Richards makes it clear that enthymematic reasoning is the basis of human knowledge. Using the thermometer example, Richards shows that people, or thinking objects, cannot just "sense" things. He says that we perceive things based on our previous associations and even references associational psychology when determining our reactions. But then you have to go to the primordial foundations of what instinct is. How did the first man and woman perceive things and attain knowledge? Did they have significant experience upon birth to know that certain things meant others? That grunts and motions "in context" were of a special significance? I suppose this thought may be too abstract, but to say that people always attain knowledge by enthemematic reasoning seems too definitive to me. There must be some kind of stimulus, perhaps one we have not encountered, that must be taken at face value without natural inferences. In the sense of rhetorical analysis, however, I think that it is safe to say that the rhetorician can infer, based upon context and social mores and norms, what the general enthemimes will be of his/her audience upon an attempt at persuasion. While every individual has unique interpretations and draw their own conclusions based on their past experiences, the rhetorician can make use of persuasions based on collectively understood cultural or otherwise shared commonalities between the reader and writer.

Recognizing the four legged canine creature on your neighbor’s stoop as “spot” is filtered through our past experiences and culture. However, I don’t think that all human knowledge is contingent upon past experiences. If Spot is a newborn puppy, you still perceive it as being vulnerable and non threatening regardless of your past experiences.

If all human knowledge is indeed enthymematic, which with the exception of some of the more "settled" sciences it is, the role of rhetoric is to "connect the mind and the world by which events in the mind mean other events." That is to say that rhetoric is responsible for and capable of nothing less than making the lucid opaque, and then making the opaque lucid again by locating the peculiarity of its causality or universality. Of course you can't say that you have knowledge that is independent of contingency, unless you claim to have the mouth of God at your ear, in which case you shouldn't be wasting your time with context, but rather should be working on a revision of the Bible into a more expositional form. Richards' example of the train service as that of pure exposition is meant to provide some much needed levity in the essay, but also to give the reader a chance to better understand what he means by "pure exposition." It is essentially a neutral language, one in which, presumably, each word could stand on its own independent of its sentence/context. The engineer shouting "All aboard," or saying that the train will be leaving in 8 minutes is communicating in neutral language. To say his words are rhetorical is absurd: they can be considered overdetermined only in a linguistical sense.

When the sea was calm
All ships alike
Showed mastership in floating.

Richards is indeed arguing that all human knowledge is enthymematic. He claims that without context everything else is meaningless: “I conclude then that these expressive or symbolic words get their feeling of being peculiarly fitting from the other words sharing the morpheme which support them I the background of the mind” (1293). This renders rhetorical analysis as among the most important skills people can learn, along with eating, drinking, and breathing. Otherwise it is impossible to understand or to know anything with any kind of certainty.

I agree with what seems to be the predominant opinion in this discussion in the belief that our past experiences seem to affect our later reactions to similar stimuli. However this brought to mind an argument concerning transcendental idealism, so I, too, looked in my old philosophy notes and online. Kant said "we can possibly know objects, even before we experience them", suggesting a prior knowledge that is not probabilistic.

I agree with the idea that we never directly perceive anything. In that case, babies would be able to percieve and figure out things on their own (ie learning to walk, talk, etc.) without any outside influence. But instead they don't, they learn from mimicking others that already know the way - which are the same people that learned from someone else. As Richards' states "a perception is never just an it; perception takes whatever it perceieves as a thing of a certain sort. All thinking from the lowest to the highest - whatever else it may be - is sorting." So I agree some of our input, if not all, is mediated by socially constructed and weighted categories and I believe that it is contingent on the knowledge of others.

I would say that Richards does argue that all human knowledge is enthymematic. From what I understand I think he also argues that words are enthymematic: “what the sign or word … means is the missing parts of the context” (1285). So there is the word “dog” and it’s up to the audience to supply the experience of Spot. I think…

While I admit that Richards raises some interesting points on experience and response to future stimuli, I wonder what his response would be to archetypal images. If one argues that all knowledge is based on circumstances, then how does one explain similar imagery and themes from cultures that are vastly different from one another?

I agree with Richards. He says on page 1283, "Do we ever respond to a stimulus in a way which is not influenced by the other things that happened to us when more or less similar stimuli struck us in the past... probably never." Richards states that what we feel in two distinct circumstances may seem different, but it is he same feeling and our reaction to the 2nd situation was dependent upon the past, similar stimuli.

I agree with Richards's stance that human knowledge is contingent on prior knowledge or perception. All that we know is based on prior experiences whether it is labels or appropriateness of actions. We have to carefully distinguish language used in various different contexts. The words we choose to communicate with depend on the audience listening to us.

*There are substantive differences between the first in second edition of “The Rhetorical Tradition”. I’m missing the section on “pure exposition”. It’s my own fault but, I don’t want to buy another book or copy hundreds of pages…

Perhaps I’m being too nitpicky, but I want to draw a distinction between
(1) all my knowledge is contingent on my circumstances
(2) all my knowledge is contingent

(1) All my knowledge is dependent on my genetic make up, cultural upbringing, any or all of my past experiences, etc.
(2) is a metaphysical claim that my knowledge either could have been of very different things or never have existed at all.

(1) is clearly at issue in this discussion (though Aristotle has a neat argument for the falsity of the second – actually I’ll give a model of Aristotle’s at the end and precede it with a ‘**’ to represent it’s total irrelevance).

Also, seeing how (2) differs from (1) only in lacking three words, is doubt thus cast upon Richards’s theory of meaning?

I’m currently convinced (1) is true. If I encountered anything other than what I actually did today or during any other day, I would have a memory that I do not actually have, and I would lack a memory that I do actually have. Trivially, any memory that I can recall is part of my knowledge- so my knowledge is dependent on my circumstances.

I agree with those below in believing that the more extensive the rhetorician’s knowledge of their audience, the more effective that rhetorician can be.

**
It is true right now that either you will be in class tomorrow or you will not be in class tomorrow. This is tautologically true, so, according to Aristotle, we must either accept that everything is determined or give up logic.

It does seem that Richards would agree that all human knowledge is contingent upon circumstances and previous experience. He asks, "do we ever respond to a stimulus in a way which is not influenced by the other things that happened to us when more or less similar stimuli struck us in the past?" Richards' answer is, of course, "no" (p. 1283). The end conclusion of this line of thinking, then, would be that since that which drives our actions is probabilistic and contingent, then so are our interactions.

As far as what this means for rhetorical analysis, I think this would put it on a more uneven footing. An appeal to pathos generally uses loaded words to evoke emotions; if the speaker/writer accepts that everyone has different reactions and different backgrounds, then the choice of words becomes that much more difficult.

The question this selection leads me to, though, is how Richards would explain our first reactions to a stimulus. As a child, the first time you see a book or a red-hot stove, how do you know it for what it is, and from where does the impetus for your reaction stem?

As everyone has previously stated, Richards certainly argues that human knowledge and interactions are "probabilistic and contingent". What I found perhaps even more interesting was the emphasis Richards put on the doctrine of "usage". According to Richards, this doctrine means "that there is a right or a good use for every word and that literary virtue consists in making good use of it". He uses morphemes as an example of how a writer can use certain words and assume a certain meaning will be interpreted from them according to the sound they make.
Overall, I think that there is a correlation of events that occur in a person's life which will inevitably turn out a general interpretation or meaning of something that MOST people will have. But one should not expect for all audiences to have the same interpretations. In other words, the ambiguities of present rhetoric can't be helped.

*I mistakenly thought that I was leading discussion Sept. 12, but in fact I had signed up for Sept. 10. This is my mistake. So I am posting as a discussion leader today...if that's all right.

I.A. Richard’s insistence that we never directly perceive anything, that all of our input is mediated by “socially constructed and weighted categories,” is, I think, indicative of the contingency of all human knowledge and interaction. His discussion of meaning as stemming from previous happenings certainly seems plausible. There is, of course, Dr. Longaker’s example of Spot the dog, who we know to be a dog because he is a canine, and who we know to be a canine because he fits the biological description of a canine as determined by a history of scientific study and categorization, and so on. In other words, we only know Spot to be dog because of precedent. Meaning only comes from a combination of previous factors.

Take another example, Richards’ discussion of morphemes: Richards explains that words like “flash, flare, flame, flicker” all share the sound (fl-) and suggest “moving light” (Richards 1292). Where does our knowledge of this come from? That is, we all understand the notion that these words suggest. As Richards writes: “The existence of a group of words with a common sound and meaning is the explanation of our belief in correspondence” (Richards 1293). So, our knowledge of morphemes is enthymematic. We, as the audience, must possess an understanding that “correspondence” across words can occur.

So what does this mean for rhetorical analysis? I think that if anything, it substantiates the very idea of rhetoric and counters any anti-rhetorical stance. Unlike Onholliday, I don’t think that this creates a problem for rhetoricians. I agree, to a certain extent, that “we can never be fully aware of what we’re saying” or the “kind of inferences that other people will draw “from it, but I don’t think that this is Richards’ point. Yes, Richards debunks the idea that we often stupidly give or think that we can give something an absolute meaning, but this does not render us helpless when practicing rhetoric, when trying to persuade, or when appealing to various differing audiences.

Richards’ point, then, is not that a word is virtuously meaningless because it will only have the meaning an audience will give it (that sounds more like Stanley Fish’s theory), thus weakening a rhetorician’s strategy in some circles. Rather, according to Richards, the meaning of words is a function of their interpretation in context. This to me sounds like a positive thing for rhetorical analysis. This should empower a rhetorician to pay close attention to exactly what to say (i.e. what words to use) to communicate with a given audience. Awareness to context, according to Richards, “would prevent our making hundreds of baseless and disabling assumptions that we commonly make about meanings, over-simplifications that create false problems interfering with closer comparisons” (Richards 1286). This is undoubtedly beneficial to rhetoric, and, in response to Onholliday’s concern about how impossible it is to persuade several audiences, another way to look at it.

Finally, I can only conclude that Richards’ areas of “pure exposition” are not non-rhetorical. They are, to be blunt, simply real. Even he concedes that he does not assume that he has succeeded at being expository in his remarks. The world is “far from being a solid matter of fact,” and it is only inevitable that the interpretation one strives for will be missed or disregarded. But one can continue to try.

I agree with onholliday that Richards believes human reactions and behavior come from what has happened in the past as well as what is happening in the present. Whenever someone hears a word, certain inferences are made and certain images appear in his mind. Richards writes that humans are naturally prone to reacting to stimuli; the manner in which we react to certain stimuli is due to the “more or less similar stimuli” we encountered in “the past” as well as the stimuli in the present. Richards writes that it is impossible to separate language from its connotations. While everyone has had different past experiences, everyone in theory should have different reactions to the words or the stimuli because they are drawing from different storehouses of knowledge. So according to Richards if no one has had the exact same past, then we can assume that a person’s reaction is “probabilistic” because theoretically, one can never know how the past will influence a person’s inferences.

If all human reactions are different because everyone has different past experiences, how can a rhetorician begin to appeal to an audience if not every member will perceive his words in the same manner? I suppose a rhetorician could assume that most members of the audience have had similar general experiences. For example, if a rhetorician is speaking to a group of students on the importance of studying, he can assume that most of the students have had some kind of experience with studying. The word “study” may evoke either positive or negative reactions from the audience and the rhetorician must appeal to both reactions if he wants to convey his argument effectively.

Yes, I think Richards is arguing that all human behavior is "probabilistic and contingent," and that our knowledge is indeed enthymematic. He illustrates this argument in saying "It is important...to realize how far back into the past all our meanings go, how they grow out of one another much as an organism grows, and how inseparable they are from one another." (Richards 1283) He essentially says here that there is no way to separate "Spot" from Dr. Longaker's example from your previous knowledge and experience with dogs - or indeed to separate "dog" from your previous experience and learned experience (from parents, culture, etc) - or indeed to know much of anything without these factors coming into play. In such a way does Richards also infer that all human knowledge is necessarily enthymematic, because it always implies a certain amount of internal analysis based on any number of previous factors.

What this means for rhetorical analysis? This is obviously the trickier question, and I'm not entirely sure I have a good answer for it. It seems to me that if indeed all human knowledge is enthymematic, then we are faced with a serious problem when attempting to persuade. We've talked already about addressing one's audience and being sensitive to the previous experience and knowledge that said audience brings to the table, but can we possibly be conscious of the entirety of human existence and experience, which Richards suggests could be taken as wholly relevant? This seems an impossible task for any rhetorician - to be not only engaged in persuasion, but to be engaged in persuasion which requires a full understanding of the far-reaching, vague roots of each word he/she/ze speaks. I think this is Richards' point, perhaps; we can never really be fully aware of what we're saying, and the kind of inferences that other people will draw from them.

However, to the idea that we must go through systematically and understand that vast expanse of previous consciousness (a bad word choice, but I can't think of a better one), it seems to me that it's a bit like giving names to parts of an argument. We were talking in class the other day about the fact that knowing about these rhetorical terms does not necessarily make you a good rhetorician, and that one may easily be a good rhetorician without knowledge of said terms. It's an act of defining things which does not improve proficiency. I feel similarly about the idea that we would have to have this expansive understanding to properly speak to any audience - the rhetorician is not above this enthymematic knowledge, either, and as a part of it rather than one separated from it, on some level we inherently must understand at least a good portion of the conclusions the audience would reach, regardless of our knowledge of exactly what factors play into that. Obviousy we can't know if someone has been bitten by a dog, or by a dog who looks like Spot, or by Spot himself, but we can know that all of these things are possible, because these are all possibilities which have already entered into our previous experiences with quadrupedal canines. In short, I'm not sure this means much at all for rhetoricians aside from the obvious and much-expounded-upon idea that one must be careful of how one's audience is likely to interpret one's words. To say that we could separate it all out for each word is a little ridiculous - no one is above participation in this enthymeme, if indeed Richards is correct, and as a part of it, to be aware of it does very little good as far as I can tell.