Logic for the Left | Ben Burgis

if that were true that would still be completely irrelevant to the question of what we do about poverty [Music] you could use example about education as a solution of poverty this is a um you know this is something that you see all over the place uh in mainstream political discourse uh from you know somebody who's you know go back to the 15 an hour issue you

know you see some fast food workers protesting for um you know higher wages trying to form a union uh and you're deeply unpleasant Uncle says oh if they um if they wanted to make more money they should go back to school and you know and and get you know and you know go into a different profession Etc right there's the nice that's the very deeply unpleasant

version of it this nice liberal version of it which is like uh Barack Obama at one of his State of the Union addresses says that the best anti-poverty program that's ever been devised is a world-class education everybody claps because that's the kind of thing that when you say it everybody claps but in both cases you're assuming that education and upward Mobility can be a solution to

poverty now one possible response to that is to say well okay in many cases that may for a variety of reasons be unrealistic and that's true as far as it goes right lots of people for lots of reasons you know can't do that but that doesn't really get at the nub of the issue something that does get at the numb of the issue that's actually helpfully

clarified if you learn a little bit of logical terminology is even if it were true of every single person right every single person living in poverty no exceptions of any kind could let's assume for the sake of argument go to school and I don't know become a doctor or lawyer or something and you know make make excellent money if that were true that would still be

completely irrelevant to the question of what we do about poverty say that again make sure everybody's clear on the point that would still be completely irrelevant if it were true because even if it's true of any individual person that they could do that it does not follow it is in fact a named logical fallacy the composition fallacy to think that it follows that every person living

in poverty could do that right um the composition fallacies where you say every member of a group has some property therefore the group as a whole has it right so every molecule in the Brooklyn Bridge Is invisible therefore you know the Brooklyn Bridge must be invisible and same deal even if we accept the false premise every single person living in poverty could be you know go

to school and be upwardly mobile it would still be false that every person living in poverty could go to school and be upwardly mobile because for one thing we'd all starve to death right you know nobody would be growing food nobody would be transporting it to the grocery store nobody would be stocking on the Shelf of that grocery store Etc it's structurally impossible in a capitalist

Society for everybody to have the better off positions you know you cannot have every you know cheerleader on the top of the pyramid at the same time that's uh so you know you could either do something to actually lift the floor for everybody do something structural along the lines let's talk about earlier or admit that you're doing something other than trying to come up with something

to say about poverty as an actual phenomenon um what I mentioned earlier is called the Continuum fallacy that's the idea uh that's where you conclude from the existence of gray areas and unclear cases that aren't real distinctions and aren't clear cases so those are a couple of examples but I think one reason why some people on the left uh some people who are good-hearted people who

have good political commitments are somewhat resistant to thinking in these terms and you know and to um and to think that this could be important right to uh to think about and study uh this kind of terminology to think about arguments on this level is because of a widespread cultural perception that logic or whatever people think logic is is somehow in tension with feelings emotions all

that stuff um that telling people to be more logical is telling them to care less about all of that right in favor of something else and this is something some people on the right weaponize like crazy you know for their own purposes you know they uh um you know another Ben right Ben Shapiro you know has this uh this kind of this catchphrase facts don't care

about your feelings which is meant to suggest that fuzzy headed leftists uh draw their political conclusions on the basis of their feelings whereas people like him derive them from the cold hard facts and of course it's true the facts don't care about your feelings they also don't care about other facts they don't care about anything uh they're just facts uh the question surely is what human

beings should care about and there it's actually a principle of logic it's uh called hume's law that you cannot logically derive a conclusion that's an ought that's about right or wrong good or bad what's just or unjust from an is from a claim about facts done work if you don't have some sort of if you don't care about some sort of values or goals that the

facts are irrelevant you know the facts are always there in a supporting role that um you know if you think that um the life of a um of a human being is always more important than anything else than you know some facts about you know fetal developments might be terribly relevant to how you come down on abortion rights if you think that bodily autonomy right there

I control what's going on in your own body can Trump that not right that's an argument about values I think the last point that I'd like to make here is that the fact that there are always some sort of values there's always some sort of goal that you care about that's in the driver's seat right logic is about figuring out what follows from what but you

know any argument is exactly as good as its starting point odd facts can play a supporting role but there is always some sort of underlying value commitment some people think that that means that well it's just sort of pointless to argue with people who fundamentally disagree with your values you know what's the point doesn't matter if you show you know that the um if you have

impeccable reasoning right you know they still disagree with the underlying value commitment and so that's that I think it's I think kind of the opposite is true which takes us back to persuasion uh so Elizabeth brunig is a um socialist writer in the U.S and she has a good line about how half the point of a debate is to get the other person to tell you

talking about it this uh collapse that had just happened in Miami this condo collapse a bunch of people have died you know because the because the condos had collapsed because of unsafe construction practices and Sam asks yarn Brook that's the person from the Iran Institute okay so is this a legitimate role for the regulatory state it says no because uh ultimately that's the responsibility of um

you know that's the responsibility of those tenants that if they were concerned about safety they should have checked to you know see what the safety practices were and how often it had been inspected and you know and all of that and that's incredibly useful because the point of a debate is never to convince the person you're arguing with that happens but very slowly right it's to

convince people who are watching and I think if you showed that they fundamentally don't care about the things that most human beings would care about you know to my mind that's a win to continue watching this video click the link in the top left or in the description below or visit iai.tv for more debates and talks from the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas