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Aren't there some contradictions there? You say upthread that they believe the thing they are trying to convince us of. You also say that they are competently
by ifyoubuildit 5y ago
Aren't there some contradictions there?
You say upthread that they believe the thing they are trying to convince us of. You also say that they are competently using tricks to fool us into believing the thing that they believe is true. Why would they be fooling us into believing something that they believe to be true? And if they were, would that even be deceptive?
This doesn't seem coherent to me. What am I missing?
- dekhn 5y agoI dunno about you, but all my training in writing and rhetoric was based on the idea that the author is right, and should, above all, have the goal of convincing the reader, that not all readers can be convinced without the use of cherrypicked data or illogical reasoning, and that it's acceptable to do so (this is the "all effective writing is propaganda" school of thought). We were also taught how to identify this and counteract it. In high school we spent a lot of time analyzing William F Buckley's article https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/s... which uses rhetoric to make a utilitarian argument.
- ifyoubuildit 5y agoI can't say that I've had any formal training in rhetoric, so I can't speak to that. > ... the author is right, and should, above all, have the goal of convincing the reader ... It still seems logically inconsistent to me to call that bad faith. Let me try from a different angle. In my mental model, bad faith requires that the author try to convince you of something that they know is untrue (or at least may likely be untrue). Is my model wrong? If so, how?