Site Update

I'm planning to take this site in a slightly different direction over the summer, so it may be down now and then over the next few weeks and when it re-emerges, it will likely be different than what you've seen up until now.

Feel free to check in periodically to see what's going on, and stay tuned!

Negative Ads – Mapping Arguments

Having looked at one of Governor Romney’s negative ads in our last entry, in the interest of fairness it’s time to review a negative ad produced by the Obama campaign targeting his presumed Republican rival. 

In this instance, we’re looking at this TV ad which is was designed to portray Romney, who served as the CEO of the large private equity firm Bain Capital, as being responsible for the closing of the century-old CST steel mill with the result of numerous lost jobs and ruined lives. 

Others have discussed the effectiveness of the ad, and we could certainly analyze it in terms of its use of pathos to lead viewers towards a specific conclusion (specifically, the ads use of moving emotional testimony from people affected by the plant shut down and powerful images of a ruined landscape where a thriving enterprise once stood – illustrating both the theme of devastation and hinting at what the American landscape might look like if the Republican candidate is elected).

But today we are continuing our look at argumentation and, as mentioned previously, negative ads – for all their manipulativeness – must be premised on some kind of logical argument (as opposed to positive ads that can rely just on warm and fuzzy pathos).  And if we can figure out what argument a negative ad is making, we can use that understanding to determine our next steps towards drawing our own informed conclusions.

This time, we are going to make use of the Toulin method for diagramming arguments that I mentioned in a previous post.  It’s worth reading that original piece over to understand how Toulmin breaks arguments down into Grounds (evidence) leading to a Claim (a conclusion) with a Warrant providing the support that links Grounds to Claims.  (We’re going to keep this example simple by skipping over Backing for now.)

The Bain ad actually starts with a simple argument that can be presented in Toulin fashion as:

By breaking the argument into these linked components, it becomes easier to determine which elements can be supported or challenged.  For example, the Grounds cannot be challenged on the basis of fact since Bain was indeed the owner of the firm during its slide towards bankruptcy. 

On one level, Mitt Romney’s role in the firm (the Warrant) also looks like a statement of fact, but this is deceptive.  Like many complex real-world situations, not all truths resemble “All Cats are Animals” with regard to judging truth or falsehood.  For example, one could look at the timing of decisions related to CST and map them to the timing of Governor Romney’s changing roles within the organization (which take into account his leaves of absence when running the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 or running for the Presidency in 2008).  One could also challenge whether Romney’s role in a large organization such as Bain was directly responsible for the mill being shut down.  In both cases, you would be challenging whether the Warrant is sufficient to support the Claim (that Romney is responsible for the shutdown of the mill) regardless of the accuracy of the Grounds.

It’s at this point that the Warrant ends up turning into a Claim to another argument which expands our Toulin diagram to look like this:

Again, one can challenge the Claim and/or Warrant of this new argument (digging further into the reasoning behind certain decisions, for example) or questioning the responsibility of the CEO for the consequences – expected or unexpected – of every decision.  But putting aside details of how such challenges might be made, you can begin to see how mapping the logical argument hidden within the original seemingly emotion-driven negative ad gives us something substantial to discuss when either supporting or challenging its fundamental call to action.

And what is that call to action?  Well if we expand our Toulin map to include the critical hidden argument that sits on top of the entire persuasive effort, it would look like this:

While it took a little work to tease out the argument underlying the Obama ad, now that we’ve done so we have a number of ways to explore or challenge the entire argument, with research from news sources like this one being useful to help us accept or reject certain Grounds, Claims and Warrants.

For those who feel negative ads to be unpleasant or manipulative, the effort needed to turn them into a coherent logical argument (leveraging tools like Toulmin to make sure such arguments take into account more than Aristotelian syllogisms can) helps us do something the makers of such ads would prefer we don’t do: think for ourselves.  

Negative Ads - Syllogism

We’re all supposed to loath the phenomena of negative campaigning, especially the dreaded “hit-and-run” 30-second TV spot - coming soon to every television commercial break near you (at least if you live in Ohio).

I’ll admit that there is a lot to dislike about negative ads, from their use of manipulative language, tone (including music) and imagery, to their reliance on out-of-context quotations or quotes from third parties (such as that ordinary guy on the street) to put a campaign’s talking points into the mouth of someone other than the candidate.

But from a critical thinking perspective, I actually like negative ads much more than positive ones.  This may seem ironic, given all of the tricks these ads seem to play to short-circuit reason.  But if you look at a positive ad, one that usually extols the virtue of a candidate using warm-and-fuzzy images of the candidate surrounded by a loving family, or listening intently as voters share their concerns, all set to background music designed to create an emotional state (“He cares!”, “She’s strong!, etc.), you realize that these positive ads have avoided reason altogether by creating a presentation based solely on pathos (emotion).

In contrast, negative ads (for all their faults) actually try to present an argument. Yes, that argument may be truncated to fit the 30-second TV format.  And yes, this argument may be illogical or unfair.  But if we can tease out the argument an attack ad is trying to make, we might discover or construct a legitimate, logical and even substantial argument that can be used as the basis for some serious thinking.

As we did with stump speeches, we’ll use negative ads from each party to explore one of the critical thinking subjects we’ve talked about more generally elsewhere.  So let’s start by looking at a spot put out by the Republican National Committee (called “Doing Fine”) to explore how principles of classical logic can be applied to our consideration of the Presidential candidates.

To get a few obvious things out of the way, clearly this ad suffers from most of the abuses of the genre, from ominous background music to a clipped news image (repeated twice) that screams “out of context quotation” to even the untrained eye.  But rather than dismiss the content of the ad out of hand due to these abuses (something many people do – although only with ads put out by candidates they don’t like), let’s try to assemble the argument the ad is trying to make in more detail.

Like most of the messaging coming out of the Romney campaign (and its surrogates and supporters), this ad focuses on the US economy which Republicans claim is doing very poorly.  And the statement that anchors their “Doing Fine” ad was spoken by President Obama during a press conference in which he says “the Private sector is doing fine,” which the ad presents as indicating the President is out of touch with the genuine state of the private sector economy.

If we were to organize the key points of the ad into a classical syllogism, it might look something like this:

* The President says that the private sector is doing fine in the current US economy

* The private sector is, in fact, not doing well at all

* Therefore, the President is out of touch with the reality of the current economic situation

This syllogism is linked to a general argument that underlies the Romney campaign which says that someone who is out of touch with economic difficulties (and is responsible for many of those difficulties) should not be elected President.  But for purposes of this discussion, the three statements in the syllogism above give us a good starting point for doing further research (and thinking) about some important subjects.

The first thing we can do is to look at the original context in which the President made his “doing fine” statement which we can fortunately do easily using this newfangled Internet thingee.  Now, by definition, anything less than a full rebroadcast of the original press conference would constitute a partial presentation.  But abridged does not always translate to “out of context,” and if you read or watch President Obama’s press conference in its entirety, I think it’s fair to claim that he demonstrates a comfort level with the current state of the private sector economy.

It’s also clear that he understands the struggles the private sector has done through over the last 4-5 years.  And, more importantly, he is making a case that other economic issues (the crisis in Europe, challenges in the public sector) are more problematical (and thus need more attention) than problems in the private sector.  So if we look at the original first premise of the argument drawn from the “Doing Fine” ad, a more accurate revision might say “President Obama thinks the private sector is doing better than other parts of the economy and thus needs less attention from government.”

Moving onto the second premise, the TV ad provides just three pieces of evidence (shots of newspaper clips discussing fears associated with slow job growth).  But problems with these sources of evidence include: (1) they are just snippets from three newspapers (only two of which are identifiable); and (2) none of these stories clearly focus on the subject at hand, which is the current state of the private sector economy.

Further examination of these sources might show that they do support the RNC’s second premise of a struggling private economy.  But even if they do, they do not provide sufficient evidence to support the argument as a whole.  So in the case of the second premise, we have an obvious avenue (do some research ourselves on the state of the private sector economy) to confirm or deny the second premise in the argument.

We should also keep in mind that even if the first two premises prove absolutely true, that does not necessarily mean that the conclusion follows from those premises.  But they could help us develop a more reasonable conclusion (such as that the President feels that government support for the private sector is a lower priority than helping shore up the public sector or supporting Europe). 

Depending on your political point of view, this might be a good thing or a bad thing.  But at least it demonstrates how a limited or truncated argument derived from the lowly negative TV ad can be used as the starting point for constructing something that is actually worth thinking about.

Stump Speech - Rhetoric

Just as we used the stump speech of the presumed Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, to illustrate the concepts of logos and pathos, we can now use a speech of his likely rival, President Obama (in this case, his 2012 campaign kickoff speech – which you should read through before continuing) to look at another critical thinking concept: the use of persuasive language (referred to earlier as “rhetoric”).

Most commentators would agree that President Obama is a highly skilled orator, which means his use of a number of rhetorical devices comes off more naturally than they would if used by a less talented speaker.  While such ability comes with some perils (notably, a tendency to talk too long or pack too many rhetorical schemes and tropes into a single speech), audiences tend to become more uplifted and transported when listening to a speaker who brings a skilled use of rhetoric to his or her presentations.

Let’s start by looking at some of the linguistic devices that tend to make the President’s speech “easy on the ear.”  First, you can find many instances of alliteration (the repeating of initial consonant sounds).  Thus we are reclaiming a “basic bargain that built” (B-B-B) and dealing with “a house of cards that collapsed in the most destructive crisis” (C-C-C), which is why we are at a “make-or-break moment for the middle class” (M-M-M).

Similarly, the President makes extensive use of anaphora, the repetition of the same word at the start of multiple linked sentences or phrases, which is why your children should get the chance to do better “no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what your last name is.”  On the written page, all those extra “or’s” would be superfluous.  But when spoken, they add life to an otherwise flat sentence, which is why we need to “make sure we aren’t taken advantage of by credit card companies and mortgage lenders and financial institutions” (as opposed to credit card companies, mortgage lenders and financial institutions – a less threatening group without that extra “and” replacing the comma).

Triplets abound within his speech, signifying how much we like examples, concepts and phrases to be grouped into threes (such as those aforementioned credit card companies, mortgage lenders and financial institutions).  Or take a look at this paragraph, in which the anaphoric phrase “Why else” is repeated at the beginning of three sentences to pull us through a particularly damning set of accusations:

"Why else would he [Governor Romney] want to spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Why else would he propose cutting his own taxes while raising them on 18 million working families? Why else would he want to slash the investments that have always helped the economy grow, but at the same time, stop regulating the reckless behavior on Wall Street that helped the economy crash?”

Before moving on, keep in mind that the use of these types of rhetoric flourishes by a skilled speaker is not necessarily manipulative, or even a conscience choice by a speechwriter or speaker.  Every speaker wants to both convince and move an audience and devices like alliteration and anaphora are often what turn a dry speech into engaging oratory.  And a skilled writer or speaker has likely internalized these techniques to the point of using them without even knowing they represent named devices (much like my frequent use of this parentheses device became second nature before I even realized it had a name).

Elsewhere in the speech, President Obama’s points become more sophisticated and nuanced, allowing him to avoid one of the biggest problems in a stump speech: how to attack one’s political enemies without sounding shrill or small-minded (a particularly problem for an incumbent President who must not be seen as damaging the dignity of his office).

Which is why he spends half a paragraph heaping praise on his likely adversary as a “patriotic American who has raised a wonderful family…” who has a lot to be proud of, including having “run a large financial firm” as well as a state (my own state of Massachusetts, as it happens).  But (the President asserts), Governor Romney has learned the wrong lessons from these experiences (assigning to him the belief that wealth flows from the top down).

Now, one can argue that he misrepresents his opponent’s actual positions, but as a rhetorical structure, Obama’s praise for his opponent followed by harsh criticism presented more in sorrow than anger is an masterful way of condemning his opponent’s beliefs (while also defining those beliefs in a way that fits the President’s own campaign themes) without coming off as insincere or sarcastic (as in “my opponent deserves the billions he earned by ripping off the public for years”).

The speech actually climaxes eight paragraphs from the end with a series of rhetorical questions: "Will we [be] better off if more Americans get a better education?”, “Will we better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity?”, etc. (each of which is punctuated by the repeated phrase: “That is the question.” – an unnecessary add-on in an otherwise economical speech).  Given that he is likely to be speaking to a friendly audience, the anticipated answer to each question is likely a resounding “Yes” shouted from the crowed, creating a dramatic bonding moment between speaker and audience, leaving the remainder of the speech as a relaxing cigarette and promises of more to follow.

Regardless of your political persuasion, watching an artist perform his or her craft well is something we should all be ready to appreciate.  Especially since mastery of these devices can help us learn to effectively persuade others to do what we know is best for them (or at least help us identify when someone is trying to persuade us to do what they feel is best for us).

Stump Speech – Logos and Pathos

It’s time to take a look at an actual campaign artifact and see what critical thinking lessons can be drawn from it. 

As the campaign heats up, we’ll be spoiled for choice on what to analyze, but for the next few postings, I’d like to take a look at some familiar political devices, starting with the “stump speech.”

This is the standard speech a candidate gives on the campaign trail, sometimes more than a dozen times a day.  Candidate speeches are interesting in that, unlike TV commercials, they allow a candidate to fully flesh out the ideas and themes behind their candidacy.  They also allow a candidate to play the high-minded Dr. Jeckyl (allowing TV ads and surrogates to act as Mr. Hyde by delivering accusations and condemnations that would sound terrible coming out of the mouth of the candidate him or herself).

Because public speeches are the direct descendent of the type of political oratory around which the rules of rhetoric developed, they still utilize techniques and devices that have been analyzed and categorized for more than two millennia. 

But forces of modernity (especially with regard to media) influence this classic form in a number of significant ways.  Most importantly, because a candidate can count on every word in their speech being dissected and rebroadcast (both in and out of context), public speeches today must be carefully constructed to minimize internal phrases or sentences that would sound terrible separated from the whole (and broadcast to the world).  They must also strive for consistency with previous speeches, as well as the candidate’s overall track record, in order to not provide ammunition to those ready to make accusations of hypocrisy (one of the worst curses in our political lexicon).

We’ll start by looking at this stump speech by presumed Republican Presidential contender Mitt Romney.   Now this speech was actually given in January when Romney was still running in a heated primary.  But because most of his speech focuses on his presumed future Democratic rival (rather than present Republican ones), it’s likely that these will be his words of choice during the actual Presidential campaign.  I also like the fact that the newspaper in which this speech was reproduced used the occasion to dissect some of the language for rhetorical themes (indicating recognition of public interest in some of the things we’re discussing here).

In addition to the general requirements of stump speeches described above, candidates bring their own strengths and challenges to this rhetorical form.  Former Governor Romney, for example, is known to be an average public speaker, which means he is less likely to use some of the rhetorical flourishes a more polished speaker would use to avoid having his words sound artificial and written.  Because the candidate is known to be extremely wealthy (and because this year’s Presidential campaign is likely to include themes pitting the wealthy “1%” against “the rest of us”), Romney has an additional requirement to avoiding sounding too patrician, while also avoiding sounding as though he’s posing as a pleb.

Like most speeches, this one blends logos (an appeal to logic) and pathos (an appeal to emotion), with Romney’s focus primarily on the state of the US economy.  The logic behind his appeal is fairly straightforward and can be broken down into a relatively simple syllogism:

* The economy has gotten worse since Barak Obama became President

* A candidate who presided over the worsening of the economy should not be re-elected

* Therefore: You should vote for a candidate other than Barak Obama

Obviously, his presentation is more sophisticated than the three statements above, and he does make additional linked arguments that indicate Obama’s current economic policies are ingrained in the President’s political philosophy (which Romney claims are statist – implying Obama seeks governmental solutions to every problem).  But the simple logic noted above provides a way of either appreciating or attacking the Republican’s argument.  If one were to do the latter, one could (for example):

* “Attack” the first premise by asking questions regarding what he means by “worse,” and do some research regarding how the economy has done as a whole during the last four years (rather than just focus on a few negative – or positive – elements within the economy)

* Presuming you accept the first premise to be true (and even if you don’t), finding historical precedent whereby a candidate who managed a struggling economy during his first term presided over a much more robust economy in the second (indicating that his first four years might have been spent delivering necessary medicine that paid off during the next four).  Since this description could apply to Ronald Reagan, this approach offers Romney’s rivals the chance to “turn the tables” on him by utilizing the experience of a Republican hero to counter the current Republican candidate’s claims.

* Not accept that the two premises lead to the conclusion by pointing out that factors outside of the economy (such as foreign policy) should also go into the decision of whom to vote for

In any speech about the economy, pathos is invoked by translating economic trends into direct negative consequences for Americans (a lost job, foreclosed home, loss of retirement savings, etc.).  It’s interesting to note that Romney does not use a typical device of naming specific people (sometimes pointing them out in the audience) who have suffered these negative consequences.  While he may have simply not chosen to do so on this particular campaign stop, it may be that this particular device (which can be effective in skilled hands) can come off contrived if the chemistry between candidate and audience is not there.

Overall, Romney’s appeal to emotion is evenly distributed between fear (the economy’s going south and it’s going to take you with it!) and hope (a different path can lead us out of the current quagmire).  And his appeal to hope links to more fundamental “good emotions,” notably an appeal to American founding principles and values.  So while pathos is in the ascendant in this speech, it would be a stretch to call it a simple appeal to fear designed to bypass reason by appealing to the worst in us.

Because Romney’s presumed rival is a more gifted public speaker, we’ll use President Obama’s stump speech (actually the announcement of his candidacy) to look at some important examples of political rhetoric 

Application

Now that it looks like we know who the two candidates/contenders/interlocutors will be for this November’s election, it’s time to start applying some of the ideas that have appeared on this blog over the last several months to actual political content (speeches, advertisements and the like).  So next up will be a bit of critical thinking analysis of one of the candidate’s stump speeches.

But before we go there I should point out that, unlike last election’s Undecidedman blog, this exercise is purely about using something we all have in common (a national election) to teach, learn about and apply various critical thinking skills.  The goal is not to come to a conclusion on which candidate to vote for, but to use one of the few experiences we all share as Americans to study a topic that struggles to find a home in traditional educational settings.

I mention this because one of the most important things you need to do to engage in this kind of activity is to embrace a Principle of Charity which requires you to actually take both sides in a political contest seriously. 

This is far easier said than done in a poll-tested and media-driven political age when political campaigns are informed far more by advertising and marketing techniques (branding – both positive and negative, targeted communications, demographic-driven decision-making) than by analysis of actual people or issues. 

As noted previously, most of us have pre-sorted ourselves into communities where genuine political disagreement is considered peculiar or profoundly uncomfortable.  And within these communities, we carefully filter our input, leveraging new technologies (notably cable or satellite TV and the Internet) to stream ourselves a steady diet of opinions we already agree with, coupled with pre-digested invective against those we don’t like.  Even the current affairs shelf of the bookstore (if you’re lucky enough to live near one) groan under the weight of ghost-written tomes by professional partisans who treat voters as market segments to be sold into.

More sinisterly, this same type of targeted marketing is the cornerstone of most professional campaigns.  To take one example, because I signed up on one of the candidate web sites during the last election, I ended up on the mailing list for one of the party’s congressional campaign committees who send me a steady stream of e-mails declaring that only I can stop the unceasing evil of the opposing party by writing an ongoing series of requested checks.  The notion that I would be appalled by such a transparent (and pathos-driven) appeal is irrelevant to the e-mail marketers sending out this spam since, as far as they’re concerned, I’m simply one of the millions of people who sit outside their anticipated 1.5% “hit rate.”

But to actually immerse yourself in a genuine political debate requires you to start with the Principle of Charity assumption that both candidates are reasonable and dedicated men who have things to say, arguments to present, and a genuine dedication to doing the right thing for the country.  Now even with this assumption as a starting point, we will likely find one candidate’s vision more compelling or their argument better presented than the other.  And since we need to make some decision as November rolls around, we will eventually need to choose a side in order to place our vote.

The alternative (especially if you knew years or decades ago how you would vote in this election, regardless of who the candidates are) is to spend the next 6-7 months creating justifications for a decision that’s already been made and calling that political deliberation.  This is actually the easiest option which both candidates (and their scientifically managed campaigns) fully support, so long as you do your thing in a state they can take for granted, allowing them to focus their resources and attention elsewhere (i.e., ignore you). 

The downside of such an approach is that it leaves you totally irrelevant as a political actor, letting you hole up in a sorted community, trading news about your preferred candidate’s virtues (or, more frequently, the vices and weirdness of his opponent) with the like-minded and awaiting orders from on high regarding where to send your money (since your vote is already taken for granted). 

The Principle of Charity offers an alternative (but equally simple) filtering mechanism.  For example, would Romney supporters be freaked out if their candidate spent his childhood abroad and was the product of elite American universities (as was Obama)?  If not, then this is not a genuine issue.  Similarly, are Obama supporters as curious about the hijinks their candidates participated in during his youth as they are regarding Romney’s high school behavior?  If not, this too can be put aside as we treat both candidates (and ourselves) as adults ready to use our full freedom (including freedom of thought) to make an informed decision – the most important one we will all make this year.

Orwellian Wisdom

Certain texts repeatedly come up in any discussion of persuasive communications.

Aristotle’s works on logic and rhetoric top the list for obvious reasons, as do historic speeches by great writers and orators such as Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King.

But an essay by George Orwell, called Politics and the English Language, also tends to be discussed frequently when critical thinking, rhetoric (or whatever else you want to call the subject under discussion at this site) turns to political matters. 

Orwell’s brilliance as a political and literary thinker provides enough reason for his work to show up in so many different areas of learning.  And his accessibility (particularly through his fictional works such as Animal Farm and 1984, which many of us were introduced to in High School) also accounts for his name being so frequently invoked in political discussion.

I also suspect that as an anti-totalitarian Socialist, Orwell is hard to claim exclusively by either Left or Right, both of which utilize his name and work (often to condemn what they perceive to be the ultimate end point of the other side’s political trajectory).  And given how much these two poles have come to define the boundaries and dynamics of political debate for the last century, it’s at least good to know that a writer who transcends such a dichotomy still resonates with today’s readers (and thinkers).

A quote from Politics and the English Language that frequently makes an appearance is Orwell’s translation of an honest (if hideous) political sentiment into contemporary, immoral double-speak:

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism.  He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”  Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that certain curtailment of the rights to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

This excerpt alone is enough to demonstrate the decrepitude of language Orwell was warning about, but reading through his essay from start to finish, you realize that he is not just discussing the symptoms but also the cause of this disease.  And this cause is the understandable desire to make ones writing seem more informed and well thought through than it is by stringing together “strips” of pre-fabricated or pre-digested words or groups of words (which might be clichés, but may also be acceptable but overused phrases or metaphors), rather than actually knowing what you want to say and putting the time, effort and thought into figuring out how to say it well.

One doesn’t need to tune into the latest presidential speech or candidate debate to see this stringing together of reasonable-sounding but utterly vacuous language as a substitute for serious thought and honest communication.  Anyone who has worked in an office setting will immediately recognize it in the language of the corporate memo whose writer can’t bring him or herself to simply say: “The strategy we decided to follow last year was a failure, so we’re going to abandon it and try something else.”  (As opposed to the much more familiar “Market conditions have changed over the last 12-18 months, which require us to review all initiatives underway within the organization.  And while not diminishing our commitment to key market opportunities and methods of achieving them with which stakeholders are already aware, current plans are to broaden our existing strategies to encompass new alternatives that will help us maximize value for our customers, employees and shareholders.”)

But modern politics adds a new twist to the subject of Orwell’s warnings: the use of science (or more specifically, scientific polling and statistical analysis) designed to determine exactly which points and what phraseology will get the biggest rise (and produce the fewest “negatives”) within a well-honed and audience-tested speech.  In other words, science – which helps us reach precision and accuracy in so many other endeavors – in politics is being used to ensure that meaningless or deceptive language will still sound correct and honest to certain audiences. 

A way out of this trap for ourselves is to follow Orwell’s suggestion and begin our thinking about an argument not by selecting language that seems convincing, but by truly thinking through what we are trying to achieve.  And once that’s been accomplished, we should choose the fewest, clearest and shortest words needed to communicate our message, ornamenting language (if necessary) with vivid and original images and metaphors, rather than tired clichés. 

And as consumers of persuasive communication, we should stay on high alert for dying metaphors (play into the hands of, grist for the mill, anytime soon…), verbal false limbs (render inoperative, be subjected to, exhibit a tendency towards…), pretentious diction (categorical, virtual, ameliorate, extraneous), and meaningless words (or at least words that clearly mean more than one thing being used definitively, such as democracy and patriotism). 

While it might be a challenge to tap into the wisdom of thinkers who wrote in the 400s BCE in an age when we think we have all the answers, it’s worth listening to someone speaking to use from a “mere” 66 years ago who clearly understands us better than we understand ourselves.

Resources

Some people have the good fortune to study and even teach aspects of critical thinking skills (in the form of philosophy, computer programming and even – gasp! – critical thinking as its own standalone subject).

But the good news is that one doesn’t need to dedicate one’s life to studying the topic in order to apply key (and easy-to-learn) critical thinking skills to important everyday tasks (such as the every-four-year job of selecting a President).

When thinking about why I’ve zeroed in on some critical thinking tools and not others in this run up to the Presidential contest, a parallel that comes to mind is the teaching by Mr. Miyagi in the original 1984 Karate Kid (not the recent - and probably better - version with the one-and-only Jackie Chan).

During that film, the young protagonist (played by Ralph Machio) received a crash course in martial arts by his elderly mentor Miyagi (played by Pat Morita of Happy Days fame).  These lessons included learning a few key motions extremely well, not by kicking and punching, but by repeating mundane tasks which included “Paint the Fence” and the legendary “Wax On, Wax Off” maneuvers. 

Once he realized that these activities had created “muscle memory” that translated directly to certain karate moves, he inquired of his sifu if this gave him what he needed to compete against far stronger and more experienced rivals.  Quality, he was told, can trump quantity of knowledge, strength, experience, (and even a willingness to cheat); a lesson demonstrated when Miyagi’s young charge proceeded to kick the ass of one opponent after another.

In the same way, familiarity with critical thinking skills (such as how the contents of an argument can be analyzed for logos and pathos, or knowledge of fallacies or rhetorical devices) gives all of us the tools needed to review the persuasive speech that comes at us during a political campaign (in the form of formal speeches, debate performances, and political ads). And these same tools can help us review media inputs for accuracy and bias.

The fact that there are over a hundred types of fallacies, or that rhetorical devices can be divided into dozens of schemes and tropes does not mean we need to memorize long lists of Greek and Latin names in order to have these concepts at our fingertips when needed.  In fact, once we start doing some analysis of this candidate’s speech or that candidate’s debate performance, we can reference information on the pages linked above to name concrete examples of this fallacy or that word scheme and analyze their effectiveness.

All that said, some people might prefer a more comprehensive understanding of the tools of persuasion before we enter the campaign season in earnest.  And since I’ll only have your attention a few minutes each week, I wanted to pass on a resource for those who have the time to dedicate a few hours to this subject over the coming months.

For many years, I’ve taken to listening to audio-based college courses during my morning and afternoon commutes. Some of these have been downloaded from iTunes University (which are pretty hit or miss, especially since I’m not fond of recorded classroom lectures that include interaction with students I’m not sitting next to).  But two companies: The Teaching Company and Modern Scholar, provide course on CD (as well as Internet download) that have helped me catch up on a range of subjects I missed in college (especially in areas of ancient history and philosophy). 

These too have been hit or miss (although with a higher hit rate than iTunes, especially since they were created with the commuting listener in mind), and I just completed a Modern Scholar course entitled “Way with Words: Writing Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion” by Professor Michael Drout of Wheaton College.  Drout is a medieval history/sci-fi/fantasy/language dweeb (a set of fixations I wholeheartedly endorse), who manages to pack a solid presentation of many of the topics we’ve been touching on into less than eight hours of lectures. 

While this course was probably intended for students trying to improve their writing, most of the lectures are applicable to any form of communication (including the aspects of persuasive speech we’ll be seeing during the upcoming campaign).  Given that this and other courses are available for the grand total of $0 from many libraries, if you’ve got some free time between now and the conventions, you could do worse than to dedicate a few hours to this highly efficient way of learning.

Nudge Nudge

Finishing up the discussion of Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow on a cautionary note, the book’s model of a human mind broken into two parts: a fast, associative System 1 that does the bulk of our day-to-day cognitive work and a slower, deliberative System 2 that analyzes deeply, handles counter-intuitive situations, and takes control when necessary should be seen for what it is: a metaphor.

The author himself announces the metaphorical nature of his construct of the mind, telling us early on that his creation of the labels System 1 and System 2 was a deliberate artifice which, among other things, provides his alleged System 1 some named characters for one of the stories it uses to achieve understanding.  And as much as the metaphor of slow and fast mental entities working in partnership helps explain a wide number of observable phenomena (such as our tendency to fall for visual and cognitive illusions), we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Kahneman’s is just one of a long line of metaphors used to describe human behavior.

For example, while it has become fashionable to sneer at Freud, his identification of a conscious and unconscious mind (not to mention the Ego, Superhero and Id he posited) not only impacted both the scientific and wider culture, it also served as the foundation for modern public relations and advertising when put to practical use by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays.  And our culture’s fondness for the notion of a Left-Right creative-logical split in our brain (despite an absence of physical evidence for such a divide) simply proves how much we humans desire to break our world into neatly labeled categories.

Now it may very well turn out that Kahneman’s fast/slow dichotomy will withstand experimental scrutiny over time.  But work done since then (including a colleague’s thesis I’m currently reading that proposes three different modes of thinking vs. Kahneman’s measly two) is already building on and refining the original hypothesis.  So before we start abandoning previous theories and models and start thinking of ourselves entirely in fast and slow terms, it’s best to exercise some humility and accept the fact that this model, while useful, may very well turn out to be wrong.

Shifting gears to political matters (which is supposed to be the subject of this blog), I must also admit to becoming uncomfortable when the author began suggesting examples of his theories could be put to practical advantage. 

If our minds work a certain way, the author asserts, why not take advantage of this phenomenon to gently move (or nudge) people towards socially acceptable or preferable behavior?

The classic example of this idea comes out of the near 100% volunteer rate for organ donation in certain European countries, vs. a far smaller rate for Americans.  This difference turns out not to be the result of differing levels of generosity between cultures, but rather a different in forms – specifically organ-donation volunteer forms which are opt-out abroad (meaning volunteering for organ donation is the default choice) but opt-in here in the US.  So if telling your printer or web page designer to change which box is checked automatically can lead to such a huge increase in some socially beneficial good, why not apply it to other societal problems (such as improving American saving habits by making joining an automatic savings plan the default option)?

The trouble is that you pretty rapidly run out of examples of causes where playing on global cognitive hard wiring will lead to unquestionably good outcomes.  Kahneman highlights the popularity of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s recent book Nudge which shows how slight manipulations in how information is presented can gently push people towards making the right choices about their money, health and overall happiness.  And he’s particularly excited that one of the book’s authors is playing a role in the current US administration, providing an avenue to put these ideas into practice.

But who gets to decide what behaviors the population will be nudged into?  And who gets to determine where friendly nudging ends and outright manipulation begins? Historically, powerful persuasive techniques such as classical rhetoric or Freudian science have been embraced by politicians and advertisers who want to get us to do what they want.  So what is to prevent new techniques based on what we think we know about our fast and slow processors from simply becoming the friendliest option on a list that also includes propaganda and coercion?

It may be a fool’s errand, but if this blog is about anything it’s about trying to engage that reasoning part of our minds (or our slow processor if you like) much more than often we do when it comes time to make key decisions that can affect our future as individuals and as a country.  And while it would be far simpler if we could all be made to “do the right thing” by simply switching around some wording or some options on a form, fears over who gets to be the nudger makes the far messier option of trying to get people to think for themselves a preferable alternative.

Slow Down

Continuing with the discussion of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast andSlow, I noted that the author’s construct of a brain separated into a fast, associative processor (System 1) informing but, occasionally, overridden by a powerful but lazy slow processor (System 2) helps explain a number of observable phenomena such as our susceptibility to visual and cognitive illusions.

This model can also help us understand pan-human tendencies towards certain types of cognitive biases, notably confirmation bias which makes us readily accept information that already conforms to our beliefs, but treats information that contradicts or confounds those beliefs with suspicion.  After all, if our fast associative System 1 uses stories to categorize and understand information coming at us from all directions, what makes more sense than to create a story that plays up our preferences and plays down or rejects our dislikes? 

Making room in our mind for uncomfortable facts takes effort, often involving looking at the world outside the framework of an easy-to-understand storyline and delving into uncertainties (or probabilities) which bring us into the realm of System 2.  Our slow processor does this work well, but engaging this lazy workhorse requires effort.  And if we can get along just fine believing a comfortable story about, say, our preferred presidential candidate representing all goodness and truth (while his opponent is a dishonest cad), why not simply accept fast System 1’s take on the matter and let slow System 2 enjoy the day off?

Kahneman’s discussion of psychology and behavioral economics can also inform other challenges that come into play during a presidential campaign, such as anchoring and framing. 

Anchoring involves putting out some information (usually numeric) that our mind automatically makes the starting point for further thinking about an issue.  An example the author uses is that if I ask a group of people if Gandhi was 140 years old when he died, all of them will, of course, answer no.  But if I then ask him how old they think he was when he died, they will tend to pick a significantly higher number than a group who was first asked an equally ridiculous anchoring question of whether the Indian leader died at age 9. 

Anchoring is a powerful phenomenon which takes advantage of a System 1 that grabs the first information it receives and uses it to build out a story that is harder to edit or delete than to create.  And thus we stick to first impressions, even if those first impressions are wrong or were purposefully implanted in the conversation to anchor us.  This is why politicians and advertisers (whether communicating employment statistics or quantitative health information regarding food products) want to get their numbers entered into the conversation early, so that subsequent conversations will stay anchored where they prefer.

Fast and Slow also draws attention to our dramatic preference for frames of reference that highlight gains vs. losses.  For example, many people who would buy a five dollar lottery ticket for a 1:10 chance to win $100 would refuse a bet that offered them a 10% chance of winning $100 but a 90% chance of losing $5.  Even though the two bets are nearly identical in economic terms (actually, once you do the math the second is better than the first), in psychological terms the notion of paying $5 for a lottery ticket is treated far more positively than losing $5 as the outcome of a failed bet.

Keep this in mind during the campaign season when candidates explain that they want to help you keep four-fifths of you money (rather than tax you at 20%) or perform what you suspect might represent some mathematical slight of hand.  In fact, whenever you are confronted by statistical data (from political friend or foe), it might make sense to stop what you’re doing, spend five minutes doing multiplication of various two-digit numbers in your head (which tends to engage System 2), and then come back issue afresh.

While I suspect that follow up to the work of Kahnaman and the researchers which followed him will help us further understand other political phenomena (such as our preference for certain cadences and word choice reflected in the rules of rhetoric), I started to get uncomfortable with his final conclusions regarding how his discoveries could be applied in the real world – the subject of some final thoughts next time.

Think Fast

Like many people interested in the subject of this blog, I’ve been reading and enjoying Daniel Kahneman’s best-selling book Thinking Fast and Slow.

Those of us who dabble in the subject of critical thinking tend to assume a classical understanding of the human makeup, one that sees people as essentially rational creatures.  And when reason fails us, we tend to blame this failure on emotion or some other component of our animal/non-reasoning self temporarily overwhelming the rationality that makes us us. 

Kahneman’s work in psychology (which won him Nobel Prize when applied to economics) contradicts (or at least confounds) these assumptions, demonstrating as it did that our reason might actually be faulty (or, at least, doesn’t work the way we think it does). 

Kahneman (in landmark work done with his colleague Amos Tversky) posited that our “mind” actually consists of two components: a fast-processing piece which he names System 1, and a slower, more deliberate part named (you guessed it) System 2.  And unlike other attempts to bifurcate or trifurcate the brain (into artistic vs. quantitative right and left hemispheres, or Freud’s Ego, Superego and Id), Kahneman’s fast System 1 and slow System 2 seems to provide a great deal of rigorous descriptive and predictive power. 

Under this framework, System 1 processes information (such as information coming in from the senses) lightning fast and attempts to make sense of it via associations and stories.  You can experience the uncontrolled associative nature of System 1 the next time you hear a familiar song and immediately (and without any deliberate effort) remember the last time you heard it, the first time you heard it, a dozen songs like it, and that great date when you danced to it in college.  Stories provide a way for System 1 to create coherence around sensory data and other input, without having to engage the more deliberate concentrative power of System 2.

And this System 2 is extremely powerful, grabbing control and overriding the association- and story-driven decisions of System 1 whenever it likes.  The trouble is, deliberative System 2 doesn’t like to do this very often since it is a lazy system that would prefer to take System 1 at its word whenever possible.

Times when this is not possible include situations when understanding requires a statistical vs. story-based understanding since System 1 doesn’t really “do” probabilities.  In fact, the illustration (and tool) Kahneman uses to illustrate the distinction between the two Systems are bets or gambles which make no sense from a purely utilitarian point of view, but are perfectly understandable once you see decisions on whether to take those bets being made by System 1 that doesn’t really get probability and a System 2 that would rather not bother if it didn’t have to.

Beyond statistics, this two-part model helps explain our susceptibility to visual and cognitive illusions, such as this famous example:

Looking at this image, most of us “know” that the two parallel lines are the same length, regardless of the fact that our own eyes registers the first longer than the second (a visual that is confirmed by System 1 acting on its own- which is what happens when children confront this illusion for the first time).  The reason we grownups “know” the lines are of equal length is that our System 2 is pulling in not visual imagery (which is what System 1 uses to process data), but data drawn from memory, i.e., the specific memory of having experienced this illusion previously as a child.  (In fact, my memory recalls not just this illusion, but the exact puzzle book where I saw it published –one which had an elaborate maze on the cover whose overall shape resembles a British toff wearing a bowler hat.)

This combination of a fast associative processor and slower, lazier deliberative processor leads to other types of illusions/errors, my favorite being the response you get when you ask people how many of each animal Moses  brought onto the ark.  This gag doesn’t work on the printed page, but when you ask someone the question out loud, most of them will confidently announce “two,” and only afterwards feel sheepish that they mistook Moses for Noah, the confusion arising because both names fall into the associative category “famous Biblical figures with long-O sounds in their names”.  (My favorite use of this trick came when I asked the Moses question of my neighbor, the local Episcopalian Minister, who began on a long exegesis regarding relevant chapters of Genesis before I stopped her and told her Moses never had an ark.)

But the slow processor, which must take over to perform certain tasks (such as multiplying two-digit numbers in your head) can also cause errors and omissions, one of the most famous illustrated in this observational assessment. 

Illusions aside, during the course of any given day, most of the mind’s work is performed by System 1 with System 2 intervening only when necessary.  Reading this piece, for example (no matter how engrossed you might be by it) is pretty much a System 1 activity, given that it consists of processing written information in a language you understand.  In fact, System 2 has only really been engaged during a small portion of the period when you were involved with this piece (when you were counting the basketball passes if you clicked on the link above).

All very intriguing, I hear you cry out.  But what does that have to do with critical thinking in general and critical thinking about the US election specifically?  Expect an answer to that question next time.

Rhetoric - 2

We started out by looking at a number of linguistic rhetorical techniques that cannot in and of themselves be considered good or bad (or, more specifically, informative vs. manipulative), especially since they are nothing more than the cost of entrance to any political discussion, argument or debate. 

Whether you are entering the political process to change the world or line your pockets, if you cannot frame your points in an interesting and engaging way, you will never get the attention of friend or foe.  So just as the ability to write well is the first step to becoming a famed novelist (or even an unknown but good one), writing and speaking in a way that engages an audience is not a moral choice but a necessity.

But there are other rhetorical techniques that require their users to make ethical decisions, sometimes difficult ones, because of the persuasive power of these techniques (regardless of the quality or sincerity of the content they are used to present).  To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’m going to focus on a set of rhetorical devices that deal with how one acknowledges opponents and their arguments. 

One rather infrequently used technique, called dirimens copulatio, simply involves mentioning opposing facts in your own arguments, not to counter them but to demonstrate the speaker’s awareness that two sides of an issue exist.  An example of this might include “In international politics, there are rarely right and wrong answers or black and white situations.  Which is why there are many legitimate criticisms of the choices my administration has had to make.”

A far more frequently used technique is procatalepsis, which also acknowledges an opponent’s position but does so in order to anticipate and counter it in advance.  Statement such as “My opponent claims that I have been too eager to engage in war when peaceful alternatives were available.  To which I would respond, what alternatives are open to us when the nation is attacked?” or “Critics will call my spending plans wasteful and irresponsible.  But who is acting irresponsibly, someone trying to move the economy forward or someone saying “No” to every proposal to put people back to work?” are both examples of procatalepsis. 

The power of this rhetorical tool is that it allows you to define your opponent’s arguments in your own terms and to provide a rebuttal that your opponent must react to when he or she would have preferred an attack that put you on the defensive.  And even if that opponent manages to successfully reframe the point and respond successfully, he or she has lost the benefit of surprise and novelty inherent in being first to present a line of criticism. 

I haven’t found a name for a third (and extremely popular) technique of using the support of members of your opponent’s group (political, national or ethnic) to bolster your own cause.  I first encountered this in the 1980s in the form of a bumper sticker that read “Another Democrat for Reagan,” and since that time cross-overs from the opposing party taking center stage has become a standard feature at party conventions.

This technique sends out several powerful messages:

* That one’s opponent and his or her ideas are so far outside the mainstream that even his own party/group does not support them

* That you, while officially representing your own group or party, actually represent everyone (or mostly everyone)

* That your broad acceptability (and your opponent’s lack thereof) is so obvious that even people who should be your opponents are attracted to your banner

You can probably see right away how any of these techniques can be easily abused.  For example, if you are presenting an opponent’s position (either to acknowledge or anticipate and counter it), it’s all too easy to present a distorted, inaccurate or even parody of your opponent’s real positions (both to make their criticisms look ridiculous and give you an easier  - and self-serving - set of criticism to reply to).

And if you are making the case that people who would normally support your opponent really support you, this can’t be done (honestly, anyway) by inflating the importance or small numbers or trying to present an unrepresentative fringe as mainstream.  The example of such abuse that I’m most familiar with (and keep in mind my bias on this issue) is the critical role Jewish voices play in anti-Israel politics, all in an attempt to create the impression that hostility to the Jewish state (no matter how egregious and irrational) cannot be labeled as an example of hate directed towards a minority group since members of that minority participate and even lead such attacks. 

But if using these techniques dishonestly in a cinch, using them honestly presents serious challenges since an effective counter-strategy against procatalepsis (for example) is to declare that any interpretation an opponent puts on your positions is illegitimate (even if the user of this technique is characterizing an opponent’s arguments completely accurately while anticipating and preemptively rebutting them).  And, all too often, including opposition points of view in an argument represents nothing more than an attempt to appear to be even handed to a wider audience while simultaneously doing everything in one’s power to avoid actual legitimate debate.

This is a particularly important dilemma in our saturated media age when members of this wider audience may only hear or see snippets of a particular debate edited to fit the needs of a newscast or (more sinisterly) the TV commercials created by one of the campaigns.  And in a world of partisan blogs and web sites dedicated to spinning every word spoken by every candidate, how can a Presidential campaign ever involve genuine debate vs. the generation of quotes and catch phrases for the media maw?

There is no simple answer to these questions, but it is worth pointing out that political debate has always taken place with a wider audience in mind.  When Roman leaders verbally duked it out in the Senate a couple of millennia back, they understood that they were not just trying to win out over their immediate political debate partner, but to convince the Senators in the audience (and the public at large) regarding the rightness of their positions.

Today, mass media, editing software and spin machines complicate the relationship between debaters and audiences, but we can still hope that enough leaders (and follower) grasp the notion that the most powerful resource one can bring to debate is that unique form of integrity called ethos.  And while political power can be won through trickery and abuse of rhetoric, ethos can never be earned in such a manner.