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.

Fallacies – 2

Of the dozens of fallacies one can bring into an argument, Appeals to Authority, Emotion and Moderation are three we should be on the lookout for during this (or any) campaign season, given how important they have become to modern, media-driven political discourse.

We’ve already talked about when an Appeal to Authority becomes fallacious, either in a Formal or Informal sense, and to a large extent we covered Appeals to Emotion in a previous discussion of logos, pathos and ethos. 

As I highlighted in the discussion of pathos, appealing to the emotions of an audience you are trying to persuade is not necessarily manipulative or illegitimate (i.e., fallacious).  Given the extent to which humans are emotional animals, and given that not all challenging questions can be resolved through reason alone, emotion can be a useful resource to draw on to navigate difficult choices.

But if you look at the list of Appeals to Emotion that are categorized as fallacies, they include Appeals to emotions such as fear, ridicule and spite, i.e., those “bad emotions” that should cause us to recoil whenever we feel them welling up in ourselves.  So someone trying to stir up these bad emotions in an audience (particularly as part of a political argument) should be looked upon as using the tools of rhetoric inappropriately.

While an Appeal to Moderation seems like a favorite of contemporary Presidential candidates aiming for the center in a national election campaign, the desire for moderation among a democratic electorate goes back quite far.

“Nothing in Excess” was written above the Oracle at Delphi with moderation being seen as an ideal by the founders of democracy in ancient Athens.  It’s no accident that Aristotle defined virtue as “Finding the mean between the extremes” (specifically with regard to action or emotion), since casting oneself as a moderate standing between extremist politician alternatives was as popular a campaign theme 2500 years ago as it is today.

Appeals to Moderation stray into the territory of fallacy when it comes time to define what constitute the extremes one is locating oneself between. 

To take an uncontroversial, non-political example, if I were to try to define what constitutes a moderate temperature, I might choose a temperature we can all agree is uncomfortably cold (say zero degrees Fahrenheit) and another one most people would agree is uncomfortably hot (say 100 F) and average the two, defining “moderate” as a cool but comfortable 50 degrees (at least for we New Englanders). 

But what if used this same formula but defined cold as Absolute Zero (approximately -459 F) and hot as the temperature on the surface of the sun (which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 F).  That would create a “moderate” temperature of 5260 degrees F, something that most of us (outside of certain astronomers and physicists) would agree as a ridiculous definition of “moderate.”

In the same way, Appeals to Moderation in politics can only be considered legitimate when the extremes are realistic, genuine and not self serving. 

For example, most Presidential candidates try to demonstrate they are willing to stand up to the extremes within their own political party, as well as the party of their opponents.  But a debate over taxes in which a liberal candidate claims he is standing against his political comrades who want to return to a 90% tax rate for the rich and rivals who want to eliminate taxes entirely to support a call for a 45% tax rate (the mid-point between the 90% and 0% extremes) is acting disingenuously since (in today’s political environment, at least) calls for both massive taxation and no taxation are not considered as mainstream, realistic positions.  Rather, this politician needs to find realistic “extremes” to center his or her proposals between, or find other arguments to justify tax rates at the 45% level.

Similarly, a candidate claiming that a proposal to criminalize the performance of an abortion by doctors is “moderate” because it stands between throwing pregnant women who want this procedure behind bars and giving abortions for free at every CVS is also creating false (or at least wildly exaggerated) definitions of the extremes in the abortion debate.  This represents another fallacious real-world example of an Appeal to Moderation.

What Appeals to Authority, Emotion and Moderation have in common is that they all try to leverage elements of the human makeup that can be used for good or ill. We need and would like to trust expert opinion, especially in the complex age we live in.  And emotion (at least good emotion like love, generosity and courage) and moderation are all virtues that should inform our decision making.

Fortunately, we have ways of determining when these appeals are legitimate or fallacious, all of which boil down to thinking for ourselves.

Next Up – Thinking Through Fallacies

Pathos

Because logic provides such a sound basis for making decisions, it follows that logos – the ability to present an argument based on logic – will have considerable rhetorical power. If we are presented with one argument based on sound premises linked to conclusions via a solid chain of reasoning, this is generally seen as superior to an argument which lacks these qualities (all other factors being equal).

But as appealing as it might be to base all of our decisions on cold, hard logos, logic alone suffers from two significant shortcomings. First off, the structure of logic works, regardless of the “facts” it is applied to. For example, IF all unicorns are magical creatures AND Gerry is a unicorn, then the statement “Gerry is a magical creature” is logically true, even if unicorns, magical creatures (or Gerry, for that matter) do not exist.

More significant for those looking for practical ways to apply critical thinking to important problems (such as choosing a President) logic cannot necessarily break a tie between two arguments of equal logical strength. Building on a simple example from last time, there might be a perfectly valid and logical argument why a school band should spend its money on new uniforms (because they will provide benefit for many years) and an equally sound argument why that same money should be spent to play at the Rose Bowl (since it raises the profile of the band and will help recruit new members).

Given that most of the political debates we have (or should have) are based on choosing between equally valid (and often equally good or bad) choices, something other than logic must be used to help us make a choice. Enter human emotion.

Now arguments based on emotion (i.e., pathos) tend to make us uneasy for two reasons. First off, we instinctively see emotion as non-rational. But we have already taken a look how at another seemingly non-rational attributes of the human condition (imagination) can help inspire and/or channel critical thinking.

It’s no accident that Aristotle built his Golden Mean ethical theory around emotion (and action) since these are the primary drivers of human existence. Within this context, reason plays the role of informing and training us how to make choices in these two non-reasoning realms. And even if we could turn ourselves into Vulcans, dedicated to making all decisions by logic alone, we’ve just noted that logic runs into a wall when we are faced with a choice between arguments over competing goods of equal logical strength.

The other (stronger) argument against pathos is that it is manipulative. By appealing to our gut or animal instincts, rather than our higher human facilities of reason (it is argued) pathos-driven rhetoric asks us to short-circuit thought and come to a speaker’s desired conclusion based on how it makes us feel (regardless of the argument’s logical worth).

There’s no question that pathos can and has been used in this way throughout history. Demagogues were whipping up the crowds to make irrational decisions back in the day when the rules of rhetoric were first canonized, and we only need to turn on cable TV to see manipulative, emotion-laden arguments presented on an hourly basis.

But the criticism of pathos being destructive assumes that all emotions are equal, which they clearly are not. Appealing to fear, greed, hate, and guilt for example, represent an appeal to bad emotions (or, as I like to think of them, “emotions of the gut”) while an appeal to courage, generosity, love and sympathy appeal to good emotions (or “emotions of the heart”).

So one way to determine if pathos is being used cynically or constructively is to analyze whether the emotions we are being asked to take into account when evaluating an argument (such as a campaign speech) are reaching to our gut vs. our heart.

The other factor to keep in mind is that strong arguments that leverage emotion (good or bad) should not rely exclusively on emotional appeals. In fact, one sure sign of demagoguery is the demagogue’s exclusive or over-reliance on pathos vs. finding just the right combination of logos and pathos to drive the argument forward.

Given that every political debate has an emotional component, we should not become cynical if a political speaker makes use of powerful pathos-based rhetorical techniques. And we should be particularly careful not to fall into the trap of deciding that the emotional content of speeches made by candidates we support are inspiring while those made by their opponents are creepy and manipulative.

Rather, we should judge political speech (made at a campaign stop or TV ad) based on whether the speaker is appealing to the gut vs. the heart, and how well they get the balance right between logos and pathos. And if they get this tricky combination right, they will be rewarded with the highly valuable third component of rhetoric: ethos, the subject of the next posting.

Logos

Regardless of how heated our political conversations have become, they remain conversations (i.e., we still settle our political differences largely through dialog vs. some other method such as violence or coercion). Which means the ability to create and analyze persuasive speech, writing and other forms of communication (otherwise known as rhetoric) is as important today as it was 2500 years ago when the ability to persuade others was the key to power (and self-reliance) within the first democratic societies.

Today, the term “rhetoric” is largely dismissive (as in “mere rhetoric”), stressing the fact that persuasive speech can often used be to mask, rather than reveal, the truth. But for millennia, the ability to master rhetorical skill was one of the cornerstones of being an educated person. And I suspect it is no accident that as opportunities to study rhetorical techniques have waned, so has the quality of our political discourse.

This is particularly unfortunate since rhetorical skills are not that difficult to understand or master (at least to a point where we can use them to analyze the persuasive communication of others – such as campaign speeches or television ads). For example, Aristotle posited three modes of appealing to an audience that are as relevant today as they were in ancient Athens. These include:

Logos – The use of logic to frame an argument

Pathos – The appeal to emotions of the audience

Ethos – A somewhat more complex concept relating to the authority and credibility of the speaker

Today, we’ll take a look at logos and see how it can be use by political candidates trying to get our attention and persuade us to do this or that, and by voters to determine the quality of those political arguments.

Despite the fact that classical logic is not automatically part of everyone’s high school or college education any longer, logic is still an enormously popular and ingrained subject in scientific and technical areas. Anyone performing computer programming (from kids playing Scratch to skilled developers working with advanced programming languages) are essentially wrestling with logical problems built on the premise that thought and action can be boiled down to symbols that can be manipulated and tested for accuracy.

In political discourse, our innate passion for consistency can be seen as our natural desire to reject any argument that boils down to the simple logical statement: “A equals NOT A” (a contradiction that automatically disqualifies an argument as having insufficient logos).

Now when we deal with complex issues (such as budget priorities, national defense, social issues and the like), it can sometimes seem like these matters are far too complicated to transform into simple IF-THEN statements and the like. In fact, one of the great frustrations of technically minded men and women (such as scientists and engineers) with politics is that political discourse seems to defy the type of neat categorization they see in their professional life.

But all arguments – even the most complex – can be translated into smaller units, each of which can be tested for logical soundness. For example, a particular spending program (whether designed to help the poor or defend the nation) implies premises (that there exists a category of people needing a certain service or a threat that needs countering by a specific weapon system), which can be identified, quantified and analyzed. And once those premises have been identified and studied, we can review the chain of logic between those premises and the conclusions drawn from them.

These logical chains can go in more than one direction. For example, there may be a compelling logic that a spending program will be effective, but an equally compelling logic that demonstrates it will not be cost-effective (which would imply the need to search for other alternatives).

In fact, the greatest problem associated with basing our political discourse and analysis on logos has nothing to do with the inability of logic to help us separate good from bad policies. Rather, it is the fact that logic does not provide us with enough information to decide between competing goods.

Even if we look at a simple, localized political issue (such as whether or not to buy school band uniforms this year vs. use that money to pay for a trip to perform in the Rose Bowl), we are likely to end up with equally compelling arguments on either side of equivalent logical soundness. In fact, most (if not all) of the political arguments worth having are not between the bad and illogical vs. the good and logical, but between two equally good and equally logical alternatives.

For those decisions, we need some additional information (or persuasion) to make a decision. And one of the things we can turn to are our emotions. So tune in next time for a discussion of pathos.