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. 

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.

My recent attendance at a High School tournament made me realize how often we associate the presence of simplicity or clarity in argumentation with good argumentation.

How many times have you seen a team win a debate, or even an argument, by using a strategy saying that their policy or principle makes things uncertain, unclear, slows things down, or makes people uncertain about what to do?

My guess would be very few times do teams win on such arguments. These arguments are so outside of normal political discourse that they might not be “legal moves” according to the norms of the debating community.

The argument that uncertainty or murkiness is a good thing is an argument that one would be much more likely to hear in an academic environment. Slowing people down in thinking, making people reconsider (as long as that reconsideration is not used to show a quicker, more crystal path to a beautiful solution to the problem presented in the debate), or making sure that people are paralyzed with information and aren’t sure what action to take are not necessarily arguments that are easy to get behind.

In our community, overdependence on The Economist and other news analysis that is generated to turn profit might be the reason we are unpersuaded by arguments that are often the conclusion of academic publications. That audience is used to, and expects, incrimental advancements in the understanding and addressing of issues in the field. In the world of for-profit journalism, clarity and simplicity rule the day as these are the things most likely to keep someone watching or reading the product that you are generating. More viewers and readers means more revenue.

Basing our topics and our competitions on the content of one publication that is not motivated by debate-ability or critical thought might be a serious disconnect. However, our addiction to The Economist is not going away anytime soon. Most debaters and most leaders in the community unproblematically agree that if it appears there then you should be prepared to debate it. And that’s the lay of the land at this moment.

So in this environment, can supporting uncertainty, murkiness, or loss of clear thinking and slowing down of the political process be goods that you could use to win debates?

I think so. The question is how these arguments are deployed. The best way to do it within the confines of the round is to ask yourself how certain you think the other side’s solution is going to deal with the problem. Compare that to how certain you think you are about the detrimental effects of their policy. In situations where they might be winning arguments that prove that their solution will work and your problem might not happen, you can raise the specter of the guess to show that if they are the least bit wrong, your problem will still happen and there’s no going back. The concepts of erasibility and reversability are good ones to argue for here.

On the level of principle, uncertainty might stand alone as a good principle in a world where most political discourse and scientific information is throttled into a funnel of absolute judgement even before we have had a chance to fully digest its meaning. This seems to be better on Opposition benches as you could oppose most motions with a principle of uncertainty, and deference, and waiting as a good way to address the situation. This might be better on topics dealing with complex systems such as the environment or the economy, and less effective on issues such as military intervention for humanitarian reasons. But there’s a way to apply it there too I’m sure. Something about not being sure how people will respond to the invasion force is used as a defensive argument, but there’s great ground to consider this as a positive good – staying out of it and thinking might be just as good, or at least avoid the problem of treating other peoples as if they are unable to handle their own affairs.

Many of these arguments are familiar. They become more unfamiliar when we talk about them as something we would want to cause or directly create in our advocacy. They become a bit strange when we talk about how it’s good to create situations where people will hold back and think a bit, where people will ponder a decision, mull things over, and really grapple with whether or not they should do something. Endorsing uncertainty and hesitation of action is a rare principle in debates, but it could be a good way to have more nuanced debates, rather than hearing that far too simple “rational actor” model of the human psyche we love to go to as an explanation of why our side is the best.

If a thoughtful argument from another sphere can be adapted to our strange debate sphere and find competitive success, it might serve as a banner for those who worry about competitive equity above everything else in debating that opening up the door to things that don’t neatly fit into the comfort zone of debating. Taking my discussion here to the next level would be for teams to say they are uncertain about the motion, and that might be a reason to endorse or reject it. But that’s a bigger move than the one I am suggesting here.

My recent attendance at a High School tournament made me realize how often we associate the presence of simplicity or clarity in argumentation with good argumentation.

How many times have you seen a team win a debate, or even an argument, by using a strategy saying that their policy or principle makes things uncertain, unclear, slows things down, or makes people uncertain about what to do?

My guess would be very few times do teams win on such arguments. These arguments are so outside of normal political discourse that they might not be “legal moves” according to the norms of the debating community.

The argument that uncertainty or murkiness is a good thing is an argument that one would be much more likely to hear in an academic environment. Slowing people down in thinking, making people reconsider (as long as that reconsideration is not used to show a quicker, more crystal path to a beautiful solution to the problem presented in the debate), or making sure that people are paralyzed with information and aren’t sure what action to take are not necessarily arguments that are easy to get behind.

In our community, overdependence on The Economist and other news analysis that is generated to turn profit might be the reason we are unpersuaded by arguments that are often the conclusion of academic publications. That audience is used to, and expects, incrimental advancements in the understanding and addressing of issues in the field. In the world of for-profit journalism, clarity and simplicity rule the day as these are the things most likely to keep someone watching or reading the product that you are generating. More viewers and readers means more revenue.

Basing our topics and our competitions on the content of one publication that is not motivated by debate-ability or critical thought might be a serious disconnect. However, our addiction to The Economist is not going away anytime soon. Most debaters and most leaders in the community unproblematically agree that if it appears there then you should be prepared to debate it. And that’s the lay of the land at this moment.

So in this environment, can supporting uncertainty, murkiness, or loss of clear thinking and slowing down of the political process be goods that you could use to win debates?

I think so. The question is how these arguments are deployed. The best way to do it within the confines of the round is to ask yourself how certain you think the other side’s solution is going to deal with the problem. Compare that to how certain you think you are about the detrimental effects of their policy. In situations where they might be winning arguments that prove that their solution will work and your problem might not happen, you can raise the specter of the guess to show that if they are the least bit wrong, your problem will still happen and there’s no going back. The concepts of erasibility and reversability are good ones to argue for here.

On the level of principle, uncertainty might stand alone as a good principle in a world where most political discourse and scientific information is throttled into a funnel of absolute judgement even before we have had a chance to fully digest its meaning. This seems to be better on Opposition benches as you could oppose most motions with a principle of uncertainty, and deference, and waiting as a good way to address the situation. This might be better on topics dealing with complex systems such as the environment or the economy, and less effective on issues such as military intervention for humanitarian reasons. But there’s a way to apply it there too I’m sure. Something about not being sure how people will respond to the invasion force is used as a defensive argument, but there’s great ground to consider this as a positive good – staying out of it and thinking might be just as good, or at least avoid the problem of treating other peoples as if they are unable to handle their own affairs.

Many of these arguments are familiar. They become more unfamiliar when we talk about them as something we would want to cause or directly create in our advocacy. They become a bit strange when we talk about how it’s good to create situations where people will hold back and think a bit, where people will ponder a decision, mull things over, and really grapple with whether or not they should do something. Endorsing uncertainty and hesitation of action is a rare principle in debates, but it could be a good way to have more nuanced debates, rather than hearing that far too simple “rational actor” model of the human psyche we love to go to as an explanation of why our side is the best.

If a thoughtful argument from another sphere can be adapted to our strange debate sphere and find competitive success, it might serve as a banner for those who worry about competitive equity above everything else in debating that opening up the door to things that don’t neatly fit into the comfort zone of debating. Taking my discussion here to the next level would be for teams to say they are uncertain about the motion, and that might be a reason to endorse or reject it. But that’s a bigger move than the one I am suggesting here.