30050: Deibert (ask) List policy on personal attacks

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Michael Deibert <michaeldeibert@gmail.com>

> From Bob Corbett:  At the end of the note 30049 Michael Deibert asks:

"Btw, Bob, could you reiterate your policy about not allowing personal
attacks, even on new list members?

Michael Deibert"

Corbett replies:

Michael, I had a hard time with the note to which you refer.  It did have 
personal attacks and that's something I dislike intensely.  However, I had 
to weigh the actually policy and its relationship to one being a "public 
figure."

Let me first reiterate the policy and reason for the policy which seems to 
be a constant source of confusion for list members.

The policy is  -- I don't want to post items which are personal attacks on 
list members for what they post on the list.

There are two items in this rule

-- there is a personal attack, rather than a disagreement with the
	CONTENT of someone's ideas.
-- this is in regard to a post on the list

The purpose of this rule is to not discourage list members from posting on 
the list.  I want people to be free to post the most provocative case they 
wish to post and not be personally attacked for doing so.  It facilitates
good discussion as I understand it.

In my many years as a professor of philosophy I regularly taught both 
epistemology and political philosophy.  On the question of free speech I 
have always been deeply moved by the positions of John Milton (the poet!),
John Locke and David Hume.  All three held the view that all claims of 
truth should be allowed and that false claims were valuable in that 
clearer thinkers should be able to make it clear why a false claim is 
false.  Since I agree with them on two points:

-- there are no privileged claims which are true just by being utter
	(that is:  a true claims is true because of the persuasive
	argument which supports it)
-- thus false claims (i.e. claims regarded as false) are valuable
	since the person who regards a claim as false then has the
	burden to make clear why it is indeed false.

Within the academic world this policy works better than on my list.
First of all just as a matter of fact in the past couple hundred years, 
what was published in academic sources tend to reject personal attacks out 
of hand.  Secondly, academics seem used to have their IDEAS attacked, even
vehemently, and thus don't respond with as much emotion as other seem to.

Where this view of mine runs into trouble in the more political worlk of 
disagreement is in relation to "public figures," which is not a very 
clear or precise term.  In reading the post that attacked you it seemed to 
me that the bulk of the personal attacks were less related to what you had 
posted in the note the person was responding to, than your role as a 
public figure, a well-know journalist on Haiti.

Personally I dislike all personal attacks and have no use for them at all. 
Even their existence in an argument is, for me, weight AGAINST the 
argument since the person's argument then appears weaker to me -- it 
suggests the person can't make an adequate attack on the content of the 
disagreement, so in desperation he or she turns on trying to disparage the 
person.  Just doesn't make good sense to me as argument.

I sat on that post for several hours, read it two or three times and 
decided it should be posted within that different standard I do use for 
public figures.

Michael, I'm not sure if this is clear enough, but as best I can weigh it, 
that's both the policy and why I chose to post that particular note.

Bob Corbett