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Tue 20 Nov, 2007 04:39 am
Argument is war; thus forum becomes battle ground.
It seems to me that the forum members who participate in a thread approach the experience invigorated with much the same attitude as does a boxer entering the ring or a soldier going into battle.
Metaphor entailments (to transmit or to accompany) we live by:
He attacked my argument.
I have never beaten this guy in an argument.
If you do not agree with my statement then take your best shot.
I shot down each of his arguments.
We approach a forum response much like we approach a physical contest. We have a gut feeling about some things because our sense of correctness comes from our bodies. Our "gut feeling" often informs us as to the ?'correctness' of some phenomenon. This gut feeling is an attitude; it is one of many types of attitudes. What can we say about this attitude, this gut feeling?
"Metaphors we live by", a book about cognitive science coauthored by Lakoff and Johnson, says a great deal about this attitude. Conceptual metaphor theory, the underlying theory of cognitive science contained in this book, explains how our knowledge is ?'grounded' in the precise manner in which we optimally interact with the world.
"The essence of metaphor is understanding one kind of thing in terms of anotherÂ…The metaphor is not merely in the words we use?-it is in the very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical: it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them in that way?-and we act according to the way we conceive of things."?-Lakoff and Johnson
Let us say that in early childhood I had my first fight with my brother. There was hitting, shoving, crying, screaming, and anger. Neural structure was placed in a mental space that contained the characteristics of this first combat, this was combat #1. Six months later I have a fight with the neighbor kid and we do all the routine thing kids do when fighting.
This is where metaphor theory does its thing. This theory proposes that the characteristics contained in the mental space, combat #1, are automatically mapped into the mental space that is becoming combat #2. The contents of combat #1 become a primary metaphor and the characteristics form the fundamental structure of mental space combat #2.
This example applies to all the experiences a person has. The primary experience is structured into a mental space and thereafter when a similar experience is happening the primary experience becomes the primary metaphor for the next like experience. This primary metaphor becomes the foundation for a concept whether the concept is concrete experience or abstract experience.
What I am saying is that for some reason the Internet discussion forum member considers engaging in a forum thread is a competition, it is a combat, and the primary combat metaphor is mapped into the mental space of this forum experience and thus the forum experience takes on the combat type experience. It seems to that is why lots of forum activity gets very combative.
Is it any wonder that the adrenalin starts pumping as soon as we start reading the responses to our post?
Do you feel like you are in a battle with me after reading my claims?
Is this why most replies are negative?
Who are you calling negative, punk?
I hardly ever gear up for battle with you guys. I usually wind up getting KO'd by the first punch anyways. Much more satisfying to wacth from the sidelines
On a more serious tone :
At a forum, we enter discussions. In a discussion, you formulate your own opinion, and bring it in the discussion. This opinion will usually conflict with several others. Thus others, in order to make their own point of view clear, have to respond by telling you where their theory differs from yours, and why their theory is better. This entails some negativity towards you.
Then comes a reply in kind, defending your theory, trying to point out fallacies in the logic of the person who just responded to your theory.
This seems like a quite natural way to have a reasonable discussion to me. However, ad hominis arguments, the kind that seem to spring up like wildfire in most forums, are anything but.
Saying: "Your theory is wrong, because you are a doodyface.", or something amongst such lines, seems quite childish to me, to be honest. Still, there are several factors that seem to favor precisely such statements:
a) relative anonimity, which leads to :
b) no fear of non-verbal reprisal (sticks and stones can break my bones, but words...)
Combine this with the fact that strong language is often (in my opinion, wrongly) equated with getting your point of view across, it will quickly lead to verbal combat.
Naj.
You are correct. There are many attitudes toward argumentation. I do however think that the common view is that if we are having an argument we are engaged in a verbal altercation. If I tell some one that I had an argument with Dave most people will think that we ?'had words'.
War comes out of the fact that we are all individuals, with our own thoughts and opinions. War will always exist, as long as there are individuals.
Gilbey wrote:War comes out of the fact that we are all individuals, with our own thoughts and opinions. War will always exist, as long as there are individuals.
That seems like a strange analysis. I certainly hope you are wrong.
Coberst is whining because he comes here with what he sees as pearls of wisdom, and does not get the agreement he desires. He doesn't wish to discuss his propositions, he invites you to agree with him or be damned. Many here have attempted to discuss his propositions with him, but he doesn't brook dissent. So now, after a few years, he has reaped the harvest he has himself sewn, and complains about a hostility which he has bred from his unbending attitude.
coberst,
You are forgetting one thing. You don't engage and that is why you attract negative comments. All of your diatribe above is rationalization to yourself of that fact irrespective of your dressing it up in the language of your favorite texts.
Set, you pipped me to the post
coberst keeps things interesting, in my opinion, and presents ideas that can be talked about and debated (and are worth talking about and debating, usually.)
as far as i can tell, the descriptions of his reactions to those debates are being exaggerated here- i'm a bit of a coberst fan myself, but also a fresco fan, and a set fan. the fact that they don't appreciate each other amuses me, although i'd rather they got along.
the "fact" (i could always be wrong about him) that he doesn't appreciate the resulting debates doesn't stop me from enjoying them, so i appreciate that he keeps bringing them up.
as for someone that never, ever engages, go pick on busma? i dunno. carry on
I think Coberst's post, for the concept it conveyed, was valid enough - there are some people (and for others some times), when they do appear to be engaging in written war.
While I don't dispute the potential interest of the ideas raised by (some of) Coberst's posts, I agree that they almost never involve actual interaction. As has already been pointed out, getting Coberst to answer a direct question is like pulling teeth. The evidence speaks for itself. When he encounters even the slightest request for details to bolster his generalizations, he'll either
ignore the question; or he'll
resort to clichéd sallies at capitalism; or he'll
answer the question he wished he'd been asked rather than the one he was asked; or he'll
pretend that no such objections have been raised; or (my personal favorite) he'll try to convince himself that
asking for evidence is an unreasonable request. In some cases he'll even try to
defend his refusal to look at real evidence. Only once has he ever directly acknowledged a request of mine for some data to bolster his arguments... and
and here was his answer.
Shapeless,
Applause is due for that research !
I'm sure I will get flamed for this, but... isn't there a lot of ad homine argumentation going on right now? While I'm sure that, if 3 well known posters zero in on a post with complaints about the poster, they probably have valid points to make, still, is this sort of reply the best way to have another person see their mistakes?
I think Set at least made a similar point years ago, when coberst started posting on this forum. It seems nothing much has changed...
i certainly won't be flaming you for it, being in complete agreement.
I wish to join Fresco in his applause of Shapeless--that was a wonderful response, and clearly makes the case about Coberst's inability to deal with dissent from his opinions. Quite frankly, i would not have considered Coberst worth the effort to have assembled such evidence, and i applaud the effort on the part of Shapeless for the assiduity it required, as well as its excellent relevance.
I think that part of the problem is that too many of us have only an accept button and a reject button.
Accept or reject are not the only options one has. The most important and generally overlooked, especially by the young, is the option to ?'hold'.
It appears to me that many young people consider that ?'to be negative is to be cool'. This leads them into responding that ?'X' is false when responding to an OP that states that ?'X' is true.
When a person takes a public position affirming or denying the truth of ?'Y' they are often locking themselves into a difficult position. If their original position was based on opinion rather than judgment their ego will not easily allow them to change position once they have studied and analyzed ?'Y'.
The moral of this story is that holding a default position of ?'reject or accept', when we are ignorant, is not smart because our ego will fight any attempt to modify the opinion with a later judgment. Silence, or questions directed at comprehending the matter under consideration, is the smart decision for everyone's default position.
Our options are reject, accept, and hold. I think that ?'hold' is the most important and should be the most often used because everyone is ignorant of almost everything.
najmelliw wrote:is this sort of reply the best way to have another person see their mistakes?
I don't pretend that I can convince Coberst of what I perceive to be his mistakes. I and countless others have been trying to do it for a long time, and I for one usually try to do it in an argumentative (rather than arguing) manner. Anyone is free to look at my past interactions with him and judge whether my comments rely on substantive argument or ad hominem attacks. By this point, I've given up. (It's only fair to point out
one fleeting moment when I seemed to have made progress; but as you mentioned, not much has changed since then.) I've piped up here only to weigh in on the point Fresco raised about Coberst's willingness to engage in actual dialogue. I've presented examples so that people can assess whether I've mispresented the case. In all modesty, I don't think you can ask for much more in an intellectual conversation than that.
I agree that
some of coberst's questions have been worthy of discussion, even though he fails to engage in such. As for the current question regarding "debate" and "warfare" this is hardly such a case. Coberst
is obliged to rigidly cite Lakoff's (et al) "metaphor theory" when a much simpler path seems to lie with the implications of the celebrated observation of von Clausewitz.
Quote:"War is the continuation of policy by other means."
It is this rigidity of coberst ....i.e. his limited breadth of reading resulting from his "self directed learning agenda"..... which precludes him as a candidate for general debate, and ironically negates his claim to be a "Critical Thinker".
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