I think both are both, im still swinging on what to call Lakoff, i think we need another category for both.

This is a topic I am unfortunately unable to make any kind of conclusions about. I don't think either fit nicely into any one catagory. They draw upon many traditions such as strong emphasis upon education, looking at all sides, rationality-or reason, truth in different forms...etc. The hang up for me is that if you don't follow all the pilars of a certain method of gov't/thought/rhetoric/tradition then are you compromising the entire entity. Can you pick and choose from which ever tradition you'd like even if they are somewhat opposing? I don't know. I like a nice neat package, and I'm just not getting it. ah, c'est la vie.
amy_lee

This is what I plan to focus on in my last paper: Booth as foundationalist. I want to argue that Booth's Listening Rhetoric is similar to elenchus and has the same objective. Socrates and Booth believe the purpose of rhetoric is to pursue the knowable truth through understanding and debate. I'll argue that there are some differences--LR is presented more as an elenchus that leads to consensus, but the mutual understanding sought in LR is the same good that Socratic elenchus pursues.

The careful way that Booth states his belief about slavery and baby killing being bad made me think he was a foundationalist. (“…Rhetoric did make the reality of our discovery, but it did not make the ethical truth itself” p. 13). But after reading about listening rhetoric, and his hope that people can genuinely change their minds made me lean toward seeing him as an anti-foundationalist. But in the end, after competing rhetorical system after another, the idea that rhetoric is not working is pretty firmly established. It sounds like an implied system of ethics: that something is “wrong, deficient, broken, inadequate, lacking.” He quotes the religious as saying, but he also says that even scientists live in “a world that exhibits multiple flaws, such as the failure of Congress to grant the money needed to finish this or that billion-dollar project” (162). In fact, the more i read, the book seems to be mostly citing the misbehavior of rhetors and people, implying that there must be some standard of right (and wrong) out there, even if he can’t find it at present to defend his belief that slavery is bad.

We speak and are surrounded by a language cradled in religion, but attempting to avoid religion and trying to boil it down to just plain rhetoric, Booth ultimately campaigns for removing misunderstanding, rejecting violence(171) …and also that this matters. This points further still to a standard of rhetoric, that while it may never lead us to the truth. It at least highlights the existence of it. Yea, I think Booth is a foundationalist.

And Lakoff too; it seems like his definition of ‘right’, or ‘good’ policy does not change. At least as long as the Conservatives’ definitions don’t. I’m not sure what he is. He’s kind of a punk. But I think I’ll read his Moral Politics book, anyways.

Lakoff is a Civic Humationaliberal. Booth is a Foundationalumanist. I am making up these words in honor of the latter.

The fact is, neither of our new friends quite fits the mold; they draw from different modes of thought to make their point.

So Lakoff. He believes in a Truth, a harm principle, and the value of values. The first comes out when he recognizes that there is something underneath our cognition--it's just not necessarily perceptible, and frames obscure the chances of it being found. The second he reveals when he asks us to be nurturant--remember that he doesn't want to convert conservatives; he just wants to give liberals a chance to voice themselves without shooting themselves in the foot. And the latter seems to be his strategy for entering the world of frames. So, I mean, he's really got all of them going on at once. And at the same time he also has values contrary to each school--the truth is not necessarily able to be communicated, use the private sphere for public argument if you want, only examine the other side so much as you can further your own argument. And his basic frame theory--that we have models for everything hidden somewhere in our cognition--doesn't strike me as resembling any of our previous schools. He's a pragmatist, if anything.

Booth is much more idealistic. He wants us to discover a small-t truth through an elenchus-like process of disambiguation. We can listen to others honestly (civic humanist) in the hopes that we will come closer to an ultimate agreement. The only reason he's not an out-and-out foundationalist, for me, is because he doesn't necessarily specify that LR-a will lead us to the Truth. He's just about the disambiguation.

In conclusion, public argument has turned into a sample bar of traditions, ultimately condoning rhetoric as a tool for communication of values. As was common to all the traditions we've studied, today's rhetoric wants to hear opposing arguments until we reach the most "correct" one. But now we're realizing rhetoric's role in shaping what is "correct."

It's been real, discussion forum. Lates.

Booth's description of the three realities does not make him a foundationalist. I'm hesitant to call him an anti-foundationalist because of his strict views in regards to slavery and baby killing, but his emphasis on our perceptions of events leads me away from the foundationalist label. As I said before, if Booth argues that how we perceive something really does affect its truth to us then there is very little real truth and thus is def. not a foundationalist.

Lakoff cannot be an anti-foundationalist, because he believes that he is right and thus knows the truth. His emphasis on frames really just makes him a panderer. I'm not commenting on effectiveness, just on style. He's way more about "the end justifies the means" than any specific philosophy. But if I HAD to categorize him, I suppose I would make him a hypocrite foundationalist. He is foundationalist in that he believes there is a T truth out there, but he is a hypocrite in that he is more interested in tricking people to follow that truth rather than leading them to an actual understanding of that truth. But I have to be honest; I'm most likely going to read this book again over the summer just so I can be more persuasive to my conservative counterparts. Oh gawd I'm going to orator hell.

George Lakoff is focused on selling the message. Lakoff’s message is liberal in the sense that he realizes that other progressives, like himself, use the facts to help them decide what is best. But this doesn’t work with the average voter or their opposition. Even when right and the facts their side, this doesn’t mean their argument will prevail: “That’s what happens when progressives just ‘confront conservatives with the facts.’ It has little or no effect, unless conservatives have a frame that makes sense of the facts” (Lakoff 17).

Lakoff establishes early in his argument that truth and facts don’t matter to those who view the world in a different lens than his own. As Lakoff asserts, truth does not set people free – the facts either fit what they want to hear or they just don’t listen: “And what is worse is a set of myths believed by liberals and progressives.

These myths come from a good source but they end up hurting us badly. The myth began with the Enlightenment, and the first one goes like this: The truth will set us free. If we just tell people the facts, since people are basically rational beings, they’ll all reach the same conclusion. But we know from cognitive since, people do not think like that. People think in frames…To be accepted, the truth must fit into people’s frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off” (Lakoff 16-17).

The idea of truth as the determining factor for people based on the premise that all people are rational beings, is a common belief of liberalism. Lakoff holds liberal ideas about how government should be ran and how it should help people. Although the harm-principle is not explicitly used to defend his arguments for issues such as gay marriage, the “nurturant” parent mold he places all progressives, is evidence that their views are those which aim to help society and do not enforce ideological norms and values which the “strict-father” method of governing imposes.

Just as in John Stuart Mill’s argument against the majority’s urge to police society based on their ideals, Lakoff’s “strict father” also seeks to enforce a lifestyle on society based on ideas of some: “The strict father model begins with a set of assumptions: The world is a dangerous place and it always will be, because there is evil out in the world…There will always be winners and losers…There is an absolute right and wrong…What is required of the child is obedience, because the strict father is a moral authority who knows right from wrong. It is further assumed that they only way to teach kids obedience – that is right from wrong – is through punishment, painful punishment when they do wrong…Without such punishment the world will go to hell” (Lakoff 9).

For Lakoff, this form of family and child-rearing play into how politics are ran, thus the strict father mold is used in how the leaders, namely the president, act in their position. For example, President Bush has been noted for his comments about not reading the news paper, disregarding his job approval ratings, and even recently saying “I’m the decision maker” in reference to the mounting criticism against him and his administration.

These strict father ideals created the frames which influence people’s decisions like the poor conservatives who voted for Bush knowing that his tax cuts would not help them. Lakoff abandon’s the liberal argument, the primary premise supporting liberalism, only after it is apparent that voters can be lead to disregard their own needs because of ideology they have bought into: “People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their values. They vote who they identify with.” Lakoff doesn’t dismiss liberal views as unfounded, just ineffective and needing adjustment. Obviously if you are losing, you look at what you are doing wrong and you fix it.

When Tiger Woods was not performing up to par a couple of years ago, he hired someone to help him fix his swing. He eventually rebounded, but he nor the game changed -- he just learned a new strategy to win. Similarly, Lakoff doesn’t advocate changing the message, but the changing how liberals are playing their own offensive game in the war of words: “Republicans real practice, and the real reason for their success, is this: They say what they idealistically believe. They say it and talk to their base using the frames of their base…This is very important to do. The goal is to activate your model in the people in the “middle.” The people in the middle have both models, used regularly in both parts of their lives. What you want them to do is to get them to use your model for politics – to activate your worldview and moral system to in their political decisions. You do that by using frames based on your own worldview” (Lakoff 21).

\Lakoff does two things here: 1) he makes it clear that it’s about framing an argument that resonates with the frames that the progressives and liberals share with voters 2) they only seek to activate the mold in the political decisions which people make. Politics is a public endeavor which is a common interest of everyone. Lakoff argues that they need only to use the mold in their political decisions. Lakoff’s point is much like the one Mill had – make decisions that are best for the whole without the influence of how you do things in your own private life.

Hence, the strict father mold should not be used because it is based on forcing a way of life on those who may not believe in it or agree with it. Lakoff doesn’t ask people to become full nurturants or live in that manner – only in their political decisions. From this, I conclude that Lakoff is a liberal, but chooses to conform for the sake of advancing the liberal ideas.

For Booth, his ideas are targeted towards the method of argument. Rhetoric is not a measure of what is argued but how it is argued. Booth’s LR is designed to help interlocutors find a common ground and progress together to a shared conclusion. Booth puts a lot of faith in the fact that we have a base of shared ideals which can be used as a starting point for dialogue. Much like a civic humanist, Booth encouragers people to evaluate their own ideas and concede to those ideas they held to be true, are proven not so. Specifically the bargain rhetoric and listening rhetoric, Booth focuses on truth rather than Lakoff who focuses on agenda. BR and LR and examples of Booth’s faith in people coming to the best idea together – a premise civic humanist presume people already desire to do.

I am sorry for my tardiness. Unexpected circumstances arouse with my job and I am just getting a chance to sit down and write.

I think Lakoff is an antifoundationalist. He encourages us to listen to all arguments so that we can understand what makes them effective, then argue our perspective with their tools. There doesnt seem to be anything that is specifically right, he doesnt appear to classify the nurturant parent over the strict father model -- although he clearly favors the former. I would make Booth a civic humanist -- his emphasis on listening to all sides of an argument and listening well reminds me of Cicero/Antonius and all the emphasis he placed on listening. I still think that Socrates firm notion of Truth is better than all the rest... but then my mom always said i was stubborn

I guess I'll first start with Lakoff. I lost my Lakoff book already so I can't specifically site the things he has said so I'll try to explain my arguments well. I'm not so sure that I would label him with a specific tradition that we have talked about but going back to the class debate from a few weeks ago, I would say that he is more a foundationalist. Lakoff does believe that there is truth out there, it just depends on what you do with that truth. He realizes that just because there is a truth our there that is based on facts, people won't neccesarily believe it. I don't think Lakoff could be classied as an antifoundationalist they don't believe that a truth will ever be reached. I agreed with Paige from a previous post about pairing Lakoff up more with Phaedrus than Socrates. Phaedrus was more about getting the audience to side with him rather than actually speaking about the truth.
I also think that Booth is a foundationalist, but with different intentions than Lakoff. For example, in the story about Jessica Lynch the American people still believed that she was rescued heroicly by our troops even after the admission that she "had not been engaged in battle, the military rescue had not occurred: the doctors had cared for her and turned her over to our team" (pg 130). Booth would want the American people to hear this truth and to acknowledge it, while Lakoff would probably say that there's nothing wrong with the media hoax because it was probably to "gain support for the war" or "even to gain media credit with the administration." I also want to say that Booth is a foundationalist because of his claim that certain things will always be true, such as slavery being wrong, I'm just thrown off when he talks about the realities that can be shaped by persuasion. Does this take away from him being a foundationalist?