Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 127

Firstly, differences of opinions, even when potentially pernicious, are the dialec-
tical equivalent of ticking bombs, so that, unless they are handled with care,
argumentation may produce early conflagration instead of safe resolution. Crucially,
arguers appear to be acutely aware of this fact, given how they weight both conflict
resolution and escalation avoidance as key concerns in various argumentative
decisions. On the contrary, doctrines that put exclusive emphasis on finding a
“reasonable” solution to the original disagreement, no matter the costs for both
arguers and innocent bystanders (think of a couple so absorbed in their own debate to
ignore its potential impact on their children), are a recipe for disaster, as far as social
conflict is concerned. The fact that some prominent argumentation theories tend to
lean in that direction (see Introduction) should give pause to any argumentation
scholar interested in the practical applicability of what she/he preaches.
Secondly, the balancing act between solving a disagreement and avoiding its
escalation has an important corollary: sometimes, or even often, the original
difference of opinions will not be settled by arguing , and arguers should not even
try too hard to settle it, lest a trivial dispute degenerates in a bitter feud. Those who
feel frustrated by this limitation of our discursive practices suffer from a pernicious
epistemological bias: the belief that agreement is always superior to disagreement.
This is, quite simply, wrong. As argued more thoroughly elsewhere (Paglieri 2013c ),
some forms of disagreement are highly beneficial, both for individuals and for their
social group. While the prolonged inability to reach a binding consensus on what
to accomplish together is a problem for society, because it blocks the possibility of
reaping the benefits of cooperation (e.g., consider the substantial costs of negotiation
impasses in bargaining situations; see Crawford 1982 ; Svejnar 1986 ), a certain level
of differences of opinion is inevitable in any dynamic social group, especially if
its members enjoy high degrees of autonomy. Moreover, such a variety of views
is often beneficial to the group itself, inasmuch as it allows the exploration of
several possible courses of action and avoids premature fixation on suboptimal
plans. Indeed, the accuracy of the so-called wisdom of crowds has been linked to the
variety of opinions represented within a group and to the independence of judgment
of its members: lacking one or both of these parameters, the collective ability to
converge on a correct belief or find an effective plan of action dramatically decreases
(for discussion, see Surowiecki 2004 ). So it would seem that well-functioning social
groups do not eradicate disagreements among their members, but rather develop
effective methods to negotiate temporary truces when (and only when) consensus
is required on a given matter. This delicate balance between ad hoc agreement
formation and a permanent reservoir of disagreement conveys important lessons
also for argumentation theories. Schematically, a well-adapted “agreement ecology”
includes both techniques for removing disagreements and renewable sources of
further disagreement. On the contrary, a unilateral focus on the former factor runs
the risk of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, that is, promoting social
practices in which the volume of agreements rapidly escalates (possibly gravitating
toward very poor equilibrium points), without at the same time maintaining a
healthy level of baseline disagreement (and thus precluding recovery from the local
minimum where groupthink often precipitates us; see Janis 1982 ; Esser 1998 ).