Today in bad arguments: identity logic

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”- Johnathan Swift

I like to consider myself a rational being (and I have the tests to prove it from a team-building at work) and I am a believer in reason and logic. While I understand humans are emotional beings, and maybe let’s say too pure, cold logic is not advisable, emotion is too easy to manipulate and must be at least tempered by reason.

Views should have some logical consistency. This is off course not enough, as starting from a wrong premise can lead to a wrong conclusion, even following perfect logic in the intervening steps. It is, let's say, necessary but not sufficient.

Always wrong
Source chroniclesmagazine.org/

In my view logic is a bit like mathematics, give or take obviously, it has some objective rules, so I should mention that I am very much against notions of “identity logic” or polylogism . This had significant use its in early socialism and Marxist theory, which came up with frankly ridiculous notions like bourgeois logic and false consciousness, to justify the fact some of the people they though should support them did not and to take the focus off logical arguments.

Why would a laborer not be a socialist? False consciousness is the obvious answer. Look, let’s get one thing clear. An argument is not dependent on class, sex, race or how fancy your hat is (mine is the fanciest anyway). It is either a valid argument in itself or it isn’t. If an argument is horseshit, then it’s horseshit and can be countered with actual quality counterarguments, not notions like it's a bourgeois argument.

An attempt to tie it to the identity of the individual is simply an ad hominem – the most classic of classic fallacies. One’s identity and life experience has no bearing on logic. I’m not saying personal experience does not matter, just it does not make logical fallacies right. If you have arguments, there is no need to pull the identity card, is there?

Even if you choose to look at things in through an identity lens, maybe someone who is detached from a certain experience has a more clear view of the thing, forest not trees and whatnot. It is clear that strong feelings about something can cloud judgement, and a step back can be useful for perspective.

Check your privilege is never a valid argument, and anyway, I totally checked mine this morning; it is right where I left it, in my diamond vault.

smbc comics

Similarly, or better said a form of this widely applied by the left, is to use accusations of racism and sexism in lieu of an argument. This, in the mind of lefties, is a great argument, because it shifts discussion from the topic at hand to persons involved, and for some reason, in their mind, once accused of racism – accusation is enough, proof not needed - the individual automatically loses. This is not that case at all and even if a person is racist that does not mean all their arguments are automatically wrong.

Similar is the simple accusation of offense. They say “that’s offensive” just like “that’s racist” or “that’s sexist” as standard phrase, an automatism if you will, which can be attached to anything one says without much meaning. The best counter to this is “so fucking what, got an actual argument”. In this way some people can never have any sort of argument if they have their wrong identity.

The basic of this is you would think differently if you were a different person. Maybe that's true, does not make me right or wrong. If I lived 200 years ago maybe I though slavery is great. And I would have been dead wrong.