Change in media reporting

[Schmedlap]

Given our discussion about then media, I thought this would be a good place to post this story from CBC.ca

Quote:
No doubt it's torture, says U.S. journalist after trying waterboarding
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 | 1:01 PM ET
CBC News

Christopher Hitchens, a Washington-based journalist known for his support of the Iraq war and the U.S. war on terror, has subjected himself to waterboarding.

Sounds like a nice stunt for Hitchens to earn a little more cash.

I want to make sure I'm clear on this. Our intel folks waterboarded 3 of the highest level terrorist operatives in our possession, about 6 or 7 years ago, in response to an unprecedented terrorist attack on our mainland and the realistic fear that another would occur. Do I have that about right? If so, why the concern about waterboarding? You'd think that it's something that we plan on doing again. It seems like we experienced the perfect storm there: high level operatives, unprecedented terrorist attack on mainland with thousands dead, country in panic, fear of a ticking-time-bomb scenario, and intel and nat'l security communities in general disarray. I don't think that happens more than about once every decade or generation or so. Given the hysteria, you'd think it occurs 3 times per day and that Dick Cheney personally turns on the water.

[wm]

Given the hysteria, you'd think it occurs 3 times per day and that Dick Cheney personally turns on the water.

What the Veep chooses to do in the privacy of his own home is not a subject of concern for us here.

[marct]

Hi Schmedlap,

I want to make sure I'm clear on this. Our intel folks waterboarded 3 of the highest level terrorist operatives in our possession, about 6 or 7 years ago, in response to an unprecedented terrorist attack on our mainland and the realistic fear that another would occur. Do I have that about right? If so, why the concern about waterboarding? You'd think that it's something that we plan on doing again.

I'm honestly unsure of the total numbers and if anyone has them, it would be great to see.

I think the concern has centered around waterboarding because that has become the symbol for "torture" and sidestepping the anti-torture conventions. As a symbol, any absolute reality of its use, scope and range is immaterial; it has become the focal point of a semantic web of meaning, hence the "concern".

As a "debate", it results out of a perceptual breach. Hmmm, try this.

• "torture" is "evil"
• "evil" is the opposite of "good"
• "We" are "good"
• Therefore we don't commit "torture"

However,

• waterboarding has been used by "us"
• but, since we are "good" and torture is "evil", that means that
• waterboarding cannot be "torture"

That's the old "official" logic that Hitchens used to support, at least passively. What he has done by putting waterboarding to the test is to realign the epistemological grounds somewhat for several of the points like this:

• waterboarding has been used by "us"
• but, since we [collectively] are "good" and torture is "evil", and
• waterboarding is torture, that means that
• someone amongst the collective "us" is forcing us to commit evil.

It's definitely a semantic realignment .

What I found fascinating about it was the epistemological premise underlying it all. First of all, he assumes, as many of us do, that we will be able to tell if X, Y or Z is "torture" if we experience it - sort of like the "I don't know art but I know what I like [and if I like it, it's "Art"]" model (i.e. Truth by personal experience). Now this is a completely different epistemological ground from the more common ideological one - e.g. "If X says it, it must be right" (truth by assertion).

When we look at the valorization of the Press as a "watchdog", that Truth via experience model implicitly underlies our expectations.

[wm]

What I found fascinating about it was the epistemological premise underlying it all. First of all, he assumes, as many of us do, that we will be able to tell if X, Y or Z is "torture" if we experience it - sort of like the "I don't know art but I know what I like [and if I like it, it's "Art"]" model (i.e. Truth by personal experience). Now this is a completely different epistemological ground from the more common ideological one - e.g. "If X says it, it must be right" (truth by assertion).

When we look at the valorization of the Press as a "watchdog", that Truth via experience model implicitly underlies our expectations.

MarcT,

I won't comment on all of the problems in the logical presentations of the stylized arguments in your post (the stuff I deleted from the above quotation). I'm more concerned with the last point anyway. I think the "Press as Watchdog" model of truth is an epistemological stance that accords validity based on position rather than on experience. It is subject to the informal fallacy of "appeal to (illegitimate) authority" (and I'm not talking about the marital status of the authority's parents ). Too often folks get snookered by "authorities" who either aren't experts or are operating well outside the scope of their expertise (Noam Chomsky being one of my favorite examples, but most of the CNN and Fox News military analysts have been known to overstep their "scope of practice" as well).

What Hitchens may really have been up to was a corrective belief experience, a form of a posteriori testing of his beliefs about waterboarding. That does not "prove" that waterboarding is torture. A mismatch exists between being able to test whether a physical manifestation of a characteristic of a concept actually instantiates that characteristic (a rather subjective and at best, interpersonal activity) and being able to determining whether the a priori list of characteristics one has for "defining " a concept adequately defines that concept (again subjective and probably interpersonal due to the use of the normative term 'adequately'). What Hitchens did was decide that waterboarding was an instance of the concept 'torture' but he did not explain what about waterboarding had the conditions necessary to hang the name 'torture' on the action. (To use terms of art, he showed that an act of waterboarding was in his extension for torture, not that it was in anyone's intension for the term.) To summarize, he found that waterboarding scared the crap out of him, but he didn't demostrate that having the crap scared out of you is a form of torture. (BTW, if being scared to death were a form of torture, then Bram Stoker tortured me with his book Dracula.)

[marct]

Hi WM,

I won't comment on all of the problems in the logical presentations of the stylized arguments in your post (the stuff I deleted from the above quotation).

One of these days, we have to sit down and do a comparison between formal logic and semantic or emotional logic - preferably combined with a series of optics experiments .

I'm more concerned with the last point anyway. I think the "Press as Watchdog" model of truth is an epistemological stance that accords validity based on position rather than on experience. It is subject to the informal fallacy of "appeal to (illegitimate) authority" (and I'm not talking about the marital status of the authority's parents ).

It's a matter of stance, really. The assumption o the part of the audience is that the reporter is an "authority", as you noted (or, at least, that they have done their homework). But this hides another assumption which is that the reporter has an experiential grounding in the area of, at a minimum, the "ask the man who knows" type.

Actually, this type of stance based authority is standard in any type of culture more complex than a simple Hunter-Gatherer group (cf Durkheim's Introduction to he 2nd edition of The Division of Labor in Society).

Too often folks get snookered by "authorities" who either aren't experts or are operating well outside the scope of their expertise (Noam Chomsky being one of my favorite examples, but most of the CNN and Fox News military analysts have been known to overstep their "scope of practice" as well).

Agreed; happens all the time.

What Hitchens may really have been up to was a corrective belief experience, a form of a posteriori testing of his beliefs about waterboarding. That does not "prove" that waterboarding is torture. A mismatch exists between being able to test whether a physical manifestation of a characteristic of a concept actually instantiates that characteristic (a rather subjective and at best, interpersonal activity) and being able to determining whether the a priori list of characteristics one has for "defining " a concept adequately defines that concept (again subjective and probably interpersonal due to the use of the normative term 'adequately'). What Hitchens did was decide that waterboarding was an instance of the concept 'torture' but he did not explain what about waterboarding had the conditions necessary to hang the name 'torture' on the action. (To use terms of art, he showed that an act of waterboarding was in his extension for torture, not that it was in anyone's intension for the term.) To summarize, he found that waterboarding scared the crap out of him, but he didn't demostrate that having the crap scared out of you is a form of torture. (BTW, if being scared to death were a form of torture, then Bram Stoker tortured me with his book Dracula.)

Actually, I don't disagree with you at all. As far as formal logic is concerned, and especially that based on crisp sets, his "experiment" is junk. The crucial point, and the reason why I tossed it up in his thread, was his use of an experimental / experiential test as a way to reinforce his "authority". Did it "prove" that waterboarding was "torture"? Not in any hypothetically objective sense. Then again, "torture" is not a thing that can be perceived as objectively existing in reality (for an analog, see all the problems with defining "abuse"). "Torture" (and "abuse") are socially constructed and negotiated conceptual constructs that have no objective and absolute existence (i.e. they are not crisp sets or objects existing outside of a socially constructed context).

What I was noting that Hitchens was doing was invoking a particular epistemological stance (or ploy, take your pick ) in an ongoing debate.

[wm]

One of these days, we have to sit down and do a comparison between formal logic and semantic or emotional logic - preferably combined with a series of optics experiments .

Only if those optics experiments involve aiming and projecting some pointy objects with flights at a bristle board (AKA a round of darts) in an atmosphere conducive to quaffing fermented malted effervescent beverages (AKA beer)

Actually, I don't disagree with you at all. As far as formal logic is concerned, and especially that based on crisp sets, his "experiment" is junk. The crucial point, and the reason why I tossed it up in his thread, was his use of an experimental / experiential test as a way to reinforce his "authority". Did it "prove" that waterboarding was "torture"? Not in any hypothetically objective sense. Then again, "torture" is not a thing that can be perceived as objectively existing in reality (for an analog, see all the problems with defining "abuse"). "Torture" (and "abuse") are socially constructed and negotiated conceptual constructs that have no objective and absolute existence (i.e. they are not crisp sets or objects existing outside of a socially constructed context).

What I was noting that Hitchens was doing was invoking a particular epistemological stance (or ploy, take your pick ) in an ongoing debate.

I agree. What concerns me is how many folks may have been taken in by the ploy.

[marct]

Only if those optics experiments involve aiming and projecting some pointy objects with flights at a bristle board (AKA a round of darts) in an atmosphere conducive to quaffing fermented malted effervescent beverages (AKA beer)

Couldn't have a proper academic discussion without them - especially the beer .

I agree. What concerns me is how many folks may have been taken in by the ploy.

Yeah, and it does happen. My suspicion is that he is doing this as a form of auto da fey (sp?) in order to justify backing off of support for it. Good social theatre... .

[wm]

My suspicion is that he is doing this as a form of auto da fey (sp?) in order to justify backing off of support for it. Good social theatre... .

Allows him never to have been wrong as well--just "previously less aware about what waterboarding really entails"--and to have a foot in the "experience-based" reporting camp that includes all those embedded journalists who file their stories without ever leaving the hotel in Baghdad or the FOB/Green Zone.