Abstract
Rhetoric is a foundational concern of the humanities. The art of rational persuasion has concerned humanists for centuries. This is particularly salient in an age where rational persuasion has taken second place to the influence of media of all sorts. That result is political polarization and embedded bias, all too familiar in political and social discourse. If we are to understand this, we must look towards a deep foundation into the construction of beliefs. This foundation, we will argue can be found in combining cognitive psychology, particularly the developing science of neuropsychology and its images of how human brains support cognition, with a biological perspective on semiotics, the idea of memes construed as the salience of symbolic communication. The paper considers the work of Antonio Damasio and Paul Thagard and Brandon Aubie whose models of the emotion, memory and belief draw upon current research into the neurological functions of the brain, combined with the revolutionary concept of Richard Dawkins’s idea of the meme as a parallel in human cultural evolution with the gene in biological evolution. Seeing memes as modifying the brains construction of memory and belief offers new insights into the role of intention and understanding in communication. The consequence for the analysis and evaluation of rhetoric is to move from the explicit content to the underlying structures that support rhetorically effective communication. Such a foundation moves the humanities towards a deeper appreciation of the role of scientific understanding of human thought and action.
Presenters
Mark WeinsteinProfessor, Educational Foundations, Montclair State University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Communications and Linguistic Studies
KEYWORDS
Rhetoric, Neuroscience, Memes, Belief, Persuasion
