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 

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.

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.

Rhetoric – 1

As the presidential primaries roller coaster towards what will ultimately be the selection of a Republican interlocutor to argue his case with a Democratic incumbent, it will be useful to look at some of the language (or rhetoric) that is likely to make up such arguments.

It’s a pity that rhetoric (now thought of as mere rhetoric) has moved from being one of the primary subjects of study for an educated person to something treated with suspicion if not outright contempt.

I suppose if you look at rhetoric as nothing more than a bag of verbal tricks designed to pull the wool over the eyes of an easily duped audience, it’s an easy category of human knowledge to dismiss.  But it’s never been clear to me that once we have rid ourselves of nasty and cynical old rhetoric, what exactly is supposed to replace it?  Will the world be transformed into a place where only honest and purely sincere discourse reigns?  Or is it more likely that those who have not chosen to ignore a study of rhetorical techniques (such as advertisers and politicians) will use those skills as they like, with the rest of the population no longer familiar that there is even a subject of rhetoric to be studied?

We’ve already talked about one component of rhetoric: Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion (logos, pathos and ethos).  But there are a whole host of rhetorical devices which, like fallacies, have mostly Latin names and are fun to illustrate with familiar (or wacky) examples.  And while we’ll take a look at rhetorical techniques over the next few postings keep in mind that (as with fallacies) one needn’t be familiar with every one of them to be on the lookout for ones most likely to be used in a modern Presidential campaign.

Let’s start off with the category that makes up the bulk of most lists of rhetorical devices: those that rely on linguistic styling.

Some of these will be familiar from the introductions to poetry we had in grade school, such as alliteration (repeating consonant sounds as in Spiro Agnew’s describing critics as “nattering nabobs of negativism”), assonance, the same technique with vowel sounds (as in “I Like Ike”), metaphor, simile, allusion and analogy (each of which relate one thing to another in a verbally interesting way - as in "no man is an island").  It should come as no surprise that word choice and sentence structure that make poetry and prose more interesting impact readers and listeners of political oratory in a similar fashion.

Then there are techniques relating to word sequencing such as antistrophe (repeating the same word or phrase - as in “Yes we can!” - at the end of successive clauses or phrases), tricolon (capping a part of a speech with a group of three words or phrases, as in Hilary Clinton’s appeal to "my supports, my champions…my sisterhood!”), and that perennial favorite chiasmus (relating two clauses via reversed structure as in “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”)

In researching this piece, I was surprised to discover that my own writing makes extensive use of the parentheses device, in which a word or phrase appears in the middle of a sentence (enclosed in either dashes or parentheses, like this).  This technique lets you disguise an important point as an informal aside, drawing attention to a critical component of an argument by making it almost seem a disposable afterthought.

My surprise derived from the fact that, like most of you, I have never formally studied rhetoric but have simply developed a writing style over time by both writing and reading the political writing of others.  And at some point during that period, I must have encountered political writing using this device that I found particularly persuasive, internalizing it in the process (along with other informal asides such as starting a sentence with “In truth,…” or “But stop and think for a moment…”). 

One of the reasons it’s good to start this discussion of rhetoric with linguistic examples is that they are harder to dismiss as intrinsically manipulative.  After all (there I go again), we want our politicians to engage us when they speak, not read out dry passages of text and policy proposals.  In fact (I can’t seem to help myself), any politician who does not pepper his or her speeches with interesting language choice and word sequences is likely to be dismissed as “boring,” “dry” or the dreaded “uninspiring.”

No doubt there are interesting psychological explanations as to why this word choices or cadences have a particular impact on human cognition and emotion.  But for purpose of this discussion, mastery of these techniques represent an entrance point for persuasive speech, an ethically neutral set of tools which can be used by anyone who masters them for good or ill.

And one of the best ways to ensure we are not manipulated by these or other forms of rhetoric is to develop and understanding of these techniques so that we can recognize and appreciate them (without being suckered by them, especially out of ignorance).

Fallacies – 3

Well the primary race starts today, as does the countdown to when we’ll be applying some of the critical thinking tools we’ve been reviewing to real, live candidates.  But while we still have the luxury to work with abstractions, let’s finish up this discussion of fallacies with a review of best practices regarding how to avoid falling for them.

All three of the major categories of fallacies that were highlighted as likely to come at us over the coming months (including fallacious Argumentsfrom Authority, Emotion or Moderation) have something in common: they all take advantage of our better natures which would normally be respectful of authority, open to moving appeals to the heart, and ready to avoid extremes.  Fortunately, this points to an effective way to avoid falling into rhetorical traps: by letting our better natures prevail.

Take Arguments from Authority, for example.  In a sense, the best way to avoid falling for this type of fallacious argument is to follow the advice on that old bumper sticker to “Question Authority.”  But by this I don’t mean we should be mindlessly skeptical of all authority figures.  Rather, we should be respectful of people with high levels of intelligence and expertise, but not defer to them in all situations.

For starters, if someone is giving advice outside their field of study, they should be respected no less (and certainly no more) than any other smart person talking outside of their discipline.  It is only if they demand to be taken seriously as an authority on a subject about which they have no special knowledge (even if they are held as extremely prominent within that other field) that we should smell a potential rat. 

And even people speaking within their field should never be given an absolutely free ride.  If an expert is at odds with the consensus of his or her profession, they could either be a far-seeing sage or a quack.  In either case, additional evidence is required by them, as is additional analysis by us. 

In fact, any evidence we receive from experts should not be taken as received wisdom, at least not by those who want to be take critical thinking seriously.  Yes, there are some subjects (such as quantum mechanics) where most of us are forced to take an expert’s word that certain non-intuitive and unobservable phenomena can be explained only by complex theories that take years to understand.  But how many political issues that we face during an election cycle are so complex that we cannot bring our own ability to research, learn and think to an evaluation that can include learning from (without unquestioningly deferring to) multiple experts on different sides of the same political issue?

There are similar common sense solutions to the other two fallacies on the table. As was already discussed, Arguments from Emotion are on shaky ground if they appeal to things like fear, greed and hate and if they appeal to emotion only (rather than finding the right balance of logos and pathos to earn ethos on behalf of the speaker).  And if the extremes someone is trying to position themselves between to convince us that they are sane and moderate bear no resemblance to actual, practical political options, chances are someone is trying to manipulate you.

The most difficult part of all these reasonable solutions is that they must be applied across the board: to candidates we support as much as those we oppose.  Otherwise, we end up looking like the Internet debaters I remember from the old Wild West days of Usenet who periodically published (OK, cut and pasted) long lists of fallacies, only to apply them solely to the arguments of their opponents (never to themselves).

The use of a critical thinking vocabulary as a political weapon can itself be considered a fallacy (perhaps a “Fallacy Fallacy” if applied to my Usenet example), one in which the tools of critical thinking are simply used to give a partisan argument unearned weight.  As we get closer to Election Day and passions begin to boil, it will become increasingly difficult to pass judgment on our preferred candidate when they appeal fallaciously to authority, emotion or moderation (or utilize some other rhetorical trick that we know to be problematical).  But being honest with ourselves is how we can keep our preferred candidates honest with us as well. 

Most importantly, such honesty is the only way we can keep our own minds truly independent and ourselves truly free.

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.