The Marketplace of Ideas
Last week the Federalist Society had a fascinating discussion on its listserv about the 9th Circuit's decision to permit a public school to prohibit a student from wearing an anti-gay t-shirt to school. Soon, the discussion turned to the "free market of ideas" issue. A classmate and I were arguing that market logic makes a number of critical and often questionable assumptions (about market structure, rationality, etc.). The rest of the group, predictably, either defended those assumptions or continued to assert their validity ipse dixit.
Then, one of the pro-market guys sent a post that said (paraphrase): "Well, either you have faith in the market of ideas or you don't."
I never responded to his post, but his response flabbergasts me. We were not having a deep disagreement between, for example, the relative epistemological merits of faith and reason--a disagreement no amount of evidence could resolve. On the contrary, my classmate and I were playing ball in the Federalist arena! We're saying: Okay, we accept your position that the most important values in this situation are reaching the "best" views (In other words, we weren't arguing for against the free market of ideas because we were concerned about trammeling the feelings of those with minority viewpoints.). But even under your set of value preferences, might the free market of ideas have structural flaws that prevent it from yielding the "best" ideas?
In other words, invoking "faith" as a trump card seems ridiculously disingenuous because evidence (in whatever form) seems so well-suited to be our arbiter.
Thoughts?
Then, one of the pro-market guys sent a post that said (paraphrase): "Well, either you have faith in the market of ideas or you don't."
I never responded to his post, but his response flabbergasts me. We were not having a deep disagreement between, for example, the relative epistemological merits of faith and reason--a disagreement no amount of evidence could resolve. On the contrary, my classmate and I were playing ball in the Federalist arena! We're saying: Okay, we accept your position that the most important values in this situation are reaching the "best" views (In other words, we weren't arguing for against the free market of ideas because we were concerned about trammeling the feelings of those with minority viewpoints.). But even under your set of value preferences, might the free market of ideas have structural flaws that prevent it from yielding the "best" ideas?
In other words, invoking "faith" as a trump card seems ridiculously disingenuous because evidence (in whatever form) seems so well-suited to be our arbiter.
Thoughts?
posted by Garrett at 3:31 PM
3 Comments:
did you suggest an alternative to a free market for ideas?
The old "It takes a plan to beat a plan" argument. It's a fair response.
You know, I didn't suggest an alternative. Why not?
I was responding to some lavish encomia of the free market of ideas. Those posts glossed over important assumptions and portrayed the free market as the panacea of all our social ills.
I was not advocating against the free market of ideas; rather, I was saying that IF we're going to adopt it, shouldn't we be intellectually honest about what we're adopting? Shouldn't we address its strongest critics head-on?
Ironically, that approach seems to be the strongest justification FOR the free market of ideas.
so lets hit it.
what are we adopting?
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