I've sometimes seen it said that in order to have a productive discussion, people on both sides need to be willing to change their minds. I think that's probably slightly overdetermined-- you can find examples of cases in which neither side was going to change, but they managed to sustain a mutually beneficial dialogue all the same. The physics example that comes to mind is Bohr and Einstein, who spent decades arguing with each other over the philosophical basis of quantum theory, but were nonetheless good friends. They pushed each other, forcing each of them to refine their arguments and think deeply about the nature of the universe, and in the process broadened our understanding of reality. Neither really budged, but everybody benefitted from the exchange.
I think the real minimum condition is a belief that both sides of the discussion are being carried on by reasonable people arguing in good faith. That is, the people on both sides are sincere in their statements, know their own minds, and are doing their best to behave in an ethical manner. They're not taking extreme positions just to provoke people, they're not cynically saying things that they don't believe but think will sound good, and they're not working toward morally repugnant goals (the enslavement or extermination of large groups of people, for example). People on both sides need to accept that their opponents are intelligent people who hold their beliefs for reasons that they find valid.
It's a little difficult to see where to draw the line on this, but I think you're pretty clearly across it by the time you start exchanging accusations of bigotry.
If you honestly believe that your opponent is a bigot, you're excluding the possibility that they could be a reasonable person arguing in good faith. They are sufficiently motivated by prejudice that you cannot be working toward mutually acceptable goals, and their arguments cannot be trusted to be sincere and valid.
If you don't believe that your opponent is a bigot, but say so anyway in order to score rhetorical points, then you're the one arguing in bad faith. That's pretty much the definition of arguing in bad faith, really-- making accusations about your opponent's character that you don't really believe in a cynical attempt to provoke them or to sway third parties.
In either case, you've closed off any possibility of a mutually beneficial exchange. There may be other reasons to carry on such a conversation-- for the entertainment or edification of third parties, or from a childish love of provoking other people-- but some time before you get to calling each other bigots, you've moved out of the realm of productive discussion, and into some very different territory. And it's not always clear that anyone will benefit from the exchange.
You can have a productive conversation in which no minds are changed but everybody benefits, but you can't do it when you believe that your opponent is an imbecile, a lunatic, or a bigot. And if you think your opponent is an imbecile, a lunatic, or a bigot, you should think carefully about whether this is really a conversation worth having.
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Einstein was terrifically wrong and Bohr lacked the chops to drive the point home. Look through any science blog or Usenet newsgroup. The empirically ignorant demand the RIGHT to stay so, and to loudly and voluminously proselytize ignorance is a form of knowing things. Texas is only 6000 years old and nobody evolved.
45 years of $trillion/year social charity - voluntary and mandated - to the Officially Sad remade the world into a beshitted sty. Demanding a return to empirical reality is not bigotry, it is critical thinking (bigotry). It is not a question of manners, it is a street fight. Nuremburg was inevitable. The only question was who would judge and be judged. The winner ex post facto set the rules.
I agree with Chad. There seem to be different coupling coefficients in different regions of the heterogeneous blogosphere. And difference between blogs and social networking systems such as Facebook.
I very strongly agree that good-faith polite disagreement can be a win-win strategy. It underlies the Scientific Method for most participants.
Not to deny feuds, but to to treat them as deviations from a (gaussian?) background.
Once you give up on the basic premise of civil discourse, that informed people of good will can differ, you're led to Holy Warrior Rules:
1) If you don't agree with me, you must not have heard The Truth. Therefore I'll lecture you.
2) If you've heard The Truth and still disagree with me, you must be incompetent to understand it (stupid or insane.) Therefore I will mock you.
3) If you've heard The Truth and obviously understand it (perhaps by applying it hypothetically) and still disagree with me, then you are doing so from bad faith (evil.) Therefore I will attack you.
It doesn't matter what the subject is -- these are the alternative to civil discourse.
Are you really asserting that if you come to believe that a person you are engaging with is a bigot, you should just give up?
You may or may not want to/be able to answer this, but is this in reference to anything in particular?
so Chad, you mean "do as I say not as I do". You have been rather thin-skinned when you write about religion, global warming, education, race or sex discrimination here. I would not care what your politics are but you keep bringing up controversial subjects and then you get offended easily when some comments do not agree with your orthodox views.
I believe that the accepted practice is to tell them to PhysioProf off, as they are no longer tolerated in that company.
I'm glad you made that point CPP,
If I find myself in a conversation with someone who is a bigot, or in locked down watertight impervious to new information or argument, I usually end the conversation before it gets repetitive. However, there are a few things I try before I totally give up...one of which is to call them on their bigotry. This could take the form of direct accusation (which is tantamount to walking away and ending the conversation, but leaving them with a little sting). The other is to ask pointed questions about what evidence would actually make them change their minds about the topic...surprisingly, this sometimes works, and we get back to a real conversation instead of an exercise in rhetoric.
Also, there is a difference between being alone in a conversation with a bigot, and having a public conversation...you might not change the mind of the bigot, but you may help to reveal his/her bigotry to others, or at least have your arguments sink in.
What I find most distasteful are conversations in which one side is never willing to come right out and risk something, but instead sticks to defensive tactics, mocking, changing the goalposts, and generally changing the subject when the argument starts moving along uncomfortable lines. It's basically passive aggressive bullshit.
CPP: If the person you are arguing against is a bigot, you are unlikely to change that person's mind with reasoned argument alone-- if at all. However, there is always the side goal of debating that person to convince spectators, if the debate is public.
But that is a dull and tedious world, and if you do it long enough and full time enough, you will inevitably start treating people you ordinarily respect-- friends and family, even-- as though they were mendacious halfwits. It is not the recipe for a good life full of caring friends.
So, yes-- I'm not sure what brought this on today, but I agree strongly with Chad on this point and have for years. It is one of the ways in which the extreme polarization of popular discourse has poisoned it. It is damn difficult to work up any excitement for taking part in important civil discussions when the most obvious and immediate result is going to be an in-box full of e-mails calling you, per D.C. Sessions above, an idiot, a monster, or a monstrous idiot. And it leaves the field most naturally to those most willing to do that.
And not only does it lead to hostile discussions (where the well-meaning commentator is screeched at) but to useless discussions of dull, repetitive screeching.
You left out, "ignoramus."
CPP: If the person you are arguing against is a bigot, you are unlikely to change that person's mind with reasoned argument alone-- if at all. However, there is always the side goal of debating that person to convince spectators, if the debate is public.
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Many times people are not aware of their own bigotry until it is shown. Many forms of bigotry are reinforced in society itself making a person unaware that there is a problem. Some people do not change. The person that knows he or she is a bigot may not change. They have made a deliberate choice. Most bigots sadly have not. They are continuing on blissfully unaware of the harm they are doing to others.
It is not easy on them when confronted. Some deny and rationalize away; never changing. Others though make en effort to change. It is not easy. Too often however, bigotry is not called out but let to continue. The silence only allows the bigotry to continue. It is why those in dominant positions in society (us white males for instance), in a position to say something should. To say nothing when we see the bigotry is giving silent consent. It is an active choice to let bigotry continue because we could not be bothered to stand up.
I remember one frustrated Party official at our college - he exclaimed "But this is not a real discussion when everyone has a different opinion."
As is so often the case, Yeshua bin Yosef had a relevant comment:
However, he seems to have frequently disregarded his own advice.
You may or may not want to/be able to answer this, but is this in reference to anything in particular?
It was inspired by the current dust-up over Unscientific America. It doesn't contain links because one of the things that led to the post wasn't public yet at the time that I wrote it.
Many times people are not aware of their own bigotry until it is shown. Many forms of bigotry are reinforced in society itself making a person unaware that there is a problem. Some people do not change. The person that knows he or she is a bigot may not change. They have made a deliberate choice. Most bigots sadly have not.
See, I read "bigot" as a stronger term than that. That is, I would not call somebody a "bigot" just because they were acting out of unconscious assumptions picked up from the general society.
"Bigot" to me carries the connotation of knowing full well that their beliefs/ actions/ whatever are considered prejudiced, and not caring. Using it as a general term for someone who has unthinkingly acted in a noun-ist manner seems to me to be rhetorical overkill.
I think this would be more aptly titled as: The Quiet Passive-Aggressive Douchenozzelry of Blog Conversations.
If someone is being a bigot, call them a bigot. Show your evidence for how they acted in a bigoted way. It seems like it should actually be rather straight forward to decide if someone is making bigoted statements or not.
The word "bigot" should never be allowed to be used in an argument without a dictionary definition (or at least a working definition) and reasoning related directly to that definition.
It's becoming like a brother of the F-words (Feminist and Fundamentalist) to me, in that whenever I hear it I instinctively want to know what the definition being used is.
But Einstein and Bohr were arguing about something reasonably objective and had the same aim (of producing a sound and acceptable theory). It was like two people having an argument about the best recipe for a marguerita.
But the religion v. science arguments don't have a shared objective other than the political ones of winning converts to the group and gaining prestige within the in-group.
The arguments about the "facts" of creation and evolution are spurious. There is no real argument. We (the science side) won that decades ago. The argument is political.
"Bigot" to me carries the connotation of knowing full well that their beliefs/ actions/ whatever are considered prejudiced, and not caring. Using it as a general term for someone who has unthinkingly acted in a noun-ist manner seems to me to be rhetorical overkill.
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Someone who doesn't actively engage in questioning themselves on such matters is making a willful decision not to think, to be passively supportive of the system. Yes they are unaware of their prejudice because of that but it is choice they made to take the easier road in life.
It is when they are forced to think when reality metaphorically knocks them out.
You are too worried about not offending those in dominant positions in society, maintaining order over justice. Reminds me of the Dr. MLK Jr. line in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail :
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season.""
Someone who doesn't actively engage in questioning themselves on such matters is making a willful decision not to think, to be passively supportive of the system. Yes they are unaware of their prejudice because of that but it is choice they made to take the easier road in life.
OK.
Personally, I prefer a little more nuance in my outrage.
OK.
Personally, I prefer a little more nuance in my outrage.
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Reading your previous debate from a couple years ago with Zuska, nuance would be one way to put it.