Disagreement is Disrespect
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Robin Hanson's posts at Overcoming Bias often intrigue me. He appears to be engaging, perhaps deliberately, in what the philosopher Grice called flouting conversational implicatures.
Just read this.
"When you knowingly disagree with someone you are judging them to be less rational than you, at least on that topic.
(Judging them less informed or experienced by itself can't create disagreement.)
It might be only a minor disrespect, if you think this disagreement suggests little about whether you'd disagree with them elsewhere.
But disagreement is disrespect, nonetheless."
Now, I don't know about you, but this is a pretty hard conclusion to either agree with or disagree with.
If you merely said "I disagree", you might be implying "You jerk, Hanson - and no, I haven't stopped beating my wife."
Personally, I disagree with this conclusion, but love the idea that it expresses.
I love the idea for what it shows: statements make truth claims, but aslo express other sentiments that are not irrelevant to the truth claim.
This is a fancy, but not merely fancy, way of saying that it matters what you say, and how you say it.
In conclusion, I disagree with Hanson, but I am very amused by his conclusion. Have I disrespected Hanson by disagreeing and also being amused?
I suspect not, otherwise why take the time to reply?
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Comments
My understanding of Hanson's position is as follows.
Let "D" stand for disagreement, and "NR" stand for something like no respect.
Hanson has two distinct claims, neither of which I think are true.
1. D implies NR.
2. The number of times D & -NR are true together is zero or very small, for a particular proposition and take across the population.
I gave a counter-example to 1, by disagreeing his views about disagreement and respect and am highly amused by his argument. Presumably being highly amused is different than being even mildly disrespectful.
As to 2, this is an empirical claim which Hanson would have to have some evidence for, other than a thought experiment.
(You disagreeing with me in an apparently disrespectful manner cannot bootstrap 2. Perhaps you are merely being ironic and agreeing that 1 is false?)
Thanks for dropping by.
Posted by: michael webster
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September 11, 2008 3:51 PM
You say you disagree with Hanson, but you give no argument to support your position, and it's not even clear what position other than Hanson's you have. Your blog entry is a waste of time.
Posted by: Tim Freeman | September 11, 2008 11:23 AM