oneofshibumi
September 20, 2003, 10:45 PM
JTR Website: Hate Website or Semitic Criticalist
(a) The topic of the debate.
How would a fair-minded person classify the JTR Website?: Hate-Website or Semitic Criticalist Website
(b) The participants of the debate, and what positions they will argue.
Semitic Criticalist definition truthfully describes the reality of the Jewish Tribal Review Website against any other definition, including Hate-Website.
(c) The scope of the debate.
??????
(d) The length of the debate, in number of rounds (no more than 10 rounds per debate).
3 Rounds
(e) Whether statements will be made concurrently or in turns, and if the latter, who goes first.
Concurrently
(f) The maximum length of each statement (no more than 5,000 words per statement).
5,000 words per statement
(g) The maximum duration between statements.
1 week
(h) The extent to which quotes from outside sources will be permitted (absolutely no copyright violation or outright plagiarism will be allowed).
The more the merrier.
(i) The starting date of the debate.
To be discussed
(j) Any additional rules or a debate format that debate participants must observe (subject to moderator approval).
The Question of Standards
As a Criticalist, I believe all knowledge results from a fair-minded thinking. If people use the Criticalist’s definition of fair-minded thinking as a standard, the quality of the debate produce a higher level of knowledge. These are the standards “rules” I wish to use when debating.
What is the definition of fair-minded? We both must agree to a definition. I suggest that fair-mindedness entails a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one’s own feelings or selfish interests, or the feelings or selfish interests of one’s friends, community, or nation. It implies adherence to intellectual standards (such as accuracy and sound logic), uninfluenced by one’s own advantage or the advantage of one’s group.
Achieving a truly fair-minded state of mind is challenging. It requires us to simultaneously become intellectually humble, intellectually courageous, intellectually empathetic, intellectually honest, intellectually perseverant, confident in reason (as a tool of discovery and learning), intellectual integrity, and intellectually autonomous. Let me define each of the above.
A) I am defining intellectual humility as having a consciousness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively. This entails being aware of one’s biases, one’s prejudices, the limitations of one’s viewpoint, and the extent of one’s ignorance. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies that lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.
B) I am defining intellectual courage as having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints toward which one has strong negative emotions and to which one has not given a serious hearing. Intellectual courage is connected to the recognition that ideas that society considers dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part). Conclusions and beliefs inculcated in people are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for oneself what makes sense, one must not passively and uncritically accept what one has learned. Intellectual courage comes into play here because there is some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held by social groups to which we belong. People need courage to be fair-minded thinkers in these circumstances. The penalties for nonconformity can be severe.
C) I am defining intellectual empathy as an awareness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others so as to genuinely understand them. To have intellectual empathy is to be able to accurately reconstruct the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than one’s own. This trait also correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when one was wrong in the past despite an intense conviction of being right, and with the ability to imagine being similarly deceived in a case at hand.
D) I am defining intellectual integrity as recognition of the need to be true to one’s own thinking and to hold oneself to the same standards one expects others to meet. It means to hold oneself to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one’s antagonists—to practice what one advocates for others. It also means to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one’s own thought and action, and to be able to identify inconsistencies in one’s own thinking.
E) I am defining intellectual perseverance can be defined as the disposition to work one’s way through intellectual complexities despite the frustration inherent in the task. Some intellectual problems are complex and cannot be easily solved. One has intellectual perseverance when one does not give up in the face of intellectual complexity or frustration. The intellectually perseverant person displays firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others, and has a realistic sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended time to achieve understanding or insight.
F) I am defining intellectual confidence in reason, in the long run, is based on the belief that one’s own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties: faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, form insightful viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think clearly, accurately, relevantly, and logically, persuade each other by appeal to good reason and sound evidence, and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in human nature and social life. When one has confidence in reason, one is “moved” by reason in appropriate ways. The very idea of reasonability becomes one of the most important values and a focal point in one’s life. In short, to have confidence in reason is to use good reasoning as the fundamental criterion by which to judge whether to accept or reject any belief or position.
The reason for these rules is because people tend to have uncritical or “blind” faith in one or more of the following. They often—but not always—have this faith as a result of irrational drives and emotions.
1. Faith in charismatic national leaders (think of leaders such as Hitler/Bush Jr., able to excite millions of people and manipulate them into supporting genocide of an entire religious group).
2. Faith in charismatic cult leaders.
3. Faith in the father as the traditional head of the family (as defined by religious or social tradition).
4. Faith in institutional authorities (police, social workers, judges, priests, evangelical preachers, and so forth).
5. Faith in spiritual powers (such as a “holy spirit,” as defined by various religious belief systems).
6. Faith in some social group, official or unofficial (faith in a gang, in the business community, in a church, in a political party, and so on).
7. Faith in a political ideology (such as communism, capitalism, Fascism).
8. Faith in intuition.
9. Faith in one’s unanalyzed emotions.
10. Faith in one’s gut impulses.
11. Faith in fate (some unnamed force that supposedly guides the destiny of all of us).
12. Faith in social institutions (the courts, schools, business community, government).
13. Faith in the folkways or mores of a social group or culture.
14. Faith in one’s own unanalyzed experience.
15. Faith in people who have social status or position (the rich, the famous, the powerful).
Some of the above are compatible under some conditions, with faith in reason. The key factor is the extent to which some form of faith is based on sound reasoning and evidence. The acid test, then, is: Are there good grounds for having that faith? For example, it makes sense to have faith in a friend if that friend has constantly acted as a friend over an extended time. On the other hand, it does not make sense to have faith in a new acquaintance, even if one finds oneself emotionally attracted to that individual and that person professes his or her friendship.
G) In forming beliefs, critical thinkers do not passively accept the beliefs of others. Rather, they think through situations and issues for themselves and reject unjustified authorities while recognizing the contributions of reasonable authority. They thoughtfully form principles of thought and action and do not mindlessly accept those presented to them. They are not limited by accepted ways of doing things. They evaluate the traditions and practices that others often accept unquestioningly. Independent thinkers strive to incorporate knowledge and insight into their thinking, independent of the social status of the source. They are not willful, stubborn, or unresponsive to the reasonable suggestions of others. They are self-monitoring thinkers who strive to amend their own mistakes. They function from values they themselves have freely chosen.
These standards/rules fundamentally essential for critical thinking and are interdependent. Consider intellectual humility. To become aware of the limits of our knowledge, we need the intellectual courage to face our own prejudices and ignorance. To discover our own prejudices in turn, we often must intellectually empathize with and reason within points of view with which we fundamentally disagree. To achieve this end, we typically must engage in intellectual perseverance, as learning to empathically enter a point of view against which we are biased takes time and significant effort. That effort will not seem justified unless we have the necessary confidence in reason to believe we will not be tainted or “take in” by whatever is false or misleading in the opposing viewpoint.
Questions:
Gurdur, do these standards/rules have your approval?
(a) The topic of the debate.
How would a fair-minded person classify the JTR Website?: Hate-Website or Semitic Criticalist Website
(b) The participants of the debate, and what positions they will argue.
Semitic Criticalist definition truthfully describes the reality of the Jewish Tribal Review Website against any other definition, including Hate-Website.
(c) The scope of the debate.
??????
(d) The length of the debate, in number of rounds (no more than 10 rounds per debate).
3 Rounds
(e) Whether statements will be made concurrently or in turns, and if the latter, who goes first.
Concurrently
(f) The maximum length of each statement (no more than 5,000 words per statement).
5,000 words per statement
(g) The maximum duration between statements.
1 week
(h) The extent to which quotes from outside sources will be permitted (absolutely no copyright violation or outright plagiarism will be allowed).
The more the merrier.
(i) The starting date of the debate.
To be discussed
(j) Any additional rules or a debate format that debate participants must observe (subject to moderator approval).
The Question of Standards
As a Criticalist, I believe all knowledge results from a fair-minded thinking. If people use the Criticalist’s definition of fair-minded thinking as a standard, the quality of the debate produce a higher level of knowledge. These are the standards “rules” I wish to use when debating.
What is the definition of fair-minded? We both must agree to a definition. I suggest that fair-mindedness entails a consciousness of the need to treat all viewpoints alike, without reference to one’s own feelings or selfish interests, or the feelings or selfish interests of one’s friends, community, or nation. It implies adherence to intellectual standards (such as accuracy and sound logic), uninfluenced by one’s own advantage or the advantage of one’s group.
Achieving a truly fair-minded state of mind is challenging. It requires us to simultaneously become intellectually humble, intellectually courageous, intellectually empathetic, intellectually honest, intellectually perseverant, confident in reason (as a tool of discovery and learning), intellectual integrity, and intellectually autonomous. Let me define each of the above.
A) I am defining intellectual humility as having a consciousness of the limits of one’s knowledge, including sensitivity to circumstances in which one’s native egocentrism is likely to function self-deceptively. This entails being aware of one’s biases, one’s prejudices, the limitations of one’s viewpoint, and the extent of one’s ignorance. Intellectual humility depends on recognizing that one should not claim more than one actually knows. It does not imply spinelessness or submissiveness. It implies that lack of intellectual pretentiousness, boastfulness, or conceit, combined with insight into the logical foundations, or lack of such foundations, of one’s beliefs.
B) I am defining intellectual courage as having a consciousness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints toward which one has strong negative emotions and to which one has not given a serious hearing. Intellectual courage is connected to the recognition that ideas that society considers dangerous or absurd are sometimes rationally justified (in whole or in part). Conclusions and beliefs inculcated in people are sometimes false or misleading. To determine for oneself what makes sense, one must not passively and uncritically accept what one has learned. Intellectual courage comes into play here because there is some truth in some ideas considered dangerous and absurd, and distortion or falsity in some ideas strongly held by social groups to which we belong. People need courage to be fair-minded thinkers in these circumstances. The penalties for nonconformity can be severe.
C) I am defining intellectual empathy as an awareness of the need to imaginatively put oneself in the place of others so as to genuinely understand them. To have intellectual empathy is to be able to accurately reconstruct the viewpoints and reasoning of others and to reason from premises, assumptions, and ideas other than one’s own. This trait also correlates with the willingness to remember occasions when one was wrong in the past despite an intense conviction of being right, and with the ability to imagine being similarly deceived in a case at hand.
D) I am defining intellectual integrity as recognition of the need to be true to one’s own thinking and to hold oneself to the same standards one expects others to meet. It means to hold oneself to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one’s antagonists—to practice what one advocates for others. It also means to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one’s own thought and action, and to be able to identify inconsistencies in one’s own thinking.
E) I am defining intellectual perseverance can be defined as the disposition to work one’s way through intellectual complexities despite the frustration inherent in the task. Some intellectual problems are complex and cannot be easily solved. One has intellectual perseverance when one does not give up in the face of intellectual complexity or frustration. The intellectually perseverant person displays firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others, and has a realistic sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended time to achieve understanding or insight.
F) I am defining intellectual confidence in reason, in the long run, is based on the belief that one’s own higher interests and those of humankind at large will be best served by giving the freest play to reason, by encouraging people to come to their own conclusions by developing their own rational faculties: faith that, with proper encouragement and cultivation, people can learn to think for themselves, form insightful viewpoints, draw reasonable conclusions, think clearly, accurately, relevantly, and logically, persuade each other by appeal to good reason and sound evidence, and become reasonable persons, despite the deep-seated obstacles in human nature and social life. When one has confidence in reason, one is “moved” by reason in appropriate ways. The very idea of reasonability becomes one of the most important values and a focal point in one’s life. In short, to have confidence in reason is to use good reasoning as the fundamental criterion by which to judge whether to accept or reject any belief or position.
The reason for these rules is because people tend to have uncritical or “blind” faith in one or more of the following. They often—but not always—have this faith as a result of irrational drives and emotions.
1. Faith in charismatic national leaders (think of leaders such as Hitler/Bush Jr., able to excite millions of people and manipulate them into supporting genocide of an entire religious group).
2. Faith in charismatic cult leaders.
3. Faith in the father as the traditional head of the family (as defined by religious or social tradition).
4. Faith in institutional authorities (police, social workers, judges, priests, evangelical preachers, and so forth).
5. Faith in spiritual powers (such as a “holy spirit,” as defined by various religious belief systems).
6. Faith in some social group, official or unofficial (faith in a gang, in the business community, in a church, in a political party, and so on).
7. Faith in a political ideology (such as communism, capitalism, Fascism).
8. Faith in intuition.
9. Faith in one’s unanalyzed emotions.
10. Faith in one’s gut impulses.
11. Faith in fate (some unnamed force that supposedly guides the destiny of all of us).
12. Faith in social institutions (the courts, schools, business community, government).
13. Faith in the folkways or mores of a social group or culture.
14. Faith in one’s own unanalyzed experience.
15. Faith in people who have social status or position (the rich, the famous, the powerful).
Some of the above are compatible under some conditions, with faith in reason. The key factor is the extent to which some form of faith is based on sound reasoning and evidence. The acid test, then, is: Are there good grounds for having that faith? For example, it makes sense to have faith in a friend if that friend has constantly acted as a friend over an extended time. On the other hand, it does not make sense to have faith in a new acquaintance, even if one finds oneself emotionally attracted to that individual and that person professes his or her friendship.
G) In forming beliefs, critical thinkers do not passively accept the beliefs of others. Rather, they think through situations and issues for themselves and reject unjustified authorities while recognizing the contributions of reasonable authority. They thoughtfully form principles of thought and action and do not mindlessly accept those presented to them. They are not limited by accepted ways of doing things. They evaluate the traditions and practices that others often accept unquestioningly. Independent thinkers strive to incorporate knowledge and insight into their thinking, independent of the social status of the source. They are not willful, stubborn, or unresponsive to the reasonable suggestions of others. They are self-monitoring thinkers who strive to amend their own mistakes. They function from values they themselves have freely chosen.
These standards/rules fundamentally essential for critical thinking and are interdependent. Consider intellectual humility. To become aware of the limits of our knowledge, we need the intellectual courage to face our own prejudices and ignorance. To discover our own prejudices in turn, we often must intellectually empathize with and reason within points of view with which we fundamentally disagree. To achieve this end, we typically must engage in intellectual perseverance, as learning to empathically enter a point of view against which we are biased takes time and significant effort. That effort will not seem justified unless we have the necessary confidence in reason to believe we will not be tainted or “take in” by whatever is false or misleading in the opposing viewpoint.
Questions:
Gurdur, do these standards/rules have your approval?