Argument is war; thus forum becomes battle ground.

Argument is war; thus forum becomes battle ground.

It seems to me that the forum members who participate in a thread approach the experience invigorated with much the same attitude as does a boxer entering the ring or a soldier going into battle.

Metaphor entailments (to transmit or to accompany) we live by:
He attacked my argument.
I have never beaten this guy in an argument.
If you do not agree with my statement then take your best shot.
I shot down each of his arguments.

We approach a forum response much like we approach a physical contest. We have a gut feeling about some things because our sense of correctness comes from our bodies. Our “gut feeling” often informs us as to the ‘correctness’ of some phenomenon. This gut feeling is an attitude; it is one of many types of attitudes. What can we say about this attitude, this gut feeling?

“Metaphors we live by”, a book about cognitive science coauthored by Lakoff and Johnson, says a great deal about this attitude. Conceptual metaphor theory, the underlying theory of cognitive science contained in this book, explains how our knowledge is ‘grounded’ in the precise manner in which we optimally interact with the world.

“The essence of metaphor is understanding one kind of thing in terms of another…The metaphor is not merely in the words we use—it is in the very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical: it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them in that way—and we act according to the way we conceive of things.”—Lakoff and Johnson

Let us say that in early childhood I had my first fight with my brother. There was hitting, shoving, crying, screaming, and anger. Neural structure was placed in a mental space that contained the characteristics of this first combat, this was combat #1. Six months later I have a fight with the neighbor kid and we do all the routine thing kids do when fighting.

This is where metaphor theory does its thing. This theory proposes that the characteristics contained in the mental space, combat #1, are automatically mapped into the mental space that is becoming combat #2. The contents of combat #1 become a primary metaphor and the characteristics form the fundamental structure of mental space combat #2.

This example applies to all the experiences a person has. The primary experience is structured into a mental space and thereafter when a similar experience is happening the primary experience becomes the primary metaphor for the next like experience. This primary metaphor becomes the foundation for a concept whether the concept is concrete experience or abstract experience.

What I am saying is that for some reason the Internet discussion forum member considers engaging in a forum thread is a competition, it is a combat, and the primary combat metaphor is mapped into the mental space of this forum experience and thus the forum experience takes on the combat type experience. It seems to that is why lots of forum activity gets very combative.

Is it any wonder that the adrenalin starts pumping as soon as we start reading the responses to our post?

Do you feel like you are in a battle with me after reading my claims?

Is this why most replies are negative?

No!

I do not participate in such antagonisms, but that is not to say I let others walk all over me - life is lived from our differing view-points, so from that basis: what’s to argue about?

Yes!

From what others tell me: they argue to feel alive - can they not tell they are alive by the blood coursing through their veins, or by the thoughts running through their heads?

I am an aggressive pacifist :smiley:

You have evidently discovered the ecastasy of understanding.

T know is to change you mind, the brain structure, literally. To understand is to change your brain.

Therefore to convince someone is to change his mind for him.
It is an act of manipulation, aggression and dominance.

You wouldn’t be at ilp if a complete pacifist. With discussion comes debate(the best part).

Is this a bad thing?

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I’m pretty much a complete pacifist… Confrontation and fighting seem so unnecessary: unless a life and death situation arises: then one’s adrenaline spikes: to prepare for the ensuing carnage :evilfun:

I prefer, and thrive on: mutual understanding rather than debate - mutual understanding = respect for another person’s dogma, belief systems, and the such…

Argument is an unavoidable sin. Take for concise example your disagreeing with my disagreeing.

You do not necessarily respect someone’s beliefs because you aren’t quarrelsome, but pretend to by avoiding confrontation.

A way I sometimes view it is as memes fighting each other, with the “truer” ones having an advantage. We here have memes “riding” people, like knights in a jousting tournament.

It should be meme versus meme. The unfortunate situation that all too often arises is one where it’s man versus man, with each man using his memes as clubs. The ego is the force that causes this inversion.

I shared my thoughts with you, on the matter: nothing more…

Mutual understanding, or confrontation: the choice is ours to see things either way…

My response to your question was the former: of which the resulting outcome was a mutual understanding on my part - the way you choose to take my reply will say a lot about you / the way I choose to take your reply will say a lot about me…

You are correct. There are many attitudes toward argumentation. I do however think that the common view is that if we are having an argument we are engaged in a verbal altercation. If I tell some one that I had an argument with Dave most people will think hat we ‘had words’.

dictionary.reference.com/browse/ … erstanding
dictionary.reference.com/browse/confrontation

And yet, you claim to only “mutually understand” as I do not, and therefore as we argue, you are hypocritically defending your pacifist approach. If you mutually understood me(had sympathy for or agreement with), we would have no discourse of opinion and you would not feel that you had to reply in opposition.

Ask yourself why.

To quote an old saying ‘It takes two to argue’.

I guess tone, humour, and happiness do not travel over the internet :sunglasses:

These are good samples of the immature kind of meta-quips I see allover forums (especially the last). Whenever I see phrases like that- all I really read between the lines is “I’m a loser and I can’t deal with anything mentally so I want to punch you in the face for trying to tell me anything.”

I’m glad you brought them up, coberst. People whom are really serious about argument shouldn’t get hot and roused with adrenaline because someone challenges what they say. That isn’t to say that argument is devoid of emotion. We argue because we do have emotion. We have passion to steak a claim. I have passion against ethical absurdities that ask why they shouldn’t go rape and torture for kicks. Some have passion against religious fanaticism that seem to ignore absolutely anything in a fifth grade science textbook. Those kinds of heated debates have raw power. But people who quibble about speach and hearsay and “hesaid shesaid” start to demonstrate that they just don’t have what it takes to work for a good argument.

It’s too bad I can’t find much in the taxonomy of fallacies to label out that kind of argument. There should be something to put such phrases in their place.

To be angered by mere words shows that you are not in control of yourself. Sticks and stones.

Totally…

Why conversations should/do: turn into arguments, is beyond me :-s

I think that part of the problem is that too many of us have only an accept button and a reject button.

Accept or reject are not the only options one has. The most important and generally overlooked, especially by the young, is the option to ‘hold’.

It appears to me that many young people consider that ‘to be negative is to be cool’. This leads them into responding that ‘X’ is false when responding to an OP that states that ‘X’ is true.

When a person takes a public position affirming or denying the truth of ‘Y’ they are often locking themselves into a difficult position. If their original position was based on opinion rather than judgment their ego will not easily allow them to change position once they have studied and analyzed ‘Y’.

The moral of this story is that holding a default position of ‘reject or accept’, when we are ignorant, is not smart because our ego will fight any attempt to modify the opinion with a later judgment. Silence, or questions directed at comprehending the matter under consideration, is the smart decision for everyone’s default position.

Our options are reject, accept, and hold. I think that ‘hold’ is the most important and should be the most often used because everyone is ignorant of almost everything.

If you let passion and emotion overtake logic and reason, you place yourself in a lessened state of learning. In pugilism where two people square off to knock their opponent off their feet, the one who has the experience to dodge an onslaught, will more times than not come out on top. The same works in debating a point or topic. If you don’t wildly swing with obtuse statements, you’ll place more strategic thoughts with reason. In some arguments, when things start becoming circular and are counter intuitive, it’s best to agree on disagreement.

Few do… it’s a hard thing to discover and get over. We have so much animalistic psychological baggage we inherited from the feral animal world, so it’s hardly surprising we indulge in the glory of the kill.

To finally put violence (taht is psychological and all aspects) away, most of the time involves a lot of pain, or some people luck out at birth. I know for me it was very difficult road, of de-egocentrification and de-feralization but… ultimately as a philosopher there is no perfect choice about being pacifist or defending what you know is right and true, if you don’t defend it literally, everything you value will be destroyed by beasts of lesser mind.

I’m a conditional humanitarian