I gave you an upvote because the topics you consider are important ones, things I have been thinking about myself recently. But I have to agree with the other commenters that you might have made the posting a bit shorter and the reasoning a bit tighter. But that is enough about you and your ideas. Lets talk about me and my ideas. :)
The remainder of this comment deals with my take on a couple of issues you raise.
The first issue is whether moral-value opinions, judgments, and reasonings can be evaluated as “rational” vs “irrational”. I think they can be. Compare to epistemic opinions, judgments, and reasonings. We define a collection of probability assignments to be rational if they are consistent; if they are Bayesian updates from a fairly arbitrary set of priors; updates based on evidence. We may suspect, with Jaynes, that there is some rational objective methodology for choosing priors, but since we don’t yet know of any perfect such methodology, we don’t insist upon it.
Similarly, in the field of values (even moral values) we can define moral rationality as a kind of consistency of moral judgments, even if we do not yet know of a valid and objective methodology for choosing “moral priors” or “fundamental moral preferences”. That is, we may not yet be able to recognize moral rationality, but, like Potter Stewart regarding pornography, we certainly know moral irrationality when we see it.
Your second major theme seems to be whether we can criticize conversations as rational or irrational. My opinion is that if we want to extend “rational” from agents and their methods to conversations, then maybe we need to view a conversation as a method of some agent. That is, we need to see the conversation as part of the decision-making methodology of some collective entity. And then we need to ask whether the conversation does, in fact, lead to the consequence that the collective entity in question makes good decisions.
Although this approach forces us into a long and difficult research program regarding the properties of collectives and their decision making (Hmmm. Didn’t they give Ken Arrow a Nobel prize for doing something related to this?), I think that it is the right direction to go on this question, rather than just putting together lists of practices that might improve public policy debate in this country. As much as I agree that public policy debate sorely needs improvement.
I don’t think I have anything to add to your non-length-related points. Maybe that’s just because you seem to be agreeing with me. You’ve spun my points out a little further, though, and I find myself in agreement with where you ended up, so that’s a good sign that my argument is at least coherent enough to be understandable and possibly in accordance with reality. Yay. Now I have to go read the rest of the comments and find out why at least seven people thought it sucked...
Yes, it could have been shorter, and that would probably have been clearer.
It also could have been a lot longer; I was somewhat torn by the apparent inconsistency of demanding documentation of thought-processes while not documenting my own—but I did manage to convince myself that if anyone actually questioned the conclusions, I could go into more detail. I cut out large chunks of it after deciding that this was a better strategy than trying to Explain All The Things.
It could probably have been shorter still, though—I ended up arriving at some fairly simple conclusions after a very roundabout process, and perhaps I didn’t need to leave as much of the scaffolding and detritus in place as I did. I was already on the 4th major revision, though, having used up several days of available-focus-time on it, and after a couple of peer-reviews I figured it was time to publish, imperfections or no… especially when a major piece of my argument is about the process of error-correction through rational dialogue.
Will comment on your content-related points separately.
I gave you an upvote because the topics you consider are important ones, things I have been thinking about myself recently. But I have to agree with the other commenters that you might have made the posting a bit shorter and the reasoning a bit tighter. But that is enough about you and your ideas. Lets talk about me and my ideas. :)
The remainder of this comment deals with my take on a couple of issues you raise.
The first issue is whether moral-value opinions, judgments, and reasonings can be evaluated as “rational” vs “irrational”. I think they can be. Compare to epistemic opinions, judgments, and reasonings. We define a collection of probability assignments to be rational if they are consistent; if they are Bayesian updates from a fairly arbitrary set of priors; updates based on evidence. We may suspect, with Jaynes, that there is some rational objective methodology for choosing priors, but since we don’t yet know of any perfect such methodology, we don’t insist upon it.
Similarly, in the field of values (even moral values) we can define moral rationality as a kind of consistency of moral judgments, even if we do not yet know of a valid and objective methodology for choosing “moral priors” or “fundamental moral preferences”. That is, we may not yet be able to recognize moral rationality, but, like Potter Stewart regarding pornography, we certainly know moral irrationality when we see it.
Your second major theme seems to be whether we can criticize conversations as rational or irrational. My opinion is that if we want to extend “rational” from agents and their methods to conversations, then maybe we need to view a conversation as a method of some agent. That is, we need to see the conversation as part of the decision-making methodology of some collective entity. And then we need to ask whether the conversation does, in fact, lead to the consequence that the collective entity in question makes good decisions.
Although this approach forces us into a long and difficult research program regarding the properties of collectives and their decision making (Hmmm. Didn’t they give Ken Arrow a Nobel prize for doing something related to this?), I think that it is the right direction to go on this question, rather than just putting together lists of practices that might improve public policy debate in this country. As much as I agree that public policy debate sorely needs improvement.
I don’t think I have anything to add to your non-length-related points. Maybe that’s just because you seem to be agreeing with me. You’ve spun my points out a little further, though, and I find myself in agreement with where you ended up, so that’s a good sign that my argument is at least coherent enough to be understandable and possibly in accordance with reality. Yay. Now I have to go read the rest of the comments and find out why at least seven people thought it sucked...
Yes, it could have been shorter, and that would probably have been clearer.
It also could have been a lot longer; I was somewhat torn by the apparent inconsistency of demanding documentation of thought-processes while not documenting my own—but I did manage to convince myself that if anyone actually questioned the conclusions, I could go into more detail. I cut out large chunks of it after deciding that this was a better strategy than trying to Explain All The Things.
It could probably have been shorter still, though—I ended up arriving at some fairly simple conclusions after a very roundabout process, and perhaps I didn’t need to leave as much of the scaffolding and detritus in place as I did. I was already on the 4th major revision, though, having used up several days of available-focus-time on it, and after a couple of peer-reviews I figured it was time to publish, imperfections or no… especially when a major piece of my argument is about the process of error-correction through rational dialogue.
Will comment on your content-related points separately.