Great comments on new #namethetrait video

[DrSinger]

I like this, it is a short and clear. I added it in, with a link to the proving formal arguments page.

[Margaret Hayek]

Sorry; I guess I better add this as a new post, since my attempt to edit my last to sneak it in before anyone noticed failed:

Really important question for the later sections on why NTT's invalidity matters qua causing confusion / inability to respond to objections: can people give examples of debates in which Isaac's (or others') tacitly appealing to the suppressed premises without acknowledging them has caused confusion or error? Can you tell me which debates to watch for this? Do you have time-stamps?

Yes, the one with the Warkis (spelling?) NonZeroSum posted the transcript.

http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3457&start=10#p34384

Search "alien"

Thanks so much! I watched the full thing (I'd only watched small bits before) - fascinating debate! Especially with Andy Warski being an ex-vegan and (i) running into the all-or-nothingism problem hat Melanie Joy (et al) talks about, and (ii) thinking / rationalizing his way out of veganism with various things that a full-Monty argument might have addressed; as well as both of the Warskis asking questions that touched on where to prioritize the reasons to be vegan / plant-based.

It was also, of course, a nice illustration of how Isaac might not have been responding to the Warskis in a completely optimal way, including some confusion on all sides. That said, I wonder if this is really a problem with the invalidity of NTT or really just the way Isaac was trying to defend P1 and P2 - and in particular just failing to appreciate that resistance / justified resistance to being harmed =/= others having moral reasons not to harm you. For instance, some of what went on could have happened exactly the same if Isaac had been appealing to the Argument from Less Able Humans, and had just done an imperfect job defending the premises given what was happening. E.g. I could imagine the Warskis responding in exactly the same way to the LHA argument P2*. if no/radically less moral concern for sentient non-human animals is justified, then no/radically less moral status for intellectually comparable humans is justified":

Warskis: "No, that's different, because they're still human,"
Isaac (here in defense of P2* in the otherwise valid argument): "I see you might think that, but species shouldn't matter, what if aliens wanted to holocaust you?"
Cleaned up Warskis: "We're not aliens, so we'd defend ourselves"
Isaac: "hunh? that's a double standard"
Cleaned up Warskis: "hunh, why is it?"
Everyone: "hunh? wtf is going on?"
If a philosopher had descended from heaven: "Warskis are saying that everyone within a species has reason to protect less able members of that species. Moreover, they are recognizing that just because they would be justified in defending themselves & less able humans from aliens, that doesn't mean that the aliens have any moral reason not to harm them - or at the very least no moral reason to care too much, or no reason to care/feel about the humans in a way that's different from how the Warskis currently care/feel about non-human animals"

So I'm not yet seeing how this has essentially to do with the invalidity of NTT as opposed to how Isaac tries to defend the moral irrelevance of species for the relevant roles, which is just as much a problem for defending the premises of a valid argument like that from LAH as it is for an invalid argument like NTT.

I am, incidentally, running things by a very nice and bright young gentleman in the comments section over on Isaac's recent video challenging UV, and I'm going to see if he helps me to see a distinct role for invalidity vs. just how to defend the premises.

In the mean time: Does anyone else have any ideas about how NTT's invalidity causes confusion above and beyond Isaac's or others' imperfections in trying to defend its premises (which could just as easily have been the premises of the argument from LAH)? Are there any other debates where this might have happened (and do you have time-stamps)? Thanks!

[Margaret Hayek]

I like this, it is a short and clear. I added it in, with a link to the proving formal arguments page.

Thanks, Dr. Singer, I'm so glad to hear that!

Sorry, one tiny thing: I assume that these two little paragraphs shouldn't have their very own main section, preceding the part 1 section on the logical invalidity of NTT (bearing in mind that the sections which follow these little paragraphs and the section on NTT's invalidity won't be primarily about NTT's invalidity)? So would it be OK to let these paragraphs start off the section on the summary of issues (of which I can get you a proposed draft soon) - assuming that you prefer starting with the paragraphs to letting them follow the characterization of logical validity (which I had been thinking could start off the revised introductory issues subsection within the section on NTT's invalidity)?

[Margaret Hayek]

Dear Dr. Singer,

(1) Did you simply delete the page I'd made on Isaac (which I'd ultimately intended to do, but now I can't access the material I'd moved to there), or move that material somewhere?

(2) I don't think you should talk only about AY's defenses of the premises, since that helps make it sound like a personal us vs. him, and I think that others run into these issues. I think you should put this in terms of certain defenses of the argument, and if you must attribute, say something like presenters like AY.

(3) I very strongly object to the way that you have edited the initial paragraphs of the wiki to include stuff about extraordinary claims including the caption and the vid, which I fear poisons the well and is a bit inaccurate.

I do not think that almost anyone in the audience (who does not have substantial philosophical background AND does not have contempt for hard-core neo-Kantians) is in a position to appreciate that this is an extraordinary claim at the outset. Remember: this is supposed to be acceptable to a lay audience, how on earth are they supposed to know that's so extraordinary? They don't even necessarily know WTF you mean by 'logical consistency', they might even think it means "without holding double standards"! They have no background! They're not in a position to assess any such thing!

Here is my explanation of why I believe that the content of this caption, besides being well-poisoning in part in virtue of the fact that the lay audience has NO idea as to its grounds, is actually a bit inaccurate (I had it in the page I'd made on Isaac, but now I can't find it):

Neo-Kantians make claims like this all the time. E.g. Christine Korsgaard argues that we're committed simply by deliberating to valuing all rational beings - and indeed, all sentient beings (she's done nice work arguing that this sort of crazy neo-Kantian view supports concern for non-human animals, and she's a staunch vegan and that's wonderful). Korsgaard does not even have Isaac's excuse of not knowing WTF is going on with different possible senses of entailment, since she's a famous professional philosopher.

I also think I substantively disagree with you about the stuff on circularity and invalid generalizations.

What was wrong with what there was before? If you want to take out the stuff sympathetic to Isaac's claims of independent formulation that mentioned Bentham and such, that's fine. But I'd really appreciate it if you not put back in all of this stuff that sounds like a direct attack on AY that I think is unprofessional, unhelpful, and makes it look like a badly biased hit-piece.

I assume that you're sympathetic to Melanie Joy et al on the need to practice strategic communication with Carnists? She's recently written about how important it is to do that with our fellow vegan advocates. I think we need to do that here, and I think that strategic communication strongly demands not treating this like a flame war with Isaac. Thanks.

[DrSinger]

The page still exists

http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/Isaac_Brown

I also think I substantively disagree with you about the stuff on circularity and invalid generalizations.

What do you disagree with? I think it's more of an issue than NTT itself being invalid, he's essentially 'teaching' his audience incorrect logic. I think that's worthy of being mentioned at the start.

I think if you try and hide the fact that a lot of the criticisms are of AY's argumentation the article loses meaning and clarity. This is something we had discussed before you changed it. I'll defer to brimstoneSalad if you can get him to agree, but imo it's better to be forthright that we are criticising AY's argumentation, not just NTT itself.

[mkm]

I would consider highlighting the fact, that Ask Yourself thinks that what he explains in his "things as constellation of traits" follows by law of identity, which is not the case, it's extensionality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensionality

Here is also a screenshot of his defence confirming, that he mixes these two (identity and extensionality)

https://imageshack.com/i/pnpl094up

Also he makes there another mistake. He says that:

"If NO TRAIT of the animal, switched to the human would justify devaluing the human, then ALL TRAITS can be switched without devaluation occurring",

which is also not necesserily true. I'll use set-theoretic example first. If a set A is inifinite, then removing one element from A won't make it lose its property infiniteness, but clearly you can't conclude that removing all elements doesn't make a difference. So if it's some infinite sequence of traits that gives moral value, of which each infinite part also gives moral value, then switching traits one by one doesn't cause devaluation, but switching all of them does.

[DrSinger]

I'm gonna start a section on this, do you think you could add to it?

http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait#Misunderstanding_the_law_of_identity

Also yes he does make a false all/part summative assumption there. Perhaps that's part of why he thinks the argument works

[mkm]

I'm gonna start a section on this, do you think you could add to it?

Seems I can't edit Wiki after "trolling incidence". I can't also send PMs (too fresh or too few posts) so: brimmstoneSalad, could you "activate" me on Wiki? The same nick as here.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm gonna start a section on this, do you think you could add to it?

Seems I can't edit Wiki after "trolling incidence". I can't also send PMs (too fresh or too few posts) so: brimmstoneSalad, could you "activate" me on Wiki? The same nick as here.

Sorry about that mkm, it's fixed now.

[Margaret Hayek]

Here is my draft of explaining NTT's invalidity in English, without FOL. It contains somewhat new ideas about how the various parts fit together. I'd love to hear what you think:


"It will be most helpful to put the basic reasoning of the first part of NTT in its simplest form. Without any commitment to what it is for us to think that an entity has moral value (for discussion of this see xxx below), the argument invites us to reason essentially as follows:

(P1) All sentient humans (or just, you) have moral value
(P2) There is no trait absent in sentient non-human animals which is such that, if the trait were absent in sentient humans (or, you), then they would be not have moral value.
Therefore (C) All sentient non-human animals have moral value

Now, an ambiguity arises in the interpretation of (P2) about what might happen if certain traits were absent from sentient humans – or ourselves. Plausibly, there are some traits or properties without which an entity cannot count as human, or us. These might be having human DNA, originating from certain parents, or originating with an initial set of experiences. Now we need to ask whether the traits spoken of in P2 are supposed to be allowed to include one’s essential properties (or the properties essential to being human). The most natural way to interpret P2 is certainly as holding that these traits do not include such essential properties: we are envisioning humans (or oneself) losing traits that they have and non-human animals lack (like abstract reasoning ability, moral agency, etc.) and still retaining their membership in the human species (or one’s status as oneself). But in this case the argument is invalid, because one could hold the view that we might call

Value Narcissism: one’s essential properties (or the essential properties of being human) are what give one moral value – or are such that, if one lost them, one would lose moral value.

A value narcissist could hold that although humans (or just oneself) have moral value, and humans (or one) would retain this value if they (one) lost the non-essential properties that they (one) have and sentient non-humans lack – but that non-human animals lack moral value. She could thus accept P1 and P2 but reject C.

Now one can interpret P2 in such a way that the traits to which it refers are allowed to include one’s essential properties. Then what P2 is really saying then is that, if we take all of the properties away from humans (or one) that they (or one) have and sentient non-humans lack, including their essential properties (and their not having the essential properties of others), then the resulting entities (not necessarily themselves) still have moral value. Ask Yourself has argued that if one were to lose all of the traits that distinguish one from each other non-human animal, then the resulting entity would be identical to that non-human animal, so P1 and P2 so interpreted entail C.

The problem with the validity of the argument even so understood is that this inference presupposes something like
The identity of indiscernibles: that if two entities have all of the same properties, then they must be the self-same object.

This is a substantive metaphysical thesis, to which certain philosophers have objected (xxx). But as we will see below, the much greater problem with the argument so interpreted is that it has essentially no rational force. P2 so interpreted is essentially just asserting that all sentient beings, human and non-human, have moral value. The argument thus offers little if any reason to change the mind of someone who does not already find this view plausible, and the defense of its premises offers no guidance on how to persuade such an individual.

The main importance of appreciating the invalidity of NTT and exploring what we need to do to make it valid is thus to (i) distinguish the formulation in which P2 excludes essential properties from that in which it includes them, which enables us to (ii) see that the formulation that excludes them presupposes the rejection of a substantive ethical view, and finally to also see (ii) that the formulation that includes them essential properties, while being such that it can easily be made technically valid, has (like the argument ‘(P1) we should be vegan; therefore (C) we should be vegan') essentially no persuasive force."