Pho­to by Math­ias Schindler, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Drawn from Aris­to­tle and his Roman and Medieval inter­preters, the “clas­si­cal trivium”—a divi­sion of thought and writ­ing into Log­ic, Gram­mar, and Rhetoric—assumes at least three things: that it mat­ters how we arrive at our ideas, it mat­ters how we express them, and it mat­ters how we treat the peo­ple with whom we inter­act, even, and espe­cial­ly, those with whom we dis­agree. The word rhetoric has tak­en on the con­no­ta­tion of emp­ty, false, or flat­ter­ing speech. But it orig­i­nal­ly meant some­thing clos­er to kind­ness.

We might note that this ped­a­gogy comes from a logo­cen­tric tra­di­tion, one that priv­i­leges writ­ing over oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But while it ignores phys­i­cal niceties like ges­ture, pos­ture, and per­son­al space, we can still incor­po­rate its lessons into spo­ken conversation—that is, if we’re inter­est­ed in hav­ing con­struc­tive dia­logue, in being heard, find­ing agree­ment, and learn­ing some­thing new. If we want to lob shots into the abyss and hear hun­dreds of voic­es echo back, well… this requires no spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

The sub­ject of sound rhetoric—with its sub­sets of eth­i­cal and emo­tion­al sensitivity—has been tak­en up by philoso­phers over hun­dreds of years, from medieval the­olo­gians to the staunch­ly athe­ist philoso­pher of con­scious­ness Daniel Den­nett. In his book Intu­ition Pumps and Oth­er Tools for Think­ing, Den­nett sum­ma­rizes the cen­tral rhetor­i­cal prin­ci­ple of char­i­ty, call­ing it “Rapoport’s Rules” after an elab­o­ra­tion by social psy­chol­o­gist and game the­o­rist Ana­tol Rapoport.

Like their clas­si­cal pre­de­ces­sors, these rules direct­ly tie care­ful, gen­er­ous lis­ten­ing to sound argu­men­ta­tion. We can­not say we have under­stood an argu­ment unless we’ve actu­al­ly heard its nuances, can sum­ma­rize it for oth­ers, and can grant its mer­its and con­cede it strengths. Only then, writes Den­nett, are we equipped to com­pose a “suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal com­men­tary” of another’s posi­tion. Den­nett out­lines the process in four steps:

1. Attempt to re-express your tar­get’s posi­tion so clear­ly, vivid­ly and fair­ly that your tar­get says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. List any points of agree­ment (espe­cial­ly if they are not mat­ters of gen­er­al or wide­spread agree­ment).
3. Men­tion any­thing you have learned from your tar­get.
4. Only then are you per­mit­ted to say so much as a word of rebut­tal or crit­i­cism.

Here we have a strat­e­gy that pays div­i­dends, if under­tak­en in the right spir­it. By show­ing that we under­stand an opponent’s posi­tions “as well as they do,” writes Den­nett, and that we can par­tic­i­pate in a shared ethos by find­ing points of agree­ment, we have earned the respect of a “recep­tive audi­ence.” Alien­at­ing peo­ple will end an argu­ment before it even begins, when they turn their backs and walk away rather than sub­ject them­selves to obtuse­ness and abuse.

Addi­tion­al­ly, mak­ing every effort to under­stand an oppos­ing posi­tion will only help us bet­ter con­sid­er and present our own case, if it doesn’t suc­ceed in chang­ing our minds (though that dan­ger is always there). These are reme­dies for bet­ter social cohe­sion and less shouty polar­iza­tion, for deploy­ing “the artillery of our right­eous­ness from behind the com­fort­able shield of the key­board,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, “which is real­ly a men­ace of react­ing rather than respond­ing.”

Yelling, or typ­ing, into the void, rather than engag­ing in sub­stan­tive, respect­ful dis­cus­sion is also a ter­ri­ble waste of our time—a dis­trac­tion from much wor­thi­er pur­suits. We can and should, argues Den­nett, Rapoport, and philoso­phers over the cen­turies, seek out posi­tions we dis­agree with. In seek­ing out and try­ing to under­stand their best pos­si­ble ver­sions, we stand to gain new knowl­edge and widen our appre­ci­a­tion.

As Den­nett puts it, “when you want to crit­i­cize a field, a genre, a dis­ci­pline, an art form… don’t waste your time and ours hoot­ing at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone.” In “going after the good stuff,” we might find that it’s bet­ter, or at least dif­fer­ent, than we thought, and that we’re wis­er for hav­ing tak­en the time to learn it, even if only to point out why we think it most­ly wrong.

via Brain Pick­ings/Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Two aca­d­e­m­ic stars and heroes of anti-author­i­tar­i­an left­ist polit­i­cal thought sit down to debate human nature—nowadays such events occur more rarely than they did in the 60s and 70s, when the coun­ter­cul­ture and anti-war move­ments made both Michel Fou­cault and Noam Chom­sky famous. Now, when two thinkers of such cal­iber sit down togeth­er, their con­ver­sa­tion is imme­di­ate­ly dis­tilled into tweet­ed com­men­tary, some­times illus­trat­ed with gifs and video clips. We get the gist and move on to the next link.

In 1971, when Fou­cault and Chom­sky joined host Fons Elders on Dutch TV, those view­ers who tuned in would have to fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion for themselves—for the most part—though it aired in a part­ly abridged ver­sion with com­men­tary from a Pro­fes­sor L.W. Nau­ta. “Chom­sky is at the height of his lin­guis­tic-sci­en­tif­ic mode,” notes New Inquiry, where “Fou­cault per­forms a geneal­o­gy of sci­en­tif­ic truth itself.”

After an intro­duc­tion in Dutch by Dr. Nau­ta, Elders wel­comes his guests onstage in Eng­lish as “tonight’s debaters,” two “moun­tain dig­gers, work­ing at the oppo­site sides of the same moun­tains, with dif­fer­ent tools, with­out know­ing even if they are work­ing in each other’s direc­tion.” It’s a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that amus­es both Chom­sky and Fou­cault, who aren’t dis­cov­er­ing each other’s dif­fer­ences so much as enact­ing them for the stu­dio audi­ence of “ear­ly-70s Dutch intel­li­gentsia.”

The two do find some com­mon ground, in Foucault’s cri­tique of the dom­i­nant his­to­ry of sci­ence, for exam­ple. Where they dif­fer, they seem to be speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and they are also lit­er­al­ly speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Chom­sky begins in Eng­lish, Fou­cault responds in Eng­lish with apolo­gies for his lack of flu­en­cy, then switch­es to French. Those of us who aren’t flu­ent in both lan­guages will have to rely on the trans­la­tion, as many of us do when read­ing Fou­cault as well, a sit­u­a­tion that should give us pause before we draw con­clu­sions about what we think he’s say­ing.

Still, those inclined to reject Fou­cault as a rejec­tor of sci­ence should pay clos­er atten­tion to him, even in trans­la­tion (into Eng­lish, Por­tuguese, and Japan­ese sub­ti­tles in the video above). He does not reject the notion of sci­en­tif­ic fact, but rather, as Wittgen­stein had decades ear­li­er, points out that much of what we take as con­cep­tu­al real­i­ty is no more than vague, mean­ing­less abstrac­tion, “periph­er­al” words and phras­es that do “not all have the same degree of elab­o­ra­tion” as more pre­cise sci­en­tif­ic terms.

Fuzzy ideas, for exam­ple, like “human nature… do not play an ‘orga­niz­ing’ role with­in sci­ence.” Nei­ther “instru­ments of analy­sis” nor “descrip­tive either,” they “sim­ply serve to point out some prob­lems, or rather to point out cer­tain fields in need of study.” They are sign­posts for the unknown, a “sci­en­tif­ic shop­ping list,” as Pro­fes­sor Nau­ta puts it when he breaks in to help­ful­ly explain to view­ers at home what he thinks Fou­cault means. Nauta’s inter­ven­tions are dri­er than the main action—apparently no one thought in 1971 to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event.

Well, almost no one thought to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event. Anar­chist host Elders “want­ed to jazz things up a bit,” writes Eugene Wolters at Crit­i­cal The­o­ry. “Aside from offer­ing Fou­cault hashish for part of his pay­ment, Elder tried repeat­ed­ly to get Fou­cault to wear a bright red wig.” Accord­ing to the James Miller in The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault, Elders “kept pok­ing Fou­cault under the table, point­ing to the red wig on his lap, and whis­per­ing, ‘put it on, put it on.”

Chom­sky found the exchange less than amus­ing, lat­er call­ing Fou­cault “total­ly amoral” and say­ing that he “wild­ly exag­ger­ates.” These minor spec­ta­cles aside, the Chom­sky-Fou­cault debate is less epic show­down and more two most­ly par­al­lel, only occa­sion­al­ly inter­sect­ing, dis­cours­es on “a wide range of top­ics, from sci­ence, his­to­ry, and behav­ior­ism to cre­ativ­i­ty, free­dom, and the strug­gle for jus­tice in the realm of pol­i­tics.” If some of that dis­cus­sion seems over­ly obscure at times, just imag­ine Fou­cault in a bright red wig, and lat­er enjoy­ing what he and his friends called “Chom­sky hash.”

The text of their debate has been pub­lished. Read The Chom­sky-Fou­cault Debate: On Human Nature.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault Offers a Clear, Com­pelling Intro­duc­tion to His Philo­soph­i­cal Project (1966)

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Lin­guis­tic The­o­ry, Nar­rat­ed by The X‑Files‘ Gillian Ander­son

Noam Chom­sky Makes His First Pow­er Point Pre­sen­ta­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness