The New York Sophist

The globalization of the scientific epistemology is a daunting problem, but no less significant is the attraction of the journalistic epistemology. They might work hand in hand. 

The journalistic epistemology is the comfortable, common-sense idea that if you want to know something you go to the place where that thing is happening and you ask the people what is happening. You record this and your impressions of the people, moral or social or otherwise, then you write about it.  This is seen by a great number of people as a very clear and easy path to the truth about things. Trouble is, this is a formula for creating good journalistic products, not a path to finding the truth. 

Photo by Thomas Charters on Unsplash

Same with science. The Scientific Method is a great way to address scientific problems and figure out how to deal with them scientifically. Less attended to is the idea that the method forms what a scientific problem is or can be. We have an illusion that the scientific method, applied to anything, will clean it up and provide an answer that has the force and clarity of a science experiment. We leave out the part where the chosen method, by virtue of its structure, limits out what counts as science, a problem, worth the time to study, etc. Science feels comfortable because it appears to be certain but it can only be certain because of its weeding process on what counts as something worth studying. Instead of bracing our uncertainty, we race to laterally apply a very limited metric to huge, complicated questions in order to get some relief. 

Same is true with the journalistic epistemology. We love it because we like the direct simplicity of it, the idea that “Someone knows” or “they know the truth, we just don’t know their story” approach. If we could just go there, get the stories, and share them with the decision makers, we would be in a much better world. This is much better than the alternative of uncertainty, which would stipulate a number of horrors: That the people there have no clue what’s happening, that they simply articulate the same corporate-supplied reasons that people far away do, that the leaders are uninterested in either compelling stories or the truth, that the leaders are very much aware of the truth and don’t care, that everyone is doing their best and the recalcitrance of the world means that someone has to simply suffer for anyone to get anything improved. 

The appeal of comfortable certainty that such simplistic epistemological moves provide is typically called ideology. Ideology always feels good and right, there’s little discomfort in it, and your actions and beliefs are always moving you toward the “good.” Hegemony are the practices that make ideology, and yourself, feel like you matter. It works so well that we often call others’ beliefs “ideology” and our ideology “truth” and set out to correct them. 

A great example of this is how the critique that we should leverage against the use of journalistic epistemology broadly is often leveraged against academic thinking. The Frankfurt School, with their use of dialectical social analysis to show the often contradictory results that emerge from actions are charged with being “ivory tower” impenetrable academic texts, or not in a position to be able to “know” since they are too far and too removed from the situation to comment on it. The journalist’s epistemology only provides one way to the truth, and makes it as uncomplicated as looking around or experiencing events to know what the truth of the matter is. This position is too being at a “distance” from things, albeit a distance that excludes other sorts of information, or the lack of information. 

The approach of dialectical analysis has great explanatory power, but very low satisfaction power – it doesn’t offer or provide any easy solution, no blame, no bad guy at the heart of it all to remove. It also doesn’t do much for what is in demand these days, tools for the management of uncertainty. Dialectical analysis raises a lot more questions than it answers, and provides very uncomfortable points of view rather than causal solutions. It throws most everyone’s point of view into question via ideology and hegemony. This is why such analysis, or any sort of academic analysis that tries to be holistic, gets dismissed by most people. 

It’s far more comfortable and easy to ascertain a singular cause as described by the people who are most proximate to the issue, or who are a part of that culture, then seek out those who don’t know, or don’t believe them and blame them for the issue. Then we can move on. I think Kenneth Burke’s notion of scapegoating is the best rhetorical approach to the appeal of the journalistic epistemology. 

Academic or scholarly analysis has nothing to offer for those seeking comfort or ease. It ramps up the situation via explanation, explication, and then critique and questioning of those modes, sometimes to the point of categorical dismissal of the mode itself. Analysis of how things connect, how people articulate those connections, and how belief drives reasoning are the order of the day. These feed uncertainty to be sure, but if there is any hope in understanding the world and the people who have been and are in it, uncertainty cannot be managed or diminished, it has to be embraced. We must establish an epistemology that does not prefer solving issues to understanding them.  A little bit of understanding and a lot of uncertainty keeps us asking questions instead of telling people to stop asking and start complying.

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In the Hua-yen universe, where everything interpenetrates in identity and interdependence, where everything needs everything else, what is there which is not valuable? To throw away even a single chopstick as worthless is to set up a hierarchy of values which in the end will kill us in a way which no bullet can. In the Hua-yen universe, everything counts.

Debate teaches, whether you want it to or not. It is a discourse; it is discourse. It crafts and creates, it disentangles and disintegrates. It merges into thought and practice and the old, solid hierarchies melt away. 


Debate is serious business, but not in the way most people think it is. It’s a lot more than just “encouraging critical thought” or “developing public speaking skills.” It’s an orientation to language, within language – which would be a definition of a discourse. Scientific papers versus Newspapers – yes, they are different styles, but this goes deeper. There are relations of the material to the linguistic within them that cannot, and will not, be accepted by the other. And probably should not, if you allow me to toss my normative hat in the ring.


The question is not what debate provides – it’s more than skills. The question should be something like: What does debate do to the student? What sort of discourse is it? And what subjects does it teach/create?


I know that’s more than one question. But such a serious issue explodes into these sorts of questions. 


It’s as serious as that vital, incredibly vital moment of Gorgias where Socrates asks Gorgias about the culpability of the boxing teacher if the boxing student uses his skills to kill someone. 


Gorgias responds that there’s no culpability, if the teacher was just teaching skills. The student must go elsewhere for that ethical instruction. 


Socrates believes that the teaching of rhetoric is a bit different – that there’s an ethic smuggled in with the skills. Or perhaps the better interpretation is, there is a no-ethic smuggled in. This absence means that it’s quite possible for the student to use the skills “because he can.”


Socrates’s “physician” argument – that the well trained rhetor could come in and convince a city to hire him as the town doctor over a well trained doctor, but poor speaker – is pretty loaded, and pretty laughable. But I don’t think contemporary debaters or deabte coaches can answer this hypothetical very well. “Skills” and “civic participation” don’t cut it. Those are the language of the academy cum technical school, which is good at budget time, bad at any other time.


The answer I am working with is one of interconnectivity. Debate emphasizes how incredibly dependent on language we are for most everything. Debate emphasizes how incredibly limited language is for expressing our thoughts and feelings to one another. Debate emphasizes how bad we are at using language to get what we want – or even to express what we want.  We are dependent on it like fish are dependent on water. Whatever we put in the water, we have to breathe, we have to touch, we have to take in. This is one way to understand karma, through the lens of language. Debate can be a tide pool where we can watch such small scale introductions of words into the ecosystem. I am not a fan of this metaphor though, unless we understand that the ocean is already on its way back to the tide pool to re-absorb it. The return is happening already. There is no professional debate sports-league (thank god); there is no Debate Aquarium where you can live. Try as you might to avoid it, you will return to the sea. Or: The sea will return to you (more foreboding).


The ethic that I try to push is one of caution. One that is attentive to others instead of just attentive to the skills you develop yourself. One that is honest about what we are up to – the violence aspects – but the same one that caused Miyamoto Musashi to weep after defeating rival swordmasters. Every loss and every victory is a moment where the hierarchy can be reordered, where it will be reordered, and inattentiveness to those moments, careless articulation to others about those moments can lead to the blooming of an ethic that you don’t want, didn’t create, and now runs your life. Debate is just as good at crafting powerful attorneys as it is at creating hollow, crushed individuals. This is the difference between taking moments at a tournament carefully or taking them as you would the sports report.


I have used Musashi’s teachings for many years to teach debate. The reasons are his clarity of purpose – victory – and his underlying means of achieving it – pliancy. His theory of victory is one where water is supreme because it adjusts to what it faces. It’s flexible. In order to be this way, one must attend to the world instead of being against it. One must listen more than speak. One must figure out, ascribe, and re-ascribe the motives in other people. This is what the quote reminds us of – that every decision we make or choice we make is ours to suffer for. Hierarchy is inevitable, hierarchy is rhetorical. This is what debate teaches, at it’s deepest, unexplored levels. I am just starting my spelunking adventures. 


“Sportification” is, of course, the major undercurrent of this post. More on that later. The discourse of debate is like other discourses, as it crafts moments and opportunities for you to fill with language. What you fill it with is shaped by and is shaping your subjectivity. Reflection on how language touches your ear and mine is a necessary step in answering Socrates. For all we can share in this world, really share, is our words. And even that should be approached skeptically.

Image via Wikipedia

In the Hua-yen universe, where everything interpenetrates in identity and interdependence, where everything needs everything else, what is there which is not valuable? To throw away even a single chopstick as worthless is to set up a hierarchy of values which in the end will kill us in a way which no bullet can. In the Hua-yen universe, everything counts.

Debate teaches, whether you want it to or not. It is a discourse; it is discourse. It crafts and creates, it disentangles and disintegrates. It merges into thought and practice and the old, solid hierarchies melt away. 


Debate is serious business, but not in the way most people think it is. It’s a lot more than just “encouraging critical thought” or “developing public speaking skills.” It’s an orientation to language, within language – which would be a definition of a discourse. Scientific papers versus Newspapers – yes, they are different styles, but this goes deeper. There are relations of the material to the linguistic within them that cannot, and will not, be accepted by the other. And probably should not, if you allow me to toss my normative hat in the ring.


The question is not what debate provides – it’s more than skills. The question should be something like: What does debate do to the student? What sort of discourse is it? And what subjects does it teach/create?


I know that’s more than one question. But such a serious issue explodes into these sorts of questions. 


It’s as serious as that vital, incredibly vital moment of Gorgias where Socrates asks Gorgias about the culpability of the boxing teacher if the boxing student uses his skills to kill someone. 


Gorgias responds that there’s no culpability, if the teacher was just teaching skills. The student must go elsewhere for that ethical instruction. 


Socrates believes that the teaching of rhetoric is a bit different – that there’s an ethic smuggled in with the skills. Or perhaps the better interpretation is, there is a no-ethic smuggled in. This absence means that it’s quite possible for the student to use the skills “because he can.”


Socrates’s “physician” argument – that the well trained rhetor could come in and convince a city to hire him as the town doctor over a well trained doctor, but poor speaker – is pretty loaded, and pretty laughable. But I don’t think contemporary debaters or deabte coaches can answer this hypothetical very well. “Skills” and “civic participation” don’t cut it. Those are the language of the academy cum technical school, which is good at budget time, bad at any other time.


The answer I am working with is one of interconnectivity. Debate emphasizes how incredibly dependent on language we are for most everything. Debate emphasizes how incredibly limited language is for expressing our thoughts and feelings to one another. Debate emphasizes how bad we are at using language to get what we want – or even to express what we want.  We are dependent on it like fish are dependent on water. Whatever we put in the water, we have to breathe, we have to touch, we have to take in. This is one way to understand karma, through the lens of language. Debate can be a tide pool where we can watch such small scale introductions of words into the ecosystem. I am not a fan of this metaphor though, unless we understand that the ocean is already on its way back to the tide pool to re-absorb it. The return is happening already. There is no professional debate sports-league (thank god); there is no Debate Aquarium where you can live. Try as you might to avoid it, you will return to the sea. Or: The sea will return to you (more foreboding).


The ethic that I try to push is one of caution. One that is attentive to others instead of just attentive to the skills you develop yourself. One that is honest about what we are up to – the violence aspects – but the same one that caused Miyamoto Musashi to weep after defeating rival swordmasters. Every loss and every victory is a moment where the hierarchy can be reordered, where it will be reordered, and inattentiveness to those moments, careless articulation to others about those moments can lead to the blooming of an ethic that you don’t want, didn’t create, and now runs your life. Debate is just as good at crafting powerful attorneys as it is at creating hollow, crushed individuals. This is the difference between taking moments at a tournament carefully or taking them as you would the sports report.


I have used Musashi’s teachings for many years to teach debate. The reasons are his clarity of purpose – victory – and his underlying means of achieving it – pliancy. His theory of victory is one where water is supreme because it adjusts to what it faces. It’s flexible. In order to be this way, one must attend to the world instead of being against it. One must listen more than speak. One must figure out, ascribe, and re-ascribe the motives in other people. This is what the quote reminds us of – that every decision we make or choice we make is ours to suffer for. Hierarchy is inevitable, hierarchy is rhetorical. This is what debate teaches, at it’s deepest, unexplored levels. I am just starting my spelunking adventures. 


“Sportification” is, of course, the major undercurrent of this post. More on that later. The discourse of debate is like other discourses, as it crafts moments and opportunities for you to fill with language. What you fill it with is shaped by and is shaping your subjectivity. Reflection on how language touches your ear and mine is a necessary step in answering Socrates. For all we can share in this world, really share, is our words. And even that should be approached skeptically.