NAP and Arguing

[Jamesican]

 

So I've been looking up different beliefs on the topic of violence and had a question about the non-aggression principle. Is starting an argument (or even a debate) in violation of the NAP?

[J. D. Stembal]

Is it theft, murder, assault, or rape?

[Kevin Beal]

No, it's not.

 

Google says this about the NAP:

 

The “Non Aggression Principle” (or NAP) is an ethical doctrine that states that aggression is wrong, aggression being defined as the initiation of physical force or fraud against persons or property, or the threat of the same.

 

Google says this about arguments:

 

An argument is a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.

 

 

Providing reasoned argument is clearly not an example of physical force or fraud against persons or property, or threat of the same.

 

Some people talk about Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and refer to certain types of communication as "violent", but NVC does not actually say that words can be violent, just that not thinking about your own needs and others' can lead to violence. And certainly there are certain types of interaction that don't involve physically hurting or threatening to hurt physically, that are unreservedly types of "abuse", but abuse is not necessarily aggression in the sense described above, even if it can ultimately be more traumatizing.

 

It doesn't make it good, but no, words are not violations of the NAP.

 

Arguments (in the sense described above) are actually incredibly beneficial. Another way of describing an argument is "if you accept these premises, then you should accept this conclusion", which is an appeal to reasoned logical principles or empirical evidence. This means that you can accept the conclusion of a person's argument independently, through your own analysis, rather than depending on an authority to tell you what is true and false.

 

In science and philosophy, arguments are how truth is determined from falsehood. Like your math teacher told you they want to see your work, making reasoned arguments is showing your work in how you arrived at your conclusions. And like in math, the answer to the math problem is not nearly as important as the methodology you employ.

 

Most arguments are implicit and are not stated as a list of premises and conclusion, but can be deduced. Consider the following argument:

 

Violence against people is not immoral. Bugs have hearts and brains and lives and produce offspring. How are humans so special? If you are fine with killing a bug with a heart and offspring of it’s own, then why are you so against harming humans? It seems to me that either you’ve got to start treating bugs with care and respect, or not care so much about human violence. And I don’t really care about the life of a bug, that’s not the point. I’m just suggesting that maybe, just maybe it’s not that bad if some people die.

 

The actual logical form of the argument is something like:

 

P1: All complex life lives and breathes and eats and reproduces
P2: We humans are not any different, fundamentally
C1: Killing people is not any different from killing bugs

P3: You step on bugs without knowing it every single day and it doesn’t break your heart
C2: You have no compunction around killing bugs (you jerk)
P4: Making irrational distinctions to base the worth of another living being is bigotry
C3: Being outraged at murdering human beings and not a bug is irrational human bigotry
C4: You ought not feel any moral outrage at murdering another person

 

...where the P's are the premises, and the C's are your conclusions. By being able to look at the argument in this way, we can discover errors in the argument, or gaps in the reasoning which make the argument insufficient in demonstrating the conclusion logically. For example, it does not follow logically that because we are the same in many respects as higher life forms that killing humans versus ants is logically and morally the same. Errors in arguments are called "logical fallacies" and the most common errors have names that are worth remembering.

 

Many times, the presence of logical fallacies is not a simple misunderstanding or honest mistake, but actually evidence of emotional defenses, and the reason that the word "argument" leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths is because of how emotionally volatile people can be when making arguments or responding to them. The "might makes right" mentality where, because I'm bigger, I am right about when I'm saying and you need to listen to me is one such example. People who have poor impulse control and lack the self knowledge to know that it's really their own shit that they are making everybody else's problem.

 

If you'd like to learn more, I would highly recommend these podcasts:

 

FDR531 Logical Fallacies Part 1

FDR532 Logical Fallacies Part 2

FDR2857 An Introduction to Sophistry

FDR2864 An Introduction to First Principles

 

And certainly check out the great Introduction to Philosophy series by Stefan, here:

[Pepin]

I'm curious, why do you associate initiating arguments with initiating aggression? You may be right in your thinking, it is just that I don't know how you got there. Even if you are wrong, providing an explanation of why arguments are not aggression may not be too satisfying, especially if it doesn't address the reasoning behind your question.