Philosophy Now Forum

Philosophy began when it separated itself from sophistry. The Sophists (at least as they are presented by Plato) were concerned with how to spread ideas, how to make them take root in people’s minds, by the use of rhetoric. Socrates, by contrast, was seeking ways to discover if those ideas were actually true or not, by challenging and checking them.
The Sophists resembled our contemporary doorstep preachers, smoothly eloquent, fitting together all their thoughts in a rounded globe of glib perfection – the one and only Truth, available at a special discount price. (Unlike Socrates, the Sophists charged for their services.) Any descent of philosophy into the ways of Sophistry should be regretted. Yet in his Cambridge Review interview, Derrida noted that: “Most of the distorting, reductive, and ridiculous talk circulating in the newspapers, on the radio or the television on this occasion [regarding his honorary degree] was first shaped in the academic arena, through a sort of public opinion transmitted ‘on the inside’, so to speak, of the university.”
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The aim of this article is both modest and Socratic. Socrates questioned people to see if they had any basis for the various ‘truths’ they thought they knew. In the same way, I suggest one should always question whether writers have sufficient knowledge of their subject to ground the opinions they express. One should never adopt those opinions as one’s own without first checking the various ‘truths’ to which they refer. Benson and Stangroom assert “It is surely in the nature of truth that it has to be all of a piece. Its norms have to apply here as well as there.” (p.17.) This is plausible but false. The truths of moral propositions, for example, are of a quite different nature from those of empirical propositions. Truth has differentiated regions. One should be particularly wary of anyone who declares that they are defending Truth, with a capital ‘T’, their passion for which may have led them to be casual about the accuracy of specific, small scale, multiple truths which could be checked and contested. Such checking and Socratic quibbling can all too easily be treated as a trivial matter when the Juggernaut of Truth is busily rolling along, crushing its alleged opponents into the dust.
© Peter Benson 2009
Peter Benson studied philosophy at Cambridge University, where his tutor was D.H. Mellor, later a principal instigator of the campaign against Derrida.

HexHammer wrote:Yearh, beware of truth, 99% of ppl here are completely unsuited for basic philosophy but speaks straight out of their asses, makes puerile assumptions and jumps to farfetched conclusions. Even the magazine here ALWAYS brings irrelevant articles.

If these characterizations of the philosophy of Derrida (and others) are false, why are they so often repeated? This question is often asked in the spirit of ‘There’s no smoke without fire, you know!’ Underlying it is that Theory of Truth which underlies propaganda and advertising, that if you repeat something often enough, it becomes true. The theory of ‘memes’, introduced by Richard Dawkins, can help us to understand how this works. Lies propagate (duplicate themselves, spread, proliferate) in a similar way to a virus, often more quickly than facts. They become established in the ‘meme pool’ of society (analogous to the ‘gene pool’ of genetics), which is embodied in newspapers, books, and daily chatter. Attempts to stamp them out can never catch up with all the reappearances they make. There is even a word for these viral entities: factoids.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘factoid’ as “something that becomes accepted as a fact, although it is not (or may not be) true.” The earliest published use of the word is from 1973 (in a book by Norman Mailer). So it is a word of fairly recent invention. This is not surprising. The proliferation of the media, and the exponential expansion of the Internet, has vastly multiplied the channels through which factoids can spread.

Here is an example of a factoid: “Tracey Emin won the Turner Prize with her unmade bed.” In reality, Emin was shortlisted for the prize, but has never won it; and her shortlisting was for a substantial group of works, including drawings and videos, not just for the bed piece. But the factoid is repeated often enough to operate as if it were true. It would be easy enough to check the facts, but journalists prefer to copy factoids from other journalists. It is particularly sad to find the same procedures operating in the field of philosophy, because this contradicts the very foundation of the subject...

© Peter Benson 2009

Peter Benson studied philosophy at Cambridge University, where his tutor was D.H. Mellor, later a principal instigator of the campaign against Derrida.

HexHammer wrote:@marjoram_blues the article is true pre-internet days, not post, with internet it's much more difficult to manipulate the populous, only the easily manipulated will fall flat for propaganda, not the reasonable intelligent people.

With internet it has become easier to distribute facts, before that, news traveled slow, and governments could easily get away with blatant lies.

marjoram_blues wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by 'the article is true pre-internet days'...
The internet means that anyone can be manipulated, anytime, anyplace, anyhow; even the reasonably intelligent. Manipulation is not always negative.
Sure, with the internet - events are relayed in real time and still govts can get away with lies. However, I think that people are more empowered than they have ever been. If not, it is not for the lack of information...

Not sure what this has to do with the article, or Derrida?
Perhaps that, these days, any controversy doesn't hang around for as long. The next piece of excitement is just a few seconds away.
I think the trouble has always been that 'mud sticks', people move on without full knowledge or any obvious rectification of a misrepresentation.