Persuasive Engagement
John Burt
These are a series of writing assignments for a college first-year composition course that focus upon the idea of “persuasive engagement,” what parties in conflict with each other must have in common with each other to engage in argument rather than in mere shouting.
1. Preliminary Notes (For class discussion. Student might make notes on the basis of these questions for use in the later short papers. The assignment will require several short papers.) Imagine that you are in a serious and protracted moral or political dispute with someone over issue p. Put aside for a second whatever external considerations may move your opponent, O, to take the side he or she does (interest, ideology, tradition, the standing assumptions appropriate, say, to O’s race, religion, nationality, party, class, gender, or whatever), since however telling they may be in the story you want to tell about why O is the way he or she is, they aren’t germane to understanding O’s convictions about p as convictions, as expressions of critical rationality. (Proviso: one can still make recourse to those things if one assumes that O will respond to arguments that he or she should be able to rise above the constraints that those things impose. But the usual use of those considerations — to show that O is a creep whom nobody should take seriously — are out of bounds as far as critical rationality is concerned.) Assume further, that O is principled, intelligent, reasonable, and well-disposed, and will make the same assumptions, at least provisionally, about you. Consider the following things:
(a) Some of the very great values that you share with O in whose terms you may construct a commanding appeal about p. (And sketch in the arguments)
(b) Some of the very great values that you share with O in whose terms O may construct a commanding appeal about p. (ditto)
(c) Some of O’s other values that you do not share, but do feel yourself bound to respect the depth of. (How will knowing what these are change your argumentative strategy about p? Clearly you can expect that arguments that cross these values, while they may be legitimate from your point of view, cannot possibly be telling with O. Is it fair for you, who do not share these values but nevertheless in some way acknowledge them, to make argumentative use of appeals to them? Under what circumstances is it permissible or impermissible for you to make such appeals? )
(d) Ditto, with the parties reversed
(e) Some of the values that you do not share with O, and do not feel have any moral legitimacy at all. What stance is appropriate to take with regard to these values? Do you ignore them? Refute them? Put them to argumentative use even though you do not feel you owe them respect? Are there circumstances under which it is permissible (and not merely expedient) to appeal to these values?
(f) Ditto, with the parties reversed.
(g) Some of the arguments which are immensely persuasive to you, but which you cannot imagine that O will buy without a fatal moral sacrifice on O’s part.
(h) Ditto, with the parties reversed.
Short papers
(a) We often construct parodic accounts of our opponent’s psychologies and moral natures, sometimes without being aware that they are parodic. What are the standing assumptions you make about people like O that may be false? What are the standing assumptions O may make about you that may be false? What circumstances give the color of plausibility to O’s nightmare account of you? (The reverse question is as boring as it is self-serving, so don’t bother with it.) Bearing these in mind, present as realistically as you can, O’s views about you as a kind of character sketch. Then, reverse the operation. In both cases you should make it clear, without being too obvious, that these portraits can’t possibly be the whole story about either you or O.
(b) We often adopt positions that are “suicidally apodictic.” (A suicidally apodictic argument is a compact, show-stopping argument for p that does not in fact reflect your real convictions, but which is a convenient weapon to brandish in an opponent’s face. The risk of engaging in suicidally apodictic arguments is that they invite one to enter into a death-spiral of reciprocated vituperation. To concede that a particular argument for p is suicidally apodictic is not to concede that one lacks other reasons for p or that one’s adherence to p is shaky.) What are arguments about p from your side that you consider suicidally apodictic? What are arguments from the other side that you consider suicidally apodictic? One adopts suicidally apodictic arguments from the suspicion that the arguments that in fact have weight with you are rhetorically, if not morally, vulnerable. What are some of the rhetorically vulnerable — but not stupid or immoral — arguments on both sides? What evidence do you have that your account of O’s vulnerable arguments is correct? What evidence do you have that your own vulnerable argument is widely shared on your side of the fence? (Note that this question and the last are related: nothing gives more color to our nightmare suspicions about each other than our own suicidally apodictic arguments.) Bearing all these in mind, present a suicidally apodictic argument about your side of p. Try to confine yourself to suicidally apodictic arguments that are already in public circulation. Then, present weaker, non suicidally apodictic arguments that probably do a better job of reflecting both your views and O’s views about p.
(c) What are arguments for your side of p that you consider, although widely held, to be fatally flawed? What are arguments for O’s side that have weight with you, although possibly not deciding weight?
(d) Is there a related issue q, which you and O could come to agreement about, which would require on both sides a non-fatal backing down from p? Is there another issue r, which, on the basis of O’s convictions about p, you would expect to find yourself in agreement with O about? Construct the convictions of another party, F, who agrees with you about p but disagrees with you about r.