From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 10:15:04 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com (Lee Corbin) writes:
>Ah ha! Perhaps this is the problem. So far as I know,
>Robin *was not* supplying any explanation for the
>persistent disagreements in left-right debates. On
>the contrary, he was merely suggesting a prophylactic
>or corrective remedy for the case when one *perceives*
>that one has a particular bias.
It's clear to me that Robin intended his deceive.pdf paper as an
explanation for a wide variety of persistent disagreements, including
many political ones. The paper starts with the claim that "Disagreement
is an obvious feature of intellectual and political life." Your response
seems to be strong evidence that you haven't given much thought to the
arguments in that paper, so I will feel fairly safe in attaching little
weight to your beliefs on this subject.
>> Robin seems to have a clear argument that value differences fail to
>> explain the lack of objectivity (i.e. unbiased weighing of the evidence
>> pertaining to factual questions) in ideological debates.
>
>I'm sorry. Where does he claim that differences in values
>fail to explain lack of objectivity? Let's see: yes, I do
>acknowledge that "loyalty to a former position", as you were
>saying, is a big factor, but it rather begs the question as
>to how the former position was obtained in the first place.
>Also, I concede that people hate to be seen as *wrong*, and
>that also diminishes their objectivity. But are you thinking
>of something more precise when you imply criticism of the
>(IMO) crucial role played by differences in values?
I'm thinking of the arguments in Robin's paper that rational Bayesians
wouldn't disagree as much as people are observed to disagree.
>> I thought you
>> started this (or a related thread) in an attempt to explain that lack,
>> and it looked like you were implying that value differences explain the
>> question you asked about objectivity.
>
>Doesn't ring an exact bell.
Ok, I'll assume you were trying to explain something I consider uninteresting,
such as why people don't value meta-debates.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Jon Johansen! http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:29 MST