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Reflecting on the inaugural four-day meeting of the Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation at Butler, I am struck by all the ways that the presenters communicate their ethical stance on various community-building projects. Blog entries will feature exemplars from the first conference sessions.

The first speaker at the Conference was the Reverend Charles Harrison, President of the Indy Ten-Point Coalition. One of the first ethical virtues included by Aristotle in his original text on virtue ethics is Courage. Without a doubt, courageous speech is one of the most important characteristics of the ethical communicators CEPA intends to hold up for emulation. As usual, the Greeks had a word for it: they called it “Parrhesia,” which referred to speaking truth even when the truth put the speaker in danger. The concept refers to the act often called “speaking truth to power.” In the case of the Reverend Charles Harrison, it means standing up and speaking the truth to the criminals or other dangerous inhabitants of the neighborhood around his Barnes United Methodist Church on the near northwest side of Indianapolis. Certainly, from one perspective, the young men, who are often former convicts, are the power, at least after dark, on those streets. Harrison and his volunteers venture out on those streets to confront and speak truth to those young men, which can be a very risky activity. See a column by Matthew Tully of the Indianapolis Star entitled, “Charles Harrison Shines Truth on Violence in Indy,”

Charles Harrison has personal experience of street violence. When he was only thirteen growing up in Jeffersonville, Indiana, his 21-year old stepbrother was murdered on the streets of Louisville, across the Ohio from Jeffersonville. He and some friends decided to get revenge by trying to kill the people they believed responsible. Before this act of revenge could be carried out, however, some adult men in his local church intervened and convinced Charles not to act on his impulse. In his speech at CEPA before an audience of mostly college students, Revered Harrison described the consequences of this experience, leading him to a vocation in the ministry and his later calling as a leader in the struggle to prevent street crime in local city neighborhoods.

Harrison described the first experience of his group of men gathered to march against crime in the streets. He said that about 100 men walked out in a group on the streets in the area near his church after a meeting which initiated what became the Indy Ten Point Coalition. There were so many men together, that they failed to make any contact with potential trouble-makers, who hid in the face of such a show of force. He then realized that they would have to go out on the streets in small groups of only three or four. Their purpose for what Harrison calls “Faith Walks” is to engage the young men and try to convince them of a way to deal with their problems without resorting to drug dealing, theft, and other crimes. Eventually, he added “OGs” to these teams—Old Gang members, who provide needed “street cred” for the unarmed patrols. Harrison indicates there are now 26 OGs operating with other volunteers on the street Faith Walks.

A central element in these efforts to deal with street crime involves finding alternatives for the young men they engage, many of whom are former convicts returning to their neighborhoods (approximately 5,000 inmates return to the streets of Indianapolis in a year). Harrison began to make contact with potential employers in the Indianapolis area who could provide jobs for the young men, allowing them to develop skills and get employment as an alternative to life on the streets. The report on the Ten Point Coalition website for April 19, for example, points out that two of Harrison’s volunteers for street patrols have just been offered employment by Penske Logistics. Since the economic downturn after 2009, however, the number of opportunities of this sort has declined.

The idea for the Ten Point Coalition goes back to the city of Boston. The Reverend Eugene Rivers, a Pentacostal minister, founded the first Ten Point coalition in the Dorchester area to try to prevent crime on the streets of that area. In 1998, the Mayor of Indianapolis, at the time Stephen Goldsmith, invited Rivers to speak to a group of local clergy about how the coalition operated on the streets of Boston. Harrison was inspired by that speech by Rivers and determined to build the Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition along similar lines.

Harrison cautioned his audience that the Indy Ten Point Coalition is not a panacea for the problems of street crimes in the Indianapolis areas. Because of cutbacks necessitated by some decline in funding since 2009, the coalition operates in just two zip code areas on the near northeast side and the near northwest side of Indianapolis; most of the city is outside these zones. But, he adds, that street crime, especially the uptick in murders related to drug trafficking in the city, pervades the entire metropolitan area. Perpetrators can easily locate in other areas of the city outside the restricted zone patrolled by the Faith Walks. In the question and answer period following the talk, several students wanted to know how they could help and get involved. Harrison answered that they could do internships with the administrative side of the organization, probably not being involved on street Faith Walks themselves, because of the necessary extensive training and life experiences of those who perform those more dangerous activities.

The Indy Ten Point Coalition received the 2014 Community Advocate Award from the Mayor’s Celebration of Diversity.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

On February 13 of this year, electronic devices across the US were, according to the hype of the day, focused on the beginning of the second season of the Netflix original hit, “House of Cards.” Stories abounded concerning plans people were making for “binge parties,” as some viewers prepared for day and night long watching of as many of the thirteen episodes as they could absorb at one go.

What do we make of Frank and Claire Underwood, a power couple who ruthlessly use and manipulate people on their relentless quest for the top of the Washington power pyramid? One of the fascinations of this series could be that it seems “realistic”—and that is quite an indictment of our view of the American political system. Many of the sinuous sub-plots do seem to reflect real-life issues and machinations of the current state of political maneuvering “inside the Beltway.”

Clearly, most of the characters depicted in the “House of Cards” exhibit the antithesis of what we mean by ethical public argument. They provide useful negative illustrations of ethical argument. Lets go back to the beginning—Plato and Aristotle first laid down some of the basics in this regard. Plato, recall, was a student of Socrates, while Aristotle attended Plato’s school, known as The Academy. Plato, reflecting his teacher’s beliefs, seems to have regarded persuasive argument (coining, probably, the term “rhetoric” for its name) as inherently unethical, or nearly so. The reason was the orator usually aims at winning (a case, an election, an argument), whereas the truly ethical person should use speech solely to improve the listeners, to make them better people. Later in life, Plato held out hope that there could be ethical public discourse, but it would be pretty rare. Aristotle, who literally “wrote the book” on what we call public persuasion (rhetoric) accepted that persuasion was a tool that could be used for good or evil and concentrated more than Plato on teaching the craft itself. Still, he maintained that the character of the speaker was probably the most important element in effectiveness of such public address.

It is safe to say that the Underwoods and most of the rest of the characters in “House of Cards”—and perhaps most of those in the public field today—do not come close to meeting the original standards set forth by the founders of public persuasion, Plato and Aristotle. They are not concerned with what is best for the listeners, for the public, but with furthering their own station in the political game. And, it would seem this is what we have come to expect and to accept of our real life policy makers and elected representatives. Consider the journalistic coverage of elections these days. Most such coverage is described as “horse-race” coverage, meaning that the election contest is reduced to the events and strategies related solely to winning and losing, rather than to coverage of the policy differences between candidates and to analysis of those policies. Politics is treated as another sport. Attention on “gridlock” in the Congress similarly is treated as a contest. Clearly, the two sides are not concerned with legislation for the public good, but with scoring points and setting up for the next election (the next game).

Casting political argument as sport simplifies television and other media coverage. It is easier to keep “score” than to delve into in-depth analysis of policy. Another unfortunate result of the coverage and of our expectations is that personal attacks are judged more effective than substantive argument. And such attacks allow for brief televised spots, “attack ads.” The side with the most financial resources, of course, can fund more such ads. In the second season of “House of Cards,” several crucial episodes deal with a sudden increase of money flowing to the opponents of the administration of which Frank Underwood is a part. The clear understanding is that money—not policy or reasoning based on evidence—is all that is necessary to swing elections in our contemporary political arena.

It is clear that people concerned for ethical public argumentation face a significant challenge.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Noon – 2:00 p.m. Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition

Program Time: Noon – 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Rev. Charles Harrison
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Pastors and community members of the Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition take to the streets to address neighborhood violence, and to promote peace instead of retaliation.

2:25 – 3:45 p.m. Panel Discussion: Standing for the Community in Indianapolis
Program Time: 2:25 – 3:45 p.m.
Speakers: Rev. Charles Harrison, Lloyd Wright
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
WFYI President Lloyd Wright, the Rev. Charles Harrison, and other panelists discuss the responsibilities and roadblocks of authentic public engagement to advance the common good.

3:50 – 5:15 p.m. Africa Is a Country and Shifting Digital Landscapes in Media of Africa

Program Time: 3:50 – 5:15 p.m.
Speaker: Sean Jacobs
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Jacobs’s blog, Africa is a Country, challenges outdated ideas about the African continent found in Western media. The author and former South African journalist teaches international affairs at The New School in New York City.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Noon – 1:15 p.m. Film “Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story”

Program Time: Noon – 1:15 p.m.
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
“Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story” recounts basketball player Brown’s hard-fought return from scandal to become an admired Indiana Pacer and Hall of Famer. Includes interviews with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Julius Erving, and others.

1:15 – 2:00 p.m. Producer Ted Green Talks about “Undefeated” Film

Program Time: 1:15 – 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Ted Green
Location:Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Veteran sports journalist Green teamed with WFYI to produce “Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story.” His other film credits include “Naptown to Super City,” “Hoosier Veterans: Faces of War,” and “John Wooden: The Indiana Story.”

2:25 – 4:00 p.m. Film “Autism: The Musical”
Program Time: 2:25 – 4:00 p.m.
Location:Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
The HBO documentary “AUTISM: The Musical” profiles The Miracle Project, a theatre and film program for children of all abilities, founded by Elaine Hall as part of her activism on behalf of children with autism.

4:00 – 5:05 p.m. Autism Activist Elaine Hall

Program Time: 4:00 – 5:05 p.m.
Speaker: Elaine Hall
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Hall was a top Hollywood children’s acting coach whose life changed dramatically after her son Neal was diagnosed with autism. A sought-after speaker on autism issues, she is co-author of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Creating Miracles in the Classroom and writes a Huffington Post blog.

Presented as part of the Howard Schrott Lecture Series.

6:00 – 7:30 p.m. Film “Medora”

Program Time: 6:00- 7:30 p.m.
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
“Medora” follows high school basketball players living in a small Indiana town hit by economic downturn. The documentary premiered at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival and aired on PBS’ “Independent Lens” series.

7:30 – 8:30 p.m. Andrew Cohn Talks “Medora”

Program Time: 7:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Speaker: Andrew Cohn
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Screenwriter Cohn spent almost a year in Medora, Ind., capturing interviews for his first feature-length documentary. He has produced off-Broadway and directed for Comedy Central, Fuse, and ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

02:25 – 4:40 p.m. Debate: Does the Butler Way Apply Only to Athletics?

Program Time: 2:25 – 4:30 p.m.
Speakers: Butler Debate Team Students
Location: Reilly Room of Atherton Union
Students on the Butler Debate Team examine the Butler Way concepts of humility, unity, and servanthood, and their implications for academic and community life at BU.

05:00 – 6:30 p.m. Communication Alumni Reception

Program Time: 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Location: Reilly Room of Atherton Union
By invitation only.

7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Keynote: Nelson Mandela’s Legacy as an Ethical Communicator
Program Time: 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Speaker: Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak
Location: Reilly Room of Atherton Union
Boesak worked with Nelson Mandela to overturn racial apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. The theologian and educator talks about Mandela’s efforts as their nation’s first black president to foster peace and reconciliation, a legacy Boesak continues through The Desmond Tutu Center, established by Butler University and Christian Theological Seminary in 2013.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Noon – 2:00 p.m. Journalist Elizabeth Bernstein of The Wall Street Journal

Program Time: Noon – 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Elizabeth Bernstein
Location: Johnson Room of Robertson Hall
Bernstein writes about personal relationships in education, psychology, and religion in her Wall Street Journal column, “Bonds.”
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The previous blog entry (February 9) begins the discussion of the upcoming initial meeting of the Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation at Butler University, April 1 – 4 of this spring. The theme, “Engaging the Community,” highlights various settings for building community through ethical communication. In the previous entry, community was defined in very broad terms: “an identifiable group of people engaged in ongoing cohesive, supportive, and positive interaction with one another.”In the sessions of this inaugural conference, such a broad definition allows for a variety of ways in which people envision and enact “community.”

First, there is community on a global, international, and political level. The Keynote Address for the conference is to be delivered on Thursday evening of the week (April 3) by Dr. Allan Boesak, the Director of the Desmond Tutu Center at Butler and The Christian Theological Center. Dr. Boesak will speak on Nelson Mandela as an ethical communicator (see also blog entry for December 6, 2013). Similarly, on the first day of the conference, Tuesday, April 1, Sean Jacobs, originally from Cape Town, South Africa, founder of the website, Africa is a Country, and professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City, will present on the topic, “Africa is a Country and Shifting Digital Landscapes in Media of Africa.” The ironic title of the website is intended to point to the inadequate ways global or Western media often portray the continent. His topic suggests ways that communities are represented by others and how communities represent themselves. And, his subject also suggests that there are “digital” communities.

Second, social and political issues of community arise in local contexts. The opening session on the schedule features the Reverend Charles Harrison of the Barnes United Methodist Church discussing his ministry through the Indianapolis chapter of the 10 Point Coalition. His session will be followed by a forum on the challenges of “Standing for Community in Indianapolis” bringing together local media and community representatives on a panel with the Rev. Harrison.

Third, the social and economic challenges facing many local communities are presented on Wednesday, April 2, in the depiction of community in award-winning documentaries (a “film festival” day). Two of the films use sports (particularly basketball, appropriate for Indiana) as the setting for presenting issues of building and maintaining a sense of community. The film about Medora, Indiana, is covered in the most recent entry of this blog. It’s nationally televised debut is scheduled for two days earlier on PBS’ award-winning Independent Lens series. The other sports-based film, to be screened beginning at noon on Wednesday is Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story, by Ted Green, formerly a sports editor with the Indianapolis Star. Roger Brown was the star of the Indiana Pacers in the early days of the team when it played in the American Basketball Association (ABA) before joining the NBA. Unfairly shut out of college and pro basketball because of supposed connections with a big-time gambler in New York City, when Brown starred for a Brooklyn high school, Brown missed out on five years or more of what could have been a fabulous career. When he was dismissed as a freshman from Dayton University’s team, as a result of the allegations, a local family took him in—a first indication of the importance of community. After his years of starring with the Pacers, Brown devoted himself to his new community, Indianapolis, serving on the city-council council and in other community organizations.

The other film to be screened on Wednesday afternoon represents the centrality of inclusiveness in the concept of community. Elaine Hall is the founder of the Miracle Project, which is a theater program created especially for autistic children, their siblings, and friends. She is the speaker for this year’s Howard L. Schrott Lecture Series as part of the CEPA meeting. Her appearance will follow the screening of her Emmy-winning film, Autism: the Musical, beginning at 2:25 that afternoon. After discovering that her son Neal, adopted from a Russian orphanage as a toddler, was severely autistic, she also began to discover how children like him were often systematically excluded from their school and neighborhood communities. She was able to build a “community within a community” of other parents and families with children similarly exhibiting autism. They made contact with a documentary director, Tricia Regan, who agreed to film the process of the development of a theatrical musical put on by the children. As Regan tells one interviewer, the film is the story of people dealing with a problem, rather than a film about “autism.” In that way, the film shows people in everyday scenes and relationships coming to grips with personal and emotional issues. The viewer becomes caught up in these stories and the compelling personalities of the children as well as the parents. The film to be screened in the evening, Medora, shares with Hall’s film stories of people overcoming personal obstacles.

Also on the level of local community, student members of the Butler University Debate Team will stage an exhibition debate on one significant way in which the Butler community has come to define itself. Their question for debate will be the following: “Does the “Butler Way” apply only to athletics?”

The fourth level of community is the level of interpersonal relationships. Dealing with these issues on Friday, April 4, will be Elizabeth Bernstein, the writer of the well-known column featured in the Wall Street Journal, “Bonds.” It is fitting that her presentation be the final event of the CEPA meeting, since so many of the issues taken up in the preceding sessions often come down to matters of interpersonal communication: how people dealing with many different kinds of problems, in different kinds of relationships, have to communicate with others in face-to-face interaction.

Please plan to join us for one or more of these sessions. More information on CEPA 2014 along with the individual events will soon be available at this web site.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

The inaugural meeting of the Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation will convene April 1 – 4 of 2014 at Butler University. The theme running through this first conference meeting is “engaging the community,” with the idea of community drawn from contexts ranging from local to a global levels. Over the next few weeks, this forum will discuss the presenters and programs that will highlight this first public event of CEPA.

The theme of engaging the community concerns ways of communicating intended to foster effective community building in an ethical fashion. Community refers to an identifiable group of people in ongoing cohesive, supportive, and positive interaction with one another. While the goal of building community sounds positive or ethical in itself, it’s possible to conceive of less positive or less ethical means of forging communal bonds. A strong sense of community can occasionally have an unfortunate “Us versus Them” feeling, which can fuel unhealthy competitiveness, intolerance, or even violence. Unethical demagogues often have traded on this sort of ingroup versus outgroup rhetoric, typically demonizing outgroups, in order to gain or hang on to power. It is unfortunately easy to call to mind examples—NAZI Germany, Rwanda, Sarajevo.

The sessions on Wednesday, April 2, will feature three award-winning documentary films exemplifying positive values in community-building communication. The film-makers will be present to discuss their documentaries. The screenings that day will feature, first, “Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story,” the work of journalist Ted Green; second, “Autism: The Musical,” followed by a presentation by Elaine Hall, the film’s director and founder of the Miracle Project; and third, “Medora,” directed by Andrew Cohn, which follows a struggling, small-town Indiana high school basketball team. In this and following entries of this Blog I will discuss their productions, beginning first with “Medora.” The next entries will concentrate on the films by Elaine Hall and Ted Green.

Medora, Indiana, is a town of about 650 people not far from Louisville, Kentucky, known for the longest covered bridge in the US (three spans over the White River). Like many small communities around the US, its population and its prospects are dwindling. The once proud Medora Hornets, the high school basketball team, have not won a game in years. Their losing record seems a match for the deteriorating economy of the town. Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart came to Medora to follow, in film, the lives and experiences of the young ball players during one season as they struggled to notch just one win. Their story seems the antithesis of the movie about a team from a similar small town in southern Indiana, since the movie “Hoosiers” was loosely based on the state championship season of the team from nearby Milan, Indiana. Milan won their championship 60 years ago this March, and much has changed for rural and small-town America, as well as Medora, since then.

Cohn and Rothbart document a developing reality for many rural small towns across the nation—poverty, drug and alcohol dependence, fractured and dysfunctional families. A conclusion from a US Department of Agriculture report describes the conditions of the Medoras around the country: “Concentrated poverty contributes to poor housing and health conditions, higher crime and school dropout rates, as well as employment dislocations. As a result, economic conditions in very poor areas can create limited opportunities for poor residents that become self-perpetuating.” The rates of rural poverty in the US tend to be higher and more persistent than those in urban areas (95% of counties exhibiting persistent rates of poverty are in rural areas). Although rural poverty is statistically more pronounced in other parts of the country, there is a swath of southern Indiana counties from around Cincinnati running west toward Evansville marked by entrenched poverty, including counties particularly hard hit since the recession. This region includes both Medora and Milan.

Early in the film, a local is asked how she would describe Medora today—her answer is simply the one word, “Closed.” This view contrasts with some footage from earlier days, the Medora of the fifties (the era of Milan’s championship portrayed in “Hoosiers”). There are scenes of busy downtown streets, thriving stores and businesses, and basketball gyms full of cheering, excited fans. Current scenes show the same sites, but now the streets are deserted, the store fronts are boarded up, fewer fans—mostly sitting resignedly—show up for the Hornets’ games. The earlier vibrancy is completely absent.

The film focuses on the everyday lives of three or four of the players as they deal with the problems characteristic of many parts of rural America. Their own disadvantages in life are representative of the disadvantages of their community. The center on the team, probably the best player, has been taken in by the family of one of his friends, while his mother is in a rehab program for alcoholism in Louisville. The obvious sacrifices of the friend’s mother in trying to care for this additional boy in her small home is particularly touching.

We ride along with another of the young players, a guard on the team, as he debates with himself whether to try to make contact with the father he has never known. The concern shown by the parents of his girlfriend as they share an evening meal him in their home also depicts the virtues that might counter the dreariness of Medora’s reality.

A younger boy on the team struggles with minor scrapes with the law and “acting out” in school and on the team. Other boys consider what will happen to them in the future. One meets with an Army recruiter in his home, while another contemplates a technical training program in Chicago. We also see the pressures on the young coach, in his first year on the job, who works the night shift as a policeman in nearby Bedford, Indiana. Interspersed in these threads of life are scenes from the basketball games themselves, as the Hornets lose game after game by 30, 40, or even 50 points. Will they ever win a game, and will they ever have a shot at winning in life?

As we follow these boys and their families in the film, we begin to wonder whether one win will provide the spark of hope they need. Will the love, support, and care of families and friends build a community struggling for a future? Or, is it really just a game?

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Unethical public communication is often associated with political propaganda and advertising—especially arguments that feature attacks on character and unfair or misleading use of evidence. If only advocates would stick to the facts and logical reasoning, so goes the popular view, we would restore ethics to the public arena.

When we say that someone argues in an ethical way, do we mean that they follow the rules of logic and logical reasoning? If all advocates were to adhere to logic, would not their arguments also be ethical?

Not necessarily—the rules of logical reasoning do not guarantee ethical argument. The proposition that logical argument equals ethical argument, while it may be mostly true, is not always true. Of course, you are unlikely to be ethical if you intentionally break the rules of argument. (Note the qualifier, “intentionally,” since intent is basic to ethics.) But you can follow the rules of logic and still mislead or deceive your listeners.

The rules of logic and argumentation emphasize the form in which claims in speech or writing are presented. The following argument (presented here in the form that logicians call a categorical syllogism) is logically valid:

All satellites are made of green cheese;
The moon is a satellite;
Therefore, the moon is made of green cheese.

So, logic does not guarantee sound reasoning. In this case, it is obvious that the first premise (the first line of the argument) is not factual. The point is that the quality of an argument often depends upon the quality of the evidence or facts that support it. One scholar writing on the ethics of argumentation makes this point: “arguers may reason correctly” and yet “nevertheless be biased or ‘unfair’ at different levels (selective choice of premises, biased interpretation of evidence, use of loaded terms, etc.)” (Vasco Correia, in a 2012 article in the journal, Informal Logic.)

Of course, all reasoning and argumentation involve some selectivity. We choose some facts and not others for our arguments. The problem is, however, that our mistakes in this selecting can be unintentional or biased in understandable ways.

Such mistakes are especially likely when strongly-held commitments become involved, leading to errors in the choice of premises, the interpretation of the evidence, and so on.

Jonathon Haidt, a social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, often points out that, for most of us, belief comes first, logical reasoning comes second. In other words, we determine what we want to prove first and then work out the “logical arguments” to justify that belief. In two books, Haidt presents an image of what psychological research suggests regarding moral reasoning—the “elephant and the rider.” Our use of logical reason is like the efforts of a rider to influence the much stronger elephant, representing our emotional attachments and motivations. (The books are The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.) Another prominent psychologist, Joshua Greene of Harvard University, makes similar points based on research using neuroimaging and behavioral experiments looking at moral decision-making. His findings are presented in the recent book, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.

If the use of slanted evidence and reasoning comes naturally to us as typical human beings, what can we do? Are we ethically responsible for presenting arguments in which the logical reasoning follows from our tendencies to overlook errors of fact or interpretation in order to win the day? Perhaps our ethical responsibility is to be aware of these error-inducing tendencies. As Portuguese philosopher Vasco Correia says, perhaps we need to strive to exercise argumentative self-control, or vigilance. This calls for systematically making the effort to consider alternatives to our reasoning and evidence. Ethical argumentation, in other words, lies in our commitment to exercising vigilance, especially when we feel strongly committed to our positions.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Today the world mourns the death of Nelson Mandela, the icon for freedom and justice not only in South Africa but also around the world. There is no doubt that his speeches and statements are recognized exemplars of what we mean by ethical public argument. Perhaps his most eloquent statement on freedom and justice is represented by the opening statement he made in his defense at the Rivonia trial in Pretoria, South Africa, on April 20, 1964. As the speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King at the “March on Washington” delivered a year earlier is remember by a single, ringing phrase—“I Have a Dream”—so is the speech by Nelson Mandela remembered for its final phrase: “I Am Prepared to Die.”

The white Nationalist Government of the Republic of South Africa had charged Mandela and seven others with sabotage and planning to overthrow the government. The defendants’ conviction led to the 27 years of imprisonment for Mandela and the others on Robben Island off Cape Town. The context for the trial was the formation of the organization, Umkontho we Sizwe (the “Spear of the Nation”), or MK for short, to initiate a campaign of sabotage against the infrastructure maintaining the Nationalist Party’s control of South Africa. Of course, the underlying context was that government’s policy known as Apartheid, begun in 1948 when the extremist white Nationalist party came to power (although official oppression of the African majority goes back to 1912 after the Afrikaners, or Boers, achieved power in the newly created Union of South Africa). The word means “separateness” in Afrikaans and its pronunciation, appropriately, is close to “Apart-hate.” After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress, or ANC, the major nationalist organization for majority democratic rule in South Africa, determined that nonviolence was not working, as the white government met any nonviolent protest or demonstration with violent repression.

The speech is lengthy and much of the first two-thirds is characterized by a carefully crafted rebuttal of the prosecution’s case: Mandela was, after all, an attorney. The arguments are noteworthy for their clarity and cogency. A major theme is that the African National Congress, founded in 1912, aims at the creation of a non-racial state, to be based on racial harmony. In addition, the ANC remains committed to non-violence, recalling the policy of the other famous lawyer who fought for justice in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi. The new organization, MK, was to remain separate from the ANC, although there would be overlap between memberships. The sabotage to be carried out by MK had to avoid causing loss of life—MK members performing operations were forbidden to carry weapons. The objective of MK was to make South Africa less attractive to foreign investors in order to bring economic pressure on the government.

Mandela also deals with two specific claims by the government that the conspirators aimed at fomenting guerilla warfare and the ANC and MK were essentially communist movements. Mandela does admit that the leadership of MK discussed the possibility of guerilla war down the road should all other efforts at influencing the current government of South Africa be ineffectual. Regarding the organizations’ cooperation with the Communist Party of South Africa, Mandela maintains that such cooperation was due to the fact that these organizations aimed at the first goal of ending Apartheid and bringing about a democratic government with an empowered African majority. He points out that in the recent World War II, the US and Great Britain allied with and cooperated with the Communist regime of the Soviet Union, yet no one suggested that Churchill and Roosevelt were therefore Communists.

This section of the speech leads into the concluding portion, which contains the most eloquent passages in defending the fight for justice and rights for the non-white population. Here Mandela contends,

“Our fight is against real and not imaginary hardships or, to use the language of the State Prosecutor, ‘so-called hardships’. Basically, My Lord, we fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation which we seek to have repealed. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity, and we do not need communists or so-called ‘agitators’ to teach us about these things.”

The problem is not that whites are rich and Africans are poor, but that the current government intends by legislation to make that situation permanent. It was official government policy to keep education for African people elementary and to keep Africans from obtaining skills for any occupation other than menial. He quotes the Afrikaner Minister for Education in 1954, who stated, “When I have control of Native Education I will reform it so that Natives will be taught from childhood to realise [sic] that equality with Europeans is not for them.” [“Natives” was the standard word used by the government for African people; “Bantu” being an alternative.]

Mandela recognizes that the whites in South Africa may well fear true democracy reasoning that they would be dominated by Africans, as they have dominated the non-whites. But, claims Mandela, “Political division, based on colour [sic] is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another.”

Mandela concludes his statement with a stirring call for freedom and justice:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Speech text: http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS010&txtstr=prepared%20to%20die

Sharpeville Massacre: http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960

Rivonia Trial: http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/rivonia-trial-1963-1964

See Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, 1994, especially Part Seven, “Rivonia.”

Bill Neher
Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

Several recent trends may appear to be related to the concerns of CEPA: the various proposals related to “Deliberative Democracy,” “Discursive Democracy,” “Deliberative Polling,” and “Deliberation Day,” among others.

Bruce Ackerman, in his recent book The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (Harvard University Press), spells out the proposal for a national holiday to be called “Deliberation Day.” The idea for this holiday was introduced earlier in a book Ackerman co-authored with James Fishkin in 2003 called simply Deliberation Day. This D-Day is to be observed in October every four years about two weeks before a presidential election. Citizens all over the country, who wish to participate, will convene in small, local groups (and later in the day in larger settings, such as in a local school or similar meeting place). The purpose of the group meetings is to provide for public education about and discussion of three or four major issues raised by the candidates of the major parties in the election campaign—hence the term, “deliberation.” The two major candidates will select the four topic issues in advance, and representatives of their parties will need to be on hand in the group meetings to take turns providing, in a structured manner, their candidate’s positions on those issues. There will be time for open discussion (deliberation) among the citizen groups, also in some kind of structured format with (it is hoped) impartial moderators.

Over about 15 years Fishkin has experimented with a process similar to Deliberation Day called “Deliberative Polls” or “Deliberative Polling.” This process brings together small groups of local citizens to deliberate about some local or state issue, followed by a poll among the participants regarding preference regarding the issue under discussion. For example, the Journal of Community Practice (article by Francis J. Schwigert) reports on such an event in Minnesota in 2010 concerned with proposals for financing highway upgrading following the collapse of the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis. In deliberative polling, the issues tend to be of this sort—relatively local and specific.

Clearly, Deliberation Day would be much broader and more complex than the deliberative polling events—by several orders of magnitude, one can argue. The “D-Day” would be national, involving potentially millions of participants, deliberating over several issues with national rather than local impact.

Concepts behind deliberative democracy go back to political and legal philosophies—such as those of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. There is not space here to develop these philosophies except in a very cursory manner. Rawls’ “thought experiment” for ethical organization of a state is based on an “Original Position” and a “Veil of Ignorance.” Under these conditions, participants debate the rules for an ideal state (the original position), but they are all ignorant concerning what their real-life statuses will be in this new state (the veil of ignorance). This is an idealized situation not intended to represent a real-life political discussion. Habermas, on the other hand, has proposed a system of decision-making for real-life issues involving argumentation among equally situated discussants whose goal is to reach agreement in a completely open yet structured way, an agreement mutually acceptable to all parties affected by the final decision. Participants must have completely free and equal access to the means of communicating with all other participants, and must have full knowledge, information, and training in presenting arguments. The closest to a real-life version of this sort of deliberation may have been the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in post-Apartheid South Africa and Rwanda after the 1994 massacres.

The general idea behind deliberative democracy goes back to the direct democracy as practiced in the assemblies of classical Greece over two thousand years ago, specifically the assembly in the city-state of Athens. The current form of this idea is best expressed by political sociologists, Hélène Landemore and Hugo Mercier, in a 2012 publication, who described it this way: “The argumentative theory of reasoning defines reasoning as a specific cognitive mechanism that aims at finding and evaluating reasons, so that individuals can convince other people and evaluate their arguments.” (The journal is Anàlise Social, Vol. 205, pages 910-934). It is believed that in the clash of arguments for and against a position, the truth, or at least the better conclusion, will emerge. This is the position upheld over a century before by John Stuart Mill in his short but famous book, On Liberty.

How would Deliberation Day work in practice? There are many obvious difficulties that would have to be overcome, of course. There is the question of adding another national holiday. In his recent revisions of the proposal, Ackerman has suggested moving the current Presidents’ Day holiday from February to the October date two weeks before the national election, to avoid adding another day for closing schools, banks, and state, federal, and local agencies, as well as businesses. The cost and organizational needs for setting up thousands of local citizen meetings, and finding enough moderators and party representatives for all those meetings represent other obstacles.

Critics of the proposed holiday have raised these kinds of practical questions. One could see, for example, the criticisms raised by Richard Posner, the highly respected judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and Senior Lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School. In the journal, Legal Affairs of January – February 2004, Posner is skeptical about the benefits of Deliberation Day in view of the costs, including the indirect costs of lost productivity over the nation. He is also skeptical about the proponents’ claim that undecided voters would be attracted to the event. Cass Sunstein, who was mentioned in the first CEPA blog, along with two colleagues in an article in the California Law Review in 2007 reported on a study of an effort to run an actual Deliberation Day. Because of geographic factors, participants in the local group meetings in the study tended to be homogenous in their political leanings (conservatives and liberals tend to be respectively concentrated in certain towns and neighborhoods). As a result of the discussions, conservatives became more conservative and liberals became more liberal—a result termed “group polarization,” similar to the well known phenomenon of “Groupthink.” Like-minded participants reinforce each other rather than broaden their perspectives.

CEPA intends to be concerned with public argumentation in all fields of endeavor, not just in politics. The ideas and proposals related to deliberative democracy and Deliberation Day may be germane to our concerns from time to time, however. It is therefore appropriate to have some familiarity with the concept. Readers are encouraged to follow up on the various sources noted in this entry for more information concerning this topic.

For more information on the proposals by Fishkin and Ackerman, check out the website of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, http://cdd.stanford.edu.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

The Wall Street Journal of June 17, 2013, featured a section labeled “Squaring Off,” covering six controversies in the field of health care in the United States. This section provides good examples of what we mean by “public argumentation” in CEPA. Some of the issues included were debates over whether hospitals residency programs should be expanded to increase the number of doctors, or whether nurse practitioners should be allowed to treat patients without a physician’s oversight.

As stated in the first blog entry of June 26, CEPA intends to look at arguments on a range of public issues, such as health and medicine. In addition to politics and government, some of these domains (but not all) might include the following:

Law (eminent domain; legal education)
Education (standardized testing; “common core”)
Science and Technology (fracking; renewal of space exploration)
Health and Medicine (immunizations; holistic medicine)
Economics, Business and Commerce (banking regulation; “too big to fail”)
Journalism and Mass Communication (economic control; bias)
Entertainment and Cultural Activities (censorship; public funding)

Of course, we must recognize that there can be a political element to each of these domains. The effects of different educational technologies, for example, can become a political issue when a local school board or state legislature is involved. A scientific question, such as causes and effects of global climate change, can certainly become politically charged. And, so on.

The relevant question for CEPA is how we can analyze the ethics of various arguments advanced in these fields and others. One of the first points at issue could be dealing with the claim that public controversies are about winning, especially for a “good cause.” A person could object to such a claim by saying that this “pragmatic” approach leads to a justification of winning at any cost. But, is that all right? Not always. We would not grant it is OK to use lying and deceitful tactics, at least let’s assume that for present purposes.

Let’s begin by approaching the question from a different direction: What would an unethical argument look like? The “unethical” implies something intentional: the speaker intends to “win the argument” by unfair means or by misleading listeners. Ethical issues come down to intent. The issue therefore could lie in different factors in the speaker or writer’s intent. For example, is an argument unethical if the position being advocated is itself “unethical” as an action or policy? Or, does the “ethics” of the matter reside in the evidence or data produced to support the argument itself? The third possibility could be that the advocate intentionally breaks a rule of argumentation (such as a logical fallacy)? Is the content, evidential support, or the form of the argument (or any or all of the three) what is unethical?

One of the health issues debated in the Wall Street Journal of June 17 could help to begin a clarification of these questions: the issue was whether or not Americans would be better off eating a mostly organic food diet. The advocate for an organic diet maintains people should avoid exposure to pesticides in food. Chengsheng (Alex) Lu, arguing this position, admits that there is no actual scientific evidence that an organic diet is healthier. But, he argues, “it only makes sense that food free of pesticides and chemicals is safer and better for us than food containing those substances, even at trace levels.” (Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2013, p. B3) Whether or not something “makes sense” is up to the individual. Something may make sense to one person but not another; this argument does not contain any actual evidence or factual support. It relies on the listener/reader to grant what cannot be proven in a scientific fashion. The conclusion, that the pesticides are harmful, then becomes a basis or assumption for trying to prove later contentions in Dr. Lu’s article. In other words, something not proven is taken as proof for other arguments. Although a specialist in argumentation would find this series of interlocking claims weak, it would not seem to be unethical. Why not? Dr. Lu makes several efforts to remind readers of the limitations on his conclusions, admitting that traditional foods are cheaper (usually), more widely available, and not definitely proven more harmful than organic foods. And, it is possible that the assertion about pesticides seemed conclusive to him even though no actual scientific data was introduced in support. An additional consideration is that in a publication such as a newspaper or magazine, or in a brief media spot, there is often not sufficient time or space to develop all the argument and evidence fully.

One lesson from this example is that the person who would be a consumer of public argument should be wary of this kind of reasoning: making an assumption and then using that assumption as evidence for later claims. A second lesson is that ethical advocates make clear to the reader or listener reservations about their arguments and evidence and conflicting evidence on the other side, as does Dr. Lu. In cases in which claims and support are presented as unqualified truths, one should maintain some skepticism toward the arguments.

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.

There is much to be desired in the nature of public argumentation today. Representative Nick Nolan of Minnesota, returned to Congress this year after a thirty-two year absence, is in a position to see how public argument has changed in Congress. He laments the lack of political cooperation to solve national problems and the extreme partisanship evident now in the House of Representatives. Because debate and argumentation are foundations of our democratic system and of our public life, these concerns are paramount in these times.

Our political institutions are only one of the public spheres witnessing a decline in civility and high-minded debate and discussion. This blog will focus on the ethics of public discourse broadly conceived and the hopes for improvement in this climate.

This blog represents the beginning of the initiative known as the Conference on Ethics and Public Argumentation (or CEPA) at Butler University. Housed in Butler’s College of Communication, CEPA promotes the ethical use of reasoning and rationality in public deliberation.

In launching this online forum two key terms need immediate explanation: “argument” (the basic activity of Argumentation) and “ethics.”

The first term can be defined quickly for our purposes. For CEPA an “argument” means a statement plus the reasons for that statement. Were the statement to be, “Cold fusion is possible,” then the argument would be completed by stating reasons in support of that statement to show that cold fusion is in fact possible (which is highly doubtful). To be clear, therefore, an “argument” is not a conversation in which two parties disagree about something — that is certainly one understanding of an “argument” as an activity, but not the meaning here. An “argument,” as we intend to use the term, is an extended piece of speech or writing in which one person or organization advances reasons — which would appear sound to a reasonable observer — for some conclusion. An argument in this sense always has two parts: the concluding statement (that which is to be claimed) and substantive reasons for that conclusion. Without the inclusion of reasons in the speech or writing, the discourse is not an argument, but merely a statement or an assertion (an unsupported claim).

The second key term,” ethics,” is more complicated — so complicated that we may spend weeks and probably much longer dealing with its meaning. Ethics is concerned with actions that may be judged right or wrong. Such judgment is based on a set of principles or rules. These principles themselves are derived from a larger set of shared values, rather than from idiosyncratic preferences and tastes of one person or just a few people. One making an ethical judgment is expected to refer to a widely accepted system of values and beliefs to justify the ethical nature of that judgment.

A further question is whether or not we can combine the adjective, “ethical,” with the noun “argument,” or “argumentation,” in a way that makes sense for contemporary speaking and writing. We are not necessarily concerned with successful argumentation — how to win a case, or how to win someone over to your side of an issue. Successful arguments (success defined here as “winning”) are not necessarily ethical, and ethical arguments are not necessarily successful. It is often true that there is a distinction between being ethical and being successful.

An additional term also in need of explanation is “public” in the phrase “public argumentation.” This term implies arguments made in a public forum or setting. The arguments — the claims and supporting reasons — are made with a public rather than a private purpose and intended for a broad audience.

This project is being launched ten years after the publication of the work of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community (convened by the then President of the University of Pennsylvania, Judith Rodin, currently President of the Rockefeller Foundation). The Commission’s work was in response to “concerns about the declining quality and effectiveness of discourse.” Over the past decade, things have apparently not gotten better. CEPA represents an effort to address these continuing concerns.

Over the next few months, this blog will deal with topics such as basic rules for making arguments and examples of issues taken from public life in America. The net will be cast more widely than politics and potentially partisan issues to look at professional fields such as business or commercial communication, education, environmental advocacy, journalism, public health, scientific inquiry, and so on (see the Mission Statement on the home page for this blog). For a quick example, a recent book, titled Nudge, by a social scientist, Richard Thaler, and a law professor, Cass Sunstein, intends to show that subtle framing of arguments can lead people to “Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” according to the book’s subtitle. (Sunstein is also the husband of Samantha Power, who was recently nominated by President Obama for Ambassador to the United Nations.) Are such “nudges” ethical if they bring about improvements in these areas or not if they lead to manipulations that could be misused in some quarters? How are such judgments to be made? What systems of values and rules for argumentation allow us to analyze this question?

William W. Neher

Bill Neher is professor emeritus of communication studies at Butler University, where he taught for 42 years. Over those years he has served as Dean of the University College, Director of the Honors Program, Head of the Department of Communication Studies, the Chair of the faculty governance, and most recently as the first Dean (Interim) for the new College of Communication begun in June 2010. He is the author of several books dealing with organizational and professional communication, ethics, and African studies, plus several public speaking and communication text books.