ANTHRO@TRIUMFER.BITNET (02/04/90)
>1) How do we challenge without attacking? > On another list, of which I am a reader (although rarely a poster), the >moderator has a very simple policy. Not only should you treat another person's >ideas and beliefs as you would treat your own, but you should treat them even >better. If you don't want your ideas/beliefs attacked, then don't attack >another's. But, by the same token, if someone else _doesn't_ attack yours, >_even if you don't mind being attacked_, that means they probably don't want >their ideas/beliefs attacked. > > The short form of that would be to say that you should only attack another >person if they've openly stated or shown that it is ok to attack their beliefs. I still don't see in here what the difference is between challenging and attacking. From what you've said here, it sounds like attacking when you disagree with someone, and challenging is when you treat their idea like your own, which means you'd agree with it? (A person wouldn't disagree with their own state- ments unless they were cognitivly dissonant or deliberatly trying to create parradox.) Can you give an example of a challenge versus an attack? And actually, there's something I don't understand. Why would you NOT want your ideas to be attacked/challenged/tested? Don't you want to find out if they hold water; find out if there's something you may have missed which makes your position untenable? Or are you content to have some arbitrary notion just sit in your head, with no consideration for its logical, moral, and ethical consistency? Do you fear words and ideas? Are you not integral enough to perceive the position of another without loss of identity? If you make statements are you not prepared to defend them? Because, Ben, if you expect to make statements and have nobody voice an opposite view, or show how your statement makes no sense, then you are asking that we just sit and listen, and keep our mouths shut, in which case you're asking that we not communicate with you; that we just be recepticles of your opinions, in which case people are going to think, "what's the point of wasting my time listening to this rubber mouth excercise his vocal cords, I have better things to do," and they'll tune you out, and you'll be talking to the wind, which means as far as thinking people are concerned, you don't exist. Dave
PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET (Tim Johnson) (02/05/90)
>Can you give an example of a challenge versus an attack? > >Dave Sure, Dave. How 'bout this: Geeze Dave, you really are an idiot. How someone could come up with such a hare-brained notion is beyond me. Clearly you are the victim of some sort of self-delusion. Well, Dave, the problem with that argument is that your source is hardly disinterested, and may well be distorting the facts. But even if you accept that source, it is not self-evident how you make the leap from such-and-such fact to such-and-such conclusion. Etc... I'll let you guess which is more acceptable. -Tim