Conversational AE (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)

[Mick Harper]

A and B's personal relationship, their overall opinion of the other, is irrelevant. The dominant factor appears to be A's assumption that he knows more than B specifically about the subject in hand and that if only B would listen to him carefully enough, all would be well. He therefore proceeds on that assumption.

Since B is thinking the exact same thing the result seems to be two people, not so much at loggerheads, as continually 'just missing' in getting their point across. However the exercise is not a futile one, apart from in the sense that agreement will never be achieved.

At one level, the exercise is an exercise. It is quite unusual, in our daily lives, to be having reasonably high level discourses with people who disagree with us but do not disengage because of it. So it becomes an opportunity to hone rhetorical skills.

But more importantly, it drives oneself to learn more about the subject, to (dare one say?) think about the subject... but in an unusual way. Since you anticipate having to be both on the attack and in defence it is not sufficient--as it would be in, say, a random encounter on the internet or with a taxi-driver--to have the standard tropes worked out in your head and just deploy them as appropriate.

You are forced to dig deeper. Remember the old AE saying: you can't improve by an effort of will. You have to 'enter a programme'.

[Mick Harper]

All that remains now is -- since we are AE-ists -- to go back and identify the specific reason why me and Wiley continue to slip past one another re Ukraine and Iran. The problem is that neither A nor B can do that for themselves.

A might be able to work out what's ailing B but he won't accept B's explanation for why A is being so stubborn. We could, I suppose, appeal to the judgement of C but we would reject it if it it did not accord with our own judgement. What does he know? Even less than A or B.