Algorithms, Meta-data and Prefiguring Existentialism

First, I want to use the space that I have here to express what time would not allow for in class. As everyone knows, our assignment was to familiarize ourselves with three technologies that were designed to enhance our research capabilities. I raised a few objections in class, noting that certain kinds of externalities accompany technologies of any sort. In his Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger considers, among other things, the possibility that while each technology uncovers things that were not seen--a revealing--they also cover over things that were seen--a concealing. The heart of this assignment, for me, was to utilize these tools in order to know what they could reveal and possibly conceal. So, as I am considering the tools before us (Internet Archive, Alex and Google NGram Viewer), I am also extrapolating or reading these technologies into the future.

Revealing
I am often dumbfounded by the pervasive technologies available to us in almost every situation and context. Sure, there is validity in analyzing IA, Alex and NGram with a view towards optimization. With that critical lens, we see what might be done to improve the technology itself, which is useful. When, however, that is the only lens we use, this becomes problematic. I will give a brief but personal example.

Instruments plus Knowledge-Making as a Holistic Art of Balance in Vico

Vico, to me, seems to believe that knowledge should be holistic. I must be careful when I use that term. Holistic implies “the whole.” If I did not further specify, the term would be too general to use here, but in this case, I am specifically wondering if Vico thinks that a more “whole” version of human knowledge is the same thing as a fusion of current measurement-based “study methods” (which he wants to improve upon, since he thinks they are, in ways, “inferior ” to more ancient methods (Vico 866)) and the antique corpus of knowledge and knowledge-making practices (which promote argumentation) we no longer have (866), which he wants to remember (and re-implement).

Not just this, but I think he is advocating a balance (which means we use both practices when we ought, in order to learn as we ought, and not inordinately) between the two because he believes that if you lend yourself too much to one you're incapable of adequately addressing the other: "We should be careful to avoid that the growth of common sense” (which he says steers eloquence) “be stifled in them by a habit of advanced speculative criticism”(which Vico seems to think stems out of  modern methods of study)… (868).

Dead Ends, Dejection, and Death: The Tunnel Vision of Seeking Absolute Truth

When I first read the exploratory assignment for this week, I was excited to see that we would be experimenting with a number of different digital tools. Having recently read about the Google Ngram viewer, I was particularly interested to experiment with this tool. However, much like Jenn describes in her post, I was troubled by the results I achieved through using this tool for this purpose (what purpose? I'm still not certain, and that's likely part of the problem). After creating my first graph for the five search terms, I felt both over- and underwhelmed. On the one hand, the sharp peaks and troughs of each line seemed significant, but on the other hand, I couldn’t determine what the lines were trying to tell me. Comparing each brightly colored line to the others felt like a good starting place to me, but then I realized that all I was seeing was the popularity of one term over another for a particular set of years. Could I interpret this data? I felt like I should be able to, but each time I tried to cross-reference the peak of one term in a particular year with the texts we read over the last two weeks, I found myself unable to see connections or draw conclusions. Attributing the spike in the usage of “language” to the work of Bacon seemed specious, at best. As much as I wanted to use the tool as a way of seeing the texts differently, I ultimately found myself unable to do so. Jason and Kyle’s presentation of the terms under the time span of a particular author definitely helped me to understand that organizing and presenting the data differently could have better facilitated my interpretations, although I still remain skeptical of being able to attribute peaks and troughs in usage to the work of one author, especially without any knowledge of the texts included in Google’s results.

Technological Enlightenment

As someone who tends to embrace technology wholeheartedly, this week’s exploratory assignment (and in particular, working with Kyle) complicated my relationship with the intersection of technology and text. One thing I hadn’t noticed until Kyle pointed it out to me was the way in which I sometimes anthropomorphised the technology using terms like “Alex provides” and “Alex suggests” or “Alex demonstrates,” when adding in content for our exploratory. 

Throughout that process, I had managed to (as I tend to do) allow the technology to become transparent, and overlook the agency of the user when interacting with it. Perhaps my brain has been rewired by my Chromebook, so I’ve gotten used to and fond of the idea of working within the constraints of certain technologies to discover accessible means of incorporating technology into my teaching, but I found it interesting in this case that I was so easily able to view the functions of Alex as a way of providing for me, removing my own agency in the process. The tools we utilized this week put the onus on us to make their output into something useful, which I pieced together more and more as we went through the Internet Archive and the Google Ngram, both of which seemed far more dependent on the end-user to put something in and get something of use back out. 

Who's to Blame?

This week's tasks were two-fold: a straddling last and this week's texts with the resource exploratory and reading additional materials. I'd like to discuss first--before I engage with the resources or texts--about how my patterns of learning and understanding were disrupted by the resource assignment this week. I realize that this exercise was supposed to either better my understanding of the texts involved in ways I couldn't have achieved before or simply expose me to various methods of reading and types of interpretation. However, this focus on Wollstonecraft and Bacon led to my mental distance from Vico, Campbell, Grassi, and Kant, and I don't feel as if I could engage with these texts as I have done with others in the past. I fear this has caused what could potentially be a continuous need to play "catch up" or to revisit "old" texts without paying the proper attention to the current ones. Our work in class together helps me to unpack these texts, and while our discussions confuse me greatly, I also (generally) develop a better sense of what I've read and what I think about what I've read.

Confessions aside, this experiment, as Sarah and I called it, was somewhat helpful in providing me with another way of reading a text, one that I'm not sure works for me but nevertheless. I didn't, however, have the urge to count the "hits" of a term like most of the other groups did. I wonder why that is--possibly because I don't necessarily attribute value to quantity (kind of an oxymoron-esque term). This sort of follows with various author's assertions about quality over quantity--using one word instead of several implies intellect and the understanding of the true essence of words (Erasmus [I believe] and Locke, among others). What matters to me is the definition of that term and the context in which it was used. Perhaps then what I'm more concerned with is the author's argument and not how they use(d) the words. That was the point of this assignment, however, so I gave it my best.

Anticipation and Apprehension: A Two Part Experience With Concordances, Databases & Ontologies.

Part I

To be entirely transparent, the task at hand appeared rather daunting when I first navigated the assignment details. In the midst of this anticipation I chose to begin composing my thoughts in a two part manner. The first part is being composed before the digital research task begins while the second part will be composed upon completion of the exercise in effort to embrace the experience entirely. 

The first thought that came to mind was a paper I read recently from the Quarterly Journal of Speech ("Whither Research?" 19.4 (1933): 552-561). William Norwood Brigance opens by retelling an attack on criticism made by Woodrow Wilson. Wilson reportedly denounced the way English departments "count the words...note the changes...and run their illusions" (Brigance 552). Furthermore, Brigance recalls Wilson's accusation that literary critics "do not reflect...they label...their minds are not stages, but museums; nothing is done there, but very curious and valuable collections are kept there" (553). In this rather vicious attack Brigance entertains the assertion that there has been a trend in criticism to this classification and counting of sentences (554) however, we should move forward from this method. 

I provide this information at the prelude to this project and to provide context for this task. My recent exposure to this type of topical word searching is predominantly negative, however, I am optimistic that this first-hand experience will alter my perception of the task. 

Reading and Ethics

I enjoyed this week’s exploratory (at least the research aspect; figuring out how to synthesize and present the information was not so great). For the exploratory, I predominantly used the Internet Archive, although I tinkered with Alex and Google nGram. The Internet Archive felt familiar to me, since I have used indexes and concordances to search texts before. Looking back now, I think that some of my approach was also derived from previous experiences with Systematic Theology. First I went through and compiled all of the quotes into a Word document, and then I read all of them, to see if I could trace a theme, and see how Vico was defining the terms “science, reason, and passions,” and how he was using them. I then synthesized what I saw, but I still tried to maintain any tensions or ambiguities that existed. What is ironic about this kind of reading is that it is simultaneously distant and close. It is distant because I’m not reading the text immersed from one page to the next – I am looking at overarching themes. However, in order to see those themes, I have to closely read the passages that might be pertinent, snippets plucked from the whole.

What made me uncomfortable about reading Vico’s The New Science in this manner is that I did not first read the text in its entirety. Although I recognize that my interpretation of the text is not necessarily what Vico intended his readers to see (and can we ever know what he intended?), I feel like I might have done Vico (or his ideas) an injustice by not placing the sections that I was drawing out within the larger context of his work as a whole. This feeling made me think about the ethics of reading in general. In a sense, when we read we are taking someone else’s words and making them our own. But, it could be argued, every element of our sense experiences are simultaneously external to ourselves (and perhaps belong to others), and they are also internal, because once they are perceived they are interpreted and become part of our thoughts and memories – they in fact become part of who we are.

Context, Online Tools, and Epistemology

This week’s exploratory was without a doubt the most difficult for me conceptually.   Although I understood each of the tools, I struggled to make sense of them in relationship to each other and to the context of the course.  Although it seems that many of you were able to embrace the seeming lack of context to create insightful and productive texts, I struggled to do so.   It is a little bit embarrassing to admit, but I struggled hard.  For me, this project – and even the sentences that I just typed about this project – became about the binary of context and lack of context.  I perceived both the online tools and the data they produced as being without context.  The Alex concordance presented me with 500-word excerpts of Wollstonecraft and Bacon.  These excerpts appeared outside the context of the texts.  They were listed on a separate page in numbered, non-textual manner, and I could not access the text from that page.  The tool, for me, became an agent that removed the words from the text and left me with just the words; however, I wasn’t left with enough words – or rather with words from enough texts – to make what I felt was a defendable claim about the text or the words.  As a result, I felt untethered.   I was, of course, not untethered.  It was simply that my thinking about the exploratory, the online tools, and the data they produced was shaped by an unproductive binary between context and lack thereof that kept me from seeing that I was the context.   

Knowledge and Knowledge Creation (Campbell and Database Tools)

The third exploratory and our class discussion helped me think more about knowledge creation, particularly how the authors think knowledge is created. In this post, then, my purposes are twofold. First, I want to show how I see the concept of knowledge creation complicated in Campbell (I could make this assertion about Vico too, but because I am going to do an analysis of several kinds of knowledge creation - and this is a post rather than a seminar paper - I will concentrate on just one author.) Second, I want to elucidate how the databases helped me think about knowledge that we create with and from texts.

(Purpose 1) Campbell had complex understanding of knowledge creation.

Campbell does not emphasize any one kind of knowledge creation. Instead, he creates a complex network of different kinds of knowledge creation, including situated knowledge, embodied knowledge, communal knowledge, experiential knowledge and rational knowledge. (Note: I want to acknowledge that these knowledges are not necessarily completely separate. My intention in naming and separating the knowledges is to use the knowledges as a vehicle for my exploration.) Below, I will start each section with a definition in order to add context to how I understand and will be using each knowledge. (Another note: I recognize that I use very simplified definitions; however, they give me a starting point.) Then, I will illustrate how Campbell alludes to each knowledge. (Yet another note: I use ideas, propositions and knowledge as synonyms. While ideas and/or facts are not necessarily knowledge, I am going to work under the assumption that ideas and/or facts can become knowledge or can be evidence of knowledge.)

Arguing About Arguing for Argument’s Sake

This week’s readings felt like a crash course in context; its inevitability, its variability, and its crucial role in shaping any theory surrounding argument.  The Dissoi Logoi, the various authors referencing Aspasia, and Perelman & O.T. all appear to me most connected in that they each address the key role of context in matters of value judgment, especially in social and specifically (and most commonly) legal matters.  The Dissoi Logoi’s collection of “opposing arguments” which juxtapose two abstract qualities and first argue that they are one in the same and then that they are fundamentally different, serve to illustrate the opposing core beliefs which are at the root of all argumentation: a conviction that there exists a priori truth as well as abstract qualities such as justice and virtue and the opposing conviction that truth and by extension virtue do not exist independently of situations but rather are informed by them.  The anonymous author proclaims that “... all arguments are about everything that is” which can be taken as a reference to the still alive and well debate over the nature of truth and reality at the center of all argumentation (B & H 54).  

Seventeen centuries later, P & O.T. were working to revive the classical tradition of rhetoric and to redeem the reputation of informal reasoning, or argumentation, as they saw it as the only means of approaching a consensus of values necessary in pursuit of social justice.  

Affect and Agency: Complicating the Web

As one might expect after reading my post last week, my interest in approaching Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca this week was in their construction of audience. I set this concern aside as Jason and I began discussing possible ways to organize our schema. We considered making a map, kicked around the idea of using a networking schema, and ultimately came to rest on the construction of web because, as we state in our explanatory prose piece, P and O-T claim that “nonformal argument consists…of a web formed from all the arguments and all the reasons that combine to achieve the desire result” (1396). A web seemed like the best approach, not only because they specifically use that metaphor in their own text, but also because we were interested in showing movement and non-hierarchical relationships between each “node” on the web.

We were satisfied with our design until it came time to place the orator on the web.

We Are What We Are Not

When forming our schema this week, we began with the image of a tree in order to demonstrate the way in which ideas have a root thought and then continue to grow upwards with branches in multiple directions and be influenced by the external factors (such as Condit’s “lightning bolt” critique). I found it most interesting as the tree schema began to grow that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca seemed to frame their argument by beginning with establishing what they are not. I found this interesting first fruits for our tree. However, after reflecting on this idea for a few days it became clear. Where do ideas begin if not from what they are not? An oddly worded question yes but even in experiencing discourse like Dissoi Logoi, the author begins his (or her) statements with what others say as a means of presenting an argument he does not ascribe to and follows it with his (or her) own understanding of good, bad, shameful, just and so forth. 

           

Signposts and Revival

Perhaps I am just going to have to get use to the idea that in order to “find” myself , in terms of understanding what rhetorical theorists are talking about, I need to first allow myself to feel “lost” for a while. This week’s reading from Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric was a case in point. Before I continue into a discussion of what I think Perelman is advancing in New Rhetoric, let me first raise the phenomena of what reading Perelman (or anyone) under the framework of the schemata assignment does. Having something like the schemata assignment tasked to you before you begin your reading a material places your mind in a mode of alertness and anticipation. You are looking out for key points that will aide you when it comes time to put pen to paper. I find that after I am done with a reading it is these key points that stand at the forefront of my thinking on the material, and thus, they are what most strongly inform my reasoning. When my group divided the labor for our schemata (which we undertook in the form of a concept map) it became my job to look for the links between Perelman’s theory and other rhetorical theorists. So, not surprisingly, when I turned the last page on our excerpt of The New Rhetoric and I looked at the notes I made and the connections I drew I said to myself: “my goodness this is all just about digging up Aristotle!” I have come to take Perelman’s work to be simultaneously an effort to refocus Aristotelian Rhetoric to the forefront of intellectual attention, and a “surgery”, if you will, to redress a perceived ineptitude in how Aristotle’s work on the subject has been passed down through history.

Genetic Not Generic Arguments

There are many threads that I wish I could address in this post, but I will try to keep them to a minimum. I want to begin with an important point that Condit does not address in her piece. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's normative project is to recover and expand upon rhetoric's sphere of influence. In their own words, they put forward a "theory and practice of argumentation [that]...accord argumentation a place and importance they in no wise possess in a more dogmatic vision of the universe" (p. 1376). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca state that:

We combat uncompromising and irreducible philosophical oppositions presented by all kinds of absolutism: dualisms of reason and imagination, of knowledge and opinion, of irrefutable self-evidence and deceptive will, of a universally accepted objectivity and an incommunicable subjectivity, of a reality binding on everybody and values that are purely individual (p. 1376).

Of course, Condit bursts their bubble of grandiosity and naivety by pointing out that Perelman re-instantiates or reaffirms the dogmatic linguistic biases that precluded women from entering into dialogue with texts.

Perelman, Condit, Quintilian, and the Rhetor's Well-Roundedness

Being a visual learner, creating a schema (and being exposed to others’ schemas) helped me contextualize Perelman’s ideas within a historical framework, something I found especially useful because I think it is important to understand the “cause and effect” aspect of theory development. Knowing how Aristotle influenced Perelman, and how Perelman influenced Condit, et cetera, helps me see development of rhetoric in the long run, as a time spectrum.

Jennifer writes that “Perelman was Aristotle in the spirit of Barthes… Perelman pulls focus, at least in part, away from the orator and more towards the audience.” I think this is very smart because the concept of “audience” is pivotal in terms of Perelman’s rhetorical structure, especially since he draws attention to this idea of the “presence,” which is comprised of whatever the rhetor picks out from among the audiences’ already established facts, beliefs, structures, etc. (1395) and weaves together in an attempt to foster “adherence” (1376). Perelman states that men gain adherence to varying degrees and that you’ll only know that degree if you seek it (page); in saying this, I believe he, in a way, poses rhetoric as a kind of practice as well as art, but assigns to it a gravity that hadn’t been present since before the Renaissance.