Great comments on new #namethetrait video

[DrSinger]

DrSinger: re-posted

I can't see it, maybe you're blocked already?

The section "Separating humans and nonhuman animals " would become more realistic but not change essentially. The change is only:

With the changed P2 the replicas would not have to exist in reality, but only in a possible world.

That's good, I'll add it in, so we can't be nitpicked

But to make a clear case one would have to name the trait that shows, which animals have moral value. In order to prove veganism one would have to say the trait is being an animal.

I guess this is true for a simple definition of veganism

[brimstoneSalad]

To bring this a little further, the question I have in my mind is why accept P2 for animals and not organisms. What is the trait, that make animals distinct from organisms?

Argument for organisms moral value
P1 - [Animals] are of moral value.
P2 - There is no trait absent in [nonanimal organism] which if absent in [animals] would cause us to deem ourselves [as animals] valueless.
C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in [nonanimal organisms], we contradict ourselves by deeming [nonanimal organisms] valueless.

Therefore, if someone accepts NTT for the animal case, one should ask him to name the trait for the organism case.

Of course this isn't true in reality (because some animals don't have it), but: "ability to deem things."
Assuming, that is, that the "us" that is deeming is the one with the trait removed, and not "US" as in the fully formed US.
It's the only one that certainly solves it by the nature of the argument.

As in the post before, though (with the Bessie example), that basically reduces P2 to "Bessie deems herself to be of moral value"
If WE (the fully formed US) do not deem it, then it's still a non-sequitur, and there's nothing that would force US (fully formed) to deem it in the argument.

[mkm]

I think that is not a correct interpretation, because the original version is concerning counterfactual cases. The problem is the material conditional.
I think a modal expression would do it. But this would make the model for interpreting it correctly way more complicated as the question is, what worlds are related to.

Once I left a comment under unethical vegan's video, where he tried to translate NTT into 0OL, that NTT propably operates in modal logic due to it's woulds, and I had the same concern, that it would be totally incomprehensible to most.

lol autistic maybe the vid is worth watching then, I might throw some of those quotes in the article if I can find them. I don't think AY will have any mathematically or philosophically competent fans remaining anymore. He's basically added 'logic tho' and 'non sequitur tho' to his list of 'invalid arguments'.

It reminds me of stefan molyneux is his claim to have proven objective ethics or what he calls universally preferable behaviour with 'you cant object to UPB without invoking UPB!!!!'.

Jesus Christ, it's hilarious. Seems that sooner or later we will all end here, and it's not that bad

Probably the most sensible and minor mistake he made, since to avoid that you'd have to find a system that doesn't use the law of the excluded middle, or has some other odd restriction, and paraconsistent and other such types of systems aren't terribly useful in the context of discourse, only really something for mathematics and computer science.
I think you could argue that rejection is unnecessarily restrictive and doesn't constitute logic itself in the general sense, but a subset for a particular use.
Not to start a "my system is best" logic war.

To contrary, modal logic is much more natural for natural language ( ). A really cool example is the following. Consider two sentences:

1) If Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, then someone else killed him.
2) If Oswald wouldn't kill Kennedy, then someone else would.

1) is obviously true, since someone killed Kennedy, but how to evaluate 2)? You need some kind of modal logic, because 2) being true means, that the assasination of Kennedy was a must, or in other words, in every possible world someone kills Kennedy.
See also that if we insist that 0-1 logic models natural language, then it implies logical determinism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_determinism), so we should be catious to what extent we agree such logic is valid, when it comes to reality (whatever it is).

[brimstoneSalad]

To contrary, modal logic is much more natural for natural language ( ). A really cool example is the following. Consider two sentences:

1) If Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, then someone else killed him.
2) If Oswald wouldn't kill Kennedy, then someone else would.

Maybe you can start a thread about it, it's an interesting discussion.

[brimstoneSalad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK7kE8PDau8

gonna watch this vid now, supposedly a debunk of NTT.

The argument (regarding the practical effect of burden shifting from the oddly presented conclusion) presented in this clip is interesting:
7:47 - 9:39

Think we can upload that clip to burden of proof, or is it too big?
(I don't think the max upload has been changed yet, it will probably be a few days at least)

[brimstoneSalad]

Isaac is spamming here to try to get attention from Unnatural Vegan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzz7GZuwRVU

Can you post your debunk in that thread? Or does the block apply youtube-wide to responding to his comments?
If it's just on a channel by channel basis, that would be a pretty safe place to confront him about this without the risk of being blocked.

NTT debunk

NTT

P1 - Humans are of moral value
P2 - There is no trait absent in animals which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.
C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in animals, we contradict ourselves by deeming animals valueless

Debunk

- P2 requires trait that can be absent in humans
- Traits that can be absent in humans are all traits except 'being human' and 'moral value' (moral value because of P1)
- Traits that could give moral value to animals based on P1 are 'being human' or 'moral value'
- Neither of these can satisfy P2 as they cannot be absent in humans
- Therefore P2 does not assign the traits 'moral value' or 'being human' to animals
- Hence C 'Animals have moral' does not follow from the premises and the argument is a non sequitur

Additionally if you allow 'us/ourselves' to be human then P2 becomes irrelevant since P1 says humans can never be valueless.

Furthermore, even if NTT did establish 'that there is no moral value giving trait absent in all animals' that would only imply 'that there is at least one animal with the moral value giving trait', not that 'all animals have the moral value giving trait' (which is the conclusion)

Try to prove me wrong

Protip: You can't, it's not possible to prove C follows from P1 & P2. Anyone with a basic understanding of formal logic knows that AY is wrong

[DrSinger]

To contrary, modal logic is much more natural for natural language

I can see I have much to learn . Has anyone checked through the FOL section, any errors etc?

Can you post your debunk in that thread? Or does the block apply youtube-wide to responding to his comments?

I posted it, it's a shame I didn't get in earlier, would love to humiliate him in another comment section. Gavel posted the debunk comment on his vid again too, I saw it briefly, but so far as I can tell Ask Yourself blocked it or deleted it. I would be good to spread it around.

gonna watch this vid now, supposedly a debunk of NTT.
The argument (regarding the practical effect of burden shifting from the oddly presented conclusion) presented in this clip is interesting:
7:47 - 9:39

I should be able to, it's not that long. He had some good points, failure to name a trait doesn't imply there is no trait. An issue we've overlooked. Interested to see if Ask Yourself will make a response, he hasn't shared it to his fan base yet (that I'm aware of) like I'd expect him to.

C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such a trait in animals, we contradict ourselves by deeming animals valueless

I guess we should add in some stuff in about steel-manning the conclusion

edit: Some highly intelligent debunk rebuttals, unfortunately darren deleted his comment so I never got to see the end of it or respond to it. It's hard to avoid becoming condescending toward these people

IntelligentDebunkRebuttals.png

[Nightcell001]

edit: Some highly intelligent debunk rebuttals, unfortunately darren deleted his comment so I never got to see the end of it or respond to it. It's hard to avoid becoming condescending toward these people
IntelligentDebunkRebuttals.png

So are we supposed to interpret P1 as : "There exists some human with moral value" ? If yes the argument is even more fragile.

I was also thinking about self referential trait as :
" the ability to deem oneself of moral value "
I apologize if it has been discussed before but I have been out for the thread quite a long time...

With this kind of trait you can argue that humans have this ability, and animals don't ( induced by lacking moral agency ).
In this case the trait is present in human and absent in animals, but now the catch is that if Isaac turn the argument against you like he always does :
" Yeah , so would you deem yourself valueless if you lack that trait ?? "
Plugging it in we have :
" Yeah, so would you deem yourself valueless if you didn't have the ability to deem yourself of moral value ?".
The answer is yes.

I haven't try to work out the kinks but it seems that self referential traits can make the argument crumble even in Isaac informal treatment.

[DrSinger]

" Yeah, so would you deem yourself valueless if you didn't have the ability to deem yourself of moral value ?".
The answer is yes.

This is quite clever, but I think it would just mean we would fail to deem ourselves of value, not that we deem ourselves valueless. I think this is a issue similar to when AY asks things like ''would you deem x to be moral if you were a cow?' etc.

If we removed 'deem' you could just reject P2 easily by naming the trait 'moral value', if you ignore the 'if absent in humans' issue.

I think in the correction

P2 - There is no trait absent in sentient non-human animals which if absent in sentient humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.

should be changed to

P2 - in all sentient non-human animals there is no trait which if absent in sentient humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.

Since 'no trait absent in all' means 'present in at least one'

whereas 'in all there is no trait absent' means ''present in all'

[mkm]

I was also thinking about self referential trait as :
" the ability to deem oneself of moral value "
(...)

I really like it, it has a gist of Russell's paradox, which was mindblowing for me when I was little
It's nice since it doesn't create double standard, as you have noticed, but it propably gives no moral value for some heavily mentally disabled people, or at least it's disputable. I guess we don't want to be in such a position.

Maybe you can start a thread about it, it's an interesting discussion.

I'm not sure, it's just short remark, and seems it's not that catchy and I am no expert on modal logic to say much more. If it gets more responses I will start a thread, or maybe then you can just separate it from this thread.