Day 127

When confronted with an argument we often attack the person who is making the argument as an alternate means. Remember how a few entries ago I mentioned being criticized by the feminist class for having my opinions only on account of being a white male? Ad Hominem, I say! The implication was that I'm used to privelege, and used to being in some sort of dominate role in society, and therefore that my beliefs will necessarily be automatically biased and probably wrong on account of that.

What terrible, terrible reasoning!

But we do this all the time, no? We see it as a means to superiority, instead of arguing the point, to describe why a person believes it, or what kind of person he or she is. I always find the show House fascinating, as it portray's its main character's brilliance in terms of his ability to 'read' people; to cook up deterministic psychological explanations for their actions, and to predict with smugness their intentions and desires. We revere this capacity in people for some odd reason. And for those of us who have said capacity, we do periodically hide behind it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
OMG, look everybody! Jared put an apostrophe in the word "portrays" when it shouldn't even be there! AAaahhh!
2:32 PM
Max said…
God dammit.
3:00 PM
Anonymous said…
OK, now that I got that out of my system, I must comment on the insightful quality of this entry.
To defend House, one might say he has had a lot of experience observing patients over the years, dealing with issues such as drug addiction, disabilities, disease, and the social stigmas and dilemmas these can be expected to introduce into various kinds of human relationships. He also appears to justify his sometimes harsh criticism of his patients in terms of their own self-interest.

But I think that most of this is beside the point as far as your general description of this character trait is concerned. Dismissing someone's point due to their supposed motives or environmental constraints gives one an imaginary sense of power over the other, which can be an enormous temptation to abuse. One degrades the other, by treating them as a predetermined machine that cannot (even will not) alter their course, assuming that the other is incapable of the kind of self-awareness that he or she already holds with regard to them. It is also good to remember that when we do happen to 'predict' the actions of others, this does not mean that our proffered 'explanations' were necessarily accurate, in any way, shape, or form.
3:14 PM
Max said…
I imagine what we're on to ties in to the inaccurately-named naturalistic fallacy: that since things are (or have been) a certain way, therfore they ought to be such a way. House uses this constantly, positioning people in terms of evolutionary psychological explanations and justifying (or at least ignoring) moral violations on the reasoning that such violations (dishonesty, adultery, trickery, blackmail etc.) are normal and to be expected.

There was an interesting exchange in last night's episode highlighting House's moral compass against conventional medical practice. Cuddy was defending House against the criticism of a hospital inspector:

Inspector "The rules exist because 95% of the time for 95% of the people, they're the right thing to do"

Cuddy: "And the other 5%?"

Inspector: "They have to live by the same rules, because everybody thinks they're in that 5%"
3:49 PM
Max said…
Oh, and in case anybody's wondering what the real naturalistic fallacy is: In moral philosophy, G.E. Moore argues that we are mistaken to define the Good in terms of the natural properties of objects (i.e. pleasant, desirable, etc). The Good, as he has it, is transcentental.

The is-ought dilemma comes from Hume I think...
3:59 PM
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