Ethos

Not all argument needs to be completely composed in logos. Ones character can easily be put to persuasive uses. Essentially, "ethical proofs rely on community assessments of a rhetors character or reputation". A rhetoric book from a class I took last semester says that, character has three important senses:

1. The patter of behavior or personality found in an individual or group
2. moral strength, self discipline, fortitude, etc
3. a good reputation.

Encompassing all of these attributes goes back to topoi and commonplaces on what people hold to be good or just, in order to attain say, a good reputation/character.

It is more difficult to establish good character anymore due to the fact technology and communication now permeates our everyday lives. That is, if some celebrity or political figure has done anything 'wrong', ever, it is well known due to the internet. Doubly so since rhetoric is often viewed nowadays as 'simple' tricks - especially when talking about politicians. The book talks about building ones character or ethos through discourse, but I would argue now the only thing that helps people build their own character is through their actions.

Most people are smart. By most people I mean the people at the beginning of the curve, the innovators and early adopters. While percentage wise they may not be the majority, they sure as hell affect the majority. If we have the people' that care ' telling us how things are, why someone is good, why someone is bad, the majority is most likely going to follow suit.

stop


Thinking about Aristotle always gets me going on proofs and the Socratic method for some reason.

Logical proof has always fascinated me and in my eyes usually proves to be one of the more effective ways of allowing people to come to an agreement on what to argue on. That is, the idea of deduction and induction.

Deduction is essentially coming to a logical conclusion based on facts that have been laid down. The books example is, "All people are mortal" "Socrates is a person" "therefore, socrates is mortal".

Its a fairly easy concept but can help one learn a lot about other peoples perceptions on certain topoi. Conversely, to deduction, exists induction. I found this quotation, "If the skilled pilot is the best pilot, and if the skilled charioteer is the best charioteer, then the skilled person is the best person in any particular sphere".

In all my rhetoric classes I always try to bring up this conversation I had with my roommate. (No alcohol was not involved...)

"I was having an argument with my roommate about whether or not one needed to wash a saute pan with soap and water after toasting a bun, rather than simply wiping it off with a paper towel. Using deduction and induction we were able to eventually agree completely on everything that was brought up, but still seemed to disagree on whether or not to wash the pan. Eventually the method lead down a road in which we began to talk about things that had no relation to the pan whatsoever.

Example:

You eat breadcrumbs, so they are clean. If the breadcrumbs were on the pan and they were wiped off, the pan would then be clean.

No, the pan retains some residue of the bread after being wiped off.

Well the pan has residue on it all of the time most likely.

True, but is the residue clean

Define clean

It went on for a good 45 minutes like this. It was a lot of fun and we try to talk about other stuff like this often."