The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ignoratio Elenchi

The Latin name of the fallacy is sometimes loosely translated "irrelevant conclusion."

Libertarians before now have written denunciations of government and attacks on any supposed right to rule of great force, as have anarchists and even mere Objectivists.

But perhaps they draw the wrong conclusions, that minimalist government, or none at all, is best.

Perhaps a more pertinent conclusion would be that governments are all of them on all fours with pirate kingdoms, were that "moral equivalence" not too unfair to the pirates.

Or perhaps the lesson is that the criminals are right, in that respect, anyway.

Or at any rate that the rest of us are merely hoodwinked.

And to get to this we did not have to invoke either atheism or amoralism.

And many are those who do invoke atheism and amoralism, either or both, and still somehow they never get here.

Psst. You can't always take Wikipedia as gospel.

No comments:

Post a Comment