Читать книгу Uncomfortable Ideas - Bo Bennett PhD - Страница 8

To some people, credibility still matters. If you are arguing for one side of an issue and you fail to acknowledge valid points by your opponent, or worse, outright reject valid points, you will lose any credibility you do have with your opponent and you are likely to lose credibility with the audience, as well. I recently heard a debate where one of the debaters was defending consequentialism as a moral theory. His opponent made the point that we rarely know the long-term consequences of our actions and most people are lousy at predicting even short-term human behavior in response to an action. Rather than accept this uncomfortable idea as a valid point (which it is), the debater defending consequentialism refused to address this criticism. Perhaps it was just debate tactic and he was counting on avoiding the criticism being a better strategy than acknowledging it. But the whole exchange did result in me concluding that the debater defending consequentialism really didn’t think his position through very well. His credibility was lost with me due to his failure to acknowledge an idea that was clearly uncomfortable to him.