<CAUTION: These handouts must be used in conjunction with class discussion and other course materials. They are not intended to be stand-alone explanations or a substitute for class attendance.>
I would now like to briefly describe the set of models and concepts that you will be using as "tools" to develop the content of your papers. Some of these tools are already familiar to you; others may be more difficult to grasp at the beginning. But the paper topics you will be assigned are all designed to help you practice working with them, so by the end of the course you should be pretty proficient in their use.
These tools will be helpful at two key stages. First, they will help you to read and interpret the texts we will be discussing. Second, they will help you to structure your responses to the questions and topics covering those texts.
I might just repeat once again that nothing we will be doing in English 1C is unique to the study of literature. So even though we will be analyzing literary texts and films, we will be taking a general, as opposed to a specialized literary, problem-solving approach to them.
So what I will be looking for are "reasonable" interpretations and explanations as opposed to "expert" interpretations. This distinction will be especially critical when we deal with American and British literary classics, such as, The Great Gatsby and Sense and Sensibility. So even though I may have you read essays written by literary specialists to provide you with background material, I will not ask that you follow those methods and approaches.
The basic rule in this course is that you present reasonable interpretations and explanations that make sense to you and others in the class. That is all that will be expected of you.
A. ARGUMENTS AND REASONS
1. An argument is an attempt to prove the truth or rationality of your beliefs or ideas to a specific audience. It is supposed to persuade your audience to share or understand your point of view.
2. All arguments are directed towards a specific audience. You cannot 'argue' in a vacuum. There would be no point to it. And knowing your audience means knowing what beliefs you have in common <these beliefs you need not prove> and what you do not <what you need to prove>.
3. In order to argue well, you need to know what you yourself believe. You must be self-aware. An argument is an attempt to get others to either share or accept your right to hold your beliefs. A good argument is always based on a set of assumptions that you and your audience have in common. In the context of constructing effective explanations, if you do not understand what you and audience do and do not share, your arguments will most likely fail.
4. An ancient philosopher said, "Know yourself and know your enemy and in a thousand battles win a thousand victories." This principle holds true in many areas outside of warfare.
B. THE UNCERTAINTY OF TRUTH
1. In a public university environment, we are all supposed to share the same rules for critical thinking and argumentation. In other words, we all have the same rules for giving reasons and exaplanations. We all share a common notion of what we can call "true" or a "fact." To establish this common model, criticial thinking as a subject has been mandated at all levels of instruction, from kindergarten to our own GE requirements here at CSUS.
2. There are a lot of assumptions underlying this focus on critical thinking. But the one that is the primary assumption of English 1C is that what people refer to as "truth" is something that emerges from open discussion and logical debate.
The reason for this is the assumption that there is no one true-for-all-time description of reality. We live in a world that is uncertain and contingent. Contary to what many actually believe, no one person, group or ideology has any special insight into a single, unifed world.
3. So all "truths" are in a sense contingent upon the arguments that support them. For an idea or belief to be held as "true" or at least "reasonable," it must meet the critical thinking criteria I have just referred to and it must be better at meeting those criteria than other theories and explanations.
In other words, we hold as true or reasonable those beliefs that have the best support or evidence, the best arguments, given our common set of rules for critical thinking.
4. So when arriving at the truth regarding X, we have to listen to all reasonable arguments for X before making up our minds. We can't simply close out options simply because they do not agree with our opinions.
5. The problem with this assumption is that most of us are "naturally inclined" to believe in the truth of what we already believe and ignore other interpretations.
6. I have just offered the outlines of an argument for English 1C. It is a course designed to help us to be more open and receptive to differing points of view.
C. LOGICAL TOOLS
1. I am going to assume that you remember the fundamentals of writing the argumentative from your English 1A class. I would like to build on that model here.
2. The basic structure of an argumentative essay is roughly as follows:
a. You have a thesis statement. It is a statement that can be proven to be true or false, reasonable or unreasonable for a specific audience. The intended result is that after reading your essay this audience will agree that your thesis is true or that it is reasonable.
b. You have the form of an argument which allows you to you present logically relevant evidence or support for your thesis statement. This evidence can be in the form of specific examples from personal experience or sources from "experts" or whatever else it will take to persuade your audience.
3. Other things being equal, there are two keys to developing a successful argument. First, your argument itself must follow a certain set of logical rules. Second, you must have sufficient evidence to persuade your audience to accept your thesis. I want to talk about the rules of logic here.
4. The most important rule of logic that you will use in English 1C is the principle of consistency. Very simply, it says that a good argument does not contain contradictions, where a contradiction is defined as the assertion that a specific proposition is both true and not-true.
5. There are two basic forms of consistency, what I will call INTERNAL and EXTERNAL consistency.
6. Other things being equal, an argument is internally consistent if it does not contradict itself. In other words, if, in the context of an argument, you claim that "X IS Y" and maintain that position throughout your argument, then, in respect to that statement, you are being consistent.
a. However, if, in another place in that same argument, you state that it is not the case that "X IS Y" <or "X IS not-Y" or some variation on that theme>, then your argument is INTERNALLY INCONSISTENT. This is not good.
b. The point about internal consistency is that it does not vary from audience to audience, as long as the audience is "educated," i.e. they share with you the belief in a common critical thinking model underlying "educated discourse" in our society.
c. Internal consistency has nothing to do with facts -- about the world or anything else -- but with the logical shape or structure of your argument. If an argument is inconsistent, then it cannot lead to a valid result, regardless of what may or may not be true of the real world. They are quite lethal.
d. So the first order of business when checking an argument, whether it is your own or someone else's, is to look for internal inconsistencies. If it contains internal inconsistencies, then the argument is dead.
NOTE: Of course, I am using this concept to cover a lot of logically related problems, for example, defining a term so vaguely that it cannot really be identified and then using it in a proof. I will be taking the same liberties in defining its sister concept.
7. EXTERNAL CONSISTENCY relates to what you and your audience agree is true of the real world. Unlike inhternal consistency, this is a relative notion, since it can and does vary from audience to audience.
a. Most ordinary arguments in every day life are based upon a set of factual givens <beliefs about the world> that you and your audience tacitly agree to share. These are the shared facts, beliefs or assumptions that are not under discussion or dispute, so they can be used in your argument to prove to your audience what you want to say.
b. An EXTERNAL INCONSISTENCY is generated when you make an assertion that contradicts something that you and your audience have already agreed to.
c. Of course, you and your audience can and may disagree without anyone being called inconsistent. In fact, disagreement underlies the whole purpose of argumentation to begin with. It is simply that once you agree to take certain facts, beliefs or assumptions as true, as givens, you can't go back on that agreement just to fit your argumentative needs. That is not disagreement. That is being inconsistent.
d. The key feature of external inconsistencies is that they have their foundation in beliefs you and your audience share about a world that is external to or outside the form of your argument. In fact, the form of your argument may be perfectly consistent from an internal point of view. You are being externally inconsistent when you contradicit assumptions that you had already, explicitly or implicitly, agreed to. <In logical terms, your arguments may be valid but they are not sound if your premises are not true.>
8. In English 1C, you will need to look at both kinds of consistency. They will turn out to be some of your most useful critical "tools."