How could a reasoned argument logically entail the ineffectiveness of reasoned argument? Look, you're trying to persuade us of Reason's impotence, but you're not threatening us or bribing us, suggesting that we resolve the issue with a show of hands or or a beauty contest. By the very act of trying to reason us into your position, you're conceding reason's potency.Actually, I don't see any problem with reasoning that we shouldn't use reason. The object of our reason in each case is different. Maybe only sometimes we should use reason (like to reason that we shouldn't use reason on something else).
Suppose you hear me threaten my children. So you come up to me and you say, "you'd better stop it or I'll call the police." I arrogantly shake my head, "You're going to threaten me to stop threatening my child? Don't you see the contradiction in that?" Well, no, because the objects of our threats are different.
I'm all for empathy, I mean who isn't?Paul Bloom
It's reason that has the push to widen that circle of empathy. Every one of the humanitarian developments that you mentioned originated with thinkers who gave reasons for why some practice was indefensible. They demonstrated that the way people treated some particular group of others was logically inconsistent with the way they insisted on being treated themselves...I hear this idea a lot. Many have convinced themselves that compassion has somehow been rationally justified. That "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the solution to an equation. But it's really not. It's no more rationally justified than other moral tenants like anti-homosexuality, environmentalism, or adultery.
It is not a contradiction to want to be treated differently from how you want to treat other groups. I'm sorry, but it's not. If one human can be treated one way, it doesn't mean all humans ought to be treated that way as well. You'd have to assert some version of human rights or dignity and then assert that it matters in the respect we're talking about, but none of that is self-evident or reasoned for. It is taken for granted.
