The essential difference between rhetoric and critical thinking is that rhetoric is about power, critical thinking isn’t. Critical thinking is about inquiry. In both rhetoric and critical thinking, we traffic in arguments. But arguments play very different roles in rhetoric and in critical thinking. Rhetoric is about persuasion, and as such it is concerned with a kind of interpersonal power. From the rhetorical perspective, a good argument is a persuasive one, one that exerts an influence on the minds of others. An argument that fails at this is a rhetorical failure. In critical thinking, a good argument is one that provides good reason for the truth of its conclusion. It’s an open question whether people will find such arguments persuasive. If people did reliably find arguments that are good by critical thinking standards persuasive, it would be much easier to persuade people of truths and much harder to persuade people of falsehoods. Sadly, this is not the case. Whether people find arguments that are good by critical thinking standards persuasive has a great deal to do with their own critical thinking skills. Our educational system is quite haphazard about the cultivation of these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seen rhetorically, an argument that fails to persuade can simply be discarded. Nobody who finds a sales pitch unpersuasive wants to hear it again. But as an instrument of inquiry, an argument that we find unpersuasive remains a useful instrument of inquiry. We can learn much from examining how an argument fails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An argument is just a set of premises from which we infer a conclusion. Given this, we can see that an argument can fail to provide a reason for the truth of its conclusion in one of two ways: by having false premises or by making faulty inferences on the basis of those premises. If we think the conclusion of an argument is false, we can learn from any mistakes made in the argument by looking into these two things. Does the argument have false premises? Does it draw a faulty inference on the basis of those premises? If no affirmative answers can be found to either of these questions, then we have a reason to accept its conclusion. Of course, that reason might not be conclusive and we may still not be persuaded. We might continue to search for flaws in the argument or stronger arguments against its conclusion. But in the absence of success in this endeavor we should at least be able to see the conclusion as reasonable and understand why a reasonable person might endorse it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attempts to engage in critical thinking conversations can fail as a result of one or more parties failing to track the appropriate role of the argument. When an argument offered in the spirit of inquiry is taken for a piece of rhetoric, people may feel uncomfortably pressured or dominated. “Who does this person think he is, telling me how to think.” When the argument is then rejected out of hand as unpersuasive, a person aiming to engage in inquiry is liable to feel frustrated and misunderstood. “Why can’t we examine the reason according to its own merits?” It may appear that people are simply more interested in holding their opinions and not being persuaded than in inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly, when a person offers an argument as a piece of rhetoric, aiming to persuade, only to find it critically evaluated as an instrument of inquiry, they are liable to feel dismissed. Worse, when a person self-identifies with their attempt to persuade, “This is My reason for holding My position,” they may feel put down when some flaw in the argument is pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personalizing arguments and ideas renders one vulnerable to feeling harmed when these come under critical scrutiny. A critical evaluation of an idea or argument you like is not an attack on you. Taking it as such, however, may lead you to personally retaliate. Here we can see the psychological roots of the ad hominem<\/em> fallacy. In the mode of critical thinking, we will do much better if we think of ideas and arguments generally as the commonwealth of intellectual beings like us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such are the hazards of mixing rhetoric with critical thinking. The critical thinking conversation will go much better when we bear in mind the role of the argument as an instrument of inquiry. Regardless of how we feed about the conclusion, arguments to are to be examined. Are the premises true? Do the premises support the conclusion? Good arguments are hard to come by. A great many arguments, including many quite popular ones, are flawed. The idea in critical thinking is to learn from these mistakes. In the context of critical thinking, making a mistake is not losing. Mistakes are no cause for shame or feeling socially diminished. Mistakes are opportunities for discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is much easier to explain than it is to put into practice. The world we’ve made for ourselves is rhetorically hyper-saturated. Most of us are firmly in the habit of thinking of arguments as bits of rhetoric and simply dismissing arguments for conclusions we don’t like, or worse, personalizing things and retaliating against the people that make those arguments. This can make critical thinking rather hazardous. Given this, critical thinking may require some special effort to explicitly establish and sustain a conversational context of shared inquiry. Staying focused on understanding and fairly evaluating arguments isn’t easy for most people. Ample low stakes practice can help a great deal. This is what developed critical thinking curriculum aims to provide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The essential difference between rhetoric and critical thinking is that rhetoric is about power, critical thinking isn’t. Critical thinking is about inquiry. In both rhetoric and critical thinking, we traffic in arguments. But arguments play very different roles in rhetoric and in critical thinking. Rhetoric is about persuasion, and as such it is concerned with … Continue reading Critical Thinking Note 38: Critical Thinking isn’t Rhetoric<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}