{"id":41946,"date":"2025-09-01T19:31:03","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41946"},"modified":"2025-09-01T19:31:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T02:31:03","slug":"taboo-topics-and-demonstrating-intellectual-hospitality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/taboo-topics-and-demonstrating-intellectual-hospitality\/","title":{"rendered":"Taboo Topics and Demonstrating Intellectual Hospitality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Based on some of our cohort\u2019s previous posts, I am picturing many of us starting this week\u2019s post off naming the person(s) in our lives whom we cannot have a conversation with regarding certain topics. For many years I have avoided discussing religion and politics with my dad. Over the years, when it comes to religious conversations, I have been practicing Boghossian and Lindsay\u2019s technique of \u201cLet Friends Be Wrong.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 I will acknowledge his beliefs but choose not to argue against them. As Kathryn Schulz points out in her book Being Wrong<\/em>, we do not all \u201cperceive the world the same way.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 One of us is wrong in our beliefs, but Schulz also points out that \u201cthere is<\/em> no experiences of being wrong.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Until reading Boghossian and Lindsay\u2019s book, my thought process was that one day one of us will realize that our perception and beliefs were wrong, and there is no sense in ruining our friendship. After reading the book, I am still willing to practice \u201cLet Friend be Wrong,\u201d[4]<\/a> but now I am equipped with some tools to help me gain an understanding of my dad\u2019s beliefs. What I have noted over the years is that when it comes to religion and politics, it doesn\u2019t seem to take much to make my dad angry.\u00a0 Boghossian and Lindsay mention four facts about anger.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u201cAnger blinds you and derails conversations.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. \u201cAnger seeks its own justification.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. \u201cAll emotions, including anger carry with them what is know as a refractor period.\u201d<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cBy understanding how anger works and committing yourself to avoiding it, you can minimize its impact on your conversations and in your life.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I see the first three occur in conversations with my dad. There are reasons that I do not know that explain why my dad gets so angry.\u00a0 Taking Boghossian and Lindsay\u2019s advice I need to have understanding as a foundational goal in our conversations.[6]<\/a> I need to learn from him. I need to examine his epistemology. When I was very young my dad taught creation and evolution to a Sunday School class at the church we attended. In that class he defended creation. Now, he would be defending evolution. What changed and how did that change occur? Those are epistemological questions I have but have never felt comfortable asking.<\/p>\n

    I listened to two different videos with Boghossian discussing and demonstrating with this audience some of the techniques from the book. I really enjoyed the examples that involved using scales. I believe using scales would be a good technique to use in having conversations with my dad. This would allow both of us to understand how strongly he holds his beliefs.\u00a0 It would also provide me with a great starting point in understanding him and possibly causing him to doubt his own beliefs.<\/p>\n

    Boghossian and Lindsay\u2019s techniques are useful, and I can think of several other people, many are closed minded, with whom I could use these techniques, but how does having impossible conversations relate to leadership?\u00a0 Leadership involves influencing people and as Boghossian and Lindsay point out that needs to be done in a \u201cpsychologically safe environments\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 People do not like to be attacked. Being attacked activates the limbic system and as Boghossian and Lindsay, Bobby Duffy, Tim Hartford and other authors we have read point out we tend not to think rationally when we our emotions are involved.[8]<\/a> If as leaders we want to influence people and possibly change their way of thinking and perceiving the world, then they must feel safe. One way to do this is to exhibit an attitude of intellectual hospitality.<\/p>\n

    Kim Phipps writes:<\/p>\n

    Intellectual hospitality involves care and concern for the person, and it also necessitates inviting others into conversation, listening without prejudging, and affirming the value of others and their perspectives even when legitimate disagreements exist. Most important, intellectual hospitality involves the virtue of epistemological humility, which roots openness to the views of others in the recognition that our own mental powers are limited and that the cognitive experiential, and affective insights of others, especially when they are different from our own, can truly deepen and extend our understanding of others and the world that surrounds us. Intellectual hospitality is not just a matter of being civil to other people in an academic setting; it is a methodology of inquiry that humbly assumes that we can learn as much (or more) from those with whom we disagree as we can from our like-minded colleagues. [9]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t know if Phipps has ever read anything by Boghossian or Lindsay, her essay was published in 2004 well before this book. It really seems to home in on the purpose of engaging in impossible conversations with others.\u00a0 As Boghossian and Lindsay state, the purpose of these impossible conversations is not to win but seek to understand the other person.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

    As leaders, humbly building relationships with those we influence must be a priority; ensuring that people feel safe and understood allows those relationships to be built.<\/p>\n

    Knowing that I have a good safe relationship with my dad, I want to practice intellectual hospitality and engage in impossible conversations with him to understand his epistemology. I know that there is a lot I can learn from him and his life experiences that will help sharpen my own leadership skills.<\/p>\n

    [1]<\/a> Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide<\/em>, (New York: Hatchett Books, 2019), 73.<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong Adventures in the Margin of Error<\/em>, (New York: Harpers Collings, 2010), 55.<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> Schulz, 18.<\/p>\n

    [4]<\/a> Boghossian and Lindsay, 13.<\/p>\n

    [5]<\/a> All four facts were taken from Boghossian and Lindsay, 124.<\/p>\n

    [6]<\/a> Boghossian and Lindsay, 13.<\/p>\n

    [7]<\/a> Boghossian and Lindsay, 12.<\/p>\n

    [8]<\/a> Boghossian an Lindsay; Duffy, Why We are Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding,<\/em> (New York: Basic, 2018); Harford, How to Make the World Add up, <\/em>(Great Britian: Bridge Street Press, 2020).<\/p>\n

    [9]<\/a> Kim S. Phipps \u201cEpilogue: Campus Climate and Christian Scholarship.\u201d In Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation<\/em>. Eds. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (Oxford UP, 2004), 174.<\/p>\n

    [10]<\/a> Boghossian and Lindsay, 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Based on some of our cohort\u2019s previous posts, I am picturing many of us starting this week\u2019s post off naming the person(s) in our lives whom we cannot have a conversation with regarding certain topics. For many years I have avoided discussing religion and politics with my dad. Over the years, when it comes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3473],"class_list":["post-41946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03-boghossian","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41947,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41946\/revisions\/41947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}