Rhetoric pt. 2

Rhetoric is the study of effective argumentation. More specifically this takes the form of the study of effective speaking and writing, but both of these individual pursuits fall under the general umbrella of rhetoric. All of the things we have done in this class cover different methods and aspects of creating arguments that are as convincing as possible. There are of course many intricacies to speaking and writing eloquently, but all rhetorical study is done with the end goal of convincing someone of something. One of the primary points of rhetoric is that in order to do this, one must consider both the content of an argument and how it is presented. The content aspect of this process is of course constructing a sound argument by building around evidence and research. Referring to research and data lends authority to an argument that is otherwise impossible to achieve. In order to do this, it is also important to practice how to weave together data and evidence into a narrative that represents reality and can be easily understood. Another one of the most important things we have learned in this class is how to consider audience when making an argument. Another important part of effectively convincing people related to the way arguments are made is knowing who you are trying to convince because difference audiences will be more or less swayed by different strategies. Different audiences may require different styles of writing that are more or less formal and choose their words carefully to consider the reactions that are likely to receive. One of the ways we have practiced this in class is through rhetorical analyses of different works which examine the specific moves authors make in order to appeal to different audiences. Another important aspect of rhetoric is anticipating objections. Arguments appear much more professional and well-developed when they introduce possible flaws to their logic and address them. This also has the effect of avoiding criticism of an argument by dealing with its counter-arguments before anyone else has a chance to make them.  Another important thing we have addressed in regards to rhetoric is that every argument can be thought of as a response to some other argument. This means that when creating a rhetorical work one must first consider what the other works on the same subject say about it in order to know what topics need to be addressed and what criticisms others might have. This also creates the opportunity to include partial concessions or agreements in an argument that make it more appealing to those being argued against. This is something we practiced through fight clubs. Having to directly debate develops the skill of framing arguments as a response to others. There are plenty more techniques of rhetoric that could be discussed in addition to the ones covered here, but these are some of the most important ones. The important thing about these strategies is that they all link directly back to the primary goal of rhetoric of convincing others.

Multimedia Project-Blog

I created a small site for my blog posts.

link to blog: https://inquirybasedstemeducation.wordpress.com/

Research paper

Overall this research paper has been more of a chore than learning experience for me. It didn’t do much that in class fight clubs, or other assignments didn’t. Learning to properly construct an argument and do research for that argument is important, but I feel like I spent more time just trying to meet the requirements than actually thinking about what I was doing. If I were to do something like this again I would prefer to just have some subject assigned to write about. Having to come up with one myself led to me wasting a lot of time trying to arbitrarily choose one. Having a specific one assigned could have also removed the home-town focus, which I did not find very helpful or useful. Knowing what audience you are writing for is important, but this particular audience just added difficulty instead of direction as there is not anything particularly special about my hometown for me to incorporate. Additionally, although annotated bibliographies can be useful, I would prefer it if annotations were not required as most of the time when I was searching my sources for material to use I just went to the actual source anyway. I also think the length requirements for each individual annotation were a bit excessive.  The in class essay was probably the most useful thing we did because it gave us a chance to practice just the basic skill of constructing an argument without many of the distractions that come into play with other assignments. So overall the process of writing this paper may have slightly improved my writing, but not drastically. As for Strunk and White, there were plenty of other resources available for reference and I found them to be more helpful.

Mizzou Protests

Pro - Should step down 

1. Many student organizations behind the president stepping down 
2. He should respect the decisions of the student body at Mizzou      
3. CNN stated "His decision, he said, "came out of love, not hate," and he urged the university to "focus on what we can change" in the future, not what's happened in the past", should step down as he is trying to help the university
4. Many students say New York times says the president is stiff and aloof, so he should step down in respect for his students 
5. Should step down because he has a bad reputation and could hurt the university 

Con - Should not Step Down 

1. Mob Mentality - should be resolved - but making the president resign doesn't fix the problem 
2. Many extremists involved- people with swastikas - so if he steps down he is just being passive in the problem
3. President is just running away from the problem 
4. A good leader would address the racial tensions, him stepping down showed weakness
5. Shouldn't because could effect many of the donors to the university 
6. Counter - Says he wants to focus on change, but with him leaving, he cannot make change 

Fight Club: Women CEO's

Pro

1.     Lack of equality in higher positions works against overall productivity of companies and economies.

2.     Disadvantages relative to men for women increase as the climb the ladder in companies

3.     Organic change will not be sufficient to fix the problem

4.     Women control around half of private wealth, so they have the ability to introduce useful perspective in how to convince people to invest that wealth in a given business

5.     Tensions will decrease when companies better reflect society at large and people adjust after the initial change.

Con

1.     Affirmative action only tends to help white women, and leaves other women out of the solution.

2.     People hired because they can fill a quota are not necessarily the best person for the job.

3.     Discrimination should not be the solution to discrimination. i.e you shouldn’t discriminate against the most qualified person because they aren’t a woman.

4.     Trying to get more women CEO only helps already well-off women, instead of the majority.

5.     Increases tension in the workplace, because it creates the feeling that women hired to fill a quota don’t deserve to be there.

Blog post continuation

Argument Culture

9/24/2015

There are around three ways I generally see arguments progress in the culture around me, and none of them seem to really produce anything useful. The first kind are the kind of arguments had when two people who already agree with each other get to talking about a subject, and in order to affirm their own opinions feel the need to argue against a theoretical person who disagrees with them. For instance, as a young college aged person I encounter a lot of people with the same political views. As a result of this anytime an election or political policy is brought up it tends to give rise to an echo chamber of ideas in which people argue against no one and hear their own ideas back. This results in people feeling like they’re arguing their ideas and having them critically reviewed, when in fact the person they are talking to is unlikely to be very critical because both people already agree. In this situation people never really learn anything because they aren’t being presented with well thought out arguments against them. This isn’t to say that people in the culture around me don’t have any legitimate arguments at all, however many of these arguments are also of the second type which end just as they get going.  The culture of a college campus is very oriented towards being inoffensive and this leads to many people being more willing to back down and diffuse an arguments before become too confrontational. So when controversial social issues related to race, gender, religion, economics, etc. the conversation often peters out as soon as people start to cement themselves in opposing opinions so as to not cause trouble or discomfort.  The final way that I see arguments progress around me is the more traditional, but still ultimately futile way. These are the more intense arguments in which people staunchly disagree and argue with only the goal of proving themselves superior in mind. When I see two students arguing between the traditionally republican and the traditionally democratic stances on an issue this is the way things usually go. Both sides begin the argument already so incensed that they would never admit to losing the coming debate, and will dogmatically deny any arguments presented to them that risk undermining their current opinion for the sake of self-esteem. People are usually in these types of arguments to have themselves proven right, instead of arguing to have their ideas critically evaluated and to do the same for others. There are surely some productive arguments that take place around me, but they are sufficiently scarce to leave the impression that arguments in the culture I see don’t tend to produce anything useful.

11/13

As a continuation of this post I would like to supplement the common paradigms under which people argue with an alternative that is less common, but ultimately much more useful.  This strategy is what I would call Socratic argumentation. It involves forcing people to evaluate their own arguments by just asking them questions about those arguments rather than explicitly presenting your own. Taking this approach results in a conversations that feel much more like a discussions than arguments, which as we saw in the last post don’t usually amount to much. This method is useful for avoiding the pitfall of getting caught up in personal conflict that then takes precedence over the actual issue being argued by painting oneself as simply curious and seeking to better understand something, instead of trying to prove someone wrong. This method of argumentation can also be one of the most effective there is. This is largely due to the fact that the points one makes when arguing through inquiry are individually arrived at by the person being argued against. People are much more likely to accept ideas that they feel they themselves have come up with because it avoids some of the issues mentioned in the earlier post. Even if you do not convince someone, this method of arguing is extremely useful because it helps the person being argued against cement their ideas and refine them to be even more convincing in the future by giving that person a chance to explore every facet of their argument. This paradigm of argumentation is not especially prevalent in my environment, but it can happen and hopefully it will do so more frequently in the future. 

Science Fiction Story

It’s a terrible feeling, coming out of stasis. (Anastrophe 1)(Contraction 2) This was the first thought on Jack’s mind as he coughed up the preservative fluid that had been filling his lungs for the last 10 years. Jack is the captain of the Kratos, Earth’s first craft built to expand human life outside of the solar system. (Protagonist 3)(Point of view: Third Person 4)(Genre: Science Fiction 5) The vessel is capable of reaching a significant percentage of the speed of light, but not fast enough for the crew to avoid having to undergo suspended animation to save supplies on the trip to their new system. (Setting 6).  “I should have read that briefing more carefully, I never would have agreed to this if I knew how terrible waking up would feel.” Jack complained as he climbed out of his pod. (Reading 7) “Quit your whining, you’re one the first humans who will get to see a world beyond our own solar system, and all you can do is complain. Besides, we’re here for the long haul so you don’t have to worry about going back in.” remarked Katherine, the ship’s lead engineer. “Thanks for the pep talk, but I’ll celebrate when we actually make it to the surface alive replied Jack.” (Sarcasm 8) “Well if we made it this far, then I’m sure the ship can hand a little high speed atmospheric entry.” (Antecedent-Consequent Relationship 9)(Understatement 10) I guess there’s only one way to find out. All hands to the landing vehicle!” shouted Jack. (Synecdoche 11) With that the crew prepared to make history and turned their attention towards the new big blue marble growing in front of their ship. (Metaphor 12)(Image 13) The ship shot through the atmosphere of the planet like a meteor, and shook so hard it seemed to be on the verge of flying apart.(Simile 14)(Analogy15) But, for all the evidence(16) to the contrary, the ship was ready for it and the crew safely crashed(Oxymoron 17) into one of the planet’s vast oceans. Before long the ship was able to navigate to the coast. The crew opened the doors of their vessel and look out upon the red hills of the planet’s terrain. “If we wanted to see red dirt Mars would’ve been a lot easier, but I suppose a proper oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere is nice.” Quipped Jack as the team began unloaded the equipment that would build the foundations of humanity’s first interstellar colony. (Meiosis 18) There was an atmosphere (19) of wonder and excitement amongst the crew as the initial preparations were made, that is until it was time to survey the surrounding area. Jack approached Katherine and said “I just finished the seismic scans of the area and there is something I think you need to see.” “If there’s a fault line around here our equipment should be ready, so what’s the problem?” asked Katherine. Jack replied “No, this is much more serious. Take a look at these patterns in the ground beneath us. What does that look like to you?” Katherine paused for a moment, “It’s almost like a network of roads buried in the ground.” Jack’s brow furrowed as he told Katherine” It doesn’t just look like roads, there is evidence of asphalt here and we sure as hell didn’t bring any with us. We were not the first intelligent species here.” (Simple Sentence 20)

GMOs

Pro:
-nearly all foods are gmo, and no negative effects have been recorded so far
-foods can be more hardy and resistant, bigger crop yields
-more efficient use of resources
-artificial selection has been around for a long time

Con:
-breeding weed-resistant plants may produce super-weeds/ "GMO" weeds
-GMOs still take just as long to mature as non GMOs
-GMOs could be crossed with allergens that people are not aware of

Fight Club Strategies in Writing

The most important skill that we practice in fight club is framing our arguments as responses to others. This ability is important because it gives your audience a reason to care about your argument. It also helps make one’s argument more convincing by forcing us to consider possible objections to our positions and preemptively address those concerns in our own writings. Debates are the perfect tool to develop this ability because you are directly engaging another person, so you have a clear position to argue against. However, these skills do not always transfer easily to other assignments because in fight club the pro and con of each argument is clearer. When we do our fight club debates each side is clearly defined and we don’t have to come up with our own positions. In order to write papers like our final paper we have to define the sides ourselves. This can make things more difficult because if you are proposing a new idea there may not be a clear opposing view for you to argue against, especially if there are several other alternative proposals already in the conversation. It is also much harder to respond to possible criticisms when writing a paper because you don’t have access to immediate feedback like you do when debating in person. This means we have to try to anticipate every possible counter to our own arguments before hand, which is a useful practice, but not always an easy one. One benefit to writing as opposed to arguing verbally is you do have more time to prepare your arguments and collect evidence which can help make the arguments you are preparing more convincing.  

Fight Club- Trolley Problem

Pro

1.     Death is inevitable, so just save the most people

2.     You are responsible for killing someone either way.

3.     Good of the many outweighs the good of the few.

4.     Better for society to save the most people.

5.     You don’t know anything about the people, so the best bet for saving the most value for society is to save more people.

Con

1.     If you kill the one person it is on your conscious, but it is just a freak occurrence if you do nothing.

2.     The ends do not justify the means.

3.     Wouldn’t pull the lever because people tend toward inaction when there is not sufficient time to decide.

4.     It doesn’t matter what you do because either way you are still killing someone.

5.     There is no absolute morality so it can’t be said to be moral or immoral to engage in either option.

6.     Its manslaughter to kill one person, but you aren’t culpable if you do nothing.