So what’s the point of pointing out the hypocrisy?
If you want to call the congressman a douchebag, and you want to persuade people he has terrible judgment and should not be trusted in the future, absolutely point out the hypocrisy: you’re showing that he’s a shitty person.
But if you want to claim that Clinton’s email issues were no big deal, OR if you want to claim that Flynn’s Russian issues were a big deal, you’ve totally failed to make an argument for either. Just because one dude made contradictory arguments has zero bearing on the validity of either argument.
Which is why I continue to think it’s stupid to raise hypocrisy as an argument against a position. If you want to raise it here in the Pit as an argument against a person, by all means, that makes sense: it’s an ad hominem, and this is the place for it.
If you don’t believe in arguing about values because you believe values are essentially faith-based, and therefore argument about them is sort of pointless, then what that leaves you to argue about is factual premises, the logical entailments of shared values, and…hypocrisy (inconsistent application of your values).
When the root of a debate is really a values clash, if you don’t want to argue whose values are correct, all you’re really left to argue is that the other side has not been faithful or consistent to the other side’s own declared values.
It’s not ad hominem, exactly. It’s a way of arguing that someone’s superficial statement of their position isn’t accurate, or doesn’t actually flow from sincere application of some value judgment.
It’s a way to test values-based premises without debating values.
Factual premises are worth arguing about. They speak to the soundness of the claim.
Logical entailments of shared values are worth arguing about. They speak to the validity of the claim.
Hypocrisy is not worth arguing about. They speak to the sincerity of the claimant, which has nothing to do with the validity or soundness of the claim.
Hypocrisy is worth pointing out when you want to be able to dismiss what people say as likely to be lies. Sure, I want to make that dismissal sometimes. But that’s about the claimant, not the claim. As such, on this messageboard, it’s Pit material, not GD material.
Claim: The actions of Hillary Clinton were wrong because national security is more important than personal convenience.
You could challenge this claim in lots of ways. You could question whether she in fact put convenience above security, for example. Or you could argue about the values claim–and contend instead that sometimes convenience of a high-level official should trump security.
Another option is to argue that even the claimant doesn’t believe this, based on other applications of the claimant’s proclaimed values. This is a highly useful exercise. Not because it reveals insincerity or lies (though sometimes it does), but because it reveals factors that might be relevant to the debate that even the claimant had not realized were playing a role, whether that be facts not yet discussed or personal bias or other subtle values.
In constructive debate, this kind of exploration is highly useful even if it is logically independent from the truth or falsity of the claim, strictly speaking.
Ugh. Do you ever feel like having kids fried your brain? I stated my argument better five years ago, here.
Exploration of hypocrisy is just another form of hypothetical. It’s considering another case and attempting to apply the same values to see what happens.
You are correct: hypocrisy is not about the validity of the claim. But hypocrisy reveals character, and that makes it very much to the point. Character, rather, lack of it, is a major issue in this administration and in Congress.
Character, as in an ad hominem, is totally relevant sometimes. Bricker wonders why his insinuations of hypocrisy are unwelcome in GD, and I’m answering that.
Pointing out the factors a particular person may secretly believe is completely irrelevant. If the factors are not part of their argument, they’re not part of the argument. If someone says that the actions of Clinton were wrong for those reasons, address their reasons. If they later say that Flynn’s actions were defensible (or Trump’s were), address those reasons they give. Then call them a fuckin hypocrite in the Pit, I don’t care. But the arguments stand or fall on their merits, not on the merits of the folks making them.
Some of us believe that part of the point of reasoned discussion is to discover which argument has more merit. This process of discovery often requires exploration of intuitions and inquiry into the real reasons one supports a given proposition. That’s a perfectly ordinary, helpful, and legitimate purpose of debate.
Pence said that in Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador sanctions were not discussed. He said that on Jan. 15th, based on what Flynn told him.
Your article says that the White House (and Trump) was briefed by the FBI on the contents of the conversation on Jan. 26th.
Note the dates. Then feel free to revise what you wrote.
Fucked, or fucked up? We know it’s fucked up. I think a lot of us only *wish *it was fucked. Flynn’s resignation was the first thing that’s gone the way it was supposed to since inauguration day. I’m already so used to being horrified that I’m not expecting anything else to go right, ever.
I firmly believe that Trump knew the contents of the conversation well before that, as Flynn was acting on his orders. Yes, I think Trump is a lying sonofabitch, who told Flynn what to do, and has been directing the Russian connections before, during and after the election.
Further, I believe that you are a sad sack of shit, who has no loyalty to your country - none whatsoever.
That makes no sense. If you are discovering which argument has more merit, that’s exactly when you don’t need to understand someone’s “real reasons” for supporting a particular proposition. The argument is there, and you can determine its merits regardless of any attribute of the person who put it forth.
Your (second) example with Clinton’s emails didn’t examine whether the argument had merit. It started from the assumption that it didn’t. It became about trying to understand why someone would make that claim when they didn’t believe it themselves. Interesting, I’m sure, but tells you nothing about the merit of the argument.
Not that I see how this links back to the talk about hypocrisy and why you shouldn’t call someone a hypocrite in GD. That’s easy–it’s calling them a liar. A hypocrite is someone who knowingly says one thing but does another.
If someone brings up something that seems to contradict what they’ve said before, just point it out to them and ask for an explanation.
Yes, what you did was not tu quoque here. But that doesn’t mean it’s not in other places.
When I have called you on tu quoque, it has always been that someone is pointing out that a Republican is doing something wrong, and you bring up that a Democrat did it, too. No one has said they support the Democrats doing it, so you aren’t pointing out hypocrisy at all.
It’s more like you’re trying to find some hypocrisy, so you don’t actually have to deal with the argument on its merits. And that is indeed the tu quoque fallacy.
This, on the other hand, is doing the same thing that many of us have done–showing that people who pretended to care about these Clinton things really don’t. There’s absolutely no element of finding something the Democrats did that is similar, and using that as an excuse to say what the Republicans are doing isn’t so bad.