#21,22 spyder: Surprisingly little interest in this thread. All we need now is some sort of economic disaster and a charismatic leader and we have all the ingredients for the Fourth Reich.

http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/838/

Stephen Colbert: Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don’t know whether it’s a new thing, but it’s certainly a current thing, in that it doesn’t seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?

AVC: You’re saying appearances are more important than objective truth?

SC: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority—authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say “Listen to me, and just don’t question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine”—the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. ‘Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America's current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren’t thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can’t argue with the validity of that feeling.

But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there’s only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press “liberal,” they call the press “biased,” not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it’s hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there’s any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it’s like the existence of another authority. So that’s another part of truthiness. Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

“I’m rather curious about where people sit on this matter. Are these pundits making a mountain out of a molehill, or not? Is this going to be another ID-type battle, or not? Actual thoughts of your own on the matter are welcome.”

Thank you for asking Clifford. Yes they are making a case for something that exists only in perception of those that want to see it. The proverbial misphrase: bias is in the eye of the perceiver. Ask a hundred people the same prejudicial question and you will get a spectrum of responses. Most of the anecdotal evidence for various specific “problems” has been refuted; and i am also sure there are professors and TA’s who have inappropriately crossed the line in hyping and proselytizing their own views (there are plenty of remedies within the university system to address this). I like the question being asked a lot these days: “Is it not the case that the study of liberal arts and enlightened thought (the US Constitution for example) is a liberal practice? While we may differ on how we define conservative/liberal stances, i would suggest that even the more conservative among us are far more liberal in our views than say those people who would support dictatorships, fascist military police states, and totalitarian regimes. The straw man in Horowitz’s world is used to create an opportunity to inject mythos into the pursuit of the study of logos. It is not conservative versus liberal, but faith versus logical and rational thought. In this sense YES we will have more ID battles in academia, particularly in the “liberal arts” wherein students in say history will demand that biblical interpretations of various events must be held to be true and rational. How would we respond to our students if one stands and state unequivocably that the Pope is infallible and has said such and such and that must be held to be true??? That is an example of the problem.

This doesn’t mean that those who perceive that their views, their opinions, and their faith, are being challenged, need to feel they are powerless in the academy. Students need to be encouraged to seek resolution of their issues of faith with those around them. If a student refuses to acknowledge(to believe to be true and valid) a lengthy set of factual references and citations that delineate that the US has acted in a way that is detrimental to itself, then there does need to be a remedy that works for this conflict. Simply dismissing the student’s beliefs will not help.

“The *opinion* that all opinions are equally valid is a stupid opinion. ”

cvj says:- Brilliant! I think that everyone agrees with this. Nobody said anything to the contrary here.

Cheers,

-cvj

Well, if the Brownshirt Acephalic Association (aka Bruin Alumni Asses) wants to hand out $100 bills, then take ‘em for all they’re worth, and punk ‘em good. A website detailing how students pulled one over on the BAA would be needed, of course:

“They gave me $100 for telling how my Prof advocated drinking the blood of innocent children! Kewl!”

Maybe some ‘how-to’ articles on lecture-note fabrication is needed.

Now pardon me, I have to get back to indoctrinating my students into the Satan messages that you hear if you play a Bach chorale backwards.

It is also unquestionable that there is a wide array of topics were true and false do not apply uniquely, however, while there may be several different opinions which are indistinguishable truth wise there may still be others which can be found to be false or inconsistent. Even here we have some grounds to differentiate right and wrong opinions, even though there might be many right ones (inherently, not due to lack of knowledge).

Then there are also some fields were all opinions are equal. “Does this taste good?” Though now the gourmets will shout…

On issues like the Death penalty I would say that it can reasonably shown to be wrong.
However if we already initially say “It’s a matter of opinion and all opinions are value judgements and can not be argued about.” we are eliminating all basis for rational discourse in these fields, and that’s a grave mistake, because if we can’t point out they are wrong then ideologues will run rampant.
And I’ve been seeing this alot over thepast few years on the internet more and more people block of all rational critizism of their points and views, no matter how absurd they are, with a blanket “Well that may be YOUR opinion…”

Uhmmm…. not saying you said anything to that end, but this is an issue that has been irking me for a while now…. *G*

P1 – All members of the Bush family are criminals.
P2 – George W is a member of the Bush family.
——–
C – Therefore George W is a criminal.

Granted, he takes shots at both sides of the ideological aisle, so he’s an equal opportunity offender, but I think the students would learn better if he used more generic examples. Since it’s a logic class we’re not really concerned with the truth values of the proposition.

We also discussed what differentiates a good and bad rapist. :\

$50 or $100 is a lot of money to an indebted undergrad. No, you can’t live on it for very long, you can’t party on it for very long, but it buys you a decent amount of food and that is not to be sneezed at. Hey, even $10 buys you a couple of sandwitches. Easy money is pretty tempting to a lot of students if they already share UCLAprofs views.

–Q.