Quote:
Originally posted by Moo
Why do the arguments have to be rational? It seems to me a contradiction - giving power to representatives of people who are elected on emotion, not rationality.
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Err, do you read everyone's mind?
When I vote, I do look for rationally defensible evidence in the arguments by candidates. If you don't offer any, you won't get my vote.
For example, I won't vote for people who peddle minute taxcuts back to the taxpayers as a carrot, when in fact such rebates don't really add much to anybody's life and there's significant evidence to believe that even a 1% reduction in the coffers of the government will result in a great reduction of the quality of essential services. There are some things that are just objectively true and people who ignore them are irrational. Will you respect someone who claims that the earth is flat?
The whole new age "Why should we be rational and care about evidence" blah blah argument is tiresome and inane. If you ignore empirical evidence and other established methods of argumentation, you'll likely be wrong and people who do such things are often wrong. And I can bet my dollars that you don't respect them.
Yes, this argument of mine basically attempts to defend an inductive argument through an inductive argument and this isn't perfect argumentation, but I haven't seen anyone really solve this problem. There is also a whole lot of wank about the infinite regress of "proof" in arguments blah blah. However, I am frankly not interested.