A dud aperçu
The profundity of Peter Boghossian.
https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/907348747364864002
The same people pleading to have honest conversations about climate change aren’t willing to have honest conversations about other issues.
That’s a strikingly stupid thing to say, especially for someone who actually teaches philosophy (despite not having a PhD in the subject) at a college. It’s so obviously something he doesn’t know and can’t know, and something that has pretty much zero likelihood of being true.
I mean, what – all the scientists who work in the field and would like people like Trump to stop lying about it are unwilling to have honest conversations about other subjects? How would Peter Boghossian know that? Even if it were true how would he know it? But it’s too sloppily worded to be true.
You can see what he thinks he’s thinking. People who want to have honest conversations about climate change tend to be on the left, and the left doesn’t want to have honest conversations about anything except climate change. The left is a hypocrite; gotcha, lefties!
That’s what he thinks he’s thinking, but of course it’s ludicrous. Not all people who want to have honest conversations about climate change are on the left, and not all people on the left are reluctant to have honest conversations about issues other than climate change. To put it mildly.
He’s trying to be a kind of academic Limbaugh or Hannity, but he’s just embarrassing himself.
What a numpty
And what are these “other issues”? I don’t know this guy, so I don’t know what flavor of hobby horse he rides.
Ben, this is the genuis behind the “hoax” gender studies paper. You know, the one they paid to have published in a hinky journal.
Peter Boghossian: everyone’s go-to guy when looking for “honest conversation.”
I suspect there are specific “other issues” he wishes to see discussed, rather than all “other issues”. He appears to be implying that all issues should be open to “honest conversation”, but these “same people” refuse to allow “honest conversation” about several important but unspecified “other issues”. (Scare quotes because I would expect to disagree with him on the uses of all of those phrases.)
I can imagine what they are, but I shouldn’t have to.
First of all, climate change is going to kill people…and other living things.
Second of all, climate change denial is an ignorant stance in the face of all the evidence.
Third, women gaining a tad more equality isn’t going to kill people.
Fourth, gender studies should be subject to some honest conversations, but the ones he wants to have aren’t honest.
#2, #5
By ‘honest conversation about other issues’ I’m pretty sure he means winding the clock back to 1950’s politics regarding women. Political correctness is preventing us from saying a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and related bullshit.
#3, #7:
Ohhhhh, that guy.
(Quoting myself from Twitter):
Surely there’s some third-rate, pay-for-play version of Twitter he could have published that sick burn in.
Also, Michael Ian Black made a point about how only one party believes in science (respecting hurricanes and climate change affecting them), and he got approximately eleven billion “YOU MEAN LIKE THE SCIENCE THAt SEZ ONLy TwO GENDARRRS?!!” in reply.
This, I imagine, is another such.
Too bad Hannity and Limbaugh are simply examples of the kind of squawking demagoguery that is now standard for EVERY topic and position. Coherence, and principle, have been rendered obsolete.
Maybe I’m misreading Boghossian here, but I thought “people who want to have honest discussions about climate change” is a reference to global warming deniers, not people who support the science. Rather like those creationists who want “all sides” to be discussed in an “open” manner as they “question ” the theory of evolution. Both groups really aren’t willing to have honest discussions: their views are rooted in dogma.
In addition to being concerned about the “regressive Left,” as far as I know Boghossian is still pretty het up about science denial in general. Does he have a history of refuting climate change?
“Honest conversation” = Conversation in which you can’t complain that anything I said was racist, sexist, or in any way offensive, because “hey, I’m just bein’ honest here!”
Examples:
“Look, we should just be honest about the correlation between race and [IQ, criminal records, propensity to eat fried chicken, insert stereotype here]”
“You can’t honestly deny that a lot of Jews work in the entertainment industry!”
“You’re really fat and ugly. What? I’m just being honest! You want me to lie?”
In addition to the problems Ophelia points out, isn’t he committing a flavor of an ad hominem fallacy? Just because someone doesn’t want to discuss X honestly says nothing about their argument when discussing Y.
Or maybe the fallacy has some other name, but it’s definitely a fallacy. And this guy is a philosophy prof?
quixote,
I don’t think it’s any kind of fallacy, because Boghossian isn’t arguing that these hypothetical people (who want honest conversations about climate change but not about “other issues”) are wrong about climate change (or anything else) because they won’t discuss other issues. His argument is simply that these people are hypocrites. That isn’t committing any kind of logical fallacy as far as I can tell.
Not all insults are instances of the ad hominen fallacy. “You are an idiot. Therefore, your argument is wrong.” is fallacious. “Your argument is wrong. And shows you to be an idiot” is not.