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Apropos attacks

Xelor

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Let's set the record straight: rational, coherent, consequent and logical, in the context of the merit of a stance one articulates/holds, all refer to the same thing. That thing is the legitimacy, validity, soundness and/or cogency of one's basis for the stance articulated and/or under consideration.

Daily I encounter examples of folks kvetching about having been "attacked" or decrying the fact of another's having been attacked. Well, sometimes so-called attacks are legitimate and sometimes they're not. When?
  • When the beleaguered person has put forth unsound/uncogent ideas and the attack is directed at the irrationality of the idea, statement, or material elisions in the line of thought giving rise to the statements, and is supported soundly, the attack is legitimate.
The fact that "such and such" crossed one's mind and one can express that notion doesn't make the notion sound. All of us are capable of uttering insipid thoughts, but when rigorous scrutiny reveals the irrationality of one's thoughts, well, one has earned the ridicule one receives.

Rational discourse, argumentation, idea development, etc. is somewhat like a chess position in that there is a limited set of "moves" that led to it. Similarly, in discourse, there's a limited set of considerations -- "moves," facts, whatever one wants to call them -- that could not have been aptly accounted for in logically arriving at a stance or idea one articulates. In many an instance, it's clear a speaker has irrationally left unreconciled a material factor affecting the conclusion s/he presented. As for why s/he did so and also uttered the ill considered conclusion is anyone's guess, but the why doesn't alter the fact that the conclusion is unsound, at least as presented, nor that its formulator laxly considered the matter.

For example:
  • Were the ebbing of moral fiber in one's nation one's expressed paramount concern, is appointing a leader who is a moral reprobate a rational choice when there are alternatives who are less (or maybe not at all) morally turpitudinous?
The rational answer is necessarily "no" given what one has asserted is one's supreme concern.

I ridiculed folks for expressing precisely the above described incongruity and was, in turn, sure as God made little green apples, chided as being presumptuous for doing so. The fact is that their disregarding the thing they said is most important to them, a thing they placed above all others among which their second concern is also one they "resolved" irrationally; thus the took irrational tacks for satisfying their top two concerns, yet they had alternatives that not only were foreseeable but also that would have resolved both as well as additional lower-level concerns.

The example above it just that, an example; I don't care about having been attacked. What's disturbing is that some folks see other folks being ridiculed and rather than consider the legitimacy of the ridicule, they blindly rally on behalf of the person/group who was rebuked. It's as though folks don't really care whether any given recrimination or remark that inspired such is valid. They just see "a friend" being attacked and move to "defend" them. Well, not only is that illogical, it's immoral.
 
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