Loneliness, Openness to Inquiry, and Public Speaking

One of the things that struck me most keenly in the Kastely reading is how profoundly lonely is the person who is not willing to engage the other. Kastely notes that both Creon and Antigone, in the end, cannot get outside themselves, and that other protagonists in Sophocles' works seem to suffer similar fates. Martin Luther spoke of sin as being "incurvatus in se" - turned in on the self - a concept that seems to me underlying much of Kastely's reflections. Being willing to engage with the other means opening up and out, like a flower unfurling its petals to welcome the bee - engaging with one who is able to bring the germinating promise of pollen, but who also carries with it the possibility of a sting. If we are to be truly open to inquiry, to changing our mind, we will engage in a similar level of promise and risk.

For teaching Intro to Public Speaking, I have often noted that the more nervous a student it, the more likely they are to be locked into their own private world - so tied to their notes they could be giving the speech in an empty room, for all they are not engaging with the audience. Ironically, since they perceive that they are scared of the audience, they actually do better and have a better time when they look up and engage. It can take a while to convince them of that! Hayley is right that a significant teaching moment comes with the chapter on listening (and I admit, when I first taught Comm 1200, I wondered how in the world i was going to do an entire lesson on something we do all the time (HA - so I thought!) ). Public speaking is all about engaging with the other, even though it is one person who is (normatively) talking. The entire process that we teach our students is audience-centered. But that does not mean that we do not encounter the problems with argumentation that Kastely outlines, especially as the students work on their persuasive speeches. And, this semester, teaching a writing intensive, I see much the same issues as first-year composition teachers experience. Somehow, I want there to be space to talk about the underlying human/spiritual/ethical issue of engaging the other, being open to the process, and getting out of the self. The Comm Dept and I both hope that, once I pass comps, I will be able to teach Comm Ethics. Something tells me I am going to be engaging these issues!

Analytic arguments, Quine and Toulmin

Last week I posted a summary of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature on my blog, where I briefly discussed the difference between analytic (true in virtue of meaning alone) and synthetic (true in virtue of meaning + how the world is) truths. Rorty draws on Quine, who earlier had made a convincing argument that there are, in reality, no analytic truths, since every statement is inextricably connected to a set of assumptions about reality. In reading Toulmin, I once again hear echoes of the philosophical arguments going on around him. Warrants have backing, and one can, ad infinitum, continue to ask for backing for the backing. Yet it is interesting to notice that Toulmin makes a practical claim that Quine does not, which is to say that certain warrants (or backing for those warrants) can be accepted on face value alone: "the acceptability of the most reliable warrants is something we are entitled to take for granted" (p. 99). Once again we see Toulmin's interest in the actual practical level of engaging with one another in making arguments, for his concern is that if we become caught up in the infinite web of backing for our warrants, we will never begin to argue!

Yet, I wonder, how it is that some warrants would be deemed to be “reliable” and others not? Is it, as Rorty would contend, a matter of whether society allows us to claim it as true? And, if then, what is “society”? Who decides? One of the exciting things about inquiry is to question assumed truths. Yet, at a certain point, we do just need to sit down and talk with one another!

One of my hopes is to teach a course on communication ethics. It certainly seems that this question of reliable warrants would be particularly sharpened when making ethical arguments. Hmmm…a possible semester project?