Taking on the conversation: unresolved tensions in Conversationalism as a system

Abstract

In his “On the System of Conversational Thinking: An Overview”, and in the talk he presented as part of the development of this paper (similarly titled), Jonathan Chimakonam attempts the first systematic fusion of the various components of Conversationalism. I refer to the ideas in the paper and the talk as ‘SCT’ (short for System of Conversational Thinking) in the comments below. In my response, I make an effort to largely ignore the comparative aspects of the work. In other words, I am not too concerned with the case Chimakonam makes to distinguish Conversationalism as a Philosophy separate from other styles and approaches such as analytic philosophy and hermeneutics. Instead, I make an effort to focus on Conversationalism in its own right and not in contrast to other systems. In doing so, my conversational stance is one of a critical proponent in the sense that I am broadly in favour of much of Conversationalism, but insist on rigorous scrutiny of its insights in the interests of making it stronger. My comments are thus focussed on potential problems with the internal coherence of the ideas contained in Chimakonam’s work, and my hope is to excavate them as areas for further discussion. To this end, I call attention to the following areas of conceptual dissonance in the explication of Conversationalism in SCT.