I usually log I/P diaries, but something happened to me today that I thought I'd write a diary about because, as a wise man pointed out to me, unless the argument is made public, then I haven't convinced anyone of anything.
The person whom I "debated" was Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who appeared on last night's Daily Show With Jon Stewart to discuss waterboarding. I commented on the full, unedited interview, which appears here.
I managed to track down May's e-mail contact info and sent him a message that stated that, about five minutes into the second clip of the interview (when May begins saying that if we abide by the Geneva Conventions, then we can't imprison people), he had evoked a slippery slope fallacy and, thus, had dropped the ball on his end of the debate.
I was surprised when May wrote me back from a personal e-mail account, wherein he stated two things: (1) It was not a slippery slope fallacy; it was the situation with which we had to deal; and (2) He posed a moral question for me to answer, i.e., were my family in the custody of terrorists and the CIA had a man who had information, would I want that person tortured to save my family's life.
I answered him thus:
Mr. May,
Thank you for your response.
Please see this link:
http://www.csun.edu/...
You'll note the following: "There are a variety of ways to turn a slippery slope fallacy into a valid (or at least plausible) argument. All you need to do is provide some reason why the adoption of one policy will lead to the adoption of another. For example, you could argue that legalizing marijuana would cause more people to consider the use of mind-altering drugs acceptable, and those people will support more permissive drug policies across the board. An alternative to the slippery slope argument is simply to point out that the principles espoused by your opposition imply the acceptability of certain other policies, so if we don't like those other policies, we should question whether we really buy those principles. For instance, if the proposing team argued for legalizing marijuana by saying, "individuals should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies," the opposition could point out that that principle would also justify legalizing a variety of other drugs -- so if we don't support legalizing other drugs, then maybe we don't really believe in that principle."
Here's the problem:
You didn't provide a reason why Jon Stewart's denunciation of torture (or whatever you want to call it — I don't want to get into a semantic argument) would lead to abolishing prisons. You don't provide the alternative either, which is to say that you didn't point out that Stewart's principles implied the acceptability of the abolition of prisons, which is where your own slope led. In fact, Stewart clearly stated that he thought what you were proposing was ridiculous. At no point were Stewart's principles compromised by an argument you made — nor yours by his, I would add. He just didn't evoke a slippery slope fallacy, and you did. So he scored the point.
If you're asking the below question of me, then I'd have to respond in the manner that I remember Mario Cuomo answering such a question in an interview. They were Monday-morning quarterbacking the Dukakis loss to George H.W. Bush in '88, and the interviewer (I can't remember who) had asked whether Dukakis's hypothetical statement that he wouldn't want the rapist and murderer of his wife put to death had hurt his election chances. Cuomo said it had, and then the interviewer asked how he, Cuomo, would have responded.
I'm paraphrasing this response, as it was over twenty years ago: "Yes, of course I'd want that person to be dead. I'd want to kill him myself. But I want a legal system that is better than my base instincts, and that's why I oppose the death penalty."
The inherent problem with the below question, by the way, is that it assumes that the person will give good information that can be used. We don't have any compelling evidence that it would. In fact, we could argue, when dealing with Al-Qaeda operatives, Taliban, etc., or any religious fundamentalists, that they would gladly give bad information even if it meant their own deaths. The "dirty bomb" scenario comes to mind, wherein a terrorist is held who knows in which American city a dirty bomb has been set. They tell the terrorist they will torture him until he tells them where. So he says it's in Chicago, and while they're en route to Chicago, the bomb goes off in Los Angeles. What, exactly, did the terrorist lose in submitting to torture? I'll give you a clue: He lost NOTHING. We lost not only Los Angeles, but our moral integrity to boot.
Moreover, the "ticking time bomb" scenario has never come up — not even for Israel, which had so many bombings in the period between the first Intifada and the building of the security barrier that it would have been far more likely to occur there than anywhere else. And Israel, at least for part of that period, openly practiced torture.
Finally, and this is a point that neither you nor Stewart made, there is some ground between giving the person "no waterboarding, no sleep deprivation, no loud music" and waterboarding them six times a day for a month, depriving them of sleep while naked for eleven days, etc. Thus it's a false dilemma and another logical fallacy. So no point for either of you on that one.
That's the way I see this one, and I'm sure you see it differently. Thanks, however, for writing.
-Andrew Mathis
I think I got my point across — to myself, at least. People like May are comfortable operating within a zone of moral relativism, and that's OK as long as crimes aren't committed in my name to protect my security.