Arguments as Conversations

Summary:
In Stuart Greene's article, Arguments as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Arguments, he discusses ways to improve research, reading and writing in a new way by treating the arguments we use as conversations. By making arguments into conversations it allows for arguments to be portrayed in a simpler way. The three steps that Greene mentions to develop and approach a good argument are to identify an issue, identify the situation, and to frame a good question. Identifying the issue is important because it is used to find the goals and interest that are relevant to others. We learn best from the issues we discuss in our environment. Identifying the situation is important because it allows for relevance and to be more relatable for the reader or the person your having the conversation with. Lastly, framing of a good question is very crucial because it allows the perspective of the argument to advance. Greene finally is able to conclude by stressing the importance of research and how it is used not only to collect information but to create discoveries.

Discussion Question:
Explain the concept of framing. What metaphor underlies it? Why is the concept important for Greene? What does framing allow a writer to do?

The concept of framing is a way for a writer to present their ideas in a way that you can only see the main point of the authors argument. The underlying metaphor is a picture. There can be two types of pictures, one with the center focused and the background blurred or the background focused and the center blurred. This metaphor represent what the author wants you to focus on. It shows both the center and the background but one is given much more attention to, thus taking control of the photo. The concept of framing is important to Greene because it is the final step in how to develop a good argument. Framing is also important to other writers because it allows them to get their argument to be the clear focus while still having other information in their writing.

Intertextuality

Charles Bazerman discusses in his chapter, Intertextuality: How Text Rely on Other Text, this new idea called intertextuality and how its a topic that isn't as recognized as it should be. He states that intertextuality is the relation the texts has to the texts surrounding it. What this means is, our text technically isn't our own, it comes from other texts or words that we've heard or seen before. We use this everyday text in our own writing, to develop an understanding, and to increase our own knowledge. Bazerman uses an article, The Weak Link, as an example. In this example it is evident that this article shows the levels of intertextuality through issues, ideas, quotations, and much more. Bazerman is then able to conclude by saying, "intertextuality is not just a matter of which other texts you refer to, but how you use them, what you use them for, and ultimately how you position yourself as a writer to them to make your own statement."

Ignorance: Lloyd and Firestein

In the lecture given by John Lloyd and the TED Talk given by Stuart Firestein, both scientists come to the conclusion that knowledge generates ignorance. They speak about ignorance not with the usual connotation that it comes with, but ignorance in a sense that it generates more questions about the ideas we don't know. In the beginning of Lloyd's lecture he uses the example of children and how they ask questions contanstly until it comes to a point where theres no answer. Lloyd refers to these as "terminal why" questions. He also discusses that the more knowledge we get the more ignorant we should get and thus leave us to a chance of discovery. Firestein explains similar ideas in his Ted Talk, he says the purpose of knowing a lot of stuff is to generate more questions. He talks about how the education today has what his colleague refers to as the "bulimic method, what he means by this is that we beige information onto students, then have them throw it all up for an exam, leaving the student with no real knowledge or interest on the topic. Therefore, Firestein concluded his argument with a quote from William Yeats and says, "Education is not about filling buckets; its about lighting fires."

In Lloyd's lecture, General Ignorance, he discusses that experts, specialist and institutions are so nervous about admitting ignorance because they hate to admit that they don't know since they are suppose to be the best in their field. But what they don't realize is that ignorance opens the door to a lot more opportunities to gain more insight.  Lloyd then transitions into talking about beliefs and how we can get individuals to deal with ideas that may challenge what they believe. He says the best way to do that is to focus on how their beliefs  and how they do have a validity and not to completely reject it in a way that isn't rude to what they believe. Since information is constantly changing throughout time it means that it is impossible for to know anything, every minute theres new scientific papers being written. In Firestein's Ted Talk he says the best way to get students to step outside the boundaries of facts is to have them evaluate them and ask more questions. He said that the best classrooms are the ones when the students asks the teacher a question and the teacher can't answer it. Students may be more timid and less willing to step outside the boundaries of facts because today students are more willing to accept the facts, learn them for an exam and then forget about it a short while after. Students don't have as much of an incentive to ask more questions and to become more ignorant. Today grades seem to be the only incentive, not knowledge. Some ways we can attempt to have students pursue ignorance is to get rid of the idea of weeding and start evaluating. Weeding is when we test students and let the ones who pass advance and weed out the ones who don't pass. While the better method of evaluating is to have students engage in conversations, collaborate ideas and ask questions. The more questions they ask the more knowledge they obtain and the more ignorant they will become. 

The significance of the "Apology" quotes

1. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” 

The significance of this quote is to show the realization of life. The life a lot of us live now is just going through the steps, we don't take the time to appreciate it. In order for life to have meaning we have to examine the little things, we have to take the time out of our day to reflect and appreciate. If we don't take time time to do this whats the point of living? Theres more to life than just going through the same steps of everyday. 

2. “To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”

The significance of this quote is to realize that the only knowledge we have is that we don't know anything. What he means by this is that we accept information thats presented to us we don't question it we just accept it. So in reality when we THINK we truly know a lot about the world that surrounds us but we simply don't, it could be all fake researchers, experiments spoon feeding us information.

Emotional Fight or Flight Experience

My perspective as her best friend:
Recently in my college career a friend of mine has had a very new approach to her life. In the past I've never had an issue with individuals who were attracted to people of the same sex, I aways thought, "As long as they were happy then I'm happy for them". The only thing that I would get uncomfortable with would be when I would see a couple of the same sex kiss or produce a public display of affection, and I don't know why but in my head I always saw it as "not normal". However, my parents always taught me to accept everyone for who they are, never to judge where they came from, how they look and even their sexual orientation. So, when my best friend here at IC had a new sexual awakening I was nothing but supportive.  I guess in the time of "fight or flight" I would say I fought rather than fled. I stuck around to listen to how this new experience was for her, I was interested to hear how it developed so quickly and thought a lot about how me and my other friends never noticed the signs. Thinking about it now the signs were all there, but we never  even took that path into consideration. Now that its my best friend who is newly in a gay relationship I don't get weirded out or uncomfortable when I see gay couples show affection, it looks so natural to see two people who mean the world to each other to be happy together. I would want nothing more for my best friend.


Her perspective experiencing the emotional situation:
I grew up in a really conservative and religious town. All my friends were confirmed, as well as myself, and my parents really expressed religious ideals. Throughout high school I was constantly fighting the urge to be honest about the way I felt; I was interested in girls. It wasn't until I came to college that I allowed myself room to explore and be honest with myself. It's a rough transition going from a girl who only dated boys to being a girl in an exclusive relationship with a girl. Bringing the news home to my dad was a terrifying experience, I was worried about what he would think of me and how it would change our relationship. But I didn't walk away from the situation, I embraced it. Being open and honest about myself with the people I love and sharing an exciting and happy new experience with them makes the hardships worth it.

I Don't Want to Be Right

In Maria Konnikova's article, I Don't Want to Be Right, she states that people are more likely to defend their beliefs than accept facts, she continues to talk about the possible techniques to persuade someone to to change their beliefs through facts, science, emotions and stories. A test that was performed were on people who believed that vaccines caused autism in children. The results said that showing the individuals the facts, emotional photographs and stories of the diseases the vaccines prevented caused no one to have a change in believe about vaccines. This test actually backfired and caused individuals to hold on to their beliefs more closely. Later on in the article Konnikova brings up the idea of self-affirmation. Self affirmation creates a low self esteem for the person when they feel their sense of self is threatened by the outside world and this feeling could change their behavior. One example that is used in the article is when women are asked their gender before taking an exam and they perform worse than when the question wasn't asked. This accurately shows how ones belief of themselves or 

of a situation could alter their performance or their judgement even though it may not be true. Konnikova is saying that beliefs,whether they are true or false, are very personal and people will defend their beliefs no matter what facts are provided to contract them. Even though not accepting the facts can be harmful in some situations, like the vaccine, we can't force people to receive it, and it may cause a lot of people to get sick from diseases that could have been eradicated. 

One of the topics that Mooney and Konnikova share is that people hold on to beliefs in a very personal manner. They hold on to them so strongly that they refuse to accept evidential facts that may prove their beliefs wrong. Mooney and Konnikova have acknowledged the idea that you can't change someones belief through facts because it will only result in a backfire. Konnikova uses the example of astrology in her article to explain how strong beliefs are harder persuade. She explains that in todays world if someone say the sun rotates around the earth and someone corrects them they will easily change their belief. However, in the time of Galileo when astronomy represented life, religion and nature it would much more difficult to try and convince them of a different sun-earth relationship.  Konnikova also brings in the idea of self-affirmation, self affirmation is basically when a persons behavior is altered due to a threat of their sense of self. They say we see self affirmation when we are asked to put our gender or ethnicity on exams like SATs and that they really do effect a persons performance. Self affirmation can also cause people to change their minds by placing doubts or second guesses into their heads. In the end, Konnikova explains that the issue of self identity and perception are to blame for the inability to change their mind with evidence is because of the way facts and evidence are perceived by the individual. Ones background and values that they grew up with make up how a person will perceive the information given to them. 

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science

In Chris Mooney's article, The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, he explains the reason why individuals don't accept specific facts or information is because the information counters what they believe. The examples that he uses to support this statement are peoples views on climate change, on post 9/11 and the correlation between vaccines and autism. All of these different examples have scientific evidence to it. People only respond to the evidence as credential if it justifies their set of beliefs, Mooney refers to this as confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when evidence or arguments agree with ones beliefs. While disconfirmation bias is when evidence or arguments disagree with ones beliefs, so they try to refute the evidence. Sometimes individuals will illustrate  facts to another and expect them to be motivated by the it, this is called "motivated reasoning. Even though this seems logical to prove facts with evidence, motivated reasoning tends to get backfired and the individual will refute what was just said because it disagrees with their beliefs. Mooney ends his article by stating if you want to convince someone of something, don't lead with facts, lead with values.

Our beliefs are something we have developed over the course of our life time. As humans, we become defensive when someone tries to skew our beliefs with facts and evidence. Our basic human survival skill is to "push threatening information away; pull friendly information forward". So when we hear information that concur with our beliefs we tend to understand it, but when it threatens our beliefs we go into the "fight or flight" mode and defend, this is referred to as, "motivated reasoning". According to Mooney confirmation bias is when we, "give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs."and disconfirmation bias is when we, "expend disapproving energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments we find uncongenial." So basically we highlight the evidence that supports our beliefs (confirmation) and discredit the facts that disapprove our beliefs (disconfirmation).  Science has to deal with situations like these in many places, one example is showing evolutionary evidence to a creationist. The creationist will have a counterargument for every fact provided in support of the Theory of Evolution, therefore giving a disconfirmation bias.

Knowledge, according to Weinberger, is the network. However, Mooney is showing that the network can not be convinced by facts or evidence if they go against other preexisting views. This may suggest that our status of knowledge isn't only dependent on facts alone, but on how facts relate to preexisting views and beliefs, this leads to a lot of bias and different opinions. In my opinion, facts are facts and individuals should consider more of an open mind even if it does go against ones views. I may try to change a persons mind regarding global warming by taking their values and start and conclude with that and in the middle explain the facts of how human waste have significant impacts and have caused an increase in global warming. If the individual still doesn't accept the facts there isn't much more to do to persuade them we just have to let them believe what they want. The problem becomes worse when they start to spread their false facts through the media and technology. Confirmation biased is worsened due to the internet because everyone is able to develop sites and even express their own beliefs on their in small pieces. One example of this is with the citizens who believe vaccines and autism are correlated, these individuals with such strong values have developed websites like Age of Autism that show false acquisitions. One of the last things that Mooney talks about are conservatives and how they are more prone to deny the facts of science. Conservatives are known for sticking to the book of the conservative lifestyle so, if they are given new information that contradicts how they've previously lived they take it to offense and deny the scientific facts that contrasts their values. 

Melancholy of Anatomy

In Wendell Berry's essay, Melancholy of Anatomy, Berry compares the human body to the knowledge that is held in the world. The human body and knowledge may not seem comparable, but the similarities between them is that they are both an assembly of parts put together to make something vast. Millions of tiny atoms are brought together and can make up the high functioning human body. The small ideas from everyone throughout time develop to create knowledge. However, Berry also talks about how the worth of the world is determined by the market. What he means by this is that products that are "beneficial" are truly beneficial to only the market who receives income or the government who receives power. The negatives to this greedy and selfish culture that our world is inhabiting is that it doesn't allow us to look at the world as a whole, only as a piece. We need to put all of these pieces back together to create a functioning society as a whole.

In Berry's essay, Melancholy of Anatomy, he writes, “We have accumulated a massive collection of ‘information’ to which we may have ‘access.’ But this information does not become knowledge by being accessible” (14). What he means by this statement is that just because information has become more accessible due to the internet and the network doesn't automatically convert it to be more knowledgeable. The more accessible the information that we have is the more likely we are going to learn invariably and quickly forget the information we just "learned". Therefore, just because we have endless amounts of information doesn't correlate to an endless amount of knowledge. Berry explains that sometimes to understand the future we have to forget the past, take what we have learned and look forward. Berry also develops the idea of a relationship between the market, research and knowledge. We use researchers and scientists to develop ideas and products. These products that claim to be beneficial are really beneficial for whom? They are only benefiting the companies that market them and sell it off as a great product due to the knowledge we trust behind the researcher who created this product. Not only is this with everyday products, but with military industrial products as well. The military industrial complex is founded on the "logic of revenge" this is what war is. The government have scientists produce products to help cause war. Science research doesn't wants us, the citizens, to comprehend all of the knowledge that they and the government hold. They have narrowed our thinking process to keep us occupied from asking questions that involve them. What Berry is advocating for in his conclusion is for us to be thinking more as a whole and taking all of the individual pieces and not just look at those, but to seek what they collectively represent.