The Design of Everyday Things

I’ve just finished Donald A. Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things. This is not my first time reading this book, nor my first time reviewing it. If you want to look at my original review, it’s here under the book’s original title, The Psychology of Everyday Things.

Aside from how interesting it is to see how my own thought process has changed over the years since I last read it, there are a lof of things worth discussing in Norman’s book. Principles that people should consider when designing anything, pointing out where design is that we don’t see it (obvious places, like doors or keyboards); Norman talks about all of it.

Epideictic Rhetoric

So I’m trying to get a better understanding of epideictic rhetoric. My adviser holds the opinion that the way Aristotle presents this type of rhetoric basically dooms it to obscurity, that his example is wrong for what this rhetoric really is and what it’s used for.

My job is to prove him wrong. To construct an argument such that Aristotle’s example, the funeral oration, is the perfect example of how epideictic rhetoric is meant to be used.

Trouble is, I think he’s right. But a good rhetorician can argue either side, and make the weaker argument seem stronger, as the sophists would say. (Though I should note that making the weaker argument seem stronger does not mean that it seems like the stronger argument; just that it is stronger than it was. Basically, I take this particular point of contention in rhetorical history as suggesting that good rhetoric gives the opposition the benefit of the doubt. Ed Schiappa writes a lot of great stuff about the fragment of Protagorus this is all based on.)

Anyway, Aristotle. I’m looking here at On Rhetoric, the Kennedy translation,so all quotes will be from there.

Why I don’t like the term “Rough Draft”

I mentioned this a while ago, but nothing I ever write is ‘rough.’ Not even this post. Even though I’m writing it as I come up with what I want to say, I still won’t call it rough. One way to read what I’m saying is to think that I’m suggesting that everything I write, every sentence I construct, comes out of my brain perfect and without the need for revision. A lot of students think like that. I’m not one of them.

In Amadeus, part of the demonstration of what a genius Mozart was is that his compositions are without editing marks, coming out of his head fully formed and beautiful. We all wish we were geniuses like that. I know I do. But I also know I’m not that smart, not that kind of genius.

But still, nothing I write is ‘rough.’ I hate that term. I think my hatred started in high school, when I had to include a rough draft when handing something in.

It’s not that the idea behind the requirement was bad; the purpose was to teach rewriting, which is a great and important skill. But the language hurts the idea.

How do you write an academic paper?

I wish I could say that someone had asked me this question, expecting that I would somehow be an authority on it. But that’s just not true. The truth is, I was wondering about the way I write papers, and how that’s changed over time.

When I was in high school, the one time I had to do a research paper, I had all my sources next to me while I wrote, and just wrote it all out, turning to sources to find quotes or whatever. It was a halting process, but it worked.

When I started college, I did the same thing, but I did go through the sources and highlight things first. It saved time.

As I graduated college, I wrote the paper first, without quotes, putting together the ‘prose’ of it all. Then I would go back through and put in the quotes where they fit, filling in transitions and whatnot where appropriate.

And then began graduate school.

On Paradox, Liars, and Revenge

I am looking at three articles right now. The first two both come from The Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox, edited by JC Beall. The third is from an upcoming issue of Studia Logica. I’ll get to that. First, though, I want to talk about “Embracing Revenge: On the Indefinite Extendability of Language” by Roy T. Cook.

All three of these articles about the Liar and the Revenge problems. In case anyone is unclear, the Liar is a famous paradox in semantics. You’ve probably heard it before: “This sentence is false.” If it’s true, then it’s false. But if it’s false, then it’s true. So it’s a contradiction however you look at it; a paradox. The Revenge is a response to an attempt to solve this paradox. Revenge, as Cook writes it, works like this: “Given any account that purports to deal adequately with a particular paradox, that account will rely on concepts… which, if allowed into the object language, generate new paradoxes that cannot be dissolved by the account in question” (33). So basically, whatever you do to solve the Liar, there is another, stronger Liar that your solution can’t defeat.

On Truth and Self Reference: A Return to the Realms of Philosophy

I started a philosophy class, and immediately got sick, so I missed the second class. However, in a very interesting attendance policy, I was required to write a paper about the readings we discussed the day I was absent. As I was writing it, I figured it would help to post it here. So here are my thoughts on paradox and self reference:

John Dewey: The Public and its Problems (1-4)

This semester, I am taking a course about Habermas and the public sphere. As part of that, I’m reading Dewey’s book. So far (about 2/3 of the way through it). It’s an interesting book, some very cool ideas about what the public is, what the state is, and how/whether democracy works.

Teaching Style, by Edward P.J. Corbett

I just finished reading Corbett’s article, published in  Style in Rhetoric and Composition (a critical sourcebook) edited by Paul Butler. The article seems to be mostly about why students are unable to analyze style, along with a few suggestions of ways to do it.

What’s interesting is that Corbett seems to believe that the reason students are unable to analyze style is as simple as just not realizing that they can do it. That students don’t quite understand what style is, seeing it “represented as a curious blend of the idiosyncratic and the conventional” (210). He seems to think that students don’t understand style mostly because teachers don’t know how to teach it.

The Question that keeps on asking

I remember when I was a little kid. People used to ask me the same question they ask every kid. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to tell them the same thing (Writer or teacher), but as time went on, the question became more serious. No more smiles when the question asked, no more glazed look in the eyes while listening to my answer. No more promise that I’ll be able to do whatever I want. If I said “Writer,” I’d get “You better have something to fall back on.” And when I said “Teacher” I’d get a follow up question about what I’d want to teach.

I got older still, and now the people asking me were either teachers themselves, or guidance counselors and advisers of some kind. I had to pick a major, after all. Then graduation was coming, and I had to figure out what I was doing after graduation. Then graduate school started, and I needed a topic for my Master’s thesis.

It’s a question that keeps on asking. It keeps coming up. What do I want to be when I grow up?

Recently, it’s started asking itself again.

On the Ideal Orator and the way I straddle the void

Primarily, I am here today to write about Cicero, about the first 100 pages of De Oratore. But thinking about Cicero makes me think about my own past. About the void, the separation, between rhetoric and philosophy. Now, I do rhetoric. In college and my first Master’s degree, I did philosophy. So I straddle the void.