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Dear Nicola,
Forgive me for coming back to you on this,
but I do think that
there is more to discuss here.
After an
opportunity to revise your earlier message, you would
now
say:
"... periodically new people come in with
fake
names and feel free to send us any kind
of
stupid message. This was certainly far
from
Ken's purpose ..."
No amount of subsequent
revision of words can remove any
effect they had when first expressed: in
this case,
misrepresentation.
In these circumstances it is not
revision that is needed, it
is an apology. Like Speech Acts [1], list
posts--List Acts,
we might call them--act on and so change the world, often
in
non-reversible ways: a world of people and their emotions,
feelings,
thoughts, desires, beliefs, ideas, ideals, in this
case.
If damage or
hurt is done by a List Act, even inadvertently,
a further act that attempts
to repair this damage or hurt is
needed: not an attempt to re-write the
history of it. This is
what Ken did.
But, even your revision
does not remove what, for me is the
offending implication: that Cindy's posts
were stupid. Even
if you say it was certainly not Ken's purpose to have
Cindy
post stupid messages, your (revised) statement still leaves
the
implication that you think, or would like us to believe
that they were
(nonetheless) stupid.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not trying to
defend what
Ken did here: that is not what we are discussing. We
have
moved on from that, as Evandro Guimaraes would wish us too.
What we
are discussing is how open and fair discussion
and argument can take place on
this list, and what is the
nature and basis of the trust that is needed for
this.
Fair and effective discussion and argument depends
upon
constructive actions. Searle's Speech Acts theory gives us
a
theory for the 'mechanics' of these actions--in our list
discussion
world of List Acts. From this point of view, you
can see that emotional
content in List Acts is important as it
can be used to achieve or secure the
desired effects:
emotional content can and does effectively refine List Acts
so
that they do what the author wants them to do.
What we can also
see, is that List Acts that are all, or
almost all, emotional expression
easily and often result in
misrepresentation and distortion. For fair
and open
discussion and argument, these are destructive acts.
Worse
still is when such emotional expressions are apparently used
to
prepare for and justify the presentation of judgements of
the (now
misrepresented and distorted) state of affairs.
For this list to work as
an open and fair places for
constructive discussion and argument, each of us,
both posting
to and reading this list, need to be able to trust that
the
posts are prepared and sent as constructive contributions to
an
ongoing discussion or debate: it is thus the form and
construction of the
post that we must be able to trust in, not
simply (or even) the person or
persons who posted it. This is
so that when genuinely constructive
attempts fail, and cause
hurt or damage--as they occasionally will--further
appropriate
List Acts (apologies) can quickly take effect to sooth
the
hurt and damage done. Careless and ill-considered
emotional
expressions of indignation, hurt, or wrongs do not serve to
do
this, no matter how strongly felt and properly justified and
real the
feelings of indignation, hurt, and wrongs are.
For this list to work as
the PhD Discussion list it was set up
to be, and which it has very largely
succeeded in being--a
list where people can engage in, learn, and develop
the
effective discussion and argument abilities basic to all kinds
of
research--we need to be able to trust list members to not
use it as the place
to express their emotional judgements:
these can and should be done
privately. This list is not for
anybody to say just anything in just
any way because he or she
feels the need to, or that he or she must or
should. It is
for genuine attempts at constructive discussion and
argument.
If there is a disease that would destroy this list, it
is
the disease of posting distorting and self centred
judgemental out
bursts.
Best regards,
Tim
References
1. John
Searle, 1969. Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy
of
language, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press.
(This presents a theory of speech acts replying on
an idea
of constructive rules.)