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Originally Posted by Ace_O_Spades
Personally, I believe the decline in logical and reasonable debate has much to do with the shift in the 17th century from predominantly print based forms of communication to the current internet and television dominant forms.
It's no longer how factual your argument is, or how logical; it's about how you look, how you present yourself, and how you convince people that your argument is the right one.
John Stewart Mill said that speeches about certain topics could be banned but the same topics in print could be allowed... he said this because speeches play on emotions and stir the soul, print is introspective - you use quiet contemplation to decide on what you think.
In the time of ol Abe, many Americans would never see the president in their entire lives, they only had what he put down in print to go by.
Food for thought in our ever increasing media-centered world view.
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I think that's a very good point. Not only from that point of view, but also from the point of view of the person writing it. The internet, TV, the radio, it's all much more spontaneous. People can say what they want immediately, without having to really think it out, plan it out, and make it into a cohesive, logical argument.
I've noticed that if I take the time to write out arguments, oftentimes in response to posts in the forum, I'll sometimes find that what I had thought wasn't really that clear, or even a good argument. I'm not talking about writing it the "Reply" box and hitting submit, I'm talking about taking the time to write it out, in Word, or on a piece of paper, and then tweak it, edit it, really try to make it flow. Very often, this process makes you slow down and really think about your argument and present it in a well thought out way--and like I said, I've found that some of my arguments just didn't hold up anymore once I
really wrote them out.
Of course, before anyone gets too nostalgic about that, remember yellow journalism and such--just because it's written doesn't make it true or even well thought out.