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| Jan 17, 2010 1:11 am |
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re: re: re: re: re: The ART of ARGUMENT, or I love a good fight on networks? |
| abbeboulah
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"The reality, though, is that our interactions are typically more related to winning or losing. Outside of possible venue constraints, such as how a post action is accomplished, or a meeting based on Robert's Rules of Order, the agreements are never established.
Following that thought, perhaps we do engage in verbal warfare rather than argument or debate. The reality, again, is that this generates more activity on networks."
Once upon a time the agreements were established and expressed in the very word for the institution: "Parliament" -- the place where we agree to leave our weapons outside and talk (parler) and agree to let each side try to convince the other of the advantages of its views on some controversy, with the (explicit or implied) agreement that we take turns in speaking, and listen to what the other has to say.
This great institution of civilization was based on the insight, I think, that the outcome plans achieved by violent fighting were not necessarily improved by the heroism applied to the fight, and most often not worth the cost in blood and misery associated with glorious military action. That this great achievement of civilization has itself been demeaned by trickery, violation of the implied rule of not resorting to deception (which nullifies the value of an argument) economic and psychological coercion and misrepresentation, and thus has come to be despised by many, is one of the great tragedies of our time -- because for all the razmatazz of negotiation seminars and psychology of rational and irrational decision-making and game theory, all exploited for the purpose of winning (you are right in this), no better alternative has been proposed, as far as I can see. I'd love to be proved wrong on this, and have tried hard to find somebody who is working on the task of reviving the ideal behind that old civilized principle of 'let's talk before we decide', and finishing the work it started. For it is still incomplete. For all the sanctimonious talk and popular demands of 'making decisions on the merit of arguments' and 'weighing the pros and cons', there are still no effective practical tools for assessing the merit of the kinds of arguments we use in such discussions about what ought to be done, especially not for assessing the combined merit of all the pros and cons -- the venerable disciplines of logic and rhetoric and critcal thinking and even informal thinking are all still busy analyzing single arguments, when we know, or should know, that decisions are made by considering precisely all those multiple pros and cons.
Trying to work out some guidelines for this from my perspective -- not really one of the disciplines one would expect to work on it -- I have come to the astonishing conclusion that as far as I can see, there are no other proposals out there for developing better tools for this. There is a some good and interesting work done on issue and argument mapping -- vital tools for giving people better overview of the different aspects of a controversy. But they all sidestep the issue of how to push those tools forward to where they facilitate a better, more transparent and systematic evaluation of planning and policy-making arguments.
And they all still sidestep the question -- the sticking point I have referred to -- of what to do about people who violate the implied or explicit agreements necessary for constructive, cooperative planning and problem-solving. Part of the problem is indeed that the underlying principle and these agreements have been forgotten or are now considered 'quaint' and obsolete, and their violation is seen as proof of great negotiation skill. That great nations spend orders of magnitude more in dollars and energy on 'disinformation', 'framing', advertising (declaring dollars for endless repetition two-word election slogans as 'freedom of speech'), of NLP-type conditioning of political beliefs aka propaganda regardless of their truth and validity etc, as on teaching our children the art of constructive argument: what kind of symptom of civilization greatness is that?
Yes: the trend, the emphasis is on 'Winning'. By all means, even despicable means. This is what we must try to change. That this great civilization has come down to letting promoters of "we don't sit down to talk with our enemies; we defeat them" get away with such talk without a peep: what does that say about it? Sure, sure: those guys have probably -- after careful analysis -- determined that those 'enemies' have violated the civilized agreements needed for constructive debate and problem-solving. Funny, so has, usually, the other side. So it's back to get out the clubs or smart bombs, fellow gentlecavemen. We can't come up with anything more decent, more innovative, creative? More artful?
With respect and apologies to the people who advocate return to principles like the Golden Rule: I admire that position and fundamentally agree with it -- but if we can't get it through to the other side in a controversy, with a good, yes, artful, but more importantly: effective argument, what good is it? If we can't offer guarantees that we are not resorting to underhanded means of circumventing the agreements for cooperative planning, if we can't be sure that we can trust the other side to play fair? And if we can't ourselves meaningfully evaluate the merit of the arguments the other side is proposing? Work to do. Private Reply to abbeboulah (new win) |
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