Back in the pre-internet age, anyone who wished to learn more about a given topic generally utilized reference books. These fact-filled texts came in various forms—almanacs being a favorite with readers—but by far the most popular option when I was a young lad was the encyclopedia—or, more accurately, a set of volumes with topics ranging from A-to-Z.
My grandmother (who taught fourth grade)
purchased a set of the World Book
Encyclopedia sometime in the early 1960s with the invitation that we, her
grandchildren, could borrow a volume as often as any of us needed. I took her
up on that offer quite frequently.
I confess, though, that in recent years I’ve
joined the crowd, using the convenience of Goggle’s search engine to obtain some
of the background information that I need for an article or to check on the
accuracy of a fact or quote I plan on using. And more often than not, my first
stop (but no means my only one) is at Wikipedia where I can get a general
summary as well leads (or links) to other sources.
I’ve also learned that publishers who once
made a living selling those sets of encyclopedias and other reference materials
now have a presence on the internet. One of them I came across recently was the
renowned Encyclopedia Britannic.
We’re
warned not to believe everything we read on the internet. That’s certainly a
good caution, but there are facts about things as well as generally-accepted or
plausible versions of events, and the key in both finding this information and
having confidence in its accuracy is your source. Who is providing these facts
or version of events and what is their intent?
I trust the contents of an article written
for an encyclopedia due to the editing and oversight that accompanies it prior
to publication and because it’s submitted by an expert in the
field, but not as much so the report from a think tank with an obvious
political agenda. I trust a print journalist writing a news story (although I’m
well aware he or she might harbor a leaning to the left or right) because most
of them adhere to a professional code of conduct in how they write a news story
or even a commentary. I’m much less trusting of the talking heads on radio and
TV talk shows who make no pretext of their political and cultural slants; donning
the uniform of journalists when they are actually more apologists and
propagandists for their viewpoints and candidates and elected officials who
support them.
Further down the ladder of believability
are the campaign spokespeople who are now front and center on the national
stage. Their spinning and twisting of facts and events, their efforts to
backtrack a controversial statement or rationalize away a foot-in-the-mouth
comment—done in service to their candidate—can be breathtaking in its audacity.
Damage control is one thing. Putting the best light on an otherwise dark
situation is understandable. But telling the public we didn’t hear what we
heard or that what we heard is being misconstrued even when it’s virtually
impossible to construe it in any other way is the stuff of Orwell’s 1984 newspeak.
Of course, the tried and true recourse when
caught between a rock and a hard place—done ad nauseam from my admittedly
biased point of view--is to attack the messenger (mainly the press) by claiming
the matter is being blown out of proportion.
On a
recent afternoon spent browsing the various mainstream media news sites on the
internet and also reading the print version of The Detroit News, I became overwhelmed with the news stories on the
political double talk that was occurring, and being reported on.
I asked myself: How amid this whirlwind do
we define and determine what is true and factual, how do we convince or
persuade someone else of its accuracy and validity, and what standards can we
employ or utilize that we and others will agree upon? Is it even possible
anymore?
I remembered that Truth and Knowledge were
topics that Socrates had dealt with in Plato’s dialogues. And to make sure I
was getting the straight dope, I clicked on the Encyclopedia Britannic’s web page that had information on what I
sought. There I found a short article that touched a little bit on my inquiry.
“Fifth-century Athens was a politically
troubled city-state,” the article noted, adding that “it underwent a sequence
of external attacks and internal rebellions that no social entity could envy.
During several decades, however, the Athenians maintained a nominally
democratic government in which (at least some) citizens had the opportunity to
participate directly in important social decisions. This contributed to a
renewed interest in practical philosophy. Itinerate teachers known as the
sophists offered to provide their students with training in the effective
exercise of citizenship.
“Since the central goal of political
manipulation was to outwit and publicly defeat an opponent, the rhetorical
techniques of persuasion naturally played an important role,” the article
continued. “But the best of the Sophists also made use of Eleatic methods of
logical argumentation in pursuit of similar aims. Driven by the urge to defend
expedient solutions to particular problems, their efforts often encouraged
relativism or even an extreme skepticism about the likelihood of discovering
the truth.”
For example, the sophist Gorgias (among his
arguments) took the skeptical position that nothing exists, if it did, we could
not know it, and if we knew anything, we could not talk about it. Protagoras,
meanwhile, contended that since human beings are “the measure of all things,”
it follows that truth is subjectively unique
to each individual. The sophist Thrasymachus, in his argument in favor of
expediency, contended that it is better to perform unjust actions than to be
the victim of the injustice committed by others.
The rap on them, thanks mainly to their
portrayal by Plato in his writings, was that these and other sophists were
using unsound or incorrect reasoning and in many cases were more interested in
winning an argument and using the tricks of the trade than in the merits of
what was being debated. Among their boasts was that they could take either side
of a question (the thesis and antithesis) and present a convincing case.
Whether
they actually deserved this bad reputation, I’m not sure (we have historically
been influenced in judgment by Plato’s interpretation and he had a
philosophical agenda of his own to propagate), but part of their legacy has
been the unflattering term sophistry,
meaning the use of reasoning or arguments that sound correct but are actually
false. Underlying that definition is the
implication that sophistry is a deceptive method of debate and done without scruples.
The irony is that the word derives from the Greek term for a wise man or
expert.
As for Socrates, the Encyclopedia Britannic article called him “the most interesting and
influential thinker in the fifth century (B.C.), whose dedication to careful
reasoning transformed the entire enterprise.
“Since he sought genuine knowledge rather
than mere rhetorical victory over an opponent, Socrates employed the same
logical tricks developed by the Sophists to a new purpose, the pursuit of
truth. Thus, his willingness to call everything into question and his
determination to accept nothing less than an adequate account of the nature of
things made him the first clear exponent of critical philosophy.”
I won’t stretch the comparison too much
between ancient
Athens with its intellectual
tug-of-war between the sophists and Socrates and our current American political
campaign with all of the questionable discourse accompanying it, other than to
wish we had more discussion on the merits of what’s being proposed, based on
facts and clear reasoning, and less of the deliberate deception and distortion.
What’s making this wish of mine increasingly
difficult to obtain is that people are picking and choosing what facts to
accept, which version of events to give credence to, and which facts and
versions to ignore or even attack. It’s worsened to the degree that previously
reputable and credible sources of information—the reference materials and the
experts in their field--are being questioned, arbitrarily dismissed, or accused
of bias. Much of this is being done, not through the use of clear reasoning,
but from allegiance to a political candidate or ideological belief.
What
we’re also seeing is an increased use of fabricated facts or events. It seems
that when all else fails, the solution is to make something up, repeat it often
enough to a receptive audience, and—lo and behold—it is perceived as a factor
as having actually occurred.
When research or fact checking shows this
information to be inaccurate at best or a complete fiction (also known as
lying) at worst, the response seems to be to shrug it off as no big deal,
refuse to accept the evidence, or attack the messenger.
The
rules of political engagement that once guided us, the standards by which the
general public could measure the accuracy or inaccuracy of what is being said
or claimed, the common ground of agreed-upon knowledge that we shared and that provided
us a solid footing to our discussions and aided us in finding a resolution have,
it seems, given way to the corrosive effects of skepticism, relativism and
expediency.
Our public discourse has become more sophistry
and less Socratic—more about winning the argument (or election) regardless of
the means used or any ethical considerations and less about the pursuit of
truth and accurate knowledge that would assist us in making an informed
decision and determining a suitable course of future direction.
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