Reddit discussion on NTT and PV critique

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NonZeroSum
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Reddit discussion on NTT and PV critique

Post by NonZeroSum »

Philosophical Vegan vs. Ask Yourself (self.DebateAVegan) by Exbo4
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/7pgp7t/philosophical_vegan_vs_ask_yourself/

I won't ask that you take parts on the whole yt drama thing, I'll just ask for you to read PV's article on NTT here (which explains NTT, shows how it doesn't lead to veganism, and reinforces it to make it "meat proof" I guess)

And then, I'll kindly ask that someone explains to me in ELI5 style what is being said here, in the "In English" section. Especially the second sentence, it's almost unreadable.

Is NTT airtight or does it have holes? What is PV trying to say?

goiken
In the following counterexample, we will imagine a case in which, sentient humans have moral value, sentient non-human animals do not have moral value, and for all traits that sentient nonhuman animals lack, humans retain moral value with the trait removed.
A bit in a rush, and haven’t considered it too carefully, but isn’t that just the negation of premise 2?
P2 - There is no trait absent in animals which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.
So he doesn’t buy the premise of the argument. Fine.

Technically this doesn’t invalidate the argument… Just its conclusion. And from casual reading, I didn’t see much discussion of why the premise fails.

Exbo4

I see, thanks. And from what I've seen, Isaac (NTT guy) doesn't say that NTT always leads to veganism, he says that it leads to veganism if the premises are retained.

From what I can understand, and your explanation seems to confirm this, PV is basically saying "fuck the animals just 'cause" which doesn't really make sense and defends dog beaters for example which is a conclusion most meat eaters wouldn't want to reach.

OFGhost

There's no way I'm going to read through all of that, but what I did read seemed illogical and baseless. Would you care to summarize, or at the very least present your own opinion in the OP?

Exbo4

In my opinion NTT works because it makes sense and PV's text wall doesn't make sense, and I made this post to ask about whether PV makes sense and I'm just too dumb to get it.

OFGhost

I was under the impression that maybe you saw something I didn't see, but in this case I agree with you completely about this text wall. It's pseudo-intellectualism. The guy seems smart, but his desire to justify his opinion has made him borderline unintelligible.

I've always thought that NTT was a fairly decent argument, from what I've heard of it.

Papi_Shango

Looks like the gist is PV is trying to demonstrate that NTT is a deductively invalid argument.

If I were you I would take this to the eggheads of r/askphilosophy because some of them are sure to speak first order predicate logic. (And maybe quote what is giving you trouble for the sake of clarity.)

Exbo4

Good idea but oh god... I don't really want to have to deal with hordes of posts about "vegan brigading" or something in non vegan specific subreddits. Thanks for the recommendation though.

Papi_Shango

They're there to answer philosophical questions or to explain philosophical material.

If you're worried about being seen as having an agenda, then leave out your opinions about the merits of the arguments under consideration. Simply ask someone to try to explain to you in standard formal English why PV is accusing NTT of making an invalid inference.
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