Peter Boghossian at the DPU: A Further Consideration

On Wednesday, May 4, the Dartmouth Political Union (DPU) hosted an intriguing “reverse” question-and-answer event with Dr. Peter Boghossian, formerly of Portland State University. In my preceding article, I provided the transcript of an interview that I conducted with Boghossian prior to that event, in which can be found an explanation of Boghossian’s theory behind the “reverse” structure he employs. According to this structure, he asks questions of the audience rather than contrariwise, as is typical. Herein I offer several additional quotations from Boghossian as well as some scattered observations about the event itself, which ran from 7pm until roughly a quarter to 9.

While hosted by the DPU, the event was largely spearheaded by Boghossian. Indeed, for Boghossian, Dartmouth was the final stop on a tour of the college lecture circuit, on which he devoted himself to events that employed his unique structure.

This structure exemplifies a direct and organized application of Boghossian’s concept of “street epistemology,” a conversational tool which he described in his first book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. According to Boghossian, “street epistemology” helps people reflect on the quality of their reasoning as well as the confidence which they have in their own beliefs. Ultimately, Boghosian explained to me, his goal is for people to be able to develop this ability at his events and go on to use it in their own lives. 

Below, I have in large part endeavored to outline the structure that he employs at his events. I have also interpolated various commentaries from Boghossian as to the purport and significance of the different parts of his structure.

Boghossian uses tape to create seven distinct lines, each of which is labeled by an extent of agreement: strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, neutral, slightly agree, agree, and strongly agree. He then selects a number of statements—resolutions, really—on which he intends to have volunteers from the audience take and defend a (literal) stance. This is to say, he will assemble volunteers on the “neutral” line, and, upon his prompting, they will all move at once to the line that best reflects their respective positions relative to the statement being considered. At this point, Boghossian will move among the volunteers, ask them to defend their positions, and ask them to try to convince others to change their lines, even if only by one. Boghossian remarked to me that “one of [his] main ideas is to ask, ‘What would it take you to move one line over? Just one?’”

Boghossian explained that the “trick to this whole thing, and it took me 20 years to figure this out, is that people don’t choose where they stand because they have evidence. They choose where they stand because they believe that standing there makes them a better person.” Ultimately, Boghossian’s objective, he said, is to bring to the fore an investigation of people’s own beliefs and a consideration of evidence which others might be able to provide to them. Whether or not volunteers ultimately succeed in persuading others to change lines is immaterial. The main outcome which Boghossian desires from this process is that volunteers at least say they “understand” the positions of others.

To facilitate this outcome from the start, Boghossian told me, he tries to avoid proposing statements which reflect beliefs that have “a whole infrastructure beneath them”—that is, beliefs which have an array of other beliefs undergirding them. In other words, Boghossian seeks to create statements that will produce a single plane of debate. He does not want his volunteers to differ on so many underlying assumptions as to render a reasonable discussion between them nearly impossible. For example, he tries “to avoid statements that deal with people’s beliefs on abortion. It’s much better to select a statement that just floats out.” After selecting these statements, Boghossian presents them to his audience for their input.

At Dartmouth: 

In the event at Dartmouth, Boghossian proposed eight statements, which he then asked the audience to vote upon, in order to select four. Boghossian explained to me that, “just because [he] think[s] it’s a good claim, that doesn’t mean people will agree. So [he] use[s] an iterative rank-ordering process.” 

The audience for the Dartmouth event selected the following four statements: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination,” “The consideration of race should be removed from the college admissions process,” “‘My body my choice’ should be consistent for vaccines and abortions” and “Speech is violence.” Due to time constraints and concerns about repetitiveness, only the three latter statements were subjected to Boghossian’s interrogative structure during the event.

It is worth noting that, in proposing the third of these statements, Boghossian departed from his previously articulated logic that a statement concerning a topic such as abortion should not be broached. However, as he explained to me, this statement’s presentation of factors for the audience to weigh—and its topicality owing to the recent Dobbs leak—rendered it an excellent selection. 

Not unexpectedly, Boghossian revealed himself to be an old pro at this sort of event. Despite a somewhat polarized and sometimes less-than-cooperative audience, he succeeded admirably in spurring thoughtful discussion and debate. In the end, Boghossian even agreed to be subjected to his own method of interrogation, which proved a particularly invigorating portion of the event.

The event was filmed by the five-member team that has long accompanied Boghossian around the country to these events; the team functioned like a well-oiled machine, carefully recording the event—and, afterwards, interviewing several of those who volunteered—in seamless and professional fashion. Boghossian told me that it is likely a good portion of this recording will make its way onto the internet, which to my mind does seem probable owing to the quality of his questions and explanations throughout the event. Ultimately, Boghossian demonstrated that he is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, both knowledgeable and enthusiastic as an interrogator.