Classic informal fallacies

Enjoy this look at "rational debate" here.

Sadly enough, this really is about the level I think a good portion of "debate" occurs on in our society today.

Democracy and information rights...

Here's a political cartoon:

Do you agree?

A good read

Here's a fascinating article regarding an officer who sued the POTUS on behalf of a prisoner at Gitmo.

Check it out here.

sins committed?

Check out this story here.
(once you click on the link, you may need to push another button to launch the CNN video).

It regards a decal a soldier (and Iraq war vet) had on the back of his truck reading, "Forgive me Lord for the sins I committed to protect our freedom."

This relates to a great class discussion we had in a couple sections.
On one view of consequentialism, if doing some (in isolation) morally wrong act leads to a greater good, then that originally wrong act becomes good. On another view, the original wrong act is still wrong, but it "had to be done" as it were. Clearly the soldier has the later view... interesting.

What do you think?

The nature of an "offense"

Here's one our department was debating over lunch yesterday.

If you do something to someone that doesn't "hurt" them in any clear, direct way -- and they never know that it happened -- have you actually done anything wrong? This gets to the nature of what it means to committ an offense. To help explain, let me give a couple examples we came up with:

First imagine a "peeping tom" type scenario where someone (say a teenage male) looks in on someone else while they are in the shower (say an attractive female). Let's say the woman never knows that the peeping tom looked at her and no one else can ever find out.
Interestingly, simply from a simplistic utilitarian perspective, assuming the male derived some kind of pleasure from peeping, and the woman (if she never finds out) does not experience any (direct anyway) harm from it -- it seems we could actually call it a "good thing," and certainly not a bad one. So was it wrong of the tom? Did he commit any offense against the woman if she never finds out or is never aware of the tom?

Another example of what we after:
Let's say you have a vegetarian friend over for dinner and you make a nice soup for the first course. Now you could easily use chicken stock instead of vegetable stock in the recipe and your friend would probably never know. So let's say you do it. Your friend assumes its a vegetarian soup. He likes it a lot. And he leaves and no one ever knows, including your friend of course, that it was chicken stock instead of vegetable stock. If he never knows that he ate the chicken stock (and thus violated his own code -- let's say he's a vegetarian for ethical reasons), did you really commit any wrong?

This is tricky. Anyone can hop into this conversation and say "YES!" it was an offense and the person is a "victim" of a wrong act in both these cases. The tough part is explaining WHY. Any attempts?

Classic paradox

Here's a spin on the classic "liar paradox," that I thought may be new for some of you.

Consider the following proposition X:
X = [This sentence is false]

What is the truth-value (true or false) of X?

Is it true? If that's the case... well you can see for yourself the trouble this leads to.

Any ideas on how to solve the paradox?

An argument

Here's a classic argument I've been mulling over (yet again, for the roughly billionth time) of late and am curious to hear your thoughts on it.

1. Assume there is a God who is omnibenevolent (all-good), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipotent (all-powerful)
2. Assume there is evil in the world (we can see it everyday in the papers, as they say)
3. Given 1, we should not have 2.
4. Therefore, either 1 or 2 is false.
5. Since we know 2 to be true, 1 must be false.
6. Hence, there is no God (at least not the kind described in 1).

This argument, or versions of it, has been around for a very long time and is one of the most widely written on topics in all of philosophy. Odds are you've heard it before (at least in a form like this, "How can there be evil if there's a God?").

Almost all possible responses focus on premise 3 above -- that is, they try to offer an explanation for how 1 and 2 CAN co-exist and therefore once 3 is false, we have no problem.

Is there any other broad approach? What approach do you take to this problem? How can you defend the argument (if you are so inclined) against the possible responses?

Academic Freedom and Unabashed War Celebrating

This fascinating post here combines two very intriguing ethical issues.

Please read it.

What do you think? Either issue is a good one to comment on, the academic freedom questions raised or the issues specifically raised against Glenn Reynolds.