With Merkel's Foes in Disarray, Germany Defies the Trump Trend

[Dill]

(05-07-2017, 03:41 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Dill: Don't claim you have "already addressed" anything. Don't tell me to "scroll up" and look at another unsupported assertion. If you cannot really argue yourself, can you put up something by Harris in text form which refutes anything I have said? I don't mean a lazy link to a youtube video with a vague verbal gesture like "that's what I think."

See, here's the problem.  You like to cherry pick what is and is not acceptable.  You like one poll but not another; polls are good but now they're bad.  A well reasoned and argued point on YouTube, or anywhere else, is not negated by the medium they are transmitted.  You come off as very elitist in this discussion.  Only "serious scholars" need apply.  Only "peer reviewed" opinions are valued, regardless of their veracity or how well educated the speaker is on the subject.  That's fine, you do you, just don't expect the rest of us to kow tow to your preconceived ideas of what is, and is not acceptable and who is, or is not, educated enough on a subject to deign to have an opinion about it.  

1. If you think I cherry pick “what is and what is not acceptable” then demonstrate that. Don’t natter on about unnamed polls I like and unnamed polls I don’t. I have no idea what you are talking about, though I can easily imagine a poll which provides perfectly useful, if limited knowledge, for one application but not for another. Someone who crudely thinks that one just “likes” polls or does not, regardless of context and application, would of course be confused by that (“polls are good but now they’re bad”).

2. Actually this is a mischaracterization both of what I have said and the peer-review process. Speaker “veracity” and “education on the subject” are exactly what the peer-review process establishes. It is at present the highest bar for publication in any knowledge field.  Calling it a “circle jerk” and referring to college professor friends who see “mean girls” keeping them from publication do not disestablish this. That’s just your effort to lower the bar so people without expert knowledge of Islam can “speak with authority” for you on the subject.

3. And are you speaking for the rest of the forum again? You are, aren’t you. How does adherence to an international standard like the peer-review process (among other criteria) as a means of establishing a scholar as “great” or “serious” in a subject area turn into a “preconceived idea” which is only mine? Have you somehow garbled my criteria for a “great scholar” into a claim that only people with peer-reviewed knowledge may speak in this forum? Rather a Merriam Webster definition of “scholar”?  Sounds like a plea for lowered standards all around—for Islamic experts, for your Youtube sources, and for you. (And my complaint about your Youtube link was not about the medium, but about the lazy gesture. You still have not yourself laid out a Harris argument you think refutes anything I have said. Are you ever going to?)

4. We are talking about elitist, “peer-reviewed” knowledge now only because you took issue with this:

A  vetted panel of academics sound good, but we are living in the time of Trump (what do "experts" know about anything) and the Islamophobes will have their "experts" too. Not great scholars, perhaps (one thinks of Fox commentators like Sebastian Gorka), but that will become a fight over criteria of expertise.

My comments here were not originally addressed to you, but to Masterp’s suggestion that a panel of academics be formed to vet knowledge about refugees and their countries of origin. I pointed out that criteria of expertise would quickly become the issue (as of course it did for you).  What sort of person should qualify as an expert on Islam and Middle Eastern countries?  My suggestion was/is, someone who is learned and vetted in these subject areas; not someone who is not, and hates Islam to  boot.

For every political/scientific/policy debate it is not a given that each side is represented by equally qualified, equally knowledgeable persons.  It appears that you assume the contrary, at least concerning debates over Islam.  So if I say there are no “great scholars” who support Islamophobia, you first treat that as an empirical claim. There must be, but I have “shut down debate” by defining the opposition as inexpert from the outset.  And I don’t even see how I have shut down debate; I “fail to admit my error.”

But apparently you do not see my error either, for you go right on to debate. So much for "shut down." You yourself cannot think of any serious scholars of Islam or Middle East history who aren’t Islamophobes—though that would settle the issue on the spot—so  you try a different road: you expand the definition of “serious scholar” to include people you want to include. Your Mirriam Webster definition opens the field to everyone from a six-grader in a public school to Sam Harris.

But whoa! Your definition is too democratic. Lower the standard so far most everyone is a scholar. So you stipulate “erudition” and “learning” and people who “speak with authority.” All that would imply standards, some means discriminating between the erudite and the unlearned. But what standards? Whose?  It is not so clear at this point what counts as “learning” or how your scholars establish their authority over their subject matter and for whom. Does publishing do that? So Sam Harris is your example. He has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. He has published books on religion. That means he can speak with authority on Islam by your “preconceived” standards?  High enough to require publications but not so high as to make them accountable to subject area experts--the perfect scholarly standard for your present needs. little bit of "elitism" to the rescue--just enough.

My definition addresses the question of standards, but rather differently, and I think more clearly. I say someone is not a serious scholar in Islam and/or Middle Eastern politics/ history if he/she cannot read Arabic, for example, has not lived and studied in the Middle East, and produced formal writing (Ph.D., journal articles, books) vetted by other experts who would recognize errors, untruths, bad research and bad arguments.  And a “great scholar” would have to do a lot of that—contribute new knowledge to the field, break new ground, change the way people addressed their subject matter.

Elitist? LOL too bad.