individuals can be forceful in non-physical ways.
Think for example of applying social pressure, using misleading rhetorical devices, non-horizontal dialogue, etc. — Tzeentch

What is it about these that you find 'non-kosher'?

Then there is morality that's implicit in law, which is applied through the threat of violence ('at gunpoint'). — Tzeentch

Yes, I agree this is different. I'd like to focus for the minute on persuasion, if that's OK.

if the intention isn't genuine — Tzeentch

Genuine being...? I assume if I want to persuade you to give more to charity, my intention is as genuine as if you want to persuade me to meddle less?

since you are here, interacting and reading my messages voluntarily, there's no meddling taking place. — Tzeentch

Wouldn't the same be true for almost all moralising? Very rarely do the would-be moralisers herd people at gunpoint into rooms before speaking.

Moral approbation is done on people willingly in the vicinity, people willingly putting themselves in the position to be morally appraised. I can't think of many examples where people are forced to listen to moral arguments.

I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing anything, nor am I attempting to persuade. — Tzeentch

But you've previously argued that morality is not solely about intent. If the result of your posting here is that I'm persuaded to act other than I would have, then you've meddled in my affairs. You might not have intended to, but you've previously denied that as a credible excuse.

it avoids the common pitfall of using notions of morality as a means to meddle in the affairs of others — Tzeentch

I'm not seeing how morality alone 'meddles' in the affairs of others in this way.

I can see a way in which strong social approbation might 'meddle', but that doesn't seem any different to what you're attempting here (trying to 'meddle' in other people's affairs in getting them to stop 'meddling' in other people's affairs).

If your arguments are persuasive, then you have undeniably 'meddled'. If I'm persuaded, I will stop the meddling I would have otherwise done, you have meddled with how my affairs would otherwise have progressed.

How is that any different to my attempting to get you to, for example, give more to charity, by cranking up the guilt and trying to persuade you that way?

It seems either way we're attempting to get someone to do something they wouldn't have done were it not for our intervention. You want them to stop their meddling, I want them to give more to charity.

In general, I think that, if you agree with the logic being employed, accept the inference rules, etc., if the argument is valid, and if the premises are all true, the argument should generally be persuasive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it just isn't. This whole site is clearly evidence of that. Scores (if not hundreds) of people failing to convince others of positions they believe have valid logic and true premises. so the interesting question is why doesn't it work?

However in these areas it's more about assigning probabilities to explanations than establishing certainty. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's really interesting. How would you go about assigning probabilities. I assume (from your love of Clayton) that we're not talking about some 'how many times this kind of thing was right' frequentism. So how? What makes one theory more likely to be right than another and why?

We use mentalistic vocabulary about others as readily as we do about ourselves, attribute knowledge and beliefs and awareness and forgetfulness and consciousness to other people all day long, and we mean the same thing as when we describe ourselves as being in these mental states. What matters is the book, not its being on the shelf. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, exactly. My mind, your mind, his mind... I'm not at all seeing a problem with this "eye can't see itself" nonsense. As if we have trouble understanding eyes because of that.

So minds and brains are different? What are the differences? — RogueAI

Minds are a facon de parler. We don't get hung up on where 'courage' is. We don't start invoking other worlds to locate 'hunger'. The act of 'forgetting' doesn't require a special force from the 'forgetting' realm.

In fact. I'll tell you what - since Chalmers did so well out of his bet that neuroscience wouldn't find 'consciousness' - here in front of witnesses (@Srap Tasmaner and @Wayfarer as official as it gets on this thread) I'll bet you two crates of fine wine that in five years time neuroscience won't have found my mojo either.

(If any neuroscientists have found where my mojo is - I've got this problem with it, see I've got it working but it just won't...)

I’m not seeing a mind’s eye in the brain images provided. — javra

Really? What does one look like then? You said

No one can in any way see that aspect of themselves which visually perceives imagined phenomena via what is commonly termed “the mind’s eye”. — javra

So presumably, at least, you've never seen one (you think no-one has). So how do you know the image I've posted isn't one? You seem to on the one hand want to say no one's ever seen one, but on the other you seem to know exactly what one should look like.

What I am seeing are individual slides empirically depicting a certain set of a brain's functions which are inferred to correlate with empirically evident self-reports concerning something that might or might not in fact be. — javra

Yep. Can you think of any knowledge you have at all that isn't inferred from evidence? Certainly the vast majority, if not all. Why is being inferred from evidence suddenly being treated with such suspicion?

were philosophical zombies to be real,... — javra

Were philosophical zombies to be real you'd be right and I'd be wrong. You're begging the question. For philosophical zombies to be real there'd have to be some nonphysical state called 'consciousness' which doesn't map to any physical states. That's what you're trying to demonstrate, so you can't do so by invoking it's truth. If I'm trying to prove aliens exist " the aliens told me so" is not a persuasive argument.

Your argument is "I think there's a non-physical entity called 'consciousness' - show me the physical thing which it is if you want to prove me wrong", it's self immunised. If you think the images I've shown you are not 'the mind's eye' then you'll have to come up with a better counter argument than "that's not what I was expecting it to look like"

In other words, these illustrations of a brain’s functioning so far do not falsify the proposition which was provided. — javra

Of course they do. The proposition was

No one can in any way... — javra

It wasn't "There exist ways in which..." your proposition attempts to rule our physicalist/naturalist interpretations. It doesn't merely rule-in dualism. We're not here arguing if dualism is a possible way to think about consciousness. You're arguing that physicalism isn't. To make that you have to show that this view is incoherent, not that it doesn't match the way you like to think about things.

This thread is still very much on my mind, so I'll probably come roaring back in another day or two. — Srap Tasmaner

Cool. If there was an emoji of bated breath I'd be posting it.

(Who am I kidding, I've never posted an emoji in my life)

D. H. Lawrence's first book of poems was called "Look! We Have Come Through."

Robert Graves reviewed it, saying, "Perhaps you have, and a good thing too, but why should we look?"

That was roughly the mood in which I wrote the OP. — Srap Tasmaner

Good attitude!

If minds are brains — RogueAI

Who said anything about minds being brains?

I was asked for "that aspect of [myself] which visually perceives imagined phenomena". I presented it. Those areas of my brain are the aspects of myself which perceive imagined phenomena. It's an fMRI of someone imagining a scene.

My hand is the aspect of myself which holds teacups. It's not a particularly complicated question.

So still on topic. — Srap Tasmaner

Very much so.

My eyes glaze over when there's a lot of "That's not what I said," and "That's not what I meant." — Srap Tasmaner

Understandable, but speaks very much to the comment you made about cost. What is meant is the important part and if we're to make a reasonable assessment of cost, then our charity is limited by our degree of trust. It has to be (the alternative being limitless charity, or perhaps random selection). So how can that trust be built here? In academic circles, it's simply qualification. I trust my colleagues not to be saying something completely not worth engaging with because they expended an awful lot of effort getting the qualifications they have. They're unlikely to waste even a private correspondence on saying something pointlessly dumb.

Here, I don't think there's any alternative than interrogating intent. That can be a bit personal, but what's the alternative? One could quietly make judgements based on other posts, but that seems like a rather weaselly way out, relying on others to do your dirty work. One could simply be super charitable to all, but I think we both agree that's simply not feasible time-wise.

Hence worrying about whether a post is indeed a 'proper' response (cost of engagement), and thus whether 'what was said/meant' is, in fact being addressed or rather simply misused. It's super annoying, and probably not worth the effort unless you're also (as I am) very interested in the nature of the responses.

If I say, "we can be justified about some historical facts and narratives," you respond with "so, you don't get that people can disagree over historical facts and narratives?"

If I say, "we must sometimes rely on the authority of institutions and base our beliefs on trust because it is impossible for one person to conduct more than a minute fraction of all experiments in the sciences," you respond with "so you always blindly trust authority?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. Both those arguments are about what we can be justified in believing. Absolutely nothing in this entire thread is about what we can/cannot be justified in believing. It is about the mechanism of persuasiveness. The 'rules' of argumentation. These are at best only tangentially related to the question of what we're justified believing.

For example. I'm justified in believing that you have a deep knowledge of physics. I'm justified in believing that because of your posting history. Now let's say you were arguing against someone who thought you knew nothing about physics because you don't hold to [insert some fringe theory here]. The claim is "your posts are all just parroting mainstream textbooks, the latest theories show you don't know what you're talking about". The response "I do, look at my posting history" is a poor, unpersuasive argument. It would be outside of the 'rules of discourse' because it doesn't address the claim. That has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that I might still quite rationally use your posting history to justify my belief that you do, in fact, know what you're talking about.

Do you see the difference? @Srap Tasmaner's post was quite carefully put together and focussed on the part that historical analyses such as the example response played in argument. That's why it was so disappointing to get slew of responses from people who'd read the term 'history' and apparently no further.

So almost none of your comments are addressing the post (specifically the aspect of it I'm honing in on here) which is the persuasiveness of an argument, the method by which an appeal to the history of ideas is supposed to actually persuade, is supposed to be a response, in argument format, to a proposition. That's the issue.

I don't think the problems you point out are at all specific to history. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The claim isn't that they are specific to history, it is that history is at the further end of a spectrum.

It is difficult for me to deny most empirical facts. Maybe not quantum physics, maybe not cosmology, but most basic empirical facts would require a very odd set of commitments for me to deny them.

By contrast, it is easy for me to deny, say, the Marxist analysis of history. It's done all the time by perfectly intelligent economics professors. Likewise, it is easy for me to deny the idea that religious study drove the growth of philosophy in the middle ages. Again, plenty of intelligent people deny such things.

Establish rules of inference, logic, mathematics, and established empirical facts are difficult to deny and remain consistent. Narrative arcs from history (such as the history of an idea) are easy to deny and remain consistent. Note 'hard' and 'easy'. Terms I've been using throughout. Nothing about 'hard' and easy' denotes binary. 'Hard and 'easy' are two ends of a scale, the scale of difficulty.

Trust in both individuals/institutions and in the process of scholarship is just as essential for science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't want to derail the thread (see above - this is not about justification, but about persuasion), but this is simply not true. Science has considerably more highly visible tests. It is virtually impossible to tell if Marxist historical analysis is actually right. If the rocket crashes, to rocket scientists calculations were probably wrong. We may not understand the maths, but we can very often see when it doesn't work. Scientist says "this should now turn green" (or whatever) and it doesn't. The two are radically different. It's why old scientific ideas are totally dead, but old economic ideas, or metaphysical ones, or historical ones are still very much alive and kicking, it's virtually impossible to resoundingly disprove them.

But this is only relevant to the discussion insofar as it affects the persuasiveness of arguments using those fields and how they form responses to propositions.

My argument is simply this: "if the history of an idea is sometimes relevant, and if we can sometimes have justified beliefs about the history of ideas, then sometimes arguments made from the history of an idea are relevant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good. That's a nice succinct argument. So my issue with it is that you haven't linked having justified beliefs about the history of ideas to arguments using that history being relevant. Why does being able to rationally hold justified beliefs about a subject automatically make it a relevant, persuasive, counter in an argument?

The range of rational reasons to believe a proposition is larger than the range of coherent responses to a contrary proposition.

Whether we accept or reject the argument should be based on the data supporting the premises and if the conclusion actually follows from the premises — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. A potted history of ideas contains neither. It is the theory, not that supporting data, nor the logic connecting it to the conclusion. "Russell re-invented Pierce to sound more analytical" (I'm paraphrasing), is neither 'data' nor 'logic'. What 'data' could we find about Russell's intent (unless he maybe wrote a diary entry like "Hehe, today I intend to re-invent Pierce to sound more analytical - that'll show those damned idealists". Analysis of historical trends is not data-heavy. It's speculation-heavy.

this doesn't seem like a difference in kind. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It isn't. Recall 'hard'/'easy'. Not 'on'/'off'.

Nor is it clear that all scientific empirical claims are easier to verify than many historical fact claims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Probably not. Again the argument is about how hard or easy it is to deny them. I don't doubt there are exceptions.

What I found weird was the claim that "[if] I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises," which seemed to imply that the logic alone was persuasive. But a valid argument with false premises isn't persuasive. I didn't, and still don't really know how to take the claim that: "For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I see the problem. By 'a logical argument' I mean an argument in logic, of the form I presented. I don't mean an argument about facts of the world which happens to be 'logical' (meaning logically valid). I'm saying that it is possible to present an argument in logic (mathematics might have been a clearer example, on reflection), where one is persuaded to accept the conclusion merely because of the rules of logic one is committed to. The 'entailment' is not the same as 'the conclusion'. The 'entailment' is those other commitments that come along with accepting or denying a theorem. If I accept 1+1=2 (whatever argument demonstrates it) I am thus committed to also accept that 2+2=4, the one entails the other (depending, of course on how it is proven, but assume a fairly standard approach).

Does that clear anything up?

No one can in any way see that aspect of themselves which visually perceives imagined phenomena via what is commonly termed “the mind’s eye”. — javra

The substantiated position is that consciousness is not empirically observable — javra

Substantiated how?

the stranger claim that if an argument is in a valid form we should be persuaded by the argument — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where have I made such a claim? No - forget that, more importantly, what is it about my posting history on cognitive neuroscience, Bayesian inference modelling, social dynamics theories, Ramseyan epistemology...has given you the serious impression that that's the sort of claim I'm likely to have made?

I only skimmed the exchange you were having with Isaac, and don't want to take sides. — Srap Tasmaner

That's a shame, because what was an interesting conversation we here having seems to have fizzled out and been replaced by yet another truly bizarre argument against positions no-one in their right mind would have any reason to believe I'd ever hold. And this isn't even odd. Far from it, it's the standard pattern of threads (at least, those I'm involved in...).

I honestly don't know how to reply. You seem to have placed a series of things-which-are-true, next to some unrelated quotes of mine.

I'll do my best to formulate a response, but I've very little idea what you're trying to say...

We're not talking about disagreements about scientific theories. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Did I say 'scientific theories' anywhere in my post? Why are you denying something I haven't said?

I've yet to come across any radically different versions of how thermodynamics, etc. were developed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So? Are you saying there are no radically different theories of history, just because there are no radically different theories of how thermodynamics was developed? I don't really know how to respond to that. If you're really going to double down on a claim that there aren't any disagreements about historical narratives, then I just can't help. Perhaps read more than one history book...?

But per your view, how can we actually know why a scientific theory was advanced or why others were rejected? — Count Timothy von Icarus

We can't. I just becoming increasing baffled as to why you can't seem to grasp the idea that intelligent people disagree. Have you ever been to a university?

when Einstein says he added the Cosmological Constant to have his theory jive with the then widely held view that the universe was static I think that is a good reason to believe that is why Einstein added the Cosmological Constant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? When Trump said he cut taxes for the rich to stimulate the economy was that a good reason to believe that's why Trump cut taxes? you may trust Einstein to be honest, but as far as the history of ideas goes, are you suggesting he's an example of the norm? That people are almost universally honest about their motives with a tiny, insignificant number of outliers? I mean, that's a lovely world view you have, but...

The pioneers of quantum mechanics published papers throughout their lifetimes, conducted interviews, were taped during lectures, and wrote memoirs, all describing how the theory evolved. In many cases, their personal correspondences were made available after their death. Most of this is even free.

Now tell me where I can get access to a free particle accelerator and a Youtube on how to properly use it so I can observe particle physics findings first hand? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The question was about verifying the narratives in textbooks on the history of ideas. Are you suggesting that such evidence troves exist for all ideas. Could we do this self-checking with the argument of the OP regarding post enlightenment thought? do we have some Russell biography I missed where hes says "...and then I deliberately re-framed Pierce as a realist to get rid of that damned idealism...grrr...hate that stuff"

I don't know where you're headed by providing these hyper-specfic examples which are not illustrative of the form in general. The last 50 years of so might be well-covered. The last hundred patchy at best, beyond that is basically little more than guesswork.

Einstein added the Cosmological Constant to fit current models is an empirical fact. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue is an empirical fact. The Catholic Church harassing advocates of heliocentrism is an empirical fact. People have had sensory experiences of those things and reported them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Baffling. So I say that you're confusing empirical fact with narratives about socio-economic causes etc, and you list a load of empirical facts... I really haven't a clue what that was supposed to do here. Yes. some things are empirical facts. Did you think I didn't think there were any empirical facts? I'm lost.

When was the last time you wanted to learn something and held a double-blind clinical study? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Five years ago.

Do you replicate the experiments after you read a scientific paper? No. Then you're trusting the institution publishing it and its authors, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. again, I've no clue what point you're trying to make here. People trust some institutions and not others. Is that a confusing concept for you?

Plenty of people don't trust the scientific establishment. This cannot be a good criterion for justification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What?

Unless you can make your arguments a bit clearer I can't see us making any progress.

A measurement isn't always a good measurement, and it's particularly difficult to tease out what a good measurement is with respect to oppression because history is not repeatable in the same way that other experiments are. "Oppression" has no units, after all. It's a story. Further I'd say your measurements are good at assessing an individual's circumstances, but that the individual isn't always an appropriate place for understanding group dynamics -- so the metrics of oppression you list won't capture all of what a group faces. It's a part of the story, and important to check up on because hey maybe one day the world really will be different and our metrics will display that, but not the whole — Moliere

Then is any claim to oppression deniable? On any grounds?

What these political philosophies are doing are not enforcements of a law or a principle for individuals, nor laying out some universal truth, but rather binding people together in spite of differences that seem important. Intersectionality isn't a scientific law as much as it is an organizer's tool which has already been proven. — Moliere

I don't see any evidence of that. The working class seem more divided now than they've ever been, the left wing has been effectively neutered by it's own internal divisions. the rift in the American working class between the white working men and the 'identity politics' groups is basically responsible for the surge in populism (with the liberal response to covid and trans issues just deepening that divide). In my country the rift between anti-semitism and support for Palestine has effectively killed off left wing opposition with differences over trans issues between traditional feminists and modern views mopping up any remaining unity there might have been.

The world, particularly the left, is at each other's throats. Ukraine, covid, trans,... not a single big issue has been tackled recently without dividing into two warring camps with division enforced with an iron fist (or as 'iron' as lefty politics gets, anyway). I've been in left wing politics for three decades, fighting pernicious taxation, racism, environmental destruction, etc...the usual. I took a different position on covid - I was regularly called a 'murderer' (right here on this site, with absolutely no consequence). I took a different position on Ukraine - I've been listed as a war crimes collaborator, friends have had far worse. I took a different position on trans issues - I'm a bigot, again, others I know have had worse. This is all in the last three of four years, after over thirty previous years of left-wing activism with nothing of the sort happening (despite some absolutely tempestuous disagreements).

So unless you've got something to hold against that impression, I'm not buying this story that these new forms of identity politics unite. Not from where I'm standing. If they do, they unite by simply crushing dissent.

to be effective you have to understand what people really care about. The international poor just isn't that big of a rallying cry, I'd hazard that's because in our particular social system we've erected a public/private property distinction. While it's certainly true that if Helen Mirren cared about the plight of the poor she'd act differently, the fact is that not only does she not care -- most human beings don't either, but not because we're callous, but because this is how we're trained to be with our private money, and people really believe they "earned" it. — Moliere

This is neither inevitable, nor was it always the case. I agree that there's a barrier to cross here, but you're writing a thread a masculinity. Is that not also embedded? why not take the same "'twas ever thus" resigned attitude when it comes to feminism, or race, or homophobia? If we can fight against those entrenched cultural values, then why are you advocating we just accept this one?

Patriarchy -- the rule of men -- is still quite common. And healthier gender identities -- ones not obsessed with maintaining power at home or at work -- will undermine that. — Moliere

But not according to your principle above. You seem to see patriarchy as something entrenched but resolvable and private property sacredness as something entrenched but not resolvable. I'm not sure why.

denying that we can trust the standard fare of physics textbooks re: the origins of relativity or thermodynamics also comes with a lot of commitments. You'd have to assume a lot of people were "in" on a misrepresentation and that they had all coordinated to keep to the same narrative across a wide array of texts, including falsifying and circulating the papers of the original people involved. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What? Why would people have to be 'in' on anything? Are you honestly having this much trouble understanding the concept of disagreement among epistemic peers? Some theories are popular, others aren't. Is that such a challenging concept for you?

Your average person is in a much better position to vet if a science textbook is telling them the truth about the history of quantum mechanics than they are to go out and observe entanglement and test Bell's inequalities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really, how?

I don't buy that this is any reason to assume total nescience is at all rational though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, my interrogation is about the supposed mechanism of persuasiveness. I haven't even mentioned nescience.

The fact of our contributions would be lost to the shifting sands of history, unable to be verified. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're confusing empirical facts for narratives about the motivations, socio-political causes, zeitgeist,... As above, empirical facts are quite easy to persuade others of since we generally share means of verification and trust. Narratives, motivations, sociology, politics... Those are not things we generally share methods of verification for, so the persuasiveness of arguments using those 'facts' is considerably less (for those who don't already broadly agree). So an argument which employs nothing else is a curiosity with regards to how the proponent intended it to work.

I was fortunate to have been raised with creativity and curiosity as well as understanding consequences of actions. — Christoffer

Right. Good start, so we need to do something about parenting? How do we get the next generation of children raised with "creativity and curiosity as well as understanding consequences of actions"? Change schools? Change working hours for new parents? Tackle inflated qualification thresholds to give more free time? Or does shouting about how we're all doomed because of the stupid rednecks somehow get children raised better?

what would constitute a pretty normal kind of upbringing in which a person gets the necessary tools to function around facts, knowledge, judgement and how to behave against other people. — Christoffer

Well clearly it doesn't because you've just been bemoaning the lack of such people. It must be quite an uncommon upbringing, no?

Almost like whenever a person shows attributes generally considered to be in line with being a "good person" (in this context), then they should in some ways feel bad for being like that in contrast to people who don't care about this extremely topic the world is facing right now. — Christoffer

I don't think I've ever suggested you should feel bad about it. I'm suggesting the we think about why you're the way you are when others aren't. Since we evidently need more people like you and fewer like the others that would seem to be the top priority.

Isn't it better to ask why people don't care rather than ask why some do? — Christoffer

It's the same question. Why do some care and others don't.

You fail to see that it's the antagonists of actions to make the world sustainable who are the ones dividing the world, not the ones who propose actions to fight climate change. — Christoffer

You know about disagreement, right? Your "creative" upbringing included the fact that epistemic peers disagree? Or did miss that lesson? I don't "fail to see", I disagree with you. I might be wrong, of course, as might you. Presumably, that's why we're discussing the matter, to find out? Or is this just a lecture? I thought egotism was one of the traits you were blessed to have avoided?

I come from a principle that humans are naturally quite cooperative and egalitarian (at least within-group). This foundation comes from a study of hunter-gatherer social dynamics. It too might be wrong, of course, but it leads me to the necessary conclusion that if people are acting in non-cooperative ways, greedy, selfish or careless, then something has caused this. If people, like your good self, are acting in cooperative, caring and selfless ways, then nothing has 'happened' as such, that's just how humans are. As such, the only relevant question is what has happened to the selfish ones.

I don't get how you are somehow blaming the polarization on the ones who's trying to globally get everyone on board to solve this? — Christoffer

What's not to get? Or do you mean you just disagree? It's quite simple, I'm wondering if the exclusory rhetoric (telling people they're stupid for holding the beliefs they do) leads people to become more entrenched in those beliefs, and seek out more welcoming groups which might seek to exploit their sense of ostracisation to further radicalise their opposition.

My response to you was what it was because you have repeatedly made the claim that the reason arguments involving history aren't valid is because "you can select just the history that proves your point." My point was that this can be claimed against all inductive arguments — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. And I've countered that point several times now, but you're still stuck at the beginning. It's not the same because not all methods are so open, not all methods are so narrowly shared. There are entailments resulting from denying a common form of logic, or an empirical fact that are uncomfortable and which are not necessary when denying some interpretation of history.

Simply put if I say, "the ball is under the cup" and then I show you the ball you could still deny my theory, but you'd have to bring in a mass of other commitments about the possibility of illusion, not trusting your own eyes, ... Commitments you wouldn't like.

Likewise if you agree that 1+1=2, then I show you how that entails 2+2=4, you'd have to bring in a shed load of uncomfortable beliefs in order to deny that.

But if I say, "history shows that strong leaders always end up in wars", you could just say "no it doesn't" and walk away with virtually no additional commitments required to maintain that belief. History is so open to interpretation that virtually any theory can be held without issue. Not so with empirical facts, not so with informal logic (not so with formal logic either but that wasn't my point).

I'm sure to someone with your... how do I put this politely... confident way of thinking, the Facts™ of history probably are all written in stone and no doubt all these alternative interpretations are more of those 'conspiracy theories' your priesthood of disinformation experts are working so hard to cull. I can see how the argument I'm trying to make just won't mesh with some mindsets. It may be an impasse we can't bridge.

I'm going to assume you meant something else by it, like "an argument can be valid without being sound. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm talking about neither soundness, nor validity, but persuasiveness. One can be persuaded of the soundness of an argument, or one can be persuaded of it's validity. It's irrelevant (to this topic) which. The topic here is the means of persuasion, the methods used to persuade. Above, you have tried to persuade me of the validity of an argument form. earlier you tried to persuade me of the soundness (or lack thereof). If I constructed a long logical proof, the manner of its exposition would determine, to an extent, whether I was persuaded by its validity. In your example above, my degree of trust in the CNF you mentioned would be at least partially determinate of whether I'm persuaded by the result. The means of persuasion are not the same as either validity or soundness, they are orthogonal to both. The question being addressed here is how it is intended that certain forms of argument from history are supposed to persuade, the manner in which is is supposed they are to work.

My choices have nothing to do with me pointing out the fact that bio-dynamic farming leads to better results. — Benkei

No, of course not. As I said, they were a lead-in to the point about personal choices affecting corporate decisions. We can't escape the fact that if we all stopped buying nonorganic food, the fertiliser industry would collapse overnight (maybe not a good thing jobwise). We can make progress by other means, but it doesn't mean there's no need to analyse the personal reasons.

I'd wish I could get all my foodstuffs locally but alas I'm stuck with cheese and eggs. — Benkei

Almost the opposite for me (veg, milk and meat but no processed dairy). But sometimes the imported stuff uses less fuel overall than, say, heated greenhouses. And organic-elsewhere vs nonorganic-local is a close call usually.

Adoption of the necessary policies has to do a lot with framing as well I think. You shouldn't do XY and Z or the world will burn! Or maybe: "If we do XY and Z we will have more nature, more free time and more security". It's governments now going down the road of the techocratic control of society, which is, if we're not careful, a prelude to fascism but in any case just raises a shit ton of resistance and distrust at a time where trust and solidarity need to be peak. — Benkei

Totally. People's responses are what's missing from the debate, it's too often framed (as above) as idiots vs the intelligentsia and who's realistically going to come round to that framing.

Put a celebrity in flares and half the world is wearing them the next day. Why? Because they like to feel part of a group (putting aggressive advertising to one side for now). Ban entry to the 'save the world' group and people will look elsewhere. Make entry too easy and nothing will get done (no one's going to commit more than they need to). But this constant drive to divide up the world into ever smaller combative groups might sell webspace, but it's sure not going to encourage collective action.

who in their right mind would be passionate about the shitfest that's modern politics nowadays? — Benkei

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
— Douglas Adams

Oh, go on then just one...

Through every nook and every cranny
The wind blew in on poor old Granny
Around her knees, into each ear
(And up her nose as well, I fear)

All through the night the wind grew worse
It nearly made the vicar curse
The top had fallen off the steeple
Just missing him (and other people)

It blew on man, it blew on beast
It blew on nun, it blew on priest
It blew the wig off Auntie Fanny-
But most of all, it blew on Granny!

Aww, poetry. I'm charmed, but we can't be publicly exchanging poems, people will talk.

can you really not see a problem with creating a system whereby a government and/or a private corporation can inject the entire population of their country with a chemical which is only intermittently batch tested? — Isaac

Me from two years ago. Called it.

I fail to see your point? — Christoffer

There wasn't one (there), you know what rhetoric means, yes?

Laziness, carelessness, ignorance, egotism and stupidity. There's little reason today for the privileged to make excuses and justifications for their ignorance of these environmental problems. — Christoffer

So you're prepared to stand by the assertion that you're uniquely less lazy, careless, egotistical, or stupid than most? Is that genetics, do you think. Or are you just a better person? What's your theory for how you turned out so hardworking, caring, humble and clever?

The rebuttal: — Hanover

First. That was physically painful to watch. Anyone comparing the two and considering the former to be the one with the 'agenda' has clearly never met ... anyone, ever.

Second. Even if we ignore the horrific smarm which drips from the screen when watching the second video, it misses the point raised in this thread since its inception... These are scientists arguing. The paper was written by scientists, the commentary was written by scientists, they were both in a scientific journal (though only the former was peer reviewed, your commentator here "conveniently forgets to mention that").

Two groups of scientists arguing about the implications of some findings. Not one group of redneck conspiracy theorists struggling to argue against The Science™ who must be silenced by disinformation experts for the sake of humanity.

Remember, the risk of batch-related variation in adverse affects was not a discussion held in public to inform a populace in their choices. It was banned from social media. The discussion was wiped out by governments and corporations deliberately eliminating dissent.

The point is not that there's no alternative take. The point is that treating science as a battle of the exasperatedly well informed vs the stubbornly stupid is a gross misrepresentation of how it works.

If you tried to imply some hypocrisy I'm sorry to disappoint — Christoffer

You're a rhetorical device in the argument, I don't care what you personally do (unless perhaps, you're wanting to make the argument that no-one is hypocritical in this respect?)

in the EU, the regulations surrounding it make it hard for companies to circumvent laws and regulations; therefore, it's a bit easier to trust the official markings on products, at least in Sweden. — Christoffer

Yes FSC timber is a good example of this even in Europe where their traceability if sometimes shockingly poor, but I think it's a good message nonetheless that consumers demand it, even if the initial response of companies is to first try and have the best of both worlds.

It seems that the hammer is the required tool to get people into serious action. A carrot doesn't work, they will just buy the least expensive mass produced chemically sprayed carrot possible and then get surprised when they die too soon. — Christoffer

I can sympathise with the pessimism, but I don't agree. I think people are not uncaring, I don't think you (and others following your efforts) are just better people. There's factors which put people in better or worse positions to take up those options, but I think it's evident that, if that's true, those factors are not the ones traditionally cited (wealth, freedom) as an abundance of both doesn't seem to do anything. I think the factors are more psychological, more to do with group dynamics and as such if we want to help the situation we'd be advised to look there. But at the very least, even if one disagrees with that theory, it's evident that simply shouting it from the rooftops doesn't work. Something has to change with the approach.

Hence the reflection.

You all diligently buy nothing but certified organic or biodynamic food then I assume?

The solution already exists and the benefits are, as pointed out, obvious.

So what were people waiting for?

Too often this is all somebody else's fault.

What it does describe is people who have less opportunity or freedom than some.

What's interesting about that, from the point of view of the OP is that it relates to what said earlier. If we're not using egalitarian assessments as a guide, then it's a matter of competition. If Helen Mirren is 'oppressed' simply because she has less freedom and opportunity as a rich white woman than a rich white man would, then how is that not the exact base competitive move being associated with masculinity. How is it not just "I want what he's got"?

If she was genuinely concerned about the unequal distribution of 'freedom and opportunity' across the globe - intersectionally - then she could, with the stroke of pen on checkbook, do more to equal things out than any speech could. But she wants to keep all of her currently accumulated 'freedom and opportunity' but just wants, in addition, the extra freedom and opportunity that her rich white male counterparts enjoy. That's not an egalitarian move, it's a competitive one.

we need to be more intersectional. We need to listen to all women which includes listening to women of colour, working class women, trans women, disabled women and the list can go on. — The #MeToo

The list can indeed go on. So the question is, why doesn't it? Are there no oppressed men? Why does the list feel incomplete when it only contains the burdens of white women, but somehow complete once it's exhausted 'women' as a group? Once it's included intersections of race, class, sexuality and ability with women, we're apparently done with the list?

No. So we expand it out, to include men of colour, working class men, trans men, disabled men.

But then not all in these groups are oppressed, otherwise our list is just 'everyone on the planet' (the concatenation of those lists includes all people). So we say we're talking about oppressed women of colour, oppressed working class women, oppressed trans women, oppressed disabled women plus oppressed men of colour, oppressed working class men, oppressed trans men, oppressed disabled men.

That's a big group if we are to, as the author implores...

stand with each other — The #MeToo

So all we've done with our efforts to expand out our intersectionality, is rediscovered that the true common thread here is oppression - not gender, not race, not sexuality, not ability, not even class, but the mere act of oppression, the exercise of power over another to remove their opportunities or freedoms.

That last part is crucial. "...to remove their opportunities or freedoms". It means that victims of oppression will have neither in relation to non-victims. It means that victims of oppression are not hard to spot, they don't need proxy identifiers, they're the ones with less opportunity and freedom than most. Does that describe Helen Mirren? Someone who has less opportunity and freedom than most? Does that describe any of the Hollywood actresses in #MeToo? Does that describe, in fact, anyone living in the wealth and comfort of the western world's middle classes? People who have less freedom and opportunity than most? I don't see how anyone can honestly say it does.

The general view is that there's good persuasion, which follows the rules of logic, and bad persuasion, which doesn't.

I'd rather switch that around and say logic is partially descriptive of at least some the types of persuasion we find good, or think usually work, etc. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I think I'd agree (but maybe for different reasons?). Any activity which loses sight of life as a whole becomes unmoored and I don't think that's terribly healthy. We might well engage here in some fairly effete topics, but they're never entirely disconnected from life and as such carry some (if not much) potential consequence. It will be the case, from time-to-time, that persuading someone of the merits of your position is more important than the method by which you do so.

In those cases I don't see the goodness or badness of the persuasion being determined by the method, but by the circumstance.

That said, I wouldn't want to discard the importance of the fact that these are edge cases and in the main, the better arguments are those which follow a set of rules for how to get from A to B and are persuasive because of their adherence to those rules. We have come to trust, as habits, the fact that those rules tend to yield good answers (less surprising models) and it's that track record which makes arguments following those rules persuasive.

In philosophy (small 'p') I suppose the focus ought be on those rules and the arguments using them. Ironically, in Psychology, I'm most interested in why the other sorts of arguments are persuasive. An emotional appeal, for example, simply doesn't have anything like as good a track record of yielding useful models, so why on earth would we find such arguments persuasive? It doesn't seem, on first blush, to fit with the self-perpetuating modelling relationship theory of cognition I also work with. So the interesting thing for me is marrying the two (plus things like groups membership tokens, fear,...all the other reasons we're persuaded by an argument that aren't those rational rules of thought). The 'why' of it can be explained in terms of evolutionary psychology (were one to be so crass as to attempt such a thing), but the 'how' of it is what interests me, what steps are taken, the mental process of becoming convinced by something...

I seem to have arrived at the same place as you. I want to know why Wayfarer (standing in as merely an example of the trope here) thought the argument persuasive. I want to know what mental steps he imagined the interlocutor taking resulting from the information given. To use your example...

A: We should take the car.
B: Train.
A: Why should we take the train?
B: Trains have been carrying passengers traveling for both work and for pleasure since the mid-19th century. They were once the primary form of transportation, but with the advent of gas-powered automobiles in the early 20th century and the modern highway system, particularly in the wake of the Second World War, they were largely displaced by cars, buses, and trucks. — Srap Tasmaner

...what follows in A's mind? What's the imagined next step?

Or the now archetypal example
A; "Pierce is not an idealist"
B: "He used to be thought of as an idealist, but then Russell re-branded him"
...then...what? What's the step that A is supposed to take next to become persuaded Pierce is, in fact, and idealist? I've genuinely no (charitable*) idea .

No, this is profoundly misunderstanding what logic alone can do for us. Logic just tells you that, if the premises of an argument are true, then the conclusion follows. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. It has persuasive force. If we just swap out all the premises for letters and produce a long, non-obvious, logical argument that, say , if A> B and B>C then A>C, that has persuasive force. I can look at that and think "yes, that's right, A is greater than C in those circumstances" I've been persuaded by the presentation. The longer an more complex the argument, more likely it is to draw out entailment from believing one logical move on other logical moves. I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises.

My point is that history alone has no such force since it is inevitably selective. Thousands of things happened in the past, so pointing to A and B as precursors of C doesn't do anything because the argument would be in your choice of A and B not in the mere fact of their near contemporaneity to C.

there isn't one set of "the rules of logic," — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't claim there was, but, that's beside the point. The point is about the level of, and likelihood of, commitment to shared foundational beliefs. It doesn't matter which brand of logic is used. In arguments it's mostly a kind of informal 'habits of thought' type of mash-up anyway. The point is that in discourse at this level, I'm quite likely to have a very strong overlap with you regarding my belief in those rules. I'm very likely to have the same set and to be strongly committed to them. As such, arguments which are based on them are likely to be persuasive (same goes for a fundamental set of empirical beliefs too such as basic physics, real-world objects etc). Arguments from analogy, or from history are not of this kind. they rely on a shared narrative about historical events of classification which is so close to that of the proponent that agreement on them is usually only the case in people who already agree with the proposition anyway (as I showed with your homosexual/trans example).

If I say "cutting taxes won't result in higher government revenues per the Laffer Curve, because we have seen 3 major tax cuts since 1980 and each time revenues have fallen instead of increasing," that is of course an argument relying on historical fact. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All facts are historical in that sense. This is not the type of argument the post was written about, it's not saying "we can't use any evidence that occurred in the past" that would be an absurdly uncharitable interpretation. What idiot is going to claim that? This, @Srap Tasmaner, might serve as an example of the costs of engagement. Why am I having to expend time countering an interpretation of an argument that a five year old could see was wrong? Why hasn't that interpretation been silently ruled out by all parties in this thread on the grounds that we're not stupid? We shouldn't be here.

I've always thought that these reviews were done so that the student could follow the development of an position. Knowing which alternatives to a theory have been considered and rejected are key to understanding a theory because, especially for a novice, the dominant theory of the day is always going to look undetermined by the evidence they are aware of. It's also true that knowing why a given element was added to a theory gives you much better insight into how to think about that part of the theory. If some constant was added simply because the mathematics for some project wasn't working out, it's good to know it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all about theory, not history. The question of why a model was abandoned, or why a constant was added is someone's opinion. Someone's theory. Again, from your perspective (you agree with the textbook - or trust the institution) that all seems really solid, but it's not the history that's done that, it's your belief in the authority of the person presenting it. The theory might have been discarded for reasons other than those the textbook claims, the constant might have been added for more rigorous reasons in someone's view but others disagreed (the ones writing the text book). As I said with your other examples, if you already agree that theory A ought have been replaced by theory B, then you're going to be reassured by a historical narrative about how theory B was only supported for so long because of dogmatism. If, however, you disagree, you're just going to also disagree with the historical narrative. It has no persuasive force on it's own because too many competing narratives are easily available. There's little to no reason to accept any particular one.

And to emphasise, this is not the case with arguments relying of basic rules of thought and empirical observation. There are not, in those cases, a myriad of narratives to feely choose from. One might well argue against a tenet of modern physics by claiming maths is flawed, but one would be rightly wary of the commitments that would entail. Not so with historical analysis. I can easily say "No, things did not happen that way" and I'm committed to absolutely nothing else as a result. It's a free pass to disagree.

I don't see how poo pooing the struggle of some women somewhere is helping that or anything else really. — frank

Fortunate then that your lack of acumen isn't my problem.

looking at interlocking systems of oppression effecting people marginalised in more than one way. — fdrake

Looking at, sure. I'm trying (but clearly not doing a good job) to draw distinctions between the data which informs a strategy, and the strategy itself. The risk factors for oppression, and the actual groups oppressed.

So yes, look at interlocking systems of oppression affecting the marginalised. See that race and gender (masculine expectation this time), and are drivers of knife crime but then, design a strategy using that information to tackle knife crime. Not to to tackle racism (which inevitability alienates the white working class), or tackle masculinity (which would alienate females caught up in gangs), or tackle any of the other single issues. If knife crime is truly intersectional, then it will only be solved as an issue. The victims aren't blacks, or men, they're anyone caught up in gang culture. We don't need proxies to identify them because we have access to the real thing, the actual measure of victim-hood.

The sort of target I took my initial swipe at (the Helen Mirren quote, was the (now near ubiquitous) generic lumpen attack on the specific oppression happening to affect a specific group (and the guilt/victim-hood appropriated by association). Mirren's target was 'men' (not the people who did the property theft, the people who do the circumcision, the people who abuse, etc...) and her victims were 'women' (not the people who had their property stolen, the people who had been circumcised, the people who had been abused, etc..) - it's "Women have had to suffer this...!" not "People have had to suffer this and one of the causal factors (among many) is patriarchal structures..."

To be more concrete, I'll try to use your example of knife crime (thou 'victim' here is a difficult one to define - I'm going to assume it's both attackers and the attacked who are 'victims' of knife culture). So a good thing to do, something I think capable of achieving Good Things, might be to look at how race and racism play a part in that (say community police techniques). It would be helpful to any strategy to know that role. A bad thing to do would be for some black celebrity, whose closest brush with a knife came from slicing the porchetta, to start talking about the problems 'the black community' have to face regarding knife crime, for campaign to be launched about how 'black youth' is being drawn into knife crime... etc (the equivalent of both have happened, this isn't hypothetical). Those two responses may arise from a generally positive academic investigation, but they themselves as political acts are toxic. Not only do they alienate other victim groups in knife crime by underplaying their stories, but they shift focus from where it should be, since most involved in the campaign (and certainly the black celebrity) are totally complicit in the other factors driving knife crime (such as poverty), and far from feeling guilty about their role, they get to feel, not only exculpated, but a little bit of reflected victim-hood ("I'm black too, so...").

I guess a more solid way to to look at it would be to say if you're going to take an intersectional approach, then don't abuse it to exculpate whichever group you don't happen to be investigating, use it include more groups in the blame. If both poverty and race turn out to be involved then that means the black celebrity needs to be apologising (for his role in perpetuating poverty) as much as chastising others (for their implicit racism). That - coming from Helen Mirren - would have impressed me. "I can feel something of the plight of disenfranchised women, having suffered a small part of that myself, but I'm as much a perpetrator of economic disenfranchisement because of my wealth, so sorry about that, I'll donate more to charity in future...".

How many of these 'big speeches' and identity-based campaigns are about the campaigners themselves? How many admit their own part in the intersectional factors? I'm willing to be proven wrong, but it's difficult in the absolutely black-and-white rhetoric employed, not to see them as nothing but attempts to shift blame. Rich westerners trying to focus blame on literally anyone but themselves so they don't have to feel guilty about the fact that their new trainers have been made by 11 year-olds in squalor and they just fucking bought them anyway.

If you're willing to accept that some kind of feminist analysis is helpful, especially along intersectional/postcolonial lines, and that broadly speaking anti-patriarchy politics is doing Good Things (tm), then there's room to talk about what's to be done. If you're on the "we should be concerned about nothing but international class based geo-politics" boat, that is fair enough. It is a respectable boat. There's another boat, which is the "international class based geo politics would be swell, and so would emancipatory politics in political north countries"... I assume you are also in that boat. — fdrake

For sure, an analysis of the tools of oppression is going to be incomplete without examining patriarchy, but that doesn't always cash out well into anti-patriarchy politics doing good things, and I think the reason for that is that analysis can be quite compartmentalised, but politics can't be. Politics gets nowhere if it just swaps around who has the power, or just re-arranges the deckchairs of the institutions. So it has to be more holistic than the analysis that might inform it. Identity politics pushes in the opposite direction, seeks to divide rather than unify, so the politics is often intergroup, not class struggle (see terfs vs trans, the tension between anti-islamophobia and antisemitism), a political position has to hold power to account from a position of equal power for it to work. Theirs comes from capital; ours comes from solidarity. That's how it's always been for me. Recognising the patriarchy as a tool of oppression helps that by giving us a target. Recognising 'women' as the victims of oppression doesn't help. It sets up divisions and refocuses the fight on to reparation-based objectives, not structural ones.

there's a type of social concept which is required to understand and work on these things. Like a demographic. Trying to understand why people act the way they do. As men and women. Around relationships, cohabitation, sex and all that. There're problems. And they're not all addressed by throwing money at them.

If those problems are simultaneously interpersonal and systemic - which they seem to be - then you end up looking at norms and what enables people to act in accordance with them. That's the space this discussion operates in. — fdrake

That makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't want to be read as a 'throw money at it' type. I see the problems, even of poverty, as structural not distributive.

Where I'm not completely sold is in the move from the value of identifying structural problems themselves, to the value of identifying some statistical cluster of such problems.

FGM is a structural problem of its own. It's to do with culture, religion, colonialism, gender inequality, even racial oppression and, yes, class, get a walk-on part...

Abortion rights are also a multifaceted structural problem at the intersection of religion, reproductive rights, inheritance (capitalism), gender inequality, poverty, class (again)...

One of the crossover points is that they both affect only women and both have patriarchal power structures as one of the causal factors. Other than taxonomy, I can't see much gain in focusing on that happenstance.

Sure, if we tackle patriarchal structures and, say, religious power structures, we'd make some progress on both FGM and abortion rights. But if we tackled FGM and abortion rights we'd make some progress on both FGM and abortion too. I don't see what's gained by the intersectional approach over just tackling each issue as it is.

To be clear, I'm not saying that awareness of the intersection is pointless, but I don't see much value in it politically, and I see a lot of potential harms in terms of damaging solidarity.

How would you flip the table and play the old one? — fdrake

I suppose I'd try to make the argument that nothing here is not useful academically. The points you raise about masculine expectations, for example, could certainly inform any strategy fighting injustices of which they were contributory factors. But I just don't think that translates well to success via a political campaign like "Hey, men! Buck up, us women have had enough". Campaigns need to build solidarity, not break it down.

Not sure I buy the point about the elite trying to distract us from the real issues. I mean, of course that's a real thing, in many cases well organized and funded -- but shouldn't you apply the same statistical approach to whether Helen Mirren's mouthing off is necessarily part of such a scheme? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, you're right. See our other conversation about rhetoric! Also about the way in which we can't not make judgments about motive, we can't suspend judgment here because we have to act in one way or another and that requires us to make a judgement one way or the other. I reckon Helen Mirren will probably shrug it off, I expect her $18 million mansion will help soften the blow of being unwittingly drawn as a caricature in my sketch of the bourgeois.

(as you say - fully signed up tankie, got the t-shirt and all)

Heard a fascinating theory along these lines of the origin of organized religion: there have to be burdens, like dietary restrictions and so on, as bona fides of your seriousness about being a member of the group; and these are only necessary because human communities had grown large enough that you might not know right off whether someone is one of us or one of them. Religion then steps in as a kind of passport, offering proof of group membership by having these up-front costs. A shared religion indicates a level of trustworthiness, so then religion can even cross borders and enable the maintenance of trading ties and so on. But again, it has to cost you something more than professing membership or no one will think it a reliable indicator of your trustworthiness. Another way of handling the cheapness of talk there. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that is fascinating, I'd never heard that before, but it's similar to an issue I've worked quite closely on in group belief dynamics where some small contingent of the token beliefs (the membership badges, if you like) will be costly in themselves to profess. The idea is the same - a test of commitment. The difference (in my model) between that and the example you gave, is that I model group membership tokens as dynamic rather than institutionalised. They're more like starling murmurations, each group member trying to predict which ones will work by copying the others but those others are just made up of people doing exactly the same thing, everyone copying everyone else. In small groups this leads to conservatism with occasional paradigm shifts. In large groups, chaos factors in and it can lead to tokens which no-one either intended, nor necessarily even benefits from.

Well, that's the theory anyway... never finished testing it.

One other thing that occurs me, that comes off the idea of the sentiment of rationality being the feeling of release under tension, is that a lot of what we actually do is more rhetoric than logic, in this sense: if you think of storytelling as the art of withholding information -- so that the audience feels anticipation and is eagerly engaged, anxious for the next reveal -- then we make our little step-by-step points so that the audience will keep getting a little hit of the sentiment of rationality. — Srap Tasmaner

Nice. I could see it as a kind of meta-narrative to soften the blow of having some fundamental belief shaken. If it's part of a known story where the whole point is the 'big reveal', then we're less likely to reject it because we know that narrative - being-surprised-by-the-plot-twist. It's a way, perhaps, of dealing with the necessary tension by putting it in a familiar story where the tension is released. A musician friend of mine talks this way about music too - tension in discordancy with a predictable (but only just) release in eventual harmony.

If we're set up right, it's actually quite enjoyable to have one's foundational beliefs shaken. But it comes back down to intent. The story form can be abused too, the set-up-and-reveal nothing but a sham to draw you in to a theory which has no A, B therefore (surprising) C structure at all. And drawn in we will be...

It's interesting you mention rhetoric and storytelling because it struck me only from your mentioning it how much the effects of my doing that (I do it a lot) are read differently in different settings. This is my first (and only) foray into social media, and outside of this forum my social circles ( in terms of who I might make arguments to) are very limited. My wife (also an academic), my colleagues (all academics), and my clients (don't argue back!). It's weird having the wider diversity here and reading the different responses - weird in a good way. But response to rhetoric is one of the differences I've noticed. It's not always taken for what it is, often getting mixed up with the actual argument. I think maybe because when talking to people who know the basic form of what you're about to say, the rhetoric is more obvious. It stands out as embellishment because the substance is mostly already known (apart, of course, from the 'big reveal' at the end).

But then again, it come back down to intent still. If people don't trust my intent, they're not going to bother sifting through the rhetoric. They're not going to see it as a well-meaning way of embellishing the story. and they'd be right to because if I don't trust them, it's as likely to be a definition of social boundaries as it is a benevolent adornment. We do also argue to persuade, and sometimes the success of that persuasion is more important than the method.

Which comes back to that tension between charitable interpretation and 'enforcing' the rules to build a web of trust within which we can feel comfortable with these rhetorical embellishments and tension-building lead-ups. That's very much how I saw your OP, a (tentative) suspension of charity to enforce an absolutely indispensable rule. I'd like to see more of it, but it didn't go down well did it?

But I don't actually know what he'll say. — Srap Tasmaner

Turns out you do!

Well. That set the cat among the pigeons...

I hope it's not rude to lump you both into the same answer, but you touch on similar themes.

Firstly, there's a missed point to address. The point I was trying to make (from just before that 'poverty porn') is that there's a distinction - missed in Mirren's comments and woefully overlooked in today's identity politics - between the form of oppression and the victims of oppression. If I invented a tool of oppression (say a new police weapon) which targeted only the tall, it would oppress only the tall. Tallness would be a risk factor. But that would not mean that if you are tall, you are oppressed. It just means that it's one of the risk factors. And we don't need a weak proxy for who is oppressed (or at risk of it). The point of the poverty porn was to show that we can see who is oppressed - they're oppressed. There's no need to 'proxy it out' to 'women', or 'blacks' or 'trans-folk', or any other group because the effects of oppression are directly measurable themselves, and if they aren't then they're just not that important right now.

To tackle the FGM example given. We know the victims of FGM, they've been violently mutilated, we don't need the proxy identifier of saying they're 'women'. They're {the violently mutilated}, it's already a group directly the victim of a tool of oppression. Yes only women are at risk from that tool, but that has no bearing on Helen Mirren, who definitely isn't, her being a women doesn't change that. She's not at risk from that kind of oppression because she's rich and socially well-placed.

We don't need Helen Mirren to be 'slightly-oppressed' because she shares a chromosome arrangement with victims of FGM, and this is important, because the next most oppressed group to the poor victim of FGM is probably the fucking monster who just carried it out, not some wealthy actress who happens to also have ovaries.

Secondly, there's the whole space-on-the-front-page question. I get that there's some intersectionality with these issues - patriarchy, racism, capitalism - but intersectionality is not what Mirren is promoting (I'm using her here as an example, I don't want to focus too heavily on the details), there's no "...and this is what fuels the oppression of the working class" at the end. Gods, she'd have to swallow a hell of a bitter pill to add that.

No, it's quite the opposite. It's a way of avoiding talk of class oppression by looking for other groups of which the ruling classes can be members and so exculpate themselves. Mirren gets to wax lyrical in her £10,000 dress without being pelted with eggs because she's seen first and foremost as a woman, not as a bourgeois elite. That's not an accident. Keep the focus on traits which the ruling class can share and so keep the focus off them.

Women's rights have made amazing progress, we have equality enshrined in some quite powerful laws. Trans activism only really took off a few years ago and already there are laws protecting that group, and social pressure among at least the liberal classes is enormous to accommodate.

Yet...The gap between rich and poor is wider than it's ever been, we've just seen the largest transfer of wealth ever, and 50 million children are still at risk of starvation in parts of Africa.

If the two issues are so intersectional - where's the progress? Doesn't this all just smack of 'trickle-down' economics? "Oh, all this first-world whinging will eventually help out the poor via some tangential proxy (gender, skin colour, sexuality...), just give it time...". We don't need a tangential proxy, nor do we need to tackle the problem sideways by dealing with sexism, racism, or transphobia. We can tackle the problem head on.

The kid in my poverty porn was mining cobalt for smartphone batteries. This phone doesn't use them. It's not complicated, we just need to stop buying products which use conflict minerals. But to do that, the possibly needs to plastered on every front page until it's done, and the social approbation currently reserved for using the wrong pronoun needs to be applied to buying a new iPhone .. And so on...

But Helen Mirren has an iPhone, and no one cares.

Did you use Yahoo! or did you get someone to help you ask Siri? — Srap Tasmaner

No, of course not. I Facebook-chatted a Snapchat question to my Tik-Tok followers, who replied by re-Tweeting an Instagram to my Whatsapp - you know...the usual way.