I’m not clear on whether you think the drowning child argument is browbeating by nature, or whether you think that just this particular presentation of it is browbeating. (Your remark about retiring the drowning child implies the former, but another of your comments elsewhere implies that you can use the drowning child argument without browbeating people with it?)
Anyway, I don’t think it’s time to retire the argument, I still feel like I hear a lot of people cite it as insightful for them.
Maybe it was an exaggeration to say it should be retired. It was an important source of insight for me as well. But I think it is used in a browbeating way very often, and this post is a strong example of that. I think the drowning child argument is best used as a way to provoke people to introspect about the inconsistency in their values, not to tell them how immoral all of their actions are.
I’m not clear on whether you think the drowning child argument is browbeating by nature, or whether you think that just this particular presentation of it is browbeating. (Your remark about retiring the drowning child implies the former, but another of your comments elsewhere implies that you can use the drowning child argument without browbeating people with it?)
Anyway, I don’t think it’s time to retire the argument, I still feel like I hear a lot of people cite it as insightful for them.
Maybe it was an exaggeration to say it should be retired. It was an important source of insight for me as well. But I think it is used in a browbeating way very often, and this post is a strong example of that. I think the drowning child argument is best used as a way to provoke people to introspect about the inconsistency in their values, not to tell them how immoral all of their actions are.