Lesson for Week 10: Day 1
10:1
Read Young, Becker, and Pike on Rogerian arguments (http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndsu/dasulliv/readings/young_rogerian.htm). Continue reading Dinner at the New Gene Cafe,chapter 14.
Write a proposal (with a technical brief attached) seeking permission to do research on a particular topic related to GMOs and to write a specific kind of paper embedded in a particular situation. The proposal must how that your project and paper meet the constraints of the assignment. It must also discuss the logistics of the project, such as work assignments and schedule (this part is sometimes called a technical brief). So send me both, a proposal and a tech brief.
Start research and collecting materials for your annotated bibliography.
Consider the public debate reported by Lambrecht in chapter 13 of Dinner at the New Gene Cafe. There Lambrecht describes a hearing conducted in France on GM0's.
Hauser on civic discourse. Gerard Hauser's, a modern rhetorician who specializes in rhetoric about public issues, argues that many things people think of as civil discourse are really substitutes for it. First, Hauser wants to disabuse us of the notion that poles of public opinion constitute public discourse. In fact, he argues, the deflect public discussion of issues because they keep people from entering into dialogue and because they give people choices of predetermined opinions. Second, he claims that descriptions of ideal deliberative settings, goverened by rules and achieving pure reason, are not really public debate either, because they are not free discussions and they don't take into account that people do not arrive at decisions based on purely rational criteria. Third, he argues that when people argue only on the basis of self-interest, they are not entering civic discourse because such a practice creates lobbying and special interest groups that once again deflect people away from dialogue. Fourth, we should not imagine that civic discourse will necessarily produce unanimous consensus on issues.
Instead of these four misconceptions, Hauser says that civic discourse about public issues occurs in many different forums, in many different conversations. It is a learned conversation or dialogue that invites participation in creating public policy.
H.P. Grice and the Cooperative Principle in Conversation. If we think of civic discourse as a series of conversations or dialogues in which everyone is invited to share arguments and to enter the process of creating public policy, then conversation theory will be of help. H.P. Grice describes the "cooperative principle" in conversation. He said that conversations or dialogues work only when people have mutual trust for each other. In those situations four principles of conversation are taken for granted.
These principles can be used to analyze public controversy--are participants entering into debate in ways that show that they adhere to the cooperative principle? If not, they are probably trying to win rather than trying to come to a mutually acceptable solution.
Dissoi Logoi. Turning to the history of philosophy, we find one of the earliest observations about debate is that every issue can have two totally developed arguments, each seeming persuasive until the other is heard. This observation precedes Aristotle and Plato and is referred to as dissoi logoi, or conflicting words. Because an issue could be viewed entirely from one perspective that conflicted with an opposing perspective, people began to see incommenurable arguments or contradictions as part of the confusing nature the world. The philosophers believed that truth was non contradictory, so these apparent contradicitons pointed to deception--someone had it wrong--and there needed to be a way to find out what the truth of the matter really was.
One critic has argued that systematic logic developed out of this need. Logic, we might say, is a set of rule governing the relationship of statements like contradictions and contraries. Through the systematic process of logic, it was believed, people could distinguish valid statements from invalid statement and hence arrive at truth. Others have argued that dialectic also developed out of this need. Dialectic was a method of exploring both arguments, defining terms, and finally coming to a conclusion about what truth really was. People would enter dialogue and take turns asking questions and explaining positions, and by following the thread of the dialogue, both would end up in a new position that was supposed to represent truth.
Stasis. The philosophers wanted to find truth; the rhetoricians didn't think it was possible to find truth. They just wanted to find the most probable and most expedient solution. They felt that the most persuasive argument should win, and that people should follow the winner position, because that was "the most probable" solution. Out of the dissoi logoi, then, the rhetoricians developed a method for determining the issues in a case, and they called it stasis. Please look at the link to learn more about that system, but briefly, we can say that stasis allowed those preparing arguments to figure out where the conflict was likely to be and where to amass their argumentative forces.
Rhetorical Invention and the Topoi. Once a person knows where the battle is likely to be pitched, he or she can begin to develop the arguments. We have talked about rhetorical invention often in the class (remember it is the first of the five canons of rhetoric), but we now see it in the context of mounting a full case to support your position. According to Aristotle, there were inartistic arguments (like appeal to authority or torture) and artistic arguments. The rhetor simply appropriate inartitistic arguments: they came ready to hand. But the rhetor had to construct the artitistic arguments (hence the name). Some times these arguments simply amounted to a system of retrieving information from memory and recombining it; some times the rhetor did more than simply consult memory. In the best cases, rhetors were able to create new knowledge as they attempted to build arguments. Besides building arguments based on ethos, logos, and pathos (arguments we've already discussed), rhetors also use a system call the topics, (or topoi) to create arguments. Look at the link for more detail, but we can summarize the topics by saying that they were categories of thought. The rhetor would assume that category of thought, put himself in that frame of mind, and then look at the case to see what kinds of arguments offered themselves from that perspective.
We have visited a handful of theoretical perspectives in this lesson. They should inform your thinking as you work on your persuasive paper about GMOs. We didn't get to Young, Becker and Pike on the Rogerian argument today. In the next lesson, we will look at patterns for argument, including the Rogerian argument.
For next time, continue research for your paper on GMOs and send me a copy of your annotated bibliography in the next couple days (on 10.2). It should have at least five to ten entries.
Read chapters 17 and 18 in Lambrecht's Dinner at the New Gene Cafe and look especially at chapter 18 as an example of civil discourse about a public issue. For a full transcript of this hearing go to Congressional Hunger Debate. Make a blog entry about Lambrecht's chapters or the hunger debate. Here's a copy of Farmers' Guide to GMOs published by The Farmers' Legal Action Group and Rural Advancement Foundation International.
When I was head of the Rhetoric Department at the University of Minnesota, I found out that several scientists there were working on the question of public policy and GMOs. Look at David Andow's Conference web site on GMO-relase guidelines, Philip Regal's Home page, and his depositon in a law suit against Donna Shalala and the FDA. Here is another declaration by a John Fagan for the same lawsuit.
Also, I receive news releases regularly from activists on GMO issues. Here is a file containing some GMO news releases for Spring 2005. You might find them helpful in your research for the GMO paper, but remember that they come from anti-GMO activists and so present one side of the debate rather than both.