CONTENTS 2. Deciding on the Proposition 1. Organization of Material - The Brief (1) The Classification of Evidence 2. Presentation of Material-The Forensic a. The Development of the Forensic THE PURPOSE AND THE USES OF ARGUMENTATION THE purpose of argument is to make others believe as we believe. It is not enough, however, to strive to reach that end by assertions - we argue only when we offer reason and evidence to sustain our assertions. To argue, then, is to seek to establish the truth or the falsity of a proposition or statement by means of evidence. This is for none of us an untried field of endeavor. Ever since we have had preferences we have tried to persuade others of their rationality. As children we were not content to announce to our mothers that we wished to go to a neighbor's house to play; most of us were eloquent in adducing reasons for the wish; "because" is a word with whose use we have long been familiar. The type of the trained arguer is the lawyer, who makes it his chief study and practice to bring others to think as he wishes them to think. But the leader in any walk of life, if he would control the thoughts and actions of others, needs to be, to some extent, master of the professional advocate's art. Daniel Boone, persuading his old neighbors to face the hardships of the frontier; Morse, urging upon capitalists the feasibility of the electric telegraph; Lincoln, proclaiming to voters that the Union could not exist half slave and half free; Charles W. Eliot, advocating the elective system in education,—such men as these have had to convince and persuade. Even one who has no great cause to advocate and no aspiration to influence others must in the simplest social and business relations frequently employ argument, pronounce an opinion and give reasons for it. Do you like your instructor's method of teaching German? Do you prefer Monday or Saturday for a holiday? Who is your candidate for class president? Who is your favorite novelist? Do you believe in co-education? These are questions that can not be disposed of with monosyllables. We are expected to know our own minds, to have views on many subjects and to be able to account for them. "Because" is in disrepute not because of the mental process it implies, but because the word so often exists with little or none of the argument of which it is the sign to justify it. The need to argue is not confined to specialists, but the ability to do so in a clear, convincing way where the subject-matter is complex usually belongs only to those who have had special training in the process of argumentation. The tools demanded are familiar - exposition, description, narration; the use to which they are put is, as we have seen, familiar. But the purposeful selection of just what is needed to prove a proposition, and the effective organization of it into an argument, call for a breadth of view, a power of inference, and a sense of relationship that rarely exist without cultivation. Perhaps more important than the arguments we enter into with others, are those inner debates that arise over conflicting duties, policies, and pleasures, and must be settled before no audience outside of ourselves: Shall I tell the truth though it injures my friend? Shall I go to the theatre when my mother disapproves? Shall I give this beggar money? Shall I do this work which I do not care for because it pays well? Our own peace of mind and much besides may depend on our ability to gather and to weigh the evidence on both sides of questions such as these. The process of reasoning is useful to us not only in shaping our own course of action and in influencing others, but it is quite essential to intelligent reading or listening, for it enables us to do justice to the arguments of others, to see their strength or to detect their fallacies. To read profitably we must form conclusions from the evidence furnished by the author, and test his theories and conclusions by the evidence we have gained from him or from others. |