Migeru also offered me (us!) a good word:

Maieutics

I'm still stuck with thesis-antithesis-synthesis, waiting for synthesis to arrive...oh so slowly!  When, if synthesis is the aim, why not cut out the five and...oh...the ten..."I win, you lose; you're dead, I win"

Those future data sets....

Hey, you found it in one!

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

But quite frequently I've come out with my position nuanced... even just a little bit. And with enough nuancings... you eventually end up with a quite different position.

That's almost exactly my experience. Giant world-changing epiphanies are rare, although they do happen occasionally. But it's not so rare to find positions changing with counter-arguments.

It also works from the other side. Trying to put together a coherent argument takes some thought, and often I'll find that my beliefs and positions change, or at least become clearer, as I try to do that.

:7)

You know, did it start with maths?  You teach quality by training a person how to do things accurately, correct use of the correct tools, correct movements, build up a praxis built on specific foundations.  If you wish to plane a piece of wood, then....

How does that sound?  The more tools and techniques you learn, the better--if they're put to the correct use....you create quality?

Rhetoric (as I understood it) was the art of putting over one's thoughts on a subject.  I've simply held it in my head erroneously that it somehow sat in contradistinction with Veritas.  That Veritas (=quality, I think, in your model) is just....there....hey, you give me a chance to quote a Shakespeare sonnet!

But, I think I'm thinking educatively--that we need to educate each other as we can and when asked if possible--so the art of getting one's message across (of creating conviction = trust?  So there is some connection...bad faith, as afew wrote...curdles the cream, poisons the well...so find lots of wells and find a person whose cream is tasty!)  ...rhetoric is a tool to speed...?  To speed the transmission of the quality, the mindful quality--but I think that's only part of rhetoric.  There is also rhetoric for funerals, parties...well, that's what I've got so far from my look at the site papicek has given us--well...

If you need to translate a quality, maybe how to plane a piece of wood, here's the wood, maybe there's a workshop, and the person over there is explaining it all wrong--but that's okay; you're going to train your students, and they'll learn well....

But we all have to learn it all, whether we like it or not...because if I fail to produce quality, yet I still produce!  And maybe that guy over there, he got the bad teacher, the one who wouldn't know quality if it licked his ears--this teacher is insensible, it seems--and yet manages to have the worst teaching style, always shouting at the kids, blaming them if they fail to meet some standard of perfection he himself is far from....heh!

There is a refusal to learn, yet I believe--I think this has been demonstrated, but only in bursts--that humans can be brought to a level where "You don't have to do it.  It's okay!  Just find something you want to do, and try and get good at it."

And they do, because they believe completely in the support they are being offered...ah, 'tis rare, and fragile--  

Ach aye, ze dreamers....

Not just how to plane a piece of wood, but...everything....and as you learn how to add quality...I must be in Chrisland now...you turn a dreamy, fuzzy, vague, unreal map into an ever more accurate map, with positive (let's not this time ponder the quality of current nerve gasses) effects in ...tonight I'll call it "the outside world"...the effects are there, for good or ill...my buddhist moment...we choose how and if we deal with them, but we choose from a limited palate if....if we haven't been taught quality--or if we are blocked in our attempts to transmit it, such that we are maybe endlessly denied the space and/or the time--both of which (learning--and creating enough time and space in which to learn) are exacting for maybe the majority of humans--you have to be able to give up, basta, enough!  Okay!  Time off!  I need some quality time....away from these exacting and often repetitive processes....

Forty minutes, an hour and a half, an afternoon, a week, a year, a decade....and then....off!

But always adding quality--does that sound like part of what you mean by quality?

Heh!  Chris!

And...ah, I can't resist!  You gotta give this one two minutes.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

But that's marketing communications...

As I have noted before, I am fascinated by a First Nation notion of debate in which 12 elders sat in a circle. Depending upon their position in the 'compass', they had to argue from the point of view of their position in the compass, not from their own view. Also one could only talk when in possession of the 'talking stick' which was passed around. These positions represented different polar aspects of tribal life and decision-making. For example, the person at North position would argue from the tribal view, opposite would be a person who would argue from a view from outside the tribe etc.

I've never tried it, and I assume that it wouldn't work in our culture, because most people wouldn't be able to get their heads around the idea of arguing another point of view. And it is not the same as playing Devil's Advocate.

You can't be me, I'm taken

I actually remember ending conversations quite embarrassed.

But not anymore. When I engage conversation I now know that I am not the owner of the truth. Many times I engage conversation precisely to have ideas challenged.

And I think I am far from being alone (although in my personal case I am very conscious about the process).

The idea of having an argument to win should be challenged. Although sometimes there is a need to enter to win, most times it could be seen as a way for mutual progress: One discusses to exchange viewpoints with the other and maybe (or maybe not) change a little bit our own view of the world (or at least be aware of weaknesses in our own reasoning that need to be addressed)...

Let's look at this as a piece of rhetoric, e.g. first limit the definition of the subject to suit one's attitude towards it:

1. Rhetoric is a tool of persuasion, not of factual analysis. It was originally developed by lawyers and philosophers who wanted to know how best to sway crowds, judges and juries.

But let's look at the very useful site linked above and we find the broader defintion I suggested was more appropriate in an earlier comment:

Rhetoric is the study of effective speaking and writing. And the art of persuasion. And many other things.

In its long and vigorous history rhetoric has enjoyed many definitions, accommodated differing purposes, and varied widely in what it included.
...
Because rhetoric examines so attentively the how of language, the methods and means of communication, it has sometimes been discounted as something only concerned with style or appearances, and not with the quality or content of communication. For many (such as Plato) rhetoric deals with the superficial at best, the deceptive at worst ("mere rhetoric"), when one might better attend to matters of substance, truth, or reason as attempted in dialectic or philosophy or religion.

Rhetoric has sometimes lived down to its critics, but as set forth from antiquity, rhetoric was a comprehensive art just as much concerned with what one could say as how one might say it.

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/

Then let's look at the Higgins article recommended by TBG:

In English, when we use the word "rhetoric", it is generally preceded by the word "empty". Rhetoric has a bad reputation. McCain warned lest an electorate be "deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change". Waspishly, Clinton noted, "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose." The Athenians, too, knew the dangers of a populace's being swept along by a persuasive but unscrupulous demagogue (and they invented the word). And it was the Roman politician Cato - though it could have been McCain - who said "Rem tene, verba sequentur". If you hold on to the facts, the words will follow.

Cicero was well aware of the problem. In his book On The Orator, he argues that real eloquence can be acquired only if the speaker has attained the highest state of knowledge - "otherwise what he says is just an empty and ridiculous swirl of verbiage". The true orator is one whose practice of citizenship embodies a civic ideal - whose rhetoric, far from empty, is the deliberate, rational, careful organiser of ideas and argument that propels the state forward safely and wisely.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/barack-obama-usa1

This has implications for the correctness, or should I say "persuasiveness", of 2, 5, 6, 9 and 10 at least.

2. Arguing with people isn't rhetoric, it's arguing.

Am I arguing or engaged in rhetoric ? Perhaps both ? In the broader sense, argument is indeed a form of rhetoric.

7. Neo-liberal economic theory is mostly rhetoric. The Laffer curve, trickle down, deregulation - these are all rhetorical positions supported with narrative logic.

These examples hardly justify the term "mostly" - the criticism is more appropriate to some simple political and journalistic defenses of neoliberal economic theory - the latter has a BIT more substance (which is not to defend it).

In fact isn't this an example of 5. ... "a simple rhetorical technique is that you can sometimes appear to invalidate a general position by apparently invalidating a small and inconsequential part of it." :-)

 Hayek is usually seen as a key figure in neoliberal economics, cf. "Friedrich von Hayek, the father of neo-liberalism." http://www.voltairenet.org/article30058.html

But, even if one rejects his ideas, they were not just simplistic narratives:

Hayek may have believed at this early point that the economics profession had or soon would understand the full significance of Mises's book. His own efforts, then, could focus on the intertemporal coordination made possible by unhampered credit markets and the intertemporal discoordination caused by misguided bank policy. If anything, the 1937 article marks Hayek's realization that the profession had in fact not absorbed Mises's insights at all. Hayek's fellow economists could not appreciate Prices and Production because they lacked a fundamental understanding of the market economy. In an attempt to overcome this obstacle, Hayek began to deal in a more explicit way with the coordination of individual plans on the basis of dispersed and incomplete information.

      With this alternative interpretation, Hayek's "technical economics" and his subsequent political philosophy can be seen as exhibiting a certain continuity of thought--the later phase involving more fundamental and even remedial concerns.

http://auburn.edu/~garriro/amagi.htm

 Hayek himself complained about over-simple approaches, so it's rather unfair that by association, his work is condemned for their inadequacies (whatever his own might have been):

The libertarian economist Walter Block has observed critically that while the The Road to Serfdom makes a strong case against centrally-planned economies, it appears only lukewarm in its support of pure laissez-faire capitalism, with Hayek even going so far as to say that "probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all of the principle of laissez-faire capitalism" [9]. In the book, Hayek writes that the government has a role to play in the economy through the monetary system, work-hours regulation, social welfare, and institutions for the flow of proper information.[10]

9. ... The reason some rhetorical points are 'obvious' is because they're based on a moral - i.e. emotional - argument. If you can sway an audience emotionally by appealing to its prejudices, it doesn't matter how silly - or not - your facts are.

This slips in another narrow definition - that moral arguments are emotional ones - they may be, but also may not be - as arguments (cf. Kant), though some premises will involve basic values. At the same time this reinforces the general, narrow, rather cynical view of rhetoric.

10. Everyone has prejudices. No one is immune to rhetoric.

This example from TBG seems to have been persuasive for some. In this case I'm immune  :-)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

LOL, best freudian pun today!

if you meant _sleight.

here's an interesting slant i've not seen here yet.

when someone says 'i was speaking rhetorically', or 'it was a rhetorical question', there is a whiff of insincerity, or self-indugence implicit in that. something fictive, ersatz.

just to further highlight the intense moral ambiguity in the word's dna.

it's pretty much a noble-sounding antique term for what they call 'spin' these days. it used to often come with 'flowery' appended to it...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

4. It's very hard to find classes in rhetoric now. It was once taught as a formal skill, because it was so useful. I assume politicians still learn it somewhere and somehow, because pols do rhetoric for a living. But if you're looking for useful rhetoric and not just a list of obscure grammatical constructions, it's not so easy to find that.

In Sweden at least, formal greco-roman rethoric fell out of style in the late 19th century with the advance of the mass movements. The formal rethoric become a suspect marker of a trained liar and replaced with a very dull style marketed as sincere. The a very common start in the latter tradition is "I am not a speaker, but ..." to build up your ethos as a person to be trusted. Very little use of pathos, though that does not guarantee it is factual, only that it is dull.

The learning of this dull rethoric style is made in-house in the political parties and sharpened through years of training in faction battles in youth organisations, student politics etc.

An interesting note is that the US seems to have a more continous tradition from the greco-roman style, in particular the tradition of debate clubs. Viewed from the lens of the dull swedish rethoric, the US political rethoric seems rather over the top, and not seldom quite silly.

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