Presentation is ultimately nothing but a mere formality designed to enhance the persuasion of a claim or series of claims. It often is mistaken for more when, in reality, it is nothing more than a frame intended to highlight a picture better--or a frame intended to distract from the fact that the picture it surrounds is missing or very damaged. The contents of a picture themselves have nothing to do with an external frame, and likewise superficial presentation has nothing to do with the veracity or verifiability of claims.
One can see this by examining pathos and ethos, which stand alongside logos as the three main components of traditional rhetoric. Pathos is an appeal to emotion, ethos an appeal to credibility (of the speaker/author or someone else), and logos an appeal to logic. A problem quickly becomes evident. Holding a title, being recognized by others, and having done something for a long time, in themselves, have nothing to do with the quality, soundness, and validity of a communicator's points. Someone could have been a theologian for 30 years but still be a shit thinker (as many theologians I have read or heard of seem to be). A scientist with great social and scientific backing is not validated intellectually by having a following and support. Social credibility has nothing to do with whether someone is correct or not. Likewise, an audience's feelings do not dictate the truth or falsity of someone's claims. Only logic, not perceived credibility or emotions, reveals if someone is correct when they make a claim. Ethos and pathos profit off of the gullibility and ignorance of those who accept fallacies, namely the fallacies of appeal to authority (or tradition) and appeal to emotion.
A person might be absolutely terrible at wielding language in a smooth, coherent, precise manner, all while holding perfectly correct and demonstrable beliefs. Inversely, a person might be a very persuasive, winsome, talented speaker, but be hiding fallacies and errors behind the facade of a "good" presentation. At this point, pathos and ethos have become a hindrance to the communication of truths. Not that either pathos or ethos really has any place in a purely rational proof of something--someone who wants proof instead of persuasion looks only to the logos of a communicator. If someone communicates the truth to me, it does not really matter if the speaker misuses language as arbitrarily defined by a society or does not have a professional background; if I understand what he or she means, then communication has succeeded, and if he or she uses no fallacies, then there are no errors to rebuke.
Some people might think that without these superficial formalities of presentation, such as grammar, eloquence, emotional appeals, and status, communication would not be successful. However, these things are all ultimately irrelevant to the truth of someone's claims and the verifiability of them, and they are judged to be persuasive or useful on purely subjective, utilitarian grounds. They are all constructs of a particular society that arbitrarily assigns a certain "value" to them. At best, they are, as are words themselves, "mere vehicles; the passengers are what matters" [1].
Does this mean that I will never use specific presentation approaches, linguistic or otherwise? No. But I do so either at my own whim, simply because I want to in a particular case, or because I seek a quick connection with a particular person or group, when I would just as readily abandon those formalities for a different audience or topic. It is not because I rely on or care about any of these things in themselves that I ever use them. There is nothing intrinsically flawed about using them, only with taking them as actual determiners of truth or correctness.
At best, ethos and pathos are distractions from what really matters in communicating and proving claims, and at worst they are intentionally misused to conceal errors. In a truly rational world, people would care only about the rationality of a communicator, not about emotional reactions or perceived authority on a matter. My society has much distance to travel before it can correctly call itself rational.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-relativity-of-language.html
No comments:
Post a Comment