Indymedia - Philosophies

Kate P wrote:

ibis wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Where does this discussion fit in under that definition?

I'd say there's an interesting general point - whether someone whose view of the world isn't reality-based is a "valid" voice, what "valid" actually means, and who gets to determine that.

Indeed. But that's only part of what chekov said.

This is the bit I'm more interested in in terms of the discussion that's happening here.

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

Here we're having discussions about discussions about discussions - and opinions about same. How many removes away do we have to be before the truth, whatever that is, is not longer clear?

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'

Ah...well here I run the risk of offence, sadly. Facts are facts. They may be difficult to discover, but they remain facts - objectively verifiable, independent of viewpoint. Reality is composed of facts. If one builds a case without using facts, there is little chance of it resembling reality.

Kate P wrote:

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'

I don't understand the addition. Are you claiming that objective reality does not exist and evidence is just one particular way of arriving at opinions? What's the alternative? Picking opinions at random?

chekov wrote:

Kate P wrote:

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'

I don't understand the addition. Are you claiming that objective reality does not exist and evidence is just one particular way of arriving at opinions? What's the alternative? Picking opinions at random?

Ah yes, why didn't I listen more attentively in those philosophy lectures on Wittgenstein and Quine, Dennet and Searle?

Certain sciences may be advanced by subjective discourse, others by 'objective' discourse. Depending on the subject matter/style of a writer's writings then surely subjective opinion can have as much value as objective discourse?

Not at all. I'm simply suggesting that by ignoring certain viewpoints then you are creating a certain - I would argue narrow- kind of understanding that takes its definition from the exclusion of those viewpoints.

I'd argue, from a multiple intelligences perspective that a holistic understanding of the world would spring from an acceptance of all viewpoints. Obviously we're not obliged to take them all on board, but I'd disagree that they have zero value.

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

chekov wrote:

Kate P wrote:

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'

I don't understand the addition. Are you claiming that objective reality does not exist and evidence is just one particular way of arriving at opinions? What's the alternative? Picking opinions at random?

I wouldn't think that that is the way it was meant at all.

If the ultimate truth (yeah I hate that phrase too) about something is not obvious from the facts that are present, a subjective truth must be arrived at. Subjective truth boils down to opinion and moreso there can be more than a singular subjective truth that is grounded in solid fact. This is not to say that conspiracy theories etc. should be treated with any degree of respect. Rather it is saying that we don't know everything and we are quite at liberty to speculate. For example I believe string theory is correct. Many would argue otherwise. I believe evolution is fact rather than theory. Why is it still called a theory (rhetorical question - I know why).

Deductive reasoning is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom (other species practice it but not to the degree we do). And it is speculation that defines truth, not the other way round. All observation by necessity must include a degree of speculation. Can speculation be eliminated from recognising and discerning truth. I argue that to suggest that it could, is mere speculation itself.

I am not familiar with any postmodernist theory that suggests that all views equally true or of equal value. It was my understanding that post-modernism rejects overarching ideologies in favour of pragmatic analysis of reality. Is post modernism not the -ism that attacks all -isms?

Kate P wrote:

Not at all. I'm simply suggesting that by ignoring certain viewpoints then you are creating a certain - I would argue narrow- kind of understanding that takes its definition from the exclusion of those viewpoints.

I'd argue, from a multiple intelligences perspective that a holistic understanding of the world would spring from an acceptance of all viewpoints. Obviously we're not obliged to take them all on board, but I'd disagree that they have zero value.

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

I think you need to distinguish between viewpoints and more or less objective reality. I mean the world is complex enough to allow multiple reality-based viewpoints on any social or political question. The selection of facts for relevance, the interpretation of those facts, the speculation about the significance of the facts, supports a very wide range of potentially interesting and different viewpoints about social and political matters. I would never presume to say that any one viewpoint is the true one - the important aspects of any event will differ depending on the observer.

My problem is with viewpoints that are not reality-based and more particularly, those viewpoints which make no effort to ground themselves in reality.

What do you mean by "an acceptance of all viewpoints" particularly in light of us not being "obliged to take them all on board"? To my mind it either boils down to an obvious contradiction (accepting a viewpoint without taking it on board) or total meaninglessness (accepting the existance of all sorts of viewpoints, which is just an acceptance of obvious reality).

In any case, your multiple-intelligence perspectives holistic
understanding of the world should be broad enough to accept my
viewpoint that your viewpoint is total nonsense

chekov wrote:

Kate P wrote:

And I wonder if there are a few words missing from what he wrote - would it make more sense to finish the paragraph with the phrase '...understand the world in a particular way.'

I don't understand the addition. Are you claiming that objective reality does not exist and evidence is just one particular way of arriving at opinions? What's the alternative? Picking opinions at random?

If you dropped in to the philosophy discussions on this and other fora they confirm that not everyone is of the view that there is an objective reality that is knowable. You could also take your test for discussion and say that debating with someone with religious beliefs is not worthwhile, as their beliefs are not rational and evidence based.

I agree that we should base our opinions on evidence, but if I was to scrutinise my own I'm sure that I would find that some of them are intuitively based or based on limited personal experience rather than evidence-based in a scientific sense.

Indymedia has the aim of being open/inclusive at the same time as wanting to provide quality, evidence based reporting of news.

We are in a different situation on this forum, where we want to involve people of varied beliefs and opinions in constructive discussion, with the ongoing aim of making it sound in so far as feasible in terms of being evidence-based. In a discussion, it is possible for one person to bring evidence in even if the other posters on a thread don't. Journalism doesn't have that fluidity and I can see the difficulty.

I have to say, I consider the cyber-obsession with proving to an "opponent" that you are right to be rather tiresome. Two protagonists may be a pair of geniuses, a pair of sophists, or a pair of gobshites. How often will they goad each other to an epiphany?

I also think that the value of a distorted view is that it can sometimes take one outside oneself. This allows one to form new insights and views. The reader's mind is the ultimate variable.

People inevitably repeat the same mental mistakes again and again and again so poor quality writings will neither damn readers nor save them. For those of genuine insight all view points will be of interest as all genuine viewpoints provide insight into how people think and interpret the world. Without that knowledge it is not possible to communicate with such people or to perceive the truth hidden in what they say. Mendacious comments are just as interesting and useful provided you know they are indeed lies.

Effectively, every person is another perspecitve and lens through which to view the world and the human mind. The joy is in figuring out the people and the underlying facts at the same time. All rather straight forward.

How to frame an editorial policy for conspiracy theorists websites - now that is a question!

Kate P wrote:

Not at all. I'm simply suggesting that by ignoring certain viewpoints then you are creating a certain - I would argue narrow- kind of understanding that takes its definition from the exclusion of those viewpoints.

I'd argue, from a multiple intelligences perspective that a holistic understanding of the world would spring from an acceptance of all viewpoints. Obviously we're not obliged to take them all on board, but I'd disagree that they have zero value.

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

Hmm. Let's take vaccination as an example. There are people who strongly contend that vaccination is harmful, and that it should therefore be stopped, or at least made voluntary. Despite the fact that the studies used in such claims have been debunked several times, the claims persist. They would appear, therefore, to be 'evidence-free'.

While the existence of such claims undoubtedly tells us something about the world, of what value are the claims themselves?

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

I have to say, I consider the cyber-obsession with proving to an "opponent" that you are right to be rather tiresome. Two protagonists may be a pair of geniuses, a pair of sophists, or a pair of gobshites. How often will they goad each other to an epiphany?

I also think that the value of a distorted view is that it can sometimes take one outside oneself. This allows one to form new insights and views. The reader's mind is the ultimate variable.

People inevitably repeat the same mental mistakes again and again and again so poor quality writings will neither damn readers nor save them. For those of genuine insight all view points will be of interest as all genuine viewpoints provide insight into how people think and interpret the world. Without that knowledge it is not possible to communicate with such people or to perceive the truth hidden in what they say. Mendacious comments are just as interesting and useful provided you know they are indeed lies.

Effectively, every person is another perspecitve and lens through which to view the world and the human mind. The joy is in figuring out the people and the underlying facts at the same time. All rather straight forward.

How to frame an editorial policy for conspiracy theorists websites - now that is a question!

Lovely post, thanks.

ZE wrote:

How to frame an editorial policy for conspiracy theorists websites - now that is a question!

Quote :

I think you need to distinguish between viewpoints and more or less objective reality. I mean the world is complex enough to allow multiple reality-based viewpoints on any social or political question. The selection of facts for relevance, the interpretation of those facts, the speculation about the significance of the facts, supports a very wide range of potentially interesting and different viewpoints about social and political matters. I would never presume to say that any one viewpoint is the true one - the important aspects of any event will differ depending on the observer.

My problem is with viewpoints that are not reality-based and more particularly, those viewpoints which make no effort to ground themselves in reality.

What do you mean by "an acceptance of all viewpoints" particularly in light of us not being "obliged to take them all on board"? To my mind it either boils down to an obvious contradiction (accepting a viewpoint without taking it on board) or total meaninglessness (accepting the existance of all sorts of viewpoints, which is just an acceptance of obvious reality).

In any case, your multiple-intelligence perspectives holistic
understanding of the world should be broad enough to accept my
viewpoint that your viewpoint is total nonsense

Chekov, you're a marvellous debater - who uses words without being specific in your definitions and then attempts to hammer your oponent with definitions that suit you. I like it.

Let us go back to your original sentence - on which I have based all my comments - in which you said that

Quote :

Opinions that are based on evidence-free claims about the world have zero value to somebody who wants to understand the world.

There are a number of points of difference here: firstly, I don't think that opinions have to be based in fact because not all opinions are objective. That would seem to me to be pretty fundamental. Writers publish opinion pieces all the time that have no reality anywhere other than in their imaginations and we accept those writings as opinion (ideally, but not necessarily ever based entirely on fact or evidence).

In fact (and I hate to use the word 'fact' against you in this situation) if you check the definition of the word opinion you'll see that your opinion of the word opinion would seem not to be the truth, based on fact.

If you had said 'make sense of the world' at the end of the sentence, I might have agreed with you more, but we cannot - surely - understand the world without accepting all of the weird and wonderful viewpoints in it.

We don't have to accept those viewpoints as rational or objective, but if your aim - as you yourself suggest, is to understand the world, then you must accept (even if you disagree with) viewpoints that have no foundation in reality as being part of that world.

In the same way that I accept - but naturally disagree with - your view that my 'multiple-intelligence perspectives holistic
understanding of the world' is rubbish.

Kate I think you're being pedantic. It was a throw away one-liner not a profound statement of epistemiological doctrine. You can take it that I meant "the content of opinions" rather than the existence of the opinions themselves. It is of course useful to have an understanding of the sorts of opinions that others hold regardless of how little evidence supports them. That brings us back, however, to a reality-based way of looking at the world (ie we are using the evidence of what opinions others express to form an opinion on the sorts of opinions that other people hold).

Incidentally, I'm aware of the various philsophical debates about this stuff, I just think they're tosh.

You're right. I am being pedantic but it's fun. Now I have to work.

chekov wrote:

Incidentally, I'm aware of the various philsophical debates about this stuff, I just think they're tosh.

The 'What is it like to be a bat?' ones? and the special colour tomatoes debates?

By 'tosh' do you mean useful/useless or something else?

Forgive me for cutting in here but I'd like to return to an issue I raised on the other Indymedia thread (now moved to a private discussion forum). It may serve as a useful real world example around which to apply the theories being expounded upon.

Recent upsets at Indymedia centred on the banning of a woman with brain injury. Chekov and some others of his fellow-collectivists banned her from posting because, in Chekovs own words, her articles were 'below par' and because she had not fully understood the editorial guidelines on the site - hardly surprising in the circumstances.

This woman has written many interesting articles about her situation for Indymedia, especially about her experiences of the psychiatric services in Ireland and lots of other things besides. They necessarily reflect her state of mind - which is one of the best things about them for anyone who genuinely wants to be informed and/or to understand. Indymedia Ireland has been lucky to have such a worthwhile contributor - and it has been fantastic up until now that it provided a forum for her news and views. X's contribution was the best proof Indymedia had that the newswire was genuinely open and inclusive of people from every walk of life. Is X's unique voice no longer deemed as legitimate as other contributors'?

This decision to ban her has offended and disgusted a lot of people. It's the virtual equivalent of shutting a friend into a back room on his or her own - and bitterly disappointing that Indymedia Ireland could have even contemplated this crass gesture. Having seen the reductio ad absurdum rationales offered on the Indymedia editorial group's list for excluding X, I'm dismayed by what has been done. It's as if Indymedia have abandoned every principle they ever claimed to believe in - and picked on the most vulnerable of their contributors to make the point.

Chekov, you are participating in a debate about media tomorrow evening at Bewley's Cafe Theatre entitled 'Is the truth out there?' What have you done to X's particular truth on Indymedia Ireland?

For shame.

What is the difference between the content of an opinion and the opinion itself??

I understand that post-modernism suggests that one shouldn't shun complexity in the search for understanding?

The impulse to simplify must be resisted. Simple truths, like salacious truths, appeal to the masses and hold greater sway. Copernicus had to to deal with the reality of the Church even though his theory of the elliptical orbit of the planets is generally considered to be superior in all respects.

To eschew detail in a discussion on the merits of statements of opinion as fact, misstatements of fact, the nature of fact, the nature of opinion, the nature of truth, the nature of discussion and the greater good is to leap from the critics box onto the stage and to start performing.

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Aragon, would you like to post a link to some of the articles so readers can know what is being talked about?

Aragon, I answered that post on another thread. Don't know where it's gone now.

[quote="chekov"]Kate I think you're being pedantic. It was a throw away one-liner not a profound statement of epistemiological doctrine. You can take it that I meant "the content of opinions" rather than the existence of the opinions themselves. It is of course useful to have an understanding of the sorts of opinions that others hold regardless of how little evidence supports them. That brings us back, however, to a reality-based way of looking at the world (ie we are using the evidence of what opinions others express to form an opinion on the sorts of opinions that other people hold).

Incidentally, I'm aware of the various philsophical debates about this stuff, I just think they're tosh.[/quote]

IMHO they are less likely to be just tosh than the reflection of social forces in ideology. I take it we agree that there is an objective reality and that we can find out about it through scientific investigation. We also encounter it through our own senses, directly.

I would agree with Zhou that viewpoints are of interest whether they reflect reality accurately or not. The viewpoints themselves are a part of objective reality and can be understood as part of it.

chekov wrote:

Aragon, I answered that post on another thread. Don't know where it's gone now.

Do you know how to check your pms chekov - I think Auditor pmd you about that. Get back to one of us if you have queries after reading it.

cactus flower wrote:

Aragon, would you like to post a link to some of the articles so readers can know what is being talked about?

I can't find a link - I searched on the woman's name on Indymedia and was told that there were no matches for her name. It's possible either that I am doing something wrong or that the articles have been hidden.

Chekov:

Could repost your answer to my post to this thread - btw the mods here prefer us not to refer to the woman by name so you may need to modify your reply.

repost:

Aragon wrote:

Chekov

Recent events on Indymedia centre around
the banning of a woman with brain injury. You and some others of your
fellow-collectivists banned her from posting because, in your own
words, her articles were 'below par' and because she has not fully
understood the editorial guidelines on the site - hardly surprising in
the circumstances.

Firstly, I didn't ban her, I defended
the moderator who did ban her. Secondly, those are not my words.
Thirdly, she was banned for repeatedly posting the same comment over
and over, not due to her "below par" posts. Fourthly, her banning is on
the verge of being overturned since she made it clear that the repeated
postings were due to her thinking that the system was not working.

Aragon wrote:

MC
has written many interesting articles about her situation, especially
about her experiences of the psychiatric services in Ireland and lots
of other things besides. They necessarily reflect her state of mind -
which is one of the best things about them for anyone who genuinely
wants to be informed and to understand. Indymedia Ireland has been
lucky to have such a worthwhile contributor - and it has been fantastic
up until now that it provided a forum for her news and views. MC's
contribution was the best proof you had that the newswire was genuinely
open and inclusive of people from every walk of life. Is MC's unique
voice no longer deemed as legitimate as other contributors'?

This
brings us to the crux of the problem. MC's articles were, by any
objective standard, beneath the very low 'par' that we set for
published material. They are bereft of grammar, often completely
unintelligible, freely mix fantasy with reality, regularly contain
serious defamatory claims and dangerous misrepresentations of
psychiatric science. Virtually all of them are hidden, the ones that
remain on the newswire are the ones that are least bad from those
points of view, or are missed by the moderators.

Now, they
definitely do reflect her state of mind, but all material reflects the
state of mind of the author and there is nothing more inherently
valuable about a reflection of the state of mind of somebody with a
serious head injury than there is of somebody with a 911 obsession or
an anti-immigrant obsession. They are all interesting as an insight to
people who do not have head injuries or 911 obsessions or whatever. The
problem is, in all these cases, that aside from the insight into the
state of mind, such postings have no informational value in themselves
- they're just totally unreliable sources of information about the
world. I also think that the proliferation of such material on
indymedia does huge damage to the site in general. I mean, such
postings do not come with a disclaimer about the disabilities suffered
by the author, they just appear on the site and unless you are an avid
reader, you have no way of knowing the specific background of the
author and it just looks as if any old rant is acceptable. If MC can
write grammar and structure free musings on the site, why shouldn't
anybody else be allowed to do so?

I also think you are
confused when you refer to the validity of her unique voice - her voice
is as valid as anybody else's. The important thing, from my point of
view, is whether the stuff that she says with that voice is readable,
reality based and newsworthy. If not, it shouldn't be carried on
indymedia and would be much more suitable on a blog.

Aragon wrote:

This
decision to ban her has offended and disgusted a lot of people. It's
the virtual equivalent of shutting a friend into a back room on his or
her own - and bitterly disappointing that Indymedia Ireland could have
even contemplated this crass gesture. Having seen the reductio ad
absurdum rationales offered on the editorial groups's list for
excluding MC, I'm dismayed by what has been done. It's as if you have
abandoned every principle you ever claimed to adhere to - and have
picked on the most vulnerable of your contributors to make the point.

I'm not sure if this decision has really offended and
disgusted a lot of people. The people posting here and on the blogs and
on politics.ie have held long grudges against indymedia and use any and
all pretext to denounce it. If other people are really disgusted and
offended, I suspect they haven't really paid much attention to the
actual facts (see the points that you've misrepresented above) and have
hopelessly unrealistic and impractical approaches to dealing with the
moderation of content.

Aragon wrote:

You are participating
in a debate about media tomorrow evening at Bewley's Cafe Theatre
entitled 'Is the truth out there?' What have you done to MC's
particular truth on Indymedia?

For shame.

I
don't have a relativistic view of truth and consider the notion of each
individual having an equally valid particular truth to be completely
wrong-headed.

Chekov - are there any articles people can look at - or is this not what the discussion is about?