If Someone Tells You It's Wrong...

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Purple Knight
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If Someone Tells You It's Wrong...

Post #1

Post by Purple Knight »

If someone tells you something is wrong, but you disagree, how do you defend your side?

I find I have no way to do so.

I don't have anything that's automatically right. I don't have anything I can give as a reference for permissibility.

The law will be refuted by anarchists and libertarians; the laws are tyrannical and wrong.

Any system of ethics can be refuted by anyone who denies that system of ethics (that's the point; they're all debatable) and besides which, ethicists tend to speak more about which things are impermissible than which things are permissible. For example, I can reference Kant for universalisability, but that doesn't mean anything universalisable is right; it means that things that are not universalisable are wrong.

It seems to me that only a holy book or a religious authority can give positive permission for something, but that anyone can declare something to be wrong and the position that it is wrong is sort of the default.

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Re: If Someone Tells You It's Wrong...

Post #2

Post by Purple Knight »

I got a great reply from a Christian in a PM so I'm posting it.
John Bauer wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 3:59 amYou do have a way, actually—logic and reason. If someone says X is false or wrong and you disagree, you can present an argument for why you think X is true or right.
Yes, I can, but I have no premises on which to base the argument except those that I am given about right and wrong. I cannot counter with my own blind and baseless assertion.

So if someone has a great big worldview, I can read up on it and use what I read to try to get up under the argument. If someone gives me a why I can try to get round the why. X is wrong because Y. Well, that, I can work with. Perhaps Y isn't the case. I can argue that. I can look for evidence.

But if someone says something like, "listening to that music is wrong, period, why, because it is" then I have nothing with which to counter.
John Bauer wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 3:59 amHowever, you probably think your position is right
I don't. I honestly don't. If I hold a position on right and wrong it's because someone else told me it was the case. I don't claim to understand it.
John Bauer wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 3:59 am"Anyone can declare something to be wrong, and the position that it is wrong is sort of the default." Incorrect. That smells like the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam, supposing that X is wrong until proven right (or vice-versa).
I did say sort of, because what I mean here is that I can't address the argument, and since I obviously don't want to do things that are wrong, I'm stuck trusting that they are if someone says they are and avoiding doing them. I'll admit I don't really believe in defaults but that's another issue.

I'm stuck in a Hellish version of Pascal's Wager that actually holds water because those things really might be wrong and I really don't want to engage in morally wrong actions.

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