A bad tendency often seen in discussion online is to ascribe motives to others and evaluate the ascribed motives to the exclusion of consideration of arguments, and I provided an example of that tendency at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050221/003859.html>. Sometimes, commentators don't even bother to discuss motives, let alone arguments: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20050214/003685.html>. Unless arguments are considered first and foremost, discussion inevitably dumbs downm just as it does in the corporate media's coverage of electoral politics. Therefore, it is worth countering the aforementioned tendency.
Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu, Tue Feb 22 08:56:26 PST 2005:
>>Thus in court, a witness's biases, and thus motives, are pertinent
>>in judging the reliability of her testimony. It is not an _ad
>>hominem_ fallacy to present evidence of a witness's bias, i.e.
>>motives.
>
>Fortunately for all of us, the world isn't a courtroom.
Even if the world were a courtroom, one would have to consider actions (or arguments in the case of discussion) first of all and establish that the actions in question were crimes (or arguments in question were bad arguments in the case of discussion) before taking motives and intents into account, as Turbulo argues below.
Turbulo at aol.com Turbulo at aol.com, Tue Feb 22 09:26:08 PST 2005:
>people don't usually talk about motives when they think the argument
>has merit. Then the motive is seen as nothing other than expressing
>a rational point of view. It's usually when arguments are deemed
>spurious that a fair-minded person goes for the motive ("Why is this
>guy making such a self-evidently stupid argument? There must be
>something else to it.")In other words, motives are normally invoked
>when hopes of responding rationally have been abandoned, so to
>evaluate both the argument and the motive mostly means you have
>disimissed the argument. It may be perfectly OK to do this,
>depending on the argument, but this is what you're doing.
snit snat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com, Tue Feb 22 09:41:23 PST 2005:
>if y'all want to play by those rules: are pugliese, dawson, and
>newman provocateurs?
amadeus amadeus wrote earlier that he took Carrol's statement to mean that Dawson, Newman, Pugliese, provocateurs, etc. are different sorts of bumps on the terrain of struggle:
amadeus amadeus amadeus482000 at yahoo.com, Fri Feb 18 12:44:49 PST 2005:
>I think the idea here is that any and all of the above parties-- and
>more-- represent, yes, a TERRAIN on which we operate. Obviously
>Churchill, the Weathermen, people on this list, etc., are not all in
>the same category. Rather, there are all different sorts of bumps
>and dips on the landscape, and there will ALWAYS be.
That's the reasonable interpretation, in that putting items in a list doesn't imply identity among them. If I say that I like Edam cheese, butch lesbians, and Iranian movies, that doesn't mean that Edam cheese is a butch lesbian or an Iranian movie, though all items in the list are in the category of my likes. Similarly, if Carrol says that Dawson, Newman, Pugliese, provocateurs, etc. are bumps on the terrain of struggle, that doesn't mean that Dawson, Newman, or Pugliese is a provocateur, though all items in the list are in the category of Carrol's dislikes. One is obligated not to call a person a provocateur unless one has material evidence for it, but one is not at all obligated to like him or even approve of his behavior. -- Yoshie
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