Christian Relaunch

Dialog with Other Attitudes

Every mind's thinking is based on its Attitudes. Minds who share Attitudes can easily maintain a facade of neutrality or indifference, but if we meet a mind with a different Attitude the difference soon rears its head.

Folk will always prefer the company of others who share their Attitudes, especially for close relationships. This is natural and proper. Birds of a feather flock together. Christians call their flocking together "fellowship" (or more technically "ecclesia" or "koinonia") and see special significance in it, but the principle applies more broadly.

But there are good motives for conversing with a mind with a different Attitude: two different motives, needing two different modes of conversation.

In analytical converse I collaborate with my interlocutor to explore what conclusions follow from each of our different attitudes, where our different worldviews overlap and where they conflict, and how to achieve aims that we happen to share, such as finding compromises that we both deem preferable to the conflict that our consciences would otherwise make inevitable.

In polemical speech I try to persuade my listener to come round to my Attitude.

Both modes need to be pursued genially. Geniality entails "respecting" the other mind's Attitudes. This kind of "respect" does not require me to accept that your Attitudes are in any way right; it only requires that in conversation with you I never assume anything that implies that they are wrong. That is, the only assumptions I make are ones which I know (or at least suppose) that you also regard as true. Geniality requires that I appeal only to shared asumptions. If these shared asumptions are too slender, polemic may be difficult, but if there is enuf common ground, it may be possible to build a more substantial case. If I make a polemical statement, to respond respectfully and relevantly you can (1) rebut my argument or (2) make an argument for your own worldview or (3) analyse something about my statement.

Switching between modes is sometimes healthy, but at all times both minds need to be clear about which mode they are in. Unnoticed switching breeds confusion.