European parliament: contemporary symbol of institutionalized debate
This Saturday was held the Joe McCarney Memorial Conference at the London knowledge lab. It was organized by the Marx and philosophy society in honor of one of their lost co-founder. Here is an analysis of the first speech given by Kai Nielsen ‘Emancipatory Social Science: McCarney and Levine’.
I would sadly not be able to comment much on the content of the speech as I lacked the prerequisite knowledge on Marx’s philosophy. Except rare references to real situations, all the discourse was built on positions to other authors’ theories. This led me to think why, and more in general how a philosophical debate is constructed.
It is fundamental to understand first the goal of a philosophical debate and of its participants. I would say that the goal of a philosophical debate is to generate a dialogue between views on a subject and to redistribute the collective thoughts to its participants and audience. It’s goal is thus not to narrow options like in some scientific or social debates, e.g. Is space related to time? Is capitalism the best option for our society? This leads to an even more important dimension: what is the goal of its participants? The selfish goal of a philosophical contributor is not to give the truth that evicts any other ideas, but to deliver a pivotal idea, an idea that polarize the debate. Pivotal ideas are the only ones that stick after a debate, and provide social recognition to its contributors. It is then interesting to realize that philosophers like Marx (is he?) are not important because they gave undisputable new facts, but because their theories are still debated at events like this conference. The participants might not agree with Joe McCarney, but by accepting to centre their debate to his theory, they legitimate his role in philosophy. I don’t know really who originated the subject but the most polarizing thought at today’s debate was that history has no direction. Many participants tried to challenge the assertion by for example proposing that history always goes to more complexity because of human nature.
Goals might be very different in other types of debates. Great scientists are most of the time those who gave a new undisputed truth. Politicians are rewarded when they win a majority based on their views, not when they bring uncertainty. This distinction is however not completely true. For example, politicians running for an election need first to deliver pivotal ideas so that further election debates cannot be conducted without referencing their names. It seems to me that both pivotal and true propositions are rewarded in any type of debates, though with different magnitudes of recognitions.
Now that I clarified the goal of philosophical debates and of their participants, I know that if I want to ‘win’, I need to deliver my ideas so that they become pivotal. I have in order to do so:
- Recognize the ideas of others. No way for an idea to become pivotal if it excludes any other. This explains the most exceptional quality of a philosophical participant: the willingness AND ability to fully understand ideas of others. Too often in everyday’s life, ideas seem to be difficult or even impossible to exchange. It is not true, people are simply not enticed to try understanding them. Philosophical debates are thus very uplifting by restoring trust to people’s ability to understand each other.
- Position my ideas to largely recognized pivotal ones. This is why a philosophical debate (or artistic criticism) can become impenetrable. An idea related to a famous philosopher is much more likely to become pivotal itself than one purely derived from a real life situation. This is true at least for incremental philosophy, radical new philosophies might surface without much references but they require exceptional social conditions. I must say to the benefit of philosophers that references in discourses are also necessary to elaborate from a theory that would take too long to describe otherwise. This referencing is also a condition to sustainable culture which can only work by simplification / aggregation of concepts. Even though references bring always more confusion to debates because of their interpretative nature. I should also not minimize my lack of knowledge and how useless it would be to describe every single concept that most of the audience is already familiar with. Finally, to be clear, I’m not talking here about the necessity of references, which are of course essential to civilization. I’m speaking about how a debate is conducted, from explicit ideas and thoughts (which can have implicit references written in small at the end of the page), or from explicit references (with implicit ideas and thoughts possibly reminded at the end of the page).
I’m sure much more can be said about the nature of philosophical debates but this quick analysis shows at least that diversity in debate mechanics exists. It should be promoted so that people, ideas, groups have multiple ways to exist in our societies. The conference was free, open to everyone, surprisingly well communicated on the web compare to other events of the same kind. It makes me want to study a little more Marx and capitalism, I don’t even have a clear opinion whether I endorse capitalism or not…
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