Our public discourse has become more sophistry & less Socratic

How do we define and determine what is true and factual, how do we convince or persuade someone else of its accuracy and validity...?

NOTE: I wrote this piece about a deteriorating public discourse in August of 2016 as both a response to and judgement of what was happening during the election campaign that year. A lot of ‘water over the bridge’ since then, but the situation remains a matter of concern—a sentiment, I believe, many others share. In fact, to say our public discourse has grown even worse borders on understatement.

  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.

   Later, when my son was young, I purchased a set called Encyclopedia Americana which focused more on American topics than the more cosmopolitan World Book or the equally prestigious Encyclopedia Britannica. As it turned out, he found the internet more conducive for his research needs, leaving me as the main user of this printed source of information. I still have the volumes--elegant in their dark blue covering with black trim and gold lettering. I keep them in my office and still (on occasion) take one off the shelf to check out a particular topic or to just to start reading the offerings.

   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.

Steve Horton is a journalist from mid-Michigan and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’—a weekly newspaper.