Sunday, August 12, 2012

Arguing for the sake of arguing

So I decided to look over an old post over at InformationisBeautiful.net (this post) and I found this comment:
The arguments both for and against same-sex marriage are not logical arguments. Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable, but the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.
Wait, what?

So let me get this straight: neither side in the gay marriage debate is basing their argument on logic, only relativistic values.

In that case, there is no reason why gay marriage should or should not be allowed based solely on the number of people who happen to believe either position, i.e. sheer majority will. There is no real reason beyond the collective whims of everyone; there is no righteousness in the struggle of gays to have their relationships recognized as marriage, because 'righteousness' is a function of moral axioms, and there are no moral axioms.

I'm glad that's straightened out.

Sarcasm aside, let's break down this statement to see what's wrong with it.
Logical arguments should work from a fixed and common set of axioms and be independently verifiable.
Assuming that the word 'axiom' means what I think it means, e.g. a premise which can definitively known to be true, then so far so good. Moving on, however...
...the arguments for and against same-sex marriage are based on very variable moral judgements and values.
And here is where the trouble begins. First off, this is yet another example of presuming the truth of premises that are left undefended, because they are thought to be clearly true by reasonable people... Except they aren't, and that's why we keep having arguments about things like gay marriage or other such things.

Secondly, this statement presumes that there is some kind of separation between "logic" and "rhetoric", as if they are different species. On the contrary, there is indeed such a thing as "rhetorical logic". In the Middle Ages, the distinction was made between the "demonstrative" argument, which relied purely on syllogisms (e.g. If A is true, then B must follow) and the "rhetorical" argument, which was probabilistic (e.g. Given that A, B, and C are reasonable courses of action, I submit that B is the best, because X). The latter is the common technique used in politics, and can be perfectly valid arguments despite not being purely "logical".

I think the trouble here is that there seem to be different working definitions of what logic is in the first place. It seems that the commenter believes that what counts as "logic" would produce a proposition that cannot be denied by anyone. This is strict to an unfounded degree. There is no such thing as an argument or proposition that can compel a person to believe it beyond their capacity to deny it. People are fickle and can deny whatever they want, and even if they are open to argumentation it takes some time for someone to truly absorb, understand, and (possibly) adopt a correct argument. People have to consciously choose to accept even a totally sound proposition or argument; that is just a fact of life.

As to what the actual premises at stake are in the gay marriage debate, that will have to wait for now. I merely wanted to point out that even our ideas about what arguments are seem to, sadly, vary wildly between different people.


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