In a recent posting, Frances began by saying:
"Cheerskep partly wrote in effect..."
Frances then restated in her own words her understanding of what I'd said in
an earlier posting (about the nature of "aesthetic experience"). Frances wrote
at length -- albeit in her own vocabulary. She concluded her posting with
this line:
"(Please accept my apologies for the editorial liberties taken by
me in restating your position.)"
I do accept them, because I take what you were doing to be salubrious.
It seemed to me an honest effort on Frances's part to voice my notions, to
describe what she inferred I had in mind. She made no cunning omissions,
injected no distortions, did not interject counter-arguments during her
description.
I commend her effort, not because they were my notions, but for the larger
reason that it is often extremely helpful to articulate for oneself as
accurately
and sympathetically as possible an opponent's view.
More than once in my day, when I've had the rare good sense to do something
similar, to try to think the way the other guy is thinking, and, indeed, to add
observations supporting his view as I got caught up in being, in effect, his
advocate, it has actually changed my mind. "Crikey, she's right!"
I'm not saying Frances came to such a conclusion. But when it worked that way
for me -- restating of the other guy's position from his point of view and
suddenly seeing he was right -- it drove me back to examine my prior thinking
with an eye to discovering why I hadn't seen it before. More often that I like
to admit, I could discern where perhaps I was with a not quite conscious stub
bornness blocking out, denying, an insight that proved I was wrong. To put it
more kindly, where I was simply shying away from focusing more steadily on an
element in the argument that I dimly sensed was "dangerous" to me.
This forcing myself to momentarily adopt the other guy's position in this way
is something I wish I did more of.
**************
Need a new ride? Check out
the largest site for U.S. used car listings at AOL Autos.
(http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851)
