>>>> I don't think his murders invalidate his manifesto.
- colinmhayes (the original post I responded to).
And, for your point to be relevant to this discussion, you would have to claim that what the Unabomber did was "killing" rather than "murder". If you claim that, I'd like to see your definitions and where you think the line between killing and murder is.
And if that isn't your claim, it looks like you're just arguing in order to argue.
I have no interest in defending the actions of the Unabomber.
I did feel that you were using the tautology of murder to ignore my actual point.
>You: His murders are the working-out of his ideas; his ideas are worth rejecting just on that basis.
>Me: That doesn't mean they are wrong in part or in whole.
If the unabomber said as part of the manifesto that the sky is blue, would you now reject that the sky is blue?
There is nothing about murder that invalidates the logic, truth, or accuracy of an argument, and especially not the individual components of an argument.
It is fine and fair if you don't personally want to learn or engage with an argument that has lead to violence. But that does not mean that it is internally inconsistent, or devoid of accurate observations about the world (e.g. new technologies can impose externalities on the unwilling).
Whether the sky is blue has no moral component. The Unabomber was saying 1) what he thought was wrong with society, and 2) how we should make a better society.
These judgments ("wrong" and "better") presuppose some definition of "good". But the guy was deliberately killing people. Am I supposed to believe his definition of what "good" is? No, I'm supposed to suspect that it's seriously skewed. (In fact, he's giving me evidence that it's seriously skewed.)
There's something about murder that invalidates the moral truth of an argument.
Could his argument still be internally consistent? Sure. Could it have accurate observations? Also sure. But should his manifesto be regarded as having any overall validity? No. (Recall that the original point I was replying to was whether his murders invalidated his manifesto.)
You need to learn to separate the ideas from the author. A work either has ideological merit or it does not. If he wrote the paper, it had merit, and then he murdered people, that does not change the writing at all. It has the same merit that it had before. Your learning information about the man who wrote the ideas should not have any effect on your assessment of its validity.
Nearly every great thinker and writer you can name from before a certain year owned slaves or wanted to.
I feel that you view his acts of murder as inseparably linked to the manifesto, and that people can not accept manifesto to be true, while condemning the murders.
This ignores the possibility of a completely pacifist implementation of the manifesto's ideals.
My understanding is that a significant portion of it is not necessarily a call to violence, as much as a call to action. It states the technology and collectivism should be rejected, and this could be either a violent or non-violent process.
- colinmhayes (the original post I responded to).
And, for your point to be relevant to this discussion, you would have to claim that what the Unabomber did was "killing" rather than "murder". If you claim that, I'd like to see your definitions and where you think the line between killing and murder is.
And if that isn't your claim, it looks like you're just arguing in order to argue.