Exercises

Take some debatable proposition, on any matter of pressing public or private concern that you with. It can be of the form, for example, of

“One should (always/never) do X”
or         “One should always/never) do X, if Y is the case”
or         “All X’s are really Y’s”
or         “Since all X’s are really Y’s, one should do Z”

However you frame this view (let us call it P), you should probably select a position on a matter you don’t care about, or else, if you feel up to it, one that you totally disagree with. In any case, you’ll have to espouse P for a while.

1. Write a paragraph in which speaker A propounds P.
Then write a second paragraph in which speaker B also propounds P, but in different terms, using a different argument, giving different examples, etc. (It may be that B is a disciple or follower of A, that B know more or less about the matter of P than A, or even that B feels that A’s arguments are bad, even though B agrees with A that P is true. Be sure you can specify to your tutor the relation of B to A.)

2. Write a paragraph in which A propounds view P in a way that is apparently cogent, but which nonetheless indicates that A is not convinced of what he/she is saying.
Then in a second paragraph have B shore up A’s presentation in a way that would lay to rest a hypothetical audience’s justifiable suspicion of A’s viewpoint.

3. Now take another position, Q, but this time a position that you strongly agree with. Your whole task here is to propound Q and justify your viewpoint. But you must give what you feel, or know, to be bad arguments (ones that don’t apply, are illogical, prove nothing, or commit you to things you don’t want to be committed to), even though they are in support of something you do believe. Try to avoid palpably non-sensical arguments, e.g. (for universal suffrage) “Well, there are a great many people in the United States,” or (against arson) “It’s wasteful of fuel.”
Then, in a second paragraph, analyze the errors in your first paragraph.

4. Return to the two-paragraph format concerning the positions of A and B. Let A and B disagree about P or Q or some new proposition R. But have them start from another proposition (say, S), which they both profoundly agree with.

5. Now, let B refute A on P (or Q or R), showing what he or she thinks is wrong with A’s position. But let there be something wrong with B’s interpretation of A’s discourse: a flaw in the reasoning, a misconception of meaning, a tendentious ascription of motive, a misunderstanding of tone.

Examples:

1)

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does, he gets beyond his hearers. The most successful speakers, even in the House of Commons, have not been the best scholars or the finest writers–neither those who took the most profound views of their subject, nor who adorned it with the most original fancy, or the richest combinations of language. Those speeches that in general told the best at the time, are not now readable. What were the materials of which they were chiefly composed? An imposing detail of passing events, a formal display of official documents, an appeal to established maxims, an echo of popular clamour, some worn-out metaphor newly vamped-up,–some hackneyed argument used for the hundredth, nay thousandth time, to fall in with the interests, the passions, or prejudices of listening and devoted admirers; –some truth or falsehood, repeated as the Shibboleth of party time out of mind, which gathers strength from sympathy as it spreads, because it is understood or assented to by the million, and finds, in the increased action of the minds of numbers, the weight and force of an instinct. A COMMON-PLACE does not leave the mind “sceptical, puzzled, and un- decided in the moment of action: “–“it gives a body to opinion, and a permanence to fugitive belief.” It operates mechanically, and opens an instantaneous and infallible communication between the hearer and speaker. A set of cant-phrases, arranged in sounding sentences, and pronounced “with good emphasis and discretion,” keep the gross and irritable humours of an audience in constant fermentation; and levy no tax on the understanding. To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it, which doubt you may not remove in the sequel; either because your reason may not be a good one, or because the person to whom it is addressed may not be able to comprehend it, or because others may not be able to comprehend it. He who offers to go into the grounds of an acknowledged axiom, risks the unanimity of the company “by most admired disorder,” as he who digs to the foundation of a building to shew its solidity, risks its falling. But a common-place is enshrined in its own unquestioned evidence, and constitutes its own immortal basis.

2)

A: Canary wine is pleasant.
B: How can you say that? It tastes like canary droppings.
A: Well, I like it.
***
C: He plays beautifully, doesn’t he?
D: Yes. Too beautifully. Beethoven is not Chopin.
D1: How can you say that? There was no line, no structure, no idea what the music was about. He’s simply an impressive colorist.
C: Well, I liked it.

***

E: There is a goldfinch in the garden.
F: How do you know?
E: From the golor of its head.
F: But goldcrests also have heads that color.
E: Well, it’s a goldfinch to me. (or: Well, I think it’s a goldfinch.)

***
A and B are discussing C.

A: How is he these days? How’s he getting on in his job at the bank?
B: Oh, quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues and he hasn’t been to prison yet.

***
1) Miss X than sang “Home Sweet Home.”
2) Miss X then produced a series of sounds which corresponded closely with the score of “Home Sweet Home.”

3)

Most of us believe that Hannibal crossed the Alps, that Neptu ne is a planet, that frozen foods thaw when left at room temperature overnight. We also share beliefs of a higher order–beliefs about our beliefs. We all hold, for example, that those gained from respected encyclopedias and almanacs are much more to be relied on than those gained from television commercials. Further, we agree that what we thir,k we see is, much more often than not, genuinely there. Seeing is not quite believing, but it, together with the continual “testimony” of our other senses, fairly bombards us with new material that requires assimilation in our body of belief. So it is that each one of us is continually adopting new beliefs, reject- ing old ones, and questioning still others. One’s repertoire of beliefs changes at least slightly in nearly every waking moment, since the merest chirp of a bird or chug of a passing motor, when recognized as such, adds a belief–however trivial or temporary–to our fluctuating store.

4)

The graces of writing and conversation are of different kinds, and though he who excels in one might have been with opportunities and application equally successful in the other, yet as many please by extemporary talk, though utterly unacquainted with the more accurate method, and more laboured beauties, which composition requires; so it is very possible that men, wholly .accustomed to works of study, may be without that readiness of conception, and affluence of language, always necessary to colloquial entertainment. They may want address to watch the hints which conversation offers for the display of their particular attainments, or they may be so much unfurnished with matter on common subjects, that discourse not professedly literary glides over them as heterogeneous bodies, without admitting their conceptions to mix in the circulation.
A transition from an author’s books to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples, and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendor, grandeur, and magnificence; but, when we gave passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

5)

Polonius. My Lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape
of a camel?
Polonius. By th mass and ’tis, like a camel indeed.
Hamlet. Methinks it is like a wesel.
Polonius. It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet. Or like a whale.
Polonius. Very like a whale.
Hamlet. Then I will come to my mother by and by.

(Hamlet, III,ii)

6)

“In her mind, she (a recently convicted murderess) thought she was innocent.” (Where else? Did she think herself innocent in her foot? Surely the speaker isn’t begging a question of epistemology, by implying that she might have been thinking herself innocent somewhere else.)

However, what the speaker meant was “As for her, she thought…” or in a slightly older expression, “To her mind, she was…” On the other hand, the offending sentence might be redeemed in another context:

“In her mind, she thought she was innocent; in her heart, she felt her con- fusion; and in her solar plexus, a knot tighter than a hangman’s twisted away.” Here, the phrase “in her mind” means just that; it’s not merely a rhetorical stammer.

General propositions can be framed in eloquent sentences, like this one, which This can also play some rhetorical accompaniment to the truth being asserted. accompaniment can sound through several variations, but sooner or later a concrete instance of what is abstractly being detailed will be called for. For example,

(1) A red bird flies across the ocean floor.

(2) Most people don’t think abstractly very well.

(3) An example is like a breath of fresh air in a smoking-car.

(4) Any example, coming along right here, of an example, will
round out the passage nicely.

(Only with (4), will the phrase “for example” in the main paragraph be used correctly.)

7)

WRONG MOVES

A: You agree with me, then, that X is always Y, except in case W?

B: Absolutely.

A: Well, what we’re trying to deal with is X, isn’t it?

B: You’re right about that.

A: And conditions are hardly such that this is a matter of W being true?

B: Certainly not. Not W.

A: Well, then, at least we can agree that in our case, X is indeed Y.

E: No.

A: ?????????

B:         (1) Because of those ridiculous socks (earrings) you’re wearing.
(2) Because I disagree with you about almost everything, and if I
agreed with you about this, there’d be something wrong, somewhere.
(3) Because even though W isn’t the case, Z is; and Z puts as radical a light on the question as W does. As a matter offact, it’s the general neglect of what happens when W is the case that often makes for confusion.
(4) Because this whole conversation is ridiculous.
(4a) Because I’ve come to realize that this whole conversation is ridiculous, and I’ve finally stopped granting you the truth or validity of anything you say.
(4b) Because this whole example is ridiculous. “X” and “y” don’t mean anything, and I can’t be expected to take empty signs like that seriously. I only agree or disagree on issues.