So, I happened earlier to be looking at the summary for a course type thing on analyzing arguments.
And, I didn’t super look into it, but from what I saw it seemed to have, like, stuff on argument structure and logical fallacies and that kind of thing. Which I think is about what I would expect from something like it.
Argument dynamics are a thing I kind of think about a lot at least on a background level, because tumblr and stuff. Which makes me wonder - are there courses and materials like this that talk about the other kinds of stuff I tend to notice, that I think I don’t usually see mentioned places?
(Some examples, not in an organized fashion because I don’t have them that way:
A big one is like, what people are bringing to the argument that they don’t actually say in the argument. (Or, on the other end, what people are likely to read from it, that isn’t said in it.)
One major example is ‘what people mean when they say word X’.
Another one is connections-to-other-things, often by affiliation. So, I could say something using the jargon of a particular group and by this be communicating my association with that group (and some amount of their angles/viewpoints/approaches/other opinions.) Or, someone could read me saying something commonly associated with some other opinions on a different topic, and think I likely share that opinion. (And I could know about this and be communicating accordingly).
Another is earlier foundations of the ‘why’s’ of things someone might be saying, or conversely the fact that they haven’t given thought to them. (Like ‘this person subscribes to divine command theory’ and such).
Another big one is personal stuff - ‘if thing X is done, this would be bad for me’, or ‘people who want thing X done have been really horrible to someone I care about’, etc.
Another one relevant to connection/affiliation is things like ‘people who say thing X are disliked, I am afraid of that happening to me’. etc.
(And I think when I do see the concept of ‘things brought to the argument but not said in it’ brought up, it’s usually just ‘well that’s not good’, which I think is missing a lot of things. Like, a lot of this is too much information if you start trying to stick it in explicitly, or we don’t have good communication technology for actually doing so, or that’s too much for people to do. Some of it you kind of can’t stick in explicitly by definition. Which can still have negative effects etc (and totally does), but it’s considerably more complicated than ‘tell people not to do it’.)
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