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Professor Claims Skeptics Just Want to Experience Belief Vicariously

8/16/2019

26 Comments

 
​In Aeon magazine, English professor Emily Ogden from the University of Virginia has a disturbing piece in which she argues that “debunking” is not a quest for truth but rather a scene in the grand drama of defending modernity against the alternative ways of knowing that populate our postmodern world. According to her published CV, this is the only subject to which she has devoted significant attention over the nine years since she earned her PhD in English, and, to be frank, her argument is a load of postmodern bunk with a small kernel of correct observation that goes too far toward demonstrating why those outside the academy are suspicious of its sophistry. You might expect me to disagree with the thesis that “debunkers” are biased performance artists, but instead I am going to disagree with the limited view she takes of epistemology as psychodrama.
​Consider, for example, the cartoon she makes of the very notion of attempting to distinguish between truth and lies, an act she sees as a biased white male effort to impose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities, who are, presumably, beyond the reaches of reason:
Debunk is a story of modernity in one word – but is it a true story? Here’s the way this fable goes. Modernity is when we finally muster the reason and the will to get rid of all the self-interested deceptions that aristocrats and priests had fobbed off on us in the past. Now, the true, healthy condition of human society manifests itself naturally, a state of affairs characterised by democracy, secular values, human rights, a capitalist economy and empowerment for everyone (eventually; soon). All human beings and all human societies are or ought to be headed toward this enviable situation. Some – and these are often non-Western people, people of faiths other than Christianity, people of colour – have regrettably gotten themselves faced in the wrong direction. They are still ‘barbaric’ or ‘medieval’ or even ‘primitive’. Maybe they are even getting more so. Turns out the debunking will have to continue. We’ll have to keep de-worming on an individual, an institutional, or a geopolitical scale until everyone is all right.
​For whom is this a modern fable? It might be for the New Atheists like Sam Harris and perhaps the Steven Pinker school of Pollyanna cheerleading for modern American capitalism, but it bears absolutely no resemblance to anything I have seen from the actual people who work tirelessly, often with personal or professional sacrifice, to try to engage in public education to correct the record. “Debunking” an episode of Ancient Aliens is not going to save democracy, nor will decrying Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest vaginal health aid lead to secular values reigning over others.
 
What is infuriating, as we shall see, is that Ogden understands the importance of truth in the usual sense but argues that the social bonds between people should hold more weight than facts and evidence.
 
Ogden clearly seeks to identify “debunking” with the historically dominant demographic in society, white males—specifically the bourgeois capitalist ones—for whom rationality is a weapon used to deny non-Western peoples, women, and minorities an equal intellectual stake in society. But she then personalizes the argument by alleging that skeptics receive an almost sexual gratification from debunking:
Even on the individual scale, debunking is not the simple scene of deworming that we might be tempted to picture. What we should imagine instead of an impartial skeptic is a person who gets a charge out of being the rational member of the exchange – someone who is drawn, for reasons that might or might not be clear to him or her, and that are probably difficult to articulate, to the drama of unmasking. The adversarial scene of debunking breaks down into a strange collaboration between debunker, charlatan and dupe.
​Here you might expect me to reject the argument on the grounds that skeptics are unbiased advocates of truth, but the reality is more complex. Skeptics are indeed drawn to debunking for reasons other than a Socratic obsession with pure reason, but the reason for debunking isn’t to participate in some fanciful drama of modernity. It happens for the same reason that people always come into conflict. One person’s actions directly threaten the interests of the other. For most skeptics, they pursue debunking because a charlatan, idiot, or fraud’s falsehoods pose a threat to something that the skeptic loves. By countering misinformation, the skeptic seeks to safeguard what he or she values.
 
But Ogden isn’t actually concerned about the impact of debunking or what good the debunker hopes to achieve. Instead, she wants to undermine the idea of rationality and reason altogether. Her goal is to prove that debunking is bad because it suggests that individuals have agency, while she believes that we are subject to broader social and even biological forces that control our behavior and therefore render reason just another way to oppress minorities. Her particular beef is with what she calls “secular agents,” people who are capable of understanding the limits of their own knowledge and therefore act rationally:
Wherever you stand, though, I bet you can also think of some experiences that don’t fit this model. Maybe at some point you fell in love. Maybe you have ideas of yourself that came from your family – ideas that you hate, but that you can’t get rid of. Maybe you have some long relationships in which you know that there is a complicated set of agreements about what everyone will pretend is true. Maybe you’ve managed to psych yourself up in order to give a speech, or sparkle at a party, or be a clutch player, or seduce someone. For a while, you acted like someone else. It wasn’t really acting, in the sense of pretending, but at the same time it wasn’t really you.
 
Life includes a great many passages in which we place the demands of social bonds above strict truth. But don’t misunderstand me: I’m not just saying that we’re willing to lie for love. I’m saying that, in the context of some of the stories we tell collaboratively in our relationships with others, the question of lying or truth does not arise. We set it aside. We apply a different framework, something more like the framework we apply to fiction: we behave as if it were true. I call that framework credulity.
​I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean, nor how it is relevant to the question of whether it is legitimate to distinguish between truth and lies. Her various examples are unrelated to one another. Brain chemistry is “you” in the most literal sense—it’s your brain—while many of the other examples are either intentional self-deception or psychological phenomena. Regardless, even if everyone involved pretends that a lie is true, only an extreme postmodernist would then argue that the truth ceases to have any meaning or value. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is not an aspirational story.
 
At the end of the article, Ogden finally concedes that debunking is valuable when it exposes con artists and prevents harm. She even admits that truth has a value beyond social cohesion, but then rejects the idea by prioritizing social bonds over factual accuracy. Her position is basically that of Groucho Marx (“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”):
But the social dynamics of debunking should not be overlooked, either, especially when the stakes aren’t particularly high – when the alleged lie in question is not doing a whole lot of harm. At these times, what is debunking? It’s a performed refusal to play along, and to recognise the value of playing along. It’s the announcement that one rejects the as-if mode in which we do what social bonds require, and not what strict truth requires. It’s an announcement of that rejection. But the reality behind the announcement might be more complicated.
​It's fascinating that she doesn’t consider the social dynamics of delusion and fraud, nor does she interrogate her own unexamined assumption that people should be allowed to assume a degree of social power through lies and fraud so long as it promotes progressive social ends. It amazes me that she simply assumes that facts, evidence, and truth will favor powerful white men. It seems that she has conflated the consensus reality of the elite with objective truth.
 
She concludes that debunkers act out of an attraction to belief that they are unable to embrace because it is one they refuse to acknowledge. That seems to be an explanation that is wrong on two counts. First, many skeptics openly discuss how they were interested in fringe subjects or were former believers themselves. The attraction to these belief systems is not hidden. But more importantly, Ogden’s view completely disregards the question of whether debunking a faulty claim serves important interests beyond social bonding, such as protecting individuals from exploitation, maintaining the integrity of data or research, or even preventing monetary losses. “Playing along” with a liar and a fraud is not simply being sociable; at worst, it is pathological. At best, it is taking a submissive position by letting the fraud dictate the terms of the relationship. 
26 Comments
Kent
8/16/2019 09:48:27 am

She's an idiot.

http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/

Reply
Joe Scales
8/16/2019 10:13:40 am

"Here you might expect me to reject the argument on the grounds that skeptics are unbiased advocates of truth..."

Well, ideally they are. Ideally.

Reply
Paul
8/16/2019 11:15:18 am

I fell out of debunk once. Hit my head quite hard. Have not been right since. But not left either. More of a centrist, I guess. Ogden gets paid for writing bunk?

Reply
Rainbow unicorn
8/16/2019 12:12:24 pm

“. . .an act she sees as a biased white male effort to oppose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities.”

Should that be “impose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities”?

Reply
Rainbow unicorn
8/16/2019 12:14:55 pm

“. . .an act she sees as a biased white male effort to oppose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities.”

Should that be “impose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities”?

Reply
Doc Rock
8/16/2019 12:30:45 pm

If the journal has a comments section you should consider expanding this and submitting it.

Reply
TONY S.
8/16/2019 05:37:34 pm

So this is where we are now. Lovely.

Reply
An Anonymous Nerd
8/16/2019 07:43:55 pm

No comments section, and unfortunately I'm not sure what her point actually is.

"Debunker" as used popularly is simply another word for a skeptic who's actually engaged some bunk and, well, shown it to be likely just that. You can be a skeptic and just kind of ignore bunk, but those who go the extra mile (thank you again Mr. Colavito for being one of them) can be called "debunkers."

But the way she's using it it's almost like it carries broader connotations -- almost like she views them as fellow Post-Modernists of a sort. Folks who seek to weaken the social bonds that the rest of us rely upon. I don't know where she's getting all that from, though.

She also I think seriously underestimates the harm that the Fringe and their claims do.

-An Anonymous Nerd

Reply
A C
8/17/2019 11:01:13 am

From the context of her article one can only assume that her sympathy for mesmerism is in the context of a blind woman with no source of income. You could accuse her of using an unfairly cherry picked case study to make 'charlatans' look sympathetic but its not like she actually attacks or severely criticizes William Leete Stone (unless you think any mention of male privilege is an attack on the honour of your entire gender in which case I recommend you either grow thicker skin or commit to spending the rest of your life hiding from all educated women). No where does she comment directly on any modern sellers of 'fringe' information except to say that some deserve to be challenged and some might not.

Reply
An Anonymous Nerd
8/21/2019 10:39:03 am

To be quite honest your reply has almost as little to do with the article as it does with my reply to it. The title of her article, "Debunking Debunked," is a pretty unsubtle clue to her intent and intellectual orientation. She also concludes her article with this:

[[Maybe, instead of being surprised at Stone’s conversion from skeptic to ally of animal magnetism, his contemporaries should have expected it from a career debunker such as him. Credulity was what he had been interested in all along.]]

Again, unsubtle.

I wish to call special attention to the phrase in your reply that began thusly: "unless you think any mention of male privilege is an attack on the honour of your entire gender."

This comment was related to nothing I actually wrote or implied. You're using the Conservative technique of attempting to argue by buzz words.

-An Anonymous Nerd

Graham
8/16/2019 08:38:06 pm

Sorry to begin this with a nitpick, but in a couple of sentences you use 'he' where from the context I think you meant 'She' As it stands those sentences are a bit confusing.

Sadly the style of argument Ogden uses is pretty typical of PostModernists, everything is 'narrative' and 'social construct' (PostModernism started as literary criticism, think about it.), therefore there is no objectivity.

Reply
A C
8/17/2019 10:18:27 am

'Postmodernism' didn't start as anything, its an adhoc term applied to create the appearance of a movement out of various strands of thought.

Postmodernism was a literary movement before it was a critical movement, just a literary movement very informed by criticism.

Its complete slander to accuse anyone of claiming that they believe "everything is a social construct" unless they specifically state that and no major theorist of social construction has ever done so.

The philosophical denial of objective reality isn't 'postmodernism' its 'empiricism' and was most popular at the start of the modern period in the 18th century. Most of what gets denounced as 'postmodern' is heavily routed in the last 300 years of the western canon. There are no anti-science English proffessors hiding under the bed waiting to plunge us back into the confusion of the dark ages by arguing for continuing the civil rights movement.

Reply
Kent
8/17/2019 11:23:04 am

You don't know the meaning of either "slander" or "empiricism".

A C
8/17/2019 10:34:09 am

You're clearly playing the biased Skeptic in this article Jason.

"an act she sees as a biased white male effort to impose capitalist hegemony on women and minorities, who are, presumably, beyond the reaches of reason"

"Instead, she wants to undermine the idea of rationality and reason altogether. Her goal is to prove that debunking is bad because it suggests that individuals have agency, while she believes that we are subject to broader social and even biological forces that control our behavior and therefore render reason just another way to oppress minorities."

"people should be allowed to assume a degree of social power through lies and fraud so long as it promotes progressive social ends"

None of this is stated in the article, its Jason projecting his own imaginary enemy onto the writer.

No where does Professor Ogden attack skeptics, talk about what she sees as worthy political goals or champion charlatans. Jason just assumes she must because she's an English professor who cites authors he hasn't read.

I heard an interview with Professor Ogden some time in the last year and her work is historical study on 19th century society, its not the sort of thing that Jason has any reason to attack on his blog that is normally devoted to defending accurate historiography when he doesn't go off on a sub-James Lindsey rant.

She's talking about her assessment of 19th century skeptics based on the sources she's read. Sure shy might be biased by her ideas about contemporary skeptics and anything written about the past always comments on the present but she's still making an evidence based historical argument first and foremost, not some imaginary "objectivity doesn't exist so I can make stuff up nah nah nah" fever dream.

At times in this blog post Jason disagree with her conclusions, her logic but ruins any insight he might be able to add to the topic with by attacking a random stereotype at the same time.

Reply
Hans
8/17/2019 08:03:15 pm

No, AC, you are dreaming.
The main problem with Ogden’s argument is its brash dishonesty. The dishonesty of her argument becomes most obvious in the first sentence of the second to last paragraph: “But the social dynamics of debunking should not be overlooked, either, especially when the stakes aren’t particularly high – when the alleged lie in question is not doing a whole lot of harm.”
Why is shy talking about an “alleged” lie here? Either it’s a lie or it is not. Either it’s true or it’s not. Does Ogden refer to an “alleged” lie that is in fact a lie or an “alleged” lie that is in fact the truth? These are two totally different cases; bundling them together to make an argument is deceptive.
If the “alleged” lie is in fact the truth, then well, the “debunker” is not really a debunker; he is just another con artist. That kind of “debunking” may well have social dynamics, though I can’t see how they would be beneficial.
If on the other hand the “alleged” lie is in fact a lie then the debunker is simply setting the record straight - as he should according to Ogden. And there is no social dynamics associated with that at all.
But it goes on. What does Ogden mean with “a whole lot” of harm? Is she saying that harm is a good thing as long as it is not “a whole lot?” Wow much harm is too much harm then? That an English professor can seriously argue that inflicting harm is acceptable if it’s not “a whole lot” is repulsive. She should know better than that – and she does. She uses the kind of language that con artists use to deceive their victims.
And lies always cause harm. Always. Yes sometimes not “a whole lot”, but that should not make lies acceptable.
And so I fully understand that Jason is upset; Ogden’s article is bunk clad in the pretense to debunk debunking. Jason is not “projecting his own imaginary enemy onto the writer”, Jason simply recognized the writer for what she is: Somebody who broadly attacks skeptics based on minimal research.
Ogden in her article examines a specific case – one – of a con artist (Bracket) interacting with a debunker (Stone). And from that case Ogden concludes that living in a make-believe world has social benefits. Yes, she is probably right in that specific case. And she may be right more generally when you are only looking at the very narrow space of pleasant social interactions. After all, make-believe games are how children learn social skills.
However from that insight Ogden vastly overreaches when she draws conclusions like (talking about debunkers): “debunking might be the way that they live out an attraction to credulity that they don’t quite want to acknowledge to themselves.” It’s a slanderous generalization drawn from a single example; how unscientific could Ogden possibly be?
Or when she states in the introductory paragraphs: “Debunk is a story of modernity in one word – but is it a true story?” The example Ogden examines in the article has no bearing on whether debunk is a story of modernity or whether that story is true. The article is a complete non-sequitur.

Reply
Kent
8/17/2019 11:57:08 pm

You make some good points.

But

a little whitespace goes a long way.

Learn it, know it, live it.

"Ogden in her article examines a specific case – one – of a con artist (Bracket) interacting with a debunker (Stone)."

As a non-debunker (non-debunker = non-researcher) Ogden misses the much juicier case of a con artist (Randi's boyfriend) interacting with a debunker (Randi).

Reply
T. Franke link
8/18/2019 12:04:09 pm

Very well analyzed!

Prof. Ogden even denies the existence of universal natural human rights when she says: "There is no neutral, universal goal of progress". So, she is anti-constitutional from a Western democracy's point of view. And in effect, such thoughts really lead to the self-destruction of Western societies. We in Europe are several steps ahead in this process, unfortunately. When German chancellor Merkel once had been asked what could be done against Islamization (i.e. the transformation of the society according to anti-Western, radical Islamicist values), her answer simply was, that you could e.g. start again attending service in church on sunday. Thus, she simply missed the point completely and effectively denied that Western values are not just the folklore of some community within society, but the very foundation of the whole Western society itself.

Furthermore, I really think that every debunking, though small it may be, contributes to the higher cause depicted as a "fable" in Ogden's article (described by her in very bold colours, to ridicule it (Atlantis skeptics do the same with Atlantis!)). Freedem and Reasonabiltiy in societies grow from the grassroots, on the one hand side. On the other hand side, we are really touching the very roots of our Western civilization, when we discuss Plato and Plato's understanding of Platonic Myths, and things like that. And many pseudo-scientist ideas once had been real science on the way of development. You never know, but some piece of you could indeed make a vast difference in the intellectual history of future days.

Reply
Tudlaw
8/18/2019 02:17:17 pm

I was thinking "Can this be? Is he finally making a post without mentioning Atlantis?" But no, he made sure to disappoint.

Reply
T. Franke link
8/19/2019 04:32:52 pm

Tudlaw ..... could you please be polite and stop telling untrue stories?

Here are three recent postings by me, without mentioning Atlantis.

The third one debunked a wrong idea held by you. So you knew exactly that there were posts by me not mentioning Atlantis. Is it rather that you cannot stand that I debunked your wrong idea?

And by the way: What is wrong with talking about Atlantis, in general, and on this blog, in particular? It is "my" theme, and an important theme of this blog as well, so it fits perfectly.

9 July 2019 - no Atlantis:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/im-moving-this-week

18 June 2019 - no Atlantis:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/university-of-bristol-backtracks-furiously-on-voynich-manuscript-deciphering-claims

16 April 2019 - no Atlantis, but Tudlaw debunked:
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/time-publishes-article-linking-viking-themed-media-to-white-nationalism

In this last blog discussion, you gave me the adivse: "Stick to Atlantis." Well, and now, when I did this, you are still not content? Please be at least consistent in your story telling, Tudlaw!

Joe Scales
8/19/2019 09:44:47 pm

I think the point was that you never fail to include the word "Atlantis" in each and every post you make here, regardless of the topic at hand. If you have... I must have missed it too.

I however side with maintaining certain norms 'round these parts; and was rooting for same to continue forthwith. In other words, you be you.

Tudlaw
8/19/2019 11:06:03 pm

"So you knew exactly that there were posts by me not mentioning Atlantis."

Get over yourself, Asspie. No one other than you keeps track of the nonsense you injaculate to this comments section.

Pacal
8/23/2019 10:11:38 am

Frankly one of the most amusing aspects of extreme Post-Modernism of which the article Jason writes about is an example, is its absolute refusal to realize that such extreme Post-Modernism is fatally undermined by it's own premises. After all is everything is "text" and "truth" to a large extent a nonsensical concept and what really counts is whose interests it serves and what feels good. Then Post-Modernism can serve both "progressive" and "reactionary" ends with ease.

And has you mentioned some extreme Post-Modernists do in fact seem to deny individual agency. In which case why do anything?

But then conceding "rationality" etc., to "Dead, White Males" etc., is in effect conceding power. I'm surprised that extreme Post-Modernists don't seem to get this.

The other thing I get rom extreme Post-Modernists is that despite all their denunciations of intellectual positions of privilege and "discourse", is that they most definitely privilege Post-Modernism and have further indicated again and again that they wish police has they say "the boundaries of discourse" of other disciplines.

Reply
T. Franke link
8/24/2019 01:46:39 pm

Very true indeed. Post-modernism is a kind of desperate and anti-rational adventure, which is no progress of humanity. Defending rationality in itself is a task of our time. Rationality may seem self-evident, but it isn't. And the misunderstandings grow on all sides. You can overtwist everthing.

Even science can be heavily misunderstood, if you e.g. say that nobody has the right to doubt alleged scientifical evidence, e.g. concerning climate, and that therefore all climate catastrophee "deniers" shall be treated as enemies of humankind.

Reply
Pacal
8/26/2019 02:09:44 pm

I was talking about extreme Post-Modernism not Post-Modernism in general. Post-modernism when applied to discusses texts has texts can actually be quite useful and interesting. Also most people who use Post-Modernism do not think of themselves has irrational but rational. They believe the real world is in fact out there and we can know stuff about it. However extreme Post-Modernists seem to say reality is all in your head and other such guff. (When called out on this stuff they almost always deny that they really said or meant that.) Whatever. It is those people I call out.

As for climate change denial. Of course people have the right to deny it. But you seem to be indulging in hyperbole. I for one lump climate change deniers has in the same camp of those who denied cigarettes were linked to cancer and creationists. I may be wrong but it certainly looks that way.

Ralph hunter
8/26/2019 07:57:42 am

‘Load of bunk’ and ‘shes an idiot’ are not exactly responding to the issues at hand. And they do seem to indicate a defensiveness and insecurity that self labeled ‘skeptics” often reveal. The length and verbosity of the comments also seem to show that lots of people got their knickers in a twist. I think there is something to consider in this article. Skeptics (not skeptical minded critical thinkers) often seem like kids with noses pressed up against the candy store window of the paranormal,hoping something wonderful and thrilling might happen to them. There also seems to be a lot of readily accessible hate and a lack of self awareness presented here (most visible in the comments ) that pretty much precludes anything wonderful, otherworldly or even insghtful from sparkng these sad dull lives .

Reply
Pacal
8/26/2019 01:58:01 pm

Thank you for a perfect example of Alternadoxy. First the usual min d reading of Skeptics. Which includes Skeptics are defensive, insecure etc. Accusations of lack of self awareness and of course accusations of hate. And then we get the trope of Skeptics leading sad and dull lives. Which is a very common trope among the Alternadoxers.

The irony is of course it so so, so easy to turn all those tropes and claims against Alternadoxers. They themselves give abundant evidence of hatred / rage against the "Orthodox". They themselves show massive and spectacular insecurity about having their fantasies / delusions challenged or questioned. They invent conspiracy theories to explain why the "Orthodox" reject their views, (I.e., fantasizing about supressed evidence etc.), and heap contempt and ridicule on people on people who know more than they do. Many, many are proud of their ignorance; some say it helps them to "think outside the box".

These people gape are proven frauds, adhere to absurd beliefs proven beyond doubt false, and gawk at things that are not mysterious in the slightest. They refuse to believe they could be fooled, or that they could simply be ignorant. And like you seem to fantasize about Skeptics leading "dull" lives.

Does taking paranormal nonsense, that is not, backed up by anything like good evidence a key to a good exciting life? I doubt it. Oh and if you want some real science that sparks this Skeptics "dull" life how about the paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics.

The problem with the Paranormal Candy shop is that there is likely no candy in the shop and over a century of investigation has so far produced very little worth talking seriously.

But then the credulous fantasies of Alternadoxers would it seem close their minds to the real wonders of this Universe for the sake of few very dull fantasies ands myths.

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        • Fragments on Giants
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        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
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