[EM] Finding the probable best candidate?

[Blake Cretney]

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:

>
> Blake said:
>
> You haven't actually brought out an argument in favour of your position.
> The fact that there exist candidates that are best for some people
> isn't in dispute and doesn't address the issue.
>
> I reply:
>
> Actually, I claim that it does address the issue, and that it
> means that there's no absolute best candidate.

So the existence of candidates that are best for specific individuals 
proves that there are no absolute best candidates?  I claim that toads 
don't exist.  After all, you admit that frogs do exist.  What more proof 
do you need?

> When I say that different candidates are best for different people,
> I don't mean that they benefit some people more than others. I mean
> that, as perceived by some people, some candidates are genuinely
> the best, and, as perceived by others, different candidates are
> genuinely the best.

So, let's say that Mr. Smith runs on a platform that it is absurd to 
allow shipping across the Pacific Ocean, since the earth is flat, and we 
North Americans would fall of the edge.  For people who agree with this 
theory, he will be the genuinely best candidate.  I wonder if for these 
people the earth is "genuinely" flat.  Perhaps the earth really doesn't 
have any shape in the absolute sense.  After all, from some people's 
perspective it is a globe, and for a few it is flat.

Or maybe, Mr. Smith is just wrong, and the people who vote for him are 
mistaken, and Smith is not genuinely best for them, even though that is 
how his supporters perceive things.

> There's no one "best" candidate. There's one that you insist is
> the best, and there's one that someone else insists is the best.
> You claim that there's a certain candidate who's really the best,
> but there isn't. Sure, there's one that I consider the best. There's
> one that you consider the best. But they probably won't be the same one.
>
> So, "the best candidate" has no meaning, unless we define it to
> mean "the candidate that the speaker considers to be the best".
>
> There's no 1 best candidate.

You can't prove your case through repetition.

>
> The second problem with your position is that all our arguments are
> predicated on there being a right answer.
>
> I reply:
>
> Not a right answer. Merely a democratic voting system, or at
> least one that meets standards that are important to us. Criteria
> serve as precise yes/no tests for compliance with standards.

But why do we prefer democratic voting systems?  I like democracy 
because I think that it provides better government than the 
alternatives.  But you think that better government is meaningless.  So 
democracy, like any standard, can't really be defended, but must be 
accepted dogmatically.  We like democracy because it is more democratic. 
 Your whole argument sounds like postmodernism.

---
Blake Cretney