Earlier this week, Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, threatened to boycott Australian e-journal On Line Opinion because it publishes article by so-called ‘climate change denialists’. Today, the journal’s Chief Editor, Graham Young, responds:
“The idea that truth is relative has taken over some areas of the humanities through postmodernism, theory and forms of Marxist analysis. That’s the school that Clive Hamilton’s argument on global warming comes from… We instinctively know that things do have objective reality and are not power constructs. That it doesn’t matter how many people say it is true if it isn’t.”
In today’s article Graham Young emphasises the importance of trying to understand the facts-of-the matter rather than as Clive Hamilton does, deferring to authority.
While Clive Hamilton has decided that “there was no way I could pretend to have a comprehensive grasp of climate science … [so] I had to decide not what to believe but whom to believe.”
Graham responds, “How do you decide who to believe if you have abdicated your right to analyse the arguments?”
Again on the subject of the truth Graham writes: “We believe that there is such a thing as the truth, and that it is out there, even if none of us will ever perceive it more than dimly.”
According to Graham one way of discovering the truth is to “welcome lobbyists as well as academics, politicians, activists and citizens. We want to put citizens in touch with decision makers and those with influence, and we don’t differentiate between them because they might have a particular point of view, or draw their paycheck from a particular source.
“Our fundamental tenet is that while there is such a thing as the truth it demands constant mining and refining for it to be discerned, and that it is not our place to tell others what to think. Consenting adults can come to this site [On Line Opinion] and see opposing arguments laid out before them and make-up their own minds. Clive is under-estimating the ability of our average reader.
“An ethical approach to argument avoids ad hominem attacks and concentrates on facts and arguments. It treats its opponent’s arguments with respect, and doesn’t misrepresent them, and it researches its own arguments thoroughly and presents them honestly.”
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Silencing dissent
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7596&page=1
The Sad Demise of On Line Opinion
http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7580
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
As the left used to say “Question authority!” Or avoid the argument from authority fallacy.
Clive Hamilton walked right into the door of argument and reason.
This elite think of Hamilton and others is something that causes unrest in society. A lot of people may not be able to argue a case like professional commentators or specialists to their specialty or technologists to their tech but they can follow an argument and take something away to digest, as a matter of fact that’s why they are in the audience.
Hamilton loses his right to an audience (the public) when he gives his authority as analyst away to other’s, he may as well just be a tape recorder or he is a market shill, whichever part of the market place, green or non green.
How can he lecture ethics when he argues censorship. Our democracy does (should) not shut down free speech because every time it does. The public react politically. This may take time until someone willing to discuss reality, upsides downsides, cost and benefit, morality and immorality appears.
Good on Graham and good on OLO. A debate is not a popularity contest it is a test or a feat of ideas.
“….because it publishes article by so-called ‘climate change denialists’.”
Is not correct. Clive would probably be fine with OLO publishing the odd skeptical argument, particular if it was well researched or from an authoritative source, and if the author fully disclosed their associations.
What he objected to was what he perceived to be the editor showing an unfounded preference for skeptical articles, and highlighted a case where the association of the skeptical author was not fully disclosed. He also challenged the concept of ‘balance’, and suggested that providing an equal number of articles from the skeptical view as from the mainstream view was not ‘balance’.
This led him to believe that OLO was biased and compromised.
Its not about the blunt censoring of “denialists”.
Normally, a philosopher, in the field of ethics or otherwise, does not flee when encountering a challenge. At the very worst, a philosopher sits down, perhaps with a ponderous tome, and reconsiders.
It appears that he is not a philosopher.
Socrates could have run for the hills if he’d wanted to, and didn’t.
Clive Hamilton shames all philosophers and should renounce any claim to the title.
Interesting comment Schiller Thurketle since you refuse to encounter any tomes or scientific papers when your ideas here are challenged. You continue to peddle rubbish but from a safe, distant mound.
Winston P. Smith
Cinders has pointed out on the other thread of this topic that Mr Hamilton may not be exactly who he claims to be. He said;
“I was aware that Clive Hamilton had retired as a director of the Australia Instiute in November last year. According to the TAI media release he was to devote himself to writing. so I was surprised he is now identified at OLO as a Professor at CAPPE.
A check on their web page at the ANU shows that he is not on staff as a Professor or lecturer, but a check of past events identifies him as Dr Clive Hamilton (Visiting Fellow, Regulatory Institutions Network, ANU)
Perhaps the first thing we need to do is ensure we identify his position.”
Could it be that we have a “Professor of Ethics” who’s grasp of ethical behaviour is so rudimentary that it allows for misrepresentation of one’s position and job description?
I support Cinders’ call to properly identify his actual position as a matter of priority.
I don’t believe that truth is relative. I believe that there is objective truth.
While truth isn’t relative, that doesn’t mean that we all are able to see the truth on every issue with equal skill – e.g. if i spent a few days (or months or even a year or two) reading about brain tumors and operation procedures, I’d still look like a goose trying to argue with an experienced, practicising neurosurgeon about how to go about it.
Yes, there is an objective truth, but we all have to try and find it with varying success, and we all defer to experts on many, many issues – it saves time, but involves trust. Its a fact of life.
Nowhere is the action of deferring to authorities more important than in government – government ministers are not scientists, or brain surgeons or military geniuses. They are policy makers and what they are supposed to be good at doing is sorting through the opinions of experts and lobbyists and voters and building a defensible and effective course of action in a timely fashion. But they don’t become experts themselves. I’m sure Penny Wong isn’t an expert on the scientific debate, she has to rely on the opinions of others.
Speaking of authorities: Why have an OLO? Its not hard to search for yourself around the internet to find limitless opinion that is online about any issue you like. Very quick to find them too using a search engine. So what does OLO do, and why do we need it? There are loads of online opinions out there!
In reading OLO, we are deferring to the skill of the editors in picking and choosing ‘good’ opinions to read. We are deferring to an authority.
Graham tries to characterise OLO as some lofty objective truth seeking institution, in contrast to Clive who has to appeal to authority, when all the while, the idea of authoritative sources is absolutely intrinsic to the premise and value of OLO, and to being an editor whose job is to pick and choose articles.
PS. Labelling another’s viewpoint as “postmodern” and raising the spectre of relative truth when characterising another’s opinion is a (currently very trendy in the blogosphere) form of ad-hominem criticism, and should be frowned upon by those interested in real debate.
PPS. I have no problem at all with anyone who wishes to get in there and debate the science of climate change with whomever is willing to debate, you don’t need to be a professional scientist to be interested in science, and debating is a good way to learn.
Just don’t expect that because you’ve read some stuff on the internet that people should listen to you, especially the government. You’ve got to get some authority in your voice first.
Winston,
I believe I mentioned Socrates. If you are not familiar with Socrates, I am sure you can find out more information easily.
Of course, if you consider mentioning Socrates to be “peddling rubbish”, well, you’ve some explaining to do. Most people educated in the Western tradition don’t consider his works to be “rubbish”, and most in other traditions don’t, either.
Steve
“Nowhere is the action of deferring to authorities more important than in government”
Sorry, but wrong example!
Would be true if government members were mere pragmatists with no discernible ideology, but they are politicians, with a political ideology.
Therefore, any decision they make is guided by their ideology.
Rest assured, Ms Wong will not take advice from CC skeptics.
“Therefore, any decision they make is guided by their ideology.”
That’s a bit too cynical to think that the advice of experts, lobbyists, etc etc is not considered at all.
You can’t explain Howard’s gun laws, Nelson’s policy of cutting petrol excise, Hawke/Keating industrial relations reforms, Garret’s hacking away at the solar rebate or Iemma’s efforts to privatise electricity as being strictly about ideology.
“Rest assured, Ms Wong will not take advice from CC skeptics.”
I disagree. She might not listen to some random blogger or self-proclaimed expert who is a climate skeptic, but she will listen to – for example – the CEOs of various energy and mining companies and interests, some of whom may indeed be skeptics. Unlikely she’ll take their view on the science over that of the IPCC, but she will def consider their view when it comes to developing a policy response.
I’d guess that her decision on whether or not to listen is based on her idea of the authority of the talker, not whether or not they are a climate skeptic.
Ian Mott, when i read Clive’s article on OLO it read as some fixed-in-place personal ethical dilemma but when i read his background was as a professor of public ethics i was more than curious. That is why i checked a bit more at CAPPE and certainly there he isn’t listed as part of the academic staff nor as an adjunct appointment. All i can say is, that it is funny peculiar and for the real funny stuff just read his article.
My comment was the hope that some contributers may offer their thoughts to help disinfect poor Clive because there are some unfortunates that do not play, that are maladaptive, fragile, inhibited, stressed or whatever?
For myself, play, although hard to define, is what I tend to do most and seemingly all lacking the extrinsic as well as any reduced uncertainty. There are cognitive benefits in play along with enrichments that enhance behavioral flexibility and discovery. Picasso and Mozart played all their lives. However, my suggestion is let’s try to get the essential features of intrinsic motivation where first one should PLAY before the enrichment of find and ye shall seek.
Steve, just to rescue you from the suspicion of an ad hominem attack, could you point out the articles published on OLO on Greenhouse that are not well-researched and shouldn’t have been published? According to your deep understanding of Clive’s mind?
And if you’re concerned about sites having editors who make editorial decisions, that’s fine. You can do away with Graham Young (and Jennifer Marohasy for that matter) and do your own reading. No-one forces people to use well-run sites with good editors, even though they appear to prefer them to the randomness of un-edited cyber space.
Steve Dream on!
Mr Howard: “I hate guns!” only needed an excuse, and it was popular with voters at the time, not to mention disarming the population is every govs. aim, if they can get away with it.
Iemma, NSW gov. is broke, needs money urgently!
Can’t afford to maintain the plants anyway, let alone build new ones.
Big business sees opportunity to break small business and make money in the process, they don’t care about CC being good bad or indifferent.
I am a realist, not a cynic, seen too much, lived through too many flavors of governments, both here and overseas. (socialist, communist as well)
They always, always delivered, according to ideology!
Big business and CC.
http://www.accountancyage.com/accountancyage/news/2220597/pwc-strikes-green-gold-4102942
I am not concerned about sites having editors, I acknowledge the need for it. I am debating your argument that Clive is somehow incorrect for relying on authority, and challenging the idea that OLO can be contrasted well with Clive’s approach. OLO is all about subscribers relying on OLO’s authority to select what is good to read. Its not a criticism, its a description, and the facts of this description take away from your argument against clive.
I don’t think I need rescuing from ad-hominem either. It is clear that I am endeavouring to describe Clive’s thinking, not attack particular authors of OLO articles, or its editors.
“According to your deep understanding of Clive’s mind?”
That kind of petty sarcasm is unbecoming. Clive’s attitude to OLO climate articles is fairly obvious after his article I would think, and doesn’t require a deep understanding to describe.
Clive Hamilton is the poster boy for all the AGW true believer tropes. In the very first sentence of his Sad Demise he hurls the ad homenim “climate change denialists.” Doesn’t sound like the man wants a debate but an inquisition.
Then he goes on to explain that the dogma is settled. AGW theory is a bit like gravity, evolution, or perhaps more aptly The Holy Trinity, only nutters would deny its self-evident existence.
Hamilton commits the same ethical errors he accuses of the skeptics: “creating doubt by exaggerating, exploiting and twisting” the facts.
Then after showing that “denialists” are “not true scientific sceptics” but nutters infected with “emotional fanaticism,” he illogically claims he lacks “the expertise” to engage in the debate anyway.
So what we have here is something akin to a rhetorically challenged spoiled brat who’s too simple to construct a coherent argument, and so claims his opponent isn’t worth of one.
And what finally says it all is that “The Demise of On Line Opinion” is paradoxically hosted courtesy of the rather vital On Line Opinion.
Don’t let the door whack you on your way out, Clive, old man.
Clive Hamilton’s faux outrage is disingenuous; Hamilton belongs to an ideology which dovetails perfectly with AGW; that ideology is critiqued here;
http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/spr03/polspr03-7.htm
Hamilton’s ideology is misonewistic and fundamentally anti-individualistic. In his eyes capitalism and the individual freedoms it has provided can be reduced to cardboard wrapping and other sundry waste and unjustified degradation of nature’s bounty. In addition Hamilton is an ascetic, and I suspect, sternly concerned with what he would see as the decadence and emptiness of modern life; who isn’t put-off by britney spears and the antics of the rich and pampered? But this is where people like Hamilton are dangerous; at heart he is an utopian with a recipe for a simpler, more meaningful existence for the rest of us. Anyone who is utopian about humanity is inevitably oppressive and censorious because humanity can never live up to any epistemological definition of perfection; especially a contradictory one which would take away the ability to search out meaning, or more importantly, question the meaning ordained. This is the essence of ideology which is self-contained by its own definition and needs no further improvement. AGW is such an ideology and its promulgation has been based on a litany of pronouncements and censorship and ostracisation of any and all apostasy and heresy.
Clive who?
Doesn’t the statement by Clive “I had to decide not what to believe but whom to believe” speak volumes. To me it says he has chosen a priest and become a follower. This mode of thinking underpins fundamentalist thought and is the worst characteristic of humans. What he now does is determined by his priest stupid very very stupid.
“To me it says he has chosen a priest and become a follower.”
Or to reframe that without the hyperbole, it says that he has decided it is more time effective (and probably more effective full stop) to defer to an appropriate authority on climate science rather than “believe” that he himself is capable of becoming sufficiently expert on the science of climatology to conduct his own science – you ever conducted a climate-related science experiment DHMO? Or are you deferring to an authority somewhere too?
And even if he did decided he wanted to become a layman climate expert, he would still need to exercise some judgement in choosing what to read.
If Clive has chosen to retreat from the field of battle, so be it. Defeat in an honorable conflict is not necessarily dishonor.
But whining about it–that’s sad. He can’t leave the field with his shield, won’t be borne away lying atop his shield, so what does he do?
Raise his voice among the mourner’s parade. Goodbye, Clive. Perhaps you’ll find honor among the effete snobs. Here’s a hanky.
Claiming academic titles and affiliations seems to be a common ploy. Both Ian Mott and Keiran confirm that Clive Hamilton was not listed on the CAPPE web site as a professor or member of its academic staff.
This was the case a few days ago at the time of my original post, however in double checking for this post the CAPPE home page has, after scrolling down to the bottom of the page this “Professor Clive Hamilton joins CAPPE as Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University”.
Perhaps the Web site administrators have been either reading this blog or OLO.
So my apologies for doubting OLO’s description of him.
This practice of claiming academic affiliation has been seen in the Tasmanian pulp mill debate. A Tom Baxter was recently identified by the media as “University of Tasmania accounting and corporate governance school lecturer” when commenting on the action of the Tasmanian Government, but on checking the school’s web site his position title is PhD scholarship holder, eg a STUDENT.
Another example in the pulp mill debate is the author of the part of the Greens submissions, a recent ‘expert witness’ in the Lawyers for Forests Federal Court Case and author of many critiques of Tasmania’s pulp mill as Professor Wadsley of the Deakin University ( see ABC 7 30 report June 2007 Professor Andrew Wadsley, Petroleum Technology, Curtin University) a check of the Curtin Staff at staff.curtin.edu.au returns no result on a search of “Wadsley”.
Correction to my above post its Professor Wadsley of Curtin University, somehow I typed Deakin.
“Claiming academic titles and affiliations seems to be a common ploy.”
Claiming some sort of knowledge and expertise appears to be a common ploy on this weblog. Lots of armchair enthusiasts who are way out of their field and like to poke and prod with some self-bestowed authority. When they are challenged they resort to smear and attack and divert the attention away from the real issue. Why anyone decides to enter into any sort of meaningful dialogue with the majority of you would probably be a great masters project in psychology.
“Perhaps the Web site administrators have been either reading this blog or OLO.”
Yes, it is highly likely that someone would use this fora for someting useful. Don’t you guys realise that this site is a source of great entertainment?
“This practice of claiming academic affiliation has been seen in the Tasmanian pulp mill debate. A Tom Baxter was recently identified by the media as “University of Tasmania accounting and corporate governance school lecturer” when commenting on the action of the Tasmanian Government, but on checking the school’s web site his position title is PhD scholarship holder, eg a STUDENT.”
A person can be a lecturer and a student. The two are not mutually exclusive. It seems that some here just can’t grasp how things are out in the real world.
Darak W
“how things are out in the real world.”
Almost agreed with you, until, this quote!
When ‘Steve’ (not me) writes:
“PS. Labelling another’s viewpoint as “postmodern” and raising the spectre of relative truth when characterising another’s opinion is a (currently very trendy in the blogosphere) form of ad-hominem criticism, and should be frowned upon by those interested in real debate.”
This is a fatuous point to make when the whole edifice of AGW orthodoxy now routinely bolsters it’s continued authority (especially after 10 years of a hiatus in global warming) by resorting to a whole host of “very trendy ad-hominem” labels for climate sceptics ranging from Clive Hamilton’s favourite ‘denialists’ through to Hansen’s ‘global criminals’.
I am the mildest of climate sceptics – a ‘lukewarmer’ if you will who has reached an opinion, based on a background of a long career in geoscience that CO2 sensitivity (delta T caused by a doubling of CO2) is only likely to lie in the range of about 0.75 – 1.25 degrees.
Yet I have sat in an on-campus public lectures and listened to real heavy duty sceptics (e.g. Lindzen) patiently working though a valid scientific critique of a particular tenet of AGW catastrophism only to invariably be howled down by a crowd of lightweight graduates (and undergraduates) resembling nothing so much as a baying pack of religious zealots attending an Inquisition torture session.
Yet when pressed to provide coherent technical rebuttals almost every single one who stood up has generally soon revealed a startling mindset which can only be described as a belief that somehow, reality itself is actually modified by the collective human will. In a nutshell – post-modernism.
IMHO, this is actually one of the keys to the problem of where we now find ourselves in the evolution of modern 21st century political correctness.
In many aspects (e.g. ‘ocean acidification will be here by 2060’) modern political correctness is now firmly grounded in de facto repudiation of the principles of the Enlightenment.
This is the disastrous outcome of at least 3 decades of the post-modernist corruption of academic standards, both in the humanities and even (alas) in part in the sciences.
Steve Short, a very cogent analysis. I’ll bookmark that. Thanks.
Excellent, Steve, but I’d also say that there is really nothing new about the phenomenon except its scale and perhaps its insidious onset. It is just the latest, grandest, example of the Madness of Crowds.
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