[MD] Harris and Steve

[david buchanan]

DMB said: "Arguments only ever persuade people who are persuadable by arguments."

John replied:
... Ian's emphasis on "community agreement" is vital to any debate or social endeavor.  It's why humility is an irreplacable aspect of wisdom. Armored antagonists tossing conversational bombs at each other from hardened academic fortresses will never produce anything but rubble.



dmb says:

Behold my magnificent humility! 

Show me a guy who brags about his humility, and I'll show you a guy with no sense of irony.

Hardened academic fortresses? Armor? Bombs? 

I think it's the other way around. Usually, education makes people less dogmatic and more open minded. I've heard this from three different professors now, most recently just last night at the campus philosophy club meeting. Rorty writes about this too. In each case, the scenario is basically the same; the freshman enters college as a narrow-minded fundamentalist but at some point during his four years he comes to realize that his worldview is too small. The world handed to him by his parents just doesn't fit anymore. But this is not a simple matter of trading old bad beliefs for new beliefs. He is not told WHAT to think. He learns HOW to think, not which ideas to hold. Critical thinking is a skill, not a set of beliefs.

This picture of the way minds grow comports with the findings in developmental psychology and it is based on what teachers observe in their students on any campus. It's not just a matter of knowing more stuff but rather a matter of gaining wider and wider perspectives. It's a matter of having a wider and wider personal identity too. In the same way that children go further and further away from home as they get older, learning is supposed to be about opening up a wider world and freeing the mind. Independence is the goal in both cases.

And that is what's vital to any debate, especially if we're talking about cross-cultural conflicts. 


Isn't it obvious that conflict represented by burkhas and bikinis will never be solved if that cross-cultural dialogue is conducted by the fundamentalists on either side? Aren't they the ones who are most likely to toss bombs of the conversational and literal kind? The hardliners on either side are hardliners precisely because they are unpersuaded by arguments, facts or reasons. 

I mean, community agreement in the narrow, provincial sense is what causes cross-cultural conflicts in the first place. And so it seems obvious to me that any realistic solution is going to include an expansion of what counts as your community. Why should we not identify with all human beings or with the ongoing process of life itself? 

Obama is freaking out the provincialists. He's got that global citizen feel to him. Plus he's not white and he has a funny name. The conspiracy theories express their fears. They find all kinds of reasons to portray him as non-christian, non-American and generally scary. They hate that the world outside the USA is so fond of him. In short, narrow is frightened by wide. 


Which is why I'm always suspicious of anti-intellectual attitudes. Sometimes it's part of an effort to critically analyze the limits and shortcomings of the intellect and that's an important thing to do. In the context of philosophical mysticism it is especially important to understand the limits of our or conceptualizations. That's what Pirsig does. But usually, it's just the contemptuous fear of a guy whose narrow worldview is threatened by things like knowledge.






 		 	   		  
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