JSDev Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 After listening to Sam Seder debate a few libertarians I figured out his game. Sam Seder likes to pass himself off as a cold pragmatist who only looks at data and outcomes. This is the only tool he has in his debating toolbox and he has been very successful in this regard. Yet, if this really were true, that he only looks at data and outcomes, then you could say that he should also be for slavery. Look at what slavery provided to the economy and the well being of the slave owners and their families, as well as the well being of the slaves themselves. Surely, the data and the outcomes should persuade him, no? Of course not! But the reason he would deny this is because there is an a priori moral standard or bias by which he measures the data and outcomes against. Therefore, he doesn't start with the data but rather a moral standard or some other bias by which he can judge that some form of coercion is better than other forms of coercion. The data is secondary. But he will never admit this, at least not in the debates I've watched. If you notice, when he debates a libertarian and the conversation starts veering into moral principles, he'll keep hammering on about how he just looks at outcomes. He doesn't want to question principles, either because he has none and/or his biases will be exposed. And honestly arguing on outcomes alone is not a terribly hard argument to make and is a pretty safe place to be for a statist, so I don't blame him. I mean lots of great things can come from the massive amount of theft and resulting violence. Having data whether or not it's cherry picked really means nothing to him.
Mike Fleming Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 I agree. If we had taken the cold, pragmatic view 150 or so years ago there would still be slavery today. After all, what pragmatic reason was there to abolish it? You might argue it was pragmatic to decrease it to some lower level.... maybe... But abolishing it completely would have been silly. Pragmatism seems to be the last retreat of those not wanting to face the truth. Or at least that's my impression.
jpahmad Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 What is the pragmatic argument for slavery? (as it was practiced in the United States)
powder Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 What is the pragmatic argument for slavery? (as it was practiced in the United States) -who will pick the crops? -who will take care of the slaves? how will the slaves support themselves? -they can't read or write, they will all become criminals. -society and the economy will collapse. ...etc. 1
Mike Fleming Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 What is the pragmatic argument for slavery? (as it was practiced in the United States) The point is when it was going and an accepted practice in society, as it had been for centuries, what pragmatic reason is there to get rid of it?
jpahmad Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 -who will pick the crops? -who will take care of the slaves? how will the slaves support themselves? -they can't read or write, they will all become criminals. -society and the economy will collapse. ...etc. Oh I see
Alan C. Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 It's called intellectual myopia or intellectual near-sightedness. It means that a person lacks depth of intellect and foresight. It's a result of lacking life experience which is why children view the world this way. Some people never grow out of it and so they retain it as adults. We see this among left-liberals/progressives like Sam Seder and Ana Kasparian who view the world through the eyes of children. It's possible for people to posses exceptional talent and still retain a child-like mentality. Intellectual myopia has been recognized and written about in the past: William Penn wrote, "If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools." Herbert Spencer wrote, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the results of folly is to fill the world with fools." Frederic Bastiat wrote a book called, That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen. Henry Hazlitt referred to it in Economics In One Lesson as the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences. Thomas Sowell subtitled one of his books, Thinking Beyond Stage One. The cure for intellectual myopia is life-experience (specifically consequences). In a state of nature, natural selection would purge stupidity from the gene pool. The State interferes with this process by insulating people from the consequences of their mistakes, bad choices, and poor judgement. 3
jpahmad Posted August 21, 2014 Posted August 21, 2014 I'll check out some of those books. "Intellectual myopia" I like the sound of that! I always did feel that those two (Ana K and Sam S) were functioning with the intellectual maturity age of a 12 year old. Either that or they have no imagination.
TheAuger Posted August 23, 2014 Posted August 23, 2014 Sam Seder debating: "ummm - eh - errr - ahhhh - emmm - heheh..." God he's awful to try to listen to.
Brook Warren Posted September 19, 2014 Posted September 19, 2014 I'm not too sure he would win debating slavery even on pragmatism. Even on the grounds of pragmatism, you could debate in return that slavery is inefficient due to the historically subsidized security costs required by slavery. When that subsidy is removed, so is the profit. In fact, I've argued this before and people tend to immediately have no idea what I'm talking about, and absolutely no knowledge whatsoever on the costs of enforcing slavery - and thus their argument utterly collapses as they clearly have no idea what they are talking about. I try to indicate to them that this should be a bit of an eye opener that they were willing to jump onto an ideology and justify it with invalid philosophy, all due to ignorance and the inability to self identify that ignorance. Basically to argue it from pragmatism requires picking the collective that you believe deserves the benefits - i.e. granting a collective special privileges. The slaves don't benefit from it so clearly one collective is being picked over another. The argument must be surrounding why the slaves deserve to be slaves. Even the slave owners in the US understood this. It's why they spouted all that nonsense about slaves being live stock with lesser intellect, etc; they were trying to justify the atrocity and convert something that is right in your damn face unethical into something that is ethical. So even they knew ethics was important and were forced to navigate by their own conscience. Can you even think of any arguments that are supposedly "pragmatic" and don't just arbitrarily choose one collective over another? To my understanding, no definition of pragmatism grants an exemption from ethics, and the writers addressing it didn't claim otherwise. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I haven't encountered or been able to find otherwise. When you present an ethical argument to people and they refute it based on pragmatism, I think it's pretty clear what their true goals are. I think they are indicating quite clearly that they understand the ethical contradiction and need bullshit to continue with their desired behavior unhindered. They're not really trying to change you or defeat you in any way in the discussion; they're really just trying to protect their own minds from the horror of their immorality. Unless they're sociopaths. And in that case they're just trying to avoid the consequences. It's tragic that these people trying to deal with the cognitive dissonance by redefining their evil behavior as pragmatic behavior, are really just trying to emulate sociopaths. 1
ProfessionalTeabagger Posted September 19, 2014 Posted September 19, 2014 What is the pragmatic argument for slavery? (as it was practiced in the United States) http://www.allenisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001197/Centricity/Domain/1919/The%20Southern%20Argument%20for%20Slavery.pdf http://www.answers.com/Q/What_arguments_were_used_by_southerners_in_defense_of_the_institution_of_slavery
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