>
>
>And my point has been that arguments don't persuade people if, and only if,
>the conditions for argumentation have not been met. In other words, if one
>person is committed to figuring something out with another person, and the
>other person is just joking around, then the conditions for an argument do
>not exist, in other words: there can be no argument without the appropriate
>conditions for argumentation.
The latter point is true, but you still seem, as the pomos say, to "privilege" argumentation above other forms of persusion. Maybe another may to make clear why I think this is wrong is to say that there are at least three sorts of circumstances where people are "persuaded" by nondiscursive means.
1) When they are not actually persuaded but are coerced into going along because of fear of harm or humiliation;
2) When they are "persuaded" by some sort of brainwashing, e.g., chemical intervention, being cut off from other sources of information, gettinga barrage of lies from the capitalsit press;
3) When they make up their minds not because of reasoning from premises but because of the power of narrative, the attractiveness of a vision, the pull of an ideal, the appeal of an example, etc.
You HAbermasians run together (3) with (1) and (2), you assume that in an ideal world, everything would be run like a graduate seminar, and that's a good thing. I doubt that it would be a good thing if you could enforce it, but I think that if people were free and equal, they would reject it because we are, by the nature of human cognitive psychology, creatures who think in stories, who are inspired by examples and moved by visions. I prefer a different German than Habermas: Grey is all theory, Green is the tree of life!
Opposition to the existing political
>regime
>is necessary *because* the conditions for reciprocal dialogue do not exist.
Well, that's part of it. I think that food and freedom come first, before dialog. Another German I like: Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral!
--jks
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