If there are no correct opinions, also the claim that ‘all humans who have been to mars’ has no extension and it makes perfect sense is incorrect. Again you are making no sense.
Applying a category presupposes criteria that allow one to say if/when the criteria correctly apply or not , this constitutes its discriminative semantic value. And the fact that you keep repeating that your nonsense makes perfect sense to you doesn’t make your views rationally compelling to me.
But from that definition doesn’t follow that “all our opinions are biased”, right? So repeating the claim that “all our opinions are biased” doesn’t make it correct.
How did you assess likelihood in this case? I get what you wish to claim, but you didn’t provide any compelling argument to support it so far.
No idea what you are trying to say. You wrote “Claims of the form ‘all X are Y’ have no logical or semantic issues and are completely normal intelligible claims” but I offered a counter example “all cats are dogs” are of the form ‘all X are Y’ but they make no sense. And I offered that example to show that the semantic contrastive value of the word “cats” and “dogs” do not allow one to claim “all cats are dogs”. The same goes for the syntactic form “all X are Y” that makes sense if “not all X are Y” makes sense.
Also the word “unicorn” has no extension in the real world, but we can say what a unicorn would look like if it existed and what would make the difference between unicorns and other creatures. The same goes with “bias”.
I was talking about evidences in relation to claims I actually made not in relation to claims I didn’t make. I offered a definition of “politics” I didn’t cite any experts.
That definition of politics doesn’t promote any particular political agenda at all, neither explicitly nor implicitly. As I argued, all political views (capitalism, communism, islamism, christianity, nationalism, anarchism, humanism etc. you name it) have to do with competition over scarce resources and competing views over such competition. As an example, I mentioned the communist views which theorise the competition between classes, and promote Communist propaganda competes against Capitalist propaganda in the political struggle. And again “natural” state is not my phrasing it’s yours. If “natural” state means that there is “permanent” competition I already argued that the claim doesn’t even make sense to me nor it’s implied by my definition. With the expression “the nature of politics”, I’m simply referring to what all those pushing a particular political agenda converge on in their understanding of the political task. Even humanist who may push for cooperation to overcome competition presuppose the existence of competing interests among human beings which may lead to conflict, unless they will succeed in pushing cooperation, with the help e.g. of shared knowledge. Unfortunately they must also deal with the fact that there are non-humanist political views which they have to politically struggle with, if they can’t cooperate with . And I guess there are limits to such cooperation: to what extent humanists can cooperate with nazis?
My point was that since in your examples it’s unclear what is the role of cognitive criteria wrt non-cognitive criteria in assessing people biases, your examples didn’t help me much understand our divergences on the notion of “bias”.
No, we do. The fact that we rely on people’s expertise is not an argument against the rationality of such a reliance as a part of our understanding of “shared” knowledge (which BTW humanists may wish to promote, right?). Besides today more than ever scientists must rely on scientific equipment (including computers, accelerators, microscopes etc.) and a wider scientific community to pursue their research. All of which is grounded on knowledge that goes beyond their expertise. In other words, even expertise is grounded on “shared” knowledge. So “trusting” in the context of “shared” knowledge is not necessarily irrational however fallible. And trusting expertise may have its more or less reliable cognitive rules.
Not crazy but it seems you wish to imply from that fact more than you can afford. For example, there are cross-domain methodological approaches that can be used in questioning domain specific expertise. A physician may question the relevance of the findings of a biologist on the ground of statistical notions which both may have, even if biology is not the domain of expertise of a physician. Not all cross-domain methodological approaches need to be so advanced, so there might be different degrees of reviewing means depending on the educational background: e.g. if in a scientific paper findings are reported without citing sources, providing evidence, describing methodology and similar things one can reasonably get suspicious about the scientific value of the paper, without being an expert of the field.
Your question was this not mine. Mine was “what do we mean be ‘politics’?” when we talk about people pushing a “political” agenda whatever that agenda might be? There you have my answer.
I don’t know what “natural state” means. “Natural state” reminds me of a biological state or historically primitive stage of humanity. In any case there is no permanent state of competition, clearly human beings can cooperate over many things. So what? This fact doesn’t change nor contradict my definition of “politics”.
BTW, do you believe that cooperation is a permanent state? A natural state? If not, also the political view you wish to push has to deal with the fact that there are competing interests and views prior to the kind of cooperation you see missing. Your objections go nowhere really. Worse, they are self-damaging.
Who said anything about there being no correct opinions? We’re talking about the intelligibility of claims. Intelligibility and correctness are not the same thing. A claim can be intelligible and incorrect. You’re confusing three principles.
The claim ‘all opinions are biased’ does not require non-biased opinions to exist to be intelligible - this is demonstrated by the fact that ‘all humans who have been to Mars’ is an intelligible category despite having no members
A claim does not have to be true to be intelligible - this is separately demonstrated by the example ‘all cats are dogs’ which is an intelligible claim (we know what the claim wants to be the case), but incorrect.
A biased opinion is not necessarily an incorrect one. Bias is a tendency to judge in accordance with a prior preference. It’s not the same as being wrong.
None of this entails that there are no correct opinions.
But from that definition doesn’t follow that “all our opinions are biased”, right? So repeating the claim that “all our opinions are biased” doesn’t make it correct.
Indeed. You asked for a definition. Not proof of a theory.
How did you assess likelihood in this case? I get what you wish to claim, but you didn’t provide any compelling argument to support it so far.
Again, we’re disentangling your misconstrual of the argument. We haven’t even gotten to supporting evidence yet. In St his instance, however, the theory that all opinions are biased has a long history in the psychological literature, which we could get into, but it’s not the point here. Your shifting the burden of proof. It is not a given that your mode of analysis surmounts bias until I can prove otherwise. It’s your claim that it does, it’s up to you to show that.
I’m simply pointing out here that, according to many highly regarded theories of psychology, bias pervades all opinion forming and, as such, your notion that you could step outside of your political ideology to perform some meta-analysis of how politics works is on shaky ground.
I would have thought, for someone interested in “intellectual gym” the chance to demonstrate the evidence for your view would have been welcomed, not foisted onto the challenging party.
You wrote “Claims of the form ‘all X are Y’ have no logical or semantic issues and are completely normal intelligible claims” but I offered a counter example “all cats are dogs” are of the form ‘all X are Y’ but they make no sense.
Intelligible != correct. Look it up.
I was talking about evidences in relation to claims I actually made…
Then “what evidence do you need” is the expression you’re after, not “what evidence would you need”. I do not need any evidence to prove the claims you’ve currently made are not motivated by political ideology. Currently your claims have been limited to things like the nature of intelligible classes and the value of an analytic approach to politics.
As I argued…
You didn’t. You stated.
No, we do. The fact that we rely on people’s expertise is not an argument against the rationality of such a reliance as a part of our understanding of “shared” knowledge (which BTW humanists may wish to promote, right?).
No one said anything about ‘understanding’. The argument was about adjudication.
So “trusting” in the context of “shared” knowledge is not necessarily irrational however fallible. And trusting expertise may have its more or less reliable cognitive rules.
Nor was the argument about ‘trusting’. Again, it was about adjudication.
A physician may question the relevance of the findings of a biologist on the ground of statistical notions which both may have, even if biology is not the domain of expertise of a physician.
Once more. The argument is not about ‘questioning’ either. It’s about adjudication. A physician may not claim “Biologist A is correct and Biologist B is incorrect” because their grasp of statistics is merely equal to that of the biologists in question. He may offer critique. Critique is not what we’re talking about here.
if in a scientific paper findings are reported without citing sources, providing evidence, describing methodology and similar things…
… then there is not a shadow of doubt it would not be published. I have no naive trust in the infallibility of the peer review process, but I’m damn sure its not going to miss a paper with no citations, no method, and no evidence.
I don’t know what “natural state” means.
The way things are. Your claim is of the form “politics is…” This is claim about the natural state of things. As opposed to a claim that, say, ‘politics’ is just a word with no fixed meaning. Which would make claims about politics not about a natural state, but normative ones.
(Sorry, didn’t notice your remark earlier, so a late reply.)
I agree totally with this.
There are many Russians that don’t like at all Putin and what he has done to the country. And here I really find a real tragic issue if that really would happen:
Let’s say that finally the Russians have had enough of all this imperial bullshit they have been forced to suffer under the Putin years and have had enough of the toxic jingoist imperialism and the corruption and cronyism of the Siloviki. And assume these new “Westernizers” who hate with all of their guts Putinism, the Siloviki and the Slavophiles come into power in Russia. And they would want to join the EU and make a dramatic change to the older Russia.
Great. And how much would we in Europe trust them to stay in power? How much we would fear about a new Putin coming into power or seizing power? How much people would fear that Russians would going back on their old ways? Would we trust this “New Russia” to stay on a new path and not reverting back to it’s former ways?
In fact in the other thread I made I posted a similar question about the US and Trump. Yes, many Americans don’t like Trump. He’s not very popular today. Yet the fact that you cannot go around is that Americans voted Trump to power twice. Which means that his policies are supported at least by an important portion of the voters. That means that it can happen again, perhaps with one more capable populist.
It’s really going to take a long time if that change would happen that the Russian border would be something like the Swedish border to us. Trust doesn’t grow in trees. It simply would take time.
You said it: “‘correct opinions’ makes sense as a category of opinion even if it has no members”.
First, as I said the problem is not the extension of a term, but the intension of a term. I made the example of the unicorn. Even unicorns do not exist but I can specify criteria to establish if unicorns exist or not. So I asked you to provide criteria to establish what distinguishes biased opinions from non biased ones. This is what I called the contrastive/discriminative semantic value.
Second, in the absence of requested clarifications from your side, I found legit to understand the claim “all opinions are biased” in light of my understanding of “bias”. To me “bias” qualifies opinions as cognitively defective. And according to that understanding claiming that “all opinions are cognitively defective” is ultimately self-defeating, because also the opinion “all opinions are cognitively defective” would be cognitively defective. That’s why I find it unintelligible to claim that all opinions are biased.
Third, if “bias” generically refers to the idea that opinions can express some non-cognitive preference, the claim that “all opinions are biased” is not made evident by the definition of “bias” itself (as “all cats are not dogs”). But most of all, notice that your talk of bias was a rebuttal to my questioning psychologically-ethically loaded analysis on cognitive grounds. So it’s not clear to me why the appeal to “all opinions are biased” would make both analytical approaches equal on cognitive grounds, if the qualification “biased” holds independently from their cognitive value.
Not much empirically incorrect, but analytically incorrect. That’s why I claimed it makes no sense if you understand the words “cats” and “dogs”. And even if analytical false claims can be claimed to be intelligible while being analytically false, as you do, fine with me. Still it’s the contrastive meaning of “cats” and “dogs” that excludes the possibility for “dogs” to be “cats” and makes it analytically false. So this example again illustrates my semantic principle.
Still unclear. Here a list of opinions I have:
“I have 5 fingers in each of my hands”
“Today is the 4th March”
“Paris is the capital of France”
“2 + 2 = 4”
“Snow is typically white”
“All cats are not dogs”
“Jokes often make me laugh”
“Somebody called me yesterday”
“Bits value can be either 0 or 1”
“Words are made of letters”
“Watermellon is a type of fruit”
“I’m a human being not a plant”
“There have been no humans who have been to Mars”
“Political views can differ”
Show me how these opinions are biased in the sense you have defined “Bias is a tendency to judge in accordance with a prior preference”.
I wouldn’t expect from somebody claiming “The common ground we have (hopefully) is that of rationality, that X, Y, and Z provide reasons to believe A, B, and C.” and “I’m saying if you choose to believe one narrative over another you must give reasons why otherwise we’ve git nothing to discuss.” the need for much solicitation. Still you claimed “all opinions are biased” without clarifying what you mean by “bias”, despite my solicitations, and without providing evidence, despite my skepticism about the truth of that claim given my understanding of “bias”.
There is no argument to misconstrue. You just made statements unclear to me. I can’t bring up counterexamples to a theory which I do not understand. My idea of partiality in politics doesn’t exclude the possibility of convergence for mutual intelligibility. An example of this is the notion of “politics” but I think that holds for many other more or less interconnected concepts used in geopolitical analysis like “security dilemmas”, “power relations”, “national interest”, “sovereignty”, “ideology” etc. (all of which can figure in pattern of reasoning with practical implications for decision makers) which transcend any particular political agenda and “inform” political competition between particular political agendas.
Part of my intellectual gym is providing definitions. For example, I reported my definition of “politics” to explain my approach to political analysis and why I find political analysis based on the “shared rules” of political competition more enlightening than a psychological-ethical analysis. I also provided reasons to support such a definition after you challenged it (see the example of “communism” and “humanism” versus “capitalism” or “nazism”, see the clarifications on the notion of “power”, and on the notion of “knowledge” as a scarce resource, see my counterargument about the irrelevance of “all opinions are biased” if that doesn’t compromise cognitive efficacy also in the context of political analysis, see my rebuttal “do you believe in permanent cooperation” as a presupposition of some political agenda?). I’m still waiting for you to counter my arguments instead of repeating your questionable statements. Said that, I could elaborate my views further (as I did in the old forum on many occasions) but that’s for now enough to me.
In any case, I’m not sure what your “intellectual gym” is hence my requests of clarification. And what’s most puzzling in your intellectual gym is the fact despite being seemingly supportive of political agendas promoting cooperation over competition you’ve got quite an uncooperative and confrontational attitude in debates. So good luck with your political agenda, dude.
If equal experts can diverge that means that also expertise is not enough for adjudication either, right? So what is the point of your appeal to domain-specific “expertise” when your ad-hoc example implies that domain-specific “expertise” doesn’t let one adjudicate? As I said, if we really can’t decide on cognitive grounds we can suspend judgement instead of choosing one over the other based on non-cognitive preferences (would our suspension of judgement prove that we are unbiased to you in this case?). My point is that, depending on our background education, it’s not impossible for us to adjudicate reliability to one expert over another on compelling cognitive grounds even though we lack domain-specific expertise.
That depends on how you construe your example. But “Yes, yes, and a dozen times, yes” I find it empirically possible that certain cross-domain notions of statistics can help e.g. a physicist understand that “Biologist A is correct and Biologist B is incorrect” . Now what?
Mine was just an example and, as I said, such criteria vary depending on the background education. Besides, in science there is a phenomenon called “predatory publishing” where standards are less strict than other more qualified publishing channels, so even average background knowledge may be enough to spot problematic papers in such cases.
It’s irrelevant if words (including the word “politics”) can change or their usage can be stretched, I’m interested in focusing on what political views I know of have in common despite their particular agenda.
You said it: “‘correct opinions’ makes sense as a category of opinion even if it has no members”
Again, that’s an argument about the way categories work to explain why your counter failed. The key word is if.
In the case that there were no correct opinions, the category ‘correct opinions’ would still be intelligible. Therefore your counter that ‘biased opinions’ isn’t intelligible without there being some ‘unbiased opinions’ is demonstrated false.
Nowhere in that dialectic is there a claim that there actually are no correct opinions.
I asked you to provide criteria to establish what distinguishes biased opinions from non biased ones.
And I provided the APA definition.
the claim that “all opinions are biased” is not made evident by the definition of “bias” itself (as “all cats are not dogs”).
No, it is made evident by decades of research into the matter by scores, if not hundreds, of psychologists. Research which I will not repeat here because;
the burden of proof is on you, it’s your idea I’m critiquing
I’m giving you the credit of assuming you’ve done at least a modicum of research into the field you’re making sweeping claims about and so will already be aware of such theories
I don’t (as expressed before) believe we’re in a position to adjudicate between experts, so the mere existence of such theories is sufficient to reduce the power of your argument from necessity
this is a thread on Ukraine, not psychology
I’m not a psychologist, if you want an explanation of these theories you’re better off going to the source
But most of all, notice that your talk of bias was a rebuttal to my questioning psychologically-ethically loaded analysis on cognitive grounds. So it’s not clear to me why the appeal to “all opinions are biased” would make both analytical approaches equal on cognitive grounds, if the qualification “biased” holds independently from their cognitive value.
Because there’d be no non-biased way to test the cognitive value of the conclusions, so judgement of such would merely repeat the judgements that would have been made in the “psychologically-ethically loaded analysis”, just with the veneer of a pretence at ‘higher level’ thinking.
Show me how these opinions are biased in the sense you have defined “Bias is a tendency to judge in accordance with a prior preference”.
No.
a) again, I’m not a psychologist; I know these theories exist because I have read them, I am not your best source for explaining them
b) this is not the place to demonstrate theories in psychology, this is a thread primarily about the war in Ukraine
c) I neither need, nor want, to demonstrate such theories, it is entirely sufficient for me (and should be for you) that they exist; you don’t have to agree with them, you have to demonstrate how your approach deals with their objections
My idea of partiality in politics doesn’t exclude the possibility of convergence for mutual intelligibility.
We’ve been through this. It’s the likelihood that’s in question, not the possibility.
I think that holds for many other more or less interconnected concepts used in geopolitical analysis like “security dilemmas”, “power relations”, “national interest”, “sovereignty”, “ideology” etc. (all of which can figure in pattern of reasoning with practical implications for decision makers) which transcend any particular political agenda and “inform” political competition between particular political agendas.
You’re begging the question.
You asked us to define such terms. My claim is that any process by which we do so would only lead to definitions biased in favour of our predetermined preferences (in this case political ideology). You can’t answer that charge assuming the answer.
If equal experts can diverge that means that also expertise is not enough for adjudication either, right?
Correct.
So what is the point of your appeal to domain-specific “expertise” when your ad-hoc example implies that domain-specific “expertise” doesn’t let one adjudicate?
Because that’s the bare minimum standard to even be allowed a seat at the table. There’s no point discussing ideas which don’t even meet that standard. My point about adjudication relates to ideas which have met this standard. Think of it as the difference between the qualifiers and the final in football.
My point is that, depending on our background education, it’s not impossible for us to adjudicate reliability to one expert over another on compelling cognitive grounds even though we lack domain-specific expertise.
How?
You can’t do so on the quality of their argument or evidence (that’s the exact domain-specificity they exceed your level in).
You can’t do so in some tangential related field like statistics (again, you will not exceed their level here such as to sit in arbitration, you’ll only, at best,
equal it, meaning their opinion is of equal value to yours.
You can’t do it on some philosophical-logical grounds either. Again, your authority there would at best match theirs since there’s no independent measure of such a body of knowledge to act as arbitrator.
So I can’t see a mechanism. Certainly interested to hear if you think you have one.
I find it empirically possible that certain cross-domain notions of statistics can help e.g. a physicist understand that “Biologist A is correct and Biologist B is incorrect” . Now what?
Well then your counterargument is pointless. As I repeatedly said the problem is not the extension of a concept, but its intention. I already gave you the example of “unicorn”, you already gave the example of “men being in mars”, but I countered that these are not arguments against the principle that words have to have discriminative/contrastive value to be meaningful and showed why.
The reference to the impossibility of having all incorrect opinions came from the fact that you didn’t clarify the notion of bias, and my notion of bias implies that correct opinions and inherently cognitively defective from which it follows that is conceptually impossible that all our opinions are cognitively defective.
So it’s not my misinterpretation the problem, but your lack of intellectual cooperation (no definition of “bias” provided when solicited) and your persistent failure to get the semantic point I was making, and you wished to object.
Yes later you offered a definition. But unfortunately it wasn’t enough to establish that “all our opinions are biased”. It wasn’t an analytical truth. Nor I found it evident. Therefore, if you are here to provide reasons to believe what you believe then you should have been compelled to provide reasons given my skepticism. You are the one pushing for cooperation, right or not?
Then quote an example of decades of research claiming that “all our opinions are biased”.
You are critiquing my views not in light of my own assumptions but in light of your own assumptions which I find questionable either because they are unintelligible to me or uncorroborated.
What are the sweeping claims I made about such theories? Quote me.
What is the argument from necessity you are referring to? Quote me.
Well if you were to claim that my opinions on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict are biased, and “bias” is a psychological notion then I’d like to understand what you mean by that.
Yes I thought so. Unfortunately, I have no idea which theories or experts you are referring to, you didn’t cite even one single theory, expert, paper claiming that literally “all opinions are biased”.
So what? are you implying that a non-biased way to test the cognitive value of the conclusions is cognitively defective? But then we will go back to square one namely that “bias” refers to a cognitively defective opinion. If that is not the case, any accusation of bias is irrelevant to me, since I attribute greater cognitive value of a political analysis grounded on shared rules of different political agendas than the cognitive value of a political analysis that is grounded on non-shared rules of a particular political agenda. The cognitive distortion is more likely to affect the latter kind of analysis than the first kind of analysis. In order to counter my views, focus on what I do care: namely cognitive criteria and their efficacy. I do not care about non-cognitive preferences.
Well, then I think that is very much likely that’s called geopolitical analysis. Tons of research on this for centuries. Are you unfamiliar with the literature? Now what?
I asked you to provide an alternative definition to “politics” that I think it’s shared by different political views. You tried to associate my definition to capitalist and conservative views. And failed because also communism, humanism, islamism, christianity and nationalism must share that definition to make sense of their political task in a way that is intelligible to themselves and their competitors. And you too believe that definition is quite correct: indeed, you too do not believe that cooperation is a given natural permanent state between all human beings, right or not?
I have no idea what you are trying to say. This is how I read it: only if we are able to adjudicate equal experts’ disputes which their level of expertise can’t adjudicate, then we are allowed to discuss ideas.
In other words, only experts should discuss ideas and only the ones that are top expertise, because they can adjudicate the other experts’ disputes. And if among the top experts there are disputes then they shouldn’t discuss ideas.
Meanwhile you are claiming that all opinions, including expert opinions, are biased. Including the one whose expertise enables them to adjudicate equal experts’ disputes. They are biased if they agree and they are biased if they don’t. But that’s irrelevant wrt the adjudication issue based on expertise so on cognitive grounds.
If this understanding of your views is correct, I don’t find anything rationally compelling or enlightening in them. But most of all I have no idea why you are torturing yourself with such self-defeating ruminations. Nor am I sure whether they help you promote your political agenda, or promote cooperation over competition. Let me know if they do.
I told you how. Construing ad-hoc examples to make my argument look more and more unlikely is methodologically questionable. In real life, there actually are cross-domain methodological criteria (including statistics or logic) that, depending on background education, can do the magic (one can find also scientific articles that corroborate the plausibility of my claim: like “Why the Empirical Sciences Need Statistics So Desperately“ by Olle Haggstrom or “The application of statistical physics to evolutionary biology” by Guy Sella , Aaron E Hirsh ).
Besides, as I said, also hard science is grounded on “shared” knowledge: namely, even domain-specific expertise may rely on other domain specific-expertise. So for example, a computer scientist could detect that some paper by biologist A is grounded on some faulty machine learning libraries while another biologist B isn’t . While both based on the their academic background can be considered equally experts. So, even a computer scientist who has no domain specific expertise in biology can spot the faulty biologist. Again, all depends on one’s background education. But, for example in the case of “predatory publishing”, there might be papers that can be legitimately questioned also on the basis of an average background education, if one takes time to seriously review the paper.
Finally, if I am really unable to adjudicate between two experts on cognitively compelling grounds (that can happen, and even more often than I wish), I can suspend my judgement. And will focus on things the experts can agree on.
I take your claim to be that we can find some common meanings and understandings of politics and political terms (like ‘coup d’etat’) by a process of analysis which avoids the ‘psychological’ aspects of more emotive arguments about who’s to blame and what moral boundaries they’ve transgressed, right?
In our discussion, you keep wanting to bring my critique of that argument back to the possibility of finding such agreement or such common ground existing.
That’s not my critique.
My critique is that the process used to find those common understandings will be no less affected by the ‘psychological’ aspects than the process of establishing blame, or moral transgression.
I’ve raised that critique because considerable psychological research has shown how pervasive our biases are - from microsecond first impressions, fake memories, implicit racism, … to the construction of sensory reality itself. These are well established principles and I don’t expect to have to defend their mere existence here.
You have, thus far failed to counter that critique.
A counter to that critique does not consist of an argument over terminology, or a claim that empty sets are unintelligible.
It consists of some reasons why you think the commonly held principles of pervasive bias in psychology would not apply to the process you’re advocating.
Anything less than that is a distraction.
On the subject of expert adjudication…
I have no idea what you are trying to say. This is how I read it: only if we are able to adjudicate equal experts’ disputes which their level of expertise can’t adjudicate, then we are allowed to discuss ideas.
Why would discussion of ideas be limited to adjudication between experts. There’s lots more to discuss beyond who’s correct.
In real life, there actually are cross-domain methodological criteria (including statistics or logic) that, depending on background education, can do the magic (one can find also scientific articles that corroborate the plausibility of my claim: like “Why the Empirical Sciences Need Statistics So Desperately“ by Olle Haggstrom or “The application of statistical physics to evolutionary biology” by Guy Sella , Aaron E Hirsh )
These all offer critique. They do not establish one author is correct and the other incorrect. Who arbitrates?
(And thanks for the references by the way; fascinating looking papers)
there might be papers that can be legitimately questioned also on the basis of an average background education, if one takes time to seriously review the paper.
There might. As I mentioned before the argument is not about ‘questioning’, it’s about adjudication.
Finally, if I am really unable to adjudicate between two experts on cognitively compelling grounds (that can happen, and even more often than I wish), I can suspend my judgement. And will focus on things the experts can agree on.
You are way far off track here. You started raising objections to my views, not the other way around. In particular, you found questionable my view that geopolitical analysis more enlightening than psychological-moral analysis. So I explained why I find it enlightening. I gave you 2 arguments grounded on cognitive reasons: one is that geopolitical analysis offers a conceptual framework (like politics, security dilemma, national interest, power relation) where competing political views can converge despite being grounded on different moral-political agendas. And when I say “can” I’m not referring to mere logical possibility but to the actual disposition of political decision makers and advisors (see Brzeziński or Kissinger to name a few) to converge on such conceptual framework. It’s this framework that lays the ground also for understanding of some political patterns that can not be explained by shared moral-ideological principles: for example the alliance between nazis and Soviet Union during the Second World War. The second argument is that moral-psychological agendas are more prone to confuse cognitive factors and non-cognitive factors, as for example in the case were expectations about how things can go are based on desired outcomes suggested by psychological-moral grounds. This predicament can also lead to the political weaponisation of the “bias” notion as a cognitive distortion which rival political agendas suffer from but not ours (and this argument should suffice to show that I’m certainly not the one claiming that geopolitical analysis is by default unbiased).
So, obviously, if you want to make compelling objections to my views first make an effort to understand what I’m talking about instead of making random objections based on non-shared assumptions of yours, which I don’t find even intelligible.
Besides, I didn’t claim anywhere that “empty sets are unintelligible”, that’s your confused phrasing. And the fact that you keep putting into my mouth your misunderstanding of my claims is rather telling of your intellectual honesty. I said that it’s conceptually impossible that all opinions are biased, if “bias” ultimately refers to cognitive failures because it’s a conceptually self-defeating claim. And this argument should make you understand that the claim that “the class ’correct opinions’ is empty” is unintelligible while “the class ’unicorn’ is empty” is intelligible: in both cases it’s the discriminative semantic value of those words that grants their intelligible vs non-intelligible usage.
I never claimed that “bias” doesn’t apply to my process, indeed you can not quote me claiming this. Nor anything I said implies such a claim. I questioned your notion of “bias” when I read the claim “all opinions are biased”: because either the notion of “bias” is cognitively grounded then it doesn’t make sense or it’s analytically self-refuting, or it’s non-cognitively grounded, then it is irrelevant wrt what I was arguing. People, politicians, analysts can be biased all you want (in the sense of supporting one political agenda over another) and still converge on a conceptual framework to make their political decisions/actions/cost-benefit reasoning reciprocally intelligible.
After all these counterarguments of mine, instead of addressing them pertinently, you still repeat your initial random objections as if I was compelled by them, which I’m not for the reasons you keep ignoring (and challenging questions that you keep dodging).
I have no idea, you brought that up not me. And you brought that up wishing to make a point which I don’t get. Your ad-hoc pointless example is even more self-damaging than it looks. Indeed, you not only are unable to adjudicate between “equal” experts’ disputes if you are not an equal expert. You are not even able to identify “equal” experts on domain-specific expertise grounds ex-hypothesis. So in your ad-hoc pointless example you must assume a non-expert “shared” knowledge background (e.g. about academic titles, number of articles published, scientific magazines where articles where published, etc.) which may be cognitively irrelevant to asses “equal” expertise if such and adjudication can be justified only on domain-specific expertise.
I told you repeatedly. Cognitive criteria to arbitrate, adjudicate, judge who is right or wrong in experts’ disputes depend on the educational background of people. Those who have an adequate cross-domain methodological background to spot failures in the experts’ research despite lacking domain-specific expertise and adjudicate, arbitrate, judge with cognitive compelling reasons who is right and who is wrong.
But I still don’t see the point of your argument. How is this argument useful to support your objections against my view that geopolitical analysis is cognitively more enlightening then psychological-moral analysis or to prove that “all opinions are biased” (indeed also those who are able to adjudicate according to your high standards of expertise would be biased anyways ) or that I’m not here to convince you about my personal political agenda (which I didn’t even expose).
Who adjudicates that claim “2 + 2 = 4” and not “2 + 2 = 3” ? You yourself if you learned how to sum numbers right? The same goes for all claims made by domain-specific experts. If you have enough pertinent background knowledge, even if it is not domain-specific, you can provide compelling reasons to invalidate the findings of one scientist over the other. If you do not have it, you can suspend your judgement and focus on what they agree on. Or not. So what?
make an effort to understand what I’m talking about
I perfectly well understand what you’re talking about. Your explanation above is quite clear, and doesn’t change my objection. You claim…
geopolitical analysis offers a conceptual framework (like politics, security dilemma, national interest, power relation) where competing political views can converge despite being grounded on different moral-political agendas.
I disagree. I have neither seen evidence of that convergence, nor does the psychological literature seem to make it likely. You’ve given no reasons whatsoever why defining concepts is more likely to lead to ‘convergence’ than talking about ethics. there is widespread agreement on ethics (with peripheral disputes). There is widespread agreement on terminology and conceptual frameworks (with peripheral disputes). There’s no default reason why one would lead to more convergence than another and you’ve given none.
the actual disposition of political decision makers and advisors (see Brzeziński or Kissinger to name a few) to converge on such conceptual framework
You’ve given no evidence of their having done so. They agreed on a course of action. Who’s to say they didn’t also agree on a shared ethical approach - such as minimising risk to the ordinary populations of both countries)?
It’s this framework that lays the ground also for understanding of some political patterns that can not be explained by shared moral-ideological principles: for example the alliance between nazis and Soviet Union during the Second World War
Again, the Soviets and the Nazis agreed on a shared course of action. You’ve given no evidence this was ‘explained’ by anything, and, as per my objection, any ‘explanation’ you give is likely to arise from your own political preferences.
expectations about how things can go are based on desired outcomes suggested by psychological-moral grounds.
Again, you’ve provided no evidence that this is the case. But also this gives a very good example of the kind of biased statement masquerading as analysis that I’m talking about.
What’s actually happening, I suspect, in these discussions, is that someone (most likely on the left) is proposing a peaceful, anti-war, perhaps socialist solution. you don’t like that because is clashes with your personal ideology. But in stead of arguing the actual disagreement, you try to gain the ‘high-ground’ by claiming they are suffering form a ‘cognitive confusion’ about what what they ‘want’ to be the case and what actually can be the case.
The problem is that what actually can be the case is not an established fact like gravity or the speed of light, it’s hotly disputed. People are not mistaking desired outcomes from possible ones. They are disagreeing with you about what the possible ones are and you’re using a cheap rhetorical tactic to sidestep that debate.
I never claimed that “bias” doesn’t apply to my process, indeed you can not quote me claiming this. Nor anything I said implies such a claim.
You said
moral-psychological agendas are more prone to confuse cognitive factors and non-cognitive factors
which implies alternative approaches are not. Confusing cognitive and non-cognitive factors, claiming an out come is more possible than it is because you want it to be (the exact thing you claim these approached lead to) is a bias.
If you are not claiming your approach avoids this, then what are its merits?
you still repeat your initial random objections as if I was compelled by them
No, I repeat them because they remain pertinent. I’ve no idea whether you’re compelled by them. As we’ve established. I do not read minds.
which I don’t get
Evidently.
Cognitive criteria to arbitrate, adjudicate, judge who is right or wrong in experts’ disputes depend on the educational background of people. Those who have an adequate cross-domain methodological background to spot failures in the experts’ research despite lacking domain-specific expertise and adjudicate, arbitrate, judge with cognitive compelling reasons who is right and who is wrong.
… and I’ve already pointed out that this is a very large pool who will disagree among themselves. So again - who arbitrates.
If you can point to a single example in history where the scientific process has been “Professor A points out flaw in paper and all other scientists in the field immediately agree”, I’d be surprised. I’ll eat my hat if you can provide evidence this any kind of general trend.
I read academic papers all the time for my work. I can count on one hand the number of times arbitration such as you describe has taken place. More generally the pattern will be that some reviewing academic will point out a flaw, another reviewing academic will disagree that it’s a flaw, the original academic will defend their position. If it’s a big issues, a few more academics might weigh in offering a range of opinions.
It’s vanishingly rare that a simple and obvious error is picked up at this stage. Especially nowadays with the popularity of pre-print servers. Even if an error is spotted late it’s usually corrected in the following journal publication and likely to be either part of a corrigendum or the paper will be retracted.
Who adjudicates that claim “2 + 2 = 4” and not “2 + 2 = 3” ? You yourself if you learned how to sum numbers right?
As I said above, no paper is going to make it through peer review, pre-print, and potential correction/retraction with an error like 2+2=3 in it.
The overwhelming majority of dispute between academics is unresolveable by non-experts and generally onyl resolved over long periods of time by the experts themselves.
But again, this provides us with a good example of the appeal this kind of analysis has. You want to be able to see a paper saying something you don’t like and pretend you can use your Very Smart Logic to show it’s wrong. You can’t. You have no authority to arbitrate in such cases.
The convergence I’m referring to is simply about a conceptual framework. Such a conceptual framework emerges from the clash of competing political views and allows reciprocal intelligibility among competitors, because what competitors share—if not ideology—is the competitive environment they are in: the struggle over scarce resources to attain non-shared desired outcomes. This conceptual framework doesn’t ensure convergence in the sense of cooperation between competing political agendas, nor does it ensure that one is safe from cognitive distortions triggered by non-shared assumptions. But it still allows one to identify common patterns of reasoning and common patterns of danger detection and response that transcend in-group, ideologically driven thinking, no matter what political views one supports. We all are rationally compelled to rise above our own ideologically driven reasoning in order to, at the very least, make sense of the competitive environment we all find ourselves in, to detect risks and opportunities and deal with them in the pursuit of non-shared desired goals. Such cross-ideological patterns of reasoning can then pave the way either for cooperation to overcome ideologically competing interests (see the example of the alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) or for polarizing divisions within the same political front (for example, between maximalist vs. minimalist, hawkish vs. dovish, and idealist vs. pragmatic views).
[quote=“Pseudonym, post:132, topic:65, full:true”]
there is widespread agreement on ethics (with peripheral disputes). There is widespread agreement on terminology and conceptual frameworks (with peripheral disputes). [/quote]
So you mean that Nazis, Zionists, capitalists, communists, Muslims, and Christians all agree on the same ethical principles? Or that their disagreement is just a peripheral dispute?
I’m literally saying that the conceptual framework (including notions like “national interest,” “power balance,” “security dilemmas,” “international order,” “territorial sovereignty,” etc.) I’m referring to is indeed the type of conceptual framework used in geopolitical analysis. To illustrate the point, here some bibliographical hints: regarding Kissinger, the notion of ‘national interest’ is central, for example, in ‘Diplomacy’ (1994), where he argues that effective statesmen identify their country’s national interests and act accordingly, even when moral or ideological norms pull in other directions. In ‘Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century’ (2001), Kissinger discusses the U.S. national interest in key regions (Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere, and Africa), attempting to formulate policies based on these interests. In ‘A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–1822’ (1957), he offers a historical case study of how 19th-century statesmen reconciled balance-of-power politics with what they viewed as their national interests and the ‘legitimacy’ of the order.
Regarding Brzezinski, ‘The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives’ (1997) is a key statement on U.S. strategy in Eurasia, advocating the preservation of American primacy as a national interest. In ‘The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership’ (2004), he contrasts strategic options for the United States, emphasizing which paths best serve long-term American interests. In ‘Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power’ (2012), Brzezinski revisits U.S. national interests, considering a more multipolar world and the challenges that come with it in a post-crisis context.
Geopolitical research can investigate “national interest” like psychological research can investigate “biases”.
There is also a reason why I mentioned Brzezinski and Kissinger instead of, for example, Mearsheimer: unlike Mearsheimer, Brzezinski and Kissinger were directly involved as official advisors to political decision-makers (especially in executive roles) and in shaping actual policy decisions.
I have no idea why you are bringing this up. Whether Brzezinski or Kissinger agreed on a course of action or on ethical views is totally irrelevant with respect to what I’m arguing.
But since we are on the subject, and more directly related to the topic at hand, we can say that Brzezinski and Kissinger agreed that the USSR/Russia was the central strategic problem, but they diverged sharply on how hard to push it and how much weight to give to values and national self-determination versus stability and accommodation. For example, Kissinger tended to see the Soviet Union as a durable great power that had to be managed and accommodated through détente, arms control, and tacit respect for its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, whereas Brzezinski saw the USSR more as a “fragile” empire built on suppressed nationalities and believed it could be weakened by supporting national and democratic movements in its periphery and satellites.
In any case, my focus here is not on Brzezinski’s or Kissinger’s specific geopolitical views. I mentioned them only as examples of geopolitical analysts.
You can consult online summaries on this: Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact - Wikipedia or German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact | History, Facts, & Significance | Britannica. Hitler and Stalin justified their 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (a non-aggression treaty enabling the division of Eastern Europe) as a pragmatic necessity for national security (for example, avoiding a two-front war) and strategic advantage, despite their ideological enmity (“a pact with the devil”). In other words, notions such as “national interest,” “sphere of influence,” “national security,” “political strength,” and “pragmatic necessity” guided their decision-making process, and such notions cannot follow from their non-shared ethical or ideological assumptions.
Show me how that explanation conceptually follows from my political preferences. Then give me your explanation of the Soviet–Nazi alliance as it conceptually follows from your own political preferences, so we can see the difference.
I take it to be common knowledge that people can occasionally engage in wishful thinking, where expectations are driven by desirable outcomes. Wishful thinking starts as a sort of infantile reflex: the communication of a desire (such as basic survival needs) and the empathic care of others (such as parents) are often enough to get those desires satisfied (no matter how).
This sort of infantile reflex to form naive expectations that desired outcomes can be achieved (again, no matter how), especially if one desires them strongly enough can spill over into adult life, manifesting itself in one’s private or public life, in ourselves and in others (think of religious beliefs in God and prophets, think of in the epic hero narratives). Also in politics we may see similar naive expectations: there is hardly a more infantile cognitive reflex in collective life than taking political leaders or political elites or political gurus as saviors—the ones who are going to fix all our problems (no matter how). So I’m surprised that you need evidence for that—especially if wishful thinking is a phenomenon actually investigated in psychological research on bias, something you claim to be familiar with, right?
Anyways, since we are on the subject, here are some sources:
“Knowing Versus Caring: The Role of Affect and Cognition in Political Perceptions” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0162-895X.00224
“Partisan Wishful Thinking in Polarized Times” https://osf.io/download/wc4qh
“The Heart Trumps the Head: Desirability Bias in Political Belief Revision” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5536309/
(Make no mistake, I’m interested in engaging in a conceptual investigation rather than an empirical one. I therefore take the findings of empirical studies only as illustrative for the conceptual investigation I’m interested in.)
Let’s dive a bit more into your very confusing, if not confused, conceptual framework.
Concerning your scenario: what is “But instead of arguing the actual disagreement” supposed to mean? If everything were just about personal preferences, what would there be to argue about? A likes ice cream, B hates ice cream—what is there to argue about? Someone on the left proposes a peaceful, anti-war, perhaps socialist solution, and someone else rejects it—what is there to argue about in such a disagreement? If you believe that geopolitical analysis is as biased as ideologically driven analysis, and that your arguments make sense, why do you keep arguing with me or with anybody else who disagrees with you? Why is there a need to argue at all when all opinions merely express what one likes? Once the disagreement is acknowledged, what is the next argumentative step? Toward what goal? You list the things you like to believe, and I list the things I like to believe; some of the beliefs you like to believe match some of the beliefs I like to believe, and some do not—now what?
Is the claim “all opinions are biased” merely an expression of what you like to believe? Is the claim that gravity or the speed of light are established facts simply something you like to believe? Are physicists’ opinions biased because all opinions are biased? Does “well-established fact” mean something more than merely what one likes to believe? If so, what else?
Is your appeal to the psychological literature on bias a way for you to gain the “high ground” and then claim that “all opinions are biased” is a well-established fact in the psychological literature, even though you are not a psychologist (and therefore do not have the domain-specific expertise to assess the accuracy of psychological research, levels of expertise, or adjudicate expert disputes that may affect research on bias), and even though, according to your view, domain-specific expertise is biased just as non-expert views are?
Why would someone be “proposing” to someone else a peaceful, anti-war, perhaps socialist solution to the Russo–Ukrainian war? Why couldn’t he simply fix the Russo–Ukrainian war by himself if that is the political outcome he likes to believe possible, without proposing anything to anybody? By the way, if all opinions are just expressions of what one likes to believe on non-cognitive grounds, and the leftist dude likes peaceful coexistence between Russia and Ukraine, then why doesn’t the leftist dude simply believe that Russia and Ukraine are already at peace—that is, that there is no ongoing war between the two countries? Does that mean that he likes to believe that Russia and Ukraine are at war?
Concerning claims such as “you don’t like that because it clashes with your personal ideology” and “you’re using a cheap rhetorical tactic to sidestep that debate”: are these accurate descriptions or explanations of what I am doing, or merely something convenient for you to believe because it confirms your belief that I am not a leftist, pacifist, socialist dude, and that you are more intellectually honest than I am? Are these descriptions or explanations “established facts” like gravity or the speed of light? Are such descriptions or explanations promoting cooperation or overcoming competition between you and me, or between pacifist, leftist socialists and their political counterparts?
My argument goes as follows:
If reasoning in terms of “national interest,” “sphere of influence,” “national security,” “political strength,” “pragmatic necessity,” “territorial sovereignty,” “strategic alliances,” etc. is what makes competing political decision-makers and advisors reciprocally understandable, then we can take this conceptual framework as the “shared rules” of the geopolitical competitive game and use it to understand how the game is actually played, independently of one’s own desired outcomes or ideological preferences—even when desired outcomes and ideological preferences are still present. Why? Because the analysis focuses on cross-ideological concerns, patterns of reasoning, and cognitive and practical challenges. Indeed, every political agenda, independently of one’s own political leaning (communism, Nazism, Zionism, Islamism, capitalism, feminism, pacifism, Christianity, etc.), is concerned with: internal cohesion within the political base and/or leadership; the degree of material and emotional sacrifice their base is ready to tolerate in order to politically “fight” for the cause; the margins for negotiation or compromise depending on power relations; the need to promote convenient propaganda that is self-promoting and/or discrediting of competitors (for example, denouncing competitors’ biased views while sparing oneself the same treatment); the struggle for power projection while avoiding overstretch; and the struggle to bridge the gap between desired objectives and the available means to achieve them.
A shared conceptual framework that allows one to establish and assess political facts, goals, and expectations, without grounding them in non-shared ideological assumptions, can explain political outcomes that would otherwise not be expected from ideological premises alone—for example, divisions among political actors within the same or ideologically proximate political front, or alliances between political actors belonging to ideologically opposed fronts.
A shared conceptual framework for establishing and assessing political facts, goals, and expectations—one that is not grounded in non-shared ideological assumptions—also offers cognitive criteria for better detecting distorted perceptions or expectations grounded in ideologically driven reasoning. Here an analogy with chess may help: in chess there are shared rules that allow one to understand facts, goals, and strategies in a given situation. Of course, misjudgments are possible: one can blunder a queen due to “tunnel vision,” “overconfidence,” or tactical miscalculations. But it is again with the help of those rules that people can become aware of such misjudgments or detect their own cognitive distortions. Perhaps people do not detect such distortions in time; perhaps they never detect them because they never engage in post-game analysis; or even if they do, they may not be expert enough to do it properly. Still, it is in light of those shared rules that one can learn to identify cognitive distortions. In other words, even if it is true that people can be biased, or that biases are so pervasive that we can even find them in chess games, this fact does not prevent people from understanding a chess game in light of its shared rules (that is, recognizing that what they are seeing is a chess game, not a basketball game) and using that understanding to detect biases, cognitive distortions, and limits of knowledge. The same applies to the geopolitical game.
Despite the fact that ideologically driven reasoning can introduce cognitive distortions (and, as cognitive distortions, they must in principle be detectable), talking about bias is not the primary focus of geopolitical analysis in the way it is in ideological critique. Why? Because such reasoning can still be politically functional in promoting in-group loyalty, cohesion, and/or consensus around a political leadership. Once again, this is true for all particular political views (communism, Nazism, Zionism, Islamism, capitalism, feminism, pacifism, Christianity, etc.), independently of non-shared ideological assumptions.
In light of these considerations, ideological critique is misleading with respect to geopolitical analysis in three ways. First, because of its intellectual dishonesty: appeals to cognitive distortions are typically directed at rival political views, not at one’s own—amounting to a self-serving double standard. Second, because such intellectual dishonesty itself emerges as one of the common cross-ideological features that ideologically driven political views share while clashing with one another. It is part of the fabric of political competition that geopolitical analysts aim to describe and/or explain independently of the militant impulses of ideological critique.
And make no mistake: what I am saying does not amount to claiming that, as you suggest, “all opinions are biased.” If bias refers to epistemic distortions, then there must be opinions that are not biased, in light of which biases are detected. If bias refers to ideological preferences, not all opinions reflect ideological preferences. Nor does my argument deny the possibility that ideologically driven reasoning can be grounded in genuine and unresolved domain-specific expert disputes, as you suggest. On the contrary, your appeal to clashes of deeply held preferences (such as the disagreement between pacifists and non-pacifists) or to clashes of epistemic views (genuine but unresolved expert disputes) actually reinforces my background understanding of political competition—the very understanding you intended to question.
Third, even if all cognitive distortions triggered by ideologically driven reasoning were removed, that would not necessarily eliminate the reasons for political competition. Our domain-specific expertise and/or shared knowledge about how to produce and redistribute scarce resources effectively may still fail to provide ways to overcome in-group versus out-group competitive reasoning through cooperation.
Again, I have no idea why you keep bringing this up, since it is totally irrelevant with respect to what I’m arguing. But since we are on the subject, my approach is still the same: can two experts honestly and compellingly disagree while still being intelligible to one another? If they are intelligible to one another, on what grounds? I would say that they share enough methodological background to enable them to understand their different views and the related cognitive challenges.
Think about the theoretical revolution that Einstein brought about in physics: how could physicists in Einstein’s time understand the cognitive challenges that Einstein’s theory posed to Newtonian views even before seeing it empirically confirmed? It is again shared epistemological or methodological assumptions that grant reciprocal intelligibility, not non-shared assumptions.
The same goes in politics. For example, there are competing geopolitical analyses of the Russo–Ukrainian war—for instance, neoconservatives versus Mearsheimer. Yet how can they understand the cognitive challenges that one analysis poses to the other? Again, by relying on a shared geopolitical conceptual framework.
Once again, as far as I’m concerned, the appeal to domain-specific expert disputes is totally irrelevant, since my argument focuses on “shared” rules for reciprocal intelligibility. Indeed, even in the case of domain-specific expert disputes, reciprocal intelligibility must be grounded in shared epistemological assumptions. Likewise, in politics we can investigate “shared” patterns of reasoning that emerge in the political struggle between competitors, independently of their non-shared ideological views. As for geopolitical expert disputes, which go beyond my background knowledge, I do not need to adjudicate them, and it does not matter if there is no adjudicating authority to resolve the dispute. In such cases, one can simply suspend judgement or choose according to non-cognitive preferences, without thereby introducing cognitive distortions. Even then, however, one can still frame the dispute, and the inability to adjudicate it, in light of a shared conceptual framework that makes the dispute reciprocally intelligible (e.g. Mearsheimer talks about American security dilemmas and national interests in a way that differs from the neocons’ because of x, y, and z). Thus, the purpose of the “Very Smart Logic” I am referring to is not necessarily to adjudicate expert disputes, but to make the dispute intelligible in light of certain shared assumptions, even when adjudication is not possible.
As far as you are concerned, the dialectical force of your adjudication requirement in cases of domain-specific expert disputes is undermined by your own background assumptions. Indeed, the appeal to domain-specific expertise is made moot by the fact that such expertise is not sufficient to prevent honest disagreement between equally qualified experts ex hypothesis (a possibility that I never needed to deny). At the same time, any appeal to equal expertise, or to an expert authority capable of adjudicating expert disputes, is made moot by the claim that “all opinions are biased” anyway. Indeed, this would render non-expert assessments of equal expertise, appeal to expert authority, and the expert disputes adjudication by an expert authority itself biased as well. Not to mention that it remains mysterious the reason that rationally compels anybody to even rely on domain-specific expertise. One can just go about his day by believing whatever is consistent with one ideological preferences with or without any expert backup.
So you claim. What I’ve yet to see is any evidence.
I mean that they are no less likely to share ethical principles than they are conceptual frameworks, or semantic understandings.
Your example, supposedly proving such ‘convergence’ was the Nazi-Soviet alliance. You failed to provide any proof that any conceptual convergence took place. They just agreed on a course of action. That’s all.
All these illustrate is that both authors used the terms. Not that they had any mutual understanding of what they meant. They may still have used those terms and meant almost completely different things by them (within reason - they’re both competent English speakers).
I bet there is…
I’m sure it’s a Very Smart and Logical reason and the fact that Mearsheimer happens to disagree with your personal ideology is a complete coincidence.
…is not …
Justifying a course of action politically is not the same thing as the actual thinking behind the strategy. Notwithstanding this, there’s still no evidence they actually had the same understanding of those terms.
But all of this is besides the point since I’m not arguing it’s impossible to share concepts. I’m arguing that attempts by one party to analyse another’s are just thinly veiled attempts to push an agenda. As you’re proving here.
Of all the people posting on this thread, you’ve raised the need for ‘conceptual analysis’ with only two. The two who’ve been critical of the Western narrative.
Although I’m sure that’s just coincidence too, just like dropping Mearsheimer.
This is a common tactic of yours and it wastes your time and mine.
No one is arguing about the possibility. I’m arguing about the ability to determine, to judge, to arbitrate. It’s pointless you providing reams of evidence that people can engage in wishful thinking because the argument is about whether anyone can reliability judge whether they actually are engaging in wishful thinking at any given time.
Let’s dive a bit more into your very confusing, if not confused, conceptual framework.
… is about as obviously a prejudicial attempt at ‘analysis’ as it gets. the framing is sneering from the start, you’ve deliberately used the least charitable, and in some case outright fabricated, versions of what I’ve said to make it sound as absurd as possible.
These are pretty standard rhetorical tricks, used in debate worldwide - I’ve used more than a few myself. What they’re not is dispassionate anaylsis aimed at mutual understanding free from ‘psychological cognitive errors’. You want waht I’m saying to sound rubbish so your ‘analysis’ of it sytarts from that premise and is biased by that objective.
Exactly the same will happen with an analysis of my use of terminology, my ‘understanding’ of mutual concepts, etc. You want what I’m saying about the Ukraine war to be wrong so any analysis will be biased by that objective and used, not in the aim of mutual understanding, but exactly as you’ve done above, as a rhetorical trick to ridicule opposing views.
You might think you’re playing 4D chess but I’m afraid you’re about as transparent as an open window.
I know. You’ve repeated it quite clearly before. You’re just not providing any evidence for it.
Using those temrs is not evidence that anyone is reasoning in those terms. The very ‘conceptual analysis’ you suggest we carry out takes as it’s base assumption that people can use those terms without having reasoned using an understanding of the concepts.
Even if we were to grant that people reason in those terms, it also does not follow from a fact that reasoning in those terms makes decision-makers and advisors reciprocally understandable, that we can then understand anything about how the ‘game’ is played by doing likewise. Understanding a thing and being reciprocally understood are two different mental activities.
Lastly, even if we grant this last fact, that we can understand how the ‘game’ is played by reasoning in those terms, it does not follow that we will actually do so in preference to using such semantics as a mask to cover further ideological promotion. For example…
there are competing geopolitical analyses of the Russo–Ukrainian war—for instance, neoconservatives versus Mearsheimer. Yet how can they understand the cognitive challenges that one analysis poses to the other? Again, by relying on a shared geopolitical conceptual framework.
No one’s disputing the existence of shared frameworks. We all use English and are understood. This has nothing to do with the plausibility of being able to ‘analyse’ those frameworks without the same bias and irresolvable disagreement that arises in ethical disputes.
my argument focuses on “shared” rules for reciprocal intelligibility.
As for geopolitical expert disputes, which go beyond my background knowledge, I do not need to adjudicate them, and it does not matter if there is no adjudicating authority to resolve the dispute. In such cases, one can simply suspend judgement or choose according to non-cognitive preferences, without thereby introducing cognitive distortions.
One could…
…or… one could do exactly as you did and come up with the first plausible sounding reason to dismiss academics who you don’t agree with, raise up those you do and thus confirm the biases you came into the discussion with.
Choices, choices…
the appeal to domain-specific expertise is made moot by the fact that such expertise is not sufficient to prevent honest disagreement between equally qualified experts ex hypothesis (a possibility that I never needed to deny).
Not at all, the ideas of academics are discussed all the time in academia. The ideas of the university gardener are not. It’s uncontroversial that there is a difference between ideas sufficiently qualified to be part of academic disputes, and ideas sufficiently authoritative to actually resolve those disputes.
At the same time, any appeal to equal expertise, or to an expert authority capable of adjudicating expert disputes, is made moot by the claim that “all opinions are biased” anyway.
Again, “biased” does not equal “wrong”. This is not a difficult concept to understand. Two academics may well have chosen their preferred theories about the biological origins of life as a result of re-existing biases. That is not the same as a person believing life was started by a race of interstellar aliens. Choosing one of the available plausible, well-evidenced theories is not the same as choosing a crackpot theory with no evidence.
The choice is a result of bias. The pool from which to choose is a result of meeting standards of academic rigour.
… but you already know that, further demonstrating how any attempt at ‘analysis’ is nothing but a smokescreen for ideological rhetoric.
If you are blind, there is no evidence you can see.
No, they do not have the same impact in politics. For example Capitalist and Communist disagree on ethical grounds when debating work exploitation, but they both converge in understanding that Capitalist and Communist have political competing interests. Nazis and Zionist disagree on ethical grounds when debating anti-semitism still they converge in understanding even Jews can find convenient agreements with Nazis (Haavara Agreement - Wikipedia). Zionist and Pro-Palestinians disagree on ethical grounds when debating over genocide, but they both understand the imbalance of military power. Ukrainian and Russians disagree on ethical grounds when debating over Ukrainian national self-determination, but they both understand that, under the current circumstances, Ukrainian national self-determination has greater chance to survive outside the Russian sphere of influence than inside Russian sphere of influence. Isis and Catholic Church disagree on ethical grounds on matter of decapitating enemies’ heads, still they agree that muslims are more prone to follow muslim leaders than Christian leaders in case of conflict between muslim and christians.
On the other side, even though the political spectrum places extreme left and extreme right on opposite sides, and this reflects their ethical disagreement on lots of subjects (like immigration and gender equality), still they can politically converge when it’s matter to fight common political enemies (leftists socialist pacifist can politically oppose the Western support to Israel as much as anti-semite Neo-nazis).
Geopolitical reasoning helps understand that the prospects of political cooperation and rivalry between competing political agendas go beyond what one would expect assuming shared ethical principles.
When you talked about “bias” and referred to the psychological literature, did you provide proof that they had any mutual understanding of what they meant instead of using that term and mean almost completely different things by them (within reason - they’re both competent English speakers)? Or that your usage of the word is the same they use?
Most importantly, you do not seem to take my conceptual analysis for what it is. I’m not an historian nor am I interested in militant political debates as you seem to be. Nor I’m claiming that the conceptual convergence is always granted and complete. I just pointed out that that there is a basic and shared conceptual framework that emerges while competing political agendas clash and which is apt to describe the competitive environment independently from ethical or personal preferences. But I also specified on many occasions that the convergence I’m referring to is dispositional and conditional: competitive agents are compelled to converge for mutual understanding. And this holds true for the political language as ordinary language. Even the one we use to talk about “bias”, so much so that as soon I had the impression we didn’t use the word in the same way I asked you to clarify what you mean, assuming that at least we converge in our understanding of the words you use for clarifying what you mean by “bias”. And notice, I’m still not sure we understand each other on this issue. I’m not sure that you use the word “bias” in the same way psychology does.
That’s possible but rather unlikely. Neither accused the other of misunderstanding the word “national interest” or other geopolitical analysts. The point is that such conceptual framework is about convergence in usage but to what extent they converge can be matter of empirical investigation (which I’m not engaging in). For example, politicians never offer an analytical definition of what “national interest” is supposed to mean, still they use it to make themselves understood to others, including competitors:
Trump: “Our new strategy is based on a principled realism, guided by our vital national interests, and rooted in our timeless values”. (Remarks by President Trump on the Administration’s National Security Strategy – The White House)
Putin: “Our position is clear: if you want to discuss security and stability issues that are critical for the entire planet, this must be done as a package including, of course, all aspects that have to do with our national interests and have a direct bearing on the security of our country, the security of Russia.” (Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly • President of Russia)
Xi Jinping: “Confronted with drastic changes in the international landscape, especially external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade, and exert maximum pressure on China, we have put our national interests first, focused on internal political concerns, and maintained firm strategic resolve.” (https://www.idcpc.org.cn/english2023/tjzl/cpcjj/20thPartyCongrssReport/)
Natanyahu: “They failed because they did not strike the right balance between Israel’s vital security and national interests, and the Palestinians’ aspirations for self-determination” (Full text of Netanyahu's speech: Today recalls historic day of Israel's founding | The Times of Israel)
Khamenei: “he said inspectors would gain access to these sites only “when Iran perceives a national interest” in allowing it.” (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202510199120)
I don’t know if you wish to argue that they all are equivocating each other when using the English words “national interest” in official speeches, due to lack of English proficiency or because they are all biased. But I’m just fine to assume that there must be enough convergence to make them mutually intelligible: for example, whenever political leaders talk about “national interest”, anybody expects them to set priorities in their domestic and foreign policies in line with what has been labelled as national interest, anybody expects human and material resources are going to be drained in support of those policies, anybody expects that foreign countries threatening what is labeled as “national interest” (like “national security”) is perceived as “provokation” and that is of paramount importance to energetically counter (diplomatically, economic, and/or military) depending on available means and strategies. Then geopolitical analysis can investigate or elaborate further or generalise the notion of “national interest” as Mearsheimer did (in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001). “Great powers are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals… because having more power enhances a state’s chances of survival. States therefore act to maximize their power and protect their national interests in an anarchic international system.”) or make comparisons, between what is taken to be the national interest for the US, Russia and China. Or different US administrations over time. Still the usage can not be equivocal the way you speculate.
And clearly you do not seem to realise how self-defeating your attempt to question my claim is. Indeed, many people including Mearsheimer (https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf) support the claim that Russia has been “provoked“ by NATO enlargement and by the Western promise to expand further to include Ukraine, that the Russians have always told the West what the red-lines were “Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the
West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly”. What does that mean? That when Russia was expecting to be equivocated, nor pacifists critical to Western policies believe that Russia was equivocated.
Again you don’t seem to realise how self-defeating your argument is.
First question: is it true or not that Brzezinski and Kissinger influenced US policies more than Mearsheimer ever could? Yes and the reason to point that out is to counter a potential objection (geopolitical analysts may talk about “national interest”, “security dilemma”, “power balance”, “territorial sovereignty”, “alliances” but that doesn’t mean that actual political leaders take their analysis into account).
Second question: is it true that this favours what you believe to be my pro-war ideology? No, because I mentioned Kissinger and Brzezinski, and Kissinger disagreed with Brzezinski, about Russo-Ukrainian issue, and believed that: Ukraine should remain independent but militarily neutral, It should not join NATO. Western policy should acknowledge Russia’s security concerns and national interests. The goal should be balance among great powers, not the strategic defeat of Russia.
Besides, one could “blame” people like Brzezinski for the war in Ukraine precisely because they were official advisors and regret Mearsheimer wasn’t official advisors who could have prevented the Russo-Ukrainian war.
BTW I appreciate the insights of Mearsheimer’s offensive realism (which I suspect you know nothing about), so much so that he is one of my sources as my posts in the previous blog can prove.
What is the difference? Hitler’s speech: 01 September 1939 - Adolf Hitler – speech to the German Reichstag
“You know that two different doctrines govern Russia and Germany. There remained but one question to be resolved: as Germany has no intent of exporting its doctrine, and at the moment that Soviet Russia no longer contemplates exporting its doctrine to Germany, I no longer see any compelling reason why we should continue to take opposing stances. Both of us are aware that any struggle between our two peoples would merely benefit third parties. Hence we have determined to enter into a pact which shall preclude the application of force between us for all time. It also obliges us to seek mutual consultation in certain European questions. Moreover, it shall render possible economic cooperation and, above all, ensure that the strength of the two great states is not squandered in rivalry with each other.”
Is it a justification of a political action or the actual thinking behind the strategy?
And what would constitute evidence that Hitler and Stalin had the same understanding of “national interest”? And what would constitute evidence that pacifists understand the reasons of Putin’s push back of Nato enlargement in Ukraine the same way Putin does? What constitute “evidence” that I and you have the same understanding of the word “evidence”? I can play dumb too, you know.
I gave you the summaries, that should have been enough to illustrate the point. Of course, one can investigate further but I don’t care about empirical investigation.
Again, you keep embarrassing yourself. My first comment and defence of geopolitical analysis was to Punsssh who is in favour of the Western military support to Ukraine, as far as I remember from our exchanges in the old blog. And I’m focusing on conceptual analysis because I take this as a philosophy forum not as a political forum. Since I know the other user nicknames from the old blog, clarifying my starting points to people I never exchanged with previously seems to me fair.
At any given time no, otherwise people wouldn’t engage in wishful thinking at all. And if you do not question the possibility, still you wish to argue for the impossibility to identify “wishful thinking” at any given time, right or wrong? If that’s your conviction then what I still find puzzling is: how can someone who keeps talking about biases and handwaving at psychological literature on biases account for the fact that empirical investigation on “wishful thinking” is possible? BTW wouldn’t many pacifist call Ukrainian hopes to join NATO or to win against Russia “wishful thinking”?
The question is not if we can claim infallibility (we can’t), but on the built-in confidence in a shared methodology of knowledge production and revision we have been trained to apply. The fact that a psychologist can manipulate a scenario to test and actually detect people’s wishful thinking in an experiment, doesn’t ensure that a psychologist will be able to detect wishful thinking at any given time, for himself and others. But he’s background knowledge as a scientist could help him be more prudent in forming his judgement of how things are and offer some guidance in the detection of biases in everyday life.
So the “ability to determine, to judge, to arbitrate” depends on the reliability of the epistemological methodology and training. But I also argued that in politics it’s hard to circumscribe problems and it only allows for heuristics (the kind of heuristics geopolitics analyses), so I’m certainly not naive about the fact that knowledge has its severe limits. While you seemed to be very confident that “knowledge” is not a scarce resource and solutions come from knowledge, right?
Indeed, your arguments sound absurd to me, I was quite open about it. But I also asked questions for you to answer and ensure your claims are not absurd as they sound. But you kept dodging them , and prefer to use ad-hominem attacks as if they weren’t rhetoric tricks for convenient diversion.
You are confused, I get it. But you can take our exchange as an opportunity for you to clarify your own ideas, as I do with mine, instead of using them as a hammer to hit imaginary nails but ultimately always landing on your own thumb.
A part from the fact that the distinction between using those terms and “reasoning” in those terms is unclear to me, you provided no definition and no evidence to illustrate how this distinction applies. If you wish to argue that people can use words without understanding their meaning or use words equivocally. That is possible. Also in politics. But political leaders and geopolitical analysts do reason in those terms (remember Brzezinski and Kissinger being an official advisor, remember Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Khamenei, Xi Jinping?) in their official speech and in the backstage, and are unlikely to equivocate their meaning, but maybe they can miscalculate as chess players do. Acting skeptical on this is like me acting skeptical about the idea that the psychological literature on “bias” is grounded on mutual equivocation over the notion of “bias”. But most importantly geopolitical analysis is not esoteric like quantum physics, literally anybody politically invested is capable of understanding and reasoning in light of those concepts and patterns of reasoning if properly solicited. And I gave you examples: “every political agenda, independently of one’s own political leaning (communism, Nazism, Zionism, Islamism, capitalism, feminism, pacifism, Christianity, etc.), is concerned with: internal cohesion within the political base and/or leadership; the degree of material and emotional sacrifice their base is ready to tolerate in order to politically “fight” for the cause; the margins for negotiation or compromise depending on power relations; the need to promote convenient propaganda that is self-promoting and/or discrediting of competitors (for example, denouncing competitors’ biased views while sparing oneself the same treatment); the struggle for power projection while avoiding overstretch; and the struggle to bridge the gap between desired objectives and the available means to achieve them.” You too can understand that. Your reluctance to accept it, no matter how rhetorically convenient you think it is, is also an all-to-human compensation for the fact that you are a powerless nobody.
My conceptual analysis is about expliciting the implicit. People can talk a language without being able to explicit the grammar rules of their language. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t talk in accordance with those implicit rules. Conceptual analysis may also include conceptual comparisons or assessment the explanatory power of a conceptual framework over another etc.
Ideological critique is ideologically driven. So, according to your metaphor, it’s not unmasking anything. It’s putting the mask on. If one wants to reason more clearly one should leave the ideological critique where it belongs, to political debates and militant propaganda. Mutual understanding about political struggle can be granted only if one grounds analysis and reasoning that is conceptually independent from ideologically specific assumptions.
Besides ethics, as I understand it, is normative, it sets goals. Geopolitical analysis, as I understand it, is descriptive, it focuses on the nature of the political competition and the actual leverages to achieve political goals. Ethics conceptually presupposes description, not the other way around. If one wants to change reality according to certain norms, first one has to be able to detect reality for what it is and what real means one has to change reality according to the norms. Part of the political competition reality is that any political agenda has its own variety of “ideological critique”, because human cohesion behind a political agenda is a scarce resource that needs to be harvested, but that’s not the only factor that plays in the political struggle, not the only scarce resource to be harvested for leverage: money, weapons, intelligence, know-how, technology, allies, etc. are useful as well and must be taken into account relatively to competitors.
You can afford to think you can dispense yourself from such reasoning because you are a powerless nobody, so you can simply play your role of promoter and consumer of a certain political propaganda, live your life in your cognitive bubble, and just go about your day. Actual political decision makers can’t really afford to think the way you do.
…or… one could be misunderstood by ideological driven people on a mission to discredit what they perceive to be their political adversaries, at every step. As you just did.
You were repeatedly bringing up the case of domain-specific expertise disputes by equal experts and for which there is no way to adjudicate. I answered specifically to this scenario. In this ad-hoc scenario, appeal to domain-specific expertise is pointless.
But since we are at it, let me ask: do you mean that labelling ideas “uncontroversial”, “sufficiently qualified”, “sufficiently authoritative” do not serve your ideological biases? Or that they do not serve your ideological biases more than mine? I’m glad to read that finally “arbitrate, adjudicate, judge” is possible. And apparently you do not even need to provide evidence to support such possibility. Easy peasy.
First, if the choice is a result of bias but not the pool from which to choose is a result of meeting standards of academic rigour. Then the pool of options meeting standards of academic rigour can not be said to be biased. And it’s false to claim that all opinions are biased since opinions about research meeting standards of academic rigour must hold true independently from anybody’s biasing preferences.
Second, if the expression “standards of academic rigour” refers to epistemological standards, then, as I have argued, “geopolitical analysis” likewise has its own epistemological standards, which ideological critique typically fails to meet.
Third, it makes sense to talk about choices in light of preferences that go beyond the “standards of academic rigour” or “geopolitical analysis” only where those standards, due to knowledge constraints, allow choices non inherent to “standards of academic rigour” or “geopolitical analysis”. This does not constitute a bias in the sense of being a cognitive distortion that violates those standards.
Four, if engaging in “geopolitical analysis” does not inherently involve cognitive distortions (like ideology critique), then it cannot be said to mask ideological preferences—just as meeting the “standards of academic rigour” does not conceal the possibility of choosing in light of personal preferences where those standards permit it.
Five, our exchange started when I compared psychological-ethical analysis (the leftist ideology critique being an example of this approach) to geopolitical analysis and tried to explain why I find geopolitical analysis more enlightening, and I do so precisely because of those epistemological standards. Why? Because those epistemological standards do not inherently depend on anybody biased preferences.
What I acutally meant to write is “What does that mean? That Russia was not expecting to be equivocated, nor pacifists critical to Western policies believe that Russia was equivocated.”