John Stuart Mill and Daniel Dennett on How to Critique ‘the Other Side’

In the 1990s, the American lawyer Mike Godwin observed how common it was for those locked in online arguments to eventually, inevitably — regardless of topic — accuse each other of being Nazis.

This observation, now referred to as Godwin’s Law, has become a cult rule of the internet. Its official formulation, according to Wikipedia, is as follows:

As a discussion on the internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person/s being compared to Hitler or another Nazi, increases.

Spend ten minutes perusing social media and you’ll find that, though it was coined 30 years ago, Godwin’s Law still holds today. What began as a rather amusing observation on the niche online community of the 1990s has developed into a damning indictment of the most prevalent communication channel in human history.

Rather than work together to find resolution, it seems many of us online are more interested in ‘winning’ the debate and characterizing our opponents as some catch-all description of evil.

Incentivized by likes and shares, whoever can most succinctly put down the enemy — ideally with a catchy tweet-length hook — gains enthusiastic kudos from their own tribe.

Invoking the Nazis is one route, but other words play a similar role. Fascist. Communist. Woke.

What do any of these words actually mean? It doesn’t matter. Used in anger or contempt, they all signify the same sentiment: “you [Nazi / fascist / communist / woke] people are dangerous, irredeemable idiots. You have been brainwashed, and speaking as someone who is not brainwashed, I have no interest in hearing another word of what you have to say.”

Of course, tribalism existed long before the internet; the internet just enables the tribes to grow larger and more sharply draw their boundaries with rhetoric.

If we seek to avoid the ugly communal mud slinging, one response might be simply to withdraw from the spaces where it most happens. Stay off social media, news forums, comment sections, and live your life free from unreasonable, unhinged discourse…

As a statement commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw (though likely much older) has it:

Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.

Sound advice, when good faith debate appears impossible.

But if the stakes of a discussion are high, withdrawing to preserve our own sanity might feel irresponsible. Correcting this particular viewpoint matters, we might think.

What, then, can we do? How can we reconcile seemingly unbridgeable gaps in belief and opinion? How can we better engage with those we disagree with?

Well, philosophers have been arguing with one another on emotionally-charged topics for millennia: how to organize society, what to believe, how to live…

As a result, some solid ‘rules of engagement’ have emerged to help discussions advance without excess bloodletting — rules that might inform how we approach disagreements elsewhere, be they political, religious, social, economic, or otherwise.

Take this famous passage from John Stuart Mill’s 1859 work On Liberty:

​​He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…

Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them… he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.

The late philosopher Daniel Dennett also emphasized the importance of really, intimately understanding the opposing view.

In his 2013 work Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Dennett distills a list of rules inspired by game theorist Anatol Rapoport — a list that philosophy professors now often share with their first-year students:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Not only does this approach respect your opponent as an actual human being, rather than as a nameless representative of some ‘other’ or ‘enemy’, it also rather shrewdly transforms them into a more receptive audience for your criticism.

If someone does their best to fairly understand and articulate your view, it’s immediately disarming. Your perspective has been respected. You’ve been heard. And you are now far more likely to work with your interlocutor to find, if not resolution, then at least a civilly agreed point of difference.

But, of course, expecting this level of considered reasonableness in unregulated online spaces is probably naive. Even philosophers don’t stick to it — many famous works are littered with quite extraordinary examples of name calling. Here’s Schopenhauer on Hegel, for instance, from The World as Will and Representation (Vol. II), written long before the internet:

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense.

Even great icons of ‘rational thinking’ enjoy an impassioned put down. Indeed, we are all human — all with our weaknesses, blind spots, and irritations. Sharing Mill and Dennett’s rules of engagement isn’t going to change that.

But while the entire internet won’t be fixed by their advice, perhaps by keeping these ‘rules of engagement’ in mind we might make our own disagreements more amicable and productive.

At the very least, we can make a difference by embodying the change we want to see in the world, and try to approach people with different views sensitively and civilly (even if, on particularly loaded topics, we won’t always succeed).

Ultimately, each person on this planet is a vulnerable human being in search of a good life. By engaging each other calmly, by really listening to one another’s unique and valuable perspectives, by digging beneath the surface rhetoric and stripping things back to first principles, I suspect we’ll soon discover we have far more common ground than we might think.

What do you make of Mill and Dennett’s rules of engagement?

• Is it naive to think humans can bridge big ideological gaps?
• How do you approach people with opposing views? Have you found success in constructive dialogue?

To inform your answers, you might enjoy the following related articles:

• Isaiah Berlin On Why the Pursuit of the Ideal is Dangerous
• John Rawls: How a ‘Veil of Ignorance’ Can Help Us Build a Just Society
• Hannah Arendt On Standing Up to the Banality of Evil
• Political Philosophy: the Best 14 Books to Read

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