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Teaching the Art of Writing: Part III
Common Sense: Pop Theory (See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense) The Neo-Aristotelian perspective depends upon the relationship between an independent, material reality and its Observer. We see, hear, smell, taste, and touch reality—we experience reality—and our minds are well-suited to interpret this sensory data into Truth. Reality is knowable. We can deduce Truth from experience, and rhetoric is the art of persuading an audience to believe in Truth. Similarly, the Positivists, or Current Traditionalists, demand that the material world exists, and that “all knowledge is founded on the simple correspondence between sense impressions and the faculties of the mind” (Berlin, 259). While these terms of existence resemble those of the Neo-Aristotelians, Positivist epistemology came as something of a revolutionary break. The movement dominating the related study of knowledge is known as Common Sense Realism, and it “denies the value of the deductive method—syllogistic reasoning—in arriving at knowledge” (259). Though Thomas Reid’s world is still as rational as it was for Aristotle, only common sense and the logic of induction uncovers Truth—not the logic of the deductive old-school. With induction, we’re talking about the scientific or experimental method. Observing and testing the world brings forth Truth, and “the world readily surrenders its meaning to anyone who observes it properly, and no operation of the mind—logical or otherwise—is needed to arrive at truth” (260). Common Sense Realism stems from various sources—many of them responses to Bishop George Berkeley’s subjective idealism, which declared that there is no existence of matter independent of perception. The famous Common Sense refutation of Berkeley’s idealism comes from Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, the story goes, went outside, took off his shoe, and kicked a large boulder. “Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley!” Johnson declared. Rhetoric, then, “becomes the study of all forms of communication: scientific, philosophical, historical, political, legal, and even poetic” (260). All truth exists outside of communication, and yet rhetoric is the study of communicating everything. While modes of rhetoric are split into several categories, “college writing courses, on the other hand, are to focus on discourse that appeals to the understanding [. . .]. It is significant, moreover, that college rhetoric is concerned solely with the communication of truth that is certain and empirically verifiable” (261). In modern day universities, Positivist perspective dominates. This is the popular, Common Sense tradition taught to students of writing. Communicating truth— “empirically verifiable” truth—depends on freeing yourself completely from all context. Again, at the core, eliminating all context and observing the observable world is induction. Forget everything you know about history. Forget everything you know about culture and society. Put yourself in an objective state of mind and your observations of the world will give you the words to explain reality to your audience. Describe a brick. Describe a tree. Describe the chronological events of the civil war. The Positivist professor of writing teaches students, not to persuade an audience, but to describe something to an audience. Does this method appeal to you? Is this what the typical, eager young writer expects to learn from a writing program? TaBoo Tenente
Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman.
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