{"id":31,"date":"2006-11-03T14:28:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-03T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=31"},"modified":"2006-11-03T14:28:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-03T20:28:00","slug":"hobbes-vs-question-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2006\/11\/hobbes-vs-question-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Hobbes vs. Question Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/museums.ncl.ac.uk\/flint\/images\/hobbes.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px;\" src=\"http:\/\/museums.ncl.ac.uk\/flint\/images\/hobbes.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>We invest a lot in <strong>opinion<\/strong> and <strong >opinion formers<\/strong>. As the BBC tenders for <strong><i>Question Time<\/i><\/strong>, it might be worth considering the value of public deliberation. Here\u2019s the philosopher Thomas Hobbes writing about deliberative assemblies in <b><i>De Cive<\/i><\/b>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>there all have an opportunity to show their wisdom, knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the greatest difficulty and moment; which by reason of that desire of praise which is bred in human nature, is to them who excel in such like faculties, and seem to themselves to exceed others, the most delightful of all things \u2026 <\/p>\n<p>But to be absent from a trial of wits, although those trials are pleasant to the eloquent, is not therefore a grievance to them, unless we will say, that it is a grievance to valiant men to be restrained from fighting, because they delight in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hobbes wasn\u2019t a fan of opinions. He thought they were a form of mental detritus.<br \/>For Hobbes, your opinions were neither a source of truth, nor a reflection of your moral worth. <\/p>\n<p>Truth could only be accessed through scientific method, and scientific truths are often counterintuitive: contradicting conventional opinion.<\/p>\n<p>Individuals can hold conflicting or irreconcilable opinions and people tend to confuse their opinions with the truth. Opinions cause conflict, and uncontrolled opinions cause political strife and civil war. I therefore suggest that <strong><i>Question Time<\/i><\/strong> be cancelled before the nation implodes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We invest a lot in opinion and opinion formers. As the BBC tenders for Question Time, it might be worth considering the value of public deliberation. Here\u2019s the philosopher Thomas Hobbes writing about deliberative assemblies in De Cive: there all have an opportunity to show their wisdom, knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50,81,5],"tags":[15,78],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-journalists","category-media","category-news","tag-bbc","tag-uk-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}