[Teaching_Composition] okay, we're called out on emotion

[Doug Downs]

Yeah, okay, I can't sit on this one. . . .  Time for a little analysis
of the nature of knowledge and persuasion.  (Epistemology, would be the
short way of saying it.)  

It is truly, truly a shock to learn that partisanship trumps
objectivity.  :-)   Funny thing is, like so many other aspects of
writing, what is trumpeted as another example of how "the system is
broken" is nothing more than the normal, natural, and dare I say
*desirable* functioning of the system that is humanity and human
intelligence.

(Another example is how students believe that when different instructors
read and evaluate the same paper in different ways, that's a sign of a
broken system.  No, actually, its a sign of HOW TEXTS WORK, and that
interpretation is overwhelmingly supported by research data and reading
and textual theory.  If we were doing our job as teachers, our students
would never have grown up believing that the system could, and thus
should, work any other way.  But somewhere we gave them the idea that
texts "mean things" instead of being interpretation-based, so they think
the subjectivity inherent in working with texts is "bad.")

But I digress.  Back to this "facts" and "emotion" business from the
study Charles cites.  LiveScience says that (gasp) people will ignore
facts in favor of their own assumptions, and indicator that something
Really Bad is happening.  Really?  The world ain't broke, folks, when
"facts" are *interpreted* according to existing ways of thinking. 
That's *how brains work.*  The data is there from tons of research with
consistent findings, and the theory to explain those findings is there
by everyone from pshrinks to anthropologists to Russian learning
theorists to artificial intelligence researchers to cognitive
scientists: new data is always interpreted in the light of existing
knowledge and will usually be subordinated to existing knowledge rather
than radically rewriting it.  

If those standard-bearers preaching objectivity and the triumph of
"logic" over "emotion" got what they think they want, they would find
themselves in a most non-human and thus inhumane world, which would
probably quickly kill them.  What is a world where "facts" replace
*reason* and where emotion is thought to hamper rather than be an
integral part of reasoning?  It's a world where the more powerful people
become the more believable people, because they have the power to insist
that *they* have the right facts, and everyone has been trained to
revere "facts," that when we're all playing by the rules, *facts end
arguments*.  Trying that a slightly different way: the reality of the
powerful is what is "factual," and the reality of everyone else is
ignorable.  That's because a "fact" is universal.  It doesn't bend too
good.  What's true in one place is true in another -- it is, after all,
a fact.  Mandatory minimum sentences overriding judicial discretion,
anyone?  *That's* what insistence on facts over reasoning gets you.  

"Facts" don't lend themselves to interpretation -- which is the very
thing, insists our culture, that is good about them.  It's just that I
don't like being lied to, and the notion that facts are independent of
interpretation (and thereby factual) is one of the biggest lies in the
world.  First, facts have to be stated in language, which immediately
removes them from the realm of the objective and True.  Second, facts
are almost always convenient, invented conventions.  ("Water boils at
100 degrees C."  That's not a fact, it's a stipulated defintion designed
as an everyday solution to the problem that boiling point varies with
pressure, and the other problem that "boil" is a qualitative discrete
point in a non-discrete process, and the other problem that in the
absence of agreement on how much a "degree" is, we have three different
kinds [F, C, and K].)  Third, facts almost always come with a viewpoint
and thus are always only partial descriptions of reality and thus fail
the objectivity test *always*.  Gravity makes things "fall down," but
no, the "truth" is that gravity attracts matter to the center of other
matter (try telling the person who just had a hammer land on her foot
that gravity didn't make it "fall down") -- but, no, gravity is actually
a distortion in the space/time continuum that pulls objects into each
others' "distortion wells."  All correct, all empirically testable, all
True, and all in literal contradiction to each other, all an attempt to
describe an existent reality that will never be fully, objectively
describable.  

Ultimately, then, facts are nothing more than claims a given audience
will agrees with.  So what LiveScience isn't going to tell me is how,
then, the notion of "fact" helps me when a) it's nothing more than
someone's interpretation of *their* reality, and b) I'm only going to
have to interpret it myself anyway, since it comes to me in language
and/or I reason about it in language, and c) they're going to need my
agreement about it to even give it the status of "fact" in our
conversation to begin with.  I would say the notion of "facts" doesn't
help me a bit; and when anyone insists that it should, I start checking
their agenda, the source of their investment in this way of thinking
about knowing and persuading. 

Not coincidentally, the same crowd tells me not to analyze Facts with
emotion, as it is womanish and will lead me away from Logic, Reason, and
ultimately Truth.  (Okay, this is 2006 -- they don't *say* "womanish,"
they just imply it.)  No:  emotions are an excellent check on reason and
a reliable source of the cognitive dissonance that *prompts* reasoning. 
Guts.  Instinct.  These are the seat of emotion.  And they're frequently
brilliant.  As such, I'm not anxious to get rid of them, nor to expel
them from my reasoning processes.  Same with Contradictions: the notion
that they are a sign of failed logic and thus failed reasoning and are
avoidable and ought to be eliminated -- no.  Again, they're an
inevitable and natural part of the human experience.  We *never* get rid
of self-contradictions; we *manage* them.  You could sum up our entire
role as teachers of critical thinking as helping students learn to
accept and handle complexity.  A contradiction is an opportunity, not a
fatal flaw.

To bring epistemology-land back to the question of the module, and the
assertion that teaching what we're emotionally invested in is risky:  as
you might be able to guess by now, that's not really going to work for
me. . . .  I pretty much don't teach anything I'm *not* emotionally
invested in.  (Among other things, I'm emotionally invested in teaching
students that, properly done, argument is passionate and makes use of
emotion.)  I'm emotionally invested in not lying to students: I won't
have them being pummeled by "facts" that are only Facts because someone
in charge *claims* they're facts.  That's a power argument, and power is
a political issue, and so is language, and so is education, and so is
writing -- so pretty inevitably, there are politics underlying the
*arguments* (NOT facts; hopefully truths) I'm passionately teaching. 
Anyway, it literally makes no sense to me to teach everything BUT what I
care about.  In fact, I'd say the coefficient of sense-making there
would actually be negative, because taken to its logical conclusion, I
wouldn't be able to teach writing, which is, after all, a vested, deeply
emotional, deeply passionate interest of mine.  

Cheers and truths (not facts) --
Doug




Dr. Doug Downs
Asst. Professor, Composition & Rhetoric
Dept. of English and Literature
Utah Valley State College
800 W University Pkwy, Orem UT 84058
LA 114w
801-863-8572

>>> "Charles Nelson" <charles.p.nelson@gmail.com> 09/14/06 5:49 AM >>>
I think that if we are too emotionally involved in a topic, we shouldn't
bring it into the classroom as an assignment. Back in January,
LiveScience
reported on a study (at
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/060124_political_decisions.html)
about
how staunch

"Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without
letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.

And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that's contrary to
their
point of view. ...

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally
biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be
discounted, Westen and his colleagues say. ...

The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and
Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own
candidate
but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can
learn
very little from new data," Westen said."

Applied to education, it means that emotionally involved or
ideologically
driven instructors, whether liberal or conservative, cannot see or
accept
how they are indoctrinating their students even when confronted with
data or
evidence to the contrary, and so should stay away from topics concerning
their "vested interest[s]."

Charles Nelson