I've gotten into an argument about whether or not honey bees can suffer.
My argument
My argument is basically here's a bunch of links proving animal sentience, showing that bees have a brain, nervous system, antenna, and cognition.
My opponent's argument
None of those links prove that bees have the ability to suffer, therefore bees cannot suffer and enslaving them and killing them is morally sound.
I'm not sure how to response. Any advice?
Replies
let's look at your opponent's argument:
None of those links prove that bees have the ability to suffer, therefore bees cannot suffer
this is the ad ignorantium or appeal to ignorance also known as the burden of proof fallacy. you'll find the standard form in the prior link. here is another example of it:
Appeal to ignorance: the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa. (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore, UFOs exist, and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance#Absence_of_ev...
(the last phrase was apparently coined or at least made famous by none other than carl sagan)
now since you have presumably provided links which show that bees can suffer, your opponent needs to do a bit more than just say that your links don't prove it. there needs to be an attempt made to demonstrate that your links have faulty content or are logically incohesive.
if this person cannot demonstrate the incorrectness of the claims your links provide adequately for further discussion, then you win right away:
and enslaving them and killing them is morally sound.
if this person is unwilling to make the effort, the cretin is just a faith-based believer of his or her own fantasy and you are entitled to make some appropriate statement pointing this fact out, after which you are quite justified in practicing conversational intolerance. ... unless you are somewhat sadistic and enjoy tormenting hapless victims:
1) a la jacob: geez! bees have brains and nerves but god made sure they don't function just so we can eat honey with a clear conscience.
and/or
2) a la windlord: why bother with cultured meat when we could take any person in coma and have a continuous source of humanburgers.
after all, the "proverbial swine" really should serve some purpose and using them for the enjoyment of others seems to be a worthy cause.
in friendship,
prad
Wow, I get this a lot "X is false because you cannot prove that X is true."
I was just too ignorant to realize that this was a fallacy. This comes up in health a lot too.
My argument
IGF-1, insulin like growth factor one, has been shown through these various studies that I am linking, to increase risk for cancer. IGF-1 is found in cow's milk. Therefore, drinking milk increases cancer risk.
Opponent's argument
There is no evidence that IGF-1 increase blood serum IGF-1 levels. There is no evidence that the IGF-1 in cow's milk survives the digestive process. There is no evidence that vegetarians have less cancer risk than omnivores. This is quackery.
Note IGF-1 could be replaced with cholesterol, fat, saturated fat, etc for the same effect. This really annoys me because I feel like I have to provide 100% of the proof or I am wrong. The same goes for my sources, your sources are bias therefore they are wrong. Or, your source states DDT is a class 2A carcinogen, which means DDT may or may not lead to cancer. Therefore, DDT doesn't lead to cancer.
Basically saying you haven't 100% proven this fact, therefore its wrong. False, until proven. My response is to bombard my opponent with evidence to attempting to forcibly prove my point. This is how I developed a lot of my skill at research. Digging for lots of potent evidence for a small fact. Perhaps pointing out this is an Ad Ignorantium is the better response.
After contemplating the two approaches, its best in my opinion to leave no doubt for your audience, if possible aim for that 100% proof. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. :)
Perhaps pointing out this is an Ad Ignorantium is the better response.
After contemplating the two approaches, its best in my opinion to leave no doubt for your audience, if possible aim for that 100% proof.
you can do both. your argument is strong when you have presented evidence. their argument is absurd when you show that it is a fallacy.
the word 'proof' is being used rather loosely here. you can't really prove any of your claims, because we're not in deductive land. empirical evidence is in the realm of induction, where the concept of a proof really doesn't apply. what you do is demonstrate that X is likely to continue due to the vast body of evidence where it shows that X has taken place. there is nothing certain about X continuing, only that it has a high likelihood of continuing. that's why you'll hear statements like
"you can't prove cigarette smoking causes lung cancer because some people smoke and don't get lung cancer"
or the ever popular "correlation is not causation" which is just a misapplied 'loophole' apologists embarrassingly try to hide behind (without understanding what it actually means) when confronted with overwhelming evidence.
so don't confuse the notion of 'proof' when you are presenting empirical evidence. what you are looking to do is to say that because there exists a mountain of evidence showing corpse foods are linked to diseases from A-Z, we can confidently assume that if you eat corpse then you'll get several of these diseases. if someone claims that you can't prove corpse consumption causes these diseases, you can say that you don't have to prove this because there is so much evidence that shows the effects of crunching corpse are said diseases, so one would really have to be an remarkable rationalizer to keep munching this stuff.
the concept of a proof is applicable to deduction (which is not what sherlock engaged in btw - a bit of an oversight by watson ... sherlock was really engaging in induction). in deductive reasoning you don't even need evidence - you just need an argument from premises. so you can have something like this:
1. all insects have wings
2. spiders are insects
3. therefore, all spiders have wings
the above syllogism is a perfectly valid one. it is internally consistent which is what deduction seeks. however, it is not a sound argument because the premises (1 & 2) are false.
if you want to have some fun, see what you can make of the argument at the end of this post:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/xn/detail/2684079:Comment:549896
finally, if you get skilled at recognizing fallacies, your argumentation time will likely be reduced because you'll be able to zap foolishness faster. you'll find a lot of these on the page i directed you to earlier:
http://yourcybercourt.info/fallacies/list.html
in friendship,
prad
One problem I see is I'm unskilled at debating. I'm good at finding scienfic evidence. Yet, I'm often unsure when my opponent's arguments are fallacies and when they aren't.
1. It is moral for an animal to eat meat (if it desires to).
2. Humans are animals.
-------------------------------------------------------------
3. It is moral for humans to eat meat (if they desire to).
#2 is correct. #1 and #3 are incorrect. For starters #1 states that cannibalism is moral, which is the same problem with #3. Unless of course you adapt an ethical egoism philosophy.
debating skills aren't difficult to pick up. several people here have worked on theirs and have become very effective beyond 30bad.
good for you in identifying the cheerleading for cannibalism! :D
this was something that neither oneeye (who thought up the syllogism) nor the philosophy student who thought it was a great syllogism realized till it was pointed out - especially since the former claimed to be a devout christian. :D :D
you'll find a more elaborate analysis here:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/xn/detail/2684079:Comment:4103321
in friendship,
prad
How about being accused of a logical fallacy? Some of them are easy to accuse somebody of, yet hard to defend. I get accused of cherry picking, straw man, Dunning-Kruger effect, and confirmation bias a lot.
Latest was straw man fallacy. I stated that enslavement of humans was wrong, so why should enslavement of bees be any different? I got called out as performing a straw man fallacy. That my opponent wasn't advocating for human slavery, and then I was attacking a straw man by stating that enslavement of humans was wrong.
Definition of straw man
"This fallacy is a type of Red Herring because the arguer is attempting to refute the other side's position, and in the context is required to do so, but instead attacks a position not held by the other side"
This bothers me, because any argument that involves comparing animals to humans in invalid due if this fallacy matches my argument. For example, if a conversation goes like this:
Opponent
"Bacon tastes good"
Me
"Human tastes good too"
Then I am committing a straw man fallacy since my opponent is not arguing for the consumption of human. If this is true, it makes it hard to make any metaphor or analogy in a debate.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
these are not strawmen by you.
enslavement of humans wrong therefore enslavement of bees are wrong is a non sequiter because as presented it is just an incomplete argument (but not a strawman). here's one way to complete it:
1. enslavement of sentient beings is wrong
2. human are sentient beings (via behavioral evidence say)
3. bees are sentient beings (via behavioral evidence)
4. therefore enslavement of humans and bees is wrong
now let's look at the other item.
bacon tastes good.
human tastes good.
to call this a strawman is even sillier than the argument you are attempting to present. :D
what you are really doing is suggesting that if it is ok to eat pigs, it's ok to eat humans. no strawman here, but no real argument either on your part.
if you want to make the argument for cannibalism, you should do it more precisely so that these philosophy 101 people you are talking to don't go around liberally using philosophical terminology without having any idea of what said terminology actually means.
for instance, you could say that there is evidence that certain cultures (usually tribal though not always) did put humans on the menu for various reasons. these days we don't think eating humans is a good thing these days because of x, y, z. since the same x, y, z apply to pigs, it stands to reason that we shouldn't eat pigs either.
so learn your fallacies by definition and example properly. there are links to various sources in that fallacies link. by all means, correct the 101ers when they try to call you on a fallacy because they have nothing better to contribute than "bacon tastes good".
as far as cherry-picking goes, encourage you opponent to provide some uncherry-picked items. in all likelihood they won't have any, because what they really wanted to do was to not deal with the evidence you provided.
in friendship,
prad
This person is asking you to believe that a bee's brain doesn't think and their nerves don't feel. Point this out and let the absurdity of that sink in on them.
First you have to determine if this is a valuable debate between two open persons, or are you simply throwing your pearls of wisdom before the proverbial swine.
If you're good to go, how about:
Suppose a human could feel no pain (which is a real disorder) and is also in a coma, rendering her sensorially unaware and thus incapable of suffering.
Would this then make her a good candidate for enslavement, harvesting, or killing?