“In Australian political debates motive fallacies are so repeatedly and commonly used – particularly, but not exclusively*, by the political left” — see Kalimna Blog

I was thus interested to hear Joe Hockey interviewed on the 7.30 Report tonight:

JOE HOCKEY: Kevin Rudd says he’s not being controlled by the union bosses. Where is all Kevin Rudd’s money coming from? Where are his candidates coming from? And where are his policies coming from?

……

They [union bosses] are going into churches, they’ll go into Meals on Wheels, they’ll go into any group to try and get the message out that people should vote for Kevin Rudd and Labor at the next election.

Now, you’d say to yourself ‘Why would they want to do that?’, because they are desperate, the union bosses are desperate, to have Kevin Rudd elected.”

Ken Parish:

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/06/13/tim-dunlops-1q-the-relevance-of-motive/

tigtog:

http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=647

You only have to look at WorkChoices to see this happening. If the Government were confident that their policy was sound and the best solution for Australian workers don’t you think they’d be happy to release all the data they currently collect about AWAs?

Clearly WorkChoices is shafting the low skilled and the young. The Government knows this because it was designed to be that way. The Government cannot be trusted to tell the truth about WorkChoices so it cannot be independently verified to be a good policy solution. So we have nothing to judge the policy on but what we think the motives of the Government are on this issue. They have not been straight with us in the past on IR matters, and I see no reason to believe they will be in the future.

We don’t hear much about “rightists” or “libertarianists” or “liberalists”.

In economic liberal land, there are rhetorical tropes too.

In time, leftists will become deviationists and renegades, as the extreme right’s grip on power tightens.

I am a bit astounded at appropriation of “libertarian”. I could describe myself as a libertarian, an accurate enough term, but I am not into Hayek but rather Hasek.

It’s like, “Everything changed for me on September 11. I used to consider myself a Democrat, but thanks to 9/11, I’m outraged by Chappaquiddick.�

Frrroooom-tish. “Used to be Right” isn’t nearly as cruel, not even for such unworthies as Malcolm Fraser or Leon Trotsky.

What complicated matters is that Harry was not able to freely and cleanly draw inferences from my post-ulates that I am indeed a “leftist” because he is tainted with the knowledge of me outside the blog: we went to school together and we were both “leftists” then. Harry claims he has “moved on” but I have remained in his mind as one who I was then. He may be right.

So why is Harry falling on the motives fallacy? Has he just discovered it?

For me, knowing where Harry is coming from is useful – this is not a strict formal logic exercise. Apart from truth values we he have value judgments and debates which rely on value judgments.

Take for instance the argument mounted by Susan Sontagabout Leni Reifenstahl that she was a Nazi when the latter produced the photographic picture book about the Nuba people of Africa. I mean, she well knew who Reifenstahl was by then.

Much as some bloggers would prefer there not to be a left and a right

Who, apart from Andrew Norton and Jack Strocchi? Anyway, of those two, the first does it in a complicated manner to universal claim the fruits of Whig liberalism and Mill for the modern political Right, and the second does it to try and further his bizarre new functional grammar, Esperanto for a modern GOVT1001.
The rest of us do ‘yeah, beyond Left and Right’ in the context of claiming spurious unanimity, humanist ethical universalism or slurring people with ‘moral relativism’—as the great Evil Pundit prophesied (from your link Kim).
Motives fallacy bah. Is economic interest no longer a viable political left/right distinction?

Now I’m not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws–that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice.