The tone of the beginning of this article—putting “quackery” in the title, the insulting opening line “Bentham’s Newsletter is back at it with bad arguments for moral realism”—makes me think it’s not going to give a fair assessment of the arguments. I didn’t read it for that reason. If you want to persuade people like me, you should skip the insults.
I strongly prefer, and recommend, arguing dispassionately and hyper-charitably.
But, it seems relevant that Lance’s posts are responding to posts that also seem highly polemic[1] (Lance outlines why he views the posts as such at the start of his first post). It seems more appropriate (whether or not instrumentally advisable) to respond in kind if that’s the established norm of the space (different from Forum norms).
You’d be mistaken. If anyone thinks I said anything unfair in the article, they’re welcome to point it out. I engage comprehensively, explicitly, and directly with Bentham’s arguments for moral realism, and I do the same for many others. I don’t think anyone would be able to build a compelling case that I an unfair to Bentham or to moral realists in general. Bentham, on the other hand, rarely engages comprehensively and tends to be dismissive of his better critics on this topic, ignoring them outright or only engaging in a superficial or perfunctory manner.
See, for instance, my discussion just a few hours ago with Alex Malpass on my channel. I don’t think you’d come away with the impression that I am unfair to moral realists. I do think, however, that if you looked over the kinds of remarks I routinely engage with from moral realists, you’ll find many instances of moral realists being unfair towards moral antirealists. In fact, one of the primary things I do is document and respond to the constant misrepresentations of antirealism and the bad arguments directed against it. We antirealists are on the receiving end of the bulk of the unfair treatment, not moral realists.
I don’t think I defended my remarks on the matter as well as I could have, and David Moss has brought to light some of what Bentham initially said and used that to make a good point. MichaelDickens, you’ve expressed a critical stance towards the post I wrote that uses the term “quackery” and is polemical.
But if you take a look, you will see from the tone and links provided that I am responding in an ongoing exchange that has spanned quite some time. During that time, Bentham has routinely made far more inflammatory and insulting remarks about antirealist views. For instance, this was a section heading he used in an early post on moral realism (one of the two I linked a response to here):
Cultural Relativism: Crazy, Illogical, and Accepted by no One Except Philosophically Illiterate Gender Studies Majors
Bentham also repeatedly describes views like mine as “crazy”. Here’s one example:
Well, in this article, I’ll explain why moral anti-realism is so implausible — while one always can accept the anti-realist conclusion, it’s always possible to bite the bullet on crazy conclusions. Yet moral anti-realism, much like anti-realism about the external world, is wildly implausible in what it says about the world.
I worry that you drew a conclusion about my tone without taking into consideration Bentham’s own tone and what I was responding to.
The tone of the beginning of this article—putting “quackery” in the title, the insulting opening line “Bentham’s Newsletter is back at it with bad arguments for moral realism”—makes me think it’s not going to give a fair assessment of the arguments. I didn’t read it for that reason. If you want to persuade people like me, you should skip the insults.
I strongly prefer, and recommend, arguing dispassionately and hyper-charitably.
But, it seems relevant that Lance’s posts are responding to posts that also seem highly polemic[1] (Lance outlines why he views the posts as such at the start of his first post). It seems more appropriate (whether or not instrumentally advisable) to respond in kind if that’s the established norm of the space (different from Forum norms).
For example, though not the main focus of the essay, the BB’s first essay includes:
You’d be mistaken. If anyone thinks I said anything unfair in the article, they’re welcome to point it out. I engage comprehensively, explicitly, and directly with Bentham’s arguments for moral realism, and I do the same for many others. I don’t think anyone would be able to build a compelling case that I an unfair to Bentham or to moral realists in general. Bentham, on the other hand, rarely engages comprehensively and tends to be dismissive of his better critics on this topic, ignoring them outright or only engaging in a superficial or perfunctory manner.
See, for instance, my discussion just a few hours ago with Alex Malpass on my channel. I don’t think you’d come away with the impression that I am unfair to moral realists. I do think, however, that if you looked over the kinds of remarks I routinely engage with from moral realists, you’ll find many instances of moral realists being unfair towards moral antirealists. In fact, one of the primary things I do is document and respond to the constant misrepresentations of antirealism and the bad arguments directed against it. We antirealists are on the receiving end of the bulk of the unfair treatment, not moral realists.
I don’t think I defended my remarks on the matter as well as I could have, and David Moss has brought to light some of what Bentham initially said and used that to make a good point. MichaelDickens, you’ve expressed a critical stance towards the post I wrote that uses the term “quackery” and is polemical.
But if you take a look, you will see from the tone and links provided that I am responding in an ongoing exchange that has spanned quite some time. During that time, Bentham has routinely made far more inflammatory and insulting remarks about antirealist views. For instance, this was a section heading he used in an early post on moral realism (one of the two I linked a response to here):
You can find this here.
Bentham also repeatedly describes views like mine as “crazy”. Here’s one example:
I worry that you drew a conclusion about my tone without taking into consideration Bentham’s own tone and what I was responding to.