The Role of Philosophy in Conflict Processes

Philosophy seems extremely abstract; how can it be personal?

Impersonal Philosophy

At least since Aristotle, philosophers in the Western tradition have thought of philosophy as following from his definition of humans as “rational animals.” If rationality is the key to human “success,” then it makes sense that philosophers would aspire to be the most rational humans. Therefore, their work seems to follow Russell’s description, below:

The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence, also, the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge, into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal. (Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy)

Personal Philosophy

However, Nietzsche challenged this picture of philosophical work by saying: “Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir. (my emphasis)(Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)

Brison, writing in her book about her recovery from a brutal rape, found a great deal of philosophical significance in her tragic story. She stresses the following:

“As we find that the ‘accidents of private history,’ especially those connected with gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and class, are not only worth thinking about, but are also inevitably, even if invisibly, present in much of philosophy, we are beginning to write in the first person, not out of sloppy self-indulgence, but out of intellectual necessity.” (p. 25, Susan Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self)

Thinking within the tension of abstraction and particularity:

I suggest that, as conflict resolvers, we need to work within the tension of abstraction and particularity—the transpersonal and the personal. We need to generalize and theorize to describe what all humans (or most humans) share, but then those generalizations and theories are constantly challenged by examples of individual difference, cultural behavior, belief, and norms. In this dialectic process, we are constantly refining our view of human commonality and diversity.

Personal Story:

In this book, we will be exploring some themes of commonality and diversity. We will need to have some examples to work with. Sometimes those examples can be quite personal. For example, one day during the spring break of 2008, I squirmed in a dental chair, while an emergency dentist struggled to pull a molar that she, in consultation with another dentist, determined could not be saved. At various points over a half hour or so, she would pull until I raised my hand in pain; she would then inject more anesthetic and try to pull again, repeating the cycle, over and over, until she felt that she had reached the maximum amount of anesthetic that could be used. Then, she covered over what was left of the tooth with a cap of a temporary substance, and sent me home to wait a couple of days before another dentist was scheduled to try to pull the tooth again.

Traumatized, my spring break cursed, I went home to explain the seemingly unforgivable crisis to my wife. Angry that our vacation was cancelled and that I had persisted in going to a dental group that she had suspected of malpractice for the last fifteen years, she proceeded to vent for what seemed like hours. Finally, reduced to tears, I got a bit of sympathy–to her, a very “unattractive” need of mine.

Stop right here. Aren’t I getting a bit too personal? Philosophical discussions are generally thought of as public discourse; and the personal can get way too private—too much information! Who wants to hear about one’s teacher crying, any more than one’s physician or one’s dentist crying? It’s like hearing about your parent’s sex life. Don’t we want to think of these people in limited professional or parental roles–reasonable and rather dispassionate? Isn’t this a generalization that many of us have? But does this constructed image allow professionals and parents to be fully human?

Personal as philosophical like the feminist personal as political:

The notion of the personal as philosophical is derived from the feminist view of the personal as political. The insight of the latter is that a woman’s personal experience should have political power, and not be limited to a kind of privacy that is silencing. Issues, like sexism, domestic violence, risks of illegal abortions, women’s sexual needs and identities, should be brought out of the closet and into public discussion and consciousness-raising. However, is such an airing of private matters always appropriate—or always appropriately done?

Protecting Privacy and Intimacy from Public View:

The film, Kinsey, about the sex researcher of the mid-twentieth century, shows sexuality and confessional sex talk in ways that can easily make the viewer squirm. We are seeing and hearing about private experiences because they are a component of the research. Is that appropriate? Could this movie have been made differently? What is the best way to handle personal information for either political or philosophical ends?

Indigenous Protection of the Sacred and Private:

Native Americans often keep their rituals, practices, and sacred sites private. Only tribal members are allowed to know about these things, and only when they are mature enough to maintain the secrecy. For Native Americans, some things are not open to the scrutiny of non-tribal members and Western Science. When a Native American skeleton is unearthed, scientists want to study the bones, whereas Native Americans feel a strong need to rebury the bones, as soon as possible, because those bones belong to the ongoing person’ spirit, the tribe, and the earth—all different layers of privacy.

Stories as Knowledge:

Just as indigenous people transmitted timeless wisdom through stories, I will tell stories in this book, and the related course, to help communicate wisdom. These stories are about personal positive and negative conflict processes, focusing on how they affect philosophical notions at the core of conflict facilitation. What will you think of these stories? Are they too personal? We may be telling each other personal stories and how they have transformed our philosophical understanding. I may suggest that you share personal stories with me and with each other. As a professional, I will keep your stories confidential; but if you share stories with classmates, your privacy will depend on your level of trust in whom you tell. Like scientists, we have lofty goals concerning the broader purposes of intellectual growth and development. However, there is a risk to most things. Are we fully aware of the risks involved with personal stories?

What does philosophy have to do with conflict processes?

First of all, I find it important to investigate the terms, concepts, and practices of conflict resolution to identify worries and problems that may exist in what is taken for granted by academics and practitioners. This investigation is philosophical because it reaches into the axiology (values in CR), epistemology (how we know what we do in CR), and metaphysics (what exists in CR practices).

Second, I am a trained philosopher, who has taught and practiced conflict processes since the mid-1970s. So this text emerges from both of my two degrees in philosophy (and one in teaching), as well as my experience resolving conflict, using insights from philosophy. Philosophy, at its best, explores extremely different ways of thinking, at times contradictory, and at times, paradoxical. At its worst, philosophy is dogmatic and argumentative, where validating opposing views seems virtually impossible. Therefore, the study and application of philosophical insights and practices has been enormously useful for me as a conflict processes teacher, and as a conflict processes practitioner, while some of its insights and practices have also undermined the teaching and practice of conflict processes.

There is validation for philosophy as a positive resource for conflict processes in the post-Wittgensteinian, dialectical, and post-modern traditions, especially in those traditions’ support for difference, as central to philosophical inquiry. The work of James Crosswhite, Josina M. Makau and Debian L. Marty also provide important insights that also inform how philosophy can move from adversariality to collaboration.

Ironically, I have attended a series of meetings of the American Philosophical Association section, Concerned Philosophers for Peace, where only a scant few of those philosophers seeming had any interest in how conflict processes had anything to do with peace. Rather, their rather narrow project seemed to focus on the merits of pacifism, and arguments against war. Therefore, I must admit that I may be the only philosopher doing this kind of investigation. I hope I’m wrong about this!

Below are several ways that philosophy and conflict processes contribute to each other. I will briefly introduce some of these ways, here, and further elaborate on them in the full text:

(1) Why the theory and practice of conflict processes needs philosophical depth: Conflict processes or any collaborative process need philosophical depth because conflicts can be understood in so many diverse ways, encompassing the three philosophical areas, ethics (how we find value), epistemology (how we find knowledge), and metaphysics (how we find what is real). Collaborative processes give us the advantage of multiple perspectives, cultural differences, diverse experiences, and the many ways that a conflict can be framed and understood. The conflict, itself, can illuminate differences that would otherwise be hidden from consideration. Therefore, reflective philosophical techniques can be advantageous, especially when disputants have dramatically different cultural and experiential frames of reference.

(2) Why conflict processes needs reflective methods: The traditional, dominant view in Western philosophy is that there is only on kind of thinking, namely rational thinking, where people are logical, and proceed from premises or assumptions to valid conclusions. If they are not logical, in this way, they are being illogical, irrational, speculative, creative, or mimicking conventional thoughts, without regard to the formal structure of true thinking. Computers generally use logical patterns, where functions follow each other in a linear sequence to help us reach conclusions from sometimes complex data points. Analyzing context and multi-causal events pose a problem for both logic and computer manipulation because they cannot be reduced to simple factors or linear progressions.

However, informal logic emerged to analyze and criticize the way people ordinarily think. Informal logic focuses on how people persuade or address audiences, and how their thoughts and conversations can be saturated with fallacies. Informal logic purports to help us evaluate thinking, with the goal of understanding the dynamics that take place, and to set standards, by which we might argue truthfully or deceptively. Critical thinking is the way that people learn to use informal logic to help them think for themselves, without letting others do their thinking for them.

The strength of critical thinking is that it helps us think for ourselves, and resist herd or mob thinking. If you are often persuaded to think like your peers or your identity group, you are letting the group do your thinking. However, if you only think for yourself, you might find yourself thinking alone, and not testing your thoughts out with other people, who can give you a reality check.

Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the “Unibomber” is an exceedingly bright man, whose manifesto has some insightful reflections, expressing the power of his ability to think for himself, alone. However, he did not test his thoughts with others, and concluded that the best way to start a revolution against some to the evils in society was to kill certain individuals in the computer technology field. Three people died and twenty-three others were injured. Without having conversations with other people, who also think for themselves, one runs the risk of being a one-person-mob. Mr. Kaczynski was a mob-of-one, and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for the simple reason that, despite his brilliance, he trusted no one to give him a reality check.

The “connected knowing” of Blythe McVicker Clinchy and the “meditative thinking” of Martin Heidegger give us grounds for “engaged thinking,” where critical thinkers think together, rather than alone. First, critical thinkers need to escape the herd mentality of groupthink, and then, second, they need to engage each other to help ground themselves in the broader context of experience, knowledge, and the practicalities of applying thoughts to the real world, strategically.

As you can see, the list of ways of thinking is increasing. So far, we have logical thinking, critical thinking, engaged thinking, meditative thinking, contextual thinking, and strategic thinking. Doubtless, there are more kinds of thought, including mystical thought and the practice of not-thinking in meditative practices that leads us to other kinds of realizations and contentment. I suggest that we consider these different kinds of thinking to be “reflective methods,” where utilizing different reflective methods help us think, not just from different perspectives, but by using different methods.

(3) Navigating groupthink and critical thinking to reach engaged thinking: Within the practice of informal logic, we learn to adopt critical thinking techniques to overcome the conformity-enforcement of groupthink. Critical thinking helps us think for ourselves, not letting the group do our thinking for us. Of course, this is easier said than done! We are always vulnerable to groupthink because so many of our cultural traditions are embedded in the way our thoughts are framed and in the forms of our thinking, including the meaning of our words and other expressions. All of us live within at least one cultural tradition, which forms elements of groupthink, and many of us live in two or more cultural traditions, where navigating differing groupthinks give us an opportunity to see a cultural tradition from outside of it. I use the term, “engaged thinking,” to refer to the process of trying to think for oneself, while engaging in conversations with people, both inside and outside of our most dominant cultural tradition. This process of engaged thinking can only productively occur when one is regularly discussing a variety of topics within a community that is as diverse as possible and practicable.

(4) Western notions of rationality tend to focus on a monological, straight line manipulation of abstractions, without much regard for multi-causal and multi-reason analysis: In most of the civilized world, rationality is defined in terms of generalizations and abstractions, ordered in a reasoned or logical progression. Often, our rationality is supposed to work through different alternatives to find a specific reason that something happened, or is likely to happen, or a specific cause that explains an effect. This monological thought process tends to dismiss an alternative multi-causal or multi-reason analysis because the later analyses are messy, inelegant, or imprecise.

However, it can be noted that many, if not most phenomena have many causes and/or many reasons for occurring. This observation complicates the work of rationality, which is supposed to give us an authoritative view of the truth of the matter at hand in a straight-line logical scheme. As an example, a disease often has many causes and conditions that need to be present. As another example, many of our decisions have multiple reasons, not just one. In some cases, it is almost an infinite task to create causal or reason matrices that comprehensively help us understand the underlying factors that cause, or help us understand, a disease or a decision. Furthermore, any abstract analysis, using generalizations, ignores the non-reducible idiosyncrasies of the specific context of any phenomena, as explained below.

(5) Navigating Both Map and Territory: We, in the civilized world, live by maps and mapping devices to navigate our world, or to understand it. Unfortunately (of fortunately—depending on your view), the territory is not the map, and the territory resists accurate mapping, as reducing the territory, in its infinite diversity, always creates a map that is good for locating what the map-maker assumes we want to find, and ignores other details that the map-maker does not suppose we are interested in knowing.

Therefore, to be good navigators, we need to be mindful of both the map and the territory. The map helps us notice what mapmakers think is important, and when we get to know the territory, we will remember aspects of the land that are important to us, and that will help us navigate when the map does not give us those details. Interestingly, when I talk to forest rangers, they readily admit that even fresh maps have inaccuracies: “That road is gone. That trail in impassible. That creek changed its path last winter.” Forest rangers routinely go out in the field to check on the accuracy of a map, then report the discrepancies to the mapmaker.

(6) Navigating difference by focusing on background stories as the real territory: When native peoples pass down stories to succeeding generations, as their oral or narrative history, scientists discover that they often match the scientific data. In the case of the last subduction earthquake in the Northwest, scientists say that the geological record points to about 1700. This date matches many oral histories of Northwest tribes. The advantage of storytelling is that it carries us into the past with our full human dimensions, its emotions, its power, its effect on us as people. Science just gives us numbers and abstractions. The experience of human difference is always unique, emotional, and to a certain extent, mysterious. A computer will never be a competent conflict resolver because it can never grasp the context of the dispute, nor feel the emotions and drama in the room. Even humans, trying to resolve conflicts online or on the phone, are severely hampered in our ability to know the context and feel the emotions and drama. So, computers will be that much worse!

(7) Navigating difference by focusing on abstractions as mapping devices: Mapmakers generally agree about the meaning of mapping devices. The terms for topographical maps are fairly uniform. However, we are not nearly so precise in our use of abstractions and generalizations. Take the term, “truth.” In logic, the truth of a logical proposition can be calculated, given the rules of logic. However, if someone wants to tell me their “truth,” they are doing something altogether different. That person is saying that they want to convey something deeply important about themselves. They are not claiming that what they will say will be logically true or that it is true for other people, it’s just true for them.

A truth about me is that I think I am smart and stupid at the same time, often about the same thing. However, if you were to give me an IQ test, I guess I would test as slightly better than the average, just like the kids of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone are all above average. But that is not my experience of myself. Sometimes, I think I can be pretty smart, and pretty creative, but on further examination, I just didn’t realize how little I knew, or how my creativity was so pedestrian. Nevertheless, “my truth is just MY experience of myself—what is TRUE for me. Other generalizations and abstractions have similar problems of precision. They just mean different things in different contexts. The great philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tried to create a precise philosophical language, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, and gave up, moving toward a context-dependent understanding of philosophical language in his Philosophical Investigations. I’m with him on this topic.

(8) Difference and Context vs. Homogeneity and Universality: In the discussion that we have been having, we are confronted with two radically different, fundamental worldviews. The traditional Western Civilization view is that ultimate truth resides in finding categories that reduce difference into sameness. We define individual things in terms of their categorical description. Each rock, that we pick up, is a member of the category, “rock,” because they all have the same description. Post-Wittgensteinian, continental and non-Western philosophers , including indigenous philosophers suggest that any reductionist strategy is questionable because it tends to blur differences into uniformity. For them, each rock is unique and a blend of substances. Any effort to reduce rocks to just one category is misleading. These latter philosophers suggest that the uniqueness and context of something can never be reduced to abstractions, any more than natural scenery can be reduced to photographs.

Navigating these two worldviews means that there is some truth to each one. And therefore, we need to navigate between them. Some things can be helpfully organized into a category. Other things are unhelpfully grouped into a category. I make a food list because I think that all of the items are available at the nearby grocery store. However, when I go to the grocery store, not all of the items on the list are available at THIS grocery store, so I need to go to a second grocery store to complete my shopping. Sometimes there is difference lurking in the homogeneity, and sometimes there is homogeneity lurking in seeming difference. My view can be reductionist or non-reductionist, depending on the context.

What does this mean for conflict resolvers? It means that we should never feel that we have figured out a conflict or a way to process it; it will always be somewhat of a mystery, where we need a steady stream of information and engaged collaboration by all of the disputants involved. Sometimes it will be helpful to simplify the dynamics of the conflict, and sometimes that move will be too reductionist, and we will need to reengage the complexities involved.

(9) Feminist, indigenous, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophical insights in conflict processes: In my opinion, feminist, indigenous, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophical insights are quite valuable for the theories and practices of conflict processes. Feminism contributes views on connected knowing, overcoming gender oppression and discrimination, and full inclusiveness of all participants to conflict. Indigenous insights include challenges to Western notions of separation of nature from humanity, challenges to overriding self-interest, and challenges to Western notions of time and space the separate people from the past and future, as well as local and global spaces. Buddhist insights contribute notions of nonattachment, which can release us from our addictions to desires, status, power, wealth, and influence. Buddhism also challenges our fundamental separation from one another, and urges us to be mindful about everything we do. Taoism helps us stay on our path forward in our intuitive knowledge of its direction, and our trust that unanticipated turns in the path are just the way the path is guiding us along. Of course, other philosophical traditions have insights to offer this work; however my reach is always way farther than my grasp; so this work will need to be revised and updated regularly!

(10) Western philosophical biases in conflict processes: Because the theories and practices of conflict processes in Western mainstream culture have been framed within Western mainstream philosophical assumptions and presuppositions, it is not surprising that conflict processes has deep biases away from, and sometimes contradictory to, non-mainstream cultures. This book challenges those biases, and suggests ways to bring conflict processes theories and practices more in line with a broader spectrum of philosophical insights and cultural practices. Bias is always inherent in our fundamental subjectivity, but when we recognize them, we can become a bit less biased. Progress; not perfection.

(11) What conflict processes can mean for philosophy: Of course, this subject would, doubtless, take several thousand words to begin to answer adequately. So, I’ll write just a few sentences to address it, inadequately, here. Philosophy, in the traditions of Western Civilization, is generally concerned with abstractions like truth, justice, the nature of knowledge, ethical principles, and what is real and unreal, etc., with scant concern for context or narrative analysis.

Alternatively, using the metaphor of navigation, we are not committed to winning an argument between different analyses or perspectives. Rather, we can suggest processes to more productively navigate these topics, in terms of context, as well as narrative techniques and histories. My point is not to demonize the traditions of Western philosophy, as in some cases, they may be the most appropriate. Rather, in suggesting an alternative to those processes, I am suggesting that we can navigate between the two of them, creating more choices for how to proceed in addressing philosophical problems and the practical dilemmas that arise from them.