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 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.