Please read in advance.

Dr. Kolb will be commenting during our discussion.David Kolb is Charles A. Dana professor emeritus at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He has a M.A. in philosophy from Fordham, a M. Phil from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Yale. His dissertation was "Conceptual Pluralism and Rationality." He has won a number of honors and awards, among them the Tew Prize in Philosophy, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Fulbright Lectureship, Charles Phillips Fellowship, and Douglas Engelbart Award for Best Research Paper at the ACM Hypertext Conference. Among his books are: "The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After" and more recently, "Socrates in the Labyrinth: Hypertext, Argument, Philosophy." As part of his work this year, he has lectured on and published: “The Revenge of the Page,” and “Making Revision Hyper-Visible,” at Hypertext 2008, Pittsburgh, June 2008. He also lectured on “How the Internet Changes Writing and Research” at the University of Oregon's Osher Lifelong Learning Center, May 2008.

We are honored to have Dr. Kolb join our discussion. (Thanks, David Kolb!) He is a philosopher who is interested not only in ethics (which he has taught) but also the structure of the blogs and how it all impacts our conversations. The quotes below are from Dr. Kolb's work (via).

We are going to be discussing the questions below and encourage feedback from everyone. We would like very much to have people here during the discussion, 7-9PM EDT (4-6PM PDT.) (However, if you can't make it, please post your thoughts here when you can, starting now.) The way it is being run this week is to start with question one and then run through them in order. (Again, everything in quotes below is written by David Kolb.)

1. What can philosophy do for me? Why do we need to discuss philosophy? Kolb says: "Philosophy discusses alternative first principles and disputes definitions and modes of argument. It tries to find a rigorous--or probable, or persuasive--way of disclosing the conditions that make rigorous argument possible."

This is what we have been discussing.

What would make rigorous argument possible? How could others act that would make you more likely to engage with them--and persist in talking to them to get through to a reasoned conclusion?!

2. Are the blogs, fights and all, good for rational dialogue? Kolb asks: "Is it significant that arguments conducted through linked blog posts and comments sometimes degenerate into shouting matches? Does the mini-essay multiple-author format with its simpler links tend to reinforce a quick thrust and parry style that avoids complex and carefully qualified views that need to be presented and examined self-consciously from many angles?"

Does it matter that we fight? Does it decrease involvement or repress thinking?

Does the blog format have inherent weakness--favoring thrust and parry versus more carefully thought out and tested ideas?

3. Do the blogs encourage publishing under-edited drafts? And over-hyped talking points? Kolb writes: "There is the danger that creating a hypertext web would be the functional equivalent of writing without self-discipline: publishing drafts and jottings, self-indulgently exfoliating ideas without taking any position. This would infect the philosophical work with well-known diseases: wandering commentary, endless qualifications, fruitless self-reflection, unnecessary contentiousness, the deadweight of meta-level upon meta-level. This could both stem from and result in intellectual laziness."

Have these things been a problem in the progressive blogosphere? Are people being intellectually lazy or trying to make others intellectually lazy (i.e., let me tell you how to think)?

4. Are we a clique with a plotline? Kolb: "It could also cater to an uncritical audience that wanted to be titillated by the passage of ideas, but not to be challenged in its beliefs or values."

What does our audience want?

And are we writing for an audience that does not want to be challenged but only reconfirmed in its beliefs and values? Is that true of us? Do we merely want to feel in on the ideas around but not to be changed by them? Are the blogs a re-enforcing echo chamber?

Do we understand and look at reality?

5. Does writing here make our writing better? Kolb: "But perhaps working up one's drafts and jottings into good philosophical writing is precisely a matter of the critical mastery and judgment that demand and produce a line."

Does writing for the blogs make us better?
Is our critical thinking better? Does putting it all together provide us with the opportunity to really understand?

Why do we post?

Who talks to us when we post well?

6. Do we need more structure? Kolb: "What would "thinking" mean if it were not providing form and focus, critical judgment, beginnings, middles, and ends, and preventing the indefinite accumulation of words and images?"

Should we structure our posts more, or our comments? Is there a way to prevent "the indefinite accumulation of words and images" and focus on the important stuff? What's big news and what's not?

7. How can we judge what we're doing? Kolb: "Part of this task is discovering how to run meta-dialogues and critical discussion in a medium where there is no privileged spot reserved for the Critic (hypertext, but also the Internet and all that it presages). We still have not adapted our thinking to a world where hierarchies are at most local. What does it mean to be critical when the critic cannot speak for the Center or the Universal? Which is not to say the critic speaks only for a local prejudice--but putting together these two insights is no trivial task. Hypertext is only part of an answer."

Who is the ultimate judge of our discussions and why? What are the standards? What are we trying for?