A New-Old Way of Practicing Inquiry & Argument

(or How to Use the Neo-Aristotelian Rhetorical Method)

1) Questions: We start with the need to know something: to answer a riddle, solve a problem, or decide on a course of action. In order to get to our own best answer, we must first know as precisely as possible the best question. To get to the best question, we must know our topic. For instance, if the topic is policy decisions governing cigarette smoking, we need to know whether or not we want to look into this issue from the perspective of public health or individual rights. The questions we ask will depend on how we want to treat the issue, and whatever we decide will have an essential effect on the questions we choose to ask. For example:

Question 1: Is second-hand cigarette smoke dangerous to peopleπs health?

This question is a Question of Fact and one that may already have been answered. By using the empirical method, scientists can come to a relatively secure answer about many such questions. To find the answer to such a question you, the student in a college critical thinking or composition course, might only have to find research that tells you what the most current research concludes. But if you want to ask a Question of Policyãwhat should we do about second-hand cigarette smoke at CR, for instanceãyou will be asking a much different kind of question.

Question 2: Should all cigarette smoking be banned from the CR campus?

Scientists using the empirical method cannot answer this kind of question, and hereãprecisely hereãis where argumentation and rhetoric come into play (the word rhetoric simply means the study of available means of persuasion, about which I will have more to say later). To answer such a question of what we should do is the most important community act for people living in democracies. This is what we call a Question at Issue. It is a question about which people might disagree. When something is at issue, it means that there can be a variety of answers concerning the problem or course of action. In government we come upon such questions continuously: Should we raise taxes to help people in poverty? Should we stop people from driving ORVs through snowy plover nesting grounds? Should we change Social Security benefits? Should we go to war? We also come upon such questions every day in our lives, such as when we try to decide which movie to go to or what to write in a job application letter. Because we are always (or should always be) attempting to proceed in the best way possible, we try to sift through information, opinions, facts, and possible outcomes in order to make choices. Along with Questions of Fact and Policy, there are also Questions of Value (Is a thing good? Is it poorly made? Is this of mediocre quality?), Questions of Definition (Are we naming this thing correctly? Is this the right adjective to describe this action? Is someone using the wrong word to characterize and thus change our opinion about a person or policy?), Questions of Interpretation (What did this author intend for me to gain from reading this book? What is the central message of this film? How did the language used to describe warfare change the way people thought about it?), and Questions of Consequence (What might happen if we do this? What were the effects on peopleπs ideas about free speech when the Chicago police used billy clubs on demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention?). Determining your Question at Issue is probably the most important part of forming an argument because, until you know what it is youπre trying to do, you canπt possibly know which steps to take.

2) Research: Once we have determined our best question, we need to continue the process of Critical Thinking in order to come to our best answer. Again, if the question we ask is one of Fact, we might begin a process of research in order to either discover tested responses that others have arrived at (such as articles in scholarly or scientific journals and books) or figure out an empirical analysis of our own ã an experiment ã that will be reproducible and as definitive as possible in its answer. A simple example would be something like: At what temperature and humidity will concrete harden fastest? We can experiment with concrete in controlled systems and find an answer (of course, numerous variables will affect our answerãthe type of concrete, the altitude, the movement of air over the concreteπs surfaceãall of the variables could change the answer). But if the question is one of, say, Value, we will need to do a very different type of research and our critical thinking will come into play in very different ways. For instance, if our question is ≥Is it good to use non-human animals for testing cosmetic products?≤ we can simply answer, ≥Yes, it is obviously better to use non-human animals for testing because everyone knows that in human society, humans are valued more highly than animals, and thus we will be doing ågoodπ for human society if we limit the possibility of injury to humans.≤ But as many people probably immediately responded, this may NOT be a simple agreement for all members of our democratic society. Today many people (myself included) would disagree with what at one time would have been a fairly common view. In fact, it is precisely such issues as this oneãissues that are shifting for large or small numbers of our societyãthat make writers and thinkers and philosophers seek to understand the motivations and claims of belief and preference among various groups of people. In order to come to a conclusion concerning such questions, we must search through the possibilities.

3) Argument and the appeals to Pathos, Ethos, Logos: Once the arguer has determined the general ideas and understanding of the larger population, she must decide where her own beliefs lie. Does she agree with the prevailing view or has her research led her to come to a different conclusion? Based on her critical analysis of evidence, claims and supporting reasons, the person who will address others within her society or communityãwho I will refer to as the Rhetorãmust make some important decisions about what she wants to do and how she can best achieve that result. Does the Rhetor want to change other peopleπs beliefs or cause them to act in some new way? Does the Rhetor want to win public office? How do people in this society or community choose public officials? If the Rhetor wants to change the way public policy is carried out, she will have to know the proper sequence by which such changes occur. The possibilities of what the Rhetor might want to do as he or she ≥speaks≤ are vast: she might want to explain to a college professor what it is she has discovered about a specific topic or subject; she might want to demonstrate that she understands a way of practicing, say, experimentation with cell structure; she might want to show that she knows how to set up a psychological experiment; a Rhetor might even want to demonstrate her accomplishment in interpreting a complex work of art, like a Cubist painting or a sixteenth-century British play. For every one of the possible reasons, the Rhetor must consider these essential factors phrased as questions:

• What do I want my hearers/readers to do or think?
• What is most likely to influence my audience to think or do those things?
• What do they already believe?
• How do I want them to see, hear and think about me?

Obviously, with such a complex psychological, social and intellectual equation, we must be careful. Aristotle, the Greek critic, cataloguer, philosopher and logician, outlined many of the variable aspects of these Rhetorical Situations in his Art of Rhetoric. One of the most important things he realized was that audiences could be appealed to in different ways. Different audiences have different expectations concerning various topics and base their ideas of what is right or wrong, proper or improper, moving or dull on whom it is they hear and see speaking to them. The major appeals Aristotle described are: 1) Pathos, or the emotionsãpeople will be persuaded or moved through feelings generated by ideas the Rhetor offers; 2) Ethos, or authorityãan audience finds the personage him- or herself to be of such standing and of a certain background (a doctor, a writer, a lawyer, a mother, a priest, an elected official, a professor with certain expertise) that who he or she is functions to persuadeãeven calling upon some other person as an expert or a moral or critical or intellectual foundation for oneπs own argument, as when we offer a statement from some authority in support of our ideas, is to persuade by means of authority; finally, and most important for this class, is the appeal by 3) Logos, meaning by reason or logicãa sequential series of claims with supporting evidence and explanations appeal to an audienceπs ability to reason and think critically. The appeals can be mixed together in a variety of ways, alternating from paragraph to paragraph or even sentence to sentence between Pathos, Ethos and Logos. All of these appeals are powerful and in fact, once we begin to recognize their uses in our daily lives, we start to see just how persuasive and powerful they can be. And there is an added benefit to society in learning about rhetoric and the appeals: the more conscious audiences are about how Rhetors appeal to them, the less unconscious will be their decision-making processes. Societies and communities in which conscious thought holds a high value are less susceptible to propagandistic appeals and are much more likely to form democratic systems in which governance and the creation of laws is shared among the people.

4) Composing & organizing the best: Now that the Rhetor has found the right question, considered the possibilities and the audience, and has pulled together all or most of his or her material, the most labor intensive part of the process begins. Now he must put it all together. If our Rhetor is a freshman in college today, this process becomes particularly complex because the audience for his writing or speech will include a professor, an academic whose training has focused at some level of intensity on this very practice of making argumentãor what we can also call discourse. Discourse is communicationãit can be between individuals, within groups, or between groups. It can be fairly straightforward and readily intelligible, as we find when we meet casual friends or acquaintances during the day and exchange pleasantriesãWhatπs up? How yaπ doinπ? etc.ãor it can be extremely complex and rarefied, as in technical scientific or philosophical writings aimed at appealing to members of specific, focused communities, such as other engineers, botanists, geologists, sociologists, psychologists, historians, rhetoricians or literary critics. For the student in college today, this task is made harder by the fact that our schools generally DO NOT teach the art of rhetoric. In ancient Greece or Rome, students learned huge varieties of topics (topoi) as possible means of persuasion fairly early on. They would drill in these arguments and, essentially, learn the formal art of persuasion by persistent and repetitive practice at recognizing and calling into play long lists of possible arguments they might make. Classes frequently conducted contests to choose winning young rhetors, and new arguments and speeches were passed around behind the scenes and studied the way young people today might exchange hearsay or news tidbits about famous athletes or movie stars. These earlier societiesãand many others throughout time and around the worldãvalued argument as central to their social systems. Our culture spends much less energy and wealth on training people to become rhetors. But because it is a requirement of the process of baccalaureate credentialingãand because there is, in general, an expectation among people who might hire college graduates that they should be able to make complex arguments and perform the kind of research that would lead to sound critical claims and the supporting evidence to back them upãstudents are required to learn how to think through and compose their ideas.

A useful list of questions we should ask ourselves at the point of beginning the actual writing and composing of our inquiry or argument follows:

Who am I writing to/for?

What do I want this piece of writing to do to them?

How do I want the members of my audience to react?

What should be the first thing they need to know in order to consider my thoughts?

How do I want their minds to move through the process of my argument (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc)?

How will different ordering of the ideas affect the way my audience thinks about this argument?

Toward whom should I turn for feedback on my argument?

How willing or open am I to hearing feedback?

Here is the process simplified:

∑ Begin with interest and a topic

∑ Seek the best questions and focus

∑ Find the reasons for coming to different conclusions to the questions, including opposing views

∑ Consider the questionπs relationship to community/society/audience

∑ Decide on a personal answer to the question at issue

∑ Determine your intention relative to your audience

∑ Plan your speech / composition

∑ Compose your argument, then seek out feedback

∑ Revise

∑ Revise again

∑ Revise yet again

Note: This is a recursive process, which means that any of these steps can, and probably should, be repeated and returned to throughout the process, especially rethinking your reasons and support for the question at issue as you revise.