ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig) (09/14/86)
A while ago I urged netnews readers to look out for arguments of the form "X, therefore Y." I pointed out that someone making such an argument must be presumed to believe "if X then Y," or else the argument is invalid. We now have a concrete example. Numerous people have been saying things like "Pornography makes people more likely to commit certain crimes, therefore it should be prohibited." In order to make that argument, one must believe "if X makes people more likely to commit certain crimes, X should be prohibited." Now, this statement does not say anything about the nature of X. If, for example, it were proven that campaign literature of the Democratic party increased the likelihood of people's committing certain crimes, that would be a justification for prohibiting Democratic party campaign literature. That follows logically from the form of the argument. The only other possibility is that the people making this particular argument about pornography are misstating their actual opinions. If this is so, it would be interesting to find out what they are. [Of course, there are people who think pornography should be prohibited for completely different reasons. I am not addressing those arguments here. I am merely urging people to think about the implications of one particular argument.]