The Ethics of Dialogue
How to truly talk with another human being
This article is an attempt to provide an outline of an ethical mode of engagement when it comes to dialogue and debate. More specifically, it concerns the necessary requirements of authentic dialogue which must be met if debate is to serve its role as a functional element of progressive discourse between opposing points of view. This discourse is the goal of debate and discussion both, and it is how we make progress not only in our projects as they relate to the external world, but also in our interpersonal relationships. Nothing substantial can ever really occur in the domain of human affairs without our first having countenanced the utmost importance of truly talking with other human beings — note, talking with them, not at them or to them.
A philosophical debate, which is the kind of debate in which members of the debate server I own and manage, Nameless Debates, prefer to engage, entails an attempt to understand the perspective of the other and to find some common ground from which to jointly reason about the difference of opinion in order to come to an understanding on the matter. In other words, it involves a dialectical process wherein debate only crops up with respect to specific points, which are then settled through concession or clarification, at which point the ‘debate’ frame vanishes and common ground is restored. Thus, the dialectic can go on. This, I think, is the most honourable way to engage in debate, and it certainly is the way which demands the most integrity from the participants. Due to the fact that the frame of debate is only instrumental and is therefore subordinated to the paradigm of a dialectic interchange between two different perspectives, it can be seen that the opportunity for authentic contact with the view of the other human being is altogether more likely in this context.
This is the kind of debate which truly embodies the ethic of the dialogue, and this brief essay is an attempt to formalize the path one has to take if one wishes to genuinely make contact with the individual other and their unique perspective in order to collaborate with them for the purposes of learning and growing together. These are the conversations we come away from feeling refreshed and inspired, reminded momentarily that argument is not a bottomless pit of frustration and discord — that there is sometimes a silver lining in conflicting positions, i.e. the opportunity to participate in the collaborative development of the collective understanding of the relevant issues. This opportunity demands of us the embodiment of two essential virtues which are required for the cultivation of the ethical dialectic, namely charity and sincerity.
Twin Virtues: Charity and Sincerity
In order to better understand the ethic of the dialogue, it would be prudent to examine the two virtues which are most primary to this attitude towards intellectual intercourse with the other. Although intertwined to a significant degree, we will attempt to identify ways in which each contributes uniquely to effective discourse, and we shall start with charity, a virtue in religion and conversation both. Of course, in the context of religion charity refers to generosity in relation to others, i.e. the willingness to give away material possessions and to help those who are needy, while charity in conversation involves giving to the other person, not material goods, but time, patience and the benefit of the doubt. In other words, this kind of charity involves treating the position of the other as inherently reasonable, and extending to your interlocutor the benefit of the doubt when it comes to arguments that they make which strike you as obviously wrong. It involves treating the other with as much respect as you would expect, or perhaps desire, from them.
Instead of assuming that the person we are talking to is simply stupid and so attempting to clown on them for that reason, it is far more productive to go out on a limb in an attempt to imagine what might be going through someone’s mind in order for them to make this particular set of statements or ascribe commitment to this specific set of ideas. It is better, that is, to dare to dream of a way in which you too might believe what they do, say what they are saying or do what they are doing. If it’s possible to imagine how a reasonable person might believe as the other does, then the task of understanding and relating to their point of view, not to mention negotiating with it, becomes infinitely easier. This negotiation is crucially facilitated by the fact that you are able to identify and acknowledge the legitimate elements of the alternative view while at the same time contending those parts which seem to you problematic. This involves listening to the other person and really hearing them, in the interest of understanding.
The most well-known method of charitably acknowledging the truth inherent in the perspective of the other is the practice of steelmanning, which is the process of constructing the effective opposite of a straw-man argument. A straw-man is basically a caricature of the ‘opponent’s point of view, which is then knocked down so that victory can be declared; to achieve this goal, certain important details are obscured or simplified in a way that distorts the meaning intended by the individual who put forward the argument. This process of reductively rendering the position of your opponent in a way that makes it seem inherently ridiculous enables you to clown on it, to ‘expose’ how ridiculous it is and thereby hypothetically win points for your side of the debate — this is what is meant by the phrase ‘straw-manning someone’. A steelman is simply the opposite of this, wherein instead of rendering the weakest possible version of your opponent’s argument, you imagine for him the strongest possible version of it and graciously supply him with it, encouraging him to adopt it for the purposes of pursuing the disagreement in debate with you.
This steelman approach is, actually, a way of ensuring that you are engaging sincerely with the ideas of the other, rather than talking past him or talking at her, both of which are a waste of everybody’s time. It is one among a number of ways in which sincerity ought to enter into an ethical dialogue, chiefly among which is perhaps the simple practice of being honest about your point of view and putting forward only arguments which you yourself genuinely find compelling reasons to accept or adopt your perspective. This means that when one is advocating for a position, one should rely on nothing other than that which actually motivates their belief in offering justifications and/or a defence of their view, because to advance arguments the refutation of which would not change one’s mind one iota — as they were never the basis for one’s attitude to begin with — is just dishonest through and through.
In fact, the act of holding sincerity up as a virtue in-and-of-itself precludes the presence of many of the dishonest behaviours which I mentioned in my article on the curse of debate bro culture, because performativity and ‘bloodsports’ debating are both, in this light, obviously unsightly. It is, simply put, inauthentic to assume a pretence which is not in keeping with who you really are or how you really feel about an issue purely so that you might derive a strategic advantage in an argument, especially if your reasons for wanting that advantage are entirely reputation-based and therefore have little to nothing to do with your genuine inner being — your own unique beliefs, attitudes and values — but are rather related to how you would like for others to perceive you. Instead, what is incumbent upon anyone who is trying to engage in an ethical dialogue is that they actually have skin in the game, which means showing up and having a sincere opinion on the issue being discussed, rather than only critiquing the views of others.
This notion, of bringing something to the discussion instead of showing up merely to tear down the ideas of others, is instrumental in the process of building rapport, which is tied up with sincerity and charity both. Part of building rapport involves genuinely speaking to the other person and incorporating a recognition of their perspective into what you speak forth, a process which demands of us not only that we actually listen to the person to whom we are speaking, but also that we have something to say which involves more than merely deconstruction of their view — that is, that we too have something to offer to the development and progression of the dialogue. We have to be willing to acknowledge that the other person is saying something worth hearing, and if we care about the dialectic we should be prepared to help them to build upon what they’re saying — this requires us to first build rapport with them, which means being both authentic and sincere. Yet we also require charitability for this task, and indeed — as we shall see — for each step in the process which is individually associated with one of the virtues, there is nonetheless an underlying presence of the other virtue, because both are intertwined in this noble ideal — the ethic of the dialogue.
Each of these virtues manifest themselves in different ways at different stages of discourse, and culminate in a certain spirit of collaboration which is the ultimate expression of the ethic of the dialogue: a tendency towards constructive and productive discourse which builds up the conceptual understanding of all participants in addition to, of necessity, breaking them down. Let us now explore the ways in which these principles are embodied through an actual instance of ethical dialogue.
Stage 1: Active Listening: Hearing the Other
The first stage in an ethical dialogue is perhaps the most important of any of the stages: it is the process of active listening, which is the means by which one tries to actually hear the other, rather than hearing our projections about what they are saying. The key distinction to grasp here is that between listening to understand and listening to respond; that is, what we are talking about here is the difference between the behaviour of listening so that you will be able to approximate in your own mind the idea that the other holds in theirs with the highest possible level of accuracy, and the behaviour of listening in order to identify points of disagreement which one can use to refute, disprove and dominate the other on their position.
This means that active listening involves forgetting all about one’s role as a respondent in the dialogue, and simply allowing oneself to be absorbed entirely into the projections of the other — the only thing that you should be thinking about while you are participating in active listening is what kind of point of view the other must be inhabiting in order to select from the myriad potential options these specific words and phrases as a way of representing themselves and their perspective. This is primarily a manifestation of charity, because it involves giving to the other person the time and space which they might need in order to articulate themselves optimally, and it therefore requires us to suspend our misgivings about what they might be trying to persuade us of in order to be able to engage wholeheartedly in the listening process by which their point of view becomes clearer in both our mind and in theirs — because there is nothing that helps a person clarify what they are saying like truly being listened to.
In summary, active listening means to listen for the sole purpose of understanding the other, that is, being able to render intelligible and reasonable his perspective. This stands in contrast to the normal way in which people who are talking to (or at) one another listen, which is what I have called listening to respond — one listens only so that one can identify key aspects of what the other is saying to which one has a clever reply, and the overall gist of the other’s perspective is lost on such an individual. The key to active listening is simply to pay sincere and genuine attention to the other: to dedicate oneself to their words and to commit oneself to trying to render as clearly as possible what they are trying to say, rather than immediately looking to how it might be flawed.
Stage 2: Building Rapport: Making Contact with the Other
Once one has mastered the art of active listening, the next challenge which presents itself is the opposite of the previous step: it demands that we conceive of a way of responding to what the other has said that they will find agreeable and reasonable, while not reneging on our own personal perspective in doing so. This is what is known as building rapport, a process by which we acclimatize ourselves to the mannerisms and mode of engagement of the other in order to facilitate a productive discourse between them and ourselves without sacrificing the individuality of either participant in the dialogue. Thus we are challenged to connect with the reality of the other while refusing to compromise on our own sincerity in doing so.
This step in establishing a dialectic is perhaps second only to the first in overall criticality, because it involves our efforts to actually build the foundation upon which the meeting of our minds might take place, if we are lucky. If we are unable to build this foundation then we will not be able to have a productive discussion with the other, because the attempt to communicate will end before it has truly begun. Only by making contact with the other — by making them feel heard and making ourselves seen to be present by them — are we able to build the rapport which is necessary to proceed in the actual having of the conversation, which is always and in every case an attempt to correlate the similarities of and thereby form a connection between two very different perspectives; to form, that is, some growing wisp of relationship between two living breathing human beings. In other words, the activity of building rapport demands a genuine investment from each participant: both must have ‘skin in the game’, and both must contend sincerely with the reality of the other.
Thus in order to build rapport we must ensure that when we engage in a prolonged critique of the ideas of the other, we also put forward our own ideas so that there is an equal degree of vulnerability to ridicule, and therefore an equal share of risk. This step involves performing a handshaking process with the other, so that they see your willingness to participate in a dialogue, and vice versa. Once this handshake has been performed and the authentic commitments of both potential participants have been established, continual investment from either side will empower the progressive construction of a mutual ground upon which the proceeding steps can build in order to establish a space of collaboration within which brainstorming is the natural mode of being.
Stage 3: The Benefit of the Doubt: Understanding the Other
The third step in the process is perhaps the first progressive step; where the prior two steps were focalized around building the foundation for the meeting of the minds, the next three steps will serve to illuminate the path one must walk in order to arrive at a place of truly ethical dialogue. This step is an evolution in the notion of charity, wherein we are no longer merely forcing ourselves to actually hear the other, but we are, in parallel, striving to grant their perspective the benefit of the doubt insofar as we are capable of doing so. This means that we have an obligation to do our best to understand the ideas of the other in the way which makes the most possible sense — to genuinely grant their ideas the space of possibility, and to sincerely take them seriously.
If you truly wish to understand the other, and if you really want the other to invest the requisite effort in order for them to understand you, you must be willing to frame their perspective in such a way as to eliminate every easy objection which occurs to you: you must make it fool-proof, a version of the idea which is well-thought-through and admits of no superficial objections. This is what we referred to earlier as steelmanning, but instead of steelmanning merely the argument, one must make a conscious and concerted effort to steelman the actual position of the other, which means to create a space where we suspend our judgements in what phenomenologists call an Epoché. How can one comprehend what the other is saying if one cannot constrain one’s own projections and preconceptions about the world and prevent them from impinging on the stream of thought which is being received from the other? One cannot.
One has, therefore, to try to project oneself into the shoes of the other, and really imagine his world as he might see it, so that one will be able to effectively engage with his position from a place which is not tainted by subtle prejudice. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt means trying to imagine that you were them, and trying to ask yourself what might prompt you to say, do or believe the things that you are hearing or observing from the other. This step is crucial for the success of the next two.
Stage 4: Having Skin in the Game: Contribution in Addition to Critique
Once we have genuinely and thoroughly understood the perspective of the other person, we are ready to begin the ongoing process of the dialectic, an ephemeral phenomenon which is refreshed and rejuvenated only by our continual individual investments in the ever-enigmatic encounter with the other. This is where we truly see the meaning of ‘having skin in the game’, because it involves our evolving beyond a mere critique of ideas as if they were distant from us, abstract entities floating out there somewhere, and moving into a state of awareness which entails appreciating that ideas are how each and every one of us makes sense of our lives and our world. As a consequence of this revelation, what becomes immediately apparent is that there is a duty incumbent upon all participants in a genuine dialogue to help the other person understand how the ideas in question relate to both life and self.
This means that when we engage with the ideas of the other, we have a responsibility to our fellow human beings to show up and offer our help in making sense of things — to attempt to be of service in the pursuit of a better understanding of life, the universe and of our very own selves. Thus when we critique the other’s ideas or strategies, we must be willing to take part in their reconstruction, offering not only our own experience and knowledge for the other to draw on, but offering our sincere participation in the process of re-calibrating their framework after we have pained them by painstakingly pointed out their error. This is a development of our previous notion of sincerity, which asked us only to hear the other and talk with them; in this stage, we are being asked not only to talk with them, but to try to help them. Therefore we must figure out a way that we might be able to find some common ground with them and use that common ground to build some sense of consensus among the participants in the discourse.
As I always say, “The true goal of argumentation is not to triumph over your opponent, but rather to agree with him”, and indeed it is so; the best outcomes for everyone involved manifest themselves precisely when we let go of any idea of winning points for our position or earning reputation among our peers, and focus entirely upon trying to meet the other person halfway. By showing up for the other and sharing in the process of figuring things out, rather than standing outside and at a distance and simply criticizing their attempts, we improve on the rapport we began to build in step 2 and contribute to their comprehension in addition to offering a constructive critique.
Stage 5: The Spirit of Collaboration: Constructive Critique and Productive Discourse
The last stage, which is the one which brings all the previous four stages together and establishes a harmonic trajectory for the continual evolution of the discourse, is a repetition of the previous step but taken to a higher level by virtue of its significantly loftier aspirations. This stage too focuses on building as well as dismantling — that is, constructive critique and productive discourse both, as two sides of the same coin — yet it seeks to push the boundaries, to go beyond the current horizons and to carry all participants along into unknown territory. In other words, this last stage focuses on bringing the spirit of collaboration to life by imbuing it with the animating spark of the constant attention of the participants in the discourse.
This spirit of collaboration has immense potential and can easily serve to empower the group, helping them to raise the ceiling of their collective consciousness higher and giving them access to realms of comprehension and articulation which no individual member of the group could dream to conquer alone. The potential of this kind of collaborative discourse, which is the highest expression of a truly ethical dialogue, is unparalleled and can scarcely be stated in words, as it transcends our every projection by its very nature. It reaches above and beyond, and it is in this kind of dialogical discourse that language finds the purest manifestation of its magical capacities: the possibility of a radical re-description which completely transforms our understanding comes within our reach during such moments of elevated consciousness. This is precisely the kind of effect which is taken to its most bountiful extreme in a resonance chamber — collaborative discourse is the fertile soil in which resonant threads and inspired ideas are born.
Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of collaborative spirit can be found recorded in the dialogues of Plato, especially those concerning the life and death of Socrates. Although Socrates was sometimes ruthless in his deconstruction of others, and despite the fact that he was frequently portrayed as doing little more than embarrassing those who were foolish enough to claim to know when they did not, on topics where he had a genuine opinion, he did not hesitate in his honest participation in the dialogue; he too was willing to submit a view to be critiqued. Of course, how much of this can be rightly attributed to the historical personage of Socrates, and how much of it is the rhetorical invention of Plato, we will never know. Nonetheless, I think what we can know is that the spirit of collaboration was strong in ancient Greece, as this motif of group conversations about philosophy, as well as the practice of memorizing such discourse, demonstrates repeatedly when we peruse the works of thinkers from that place and period.
If one is able to follow the steps outlined in this article, a fruitful and penetrating discussion is sure to follow — provided, that is, that each step is carried out with due reverence for the twin virtues of charity and sincerity. The ethic of the dialogue is central to the vision I have for Nameless Debates, which is far and away the best debate server on Discord (the best social media platform around). If you would be interested in finding out more about the space where this ethic is the essence of the social contract, you can check it out here — just introduce yourself and lay out some topics you like to talk about, and before you know it someone will have engaged you in exactly the kind of productive discourse which has been described for you in such detail here.
Thank you for reading about my vision of an ethical form of dialogue with others, I hope you enjoyed my thoughts and appreciated my perspective. If you have any comments or feedback, leave them down in the comments section and I will respond to you promptly; thanks for your time! :)
