Some Thoughts on Problematic Arguments
Kenneth Taylor

06 April 2017
Jeff McMahan and Peter Singer—the latter a famous philosopher and public intellectual, the former famous enough among philosophers, but not so much among the broader public—wrote an article inThe New York Timesphilosophy forum, "The Stone," that has gotten lots people I know and respect pretty upset. Some have reacted to the article with very reasoned and persuasive counter-arguments. Some have thrown in a good measure of anger and disgust at them in addition.
You can check out the original article here:Who Is the Victim in the Anna Stubblefield Case?For what seems to me a fair-minded reaction to this piece, check out this,Singer and McMahan on the Stubblefield Casefrom Brian Leiter, who has been a guest on our program several times. There is also this thread from theDaily Nous blog , McMahan & Singer: Stubblefield Is A Victim Of Injustice (updated) that you may find worthwhile. It links to still other threads in other places. So if you follow it all out, you will get a good sense of how various philosophers have reacted to their piece.
我不打算评论麦克马汉和辛格的观点的优点，也不打算评论针对他们的原始观点提出的许多观点。不过，我确实想讨论一些相关的问题，因为它涉及到一些长期以来至少有点让我困惑的问题。
Not just in this case, but in a lot of these cases, I usually don’t find myself getting viscerally ANGRY at people—even when they are famous people and ought to know better—for holding, expressing, or even defending, even when it’s done in a ham-fisted and confused way, ideas that I abhor. But I have noted over the years that that lots of people have much more visceral reactions than I do. Even people who deal in ideas professionally and are expert at pointing out the flaws of ill-conceived and ill-defended idea often react with visceral anger and disgust to what they regard as nonsense.
现在，我完全不确定这表明了我的什么，以及那些对辛格和麦克马汉等人感到愤怒世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区和厌恶的人的什么。我应该说，我不是想诽谤这里的任何人。每个人对无意义和混乱有自己的反应。但是我很好奇我的方法和他们的方法的区别的来源。
Here's a half-believed pseudo hypothesis. Perhaps the difference between me and people like that rests on different attitudes about the task of rebutting problematic ideas. It is awfully tiresome to have to bother to rebut ideas that you strongly disagree with, in any case. It is even worse when you find them confused and even abhorrent. It's especially tiresome when you expect better of the purveyors of the relevant ideas. The pedigree and position of the purveyors can easily lead you to expect better of them. That much may be common ground between us.
What may not be common ground is the level of, for lack of a better word, resentment one feels in response to abhorrent nonsense. It would not be surprising feel resentment at being called on to do exhausting work that, in one's own view, simply shouldn't have to be done—not when there is so much else that needs to be done, not when one has such limited time, attention, and opportunities. Perhaps one resents the purveyors of the problematic ideas, not just because they are wrong-headed or misguided—lots of people with no pedigree or position are that. But when the purveyors of nonsense enjoy pedigree and position, one may find in the propagation of nonsense an abuse of their pedigree and position. After all, only their pedigree and position allows such abhorrent ideas, with such ham-fisted defenses, to achieve a wide-spread hearing, one might think. In the pens of lesser schmucks, those same ideas might be brushed aside, laughed off, but certainly not given wide berth.
One may even see the ham-fisted defense of confused, even abhorrent ideas as a kind of betrayal. It is a betrayal of standards of argument and reasonableness that their pedigree and position would otherwise suggest they must hold themselves to and must at least tacitly endorse. Else how did they achieve the pedigree and position in the first place?
I can see the reasonableness of getting upset about all that. I really can. But I seldom get angry about it myself. But perhaps it depends on one's expectations. There seems to me an implicit optimism behind the tendency to be emotionally upset by shoddy arguments proffered by those with position and prestige. The implicit optimism bespeaks a belief in the force of the better reason, a commitment to allowing your ideas to be shaped merely by that force. I share those commitments. Don’t get me wrong. But I also have to admit to having at times a pretty bleak and pessimistic view of human beings. The thing is that in my heart of hearts, I am only willing to give two, not three cheers, to the power of human reason. This is what my forthcoming APA Presidential Address, “Charting the Landscape of Reason” is about really. It could easily have been called "Two (Muted) Cheers for Human Reason."
事情是这样的，人类，他们是什么，充满了盲目和偏见。我们经常对自己的认知缺陷视而不见。我们大多缺乏智慧上的谦逊。大多数情况下，我们确实认为我们自己封闭的直觉和信念是有更好的理由支持的。但是，不知怎的，神奇的是，我们认为我们可以精确地识别出更好的原因的力量，因为它恰好与自己内心的声音完美地吻合。
与自我保持临界距离对我们来说是一件非常困难的事情，也是非常重要的事情。即使对我们这些专业的思想传播者来说，这也是困难而重要的。在“理性”的头脑中，在其分布多样的整体中，要从错误中找出真，从可憎中找出令人钦佩的东西，这一工作必然是艰苦而劳累的。事实上，这比困难更糟糕。这是一种西西弗斯式的劳动。或者，说得好听一点，这是一个混乱的零售行业，永远无法确保成功。
I am sorry to be such a downer. But I think Camus got it basically right, when he said, in a different context, that despite the seeming futility, we must imagine Sisyphus happy! In my own approach to nonsense, I try to achieve something like that attitude. I try to be a happy warrior, as it were, even in the face of a possibly futile, frustrating battle against the forces of darkness.

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