I had never thought about how everything can be turned into a moral argument (I, obviously, am not a noncognitivist), BUT I do think that is something we- as humans- should strive to work towards. I appreciate how their focus is not on trying to be right right, but trying to share opinions and emotions. Imagine what political debates would be like if they put all of their effort into making their point, instead of dividing time between that and targeting their opponent. This view could make voting decisions clearer, because there would be a more transparent understanding of what politicians platforms stand for. I still think analysis of policies are important, but my point is the politicians themselves wouldn’t waste energy on attacking opponent’s policies.
Also, in regards to moral arguments, since critical thinking skills are useful “to get beyond emotional reactions in evaluating arguments”, does this mean categorical logic is more important in these argument types? And how does this relate to agreeing/disagreeing with implied premises? The last comment I have about this first reading has to do with universalism. I understand the emphasis on equality, but I don’t understand the lack of acknowledgment of equity. In order to honor the equal importance consideration of others, it is implied that people understand this may be enacted differently. For example, if everyone should have a standard amount of food for the month. The government would be giving more food to families in the lower economic class compared to the families in the middle class. How does this work if someone who believes in universalism, but not equity?
For the second reading, I had studied “mindbugs” in my LDST 102 course so there wasn’t any content that “blew my mind”, but it was refreshing to read about the complexity of the human brain. I did fall victim to the quiz at the beginning of the Availability and Achoring section; my answers were (b), (a) and (a), as predicted. This example of availability heuristic made me think of how I know several people who are scared of sharks when they go to the beach, despite the probability of being attacked by one is very slim. I understand why there is this fear though, because of the amount of news stories and movies that portray these incidents.
I think that the CTAA is incredibly relevant to political debates. It is very common for people to fall victim to the emotional appeal of an argument rather than its substance and I wonder if there is a way for the teachings of the CTAA reading to be applied to the structure of the debates.
I agree with everything you said, Esmi. I think that (like we talked about in leadership last semester) that charisma and emotional appeal have started to overtake politics, and that poses an issue when it comes to voting and electing authentic people to represent you and your ideas. Going off what Katie said, I think that if these ideas in the CTAA readings were more accessible to more people if that would start to change the way our political system operates.
I actually thought of the same point in regards to political debates and how a noncognitivist perspective could be very useful here. In one of my other classes which is focused on voting, we talked about how discussion about ideas and not parties could be a useful remedy to this biased, partisan political environment. However, I think emphasizing the importance (and maybe even possibility) of employing a noncognitivist perspective into the political environment would be incredibly useful and would contribute to stronger elections and results, since emphasis is placed on ideas and not attacking opponents as you put it.