concurrence |
Working Definition:
A concurrence is an event in which several persons, because of an accord that a problem exists, get together at a specific time and in a specific place to maintain or change that situation.
Disciplinary Definitions:
The root meaning of concurrence is an agreement. A concurrence, in the sense in which it is used in c-cs, is an event in which several persons, because of an accord that a problem exists, get together at a specific time and in a specific place to maintain or change that situation. Concurrence is not based on consensus. It is not required that all concurring agree on fundamental principles. On the contrary, the differences among those concurring are valuable in their collaboration. Rather than seek a superficial agreement on a conceptual framework, the acutely differing perceptions each person has of their situation form a novel "approach" to the problem. In a concurrence, persons do not apply pre-conceived methods. Concurrences break down the conceptual frameworks persons bring to the "event" (their common experience of pain or joy) in favor of heuristically re-negotiated articulations of the problem which can resolve or diminish it. The negotiation is ongoing. Agreement and disagreemnt are in continuous dialectical relation. Whereas at one moment several articulations exhibit striking coincidences and govern the groups' plans for action, at another stage, especially when the pressures of experience break down the always temporary frameworks, other articulations reformulate the problem. Even in instances where some persons remain in constant disagreement with others in the group, this has positive ramifications when such disagreements help sharpen the perspectives of those whose views coincide. Concurrence depends upon care for the other members in the group who work to come to terms with mutually recognized pains and joys. Without such care, disagreements debilitate the aim of the research group. Discussions that are discourses whose shape is largely structured by the canons of argumentation, like all disciplinary debates, have unwritten and un-acknowledged but traceable protocols. I will focus on two: the protocol of scientific inquiry: an agreement to disagree with the expectation that the "better" view will win out and advance knowledge, and the protocol of inter-personal understanding which is an agreement to find agreement in views that are at the surface conflictual with the expectation that the discovered intersections point to productive intellectual concurrence. I refer to the first protocol as "competitive" and the second as "cooperative." (Sosnoski, Modern Skeletons in Postmodern Closets, 168ff.)
Comments:
In forming a research program, the protocol of cooperation is self-evidently more conducive than its rival. There is a simple reason, if we articulate our differences from each other along disciplinary lines, these differences will obscure or neglect the grounds for agreement which is the pre-condition of our cooperation.
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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