Ways to handle the dilemma: No. 2--Increase the broadness of commensurability

One can also increase the broadness of what one considers to be 'commensurability'. I could call it 'measurable by a common standard of conduciveness to a convergence of opinion'. Therefore, one could consider that existing convergence of opinion and appreciability are both coercive because reason is not involved.

First, this means that one would now have to increase one's number of levels. One would have to include 'brainwashability' in there somewhere, although I suppose that one could call it 'programmability'.

Second, it could also affect the order of the levels. My natural tendency would be to put programmability in last place, but one might well find that this was only a judgement about its possibility in practice. In principle, if we increased the sophistication of the technology involved, there would be reason not to suppose that programmability could come first.

Third, it also makes the power of consensus and appreciability arbitrary. For one thing, their position in the list can now vary relative to programmability. But it also sheds light on how non-arbitrary their relative positions are, with or without the presence of programmability. Might not consensus sometimes be more powerful than appreciability for certain kinds of views, and vice versa? Besides, the very notion of consensus itself is problematic, because consensus is a matter of degrees. By consensus I have only meant a very high level of consensus, so that someone who disagrees with the consensus is probably only being disingenuous anyway. But if we are not treating rationality as special, then what is to stop us considering the relative persuasive power of different degrees of consensus?

I think clearly we have to keep thinking in terms of a non-coercive convergence of opinion. If might makes right in rational discourse, to paraphrase Rousseau, then it can only produce a tissue of bewildering nonsense.

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