One of the requirements of my internet based History course is to participate in a weekly online discussion.
I figured it would be boring, just some mundane thing in whatever chapter we're reading that week, and that I'd show up, post a response for my five points of credit and that would be it.
But man, my instructor is pretty cool.
They are very thought provoking questions, and the discussions are lively and full of great inisight on the part of most of the class.
It reminds me of here, really. And how cool is that? I get credit for talking about topics hatrack style. This week's question: Can a person write without bias? Can you separate your personal beliefs from what you write or will your religious or philosophical views always come through?
You're not doing my homework for me if you answer, I've already submitted my answer for credit. Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Wish we could participate in the forum!
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
No.
At least I can't.
All information is filtered through our own internal paradigms.
That's one reason why I quit being a journalist after 15 years. I had such strong opinions.
FG
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
And my answer was no, by the way.
I pointed out that getting objective information on an ancient society was going to be pretty hard anyway, since few if any of the source materials are going to be written by historians who are trying to record objective history. Many times our information comes from religious writings, for example, which are not going to be free from the bias of the writer.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
It depends. Personal beliefs after all are our fuel. They effect how we see the world, they are our lense. But, sometimes you can choose to view the world outside them, I know this happened to me back in Jr high school we I lost my religion. Now I seem to have a different one, and maybe it does effect what I write, or perhaps I want to write because of it........
*hopes that answers the question a bit, or at least makes sense*
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Sure, Sara wrote a scientific report yesterday. It was stale and dispassionate, but impressively clear. Since the criteria for science is inappropriately impoverished for speaking to most human affairs, I don't think there is a crime putting thought and color into the story, with due balance. I imagine that the bias is going to show up in metaphors and connotations.
I did read in the Steinbeck journal that he was most proud when he could get the reader to furnish their own emotions and that way each reader took something slightly different but factually the same out of his work.
I don't think I'm answering the question, I don't care as much about if writers can write without bias, I'm wondering if they should, and if they should, in what way should they restrict themselves.
If a writer writes without bias, yet all of readers think within different assumptions, is it even going to be intelligible on a deep level? I think thinking is what is called for.
The bias assumes imposing some controversial mental framework that doesn't properly belong to the act, but if we just describe the act in cold discourse, are we really doing justice the richness of the event?
There seems to be a place for thoughtful interpretive journalism that is not traditionally biased, but that does convey the rich experience that is lost in technical writing. I don't want to open the door for people to write whatever they feel like and call it news. There has to be some sort of over-riding responsibility to thinking about the event, and letting the event, and not ones mere opinion of the event, do the work of the story. Geez, I'm flip-flopping in my own post.
Didn't Tom spend a few years in the field. What does he think?
[ January 14, 2005, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by Dread Pendragon (Member # 7239) on :
For years there was (and still is to some degree) the view that people doing counseling/therapy should be "value-free." While it is important to be non-judgemental, I think it is absolutely absurd to think that your values won't affect your interactions with other people. It is a myth that a therapist can be really objetively value-free. The only ethical way to deal with it is for the counselor/therapist to be transparent about their values and beliefs.
Post-modern approaches are really popular in psychotherapy right now (although I have noticed it is more popular with academics teaching psychology than in regular practitioners). They are appealing approaches because they are really respectful toward clients, but I think they are lying to themselves and their clients when they pretend that they are values-free.
I agree that there is no such thing as an objective history.
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