Unreal:  Students Justifying Beliefs

    “Argument” to me is essentially just reasoning, because when I write out an argument I'm writing out my own thinking on an issue.  I participated in a debate in the sixth grade where the instructor required us to argue the opposite of our convictions.  I no longer admire people who do that.

I see the pedagogical utility of the exercise: among other things, you learn to see the logic of other perspectives. But as an adult nothing annoys me more than people who take positions they don't actually find credible themselves.

 

    Sometimes people think they believe something, while their behavior indicates otherwise.  This happens to all of us.  But when I find myself arguing opposite to the perspective I was arguing ten minutes before, I take that as a sign I've become concerned with winning, or with showing off my racionating skills, with something other than Truth.

 

I often raise objections to my own convictions. Isn't this the healthiest attitude?  Rarely am I on more dangerous ground than when I've made up my mind.  Playing the devil’s advocate for purposes of sharpening your thinking and attaining Truth, however, is not the same as building castles in the air.

 

    So now my reasoning (including feelings) is my writing.  I want the main difference between my reasoning and my writing to be that my writing is more explicit, organized and rigorous, because I've put more time into it. 

In practice it's hard to separate working my explicit beliefs out on a keyboard from my rhetorical presentation.  It's just that working out the genuine beliefs takes precedence for me over rhetorical considerations.

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Our assumptions cause weak arguments and many disagreements. Intellectual honesty, however, demands we acknowledge that we can’t get off the ground without making assumptions.

Too many people don't get this. They treat assumptions - even conclusions - as facts.  The real question is, which assumptions does the evidence best support? Which assumptions about the evidence does other evidence best support?

The question is not: How do I remain consistent?

The question is not: How does this sound?

The question is not: How do I defend this position?

     I schematize ideal reasoning as a movement from perceived evidence ---> via perceived implications  ----> to a conclusion/judgment.  The rest of the thousands of other considerations that an in depth look at rigorous reasoning will reveal only buttress, question, qualify, or otherwise elaborate points along this progression.   Any inquiry genuinely aimed at uncovering knowledge has the overall shape of a movement from evidence to judgments about the implications of that evidence. You look, listen, sense, then you decide on the significance of what you've perceived.

    Yet students of writing, rhetoric and argument are taught to craft a strong thesis first and foremost.  The claim comes first.  Their job, they're told, is to justify that judgment with evidence. 

  Schools have been teaching this way for decades. (For centuries? For the millennia since Aristotle?). Now everyone on earth goes around making bald assertions and then defending them.  Just look at the Internet or the Congress.  I do the same thing. I'm doing it now.

 Is it any wonder the world is so screwed up?

    I'm not saying this is all bad.  Following an up-front assertion with evidence exemplifies one rhetorical approach to conveying your personal Truth.  Monotony bores, so constantly laying out the evidence, followed by its implications, followed by a judgment, would make for boring writing.

 

Writers may present the findings of their reasoning in a variety of ways.  And they may reason as they see fit. In fact the possibilities are endless.

But why are they reasoning? To convince, as I'm doing now? Or to inquire and learn, as students should spend most of their time doing?

Writing doesn't just help us to persuade. Writing helps us to learn, by articulating our thinking and getting it out there as an object. Once it's an object, we can look at our thinking from some distance. We can manipulate it to our liking.

By writing, we can find out what we think.

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     Unfortunately, by the nature of our brains evidence usually must first pass the gatekeeper of our existing beliefs before we even notice it, let alone accept it.  That shouldn't stop us from trying to keep an open gate, so we can follow where the facts lead us. Argument, fundamentally, is not about justifying judgments. It's about reaching judgments.  An argument is a line of reasoning.

In the real world our reasoning jumps around.  Our trains of thought visit and revisit all sorts of stops on the tracks of argument.  But on our vacation journey to the sunny paradise of justified conclusions, we should start from the evidence station. And we should return to that station often.