Age wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 10:37 pm
But, if a 'philosophy forum' is not the palace to go to share what one thinks or knows is true, and not the place to go to be expected to be questioned and/or challenged over their views and/ir claims, then could you anyone else inform of where is the best place to go to, where I can expect to be questioned and challenged over my views and claims?
This description of the process one experiences with you is misleading though not technically false.
Generally, in philosophy forums, if one wants to share what one thinks or knows is true and to be questioned and challenged about that, then one does (what you have done in some cases) and opens a thread on the topic, shares one's views there and responds to the challenges. Yes, you have done this, but if we look at the actual interaction...
Someone responds to part of all of your assertions and you request they define all their terms and justify all their assertions. The discussion moves towards them justifying their positions, defining their terms and away from you justifying your position and defining your terms.
Of course any discussion probably should include both processes, but yours, if you get your way, ends up with anyone who interacts with you getting the onus to define and justify. If they do not do this, then they get judgments aimed at them or aimed at all the people of this time.
I am not saying that all conflict will disappear if you focus on justifying and explaining your position and terms. Philosophy forums, just like forums in general, have tendencies towards disagreement and position-taking - though this tendency includes you also.
But if you actually look at your interactions in general here you will see that there is constant conflict. You can blame that on the other people, and if the results of blaming that on other people works for you, well, great. It seems like, in the post I am quoting, you are not experiencing this as working for you.
I understand that you see the process of confirmation as one of dialogue. One could even say that it shares some elements with the Socratic method. We don't just simple present proofs, we arrive at the truth in a collaborative dialogue with assertions, questions, challenges, explanations, shorter justifications and finally the truth is the only thing remaining, the only thing that withstood the process. In the abstract I'm on the same page.
In practice, here, what I see is that either someone goes along with your process, which means they end up having to justify any points they make and define any terms they use and make sure they never in any way paraphrase your position, and their justifications and definitions lead to more questions and the discussion becomes you questioning them and you, it seems, will not move forward with justifying and defining your position and terms, until their position is utterly clear. I remember Harbal responding to you with great patience for page after page until he finally couldn't take it any more and during those pages your point of view, what you want to share, was not justified more nor your terms defined.
As a part of the process, if someone says something about what you have said that you consider not exactly what you said, you say you never said that - or use other similar descriptions.
If I am talking to someone and they say 'But you don't like your job', for example. I might say. I never said that. But I would immediately add 'What I said was, that I felt my boss did not share the responsibilities fairly.' You tend not to do such things. So the other person has to go back through what may be hundreds of posts looking for the moment they got the impression you don't like your job. And sometimes, from my perspective, the differences are not significant.
What does this do? it adds to the work of the other person.
You certainly allow yourself to read into what people say. You draw conclusions about the implications about them or their ideas that are not exact quotes. But when others do this they are met with a simple denial.
There are other examples where the process moves the onus of work to other people. Posting things with the phrase 'not necessarily' often just mystify. You could say, I am not writing this with you as my target audiience. Or you could write I am writing this with you as my target audience. But instead we get 'I am not necessarily writing this with you as my target audience.' With the same or even less words, you could actually move the discussion closer to understanding, but instead the poster gets a non-committed, near non-statement. Now such a statement could be used to point out the assumptions another might be making. Great. But in context, if the goal is to have the kind of collaborative search for truth indicated in what I quoted above, actually letting people know you are writing with the people here as an intended audience is not only polite but necessary.
And there are a number of things you say and do that hint at, imply, if not outright indicate that you don't really respect most people here. And yet you seems surprised when you are met with disagreement and to a degree, I hope you'll notice, that is even more so than other posters experience.
If we add in that the way you communicate at the very least seems condescending and seems to place yourself outside of the fallible humans the patterns you see others engaging in, the process of interacting with you is unpleasant.
If anyone does not engage in the process the way you think it should be carried out, they can expect to either be judged as being like other human beings in a negative way and/or somehow proving something. IOW you allow yourself to draw conclusions very quickly about what you think is logically necessitated by their behavior - apart from this being, often, an unjustified conclusion (other options are available) it comes off as 'you do this my way or I will point out negative things about you'
I have also tried to show problems with how you communicate by responding using your own formulations, so that perhaps you can see how they do not in any way more the dialogue forward and have other unpleasant effects.
If you want to see this as simply ridiculing you or attacking you, well, so be it. I have tried before to explain why people, including myself, react to your approach the way we do.
You have indicated that you are not condescending and don't have these negative attitudes and all that I am saying is baseless. Perhaps you don't have these attitudes, but your communication with great regularity then does not match whatever is going on inside of you.
What one indicates to others is not just the exact words one uses.
In face to face communication there is implicit communication in voice tone, body language, timing, facial expressions, what one talks about when, the wider context and patterns in the interaction, not just the exact words. One can, and many do, assert that the implicit communication tells us more about the attitudes and relationship than the explicit communication - the words.
Much of this implicit side of things is reduced here. Yes, we just have words on a screen. However we still have what is focused on, what is accepted and not excepted, how we are responded to or not, what is stated clearly and what is avoided, what is expected before judgment, what is acknowledged or reacted to with silence. The beyond-verbal patterns and what they indicate. These affect the reactions you get and no amount of quoting you back to you can show you this, though I have tried through a variety of methods to show you by quoting and other methods.
I have seen your judgments of me and they no longer bother me. If you want to dismiss this with your usual judgments, so be it, as you would say.
I have respect for the Socratic method, but right now, in relation to what I have just asserted, if it has any interest for you at all, if among your reactions, especially defensive ones, you have any curiosity about whether I might be correct about some or all of this, my suggestion is that you look back on previous dialogues you have had, probably best not ones with me, and see if any strikes you as supporting what I said. I would also suggest that you look at communicative patterns you have with people in face to face life. What happens when you try to share what you consider true with them - the things you want to share with us here. How do they react? Even better ask them about it and see if any of the patterns I am mentioning here are one's they can recognize in face to face communication. And then there's mulling on your own.
It would be lovely if everything could be handled in a question answer approach, but we learn, also through experience. We often need time when what we are trying to learn might be very challenging for us. Questions and requests for justiifcation can also be avoidance patterns. Some things have to settle in.
If you are not curious or interested, well, then obviously you won't engage my suggested processes.
If you can only interpret what I just did here in negative and/or signs of my limitations ways, that's also not of interest to me. You will have misread what I wrote and my intent. I saw what might have been a tiny or larger opening in what you wrote to someone else above and responded this way, person to person. That there might be some vulnerability that you are conscious of in you and a real wondering why this is not working out like you hoped/hope so far. (when I have in the past suggested you might be feeling such things, this was met by complete denial on your part. Fine. Just know I do not mean anything in the least negative about you possibly feeling such things. If anything quite the opposite)
I'm going to take a break from our interaction.
Take care.
