I had this debate with one of my lecturers and her only response was that I should wait until I have children. Of course I found that slightly patronising, not least because experience is not essential for opinion formation. Indeed it is often easier to be objectively rational where no direct experience is involved. Anyway, should the watershed be abolished? Should it be pushed back to later in the evening? Does it matter if children are exposed to sex, violence and foul language? Does it impact negatively on their development, or is it only because we have, for example, made sex a taboo that we have to shield children from it?
Ah, lecturers are mostly twats:tongue: I think the watershed is becoming increasingly irrelevant with TV on demand and t'internet, watch-as-broadcast TV will become less and less the main way we watch. This probably makes it difficult for parents who do want to shield their kids from bad language and violence, but frankly the watershed is not really going to stop a teenager from watching what they want to, and before that age you should know pretty well what your kids are doing anyway. So it's already a parental choice, but will become more of one. I don't think it will or should be abolished for broadcast television, though soon enough we will wonder what exactly it's for with all the other ways you can watch.
Makes perfect sense to me? You don't need to have experienced something in order to develop a valid opinion about it, in fact in many cases directly experiencing something is a hindrance to properly understanding and making judgements about it. Victims of crime for instance tend to develop very strong conservative attitudes towards crime and punishment, thinking that because they have personally experienced it only they can properly understand what it means and have the right to pass judgement on criminals. Are those opinions going to be the best way of dealing with crime? Clearly not. Opinions based on logical inference and dispassionate weighing of all the information will be better, direct experience is not only not necessary but often gets in the way. You can understand things without experiencing them, and you can experience things without having the slightest understanding of them. The two are in many cases quite distinct.
So you can form a valid opinion on the experience of giving birth? Nationalists can form valid opinions about 'damn foreigners' without having met them or travelled abroad? You can validate/concur or invalidate/disagree with my own opinion on what it's like to climb mount Taranaki? The first and third questions are extremes. However, the second is a somewhat pressing concern born of people who think they can have a valid opinion on something they have no experience of.
Well in the first and third instances I think you're conflating experiencing something with having an opinion on it. In the second one you can certainly form a xenophobic opinion about "damn foreigners" but one which with reference to the facts would be demonstrably not valid! I think experience often enriches your ability to form well founded opinions, don't get me wrong, but not in all instances - and on public, political, judicial and factual issues it is certainly not a prerequisite and you can form as good or better opinions by considering many viewpoints, reading multiple second hand sources, engaging with insightful analysis and properly researching it than just by "being there". Would I have a more valid opinion about what happened at a football riot by being there? If I was present as a policeman would my opinion be more valid than if I was there as a football fan who got whacked with a truncheon? It's dangerous to think experience and understanding are interchangeable
umm.. from your first paragraph it looks like you missed my point, or i didn't get it across well. I was asking questions for you to answer, none of those were statements. I think we're looking at the term opinion from two different sides - or rather from two seperate extremes you can take it to. You from the hypothising point of view side, me from the judgement side. I say it's dangerous to form an opinion (one that can lead to judgement) without experience.
i do think that those of us without kids can still rationally have opinions based on things we have experienced in life when we were kids, watching other people and their kids, and just what is out there available for parents to protect their kids. that being said, i don't think it is going to catch on for people to have swearing and nudity on Richard and Judy. However, moving the watershed earlier or leaving it as it is should be fine. I mean, we live in the day and age of the V chip. There are plenty of parental control options on any cable/satellite box for people to pick and choose what channels and programs the kiddies are allowed to watch and what they aren't. i don't feel that this should fall on the responsibility of tv programming to govern what is acceptable and what is not for the kiddies. some people might not mind their kids watching certain things whereas other people would. and believe me last thing i think most people in the UK want is their television to be as censored as it is in the States. where you can't ever say 'god damn', 'shit', 'fuck', etc. and you'll NEVER see any nudity at all, ever. Didn't you know, nipples don't exist?
Opinions and experience are not the same thing; it doesn't really make sense to ask if you can form an opinion of what it is like to experience something, so I didn't answer your questions 1 and 3 because they were somewhat incoherent A doctor specialising in childbirth does not have to be a mother or even a woman to have far better opinions about the way to treat pregnant women than most experienced mothers! An expert on fascism does not have to have been a member of a fascist party to have valid opinions about fascism. I would trust the opinions of a medical expert on childbirth, or a political scientist who has extensively studied fascism far more than I would trust a non medically qualified mother or a member of the BNP to influence social policy on those issues.
Some subjects can only really be understood properly though with the relevant experience. Just becasue someone says they have the right to an informed opinion does not mean they are capable of an informed opinion. I believe you'll find the majority of people, especially males, take little notice of the required attitudes for child rearing and will certainly not have studied it, hence the natural response of most parents to non-parents. I will declare it a baptism of fire, you are re-born through the experience.
To drag the thread back on topic slightly, in this case such a policy decision affects not only parents but also everyone else, and as non-parents we have every right to a voice on what can be broadcast when and what is the remit of individual parents when it comes to public broadcasting and censorship. Parenthood would I think tend to skew your opinion on a matter such as this towards your own self interest just as with the victim of crime example; just because someone is a parent there is absolutely no reason to think her take on the issue is any more 'valid' or well informed than that of a non-parent.
Regarding the watershed I'd agree it is a decision based on perceived social requirements rather than on an individual need. Precisely because perspectives of reality are revised through parenthood I would say a parents opinion on the issue will in the general be more valid, unfortunately most non-parents are also immature humans so that could cloud my judgements. I'd not argue against your opinions as a non-parent, Lithium, but I would argue the right to opinion of some.
What makes a parent's "revised perspective" more valid? There's no way to argue against this kind of "you can't possibly understand until you've done it" argument where one hasn't done the thing in question, I just know that whenever anyone has said that to me about something I haven't done, and then I've subsequently done it, I can confidently say that they were wrong, and that it is quite possible to understand and form valid opinions on most if not all areas of human endeavour by thinking about and researching them. You personally may well have become a better person by experiencing parenthood and for many others that may have been an impetus to do the mental work involved in understanding but that's not to say that many many people can't have an understanding of existence as good or better without doing so. I return to the point that understanding is quite distinct from experience, the mind is a recursive combinatorial system with almost limitless potential for making and remaking our awareness of the reality we perceive; those who think you need to experience something through the senses in order to understand it with the mind are suffering from a lack of imagination or haven't read enough books I can understand and learn from an infinite number of things about human experience that I could never dream of experiencing, that is the beauty of having a cognitive organ in my skull consisting of a bundle of neurons and synapses whose combinations rival the number of stars in the universe Don't you think many, many parents are immature fools you wouldn't trust with an opinion? As are many people who have been abroad, as are many people who have done pretty much anything. Experience only enriches you if it is matched with a thoughtful and receptive mind - and it's the mind which does the work, not the legs or the eyes or the tastebuds...
I wish it wasnt such a problem, I dont have a problem with finding out about sex at a young age but here it is so obsessed with love and girl/boyfriends - I for one am SICK of it. It shouldnt be such a problem at such an age. However it doesn't matter if you dont watch the programmes or let your child, they WILL find out most likely from their friends... I wish sex wasn't such a taboo subject, and it didn't matter.
Sex on TV, harmless fun. violence shouldn't be allowed on TV, especially at a time the majority of youngster, not teenagers, watch as they are easily influenced.
