Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 4: Logos

When dealing with Logos, you're dealing with the message in whatever is articulated. In short, you're asking whether or not an argument makes sense. But, what does it mean when something “makes sense”?

Looking for Logos requires looking at the main arguments of a piece and the information it presents to back it up: what should “make sense” is the rational connection between the premise and the conclusions. On another blog post, I used the example, if A and B, then C to explain Logos. Rewritten, it would be:

• Premise A:
• Premise B:
• Conclusion: 

And if your premises or conclusions can be challenged, then your logic fails, usually because you've made a logical fallacy. To explore this, I want to use the case of Spontaneous Generation, a now obsolete philosophy that held that organisms arose spontaneously from unrelated organisms, and not from similar organisms. The classic example is the theory maggots spawned from rotting meat. Let's break this down logically:

• Premise: After time, meat will rot.
• Premise: As meat rots, maggots will appear on it.
• Conclusion: Maggots are generated by the process of meat rotting.

To a modern reader, this will seem illogical, but this was the prevailing theory from ancient Greece until Francesco Redi tested it. In his experiment, Redi placed meat in jars, some of which were sealed with gauze. After some time, the exposed meat had maggots on it, but the sealed meat had none. From this experiment, Redi didn't disprove the first premise, but he did show the second premise is not as simple as it seems, causing him to doubt the conclusion and to theorize that something else must cause the maggots to appear.

For a biologist like Redi, “something else” isn't a good place to end, especially when challenging a premise that dates back to Aristotle. His theory then became the premise for the next phase of his experiment:

• Premise: Something must have access to and be attracted to the meat that generates the maggots.
• Premise: Flies can be observed around the rotting meat.
• Premise: Flies cannot access the meat in the sealed containers.
• Conclusion: Maggots appear after flies have access to rotting meat.

This then raises the question of what flies have to do with the meat and with the maggots. It could have been that maggots generated spontaneously from rotting meat when flies were nearby, or the flies bring the maggots, potentially disproving spontaneous generation. To test this, Redi placed some dead flies and maggots in one sealed jar with meat, and some living flies in another. After time, there were maggots on the meat in the jar with the flies, but none in the other:

• Premise: Maggots appear to generate after flies have access to rotting meat.
• Premise: The combination of dead flies and meat does not generate maggots.
• Premise: The combination of living flies and meat does generate maggots.
• Conclusion: It is not enough for flies and rotting meat, as base matter, to be in proximity to generate maggots.
• Conclusion: Maggots come from living flies.

Redi continued his experiments, catching some maggots and discovered they metamorphosed into flies, so maggots were just young flies left behind by flies eating the rotten meat, as opposed to generating from the raw meat or some other combination. This prompted Redi to conclude “omne vivum ex vivio” or, “all life comes from life.”

All of this is long example of how logic, Logos is a matter of presenting your conclusions alongside the process through which you came to them. Redi's example is one of scientific experimentation, but the same concept applies in any discourse: look for the evidence, combine it, and see what happens. The important thing to bear in mind is being logical requires critical thinking and analysis: such as not stopping with the first experiment, but modifying it as you look for an answer.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 3: Ethos

I want to tell you about a movie called North. You may not have heard of this movie, but it is famous for two reasons: it's the first film appearance of Scarlett Johansson, and Roger Ebert condemned it as “one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. ...I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.” On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 15% rotten rating, and an audience score of 27% of users liking it.

Now let me tell you of another movie, one you're much more likely to have heard of: The Princess Bride. Released in 1987, it has enjoyed a long, popular existence, becoming something between a classic and a cult classic. People seem to either enjoy it or love it. It's funny, warm, and at the same time, a romantic fantasy with an enjoyable cast. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a critic's rating of 97% Fresh, and an audience score of 95% of users liking it. What's not to love?

So, here we have two films: one doomed to obscurity and mediocrity, the other, one almost universally enjoyed, if not adored. And guess what? They both had the same director.

That's right, Rob Reiner directed these two movies.

I bring up this example to address a common misconception with rhetorical appeal Ethos, or Authority. Often times people think Ethos refers to the authority of the author, but it's not as simple: Ethos refers to how a text presents itself, and its author in an authoritative manner. In other words, it's how the author, in their writing shows they are an authority.

Reiner's North and The Princess Bride show us that good people do bad work. Ebert said North was “not [made] by a bad filmmaker, and must represent some sort of lapse from which Reiner will recover”. Be that as it may, Reiner’s other successes don’t excuse a bad film just as a bad film does not ruin his reputation or ability.

However, we still look for and care about authority. Ethos doesn’t mean we refuse to acknowledge author, or ourselves as authors, but rather look at how the authors appear through their work. Ethos is not the author: it is the author presenting themselves. Verifying or applying any rhetorical appeal means taking a close look at how a piece is written or constructed. This means Ethos is demonstrated primarily by how an author executes their craft, from their own use of and familiarity with available research on the topic, how expertly they develop their argument, to their use of proper grammar and style, to name a few.

Basically, anything in a text that makes you say “whoever made this really knows what they're doing” is Ethos. If someone really does know what they’re doing, then odds are, they’ll do a good job of it. Everyone makes mistakes, but you don’t want your work or your research to end up being the sub-par accidents of experts just as much as you don’t want to flaunt your own inexperience.

Using and implementing Ethos in our own writing is therefore a tricky, even precarious, matter, but ultimately asks: is this the best I can produce? Does this represent me and my abilities in the best way possible? A text, whether film, article, or book, should be able to stand on its own and if it stands on its own, we will be able to see the good decisions the author (or filmmaker) made in putting everything together. However, something lazily or haphazardly produced, filled with mistakes and errors in any way, no matter the author's reputation or past work, will have poor Ethos.