Rationally Speaking #152 - Dan Fincke on "The pros and cons of civil disagreement"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2016

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Julia invites philosopher and blogger Dan Fincke onto the show, inspired by a productive disagreement they had on Facebook. Their topic in this episode: civility in public discourse. Do atheists and skeptics have a responsibility to be civil when expressing disagreement, and does that responsibility vary depending on who their target is? Is there a legitimate role for offensive satire? And might there be downsides to civility? Dan and Julia also revisit the subject of their original disagreement: the recent NECSS decision to rescind Richard Dawkins' speaking invitation, on account of a video he tweeted which compared feminists to Islamists. Dan and Julia attempt to put the Dawkins case study in the broader context of the civility debate, asking questions like: What makes something offensive, and can someone be *unjustifiably* offended?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally Speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptics.org.
0:30.6	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:41.1	I'm your host, Julia Galeith, and with me is today's guest, Dan Finca.
0:46.2	Dan has a PhD in philosophy from Fordham University.
0:50.6	He specializes in topics such as ethics and atheism and Nietzsche.
0:56.0	He blogs at Camels with Hammers and was for many years a professor of philosophy at various universities and now does online philosophy courses,
1:08.0	as well as being a certified philosophy practitioner, using philosophy to
1:13.8	help people think through troubling dilemmas and give life advice. Dan, does that sound like
1:18.4	the right description of a philosophy practitioner? Yep, that's about right. Okay, great. Well,
1:24.0	so I want to start this episode by just explaining what the impetus was for me to invite Dan on the show for this particular episode.
1:33.4	As I mentioned, Dan blogs quite eloquently about a bunch of different interesting topics, any one of which would honestly have made a great episode.
1:41.4	But the impetus for this invite happened to be that about a week ago
1:48.3	now I posted an argument on Facebook about a controversial issue, which I'm sure we'll get to
1:55.8	at some point in this episode. And a bunch of people agreed with me, some people disagreed with me, and Dan disagreed with me.
2:04.4	But his disagreement was so thoughtful and nuanced and reasonable that it was, you know,
2:12.5	on complicated issues, I tend to feel like I have a lot more in common with the people who
2:16.6	disagree with me but think the issue is common with the people who disagree with me
2:17.7	but think the issue is complicated than the people who agree with me and think it's obvious.
2:21.9	And Dan definitely fell into that former category.
2:24.9	So his post gave me a lot of food for thought, which again, we'll get into the details of later.
2:30.2	And we may still disagree to a substantive extent, I'm not sure.
	...

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