Stefan Molyneux - The Art of the Argument; Western Civilization’s Last Stand

The Art of The Argument

The Art of The Argument

Western Civilizations Last Stand

Stefan Molyneux

2017 Stefan Molyneux

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1548742074

ISBN 13: 9781548742072

CONTENTS

PART ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ARGUMENT

T he first thing to understand is that The Argument is everything . The Argument is civilization; The Argument is peace; The Argument is love; The Argument is truth and beauty; The Argument is, in fact, life itself .

What do you think of when you hear the word argument? Probably nagging spouses, battling coworkers, internet flame-wars, scolding politicians the kind of win/lose verbal wars that only end when one person cowers in exhaustion and gives up his position.

That is not The Argument .

The Argument is the rational map that allows us to navigate and meet in reality. The Argument keeps us sane by reminding us of facts and reason and evidence. The Argument stops wars, abuse, bullying, manipulation and aggression of every kind. The Argument is the robust sport that stops hysterical escalation. The Argument prevents the scourge of violence: it is the only thing that can.

The Argument favors the intelligent, the prepared, the resourceful, the courageous, and the well-trained. The Argument rewards intellectual and moral virtues of every kind. The Argument promotes the most civil to the highest reaches of influence in society, and demotes fools and bullies to the basements of irrelevance.

In short, we can embrace The Argument and have civilization or we can reject The Argument and descend into a living hell without end.

There is no other choice.

WHAT IS AN ARGUMENT?

A n argument is an attempt to convince another person of the truth or value of your position using only reason and evidence. There are two fundamental kinds of arguments one establishes truth , the other establishes value .

Truth arguments aim to unite fragmented and subjective humanity under the challenging banner of actual reality. Truth arguments wage war against delusion, confirmation bias and the endless emotional reactions currently programmed in the human mind against any facts that challenge profitable prejudice. These are called hate facts by those who hate facts.

Value arguments aim at improvements in aesthetic or moral standards anything from We should really buy this picture, not that picture, to Lets go to this movie, rather than that movie, to The human mind is elevated by exposure to beauty, not ugliness, to It is preferable to pursue virtue rather than vice, and so on.

A truth argument can tell us who killed someone. A value argument tells us that murder is wrong. Truth arguments are the court; value arguments are the law.

A truth argument cares nothing for consequences. A value argument cannot be defined by consequences, but cannot be indifferent either. A truth argument can establish whether arsenic is present in a drink. A value argument can convince you not to serve it to someone.

These two kinds of arguments are not completely independent: for a truth argument to have value, we must value the truth; for a value argument to have meaning, it must be true.

Truth Arguments

Truth arguments are divided into two categories that were once taught to even moderately intelligent people, but which are now mostly withheld from everyone. Children are rarely taught critical thinking anymore, and society has become so antirational that basic reason and evidence are the new counterculture: thought is the new punk.

The first category is called deductive reasoning, the second is called inductive reasoning.

The general difference is between certainty and probability . One way to differentiate them is that, as babies, we learn certainties before we learn probabilities, and d comes before i in the alphabet.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning gives 100% proof, assuming all the premises are correct. Inescapable, perfect, divine proof. The standard example is this:

1. All men are mortal.2. Socrates is a man.3. Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Given that premises one and two are valid, the conclusion three is inescapable. (What this means is that anyone who tries to escape the conclusion is actually trying to escape rationality and reality.)

Naturally, relativists of every stripe and hue will fight against the inescapability of the conclusion tooth-and-nail. Getting most modern thinkers to accept the absolutism of deductive reasoning is like trying to use a nail-gun to attach electrified Jell-O to a fog bank. Most of us are trained to look for every possible exception to every potential rule it is a way of evading the responsibility of following basic rules.

However, if you surrender to the peace of absolutism if the premises are correct, and the reasoning is correct, the conclusion is absolute and inescapable you will quickly find it a beautiful place to be, and that relativists are trying to deny you the peace, Zen, and beauty of the paradise called certainty . Take a deep breath, understand this, and your life becomes much simpler and much more effective. Relativism is the air horn that shatters the peace and concentration of reason.

If deductive reasoning leads to a conclusion you disagree with, you are certainly free to deny that conclusion, but your sanity is far better served by examining the premises, rather than blindly rejecting the conclusion.

This is not to say that the sensibility of a conclusion is irrelevant Aristotle once said that if your moral system somehow proves that murder is a wonderful thing, youve made a mistake somewhere. A negative reaction to a conclusion is like a suspicious coroners report it doesnt prove a crime, but it should certainly spur further investigation.

Deductive reasoning is the process of extracting general rules from specific observations, and then applying them to new empirical information. If I notice that some animals are warm-blooded, I can create a category called warm-blooded, and then sort new animals I find according to this information.

There is a problem of overlapping categories, though, which really needs to be understood. While it is true that all men eat food, not every person who eats food is a man. All ice is cold, but not all cold things are made of ice. Staying alert to this reverse extrapolation is very important in any debate. Drilling down from the general to the specific is enormously helpful drilling up from the specific to the general is far more challenging and is in fact the realm of inductive reasoning, which we will get to shortly.

Examples of Bad Deductive Reasoning

Consider the following:

1. All plumbers can swim.2. Bob knows how to swim.3. Therefore Bob is a plumber.

Hopefully, the above argument produces a spark of intellectual short-circuiting in your brain, since it goes wrong in so many ways.

Of course, not all plumbers can swim, so why bother reading further?

Of course, not everyone who knows how to swim is a plumber the only thing that could be provisionally valid is the proposition that Bob knows how to swim.

Does this seem crazy? It is actually more common than you think, consider this:

1. Kind people are socialists.2. Bob is a kind person.3. Therefore Bob is a socialist.

Or:

1. Kind people support the welfare state.2. Bob is a kind person.3. Therefore Bob supports the welfare state.

Or, conversely:

1. People are either mean or kind.2. Only kind people support the welfare state.3. Therefore only mean people oppose the welfare state.4. Bob opposes the welfare state.5. Therefore Bob is a mean person.

Or:

1. People are either mean or kind.2. Kind people want children to be educated.3. Only the government can educate children.4. Bob opposes government education.5. Therefore Bob opposes children being educated.6. Therefore Bob is a mean person.Next page