William Payne

I’ll link to Chalmers paper when I have a chance. He’s very clear about how he conceives of consciousness, distinguishing subjective conscious experience from other candidates. We all have immediate acquaintance with conscious experience. but of course, we can only know it in our own case. Subjective conscious experience is that what is like for you to be aware of things. This conception is clear enough, at least to conscious beings. But it doesn’t beg any questions about whether it can or can’t be explained in terms of physical processes. No mention of this issue is involved in explaining the conception of consciousness itself. Given this, I’m not sure how the circularity worry gets off the ground. The conclusion Chalmer’s argues for, that conscious experience can’t be accounted for in terms of physical processes, results from functionalism as the reigning paradigm in cognitive science. We can explain mental states and processes in terms of physical processes when we can understand those mental phenomena in terms of their functionality. The hard problem of consciousness, as illustrated with the zombie thought experiment is that subjective conscious experience has no associated functional role.

Dare I give your thoughts a “like”? (I could not resist)

As usual your ideas and focus are cogent, thoughtful, and elegant. In law we use the notion of “make an argument” all the time. However, in more general discourse and in instruction I find I am regularly explaining the notion of an “argument” as not the power of mere persuasion by power over less powerful or the desire to prove ones personal perspective correct, but of the notion of thoughtful critical thinking considering multiple perspectives. This runs counter to the notion that personal opinion adds credibility to an argument which one often encounters. In law, personal opinion adds no credibility to a legal argument. One might make an argument that last statement might not be true if you are a Justice serving on the SCOTUS – it would be an interesting critical thinking exercise! Res Ipsa Locquitor at its best!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and reducing to elegant writing some very powerful ideas and reasons to soldier on.

I agree with the symptoms described here but propose a different flavor to the concluded take, because I believe the root cause of these issues is 1) unavoidable and 2) fundamental and inescapable to the dynamics of human interaction.

Basic playground guidance assumes the norms will be respected and followed by everybody, and in an increasingly divided community (and society as a whole) that assumption can only be advocated for. But if in lived reality these cries for good faith are ignored, then influence and power inevitably become a factor as a means of upholding these values and will be to our detriment if ignored or avoided. Good faith is a social contract mutually agreed upon, but in event of its breach alternatives to good faith engagement become necessary.

Semantic differences between “influence” and “manipulation” aside, speech that is disagreed upon will always be flavored with moral arguments on either side, whether made in good faith or bad. To my mind, there is no objective means to evaluate the validity of these arguments beyond what is observable and empirical; the material context in which these arguments are made provide this universal standard, as well as illustrate the power dynamics by which one’s speech is made and how that speech may alter the material conditions of everyone around us. It is for precisely this reason why hate speech is outlawed and made distinct from other forms of speech; because it is an incitement to physical, material, lived violence upon a perceived group.

I would agree that further regulation brings diminishing returns; microaggressions and dog-whistles do not carry the same weight of material consequences or historical animus as racial epithets that were so often employed by the bigots and lynch mobs of prior eras. But I would disagree with the assertion is to simply try to enter into good faith discussion with people who are clearly “gaming the system.” If someone speaks dogwhistles rather than open epithets in support of their views (which are fundamentally unchanged in comparison to the speech they employ), then by inference it can already be concluded that good faith is out the window. The ground that is free speech is already contentious. What the law accomplishes with regulations to free speech is to keep that conflict within the bounds of words rather than physical action. I believe this to be a good thing; it suppresses harmful behavior, but it cannot change the heart of the person advocating for those things. Where there is a will, there is always a way.

For this fact alone, speech in pursuit of advocacy takes on a dynamic of engagement, even contention. Even so, it must not be shied away from; and all manner of rhetoric in support of this advocacy is fair game, regardless of how it’s characterized by the opposition. Narratives and framing of ourselves and our detractors will always be an inevitable part of discourse, and as a tool they are used to convince others. I do not think of these things as inherently misleading or harmful. In my humble opinion, biases are inherent to possessing moral values, and therefore cannot be fully suppressed or suspended, and I would rather that these be openly acknowledged rather than claiming that we are free of them (or at least more free than our opposition, which again carries a primarily rhetorical function as a claim towards objective truth) when making arguments for morality and systems of ethics.

The impetus for this engagement, in my view, is all the more important when our own perceptions and means of thinking is influenced not only by individuals of social media, but also by moneyed interests in the mainstream media class, who absolutely weaponize their speech to alter and shape the perceptions of their vast audience. This has been made clear in the ways in which the press has characterized the campus protests of the genocide in Gaza, the lack of any western press on Israel’s intent to ethnically cleanse Palestinians in the strip, and the ways in which government twitter accounts blast Neonazi sentiments across the app of a person who bought his way into a shadow vice presidency. Speech has material consequences affecting countless people and cannot be divorced from this reality; these matters must be engaged by every means available to us precisely because of the moral, material crises facing our country and society today. I believe we should defend free speech with an explicit awareness and engagement of this context, as a nonviolent means to advocate our values in a world where speech is inherently intertwined with power, influence, and conflict.

I’m not sure how this narrows our past understanding of critical thinking since I’m not sure what that has been. Our lack of a shared understanding of outcomes like Critical Thinking is a good part of the reason we are engaged in ILO reform.

Addressing our accreditation recommendations requires remedying this issue. To this end, we are proposing a more developed understanding of Critical Thinking. One that is pretty mainstream, and research based. There is still ample flexibility for teaching it across disciplines.

It’s an open question how many courses will adopt a CT ILO along the lines we’ve proposed. I hope many of us do. But our past practice of claiming outcomes in the absence of any developed shared conception doesn’t meet accreditation expectations nor does it serve our students well.