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Philosophy Paper

article to write about: https://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005323

When looking for information about a particular issue, how often do you try to resist biases toward your own point of view? This assignment asks you to engage in this aspect of critical thinking by playing the “Believing Game.” The Believing Game is about making the effort to "believe” – or at least consider – the reasons for an opposing view on an issue.

In this assignment, you will first read a book excerpt about critical thinking processes: "The Believing Game and How to Make Conflicting Opinions More Fruitful" at http://www.procon.org/sourcefiles/believinggame.pdf. Next, you will review the Procon.org Website in order to gather information. Then, you will engage in prewriting to examine your thoughts.
Note: In Part II of the assignment (due Week 4), you will write an essay geared towards synthesizing your ideas.

Follow the instructions below for this activity. Use complete sentences and adhere to standard rules of English grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and spelling.

Select one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website and state your position on the issue.
From the Procon.org Website, identify three (3) premises (reasons) listed under either the Pro or Con section -- whichever section opposes your position.
For each of the three (3) premises (reasons) that oppose your position on the issue, answer these “believing” questions suggested by Elbow:
What's interesting or helpful about this view?
What would I notice if I believed this view?
In what sense or under what conditions might this idea be true?"
The paper should follow guidelines for clear and organized writing:

Include an introductory paragraph and concluding paragraph.
Address main ideas in body paragraphs with a topic sentence and supporting sentences.
Adhere to standard rules of English grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and spelling.
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA Style format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

Create written work utilizing the concepts of critical thinking.
Use technology and information resources to research issues in critical thinking skills and informal logic.

Criteria

Unacceptable
Below 60% F

Meets Minimum Expectations
60-69% D

Fair
70-79% C

Proficient
80-89% B

Exemplary
90-100% A

1. Select one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website and state your position on the issue.
Weight: 20%

Did not submit or incompletely selected one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website; did not submit or incompletely stated your position on the issue.

Insufficiently selected one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website; insufficiently stated your position on the issue.

Partially selected one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website; partially stated your position on the issue.

Satisfactorily selected one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website; satisfactorily stated your position on the issue.

Thoroughly selected one (1) of the approved topics from the www.procon.org Website; thoroughly stated your position on the issue.

2. Identify three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section from procon.org.
Weight: 30%

Did not submit or incompletely identified three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section from procon.org.

Insufficiently identified three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section from procon.org.

Partially identified three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section from procon.org.

Satisfactorily identified three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section under “Con” from procon.org.

Thoroughly identified three (3) premises under either the “Pro” or “Con” section “from procon.org.

3. Provide answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.
Weight: 40%

Did not submit or incompletely provided answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.

Insufficiently provided answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.

Partially provided answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.

Satisfactorily provided answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.

Thoroughly provided answers to the “believing questions” for the three (3) premises that disagree with your own position.

4. Use complete sentences and adhere to standard rules of English grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and spelling. Follow APA Style format.
Weight: 10%

Did not complete the assignment or had more than 9 errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling.

Had 8-9 errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling.

Had 6-7 different errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling.

Had 4-5 different errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling.

Had 0-3 different errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, spelling.

no reference except for the procon.org website on the specific page noted above

The Believing Game and How to Make Conflicting Opinions More Fruitful

Peter Elbow

[A chapter in Nurturing the Peacemakers in Our Students: A Guide to Teaching Peace, Empathy, and

Understanding. Chris Weber, editor. Heinemann, 2006. The present version contains a

few short

passages that had to be cut for space reasons in the published version.]

Don Quixote says he admires Sancho Panza because he

doubts everything and he believes everything.

In the chapter before this, Chris Weber suggests ways to help

students speak their minds, listen well, and engage in nonadversarial

dialogue rather than debate. His suggestions focus on outward behavior.

In this essay, I will move inward to the mysterious dimension of thinking

and feeling. I’ll start by asking you to imagine that you are looking at an

inkblot (for examples, ask Google Images for “inkblots”).

Imagine that you see something in it that interests and pleases you--

-but your colleagues or classmates don’t see what you see. In fact they

think you are crazy or disturbed for seeing it. What would you do if you

wanted to convince them that your interpretation makes sense?

If it were a matter of geometry, you could prove you are right (or

wrong!). But with inkblots, you don’t have logic’s leverage. Your only

hope is to get them to enter into your way of seeing---to have the

experience you are having. You need to get them to say the magic

words: “Oh now I see what you see.”

This means getting them to exercise the ability to see something

differently (i.e., seeing the same thing in multiple ways), and also the

willingness to risk doing so (not knowing where it will lead). In short, you

need them to be flexible both cognitively and emotionally. You can’t

make people enter into a new way of seeing, even if they are capable

of it. Perhaps your colleagues or classmates are bothered by what you

see in the inkblot. Perhaps they think it’s aberrant or psychotic. If you

want them to take the risk, your only option is to set a good example and

show that you are willing to see it the way they see it.

From Inkblots to Arguments

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Interpreting inkblots is highly subjective, but the process serves to

highlight how arguments also have a subjective dimension. Few

arguments are settled by logic. Should we invade countries that might

attack us? Should we torture prisoners who might know what we need to

know? Should we drop a nuclear bomb on a country that did attack us?

And by the way, what grade is fair for this paper or this student? Should

we use grades at all?

I’m not denying the force of logic. Logic can uncover a genuine

error in someone’s argument. But logic cannot uncover an error in

someone’s position. If we could have proven that Iraq had no weapons

of mass destruction, that wouldn’t have proven that it was wrong to

invade Iraq. “We should invade Iraq” is a claim that is impossible to prove

or disprove. We can use logic to strengthen arguments for or against the

claim, but we cannot prove or disprove it. Over and over we see illogical

arguments for good ideas and logical arguments for bad ideas. We can

never prove that an opinion or position is wrong---or right. No wonder

people so seldom change their minds when someone finds bad

reasoning in their argument. (By the same token—or at least a very

similar token—it is impossible to prove or disprove the interpretation of a

text. For more on this, see my longer essays on the believing game.)

This explains a lot about how most people deal with differences of

opinion:

• Some people love to argue and disagree, and they do it for fun in a friendly way. They enjoy the disagreement and the give-and-take and

they let criticisms and even attacks roll right off their backs. It’s good

intellectual sport for them.

• Some people look like they enjoy the sport of argument. They stay friendly and rational---they’re “cool”---because they’ve been trained

well. “Don’t let your feelings cloud your thinking.” But inside they feel

hurt when others attack ideas they care about. They hunker down into

their ideas behind hidden walls.

• Some people actually get mad, raise their voices, dig in, stop listening, and even call each other names. Perhaps they realize that language

and logic have no power to make their listeners change their minds---

so they give in to shouting or anger.

• And some people---seeing that nothing can be proven with words--- just give up on argument. They retreat. “Let’s just not argue. You see it

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your way, I’ll see it my way. That’s the end of it. There’s no use

talking.” They sidestep arguments and take a relativist position: any

opinion is as good as any other opinion. (It’s worth pondering why so

many students fall into this attitude.)

But sometimes people actually listen to each other, come to really see

the merit in opinions they started off fighting. Through listening to

someone else’s views, they do something amazing: they actually

change their thinking. Sometimes strong differences of opinion are

resolved---even heated arguments.

When this happens people demonstrate the two inkblot skills I just

described: the ability and the willingness to see something differently---or

in this case to think or understand something differently. (We often say “I

see” when we “understand” something differently). These are precious

skills, cognitive and psychological. We won’t have much luck

encouraging them in other people unless we develop them in ourselves.

With inkblots, the risk seems small. If we manage to see a blot the

way a classmate or colleague sees it, we don’t have to say, “Stupid me. I

was wrong.” It’s “live and let live” when we’re dealing with inkblots. With

arguments, however, it feels like win or lose. We often want people not

just to understand our position; we often want them to give up their

(“wrong, stupid”) position.

I used inkblots earlier to look for the subjective dimension in most

arguments (given that logic cannot prove or destroy a position). Now

inkblots can teach us something else. They can teach us that there’s

actually a “live-and-let-live” dimension in many arguments---probably

most. But we often feel arguments as win/lose situations because we so

naturally focus on how our side of an argument differs from the other

person’s side. We assume that one person has to say, “Stupid me. I was

wrong.”

The believing game will help us understand ideas we disagree with,

and thereby help us see that one one needs to lose or give up their

central idea. The believing game can help us see that both sides in an

argument are often right; or that both are right in a sense; or that both

positions are implicitly pointing to some larger, wiser position that both

arguers can agree on.

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What is the Believing Game?

In a sense I’ve already explained it with my analogy between

inkblots and arguments. I can summarize it quickly now by contrasting it

with the doubting game.

The doubting game represents the kind of thinking most widely

honored and taught. It’s the disciplined practice of trying to be as

skeptical and analytic as possible with every idea we encounter. By

doubting well, we can discover hidden contradictions, bad reasoning, or

other weaknesses in ideas that look true or attractive. We scrutinize with

the tool of doubt. This is the tradition that Walter Lippman invokes:

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other

sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than

from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster

unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is

wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because

they will ruin him. But, though it hurts, he ought . . . to pray never to

be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason

and good sense.

The widespread veneration of “critical thinking” illustrates how our

intellectual culture venerates skepticism and doubting. (“Critical

thinking” is a fuzzy, fad term , but its various meanings usually appeal to

skepticism and analysis for the sake of uncovering bad thinking. When

people call a movement “critical linguistics” or “critical legal studies,”

they are saying that the old linguistics or legal studies are flawed by

being insufficiently skeptical or critical---too hospitable to something

that’s wrong.)

The believing game is the mirror image of the doubting game or

critical thinking. It’s the disciplined practice of trying to be as welcoming

as possible to every idea we encounter: not just listening to views

different from our own and holding back from arguing with them, but

actually trying to believe them. We can use the tool of believing to

scrutinize not for flaws but to find hidden virtues in ideas that are

unfashionable or repellent. Often we cannot see what’s good in

someone else’s idea (or in our own!) till we work at believing it. When an

idea goes against current assumptions and beliefs---or seems alien,

weird, dangerous---or if it’s poorly formulated---we often cannot see any

merit in it.

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“Believing” is a Scary Word

Many people get nervous when I celebrate believing. They point to

an asymmetry between our sense of what “doubting” and “believing”

mean. Believing seems to entail commitment, where doubting does not.

It commonly feels as though we can doubt something without

committing ourselves to rejecting it---but that we cannot believe

something without committing ourselves to accepting it and even living

by it. Thus it feels as though we can doubt and remain unscathed, but

believing will scathe us. Indeed believing can feel hopelessly bound up

with religion. (“Do you BELIEVE? Yes, Lord, I BELIEVE!”)

This contrast in meanings is a fairly valid picture of natural ,individual

acts of doubting and believing. (Though I wonder if doubting leaves us

fully unchanged.) But it’s not a picture of doubting and believing as

methodological disciplines or unnatural games. Let me explain the

distinction.

Natural individual acts of doubting happen when someone tells us

something that seems dubious or hard to believe. (“You say the earth is

spinning? I doubt it. I feel it steady under my feet.”) But our culture has

learned to go way beyond natural individual acts of doubting. We

humans had to struggle for a long time to learn how to doubt unnaturally

as a methodological discipline. We now know that for good thinking, we

must doubt everything, not just what’s dubious; indeed the whole point

of critical thinking is to try to doubt what we find most obvious or true or

right (as Lippman advises).

In order to develop systematic doubting, we had to overcome

believing: the natural pull to believe what's easy to believe, what we

want to believe, or what powerful people tell us to believe. (It’s easy to

believe that the earth is stationary.) As a culture, we learned systematic

doubting through the growth of philosophical thinking (Greek thinkers

developing logic, Renaissance thinkers developing science, and

Enlightenment thinkers pulling away from established religion). And we

each had to learn to be skeptical as individuals, too---for example

learning not to believe that if we are very very good, Santa Claus/God

will bring us everything we want. As children, we begin to notice that

naïve belief leads us astray. As adults we begin to notice the dreadful

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things that belief leads humans to do---like torturing alleged

witches/prisoners till they "confess."

Now that we’ve finally learned systematic doubting with its tools of

logic and strict reasoning and its attitude of systematic skepticism---

critical thinking---we are likely to end up afraid of believing itself. We had

to learn to distrust natural believing (“My parents/country/God will take

care of me whenever I am in need.”). So believing can seem a scary

word because our culture has not yet learned to go beyond natural acts

of naïve believing to develop unnatural believing as a methodological

discipline. In short, the believing game is not much honored or even

known (though it’s not new).

The methodology of the doubting game gives us a model for the

methodology of the believing game. When the doubting game asks us

to doubt an idea, it doesn't ask us to throw it away forever. We couldn’t

do that because the game teaches us to doubt all ideas, and we’ll learn

to find weaknesses even in good ideas. We can’t throw all ideas away.

The scrutiny of doubt is methodological, provisional, conditional. So when

a good doubter finally decides what to believe or do, this involves an

additional act of judgment and commitment. The doubting game gives

good evidence, but it doesn’t do our judging and committing for us.

Similarly, when the believing game asks us to believe all ideas---

especially those that seem most wrong---it cannot ask us to marry them

or commit ourselves to them. Our believing is also methodological,

conditional, provisional---unnatural. (It’s hard to try to believe conflicting

ideas all at once, but we can try to enter into them one after another.)

And so too, if we commit ourselves to accepting an idea because the

believing game helped us see virtues in it, this involves an additional act

of judgment and commitment. The believing game gives us good

evidence, but it doesn’t do our deciding for us.

In short, we must indeed continue to resist the pull to believe what's

easy to believe. But believing what’s easy to believe is far different from

using the disciplined effort to believe as an intellectual methodological

tool in order to find hidden strengths in ideas that people want to ignore.

A Surprising Blind Spot for the Doubting Game

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The doubting and believing games have symmetrical weaknesses:

the doubting game is poor at helping us find hidden virtues; the believing

game is poor at helping us find hidden flaws. But many people don’t

realize that the doubting game is also poor at reaching one of its main

goals: helping us find hidden flaws in our own thinking.

The flaws in our own thinking usually come from our assumptions---our

ways of thinking that we accept without noticing. But it’s hard to doubt

what we can’t see because we unconsciously take it for granted. The

believing game comes to the rescue here. Our best hope for finding

invisible flaws in what we can’t see in our own thinking is to enter into

different ideas or points of view---ideas that carry different assumptions.

Only after we’ve managed to inhabit a different way of thinking will our

currently invisible assumptions become visible to us.

This blind spot in the doubting game shows up frequently in

classrooms and other meetings. When smart people are trained only in

critical thinking, they get better and better at doubting and criticizing

other people’s ideas. They use this skill particularly well when they feel a

threat to their own ideas or their unexamined assumptions. Yet they feel

justified in fending-off what they disagree with because they feel that this

doubting activity is “critical thinking.” They take refuge in the feeling that

they would be “unintellectual” if they said to an opponent what in fact

they ought to say: “Wow, your idea sounds really wrong to me. It must

be alien to how I think. Let me try to enter into it and see if there’s

something important that I’m missing. Let me see if I can get a better

perspective on my own thinking.” In short, if we want to be good at

finding flaws in our own thinking (a goal that doubters constantly

trumpet), we need the believing game.

The Believing Game is Not Actually New

If we look closely at the behavior of genuinely smart and productive

people, we will see that many of them have exactly this skill of entering

into views that conflict with their own. John Stuart Mill is a philosopher

associated with the doubting game, but he also advises good thinkers to

engage in the central act of the believing game:

[People who] have never thrown themselves into the mental

position of those who think differently from them . . . do not, in any

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proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves

profess. (129)

Yet this skill of sophisticated unnatural belief is not much understood or

celebrated in our culture---and almost never taught.

Imagine, for example, a seminar or a meeting where lots of ideas

come up. One person is quick to point out flaws in each idea as it is

presented. A second person mostly listens and gets intrigued with each

idea--and tends to make comments like these: “Oh I see” and “That’s

interesting” and “Tell me more about such and such” and “As I go with

your thinking, I begin to see some things I never noticed before.” This

second person may be appreciated as a good listener, but the first

person will tend to be considered smarter and a better thinker because

of that quick skill at finding flaws.

I used to feel that I was unintelligent because when one person

gave an argument I would feel, “Oh that’s a good idea,” but then when

the other person argued the other way, I found myself feeling, “Oh that

sounds good, too.” I wondered what was the matter with my loose,

sloppy mind to let me agree with people and ideas that are completely

at odds with each other. The “smart people” tended to argue cleverly

and find flaws that I didn’t notice. But now I’m finally insisting that my

instinctive ability to play the believing game is not just “niceness” or

sloppy thinking; it’s a crucial intellectual strength rather than a weakness-

--a discipline that needs to be taught and developed.

Let me emphasize that I’m not arguing against the doubting game.

We need the ability to be skeptical and find flaws. Indeed, the doubting

game probably deserves the last word in any valid process of trying to

work out trustworthy thinking. For even though the scrutiny of belief may

lead us to choose a good idea that most people at first wanted to throw

away, nevertheless, we mustn’t commit ourselves to that idea before

applying the scrutiny of doubt to check for hidden problems.

My only argument is against the monopoly of the doubting game as

the only kind of good thinking. We need both disciplines. Some of our

most needed insights come from opinions that are easy to criticize or

dismiss. But those insights are only available if people work at entering

into such opinions in search of unnoticed virtues.

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Concrete Ways to Learn to Play the Believing Game

As teachers and students we are in a good position to learn the

ability to see things differently from how we usually see them, and the

willingness to risk doing it. If we want to learn those skills, it helps to notice

the inner stances ---the cognitive and psychological dispositions---we

need for doubting and believing:

• If we want to doubt or find flaws in ideas that we are tempted to accept or believe (perhaps they are ideas that “everyone knows are

true”), we need to work at extricating or distancing ourselves from

those ideas. There’s a kind of language that helps here: clear,

impersonal sentences that lay bare the logic or lack of logic in them.

• If, on the other hand, we want to believe ideas that we are tempted to reject (“Anyone can see that’s a crazy idea”)---if we are trying to

enter in or experience or dwell in those ideas---we benefit from the

language of imagination, narrative, and the personal experience.

Here are some specific practices to help us experience things from

someone else’s point of view.

1. If people are stuck in a disagreement, we can invoke Carl Rogers’

application of “active listening.” John must not try to argue his point till

he has restated Mary’s point to her satisfaction.

2. But what if John has trouble seeing things from Mary’s point of view?

His lame efforts to restate her view show that “he doesn't get it.” He

probably needs to stop talking and listen; keep his mouth shut. Thus, in a

discussion where someone is trying to advance a view and everyone

fights it, there is a simple rule of thumb: the doubters need to stop talking

and simply give extended floor time to the minority view. The following

three concrete activities give enormous help here:

• The three-minute or five-minute rule. Any participant who feels he or she is not being heard can make a sign and invoke the rule: no one

else can talk for three or five minutes. This voice speaks, we listen; we

cannot reply.

• Allies only---no objections. Others can speak---but only those who are having more success believing or entering into or assenting to the

minority view. No objections allowed. (Most people are familiar with

this “no-objections” rule from brainstorming.)

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• “Testimony session.” Participants having a hard time being heard or understood are invited to tell stories of the experiences that led them

to their point of view and to describe what it's like having or living with

this view. Not only must the rest of us not answer or argue or disagree

while they are speaking; we must refrain, even afterwards, from

questioning their stories or experiences or feelings. We may speak only

to their ideas. (This process is particularly useful when issues of race,

gender, and sexual orientation are being discussed.)

The goal here is safety. Most speakers feel unsafe if they sense we

are just waiting to jump in with all our objections. But we listeners need

safety, too. We are trying to enter into a view we want to quarrel with or

feel threatened by. We’re trying to learn the difficult skill of in-dwelling. It's

safer for us if we have permission simply not to talk about it any more for

a while. We need time for the words we resist just to sink in for a while with

no comment.

3. The language of story and poetry helps us experience alien ideas.

Stories, metaphors, and images can often find a path around our

resistance. When it’s hard to enter into a new point of view, try telling a

story of someone who believes it; imagine and describe someone who

sees things this way; tell the story of events that might have led people to

have this view of the world; what would it be like to be someone who

sees things this way? Write a story or poem about the world that this view

implies.

4. Step out of language. Language itself can sometimes get in the way

of trying to experience or enter into a point of view different from our

own. There are various productive ways to set language aside. We can

draw or sketch images (rough stick figures are fine). What do you

actually see when you take this position? It’s also powerful to use

movement, gesture, dance, sounds, and role-playing.

5. Silence. For centuries, people have made good use of silence for in-

dwelling. If we’re having trouble trying to believe someone’s idea,

sometimes it’s helpful for no one to say anything for a couple of minutes.

That’s not much time out of a meeting or conference or class hour, but it

can be surprisingly fertile.

6. Private writing. There's a kind of silence involved when everyone

engages in private writing. Stop talking and do 7-10 minutes of writing for

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no one else’s eyes. What's crucial is the invitation to language in

conditions of privacy and safety.

7. Use the physical voice. When it’s hard to enter into a piece of writing

that feels difficult or distant, for example something written by someone

very different from us---or an intricate work like a Shakespeare sonnet---it

helps to try to read it aloud as well and meaningfully as possible. (When

I’m teaching a longer text, I choose crux passages of a few paragraphs

or a page.) The goal is not good acting; the goal is simply to say the

words so that we feel every meaning in them---so that we fully mean

every meaning. Get the words to “sound right” or to carry the meanings

across—for example, to listeners who don’t have a text. After we have

three or four different readings of the same passage, we can discuss

which ones manage to “sound right”---and usually these readings help us

enter in or assent. (It’s not fair to put students on the spot by asking them

to read with no preparation time. I ask students to prepare these reading

at home or practice them briefly in class in pairs.)

This activity illustrates something interesting about language. It’s

impossible simply to say words so they “sound right" without dwelling in

them and thus feeling their meaning. So instead of asking students to

“study carefully” this Shakespeare sonnet, I say, “Practice reading it

aloud till you can say every word with meaning.” This involves giving a

kind of bodily assent.

8. Nonadversarial argument. Finally, the classroom is an ideal place to

practice nonadversarial forms of argument. Our traditional model of

argument is a zero-sum game: “If I'm right, you must be wrong.” Essays

and dissertations traditionally start off by trying to demolish the views of

opponents. “Unless I criticize every other idea,” the assumption goes, “I

won’t have a clear space for my idea.” But this approach is usually

counterproductive--except with readers who already agree with you

and don’t need to be persuaded. This traditional argument structure

says to readers: “You cannot agree with my ideas---or even hear them---

until after you admit that you’ve been wrong or stupid.”

The structure of nonadversarial argument is simple, but it takes

practice and discipline: argue only for your position, not against other

positions. This is easy for me here since I have no criticisms at all of the

doubting game or critical thinking in itself. It’s much harder if I really hate

the idea I’m fighting. It’s particularly hard if my essential argument is

negative: “Don’t invade Iraq.” So yes, there are some situations in which

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we cannot avoid arguing why an idea is wrong. Yet even in my position

on Iraq, there is, in fact, some space for nonadversarial argument. I can

talk about the advantages of not invading Iraq---and not try to refute for

invasion. In this way, I would increase the chances of my opponent

actually hearing my arguments.

The general principle is this: If all I have to offer are negative reasons

why the other person’s idea is bad, I’ll probably make less progress than if

I can give some positive reasons for my alternative idea---and even

acknowledge why the other person might favor her idea. (For more on

nonadversarial argument, see my “Introduction” xviii-xxiii.)

I can end by glancing back at the inkblots. Arguments that look

conflicting might both be somehow valid or right. They might need to be

articulated better or seen from a larger view---a view the disputants

haven't yet figured out. I may be convinced that someone else’s idea is

dead wrong, but if I’m willing to play the believing game with it, I will not

only set a good example, I may even be able to see how we are both

on the right track. Nonadversarial argument and the believing game

help us work out larger frames of reference and better ideas.

Works Cited

Elbow, Peter. “Appendix Essay. The Doubting Game and the Believing

Game: An Analysis of the Intellectual Process.” In Writing Without

Teachers. Oxford University Press, 1973. 147-91.

---. “Bringing the Rhetoric of Assent and The Believing Game Together--

and into the Classroom.” College English 67.4 (March 2005): 388-99.

---. Introduction. Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of

Writing and Teaching Writing. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.

---. “Methodological Doubting and Believing: Contraries in Inquiry.” In

Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching.

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Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of

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Lippman, Walter. “The Indispensable Opposition.” Atlantic Monthly

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Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. London, Dent, 1951.

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Rogers, Carl. "Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation." On

Becoming a Person. NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving From Debate to

Dialogue. Random House, 1998