Dragaera

Reason and passion (was: OT: Subjectivity vs. Objectivity)

Gregory Rapawy grapawy at yahoo.com
Sun Aug 18 10:49:53 PDT 2002

--- David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote:
[...]
> I do think that's going outside the province of
> intellectual debates.  *How much* somebody cares 
> about something *in an intellectual debate* is 
> completely irrelevant, except tactically.  The
> truth of a belief is not increased by believing it 
> more passionately.  And intellectual debate is about

> *truth*. 
> 
> Obviously, many issues that we debate with people in
> day-to-day life are not issues best settled in a 
> purely intellectual debate.

I disagree, although it is possible that your
qualifier "purely" may remove my grounds for
disagreement by narrowing the breadth of your claim to
a subset of what I would generally consider
"intellectual debate."

Taking your broader claim ("*How much* somebody cares
about something *in an intellectual debate* is
completely irrelevant, except tactically."), I think
that in certain areas of debate the strength of the
participants' beliefs in certain emotional (or,
perhaps, value) propositions is relevant to the truth
they are seeking to ascertain.  Examples include
political philosophy, rhetoric, and aesthetics.

First, in political philosophy, the strengths of our
beliefs in certain propositions of value are, at least
within some methodologies, the raw data from which we
construct theories of the good or the right.  I am
thinking here of Rawls's concept of reflective
equilibrium, in which any value proposition may be
revised at any point after reasoned consideration; but
all others are taken as given while consideration is
given.  Other methodologies insist that we proceed a
priori (some utilitarians fall into this category, as
does the Kantian tradition) but whichever side of that
debate one takes, I do not think it is fair to say
that only the latter are engaged in intellectual
debate.

Second, in rhetoric, the goal is to find the argument
that the ultimate listeners (not the present companion
with whom one is having the intellectual debate about
rhetoric) will find persuasive, which will almost
certainly depend on the strength of their beliefs in
various propositions.  The debaters therefore, again,
may use their own beliefs as data on the assumption
that the ultimate listeners share them, or perhaps
with the intent of deriving the listeners' beliefs
>from their own by adjusting for known differences in
attitude.  (This resembles your caveat about tactics;
but here the tactical, or strategic proposition, is
itself the truth the debaters seek to ascertain.)

Third, in aesthetics, I suspect -- although I have
little knowledge of formal, as opposed to casual,
aesthetics, and so may be completely mistaken -- that
even quite sophisticated arguments about what is
beautiful (which I think is a kind of truth) may need
to rely on beliefs about what is good or right.

It may be that you will simply respond that these are
therefore not subjects of *purely* intellectual
debate.  Then, however, I would say that purely
intellectual debate, within your definition, is quite
rare and restricted to a few technical subjects such
as mathematics and computer science.  And even there
(I am neither a mathematician nor a programmer) is it
really true that some aesthetic propositions -- and
therefore ultimately matters of belief -- do not creep
in?

-- Greg

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