Geoff's Miscellany

When using rhetoric or dialectic, your currency is words, they're backed by definitions which reflect concepts or terms, and they're used to buy emotions and thoughts.

When you're using dialectic, you want to be sure that you and your conversation partners agree about definitions. For instance, I was a part of a classroom management discussion recently, and the author of the material we were using eschewed the use of threats, manipulation, and shame. But those words all have conceptual overlap with these terms, "explaining consequences," "persuading," and "social proof." The author of the materials was even against explaining consequences to students because he believes that changing student behavior only happens through the poorly defined concept of "relationality." Here's the point. Teachers were very confused about whether or not they had any discipline tools at all. The author of the material was also a Christian who talked a lot about showing grace to students, but he defined grace in a confusing way. So the main way available to teachers who need to manage their classrooms is basically forgiving them for things.

Writer's Block

You've had it, I've had it. It's not pleasant.

As far as I can tell, there four reasons for writer's block:

1. Trying to sound profound (This is part of the game in fiction and poetry.)
2. Poor research
3. An inability to make an argument
4. Nothing to actually say
5. Bonus Reason Five: You're just procrastinating.

I have very little to say to help poets and fiction authors to overcome writer's block. What I will say is this: Write about something else. Literally just write a narrative or a poem about something entirely unrelated to the project that has left you stumped. Write a narrative about your trip to the bank or a rhyme about your wait in the grocery line. That helps me come up with sermon illustrations and illustrations for speeches on engineering topics as well.

John Henry Newman was talking about his own era, but his thoughts are relevant today:

It were well if none remained boys all their lives; but what is more common than the sight of grown men, talking on political or moral or religious subjects, in that offhand, idle way, which we signify by the word unreal? “That they simply do not know what they are talking about” is the spontaneous silent remark of any man of sense who hears them. Hence such persons have no difficulty in contradicting themselves in successive sentences, without being conscious of it. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1873), xvii.

Yet, despite its advantages, logic is not typically a part of the curriculum in most fields. It was not a part of my training in seminary nor was it a part of my undergraduate degree. Logic is not a requirement for my engineering degree either (though you have to learn it intuitively in computer programming, circuits, and mathematics). I learned logic in high school from a rogue English teacher who was not following the curricular guidelines and it has been a study of mine since then. I talked to a logic professor just last year after watching a debate he moderated. We discussed how amazing it is that essentially the same syllogistic rules work for inference in all fields and apparently in all physical space. He said, “That is troubling for me as an atheist. But have you read about Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic?” This is precisely the trouble. Instead of teaching the thing that works and is supremely useful, we find logic replaced by theoretical substitutes apparently for the rhetorical purpose of making the universe seem less orderly.

Summary: Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, dialectic of verbal reasoning. Knowing the difference between the two will make you a better reader, listener, thinker, writer, and speaker.

Introduction

Sometimes a tool becomes so important to us, it's impossible to imagine not having it. I tend to think of shoes, my pocket knife, and my car that way. For others, it might be their phone or laptop. But all of us know of a tool that becomes quintessential to who we are because of how it increases our capacity to be human. I've taught research, writing, and public speaking for 10 years now, and the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic has become such a tool for me. 

I found this paper, or rather, saw it linked on Twitter. It purports to criticize the behaviors of online dating platforms for their sexual racism, suggest that sexual selection is the result of more than individual choice, but rather of cultural factors as well, "In this view, individuals’ intimate affiliations are not the product of "pure" individual choice, but are instead shaped by accretions of state and social power." The paper then suggests that one can resist such assortative mating, "resistance simply requires recognizing that desire is malleable," particularly it can be shaped by online dating platform algorithms. But whose desires should be shaped, I wonder. I'll simply drop this paragraph here indicating whose desires should not