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Dialogue/Cooperation as Debate/Conflict

coberst

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Dialogue/Cooperation as Debate/Conflict

Dialogue is to cooperation as debate is to conflict. Dialogue utilizes communication to facilitate harmony with the other while debate utilizes argumentation power to facilitate victory over the other.

Internet discussion forums advance the human aggressive desire (verbal video games); we have no such forum to advance the human need for harmonious cooperation. Dialogue is designed for the sophisticated intellect while debate is designed for the sophisticated sportsman. Debate has gotten our world into the mess we are now in: only dialogue can turn the stampeding herd from the cliffs ahead.

I think that our first step is for a significant percentage of our population to become intellectually sophisticated sufficiently so as to make many citizens capable of engaging in dialogical reasoning. To do this I think that many citizens must become self-actualizing self-learners when their school daze are over.

Under our normal cultural situation communication means to discourse, to exchange opinions with one another. It seems to me that there are opinions, considered opinions, and judgments. Opinions are a dime-a-dozen. Considered opinions, however, are opinions that have received a considerable degree of thought but have not received special study. A considered opinion starts out perhaps as tacit knowledge but receives sufficient intellectual attention to have become consciously organized in some fashion. Judgments are made within a process of study.

In dialogue, person ‘A’ may state a thesis and in return person ‘B’ does not respond with exactly the same meaning as does ‘A’. The meanings are generally similar but not identical; thus ‘A’ listening to ‘B’ perceives a disconnect between what she said and what ‘B’ replies. ‘A’ then has the opportunity to respond with this disconnect in mind, thereby creating a response that takes these matters into consideration; ‘A’ performs an operation known as a dialectic (a juxtaposition of opposed or contradictory ideas). And so the dialogical process proceeds.

A dialogical process is not one wherein individuals reason together in an attempt to make common ideas that are already known to each individual. “Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.” Dialogical reasoning together is an act of creation, of mutual understanding, of meaning.

Dialogic can happen only if both individuals wish to reason together in truth, in coherence, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other.
Each must be prepared to “drop his old ideas and intentions. And be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for…Thus, if people are to cooperate (i.e., literally to ‘work together’) they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority.”

“On Dialogue” written by “The late David Bohm, one of the greatest physicists and foremost thinkers this century, was Fellow of the Royal Society and Emeritus Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Bohm is convinced that communication is breaking down as a result of the crude and insensitive manner in which it is transpiring. Communication is a concept with a common meaning that does not fit well with the concepts of dialogue, dialectic, and dialogic.

I claim that if we citizens do not learn to dialogue we cannot learn to live together in harmony sufficient to save the species.

Do you have any interest in taking that first step required (intellectual sophistication) to dialogue?

Quotes from Critical Thinking by Richard Paul
 
So instead of having debates on religion, we should have dialogues on religion, so that while one group may worship 1 god and another group worships 10 gods, both will talk with each other and eventually agree that everyone should worship 5 gods instead of following their personal conscience and convictions where one individual wants to worship 1 god and one individual wants to worship 10 gods?
 
So instead of having debates on religion, we should have dialogues on religion, so that while one group may worship 1 god and another group worships 10 gods, both will talk with each other and eventually agree that everyone should worship 5 gods instead of following their personal conscience and convictions where one individual wants to worship 1 god and one individual wants to worship 10 gods?


No but we might use it to establish a goal for a world without nukes, or for a world free of gases that cause global warming, or for a United States without an immigration problem, or how we can all become more intellectually sophisticated, etc.
 
No but we might use it to establish a goal for a world without nukes, or for a world free of gases that cause global warming, or for a United States without an immigration problem, or how we can all become more intellectually sophisticated, etc.

Those aren't going to happen no matter what we do.
 
Those aren't going to happen no matter what we do.

It requres a sophisticated citizenry, which might be impossible to acquire.

Drawing conclusions about the human psyche based upon untutored common sense is as justified as drawing conclusions about QM based upon untutored common sense.

We can see only what we are prepared to see and we comprehend only what we are prepared to comprehend.

When I study a domain of knowledge that is new to me I do not try to insert my common sense untutored intuition in place of what the expert is writing about that domain of knowledge. I will over ride the expert with my own judgment only after I have studied the matter for a good amount of time. One cannot learn anything if they trust their uneducated common sense before that of the expert.

I think that we would be wise if we were to place our common sense reactions on hold until we had developed a comprehension of the domain of knowledge in question. If we reject all new stuff that is contrary to our common sense we will never grow intellectually.
 
It requres a sophisticated citizenry, which might be impossible to acquire.

Drawing conclusions about the human psyche based upon untutored common sense is as justified as drawing conclusions about QM based upon untutored common sense.

We can see only what we are prepared to see and we comprehend only what we are prepared to comprehend.

When I study a domain of knowledge that is new to me I do not try to insert my common sense untutored intuition in place of what the expert is writing about that domain of knowledge. I will over ride the expert with my own judgment only after I have studied the matter for a good amount of time. One cannot learn anything if they trust their uneducated common sense before that of the expert.

I think that we would be wise if we were to place our common sense reactions on hold until we had developed a comprehension of the domain of knowledge in question. If we reject all new stuff that is contrary to our common sense we will never grow intellectually.

If we focus too much on growing intellectually and not act on common sense, the citizenry would be so focused on reaching all those goals that we'll forget about operate our farms and feeding ourselves.
 
If we focus too much on growing intellectually and not act on common sense, the citizenry would be so focused on reaching all those goals that we'll forget about operate our farms and feeding ourselves.

Perhaps you have been too influenced by our (American) anti-intellectual frame of mind.
 
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