Is this example of straw man?

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In this topic Did God really command violence?

I have asked @Damian243 question: What is your authority of moral evil and moral good?

On which he replies:
The experience of human existence. We can actually detect people being in physical and psychological pain and pleasure. Seems like we align moral rules along the lines of maximizing physical and psychological pleasure as equitably as possible and minimizing pain…

full reply here: Did God really command violence? - #174

Then, I asked : My mother used to take me to dentist and I didn’t like it because it hurt me. I suffered. Did she do good or evil thing by taking me to dentist?

Which he didn’t want to answer saying : Straw man will be ignored

Did I do straw man?
How can I ask question without being straw man?
 
Jbrady said:
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tomo_pomo:
Did I do straw man?
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Yes, that is a classic straw man argument, You need to review your logical fallacies. Here is a good site:

https://www.nizkor.org/fallacies/

They have a page on the Straw Man Fallacy:

http://nizkor.com/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
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Eh, the OP could have made an inference but the other user could articulate the point better into a more consistent framing. The OP didn’t add to or change the argument (we should clean the toilets —> don’t you think cleaning them everyday is a bit much?) so much as take it at face value. Is the person who suggested minimizing suffering attempting to make the argument that it’s okay to inflict suffering now to minimize it in the long run? Or is it a matter of degree? Does he actually have a coherent position (which such questions are meant to suss out)?

Good link, by the way.
 
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tomo_pomo said:
Then, I asked : My mother used to take me to dentist and I didn’t like it because it hurt me. I suffered. Did she do good or evil thing by taking me to dentist?

Which he didn’t want to answer saying : Straw man will be ignored

Did I do straw man?
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I don’t think so. However, you asked a question that was improperly framed up.

His logic is based on the consequentialist approach known as “utilitarianism”. Very literally, it asserts “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”. (The Catholic Church rejects this approach, by the way. Morality isn’t contingent on what people want.)

In essence, your example pointed to suffering. If @Damian243 were to respond with a good comeback, it wouldn’t be “straw man”, it would be: “Ahhh… but your suffering was outweighed (in her opinion) by the good that the visits to the dentist did for your health. So, yep – your example illustrates my point : ‘the greatest good’!”

(A better retort for you might have been: “Hitler / Stalin / Pol Pot thought that they were doing the ‘greatest good’ by pograms of genocide. By your standard, they were doing a ‘moral good’, then, right? One of the problems of your construct is that it doesn’t ground the notion of ‘who gets to decide?’ in any meaningful way (unless you consider ‘morality by popular vote’ to be ‘meaningful’)…”

Anyway, your response wasn’t a “straw man”; it just wasn’t a really strong one, and he should have pointed out its shortcomings to you.
 
“Straw man fallacy” is when you attribute something to your interlocutor that he hasn’t said, and then criticize him for something he never expressed.

The case you reported is not easy to evaluate, but I would say that you didn’t fall into the “straw man fallacy”.
 
tomo_pomo said:
Did I do straw man?
How can I ask question without being straw man?
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I don’t think you did. I think his answer doesn’t take into account that experiences of physical and psychological pain and pleasure are highly subjective and hence open to interpretation from all angles. It also doesn’t take into account, for example, instances where majorities infringe in the lives and rights of minorities. If all we are doing is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, then it comes down to mob rule, might makes right.

Taking someone’s reasoning and applying it to examine how results logically extend from that line of reasoning isn’t a straw man.
 
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Strawman is easily summed up by making an example of something terrible and comparing it to the topic. You are burning your example therefore you burn the topic.

Unfortunately it’s a fallacy because you are ignoring what sets the topic apart on its own merits. We can’t have the luxury of treating everything the same.
 
Yes, I think @Damian243 is using the term “straw man” correctly. For a start, your question about the mother and the dentist is a caricature of hedonism, which is the name given to the theory that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good and pain the only thing that is intrinsically bad. But would a hedonist philosopher actually advise a mother to cancel her young son’s dental appointment? No, of course not, just as no Christian philosopher would advise her to cancel the appointment on the strength of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:34, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

Second, @Damian243 is defending a view of ethics that can, without injustice, be labeled Utilitarianism, and it is true that Utilitarianism is a form of hedonism, but applied to society as a whole, not to each individual hedonist’s own impulse to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is where the “straw man” accusation comes in. In jumping from the ethical theories underlying the philosophy of utilitarianism to your question about the mother and the dentist, you’re not addressing the real @Damian243 but an imaginary Damian, a “straw man” of your own creation.
 
Ok thank you.
Then how should I address the society if not starting by individuals first? Who decides for society if not individuals? In this case each to his own? Can you elaborate please?
 
Thanks, but there’s so many of them. Which ones are most popular to learn first?
 
Thanks, I did not recognize that he is talking about greatest good for most people. I should have frame better
 
Malware from what I can see from my alerts. Thought I would mention it rather than leave it for people to have problems.
 
TheHolyTrinity said:
Malware from what I can see from my alerts. Thought I would mention it rather than leave it for people to have problems.
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It’s safe. The warnings are spurious and caused by incessant attacks of this site by Alt-Right antisemitic holocaust deniers, who flood Google with false reports of malware, There is none. The site is of the highest integrity,
 
tomo_pomo said:
Then how should I address the society if not starting by individuals first? Who decides for society if not individuals? In this case each to his own? Can you elaborate please?
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There’s a chapter on the Utilitarians in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. It’s only a short chapter, because Russell doesn’t take Utilitarianism very seriously. He demolishes it quite thoroughly in just two pages, beginning with this:

John Stuart Mill, in his Utilitarianism, offers an argument which is so fallacious that it is hard to understand how he can have thought it valid. He says: Pleasure is the only thing desired; therefore pleasure is the only thing desirable. He argues that the only things visible are things seen, the only things audible are things heard, and similarly the only things desirable are things desired. He does not notice that a thing is ‘visible’ if it can be seen, but ‘desirable’ if it ought to be desired. …

I suspect that Russell gives the Utilitarians as much space as he does only because the three main proponents of the philosophy, Jeremy Bentham and the two Mills, father and son, were such likeable and in many ways admirable people. Russell clearly sympathizes strongly with their Radical politics. It’s only their attempt—a failed attempt, in Russell’s view—to devise a philosophical underpinning for their political and social views that lets them down.

These two pages (pp. 744-6 in my 1984 edition) would be a good place to start. But don’t stop there: read the whole chapter. And there’s a lot more in the book that I’m sure you will find of interest.

https://www.amazon.com/History-West...8:History+Western&s=books&sr=1-1&unfiltered=1
 
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Not a strawman argument at all. A strawman argument is arguing against a position that your opponent never makes (you build up a strawman yourself and tear it down). One can make the case you argued using an illogical example, but most certainly not a strawman. I did not see the thread, but Damian243 could have easily told you: she did good, because the ultimate pleasure of you having good teeth to use far outweighs the pain caused by visiting the dentist.

So, in my opinion, your example did nothing at all to counter his definition of good and evil, it most certainly was not a strawman argument. Just a weak argument.
 
Damian243 said:
Here I pointed out the difference between a secular internal moral system and an externally imposed moral system of a deity. Comments? Thoughts?
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Sure… why do you think you can assess the psychological well being of God? How do you have sufficient perspective to make that claim? Moreover, how do you claim that a system of moral behavior even affects God’s “psychological well being”?
Damian243 said:
So in the end, your lack of response to these points made and to only sum up the full presentation to one point to address into a caricature to easily knock down was a straw man.
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It may have been a simple response, but if it addressed a point you were making, it wouldn’t have been a ‘straw man’. 😉
 
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