Helen Haste dissects the way we find common ground

The case for dialogue has been well made, and the science community is increasingly involved. Much thought has gone into how to set up the structures for communication, but much less attention has been paid to the realities of dialogue itself.

What do people bring to dialogue?  What are the obstacles, blocks and resistances?  What happens as people begin to connect to the issues, and to each other? What do people gain from the experience?

Though there is considerable research on natural dialogue, as yet there is relatively little detailed data about public engagement.  One example is the BA/OST Foresight exercise in 2004, in which scientists and laypeople considered scenarios and implications of cognitive sciences. The report by Nick Hillier is rich in details of the processes of dialogue.  It contains many surprises.

Treasuring surprises

What is dialogue?  It is not a simple conduit of information, flowing from me to you without hinder.  Dialogue is the series of processes which make it possible to understand what we need to know, so we can share knowledge and that it has the same meaning to each of us. The task of dialogue is to find common ground.  Common ground is not agreement.  It is about exploring common cultural territory, as a prerequisite to pursuing routes to agreement. It is understanding where each party is coming from.

One outcome of successful dialogue may be that such a conduit might be possible. But the main objective of dialogue is to understand how we bring assumptions to the discussion.

What kind of assumptions are we talking about?   Some depend on level of knowledge: ‘I did not include this in my thinking because I did not know it.’  More important for dialogue, are questions about what is relevant: ‘I know this information but it is not important to me in dealing with this issue.’  Here the assumptions – shared or differing – are about how to put data together in making a decision or evaluation.

Dialogue makes such assumptions explicit.  In practice it is through the other party’s miscomprehension that we see – often much to our surprise - where we do not share assumptions.  We are surprised precisely because we take these assumptions for granted – it seems ‘obvious’ to us. Good dialogue is about treasuring and using those surprises.

Also, when others resist our use of certain terms we see that these terms have different value connotations, not just different meaning. For example, a term like ‘thinking’ may seem self-evidently positive.  Yet if it is seen to be in conflict with ‘feeling’, this has a negative connotation for some.  For others who worry that feelings ‘get in the way’ of ‘true’ reason, ‘thinking’ has positive value because it contrasts with feeling.

Whether something should matter in a decision may be more of a stumbling block to dialogue than what that ‘something’ is.  Scientists and lay people in fact come from the same cultural and moral universe.  In the Foresight exercise, scientists and lay people had remarkably similar ethical concerns and worries about the scenarios, and similar moral priorities – about control, equality of access, dependence on technology, and individual versus societal needs. The differences – largely resolved through the dialogue – lay in where and how to bring these considerations into the decision-making process.

Facts in dialogue

Understanding how we use fact is important to dialogue. Facts only have meaning in context.  An observation of any sort, in ordinary life or in scientific investigation, only makes sense if it is in a frame, and relates to our expectations or hypotheses. Getting a handle on the other participants’ frames is a crucial part of finding common ground; it also makes us aware that we must take account of more than one.

I once stood in a spectacularly rich fossil field with a palaeontologist. He was beside himself with joy; all I could ‘see’ was a pile of rubble. Similarly, he could make little sense of the work I was then doing on young people’s moral reasoning.  After these experiences I still couldn’t ‘see’ the fossils and he could not analyse moral text, but both of us could appreciate that there was more than one ‘story’ in the data.

The story that makes sense of the fact also frames how we interpret information. The American linguist George Lakoff argues that the debates between liberals and conservatives in the US cannot be explained simply by different values. Those values fit into two core stories, about causes and consequences.  The conservative story is the ‘Strict Father’ who has an obligation to control (and chastise) his wayward offspring – including members of recalcitrant nations.  The liberal story is the ‘Nurturing Parent’ who fosters the growth of the young (or dependent) by caring.

We cannot win a rhetorical battle unless we anticipate how the opposition will frame ‘our’ facts – and use them on their terms. The optimistic ‘nurturing’ liberal who hopes that the data on numbers of people in welfare will move the conservative to provide better services for the unfortunate impoverished will be disappointed; the ‘strict father’ will, naturally, argue for strengthening the independence of such people by minimising support.

It is part of finding common ground to unpack the stories that frame the facts.

Narratives in dialogue

There are also ‘grand narratives’ which set the larger picture; these frame not just the fact but the whole agenda for telling the story. I see four grand narratives in current issues around public engagement and especially around responsibility. Different groups will access them differently.

• The grand narrative of ‘discovery’
  Science and technology explain our world and this is self-evidently valuable; more knowledge, per se, is ‘good’.  Scientists rarely question the value of ‘discovery’ and indeed are fearful that pressure for public engagement may be a threat to this narrative.
• The grand narrative of ‘progress’ and benefit to humanity
  To be an agent of progress is to benefit others.  To the recipient, the ‘benefit’ is also a good, but it is easier for recipients to weigh up the benefit against costs, or against other competing benefits.  Engineers may solve problems they define as technological; the human benefits are only apparent when the new development is used in ways undreamt of by the innovator.
• The grand narrative of ‘risk’
  We all agree that developments may have risks.  But who is the cause?  The scientist-engineers may deny responsibility, because their obligations are only to discovery  – in which case the debate is, who should carry the can?  (Politicians and industrialists are likely candidates.)  From the point of view of lay people, the core question is the extent of their own vulnerability; the agenda is assessing the risk.
• The grand narrative of ethical obligation
  No-one denies that progress involves ethical considerations. Even if scientists and engineers ‘cause’ – directly or indirectly – problems, does this mean they have an ethical responsibility, and if so, must they acquire a better understanding of ethics?  Or does the situation require ethical experts, so freeing the scientists to get on with discovering?

The vulnerable public, in this narrative, have the ‘right’ to complain and blame, as well as to have their fears taken seriously. However, increasingly the public has a responsibility to assess the risks and to take action; it is no longer enough to blame external forces.  It is in this grand narrative that much of the current debate takes place.

We can see the interweaving of these four grand narratives in most discussions about scientific and technological progress, and in many arenas of public engagement. Addressing them has been the agenda of both ‘downstream’ and ‘upstream’ engagement. When dialogue breaks down, it can often be seen to be due to failing to recognise the underlying narratives (and stories) and where they need common ground. Where dialogue is successful, it can be seen that this groundwork has been done, and both sides have been willing to see where they are located in the landscape.

Professor Helen Haste is Vice President of the BA and Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education