preview

What Is It To Be Convincing? At First, This Appears As

Decent Essays

What is it to be convincing? At first, this appears as a simple question, right?
What do you think the answer is? Take a moment before reading on.
The hint we offer is that this is a “practical” question. While it is easy to suggest that the answer to this is merely of “academic” concern, we contend, it is not so simple.
Let’s begin. A few strategies seem to be a reasonable interpretation of the question. First, the question seems too vague and it seems likely there would be an urge to ask for more information. Since we are writing with the awareness of that urge, let us consider two options. That is, it is a general question asking on what grounds will someone be “truly” willing to change their beliefs? Another possibility is to read it …show more content…

If you are authentically “convinced” after being presented with an argument that is new to you, there is the follow-up question, “is change of beliefs necessary?” The answer to this seems dependent on the second association: the idea of beliefs in connection to the issue of “reality”. After all, at first glance, it is not clear what distinguishes “belief” from “reality”. Change seems necessary if these are interdependent. If not, “belief” and “reality” come into conflict. Many artists play with this second answer. Scientists struggle with both answers. While scientists feel there is no need to believe planets and stars into existence, it is not so clear for the meaning of “stars and stripes”. The significance of this, and other symbols, is dependent on more than the beliefs of individual subjects. Why? Reality is the ultimate question of politics. There are politics to what a subject is, the degree to which a subject can be taken for what it claims to be, and how those claims shape the way people approach social life -- and the worlds those interactions generate, sustain, collapse and reconfigure. In this sense, politics is a short-handed expression for raising concerns about authenticity’s ritualized form: the idea of legitimacy and its conferral of authority and its organization of relations amongst subjects. This tends to invoke the question of justice, and depending on the audience, an answer to whether the idea of morality is involved. At this point, it is clear this

Get Access