Following The Argument Where It Leads
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
Hovering = hanging over or around someone - staying close, waiting, ready to interfere.
hoovering = cleaning or removing with a vacuum cleaner.
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
Greta is wise with her words, you should listen up some:
'I left my hoovering behind because said hoovering kept creating the very foment I hoped to avert, to keep topics on the interesting stuff rather than the internally focused. That is, the hoovering, rather than the hoovered, kept becoming the issue.'
I see all your locked 'Off Topic' threads as even more clutter. Space debris. Junk.
- Burning ghost
- Posts: 3065
- Joined: February 27th, 2016, 3:10 am
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
But I like the sentiment. I really think the steel man argument is more easily applied priniple to work from. My view is if you cannot see any possible argument aganist your position then you’re either dogmatic and/or blinkered for some hidden reason.
I think it was Will Self talking with Zizek about adages that made me smile. The point being an adage can be used both for or against an argument, they are essentially meaningless and arbitrary:
“Many hands make light work.”
then contrary to this:
“Too many cooks spoil teh broth.”
Both can be used to bolster an argument (or rather appearto bolster an argument.)
I’ve often thought about, and wrote about, “How to have an argument/discussion?” With nothing much to conclude other than a bunch of contradictory adages like the ones noted above. The vague “conclusion” I came to was to ignore the “how” and to try and to view my, and other’s, judgements as best I can in order to “improve” my ability to judge words, thoughts and better express the thoughts of others and of myself.
Being angry, upset or emotional means that you’re close to something important to us. If we’re lucky it may even partially reveal itself to us long enough for us to take a step in the “right’ direction. Suspicion and negativity are natural resources on this path in my experience.
- Burning ghost
- Posts: 3065
- Joined: February 27th, 2016, 3:10 am
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
Good point. It would be helpful if Greta could show me how to move unwanted posts into a single thread (I’ve asked.) I guess I should google it and find out ... duh!Georgeanna wrote: ↑October 24th, 2018, 5:34 am To burning ghost
Greta is wise with her words, you should listen up some:
'I left my hoovering behind because said hoovering kept creating the very foment I hoped to avert, to keep topics on the interesting stuff rather than the internally focused. That is, the hoovering, rather than the hoovered, kept becoming the issue.'
I see all your locked 'Off Topic' threads as even more clutter. Space debris. Junk.
Over all though they are only seen as “new posts” for one day then they go away. I should probably go with the rule that if I see five or more on one page then I should shift them (cannot shift multiple posts fro multiple pages in one go.)
Thanks
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
From: https://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
I - It is a methodological presumption made in seeking to understand a point of view whereby we seek to understand that view in its strongest, most persuasive form before subjecting the view to evaluation.
1.While suspending our own beliefs, we seek a sympathetic understanding of the new idea or ideas.
2.We assume for the moment the new ideas are true even though our initial reaction is to disagree; we seek to tolerate ambiguity for the larger aim of understanding ideas which might prove useful and helpful..
3.Emphasis is placed on seeking to understand rather than on seeking contradictions or difficulties.
4. We seek to understand the ideas in their most persuasive form and actively attempt to resolve contradictions. If more than one view is presented, we choose the one that appears the most cogent.''
------
II - The principle of charity is a methodological principle—ideas can be critiqued after an adequate understanding is achieved. The original presumption of setting aside our own beliefs and assuming the new ideas are true is only a provisional presumption.
1.Hence, we should listen and read in the beginning as if we had no personal attitudes. We should seek to be open and receptive.
2..This attitude, if maintained, frees the conditioned mind and enables it to absorb and understand the new.
3. In essence, we just start with a simple desire to get a point not understood upon first acquaintance.'
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
That comment was not directed at you. It was more a general statement because it could be said that I hold an inordinate power imbalance that makes my participation unfair. Thus, the only ethical approach I have is to allow others to get stuck into me if they wish, within reason of course, and I guess I was providing gratuitous reassurance to that end.Burning ghost wrote: ↑October 24th, 2018, 4:35 amGreta -
I am not opposed to “talking smack.” As far as I am concerned spmeone can be racist, homophobic, anti-religion, sexist and insulting in various other ways AS LONG AS THEY HAVE SOMETHING OF CONTENT IN THEIR POSTS.
- Burning ghost
- Posts: 3065
- Joined: February 27th, 2016, 3:10 am
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I didn't take it as being directed at me. I was merely reiterating your point. If someone insults me I usually let it go. If they repeatedly target me I will say something - regardless, if there is content to their post, I'll apply myself to that more than attempts to bait me.
I actually prefer insults more than vacuous niceties. If we're all trying too hard to get along we may very well miss uncomfortable truths.
-
- Posts: 3601
- Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I am going to repost part of an earlier post. It is, in my opinion, an important and interesting idea, one that runs counter to much of what we find in professional philosophical discourse.
It may be that for some philosophical thinking is an orderly process, but perhaps there are some who give up on philosophy because their thoughts do not come fully formed and logically connected. They may conclude that the disorder in their thinking is a defect, but perhaps it is a virtue. The Greek term ‘logos’ has as one of its original meanings ‘to gather’. A philosophically creative mind may be one that has learned to gather together the disparate ideas that flow forth and make them into wholes.There is something chaotic or disordered in this image of the wind blowing things around. It is not a stepwise pattern. It lead us here and there and who knows where. When I started studying philosophy I often experienced something like this, chasing down one avenue and another, down paths that diverged and paths that converged."Perhaps," I said, "and perhaps something still more than this. You see, I myself really don't know yet, but wherever the argument,
like a wind, tends, thither must we go." (Republic 394d)
Following where the argument leads is not limited to what we do when arguing with others, but more importantly, what we do for and by ourselves. It is not simply a matter of getting others to see things our way, but of the continual development of our own way of seeing. Socratic dialogic is about both what we do in dialogue with others and in dialogue with ourselves. It is 'logos' not simply as saying but as gathering together what the wind has blown here and there.
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I don't think your posts were missed but perhaps some of us might have been swept away in the undercurrent of the parallel flow or subplot.Fooloso4 wrote: ↑October 24th, 2018, 11:57 am Has the irony of all this been lost? Will my posts about Plato’s idea of the nature of philosophical discussion and following the argument where it leads be missed? Indeed, all this seems to confirm my claim that sometimes the fix is worse than the problem.
I am going to repost part of an earlier post. It is, in my opinion, an important and interesting idea, one that runs counter to much of what we find in professional philosophical discourse.
It may be that for some philosophical thinking is an orderly process, but perhaps there are some who give up on philosophy because their thoughts do not come fully formed and logically connected. They may conclude that the disorder in their thinking is a defect, but perhaps it is a virtue. The Greek term ‘logos’ has as one of its original meanings ‘to gather’. A philosophically creative mind may be one that has learned to gather together the disparate ideas that flow forth and make them into wholes.
There is something chaotic or disordered in this image of the wind blowing things around. It is not a stepwise pattern. It lead us here and there and who knows where. When I started studying philosophy I often experienced something like this, chasing down one avenue and another, down paths that diverged and paths that converged.
Following where the argument leads is not limited to what we do when arguing with others, but more importantly, what we do for and by ourselves. It is not simply a matter of getting others to see things our way, but of the continual development of our own way of seeing. Socratic dialogic is about both what we do in dialogue with others and in dialogue with ourselves. It is 'logos' not simply as saying but as gathering together what the wind has blown here and there.
You describe your initial thought processes as a student philosopher as somewhat chaotic. I'd be interested to know how you learned to channel or gather together all the ideas you were presented with and those which presented themselves to you. Did you feel that your creativity was being dampened so as to follow course guidelines - or perhaps there was room for both. The orderly and the imaginative.
A play of two parts. Both important to continuing development and ways of seeing, reading and learning about...our selves and others.
To a Louse - by Rabbie Burns
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
-
- Posts: 3601
- Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I suppose it is just by the continued attempt to tie things together. Asking myself if there are connections between things, if and how they might fit together, or if they stand in opposition. Sometimes I only see the connections as I am working through things. I use the present tense because this is something I do continually.I'd be interested to know how you learned to channel or gather together all the ideas you were presented with and those which presented themselves to you.
When I first began there would be l o n g pauses when I was talking as I followed a thought as it developed in my mind. Eventually the time intervals diminished. The opposite would then sometimes occur. In a flash I saw all these different things in an interrelating and rapidly expanding view.
My writing style was called cryptic. It was not until years later when I read some of the things that I had written that I saw that it did not make nearly as much sense as I thought it had. I began to make an effort to write clearly and simply. To make connections explicit and not leave logical and contextual gaps, and to post road signs to aid both the reader and myself from getting lost. I became aware that if I could not say something clearly I could not think it clearly. I began to think with my pen.
I was fortunate enough to be taught philosophy by reading the philosophers. Reading them continually generates new questions, new avenues of inquiry. So, no, I don’t think the course guidelines dampened my meandering, although time constraints were a limiting factor.Did you feel that your creativity was being dampened so as to follow course guidelines - or perhaps there was room for both. The orderly and the imaginative.
I don’t see the orderly and the imaginative to be at odds. Gathering is an ordering, but I never bought into the idea of systematic philosophy, of knowledge of the order of the whole. And so, if I cannot see how this and that did not fit in I am content to leave it unsettled and not reject it because it does not form part of an ordered whole. Down the road I might make connections, but never a well ordered whole.
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I love this. Your sense, your way of seeing and your beautiful, beautiful words.'When I first began there would be l o n g pauses when I was talking as I followed a thought as it developed in my mind. Eventually the time intervals diminished. The opposite would then sometimes occur. In a flash I saw all these different things in an interrelating and rapidly expanding view.
My writing style was called cryptic. It was not until years later when I read some of the things that I had written that I saw that it did not make nearly as much sense as I thought it had. I began to make an effort to write clearly and simply. To make connections explicit and not leave logical and contextual gaps, and to post road signs to aid both the reader and myself from getting lost. I became aware that if I could not say something clearly I could not think it clearly. I began to think with my pen.'
Wonderful. Thanks.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14997
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
I have often been accused on digressing. However, I find it hard to analyse the human condition without first considering where the qualities emerged from in other parts of nature. Civilisations are preceded by, built upon and fed upon those other systems of nature. How to fully understand the adult if we don't have a clue about the child?
To consider aspects of the human condition without taking into account equivalent dynamics in the wild is akin to analysing an iceberg's tip without much bothering with its much larger underside, and then claiming to understand the iceberg. The dismissal of biology (and physics and cosmology at times) is a major flaw I see in aspects of philosophy, one that I think was caused by historical delusions of human divinity. It's this flaw that leads prominent scientists to (wrongly) dismiss what I think is a beautiful discipline, even while liberally engaging in scope creep by dabbling in it themselves.
It appears that we humans are caught between worlds - between the visceral brutality of our origins and the cerebral functionalism of the future we are creating. Still mired in suffering, on the verge of transcendence (emergence) from the pains of natural selection, but without having yet achieved it.
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
Isn't it your philosophy they are attacking. Your way is not always the way of others. And that is good and the wonder of it all. When different perspectives combine, clash or comfort...
And also share knowledge and experience in reading the works of e.g. Plato - who I must go pick off the back burner.
There is an argument about poetry in the dialogues. And, of course, it is not straightforward or even clear, like so many philosophical works.
Even so, there is a poetic beauty there - ironically.
------
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-rhetoric/''Plato's critique of writing on the grounds that it is a poor form of rhetoric is itself written. Of course, his Socrates does not know that he is “speaking” in the context of a written dialogue; but the reader immediately discerns the puzzle. Does the critique apply to the dialogues themselves? If not, do the dialogues escape the critique altogether, or meet it in part (being inferior to “live” dialogue, but not liable to the full force of Socrates' criticisms)? Scholars dispute the answers to these well-known questions.[32]
There is general agreement that Plato perfected—perhaps even invented—a new form of discourse. The Platonic dialogue is a innovative type of rhetoric, and it is hard to believe that it does not at all reflect—whether successfully or not is another matter—Plato's response to the criticisms of writing which he puts into the mouth of his Socrates.
Plato's remarkable philosophical rhetoric incorporates elements of poetry. Most obviously, his dialogues are dramas with several formal features in common with much tragedy and comedy (for example, the use of authorial irony, the importance of plot, setting, the role of individual character and the interplay between dramatis personae). No character called “Plato” ever says a word in his texts. His works also narrate a number of myths, and sparkle with imagery, simile, allegory, and snatches of meter and rhyme. Indeed, as he sets out the city in speech in the Republic, Socrates calls himself a myth teller (376d9–10, 501e4–5).''
-
- Posts: 436
- Joined: October 29th, 2017, 1:17 pm
Re: Following The Argument Where It Leads
Of course, not everyone has the ability to combine different ideas in exciting new forms. But what a great place to start...to think about it.
How important is it to find fresh words or a new arrangement of notes...? And be given the space to explore. Thanks for being a major force behind and within the forum.
I found this - haven't listened to it yet. Part of the Melvyn Bragg series, Radio 4, In Our Time :
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548vy
The concept of Originality - related to Creativity. 45 mins.
Summary:
Worthy of another thread, perhaps. Another time, another place, another person.Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the creative force of originality. How far is it to do with origins, how far with the combination of the discoveries of others, which were themselves based on the thoughts of others, into an ever-receding and replicating past? Is invention original? Is original important? Is tradition more interesting and the reworking of what is traditional of greater value than the search for idiosyncrasy? And did our notion of the original genius come as much out of a commercial imperative for individual copyright in the eighteenth century, as a romantic view of human nature which came in, perhaps not co-incidentally, at the same time?
In 1800, in his preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wrote "Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished".
But did the notion of originality begin with the Romantics in the 18th century, or has society always valued originality? Should we consider Shakespeare an innovator or a plagiarist?To what extent is originality about perception rather than conception and is originality a concept without meaning today?With John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College London; Jonathan Rée, philosopher and author of Philosophical Tales; Professor Catherine Belsey, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University.
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023