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    Aristotle’s notion of dialectic as a model for philosophical debate and inquiry

    This week, we’ve had a new round of discussions on the ‘combative’ nature of philosophy as currently practiced and its implications, prompted by a remark in a column by Jonathan Wolff on the scarcity of women in the profession. (Recall the last wave of such discussions, then prompted by Rebecca Kukla’s 3AM interview.) Brian Leiter retorted that there’s nothing wrong with combativeness in philosophy (“Insofar as truth is at stake, combat seems the right posture!”). Chris Bertram in turn remarked that this is the case only if “there’s some good reason to believe that combat leads to truth more reliably than some alternative, more co-operative approach”, which he (apparently) does not think there is. Our own John Protevi pointed out the possible effects of individualized grading for the establishment of a competitive culture.

    As I argued in a previous post on the topic some months ago, I am of the opinion that adversariality can have a productive, positive effect for philosophical inquiry, but not just any adversariality/combativeness. (In that post, I placed the discussion against the background of gender considerations; I will not do so here, even though there are obvious gender-related implications to be explored.) In fact, what I defend is a form of adversariality which combines adversariality/opposition with a form of cooperation.


     My historical inspiration for this model of philosophical debating and inquiry is ancient dialectic, or at least one particular version of ancient dialectic: the one found in Aristotle’s Topics, Book VIII in particular. True enough, on several occasions both in the Topics and in the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle also offers advice on how to ‘crush’ an opponent with ‘dirty tricks’ (e.g. how to confuse the answerer by asking for irrelevant premises, as discussed in VIII.1). But in VIII.5, Aristotle introduces a form of dialectical interaction that, according to him, has never been discussed in detail by his predecessors: “… dialectical meetings among people who engage in arguments not for the sake of competition, but for testing and inquiry.” (159a33-34)

    Basically, what he means by ‘inquiry’, as becomes clear later in the text, is the exercise of unpacking what a given thesis implies/entails. This is accomplished by one of the participants adopting a thesis ‘for the sake of the argument’, and maintaining it against objections by a fair but tough opponent. This dialectical model requires a virtuous attitude from both participants; the common goal of inquiry will only be attained if both partake in the disputation in a virtuous way. “For it is not in the power of one participant alone to see that their common goal is well accomplished.” (161a20-22) However, in practice participants are not always virtuous interlocutors: 

    There are times, then, when it is necessary to attack the speaker, not the thesis – when the answerer is particularly abusive and ready to pounce on the questioner with the contrary of whatever he asks for. By being cantankerous, then, these people make discussions competitive and not dialectical. (161a22-25)

    The picture that emerges is of lower-level adversariality but higher-level cooperation. Adversariality occurs in the sense that each participant is not easily going to grant the thesis the opponent is defending, and thus will force him/her to offer solid arguments for it. Cooperation occurs in the sense that, given their common goal of inquiry, participants will perform to the best of their abilities and in a virtuous way. This also seems to be, at least in theory, the rationale for the adversarial justice system: defense and prosecution are defending opposite theses, but the higher goal of attaining justice is best served when each of the parties performs to the best of their abilities, and this has two aspects: to look for the best possible support for their theses, but also to engage in debating in a virtuous, non-cantankerous way.

    Hence, it seems that a certain amount of adversariality, thus understood, is conducive to leading to truth, because it forces each participants to come up with the best possible defense for their views. (This idea is also grounded on the observation that human reasoners are highly prone to confirmation bias, i.e. to sticking to the beliefs they already hold. A great antidote to this tendency is people who disagree with you in a respectful and articulate way. Someone who already agrees with you is less likely to force you to sharpen your arguments.) But sheer adversariality and combativeness, besides being mighty annoying, is not conducive to truth, i.e. if an interlocutor wants to win the debate at all costs (as often seen at philosophy Q&A sessions…). These are the cantankerous people Aristotle talks about, and his suggestion is that one should simply refuse to engage in debates with such people.

    In conclusion, I want to suggest that much in the discussions on whether philosophical inquiry should be combative or cooperative is based on the false dichotomy that a debate can only be either combative or cooperative. In other words, my suggestion is that it is precisely from the right combination between productive adversariality and cooperation towards a common goal that the best philosophical debates emerge. The age-old notion of dialectic still provides a very fruitful model for philosophical discussions and philosophical inquiry. Long live Aristotle!

    (There is a whole debate in the secondary literature on Aristotle about the relations between dialectic and philosophy, which I am setting aside for the present purposes. Suffice it to say that I am of the opinion that the connections between dialectic and philosophy are tighter than some commentators seem to think, but not for the reasons defended by e.g. Owen. Also, I am told that Socrates says very similar things in the Gorgias, but I haven't had the time to check it out yet.)

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    34 responses to “Aristotle’s notion of dialectic as a model for philosophical debate and inquiry”

    1. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Hello Catarina, thanks, this is a very nice discussion. I was particularly interested in this formulation: “Basically, what he means by ‘inquiry’, as becomes clear later in the text, is the exercise of unpacking what a given thesis implies/entails.” Let me see what we can do with this in a Deleuzean idiom. There are at least three interrelated points here: Deleuze didn’t like “discussion”; he thought philosophy was the construction of concepts; and he located truth not at the level of the proposition but at the level of the problem.
      Deleuze didn’t like “discussion” because he saw that as merely trading pre-established positions (thus it’s not what you’re after with “inquiry” but more like “debate,” which I take it is what the vicious interlocutor does in trying to “crush” opponents). Rather, he thought philosophers should see concepts as solutions to problems, so cooperation would be the mutual search to move from any one concept to the problem to which it is a (partial) solution.
      A problem is also what Deleuze called a multiplicity or Idea: roughly speaking, a set of mutually interactive processes that can be resolved in a solution but never answered once and for all. To use my well-worn hurricane example, the problem to which a hurricane is a solution can be formulated at one level of precision as “how to move heat from the tropics to temperate zones?”. Now no one hurricane finishes off the problem (hurricanes come in series; we haven’t seen the last one yet) nor are hurricanes the only solution (ocean currents are another, less intense, solution). At another level of precision, however, you could reformulate the problem as “how to move heat from higher to lower energy zones?” and here meteorological phenomena are only one class of solutions, and other media present other solutions (refrigerators, air conditioners, heaters …).
      Now a concept (the concept of “hurricane” for instance) is internally differential — or irreducibly multiple: there’s no center to a physical hurricane nor is there a center to the concept of “hurricane,” which can only be stated as “what happens when air and water currents reach critical points to begin the self-organization process of thunderstorm circle, eye wall construction, …” But what you can say is that any one attempt to provide a verbal formulation of the concept of “hurricane” is something like a thesis or proposition. In Deleuze’s terms, it’s actualized: it’s the end result of a thought process that puts forth words as setting forth a concept. (Thoughts are like hurricanes: they are the solutions to problematic fields; the “eureka” is like a lightning bolt!)*
      What this means, I think, is that the move to presuppositions in “inquiry” for Deleuze would not be the move from one proposition to a series of (implicit) propositions, but the move from theses as actualized results to concepts as solutions to problematic fields. And it’s at the level of problem, not that of proposition, that Deleuze, following Bergson, locates truth. So there is a move from thesis to presupposition that interlocutors can help each other with, but it’s not “propositions” all the way down. That is, the other zone to which we move in inquiry is not populated with individuated thoughts actualized in theses, but with differentiated problems (aka, Ideas, multiplicities …)
      *I’m not completely sure about the formulations here — it’s a very tricky thing to try to convey in actualized, fixed, form that actualized forms are results of the actualization of differentiated “problems.” So I’m going to put up the Bat-signal and hope Jeff Bell with join the discussion!

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    2. Chris Bertram Avatar
      Chris Bertram

      [posted this comment on CT, but it also seems apposite here. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with proceeding dialectically,as you put it]
      Is it wrong to call bullshit bullshit? – NO
      Is it wrong to argue forcefully and clearly for or against a proposition because you believe it to be untrue or unjustified? – NO
      Clearly, there are times when both of these are the right thing to do in a philosophical discussion.
      There are also times when the right thing to do is to work co-operatively with someone to help them better articulate their view, and, indeed, providing objections to that view (proceeding dialectically) can be part of that process.
      So I don’t oppose any of those things. What I oppose is to conceive philosophical encounters mainly or even ideally on the model of combat, where the aim of combat is personal triumph and the crushing of the opponent. Anyone who has been in a few philosophical fora (and economics ones too, for that matter) will recognize the sort of bloody encounter whose purpose is not to get at the truth but to gratify the ego of the aggressor. These are behaviours that lead some good smart people not to bother engaging and others to lose confidence in themselves. We’d be in a better place if such people did not disengage, so we need to tackle the way some people conduct themselves.

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    3. Mauricio Suarez Avatar
      Mauricio Suarez

      Catarina writes: “the false dichotomy that a debate can only be either combative or cooperative”.
      I fail to see how this can possibly be a false dichotomy. You must be giving these terms a sense they don’t have in ordinary language, or in their etymology. It already stretches ‘adversarial’ to see it as partaking of the dialectical nature of argument (even in those cases where a dialectical argument takes an explicitly adversarial form between its participants, it is often very misleading to reduce it to a mere adversarial confrontation of opinion — Galileo’s 3-way dialogues strike me as a very good example of this).
      Jo Wolff is spot on and it is about time that the profession confronts its ‘mobbing’ techniques, which almost invariably dress themselves up in the supposed virtuosity of ‘been able to bear the heat’ in debate. In most philosophy departments, this is just a lame excuse for the established and most powerful few to suppress dissenting judgement. And in practice, as Mill put it so well so long ago, we all lose out when we allow the mob to continue mobbing the dissenters into submission.

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    4. Jeff Bell Avatar
      Jeff Bell

      Bat signal received! Great post Catarina and I’m enjoying the discussion about the role of combativeness and cooperation in philosophical inquiry. I do agree with you (or Aristotle) that successful inquiry will entail a mixture of both adversarial and cooperative moves, which brings me to John’s comment.
      One of the reasons Deleuze spoke out against philosophical discussions was precisely for the reason you mentioned – philosophers work through creating concepts in partial response to problems, and any two given philosophers may simply not be addressing or discussing the same problem. Even when the problem is formulated (or actualized) within a set of propositional claims, they may debate the nature of these claims but the adversarial relationship follows more from the non-identity of the problematic conditions with these claims, or the irreducibility of propositional claims to their problematic conditions. Adversarial relations and oppositional positions are thus inevitable from this perspective; however, a productive philosophical concept draws from the problematic conditions in a way that may well be thought of as cooperative (in a sense).
      The great philosophical concepts thus generate both adversarial debate and further cooperative inquiry. Deleuze cites Plato’s concept of the Idea as a response to its problematic conditions, conditions that Kant addresses again with his theory of Transcendental Ideas, which is both in opposition to Plato but also further develops the Platonic inquiry of the problem. Deleuze then develops this point as an explicit theme with his concept of Ideas as multiplicities/problems, which is in opposition to Kant while also being a development of the Kantian problematic. This is all too brief, I know, but your comment makes much of this clear. I just wanted to tie it in to Catarina’s post.
      One modification I’d make to your formulation, John, is when you say that “the concept of ‘hurricane’ is something like a thesis or proposition. In Deleuze’s terms, it’s actualized: it’s the end result of a thought process that puts forth words as setting forth a concept.” I would add to this that the actualized state also modifies the problematic conditions as well and so it’s not a simple linear process but a complex recursive/feedback loop process. As we in Louisiana know, Hurricanes undergo similar processes when they churn up the cool water from deeper levels which then leads to a weakening of the hurricane (this is why they think Katrina weakened from a category 5 to a category 3 as it approached landfall. Otherwise, your discussion is clear as usual.

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    5. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Hi Jeff, thanks! Very cool, and very nice use of the Plato / Kant / Deleuze series working through “Idea” or, if you will, the concept of “Idea” put forth in Difference and Repetition now changes the Idea via “counter-effectuation.”
      It’s Deleuze’s theory of philosophical history I think: there’s both an Aion-level / structural level of “problems” which co-exist (or co-insist) and counter-effectuating changes to that level made in real time history by the publication of a book, e.g., Difference and Repetition, after which no one (who has read DR) can think of Idea the same way. (Of course there the sociology of philosophy comes in: who reads which author, etc.)

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    6. Ruth Groff Avatar
      Ruth Groff

      I don’t know that passage from Aristotle, but it’s weird that he would claim that no one else had said what he is saying there, as what he (Aristotle) appears to be saying there is, to my mind, one of Plato’s central preoccupations. Certainly it figures in the Gorgias, but it is all over the place even in the Republic. With all sorts of examples. I think it is a mistake to imagine “combative” to mean “when you disagree with the interlocutor,” or ” when you think that there is a problem,” and “cooperative” to mean “when you think that they are right.” It seems to me that the very temptation to define the words in this way – and by extension the stances that they name – is part of the culture in analytic philosophy. I think a better way to think of “cooperative” is to imagine two people who are trying to solve a problem together. “What if we try it this way?” “No, I don’t think that will work. What if we say this, for starters?” “Ah. I see. Ok, but then we’re going to run into this other thing.” “Aw man. I didn’t think of that. Yes; you’re right.” “Oh wait! I think I see how it can go.” You know, like when you are trying to get a couch into a door around a very tricky turn.

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    7. Ruth Groff Avatar
      Ruth Groff

      And there are at least 2 of you, trying to maneuver the damn thing. The couch, I mean.

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    8. Mauricio Suarez Avatar
      Mauricio Suarez

      Very well put, Ruth Groff, in everyday life ‘cooperative’ rarely boils down to ‘fully in agreement’ and ‘combative’ certainly expresses something other than ‘constructively in disagreement’.
      We philosophers should be fair to the everyday usage of terms, on pain of abusing them. It strikes me now that Wolff’s piece has the added virtue to force us to confront the real functions that these terms – and their near universal endorsement as ‘virtuous’ by the community – actually play in our professional lives. It turns out those functions are often anything but virtuous. Cf my comment above.

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    9. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      The passage says: “it has never been spelt out what the answerer must aim at, or what sorts of things he must grant and what not in order to defending his thesis well or not.” (159a34-37). He may well mean that this hasn’t been spelt out before in the treatise (the Topics). But it is typical of Aristotle to claim that he’s doing something that has never been done before, hence this reading.
      The sense of cooperative that I am adopting in the post is exactly the one you describe: doing something together, having a common goal. As for the meaning of adversarial, I’ll explain it further in a response to Mauricio Suarez below.

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    10. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Mauricio, with all due respect, first of all I want to say that I find somewhat ironic that, to criticize the combative style of argumentation in philosophy, you adopt a combative style of argumentation, or at least a somewhat hostile style. You seem to pick the least charitable interpretation of what I’m trying to say – which is precisely one of the features of the ‘combative’ approach you criticize. (The same thing happened when I wrote a blog post on this topic in May.)
      I’ve already clarified the sense of ‘cooperative’ that I’m adopting in the post, which is that to have a common goal. As for adversarial, it can be spelled out in game-theoretical terms: in the dialectical game of questions and answers that Aristotle spells out in the Topics, questioner and answerer having different ‘winning conditions’. Questioner wins the game if she gets answerer to grant enough premises so as to allow for the derivation of the opposite of the thesis that answerer has picked at the beginning. Answerer wins the game if he is able to avoid this outcome and thus defend the thesis. On this lower level, the participants have opposite goals and the game is a zero-sum game. But in the dialectical exchanges pertaining to inquiry, which are not purely combative, there is also higher-level cooperation.
      I think I should have used ‘adversarial’ rather than ‘combative’ when formulating the false dichotomy, but I assumed this would be clear from the context. So I’m saying that, if you look at the different levels, the debate can both be adversarial (lower level) and cooperative (higher level), much like the adversarial justice system.

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    11. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      We are completely in agreement, Chris, and I too have been much too often exposed to the purely combative style of discussing philosophy — not in Bristol, though! 🙂 It’s not conducive to good philosophy in any way.

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    12. Mauricio Suárez Avatar
      Mauricio Suárez

      I was not been ‘combative’ at all! Certainly not to you. At any rate ‘adversarial’ certainly seems a better term for what you want than ‘combative’. Maybe I was just misled by that. I’ll need to think about your use of these terms.

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    13. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Btw, I propose that we adopt the convention that, every time somebody is being mean and excessively combative at Q&A, we should say: You are being cantankerous! (Love the word.)

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    14. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      For the record, I want to say that Mauricio and I have talked about this exchange in private, and it was all a misunderstanding, so it’s all cool now. We made plans to have a friendly discussion about all this and other things over a beer at some point 🙂

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    15. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Deleuzians: I’m gonna need more time to think about all this! I promise to get back to you in the very near future.

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    16. Philip Avatar
      Philip

      Be forthright without being an arsehole. Easy.

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    17. Justin Vlasits Avatar
      Justin Vlasits

      Catarina, I really enjoyed this post. This is a question about something you said in passing—that Aristotelian inquiry is adopting what Plato would have called a “hypothesis” and finding out what follows from it. I totally agree that this is a part of Aristotelian inquiry, but I have a hard time seeing that this can be the whole story.
      Two things might be helpful for further developing Aristotle’s conception of inquiry. First, you could think about Aristotle’s theorizing about inquiry in APo II. There he distinguishes, for instance, between different objects of inquiry and discusses inquiring into definitions, which I don’t think really fits your model above, since he does not use anything like hypothesis, but instead techniques that will lead to unhpythetical reults. A second place would be Aristotelian practice itself, such as his search for first principles of nature in the Physics. The kind of dialectical (I use the term intentionally) inquiry here does not seem to be what you have in mind. Rather, there are typically a number of different stages, including arguing against the views of predecessors, stating and resolving aporiai, and doing induction. Only the first of these seems to me a genuine case of the kind of thing you had in mind.

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    18. Olav Eikeland Avatar
      Olav Eikeland

      Very interesting discussion, which, however, should relate to the literature on Aristotelian dialectic. Since I’m in my car writing this, I’ll just mention my book on Aristotelian dialogue and phronesis from 2008 (and my PhD from 1993, which unfortunately was written in Norwegian. To really understand Aristotelian dialogue / dialectic you should study Books II-VII of the Topics in relation to the rest of the Corpus A, not just VIII (and/or I). When I have the time (and am out of my car), I’d like to return to the discussion.

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    19. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      I would defend Catarina’s use of the word “combative” as a description of the adversarial aspect to a dialectic, at least in some circumstances.
      Suppose I am a teacher of science. Suppose I am instructed that it is well within my mandate as a teacher to assert that the Earth is 4.5 million years old, but that it is prejudicial towards Creationism to assert that the planet is not merely 4000 years old. The former statement logically entails the latter, but the former is permissible to assert, and the latter impermissible to assert.
      Suppose, now, I am aware that many students self-identify with Creationism, and are committed to Creationism being true. Furthermore, I am aware that, from their point of view, the denial of Creationism shall be seen to do violence to their core projects. All the same, being worried that my students do not appreciate the full logical implications of any statement about the age of the Earth, I go ahead and assert that the Earth is, in fact, more than 4000 years old.
      Here’s a question: being aware of the subjectively harmful consequences of my assertion, and deciding to say it anyway, am I being merely adversarial when I make it? Or am I being combative as well?
      I am curious as to how others might describe the setup of this situation. For my part it seems to me quite reasonable to describe my stance using either word. If I am put on the defensive — as I would be, in this situation — then surely it reflects a reasonable expectation of combat.
      (Of course, this is probably not quite an ideal case of what Dr. Novaes has in mind when she describes Aristotelian dialectics above. But it does seem like a case where, ideally, we hope all parties will at least have the opportunity to learn the rules of the dialectical game, so to speak.)

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    20. Ruth Groff Avatar
      Ruth Groff

      I don’t think we know, just from the information you’ve given, whether you’d be being combative or adversarial.

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    21. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      You might say that there actually is some objective criteria that we can use to judge the combativeness of persons, and these criteria are objective simply because they make reference to features of the bare facts of the situation and not the contents of what is expressed. And, of course, there are some behaviors that indicate aggression: bulging eyes, voice inflexion, closed posture, gritted teeth, etc.
      So suppose that all those things are factored out of it, and the statement of delivered in the blandest style. Or, barring that: neutralize any other contextual factors you think are relevant. The only point is that it is possible to parse the situation, or a like situation, in some way where terms like ‘combative’ or ‘adversarial’ will legitimately apply, even though all the objective features of the situation have been mooted.
      It seems to me that a reasonably empathetic speaker who knows they are about to say a controversial thing must understand that they may be interpreted as combative, or ‘on the offence’, from the point of view of someone or other. And it also seems to me that the interpretation is correct, in this case. The audience correctly and reasonably infers that the speaker is willfully dismissing one of the things they deeply believe in. If they do not make that inference, they will have missed the point of the utterance insofar as it connects with their own beliefs.
      Of course, the speaker can try to show that the primary point of the utterance was not offence — that the offence was just a kind of collateral damage. They can say, “No offence, but…” or, “Sorry, but…”, hoping to focus attention more narrowly on the truth or falsity of the belief under review. One hopes that it would be enough to forestall tragedy, but of course it often isn’t.

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    22. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Clearly we have drastically different opinions about the situation. Even if all other things were held equal — e.g., if body language were neutral, as were voice inflection, etc. — I think the systemic features of the context will rationally compel that audience to read mere truth-telling as combative. I’d be interested to hear why we disagree.
      (Sorry for the terseness of this reply. I posted a longer one last night, but it was gobbled up by the spam filter, Google Chrome, and/or Murphy’s Law.)

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    23. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Sorry, just found it and published it. It appears as 21 in this thread.

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    24. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Thanks John!

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    25. Ruth Groff Avatar
      Ruth Groff

      Hi BLS Nelson! I think that it might depend on the context, with your example. The original “case” assumed philosophical exchange, and your example was a classroom — yes? Or at least involved a teacher and students. It’s possible that if you were at a dinner party, or – I don’t know – a memorial service or something – then it would be inappropriate to engage in truth-seeking. The inappropriateness of it might then, I suppose, be the aggressive or combative component of the act. But in a truth-seeking context (or one that ought to be, and which is purported to be), then, I think, calling out falsehood is not combative in and of itself. That’s consistent with what I originally said, I guess, viz., that “cooperative” doesn’t mean “I agree,” “combative” “I disagree.” I think if the teacher said “Ok, so there is a serious issue here. It looks as though one of these claims about the world isn’t true. What are some reasons to think that it’s this one rather than that one that we should reject? Here is the kind of reason that scientists accept as sound, and here are the particular ones that have convinced them that it is false to think that the earth is only a few thousand years old …” — I don’t think that that would be combative, and I think that it is a really dangerous bit of ideology to accept that mere disagreement, in and of itself, is combative. Probably a good teacher would also use their social power to ask students how it makes them feel to imagine that something that they’ve been told is true probably isn’t. If the class were in a Jesuit school (I teach at one of them, albeit at the university level), the teacher would probably also invite the students to try to think through whether or not they would actually have to abandon their Christianity if they were to accept updated scientific claims. This is not to say that the teacher won’t risk being charged with corrupting the youth. 🙂 But certainly, to my mind, cooperative truth-seeking in the context of philosophical exchange is never going to be combative simply in virtue of objecting or saying “false.” For me, as I think I said before, the most potent source for help thinking through this exact issue is Plato. Does this help at all? At least we agree if you change your example to a funeral! Or, you know, Mother’s Day tea.

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    26. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Hi Ruth. 🙂 Calling me Ben is fine. I do think that helps, thanks. I’m not sure we’ll agree, since we do describe the same situation in very different terms. But there are significant areas of overlap.
      One bit of overlap. I do agree that there are circumstances where it is appropriate to either lie, or to be economical with the truth. The funeral and the dinner party might be examples. Or Mother’s Day tea, certainly, depending on the mother.
      To be sure, the example is supposed to involve a classroom setting. But there are also normative obligations and tacit threats going on beneath the surface which guide and constrain the actions of participants. e.g., the teacher has a duty to encourage the children to understand the material, and the parents have some limited right to influence how their children are taught. Because of the roles of people involved, in those circumstances, the educator should be duty-bound to tell the unvarnished truth. It would be irrational to tell the educator that they can assert (a) but not (b). (Though I’ve been told that some areas of the United States do expect exactly this, I would think this is because faith in the productivity of critical argument has eroded.)
      Teachers have a duty to educate, and this is a case where the education requires the speaker to encourage an understanding of the material, which requires them to show students the implications of the things they learn. Of course, ideally, we would hope that the spirit of speaking a mere truth would be agreeable to all reasonable persons involved; and with a bit of crafty pedagogy, bullets can be dodged. However, in the hypothetical I outlined, there is a major obstacle that prevents this from happening. For it seems to me that there is a difference between someone who merely believes that the Earth is only 4000 years old, and someone who deeply identifies with a body of belief that includes the fact that the Earth is 4000 years old. If the child (and the parent) belong to the latter category, then the educator’s statement cannot help but confront the Creationist’s self-image. The perlocutionary elements of the event will not allow her to get away with speaking the truth without being rationally understood to be violating their deeper projects (indeed, corrupting the youth!)
      I would like to think that most Creationists are mere believers in Creationism, and do not identify with Creationism in the above-mentioned sense. But we live in strange times.
      One thing I think we’d both agree on is the idea that there are negative consequences to what I’m saying. If people fully internalize the point I’m making as if it were a proper rule of conduct, then it may lend itself to whitewashing unproductive blood-sport. (Belle Waring put it really well when writing in Bertram’s Crooked Timber thread, but I can’t access the thread at the moment, and wouldn’t dare to paraphrase.) But that would be a distortion of my point, I think. I mean only to defend Cordelia from King Lear, not to do any favors for a blood-sport system. The gladiatorial aspect of professional philosophy is damaging to dialectics (in the cooperative-adversarial sense that Dr. Novaes put in the OP), and has a fabric-thin connection with the production of objective knowledge.

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    27. Mauricio Suárez Avatar
      Mauricio Suárez

      The idea that a dialectical debate can only be truth conducive if it is combative, even adversarial (in the weak game theoretic terms developed by Catarina above) bewilders me. Just to insist on the same example: Galileo’s dialogues are certainly truth conducive, but hardly adversarial (even in those cases in which Simplicio and Salviati engage in hand to hand argument, it seems oversimplified to think of the situation as a zero sum game) and are certainly not combative (which I take it is the limit case of an adversarial debate where the aim is the permanent silencing of the opposition).
      Where does this idea that a truth conducive or seeking argument must by nature or definition be combative (or more generally adversarial) come from?

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    28. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Actually (and not contrary to anything you said), there’s quite a bit on definitions in the Topics as well, so definitions as such are not extraneous to the framework (though I don’t talk about definitions at all in the OP, that’s true).
      But thanks for the comments!

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    29. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I don’t think that dialectic/adversarial debate is the only truth-conducive method. What I was outlining in the OP is that what I call productive adversariality can be truth-conducive, in virtue of counterbalancing for confirmation bias and other aspects. It’s an existential claim, not a claim of exclusiveness/uniqueness. I can think of many other approaches to inquiry that can also be truth-conducive on specific occasions.

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    30. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I just want to add to the interesting debate between Ruth Groff and BLS Nelson that Aristotle treats teaching contexts as separate from the contexts of inquiry that he’s talking about in these passages. There are similarities, of course, but a crucial difference is that in contexts of inquiry it is ok to suppose something without believing it to be true (to see what follows from it), whereas such ‘hypotheses’ are not ok in the context of teaching.

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    31. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Heya,
      To my mind, Galileo was certainly adversarial in the popular writings that you cite, in at least the cooperative sense of adversariality that is currently being discussed. He intended to confront an ideology that was inconsistent with the facts, and that is what he did. One need not look much farther than the choice of monikers used in the Dialogue, where the Aristotelian is named “Simplicio”. It is quite reasonable to detect this as a deliberate and artful choice of rhetoric.
      The decision to describe the state of affairs as ‘combative’ will depend on the acceptance of a few other ways of describing the situation. First, you’d have to accept that terms like “combative” are not objective terms applied by a disinterested observer about some mind-independent facts in the world, but are always applied in a way that is relative to some background values and beliefs. (Psychological terms of art, like “aggressive, passive aggressive, assertive”, are not natural kinds.) A person is always only combative from within some point of view; the attributions are either reasonable or unreasonable depending on how well grounded the attribution happens to be.
      Second, you’d have to accept that there’s a vital difference between merely believing a thing and making that belief central to your social or personal identity. To identify with a belief, to identify with it wholeheartedly or ideologically, is to treat the refutation of a belief as if it were an existential threat. (It is a disease that is particularly acute for ideologues, children, and ambitious academics.)
      Once you accept these two premises, it there looks as though there is very little room for the reasonably empathetic truth-teller to breathe when they are confronted by a person who self-identifies with a false belief. Their only recourse when challenged is to knuckle down and say: “Okay, given that you identify this way, then I must be combative by your lights.” The tragedy of identifying with false things is that it makes false monsters out of those who hold true ones.

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    32. Mauricio Suárez Avatar
      Mauricio Suárez

      Thanks Catarina for the clarification. Of course, an adversarial debate can be truth conducive too – my point was merely that I don’t see it as the sign of truth conduciveness of an argument in general that it be adversarial. But we seem to agree on the fundamentals now. Let’s have a chat about the details over a beer sometime …
      BLS Nelson points out that Galileo was intent on combatting the Aristotelian paradigm. But historians have shown how much debt there is in Galileo’s own views to his own contemporary paradigm, and how little of it was in fact contested as part of his conflict with the Church. It turns out things are immensely more complex (and interesting) than the popular story of ‘fact seeking scientist confronts superstitious religious belief” would have it. As for the dialogues themselves, I was pointing out that even when Salviati confronts Simplicio, the presence of a third party in Sagredo is essential to the debate and its settlement – so I don’t think even these cases can be cast as merely adversarial. But yes I picked on Galileo because he is often thought as a paradigm case of science advancing through something like combat. As Paul Feyerabend already showed long ago, even this paradigmatic case is far from amenable to the idea that error is disposed of through any purely dialectical means. More generally, the history of science seems to point out that overcoming error has a lot to do with the resilience and independence of mind of a dissenting few, with ‘combat’ if anything typically on the side of the dictatorship of error.

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    33. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Heya,
      As far as the illustration goes, it really depends on what those complications are. So, e.g., it has been noted by some that the core debate between Galileo and the Church was based on a disagreement about what it is proper for the scientist to assert. e.g., whether the authority of the scientist licensed them to use realist rhetoric, or whether their authority only allowed them to make assertions that were hedged in fictionalist or probabilistic prose. So you might argue here that the combativeness had nothing to do with the mere fact that Galileo is speaking a true thing, and everything to do with stepping outside of his presumed authority. And fair enough, but then that just means it’s tangential to my argument, which is about those cases where mere truth does count as combative in that sense.
      Whatever the grounds, though, I believe there is little question that they were in an adversarial relationship or worse. Toby Huff, 2003, in discussion of remarks from the handsomely named Benjamin N. Nelson (no relation): “Here, one might say, is a classic confrontation between the accepted logics and official interpretations that reoccur in history and have often come out badly for the people involved.” (italics mine) Nelson is in-quoted: “The fundamental issue at stake in the struggle over the Copernican hypothesis was not whether or not the particular theory had or had not been established but whether in the last analysis the decision regarding truth and certitude could be claimed by anyone who was not an officially authorized interpreter of revelation.” Now Huff again: “Although this was indeed a dramatic confrontation, a showdown between official authority and the freedom of the individual with many ramifications, it was in fact the last gasp of a restrictive ideology, which no longer had the power to regulate such questions.” (italics mine) Have Huff and Nelson got it wrong?
      I suppose you might say that Galileo was in a confrontation without being confrontational. Still, prime facie, it seems to me that the subtle accusation that one’s interlocutors were ‘simple’ is countervailing evidence. Surely you won’t deny that?

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    34. Mauricio Suárez Avatar
      Mauricio Suárez

      Well, my point is precisely that the Dialogue is 3-way: Simplicio is not Salviati’s only interlocutor – not even his main interlocutor. I think that if you don’t appreciate this, it really is very difficult to understand the Dialogue. But don’t misunderstand me, Galileo’s conflict with the Church is clear and well documented (we have the scripts of the trial after all!) And of course it is hard not to side with Galileo there. His substantial scientific debate in the Dialogue, however, as you pointed out, is with Aristotelianism, and that is what I don’t see can be cast as a zero-sum game. Incidentally, all the names in the Dialogue (not just Simplicio) appear to correspond to real historical figures, including Galileo’s friends in the Acaedemia (he had many). It was a complex and many sided dialogue which bears no easy simplification.

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