WITHOUT CRITICAL THINKING RATIONAL DISCUSSION IS IMPOSSIBLE

Nothing exposes the deficiency in critical thinking like many comments in online newspapers, where logical incoherence seems to be the order of the day. I will illustrate this with an example, without even the need of presenting the worst case. The example will show that deficiency in critical thinking makes rational discussion practically impossible, and hence demonstrate the urgency that critical thinking in education deserves.

Replying to a comment in The Times of Malta, where Victor Laiviera, who is pro-choice, had suggested that “whether a person comes into existence at the moment of conception, when it acquires a brain or when it becomes viable are, in (his) opinion, secondary issues”, I had replied by saying that “here is where (the commenter and I) part ways. As pro-choice Kate Greasley convincingly argues in her book ‘Arguments about abortion’, the question of whether foetuses and embryos are ‘persons’ is central to the debate, because if they are, this would make abortion at best ‘justifiable homicide’ and at worst ‘murder’”.

In response to this, John B Pace - who had already on several occasions (such as here and here) demonstrated his lack of critical thinking and his blatant incoherence and confused thought-processing as well as his complete ignorance of philosophy he consistently attempts to refute - failed to even understand that my argument could even tentatively be used in his favour, given that Laiviera’s opinion would effectively shut down any abortion debate by concluding that a potential new life (irrespective of personhood status) cannot acquire more importance and more rights than the fully grown woman.

By insisting on the importance of the personhood question, I keep the moral consideration of foetuses up for debate, leaving it to those who are either pro or anti choice to argue for or against it. But this, of course, flew right over Mr Pace’s head. As the saying goes, it was like casting pearls before swine.

But it gets even worse. Mr Pace, failing completely to get the point or at least argue against my claim that personhood is morally relevant in any abortion debate, only offers prejudiced opinions on the Oxford University published philosophy book and its author (who happens to be an Associate Professor in Law teaching criminal law, jurisprudence, medical law and ethics) that I cite. Perhaps Mr Pace thinks that Kate Greasley is, like him, just an average commenter without even basic knowledge of philosophy and ethics.

John B Pace writes: “(Kate Greasley) says that because she is Pro-Choice and pro-abortion, and needs some excuse for her conviction”. Yes, sure, that must be it. He really got her. Then Pace follows this up by saying that “persons are persons because they are human”, taking this as a species-exclusive given without any need for any supporting argument. He might as well have said “persons are persons because they are persons, or better still, humans and only humans are persons because I said so”. In fact, he comes close to this when he says that “it’s their humanity that is paramount in significance and the absolute basis for their personhood and also for all embryos’ lives”.  Again, no supporting argument is necessary. We must take it as fact on Pace’s word, and all philosophers be damned.

Mr Pace then rhetorically (I suppose) asks how many abortions occurring nowadays constitute justifiable homicide. He challenges me to “tell the facts that (I) so often insist on in (my) counter-arguments.

Again, Mr Pace, as is common with people incapable of critical thinking and logic, fails to see the wood for the trees. In my comment I had written that the question of whether foetuses and embryos are persons is central because if they are, this would make abortion at best ‘justifiable homicide’ (and at worst ‘murder’). Apparently Pace completely missed the point, if he even knows what at best means or implies. But just in case he’ll be reading this, I’ll explain that ‘at best’, in this context, implies that if foetuses are persons, then cases of justified abortion would be rare, if there would be any at all. So to answer Pace’s question, if foetuses are persons (like he himself claims), the only cases of justified abortions would perhaps be in instances where a choice has to be made between the life of the foetus and that of the pregnant person, and perhaps only in instances where both could not be saved. If Mr Pace, instead of thinking of me as an adversary to defeat, had carefully read and understood what I actually wrote, he would have noted that at least on this basic fact we surely must agree.

Then Christian S Borg, arguing against abortion, asked whether, since some “lobby groups” in the US are claiming that “infanticide should not be prosecutable”, and given that, to use his own – and only his own – words, “a child dependent on its mother is not worthy of human dignity”, we should then decriminalize the killing of the disabled, those “fighting incurable disease”, or kill those who are somehow inconvenient to us.

I replied by saying that we should not, because disabled people are sentient persons with interests, as are those “fighting incurable diseases”. Then, in response to the ridiculous claim that no rational person could ever make - that we should “kill those who are somehow inconvenient to us” - I replied partly in jest saying that no, we should not kill those who are inconvenient to us given that they too would be sentient persons with interests,  and adding that “however, if the beings inconveniencing you are mosquitoes, I suppose you could justifiably kill them”.

And right on cue, John B Pace latched on to that last sentence, taking from it that I am somehow “comparing human embryos to mosquitoes” (where did he get that ridiculous idea?), and adding that “(I) think (embryos) are worthless just because they are not sentient and they ‘would not mind’ (they actually could not mind) and concluding that my “theory” is “philosophically flawed”.

Let me summarize “my theory” in the form of a syllogism and see whether Pace is for once correct in saying that I am being “philosophically flawed”.  It would go something like this:

Any kind of experience of existence requires a sufficiently developed brain that makes experience possible.

Beings who never experienced existence cannot even care whether they exist or not because to care requires the ability to experience.

Pre-sentient foetuses do not have a sufficiently developed brain to enable them to experience anything.

Therefore, pre-sentient foetuses cannot even care whether they exist or not.

Mr Pace would of course have every right to refute my argument or any of its premises with his own rational and logical arguments – something that despite countless challenges, he has yet failed to even attempt. What he is not entitled to do unless he wishes to display gross irrationality, ignorance and critical thinking deficiency, is to simply assert that a logically sound and consistent argument (even if it might be countered with other more logically sound and consistent arguments) is simply “philosophically flawed”, without even attempting to show in what way the argument might be flawed. He simply chooses to assume it is flawed because, given that he takes an infantile adversarial attitude towards philosophy, it must be flawed if it logically contradicts his foregone prejudiced conclusions.

Evidently, as The Times editorial of February 14 concluded, “Malta’s free education system is among the most generous in any EU member state…but education policymakers and students must understand that one of Malta’s biggest problems is a general lack of critical thinking. It is in everyone’s interest to start focusing on it”. Nowhere is this need shown to be more evident than in the comments sections of that, and all other, national newspapers.