Comment on Why does good faith matter ?
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 3 days agothey don’t believe in the argument they are presenting
I don’t think that’s the case here. While people might lie when there’s something to gain from it, we generally don’t hold views we don’t believe in - because that creates cognitive dissonance.
More often, I think it’s that people hold views they feel are true on an intuitive level, but these beliefs usually aren’t something they’ve arrived at independently from first principles. Instead, they’ve adopted them from somewhere else - social groups, media, culture - and haven’t really thought them through.
The belief becomes part of their identity, and they accept it at face value. They know they’re right, so anyone who disagrees must automatically be wrong. That makes it easy to dismiss or ridicule opposing views rather than trying to understand where that “false belief” comes from. After all, why waste time listening to someone who just doesn’t get what you already know to be true?
What people need is humility. There’s no way one can be right about literally everything - we just don’t know what we’re wrong about. It might be something trivial but it also might be one of our core beliefs. The truth is not always intuitive or something that we like. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.
There are three small words that a lot of people need to use more often:
“I think that…”
Being able to distinguish between opinions and things that you can prove is right is important for debates. The goal is to reach the best conclusion, and you cannot do that if you base the conclusion on falsehoods.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I don’t disagree with most of your thoughts above, but I’m not seeing a discussion of the merits or detriments of arguing in bad faith. A necessary component of bad faith arguing is the knowledge that you don’t actually hold that opinion that you’re defending even while claiming you do. After your first sentence in your text above you’re speaking to actual beliefs that the person holds, which wouldn’t be bad faith.
jasory@programming.dev 3 days ago
Bad faith argumentation has nothing to do with honestly presenting your views. I can defend positions I don’t actually hold just fine, an argument doesn’t gain any special properties depending on who makes it. I could even claim that I held these beliefs and it would have no effect. Rather, bad faith argumentation has to do with how you engage with your opponents arguments, not your own. An example of bad faith would be if your opponent said that they liked Germany, and you then spun it into portraying them as a Nazi.
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 3 days ago
I don’t think actually believing the views you defend is relevant here. Playing devil’s advocate can be done in good faith. In fact, I’d argue that being able to clearly articulate a view you don’t hold is a sign that you’ve genuinely understood your opposition’s arguments. You don’t need to be convinced by them yourself.
What does make it bad faith is if you put those arguments forward but then refuse to engage with the counterarguments - that’s where the line gets crossed.
For example, I don’t agree with the reasons Russia has given for attacking Ukraine, but I can still lay out those arguments in a way a pro-Russian person would recognize as accurate. That, on its own, isn’t bad faith. But if someone responds by calling me a delusional Nazi or something similar, that is bad faith - a strawman, specifically - even if that person genuinely believes people who argue that position deserve such a label.