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| coberst |
 Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:15 am Post subject: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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Dialogue ain’t for Sissies!
Human discourse seldom goes beyond adolescent styled discussion, debate, or argument. Intellectually, judging by our discourse, few Americans have the sophistication to undertake dialogue. I am 74 years old and have never experienced dialogue either as a participant or as a spectator. Our discourse seldom takes us beyond tacit (only a vague feeling) knowledge.
I am convinced that until we can dialogue we will never be safe from self destruction and perhaps even destruction of the planet for any life forms.
Few Americans are prepared to dialogue. Dialogue is much different from discussion and debate. To dialogue requires much preparation and our educational system have not prepared us for the practice of dialogue.
Our educational system is almost completely dedicated to rote teaching. Our system is almost totally a system of teaching by telling. Why is this so?
A didactic technique of educating young people is the most efficient way of inculcating facts into the memory of children. It seems to me that it is necessary to teach facts to children as quickly and as efficiently as possible during their early years.
It is vital that we have knowledge of many and varied types of algorithms. The more our lives are controlled by technology the more algorithms we must know.
However, there are no known algorithms for many problems that we face daily. Where we fail to have algorithms we must find ways to facilitate understanding.
How does the Socratic technique, or as it is more often called the dialogue method, enhance understanding by a student?
A classroom that is focusing on a dialogue technique of instruction would be one wherein there would be the usual teacher and a number of pupils. A question or a matter of interest would be introduced and pupils would be asked to give their opinion on the matter. Each student voicing a point of view would be subject to questions by members of the class and the instructor and each would be expect to defend the opinion as best they can. Such a class program would require, in many cases that the students come to class well prepared and ready to become an active participant.
The subject might be the American war in Iraq, for example. One can imagine in such a case that there would be many different points of view. Some students might be from homes wherein varying political affiliations might be held. Some students may be Muslims or Jews of Protestants. Such a question would elicit many and strongly held views. The views of all students would be subjected to questions focusing upon the quality of the argument supporting a view and perhaps questions that might focus upon the biases exposed by the view. Assumptions would be examined and questioned. The whole process is directed toward establishing a critical habit of thought in all students.
How does a young person who has finished their schooling develop their own value system?
How does a young person develop a sound intellectual foundation upon which to build a life?
What is a sound intellectual foundation?
How does a young person learn to ask the important questions? |
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| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:27 am Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
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| coberst wrote: |
Dialogue ain’t for Sissies!
Human discourse seldom goes beyond adolescent styled discussion, debate, or argument. Intellectually, judging by our discourse, few Americans have the sophistication to undertake dialogue. I am 74 years old and have never experienced dialogue either as a participant or as a spectator. |
If you've never done it or seen it, how are you so sure it works? And you really haven't explained why it is different than discussion or debate. |
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| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:53 am Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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Forum Radioactive Isotope
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| coberst wrote: |
| I am 74 years old and have never experienced dialogue either as a participant or as a spectator. |
That I can totally believe. Your persistent failure to respond to more than a small fraction of the replies to your posts suggests you have only the vaguest idea of how dialogues should be conducted.
| coberst wrote: |
| Our educational system is almost completely dedicated to rote teaching. |
Nonsense. May I suggest you visit some schools or talk to some teachers. We are now in the 21st century, not the 19th.
_________________
The Universe is not only weirder than we imagine it is weirder than we can imagine. J.B.S.Haldane. |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:05 am Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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| Harold14370 wrote: |
| coberst wrote: |
Dialogue ain’t for Sissies!
Human discourse seldom goes beyond adolescent styled discussion, debate, or argument. Intellectually, judging by our discourse, few Americans have the sophistication to undertake dialogue. I am 74 years old and have never experienced dialogue either as a participant or as a spectator. |
If you've never done it or seen it, how are you so sure it works? And you really haven't explained why it is different than discussion or debate. |
I am not completely sure it will work. But the best minds that I have read indicate it is possible. I have no alternative, do you? |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:08 am Post subject: |
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William Graham Sumner, a distinguished anthropologist states the ideal:
“The critical habit of thought, if usual in a society, will pervade its entire mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life.”
There are no paradigms for multilogical problems. Perhaps we might use the phrase ’frame of reference’ instead. A jury trial might be a useful example of a problem engaged by many reflective agents with a multiplicity of frames of reference. In such a situation the jury must utilize communicative techniques to enter into a dialogue wherein there is a constant dialectic until a unanimous solution is reached or deadlock prevails. The example of jury trial is useful but is a snapshot of experience and details agents in a one-time sort of experience.
Socratic dialogue is a technique for attempting to solve multilogical problems. Problems that are either not pattern like or that the pattern is too complex to ascertain. Most problems that we face in our daily life are such multilogical in nature. Simple problems that occur daily in family life are examples. Each member of the family has a different point of view with differing needs and desires. Most of the problems we constantly face are not readily solved by mathematics because they are not pattern specific and are multilogical.
Dialogue is a technique for mutual consideration of such problems wherein solutions grow in a dialectical manner. Through dialogue each individual brings his/her point of view to the fore by proposing solutions constructed around their specific view. All participants in the dialogue come at the solution from the logic of their views. The solution builds dialectically i.e. a thesis is developed and from this thesis and a contrasting antithesis is constructed a synthesis that takes into consideration both proposals. From this a new synthesis, a new thesis is developed.
When we are dealing with monological problems well circumscribed by algorithms the personal biases of the subject are of small concern. In multilogical problems, without the advantage of paradigms and algorithms, the biases of the problem solvers become a serious source of error. One important task of dialogue is to illuminate these prejudices which may be quite subtle and often out of consciousness of the participant holding them.
When we engage in a dialogue what happens? The first thing we find is that dialogue is unlike anything in which we have previously been involved. Group discussions generally digress quickly into verbal food fights and nothing positive is accomplished. Discussions become venues for shouting at one another. The most important thing discovered--provided you wished to advance your thinking so as to develop a means for solving intractable problems--is that skills and attitudes not presently possessed must be developed.
In a dialogue one discovers that advancement of the group toward solutions requires that each member be part of a coherent body wherein all agree to certain standards and procedures. It is necessary to form a solid foundation for the house under construction. The foundation must be solid and the structure true to a standard. In a house construction one sees carpenters using plumb-bobs and levels constantly. What are the plumb-bobs and levels of thought? What are the standards and principles of successful dialogue?
Each member of the dialogue discovers that things never thought of before are the first matters that must be resolved. The science of thought is the first and fundamental consideration that dawn on the participants. What are the fundaments of thought that must be examined?
The science of epistemology imposes itself immediately as a first consideration. Epistemology is the theory and craft of knowing. If the members of the group cannot agree on what knowledge is that group can go no further.
What can the group agree upon as to what is knowledge and what is truth? For all those who have never given such matters any thought this sounds a bit silly. Everyone knows what knowledge is and what truth is. That is a problem. Those never engaged in dialogue are likely to have ever questioned such basic concerns. This whole matter of introducing the concept of dialogue faces the bootstrap problem. The bootstrap problem is one of accomplishing an end when the end to be accomplished is necessary for considering the end to be accomplished. Can the dog ever catch its tail?
Only after the group agrees on the nature of the plum bobs and levels of thought will the group be ready to move to the next step. The next barrier that it is likely to face is of the distinction between awareness and consciousness.
Before Americans can dialogue there must be preparation. That preparation is not furnished by our educational system. The only way that Americans can prepare themselves for dialogue is through a process of self-actualizing self-learning. It is here that we must begin our effort to dialog.
A dialogical process is not one wherein individuals reason together in an attempt to make common, ideas that are already known to each individual. ”Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.” Dialogical reasoning together is an act of creation, of mutual understanding, of meaning.
Dialogic can happen only if both individuals wish to reason together in truth, in coherence, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each must be prepared to “drop his old ideas and intentions. And be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for…Thus, if people are to cooperate (i.e., literally to ‘work together’) they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority.”
“On Dialogue” written by “The late David Bohm, one of the greatest physicists and foremost thinkers this century, was Fellow of the Royal Society and Emeritus Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Bohm is convinced that communication is breaking down as a result of the crude and insensitive manner in which it is transpiring. Communication is a concept with a common meaning that does not fit well with the concepts of dialogue, dialectic, and dialogic.
I claim that if we citizens do not learn to dialogue we cannot learn to live together in harmony sufficient to save the species.
Do you have any interest in learning to dialogue? |
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| Ophiolite |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:47 am Post subject: |
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Forum Radioactive Isotope
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| coberst wrote: |
| Do you have any interest in learning to dialogue? |
Do you? I already routinely engage in dialogue as you have defined it.
_________________
The Universe is not only weirder than we imagine it is weirder than we can imagine. J.B.S.Haldane. |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:51 am Post subject: |
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| Ophiolite wrote: |
| coberst wrote: |
| Do you have any interest in learning to dialogue? |
Do you? I already routinely engage in dialogue as you have defined it. |
Here is a technique that might be of interest for a dialogue.
Talking Circles is a technique used in colleges to teach dialogical thinking. This technique has evidently proved effective when decisions are required about issues wherein there is no right or wrong answer; such matters as social and moral concerns can be discussed within a non-judgmental climate.
A particular issue is defined in a short statement and every entry is directed only to that statement and no comment is directed at other comments. The group should be small, perhaps seven members or less.
Suppose we start with a short essay like the following and ask for a first response to this post by those who wish to enter into a dialogue.
________________________________________
A prudent society would put technology on hold
The aims of technology are achieved and our chances for survival are fatally diminished. The fault is not in our technology but in us. The fault lies within human society.
McLuhan made us aware of the fact that technology is an extension of our self. I would say that we and also our ecosystem are both gestalts, a whole, wherein there are complex feedback loops that permit self healing and various means that protect us from our self.
The dictionary defines gestalt as meaning a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts. When we interfere with the gestalt, i.e. our ecosystem or our self, we are changing some one or some few of the feedback loops that help us maintain equilibrium. Such modifications, if not fully understood, can send the gestalt into a mode wherein equilibrium can no longer be maintained.
In 1919 Ernest Rutherford announced to a shocked world “I have been engaged in experiments which suggest that the atom can be artificially disintegrated. If it is true, it is far greater importance than a war.” Today’s stem-cell research could, in my opinion, be considered as more important than a war and also more important than Rutherford’s research success.
The discussion regarding the advisability of continuing stem-cell research primarily focuses on the religious/political factor and on the technology but there is little or no focus upon the impact that could result to our society beyond its health effects.
We are unwilling or unable to focus on the long-term effects of our technology and thus should put much of it on hold until we gain a better means to evaluate the future implications of our technology. What do you think about this serious matter? |
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| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 2:21 pm Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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| coberst wrote: |
| I am not completely sure it will work. But the best minds that I have read indicate it is possible. I have no alternative, do you? |
Okay Coberst. Let's have a dialogue. You be Socrates and I'll be the pupil. Topic of discussion: Why Dialogue is different/better than the usual discussion on The Science Forum. Lead on. |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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| Harold14370 wrote: |
| coberst wrote: |
| I am not completely sure it will work. But the best minds that I have read indicate it is possible. I have no alternative, do you? |
Okay Coberst. Let's have a dialogue. You be Socrates and I'll be the pupil. Topic of discussion: Why Dialogue is different/better than the usual discussion on The Science Forum. Lead on. |
Before Americans can dialogue there must be preparation. That preparation is not furnished by our educational system. The only way that Americans can prepare themselves for dialogue is through a process of self-actualizing self-learning. It is here that we must begin our effort to dialog.
A dialogical process is not one wherein individuals reason together in an attempt to make common, ideas that are already known to each individual. ”Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.” Dialogical reasoning together is an act of creation, of mutual understanding, of meaning.
Dialogic can happen only if both individuals wish to reason together in truth, in coherence, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each must be prepared to “drop his old ideas and intentions. And be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for…Thus, if people are to cooperate (i.e., literally to ‘work together’) they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority.”
“On Dialogue” written by “The late David Bohm, one of the greatest physicists and foremost thinkers this century, was Fellow of the Royal Society and Emeritus Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Bohm is convinced that communication is breaking down as a result of the crude and insensitive manner in which it is transpiring. Communication is a concept with a common meaning that does not fit well with the concepts of dialogue, dialectic, and dialogic.
I claim that if we citizens do not learn to dialogue we cannot learn to live together in harmony sufficient to save the species. |
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| Pong |
| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Why Socrates, you're off to a bold start today! Opening the dialogue by asserting your own thesis ?! |
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| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 3:32 am Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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| coberst wrote: |
Before Americans can dialogue there must be preparation. That preparation is not furnished by our educational system. |
It seems you are declining my offer to dialogue because I am the product of the American educational system. Is that correct? |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: Re: Dialogue ain’t for Sissies! |
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| Harold14370 wrote: |
| coberst wrote: |
Before Americans can dialogue there must be preparation. That preparation is not furnished by our educational system. |
It seems you are declining my offer to dialogue because I am the product of the American educational system. Is that correct? |
You asked me to lead on. I have presented my thesis and I would expect you to answer with your thesis and from that I would try to make a synthesis out of yours and mine. Then we would continue from there dialectically until we reached a conclusion or exhaustion. |
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| Bunbury |
| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| I claim that if we citizens do not learn to dialogue we cannot learn to live together in harmony sufficient to save the species. |
Hi Coberst, Harold's topic for dialogue is why dialogue is different or better than the type of discussions that go on here. Your reply doesn't respond to this at all. I'm confused as to what the difference is.
There are a lot of young people on here who are benefitting from being here in ways they wouldn't if they were involved in some other activities. Don't you think that these forums are a practical electronic substitute for sitting around the Academy? |
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| coberst |
| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Bunbury wrote: |
| Quote: |
| I claim that if we citizens do not learn to dialogue we cannot learn to live together in harmony sufficient to save the species. |
Hi Coberst, Harold's topic for dialogue is why dialogue is different or better than the type of discussions that go on here. Your reply doesn't respond to this at all. I'm confused as to what the difference is.
There are a lot of young people on here who are benefitting from being here in ways they wouldn't if they were involved in some other activities. Don't you think that these forums are a practical electronic substitute for sitting around the Academy? |
These two paragraps of my thesis speak to the question of why dialogue is different and better.
A dialogical process is not one wherein individuals reason together in an attempt to make common, ideas that are already known to each individual. ”Rather, it may be said that the two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.” Dialogical reasoning together is an act of creation, of mutual understanding, of meaning.
Dialogic can happen only if both individuals wish to reason together in truth, in coherence, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each must be prepared to “drop his old ideas and intentions. And be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for…Thus, if people are to cooperate (i.e., literally to ‘work together’) they have to be able to create something in common, something that takes shape in their mutual discussions and actions, rather than something that is conveyed from one person who acts as an authority to the others, who act as passive instruments of this authority.” |
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| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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Coberst, I think it would be good to start off with a set of ground rules; otherwise I am liable to lapse into my usual methods, since I am still not clear on the difference. The way you have started the discussion is a lot different than I expected. Of course, we can play this any way you want, but I thought Socrates' method was to ask a series of leading questions to elicit the desired conclusion, without even overtly revealing his own opinion.
Now, there is one thing that bothers me about what you have said, and that is that it requires some preparation or training before you begin to attempt a dialogue. Does that mean that there is some grade level, say in elementary school, below which the students would not be ready to do it?
This does not seem right, because if dialogue is the most efficient method of learning, why spend time learning by other methods before you even start using it?
It brings to mind Professor Harold Hill's "think method" of learning to play a musical instrument.
If you are not familiar with Professor Harold Hill, he was the con artist in The Music Man who came to River City, Iowa and convinced the people they needed a boy's band. Then when they started asking where their musical instruments were, he convinced them the kids could learn to play by just imagining they have an instrument. |
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