Obnoxiousness and Aggressiveness in Politics and Philosophy

Analytic philosophy has a problem. It’s probably not the only discipline with this problem, and it’s not the only problem that this discipline has. But it may be of wider interest because it’s a problem that afflicts political discourse as well.

The problem is that verbal aggressiveness is extremely common and perhaps even the norm.

In academic philosophy—at least in its analytic (or “post-analytic,” or Anglo-American) manifestation—one develops a reputation by being confident, strident, unyielding, quick on your feet…and verbally aggressive. This is no secret in the discipline.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with being unyielding in the face of bad criticism. And confidence is a virtue when confidence is warranted. And it’s good to be quick on your feet if your quickness is used in the service of truth rather than sophistry. But sadly, and contrary to what one might think, confidence, quickness, and unyieldingness are misused in academic philosophy about as often as they are used rightly. Similarly in American political discourse. We are taught to expect sophistry in politics, but I—perhaps naively—thought that we could expect better from philosophers.

Of course if that way of proceeding really were the best route to the truth, then that’s the route we should take, no matter how unpleasant it might be. But it is not the best route to the truth. Far from it. And to think that it is is to ignore the importance of human psychology in inquiry.

In many branches of inquiry—and in philosophy and politics in particular—the difference between a better position and worse one is often almost vanishingly small. We are often called upon to compare one position, blessed with virtues and laden with problems, to another that is only slightly less blessed and only slightly more heavily-laden. Such decisions are extraordinarily difficult even for minds unburdened by anger and resentment and unclouded by competitive impulses. For minds that are so burdened and so clouded, success is basically a pipe dream.

Sadly, the culture in analytic philosophy fosters competition and, consequently, sophistry. When you read a paper in public, you know that much of the audience will be gunning for you in the question-and-answer session. Sometimes it will be because they are committed to a contrary position. Sometimes the goal will merely be glory--for nothing brings glory faster in philosophy than humiliating a speaker by revealing some niggling problem with his view, or raising some question he cannot answer.

I can speak with some authority on this subject I think given that I was once one of Them. I liked aggressive argument, I was very, very good at it, and I somehow came to believe—or at least I said that I that believed—that such argument was the best way to the truth. Let the proponents of the various positions have at it, and devil take the hindmost. Some people found such an atmosphere off-putting, but if you can’t stand the heat—so I thought and said on several occasions—get out of the kitchen.

The immediate point here is that I am not writing as someone who is bad at this kind of competition, nor as someone who finds it upsetting. I am, rather, writing as someone who has come to see that it is an impediment to attaining the truth. When the subtext of Professor Jones’s question is “You are a piece of shit, and I am smarter than you,” it's difficult to assess the question on its merits. And it's even harder to admit it if Professor Jones happens to be right. Especially in front of a roomful of people. And especially when you know that, if you do concede the point, you will not be seen as the honest inquirer that you are, but, rather as the intellectually inferior loser of a verbal battle for supremacy.

Consider this story from my first year of graduate school:
A well-known philosopher was one of the speakers a the annual Chapel Hill colloquium. After his paper, one of my professors asked him a question—a perfectly civil one, in this case—but the answer was impenetrable. My professor rephrased his question and tried again. The answer was so baffling that it seemed as if the speaker had misunderstood the question. So a third attempt was made. No luck. Afterwards, as he later told me, my professor went up to the speaker, who he knew well, and tried to explain his question again. With no one else within earshot, the speaker told him “Oh, I understood your question just fine, but what could I do? You had me dead to rights.” Weep if you will over Anna Karenina, this is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard…

But all of this should sound familiar even to people outside of academia, for this is, in essence, the Crossfire model of discourse: start the discussion with the goal of ending the discussion with the same position you started with. Any change of position signals that you have lost what is, in effect, a fight. When problems are raised for your position, the goal is not to consider them honestly, but to say something—anything—to muddy the waters or change the subject. The preferred method is to employ some kind of ad hominem attack—preferably a tu quoque or “you too” response. Is W a big fat liar? Well, Clinton lied, too. So there.

We know that the passions that are stirred up in aggressive and competitive discourse are very strong. We know, in particular, that these passions make admitting error particularly difficult. We know that admitting error is required for making progress and achieving agreement. Yet we continue to employ this aggressive, competitive model of discourse. We continue to employ a method that is virtually guaranteed not to achieve our goals.

We continue to debate when we should be inquiring.

[In the comments, Richard points us to Norman Schwarz's "Philosophy as a Blood Sport," which, somehow, I wasn't even aware of. For those interested in the current (sad) state of academic philosophy, this (very short) essay is worth a read.]