I second David’s comment: this reply doesn’t abide by the Forum’s norms. (Specifically “other behavior that interferes with good discourse”.)
Calling for someone to be removed from the community (as I think was appropriate in Phil’s case) isn’t the same as saying we should give the same treatment to their ideas. And that’s what you seem to be doing when you link “more credit than [the critiques] deserve” to “redressing personal slights” and “doesn’t believe what he is saying”.
If you think Phil’s vendetta or personal beliefs are relevant to the reasonableness of his critique, you should explain why — it’s not clear to me what the connection is.
I think his arguments fail as arguments, and would still fail as arguments even if he believed in them sincerely. If the arguments are solid, any hypothetical bad faith seems irrelevant.
Put another way, would “Phil believes this” be important evidence in favor of the critique? If not, why does “Phil doesn’t really believe this” serve as important counterevidence?
Without the connection between Phil’s personal life and his arguments, this comment seems like a personal attack unrelated to your point. And it’s an unfortunate contrast with your other comments, which reliably engaged with the critiques rather than the critic. (As well as a contrast with basically all the other stuff you’ve written on the Forum, which is consistently backed by lots of evidence.)
I would usually agree that we should play ball and not man, but I think the critiques would be mystifying unless you knew the background on what is actually driving him to write this stuff. I think it is relevant evidence that he doesn’t really believe what he is saying because eg it should influence what you should believe about how faithfully he reports what the people he criticises say. We could look into each specific claim that he makes and check how faithfully he quotes what people actually say. As it turns out, it is often not faithful and often very uncharitable. But if you know that someone’s motives are randomly to trash people who have crossed him, that should update us about how much we should trust all of the claims they make. It’s like ignoring the fact that a journalist has fabricated quotes when examining what they write, and instead just focusing on all of their object-level claims each time they write anything.
I agree that knowing someone’s personal motives can help you judge the likelihood of unproven claims they make, and should make you suspicious of any chance they have to e.g. selectively quote someone. But some of the language I’ve seen used around Torres seems to imply “if he said it, we should just ignore it”, even in cases where he actually links to sources, cites published literature, etc.
Of course, it’s much more difficult to evaluate someone’s arguments when they’ve proven untrustworthy, so I’d give an evaluation of Phil’s claims lower priority than I would evaluations of other critics who don’t share his background (all else being equal). But I don’t want them to be thrown out entirely.
I think the critiques would be mystifying unless you knew the background on what is actually driving him to write this stuff.
When Phil shares this material, I often see comments (on Twitter, Aeon, etc.) from people saying things like “yes, this is also how I feel” or “this experience you said someone had is similar to the experience I had”. You could argue that these people probably have false beliefs or biases of their own, but they don’t seem mystified, and they probably don’t share Phil’s personal background. He seems to represent a particular viewpoint/worldview that others also hold for non-vengeful reasons.
I second David’s comment: this reply doesn’t abide by the Forum’s norms. (Specifically “other behavior that interferes with good discourse”.)
Calling for someone to be removed from the community (as I think was appropriate in Phil’s case) isn’t the same as saying we should give the same treatment to their ideas. And that’s what you seem to be doing when you link “more credit than [the critiques] deserve” to “redressing personal slights” and “doesn’t believe what he is saying”.
If you think Phil’s vendetta or personal beliefs are relevant to the reasonableness of his critique, you should explain why — it’s not clear to me what the connection is.
I think his arguments fail as arguments, and would still fail as arguments even if he believed in them sincerely. If the arguments are solid, any hypothetical bad faith seems irrelevant.
Put another way, would “Phil believes this” be important evidence in favor of the critique? If not, why does “Phil doesn’t really believe this” serve as important counterevidence?
Without the connection between Phil’s personal life and his arguments, this comment seems like a personal attack unrelated to your point. And it’s an unfortunate contrast with your other comments, which reliably engaged with the critiques rather than the critic. (As well as a contrast with basically all the other stuff you’ve written on the Forum, which is consistently backed by lots of evidence.)
I would usually agree that we should play ball and not man, but I think the critiques would be mystifying unless you knew the background on what is actually driving him to write this stuff. I think it is relevant evidence that he doesn’t really believe what he is saying because eg it should influence what you should believe about how faithfully he reports what the people he criticises say. We could look into each specific claim that he makes and check how faithfully he quotes what people actually say. As it turns out, it is often not faithful and often very uncharitable. But if you know that someone’s motives are randomly to trash people who have crossed him, that should update us about how much we should trust all of the claims they make. It’s like ignoring the fact that a journalist has fabricated quotes when examining what they write, and instead just focusing on all of their object-level claims each time they write anything.
I agree that knowing someone’s personal motives can help you judge the likelihood of unproven claims they make, and should make you suspicious of any chance they have to e.g. selectively quote someone. But some of the language I’ve seen used around Torres seems to imply “if he said it, we should just ignore it”, even in cases where he actually links to sources, cites published literature, etc.
Of course, it’s much more difficult to evaluate someone’s arguments when they’ve proven untrustworthy, so I’d give an evaluation of Phil’s claims lower priority than I would evaluations of other critics who don’t share his background (all else being equal). But I don’t want them to be thrown out entirely.
When Phil shares this material, I often see comments (on Twitter, Aeon, etc.) from people saying things like “yes, this is also how I feel” or “this experience you said someone had is similar to the experience I had”. You could argue that these people probably have false beliefs or biases of their own, but they don’t seem mystified, and they probably don’t share Phil’s personal background. He seems to represent a particular viewpoint/worldview that others also hold for non-vengeful reasons.