To Win You Must Lose: How to Argue Better | Dave Sumner | TEDxMcMinnville

have our words and opinions ever been more under the microscope from Facebook to Twitter from the daily from the Daily Kos to Fox News we seem to be arguing all the time and these arguments are having an effect in fact recently the LA Times reports that 52% of Republicans think that Democrats are less open-minded than most Americans 70% of Democrats think Republicans are less open-minded and it gets worse 46% of Republicans think Democrats are more immoral than most Americans and 35% of Democrats think the same about Republicans now listen I am all for a good argument arguments a really important way we have for knowing the world but we need to learn to argue better and by that I don't mean some shallow platitude like let's all just agree to disagree what I'm talking about is a 2,000 year old tradition the tradition of rhetoric that teaches us how to argue more productively now rhetoric you're saying what's that well it's the tradition of studying how language creates meaning and the ethical questions that arise when we write and when we speak for an example let's look at Socrates to remember him Plato's teacher 2,000 years ago he argued for a living and on one occasion he was engaged in a dialogue with a Sophists by the name of gorgeous and Socrates wanted to know if gorgeous was the same kind of man that Socrates claimed to be and he said I am one who had glad to be who would be glad to be refuted if I say anything untrue and who would be glad to refute anyone who speaks untruly but here's the important part then Socrates says however it is the greater good to be refuted than to refute because it is a larger benefit to be delivered from evil than to deliver another think about this Socrates is saying it is better to be shown where you were wrong than to show another where he or she is wrong how does this change argument he's saying we need to reframe the way we think about argument we need to think about argument not as argument to win but as argument to learn how would this change Thanksgiving dinner you're sitting across from your uncle read it's always an uncle isn't it and he starts to push your buttons and instead of trying to figure out a way to prove him wrong what if you start to think about what he's saying and perhaps whether or not he's saying something you can learn from let's take this one step further what if uncle Reid were to do the same and listen to your argument and your reasons my guess is that you wouldn't that my gift my guess is that you'd leave the dinner a little listed a little less dyspeptic and a little more enlightened and in fact if you are both arguing to learn rather than to argument arguing to win you might learn something you might be rid of your own evil in fact to win you must lose that's the better way according to Socrates now metaphors matter and have you ever noticed that all the metaphors we have for argument come from war we attack we defend we counter we win we lose and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson point out that the metaphors we choose shape the way we see an idea so if we frame argument as a fight how will we ever argue to learn well lake often Johnson also point out that we can change the metaphor they ask us to imagine what if we were to think about argument instead of as war as dance Wars our adversarial dance is cooperative war has winners and losers Dance has partners war wounds dance heals metaphors matter and the way we frame the argument is going to make a big diff francy and whether or not we can argue to learn now another thing another really useful tool in arguing to learn as a lesson we can take from American pragmatism in 1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. was a senior at Harvard and an abolitionist and he quit Harvard that year and he joined the Massachusetts Volunteers and he spent the next four years as a Union soldier fighting in the American Civil War during that time he was wounded three times he saw the ravages of battle he were he experienced the worst horrors of war and he almost died of dysentery when he returned to Cambridge he had decided that the price of war was far too high and that we must find another way and so with William James Charles purse and others he invented a new philosophical school called American pragmatism and pragmatism is important because the underlying principle for American private pragmatism is fallibilities that is the underlying principle is that the only thing we can be confident in is our own ability to misunderstand to make a mistake to be wrong in short he's saying the only thing we can be certain of is our own mistaken assess sink about how this would change Thanksgiving think about how if you and your interlocutor are both aware of your own mistaken us think how that would change the conversation think how that would help us be rid of our own evil now okay back to Thanksgiving how many times you've been driving home and you're saying to your wife or your or your brother or your husband you're saying uncle Reid he says that he's just defending the Second Amendment but I know he just loves the power of guns and how many times was Uncle Reid been driving home of that Lois and said Dave says that he just wants a safer society but I know he just wants to take away my personal now both of these are examples of what Wayne booth calls motive ISM Wayne booth was a Dean at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and he was witnessing the conflict and the rhetoric that surrounded the Vietnam War and he was alarmed by how all sides seem to be talking past one another and so as a student of rhetoric he decided to to examine what was going on and he came up with the idea of motive ISM that is the idea that people were going to the assumed motives of their interlocutor rather than accepting their given reasons now isn't uncle Reed just a gun nut right isn't he just in LA all this stuff about the Second Amendment and personal freedom isn't this just a cover I mean he just really is fascinated with firearms and he just really you know is compensating for some kind of male insecurity right well maybe but probably not and how can I know the only thing I can know are the reasons that Reed gives and think about this have you ever presented a carefully articulated argument and had your interlocutor your dance partner ignore your reasons and accuse you of some secret motive it feels like an attack it feels like you've been dismissed and your character and you have some kind of character flaw but think about how it would be different if you listened to the reasons of your dance partner think also how it would be different if your dance partner listens to your reasons without accusing you of some ulterior motive the dance continues were able to make progress now back to uncle Reed poor uncle Reed he actually is my real uncle how many times of it have I been talking to uncle Reid and we start way too far down the road we talk about climate change we talk about welfare we talk about taxation and we really don't back up to the deeper issues right what we really need to talk about is what do we think about fairness what do we feel like our obligations are to each other to future generations what role does hard work or Luck play in the way we move through the world what role does science or religion or tradition play in helping us understand the world now if we can back that truck up and find the place where we begin to disagree we actually might find that there's this large space of things we agree on if we can back that truck up and find a shared epistemology a shared way of knowing the world we might actually make some progress we might actually gain some understanding of one another but don't I need to speak truth to power don't they need to stand up and be brave and tell people how it is well sometimes we do but more often than not we need to think about levels of community who are the people we have arguments with there are a brother there are spouse there are neighbor there are colleague right and after we have this argument don't we need to be able to live with work with talk to our dance partner so before we accuse our dance partner of being crazy before we get self-righteous and indignant let's think about the relationship let's think about the community let's think about how we can preserve this relationship past this one argument so this reminds me of a recent op-ed from a woman by the name of Aaron Carmen and she is writing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's what she calls her caution radicalism how she approaches argument and Justice Ginsburg says fight for the things that you care about but do so in a way that will invite others to join you right then she warns about righteous anger she says she says that righteous anger can consume us and in response to this ms/ms Carmen says it may seem strange for a feminist to counsel against anger when those of you who are not straight white men have had to fight just to have room to express it but the risk of burnout over fast flaming conflict is real our current conversations value catharsis over strategy this doesn't mean picking the middle point of two polls and calling it common sense it just means thinking past instant outrage and doing sustainable work neither miss Carmen nor Justice Ginsburg are advising us to be passive about things we care about it but they're telling us to be strategic it's really easy to be offended it's really hard to be effective there are a few people in this world who have led more effective lives than Justice Ginsburg so let's take some advice from notorious RBG let's argue in a way that invites others to join us now so far I've argued that we must argue learn that metaphors matter that we must accept our own foul ability first that reasons are important not motives that we must back that truck up that levels of community must be considered and finally that we need to not be offended but we need to be effective and I want to finish with one of my favorite rhetorician zhim and by the name of Kenneth Burke and in Kenneth in Kenneth Burke study above the window on the sash he took a crayon and he wrote ad bellum per if a condom and in Latin this means towards the purification of war and he spent his life studying rhetoric and studying how we could use words instead of fists or rifles or ICBMs and the following quote sums up most of what I've tried to talk about today he says the progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious but as a mistaken now let's stop right here if I see uncle Reed as vicious there's no way we can proceed if I see him as mistaken we can have a conversation I mean you can't dance with vicious right Burke goes on when you add that people are necessarily mistaken that all people are exposed to situations in which they must act as fools that every insight carries its own special kind of blindness let's stop here again so I not only need to see uncle Reed is mistaken I need to see myself as mistaken I need to realize I am human I am fallible I'm necessarily mistaken he finishes by saying then you complete the comic circle returning again to the lesson of humility that underlies all great tragedy so let's not shy away from talking about things that are important let's not shy away from the issues we care about but let's do it with humility let's do it knowing our own humanity our own phal ability and if we do so we just might complete the comic circle we just might avoid tragedy thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 39,518

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Humanities, Communication, Debate, Relationships

Id: EfIGTJ86oSs

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 27 2019