It goes both ways (can fail in both ways) because discourse isn't theorem proving. There is no universal set.
No two people share the same experience, therefore discussion is not possible, because one cannot share exactly the viewpoint of the other. That's the extreme on one end.
On the other end, we can only take "rational facts" into account. In order to do this, we must discard completely all personal experience, which is first of all actually impossible between two human beings sharing a discussion, and second of all, will transform both participants into what amounts to deterministic computers who will arrive at precisely the same outcome given the same input.
Now clearly if we are arriving at a shared conclusion between two people discussing a shared input, either extreme is impossible.
Some nuance is required.
You don't have to "put them aside." You have to incorporate them into the reasoning. It's true that some people are petulant and try to end discussion with the "you can't know what it's like" meme, sometimes it's really just what it looks like: a plea to try and understand what it's like to be me, instead of the caricature of me I see being constructed.
Yeah, and that would necessarily be a bad thing if your only priority was pwning people with facts and logic. However, some people care more about things like being kind and getting along with others. Such people have to be willing to stop doing things that hurt others, even if they can't understand why those things are bad.
Eg. It's very hard to explain what gender dysphoria feels like. If a trans person isn't able to do this to your satisfaction, that doesn't mean that you can just go on misgendering them. It means you just have to take their word for it.
I'm not interested in "pwning" anyone. But if someone says "this guy needs to be fired/resign" (which actually, in the rms case I kinda agree with), then they need to be able to articulate things in a manner that's not just "you're not from [some group] so you don't get it". It's just lazy and disrespectful to other people.
there are things you don't know that you can find out by listening to people.
Maybe logic can be useful in the way you want it to be, but first you'll need to figure out how to serialize a person's entire life experience into some sort of sequence of symbols.
> Prioritizing personal experience and saying “you cant know what its like if youre not X” is a bad bad social meme.
But you don't know what it is like, and logic alone cannot help you know what it is like, because the full range of human experience is not expressible is any extant logical system.
hell, you can't even beat SoTA object detection if you don't have tons of actual experience in the form of labelled data.
And object detection is trivial compared to "being a human".
Is it really so hard to believe that you need actual experience in order to really understand how someone experiences the world? Or that your experience might make certain completely true things seem false to you, in a way that would make others experience your view of the world as akin to that of a child?
> So what? It doesn’t advance the discussion at all, its only purpose is to end discussion.
Sometimes that's true, but very often it is not true at all.
Very often, conversations about social/political topics end exactly when someone refuses empathize and instead imposes what they view as "logical" based on their "obvious experience of the world". E.g., "being gay would make me feel bad, and no healthy person wants to feel bad, so therefore gay people must be somehow sick". Completely logical from the priors, but immediately ends the conversation because the speaker assumes their experience of being a human in society is the only valid one.
> If a persons feelings trump logic...
Try replacing "feelings" with "experience". And then consider all those annoying arguments where someone says "but A is of course true and A clearly implies B so B must be true!" Even though you can go out and verify -- with reproducible experiment -- that the earth is in fact really, really not flat. i.e., that B is false.
And look: in this case, logic does not matter! If you can check with experience that B is false, then you don't need to look through the chain of logical deductions that resulted in a derivation that B is true. When people say "logic doesn't matter", what they usually mean is "your conclusion is prime facie false based on how I experience the world"; not "I'm not a blind child, you're a blind child!"
This doesn't mean that there is no room for logic. It just means... when talking about topics that involve how other people experience the world, try walking in other people's shoes.
And if they come to different conclusions that you do when you try to empathize with them, consider that perhaps they're not just dumb children. Perhaps you're not using enough synthetic training data to really understand where they are coming from. Or even that you can't do this task of imagining the other person's experience with purely synthetic training data.
Logic is a bad tool for solving social and political problems. Empathy is a much better tool. Especially empathy grounded in the realization that even empathy isn't quite enough to really understand how other people experience life. Logic can sometimes help you empathize, or explain to yourself why you need to empathize, but logic is just a tool for thinking. And it's not even always the best tool.
Furthermore, realizing this gap exists is not synonymous with claiming that "you can only talk about things you have personal experience". Where in my above post do I say that?
Imagination is powerful, not magical.
Certainly we can't discount logic, but praising logic as some sort of solution, while ignoring people's emotions, is a great way to be completely ineffective at, well, nearly everything.
Indeed, and that deserves some emphasis, I think. Applying "logic" to complex issues in real life is fraught with difficulties, because there aren't really any obviously and fully true premises to base logical arguments on in the first place, and a lot of common sense or "self-evident" inferences are either false or only weakly or unreliably true.
Experience and feelings encode a lot of implicit knowledge about how the world works. When someone makes a dispassionate "logical" argument, they essentially throw these heuristics away and instead work their way up from axioms. Which sounds good in theory, until you realize these axioms are simplistic assumptions that often fail. For example, you might base an economic theory upon the axiom that economic actors are rational. In reality, though, that's not true, and you'd be better off incorporating some of your personal experiences and feelings because they may give you an intuitive grasp of when to trust the axiom, and when not to.
Logical, dispassionate arguments are (not always, but often) like arguments about spherical cows. Sure, they are technically valid, but they rely on simplifying assumptions, sometimes to the point of uselessness. The people who do that have undue confidence in a lot of platitudes, which makes them blind to the fact they are building their arguments on sand.
I think it's right to shut up when "logic" hurts people's feelings AND there's nothing to gain from saying it, but when there's an injustice and we can at least try to fight back, I think the right thing to do is just saying the "logical" truth, even if people's feelings get hurt.
I don't mean to say that my view is always the correct one, but rather that there's some subjacent right, "logical" system that we should strive to discover and apply. My opinion is simply my best effort at trying to discover that subjacent truth.
But there are times when being human outweighs those interests. There are times when we should be deliberately inefficient because too much efficiency can cause harm. There are times when we need not investigate rigorously, because by picking apart someone we might do them harm. There are times when we should accept that there might not be a logical underpinning to a behavior, because we will never be capable of operating free from emotions.
And most importantly, there are times where you need not pursue a truth. That sometimes the quest to understand can be much more harmful than simply being present and accepting.
I used to be a hardline 'logic only, logic always, efficiency above all' person. I'd plan my routes to optimize path efficiency. My relationships left me scrutinizing every interaction, guessing at double meanings and challenging assertions by people. It was unbearable to be around me. I've had to learn that sometimes people want to engage with me in diving deep, sometimes people really hate doing that, and rarely it's for everyone's best interest to override those interests.
Otherwise, they’ll mentally dismiss your arguments as coming from a different tribe without really listening— emotions and group identity are very strong psycological forces, so you need to take them into account when crafting your own actions.
Perhaps this is of little concern to you, but if you absolutely want to maximize your accomplishments, you must be sufficiently flexible so that when you do speak truth it carries weight and import.
Not being wrong.
Which is often bad, sometimes very bad, like "you're dead" bad or "you killed somebody else" bad.
Being right is just like epidemic prevention or vaccines: if they work, you don't even notice.
Given that your logic train might inspire others to get more insight and work on expanding your argument - or refuting it - "nothing to gain" is something that never happens.
You ought to inspect why you yourself are getting defensive over that statement.
The OP starts out dismissing logical arguments and then pats himself on the back for seeing through the grand conspiracy of analytical thought.
Similarly, it’s often helpful to recognize that there’s some social currency to be gained by compromising on low-priority issues that you can spend to get people on board with your high-priority ones— people will pay more attention to the objections of someone who’s generally agreeable than someone who has a reputation of complaining about everything.
Is this so? Let’s call the statement above P0.
Let’s start from first principles. A discussion is performed by agents (peer interlocutors, a speaker and its audience, etc). I believe we can make it an axiom of our discussion that there are at least two sentient agents involved. Assume two (A1 and A2), without loss of generality. Focus on one of them, A1.
A1 joins the discussion in pursuit of a goal G1, and for that purpose puts forward an argument, as does A2 in pursuit of G2. G1 and G2 might or might not be the same.
Lets not concern ourselves much with the mechanics of the argument, but with the goals and their relation to P0.
Focusing on A1 and G1, it its trivially true that if G1 involves convincing A2 of some fact F, then P0 is trivially false except in the specific case in which A2 is the sort of agent which can only be convinced by a purely logical argument.
Empirically, most humans are not such agents.
Unproven conjecture: No human is such an agent.
Empathic communication (communication relating to feelings) is known to be an effective tool in convincing human agents [1].
Therefore P0 is invalid, arguments based on feelings are likely to have a use in discussion when the goal is to convince.
Let’s, however, assume that G1 is the goal of the idealized logician, to “arrive at the truth, whatever it might be.” Two cases arise:
Either A1 holds all the facts and the means of reasoning required to arrive at the truth, in which case communication with A2 is unnecessary. Or else A1 requires information or processes from A2 to arrive at the truth.
In the later case, if G1 == G2, meaning both agents seek the truth as their primary (perhaps only) objective, and this remains true through the whole discussion, then P0 could apply, under those strengthened premises.
However, if the goal of A2 is not initially the pursuit of truth, or if G2 ever changes after becoming the pursuit of truth, then A1 must attempt persuasion on A2 to (re-)align their goals. This could benefit from an emotional argument.
And this is all assuming A1 has the pursuit of truth as its only goal, and not, say, a performative goal of showing its command of logic, at the expense of the optimal process for arriving cooperatively at the truth. It also assumes that persuasion from one agent might not be used to move the other closer to the truth, or more receptive to future logical arguments, which might be possible in situations where the agent’s internal process is not perfectly logical (consider e.g. the practice of psychotherapy).
As a side note, when the goal G1 is performative, an emotional argument can be cloaked in the language of logic, for example the argument put forward by A1 might on the surface be about the subject of discussion, while intending in truth to convey information about A1’s social standing, for example, to show off education or intelligence by means of elaborate language not otherwise needed to make the argument persuasive or logical (e.g. [2]).
Other possible goals include, e.g. the didactical, the parodical, or that of artistic expression.
[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b879/4bf1a7e6845f87824c52a3...
[2]
p.s. By the way, the above throwaway comment is also a self-demonstrating example in another way. I wrote it only to make a point regarding the idea that "logical arguments are the only kind of worthwhile communication, talking based on feelings is incorrect/unacceptable". However, this still shows up in a thread about recent news involving RMS. This comment is neither pro or against RMS or the reasons for his resignation(s). I don't believe it will be read as either, but it certainly could be read in that context. Given part of the discussion is about reading the social cues, particularly during an emotionally charged topic of discussion... I do wonder if this is an example of what not to do (strategically)? And, if so, whether that is a good thing or not (normatively). Provided as food for thought, I have not arrived to an answer nor am I engaged in seeking one.
In particular, OP does not claim that logic is not a useful tool for discussion. OP seems to claim that it’s use to shut down important voices and experience that isn’t framed in those terms, by people who don’t have the power to be heard, allows those who do to deny those people inclusion into discussion. OP even says that he fights fire with fire, ie uses logic against logical people to try to bring those silenced people’s experiences into conversation.
I see your dismissal of OP’s argument, as an example of OP’s point. Not only does the “facts” your pointing out seem awfully defensive to a personal, emotional image of “logicalness” that OP’s point calls into question (ie your “facts” aren’t just “facts”), but the next step is to call for that line of thought to be dismissed entirely because it stands outside your personally invested framework.
Nor do I fundamentally agree that statements made from feelings have no place in discussion just because they aren’t framed in the same logical framework as the hyper rational people who shoot those types of statements down. People’s feelings are typically based on lived experience relevant to a topic and contain content that, while not neatly packaged into the cogent, easily digestible logical argument you’re looking for, remain informative for ethically ambiguous topics.
To tie it to the literal situation that Stallman has found himself in, he has made dispassionate arguments about things like children being able to consent to sexual encounters with adults. If you’re expecting an abused child to give you a well formed, logical argument for why those actions are or are not ethical, then you’ve found quite the exceptional victim. Otherwise, the lack of that argument effectively silences the child’s ability to convey the importance of their trauma, and empowers influential people like Stallman to make those hyper-rational arguments that ignore and actively erode those people’s legitimate experiences.
It’s the adults who listen to the incoherent pain of those children, who are able to have those children’s voices heard in discussion, and therein lies the value of listening to, not dismissing, “emotional” appeal in debate.
Stallman’s case is a very cut and dry example of the kind of dispassion that represents my take of OP’s post, about how excessive application of “logic” corrodes productive discussion. This doesn’t just happen to children, this happens to capable adults whose cultural backgrounds (non-Western bluntness? doesn’t speak your language?), or complicated circumstances (traumatized rape victim?) make speaking clearly, logically and dispassionately about an ethical issue difficult.
~5 million people. how can you be so blithe as to completely discount the existence/experience of that many people. i challenge you to empathize with someone living there. truly imagine it and then tell me it's completely trivial.
i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire content of a thing was what i understood about it in my oh-so logical way. what i was missing was experience (and often context), which is not neatly captured by syllogisms and facts. e.g. ask the jews who's entitled to palestine. now ask the palestinians. there is no theorem prover that will enable you to resolve that one no matter how many historical facts you feed it because ultimately the significance of each fact is refracted through personal experience (i.e. feelings).
this was as a result of being young and arrogant. i had the luxury of dispassion because none of these things had affected me in any way - i was lacking in experience of the injustices of the world that can't be written down using a set of "objective" facts. in retrospect it's a shameful mistake to have made.
this kind of bullying with "logic" is abhorrent to me now, especially when coming from someone who abuses their "logical" authority ("i'm very logical at x so trust me when i reason about completely unrelated y"). i always do my best to fight that kind of fire with fire. i believe if you have abilities (oratory, "logical") your responsibility is to aid those that don't, that don't get the same kind of attention, room to speak, credence, that you do simply because what they've experienced can't be formalized.