Can philosophy do anything for better relationships between people?

[Angelo Cannata]

I think you are talking about different things. Angelo refers to our pre-conscious process of perception, whereby raw sense data are analysed, interpreted and fitted to our internal world models before the results are passed to our conscious mind. This processing is part of what we do, just as breathing and digestion are, and we are unable to do otherwise.

But the idea of careful listening, although it sounds like it might be the same thing, is something different. It refers to us withholding judgement, consciously and deliberately, and just considering the facts. Nothing else, at first, but only consider the facts. Later we might judge, but initially the Professor recommends just listening.

Two quite different things.

How can we do just listening if if we are unable to stop interpreting?

[Belindi]

It depends on whether or not you believe in determinism.Every event is a necessary event. Nothing happens by accident. You can't know all the causes of an event, however the more causes that you know of , the more free you are to choose your next course of action .

Interpersonally, if you want better relationships it is a big help to know what causes the other person to feel, believe, or act the way they do, as then you are better placed to help them.

[Nick_A]

Angelo asserts that we are ourselves and limited to interpretations.

Einstein suggests that the true value of a human being is freedom from the self and its interpretations

Can we conclude that as we are, prisoners in Plato's cave, attached to the shadows on the wall, by definition we lack value?

Angelo and Einstein are talking about quite different things, no?

First, how do you define yourself? What is your self?

[Pattern-chaser]

Angelo refers to our pre-conscious process of perception, whereby raw sense data are analysed, interpreted and fitted to our internal world models before the results are passed to our conscious mind. This processing is part of what we do, just as breathing and digestion are, and we are unable to do otherwise.

But the idea of careful listening, although it sounds like it might be the same thing, is something different. It refers to us withholding judgement, consciously and deliberately, and just considering the facts. Nothing else, at first, but only consider the facts. Later we might judge, but initially the Professor recommends just listening.

How can we do just listening if we are unable to stop interpreting?

How can we do just listening if we are unable to stop breathing?

The pre-conscious interpretation that accompanies our perception is just something we do. It's not conscious, so we can't consciously stop or change it. It's how our senses work, as our minds accept sensory data from the world. So maybe that makes listening more difficult, and maybe it doesn't. But it is always there. If we can do as you wish we could, we can do it in conjunction with this form of 'interpretation'.

As I said above, I think the listening that you recommend is quite possible. It's a matter of consciously and deliberately setting aside conscious judgement and conscious 'interpretation', and just passively listening to what is being said. Plan your responses and comments later, after you've absorbed the sense of what the speaker intends. I think this is what you pursue, Angelo, yes?

[chewybrian]

I think you are talking about different things. Angelo refers to our pre-conscious process of perception, whereby raw sense data are analysed, interpreted and fitted to our internal world models before the results are passed to our conscious mind. This processing is part of what we do, just as breathing and digestion are, and we are unable to do otherwise.

But the idea of careful listening, although it sounds like it might be the same thing, is something different. It refers to us withholding judgement, consciously and deliberately, and just considering the facts. Nothing else, at first, but only consider the facts. Later we might judge, but initially the Professor recommends just listening.

Two quite different things.

How can we do just listening if if we are unable to stop interpreting?

We can't stop interpreting in many ways, and it would not be practical. If I see a dog, I can't help seeing a dog. There is little point in trying to withhold judgement on what I am seeing. Is it a mushroom or the sun? The shape is wrong for a mushroom, it's not in the sky... How long should I continue pretending I don't see a dog, and what good is this process?

However, I don't have to interpret the intentions or demeanor of the dog without "listening". In this case, listening might mean interpreting the body language of the dog. If I was bitten by a dog in the past, I might be fearful, yet there is little point in judging this dog on the behavior of other dogs, assuming he will harm me without any objective basis for that assumption. I should "listen" to the fact that he is calm, wagging his tail, making eye contact, and giving every other signal that he can, intentionally or not, that he wants to be friends.

So, it's fair and reasonable to see "dog", but unfair and unproductive to see "scary" without listening to what this particular dog is telling me.

If you ask most Americans to name one good thing that Trump did and one good thing Biden has done, you are very likely to get a reply that their choice did X and the other guy never did one good thing. In fact, they both did so much that you are bound to be able to find one good thing if you are "listening". Interpreting without listening would be assuming the other guy never did anything right, or that they always had a sinister motive if they appeared to do something good.

[Angelo Cannata]

How can we do just listening if we are unable to stop breathing?

The pre-conscious interpretation that accompanies our perception is just something we do. It's not conscious, so we can't consciously stop or change it. It's how our senses work, as our minds accept sensory data from the world. So maybe that makes listening more difficult, and maybe it doesn't. But it is always there. If we can do as you wish we could, we can do it in conjunction with this form of 'interpretation'.

As I said above, I think the listening that you recommend is quite possible. It's a matter of consciously and deliberately setting aside conscious judgement and conscious 'interpretation', and just passively listening to what is being said. Plan your responses and comments later, after you've absorbed the sense of what the speaker intends. I think this is what you pursue, Angelo, yes?

How can you consciously stop judgement, interpretation, since, as you said, there is an unconscious interpretation and judging that you can't stop?

[Steve3007]

Jacob Needleman in this video describes an experiment in listening he did with college kids. He put them in a position where they had to listen. At the conclusion they learned they may disagree but do not hate. Is there a future in learning how to listen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSOs4ti0sm0

I agree with Jacob Needleman that an effective way to properly understand another person's position is to honestly state that position to the satisfaction of that other person. Obviously he's far from the first to make that observation. "Don't judge a person until you have walked a mile in his shoes" goes an old saying (often altered slightly for comic effect). One of the critical parts of what he said is that one must state the other person's position to their satisfaction - "don't fudge it". That's the hard part, but doing it properly ensures that it isn't simply used as an opportunity to satirize or strawman the other's view, or lump it together with the perceived views of a group to which the person is asserted to belong.

It's a point primarily about empathy, and as he says, "that is the beginning of morality", because morality is about the interactions of people in societies; co-existing for mutual benefit.

But it's also about getting to the root of what causes disagreements between people, and often finding that the disagreement is not fundamental but is simply a disagreement as to what is factually the case. I've had a longstanding view, stated frequently here, that disagreements between people which might superficially seem to be about our values often turn out to be more superficially about what is thought to be factually true and what chains of causality exist; i.e. what are the consequences of a given set of initial conditions.

So Needleman's point, it seems to me, is about morality being founded in empathy.

[Steve3007]

I disagree with Needleman’s thesis. He solves the problem of lack of listening by finding somebody to blame. This is the mechanism he calls “morality”: “aren’t you listening? Then you are immoral, you are selfish”.

This is an interesting comment because it makes me think I must have watched a completely different short YouTube video clip to the one that you watched. This is the one that I watched:

I didn't hear anything at all on the lines of the things you've placed in quotes above. As I said in my previous post, he seemed to me to be making really quite a simple and obviously true point: that stating another person's position on an issue, to their satisfaction, can often be quite an effective way to try to hear and understand it. But I'd have trouble stating your position on that video unless you can point me more specifically to the part in which said something to the effect of: "Aren’t you listening? Then you are immoral, you are selfish".

So one thing that perhaps this goes to show is that stating another person's position can be a useful device but it's not a panacea.

[Steve3007]

Of course, another important (and hopefully obvious) thing about the act of stating another person's point of view, to their satisfaction, is that it doesn't mean simply quoting them verbatim. Obviously it's easy to quote somebody and obviously, by definition, they're going to agree with that way of putting their view! But it doesn't necessarily involve understanding on the part of the quoter. It's possible to quote somebody without even understanding their language, for example.

When Angelo Cannata wrote "Aren’t you listening? Then you are immoral, you are selfish" as if quoting Jacob Needleman, clearly that wasn't something that Needleman said. So it passes the test of not simply directly quoting. But I suspect it wouldn't pass the test of stating Needleman's position to his satisfaction. I suspect he would say that it bears no relationship at all to his position.

[Pattern-chaser]

How can we do just listening if we are unable to stop breathing?

The pre-conscious interpretation that accompanies our perception is just something we do. It's not conscious, so we can't consciously stop or change it. It's how our senses work, as our minds accept sensory data from the world. So maybe that makes listening more difficult, and maybe it doesn't. But it is always there. If we can do as you wish we could, we can do it in conjunction with this form of 'interpretation'.

As I said above, I think the listening that you recommend is quite possible. It's a matter of consciously and deliberately setting aside conscious judgement and conscious 'interpretation', and just passively listening to what is being said. Plan your responses and comments later, after you've absorbed the sense of what the speaker intends. I think this is what you pursue, Angelo, yes?

How can you consciously stop judgement, interpretation, since, as you said, there is an unconscious interpretation and judging that you can't stop?

The interpretation that is conscious is under our control, and we can do it or not do it as we choose. The interpretation that is unconscious is not under our (conscious) control, so we cannot help but do it.

[Angelo Cannata]

I disagree with Needleman’s thesis. He solves the problem of lack of listening by finding somebody to blame. This is the mechanism he calls “morality”: “aren’t you listening? Then you are immoral, you are selfish”.

This is an interesting comment because it makes me think I must have watched a completely different short YouTube video clip to the one that you watched. This is the one that I watched:

I didn't hear anything at all on the lines of the things you've placed in quotes above. As I said in my previous post, he seemed to me to be making really quite a simple and obviously true point: that stating another person's position on an issue, to their satisfaction, can often be quite an effective way to try to hear and understand it. But I'd have trouble stating your position on that video unless you can point me more specifically to the part in which said something to the effect of: "Aren’t you listening? Then you are immoral, you are selfish".

So one thing that perhaps this goes to show is that stating another person's position can be a useful device but it's not a panacea.

0:21: “The work of listening to another person is a deep beginning of morality”
4:47: "...that’s the beginning of morality, it’s the beginning of what way in the distance would be the capacity to love, because in order to listen like that you have to step back from your ego”
5:48: “...whereas now, when we have so much disagreementit becomes almost murder”
6:03: “...egoistic attachment to our own thoughts”

[Steve3007]

...I didn't hear anything at all on the lines of the things you've placed in quotes above...

0:21: “The work of listening to another person is a deep beginning of morality”
4:47: "...that’s the beginning of morality, it’s the beginning of what way in the distance would be the capacity to love, because in order to listen like that you have to step back from your ego”
5:48: “...whereas now, when we have so much disagreementit becomes almost murder”
6:03: “...egoistic attachment to our own thoughts”

Understood. Post withdrawn.

[Waysofbeing]

Sartre said that “Hell is other people”, but this doesn’t seem helpful to me: it just sounds like a pessimistic conclusion. On the other hand, Levinas was optimistic, but in a way that seems confused to me. You might answer that if we love each other, we’ll have better relationships. My objection is: if the solution is so simple and clear, why isn’t it adopted, why is it difficult to practice? Can we think about some kind of practice that, if practiced, would favour better relationships? If you think that we are all “homo homini lupus“ (Hobbes, but others as well), why is that and what can we do?

Besides, the “other” can even be myself and this would open a lot of other questions connected to my opening one.

Is 'listening without judgement' philosophical? This stance, whether it is a detached stance or an empathic stance, would be a key aspect of improving relationships.

This can also be applied to the self as 'other' and, I would argue, would benefit the self in similar ways. However, to what extent is it philosophy? The idea is very prevalent in psychology.

A quick note regarding love: clearly that question can't be answered without a definition. Two aspects of love might be: love-as-emotion, and love-as-action. We might say that love-as-action is acting in ways that are for the good of the other - but of course, unfortunately this relies on our own interpretations of what that might be and may contrast with those of the loved one. So a better relationship is not guaranteed.

Perhaps this very broad question would be better placed in a psychology forum; surely at least it begs the question of the relationship between philosophy and psychology.