words ...
You might have run into something like this in your intellectual travels/travails ...
A friend of mine and i were having a discussion with an intelligent Born Again Christian, the kind that understands argumentation and is well versed in the standard arguments on standard issues.
The subject of organ transplant comes up.
My friend just cannot believe that she, the BAC, could find organ transplants morally repugnant.
"Its cannibalism!" she says.
Okay, sure, yes ... it is cetainly one definition of cannibalism ... "to take a part out of one thing and put it into another".
But there is a reason she chose to say "Its cannibalism" rather than "Its taking the part out of one thing and putting it into another". Here they are setup as equivalent phrases, and she meant them that way as far as the logical form of the argument went. But the logical form of the argument did not explain properly her aversion ... she still needed a moral element in the argument. The word choice "cannibalism" provided that for her "for free" ... no further argument was necessary.
I find such argument forms tedious in that they are produced not to learn or to teach, but to create converts.
[There is actually a historical period in Europe where from which one can see the moral step and that is probably the origins of that particular BAC argument ... but our particular conversation did not run along that route. Essentially it says ... about the time Colombus encountered the Canibs there was in European medicine about that same time a like-produces-like theory in which human blood and human flesh were actually tried in small bits as cures, where the portion used was from someone who seemed imune to the particular disease or some such theory. There were those at the time who did not miss the hypocracy of making it legal (and moral, the Pope okayed this too) to enslave peoples because they were claimed to be cannibals while Europeans were actually openly practicing a very direct form of cannibalism. That fact that organ transplants do not pass through the lips might be considered a technicality. (The fact that the cure actually works and is not simply alchemy gone bad might be something to take under consideration, however.) Anyway ... there it is, in very short form. Background information only, really, not so much relevant to the story per se ... but it might come in handy if you ever find yourself in that same conversation with a BAC. Really ... its okay to heal someone on the Sabbath.]
A friend of mine and i were having a discussion with an intelligent Born Again Christian, the kind that understands argumentation and is well versed in the standard arguments on standard issues.
The subject of organ transplant comes up.
My friend just cannot believe that she, the BAC, could find organ transplants morally repugnant.
"Its cannibalism!" she says.
Okay, sure, yes ... it is cetainly one definition of cannibalism ... "to take a part out of one thing and put it into another".
But there is a reason she chose to say "Its cannibalism" rather than "Its taking the part out of one thing and putting it into another". Here they are setup as equivalent phrases, and she meant them that way as far as the logical form of the argument went. But the logical form of the argument did not explain properly her aversion ... she still needed a moral element in the argument. The word choice "cannibalism" provided that for her "for free" ... no further argument was necessary.
I find such argument forms tedious in that they are produced not to learn or to teach, but to create converts.
[There is actually a historical period in Europe where from which one can see the moral step and that is probably the origins of that particular BAC argument ... but our particular conversation did not run along that route. Essentially it says ... about the time Colombus encountered the Canibs there was in European medicine about that same time a like-produces-like theory in which human blood and human flesh were actually tried in small bits as cures, where the portion used was from someone who seemed imune to the particular disease or some such theory. There were those at the time who did not miss the hypocracy of making it legal (and moral, the Pope okayed this too) to enslave peoples because they were claimed to be cannibals while Europeans were actually openly practicing a very direct form of cannibalism. That fact that organ transplants do not pass through the lips might be considered a technicality. (The fact that the cure actually works and is not simply alchemy gone bad might be something to take under consideration, however.) Anyway ... there it is, in very short form. Background information only, really, not so much relevant to the story per se ... but it might come in handy if you ever find yourself in that same conversation with a BAC. Really ... its okay to heal someone on the Sabbath.]
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 3:12 PM
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