Lawyers are the quintessential speakers-for-hire who apply rhetoric to mercenary causes. Yet lawyers are accepted and high-status in most parts of society. In play, debate clubs are often popular; and at a recent LW meetup we played an Ideological Turing Test game, where we had to convince each other of positions we didn’t always hold.
Lawyers don’t hide the fact they’re biased and mercenary in court. Maybe that helps them disassociate enough from the practice that people don’t feel uncomfortable with them in a personal setting. And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things. People compliment politicians on their public speaking skills without thinking “dark arts!” every time.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”. How do you reconcile this with your analysis of “betraying cooperative norms”, which people are usually good at enforcing?
Note: I’m not well familiar with modern lawyers and exactly how important rhetoric is to them. In classical antiquity it was extremely important; that is relevant insofar as it partially explains why rhetoric is present in today’s classical liberal education.
I’m not sure I agree re: lawyers, or about how people/society thinks of this. For one thing, I don’t think most people are that OK with lawyers—they tend to get a lot of flack, and e.g. criminal defense attorneys will often get pushback from people who identify them with their clients, irrespective of the fact that they know the lawyers don’t necessarily condone their clients’ actions.
Another thing—most people absolutely hate hypocrisy. I think it’s considered a death-blow to most people’s arguments. People compliment politicians on their speaking skills, but if they discovered that the politician’s are not saying things they believe in, they’d turn on them. (Well, theoretically—President Trump is a good counterexample).
Btw, an aside, but I also think you misrepresent what lawyers do in some way. They’re supposed to be advocating for the rights of their clients, and supposed to persuade, but they can’t for example lie. They are a check on the system that works from within the system—they need to make sure everyone is playing by the rules, but they can’t just make up their own rules or anything. That said, of course rhetoric is important for trial lawyers.
Trump is a good example. Trump appears to most voters to not be a skilled orator but to simply state the facts in a down to earth way as he believes them to be.
He’s persuasive without signaling that he is a great orator.
I did not mean to misrepresent what lawyers do (or are allowed to do). I noted they are restricted by lawyer ethics, but that was in a different comment than the one you replied to. Yes, absolutely, they not supposed to lie or even deliberately mislead, and a lawyer’s reputation would suffer horribly if they were caught in a lie.
I’m not sure I understand people who aren’t OK with ethical lawyers, as a concept. Is there something they would like instead of lawyers? (See: my other comment.) Or do they feel that lawyers are immoral by association with injustice—the intuition of “moral contagion” (I forget the correct term) that someone who only partially fixes a moral wrong, is worse than someone who doesn’t try to fix it at all?
Hypocrisy is anathema to me, but I’ve notice that many (most?) people are happy to let other people live with their contradictions as long as they are not very painfully glaring.
The best persuasive speakers I’ve ever seen in person are, unsurprisingly, lawyers. I saw Robert P. George speak once and thought “This is an atom bomb in the form of a man; I want that power.”
It’s not mere demagoguery. There’s structure to the arguments. And I’m pretty sure the same places that trained him to make arguments also trained him to speak effectively.
And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things.
Uh… I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice. My impression is that this is not a deviation from that pattern.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
It’s not just average people who are put off by impressive talk. The charge of “sophistry” comes from the sophists, teachers who were skilled in the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. These teachers acquired a (dangerous) reputation for being able to convince anyone of anything, true or false, to the point where our word for such argumentation references them.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
Then the skilled orator will take that into account, speak simply, and avoid impressive or skillful rhetoric.
Marketers have noticed that some people are suspicious of slick corporate brands, but they haven’t conceded those customers to local producers and small businesses and whatnot—they’ve rolled out product lines that appeal to those people. Farmer’s Garden pickles are a good example of this, although the Vlasic branding is maybe a little too visible.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
I’ve met fewer people like that, but then I’m not a native English speaker, so not all of the speechifying I’m exposed to is in English.
It sounds like the thing being described is in part a desire for the speaker to talk in a particular dialect and style, associated with a social class or background, with the appropriate choice of acrolect/mesolect/basilect, etc.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience? Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself), and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level. An untrained speaker will rarely carry an audience, however plainly they speak.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience?
I am not convinced that the “plain” speakers do “harness rhetoric”, unless by “rhetoric” we mean something much broader than what seems to be being discussed in the OP. For example:
Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself)
If this counts as “rhetoric”, then “rhetoric” seems to be a useless term.
and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level
Yes, I think this absolutely does count as rhetoric in the classical sense (being concise, expressing the right points, good body language and good delivery.)
I think my definition of rhetoric is the same as OP’s: namely, the art of shaping words or a speech to be beautiful, moving, convincing, or otherwise effective. How to best verbally convince others of an idea: I think that’s a useful term.
In particular the OP referred to dispositio (concise, addressing the right points) and pronuntiatio (body language and delivery).
I’m not convinced this is true.
I’m not sure what exactly you’re not convince of. That speech is much more effective when its form is liked as well as its object level claims?
I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice.
I agree that most people are bothered by anything they perceive as injustice. But if they don’t know a way to make things better, or what things being better would look like, then they tend not to blame e.g. lawyers for participating in the system and being good at it.
Is there a better way of doing things, that lots of people would prefer to be the case? Not just “I wish judges applied the law fairly and for Justice”—then you might as well wish for people not to commit crimes in the first place. But a system that would work when being gamed by people desperate not to go to jail?
Alternatively, is there a relevant moral principle that people can follow unilaterally that would make the world a better place (other than deontologically)? If we tell a defendant not to hire a lawyer, or a lawyer not to argue as well as they can (while keeping to lawyer ethics), or the jury not to listen to the lawyers—then the side that doesn’t cooperate will win the trial, or the jury will ignore important claims, and justice won’t be better served on average.
This seems to depend a lot on social context.
Lawyers are the quintessential speakers-for-hire who apply rhetoric to mercenary causes. Yet lawyers are accepted and high-status in most parts of society. In play, debate clubs are often popular; and at a recent LW meetup we played an Ideological Turing Test game, where we had to convince each other of positions we didn’t always hold.
Lawyers don’t hide the fact they’re biased and mercenary in court. Maybe that helps them disassociate enough from the practice that people don’t feel uncomfortable with them in a personal setting. And yet, most people are not bothered by the idea that the justice system runs in part on rhetoric persuasiveness, or that the wider political system runs in part on politicians convincing voters of things. People compliment politicians on their public speaking skills without thinking “dark arts!” every time.
In general, the average person’s reaction to “wow what a skilled orator” isn’t “therefore I won’t listen to them, persuasiveness is orthogonal to truth”. How do you reconcile this with your analysis of “betraying cooperative norms”, which people are usually good at enforcing?
Note: I’m not well familiar with modern lawyers and exactly how important rhetoric is to them. In classical antiquity it was extremely important; that is relevant insofar as it partially explains why rhetoric is present in today’s classical liberal education.
I’m not sure I agree re: lawyers, or about how people/society thinks of this. For one thing, I don’t think most people are that OK with lawyers—they tend to get a lot of flack, and e.g. criminal defense attorneys will often get pushback from people who identify them with their clients, irrespective of the fact that they know the lawyers don’t necessarily condone their clients’ actions.
Another thing—most people absolutely hate hypocrisy. I think it’s considered a death-blow to most people’s arguments. People compliment politicians on their speaking skills, but if they discovered that the politician’s are not saying things they believe in, they’d turn on them. (Well, theoretically—President Trump is a good counterexample).
Btw, an aside, but I also think you misrepresent what lawyers do in some way. They’re supposed to be advocating for the rights of their clients, and supposed to persuade, but they can’t for example lie. They are a check on the system that works from within the system—they need to make sure everyone is playing by the rules, but they can’t just make up their own rules or anything. That said, of course rhetoric is important for trial lawyers.
Trump is a good example. Trump appears to most voters to not be a skilled orator but to simply state the facts in a down to earth way as he believes them to be.
He’s persuasive without signaling that he is a great orator.
I did not mean to misrepresent what lawyers do (or are allowed to do). I noted they are restricted by lawyer ethics, but that was in a different comment than the one you replied to. Yes, absolutely, they not supposed to lie or even deliberately mislead, and a lawyer’s reputation would suffer horribly if they were caught in a lie.
I’m not sure I understand people who aren’t OK with ethical lawyers, as a concept. Is there something they would like instead of lawyers? (See: my other comment.) Or do they feel that lawyers are immoral by association with injustice—the intuition of “moral contagion” (I forget the correct term) that someone who only partially fixes a moral wrong, is worse than someone who doesn’t try to fix it at all?
Hypocrisy is anathema to me, but I’ve notice that many (most?) people are happy to let other people live with their contradictions as long as they are not very painfully glaring.
The best persuasive speakers I’ve ever seen in person are, unsurprisingly, lawyers. I saw Robert P. George speak once and thought “This is an atom bomb in the form of a man; I want that power.”
It’s not mere demagoguery. There’s structure to the arguments. And I’m pretty sure the same places that trained him to make arguments also trained him to speak effectively.
Uh… I don’t think that’s true. Lots of people are bothered by this. Maybe you’re right, maybe a majority is unbothered, but this is interesting only to the extent that it doesn’t embody a larger pattern of what proportion of people care about injustice. My impression is that this is not a deviation from that pattern.
Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of people (“average people”, not rationalists) who take the view of “yeah, he can talk real impressively, but it’s all bullshit, no doubt”. Many people like “simple talk”, i.e. speech that simply lays out facts, and are suspicious of impressive/skillful rhetoric.
It’s not just average people who are put off by impressive talk. The charge of “sophistry” comes from the sophists, teachers who were skilled in the arts of rhetoric and persuasion. These teachers acquired a (dangerous) reputation for being able to convince anyone of anything, true or false, to the point where our word for such argumentation references them.
Then the skilled orator will take that into account, speak simply, and avoid impressive or skillful rhetoric.
Marketers have noticed that some people are suspicious of slick corporate brands, but they haven’t conceded those customers to local producers and small businesses and whatnot—they’ve rolled out product lines that appeal to those people. Farmer’s Garden pickles are a good example of this, although the Vlasic branding is maybe a little too visible.
I’ve met fewer people like that, but then I’m not a native English speaker, so not all of the speechifying I’m exposed to is in English.
It sounds like the thing being described is in part a desire for the speaker to talk in a particular dialect and style, associated with a social class or background, with the appropriate choice of acrolect/mesolect/basilect, etc.
Do you think such people are unaware that the “plain” speakers they like still harness rhetoric, just one tailored to that audience? Good plain speech still needs to be concise, address the right points, have good body language, good delivery (e.g. not stutter or repeat yourself), and in the end say things that the audience will like as speech as well as on the object level. An untrained speaker will rarely carry an audience, however plainly they speak.
(I, also, am not a native English speaker, fyi.)
I am not convinced that the “plain” speakers do “harness rhetoric”, unless by “rhetoric” we mean something much broader than what seems to be being discussed in the OP. For example:
If this counts as “rhetoric”, then “rhetoric” seems to be a useless term.
I’m not convinced this is true.
Yes, I think this absolutely does count as rhetoric in the classical sense (being concise, expressing the right points, good body language and good delivery.)
See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Oratore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
It’s not meaningless if you view rhetoric as “how to speak well” rather than “how to speak artificially and misleadingly.”
I think my definition of rhetoric is the same as OP’s: namely, the art of shaping words or a speech to be beautiful, moving, convincing, or otherwise effective. How to best verbally convince others of an idea: I think that’s a useful term.
In particular the OP referred to dispositio (concise, addressing the right points) and pronuntiatio (body language and delivery).
I’m not sure what exactly you’re not convince of. That speech is much more effective when its form is liked as well as its object level claims?
I agree that most people are bothered by anything they perceive as injustice. But if they don’t know a way to make things better, or what things being better would look like, then they tend not to blame e.g. lawyers for participating in the system and being good at it.
Is there a better way of doing things, that lots of people would prefer to be the case? Not just “I wish judges applied the law fairly and for Justice”—then you might as well wish for people not to commit crimes in the first place. But a system that would work when being gamed by people desperate not to go to jail?
Alternatively, is there a relevant moral principle that people can follow unilaterally that would make the world a better place (other than deontologically)? If we tell a defendant not to hire a lawyer, or a lawyer not to argue as well as they can (while keeping to lawyer ethics), or the jury not to listen to the lawyers—then the side that doesn’t cooperate will win the trial, or the jury will ignore important claims, and justice won’t be better served on average.