I hold rhetoric, thus characterized, to be a sort of foundational branch of the arts more generally, much as logic is a foundational branch of mathematics. — Pfhorrest

Rhetoric would be logic misapplied in the sense that it is argumentation intended to bypass objective empirical validation and instead plug directly into the various cognitive biases of humans. That is, all the standard kinds of "irrationalities", such as the recency effect or groupthink.

Trump is a master of rhetoric in that any statement he makes is true because - evidence - "everyone says that", or "only nasty and unpopular people would contradict it".

This site lists over 80 such appeals to bias. Trump probably can hit all of them.

But Trump is of course also the most challenged in actually constructing a logical argument, so that demonstrates how little rhetoric in fact relies on actual logic.

And indeed, it highlights the further point that even actual logic depends on a notion of empirical confirmation - validation by the evidence as well as by its internal syntactic consistency - to enjoy the prestige it has.

So it is foundational to pragmatism and science really. Or at least it makes more sense to oppose the rhetorical arts to the pragmatic sciences if both are about discovering "real world truths" in some fashion.

Art is social realism. It is subjective rather than objective in being tailored to the cognitive biases that evolution built into the pre-rational, pre-linguistic, vertebrate brain. Or at least that brain as used by humans still stuck in a narrative era of social discourse. Before they got all rationally educated in a modern logically-structured way that valued objectivity as a stance on nature.

The “art” part in the “art of rhetoric” probably serves the same function as in “the art of building”, “the art of war”, “the art of the deal” which has less to do with the modern meaning of the word as it stands alone then with the more ancient meaning as in the Greek “techne” which rather means “skill”, but is still translated as “art”. Rhetoric is a skill.

That being said, rhetoric does seem to be more artistic than other more artisan skills. It may be considered a form of literature even when only spoken since it is about putting words together in a way that produces an aesthetic effect rather than just being plain communication.

Against that, one could argue that we all use rhetoric whenever we try to persuade anyone of anything without thereby having any reasonable right to call ourselves artists. But I think it’s important to retain a difference between good art and bad art. If I draw a stickman on a scrap of paper I am strictly speaking an artist, although a horribly bad one. Art as such is nothing rare and special and we all engage in it whenever we do anything that is slightly creative, for example when we try to persuade.

logic and rhetoric — Pfhorrest

More accurately rhetoric is the skill - techne - of persuasion in contingent matters. E.g., shall we attack at dawn? Shall we build a wall or build ships? Of matter that could be one way or the other.

Logic is about the demonstration - proof - of matters that are as they are and cannot be otherwise.

Rhetoric a (usually auditory) taking-counsel-with leading to a decision concerning an action to be taken or not taken. Logic often a visual display to which a viewer assents.

Rhetoric and logic. Two different animals, or tools, for different purposes, used in different ways, although with some overlap.

It's tempting to think of logic as senior, but the differences between them forestall such comparisons, and likely rhetoric is much the older.

Rhetoric is an art, sure. It's not foundational to art generally, though. If I enjoy some music, am I really a victim of rhetoric?

And is the composer of the music you liked practicing rhetoric on you by way of notes?

I have some difficulty applying the term 'rhetoric' to music or abstract art. I can imagine drama or novels, poetry--the verbal arts--employing rhetoric effectively. In the TV drama MAD MEN, Don Draper displays his advertising campaigns (which are sometimes very artful in the way advertising works can be) with rhetorical force. The show writers didn't invent one very effective piece--Eastman Kodak did--where Draper presents the slide carousel (a carousel of color as Disney later put it).

Hmmm, I guess in a broad way a lot of our creative activity involves rhetoric, including music.

Rhetoric would be logic misapplied in the sense that it is argumentation intended to bypass objective empirical validation and instead plug directly into the various cognitive biases of humans. That is, all the standard kinds of "irrationalities", such as the recency effect or groupthink. — apokrisis

I'm not sure if you took me to be saying that rhetoric is a kind of logic. I wasn't; I was separating them as different aspects of communication, "structure" and "presentation" basically, and relating rhetoric to the arts in the same way that logic is usually related to mathematics.

I have some other stuff to say in response to the negative view of rhetoric you go on to state, but I intended to do a different thread all about that later. Another thread about the merits or faults of rhetoric, rather than this thread which is just supposed to be about the relationship of rhetoric to art.

The “art” part in the “art of rhetoric” probably serves the same function as in “the art of building”, “the art of war”, “the art of the deal” which has less to do with the modern meaning of the word as it stands alone then with the more ancient meaning as in the Greek “techne” which rather means “skill”, but is still translated as “art”. — Congau

Yeah, I meant that to be a bit of artful rhetoric on my own art there, segueing into the relationship between art (in the modern sense) and rhetoric by using the phrase "the art of rhetoric", which I'm sure is usually meant in the way you say here.

one could argue that we all use rhetoric whenever we try to persuade anyone of anything without thereby having any reasonable right to call ourselves artists. But I think it’s important to retain a difference between good art and bad art. If I draw a stickman on a scrap of paper I am strictly speaking an artist, although a horribly bad one. Art as such is nothing rare and special and we all engage in it whenever we do anything that is slightly creative, for example when we try to persuade. — Congau

Yes, I agree completely. Art is involved to some degree or another in basically all communication, different art forms depending on the medium of communication. My thesis here is that rhetoric is really more about that, the artistic side of communication, than it is about persuasive communication specifically, and that the thing that makes any kind of art art at all is a certain feature it has in common with rhetoric, that feature being precisely what it is that makes them both good or bad in their respective ways. (Continued below...)

Rhetoric a (usually auditory) taking-counsel-with leading to a decision concerning an action to be taken or not taken. — tim wood

The historical origins of rhetoric are in recommending or discommending actions in the course of politics, sure, but even back in ancient Greece, many rhetoricians like the Sophists argued that, to quote Wikipedia here, "a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic, regardless of his experience in that field. This method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics."

Rhetoric is an art, sure. It's not foundational to art generally, though. If I enjoy some music, am I really a victim of rhetoric? — bert1

Leaving aside the "victim" language which again paints rhetoric as an entirely bad thing: yes in a way, if you enjoy some music, the musician has successfully used some broadly-speaking rhetorical device on you to successfully evoke that reaction in you.

(...Continued from earlier). Good rhetoric is successful rhetoric, rhetoric whose style and presentation successfully delivers its content into the minds of the audience; not necessarily rhetoric whose content is true. Likewise, what makes something art at all, on my account (though by no means unique to me), is its being presented to an audience to evoke something in them, and good art is successful art, art that evokes the intended reaction in the audience.

It's in that sense that I mean that rhetoric is a foundational branch of the arts. It is purely and explicitly about getting someone to feel some way about something using our most basic communicative tools, our language. All of the other arts are about using various other media to get people to feel various ways about various things, and so are sort of "applied rhetoric", in the same way that mathematical fields that seem to have nothing to do with pure formal logic are all in a distant sense "applied logic".

Hmmm, I guess in a broad way a lot of our creative activity involves rhetoric, including music. — Bitter Crank

:up:

I'm not sure if you took me to be saying that rhetoric is a kind of logic. I wasn't; I was separating them as different aspects of communication, "structure" and "presentation" basically....

...]I have some other stuff to say in response to the negative view of rhetoric you go on to state — Pfhorrest

Sure. The traditional meaning of rhetoric was about oratorical skill - persuasive public speaking. So it was about pragmatics - presentation - rather than syntax/semantics, the actual grammatically-structured and meaningful part of what was said.

But "rhetorical" has come to have the negative connotation of the merely crowd-pleasing for good reason. And your effort to connect rhetoric to the arts is something I then tried to account for in as neutral a fashion as possible.

Again, if we say someone is making a logical or rational argument, we mean it is essentially scientific and objective. There is some theory expressed as a logically consistent assertion. And there is good reason for us to agree with it because it appeals to "objective evidence" - both the internal logical validity of the argument that we can all check as we all follow the same rules, and by empirical support in that we make the same measurements to check the world actually is as proposed.

Art is different from science. It's target is the social world rather than the real world. That is what it wants to tell "the truth of". It ends up speaking to the constructed reality of being an individual in a culture - even if it is a painting of mountains.

So rhetoric becomes persuasive narrative in that context. And it is not surprising that "good rhetoric" in that context plays to the inherent cognitive biases of humans. It hits its audience on the target. Otherwise it would be just a lecture with examples.

The bad thing is when rhetoric of this "artful" kind then gets applied back where it shouldn't be - where we are supposed to be rational thinkers making evidence-based claims.

Another thread about the merits or faults of rhetoric, rather than this thread which is just supposed to be about the relationship of rhetoric to art. — Pfhorrest

You are so controlling. But it should be clear that my point was that rhetoric is not merely "presentation style" or "holding a crowd technique". There is good reason why we now see it as distinguishing between scientifically rational discourse and creatively social discourse.

Rhetoric is called rhetoric to point to argumentation that pretends to objective standards but is designed to tap into psychological biases.

When rhetoric is actually art - a subjective narrative that is also designed to tap into how people "naturally are" - then it gets called art. No one calls Picasso or whoever great rhetoricians, even if being fluent in earnest bullshitting may be a career requirement of the budding artist.

not necessarily rhetoric whose content is true. — Pfhorrest

What does this mean? If rhetoric is about the arts of persuasion, then either side could be true. The question of truth goes to logic and its demonstrations. Should I apply for this job or that? Logic cannot tell me. It goes to rhetoric, even if self-applied, to persuade me as to the better course of action. That is, in brief, the true is not the business of rhetoric, the business of rhetoric is the better - or best.

What does this mean? If rhetoric is about the arts of persuasion, then either side could be true — tim wood

Yes, I was saying that good rhetoric is not determined by the truth of its contents, but by its effectiveness at delivering them.

Should I apply for this job or that? Logic cannot tell me. It goes to rhetoric, even if self-applied, to persuade me as to the better course of action. That is, in brief, the true is not the business of rhetoric, the business of rhetoric is the better - or best. — tim wood

Rhetoric isn't entirely about prescriptive matters. You can use rhetoric to convince someone that something is the case just as much as you can use it to convince them that it ought to be the case. That was the point of that bit I quoted earlier about even people as old as the Sophists using rhetoric for purposes other than convincing someone to do something, which of course was its origins, but rather for convincing anyone of anything.

I'm actually planning yet another future thread about adapting Aristotle's breakdown of rhetoric into three kinds, all prescriptive, divided by their temporal relations, into instead a descriptive, prescriptive, and dual-direction-of-fit breakdown that ends up remarkably similar to his original triad.

The bad thing is when rhetoric of this "artful" kind then gets applied back where it shouldn't be - where we are supposed to be rational thinkers making evidence-based claims. — apokrisis

I don't think it's bad for rhetoric to get used in those circumstances entirely, only for it to be used against logical thinking in those circumstances. But it can also be used for encouraging logical thinking in them as well.

Since this thread is already going off the rails into this other topic, I may as well just say what I was saving for another thread now.

Some philosophers such as Plato were vehemently opposed to rhetoric, seeing it as manipulative sophistry without regard for truth, in contrast with the logical, rational dialectic that he and his teacher Socrates advocated. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, had a less negative opinion of rhetoric, viewing it as neither inherently good nor bad but as useful toward either end, and holding that because many people sadly do not think in perfectly rational ways, rhetorical appeals to emotion and character and such are often necessary to get such people to accept truths that they might otherwise irrationally reject.

I side much more with Aristotle's view on this matter, viewing logic and rhetoric as complimentary to each other, not in competition. I like to use an analogy of prescribing someone medicine: the actual medicinal content is most important of course, but you stand a much better chance of getting someone to actually swallow that content if it's packaged in a small, smooth, sweet-tasting pill than if it's packaged in a big, jagged, bitter pill. In this analogy, the medicinal content of the pill is the logical, rational content of a speech-act, while the size, texture, and flavor of the pill is the rhetorical packaging and delivery of the speech-act. It is of course important that the "medicine" (logic) be right, but it's just as important that the "pill" (rhetoric) be such that people will actually swallow it.

@tim wood maybe you would like to tell @apokrisis about your distinction between rhetoric and sophistry that you mentioned to me before, since it sounds like that's basically the same thing I would say in response to the negative light apo casts on rhetoric. Sophistry sucks, yes, but not all rhetoric is sophistry. (Though sometimes people do use the word "rhetoric" to mean something more like sophistry, sure; and "logic" to mean the opposite; but IMO those are themselves rhetorical, technically inaccurate uses of the words).

His student Aristotle ... holding that because many people sadly do not think in perfectly rational ways, rhetorical appeals to emotion and character and such are often necessary to get such people to accept truths that they might otherwise irrationally reject. — Pfhorrest

So if you are the smart rational one with the correct opinion, it is fine to use any means necessary to carry the less clever crowd?

Do you really want to argue that?

In this analogy, the medicinal content of the pill is the logical, rational content of a speech-act, while the size, texture, and flavor of the pill is the rhetorical packaging and delivery of the speech-act. — Pfhorrest

Yikes. You do know that Big Pharma indeed relies on the placebo effect in designing its pills and potions? If they look like magic beans or secret elixirs, this has a measurable effect on their perceived benefits.

Likewise the doctor in a white coat and a stethoscope draped around the neck. A rational content is being promised by the medical packaging. But sometimes all you are getting is the packaging.

You’re just re-emphasizing that this power can be used for bad, which I’m not contesting at all. I’m only saying it can also be used for good. Communicating effectively in any way requires the use of rhetoric, guiding people's attention to the important parts. (Like the analogy with building design or interface design earlier). Teaching effectively requires the use of rhetoric like that. The Socratic method is itself a rhetorical device to do just that. I'd almost say that rhetoric used for good just is synonymous with effective teaching, maybe.

I was going to have yet another later thread about this too, but maybe it would help to clarify this issue (which is already a thread-swallowing tangent) if I give my interpretations of the traditional rhetorical "modes of persuasion", in terms of speech-act theory, specifically direction of fit.

In order to communicate effectively, a speaker must convey to their audience:

- The speaker's "fit to the world": their expertise on the subject matter. Emphasizing this is the essence of the "ethos" mode of persuasion. As a "speaker-to-world" fit, so to speak, this may superficially seem like it is entirely about descriptive truth, with a mind-to-world direction of fit, but the subject matter about which the speaker conveys their expertise may just as well be a prescriptive one, with a world-to-mind direction of fit.

- The speaker's "fit to the (audience's) mind": their sympathy with the perspective of the audience, being on their side, trying to help them, rather than being against them, attacking them. Emphasizing this is the essence of the "pathos" mode of persuasion. As a "speaker-to-mind" fit, so to speak, this may superficially seem like it is entirely about prescriptive good, with a world-to-mind direction of fit, showing the audience that the speaker is normatively acceptable, but it can be just as important to convey a factual understandability (with a mind-to-world fit), that the speaker understands the perspective from which the audience sees the world, and can translate a view of the the subject matter in question to that audience's perspective.

- The speaker's ability to feed their expertise on the world sympathetically into the audience's mind at an appropriate pace for the audience to digest it. This has much in common with the showmanship that is most important in the ceremonial or epideictic type of rhetoric, because it requires the speaker to convey the subject in an entertaining manner, in the literal sense of "entertaining" as in holding the audience's attention, leaving them neither bored nor overwhelmed.

Contrary to the Sophists, and concurring with Plato and his portrayal of Socrates, I think it is very important that the speaker actually be all of these things they are conveying to their audience. They really should actually know the topic they are talking about. They really should care to actually help their audience by conveying it to them. And they really should have the patience to pace it out in the way that most effectively bridges that gap between the two. But unlike Plato and his portrayal of Socrates, and concurring with Aristotle, I think it is also important that the speaker demonstrate such expertise, sympathy, and patience to their audience.

That demonstration of ethos and pathos, expertise and sympathy, is the essence of rhetoric, in the sense that I mean it here as something separate from logic, logos being the traditional third mode of persuasion. Just dryly hitting someone with a book of hard logic isn't going to effectively communicate anything to them. It has to be delivered in a way that will actually get through to them.

@apokrisis Pfhorrest thinks I can tell you something about rhetoric. And I doubt it, but who can resist such a request? I find in Rhetoric and reinforced by other sources a completely clear distinction between the purposes of logic and rhetoric, and thereby a difference between themselves. Logic is about demonstrating truths that are universally and necessarily so and cannot be otherwise. Rhetoric the contingent, that could either be or not be.

Rhetoric usually concerns a decision to be made, an action to be taken - or not taken. The arguments are persuasive in nature and reasoning via enthymemes and topics. The former being incomplete syllogisms, and the topics being usually the consideration of opposites or contraries like the greater the lesser, bigger/smaller, more likely/less likely: if memory serves, Aristotle listed 29 such.

Aspects of both share a semblance. I believe Aristotle made clear that he would have preferred if all matters could be resolved by logic, but at the same time he knew they could not be.

Persuasion, then, has its place. And the tropes of both are sometimes shared. How many times, for example, did you hear a maths professor say that something was obvious or clear that clearly was not either. That was a rhetorical appeal. And so forth. I'm surprised if anything here you do not already know perfectly well. But many people, even those who know something about rhetoric, still do not keep the distinction between them and their respective purposes in mind, and also confuse rhetoric with sophistry. That is, confuse the reputable and useful with the contemptible and hateful.

Edit, to correct a word.

I’m only saying it can also be used for good. — Pfhorrest

If that were all that you claimed, there would be far less to discuss. That counts as the bleeding obvious.

Just dryly hitting someone with a book of hard logic isn't going to effectively communicate anything to them. It has to be delivered in a way that will actually get through to them. — Pfhorrest

OK, you make it clear your concern is limited to the use of the "fit to" concept of interactions.

I think I was ending up talking about that fit as well. Scientific ideas need to be communicated in their certain way - explicit logical theory, concrete objective measurements - to persuade their audience. That defines a good fit.

But rhetoric - in its ancient Aristotelean sense - is about powerful oratory. And to move crowds, you have to plug into ordinary human psychology. That would define its good fit.

The problems of mixing the two were already known in Aristotle's day. Hence Plato's scorn for sophists who taught rhetoric as a game of social winning rather than an excavation of metaphysical truth.

And today, having been through the Scientific revolution, and even the Romantic revolution, the problems of mixing the two modes of "fit" are even more apparent.

The problems seem the more interesting story here. But obviously that's just me. I haven't persuaded you. :grin:

Logic is about demonstrating truths that are universally and necessarily so and cannot be otherwise. Rhetoric the contingent, that could either be or not be. — tim wood

I don't think much hinges on the distinction if rhetoric is a social art of persuading an audience towards an already held opinion rather than a Socratic dialogue where the goal was to reveal what had to be the case logically.

So the big flip in Ancient Greece was in accepting the principle of a dialectical inquiry as the royal road to arriving at truth. That is what you really get from Plato as the reason to engage in something more ambitious than sophistry.

The irony is that really strong dialectical arguments produce equally convincing alternatives. Heraclitus says all is flux? Well, my boy Parmenides says all is stasis. The Many is the One.

And so metaphysics oscillates even until this day. Another story of course.

Rhetoric as qualitative information is necessary for positioning quantitative information in relation to the system. In the ancient Aristotlean sense - where all information is oratory - rhetoric can be seen to render quantitative facts or logic as secondary. Plato’s arguments against rhetoric seem to follow these lines.

Modern sources of information, while commonly sliding into sophistry, can also have the opposite effect - with empirical data rendering qualitative positioning of the measurements as secondary. An excavation of metaphysical truth - in the age of quantum mechanics - necessarily involves rhetoric, not as an ‘art of persuasion’, but as a recognition of relativity or uncertainty in interpreting undeniable quantitative information as a statement of relevant philosophical truth.

But many people, even those who know something about rhetoric, still do not keep the distinction between them and their respective purposes in mind, and also confuse rhetoric with sophistry. That is, confuse the reputable and useful with the contemptible and hateful. — tim wood

That's what I was looking for, thanks :-)

(I disagree with the characterization of rhetoric as being entirely about prescriptive persuasion about contingent futures, but I'll circle back around to that in a different thread later).

If that were all that you claimed, there would be far less to discuss. That counts as the bleeding obvious. — apokrisis

Well the main topic of this thread isn't about that claim, it's about my proposed relationship between rhetoric and the arts. You responded with an attack on rhetoric generally though, and didn't like me trying to sidestep that to get on with the main point, which is not about whether rhetoric is good or bad, but how it relates to the arts. So to try to wrap that tangent up, I'm replied with my explanation of why rhetoric can also be used for good, and isn't the same as sophistry, which I agree is always bad. In that context, all I'm saying (the conclusion I'm giving reasons for) is that rhetoric can also be used for good. If you think that's bleeding obvious then I don't know why it seemed like you disagreed with that until now.

Aside from that tangential context, I have other claims, about the relationship of rhetoric to the arts, yes.

I think I was ending up talking about that fit as well. Scientific ideas need to be communicated in their certain way - explicit logical theory, concrete objective measurements - to persuade their audience. That defines a good fit.

But rhetoric - in its ancient Aristotelean sense - is about powerful oratory. And to move crowds, you have to plug into ordinary human psychology. That would define its good fit. — apokrisis

You seem to be conflating content with audience here.

If you're trying to convince scientists of a theory about reality (say, anthropogenic global warming), you need to show them explicit logical theory and concrete objective measurements, yes. And for that audience you can mostly assume they're already interested in hearing what logic and measurements you have to present, so you don't need to wrap it up in a bow, you just need to put it out there and then get out of the way.

But if you're trying to convince the general populace of that same theory of reality -- same content, different audience -- you need to be aware that often they're not just going to zero in on your logic and facts and brush any rhetorical flourishes away as distractions. They're going to be loaded up with biases that will make them inclined to either trust you or distrust you, either because they think you really do or don't know what you're talking about, or because they think you really are or aren't concerned for the same interests as them; and even if they do perceive you as a sympathetic expert, if you talk too fast, or too slow, or otherwise don't spoon feed it to them at their pace in their way, you're still going to lose them. If you think you have an important, true message that you need to communicate to them, it's thus important that you do everything you can to encourage them to trust your expertise, trust your sympathy for them, and follow along with what you're trying to tell them until the conclusion.

You could also use those same tools to feed them lies, but that's not the fault of the tools, that's the fault of the user -- and of the audience they're used on, for paying more attention to the packaging than the content in the first place. Someone who rightly zeroes in on the content won't care how it's packaged. So you can ignore them for rhetorical purposes. And they're a tiny minority of the populace. It's everyone else you need to hone your communication skills (i.e. rhetoric) for.

So the big flip in Ancient Greece was in accepting the principle of a dialectical inquiry as the royal road to arriving at truth. That is what you really get from Plato as the reason to engage in something more ambitious than sophistry. — apokrisis

Getting someone to walk that road together with you is itself a rhetorical feat. If your interlocutor thinks that you're going to be playing some kind of duplicitous tricky mind games, they're not going to be open-minded enough to follow the logic in the dialectic. They'll put up their defenses and be ever on the lookout for the way to "win" the argument they think they're having with you. To get someone to engage in a dialectic, they have to believe you are an honest truth-seeker too, who isn't looking to brainwash them but to go on a journey of exploration with them, and someone who's not going to get them lost on that journey, i.e. a smart and honest truth-seeker. Convincing them of that is a work of rhetoric. It's easiest to do if it's actually true, but while you could convince them of it even if it were false, it just being true isn't enough unto itself, you also have to convince them of it, or they'll never engage in the dialectic with you.

Leaving aside the "victim" language which again paints rhetoric as an entirely bad thing: yes in a way, if you enjoy some music, the musician has successfully used some broadly-speaking rhetorical device on you to successfully evoke that reaction in you. — Pfhorrest

Fair enough. If you take the negative connotation out of it. In my ignorance I thought rhetoric and sophistry were more or less the same thing.

In the ancient Aristotlean sense - where all information is oratory - rhetoric can be seen to render quantitative facts or logic as secondary. — Possibility

I think that rhetoric does just boil down to that ancient emphasis on oratory as a practical life skill - the social art of speaking persuasively.

The modern rational mindset then arises via a shift from qualitative to quantitative argument. The shift from ordinary social language to a mathematical mindset based on logical rules and measurements.

That shifts the “persuasion” out of the subjective or social realm and into a formal scientific or rationalist one.

An excavation of metaphysical truth - in the age of quantum mechanics - necessarily involves rhetoric, not as an ‘art of persuasion’, but as a recognition of relativity or uncertainty in interpreting undeniable quantitative information as a statement of relevant philosophical truth. — Possibility

Metaphysics is on the qualitatiive end of the spectrum in its discussions. But science has been generating the new qualities to be discussed. Dialectically paired qualities like information and entropy have emerged as the most essential measures or quantifications of reality. Metaphysics can now ask, so what are those really? :grin:

If you think that's bleeding obvious then I don't know why it seemed like you disagreed with that until now. — Pfhorrest

If you want to sharpen the definition of how something might be good, it helps to be clear in what sense or context it is bad.

The general modern connotation of rhetoric is that it is sophistry. So there is even more reason to dig into a neutral definition.

Then my actual argument - the bit I found interesting - was how rhetoric would count as not logical in its dependence on psychological appeals rather than quantified facts. That is where art would come in. The ability to plug into the cognitive biases that rational discourse is instead designed to overcome.

If there was anything useful to say here, that was it as far as I was concerned.

But if you're trying to convince the general populace of that same theory of reality -- same content, different audience -- you need to be aware that often they're not just going to zero in on your logic and facts and brush any rhetorical flourishes away as distractions. — Pfhorrest

Again you dwell on the bleeding obvious. My focus was on the fact that “success” in that fashion hinges on a skill at connecting with human cognitive biases.

Note how your whole post manages to avoid the point I raised. I say science and art are distinctive in that one relies on “psychological facts” and the other on “objective facts”. Each thus ought to have their own rhetorical style - if we are using rhetoric as some general neutral definition of persuasive communication.

But you were trying to contrast logic and rhetoric. And that then doesn’t work if you also want rhetoric to bridge the division of rational or scientific exposition and artistic or social audience connection.

Your OP had this central confusion running through it. If everyone seems to be going off at tangents, perhaps that would be why?

But you were trying to contrast logic and rhetoric. And that then doesn’t work if you also want rhetoric to bridge the division of rational or scientific exposition and artistic or social audience connection. — apokrisis

It sounds like you are confused about the way in which I'm contrasting logic and rhetoric. I'm not saying that you can do only one or the other. Only that they are concerned with different, complementary aspects of communication. We can do one without the other, but most often we are doing both simultaneously.

We can do pure applied logic, and just be doing abstract mathematics. (Empirical science is something else beyond mere logic and math). We can do pure applied "rhetoric", in the sense of playing to people's psychology, and that would be doing abstract art, just evoking feelings in people for the sake of feeling them.

That relationship between rhetoric and art was the main point of this thread. The similar relationship between logic and math was for analogical illumination, as that relationship is generally much more widely understood. The point wasn't to pit logic and rhetoric in competition with each other. Because most of the time, we're using at least a little of both at once.

I think that rhetoric does just boil down to that ancient emphasis on oratory as a practical life skill - the social art of speaking persuasively. — apokrisis

In a preliterate society - not to be confused with an illiterate society - spoken language was the repository of all knowledge. Rhetoric, then, no mere social art. It's been said that the state of the state then could be assessed by the state of the official language.

Modern rhetoric as sophistry? All that says is that you have not grasped that some - many, most - issues are not soluble in logic. How could they be? Calling it all just psychology not only completely misses the point, but covertly reserves a place for the clever people to claim they're too smart for mere psychology. Rhetoric can only be understood by first recognizing that it does not reduce to anything else but itself. Not logic, not psychology, but itself.

"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Rhetoric 1355b25

It sounds like you are confused about the way in which I'm contrasting logic and rhetoric. — Pfhorrest

Nope. I covered that.

Sure. The traditional meaning of rhetoric was about oratorical skill - persuasive public speaking. So it was about pragmatics - presentation - rather than syntax/semantics, the actual grammatically-structured and meaningful part of what was said.

We can do one without the other, but most often we are doing both simultaneously. — Pfhorrest

Speech acts are always performative - they involve pragmatics. But speech acts also need semantic intent constrained by grammatical structure. So they always go together. Otherwise there is just a nonsense noise or empty theatrics.

We can do pure applied logic, and just be doing abstract mathematics. (Empirical science is something else beyond mere logic and math). — Pfhorrest

Abstract maths often does seem like nonsense - all syntactical pattern and no semantic meat. :razz:

Empirical science is logical structure meaningfully applied to the world via quantification or measurement. It is speech about something and so is demonstrably useful.

So I don't find your logic vs rhetoric dichotomy accurate as it leaves out the third thing of semantics.

But at the same time, it seems like a good departure point for asking the question of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. What is it about the way we say something that acts as a constraint on semantic interpretation?

What strikes me now is that logic as syntactic structure is a constraint that the audience - a community of thinkers - would want to impose on the speaker. A discipline to ensure something concrete and measurable, so potentially meaningful, just got claimed.

Rhetoric - as pragmatics - is the attempt by a speaker to constrain the audience in an inverse fashion. It boils down to loosening their determination to doubt by signalling all the ways they must be really already on the same page. A context that grounds the semantics is shared. This being so, there is no need to speak of x, y and z.

So that is how the game of communication gets played generally. The speaker is constrained by a set of grammatical habits. But an audience also needs to be on the same page in terms a semantic common ground. Otherwise a speech act can never touch bottom in terms of an endless capacity to doubt the semantic validity of everything that we hear said.

(Sound like a discussion board?)

Anyway, a speaker has to provide both those things to communicate an idea. Both a logically structured speech act and also some kind of "impression management" via rhetoric/linguistic pragmatics that brings an audience into the necessary state of receptivity which would ground the interaction.

From there, we can branch off into the uses and abuses of rhetoric/linguistic pragmatics as they are appropriate to the sciences or the arts. Even abstract maths (or abstract art).

That relationship between rhetoric and art was the main point of this thread. — Pfhorrest

Have you said anything so far in response to my point that art relies on plugging into the inherent cognitive biases of humans? That is what sets up a dichotomy between two kinds of currently socially-valued communication methodologies that we might get educated in - the rational and the social, the scientific and the poetic, the thoughtful and the rousing.

In a preliterate society - not to be confused with an illiterate society - spoken language was the repository of all knowledge. Rhetoric, then, no mere social art. It's been said that the state of the state then could be assessed by the state of the official language. — tim wood

Sure. Oral traditions are thus dependent on the kind of narrative structure that human brains are adept at remembering. Reality has to get turned into a story handed down over the generations by this kind of fragile link - one where every speaker can rewrite the facts to suit the audience.

Modern rhetoric as sophistry? All that says is that you have not grasped that some - many, most - issues are not soluble in logic. — tim wood

All that says? Did I even say that? Or is this your creative approach to the facts in pursuance of a crowd-pleasing rhetorical performance?

Rhetoric can only be understood by first recognizing that it does not reduce to anything else but itself. Not logic, not psychology, but itself.

"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Rhetoric 1355b25 — tim wood

So why does Aristotle list the three things it reduces to as (1) perceptions of the personal character of the speaker, (2) the ability to excite emotions that are pleased and friendly, not pained and hostile, in the the audience, and (3) the proving of a truth - or at least an appearance of having done so - in the structure of the speech act?

So I don't find your logic vs rhetoric dichotomy accurate as it leaves out the third thing of semantics. — apokrisis

I never said that logic and rhetoric are the entirety of communication, just that they are different and opposite aspects of it. Semantics is, as you say, the meat of all communication. In that analogy, one might say is the bread (structures the sandwich) and rhetoric is the sauce (adds flavor). Abstract mathematics is, like you say, meatless, just dry bread. Abstract art is, on the other hand, pure sauce. (I don't mean abstract painting here specifically, but all forms of art that aren't representational; instrumental music, for instance).

What strikes me now is that logic as syntactic structure is a constraint that the audience - a community of thinkers - would want to impose on the speaker. A discipline to ensure something concrete and measurable, so potentially meaningful, just got claimed.

Rhetoric - as pragmatics - is the attempt by a speaker to constrain the audience in an inverse fashion. It boils down to loosening their determination to doubt by signalling all the ways they must be really already on the same page. A context that grounds the semantics is shared. This being so, there is no need to speak of x, y and z.

So that is how the game of communication gets played generally. The speaker is constrained by a set of grammatical habits. But an audience also needs to be on the same page in terms a semantic common ground. Otherwise a speech act can never touch bottom in terms of an endless capacity to doubt the semantic validity of everything that we hear said. — apokrisis

That is an interesting symmetry. Thanks for noting that. I'll mull it over.

Have you said anything so far in response to my point that art relies on plugging into the inherent cognitive biases of humans? — apokrisis

I thought that was just you agreeing with my general thesis here, that rhetoric and the arts more generally both trade in the appeal to those kinds of things. I would frame it more as "evoking feelings" than "plugging into biases" but I think that amounts to the same thing, inasmuch as I construe "feelings" as unreflective, automatic interpretations of experiences, in contrast to "thoughts" which I construe as more reflective, deliberate judgements.

I thought that was just you agreeing with my general thesis here, that rhetoric and the arts more generally both trade in the appeal to those kinds of things. — Pfhorrest

OK, we look to agree there.

I would frame it more as "evoking feelings" than "plugging into biases" — Pfhorrest

Yep, this in turn gets tricky as the biases are both biological and cultural - hardware and software - once you dig into them.

:up: