It might seem odd to introduce a poem by pointing toward a blog on philosophy, but when the poem and the blog are read the connection will be clear.
I deal in controversy, in discourse that is sometimes freighted with more than disagreement. So I wrote the poem on this page 40 years ago while a graduate student, based on a sharp disagreement I had with a friend. She believed one thing and I believed another, and the two could not both be true.
It seems now that my life deals in this situation even more, only the rhetoric and emotions are are stronger, more caustic even.
How are we to deal with this conflict?
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https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/08/oppy-on-disagreement-part-3.html
What does epistemology have to say about solving disputes?
“As can be seen, there is no single correct response or strategy to take toward actual cases of disagreement. The unsurprising irony is that the epistemology of disagreement has managed to give rise to a whole new set of disagreements.”
And then, after discussing religious disputes, the articles comes to this conclusion:
“disagreement must be dealt with in the ordinary way: I’ll state reasons, provide arguments and pinpoint evidence, and you’ll do the same.”
On Truth
The line twixt truth and lies is difficult to see-
It winds and doubles, blurs the mind,
And vanishes unseen.
How then as mortals who would hope
To know the truth can we
Presume to judge on simple lines and clean?
I had a friend who spoke her truth
That was no truth to me.
Whose lies were these, and where
The line to separate between?
For just as I, with pain, had grasped
My truth, she held to what she knew.
And with our private truths like whips
We flailed, to find the root
Of discord and of pain.
No hope in that: the pain did not
Delineate, our differences remained,
And Truth lay somewhere, savaged, in between.
Making Note of the Moments 