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I posted a while back about the ad baculum argument<\/a>. Roughly, “you hold p, but p, is false, and if you don’t agree I will punch you in the nose.” The typical account is that the nose-punching is irrelevant to the truth of p, so the ad baculum<\/em> in this version is a fallacy. \u00c2\u00a0Put another way: the punching, shooting, or threatening are not epistemic reasons for p, though they may be pragmatic ones. Whether pragmatic reasons can bring about belief is another question.<\/p>\n A standard objection to the existence of the ad baculum<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0is that this just never really happens this way, and there are all sorts of more subtle things at work–such as consequences of one’s commitments, tests of hypocrisy, and so on. I think there’s a lot of truth to this (though I think there’s much to be said for the ad baculum<\/em>). One bit of evidence in favor of the deflationary view is that it’s just hard to come up with plausible sounding examples. They all sound so contrived.<\/p>\n Until now. Here is Blake Farenthold, Republican Congressman from Texas (via TPM<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The fact that the Senate does not have the courage to do some things that every Republican in the Senate promised to do is just absolutely repugnant to me. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Some of the people that are opposed to this, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re some female senators from the Northeast,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, likely referring to Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, who has been vocal about her opposition to each of the Senate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health plans from the start. She said over the weekend that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opposed to the delayed repeal bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n Farenthold suggested if it were a man from his state blocking the repeal bill, he might ask him to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153step outside and settle this Aaron Burr style,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/strong> he said, referencing the famed gun duel between the former vice president and Alexander Hamilton, a former secretary of the Treasury who had longstanding political differences. The gun fight ended in Hamilton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Man or woman, that wouldn’t settle it really–well, other than to subtract one vote either way (ok, two votes, because duels are illegal).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I posted a while back about the ad baculum argument. Roughly, “you hold p, but p, is false, and if you don’t agree I will punch you in the nose.” The typical account is that the nose-punching is irrelevant to the truth of p, so the ad baculum in this version is a fallacy. \u00c2\u00a0Put … Continue reading Hamilton<\/span> \n
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Shelly Moore-Capito<\/a> (R-WV) have also been clear about their opposition to various versions of the Republican health care plan.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n