Arthur Schopenhauer made this list with the purpose to show 38 ways to win an argument according to him. To win a debate depends on why you are debating. If you are trying to get the person you are debating to change views, these strategies are of no help. The other person will just become offended and hardened. If you are trying win in the eyes of a third party, these strategies may be the right choice. We as humans usually want the truth we seek or somehow ‘gain’ from this. And looking like you know the most truth doesn’t even help you either.
In this list of argumentative strategies written by Arthur Schopenhauger, we can see a direct relation between the ways people usually argue, and actual debating/argumentative strategies commonly used by professionals, lawyers, and politicians. These are rather commonly used to make a point, change the opponent’s mind, and state your beliefs, among others. Some examples of these rules that Arthur wrote about are to ignore your opponent’s proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing, which you could translate to understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. A great strategy would also be to hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end, while mingling your premises here and there in your talk which will get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. These strategies will get your opponent to think in a different way or manipulate their thoughts in order to view things from your perspective, resulting in your opponent to end up agreeing with you.
Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as love written by Jim W.Corder is a lecture that shows his description or perspective of what authors write like and how they involve in the history, or previous experiences to back up their writing and portray their believes. I think that the majority of the authors do write according to what they have lived; sometimes they write according to what they are living and other times they write using a tone according to all their experience. "Language comes out of us a word at a time; we canot get all said at once (18)." The closing this lecture demonstrate that Corder is a writer who really writes with his feelings, with his life experience, persuading the reader to believe what he believes and think what he thinks. And For me, this is what rhetoric truly means, which is the art, and study of effective speaking, writing, and persuasion.
Jim W. Corder wrote this lecture called argument as emergence, rhetoric as love to explain his perspective on how writers express themselves when writing; he explained the way the majority of authors write, and this was commonly by narrating, storytelling, talking about themselves, their lives, and things they know, he said how writers often feel like they are missing something or that it doesn’t make sense. He argues how our narratives often describe our past, learned lessons, or previous experiences, He says something important about language, "Language comes out of us a word at a time; we cannot get all said at once (18)." In my opinion he said was that you think one step at a time while you write what you think, this is could be a good way to write, or bad because you could write your thoughts down and they don’t turn out to be what you really were thinking and not what you thought you wrote. Jim Corder "Argument is not something to present or to display. It is something to be (26)." Corder then explains what an argument requires, "Requires a readiness to testify to an identity that is always emerging (26)..." by this he meant that your experiences, memories, or the way you were raised makes an argument to what you believe and what you defend. He then concludes this lecture by describing how rhetoric is love, and describing it as a world that withholds our diversities, and perspectives as writers.
Dennis button, the editor of a small journal that challenged its readers by showcasing difficult sentences that will challenge and provoke the reader to look at controversial topics in a new way as well as challenging their common sense, explained how the Bad Writing Contest started and the essential purpose of it was. Many writers in the scholarly world tend to write gracefully and persuade their writer with facts and arguments, while some persuaded them with obscurity as Denis Dutton referred to it, which simply means by attracting and persuading the reader with textual objectivity or the use of common language.
There is no reason to expect academic writing to be graceful or elegant; Dennis Dutton explained how an appealing prose style wasn’t a requirement to attract people into a scholarly life. Dennis Dutton has been an editor for a a relatively small journal that has gained public attention over the past few years just by showcasing difficult sentences that will challenge and provoke the reader to look at controversial topics in a new way as well as challenging their common sense which she described which differs from person to person based on human perspective. He explains how for the past 23 years working as the editor of the journal he’s came across all types of writing, some which are great, adequate, or just plain awful. After such happening the Bad Writing Contest was born and participants would write entries of a sentence or two of length. For 4 years now, the contest has attracted over 70. The winners of the contest typically persuaded their readers by obscurity and not by argument.
By Judith Butler Synthesis
Throughout the reading, we can clearly see how the readers of a journal that has gained popularity over the past few months challenges the reader by showcasing sentences written in a difficult manner by intellectuals of the academy as well as accusing some of us as bad writers. Which provokes them to look at controversial topics in a new way as well as challenging their common sense which she described which differs from person to person based on human perspective. A `Bad Writer' Bites Back talks about a relatively small journal that has gained public attention over the past few years just by showcasing difficult sentences that will challenge the reader. In result, the journal philosophy and literature has been seen by its readers as the arbiter of good prose, it earned its name by its common readers who are scholars who are familiar with controversial topics and their relation to language and politics. Judith then explains how common sense “works” or at least her point of view on it, she gives an example of how before it was common sense for a white man to own a slave, which today would be unthinkable. She also stated how some people think it would be common sense to protect gay couples against discrimination while in the other hand another group of people wouldn’t see that as common sense or even accept it as a result after reading these examples we can see that common sense is perhaps not so common.
Dorothy Winsor explains how “our explanations are weak because our questions are weak” (8). By this she means that In order to be successful writers it is necessary to make the right questions in order to get the required information. In this article she introduces the example of the “Challenger’s explosion” in which the failures were caused because of miscommunication of employees who were responsible for the failure of the space shuttle. Since “people in the organizations involved knew about the faulty O-rings but failed to pass on the information to decision makers” (7). This could be caused because of the way they communicate the problem and that they did not show it was a serious a problem and the decision makers did not pay too much attention to it.
In the article titled The Construction of Knowledge in Organizations by Dorothy Winsor, she starts the text by introducing a question that will lead for further discussion and provoke the audience. Winsor asks "Why did it happen that various people in the organizations involved knew about the faulty O-rings that cause the Challenger to explode but failed to pass on the information to decision makers (7)?" The author establishes that it seemed that personnel from NASA and Thiokol Inc. knew about the problem and failed to act or knew and ignores the plain evidence. Winsor states two parts to her question, which are, "knew" and "pass on the information." This suggests that throughout the article, we can evidently see how Winsor compares and analyzes the difficulties with knowing and passing on the information. Winsor asks in the discussions, "What does it mean to know something?" She first analyzes and explains how knowledge is based on evidence and to be based on evidence, Secondly Winsor states that "Knowledge is regarded as certain if someone is still unsure of an idea, we don't usually call the idea knowledge (8)." During the explanations and the rest of the article, Winsor continues to explore and argue about what it means to know something enforcing this idea by using the Challengers explosion mission as an example. The different causes why the Challenger failed the mission. It is key to see the different perspectives that exist. One being the people who knew about the situation and that the challenger could fail and the people who didn't know about it because of employees lack of communication or sharing the information. This article could go alongside decision making can also affect miscommunication, as in the Challenger mission people had the knowledge but could not decide on what to do so that resulted in a lack of communication and the fail of the Challenger mission.
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AuthorMy name is Alex Ivan Martinez, I'm a freshman at UTEP seeking an Engineering Leadership major and a graphic design minor.
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