The main reason why most would-be deep discussion (as well as superficial argument) is a waste is... Metaphysics.
Metaphysics is our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and when these assumptions are wrong, all answers will be wrong - even if they are superficially correct.
All answers will be wrong because they all trend to wrongness; they will be wrong because all the answers will constellate around the wrong assumptions, making it appear that the wong assumption is true (when, in fact, the facts are all built around the wrong assumptions).
The constellation of wrong facts, the patterns they make, will make us that they are true; when they are actually all wrong, but all wrong in the same kind of way - because rooted in the same false assumptions.
And none of this will ever change, or can ever change, for so long as people are unwilling to expose and acknowledge their own basic assumptions.
Nobody else will do this for us! If we don't do it ourselves, it won't be done.
Anybody can do it for themselves, simply by asking why, and then why and why again, we believe X - and sincerely answering their own query.
But you have to want to do it.
2 comments:
Coming to this realization (which Bruce has largely helped me to do) is also quite liberating in that it frees one up from trying to convince others, trying to argue with others and trying to "be right" all the time. Of course, one can still engage in some degree of debate and persuasion, but the first step then becomes asking oneself: "Is my interlocutor someone willing to recognize and acknowledge, put aside and/or change their fundamental assumptions?" And if the answer to that question quickly is confirmed to be "No", then one need go no further in the discussion or debate, or at least one can approach it with much less expectation or hope that it will lead anywhere fruitful.
(And lest this sound arrogant, the idea is not that "My assumptions are right and theirs are wrong" but rather simply a recognition that meaningful discussion can only occur around acknowledged common fundamental assumptions.)
@Daniel - I have found that these recent years have been a continual stress-testing of my own metaphysical assumptions. I think I have things adequately sorted-out, then it becomes clear (from incoherence, from inadequacy) that there are contradictions or gaps, and more work is needed. More work from me, that is; because one of the major lessons has been that all "completed metaphysics" (i.e. work of particular philosophers, or schools of the like) have problems; and no present external institution is even prepared to acknowledged its own assumptions, let alone the problems these entail. Official Christianity (of whatever type) sometimes seems like a massive and coordinated effort in cover-ups and fake denials! If only people would put a fraction of this dishonest effort into discovering the source-of, and trying to sort-out, the problems!
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