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Is there any sense in which a human can have a dialogue with a machine? In common usage dialogue means conversation, talk, discussion. However, the term is deliberately chosen here to signify a search for a certain quality in discourse, a quality not found in all conversations, some being nothing more than an exchange of empty words. A true dialogue does not persuade, delude or dumbfound another person, it is a process of finding something out together with another person. It has no pre-set goal, it has no end, and it is pure movement, movement which cannot be frozen and translated into a formula, a rule or a programme. Whether resulting in agreement or disagreement, dialogue helps to achieve clarity. Socrates used dialogue to demonstrate the falsity of the conviction that being able to state something is the same as possessing real knowledge. Dialogue is a means of gaining insight through inner reflection. "Intuition" places dialogue in a meaningful context, a "presence of mind" which gives it life and depth. Dialogue is not a particular behaviour or attitude; only something purely factual which, whether in the form of words, art or music, involves both parties in their total historical experience.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-1731-5_5

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