There are things people readily believe today there were thought of not merely as incorrect in the past, but as so utterly absurd that they were used in reductio ad absurdum arguments. If you held a point of view that, when taken to its logical conclusion, led in an absurdity, then that cast doubt on the truth of that point of view. That's how ad absurdum arguments used to work.
I can't remember the context, but I remember using an ad absurdum argument in which the absurity was that I claimed to be a black woman even though I'm obviously a white man. The argument probably had to do with whether claiming to be something meant that you were that thing, like claiming to be a Christian even though you denied the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. That reductio probably wouldn't work today because the absurdity is no longer considered absurd.
About 24 years ago or so when I first started reading pro-life literature, I came across a reductio ad absurdum argument meant to show that the fetus was a distinct organism rather than being a part of its mother. The argument was that if the fetus were a part of the mother (like an organ or an appendage), then you could have a woman with two heads, and in the case of a male fetus, a woman with a penis. If you tried to use that argument today, people would say, "But women can have penises."
We live in crazy times, and it's getting crazier. I wonder if some day reductio ad absurdum argument will no longer be considered a valid way of reasoning. Maybe they will be moved to the "logical fallacies" part of the logic text books since nothing is absurd.
4 comments:
Wow, I was randomly scrolling through one your Mormonism posts the other day and saw that exact analogy and thought the same thing!
See your reply to Tracy on 6/10/2009 2:41 AM: https://philochristos.blogspot.com/2009/05/book-of-mormon-118.html?showComment=1244616085765#c2908535611228738834
Good catch, Watson! Thanks for the link.
I've thought about this as well. I've used reductio ad absurdum arguments a lot in past LGBT discussion, and wondered how long I could use things like polygamy, bestiality, and pedophilia as ad absurdums. The very fact that we keep adding letters to LGBT kind of says it all. Pedophilia is seemingly the last frontier, but you and I know that there have long been overtures in this area for normalization. The roadblocks on this are our strong moral intuitions against it, and the discomfort people feel about affirming it as the logical conclusion to all the sexual desacralization, sexual indoctrination, and the power of consent we are giving to children regarding their sexual identities. For these reasons, few are willing to openly advocate for it. But then again, I would argue that it is the pattern of secular progressives that they push their agendas in roundabout ways that do not include full disclosure of their ends.
Pedophilia has so far been a powerful ad absurdum because of some of the similarities it has with arguments made by the LGBTQIA+ crowd, particularly the "born this way" assertion. When using reductio ad absurdum arguments you want to use something that they actually find to be "absurd," like pedophilia. The problem is, almost every time I use such arguments, particularly with this comparison, the person misunderstands what I am doing. They think I'm making a moral comparison between their thing and my thing. For instance, they think I'm comparing being gay to being a pedophile. I then need to spend quite a few cycles explaining the nature of the argument, even if I have explained in advance what I was doing before doing it. Ultimately, I just end up being scolded for being offensive and the distraction from the original argument they were making is complete.
Yeah, I've experienced the same thing. I stopped using that ad absurdum a long time ago because no matter how careful I was to be clear about what I was saying, it would always throw somebody into a rage over a misconception anyway. You can lead a person to an argument, but you can't make them think.
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