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.
There is no reference to she or her in Perelman's discussions, even though he co-authored with a brilliant female. In retrospect this is difficult to understand because it seems like such a glaring omission. So, I credit Condit's critique on that front. She demonstrated that you cannot deem something "new" and have it remain "new" at each point in time. It will always need revision because (un)certain aspects of reality are not fixed.
Despite any failings, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca still present us with a theory of argumentation that was insightful and, in many ways, ahead of its time. The New Rhetoric shares important theoretical concepts with Sherif and Hovland's Social Judgment Theory and Brunswick's Probabilistic Functionalism Psychology. Importantly, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca state that we do not base "our philosophy on definitive, unquestionable truths," but "adhere to opinions of all sorts with a variable intensity" (p. 1376). Again, this may sound self-evident to us, but this notion that people actually hold to several different--and often contradictory--views of self, others and the world was a giant leap forward. I would relate to the movement we now see in medicine and biotechnology.
{Digression} It was not that long ago that doctors and researchers relied solely upon "the tests." What did the blood tests show? If the blood work came back as "within normal range," then the patient was seen as fine or simply malingering. In one way, the tests--independent of patient report--seem to ontologize or create the reality of an illness. One of the epiphanies rising out of the genome project is that we seem to possess a genetic language that while similar to one another (like Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's idea of a language of communal agreement found on page 1377) is quite distinct. The implications for this are that "people" and "patients" can no longer be understood in monolithic terms. If you want to be truly effective, you must treat a person and patient at the individual level of her genetics. There is no standard of normal because we all have genetics that impact us in "all sorts" of ways "with variable intensity" (p. 1376). So, argumentation, like genetics, plays a role in addressing things unanswered by (strict) science. I am not sure anyone has made this argument yet, but you might say that we are rhetorical beings throughout: even our genes are making pleas to be expressed or not; they are arguing to be made manifest in the world. Is it possible that Aristophanes' critique in Clouds is the same thing we see in disease processes? Is a disease state a case of the lesser argument (gene) becoming the greater (dominant expression)?
Speaking of dominant expression, I must admit that the schema was a challenge for me. My discipline does not often require that I show--in extra-linguistic ways--how a thought has changed/evolved/emerged. Typically, we represent this through a standardized literature review. Working with Kendall, who is an amazingly gifted and talented artist, on this assignment made me uncomfortable in all the right ways. She had an idea about how to draw things out and show it in ways that I simply could not envision. In one way I felt a bit useless because I could not help her realize the images she had in mind.
I found myself back at the dualism of reason and imagination. Kendall's imagination far exceeded my own narrow sense of how to schematize rhetoric. I sat holding the book and jotting down notes in a linear fashion (how blah), while she invented something that never existed. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca state that argumentation is aimed at "modifying an existing state of affairs" (p. 1391). What I want to say is that Kendall's drawings are very much arguments that modified my way of seeing and understanding the material. I am not being trite when I say that. I was blown away by her "argumentation." So, we definitely had an inception-like experience. As we were reading and thinking about The New Rhetoric, we were also experiencing it. One of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's points is that this new rhetoric is a form of argumentation with a "wider scope as nonformal reasoning that aims at obtaining the adherence of an audience" (p. 1392). Perhaps the reader of this post will also be persuaded by our schema; but, if not, it still remains true that I was persuaded. In order for that to happen, Kendall met the "preliminary condition" of ethos; that is, Kendall first presented herself as someone I should listen to in this matter. I am glad that she did and that (at least for once) I listened!
A thread I should have liked to unravel further would have been on the issue of scientism and the possibilities of rhetoric. I started thinking about it while reading Sarah's post, but couldn't work it all in here :(
Kyle,
ReplyDeleteI found your digression quite interesting, which I interpreted to mean that doctors and researchers use tests to arbitrarily limit what they might find (correct me if I misinterpreted what you were saying). While they provide useful information (if a patient's blood isn't within "normal" range, it could be the first step in identifying an illness), they also simultaneously ignore and obscure other types of information, i.e. the "rhetoric" of genes.
This reminded me of something that was discussed in my Writing Assessment class. For many years, problems with the reliability of direct writing assessments was defined as problems with inter-rater reliability, which became further narrowed to the goal of finding a way to eliminate all disagreements between raters. Because the problems were defined in this way, all of the "solutions" were pre-determined (or at least pre-limited).
However, an innovative researcher decided to address the problem of inter-rater reliability not by eliminating differences ("errors"), but rather by seeking to understand what was causing those differences in the first place. All of that to say, we limit our answers by how we formulate our questions. Perhaps the problem with scientism is not in the limited scope of its questions, but in its apparent denial of the idea that there are other valid ways of approaching problems or understanding the material world.
All of that to say, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on "the issue of scientism and the possibilities of rhetoric."
I focus quite a bit of my energy and attention on "incurable and contested illnesses." I'm certainly not the first to point out that there is a trend towards dismissing patients--most of the time women--because of an over-reliance on what the tests show. The tests are really a conversation between your specific levels and the aggregated scores of other healthy people. If you do/don't fall into a particular range, you are considered healthy or sick-- independent of what the patient is reporting. Hence, we are left with patients describing illnesses that there are no tests for or defy the ones that do exist.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way, if you added the shoe sizes of everyone in our class together and took an average, let's say that you would end up with a size 7 (for the sake of argument). So, shoes made for our class will all be 7s. Now, let's say that your actual size is a 6. You buy the shoes and earnestly try to wear them, despite the fact that they are creating blisters on your heels. Eventually, you complain that something is wrong with this equation. Your complaint warrants an inspection. This inspection reveals that you are wearing size 7s, which are the normal sized shoes for students in our class. So, there must not be a problem, right? Yes, you are wearing the "normal" size, but it is not the "right" size for you. If your feet deserve that kind of individualized attention, shouldn't your biochemistry?
This is how medical testing has worked for quite a while. If you complain of Y symptoms and have X scores on your blood tests, then doctors might say that you are perfectly within range. The question remains: are the patient's symptoms in his head or is the test simply not capable of capturing subtleties? When it is an illness that primarily impacts the female population, it is generally considered psychosomatic or psychogenic in nature. Ouch! It is chalked up to being "in their heads," until a more sophisticated diagnostic tool demonstrates that it is, in fact, a disease of the body.
On the issue of scientism: I've been turning it over in my head, but I know that I can't say it any better than Neil Postman did in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I love that book and all the media ecology crew.