Yes, as a strategy to convince your readers, the new ordering would likely be more effective. However, re-ordering or re-phrasing your reasoning in order to be more rhetorically effective is not good truth-seeking behavior. Yudkowsky’s “fourth virtue of evenness” seems relevant here.
The counterargument that Mitchell Porter’s critics bring is recognizable as “Argument From Bias”. Douglas Walton describes it in this way:
Major Premise: If x is biased, then x is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A
Minor Premise: Arguer a is biased.
Conclusion: Arguer a is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A.
In this case, the bias in question is Mitchell Porter’s commitment to ontologically basic mental entities (monads or similar). We must discount his conclusions regarding the deep reading of physics that he has apparently done, because a biased individual might cherry-pick results from physics that lead to the preferred conclusion.
This discounting is only partial, of course—there is a chance of cherry-picking, not a certainty.
Yes, as a strategy to convince your readers, the new ordering would likely be more effective. However, re-ordering or re-phrasing your reasoning in order to be more rhetorically effective is not good truth-seeking behavior. Yudkowsky’s “fourth virtue of evenness” seems relevant here.
The counterargument that Mitchell Porter’s critics bring is recognizable as “Argument From Bias”. Douglas Walton describes it in this way:
Major Premise: If x is biased, then x is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A
Minor Premise: Arguer a is biased.
Conclusion: Arguer a is less likely to have taken the evidence on both sides into account in arriving at conclusion A.
In this case, the bias in question is Mitchell Porter’s commitment to ontologically basic mental entities (monads or similar). We must discount his conclusions regarding the deep reading of physics that he has apparently done, because a biased individual might cherry-pick results from physics that lead to the preferred conclusion.
This discounting is only partial, of course—there is a chance of cherry-picking, not a certainty.