Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology (Billig, 1996)

Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology (Billig, 1996)

Michael Billig's rhetorical approach has been key to the discursive turn in the social sciences. His witty and original book examines argumentation and its psychological importance in human conduct, and traces the connections between ancient rhetorical ideas and modern social psychology. In a new Introduction, he offers further reflections on rhetoric and social psychology, discusses the recent scholarship, and allows some forgotten voices in the history of rhetoric to be heard. This book will be enjoyable and provocative reading for scholars in social psychology, English language and the history of philosophy.

"the rhetorical handbooks, which provide guides to debate, can also be considered as guides to thought"

"a person who thinks must ask himself questions"

"Without any categorization an organism could not interact profitably with the infinitely distinguishable objects and events it experiences"

JLJ - Well there you have it. We need to categorize, we need to ask ourselves questions, and we need to organize a debate within ourselves, in order to truly think. Why didn't I think of that?

p.1 The book celebrates the argumentative spirit. Disagreement is praised as the root of thought.

p.35 It will be suggested that psychologists have overlooked the extent to which our inner deliberations are silent arguments conducted within a single self. If deliberation is a form of argument, then our thought processes, far from being inherently mysterious events, are modelled upon public debate. In consequence, the rhetorical handbooks, which provide guides to debate, can also be considered as guides to thought.

p.22 One of the implicit messages of Arguing and Thinking is an argument against disciplinary thinking. Once an orthodoxy is established, there is the danger of a monologic voice stifling the critical spirit.

p.92 It is the novelty of each moment and each situation which produces uncertainty, and thereby the need for hunches or judgment.

p.92-93 We can call these arguments against the possibility of definite rules Quintilian's Principle of Uncertainty. The principle asserts that we can never capture the infinite variety of human affairs in a finite system of psychological laws. At any moment, the finite laws are likely to be embarrassed by unforeseen and unforeseeable events. It is only because of the possibility of such embarrassment, that the rhetorician can learn from experience. Experience gained from each novel situation contributes to this learning, as the rhetorician builds up more sagacious hunches and guidelines. However, this process of learning can never be finished. There is an infinity of possible situations, and therefore an infinity of things to be learnt.

p.100 The Principle of Uncertainty undermines any attempt to be too certain.

p.143 Deliberation is more than an uncomfortable state of uncertainty. It is an important thought process, which includes imagining future consequences and assessing the desirability of different outcomes. Since the vagaries of the future are being considered, there is little sense of one tight-fistedly correct solution existing amongst a pile of errors.

p.145 Janis and Mann suggest that vigilant decision-makers ask themselves particular questions at each stage: e.g. 'Have I sufficiently surveyed the available alternatives?', 'Are the risks serious if I don't change?', 'Are the risks serious if I do change?' etc. (1977, p. 172).

p.146 Hans Gadamer has proposed that every statement presupposes a question and that the art of dialectic consists of asking the right questions. In consequence "a person who thinks must ask himself questions" (1975, p. 338). The prescriptive consequences of this are that good thought depends upon rigorous mental cross-examination.

p.152 Wilder describes categorization as "a pervasive cognitive process" (1981, p.213), and Cantor et al. call categorization "a fundamental quality of cognition". Its psychological importance arises "because categorization schemes allow us to structure and give coherence to our general knowledge about people and the social world, providing expectations about typical patterns of behaviour and the range of likely variation between types of people and their characteristic actions and attributes" (Cantor et al. 1982, p.34).

p.152 "Without any categorization an organism could not interact profitably with the infinitely distinguishable objects and events it experiences" (Mervis and Rosch, 1981, p. 94).

p.153 Taylor and Crocker suggest that "because we cannot notice every detail in the environment", we need schemata to "tell the social perceiver what data to look for and how to interpret the data that is found" (1981, p.90)... complexity is to be reduced by categorizing incoming information. All in all, "in the cognitive approach the perceiver's groupings of objects into equivalence classes is viewed as a means of reducing the enormous complexity of the stimulus world with which he is confronted" (Hamilton, 1979, p.56).

p.158 The typical thinker is seen as an individual who is faced with a complex and untamed stimulus world, which must be caught by the net of an appropriate categorization or schema.

p.176 because of Quintilian's Principle of Uncertainty, it is impossible to envisage all future possibilities.

p.285 When imagining totally hypothetical situations, all manner of possibilities can be played out.