Principles of Dialogue: Academic Resources
We need more dialogue within the Public Sphere: how do we do that? In the age of social media and virtual engagement with society, perhaps we should start with some basic principles:
1. Dialogue requires moving beyond debate. Your assumptions are usually just defended when challenged (Bohm, 1990; Pinker 2018).
2. Engaging in dialogue creates the possibility of shared meaning. “Dia” means “Through” - not two. Logos means “the word.” Dialogue is not a discussion. (Bohm 1990).
3. Dialogue is a creative and constructive process (Cohen, R., & Sheringham, O. 2016).
4. Dialogue requires Humility. Others know something that you do not. Your beliefs and assumptions may be wrong. (Freire 1979; Lynch 2016, 2018).
5. Dialogue requires diversity - including ideological. (Duarte et al. 2015; Parker 2003; Pinker 2018).
6. Dialogue can be uncomfortable. Transformation happens through discomfort (Harwood & Rasmussen 2004; Bheekie & Huyssteen 2015).
7. The dialogue session or event is not a free-form discussion, it must have a structure, advanced planning, and communication agreements (Barthold 2020).
8. Finding problems, contradictions, limits to knowing must lead to Action (Karl Jaspers).
9. Democracy is sustained through the principles of dialogue, and sustained from the Norms of Mutual Tolerations and Institutional Forbearance (responsible power) (Levitsky & Zablatt 2018).
Resources and Further Reading:
Harvard research and website that tests individual biases on a number of factors (e.g. racial). Debiasing strategies for students may include taking such tests.
Barthold, Lauren Swayne (2020). Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square: Civic Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland.
"This book argues that where polarization is predominant, traditional forms of rational argumentation and reason-based persuasion will likely prove impossible. But that does not mean we need to “reach for our guns” and give up on civic discourse all together. Instead, we need to utilize a form of discourse that is specifically tailored to reducing polarization by first building trust and creating mutual understanding.”
Bheekie, A & Huyssteen, M. (2015). Be Mindful of Your Discomfort: An Approach to Contextualized Learning. International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. 2(1). http://journals.sfu.ca/iarslce
Example research on applying a pedagogy of discomfort to medical schools. Gives a clear and concise explanation of Boler’s theory.“Megan Boler (1999) introduced the pedagogy of discomfort in her book Feeling Power: Education and Emotions. During the Persian Gulf War, students “coped” by disengaging with media coverage, thus denying the war and not talking about it, which Boler attributed to feelings of powerlessness and numbness. Boler revealed that without informed options for alternatives, numbness may be the inadvertent effect of cultural illiteracy with respect to translating emotions into knowledge and action…Witnessing, by contrast, is a dynamic process requiring one to move across self-imposed and societal barriers, explore both sides of the binary, and embrace their contradictions. In this way, judgement is suspended as any one side of the binary is not necessarily viewed as “better” than the other. Thus, by being able to “bear witness” to ambiguities, contradictions, and internal struggles associated with social injustices, and by articulating the causes of and possible alternatives for them, one might achieve action empathy. Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort calls not only for inquiry, but also for action— action that is catalyzed as a result of learning to bear witness”
Bohm, David (1990). On Dialogue http://thor.physics.wisc.edu/Chaos-Complexity/dialogue.pdf
Classic treatment toward a theory of dialogic education. However, Bohm was a scientist and not per se an educator. Bohm’s insights, on the other hand, are supported by Pinker, et al. on bias and defending assumptions, Cohen on the creating of cultural meaning through encounter, and my thinking on the need to more beyond debate as a form of collective thinking and problem solving.“Now, why do we need dialogue? People have difficulty communicating even in small groups. But in a group like this of thirty or forty, many may find it very hard to communicate unless there is a set purpose, or unless somebody is leading it. Why is that? For one thing, everybody has different assumptions and opinions. They are basic assumptions, not merely superficial assumptions - such as assumptions about the meaning of life; about your own self-interest, your country's interest, or your religious interest; about what you really think is important….And these assumptions are defended when they are challenged. People frequently can't resist defending them, and they tend to defend them with an emotional charge….Opinions thus tend to be experienced as 'truths', even though they may only be your own assumptions and your own background. You got them from your teacher, your family, or by reading, or in yet some other way. Ten for one reason or another you are identified with them, and you defend them…I am saying society is based on shared meanings, which constitute the culture. If we don't share coherent meaning, we do not make much of a society…Therefore, you have to watch for the notion of truth. Dialogue may not be concerned directly with truth - it may arrive at truth, but it is concerned with meaning. If meaning is incoherent you will never arrive at truth. You may think, 'My meaning is coherent and somebody else's isn't, 'But then we'll never have meaning shared. And if some of us come to the truth', so-called, while a lot of people are left out, it's not going to solve the problem. You will have the 'truth' for yourself or for your own group, whatever consolation that is. But we will continue to have conflict…The early Christians had a Greek word koinonia, the root of which means 'to participate' - the idea of partaking of the whole and taking part in it; not merely the whole group, but the whole.’’
Cohen, R., & Sheringham, O. (2016). Encountering Difference: Diasporic Traces, Creolizing Spaces. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Oxford and University of London social scientists on the historical processes of creolization and Diaspora show the need for individual to investigate identity from the “bottom up.”Stuart Hall quote: Key issue of the 21st C: How are different people to make a common life together?“Instead of focusing on the many forms of ethnic and religious conflict…this book is centered on how, when and where people of diverse heritages meet and converge, and why understanding this more positive outcome might be important for the future of humankind.” (2). Interculturalism: transcends the segmentation implied by multiculturalism (6). Social identity: why so important in today’s discourse: the social roles individuals are called upon to play; social constructivism - construction of social reality itself through the subjective and phenomenological; “The social world became a world of identity flows, boundary formation/deformation, frontier zones, blurring, uncertainty, hybridity and mixtures rather than one marked by purity, homogeneity, timelessness and bounded entities (7). Five Forms of Social Identity: Sub-national, National, Diasporic, Creolized, Cosmopolitan.Diaspora: social identity construction, one marked by incomplete subordination to a single national identity, on the one hand, and a continuing sense of belonging to an original homeland or a more loosely imagined ‘home’, on the other (14). Creolization: occurs when participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow then with meanings different from those they possessed in the original culture and then creatively merge them to create totally new varieties that supersede the prior forms (15). “Difference can’t be willed away by philosophy or ideology” (157)“The very definition of the self depends on contrasting it with the other”(157).
Duarte, J.L., Crawford, J.T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L. and Tetlock, P.E. (2015) ‘Political diversity will improve social psychological science’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X14000430.
Supports Jonathan Haidt’s overall work on Moral Psychology and the influence on reason and rationality. “Many may view education as “enlightening” and believe that an enlightened view comports with liberal politics. There is little evidence that education causes students to become more liberal. Instead, several longitudinal studies following tens of thousands of college students for many years have concluded that political socialization in college occurs primarily as a function of one’s peers, not education per se (Astin, 1993; Dey, 1997)”. Suggests work needed to see if patterns of political dehumanization by opposing party affiliations are as severe in the United States. Work by Moral and Social Psychology suggest the evolutionary and psychological factors of moral beliefs, especially about conceptions of justice, and might either undercut or direct future educational paradigms in teaching democracy, justice and political dialogue.
Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Random House: London.
Classic articulation of a pedagogy of dialogue and radical possibility of change in education: Anti-“banking” system of education. So “student-centered,” “transformative,” and “dialogic”
Teachers and students must engage in dialogue and communication to transform knowledge and reality for the true liberation of students. “Only through communication can life hold meaning” (50). “Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective” (51).“Dialogue cannot exist without humility…Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the “dialogical [person]” believes in others…true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking…(63-65).
Harwood, V. & Rasmussen, M (2004). Studying schools with an “ethics of discomfort.” https://www.academia.edu/991912/Studying_schools_with_an_ethics_of_discomfort
Foucault’s Ethics of Discomfort is useful as a research tool - similar to “Pedagogies of Discomfort.” “Foucault writes “Never consent to being completely comfortable with your own certainties…everything perceived is only evidence with surrounded by a familiar and orly know horizon ” (Foucault, 1997a:144). The authors utilize this notion to analysis LGBTQI stories in schools - especially in how students deal with their trauma but what to know why the “poorly known is poorly known” and to “corrupt the pleasantry of certitude.” Students can learn to move away from apathy and none a “hyper-and pessimistic activism.”
Lynch, Michael (2016). The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data. New York: Liverlight Publishing.
Very influential source for my thinking from a philosopher at University of Connecticut. Concept of ‘Space of Reasons” is introduced and analyzed here. I apply this to Pedagogy. See https://libraryofbabel.info: There is no “source” outside of the library; no “god’s eye view”.
Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? In other words - "truth" or verification has always been a philosophical and sociological problem, but today's informational climate has really destabilized the ability to even agree upon standards of rationality - let alone what is truth. So...Is this the fundamental issue of a functioning democracy? Let's think about what it even means to worry about a "functioning democracy.”
Oxford and University of London social scientists on the historical processes of creolization and Diaspora show the need for individual to investigate identity from the “bottom up.”Stuart Hall quote: Key issue of the 21st C: How are different people to make a common life together?“Instead of focusing on the many forms of ethnic and religious conflict…this book is centered on how, when and where people of diverse heritages meet and converge, and why understanding this more positive outcome might be important for the future of humankind.” (2). Interculturalism: transcends the segmentation implied by multiculturalism (6). Social identity: why so important in today’s discourse: the social roles individuals are called upon to play; social constructivism - construction of social reality itself through the subjective and phenomenological; “The social world became a world of identity flows, boundary formation/deformation, frontier zones, blurring, uncertainty, hybridity and mixtures rather than one marked by purity, homogeneity, timelessness and bounded entities (7). Five Forms of Social Identity: Sub-national, National, Diasporic, Creolized, Cosmopolitan.Diaspora: social identity construction, one marked by incomplete subordination to a single national identity, on the one hand, and a continuing sense of belonging to an original homeland or a more loosely imagined ‘home’, on the other (14). Creolization: occurs when participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow then with meanings different from those they possessed in the original culture and then creatively merge them to create totally new varieties that supersede the prior forms (15). “Difference can’t be willed away by philosophy or ideology” (157)“The very definition of the self depends on contrasting it with the other”(157).
Duarte, J.L., Crawford, J.T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L. and Tetlock, P.E. (2015) ‘Political diversity will improve social psychological science’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X14000430.
Supports Jonathan Haidt’s overall work on Moral Psychology and the influence on reason and rationality. “Many may view education as “enlightening” and believe that an enlightened view comports with liberal politics. There is little evidence that education causes students to become more liberal. Instead, several longitudinal studies following tens of thousands of college students for many years have concluded that political socialization in college occurs primarily as a function of one’s peers, not education per se (Astin, 1993; Dey, 1997)”. Suggests work needed to see if patterns of political dehumanization by opposing party affiliations are as severe in the United States. Work by Moral and Social Psychology suggest the evolutionary and psychological factors of moral beliefs, especially about conceptions of justice, and might either undercut or direct future educational paradigms in teaching democracy, justice and political dialogue.
Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Random House: London.
Classic articulation of a pedagogy of dialogue and radical possibility of change in education: Anti-“banking” system of education. So “student-centered,” “transformative,” and “dialogic”
Teachers and students must engage in dialogue and communication to transform knowledge and reality for the true liberation of students. “Only through communication can life hold meaning” (50). “Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective” (51).“Dialogue cannot exist without humility…Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the “dialogical [person]” believes in others…true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking…(63-65).
Harwood, V. & Rasmussen, M (2004). Studying schools with an “ethics of discomfort.” https://www.academia.edu/991912/Studying_schools_with_an_ethics_of_discomfort
Foucault’s Ethics of Discomfort is useful as a research tool - similar to “Pedagogies of Discomfort.” “Foucault writes “Never consent to being completely comfortable with your own certainties…everything perceived is only evidence with surrounded by a familiar and orly know horizon ” (Foucault, 1997a:144). The authors utilize this notion to analysis LGBTQI stories in schools - especially in how students deal with their trauma but what to know why the “poorly known is poorly known” and to “corrupt the pleasantry of certitude.” Students can learn to move away from apathy and none a “hyper-and pessimistic activism.”
Lynch, Michael (2016). The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data. New York: Liverlight Publishing.
Very influential source for my thinking from a philosopher at University of Connecticut. Concept of ‘Space of Reasons” is introduced and analyzed here. I apply this to Pedagogy. See https://libraryofbabel.info: There is no “source” outside of the library; no “god’s eye view”.
Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? In other words - "truth" or verification has always been a philosophical and sociological problem, but today's informational climate has really destabilized the ability to even agree upon standards of rationality - let alone what is truth. So...Is this the fundamental issue of a functioning democracy? Let's think about what it even means to worry about a "functioning democracy.”
Lynch, Michael (2016) After the Spade Turns: Disagreement, First Principles and Epistemic Constractariansim. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2016) 248-259.
Academic analysis of the epistemic first principles problem that I see as a fundamental issue in encountering difference within a course on transformative educational dialogue.
Lynch, M.P. Arrogance, Truth, and Public Discourse (Epistemic arrogance): (Lynch, forthcoming, 2018).
The unwillingness to updates one’s worldview or knowledge in light of the evidence that others bring to the table. Good analysis on epistemic humility.
Levitsky, Steven and Ziblatt, Daniel (2018). How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.
Harvard Professors of Government discuss the history of authoritarianism and declining democracies. Current politics and Trump threaten our democratic norms. Two norms that stand out as fundamental to a functioning democracy are mutual toleration and institutional forbearance (102). Recommendations include learning to reinforce those norms instead of breaking them in retaliation for them being broken. The challenge is building a multiethnic democracy - which has never been truly or fully done. Reducing polarization, building a broad opposition coalition along diverse racial, religious and ideology lines is essential (219). This notion connects directly with my research and thinking about bridging agreement across diversity through dialogue.
Academic analysis of the epistemic first principles problem that I see as a fundamental issue in encountering difference within a course on transformative educational dialogue.
Lynch, M.P. Arrogance, Truth, and Public Discourse (Epistemic arrogance): (Lynch, forthcoming, 2018).
The unwillingness to updates one’s worldview or knowledge in light of the evidence that others bring to the table. Good analysis on epistemic humility.
Levitsky, Steven and Ziblatt, Daniel (2018). How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.
Harvard Professors of Government discuss the history of authoritarianism and declining democracies. Current politics and Trump threaten our democratic norms. Two norms that stand out as fundamental to a functioning democracy are mutual toleration and institutional forbearance (102). Recommendations include learning to reinforce those norms instead of breaking them in retaliation for them being broken. The challenge is building a multiethnic democracy - which has never been truly or fully done. Reducing polarization, building a broad opposition coalition along diverse racial, religious and ideology lines is essential (219). This notion connects directly with my research and thinking about bridging agreement across diversity through dialogue.
Parker, W.C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life. New York: Teachers College Press.
Scholar of Social Studies education. Already a classic argument to teach democracy with diversity. Advocate of using dialogue, collaboration, and deciding together. He argues that dialogue requires diversity because it achieves a plurality of social perspectives:
1. Diversity protects liberty and prevents the “majority view".
2. Diversity contributes to social knowledge.
3. Diversity contributes to individual “enlightenment” - opens the possibilities of what your life could be.
Epistemic Privilege: Members (insiders) have an unparalleled vantage point from which to understand and articulate the experience of oppression. Epistemic or Methodological Humility: Those is dialogue are uncertain (in some way) about the completeness of their knowledge; therefore, one can learn from the other (those without being uncritical). Dewey (1927) thought of democracy as a “journey.” He called this “creative democracy,” or a way of living with with others, a way of being. Parker outlines his Problems of Democracy course:
Identify and explain a public problem - map stakeholders and their perspectives
Selection of topics - should be organic? Related to school/class/demographic needs?
Develop and analyze Policy Alternatives
Decide what action to take
Scholar of Social Studies education. Already a classic argument to teach democracy with diversity. Advocate of using dialogue, collaboration, and deciding together. He argues that dialogue requires diversity because it achieves a plurality of social perspectives:
1. Diversity protects liberty and prevents the “majority view".
2. Diversity contributes to social knowledge.
3. Diversity contributes to individual “enlightenment” - opens the possibilities of what your life could be.
Epistemic Privilege: Members (insiders) have an unparalleled vantage point from which to understand and articulate the experience of oppression. Epistemic or Methodological Humility: Those is dialogue are uncertain (in some way) about the completeness of their knowledge; therefore, one can learn from the other (those without being uncritical). Dewey (1927) thought of democracy as a “journey.” He called this “creative democracy,” or a way of living with with others, a way of being. Parker outlines his Problems of Democracy course:
Identify and explain a public problem - map stakeholders and their perspectives
Selection of topics - should be organic? Related to school/class/demographic needs?
Develop and analyze Policy Alternatives
Decide what action to take
Pinker, Steven (2018), Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Allen Lane: UK.
Influential new source for my research on the case for reason, recent psychology research on mind, bias, cognition and reasoning. Renowned Harvard scientist Steven Pinker makes the case about how Science, technology, reason and knowledge are the key ingredients to global progress. Educating democracy goes hand in hand with new ways of thinking, problem solving, and entering into markets….The major enemy of reason is politicalization (371). How to teach students to be humble about their beliefs but not their abilities or themselves? In the very act of asking that question (about meaning in a scientific age), you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you. And there are so many reason to live! (Pinker, 2018, 3).“Root-causism” theory leads to essentialism and lacks ability to creative problem-solving. “Better education today makes a country more democratic and peaceful tomorrow…more education makes citizens trust their fellow citizens (235) Professing belief is an affirmation of loyalty to a political group; so what predicts the denial of climate change is not scientific literacy but political ideology.(357). “expressive rationality” : Identity protective cognition. Blue lies Role of motivated reasoning: forms of confirmation bias, political bias, and moral intuition, bias bias. (See Kahan, Peters, 2013) “The most depressing discovery about the brain ever. Epistemological standards of common sense: 1: features of accurate predictors or forecasters; those with “Big Ideas” or rigid ideological frameworks did the worst; the best had features: “openness to experience” “need for cognition” “Integrative complexity” “anti-implusive” Humble about particular beliefs, in short, active open-mindedness” ; belief in wisdom of the crowds (peer-review); belief in chance and contingency: (Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Baron 1993; Pinker 2018).
Thornhill, Chris and Miron, Ronny, "Karl Jaspers", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/jaspers/>.
Selection about Jaspers’ limit situations - There are limits to the current rational thinking of one’s finite position (perspective): “Instead, all world views contain an element of pathology; they incorporate strategies of defensiveness, suppression and subterfuge, and they are concentrated around false certainties or spuriously objectivized modes of rationality, into which the human mind withdraws in order to obtain security amongst the frighteningly limitless possibilities of human existence. World views, in consequence, commonly take the form of objectivized cages (Gehäuse), in which existence hardens itself against contents and experiences which threaten to transcend or unbalance the defensive restrictions which it has placed upon its operations. Although some world views possess an unconditioned component, most world views exist as the limits of a formed mental apparatus. It is the task of psychological intervention, Jaspers thus argued, to guide human existence beyond the restricted antinomies around which it stabilizes itself, and to allow it decisively to confront the more authentic possibilities, of subjective and objective life, which it effaces through its normal rational dispositions and attitudes.” Like Arendt, in fact, he concluded that social atomization creates cultures in which totalitarianism is likely to flourish, and that only unregulated debate in the public sphere can offset this latent pathology of mass society.
Thornhill, Chris and Miron, Ronny, "Karl Jaspers", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/jaspers/>.
Selection about Jaspers’ limit situations - There are limits to the current rational thinking of one’s finite position (perspective): “Instead, all world views contain an element of pathology; they incorporate strategies of defensiveness, suppression and subterfuge, and they are concentrated around false certainties or spuriously objectivized modes of rationality, into which the human mind withdraws in order to obtain security amongst the frighteningly limitless possibilities of human existence. World views, in consequence, commonly take the form of objectivized cages (Gehäuse), in which existence hardens itself against contents and experiences which threaten to transcend or unbalance the defensive restrictions which it has placed upon its operations. Although some world views possess an unconditioned component, most world views exist as the limits of a formed mental apparatus. It is the task of psychological intervention, Jaspers thus argued, to guide human existence beyond the restricted antinomies around which it stabilizes itself, and to allow it decisively to confront the more authentic possibilities, of subjective and objective life, which it effaces through its normal rational dispositions and attitudes.” Like Arendt, in fact, he concluded that social atomization creates cultures in which totalitarianism is likely to flourish, and that only unregulated debate in the public sphere can offset this latent pathology of mass society.
Wineburg, S. & McGrew, S. (2016). Why students can't google their way to the truth. Education Week, 36(11), 22-28.
Article about Sanford’s research and links to website about teaching media literacy. “Research we've conducted at Stanford University supports these findings. Over the past 18 months, we administered assessments that tap young people's ability to judge online information. We analyzed over 7,804 responses from students in middle school through college. At every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation: middle school students unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story; high school students taking at face value a cooked-up chart from the Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee; college students credulously accepting a .org top-level domain name as if it were a Good Housekeeping seal.”
Article about Sanford’s research and links to website about teaching media literacy. “Research we've conducted at Stanford University supports these findings. Over the past 18 months, we administered assessments that tap young people's ability to judge online information. We analyzed over 7,804 responses from students in middle school through college. At every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation: middle school students unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story; high school students taking at face value a cooked-up chart from the Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee; college students credulously accepting a .org top-level domain name as if it were a Good Housekeeping seal.”
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