If You Are Offended
If you are offended when someone says you are wrong,
you have no business claiming to be any kind of intellectual.
There is a great difference between a sincerely reasoned argument
and an unargued dismissal. As English clergyman William Paley (1743-1805) lamented,
“Who can refute a sneer? Such attacks do their execution without inquiry.”
Much more philosophy than we like to admit is simply argumentum per supercilia, “argument by raised eyebrows.”
The great economist John Maynard Keynes gave a wonderful description of how this technique was practiced by one of the founders of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore (1873-1958)
Moore was a great master of this method – greeting one’s remarks with a gasp of incredulity – Do you really think that, an expression of face as if to hear such a thing said reduced him to a state of wonder verging on imbecility, with his mouth wide open and wagging his head in the negative so violently that his hair shook. “Oh!” he would say, goggling at you as if either you or he must be mad; and no reply was possible. – John Maynard Keynes, Two Memoirs p. 243-44
The above text is excerpted from the book, Taking Back Philosophy, A Multicultural Manifesto by Bryan w. Van Norden. The excerpted text highlights the pedigree of the virulent racist, anti-intellectual position of the President, and the political party, formerly known as the Republican Party which is now in power. The President, his advisors, and the institutions such as Fox News, and the think-tanks that support them dismiss by contempt opposing concepts: such as the inherent worth of all persons, such as the preservation of Nature as crucial to human well being as is economic development, etc.
I recommend the book.
