Good-Faith Conversation
It is an exchange in which participants are honestly intentioned (bona fides), behaviorally cooperative (Grice), hermeneutically generous (the Principle of Charity), epistemically open (Mill), structurally uncoerced (Habermas), and existentially authentic (Sartre). It is simultaneously a personal virtue—something a speaker must choose, moment by moment, to practice—and a social structure that institutions can either support or undermine.
It's hard to have a good-faith conversation with someone who has already decided they're right before you've said a word.
Good-Faith Conversation by Potatoviro June 4, 2026
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