After all, “contraband” methods of persuasion are rarely punished
Contraband methods of persuasion are weakly punished, here and elsewhere, by means of public humiliation along with repudiation of the point trying to be made. Some people go so far as to give fallacious defenses of positions they hate (on anonymous forums) in order to weaken support for those positions. Interestingly, the contexts where we think logic is most important (like this site) are much less tolerant of fallacies than the contexts where we think logic is less important (politics or family dinner). So while I’d love to dismiss that cynical explanation, I can’t quite so easily.
People often have conflicting intuitions, but there seems to be some hierarchy which tells which intuitions are more basic and thus to be preferred.
Actually, there is indeed such a hierarchy in moral reasoning, and it has been better studied/elucidated (by Kohlberg, Rest, et al) than logical reasoning has.
You are certainly at least partly right. But:
Contraband methods of persuasion are weakly punished, here and elsewhere, by means of public humiliation along with repudiation of the point trying to be made. Some people go so far as to give fallacious defenses of positions they hate (on anonymous forums) in order to weaken support for those positions. Interestingly, the contexts where we think logic is most important (like this site) are much less tolerant of fallacies than the contexts where we think logic is less important (politics or family dinner). So while I’d love to dismiss that cynical explanation, I can’t quite so easily.
Actually, there is indeed such a hierarchy in moral reasoning, and it has been better studied/elucidated (by Kohlberg, Rest, et al) than logical reasoning has.