Glen☣
Yours is a characteristically adroit yet confrontational argument and I
don't know that it is my place (or ability) address it completely, but
would like to try to add some context that I hope will help:
A) Are /Truth/ and /Social Justice/ in any way different?
I think they are categorically different... they represent different
goals and values. This is not to say that they are fundamentally
incompatible, however. I *think* your argument implies that you
believe that they are very compatible, possibly to the point that
the pursuit of truth serves social justice, or in the strong "they
are no different" case, that social justice *also* serves truth.
My own belief is that the pursuit of truth should be bounded by
reasonable merits of social justice and that social justice should
be grounded in truth. I *think* this is different than saying that
they are no different from one another.
B) Apparent conflicts we have seen are (or not) between /Truth/ and
/Social Justice./
I agree that this judgement might be too glib and convenient for
some agendas that I'm not clear on, which might be at work.
Perhaps /Truth/ and /Social Justice/ ARE intimately and
fundamentally compatible. On the surface I would *like* them to be,
but have to admit that such an assertion deserves more inspection
and support. I suspect that many incompatibilities/conflicts
between them in practice could turn out to be the result of early
termination of lazy evaluation. I also suspect that in practice,
many of us are prone to making this error conveniently in situations
that support one of our less openly acknowledged agendas.
Trying to make them identical seems to confront what I apprehend to
be a fundamental truth about Truth and that is that in it is
nominally absolute, it is not relative while Social Justice is
fundamentally relative to the "Social System" or "Ideals" we are
trying to provide justice for or around?
C) This alleged conflict is somehow more critical than others which ...
I think the discussion emerges from decades of their appearing to
have been such a conflict, especially in the domain of education. I
am in the throes of reading Nick Simonds (kewl name) Thompson's
now-vintage essay on the topic of pluralism in education and suspect
it offers some useful grist for this particular mill. I feel
sheepish that I'm not digging yet deeper into this (nor the Clark
Kerr work that Nick references)...
- Steve
On 12/5/16 2:47 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
I'd like to challenge the core assertion: that conflict will
necessarily happen. Then, even if we can adequately show it will
necessarily happen, I'd like to challenge the children:
• that it has happened and
• that it will/has happenened so much that it's caused a problem.
My challenge lays the burden of proof at the feet of those who claim:
a) that truth and social justice are in any way different and _how_
they are different, b) that the apparent conflicts we've seen have
actually been between truth and social justice, and c) that this
alleged conflict is somehow more critical than others that seem to be
successfully navigated (e.g. between budget and class size or tenure
or admission policies or cost or the peer review crisis, etc.).
A second type of challenge is to the (again, false binary) idea that
there are only 2 ways to procede: 1) choose a singular priority or 2)
handle each instance case by case. Why not a 1.5) handle some based
on a (volatile) priority and others by case? Or why not any of a
large number of multi-objective optimization algorithms? Why does it
have to be one or the other?
You'll note that both the above challenges are the same, really. I
claim telos can be multifarious and solutions to problems can be a mix
of rule-based and case-by-case. Haidt says this can be done in an
individual _human_... So, what is it about institutions that _prevent_
it from being done? Why do you assert that institutions are simple,
whereas individuals are complex?
It seems reasonable to believe the "manipulation conception of
mechanism", wherein one can only learn or understand some thing by
modifying it. Hence, the dichotomy Haidt sets up (understand vs.
change the world) is obviously suspect. A university _cannot_ be one
or the other. It must be both. Change allows understanding and
understanding allows change. To artificially separate the two seems a
bit childish to me.
On 12/05/2016 01:29 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
Glen,
Certainly one can follow more than one telos, and given fairly
compatible choices one can typically do so for long periods without
encountering conflict. But eventually they will conflict, if pursued
long enough, and when that happens, there are various courses of
action, and various consequences. One course of action is that you
can deny the need to pick a priority, and thus handle every instance
of a conflict on a case by case basis. That leads to schizophrenic
behavior on the part of an organization, with difficult to interpret
inconsistencies in the rewards and punishments distributed.
Haidt argues that, we have reached such a state in many universities
(to use Nick's phrase they have "passed a point of no return").
Conflicts between truth-seeking objectives and social-justice
objectives are so frequent as to be ubiquitous, and the institutions
are becoming schizophrenic trying to fully pursue both. Faculty don't
know what to do (can we invite a respected expert on a controversial
topic?), and administrators don't know what to do when faculty act
(yes we put out a call for two-sides debates, but experts on both
sides might lead to objections). The students also don't have a
principled way to predict when the university will or will not agree
with them if they voice an objection. It has, in many places, become
a grand mess. The result isn't as dramatic as all this makes it seem,
the result is a slow, but steady, decline in the intellectual
atmosphere, as everything becomes ever more "safe."
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps
<mailto:echar...@american.edu>
On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Nick Thompson
<nickthomp...@earthlink.net <mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net>> wrote:
Glen, ‘n all, ____
__ __
I thought Haidt's point was not universal, but that we had passed
some point of no return in the current situation. I have to reread
it. ____
__ __
Somebody once wrote a very profound essay on this subject 45
years ago. Oh, Wait a Minute! It was ME!
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261728846_The_Failure_of_Pluralism>
I particularly like the author portrait on the title page. ____
__ __
We’ve been here before. Clark Kerr vs The Free Speech Movement,
1964. ____
__ __
Nick ____
__ __
Nicholas S. Thompson____
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology____
Clark University____
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>____
__ __
__ __
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2016 10:15 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Truth vs. Social Justice on college campuses
__ __
Is there anything in the study of telos that demands it be
unitary? Even assuming "truth" and "social justice" are
fundamentally disjoint, why must a university choose one over the
other when they "collide"? The epithet "linear thinker" comes to
mind.____
__ __
Haidt's parenthetical is important: "But an institution such as a
university must have one and only one highest and inviolable good."____
__ __
Institutions are complex, whether more or less so than the
individuals composing them is debatable. But anyone who sells you
with a pitch claiming that a university is a simple structure that
must have a single arching _purpose_ is obviously a huckster of some
sort.____
__ __
__ __
On 12/05/2016 07:33 AM, Eric Charles wrote:____
> Seems like the type of thing this group likes to digest. (Note,
there ____
> is an outline of the talk below the video, so you don't need to
watch ____
> anything.)____
> ____
>
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-social-justi
<http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-social-justi>____
> ce/____
__ __
--____
␦glen?____
__ __
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