Navigating Differences in Conviction and Belief

Was listening to a talk by Father Andrew Stephen Damick this morning. He suggested, and the following is my own summation, that there are three important things to remember when it comes to navigating differences in beliefs and worldview:
1. Recognizing that its possible that someone actually understands what you are saying and your point of view and still doesn’t agree.

One familiar motif when it comes to discussing beliefs/convictions/worldview is that if someone disagrees it means they don’t understand. This can often be the case. However, things spiral out of control when we assume that the only way a person can understand is if they agree, and this happens all the time, often with both parties equally guilty of doing the same thing

2. Everyone’s beliefs and convictions, or the arguments they are making (which can be ones they ultimately disagree with), necessarily function within the specific boundaries of their given assumptions.

So often what happens in discussions is people believe they are operating without bias and are the only truly objective one in the conversation. Similarly, they treat their argument as though it is able to function apart from their given assumptions in a truly empirical and reasoned fashion. The end result is often propping up a fallacy that then uses their conclusions as an argument for their given assumptions. Not only that, but arguments are used to address a point of view that is operating according to a very different set of assumptions with a very different set of questions, leading to a never ending set of logical fallacies that confuse the necessary limitations of a given argument.

3. We all have a worldview, and we all have beliefs/convictions/biases, and empiricism and reason and logic  do not operate apart from these things. They can only function well in relationship to these things. They are in fact subservient to them, and necessarily so.

Empiricism, reason, logic, they do not function in a bubble. These are benign things apart from interpretation and an interpreter. Functional realities cannot and do not speak on their own. One of the great tragedies of modernism is that it convinced us that they do.