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Category: Philosophical Musing

Why I am becoming convinced that bifurcated argument on Social Media is detrimental

During this current ‘not-plebicite’ season I have been asked several times on various social media platforms as to what my position on various aspects of the debate are. But, apart from one more sleep deprived enquiry about jurisprudence, I have decided that I won’t be posting on the topic. More than this, I am becoming convinced for a few reasons that the place for extended debate is not on social media.

Much of this has come from revisiting some research I was involved in back when Tom was the ‘first friend’ you had, and Facebook was in its infancy (ok, it was 2006). Most of this research involved evaluating hugely expensive telepresence solutions such as the HP Halo system as means of improving computer mediated communication (CMC).

Two aspects of this research I will briefly consider–and most of this post is drawn from a paper I wrote back in 2015, so some bits are dated, and it is written for academic presentation. On the upside there are footnotes 😉

Emotional Confusion

The first aspect is emotional confusion, which is often present within textual communication is often parodied in mainstream media. From the innocently worded text message being read in an unintended tone, to the innocuous social media message eliciting murderous responses. See that classic Key and Peele sketch on text message confusion here (language warning). The situations are so often parodied because they are highly relatable, many, if not all, of us have had similar experiences before. Why? Why does text on a screen elicit such powerful emotive responses, when the same message in other forms barely registers a tick on the Abraham-Hicks. Studies have shown that it is the sociality, or social presence of the medium that provides the best insight into the emotional regulation that can be so diversely represented in CMC.[ref]Antony S. R. Manstead, Martin Lea, and Jeannine Goh, ‘Facing the future: emotion communication and the presence of others in the age of video-mediated communication’, in Face-To-Face Communication over the Internet (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction; Cambridge University Press, 2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511977589.009.[/ref] Specifically in our case it is the factors of physical visibility, or more precisely, the lack thereof that impact on emotional regulation. When engaging in social interaction an enormous amount of social cues are communicated non-verbally, through facial features and mannerisms. Of course with CMC the majority of these are removed, and those that remain are relegated to the domain of various emoticons and emoji. Notably this devaluation of the majority of non-verbal social cues serves to reduce the salience of social presence, and therefore the corresponding salience of the interaction partner. It is this effect that has led several companies, including my previous employer, to invest millions into virtual telepresence systems in an attempt to mitigate the loss of visual cues and the salience of interpersonal interaction.

What does that mean? Well in essence the vast majority of social cues for interpersonal interaction are removed on social media, and it is this context that assists in evaluating the emotional content of the message. From a social identity perspective Spears et al. found that within CMC based interactions both in-group and out-group salience and bounds were profoundly strengthened, and inter-group conflict was heightened.[ref]Russell Spears et al., ‘Computer-Mediated Communication as a Channel for Social Resistance The Strategic Side of SIDE’, Small Group Research 33/5 (2002): 555–574.[/ref] Furthermore, the degree of expression of these conflicts was also heightened along with the corresponding in-group solidarity expressions. Essentially, the majority of CMC interactions serve to strengthen positions, rather than act as bridges for meaningful communication. For more on that see my post a while ago on the Backfire Effect.

Emotional Regulation

The other side of this comes in terms of emotional regulation. On this Castella et al. studied the interactions found between CMC, video conferencing and face-to-face mediums and interestingly found that not only is there a heightened level of emotive behaviour for a non-visual CMC interaction.[ref]V. Orengo Castellá et al., ‘The influence of familiarity among group members, group atmosphere and assertiveness on uninhibited behavior through three different communication media’, Computers in Human Behavior 16/2 (2000): 141–159.[/ref] But also found that the emotive behaviour was significantly negatively biased. So it is not merely a heightening of all emotions, but as Derks et al also observed it ‘suggest[s] that positive emotions are expressed to the same extent as in F2F interactions, and that more intense negative emotions are even expressed more overtly in CMC.'[ref]Daantje Derks, Agneta H. Fischer, and Arjan E. R. Bos, ‘The role of emotion in computer-mediated communication: A review’, Computers in Human Behavior 24/3 (2008): 766–785.[/ref]

Ultimately when people are emotionally confused, in low physical presence environments, they tend to react emotionally–and predominantly negatively. Hence, the majority of emotional expressions that will be found in CMC will be negative reactions from the extremes of any dialectical spectrum.

What is the outcome of all of this then? Well simply put the very mechanism of computer mediated social media interacts with our own natural cognitive biases and produces an outcome that is predisposed towards burning bridges rather than building them. And this even before any considerations of social media echo chambers have been made (thats another post for another time).

Where to?

Sure, there will be always a plethora of anecdotal counters, but given human predisposition I think there is a better way. For me that better way is in person, in a setting where we can explore any conversation at length. So, if you want my views on the majority of controversial topics out there, come and talk to me over a coffee or beer.

August 25, 2017
Learning from Comics: Compilation of Oral Tradition and Making sense of Time and Narrative

I have been doing some musing recently on how compilations of oral traditions communicate time in linking a story together. For example if a series of stories about a person are communicated, does it necessarily matter the order that they are communicated in, and does the significance of that order change between different cultures?

Say we have a collection of stories about Winnie the Pooh, labeled Scene A, B, C and D. Temporally they occurred in a certain order A > B > C > D, but what would happen if A.A. Milne decided to compile these as C, A, D, B? While in our Western concept of time and space this would appear unnatural and confusing, I’m not sure that this is universally applicable.

In musing about this I went back to an old book I have around on how sequential artists communicate in their specific medium: comics. Scott McCloud provides a helpful series of categories that comic artists use in communicating transitions between their panels.

Scott McCloud on Comic Transitions (click for bigger)

In the book (and elsewhere) he notes that the majority of Western comics reflect a western concept of time, and therefore use action-to-action or scene-to-scene transitions, that are specifically temporally linked. Interestingly Eastern (Japanese/Chinese) cultures tend to also use more subject-to-subject and aspect-to-aspect transitions in communication–as shown here in reflections on Ghost in the Shell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTnl1FVFBw

However, I think that the style of communication with subject-to-subject and aspect-to-aspect transitions is lost on a lot of Western audiences, as they impose a temporally sequential hermeneutic on the panels.

What I have been wondering about is how this would apply to collections of oral traditions or memories. In many cases when Western trained scholars look at collections of oral tradition, such as the Gospel of John, or the book of Judges, it is presumed that the material must be temporally sequential in some form. But I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a particularly Greco-Roman concept, and that quite possibly the Hebrew/Jewish concept of time is more along the subject-to-subject and aspect-to-aspect line.

This, I think, would significantly change how we interpret and centre the compilations of collections of oral traditions. The next question though is how does it change?

February 20, 2017
Racism, Identity and Identities: a Question of Salience

Yesterday I had the time to read an excellent long form report from Gary Younge—a British reporter for the Guardian—on his upcoming departure from the United States, where he has been reporting for the past twelve years (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/gary-younge-farewell-to-america). Throughout his report he notes that the overwhelming reason for his imminent departure is the continual subtext of racism that he identifies as present in his environment. Now while there are a swathe of interesting observations and great points in his article, I want to focus on just one aspect: identity and racism.

In amongst his reflections of the swirling maelstrom of race relations he recounts an exchange he had with his son while walking to school:

Explaining the complex historical and social forces that make such a dance necessary is not easy at the best of times. Making them comprehensible to a child is nigh impossible without gross simplifications and cutting corners. Once, during our 10-minute walk to daycare, my son asked if we could take another route. “Why?” I asked.

“Because that way they stop all the black boys,” he said.

He was right. Roughly twice a week we would pass young black men being frisked or arrested, usually on the way home. He was also four, and until that point I was not aware that he had even noticed. I tried to make him feel safe.

“Well don’t worry. You’re with me and they’re not going to stop us,” I told him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because we haven’t done anything,” I said.

“What have they done?” he asked.

He had me. From then on we took another route.

In amongst all of the social issues going on and the complexity of issues on the street, his son has rapidly assessed the situation at hand and identified a core issue: blackness. However this isn’t merely an issue with the melanin content of skin, but of something deeper—an identity of blackness. But some would argue that Gary Younge doesn’t fit the typical stereotype for the target of racial interactions, he is educated, employed and is British, not American.

Yet here is where I think the crux lies for our modern society. We don’t deal well with identity.

Within Psychology the stream of questioning that addresses this area is logically called Identity Theory. As Stryker and Burke write:

Identity theory began with questions about the origins of differential salience of identities in persons’ self-structures and why identity salience may change over time (e.g., Stryker 1968; Wells and Stryker 1988). These questions led to the development of theory concerning ways in which people are tied into social structure and the consequences of these ties for their identities. [ref]Stryker, Sheldon, and Peter J. Burke. “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity Theory.” Social Psychology Quarterly, no. 4 (2000): 284-297, 287.[/ref]

Sounds logical enough. Certainly for Younge, the black American population, and every one of us we are each tied into our social structures by our identities. Not just black or white, but father, student, worker, mother, wife, single, married, and many more.

But in this case what matters is the salience of those identities. When Gary Younge receives an extra frisking at a checkpoint, or Trayvon Martin was shot dead, or any one of the myriad of instances of racial abuse, the identity factor that matters is mainly reduced to one aspect: race. The other identities just don’t matter. All the other identities: gender, education, family relations, are all ignored in favour of the identity that is perceived to be most salient: race.

In this aspect we can see one of the issues: we are terrible at engaging with multiple identity factors, and seek to reduce them to a single factor. Be it race, sexuality, religion, or many more. In each encounter one identity factor will likely be more salient than the others, and correspondingly others will perceive one factor as more salient than the others in our lives.

Perhaps then the real solution to racism isn’t how to reduce the identity based discrimination, but how to broaden the salience of the perception of identity factors. This is a topic that I intend to explore further on this blog, keep an eye out.

For now though, have a read of Gary Younge’s reflections, it is well written, sobering and eye opening: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/gary-younge-farewell-to-america

July 4, 2015
Writing, Jazz, Plagiarism and Improv – Jazz as a metaphor for academic writing.

Academic writing, Jazz, Plagiarism and Improv. You might be wondering at what these concepts have in common, and why they should be written about in a single article. Well last week I had the opportunity to attend a network meeting-come-book launch-come-philosophy lecture by Bruce Ellis Benson talking about his new-ish book Liturgy as a Way of Life. “Ugh, are you serious” – I can hear the groans already. What does Liturgy have to do with anything? Well i wont be directly addressing the liturgy part of the lecture tonight, except to say that it’s not quite as you may think.

Instead one of the parts that piqued my interest was Benson’s extensive use of musica as a philosophical framework for the explanation of life, amongst many other things. From this framework he posits a veritable bevy of comparisons between Jazz and life, of which I will only look at one in this post: Improv. Benson argues that while God is the originator and creator of the world, we are instead re-creators, taking what has been already created and reimagining it and recreating it into something new. While Marx and Hegel may have argued that everything has been done already, in the same vein as Ecclesiastes 1:9; Benson instead argues that we take the original strains of musica and reinterpret them as a form of Jazz-like improvisation i.e. Improv. In such a way we stand on the shoulders of giants and play the tune that has come before but in a slightly different way.

Now for this metaphor to work it is worth noting a few things about Jazz music. Firstly, despite the seemingly cacaphonic nature of an improv within the piece it inevitably picks up on the theme laid out earlier in the piece, and ‘riffs’ off it. In this way the improv soloist (or band) are taking what has already happened and turning it into something a little bit new. Secondly, it is not the wholesale replacement of the original piece. Despite how different the improv may seem there is acknowledgement of what has come before, and cues for what is to come afterward. In this way an improv cannot simply stand on its own as a whole piece, it is shallow and thin; and the piece is somewhat hollow without that corresponding improv.

But what does this have to do with academic writing? – I hear you ask; well I offer this corollary. One of the aspects of academic essay writing that the students who come and see me for first year tutoring commonly wrestle with is how to present ‘novel’ thoughts within their essays. They rebel at the concept that an essay could be simply the regurgitation of someone else’s ideas, organised into a pithy 2000 words; and I would say rightly so. Nevertheless the balance between acknowledging the supports for your argument and simply depositing it onto the page with a citation is a fine balance at times. [ref]I know that the comparison between classical music and regurgitation can be made here. However, even in classical music I think there is some scope for individual interpretations.[/ref] Here is where I think the metaphor of Jazz plays into the equation: writing an academic essay is somewhat like performing a Jazz improv. When you are writing an academic piece you are constantly acknowledging the shoulders on which you stand, those who have run the race beforehand and set benchmarks, the explorers who have charted their little bit of new territory and laid out some of the markers. Rare is it that a paper stands on its own, and in the vein of Star Trek: boldly goes ‘where no man has gone before.’

However, a good academic essay should not be simply regurgitating the previous information, but should be teasing out the implications, the differences in individual perspective that make previous arguments sing more brightly, or lend weight to a specific train of thought over another. This is the improv part, the offering of a different interpretation, nuances here and there, extending the bounds of the sphere of research wider. It is not simply slavish wholesale copying which is realistically plagiarism, even if it is cited. But rather seeing the intricacies of the arguments that have come before hand, watching the notes bounce off each other, and recognising the gaps that can be filled, or the silences that can be left, and working with those. Sure at an introductory level the author is bound to find that someone else has thought of their lightbulb before, or shares the same interpretation of a text as them. But even there the nuance is different. In the indomitable words of Monty Python ‘you are all individuals’, and as such the individual differences of our perspectives can be brought to bear in an essay, of any level.

Perhaps the best way to sum it up is by using Bruce Ellis Benson’s own words:

Just like in Jazz improv, one may borrow an idea but one must return it with interest.

August 28, 2014
Justification of beliefs – a philosophical perspective.

Further to the last few posts here is the publication announcement of an article that a friend at church has just had accepted for publication:

http://philpapers.org/rec/SILODJ

No, justified belief isn’t simply clicking the “Justify Text” button in Word, but rather how we support and rationalise our beliefs. Interestingly Paul argues that even false beliefs can be validly justified. I’ll let his own words do the talking:

More to the point, I argue that so long as one actually has good reasons for belief, it is possible to have a justified belief that is based on the worst possible reasons. For example, basing a belief on tarot card readings, irrational bias, coin flips, etc. is no barrier to doxastic justification

He continues to expand on his argument in the brief on his own website here: http://paulsilvajr.com/2014/08/18/is-basing-really-necessary-for-doxastic-justification/

I’m looking forward to hearing more from Paul on it, and perhaps even making it along to his presentation on the 21st of August at Melbourne Uni.

August 20, 2014
Opinions… like bums, everyone has one?

Perhaps opinions are like bums, and everyone has one. But perhaps they shouldn’t be paraded around in public all that often. Patrick Stokes has written an article over on The Conversation to this effect, arguing that internal and external evidences for opinions should not be weighed equally. I think this backs up some of what i wrote on the last blog post, regarding how to do public discourse well. Check out the article on The Conversation here: http://theconversation.com/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978 Also, this is what i posted on John’s wall on the same:

It is simply putting forward that unsubstantiated opinions should be treated as subjective opinions, not objectively argued positions.

Upon reflection this is at the core of the issue that came out from last Monday’s Q and A, and the subsequent discussion on this wall! The elevation of subjective opinion as equal to or trumping objectively argued positions is actually the real detriment to free speech.

Lets take a hyperbolic example: Person A argues that because sucrose is harmful for teeth, then eating apples should be banned (fallacious argument, but supported by evidence). Person B argues that ‘I like apples’. In the current climate A and B arguments are viewed as equivalently supported, with external and internal ‘evidence’ being quantified equally.
Or perhaps at the risk of a re-hash of last week: Prof Stackhouse makes well supported statement regarding the writings in the Quran. Sussan Ley stated “I don’t think that the Quran teaches that.” Ensuing discussion revolved around whether Stackhouse was being judgemental: again internally and externally provided ‘evidence’ quantified equally.

Also of interest to this conversation is this Tell me if you agree, or disagree? Or simply that my bum shouldn’t be exposed here…

August 18, 2014
How to engage in productive public discourse?

Most of this post has been sparked from the Q and A program on Monday night on the ABC; so while this post should make sense even if you haven’t seen the program, it will probably make more sense after watching it or reading the transcript. You can find that here: http://ab.co/1lQzstT

After the program John Dickson on his Facebook wall asked the question on his wall (https://www.facebook.com/john.dickson.9406417/posts/10153072863099447) about whether there are constructive methods of discussing conflicting truth-claims (my paraphrase). The part of the show that sparked this off was the perception that John Stackouse, speaking relatively objectively on the history and ideology of Islam was being ‘judgemental’ as he was expressing views, and arguably accurate ones, that contradicted another panellist’s own conception of the same issue. Unfortunately the comments on John’s post have diverged off on a tangent, and haven’t really addressed the question of public discourse.

When discussing theories or data, it is relatively easy to find stable and consistent bases for discourse on the matter. Maths for example has a fairly long and standard ‘language’ and agreed set of norms. Such that when one theory is set against another, the playing field is set and comparisons are able to be made. However, in more subjective environments the discourse is far from clear, for example individual preferences: Why is Coffee A better than Coffee B in a blind tasting? The level of public discourse swings wildly between those two extremes, although I think often attempts are being made to discuss concepts and ideas that are naturally towards the ‘objective truth-claim’ end of the spectrum, but using ideology from the ‘subjective perception claim’ end of the spectrum.

As such this issue of productive public discourse has been bugging me for a while, as I think it appears to be stemming from the recent headlong collision in the public sphere between variants of post-modern philosophy and the burgeoning use of scientific method in all spheres of life. I wonder if a lot of the interface of a rational modernistic ‘burden of proof’ approach with narrative philosophy, and probably internal psyche narratives, has given us a hyperbolic expression of Lyotard’s early post-modern narrative philosophy. [ref]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#2[/ref] However, I don’t think that either Lyotard or Derrida envisaged modernistic scientifically based narratives as being shoe-horned into place for supporting truth claims.

I think from this our society has embraced a form of post-modernism in an antithetical type of Orwellian-doublethink. No longer saying ‘your truth offends me’, but rather a case of ‘a different truth-claim to mine offends,’ and ‘your different truth-claim to theirs offends me’. The proof of accuracy and justification is no longer considered external but rather internal. This has impacts on all spheres of life, not only religious discourse, but legal, political, ethical and even starting to have inroads into scientific discourse. (cf Sweet, 1998 Discourse and the possibility of religious truth; Habermas 1996 Between facts and norms; Patterson, 1996 Law and Truth). Take for example the current debate surrounding the 18C vilification laws. While it was arguably never overly socially acceptable to be a bigot, it is no longer socially acceptable in many spheres to even entertain the idea that there are unsilenced bigoted people out there. Furthermore, the push towards legislation of ‘bigotry’ is arguably a case for making what has been considered internally subjective in cultural meta-narratives, externally objective in the rule of law.

It seems that no longer is it a case of ‘I am right, and you aren’t’ but more along the lines of ‘I am internally justified, and your own internal justification is worth less than mine’

So how do we end up doing public discourse over major issues in this environment? Is it even possible to conduct productive discourse in an environment where the mere expression of another subjective opinion causes ‘disgust’? Has anyone conducted studies in discourse analysis in this sphere? How about studies in other fields I’m less familiar with? Would love to hear about it in the comments.

August 13, 2014