Rhetoric’s Presence: Or, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Christopher W. Tindale University of Windsor Martin Wesley Lecture January 25, 2012 1. Introduction: Informal logic and the rhetorical (re)turn. Argumentation is a broad multi-­‐disciplinary area that exhibits logical, dialectical and rhetorical components. I will address primarily the rhetorical here. But I want first to say something about the relationship between the logical and the rhetorical within argumentation theory, since I judge that this relation most needs some clarity. From a logical point of view, we are aware I think of the innovative space informal logic created in the 1970s for the study of ordinary arguments. This in a sense brought much of the study of arguments down from the level of the abstract to that of the concrete. And Windsor had a leading role to play in that move. By focusing on the rhetorical, I see an important amendment or supplement to the activities of informal logic. Formal logic, while an important area in its own right, was judged inadequate as a theory of arguments, and in particular of arguments as they are used in everyday situations. But formal logic’s problems exceed just this. It separates reason from its base—home, even—in human beings. It tends to present reasoning as an objective activity, detached from its source. The impetus of informal logic was always to return logic to its human roots. Rhetoric completes the return. In this talk, I will discuss some of the elements involved in that return. [I am here failing to distinguish some important terms, like ‘argumentation’, ‘logic’ and ‘reasoning’, which are certainly not synonymous. Such distinction would take me too far from my targets.] ‘Rhetoric’ can be defined in many ways. Stanley Fish recently captured my focus when he defined it as “the art of argument” (Fish, 2011:29). Aristotle presented it as an ability to see in every particular case the available means of persuasion [Rhetoric, I.2.1], thus encouraging attention on persuasion and the ways it is achieved. But Nietzsche warns us this effect is not the essence of a thing. Nor are we always persuaded (1989:5). We need to go back and look at Aristotle’s full statement, and particularly the attention given to discovery. The seeing that rhetoric is, is theoretical (from the common route of theorein), a seeing in the mind. Thus, rhetoric is a part of epistemology. While the orator does, rhetoric knows (Gunderson, 3). The questions then adjust to what and how the rhetor (or rhetorician) knows. 2. The Story so far. The majority of my work in argumentation has dealt with the rhetorical approach to the subject. Basically, we can trace three threads of research from Aristotelian roots: 1 one that focuses on logical argumentation, one on dialectical, and a third on the rhetorical (product, procedure, and process). Focusing on one does not preclude an interest in the others, and one conclusion that many have drawn is that they cannot be separated. Habermas’ criticisms of StephenToulmin, for example, are based on just such a judgment: that Toulmin privileges one of the three approaches to the exclusion of the others, when, Habermas argues, “At no single one of these analytic levels can the very idea intrinsic to argumentative speech be adequately developed” (1984:26). Toulmin develops the logic of argumentation on only one level, failing to address the levels of procedure and process (Habermas, 1984:34). It happens, though, that in focusing on the rhetorical, I have tried to make the case that these considerations need to be the ground of any complete theory of argumentation. This was the motivation behind the projects that resulted in the 1999 and 2004 books. Such a position has put me at odds with some theorists who take a more logical or dialectical bent and argue either that none can have priority (as we see Habermas does) or that the rhetorical is secondary to other considerations, as the Dutch pragma-­‐dialectical theorists claim in prioritizing the dialectical. These debates not withstanding, I think progress has been made in bringing to the attention of argumentation theorists working in departments of philosophy, and in particular informal logicians, the importance of rhetorical features like pathotic concerns, figuration, audience, and other aspects of context. Focusing on such matters uncovers a fuller sense of the argumentative situation, which must be explored when both constructing and evaluating argumentation. Part of the judgment against formal logic as an adequate theory of argument was with respect to the tendency to strip arguments of their dynamic nature, to tear them from their contexts or origin and analyze them without consideration to who produced them and for whom, and the details of the occasion that prompted them—what Lloyd Bitzer captured under the heading of ‘exigency’ (Bitzer, 1968). Without turning first to such matters, we rarely can decide what can be assumed and does not need defense, or what schemes are most likely to be successful; and we rarely can decide the relevance of argumentative moves that have been made, or even the goals that the participants had in mind and that therefore should colour our judgments of whether the argumentation has been successful. In such terms, the rhetorical is fundamental. But saying that does not itself indicate the particular tools that rhetoric provides argumentation theory, and it is some of these that I want to concentrate on here. In particular, I want to consider ways in which rhetorical devices make ideas and voices present, bring them to our attention, even to the extent that they demand response. Let me begin with a device that has been readily embraced by argumentation theorists—the topos—and relate it to a concept that I’ve explored on several occasion since the 1999 book—that of cognitive environments. Because it is on this level that we touch bases with what is often referred to as ‘cognitive rhetoric’. 2 3. The role of topoi . Some philosophers are attractive to scholars because their writings are obscure enough to allow all kinds of readings without others really being able to say—but that’s not what he actually means. I think here of philosophers like Plato, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. Aristotle is not among that group. For the most part, he takes pains to explain his meanings, even to the point of overly repeating himself. But on the concept of the topoi, he is not so forthcoming. The consensus seems to be that the term was familiar, at least within Aristotle’s circle and among his students, and so it needed no particular clarification. But the scholarly disputes over the meaning of topoi suggest clarification would have been welcome. Michael Leff understands “topoi” as resources for constructing arguments, and in particular, for connecting the data from which an argument begins to the conclusion with which it ends. And, importantly, topoi draw their material from commonly accepted material within a community (Leff, 1983: 220-­‐21). This is a reading I endorse. It clashes with the currently popular interpretation of topoi as early argumentation schemes. But there are reasons for seeing topoi as far more rhetorical because they involve an intimate connection between arguer and audience that schemes, as they are generally understood, do not. To see this, consider a little of how Aristotle uses the concept (or tool) in his Rhetoric. For example, there is the topos ‘from the more and the less’, illustrated with: “If not even the gods know everything, human beings can hardly do so” (Rhet. 2.23.4). Here we see a familiar construct involving a general sense of contrast that is given a specific application, one that depends on an audience’s appreciation of the gods and their limitations. I want here to add a particular nuance to this reading of topoi and suggest we think of them as “customs of the mind,” familiar or customary patterns of reasoning that would be employed within communities. This may make some of them community-­‐specific, but there is a generality to most of them that allow for wide application across time and space. The mind becomes accustomed to think in certain ways, due in part to how it develops, its training, and the ideas it has access to. These customs therefore represent a cognitive connection to others since they form a common fund. They are part of the social web that connects us. Understood in this way, topoi are distinct from dispositions, which are a related idea (through the influence of customs on character) but whereas dispositions are private, customs are public. Customs of the mind need to be followed like rules, but they are less rigid. They don’t guarantee outcomes; they encourage outcomes and, in turn, serve as explanations for them. By approaching topoi as customs, we are encouraged to think about the “other side” of argumentation that they involve. The study of topoi focuses on where arguers go for the materials of their arguments. But we are also interested (both as arguers and theorists) with how audiences understand topoi. The materials of argumentation, propositions related to issues, relate to the internal geography of the mind, shared by a community like they share physical space. If I locate my arguments in the correct mental space of the audience, then persuasion is facilitated. 3 This gives us the initial adherence from which argumentation can begin. Topoi, then, are related to cognitive environments, but not the same as them. Cognitive environments explain how knowledge is shared, while retaining the measure of uncertainty that characterizes argumentation in everyday circumstances. While we do not know what ideas people actually hold in common, we do have a better grasp of the objective environments of ideas that they share by virtue of their membership in the relevant communities. We cannot guarantee that an individual has processed/recognized an idea that is current in an environment, but it is reasonable to expect that they have had access to it, and it is this reasonableness that justifies the use of cognitive environments. 4. Approaching Presence. Accessing an audience’s cognitive environment puts us on the road to considering how presence operates in rhetorical argumentation. Traditionally, ‘presence’ has been understood as essentially making certain elements present to the mind, and using various techniques to accomplish this. The nature of presence is captured by Chaim Perelman, who writes “By the very fact of selecting certain elements and presenting them to the audience, their importance and pertinency to the discussion are implied. Indeed, such a choice endows these elements with a presence, which is an essential factor in argumentation and one that is far too much neglected in rationalistic conceptions of reasoning” (New Rhetoric, 116). An arguer may choose to emphasize elements within a cognitive environment, highlighting their nature, or associating them with other elements (as through analogy). A speaker makes present “by verbal magic alone” what is absent, or makes more present what is there, by drawing it to the forefront of consciousness and isolating it there (117-­‐18). In this way, the arguer influences how an audience perceives, conceives and remembers ideas, images and topoi (See Karon, 1976; Long, 1983:110). Before any act of arguing takes place, Perelman insisted that the basic premises used “should stand out against the undifferentiated mass of available elements of agreement” (142). In our terms, choices are made in light of the cognitive environments to be modified. He proceeds: “[Presence] is essential not only in all argumentation aiming at immediate action, but also in that which aspires to give the mind a certain orientation, to make certain schemes of interpretation prevail, to insert elements of agreement into a framework that will give them significance and confer upon them the rank they deserve”. This speaks to the range of modifications that presence effects: orienting the mind to see in certain ways, encouraging interpretations of ideas, and adding to previously structured frameworks so as to emphasize or reassign values. Aristotle provided us with one of the earliest accounts of presence in the Rhetoric in a discussion of what he called bringing-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes. Aristotle states: “Further [urbanity is achieved] by words bringing-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes, for things should be seen as being done rather than as going to be done. We should thus aim at three things: metaphor, antithesis, and energeia” (3.10.6). In earlier chapters he had discussed metaphor and antithesis, but not energeia. Now in the section that follows 4 this passage (the longest section in the Rhetoric), Aristotle proceeds to provide a series of examples in which metaphors might be seen to “bring-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes.” For example, “Greece uttered a cry” is a metaphor and before the eyes [3.10.7 1411a32-­‐33]. It’s not clear how metaphor and energeia are linked. The goal of chapter 10 is quick and easy learning: metaphor, for example, “creates understanding and knowledge [gnõsin]” in the audience. So the effect of “bringing-­‐
before-­‐the-­‐eyes” must contribute to this goal in some central way. At the start of chapter 11, matters are clarified a little: “I mean that things are brought-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes by words that signify [semainei] activity” (3.11.2). The sense is strengthened with further examples from Homer, who often uses energeia in making inanimate things animate through metaphor. His fame is achieved through creating actuality/activity [energeia] in such cases (3.11.3). For Homer “makes everything move and live” [Kennedy] and energeia is motion [kinesis] (3.11.4). This is as clear as the explanation gets: energeia is the motion of bringing things alive, of animation, not in reality but in the mind of the audience. It creates immediacy and conceptual vividness. What it does not create is visual vividness. Kennedy notes (2007:117) that energeia should be distinguished from enargeia, which means “clearness” or “distinctiveness.” This may strike us as odd because it comes in spite of the prevalence of visual imagery throughout the Rhetoric. Confusion is encouraged by Quintilian’s later association of “bringing-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes” with enargeia: “I am complaining that a man has been murdered. Shall I not bring before my eyes all the circumstances that it is reasonable to imagine must have occurred in such a connection? Shall I not see the assassin burst suddenly from his hiding place, the victim tremble, cry for help, beg for mercy, or turn to run? Shall I not see the fatal blow delivered and the stricken body fall?” (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 6.2.31-­‐2). There is a large difference between being at work and visual vividness, and the two etymologies are distinct. But one would be forgiven for thinking Aristotle also had in mind the senses attributed to enargeia. That “bringing-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes” should involve some kind of phantasia is suggested by its perceptual nature. The audience sees something, whether a word or an image, and learns from this. Thus, we have a cognitive effect arising from a perceptual cause. In Quintilian’s case of enargeia the subject brings this on himself. In the atmosphere of the Rhetoric, energeia is one of the means of persuasion that a speaker employs to move an audience. But enargeia also came to have the wider intersubjective sense, where an audience takes the description of a speaker and creates “for themselves the images that the speaker describes” (Kochin, 2009:392).1 1 Quintilian’s usage of “bringing-­‐before-­‐the-­‐eyes” is presaged in Aristotle’s De Memoria, where we are told that it is “impossible even to think without a mental picture,” and that “the man who is thinking…puts a finite magnitude before his eyes [tithetai pro ommatôn], though he does not think of it as such” (450a). A similar understanding of “before-­‐the-­‐eyes” seems operative in the Poetics, where the poet is encouraged to “keep the scene before his eyes [pro ommatôn tithemenon]” when constructing plots and dialogue (1455a). O’Gorman (2005:24) suggests these 5 Modern considerations of presence should accommodate both conceptual and visual ideas associated with energeia, the enlivening of ideas, and enargeia, visual vividness. In his examination of the art of translation, Umberto Eco (2003) attributes importance to hypotyposis, as the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene. Unfortunately, he notes, the rhetoricians who have written about it provide only circular definitions and don’t explain what is involved. He suggests: mentioning; describing; listing; and piling up events. (104-­‐
105). Consider, though, how Obama achieves presence in the following clip, whether we want to classify his move as energeia, enargeia, or hypotyposis. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-­‐397469841574295653 Note the description he provides: “But the life of a tall, gangly, self-­‐made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope.” In this way, Obama, standing on the steps of the courthouse in Springfield, Illinois where Lincoln launched his campaign, does more than invoke the memory of Lincoln; he summons him, brings him to the podium and superimposes his absence over Obama’s own presence. Or, in our terms, he translates that absence into a presence. And how does he do this? Through words. Through knowing his audience and modifying their cognitive environment, by taking something already there, and creating something new—an association with Lincoln. Aristotle and Perelman present presence in ways that accommodate the Obama example. He inserts elements into a framework so as to give them significance. But also to reorient the perception of that framework and give it new significance. Suasory force arises from the connections made, whether logical or psychological. This force accompanies a feeling that provokes assent. As David Hume insisted, “An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea.” (Treatise, Bk.I, Part 3. Section 7). This feeling he attempted to explain, “by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness.” Feeling ideas in the mind gives them more importance and influence over actions. Minimally, we might judge this feeling, following Aristotle, to be the experience of ideas actualized in the mind, usages resemble the rhetorical practice described in the Rhetoric. But if so, the resemblance is faint. In both De Memoria and the Poetics the individual brings the image before his own eyes through an act of imagination. The very different task of the rhetor is to achieve this in another person through the use of words. 6 converted from the potential that existed or had been prepared there.2 But some ideas have greater power, or force; they feel stronger. To achieve presence of one’s ideas on that level is the arguer’s real goal. 5. Grice’s other maxim: Bakhtin and the promptings of voice. I want now to try to relate some of these thoughts about presence to an extended notion of ethos, one of the three early “proofs” of rhetoric (along with logos and pathos), this one related to character (principally of the speaker). In his essay “Logic and Conversation,” the philosopher Paul Grice famously introduced four maxims to govern conversations (Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner). But often overlooked is a further maxim of Manner that he added in a later essay (“Presupposition and Conversational Implicature”, 1989:273). This is a maxim that he allows is deliberately vague: “Frame whatever you say in the form most suitable for any reply that would be regarded as appropriate”; or, “Facilitate in your form of expression the appropriate reply.” Of importance here is the “otherness” that becomes intrinsic to the utterance; the way not only the hearer but also the hearer’s reply is anticipated in the structure of the utterance. In phrasing matters this way, Grice unwittingly echoes sentiments motivating Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of utterance. Utterances mark the boundaries between different speakers. But, importantly, they are structured so to penetrate those boundaries and evoke response. In this way, Bakhtin invokes the internal dialogism of the word. “The word in living conversation,” he writes, “ is directly, blatantly, oriented toward a future answer-­‐word: it provokes an answer, anticipates it and structures itself in the answer’s direction” (Bakhtin, 1981:280).3 This in turn reflects what is called the addressivity of the utterance, that a key feature of an utterance is its being directed to someone (Bakhtin, 1986:95). This is the “hidden dialogicality” that characterizes our supposedly monologic texts. In his work on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin writes of our sense that a text is a conversation, although only one person speaks: “and it is a conversation of the most intense kind, for each present, uttered word responds and reacts with every fiber to the invisible speaker, points to something outside itself, beyond its own limits, to the unspoken words of another person” (Bakhtin, 1984:197). This Gricean/Bakhtinian insight is one I want to pursue further here because addressivity brings to the fore the very important role of the addressee, and this is a role directly relevant to our rhetorical concerns. There is the potential in rhetorical (argumentation) theory to view the arguer and audience as separate positions mediated by the product of the argument. Now, attention to addressees closes that gap and reframes the relationship. Addressees are certainly part of an audience, but they stand out from the general 2 Hume is interested in distinguishing realities and fictions, but it is the sense that denotes such a distinction that interests me. 3 It may be important here to note, as does David Lodge (2000:93) that Bakhtin’s subject is “living conversation” not writing. 7 audience as being more receptive; they are identified by the speech. In this way, ‘addressee’ personalizes the audience that might otherwise remain anonymous. Addressee identifies the active agent; the one who responds. (Habermas introduces a similar distinction between listeners and hearers.). Audiences, then, are potential in nature; addressees activated. They represent that component of an audience that comes alive in responses to argumentation that they hear is for them. This aspect of presence aims to transform listeners into hearers. It activates addressees, drawing them from the audience. Presence in this sense is abut hearing. But how should we understand this? 6. Voice. I think part of the answer to this question comes about through the recognition of what I will call “voice.” Since childhood we have had no problem dissociating voice from body. Nor being skeptical about the voices we hear. Since Toto pulled back the curtain and revealed a rather mundane source to the wizard’s bellowing voice, our experience of voice has been more complex. And I want to consider voice in a way that associates it with character as conveyed in speech without making voice and character identical. To borrow a line from Paul Ricoeur, “voice is the vehicle of the act of utterance” belonging to an irreplaceable “I” (1992:55). Aristotle promotes the importance of ethos in effective argumentation. It is, he suggests, one of the means of persuasion. [Together with logos and pathos, it is one of three proofs. While we might relate the other two to argument and audience, this one relates to the arguer, in particular to her character conveyed in speech.] But ethos as an Aristotelian idea needs to be expanded in modern contexts. We can no longer limit it to the character of the speaker conveyed through her or his words, and with no prior reputation influencing how it is received. We see it now also in the writer, who in revealing character extends authority to what is said. In Robert Brandom’s more recent terms, we cloak our statements with commitment and authorize others to hear or read our claims in light of that authorization (Brandom, 1994:215). “We” are conveyed in what we say, along with what we say. Bakhtin considers everyday speech to be personalized with words that are filled with the voices of others. Some of these we merge with our own voice, forgetting whose they are, others “which we take as authoritative, we use to reinforce our own words,” still others we populate ourselves (Bakhtin, 1984:195). Voice here takes us beyond character. We see this in the case of reported speech, for example, where a reporter takes the details of an interview and constructs the voice we “hear”, making specific choices pertinent to the issue and the occasion. And voice is not simply character because it is not in any way dispositional but public. This, both in its expression and, more importantly, in its origin. On one level, there is a recognizable style, but in another sense there is an aspect of otherness in the way it cites and makes allusion to other discourses. This pushes matters beyond the individual’s own voice to include those that “stand” or, rather, resonate, behind and through her. This is the personalization of allusion, 8 working on a deeper level than I’ve used it before. Because speech is allusive, utterances are allusive. What distinguishes audiences and addressees is the “catching” of the allusion in our speech, the recognition that goes on on a quite trivial level. It follows that if we think of arguments as personalized discourses, then that personalization resonates beyond the arguer’s own speech to the discourses that influence her and on which she draws in order to make her utterances addressive. That is, in order to meet Grice’s additional maxim of Manner. 4 The personalization that comes with an emphasis on voice is familiar from feminist philosophy. Carol Gilligan stressed the importance of “voice” in the ethic of
care. We see this suggested in several ways that are transferable to interests in rhetorical
argumentation: (1) “voices” are described differently than are propositions. They are not
“true” or “false” or “wrong”, they are “strong” or “weak” or “hesitant” or “confident”,
and so forth; they are full and echo (themselves and others); (2) “voices” express
emotion: it’s not just what is said that matters, it’s how it is said. In this sense they
command attention for what they say, instill confidence, or, of course, have the very
opposite effects; (3) “voices” are different without excluding; the phenomenon of a choir
captures the way in which different voices blend to create something unified. And insofar
as its allusive nature qualifies here, we can appreciate the blending of voices in the one
that utters.
The stress on “voice” can shift our focus. If we think about argumentation theory,
we might express ourselves in objective terms. But if we think about our argumentative
voice, it will be more subjective and reflective of who we are and what issues concern us.
It will reflect our belief system.
The Sophist Alcidamas considered that “underlying any written text is a voice that animates it” (Porter, 2009:99). But contrary to this, I would suggest, voice is not beneath the argument; it is at the heart of it; between the arguer and audience. It is part of what is received. It both frames and colours the reception. In this sense, it extends beyond the “living conversation” to the written text. So, “voice,” as I employ it here, is an important part of a speaker’s ethos, part of the public display of that person’s argument. It is part of how the person appears. Ricoeur captures something of this in an idea he borrows from Levinas: when the face of the other appears before me, “the face is not a spectacle; it is a voice” (Ricoeur, 1992:336).5 But something further needs to be said about how we respond to voices as audiences, what kind of recognition is involved? Let me first say something about our proneness to being “in audience.” We are argumentative beings, but we are so most fundamentally from the perspective of audiences. In this sense, we always know what it means to be addressed by arguments, and are always potential addressees. This is another point 4 One needs here to distinguish between appropriation and mimicry, neither of which may be conscious. Mimicked speech repeats without investing with our own sense; appropriated speech uses meaning to our ends, modifying them accordingly. 5 The context here is to see in the voice a call to ethical responsibility, since the other demands commitments from me. 9 often overlooked with the attention placed on arguments and arguers. But it is how arguments are experienced that is conveyed in the sense of “being-­‐in-­‐audience” (See Crosswhite, 1996).6 This is part of our social nature in terms of how the world approaches us and how we find ourselves in the world. We cannot escape the influences of the social upon our beliefs and behaviors. Dewey (1927:188) employed an analogy between cells within the body and the human being within society to emphasize the kinds of dependency involved. As he conceived it: “Any human being is in one respect an association, consisting of a multitude of cells each living its own life. And as the activity of each cell is conditioned and directed by those with which it interacts, so the human being whom we fasten upon as individual par excellence is moved and regulated by his associations with others; what he does and what the consequences of his behavior are, what his experience consists of, cannot even be described, much less accounted for, in isolation.” But it is more than a matter of describing and accounting for what a person does and the consequences of behavior. We are interested in the deeper implication “what his experience consists of,” because it is the social dimensions of our experience that capture our entries into argumentation. 7. The Wakefield Case: Consider the Wakefield case involving the alleged relationship between the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) and the onset of autism. Andrew Wakefield was a lead author in a February 1998 paper published in the Lancet that explored a link between the measles vaccine, irritable bowel syndrome in children and the onset of autism. While the paper itself did not assert a clear link (in fact, it was conceded in the paper that no link had been established on the basis of the twelve cases studied), Wakefield did make such an assertion in a related news conference, and that assertion was seen as instrumental in the subsequent drop of the numbers of children being vaccinated. Many parents acted on what they judged to be Wakefield’s expert testimony, even though the majority of relevant experts rejected his claims (John 2011). Subsequently, serious concerns about the original research came to light, resulting in a retraction by some of the authors and the editors of the Lancet, and in Wakefield and another author being struck off the United Kingdom’s medical register in 2010. Among the charges deemed proven by a lengthy inquiry were unethical behavior on the part of the researchers in dealing with children, fraud in the reporting of their results, and in Wakefield’s case that he patented a single-­‐measles vaccine from which he stood to profit in the absence of MMR. Wakefield portrays himself as the victim and continues to operate in the United States (See Dominus 2011). As Stephen John points out in his study of the Wakefield case, it exhibits a serious instance of the failure to defer to expert testimony (2011: 497), since the 6 Crosswhite writes, “audience is a mode of being, one of the ways human beings are” (1996:139). 10 prevalence of opinion opposed Wakefield’s conclusions. Parents ‘‘should have deferred to the experts who claimed that MMR was safe. However, a large proportion of parents did not do so’’ (501), hence, something ‘went wrong’. John is concerned with the apparent epistemic failure, arguing that non-­‐experts should defer to experts’ testimony, and he supports this by building a case that agents have social obligations to shoulder their share of the burdens required to maintain public good. The aspect of the case that is most relevant to my discussion, however, is that in spite of the counter-­‐claims of experts, and of the evidence of fraud and self-­‐
interest, and the failure of other researchers to corroborate the original findings, Wakefield continues to receive substantial support from autism groups and individual parents. Why is this? The answer must lie somewhere in the reception of the experts’ arguments, both Wakefield’s and those of his critics. The critics win the scientific argument, but not the social/public argument. They assume, perhaps, that in discounting his findings they discount him. I do not have space here to go into a detailed account of how the case might be treated, but in terms of the ideas I have been discussing two things appear significant. Wakefield was initially successful, we might speculate, through a combination of the ethos he conveyed and the presence he created for his ideas. And, in this case, an appropriate precondition in his addressees. What enabled the creation of presence for his ideas was the need that the parents had for an explanation of the phenomena they were experiencing with their children. In attempting to remove the ideas from that audience, Wakefield’s critics failed to also supply an alternative explanation for those experiences. Thus their arguments were not sufficient to replace the force of Wakefield’s ethotic argumentation. 8. Conclusion: There is something subversive about language, as it resists the call to a “truth” that will strip it of its identities, which will de-­‐personalize it. And rhetoric is important in that resistance. The discovery and articulation of “the one language of truth” has occupied much of our tradition from the poetics of Aristotle and Augustine, down through Descartes and into the modern era (Bakhtin, 1981:271). Bakhtin viewed this tradition as a kind of enslavement, and it is certainly not conducive to the personalization of arguments that we strive for. Thus, it is against this impulse to a truth that tries to conquer all else that much of argumentation theory rebels. This raises the question of what kind of commonality, of universality, can survive? It is a central question in argumentation theory generally, because the move to a sense of transparent meaning and knowledge that is held in common is a natural move. But in argumentation’s domain, that is, the domain of uncertainty, such moves are resisted and ideas like the universal reframed in ways that connect them to the social (to the community). Thus in Perelman’s celebrated universal audience we find an idea anchored to particular audiences themselves rooted in place and time. David Lodge, in his work on Bakhtin raises the concern in another way, asking “If language is innately dialogic, how can there be monologic discourse?” 11 (Lodge, 2000:90). And indeed, much of what I have uncovered about presence would suggest there is something false about the idea of monologic discourse. We find instead a deep connectedness between participants at the heart of discourse, of utterance, of the word. And as that connectedness is exploited, in the most neutral sense of the word, the prospects for persuasion are enhanced. Not agreement, not always resolution of disagreements, but the maintenance of diversity in consensual reasoning. Presence draws attention to the ways arguers interact with addressees, explicitly considering them and their cognitive environments and organizing their discourses to foster the right kinds of connections. As such it is a concept—perhaps the concept—that best captures the dialogical, interactive, cooperative nature of rhetorical argumentation.7 References Aristotle (2007) On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. 2nd ed. G. Kennedy (Trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bakhtin, M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Essays. V.W. Magee (Trans.) Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. C. Emerson (Trans.) Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Trans.) Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bitzer, L. (1968) “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1:1-­‐14. Brandom, R. (1994) Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crosswhite, J. (1996) The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the Attractions of Argument, Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Dewey, John (1927) The Public and its Problems. Denver: Henry Holt and Company. Dominus, Susan. 2011. “The Denunciation of Dr. Wakefield.” The New York Times Magazine (April 24). 7 I am grateful to the following for discussions that inspired several of the ideas in this paper: Andreas Welzel (topoi as customs of the mind); Manfred Kraus and Christian Kock (conceptual vividness [energeia] versus visual vividness [enargeia]), and Fred Kauffeld (audiences versus addressees). 12 Eco, U. (2003) Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London: Weidenfield & Nicolson. Fish, S. (2010) How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Garvey, G.T. (2000) “The Value of Opacity: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Habermas’s Discourse Ethics,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 33: 370-­‐390. Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Grice, P. (1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard, MS: Harvard University Press. Gunderson, E. (2009) “Introduction,” in E. Gunderson (Ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1-­‐23. Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 volumes, translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Hume, D. (2000) A Treatise of Human Nature. D. Fate Norton & M. Fate Norton (Eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press. John, S. (2011). “Expert testimony and epistemological free-­‐riding: The MMR controversy”, The Philosophical Quarterly: 496-­‐517. Karon, L.A. (1976) “Presence in The New Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 9 (2):96-­‐
111. Kochin, M.S. (2009) “From Argument to Assertion,” Argumentation 23:387-­‐396. Long, R. (1983) “The Role of Audience in Chaim Perelman’s New Rhetoric,” Journal of Advanced Composition, 4:107-­‐117. Leff, M. (1983) “The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius,” Rhetorica 1:23-­‐44. Lodge, D. (2000) After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. Routledge. O’Gorman, N. (2005) “Aristotle’s Phantasia in the Rhetoric: Lexis, Appearance, and Epideictic Function of Discourse,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 38:16-­‐40. Perelman, C. & L. Olbrechts-­‐Tyteca (1969) The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Trans.) Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Porter, J. (2009) “Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and the Voice,” in E. Gunderson (Ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 92-­‐108. 13 Quintilian, M.F. (1920) Institutio Oratoria, H.E. Butler (Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1989) Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, S.L. Gilman, C. Blair, & D.J. Parent (Ed. & Trans.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1992) Oneself As Another. K. Blaney (Trans.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tindale, C.W. (2004) Rhetorical Argumentation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tindale, C.W. (1999) Acts of Arguing. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Todorov, T. (1984) Mikhail Bakhtin: A Dialogical Principle, W. Godzich (Trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 14