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Criteria
For Validation Of The Practice
It
is justifiable to question the validity of DEPTH Dialogue since
large and sweeping claims are made here about what the practice is and
what it accomplishes, and since it is so unique and new (at least to
the modern world.) What is there to back up these claims?
There
are three main criteria for evaluating whether this new practice called
DEPTH Dialogue is what it claims to be. These are all followed through
at various places in this website which will be pointed to.
I.
Scholarly Criteria
II.
Functional
Experiential Criteria
III.
Practical
Criteria
I.
Scholarly Criteria
1.
Socrates and Plato were
serious in their claims that the Dialectic (here called DEPTH Dialogue)
is a real and practical path of "care for the soul" into full
self-realization.
2.
Specific guidelines for
the practice of Dialectic are provided throughout Plato's Dialogues. They
are what Socrates and Plato say
they are. These guidelines refer to Dialectic
as the practice of "care for the soul" into full self-realization, and
are also serious and real.
3.
The "functional
interpretation"
is at least one valid way of looking at
Plato's Dialogues, backed up by solid academic research and scholarship.
4.
This functional view
clearly takes Plato's statements about the Dialectic and its practical
means out of the realm of the mystical and/or fanciful. Since the
statements are functional they refer to specific actions, and these
actions are testable.
5.
Plato not only makes
statements about what Dialectic is and how it is practiced, but he
exemplifies and illustrates these by the very form and contents of the
Dialogues themselves. Each of Plato's Dialogues presents an instance in
the practice of Dialectic. In the functional interpretation these are
also actions which are testable.
6.
The first criterion for
testing the specific actions of Dialectic referred to above is whether
they match the goals of Dialectic that Plato states.
7.
The second criterion
for this is to see whether they produce the results that Plato claims
for the Dialectic.
8.
The only way to
evaluate the last two criteria is to have a working practice of
Dialectic. This is because any merely textual interpretation does not
and cannot test specific actions. You must have the reality of actions
and then examine what they do and what results they produce.
9.
DEPTH Dialogue claims
to be a practice that puts the specific actions of Dialectic into play.
If this is truly the case, then we have a concrete way to evaluate the
specific actions of Dialectic presented in Plato's Dialogues. In other
words, we have something that claims to be the practice of Dialectic,
whose actions can be evaluated and then this evaluation applied to
Plato's statements about Dialectic and to his exemplifications in the
form and content of his Dialogues.
10.
But this means that we
first have to evaluate whether the specific actions of DEPTH Dialogue
match the specific actions of the Dialectic in Plato's Dialogues. If
they do, then we can go on to evaluate the Dialectic itself.
11.
This evaluation of
DEPTH Dialogue's match with the actions of Dialectic depends on the
second set of criteria. This is presented next.
(For
the arguments and
evidence on the above points see the sections on Plato's
Transcendental
Dialectic, A
Practical
"Functional" View Of Socratic Dialogue, Scholarly
Validation, and Plato Studies.)
II. Functional
Experiential Criteria
1.
In order to develop a
set of functional actions that correspond to the functional
interpretation of Plato's Dialogues it is necessary to in some way
recapture the modes of experiencing and action of the classical Greek
world. This is the world that the functional interpretation claims to
more accurately represent than other interpretations.
2.
In the last 50 years or
so there have appeared several experiential learning methods, mainly in
the bodywork field but some also in what might be called
"psycho-somatics," that operate in ways that do not reference modern
ideas of mind-body dualism. They view and act with the process of human
experiencing as an aware inner wholeness rather than as an intangible
mind acting on tangible objects.
3.
The operating mode of
these
disciplines closely corresponds to the functional interpretation of the
ancient modes of experiencing in classical Greece. They are therefore
eminently suitable for providing some kind of entrance into the kind of
actions we are seeking in order to validate the specific actions of
Dialectic presented by Plato in his Dialogues.
4.
DEPTH Dialogue makes
use of these disciplines not by taking on their specific actions but by
utilizing the fundamental principle that is common to all of them. That
is the principle of experiential repatterning.
5.
Even more to the point,
the highest, most effective of these disciplines use a higher and more
subtle form of the principle of experiential repatterning. They use
what I have called Dynamic Pattern Transcendence. This principle is the
most refined essence of these disciplines, and it is therefore most
suitable to the very refined practice of Dialectic.
6.
DEPTH Dialogue is a
practice that utilizes the principle of Dynamic Pattern Transcendence.
It extends and generalizes this from merely bodywork to encompass the
whole range of human experiencing and acting. It is thereby a
functional learning discipline.
7.
DEPTH Dialogue
encompasses the whole range of human experiencing and acting in a way
that is consistent with the highest goals of Dialectic as well as with
the specifics of the practice, as set forth by Plato and noted in the
above section on Scholarly Criteria.
8.
Therefore the specific
actions of DEPTH Dialogue both meet the criteria for matching the
specific goals and actions of Dialectic as set forth by Plato, and meet
the criteria for being the specific kind of functional action learning
discipline that the functional interpretation of Plato's Dialogues
calls for.
9.
The evidence and
arguments in the sections that are referenced throughout this website
are the proof of this, and thereby validate DEPTH Dialogue's claim of
being the true inner dynamics of Dialectic (deep, inwardly focused
Socratic dialogue.)
(See
A
Practical
"Functional" View Of Socratic Dialogue, The
Inner Dynamics Of Modern Experiential
Learning Disciplines, and the
whole section on Basics,
for elucidation of the above points.)
III.
Practical Criteria
1.
The functional learning
disciplines referred to above have proven to be much quicker, easier
and more effective than standard methods based on modern notions of
mind-body dualism. This is because they use the principle of
experiential repatterning. Most effective are those practices that use
the principle of Dynamic Pattern Transcendence.
2.
DEPTH Dialogue uses the principle of Dynamic Pattern Transcendence,
and extends and generalizes it to the whole range of human experiencing
and acting. Therefore its quickness, ease and effectiveness should be
similar in this wide field to that of the bodywork and somatic
repatterning disciplines. In practice, this is found to be the case.
3.
DEPTH Dialogue's use of the principle of Dynamic Pattern
Transcendence is specifically designed to match the goals and actions
of Plato's Dialectic. By combining the use of the repatterning
principle with the wisdom of Plato's Dialectic it thereby gives
Dialectic the same scope and effectiveness that Socrates and Plato
claimed for it. And it enacts the Dialectic in a way they wrote about,
and then illustrated in the form and content of specific dialogues.
4.
Therefore, because DEPTH Dialogue has the same goals, the same scope
and effectiveness, and the same form of action as Plato's Dialectic, to
all intents and purposes it IS
the Dialectic that Socrates and Plato wrote about and illustrated, now
in practical usable form. At the very least it is a very good
working approximation of that.
5.
Building on the first two criteria, the practical criteria prove the
validity of DEPTH Dialogue as what it claims to be.
(For
specifics of the practice of DEPTH Dialogue see the sections on Basics and Advanced.)
6.
Scientific Validation. The above line of reasoning shows that DEPTH
Dialogue is what it claims to be. Above and beyond this would be field
research into the actual effects of the practice with real people in
real life. The design of such studies would be different from standard
research in the fields of the social sciences because Dialectic itself
sets standards of scientific research that are more correct and fitting
for such research than what is done these days. Namely, Dialectic
itself is a valid means of gaining knowledge in the realm of human
experiencing, which is fundamentally different from valid knowledge in
the "hard" sciences.
All
current methods of research in the social sciences try to adapt
methods from the physical sciences, i.e. methods based on manipulating,
controlling and dominating "objects." Dialectic represents a viewpoint
that does not subscribe to the mind-body dualism which this
presupposes. Therefore, this method does not apply. There is another
method, and Dialectic shows what it is. (See The
Science Of Human Action for an explanation of this method.)
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