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Meaning is slippery. Some argue that words only point to other words—a “free play” without solid grounding.

Rather than focusing on meaning, a focus on function can keep conversations moving forward.

Asking, "How would that work?" can reduce extremism and over-confidence.

Dialogue where judgments are set to one side can create space for richer understanding.

Many heated conversations—about everyday topics like medical information and about big topics like foreign policy—seem to wind up challenging our basic understandings of what’s true.

It can feel deeply disturbing to be in a conversation where what seem like basic facts about reality are in question.

In his book Nonduality, philosopher David Loy explains what happened when European thinkers like Jacques Derrida ran into this problem. They discovered that the truth of words and their meanings seems to always rest on the truth of further words and their meanings. It just goes on and on endlessly.

Derrida decided that apparent meaning wasn’t really there. Meaning just depends on other meanings. An idea, when deconstructed, would just lead to other ideas. None of it meant anything definite or universal. Loy calls the result a “free play of discourse.”

That sounds a lot like being on social media today! It can be a frustrating game of continual misunderstandings and endless conflicts about what things mean and what’s true, without much........

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