psood0nym
Bluelighter
I was recently reading chapters 11 through 13 of a modern classic in advanced adult reading instruction, Mortimer J. Adler’s (1966) “How to Read a Book,” when I was stuck by the relevance of what I was reading to a recent short-lived thread in Philosophy and Spirituality by MyDoorsAreOpen titled Dialectics.
I’ve no doubt I’m not alone in my frequent exasperation in attempting to have intelligent productive discussions on Bluelight. What is especially frustrating is that the affordances of the online message board format – anonymity, time to compose a post, and the ability to review an entire discussion prior to posting one’s thoughts – make it a nearly perfect medium for productive discussion, yet so few of our global community seem to take advantage of or even be cognizant of the opportunities these tools present them.
Given how relevant to the concerns of formal dialectics these chapters are, I wasn’t too surprised when Dr.Adler admitted in the text that they represent a refinement of an early book of his, “Dialectic.” That book was about the art of intelligent conversation, the etiquette of controversy, and so I think chapters 11 through 13 of “How to Read a Book” are highly instructive for those of us looking to have more sophisticated discussions here on Bluelight or in any online forum. Of course, what follows does not apply to places like The Lounge, or social threads, but it does apply to most other threads where some degree of expository work is being attempted.
I realize I’m posting this to a drug message board where many of the readers are fairly young, and often inebriated while posting. That aside, this is the world’s largest and best organized public drug discussion board and I know there are those out there capable of engaging in productive discussion. This post is not for you so much as it is for you to help others who may just be beginning to learn to converse intelligently and constructively online. I feel if we heed Dr. Adler’s advice all online forums will be much more interesting places.
What follows is largely a collection of chronologically ordered pull quotes from chapters 11 through 13 of “How to Read a Book,” edited in the interest of brevity and appropriated by me at times to make the content more directly relevant to Bluelight. For readers looking for further exposition the entire book is available free online at this link.
From Chapters 11 through 13 of Mortimer J. Adler’s “How to Read a Book”:
I’ve no doubt I’m not alone in my frequent exasperation in attempting to have intelligent productive discussions on Bluelight. What is especially frustrating is that the affordances of the online message board format – anonymity, time to compose a post, and the ability to review an entire discussion prior to posting one’s thoughts – make it a nearly perfect medium for productive discussion, yet so few of our global community seem to take advantage of or even be cognizant of the opportunities these tools present them.
Given how relevant to the concerns of formal dialectics these chapters are, I wasn’t too surprised when Dr.Adler admitted in the text that they represent a refinement of an early book of his, “Dialectic.” That book was about the art of intelligent conversation, the etiquette of controversy, and so I think chapters 11 through 13 of “How to Read a Book” are highly instructive for those of us looking to have more sophisticated discussions here on Bluelight or in any online forum. Of course, what follows does not apply to places like The Lounge, or social threads, but it does apply to most other threads where some degree of expository work is being attempted.
I realize I’m posting this to a drug message board where many of the readers are fairly young, and often inebriated while posting. That aside, this is the world’s largest and best organized public drug discussion board and I know there are those out there capable of engaging in productive discussion. This post is not for you so much as it is for you to help others who may just be beginning to learn to converse intelligently and constructively online. I feel if we heed Dr. Adler’s advice all online forums will be much more interesting places.
What follows is largely a collection of chronologically ordered pull quotes from chapters 11 through 13 of “How to Read a Book,” edited in the interest of brevity and appropriated by me at times to make the content more directly relevant to Bluelight. For readers looking for further exposition the entire book is available free online at this link.
From Chapters 11 through 13 of Mortimer J. Adler’s “How to Read a Book”:
Mortimer J. Adler said:The first thing a reader of a thread can say is that he understands or that he does not. In fact, he must say he understands, in order to say more. If he does not understand, he should keep his peace and go back to work.
There is one exception to the harshness of the second alternative. “I don’t understand” may be itself a critical remark. To make it so, the reader must be able to support it. If the fault is with the thread rather than himself, the reader must locate the sources of trouble.
If, in addition to understanding the thread, you agree thoroughly with what the original poster or a disscussant says, the work is over. You have been enlightened, and convinced or persuaded. It is clear that we have additional steps to consider only in the case of disagreement or suspended judgment.
To the extent that authors argue with their readers—and expect their readers to argue back—the good reader must be acquainted with the principles of argument. He must be able to carry on polite, as well as intelligent, controversy.
Now let us consider the situation in which, having said you understand, you proceed to disagree, and you disagree because you think the author can be shown to be wrong on some point. You are not simply voicing your prejudice or expressing your emotions.
There are four rules of thumb to keep in mind if you adversely criticize a post or posts. If you say, essentially, “I understand but I disagree,” you proceed in productive debate by making one or more of the following essential replies:
(1) “You are uninformed”;
(2) “You are misinformed”;
(3) “You are illogical, your reasoning is not cogent”; or,
(4) “Your analysis is incomplete.”
The reader cannot make any of these remarks without being definite and precise about the respect in which the poster is uninformed or misinformed or illogical.
If you have not been able to show that the thread's original poster or subsequent discussant is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical on relevant matters, you simply cannot disagree. You must agree.
You cannot say, as so many students and others do, “I find nothing wrong with your premises, and no errors in reasoning, but I don’t agree with your conclusions.” All you can possibly mean by saying something like that is that you do not like the conclusions. You are not disagreeing. You are expressing your emotions or prejudices. It you have been convinced, you should admit it. (If, despite your failure to support one or more of these three critical points, you still honestly feel unconvinced, perhaps you should not have said you understood in the first place.)
Regarding the fourth rule of thumb, to say that a poster’s analysis is incomplete is to say that he has not solved all the problems he started with, or that he has not made as good a use of his materials as possible, that he did not see all their implications and ramifications, or that he has failed to make distinctions which are relevant to his undertaking. It is not enough to say that an argument is incomplete. Anyone can say that of any argument. Men are finite, and so are their works, every last one. There is no point in making this remark, therefore, unless the reader can define the inadequacy precisely, either by his own efforts as a knower or through the help of other materials.
We have now completed, in a general way, the enumeration and discussion of the rules of reading threads. When you have read a thread according to these rules, you have done something. I need not tell you. You will feel that way about it yourself. But perhaps I should remind you that these rules describe an ideal performance. Few people have ever read any thread in this ideal manner, and those who have, probably read very few threads this way. The ideal remains, however, the measure of achievement. You are a good reader and forum participant in the degree to which you approximate it.
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