Your Argument is Invalid

Conversations that end like this are downright stupid:

Rational Interlocutor:  So for these reasons, I believe… [insert tenable position here].

Joe Schmo:  Dude, I totally respect your position, but I’m afraid I just don’t agree.

Rational Interlocutor:  Pardon me, but why exactly?

Joe Schmo:  Well, I mean, you’ve made an interesting argument, but I just fundamentally disagree.  That’s all.

Joe Schmo then proceeds to sit back in his chair contentedly, waiting for some reciprocal gesture of intellectual respect.  What Mr. Schmo is in effect saying, however, it that the Rational Interlocutor’s argument is invalid just because.  This is approximately as rational as:

This is silly and irrational.  But, frighteningly, this sort of thing is becoming commonplace and – worse yet – respected as a sort of intellectual sophistication.

Joe Schmo mistakenly believes that by maintaining an ostensible esteem for the opposing position, his own position is justified though lacking articulable reasons other than just not agreeing.

Now Messr. Schmo just might invoke the words of Vittorio Alfieri to defend himself:

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”  ~ Vittorio Alfieri, Don Garzia (III, 1)

Here, Joe.  Allow me to explain to you the very quote of your own choosing.  See, scholarship is possible because it is possible to toy around with an idea without subscribing to it wholesale.  The sophisticated thinker is able to hold a thought in a kind of “intellectual limbo.”  The purpose of this mental purgatory is to objectively contemplate an idea and then emerge with an argument for where you stand.  To be clear, “just because” does NOT qualify as an argument.

“Wait,” Joe Schmo might object, “so do you really just expect me to suddenly change my entire worldview after just one conversation with you?”  An easy objection, that.  The answer is no.  It would be silly to abandon everything you know at the drop of a hat.  But in saying this, it does not follow that “just fundamentally disagreeing” without sufficient reason is the thing to do.

So if you can’t just disagree, and whimsically changing face might be a bit rash, then what can you do?  Seems like a conundrum.  The right thing to do is to be found in the middle ground;  namely, continue thinking things through and seeking out counterarguments.  That is, keep the thought in “intellectual limbo” until, after weighing the arguments, you settle on the right, well-reasoned response.

This all said, I must give Mr. Schmo some credit:  respect is indeed a crucial component of dialogue.  However, even here, he goes awry.  Schmo says he respects a position or an argument that he disagrees with.  That’s absurd.  Don’t respect an argument; respect the person making the argument.  And let the argument speak for itself.

Do you find this post convincing?  If not, there’s a comment section below.  Use it.  But don’t even think about writing, “I just fundamentally disagree.”  Because that argument is invalid.