Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
People in a public forum cannot be expected to behave in a very reasonable way - they tend to react emotionally even to scientific arguments. Thus, I would not recommend you to behave in a public forum assuming that all people are highly rational and would look for arguments in a text formulated as a personal attack. And, given that in most cases there is anyway no argument behind an attack, or at least only a very weak one, this is not irrational at all.If people were reasonable, they'd look for the argument, and they'd critically analyze that. The attack is nothing but emphasis, and so it's separate from the rationale; if there's no rationale for the attacks to emphasize, then you can base your appraisal on that, because at that point, you've got evidence that the person has nothing meaningful to say.
This is because such public discussions have a high noise level, and to spend to much time to search for a meaning in the noise would be an irrational loss of time. So, it is rational to use simple thumb rules to decide if it is worth to look for interesting content. And such a thumb rule is that personal attacks are with high probability only cheap ad hominem not worth to be evaluated in detail.
You anyway have to make assumptions. All scientific theories are only hypotheses, assumptions. This is elementary scientific methodology, following Karl Popper. Then, of course, you cannot live based on logic alone, you also need plausible reasoning - which is, by the way, also a form of logical reasoning, described mathematically by probability theory (I recommend here Jaynes, Probability theory - the logic of science). So, plausible reasoning and assumptions are clearly part of rational reasoning.If you have to assume, you're being intuitive, not rational. There's a huge difference.
And even intuition plays an important role in science. Scientific theories have to be invented, they cannot be simply derived somehow from observation. Intuition plays an important role in this process.
Indeed. But it influences the way people react to this content. If one uses an aggressive form, many people will ignore the content, because aggressive behaviour is strongly correlated with the absence of interesting arguments, thus, nobody expects them inside an aggressive message.You can be as aggressive or as polite as you want; it has no influence on the content of your message.
In one post I have explained in some detail why the very question you consider - objective moral - is an IMHO ill-defined notion not worth to be discussed. This was in fact a response to a posting of another participant. You have not considered this posting at all, and I have not even expected that you will. So, this was not a claim against you - it was simply the explanation of my desinterest in Rashdall's argument and its possible refutations.Your claims against me argument were straw/weak men, used to hide the ad lapidem dismissal that you and everyone else has been using. That's more insulting than any hostility could ever be.
What remains was, essentially, only metadiscussion. I have taken some of your texts to evaluate the form, and to consider the question if it is a reasonable technique to use such a form in discussions in a public forum. My conclusion was that this is not a good idea to behave in this way. It was not evaluating the content at all. I think such a strategy of presentation would be suboptimal also for presenting true and good arguments. So no straw man or weak man involved, it has not been at all about the man.
The pride that I've been attacking has gotten in the way of the others' ability to acknowledge the hindrance to rational discussion caused by their own irrationality. I've addressed their arguments - there really wasn't much to address, given what "ad lapidem" refers to.
I would recommend you not to use claims about what you have already done in the past. There are some situations where this becomes useful or even necessary - after many repetitions, when you have to expect that yet another repetition will be already boring to the reader. And, if you do it, I would recommend to use only very neutral terms for this purpose. Claims of type "I've already addressed their arguments" will be ignored, because they are cheap. Usually above sides - the winner as well as the loser of the debate - can make a summary of this type. And usually it is the loser who is really doing it - the winner usually prefers to mention the point of the content where he has reached the decisive points. So, if one side claims "I have addressed all your arguments" and the other side claims "point X remains unanswered", I would risc a 1:3 bet that the second is the winner.
I would also recommend you to accept that simply giving your argument a latin fallacy name is usually not accepted as a sufficient rejection. Ad hominem is an exception - it is sufficiently easy to recognize - but everything else has to be explained in detail, even if this may be boring.
BTW, even if this forum is, from the name, scientific, don't expect many scientists here. Most people here seem to be laymen, with some general interest in science, that's all.