Name: 【TED】Daniel H. Cohen: For argument's sake (Daniel H. Cohen: For argument's sake)
Uploaded: 2016-09-29T06:01:37.000Z
Duration: 9 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

My name is Dan Cohen and I am an academic, as he said.

And I'm not just an academic, I'm a philosopher,

so I like to think that I'm actually pretty good at arguing.

But I also like to think a lot about arguing.

And in thinking about arguing, I've come across some puzzles.

as I've been thinking about arguing over the years --

But the more that I argue and the better I get at arguing,

And the other puzzle is that I'm actually okay with that.

and why is it that I think good arguers are actually better at losing?

When I think about arguments, I'm talking about --

let's call them academic arguments or cognitive arguments --

Is this proposition true? Is this theory a good theory?

Is this a viable interpretation of the data or the text? And so on.

I'm not interested really in arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes

I tend to win those arguments, because I know the tricks.

But those aren't the important arguments.

First, what do good arguers win when they win an argument?

that utilitarianism isn't really the right framework

whether you have this idea that Kant's theory works

whether you think functionalism is a viable theory of mind.

to believe things they don't want to believe,

Is that a nice way to treat another human being,

try and make them think something they don't want to think?

Well, my answer is going to make reference to three models for arguments.

The first model -- let's call it the dialectical model --

is we think of arguments as war; you know what that's like --

a lot of screaming and shouting and winning and losing.

That's not a very helpful model for arguing,

but it's a pretty common and entrenched model for arguing.

But there's a second model for arguing: arguments as proofs.

Here's my argument. Does it work? Is it any good?

Are the premises warranted? Are the inferences valid?

Does the conclusion follow from the premises?

not necessarily any arguing in the adversarial sense.

But there's a third model to keep in mind

that I think is going to be very helpful,

and that is arguments as performances, arguments in front of an audience.

We can think of a politician trying to present a position,

trying to convince the audience of something.

But there's another twist on this model that I really think is important;

namely, that when we argue before an audience,

sometimes the audience has a more participatory role in the argument;

that is, arguments are also [performances] in front of juries,

where you have to tailor your argument to the audience at hand.

You know, presenting a sound, well-argued,

tight argument in English before a francophone audience

So we have these models -- argument as war, argument as proof

Of those three, the argument as war is the dominant one.

It dominates how we talk about arguments,

it dominates how we think about arguments,

and because of that, it shapes how we argue,

We want strong arguments, arguments that have a lot of punch,

We want to have our defenses up and our strategies all in order.

It is the dominant way of thinking about arguments.

that's probably what you thought of, the adversarial model.

the war paradigm or model for thinking about arguments,

has, I think, deforming effects on how we argue.

First, it elevates tactics over substance.

You can take a class in logic, argumentation.

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【TED】Daniel H. Cohen: For argument's sake (Daniel H. Cohen: For argument's sake)

practice

articulate

cognitive

think