↩ ExploRational · A Catalogue of Divergent Rationality
explorational · a divergent move
“Did he do it,” “does it count as theft,” “was it justified,” “is this the right forum” — four different arguments that sound like one. Most deadlocks are two people answering different questions; naming which question reopens the argument.
Antiquity kept a diagnostic for talking past each other. Hermagoras of Temnos, second century BCE, taught advocates to find a dispute's stasis — its standing-place, the question it actually turns on — before writing a word of the speech. He counted four: did it happen; what should it be called; was it justified; is this the right place, time, or person to decide. Roman procedure built the insight in: the praetor fixed which question was being tried before anything was tried — one side proving the deed while the other proves the court cannot hear it is two trials wearing one docket, and neither can end.
The meeting that cannot end runs on the missing diagnosis. One side argues facts — the figures, the timeline, what the contract says. The other argues values — what a decent firm owes, what the neighbourhood deserves. Each reads the other's refusal of its evidence as bad faith; every exchange confirms the reading. They occupy different stases: the harder they argue, the less they touch. The move is the prior question — which of the four questions are we actually in? — and the bench below performs it.
four questions wearing one quarrel
Fact · coniectura — did it happen; is it so? The tell: reaching for evidence — witnesses, records, timestamps, “prove it.”
Definition · definitio — granting the event, what kind of thing is it? The tell: the word “technically,” air-quotes, duelling labels — borrowing or theft, feedback or insult.
Quality · qualitas — granting the event and the name, was it right, good, justified? The tell: openings that concede — “even if,” “sure, but,” “given the week she'd had.”
Procedure · translatio — is this the forum, the moment, the person to decide? The tell: nobody argues the case; they argue standing — “not here,” “not now,” “not your call.”
Classical doctrine ordered them as a ladder of retreats: concede the fact and fight at definition; concede the name and fight at quality; when all else is lost, challenge the forum. A dispute is joined when both parties stand on the same rung. It stalls, with rising heat, when they stand on different ones.
the signature instrument
Name the dispute and list what each side actually says, then drag every claim onto the question it answers — or tap a claim, then tap a stasis. Every readout below is a count of your own sorting: the bench computes structure and grades nothing.
The dishes, again
4 stases · 2 parties · every readout a count of your sorting
01 · the dispute, in one line
02 · the claims each party actually makes
03 · the sort — file every claim under the question it answers
Drag a claim onto a stasis · or tap the claim, then tap the stasis · keyboard: focus a claim and press F, D, Q or P; U returns it.
04 · the relocation — where should it be tried first?
Pick the stasis the dispute cannot proceed without — the first question, not the safest — and write the question in that stasis's form.
what to try
Load the blank bench and enter a real argument from your week: one line for the dispute, then each party's actual sentences as claims — short, quoted, yours included. Sort every claim; file what the sentence does, not what you wish it did.
Read the mismatch map before the headline: where does your claim mass sit, and where does theirs? The headline only names the peaks, so notice how much mass sits off each peak and what the unsorted counter still owes you.
Pick the first stasis and write the relocated question in its frame — then say it to the other party and notice the temperature drop. “Does leaving pans to soak count as leaving the dishes?” is cooler than any accusation it replaces. If their answer relocates it again, that too is data.
naming the stasis reopens the real one
A stasis mismatch feels, from inside, like bad faith. The facts-side hears value-talk as dodging the evidence; the values-side hears fact-talk as missing the point on purpose. “You refuse to listen” is unanswerable, and each round of it hardens. “We are answering different questions” is answerable — a finding with a next move attached. The relief is real and slightly embarrassing: the other party has been arguing competently the whole time, just somewhere else. Naming the stasis turns an enemy into an interlocutor on a different rung, and the quarrel about character collapses into a decision about where to stand together.
Institutions that must end disputes settle the question's kind first. The praetor fixed the formula before the case went to a judge; modern courts hand questions of fact and questions of law to different deciders; jurisdiction and admissibility are closed before anyone reaches the merits. The court's wisdom is sequencing — one question at a time, in an agreed order. Conversations that never end usually skipped that step and are trying everything at once, forever.
the honest bench
The displayed values are counts of chips you placed: the profiles, the peaks, the unsorted counter, the overlap. The map diagnoses the conversation as you parsed it — a second sorter might file “the rota says Thursday is your night” under procedure where you filed fact, and neither of you is wrong about the instrument. Sort the same dispute with the other party and argue about the placements: the argument over where a claim goes is usually the real argument arriving, at a lower temperature. The presets' suggested sortings are labelled suggestions for the same reason — comparing is a conversation, not a mark. And the bench never scores the relocation: no count could tell you where a dispute ought to be tried. That judgment stays yours.
the move ↔ the bench
| The move | The bench |
|---|---|
| a claim chip | one thing actually said — a sentence from the quarrel, kept short enough to sort. |
| the fact card | what happened: events, records, evidence — the world's side of the dispute. |
| the definition card | what to call it: the category a conceded event is being filed under. |
| the quality card | whether it was justified: evaluation, once event and name are granted. |
| the procedure card | whose call it is, and how: forum, standing, timing — the question about the question. |
| the mismatch map | the two parties' different questions, made visible as claim mass on the four stases. |
how this opening fails
risk · endless deferral
The move's own weapon turns: whenever a stasis starts going badly, relocate to one you are winning — and never land. Procedure is the classic bolt-hole: argue the forum, the standing, the timing, the process for deciding the process, and the merits never arrive; every institution knows the party that files motions instead of answers. The relocation step asks for the first question — the one the dispute cannot proceed without — not the safest. If your relocations keep drifting away from the stasis you were losing, the bench has become a trapdoor, and the deferral is the decision.
risk · over-diagnosis
When both profiles peak on the same stasis, the map says so; believe it. A shared question means the parties are already in the same argument, and no relocation dissolves an honest disagreement about a hard fact or a real conflict of values. Reaching for the sorter again uses re-framing to avoid the shared question. Sometimes the question is correctly framed, and the parties need evidence and argument on the rung they already share.
Before you argue harder, name which of the four questions you are actually in.
can you use it?
RECOGNITION — Which quarrel calls for this move? A · Two reviewers dispute whether a study replicated, each citing data. B · One flatmate cites the rota; the other insists soaked pans are not dirty dishes. C · A committee still choosing its agenda.
B — procedure against definition, different stases, so the harder they argue the less they touch. A is already joined at fact: believe the shared peak and argue evidence there.
THE NEAREST NEIGHBOR — Finding the crux also locates where a disagreement lives. One criterion separates the moves — what is it?
Whether the parties share a rung. This move asks which of the four questions each side is answering; the crux hunts the load-bearing claim inside a question both sides already occupy. A crux exists only in a joined dispute.
PRODUCTION — A team is deadlocked on ending a vendor contract: one side lists missed deadlines, the other repeats that procurement owns the decision. Name each side's stasis and write the first question in its frame before looking.
Deadlines argue fact; “procurement owns it” argues procedure — and procedure is tried first, since nothing proceeds without a forum: “Whose call is ending this contract, and by what process?” Yours works if it files what each sentence does and phrases the first question in that stasis's form.