A couple days ago PZ put up a post on the over-done issue of “civility” in the blogging world. I had to pause and wonder what exactly people are complaining about. I read through the first hundred comments. This being PZ’s place, few were in defense of civility, but on the few there were:
The first comment calling for civility, #19, doesn’t really say anything, except placing the blame for the current mess our country is in on unspecified “uncivility.” How uncivility got is into a disastrous war, created a huge budget deficit, followed by a huge financial collapse, and so on, is never explained.
I’m not sure which side of the issue comment #39 is supposed to be taking, though it does link to a funny YouTube video with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins. I think the video mainly shows how Dawkins is a more effective communicator than most people on the side of science and reason. deGrasse Tyson has some good-sounding points about being sensitive to how different people think, though he may miss how many people want to know what you think, why, and what hard info you have.
Comment #72 amounts to “don’t swear,” which is only sometimes bad advice. It’s especially bad advice when pseudointellectuals are getting whiny about swearing, because giving in creates the impression that word choice matters more than getting facts straight.
Comment #100 is almost as vague as #19, with some added stuff about “fighting dishonorably,” “vulgarity,” and “ad hominem.” You get the impression he thinks cuss words give an unfair advantage, as for ad hominem, I suspect he doesn’t know what it means: good reasoners understand it only as illegitimately dismissing an argument based on a person’s character, but nowadays it’s mostly used for any criticism of a person, however apt.
Finale note: Inspired by one chapter in Steve Pinker’s _The Stuff of Thought_, I recently wrote an essay for an essay contest about honesty, and, what is often in conflict with it, politeness. Part of the problem, I think, is that we like people who like us, so to be “polite,” a good strategy is to pretend to like others (along with their religious beliefs, artwork, and clothes) more than you really do. Civility, then, could be ultimately incompatible with truth-seeking.
My view of this is that civility is presenting your case with force and vigour without being an ass.
An uncivil response to a christian would be:
“You believe in an invisible friend, you should be put away in a mental hospital.”
A civil version of the above response would be:
“If my take on the existence of god is rational and correct (and I most certainly beleive it is) then you are trying to communicate with someone that doesn’t exist.”
I think you can be forceful and vigorous without being insulting. That I think is the essence of civility. Politeness may be contrary to truth seeking but I don’t believe civility is.
I would contrast the writings of Daylight Atheism as being civil to Rational Response Squad as being uncivil. One, I believe would be able to have an honest dialogue with a christian and the other could not.
Or how about William Lane Craig as civil and Fred Phelps as uncivil. Civility seems to me the better tool for discussion and conversion while incivility seems to me primarily for ingroup reinforcement (preaching to the choir).
Getting back to the point I think PZ can and has been both civil and uncivil. Yet has remained strong voiced and with outspoken opinoins.
Just my thoughts, sorry for eating up your whole comments section.
I think #72 had a very good point. When you engage a person with personal attacks and pointless insults you come off looking like a jerk so the better tactic is to engage the ideas and attack those.
The problem with your example of an “uncivil” response (and people like Brian Sapient of the Rational Response squad, who really believes it) is that it’s says something false: putting religious believers in mental hospitals won’t actually do any good. Contrast: “Your delusions look like a case of schizophrenia, and you should talk to a psychiatrist about getting medicated.” I don’t see that there’s an inherent difference, and the schizophrenic might be just as mad. The only difference is that the statement to the schizophrenic makes sense.
As for Craig vs. Phelps, while if Craig were here he’d emphasis actual disagreements he has with Phelps (Phelps is a Calvinist, Craig is a Molinist, etc.) the main difference is that Craig works hard to keep the wrong people from figuring out his views. Mention in a public debate that Craig thinks all non-Christians are evil people who deserve to go to Hell, and he’ll issue a stern rebuke about the irrelevance of that point and never acknowledge holding the view (though he does). Bad model.
I’m willing to admit to a bad example there.
But I think my Craig/Phelps example is dead on. Phelps and Craig both believe that non-christians are in some manner morally deficient and will burn in hell. One is civil and the other not.
Here civil isn’t necessarily the ideas expressed as the tone and intention of the expression itself.
A, hopefully, better example: An uncivil discussion would involve abusive language like personal insults (i.e. you are a moron) or extremely negative language (anyone who believes that is stupid) while a civil discussion would not. A civil discussion could still come to the conclusion that no rational person would believe the topic but it would do so in a way that did not attack the person, obfuscate the real argument (no matter how sound), or invoke needless emotional responses.
I believe, albeit from personal experience and not from scientifically collected data, that an argument made with civility will be more widely heard/read and more likely to be considered than one made rudely.
I am writing a blog post about this and will link to this post.
Okay, maybe we don’t differ that much in the Craig/Phelps comparison, though I’d add we have to be careful about imitating hucksters. We can learn things from them, yeah, but imitating whatever the other side is doing, while effective in the short run, won’t necessarily help in the long run. Why would it? Where’s our advantage.
As for research on effective persuasion, in Steve Pinker’s _The Stuff of Thought_, he says that sarcasm, of all things, is often perceived as more restrained, persuasive, and so on, than flat-out saying something. And so much more fun than imitating diplomat-babble.
Yeah, I didn’t express myself well in my first few comments. I agree that ridicule and sarcasm can be effective weapons and I agree that congeniality can certainly be a vice.
I was trying to say that a civil tone seems to me more likely to be heard and pondered over than one that is overly rude and that is the virtue of civility.
Apparently I didn’t sit and chew over my thoughts long enough before typing and they came out quite malformed. I will have to check out Pinkers book (seen it a million times just never get around to picking it up).
The last time I discussed Craig’s odd reluctance to own up to being an evangelical (something that Alister McGrath also seems to suffer from), the Christian I was talking to made the valid point that, in his debates with atheists, Craig is careful to make smaller claims than those which evangelicals make. Even though he believes the larger claims, his arguments for the smaller claims aren’t invalidated by that fact.
If this is a deliberate strategy to avoid people finding out that he believes unpalatable things, that would seem wrong to me, but I’m not sure that it is.