Chapter 6 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making focuses on the steps required in building a case. Among the concepts that are discussed, visualization stands out as one of the most important. On page 101, the authors even state “Powerful arguments are only half of the job in preparing a case or presentation. The other half is developing a convincing vision through which you can tell the story of your ultimate purpose” In other words, having a great argument alone is not going to necessarily gain you adherence. Instead, it needs to be supplemented with a story that vividly shows the decision maker the outcome if they were to agree to the proposition.
The chapter goes on to say that to create a powerful vision you must know the decision maker’s narrative of the subject you are arguing about. The example that is given is college. Some decision makers might have had the greatest time of their lives in college during which they made a ton of friends and found love. On the other hand, other decision makers might have hated college and found it to be the most excruciating time in their life. The authors say that if your proposition is to shorten the amount of time required for a bachelor's degree, your story should vary depending on which experience your decision maker(s) have had.
Another angle that the book offers is to attack the decision maker’s worldview. Basically, saying that their thought pattern is outdated due to x, y and z. The text informs us that people do not like change and would instead prefer to stick to how things were done in the past instead of critiquing why they were done this way. College is once again brought up as an example because the United States 4 year college calendar was adopted from the British back in 1652. However, Brittan did switch to a 3 year calendar at a later time. So, bringing up this fact could cause the decision makers to question the relevance of their standpoint on the topic and ultimately help push them towards adherence.
The angles stated above obviously require research into your decision makers. Connecting this to real life, I have had the privilege of getting to know a couple great lawyers in the Twin Cities and one of the key things I learned from them is that they know a lot about the judges that they appear before. When they get a new client, they do a lot of research on the judge such as their history and past rulings in cases. Not only that, but more importantly the reasoning behind their rulings. These lawyers do their best to find out everything they can about the person that will make the decision in their case before they present a single thing to them in actual court. The knowledge that they gain helps them structure their arguments in a way that would be favored by these judges. I find it fascinating that what the book says as far as creating a powerful vision directly correlates to what I learned from these attorneys.
This a substantial and well thought out blog post. There is not much to disagree on, but I am interested to know how much similarity there is between what one can research about another person and their corporeal personhood /decision making sensibilities. Decisions are made consciously, and I would assume it is difficult to carve out someone's preferences and proclivities based on solely their resume or history of life. Does a person's paper records indicate what their conscious leans towards?
ReplyDeleteHowever, the importance of focusing on vision appeals to most audiences since it is endearing to conceptualize the grander picture through rhetoric. This allows the decision makers to zoom out, to see the world-at-large, and to cast light away from the gritty and cumbersome steps that are needed for the vision to come to fruition. When a goal is long term it is easy to get discouraged with all the preliminary steps. The vision gives values to these measures and enhances the importance of each smaller decision.