Rhetoric

1 Why we use rhetoric

Are our brains intrinsically social? Do we reason best by social means? Is language more “about” reason, or persuasion? That question, and the whole Argumentative Theory of Reason, are explored in another notebook

2 Weak man

Picking the weakest opposing argument to refute instead of the strongest. There are handy discussions of that, e.g., by Julian Sanchez or by the original taxonomizers, Talisse and Aikin. There are interesting hypotheses about how this might interact with coalition and identity from Scott Alexander.

3 Metaphor

(Kerkhoff 1996; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Sperber and Wilson 1996; Spranzi 2004).

4 Rhetorical standards

I’m not invested in the details of the the Harris-Klein Controversy as they relate to the topic they discuss, but I think the case study is interesting. It identifies Rational Style and Activist Style in arguments, and the friction that can arise when we don’t (even if we think of ourselves as above the internet of dunks dogpile):

Harris isn’t doing identity politics in this sense. He doesn’t expect his identity to be an input to his arguments’ evaluation function, and from what aspects of his psyche they’re coming isn’t relevant. Not according to tradition Rational Style debate rules anyway, where evaluation functions only take the content of the argument. Identity politics means refusing to stay in this sandbox and the result is Activist Style, based on traditionally disallowed moves.

Ordinary politics and political journalism play dirty too, because when you really want to win you get out of the sandbox as soon as you think it benefits you. I think strategic use of Activist Style techniques is so normal in politics and political journalism (and frankly, everywhere except among philosophers, scientists and technologists who I, in a fit of typical-minding and wishful thinking, want to see as the norm) that members of those professions don’t think of it as playing dirty at all. At least not as playing dirtier than generally accepted and expected.

This is likely why Klein appears so surprised at Harris anger (to the extent that his surprise is honest). To him, political logic and its tactics are a fact of life and Harris being angry about him using it feels bizarre, like it would feel bizarre for a regular person just having a job to hear an anarchist yelling at them about “collaborating with the system”.

Related: conflict theory.

5 Incoming

• Beware What Sounds Insightful
• Value/virtue signalling. As much as I am tired of things that seem to me to be facile value signalling — which, I presume, is what people mean when they dismiss something as virtue signalling — I am doubly tired of the stylized value signalling where people dismiss any display of values they disapprove of as facile, which is how this term is predominantly used in the comments section. “Virtue signalling” is virtue signalling without the excuse of ignorance.
• Motte and bailey doctrine. Beware: although this is an interesting perspective, every pseudo‑clever commenter treats it as a universal explanation the moment they hear it, just like value signalling.
• My opponent believes something
• Perhaps The Debunking Handbook?
• Scheinproblems
• Ideological Turing tests
• arguman, the online argument mapper
• Slate Star Codex, Varieties Of Argumentative Experience
• What is Erisology?
• Lawrence Newport, How to Convince Your Opponents: “choose what you want to achieve and speak in the language of those who want to achieve the opposite”.
• Rhetological Fallacies – A list of Logical Fallacies & Rhetorical Devices with examples

6 References