View Single Post
  #21 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to talk.politics.animals,alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,alt.food.vegan,misc.rural
Rupert Rupert is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,380
Default skirt-boy: burden of proof not met

On Jul 28, 6:21 pm, Dutch > wrote:
> Rupert wrote:
> > On Jul 28, 1:26 pm, Dutch > wrote:
> >> In attacking the essay moralstat99 he latches onto one word that he
> >> thinks is poorly defined

>
> > It's the crucial concept on which the whole argument rests, and
> > nothing resembling an adequate explanation of the concept is given.

>
> He defines "capability" as a subset of "capacity", being an ability that
> is inherent but not operative. Just as a baby bird whose wings have not
> yet developed has the inherent capability, but not the operative ability
> to fly, so an infant has the inherent but non-operative abilities of
> advanced cognition. A marginal human has the capability but it is
> non-operative due to disability.
>


What would it take for the capability not to be there? This idea of
the ability being somehow "inherent but not operative" is totally
obscure to me. You either have an ability or you don't. I guess you're
somehow alluding to the fact that the machinery which gives rise to
the ability in normal contexts is all there. You might be able to give
that idea a precise sense in some contexts, though you haven't done
that yet. As I said before, that's a scientific research programme,
not a matter of common sense. How much of the machinery needs to be
there? How far is it allowed to be from being in working order? And,
anyway, what is supposed to be the morally big deal about the
machinery being there?

> Explain what is inadequate about the above description. I'll tell you,
> nothing.


Everything. You haven't given any indication of what having the
capability consists in.

> It is crystal clear.


If you think that then there's something seriously amiss with your
standards of clarity.

> You're in a corner with no way out except
> to acknowledge that the approach in this essay leads to a rebuttal of
> the argument from marginal cases.


Oh, get over yourself. This wasn't the way I reacted when you were
bagging DeGrazia. I didn't have the arrogance to say "I've got you in
a corner, there's no way out for you but to accept my position." No-
one is that arrogant when presenting a serious argument. I patiently
tried to explain how I understood the text to you.

You haven't convinced me. That's the bottom line. I believe that you
have not done anything significant by way of clarifying this notion of
"capability", and I am quite certain that just about any academic
philosopher reading this conversation would agree, including the
author of that essay that you like so much. You can shoot your mouth
off all you like about how you've got me in a corner, and I daresay
you believe it, but it's not going to impress me and I don't think
it's going to impress any other sensible person either.

> You might disagree with the overall
> approach the argument takes, or you might still argue that humans treat
> animals cruelly on other grounds, but if you accept this approach you
> ought to reassess the argument from marginal cases.


I'm happy to reassess the argument from marginal cases as soon as I
understand this notion of "capability". The notion remains totally
obscure for the moment, so I don't have an adequate reply to the
argument from marginal cases.

> That argument always
> sounded intuitively phony to me, but moralsta99 expresses why in
> rigorous form.


Well, you can think that if you like. Suppose you were writing an
essay for a philosophy professor whose judgement you respected, but
who was skeptical about this argument. How would you go about
explaining the crucial notion of "capability" to him? Do you really
think he would find what you have said so far satisfactory? If you
think that, you really have no clue about the standards of clarity and
rigor which prevail in academic philosophy.