As I indicated in my last posting, I want to dedicate a few
postings to the structure of good arguments.
Why? When one considers the study
of government and civic affairs, much of it is involved with making and judging
arguments. Most of that is about what
constitutes good policy; should the government do this or that? So something a civics teacher should try to
instill in students is the wherewithal to determine whether a particular
argument is sound and reasonable. As
Philip Selznick[1]
points out, this does not mean that arguments should follow the tenets of
rationalism in which all but reason is used to construct and accept an
argument. There is room for emotions in
good arguments but, as the following will indicate, one needs to be disciplined
in the use of reason and emotions as well as relying on religious or other
philosophic beliefs. I have often
mentioned that some argument or position is a radicalization of some theory or
ideology; that is, that the particular belief or claim of knowledge is held to
be true and should trump all other considerations. The problem with such arguments is that they
assume perfect knowledge, something we humans have proven to be quite
deficient. “Ain’t nobody perfect.”
In the last posting, I related the “five pillars of reason”
according to Selznick. These I labeled
the disciplines of good argumentation and they are order, principle, experience,
prudence, and dialogue. I briefly
defined each in that posting. With this
posting, I want to begin expanding on the meaning and significance of each,
starting with order.
Good arguments do rely on reason – the quality in which one
attempts to consider evidence in a dispassionate way. What that basically means is that one has to
put a considered restraint on emotions, the rhetoric of others – and of oneself
– and any preconceived biases or inclinations.
This denotes a slowing down or allowing enough time to reflect, to put
things – ideas or objects – in logical order.
Selznick quite rightly points out that this discipline needs to be
extended not only to the consideration of means toward some ends embedded in
some argument, but to the ends themselves.
One of the problems of ideologies is that they tend to
proffer their vision or belief of the right/correct life and yet, under such a
posture, ideologies fall short of reflecting life or other aspects of realities
in what one would deem totally true.
There is always some mistake as to what is claimed to be reality. This is not only the case of some belief
based on religion or some philosophy (such as Marxism), but also on belief
based on science. We simply don’t know
it all. So the discipline of order must
account for this: a structural imbedding of doubt and of thinking and having to
decide in terms of probabilities, not certainties. And even when the knowledge proves to be
sound, it offers a view of what is that is less than totally consistent and
dependable or totally free of obstacles.
Selznick writes:
People are “reasonable” and show
“good sense” when they accommodate their goals to what the world is like. They seek change within a framework of
limited alternatives and necessary trade-offs.
This ambient order, properly understood, is not an alien system of
domination. It is the world to which we
belong, on which we depend, of which we are integral parts.[2]
Order leads us to think in terms of frameworks, not technical
manifestos or social architecture. It
also avoids discrete values or goals, such as profits or payloads, as be-all
aims of any effort. One sees this type
of offense when considering the modern corporate structure in which the goal of
maximizing profits for shareholders becomes the trumping goal for just about
any business decision a corporation makes – such as providing sub-living wages
to workers. This reflects the type of
thinking in which rationality is divorced from reason.
In federalist theory, I have argued that the trump value of
that normative theory is societal wellbeing.
Is this not a case in which rationality outstrips reason? I believe not. First, societal wellbeing is not a discrete
value; it is a general value subject to interpretation. The argument allows for diverse options and
part of this theory in guiding civics curricular choices is not to indoctrinate
students, but to facilitate those inquiries that might lead to benefits of our
common welfare. The student so led,
though, must be encouraged to practice and gain proficiency in the exercise of
order in such endeavors.
