They're good rules, but if they were intended as discipline to the posters who argued with pdf about the universal necessary truth that children only have a right to support from one parent, I think everyone was more than patient with that argument.
3: As I say here, "I’m not resentful in particular about these discussions, they just happened to be the most recent ones I’ve had that have led me to think about these issues, and thus, to write this post."
But, I don't think that, as a whole, people were very patient with me in that discussion. But Unfogged was much, much more patient than Alas. There's a really huge range of skill involved in following those rules. So there could be five different communities, each of which is "very patient" compared to the previous. And the discussion was mostly resolved, which is saying a lot.
Also, what do y'all think about this:
"I remember reading somewhere (don’t feel like googling) that people who spend time in “enemy” forums, like liberals posting at Red State or whatnot, tend to solidify their prejudices about the other side, and rarely really gain a more naunced and sympathetic understanding of their opponents’ positions. I wonder if the dynamic I describe in the article is at least part of the mechanism behind this."
Next week: How to drive like your grandmother.
I'll just note, without drawing any conclusions, that if Atrios followed those rules, he wouldn't have a cent to give to any candidates. I'll let Emerson take it from here.
Apropos of nothing particular, I would add to your post a discussion of one's own responsibilities in presenting arguments. I'd soften this, in particular. You seem to address this when you say, "be aware of the flaws in your own arguments", but I'd strengthen it to 'be aware that your word choice doesn't happen in a vacuum. A tin ear is your own fault.'
But when things really break down, it’s when the respondent sees possible implications and assigns them too-high probabilities and then fails to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt when they disclaim those assertions.
If your argument is being continually misunderstood, that does not necessarily entail that your discussion group is unaware of the principles of charity. It could be that your argument isn't very clear. An awareness of rhetoric and of your argument's place in the larger social context and the implications which are likely to be drawn might serve you well.
Particularly, if you think that the rules should be followed among those within a particular ideological range, but discarded when engaging with those outside that range, I’d like to hear your reasoning, Rbecause I am very suspicious of it.
Do I hear my name being called?
I can actually justify my own practice within a slightly adapted version of these rules -- actually, just lowering two thresholds. I'm quicker to conclude that argument is not going to be productive, and I'm also quicker to conclude that I'm faced with bad faith, than pdf23ds would be. In large part this is because of specific developments in recent political history, i.e., the rise of the Movement Republicans and the collapse of the (Deboned, Nerveless, Jellyfish) Democrats.
As a secondary point, I'm not sure how much value there is with wrangling with someone with a strong opposed position of any kind, even if it is not a terribly awful position. The addressable disaster in American political life is uninformed, disengaged people who don't seem to care and have random opinions. I think that they are more persuadable than people who like to have opinions, but you seldom meet them on the internet.
In general, if I can't learn from someone and can't teach them either, I don't want to talk to them. If I also find myself disliking them, I might express that; I don't see the obligation to leave quietly. In some cases, you also have to ask whether you want a given individual to keep coming around, and if you don't, somehow express that.
Grices' principle of charity means that you should assume that the person you're talking to is NOT a bot programed to talk nonsense and falsehood. I do't think that there should be a principle of political charity; there really are bad guys out there.
One point at which discussion ends is when someone affirms falsehoods (WMD in Iraq) and refuses to listen to argument or look at sources saying otherwise. But this is not a rare borderline condition; it describes a big chunk of the populace. It is also not at all unusual to have an argument dominated by unaffirmed principles such as racism. There are ways to smoke this out, but doing so isn't really worth it.
Much of my argument on the serious political Unfogged threads is with the regulars here, and against the idea that civility requires dialogue with Republicans and conservatives as they now exist. I really think that we're in a different period of history than even 15 years ago. The old moderate, rational Republicans are whipped and cringing, and the doiminant movement Republicans are praying for Armageddon. I confess that even 15 years ago I thought that the renunciation of liberalism and of Democratic partisanship was gutless and silly, but it's much more so now.
7: That's definitely worth mentioning, but it doesn't fit in the first section of rules. You can see where I have a stub of "things to do when other people aren't addressing your argument well", and I'll certainly head that off with a discussion of how to avoid misunderstanding in the first place, including your advice.
I think these are rules which we should all strive to follow, but that said, 7 gets it exactly right.
"The addressable disaster in American political life is uninformed, disengaged people who don't seem to care and have random opinions. I think that they are more persuadable than people who like to have opinions, but you seldom meet them on the internet."
I think much of this apathy, though, stems from the terrible quality of debate that goes on. People see partisans screaming at each other and assume that neither side has a good point. But I don't see that as any more than a minor factor. The majority comes from other sources.
Now that I think about it, it could be that since the general quality of debate isn't something one can change by simply raising one's own standards, it could be that people *don't* have an obligation to try to debate charitably, since more aggressive rhetorical tactics could potentially lead to better outcomes given the incredibly tribal nature of human psychology. But I still lean toward the argument I make in my article.
"If I also find myself disliking them, I might express that;"
In the context of engaging with them, I wouldn't hesitate to, either. But I think it might be better for communities to enforce the norm that a contentious commenter (i.e. troll) is either engaged with or completely ignored. Perhaps if your expression of dislike includes a substantive dismissal of the troll's position, it might be ok to post it even if you don't plan on engaging with the troll. But to express your dislike without any other commentary is just noise, and probably not anything that all the other commenters didn't know already.
"In some cases, you also have to ask whether you want a given individual to keep coming around"
I think that the community moderators should be the only ones with that responsibility. My article is written for participants in general.
For everything in 8 I didn't address, I think the position is quite respectable. While I make assertions like "People who don’t strive to follow the principles of sound, rational debate are complicit in the intellectual chaos that characterizes open societies and effectively cripples mankind", I think when your society is unstable, (especially when it's exhibiting some fascist tendencies,) things really are different. But much left-right conversation is on issues that don't really have a lot of immediate political impact, so I think that the dialectical warzone can be limited to a subset of all political issues.
7, 10: The thing is, I really *did* try to approach it very sensitively. I was throwing disclaimers around left and right. I might not have done a good job, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
I think much of this apathy, though, stems from the terrible quality of debate that goes on. People see partisans screaming at each other and assume that neither side has a good point.
I really don't think so. In my experience at least, the politically apathetic either aren't paying attention, don't have time to pay attention, or just can't be bothered. Those who listen to enough political rhetoric to become offended by the "terrible quality of debate" usually turn into flustered moderates rather than disengaged apathetics.
11: The apathetic people I run into seem disengaged, and often don't believe that politics will affect them. Republicans have been very successful at using low-quality, ugly debate to attract voters.
Dislike can be expressed with ridicule, snark, and clever invective. It doesn't have to be "Fuck you!"
There seems to be a consensus welcoming, or not, at Unfogged. I'm aware that I'm more or less alone at my end of the Unfogged community, and I don't claim the power to eject anyone, but sometimes I let people know that I might be wishing that I did.
7, 10: The thing is, I really *did* try to approach it very sensitively. I was throwing disclaimers around left and right. I might not have done a good job, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
I see now how you might have taken 10 as a criticism of you, since your post and some comments here seem to be rehashing an argument you were in. I'm sorry that I wrote what I did in a way that communicated that to you. It was the furthest thing from my mind.
I was trying to make the point that your proposed rules, while very good, need to go both ways. It is not unusual for me to feel like some version of the rules you propose serve more as rhetorical shields rather than a guide to reasoned discussion. For example, if someone writes something that--taken on its face--says something unreasonable, and it is pointed out, the retort is some version of "Gee, you should have read it more charitably." You are absolutely right that we should all do a better job not reading things in to what people say/write. On the other hand, however, you can't have a discussion when people refuse to own up to the actual words they say or write.
I'm pretty much with Emerson on this, actually, and have been for a while. It's been expressed here any number of times, but I'll say it again: at this point, those who support the Republican agenda are no longer merely ideological opponents; they're either woefully ignorant or just bad people. Facts and arguments can be brought up with the former, but there's nothing really productive you can say to the latter.
13, 14: Some rough speculation: "disconnecting" is a skill routinely learned at a young age, because of really bad experiences with arguments. (That's not to say that people aren't born with terrible argumentative skills--they are.) Hypothetically, the prevelance of productive and flameless debates (by routinely teaching children and adolescents how to debate well, or some other method) could lead to a society where such debates in general are much less unpleasant, and thus require less political concern to override the unpleasantness, and thus lower the barrier to entry in such dialogue so that many more people are able to participate. And, with network effects, a small change in the barrier to entry could lead to a significant change in the number of politically-aware, and a substantial change could lead to a huge change.
Not to say that this is terribly relevant to America, because there's really not much you can do to improve the debate quality in general except for inventing a new kind of forum that becomes very popular and that specifically fosters that kind of debate. And any such effects from teaching people to debate better would take many years to really take effect, and things are changing more quickly than that.
"Dislike can be expressed with ridicule, snark, and clever invective. It doesn't have to be "Fuck you!""
Oh, certainly. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
16: I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but it sounds right.
"You are absolutely right that we should all do a better job not reading things in to what people say/write. On the other hand, however, you can't have a discussion when people refuse to own up to the actual words they say or write."
Certainly. Just like the bit about determining when someone has crossed the line into being not worthy of engagement needing another article written about it, I think I could write another article about how much give there should be, and how much take.
"I was trying to make the point that your proposed rules, while very good, need to go both ways."
The situation is asymmetrical. The person writing the contentious post ("the speaker") is only trying to say X. Possible implications include A-W. There's no easy way to disclaim all of those, but any given commenter could come up with any one of them as a criticism. If you give the speaker too much responsibility, they end up spending three times as many words say what they're not asserting than they do saying what they are. So, while I think that the speaker does have a responsibility not to have a tin ear, I think it's a really big responsibility, and hard to get right, and that others have an obligation to be sensitive to that. Which is my point with the "You cannot read minds" rule.
Where do you think the proper balance lies?
You were trying, and no one was interpreting you uncharitably. We just couldn't figure out where your intuition came from, and there wasn't a whole lot of help offered on that score.
I'm simply not sure that the fact republicans have found a way to exploit the principle of charity is a sound basis for losing the principle wholesale. Or rather, the condition's which allowed for that exploitation are fairly specific (9/11) historical events, the effects of which which are beginning to dissipate.
In the face of a radical restructuring of the political landscape, the vast majority of both the electorate and cognoscenti are simply at a loss because there normal landmarks have been upended. The republicans realized this and abused the phenomenon to push the debate far to the right because people, without their regular markers, were using some sort of epistemological/political averaging to stake out a "reasonable" position. This pretty much explains the whole TNR/liberal hawk cohort. As peoples begin to regain their bearings, I'm relatively sure this method will lose a great deal of its effectiveness.
While charity might have its flaws, the magnitude of those flaws has been exacerbated by a fairly specific historical event, so we should be very careful before throwing three sheets to the wind and declaring unrestricted partisan warfare. That cure may very well be worse than the disease.
Anyway, that's my piece. Have at it Emerson.
The Republicans ditched the principle of charity no later than 1994 (Gingrich as Speaker). 9/11 helped, but charity was already dead by then.
I was arguing against the idea that people reject viciousness and brutality. They don't. I'm not saying we should imitate the Republicans, but we should be aware that their method has worked for them.
"and no one was interpreting you uncharitably."
That's not what it felt like to me.
Specifically, I think people (except for LB) were stating what they though the implications of my position were with much too much confidence, force, derision, and in some cases, snark. I also felt like I was having to repeat myself a little.
22: Charity doesn't imply being nice, necessarily. But I think Emerson is right as a matter of political rhetoric, nasty and caricatured has been very effective.
Also, I think the problem pdf23ds is actually a separate, albeit related issue to the more general question of charity. One of the more powerful leftist critiques of liberalism(defined very broadly) has been pointing out that "rationality" is loaded with a whole bunch of socially induced stuff. This is an important, and fair point, but it tends to allow for some very amorphous arguments. Since the standard metric for determining argumentative validity are undermined, a whole plethora of counterarguments arise that are very hard to engage with. (This, I think, corresponds roughly to pdf's "A-W" in 19)
This is why many of the debates over whether certain things, especially people's statements, are racist or sexists, or what have you, feel like you are wrestling with a jellyfish. It's simply hard to get a sense of what the opposing argument is much of the time, because it's so easy to switch tacks. Whenever I go read Alas, even when I agree with what they are saying, I feel a sort of argumentative nausea, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, this is my take on what pdf is trying to get at. I may be completely wrong, but I seem to be in the mood for monograph-posts tonight, so eh.
My response was to pdf's long post at his site, read in a general sense. I did not participate much if at all in the thread in question and have not been referring to it. To an extent we are talking about different things.
I am willing to argue in a civil manner on an issue-by-issue, person-by person basis. There are a number of issues and individuals about which / with whom, I am not eager to carry on civil discussion.
re:22
But it's possible to draw a distinction between uncharity and politically effective uncharity. I am young, so I may just be biased by what I've seen, but it seems that being uncharitable paid vastly better dividends after 9/11 than before. The character assassins of the Clinton era had some success, but they were also ridiculous and, on balance not nearly as important as Rove et. al. have been in the Bush era.
26: Reading your post I was trying to think what I'd said on this thread or in my post like that, because it's so close to a point I think I might have almost made somewhere. Specifically, that there's a (I think characteristically leftist) argument that certain groups of people, because of their oppression, get a free pass on being really emotional and irrational in debates. The argument is a bastardized version of a very valid point that because the oppressed group is, of course, more emotionally impacted by the relevant issues, that they're as a group going to have a harder time staying calm in discussions about it. Thus all the talk about safe spaces and territory and whatnot that really gets on my nerves. A lot of it has validity, but it's easy to bend to perverse ends, and it tends to be associated, at least in my experience, with really whiny commenters.
And while there's nothing wrong with such emotionality per se, the Not everyone cares as much as you rule says that when you let your emotionality get in the way of following the other rules of charity, you're still wrong.
pdf, honestly, I was being as charitable as I could. You were appealing to 'axiomatic intuition', and when challenged, retreated to arguing that a contingent claim was an a priori truth. People offered reasons that they thought your claims were wrong; you just denied that those were reasons.
Alas is not going to be a welcome atmosphere for those sorts of debates. I don't usually find them all that interesting over there, but they state their policy pretty clearly: ampersand or one of them crossposts specifically for those discussions.
There are Republicans you can debate, and Republican crazies you can't, just like there are ultra-lefties who aren't open to debate. They are always going to set up a straw man with whom they're going to argue instead of with you,
"you're still wrong"
Not your position--following or not following the rules doesn't make your position any more or less wronng--but you're wrong to engage without following the rules.
"Alas is not going to be a welcome atmosphere for those sorts of debates."
I think his moderation policy is wrong, even for the purpose he wants for it. I think he does a poor job of moderation.
Another rule: He who has the soccer ball makes the rules. It's his backyard.
28: Lack of charity was one of the tools by which the Republicans gained control of Congress. Clinton wasn't impeached, but he was crippled, and the Republicans were punished only very mildly by the voters in 1998, and gained everything back by 2002.
29: Yeah. The problem isn't so much with the idea that certain groups get "special treatment" or what have you(I lack a good word for this, be nice to me!) in debates. They are bringing different things to the table that are very much relevent to the discussion. The problem is the open-endedness of this "exception." Just when I feel that I have a lock on an argument and the degree to which I agree/disagree with it, the nature of the argument will change radically. This makes engagment extremely difficult, and in some instances raises a reasonable suspicion that it is being used for explicitly polemical effect. I'm honestly not sure what to do in such circumstances.
35: Hold it, let me get my bearings. Are we talking about general political uncharitability? Because both sides do that, a lot, and the degree to which the democrats should ramp it up is more a discussion of tactics than anything else. I thought we were discussing the systemic uselessness of debating *anyone* on the other side--i.e., anyone who hasn't declared their opposition to the republican agenda by now is stupid, evil or both. There is a colorable argument to be made that that is true now, but my impression, at least, is that there were reasonable, albeit wrong, people on the other side back in 94? Am I mistakan?
34: Care to expand? I'm all for that rule, I think.
Oh, were you responding to 33? I don't dispute Amp's right to make his own rules. I just think his vision for his community isn't served well by his ideas about moderation.
"stupid, evil or both"
You forgot ignorant. Disconnected, self-absorbed, apathetic, etc.
Sure -- if you're debating on another blog, the host generally gets to set the rules on the sorts of acceptable discourse: whether profanity is permitted, what topics are off-limits, how much snark is acceptable, whether cock jokes are okay, how on-topic comments need to be, that sort of thing.
This thread gives me an opportunity to note, again, that I was merely teasing pdf23ds about the whole transhumanism thing and that I hope he didn't take it amiss.
37: Gingrich transformed the Republican party in a highly uncharitable direction. He was quite explicit about this, though he didn't use those words. He was willing and eager to use absurd and vicious slanders, and he was rewarded by being named Speaker. The Democrats still have not caught up, either in viciousness or in success.
A woman named Susan Smith killed her two young children not long before the election, and Gingrich blamed the Democratic Party's atmosphere of permissiveness or something like that. He never has apologized. (It turned out that Smith had been sexually molested by her Republican official, Moral Majority stepfather, but if I were to say that, I would be just as bad as Gingrich, of course. The truth never got as much publicity as the smear.)
I think his moderation policy suits his vision just fine; he's conducting an in-house debate, he wants to limit distractions.
But what's the upshot? I presume you don't want the democrats to emulate that model. I'm all for losing west-wing style naivete about republican tactics, but I think that issue is seperable from whether engaging with people on the right can be worthwhile, which seems to be at the core of this post. Afterall, pdf wrote rules for debate, not the conduct of national politics.
42: I figured so. It still annoys me, because negative sterotypes about fringe ideologies used to dismiss them in the public eye, as an excuse not to take them seriously, are annoying to those who subscribe seriously to those ideologies. But I figured it was either a joke about the stereotype or something I was missing--I couldn't quite tell, because the comment was short and I haven't read other comments of yours.
National politics, in theory, is a form of debate, and pdf did refer to politics.
What I've been saying specifically refers to the idea that the voters will reject uncharitable debate. The won't. They love uncharitable debaters.
44: His main failing, I think, is not doing enough limiting on the feminist commenters, rather than too much on the others'. It's perfectly OK to limit the ideological range of the commenters, but he holds feminist commenters to a much, much lower standard of charitibility, and I think that gets in the way of what he'd like to have. Of course, I could be wrong about what his vision is.
Well, I regret my snarkiness, but while it may not have been a very persuasive approach, I think my comments were reasonable. What you are calling "implications" (which you strangely appear to think are not implicit in your position) would in fact be the logical results of the course of behavior you proposed. If you haven't examined the implications of a belief or opinion, that doesn't mean they aren't there. If, once they are made explicit, you don't like what they sound like, then perhaps you should reexamine your position.
You seemed to think the reason I was disagreeing with you was that I didn't understand you. What can I say but that I believe you are mistaken?
50: Not necessarily implicit. I'm aware that beliefs have necessary consequences, and that you were arguing that my position necessarily led to certain other positions with sexist consequences. I'm not accusing you of not having understood my position. (Well, I'm sure you didn't, but only to the degree that I wasn't clearly stating it.) But I'm still not sure that you understood that I thought my position didn't necessarily lead to those consequences. And you didn't do this at all: "Include questions to the person to try to confirm or disconfirm what you see them as implying. Phrase the questions sincerely, and use as much of the person’s own reasoning (putting in the best light) as you can."
And you seemed pretty weak on this: "you should frame your response with the expectation that the [distasteful] implication was unintended, and contrary to their actual position. Then give them the opportunity to show you how you misunderstood them, by offering your most charitable rendition of their position and how it seems to lead to the distasteful conclusion." And this: "The more distasteful the position, the harder you should search for a more charitable interpretation of their words."
50: I just edited the mind-reading rule (second and third paragraphs) with a few additional things I think would have really helped in our exchanges.
Particularly, if you think that the rules should be followed among those within a particular ideological range, but discarded when engaging with those outside that range, I’d like to hear your reasoning, Rbecause I am very suspicious of it.
In a fight, I'll kick a stranger until he stops trying to get back up. But when I've tangled with my brother, it didn't even occur to me to hit him with a closed fist.
Different rules when it's one of your own.
vomit vomit vomit. The whole point of about half the arguments in the world is to demonstrate to people that their positions are, in fact, unsustainable. This just looks like David Lewis' philosophical joke ("Your argument cannot be a counterexample to my proposition, because I had specifically constructed my proposition to have no counterexamples") crossed with the very worst of the Miss Manners column. puke.
Here's my rules:
1. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers.
2. Be excellent to one another
3. Whatever else happens, don't write a nobby little passive-aggressive rulebook telling other people how they must be nice to you.
4. If the cap fits, wear it.
They are all negotiable except 3.
The more distasteful the position, the harder you should search for a more charitable interpretation of their words
I'm not certain this is a useful rule. If it's a distasteful position, and you have reason to believe the person is arguing in good faith, then you should be charitable. But if someone's position is "It is alright to rape college girls because they're all stupid American whores ruined by Hillary Clinton", and their argument is "It's just the way things oughta be", I don't owe them a blessed thing.
But I'm still not sure that you understood that I thought my position didn't necessarily lead to those consequences.
I, at least, understood that you didn't want to be sexist or hold a weird position. But not wanting to and not holding it are completely different things, and when challenged, you didn't offer compelling reasons why your position didn't lead you there.
55: I think my favorite one is "P. P is crazy, and when I state it, people give me incredulous stares. I do not know how to refute an incredulous stare. Therefore, P."
pdf, I agree it would have been friendlier to ask a series of questions that unpacked your position more carefully, but what the hell, I'm not Socrates. I should be more careful with tone when I strongly disagree with an interlocutor's perceived position. I don't think you're a bad, sexist person. Just, in this case, overly abstract, perhaps.
On a meaner different note, i woke up this morning thinking that my 50 above sounded kind of pompous, and I asked myself, as so often, "what would D^2 say?" And I realized I should have just called everybody cunts and gone to the opera in a tank top.
"I'm not certain this is a useful rule."
On several of my rules, I explicitly include a disclaimer to the effect of "unless you don't want to engage them". I don't do this on every rule because if I did then I would have to say it dozens of times. But it applies for everything. If you don't feel like being charitable to a person, then the only rule that applies is the last.
55: Odd. I wrote it because I thought it was the *best* way to demonstrate to people that their positions are, in fact, unsustainable--as opposed to demonstrating it to people who already agree with you--without making an ass of yourself in the process, and without your falling victim to the many ways people are prone to delude themselves about others' positions. And you might notice that I don't once mention civility or politeness. And while, to a large extent, those are part of charity, that's only incidental.
"But not wanting to and not holding it are completely different things, and when challenged, you didn't offer compelling reasons why your position didn't lead you there."
One can make no fallacies whatsoever during the course of an debate, and still have not one shred of charitability for the other's position. I feel like you're, perhaps, defending yourself on the former count, but I'm not trying to impugn you.
55.2: I tend to ration my disbursement of excellence, which in my own personal space is never in glut, and just try to match the level of excellence being offered.
mate, your position was "men shouldn't have to pay child support if they didn't plan to have kids because women can have abortions", and you wanted to be interpreted as other than a sexist. It's not "charity" you're needing, it's the fucking Marshall Plan.
One can make no fallacies whatsoever during the course of an debate, and still have not one shred of charitability for the other's position.
Charitability is simply not the same as courtesy. I wasn't all sunshine and sweetness, but I was fully charitable. I didn't assume your position was sexist. I didn't assume you had a hidden agenda. I limited myself to considering your points. They weren't compelling, plausible, nor compellingly argued. When asked for clarification none came. Charity doesn't entail that I have to make your arguments for you.
I feel like you're, perhaps, defending yourself on the former count, but I'm not trying to impugn you.
I don't need to defend myself on either count, frankly.
thinking about it, I am going to pick this one up and run with it. From now on in my book, any argument in which someone is trying to construct an elaborate logical structure to protect themselves from the obvious implications of their fundamental premis, will be described as an "intellectual charity case".
They are all negotiable except 3.
Dude, #1 is totally non-negotiable.
56: Do you think you *were* charitable, or do you think that it doesn't matter that you weren't, or do you think my position didn't deserve charity? Or what's behind door number four?
62: I don't really care what you think at this point, dsquared. But, for the record, that was not my position.
Charity is bullshit in some discussions because the thing being discussed doesn't admit of a neutral viewpoint. For example, in a discussion about rape a man who comes in and says 'Men get raped too!!!' is using a time-honed rhetorical trick intended to stop a conversation about the imbalanced impact a problem has on women and focus it, like so many other things in life, squarely upon men and men's problems.
There are kind, generous people who will patiently try to discuss the issue with that person, assume their opponent is not in bad faith, and then be utterly flabbergasted when that person is revealed to be a troll giggling over his success somewhere else on the internets. I saw that pattern often enough that I stopped being charitable.
I do assume people who are oblivious to the antique idiocy of their arguments are trolls and because of that I do not engage in After School Special-esque conversations in which my opponent suddenly understands everything and becomes a socially conscious feminist vegan. Pardon me while I weep into a lace-trimmed hankie, but I'm thinking the numbers of those conversions are very, very low.
Hrm. This thing got less sympathy than I expected. Does it help to point out that it's not supposed to be a set of rules for talking to people, it's supposed to be guidelines for arguing with people productively? Winna -- for someone like you're talking about, the useful response is "Fuck off, asshole," or pretty much anything dsquared might say in any situation, but that's because you're not expecting to get anything interesting out of talking to them.
This stuff is only for arguing with people who you either think might have a valid point that you aren't getting, or whose positions you're actually interested in for some reason. If you're sure they're wrong, or boring, or whatever, then invective is absolutely the way to go.
people who are oblivious to the antique idiocy of their arguments
Nice.
I know it was supposed to be for people with whom you want to have a debate, but a lot of the time what I see on the internet is one side of the argument laying down rules similar to those and telling everyone that their points are so logical they must be engaged or the debate was objectively WON! by the person trying to set the terms.
I am sure that pdf23ds didn't intend his rules to be taken that way, but that is perhaps why they're getting the poor reception. It's not at all the content of the rules, but the pattern some of us have seen having arguments on the internet.
They may very well be excellent rules for arguing with people in real life.
"For example, in a discussion about rape a man who comes in and says 'Men get raped too!!!'"
In that situation, yes, the effect of the post (which may or may not be its intent) is to completely distract the discussion away from the other focus. I think the proper response, though, is deletion, not invective.
And much of the reason that behavior is so obnoxious is that the arguments made by the troll are well-worn, time-tested and already completely treaded-in ground. So the solution is to have a single essay that addresses all the arguments and point them to it while you're deleting their comment, so that the charity only has to happen once, and then you're ready to be able to address their arguments without letting any threads get derailed.
"Charity is bullshit in some discussions because the thing being discussed doesn't admit of a neutral viewpoint."
Do you mean that certain topics are troll attractors? I think it's always possible to have a neutral viewpoint.
63: You weren't charitable according to the rules in my article. Do you think you were, or do you think the article is mistaken about what charity is, or do you think it's describing a different sense of charity? Or do you still hold to 7? Maybe the last part of 19 is relevant? (I'd be really interested in someone's response to 19.)
weep into a lace-trimmed hankie
Now there you go again, reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes...
Refusing to engage and resorting to name calling has the added benefit of allowing you never to have to examine your own beliefs. If pdf23ds had truly considered how rewarding this approach is, he would have made, I am sure, a quite different set of rules.
I think the trick there is to be willing to explictly kick over the table when someone is pulling passive-aggressive shit like that. "No, I'm not 'debating' you, because you're a nitwit who isn't worth it." What I thought was kind of useful about these was was the idea of being clear about what you were doing -- if you're debating, it's because you think your interlocutor has something of some value to say, and so you should be cooperative about helping them get it said, and vice versa. If the person you're talking to isn't worth that, then don't slowly ratchet up the hostility -- stop 'debating' and either quit talking to them, or move on to another mode of discussion.
To add to 73, I don't think that it's wrong to delete their comment in the absence of such a comprehensive response, or even that it's wring to do that without pointing such a response out. But it is possible to be charitable in that situation without compromising your community.
75: I sense that you're cranky with someone, or perhaps disagree with someone. Can't say as there's much else I can productively say in response to that.
BTW, LB, are you very attached to spelling my name "pdf123"? Because if so, you can leave it spelled that way--I don't mind at all. It has a certain School House Rock sort of charm to it.
Sorry, no -- I can fix that. I just misremembered it yesterday and then went home.
One way to participate helpfully in discussions is to respond to hypotheticals, and if one finds the hypothetical ill-constructed, to try to reform the hypothetical rather than dismissing it. In this case, I think poor pdf is still waiting for an answer as to whether or not it would be in principle acceptable to have an enforceable contract between two people that in the event of pregnancy any child that comes to term will be given up for adoption. The closest to that in the last thread (I believe, can’t say I read with perfect attention) was d^2’s remark that this would be fine “if you could get the child’s signature.” This seems (to me) off point, as one doesn’t need the child’s signature to give him up for adoption now. Maybe this is just another way of putting the point that we may not always recognize a child’s right to care from biological parents, or at least that this right can be trumped in some cases.
[[I hasten to add that it is of course a different question whether contracts of this kind are in practice a good idea. And for what (little) it is worth, I personally am *deeply* unsympathetic to the idea of “choice for men.”]]
"a different question whether contracts of this kind are in practice a good idea"
Which is something I've said all along.
I sense that you're cranky with someone, or perhaps disagree with someone.
Why yes, I do disagree with the people who, instead of disagreeing with pdf23ds's proposal on the merits, thought it was easier derisively to dismiss them without examining them "vomit, vomit, vomit" and/or to rehash a prior argument about whether he was a sexist for proposing whatever it was he proposed (I am on vaction and have not followed all of the threads, lately).
There, I think DaveL said it best, that contract law is a poor model for handling agreements in the sphere of family and relationships. Societal norms are so strong, and the emotional relationships underlying any such agreement are so comparatively powerful, that I would suggest that as a matter of public policy such contracts should not be enforcable.
85: I think the contract hypothetical was really just an effective way to bring the discussion close to the issue. Were it possible to pinpoint exactly what the injustice is in any of these situations (which I feel I haven't done at all) then we could start to think about policies that do a good job of remedying them, that don't have unwanted side effects. I never strongly thought the idea was actually a good policy idea.
re: 85, sure. There are oodles of reasons why such contracts are, all things considered bad *policy.* (as I think pdf23ds was happy to grant). I get the sense, however, that some people (?) also think such a contract would be morally impermissable. And that is what I took to be the interesting intuition pdf23ds was trying to tap.
Does it help to point out that it's not supposed to be a set of rules for talking to people, it's supposed to be guidelines for arguing with people productively?
No. It begins with the premise that in a debate, we are not attempting to convince each other of our viewpoints. If that is not the case, I do not see the point of a debate at all.
You weren't charitable according to the rules in my article.
Goddamn then, that settles it.
Do you think you were, or do you think the article is mistaken about what charity is, or do you think it's describing a different sense of charity?
Yes to the first two, no to the third because I'm not sure what it means. Your article is mistaken because I believe, like dsquared, that the point of debate, as opposed to the point of shouting madly on street corners, is to convince your opponent of the correctness or plausibility of your position. You may not succeed, mind, but it surely underlies it.
In response to 19: this does increase the burden on the person proposing a position, but that's just because that's what a debate is. The burden varies with the context.
If you don't want to provide rational support, all well and good, but you're not debating just asserting. I would note that contra 19, it is symmetrical. If you say P, I can't just argue against you by saying not-P. I have to give you a reason that I think P is wrong. If I do that, and you simply say, P. P. P!!!, it's certainly not that I haven't been charitable.
Now, if you're not aiming to convince me of anything, but have some other purpose -- seeking approval of your character, whiling away the hours -- all well and good. But that isn't a productive debate.
"Your article is mistaken because I believe, like dsquared, that the point of debate, as opposed to the point of shouting madly on street corners, is to convince your opponent of the correctness or plausibility of your position."
OK, this is, I think, very interesting and leads us away from the specific discussion earlier, and is perhaps the root of our disagreement on this thread. Can we agree, at least for now, that charity in debate is the set of practices that most reliably and quickly lead to the resolving of differences? That is, with participants modifying each other's positions with arguments (admitting mistakes as they go) until the positions cohere?
You think my article doesn't describe charity, because the practices aren't effective when you're trying to convince someone. Am I right so far? If so, could you say in what situations they fail, or why they're suboptimal? (Perhaps I'm not describing the rules well enough. I might need more of an emphasis on how you can strongly argue for a position without violating them, maybe with some examples?)
There are oodles of reasons why such contracts are, all things considered bad *policy.* (as I think pdf23ds was happy to grant). I get the sense, however, that some people (?) also think such a contract would be morally impermissable. And that is what I took to be the interesting intuition pdf23ds was trying to tap.
People did address the moral question and asked for his reasons for thinking his intuition was true in all possible worlds. (Most of my snark was against what seemed to be an 'I see no reason why this couldn't work practically.) Particularly 380, 385, 393. In response we get 414 asserted with no argument. I tried to lay it out the problem with the 'intuitive' view in 424. 425 also, and 442. I bail in 440 when it becomes clear we've mixed up what necessary and contingent mean.
re: 68: well, charity begins at home. Interpret me as saying something else then.
re: 84: let's be clear here. I did examine this proposal, on the merits, and concluded it had none. I also think that whether it's right or wrong, it's clearly sexist and that if it were right, that would be evidence in favour of sexism. "vomit vomit vomit" was my response to the twee little "productive debate" thing, not the position it was trying to provide rhetorical cover for.
Can we agree, at least for now, that charity in debate is the set of practices that most reliably and quickly lead to the resolving of differences?
No. Underlying all of this is a mistaken faith in rational argument leading to the One True Solution. Off the top of my head, it's quite possible that a charitable interpretation will be an inaccurate one, because the person you're debating really is a monster. (Not referencing anyone here--other than baa and Ideal, obviously.)
Can we agree, at least for now, that charity in debate is the set of practices that most reliably and quickly lead to the resolving of differences?
No we can't. It leads to people being able to state an abhorrent position, get called on it, quickly modify it with qualifications, hypotheticals and of-course-the-practical-implications-are-problematics, leave it as an airy generality with no real content, and then go right back to the abhorrent version as soon as your back's turned, this time acting as if they had proved it wasn't abhorrent.
"Between genuine opposites, there can be no accomodation" (K Marx).
No, I don't think she's saying that at all. She's saying that she found your basic intuition -- the one you ended up walking away from, that women's responsibility for children was necessary while men's was derivative, or however you'd like to put it -- both unconvincing and impossible to argue with because you characterized it as a basic intuition. I felt pretty much exactly the same way, hence my post halfway through the argument saying that I couldn't see any reason to keep talking to you about it. I got back into it when you laid out a procedure that you'd buy as a basis for attacking that intuition -- talking through the implications of your missing-father hypo -- and that had productive results, but it would have been natural to have moved on and abandoned the discussion at that point. Most people, when they ground an argument in their 'moral intuition', mean that they are taking the truth of that argument as axiomatic and don't intend to change their minds about it.
On the other hand, if let's see, oh, anyone ever at Unfogged (Adam, LB, Weinder, sj, Emerson) accuses me of being too charitable, I can pull up this thread and insist AM NOT!
93: Sure. This is all about talking to people who you, for whatever reason (delusion, naivete, whatever), believe aren't going to pull that shit. For people who are, open hostility is the way to go.
"In response to 19: this does increase the burden on the person proposing a position, but that's just because that's what a debate is. The burden varies with the context."
There are two extremes here, with a happy middle. At one extreme, the poster tries to think of all the different ways they could be misconstrued, and to pre-empt them. At the other, they make no attempts to avoid even the most obvious unintended implications. So where's the middle? Sure, the poster should be aware of the views of the audience, and be aware of the likely ways that they could be misconstrued, and disclaim the most likely ones.* Do you think there's a further obligation?
*(I usually do this. I think it that other thread I was a bit broadsided, because I linked to my post about it without the intention of talking about child support, and then bitch introduced the subject, and I argued with her assuming she read my whole post with the disclaimers, and then other people came into the argument gradually who hadn't read the post, and so didn't see any of the disclaimers.)
They may very well be excellent rules for arguing with people in real life.
They may very well be excellent rules for arguing with other people who have also read the rules.
I'm suspicious of "rules for debate" because, as I think someone said about, they can became an excuse not to engage a tenacious interlocutor. "You used too many declarative sentences and not enough questions, so I refuse to respone."
Debates emphatically can be won. Sometimes winning is converting your "opponent" to your side; sometimes winning is clarifying your own beliefs for yourself; sometimes winning is finally understanding why someone disagrees with you.
dsquared may have put it rudely (and bless him for it), but I think he's on to something.
That said, clarity and charitability are good things, and make a discussion among friends a much more pleasant thing.
I'm suspicious of "rules for debate" because, as I think someone said about, they can became an excuse not to engage a tenacious interlocutor. "You used too many declarative sentences and not enough questions, so I refuse to respone."
Oh, absolutely. Using rules like this as a way to critique someone you were talking to, rather than as a guide to your own behavior, would be completely toolicious.
This is all about talking to people who you, for whatever reason (delusion, naivete, whatever), believe aren't going to pull that shit
if this was a guide for debating things with Bodhisattva and Saint Francis of Assisi it should probably have said so at the start. In one way or another, everyone is going to pull that sort of trick if given a chance, it's human nature. Which is why I am not a fan of the kind of philosophical debate in which people try to find a convoluted apologia for a position that can't be remotely excused when described in its simple version.
I, for one, do not lower myself to arguing with the unenlightened.
"Off the top of my head, it's quite possible that a charitable interpretation will be an inaccurate one, because the person you're debating really is a monster."
But if they agree with your charitable interpretation (and say it's an interpretation that makes their position out to be not that bad at all), then do you have any basis on which to believe them a monster? And if they don't agree, then discussion can continue until you show that the monstrous implications of their position are necessary.
If you come into an argument with the viewpoint that whoever advocates X can safely be assumed to secretly (or not so secretly) advocate horrible position Y, then you're not in a position to engage them.
Can we agree, at least for now, that charity in debate is the set of practices that most reliably and quickly lead to the resolving of differences between honest participants?
Do you think there's a further obligation?
This is unrelated to your argument. But broadly speaking, yes. It isn't enough just to distance yourself from an view by saying 'I do not like P. Therefore, I do not hold P." Doing so commits you, if you're being intellectually honest, to a) avoiding arguments that lead you to P and b) refraining from using helpful premises that point you to Q if they also take you to P.
Otherwise, it's too easy. I can just say, "I don't hate all Muslims. But you have to agree that any religion predicated on eating hummus and jihad is going to lead to a lot of towelheaded bastards firing rockets at the Jews." And then when you rightly say, "Gee, Cala, you're making a lot of unsubstantiated hateful assumptions about Muslims" I can just say, "But I told you I didn't hate them! Duh!"
Using rules like this as a way to critique someone you were talking to, rather than as a guide to your own behavior, would be completely toolicious.
This we certainly agree on.
"In one way or another, everyone is going to pull that sort of trick if given a chance, it's human nature."
Tricks like dishonestly changing their position for the sake of winning the argument without really changing their position? That's a deeply cynical view that I don't share. Now, I'm sure people do this to some extent without being aware of it, but that's just one more difficulty in debate between honest people that needs to be overcome.
105: Well, yes, that's going to legitimately be the center of the discussion. That's probably why the person brought it up in the first place in a critical forum, because they wanted to try to reconcile the positions. It's only a straw man when people don't argue primary about whether the implications follow, rather than whether the poster is a sexist bastard for even daring to bring up the issue. (Not thinking about Unfogged so much here.)
Arguing at Alas is a fool's errand. It's explicity *not* about interacting with a larger community, precisely because there are already plenty of places on the web where one can pre-empt feminist discussion by redirecting the argument ('men can't abort! men have no rights! men get raped too! men have social obligations too!'). It's sort of providing a safe haven for in-house debates that don't have to start with, "Yes, we know men can be raped by women, too" when they want to talk about college campus violence.
105: In the context of the prior discussion, I can see how you could have felt I wasn't supporting very well my position that my ideas didn't have sexist consequences. And that makes sense to me because I thought you were taking my argument as way less abstract and relatively inconsequential than I was intending it. I was arguing about abstract moral philosophy and you were arguing about ethics and structural inequalities. The reason I didn't offer more arguments is because I thought you weren't meeting my position at the level I offered it on. I think it's silly to take too seriously nebulous ideas about creation and transfer of human rights. Human moral intuition doesn't work on that level--when you get that abstract, it's all silly rationalization.
In fact, maybe the reason it went so poorly is that I just have really strange ideas about morality.
Now, I'm sure people do this to some extent without being aware of it, but that's just one more difficulty in debate between honest people that needs to be overcome.
This is more or less why I agree with dsquared. These arguments are all related to much broader worldviews. Particularly when we're talking about something that has been widely discussed, like abortion, people lining up on different sides have at least slightly different baseline principles. And those baseline principles are themselves contingent on a certain series of assumption about facts and the way those facts relate to other facts, and so on. You can't really overcome the tendency because you often aren't trying to overcome one opinion, but a host of them, the vast majority of which never get brought up in the debate for reasons of time, etc.
I think we disagree about the (a) the existence of common priors, (b) how willing we are to change our common priors, and (c) how deeply rooted and, at the same time, contingent belief in a set of common priors really is. I think you're looking for a coherence, stability, and factuality to beliefs that simply doesn't exist, for any of us. Debating or arguing is really much more about finding out the shape of a possible deal, with the understanding that, like any deal, someone may pull out down the line when his perceived interests change.
109: I find that the discussion there tends to be very good, except for the 50% of the posts that are very bad. I don't think it's quite hopeless to argue there, though it is exceedingly difficult. And I am quite a contrarian, you know. (I.e. I don't hesitate to get involved in discussions where my viewpoint is very different from others', not that I adopt contrary viewpoints for the sake of stirring up shit.)
I was arguing about abstract moral philosophy and you were arguing about ethics and structural inequalities.
But even abstract moral philosophy doesn't support the claim that it is true in all possible worlds, or a universal invariant, that a child's right to support is the sole responsibility of the mother, or the sole responsibility of one person that just happens to be the mother in all cases. And even if it did, you don't do abstract moral philosophy by saying I have an axiomatic moral intuition and there's an end on't.
I didn't engage it at the level because it's clearly false at that level, and it was far more charitable to assume that you intended your position to be a first principle for ethics as opposed to a truth of logic. Hence, the arguments about why it would be a bad first principle.
re: 90.
Thanks Cala. (and I can't tell you how pleased I was to see 'unicorn island' get a shout out...) I tend to agree that the greater responsibility of care for mothers then fathers was not a helpful path for pdf to go down, and that the reference of intuition as a ground for that was also not calrifying. But I don't think that was the interesting question raised by the "contract hypothetical." The question is: is it morally permissable for two people prior to having sex decide to "indemnify" one parent (or heck, both of them, if the kid will be given up for adoption) against post-birth care responsibilites?
111: I don't think that arguments boil down to differences in priors all that often. Even when there are many differences at this basic level between people, often they share enough others that they can argue based only on their shared intuitions.
Further, many differences in priors (how much you trust authority) just affect the outcomes of broad heuristics (how big should government be), but the outcomes of things like tax policies and national security lead to real effects (fascism) that can be productively argued about, but only at a much higher level of expertise.
And finally, at least if you can proceed to the point where your differences are identified as of this type, you’ve come much further than you could have otherwise.
That got argued, and my take on it is (with respect to indemifying one parent) no, because it's reducing the rights to support of the child without the child's agreement. (Someone on the other thread suggested that the responsibilities of the parent remaining responsible would just be increased, but that doesn't work except at a stratospheric level of wealth. The cost of supporting a child in the manner that a two-parent household is capable of is not something that any but a very few single people are financially capable of committing to. A cannot shed himself of his financial obligation to B by turning it over to C, where C isn't certain to have the money and B doesn't consent.)
For the 'agreement to have any kid adopted out' thing, I don't think it's a priori wrong, but I do think that it would be a bad thing, for the reasons referred to in 85, to make such contracts enforcable.
"And even if it did, you don't do abstract moral philosophy by saying I have an axiomatic moral intuition and there's an end on't."
No, you use thought experiments. Which I did.
I think that difference sin priors are massively important. One thing I find as time goes on is that my priors are not widely shared.
re: 76. I think kicking over the table is precisely the wrong response. You have to either *completely refuse* to engage, or engage in a stolid, absolutely rational way so that you can pursue them into an abhorrence. Time-consuming, but kicking over the table is precisely the response that type of interlocuter wants, because they can hold it up like a trophy of your irrationally erupting in face of the relentless rhetorical excellency.
117 -- Thanks LB. Although if giving a child up for adoption is morally neutral and permissable, it seems at least questionable why promising in advance to give a child up for adoption would be impermissable. The situation you describe "A shedding financial responsibility for B by turning it over to C without B's consent" seems to me exactly what adoption is. The only thing left out is C not being certain to have the ability to fulfill the responsibility (or to be better placed than A). And that doesn't seem like it's an explicit requirement for adoption, although it is usually assumed.
I read Unfogged and associated sites a lot, but don't comment too much.
I can't figure out how to communicate all the nuances that I use face-to-face: body language and tone of voice. When I preview my comments, I sound too abrasive to myself, so I usually end up deleting it. I always want to soften what I say with a smile or self-deprecating joke, but it's incredibly hard to make those come through.
Face-to-face, my style is to be super-blunt, but validate the other person's position by nodding or making fun of my own position, so that the overall tone stays productive.
Anyone else with this problem? What do you do?
116: Figured it was you, and briefly, I don't think that it is morally permissible. I'm not sure how I'd cash it out, exactly, but here's a few ways that I think might be promising.
1) If we allow abortion into the argument, such a contract is implicitly a promise to abort or go without support. It's plausible to think that such a promise would be invalidated by acquiring serious future considerations, like actually carrying the fetus. That is, I don't think a contract could be entered into knowingly, and that makes it morally impermissible in a weak sense. (Heck the married people with kids are always telling me I couldn't possibly understand.)
2) But suppose she doesn't want to abort. I think a similar 'uninformed consent' move could be made, but I think the real problem is that child support is the child's right. It doesn't seem that it's the mother's right to promise that away. Briefly, this is different from adoption, where the child's right to support is transferred, not abandoned.
122: Use more questions than statements when things start to get heated. Avoid saying "X" if the person you're arguing with believes "not X". Instead, say "I think/feel X". Avoid making them feel like you're not carefully reading them. Those are the main things.
122 -- I think the way to overcome this is to be in the community -- your individual posts may have the problems you talk about but taken together, your nuanced personality will emerge.
The only thing left out is C not being certain to have the ability to fulfill the responsibility (or to be better placed than A). And that doesn't seem like it's an explicit requirement for adoption, although it is usually assumed.
I don't know much about adoptions, legally, but isn't there a state review process even for private adoptions? And a point of difference is that where one bio parent indemnifies the other, the kid is going from two people responsible for its welfare to one. In an adoption, it's generally two for two, or one for two if the father is unlocatable, and I believe exceptions (adoptions by single people) are generally vetted by the state.
o, you use thought experiments. Which I did.
Where? And why did your thought experiments not take into account counterexamples?
, but I think the real problem is that child support is the child's right. It doesn't seem that it's the mother's right to promise that away. Briefly, this is different from adoption, where the child's right to support is transferred, not abandoned.
This seems wrong. At a minimum, if we're paper aborting, we're just transferring the father's responsibility to the mother (or whomever).
122: And be willing to apologize and restate a lot. Even if people take what you say badly, most will be fine if you back away from their interpretation of your words. And really don't worry about it -- skins are fairly thick around here.
In an adoption, it's generally two for two, or one for two if the father is unlocatable, and I believe exceptions (adoptions by single people) are generally vetted by the state.
Is this always the way it works? Don't people ever just leave the kid to the state, to be placed later?
128: See my 126 and my 117. A kid starts out with two people committed to support it. If the mother indemnifies the father, the kid is down to one. And the mother can't realistically (other than for the few very wealthy) promise ex ante that over the next 18 years she will have resources sufficient to cover what she and the father together would have spent on the child.
If Buck and I get a mortgage, and the bank gives it to us on the basis of both of our incomes, the bank isn't going to let Buck out of the mortgage if I agree to assume his responsibility. The bank already had me on the hook -- they lose security if they lose Buck.
130: I shouldn't be opining here, but I don't think so. You can have your children taken away for neglect or abuse, but I don't believe in most states that you can drop your children off with the state to be adopted without penalty. (Safe haven laws for newborns are a bit of an exception, but not really -- it's a way to short-circuit the process of getting your children taken away for neglect without actually putting the kids at risk.)
Thanks, 124,125,129. I'll just dive in and try to be charitable. (See? No room for teasy facial expression. Except ":)" and that wears thin.)
This site has a bunch of very intelligent people on it. I'm pretty confident in my intelligence, but I often suspect that everyone on this site is a wee bit smarter than I am. Really, you all are a bunch of smartypantses.
So per the essay on being charitable in debates: It takes a bit of eloquence and presence of mind to pull off those recommendations. Part of being charitable is cooperating with what the person was probably trying to say, but didn't have the eloquence to be spot on.
I don't believe in most states that you can drop your children off with the state to be adopted without penalty.
Hmm. Interesting. I seem to recall that in one of the Northern European countries, you can do this, and can do it without any paperwork. So not out of the realm of "agreeable to a Western mind."
When I said "I get the axiom from my intuition. I justify it using those two thought experiments." in 382, I meant to communicate that the thought experiments could be a way to argue against my intuition. Was this not clear?
133 and 135: Ah, I see that's what's meant by "safe haven" laws. Although I'm not sure how they're testing for future child abuse.
That's the 'Safe Haven' for newborns thing. In states with such laws, it is no penalty and no paperwork -- the presumption is that no one would do it whose other (perceived) choice wasn't abandoning the baby. So, essentially, taking the kid from no parents to whatever the state could do for it. But the state isn't going to place the kid in an unvetted home.
137: It was unclear to me. I didn't understand you to be saying that you saw the axiom as vulnerable to argument until you explicitly said so slightly later. At which point I argued.
That's responded to by 380. Look, I don't want to rehash the thread, but people offered reasons why your thought experiments might be wrong (namely, the starting point seems arbitrary and that makes it a bad thought experiment) and your response at that point has to be an argument that addresses that. If it's just your intuition, then the one who isn't playing the argument game is you.
In 382 I say that "I think that in those hypothetical worlds, it's apparent that the rights of the child are as I say." If someone disagreed with this, shouldn't they say so? (In fact, LB did, finally, in 425. She presented another hypothetical based on mine which led me to change my position.) And I say that "If the humans in those two thought experiments are human *enough* to have the same morally relevant characteristics, then conclusions drawn from those possible worlds should be applicable to this world."
379 was quite early in the argument, and in 382 I tried to show my reasoning and how people could engage with it. But it seemed like the significance of that was completely missed. Should I have phrased it more clearly?
Yeah, it was the word 'axiom' that confused me. I used it first, but you picked it up without argument. To me (not a philosopher) 'axiom' means a starting point for argument, that cannot itself be arrived at by argument. Once you call something an axiom, that means that you're not interested in discussing how you got there.
You weren't using it that way, and I understood you later on to say that you saw it as open to argument, but that was what confused me.
quote from 73 63: You weren't charitable according to the rules in my article.
See, pdf23ds, this is exactly what happens when people have rules for debate- the rules become a strangling checklist. This is why I don't think they will work.
In my experience, the people you should be trying to convince on the internet are not the people who actually argue with you, because generally people who argue on the internet are either totally invested in their position or are trolling. You aren't going to change either one of those two groups. Who you can convince are the silent spectators who don't feel confident enough to have the argument but who are reading avidly. If you have (as pdf23ds suggests) a little primer on the subject with links and you rigorously reject argument with people who are plainly in bad faith, you can reach those people who don't have a set position but who are willing to be convinced. But the actual people who are arguing are usually not open to changing their position.
That is the only argument I can think of that is solid for being charitable- by taking the moral high ground you can present yourself as the 'reasonable' one and thus win points for your side from the peanut gallery. That's what a lot of anti-feminist trolls do by urging everyone to be civil- they look like the nice guys being beat on by all those big mean feminists who are tearing down the patriarchy, lace-trimmed hankies in hand.
I suspect my view of debate on the internet as a cross between Kabuki theater and bull-fighting is not what you see as the purpose of it, so those rules may well be valid for given types of arguments with given types of arguers. But you can't guarantee that the person on the other side of the keyboard will fall into one of those categories, so the Prisoner's Dilemma approach to comity isn't a good model for internet debate unless all parties are known to each other. You may wish to add that caveat to the essay, because they would be reasonable rules in a situation where all the participants may be vouched for as people of good will. I just don't think that for unknown quantities rules will 1) police the behavior you object to or 2) change the nature of internet debate.
To me, pdf's rules raise questions about the type of debate. What are you trying to accomplish (persuade or just explain your position)? Are there shared values? Do you have an ongoing relationship with the person?
At the dinner table, I'm going to argue with my father until I'm blue in the face. I'll cite every fact at my fingertips, call him on every tenuous point, and use all my knowledge of his life and history to morally persuade him. But that is in the context of our relationship -- with the underlying assumptions that he's not stupid; that I'll never stop speaking to him; that I genuinely trust he finds value in debate even if neither of us change position.
In the workplace, I'm going to tread carefully, making my points gently, because I DO want to persuade. (E.g., I want my co-workers to agree on the ethics of using a family member as a language interpreter.) But regardless of the outcome of any given discussion, I still have to keep working with these folks, so I won't stage a do-or-die battle.
In a letter to the editor, I have limited space and there will be no dialogue. So I want to make a point quickly, concisely, and clearly. I'm comfortable dismissing nuances to say "The rule of law is better than the rule of men [and women]." Or whatever.
Treating a workplace debate like a family dinner table is a recipe for disaster. Pdf's rules don't strike me as bad guidelines, but the task itself is problematic. What rules could possibly cover every situation?
Witt makes the point toward which I was shambling!
That's the problem, really, in that all debates are not created equal, and on the internet (I assume the rules were intended for the internet) you can't be sure that the person you're arguing with sees the same debate you do.
After I did internet arguing for a while I looked at the Federalist Papers in a whole new light.
"See, pdf23ds, this is exactly what happens when people have rules for debate- the rules become a strangling checklist."
I certainly didn't mean to be using them that way when I was addressing Cala. I was observing that she didn't follow them (not accusing her), and then asking if she didn't because she didn't agree with them, thus, using them to see if she had a different idea of what charity is. You're seriously missing the point of my statement.
147, 148: Yes, charity is not appropriate for every situation, even if you're trying to convince people. For instance, trying to convince a lot of people at once means arguing to the center, bolstering the opinions of people who already almost or mostly agree with you, and not caring about people who differ widely from you.
"the Prisoner's Dilemma approach to comity isn't a good model for internet debate unless all parties are known to each other."
Where "known" can include "having had productive debates in the past", or "have seen them make comments that shows they're reasonable", then sure. While I don't think you should ever completely give up on charity for unfamiliar commenters, you should certainly hold them to a higher standard of coherency and charity.
"You may wish to add that caveat to the essay, because they would be reasonable rules in a situation where all the participants may be vouched for as people of good will."
Well, I already start out the rules by saying that they don't apply to people you don't think are honest, or who you don't have time for, or who don't fit into your community. Should I increase the emphasis on that somehow?
John Emerson is right. pdf23ds rules would, however, be very good in a world that doesn't actually exist. That hypothetical world would probably be better than this one. Pretending we live in it is foolish. History has happened and continues to happen.
149: One good way to increase the emphasis on those disclaimers would be to delete the post entirely, because in an atmosphere of mutual trust, these pathetic little "rules" would completely take care of themselves.
Once you call something an axiom, that means that you're not interested in discussing how you got there.
Indeed, that's what an axiom does -- serve as a starting point. If you claim something to be axiomatic, you aren't going to argue for the proof of it, but using it in proofs. They can be challenged, but they're normally the sorts of things that are pretty self-evident, not the results of speculative proofs.
Huh. Well I definitely shouldn't have said "axiom", then. I was just echoing LB, and didn't intend to give it any meaning--I thought the meaning of "axiom" was negated when I said that it was justified by my hypothetical. Axioms can't be justified, right? (Right. Contradiction in terms.) I guess that was not clear enough.