The third - changing horses - if I understand your use of the term correctly, is allowed, as far as I know.
"Changing horses" is the English vernacular for a kind of ad hoc revision that surreptitiously deploys a new proposition in place of the original topic. It is intended to distract from a failed argument.
If a Socratic examination proposes to identify a contradiction to something said earlier in the dialogue, allowing revision ad hoc will escape the contradiction artificially. Some lines of questioning require the proposition to remain unchanged in order to achieve a proper examination.
This is not to say that all revision in a dialogue is bad. But one must pay very careful attention to the disjunction at the point of departure to ensure it holds.
For example, if one wishes to argue that same-sex marriage should be forbidden because it harms the children of such marriage, one could lose that point and still go on to argue that it should be forbidden also because taxation policy would be too drastically affected. Here we might consider the disjunction appropriate because either reason alone might be thought sufficient for a public policy decision, or both together.
In contrast, the G.W. Bush administration is accused frequently of having changed horses on the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Initially the claim was that Iraq and its alleged WMDs posed an exigent threat to the United States. After WMDs failed to materialize in expected quantities, the claim became that Saddam Hussein and his regime was an intolerable threat to world security. The disjunction is not as clear in this case because while some might consider the former reason appropriate, they might not agree that the latter is sufficient.
And no, I'm not advocating any position on these political matters; I'm just citing them as examples of debate in which revision is variously allowed.
No. I agreed on a particular point with Turbonium.
Fair enough.
But of course it is the reasons that I am given for rejection of my arguments which led me to make that claim.
I understand that you believe we reject your approach because we are not familiar with the Socratic method nor recognized it. My response was that we do recognize the Socratic method but do not, on the one hand, consider it applicable to many of the questions we are discussion; nor, on the other hand, believe that you have exercised it properly or with constructive intent.
This is the important question, IMO.
This is the important question in your philosophical formulation of the problem, yes. Unfortunately if you're going to hold philosophy over everyone's head, we are at an impasse until you are prepared to make your argument on it.
Some of us are ready now because these kinds of investigations are already familar to us. There already exists a number of contexts in which evidence of this kind is routinely evaluated according to its power to convince and in which its availability and provenance is considered. Your call for a Socratic examination on it can be interpreted merely as your personal inexperience in this type of investigation; therefore you want to start from first principles rather than deal with the philosophy already in place.
The point of the Socratic question I proposed is just that: to try to establish how far one's duty to supply evidence in an investigative discussion reaches.
It sounds like you're changing horses. Originally you spoke of the "amount" and "quality" of the evidence. Now it seems you want to talk of the "duty" of people and organizations to "supply" it. I don't consider those equivalent.
First, the existence of evidence in a forensic examination is not necessarily subject to control. One is limited in nearly all cases to convenience samples. When considered in the arbitrary context of "duty" this may suggest a responsibility were none exists.
Second, the arbitrary release of evidence in custody is governed by many factors, many of them fairly immovable. Other parties' interest in it cannot be considered necessarily indicative of any "duty".
It seems you're trying to rewrite the evidence argument once again according to your political bias. The possible outcomes of your proposal seem limited to whether the custodians of evidence are acting appropriately, not whether the nature of the evidence itself compels belief. I don't see where your approach has the possibility of being constructive.
If evidence (of a 757 having crashed into the Pentagon) is supplied that satisfies the criteria that come out of the Socratic investigation, then those that do not accept that evidence may be called irrational.
This smacks of circularity. People are deemed rational if they accept a certain line of reasoning. But the validity of a certain line of reasoning is considered on the basis of whether rational people accept it.
Further, I have a serious problem with the implications of your approach. It sounds as if you wish to establish, by philosophical wrangling, that some objective standard of evidence exists. Then any belief for a proposition failing to meet that standard is somehow automatically irrational. I have already stated why I do not find that a useful approach. Please address my discussion on the difference between an absolute and comparative approach. If one's belief is in the hypothesis for which there is the most and strongest evidence, why would you argue it is not rational.
Your proposed approach boils down to little more than FUD draped in the robes of Socrates. You propose only disbelief.
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