Michael writes: > I would only add that in >these debates nobody seems to learn anything from anybody else -- at >least, you can pretty well predict what the few participants in such >debates will write.
To be sure, most postings in most PEN-L debates appear as predictable rehearsals of existing positions. But for what it's worth, that doesn't mean that no learning is going on, despite the occasionally frustrating lack of anything that looks like progress or meetings of minds. Among the things I've gotten from past PEN-L debates in which I've participated are: finding out the range of possible arguments against a given position (and possible responses); references to relevant literature (particularly useful); and offline correspondences that often *do* end up going somewhere. On the first point, for those who enter given debates seriously and in good faith, positions and counterpositions can be developed much more rapidly than via the traditional route of published exchanges in journals. I think that's been a real contribution of this medium, despite its drawbacks. Gil
