Yeah, it isn’t really engaging with a steelman. But then again, the purpose of the passage is to explain a very common dynamic that occurs in post-modernism. And I guess it’d be hard, considering a similar situation, to explain a dynamic that sometimes makes government act dysfunctional, whilst also steelmanning that.
Although I don’t think its accurate to say that its not representative of what post-modernists really argue—maybe it doesn’t accurately represent what philosophers argue—but it seems to fairly accurately represent what everyday people who are a fan of post-modernism would say. And I guess there’s a tension between addressing the best version of an argument and addressing the version that most comes up in real life.
The implied claim that I took from the passage (perhaps incorrectly) is that motte and bailey is a fallacy inherent to post-modernist thought in general, rather than a bad rhetorical technique that some post-modernists commenters engage in on the internet. From that it should be easier, not harder, to cite real-world examples of it since the rhetorical fallacy is actually widespread and representative of post-modern thought. The government example isn’t analogous, as it would have at least been a real-world example and the person in that hypothetical wouldn’t be trying to argue that the dysfunctional dynamic is inherent to all government. But the quote chose to make up an absurd post-modernist claim about the sun being socially constructed to try and prove a claim that post-modernism is absurd.
I made my aside because I am a relatively everyday person who is a general fan of post-modernism, or at least the concept of social construction as I’ve described, and I have a strong suspicion that whatever specific real-world examples the author is pattern-matching as denying objective reality probably have a stronger argument for being a socially constructed than they’re aware of. Or at least able to hand-wave as absurd as easily as their sun hypothetical.
This is all just an aside of an aside though, and I somewhat regret putting it in the body of my post and distracting from the rest. People generally do make terrible arguments on the internet, so in terms of sheer volume I do agree that bad arguments abound.
Yeah, it isn’t really engaging with a steelman. But then again, the purpose of the passage is to explain a very common dynamic that occurs in post-modernism. And I guess it’d be hard, considering a similar situation, to explain a dynamic that sometimes makes government act dysfunctional, whilst also steelmanning that.
Although I don’t think its accurate to say that its not representative of what post-modernists really argue—maybe it doesn’t accurately represent what philosophers argue—but it seems to fairly accurately represent what everyday people who are a fan of post-modernism would say. And I guess there’s a tension between addressing the best version of an argument and addressing the version that most comes up in real life.
The implied claim that I took from the passage (perhaps incorrectly) is that motte and bailey is a fallacy inherent to post-modernist thought in general, rather than a bad rhetorical technique that some post-modernists commenters engage in on the internet. From that it should be easier, not harder, to cite real-world examples of it since the rhetorical fallacy is actually widespread and representative of post-modern thought. The government example isn’t analogous, as it would have at least been a real-world example and the person in that hypothetical wouldn’t be trying to argue that the dysfunctional dynamic is inherent to all government. But the quote chose to make up an absurd post-modernist claim about the sun being socially constructed to try and prove a claim that post-modernism is absurd.
I made my aside because I am a relatively everyday person who is a general fan of post-modernism, or at least the concept of social construction as I’ve described, and I have a strong suspicion that whatever specific real-world examples the author is pattern-matching as denying objective reality probably have a stronger argument for being a socially constructed than they’re aware of. Or at least able to hand-wave as absurd as easily as their sun hypothetical.
This is all just an aside of an aside though, and I somewhat regret putting it in the body of my post and distracting from the rest. People generally do make terrible arguments on the internet, so in terms of sheer volume I do agree that bad arguments abound.