Do you mean I should quote published philosophers on this like pragmatists and relativists? — Andrew4Handel

If possible yes, or just discuss their views, or present your own interpretation of their views, or present what you see as the standard arguments, etc., and then criticize them. Relativism in particular is very commonly misunderstood, so it would be useful to get an idea of what relativists, if such creatures exist, are actually saying, so that you’re not attacking a straw man.

I watched the below video involving Rorty and in it they raised issue of the impact on civil rights movements on the idea that you can't define a concept among others such as whether you can define a vulnerable or threatened group or make a claim like "all men are made equal". — Andrew4Handel

So the thing here would be to pick out something substantial from the video and go through it in some detail.

Which Lounge discussion do you think should not be in the Lounge?

This one is interesting, I think. It would have been nice if Benj had given his interpretation of the quotations, but on balance I thought it might produce an interesting discussion.

As far as I know there are no philosophers who are “anything goes relativists” or who deny the existence of the world outside their own minds, so maybe you’re just arguing against the bad philosophy you sometimes see on TPF. So, although I agree with you, I question that it’s a good topic for philosophy.

Note also that you’ve brought up three issues that, while sometimes connected, are usually tackled separately: truth, Cartesian scepticism, and relativism.

Formally yes--one is about "bachelor", the other is about bachelors--but practically I'm supposing that the latter, if it's ever said, usually just functions to tell people what the word means, which is why it's fair to reword it to refer to the word instead of the thing.

In modern discourse you will rarely see bigots sincerely peddle their true argument (the bailey) because it's not only wrong and clearly fallacious, but often times monstrous. The problem however is trying to expose the bailey instead of fighting on the motte, because the motte is the shadow, it's never really about that. — Darkneos

Yes indeed. I think we see this from white supremacists, motte-and-bailey not so much as a fallacy but as a long-term strategy.

@fdrake talked about it here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3976/the-cooption-of-internet-political-discourse-by-the-right/p1

I realized that until today I’ve been using the phrase “strong claim” to describe the bold, unsafe claim, i.e., the bailey, when in fact the bailey is weak, in that it’s hard to defend. What a fool I’ve been.

Ah, young Jamal has been looking for examples of the motte-and-bailey fallacy — Banno

I don’t even have to go looking for it; I’m seeing it everywhere now.

7 ) I now defend not( not(X implies Y) implies Y) — fdrake

I don't think anyone ever gets to stage 7. — fdrake

Pretty sure I’ve been there a few times.

I also don't trust that it's rightly construed as just a fallacy of inference. — fdrake

Certainly. In terms of form, content, and context, M&B is maybe fallacious in its context, because of the way the argument is “assigning inconsistent meanings to positions”: (A) might argue validly for the motte position, but since that’s not the position they take themselves to be arguing for (or, if they are being devious, the one they want to prevail), there’s a mismatch between argument and context.

Or from the dialogical perspective, it’s a violation of dialogue rules.

No objections. So what you’re saying is, in the legal example it’s not a fallacy so much as a strategy to win, but at the same time, logic remains relevant to this? Seems reasonable.

Looking at the example again, I don’t think motte-and-bailey models it well. With M&B, (A)’s unsafe claim is the one she wants to prevail but is forced to retreat from. In your example, this is “The collision damaged me terribly,” which she doesn’t retreat from. The tactical retreats occur when trying to make a case for this proposition, and the successive retreats do not function to allow the previously defeated evidential claims to prevail; they function as successively weaker evidence for the proposition that “The collision damaged me terribly”, deployed in transparent sophistry.

So yes, I guess I’m agreeing that it’s not fallacious.

However, fallacy and strategy are not mutually exclusive. It’s just that in this case, we see the latter and not the former. Maybe.

My observation here then is that this is less a fallacy than a strategy in getting a desired outcome. — Hanover

Nice example. My observation is that in a debate, if the strong claim—the claim that (A) wants to prevail—fails, then retreating to a more defensible position is a tactic still to make the strong claim prevail. I think it’s fair to call this a fallacy.

In a court of law, everything is sophistry anyway, therefore there are no fallacies.

:ok:

Because antinatalism is the same as the sexual enjoyment of coprophagia. In many societies there’s going to be a few people who are into it.

a preposterous claim — TonesInDeepFreeze

Your entire reply is preposterous, performatively contradicting your stated ideal debating behaviour of “high-minded participants.”

But still, “men make their own history”. We couldn’t even do that without being thrown into a world to begin with. Choosing doesn’t apply to when and where and how you are born, only to what comes a few years later. It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.

I remember watching a youtube video from Philosophy Tube which made the point that anti trans prejudice is rooted in some kind of "metaphysical skepticism". That trans people don't "really" exist in some sense. Because the notions of gender identity we're brought up with make them fall through the cracks. Food for thought. — fdrake

Speaking as someone who has moved from roughly the position of @Mikie and @Pantagruel to a much less trans-sceptical position, I can attest to this.

Uncle Karl, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (chapter 1)

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.

It depends on whether you wanted to talk about transgenderism or Motte and Bailey in particular I guess. I assumed it was the latter. — I like sushi

I’m interested in both the abstract and the concrete, and how they relate. So the answer is something like: the latter, and both, because we can only properly understand M&B in the light of concrete examples, whose content, I contend, cannot simply be put to one side. This itself is controversial, I suppose, but it’s at least interesting I hope.

And that truly high-minded participants extend Charity, even Steelman Variation and don't commit Siege. To me, that is a mark of intellect and enlightenment — TonesInDeepFreeze

In my opinion, cranks rarely deserve Charity or Steelman Variation. — TonesInDeepFreeze

There’s a tension here, don’t you think?

But maybe it’s like the problem of democracy: do we extend democratic rights to radical anti-democrats, e.g., fascists? Surely not, and this itself necessitates anti-democratic elements, like written constitutions. Similarly, precisely because we value the principle of charity we shouldn’t extend charity to irrational interlocutors, those who hold bigoted positions or, perhaps, those whose rhetorical tactics undermine the rationality of discussion, e.g., with motte-and-bailey, strawmanning, etc.

Very nice and probably in harmony with what @apokrisis was saying.

That’s interesting. Do you mean that the actual occurrence of the fallacy is a means, within the debate, of finding a bridge; or do you mean that an awareness of the fallacy, that is, a real-time identification of it by an interlocutor, can be that means?

So it looks like the phrase “all I’m saying” is the biggest clue to the presence of this fallacy.

I think you’re committing the motte-and-bailey fallacy yourself. You started out with the claim that it was B who was fallacious and that A merely rephrased the first statement, and now you’ve retreated to a softer position.

(A) was pushed, yes, pushed into retreat.

So I think A’s natural response is to be defensive because such accusations could mean ostracism and violence, and I don’t think he’s retreating as if B had the better argument. — NOS4A2

Even if that’s the case it doesn’t matter. It’s a retreat to a more defensible position.

Could be. The content of the example was not meant to relate in any way at all to the substance of Shackel’s criticism of postmodernism.

Although I get the impression that it's not a tactical retreat to go from Christian God to original designer, but just that they didn't realize there was a difference--or it's just a step in their overarching argumentative project heading towards the proof of the Christian God. In neither case is it an example of motte-and-bailey, I don't think.

Yes, I'm sure I've seen that on TPF even just recently.

Yeah, on the one hand it's a good example precisely because it highlights the context sensitivity--and I must admit I chose it for that reason, that it might be controversial because of the non-obvious role of context--but on the other hand it is a bit irresponsible since some people will conclude that the bigots are not really bigots.

On the third hand, those people can be countered here in a way that exposes their biases in a way that wouldn't come to light otherwise, at the same time as exploring context dependence.

Didn't Contrapoints do a bunch of work to show what the bailey was and what the motte was? I remember that they've previously shown that comment to be used by people who are almost assuredly transphobic, since they follow, reshare and post in transphobic communities (bailey). And those people also defend themselves in terms of the "biological definition" motte. — fdrake

Yep.

Nevertheless, the kind of person who makes that statement in the kind of context that it tends to arise is justifiably expected to be making a prejudiced comment. If the person really really wanted to engage in the "what is gender identity" discussion in good faith, that's a bit different from the motte and bailey thing above. It might just highlight a gap in their understanding - or at least a lack of awareness of where the ideas can lead (and I think should lead). — fdrake

Totally. You might say it was irresponsible of me to so casually take it out of context and use it as an example, since without knowing about the context—the common situations that ContraPoints describes at length—one could look at the example and think that (A) is being reasonable or at least innocent of bigotry, which would make B look unreasonable.

In which case, your post functions as a necessary corrective. :up:

The second statement of A seems more of a response to the appeal to emotion of B and not necessarily a retreat of any sort. B is where the fallacy is.

I don’t think rephrasing an argument into terms that are less crippling for some brains is unwarranted. — NOS4A2

But A's second statement is not just a different way of putting the first statement. If A is fully aware of the issues, they know that the word "woman" is about gender, or about both sex and gender, or is at least ambiguous and controversial; whereas the second statement is explicitly about biological sex and thus represents a retreat. The first statement is a categorical proposition that relies on an equivocation and therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny.

But as @Mikie pointed out, (A) might not in fact be aware of all that. The reason I chose the example is precisely because under a certain light it's not crystal clear who is in the wrong and why.

Where the motte-and-bailey image fails is that in a serious argument, both sides would be going back to basics this way.

In the trans women example, the axiomatic basis on one side would seem to be that biological truth trumps cultural fiction. On the other, it would be some version of the reverse.

The stepping back by one side ought to be an invitation to the other to take up the challenge of defending the reverse in good old dialectic fashion. — apokrisis

Yes. However, it's not the motte-and-bailey image but rather the participants themselves who sometimes fail. Motte-and-baily identifies one way in which people fail in debate, and isn't that exactly what the identification of informal fallacies is meant to do?

See above. — I like sushi

You haven't posted anything arguing that it's a poor example.

Poor example. — I like sushi

It's a good example.

What now?

To the posters that are saying it's similar, I'm not seeing where the strawman fallacy comes into play here. What would be considered the strawman in this scenario? Person A's initial (bailey) argument? — Mikie

It's made clearer in the OP:

In other words, B might just as often be guilty of a failure to observe the principle of charity in taking A to be in the bailey, i.e., distorting A's position such that they can easily defeat them. This looks like a description of strawmanning. — Jamal

So the motte-and-bailey fallacy and the straw man fallacy seem to be two sides of the same coin. One is the reverse of the other. I think @Janus said this too.

M&B: A, putting forward claims, moves from a bold to a safe claim
SM: B, in interpreting A's claim, moves it from a safe claim to a bold claim

That is, in a straw man fallacy B interprets A to be saying something much easier to defeat.

I know it's just an example, and I don't want to go off about transgenderism, but just so I'm clear: The more correct statement would be that "trans women are not female," yes? Since "woman" (and "girl") can often relate to gender identity. — Mikie

I don’t entirely go along with this. Examples of more correct statements in this kind of context would be “trans women were not born female” and perhaps “trans women are not biologically female”. (I imagine that a small minority of trans people would dispute the latter two, but I won't get into that).

It's true that people making statements like (A) are probably bigoted. But in the cases where a person is meaning to express the corrected statement, it may just be an honest mistake. I would put myself in this camp, although I see no reason to make either statement. — Mikie

The point of the example is that A retreated from a claim when challenged, probably knowing full well that it was controversial. In these debates it is usually effectively bigoted, even if you can interpret it charitably to be referring only to biological sex. Having said that, you’re no doubt right that people still confuse and conflate sex and gender. But if one wants to distinguish between trans women and non-trans-women, we already have a term that’s better than “men”, which is … “trans women”.

We can see B’s response as a bad one. If A meant it more innocently, just to mean biological sex, without having thought about the issue carefully, then B’s response was unfair and counterproductive. And even if A was aware of the all the issues, B could have given a more direct and measured response, like “I think you ought to more carefully distinguish between gender and biological sex…” etc. But in the example, B’s response just functions as a challenge that causes a retreat.

You could argue then that the example isn’t a good one, because it’s complex, and it’s meant to show the fallacy of A while B is not totally blameless either. But its complexity is why I like it.

Has Jamal or his mod minions, decided to 'diminish' this thread?
I apologise in advance for such a terrible accusation if it's just a tech hitch.
In truth I am not that bothered anyway. It's lived a long life in the league of page one threads.
It seems to be getting pushed down the pages, regardless of any new posts on it. — universeness

Yes, I “sunk” it, which means new posts no longer push it up the page. As you say, it’s had a long enough life, and it’s now more like a private conversation.

I haven't heard of this fallacy before and I think it is helpful. — Art48

I agree, I like it. I do find it occasionally confusing though, when for some reason I’m associating the strong claim with the strong position in the castle.

I think it's vaguely like the moving the goalposts fallacy — Art48

Maybe they overlap. When you move the goalposts you move them to where it’s more difficult for your opponent to score, which is like retreating to the defendable position.

You didn’t put it in the Lounge. I did. This is pretty clear from what I said above:

From now on I’ll be deleting discussions like this rather than moving them to the Lounge — Jamal

I tend to think the idea of the insentient nature of matter goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. Judaism and Christianity, but it's a nuanced issue to be sure, and I'm no expert. — Janus

Yes, but to view people or animals as at bottom inanimate or as divided between animate and inanimate might be more recent.

Is it a scientific view that makes it look puzzling, or just the commonsense view of matter as being "inanimate", not to mention insentient and insapient? — Janus

They’re the same thing. Or in other words, yes, but this is a particular commonsense view that we get from science, from the culture of a secular society in which science has been paramount for a few hundred years. Science, that is, of a particular kind—and here I hand wave in the direction of Descartes.