How to Hold a Postmodern Discussion Group

 Friend Xerxes has proposed some formal rules for any discussion:

1.     Speak from your own experience. 

2.     Everyone’s experience is valid.

3.     No one’s experience is ever wrong. That’s how they experienced it; that’s the way it is for them.

He objects, by contrast, to Christians relying on quoting the Bible. He objects to referring to dictionary definitions. This, he believes, prevents discussion. 

Among the other things he thinks prevent discussion is discussion. Another proposed rule is:

4.     Accept that anyone may tell you, at any time, that you have said enough.

Xerxes is half right about appeals to authority. A simple appeal to authority is a recognized logical fallacy. It is not enough to say “Einstein said X,” or “Aquinas said Y”; you need to offer reasons and evidence. You may have gotten them from such a figure; but the reasons or evidence stand on their own. They cannot be accepted simply because Einstein or Aquinas said it. This is a version of the ad hominem fallacy.

But the alternative is not individual “experience.”

Consider science. Science rejects all appeals to authority. Its standard of proof is controlled and repeated experiment: the scientific method. Which itself has accepted rules and standards. Only if everyone agrees on and follows these rules—an authority—can any legitimate scientific assertion be made. The scientific discussion is invariably over whether these rules were indeed properly followed.  To rely on personal experience instead is to rely on mere anecdote and superstition. It throws everything back to the Cro-Magnon: the sun rotates around the flat earth, and the moon is made of moldy cheese.

For a discussion among Christians, the text of the Bible is the proper authority. Only if everyone accepts this authority, along with certain rules of textual criticism, and perhaps a common creed, can any meaningful discussion occur. Without this, the conversation easily veers off in any direction; there are no grounds for agreement or disagreement on anything. Satan might be the messiah.

In politics, or in court, the standard is the constitution and the doctrine of human rights. If all parties do not agree on this much, civil discourse breaks down and revolution, war or civil war ensues. Everyone asserts what they want, and, if others do not agree, come to blows or guns or guillotines.

Sadly, that is about where we are in political discourse in North America right now. The left has aggressively rejected the constitution, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the doctrine of human rights as “white supremacy.”

For any discussion at all, you need to rely on a shared definition of the words you use. Otherwise you are only making animal sounds. This is what dictionaries are for. Lacking that, the meaning of each new word must be agreed upon or asserted before being used. Which cannot be done unless the meaning of all the words used to define this word are themselves previously agreed upon. Otherwise, the speaker is only wasting everyone’s time. But to require this is almost equally wasting everyone’s time.

Also in any conversation at all, if you rely on “everyone’s experience,” and “no one’s experience is ever wrong,” if no one’s experience can ever be challenged, there is no basis for any discussion. 

Bethlehem Asylum, London.

The person beside you declares that, in his experience, he is Napoleon Bonaparte, but is currently being pursued relentlessly by the CIA in collusion with lizard-formed aliens. 

All you can properly do in response is nod and smile. If you say your experience is different, that is a challenge. That is denying his lived experience. If you say your experience is the same—that too is a challenge, since you can’t both be Napoleon, can you?

The person across from you then complains angrily that in their experience every Jew is cunning and malicious, and something ought to be done about them. Germans, however, and other Northern Europeans, are clearly a superior race.

You nod and smile.

The woman on your right insists that it is only proper to kill babies and eat them; and she plans to do so this Saturday. 

You nod and smile. Perhaps you hope it is not your baby she is thinking of.

At all of this you must simply nod and smile; there is no possibility of discussion.

But then someone over to the left pipes up impudently that in their experience, there is a right and a wrong which applies to all mankind, that murder is always wrong, people are equal in moral worth, and some things are real, and others not.

This person you must silence or drive out of the discussion. 

Or perhaps eat.