The idea of dialogue: in conversation, something always changes

Debate, discussion and dialogue

A 3D printer produces an object that can be viewed and handled from every side. A paper printout shows its subject from one direction only and leaves the other sides to the viewer's imagination. The comparison fits conversation. A conversation in which no one is prepared to move from their position remains two-dimensional. Its picture may be clear, but it hides more perspectives than it shows. A conversation becomes three-dimensional when many positions and nuances are accepted and when participants are allowed to change their views if they are given good reasons. The starting point is then only the beginning of what is found at the end.

Two-dimensional conversation is also an exercise of power: whoever sets the question locks in the topic, and with it everything that is not discussed. Anglo-Saxon culture values and teaches the ability to defend any position or its opposite. Such rhetorical skill comes close to the sophists' virtuosity, which Plato and Aristotle criticised. Aristotle called for an ethical use of speech and conversation.

The origins of the words reveal the differences. Debate goes back to the Latin verb battuere, to beat. Discussion comes from the Latin discutere, to break apart. Dialogue comes from Greek: dia means through, and logos means word or meaning. In dialogue, meanings take shape through words, and it is the demanding but rewarding ideal of the Delphi method.

In a debate, the parties present opposing views with the aim of defeating the other side and convincing the audience. The structure of a debate is usually as follows:

1. A contested question is posed: two opposing or mutually exclusive positions.
2. Reasons are given for each position.
3. Reasons are given for those reasons and for their underlying assumptions.
4. Counter-arguments are raised against the claims, reasons and assumptions.

A debate can be a competition, a game or a serious attempt to reach agreement. Often, however, it deepens the opposition, which the emotions it arouses reinforce.

From dispute to resolution

Technically, debate is also the starting point of a Delphi study. Many Delphi processes begin with a contested question that divides respondents into two emotionally opposed camps. The art of facilitation is to lead the conversation from opposition to complementary reflection, in which perspectives enrich one another and the emerging overall picture.

For the Finnish National Agency for Education's Future of Learning 2030 barometer, I developed a traffic-light metaphor for this. Each futures thesis is in one of three states, and its state can change over time:

• Dispute (red): views have polarised into sharp, often emotional positions, and the other side's reasoning cannot be heard.
• Dialogue (amber): views have diversified into many perspectives that can be examined side by side as complementary.
• Resolution (green): the panelists agree on the thesis to the point that a shared view can be formulated.

Ideally, a dispute sets off a development that changes the paradigm or uncovers a third way that is neither of the original opposites. Opposition leads to commenting, argument and discussion in which views diversify. This opens the way to listening and to dialogue.

An interesting point of comparison is the open-source Polis platform, which the Finnish innovation fund Sitra has trialled, for example in its What do you think, Finland? project. Polis was developed in response to the polarisation of online discussion. Participants do not comment on one another's messages at all. They write their own statements and vote for or against each other's statements, and a statistical analysis shows where people agree and where they disagree. The solution is ingenious, but its use for exploring the future is limited: without reasoning, it is hard to extend thinking to alternatives that are not yet visible.

Four ways of communicating

Ian O'Byrne has arranged ways of communicating into a four-field model. The vertical axis runs from cooperative to coercive, the horizontal axis from individual to collaborative. This produces four modes:

• Declare: individual and coercive. Communication appeals to emotions and seeks to steer the recipient in the sender's interest. In authoritarian systems it is the dominant form of media.
• Deliberate: individual and cooperative. An actor conveys information to its audience in one direction, as a state does when informing citizens about new legislation.
• Debate: collaborative and coercive. The parties have an equal chance to defeat the other with arguments or other rhetorical means. In two-party systems, debate is the typical way of exerting influence, and its advantage is that political differences become visible.
• Dialogue: collaborative and cooperative. Two or more actors exchange information in both directions in order to solve a problem or make a decision.

The time horizon also affects the conversation. Social change meets forces of inertia that arise from defending interests, competences and institutional positions. The terrain of the near future is mined with these forces. If the future is to be examined from the perspective of change, the target year should be placed far enough ahead for interests to fade and for thinking to open up even to major transformations. For most people the line between the near and the distant future lies about ten years ahead.

Disputes arise in the present, but they are often easier to handle in the future. This is the idea of anticipatory thinking: a hot question of today is taken to an imagined future for examination and brought back from there. In this way present decisions can be aligned with probable and desirable developments.

Philosophers of dialogue

Socrates is regarded as the pioneer of conversational philosophy, and he has had many successors. Martin Buber distinguished two ways of relating to another person. In the I–Thou relationship, people meet one another as unique and whole, with respect and reciprocity. Neither seeks to use the other. In the I–It relationship, the other is seen as an object and a means to satisfy one's own needs. According to Buber, genuine encounter and growth take place in the I–Thou relationship, and education should also be built upon it.

For Mikhail Bakhtin and Paulo Freire, dialogue comes closer to what was called discussion above. According to Bakhtin, in dialogue each party keeps their own voice and perspective while trying to understand the others. He used the concepts of polyphony and multivocality for this plurality of voices. Cultural polyphony can be considered as valuable as the diversity of nature. For Bakhtin, language is not a static tool but in constant interaction with culture: it does not merely reflect change but also produces it. Contradiction is for him the basis of a creative process, because it gives rise to new ideas.

Freire emphasised dialogue between teacher and learner, in which the teacher is not an authority but a partner who helps the learner develop their own thinking and their capacity to act in society. For him, dialogue is a force for social change and democracy, because it brings different views together.

Polyphony is not only something between people. The social psychologist Klaus Weckroth developed Bakhtin's idea into a notion of multiple selves: a person can also conduct a dialogue with themselves, between their different selves. Understanding this helps us see that our own perspective is not the only way of seeing reality.

The physicist and philosopher David Bohm understood dialogue as thinking together, in which people jointly move towards a better understanding. In Bohmian dialogue the aim is not to prove one's own views right and others' wrong, but to develop thinking together. Peter Senge has incorporated Bohm's ideas into the five disciplines of the learning organisation.

Dialogue in the Delphi method

In dialogue, it is not essential whether a claim is true or whether the conversation stays on its original topic. The aim is to understand others' views and to build shared meanings. In dialogue, one's own and others' positions usually develop as the conversation proceeds. In debate this is rarer. In this sense the Delphi method is a pedagogical form of conversation: the process often starts from debating positions, but as the round progresses, the facilitator gradually leads it towards dialogue.

Ruurik Holm, Petro Poutanen and Pirjo Ståhle have described four conditions for good dialogue. All of them are worth pursuing in a Delphi study too:

1. Equality. In the Delphi method it is ensured by anonymous participation. Positions and hierarchies are set aside, and weight is given to the willingness and ability to reason and discuss. When we consider ourselves above others, we do not listen; when we consider ourselves below them, we do not dare to speak.
2. Listening in order to understand. The hallmark of listening is reassessing one's own perspectives. Through listening, one comes to understand how others see the matter, what one could learn from them and whether the views can be reconciled.
3. Readiness to examine one's own underlying assumptions. Experts, too, have assumptions about how things are connected and what is valuable. Dialogue is a way of exploring one's own and others' assumptions even when starting points differ.
4. Trust. Trust is needed both that information from others is valuable and that the others can be trusted as people. If either is missing, the interaction becomes poorer.

David Bohm's five features of ideal dialogue largely overlap with these, and all of them apply to the Delphi method as well:

1. Seeking shared understanding. Dialogue makes it possible to overcome disagreements and build deepening knowledge together. Shared understanding does not mean agreement or shared values.
2. Listening and empathy. A genuine effort to understand another's perspective lays the ground for reconciling and reformulating issues.
3. The free flow of thought. Ideas are explored without restriction or premature judgement, which makes room for new insights.
4. Exploring together. The purpose of dialogue, as of the Delphi method, is to explore phenomena together so that everyone shares their observations and knowledge.
5. Deep reflection. Participants are encouraged to raise big, system-level questions and to go beyond surface knowledge and preconceptions.

In short: debate is based on opposition, dialogue seeks understanding and cooperation, and discussion is an open exchange from many perspectives. All of these forms are useful in a Delphi study, but the ideal lies in open, reasoned and collectively learning forms. They are strengthened by the facilitator's active approach and by the repetition of rounds. Because the Delphi method is built on language, AI based on language models will bring the method much new expressive and process power in the coming years.

Dialogue as a skill of learning and democracy

In a pedagogical Delphi, dialogue is the most important object and content of learning. According to Freire, in dialogue teacher and student come together to learn and to relearn. Bakhtin speaks of dialogising truth. In dialogue, disagreements must be faced without opposition, and one must be willing to explore views one does not hold. Dialogue is an important futures skill, and it does not develop without practice.

Dialogue is also a key skill of a democratic society. According to the philosopher Kai Alhanen, something new can arise only when people encounter unfamiliar things and deal with them together. At its deepest, he argues, democracy rests on conversation in which we are interested in the differences between our experiences. If such conversation does not take place in schools, homes and workplaces, it will not spread to the rest of society either.

A dialogical relationship includes accepting difference. The sociologist Émile Durkheim distinguished mechanical solidarity, based on sameness, from organic solidarity, in which difference is a resource for society. Dialogue does not require the same identity, the same way of thinking or shared values. Music has no words, yet some of its forms are experienced as dialogue. In jazz improvisation, listening, soloing and supporting the soloist take turns.

In a pedagogical Delphi, different views, life histories, experiences and values are brought into conversation with one another. This also makes the Delphi method a political one in a world where a large share of people live in societies that do not accept a pluralistic, many-voiced view of the world.

The rest of the series

The next essay, The idea of argument, shifts attention from form to content: to knowledge, logic and reasoning. The idea of open speech extends dialogue to the level of society and systems. The idea of expertise describes the forces of change, whereas the earlier essays deal with ideas that endure over time. The last two, The idea of the future and The idea of futures studies, broaden our understanding of what can be known about the future and how a desired future can be made.

Sources

• Alhanen, Kai (2016). Dialogi demokratiassa [Dialogue in democracy]. Gaudeamus.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bohm, David (1996). On Dialogue. Routledge.
• Buber, Martin (1923). Ich und Du. Insel. In English I and Thou (1970), trans. Walter Kaufmann, Scribner.
• Durkheim, Émile (1893). De la division du travail social. Alcan.
• Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder.
• Holm, Ruurik, Poutanen, Petro & Ståhle, Pirjo (2018). Mikä tekee dialogin [What makes a dialogue]. Sitra.
• Linturi, Hannu (2017). Oppimisen tulevaisuus 2030 -barometri [Future of Learning 2030 barometer]. Metodix.
• O'Byrne, Ian (2018). The four types of online discussion. Where are you? wiobyrne.com.
• Senge, Peter (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Doubleday.
• Weckroth, Klaus (1991). X voi olla kuka tahansa [X can be anyone]. Hanki ja jää.