argumentum ad dirty look

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
1

I hate dirty looks. the disgusted eye roll. it makes me die inside. stupid me, i always take it as a signal to unravel the fallacies, but the damage is never repaired, each dirty look stays with me.

all i ever wanted, believed was right, is to be boldly real, in the proper time and place, talk about things as they are. i’m tactful about people, but brutally honest about things. this is painful, most people are programmed to have such knee jerk disdain for anyone who questions the status quo.

something’s gotta give. i have to stop trying to walk the path of truth with everyone i meet, and instead walk the path of peace. this means less connection, fewer instances of knowing and intertwining between self and other. but it also means fewer dirty looks.

i suppose i could learn to keep my cool and calmly amused, say, “a dirty look is not be any means a systematic argument” and make the accuser seem primitive. but what’s to gain in making someone look primitive? they only ever redouble efforts to justify their exasperation. “An eye roll and a ‘yes is DOES’ does not an argument make, my dear, although i must admit, you are rather gifted in the area of argumentum ad dirty look.”

i rehearse nonsense like this in the shower. the more we care about reaching our vision of anything, the crazier we get. and i have a whole lot of crazy i’ve been avoiding all along.

2

But are you a philosopher?

3

Social animals are dependent on the recognition of others, for something at least[/i]. Maybe you should choose your battles, with a select few. (Who cares what someone who you don’t care about thinks?)

A “dirty look” signals catastrophic counter-intuitiveness. Is there a place for an objection like that, anywhere?

Dirty looks are common. (Maybe) your post is a bit like a dirty look. But calling these things “dirty looks” is hyperbole. They should be called “incredulous stares”. It’s a phrase that comes from back when David Lewis declared, “all possible worlds are real”. (–A brand of modal realism that means my perfect girlfriend (that exists in some possible world) is real—just in another world, I guess).

Because of what is at stake… I side with you that the status quo shouldn’t be defended unthinkingly.

4

Von, you beat me to the incredulous stares thing. Good work.

5

A “dirty look” conveys not only emphatic doubt over what you said (incredulous stare), but disdain for the fact that you said it in the first place.

It’s hard to unravel whether they hate wrongness; or whether they are afraid of implications of counter-intuitive claim being right.

Either way, It’s the difference between an incredulous stare and hemlock. No hyperbole.