Personal Arguments
by Bijan Parsia
Lest anyone think we’re all hard core technical stuff and geekery, here’s a nice touchy feely post!
I am, by training and inclination, a philosopher. A common feature of philosophers is that they like to investigate arguments, indeed, are passionate about arguments. That is, we like to present, explore, pick apart, and play with justificatory structures. Many of us can get quite worked up about them as well. So, with a philosopher like me you can have a passionate disagreement even when you agree on the conclusion!
(Yes, my beloved one is a hero.)
Of course, everyone knows that attacking people is, at best, bad argument form in most cases, not to mention impolite and counterproductive. Sometimes it is straight up necessary (that is, not all ad hominems are fallacious): For example, consider an argument that a certain person is habitually a bad actor. It’s impossible to separate the argument from the person involved since, after all, one is discussion that person.
However, one might think that in most technical situations that personal attacks are inappropriate. Of course, sometimes they are funny and lighthearted, sometimes they just slip out, and sometimes they communicate important information (like that an interlocutor is at the end of their rope). In the latter two cases, apologies are almost always appropriate, and in the first case, if people take it the wrong way, apologies are likewise appropriate.
I tend to believe that “attacking the idea” is ok. I know this isn’t generally true: With children, for example, it’s often not good. Also, people identify closely with their ideas. (I personally get upset if a cherished idea is shattered. It’s certainly possible to increase that upset with certain tones.) When they do that, they tend to read attacks on the idea as attacks on them. In that circumstance, a “dishing back what you got” response is pretty common (even if that’s not what you got).
One line that I tend to fall into is that I’m perfectly innocent since I merely attacked the idea, whereas other people are out of line because they attacked me. This is coherent, but, y’know, doesn’t work too well. It’s pretty infuriating to feel attacked, then to lash back, then to have the fact that you made a personal attack rubbed in your face. Even if you recognize that you escalated it is very natural to deny that you did. It’s also very natural to lash out harder. Indeed, people are very good at avoiding the recognition that they are doing wrong. After all, it sucks to be a schmuck. To be a mean person is worse.
I used to think that once I got to “the serious place” (college, grad school, faculty) that the “attack the idea, not the person” thing would become the default attitude and everything would be nice. Or vigorous, at least. But it sure doesn’t seem that way. I would prefer, for my own ease of behavior, that I could just walk through the world concentrating on having a thick skin with regard to my ideas. Alas, that really doesn’t suffice.
Furthermore, it’s not too hard to subvert the rule. It’s very easy to make a personal attack that is hidden as an attack on ideas. Or to make a personal attack without mentioning the person. (I had someone claim that they did not personally attack me because they did not mention my name, but merely pointed to three email that I had written as examples of alleged reprehensible behavior. Bleah!) It’s possible, then, to mistake someone’s attack on your idea as a disguised personal attack.
My main strategy for that is to make my personal attacks as clear as possible! Then I can argue that of course my idea attack wasn’t a disguised personal attack because if I’m going to attack you…you know it. This, again, is not the most winning of strategies, but has a somewhat appealing coherence. If you find coherence appealing, of course.
One place where I am especially thin-skinned is when people, however obliquely, call into question my honesty. (I’m not too fond of attacks on my competence either.) This doesn’t seem to bother some other people in the same way, especially if they can indite themselves in the same breath. For example, I had someone point to me after an exhausting thread (wherein I did my best to keep cool and argue the merits) and say, roughly, “Oh, you’re like me…you just enjoy the disputing.” I found this amazingly hostile. I was arguing in good faith and, by their own words, they were not. In the confession of that, they accused me of likewise arguing in bad faith. That’s so frustrating that I’m likely to go ballistic in response. I imagine that my doing so is surprising to many people, including the interlocutor, since, from their perspective, they are being friendly. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that their indifference to a moral flaw is likely to be shared by anyone else.
Although, I do try to admit to flaws or the possibility that I’m the problem (or my style is or…) in order to get people to calm down. That doesn’t work very well either a lot since a bad faith or sufficiently upset interlocutor will just take that as an additional stick to beat you with.
I find myself walking away from conversations a lot more, which makes me sad. I often come at things from a different perspective that people have trouble grasping. (A prof in grad school kept beating on my papers as heroically missing every point until I had a sit down with him and went through one bit by bit. He had a revelation: I wasn’t missing the point, I just was coming from a very different perspective. More precisely, “I saw the world askew.” This didn’t make me wrong, just harder for him to get without care.) One of these is the methodological and another is what constitutes appropriate, helpful, and polite behavior. I’m not very good at successful modification of my settled behavior (that is, I can effect fairly radical changes, but not in ways that help notably in the broad scheme of things) so it seems unlikely that I can unskew myself.
This leaves me with trying to compensate: cultivating an extra-thick-skin, getting better at recognizing when a situation is hopeless, continuing to practice de-escalation tactics, doing as much good as possible, and avoiding problem cases. Oh, and, of course, finding communities that I can live with and that can live with me.
