Teed Rockwell: Rational “Pandering”

Rational “Pandering”
http://processandpossibilities.blogspot.com/2008/09/rational-pandering.html

In the days before broadcast media, a politician could tell a grange meeting that he was going to increase farm subsidies and a banker’s organization that he was going to decrease farm subsidies, and no one would find out until after the election. Of course, this kind of thing is unethical, as well as irrational, but it is not always wrong to present different arguments to different groups of people. Reasoning always starts from premises and moves step by step to a conclusion. This means that when you argue rationally with someone, you must assume that you share certain premises, despite your many disagreements, and that you must start from those premises. Consequently, you must tailor your argument to the person you are arguing with, because no two people share exactly the same set of agreed-upon premises.

Last week an environmental group released a television ad that criticized Sarah Palin for authorizing the hunting of wolves from helicopters. That gave me one more reason for not voting for her and McCain, but as I was never planning on voting for her anyway, that wasn’t much of an accomplishment politically. That ad probably created a sense of solidarity between hunters and Palin, because many hunters probably also felt attacked by that ad. The argument of the ad was a modus ponens that used two premises: The explicit premise “Sarah Palin supports hunting wolves” and the implicit premise “If Sarah Palin supports hunting wolves, you shouldn’t vote for her”. It’s irrational to believe that somebody should be persuaded by this ad if they don’t accept the second premise................