Talking past each other

Talking past each other is an English phrase meaning two or more people talking about different subjects, while they believe that they are talking about the same thing.

Talking past each other is an idiomatic expression describing a situation in which people in a discussion proceed at . There is a .

In other words, "those who subscribe to alternative, incommensurable paradigms are bound to a degree to talk past each other."

The idiomatic expression is an allusion to the interaction between Thrasymachus and Socrates over the question of "justice" in Plato's Republic I. In their dialogue, neither man addressed any of the issues raised by the other and two different concepts which need not have been disputed are somehow confused.

In fictional dialogue, when characters "talk past each other, ...[they are said to] expose an unbridgeable gulf between their respective perceptions and intentions. The result is an exchange, but never an interchange, of words in fragmented and cramped utterances..."

The phrase is used in widely varying contexts. For example, in 1917 Albert Einstein and David Hilbert had dawn-to-dusk discussions of physics; and they continued their debate in writing, although Felix Klein records that they talked past each other, as happens not infrequently between simultaneously producing mathematicians.'"

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