Great comments on new #namethetrait video

[Daz]

In my understanding it is really quite simple. If you really need to in the context of a strict logical argument (generally not necessary for discussion with most people for this would already be accepted if they understand morals and the importance of consistency), throw in a premise that says something like the following:

P: Double standards and hypocrisy are unacceptable as part of a consistent and robust moral and ethical framework.

It's that simple. I mean is there any context you can think of that someone wouldn't accept this premise (particularly in relation to humans)? And if they accept it in relation to humans then when this premise forms part of the rest of the NTT argument, not extending it to animals will result in a logical inconsistency. Does this make sense to you?

The whole fuss is basicly about the fact that AY not only haven't recognnized the necessity of adding premises of that sort to complete the arguement, he claim(s?)ed that the argument holds as is only based on logic, without other premises, which is obviously not true.
And yeah, adding a premise that prohibits double standards is a good idea

Sorry for interrupting

Haha yeah, fuss over nothing. A lot of wasted energy. I mean, I don't know anyone that would legitimately argue that double standards or hypocrisy are ok when it comes to a moral and ethical framework. I guess to make it technically logically valid from a strict standpoint you can throw in that premise, however in general everyday use it is safe to assume people having any kind of honest discussion about standards in morals and ethics and a logical framework therein, wouldn't except double standards. Pretty basic primary school stuff. But sure, throw it in just to satisfy the pedantic Now we have a logically valid argument in the strict sense. I mean, if someone did want to argue that double standards are ok within a moral framework let them go ahead, it will lead to some absolutely ridiculous positions that they themselves would never accept and would never want to live in a world that accepts.

[brimstoneSalad]

Haha yeah, fuss over nothing. A lot of wasted energy.

IF Isaac's claim was that it was only an informal argument and he didn't frame it as a formal one, then it would be wasted energy. Nobody's trying to nitpick a casual argument to that degree.

The problem is the CLAIM that the argument is formally logically valid, when in fact it is obviously not valid to anybody who grasps basis logic. It makes the people claiming this look like idiots, and reflects badly on veganism.

Isaac looks about as rational as Timothy Shieff claiming the Earth might be flat; less so, even, considering Tim is only making empirical claims which are overwhelmingly probably wrong, while Isaac's claims are transparently, obviously, uncontroversially wrong based on the simplest understanding of logic itself.

I guess to make it technically logically valid from a strict standpoint you can throw in that premise,

You not only "can" but must if you want it to be logically valid.

But try to get Isaac to admit that: if you even tried he would ban you from his Discord.

The problem is he's throwing a narcissistic tantrum and won't admit ANY flaws to the argument.
And it has more flaws than just that. There are many. Some smaller issues of word usage (his use of the word "deem" for example), others larger issues (like the entire second deontological/politically radical marxist/social justice half of the argument).

If Isaac were just open minded to revise the argument, or stop claiming it's logically valid, there wouldn't be a problem. The only way to stop being wrong is to be willing to correct yourself, and Isaac is not.

however in general everyday use it is safe to assume people having any kind of honest discussion about standards in morals and ethics and a logical framework therein, wouldn't except double standards.

The general form of the first half, expressed informally, is fine for an informal argument. Just don't go around saying P1 P2 etc. because that's a dishonest claim to be a formal argument, and in that case leaving off a logically necessary premise makes the argument both invalid and dishonest.

But sure, throw it in just to satisfy the pedantic

It's not to satisfy pedantic vegans, it's to make the arguments valid and strong against opposition, so our opponents don't just point and laugh at us.

Now we have a logically valid argument in the strict sense. I mean, if someone did want to argue that double standards are ok within a moral framework let them go ahead, it will lead to some absolutely ridiculous positions that they themselves would never accept and would never want to live in a world that accepts.

The way you put it, sure. But Isaac's version has more problems than your version did (deeming, etc.).

[ESP.ION.AGE]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but someone started a discussion on #namethetrait today on /r/askphilosophy. A few philosophy graduates have brought up some issues with it. One of them said that the PhilosophicalVegan Wiki entry is nonsensical as well. You can read the criticisms here: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/7vw368/is_there_a_way_to_believe_in_human_moral_value/dtvlcxu/

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this,

This is a fine place to post it.

One of them said that the PhilosophicalVegan Wiki entry is nonsensical as well.

His reply as to why it's nonsensical is nonsensical.

Let's look at the alleged counterexample:

P1 - Humans are of moral value

P2 - There is no eye colour absent in cows which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.

C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such an eye colour in cows, we contradict ourselves by deeming cows valueless

The wiki claims that this "is clearly invalid as there is no premise to say moral value must be based on eye colour." But why would we think that? If it's because P3 is missing, then sure, but obviously that has nothing to do with eye colour. If it's for some other reason, this makes no sense. Surely nothing about eye color can tell us that the argument is logically invalid. To see this, let's add P3 into the mix:

P1 - Humans are of moral value.

P2 - There is no eye colour absent in cows which if absent in humans would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.

P3 - It's a contradiction to deem cows valueless unless we establish the absence of an eye colour in cows that, if absent in humans, would cause us to deem ourselves valueless.

C - Therefore without establishing the absence of such an eye colour in cows, we contradict ourselves by deeming cows valueless.

Obviously this one's valid! So eye colour can't be telling us about validity or invalidity.

Yes, obviously it's valid WITH the substantive missing ethical premise P3 added. It's invalid without it. That's how logic works. If you're missing a necessary premise, then your conclusion no longer follows from the premises.
C does not follow from P1 and P2 alone.
C does follow from P1 P2 and P3.

I don't know what his point is, or if he really just doesn't understand the basics of logic.

[brimstoneSalad]

Albus on Seitainism had some comments on replying to NTT, @Margaret Hayek @DrSinger I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

"You're saying that it's okay to kill cows for food, but not kill humans for food.
Cows and humans are different. So what is your reason/justification for that difference of treatment?"
notice how it doesnt say anything about "traits"
ntt should be worded more like that

It should, that is another way to correct it: talk about justification instead of traits. This is why I have said Isaac's old version was better: he used to say something like "either you think actions have to be justified or you don't, if you don't then you can't judge others for acting against you without justification, if you do then what's your justification for treating animals in ways you wouldn't accept for humans"

yeah
he makes it more confusing when he starts talking about "all objects are constellations of traits"
in his response to you he says: "it doesnt have to be a trait"
thats why i was telling u that trying to "fix" ntt to be about traits would be useless because AY wouldn't accept it, since that's not the goal ntt is trying to achieve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dFmji1 ... u.be&t=895
Where Isaac says it doesn't imply it has to be based on a trait, but if it isn't then you have to accept the same.

yeah all im saying is that if the argument you propose has premises like "moral value is based on a trait", AY will just dismiss EVERYTHING you say because of that
and people will think he's right

because trait == justification
for ay

IMO it has always been about justifications
and you would need some kind of "golden rule universal justification" type premise
or something

@philosophicalvegan i think you would have more luck if you focused more on that justifications part rather than the whole "traits" thing.

@philosophicalvegan and i mean, isaac KNOWS his argument isn't about traits, like you saw on that clip. he just keeps talking about "traits" and name the "trait" for some reason. but he knows its about justifications. he just doesn't agree that it needs more premises(edited)

He thinks we should focus more on trait being irrelevant, and AY really being after justifications.

Justifications may be traits in the broadest sense (the one that creates contradictions and question begging), but Isaac has said that morality doesn't have to be based on traits and still thinks the argument creates demands for a kind of golden-rule like consistency of non-double standards that he confuses with logical consistency.

It's possible this is an outdated response from Isaac, but there could be something to it.

[Margaret Hayek]

Albus on Seitainism had some comments on replying to NTT, @Margaret Hayek @DrSinger I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

"You're saying that it's okay to kill cows for food, but not kill humans for food.
Cows and humans are different. So what is your reason/justification for that difference of treatment?"
notice how it doesnt say anything about "traits"
ntt should be worded more like that

It should, that is another way to correct it: talk about justification instead of traits.

I wonder if the following would best capture the logical form of the argument that you are suggesting. As in our our current version of NTT 2.0 (see wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait#Correction and wiki/index.php/NameTheTrait_2.0), let 'x has non-trivial moral status' mean at least that we are morally required not to treat x in the ways that consuming animal products treats non-human animals - for instance, x is such that we are morally required not to inflict enormous suffering upon and / or kill x for relatively trivial reasons (like taste-pleasure):

(P1) Sentient humans have non-trivial moral status.

(P2) If sentient humans have non-trivial moral status but sentient non-human animals lack this status, then there must be some morally relevant difference between sentient humans and sentient non-human animals that is important enough to justify this difference in moral status.

(P3) There is no morally relevant difference between sentient humans and sentient non-human animals that is important enough to justify this difference in moral status.

Therefore, (C) Sentient non-human animals have non-trivial moral status.


One very nice thing about this argument is that its logical form and validity can be very simply and easily explained using only sentential / propositional logic (one does not have to get into predicate / first order logic). The logical form is:

(p1) A
(p2) If A and not B, then C
(p3) Not C
Therefore, B

Where:
A = Sentient humans have non-trivial moral status
B = Sentient non-human animals have non-trivial moral status, and
C = There is some morally relevant difference between sentient humans and sentient non-human animals that is important enough to justify this difference in moral status [viz. sentient humans having non-trivial moral status but sentient non-human animals lacking such status].

The validity of the argument can be easily shown as follows:
1. A; premise
2. If A and not B, then C; premise
3. Not C; premise
4. It is not case that both A and not B; 2, modus tollens
5. Either not A or B; 4, demorgan's law [~(A & B) iff ~A or ~B]; dropping double negation [~~B iff B]
6. B; 1, 4, disjunctive syllogism [C or D, ~C |- D] (and ~~A iff A, since in our case the inference is ~A or B, A|-B)


If you want to make P3 more compelling at first sight, or make the strategy for defending P3 (a la less able humans / "marginal cases") clearer at first sight, we could try to do so by explicitly talking about ALL sentient humans:

(P1) All sentient humans have non-trivial moral status.

(P2) If all sentient humans have non-trivial moral status but farmed animals [or 'some sentient non-human animals'] lack this status, then there must be some morally relevant difference between all sentient humans and farmed [/these sentient non-human] animals that is important enough to justify this difference in moral status.

(P3) There is no morally relevant difference between all sentient humans and farmed [/ some / these sentient non-human] animals that is important enough to justify this difference in moral status.

Therefore, (C) Farmed [or 'all sentient non-human] animals have non-trivial moral status.

Even here, while you do have to put it into FOL to show how we can infer that all sentient non-human animals have moral status from P1, P2, and there being no sufficiently important difference between any given sentient non-human animal and all sentient humans, the logical form of the argument and proof that it is valid are still pretty straightforward (and if you run this with 'farmed animals' instead of 'some sentient non-human animals', then you again don't even have to put it into FOL and sentence / predicate logic suffices, because the logical form and proof of validity are identical to those above).

Best,
Margaret

[brimstoneSalad]

@Margaret Hayek That phrasing (with justification) really seems to read better. I wonder if Isaac or his fans would be more open to is as Albus suggested.

Is this an improvement in terms of proofing?

[Margaret Hayek]

@Margaret Hayek That phrasing (with justification) really seems to read better. I wonder if Isaac or his fans would be more open to is as Albus suggested.

Is this an improvement in terms of proofing?

Sorry, can you clarify the question?

If you're just asking whether the logical form and validity of the above argument is easier to explain and prove than that of our NTT 2.0 argument, then my answer again is YES, RIDICULOUSLY SO! As you can see above the proof of its validity is really only 3 lines (in addition to the 3 premises) [vs. 24 lines in the natural deduction proof of our current NTT 2.0], the reasoning is simple and intuitive [more so than in our proof of the validity of NTT 2.0], and the logical form is simple and for some ways of presenting it requires only sentence / propositional logic rather than predicate / first order logic.

Because this argument doesn't talk about 'traits' (although it does talk about "morally relevant differences") it might be odd to call it a version of "name the trait." Maybe it would be better called "name the difference," or, if you want to foreground justification, "justify the difference."

I don't know to what extent Isaac or his subscribers / other social media followers would be interested in or open to something like this argument, but it might be interesting to see.*

Do you think we should have a wiki entry on this "name / justify the difference" argument and / or suggest it as another helpful way of making the original NTT argument valid?

Best,
Margaret


*Sadly, I am inclined to doubt that Isaac will take anything coming from this forum as a helpful suggestion, and my sense is that he isn't very open to the suggestion that he should change anything about NTT or its presentation. But perhaps if it were suggested as an alternative way to convey the basic idea of arguments like that from less able humans ("marginal cases"), NTT, etc., then some might find it helpful - if not as a replacement, then perhaps as one of a range of alternatives.

[brimstoneSalad]

Do you think we should have a wiki entry on this "name / justify the difference" argument and / or suggest it as another helpful way of making the original NTT argument valid?

Based on what you said, yes, I think we should. Maybe it should be called "Name The Justification" to conserve the convention, unless that wording doesn't make sense?

[Margaret Hayek]

Do you think we should have a wiki entry on this "name / justify the difference" argument and / or suggest it as another helpful way of making the original NTT argument valid?

Based on what you said, yes, I think we should. Maybe it should be called "Name The Justification" to conserve the convention, unless that wording doesn't make sense?

Sure; that sounds good - "Name The Justification" it is (for now at least / unless we change our minds)!

I'll throw together a phil vegan wiki page on it.

Do you think we should have a quick discussion of it - in addition to NTT 2.0 - in the NTT wiki?

Depending upon what you and others like better we could mention both NTT 2.0 and NTJ in the NTT wiki but foreground whichever we think is most helpful (e.g. if everyone like's NTJ better, we could present that one alone in the phil vegan wiki, while just mentioning and linking to the NTT 2.0, which sticks closer to the form of the original NTT but slightly revises premise 1 and adds premise 3 to make it valid).