[MD] Quality Conversations

[ian glendinning]

Matt, DMB, Horse, et al ..

You bemoaned a failure to strive for
"intersubjective cooperation and mutual recognition."
And then went on to say
"I think philosophy is adversarial, but I don't think it has to be aggressive."

I don't think it has to be (exclusively) adversarial either -
"debates" with moderated rules - are an essential adversarial part of
it, but not even 50% of it in my book. Critical rationality also
involves knowing / recognising / discerning / valuing when criticism /
dialectic is not adding value / quality to the discussion. (Sorry
Horse - but without active moderation - even debates are doomed too.)

My view is that at this metaphysical level - a theory of everything
level - MOST of it should be non-adversarial conversation / anecdotes
/ poetry / games / inclusive-fun.

Ian

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Matt said:
> I don't have a taste for dog-fights anymore. I may have once, but not anymore. Now I just want to talk about philosophy. Talk, not fight. Arguments aren't fights, but somehow I always feel like I'm fighting when I talk to DMB. I haven't wanted to fight with him in a long time.
>
> DMB said:
> How is it that defending the MOQ (or myself) against charges of Platonism doesn't count as philosophy?
>
> Matt:
> Who said it didn't?  I said I don't want to _fight_ about philosophy anymore, just talk about it.  I was trying, in vain, to make a distinction between fighting and talking to preempt your likely response, along the lines of "you're in the wrong business, you wuss," but I think we can make a distinction between the kind of thing me, Scott Roberts and Sam Norton once did and the kind of thing Ken Wilber referenced, and this is one of the few things I'm a fan of in his corpus, when he said, "Most disturbing of all, a great number of the Infobahn males are digital predators–egocentric computer warriors that couldn't give damn about intersubjective cooperation and mutual recognition."  I think philosophy is adversarial, but I don't think it has to be aggressive.
>
> I think part of the problem is that you are "defending" when I haven't made an "attack" in some time.
>
> Good luck with your studies.  I had wished we could've been conversation partners as you learned more about the history of philosophy.
>
> Matt
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