Overview of This Unit

2. Overview of This Unit • Verbal Strategies of Supportiveness and Defensiveness • Why Argue About Pointless Matters? • Why do we Misunderstand?

3. Evaluation Control Strategy Neutrality Certain Superiority Description Problem Solving Spontaneity Empathy Provisional Equality Defensiveness and Supportiveness

4. Overview of This Unit • Verbal Strategies of Supportiveness and Defensiveness • Why Argue About Pointless Matters? • Why do we Misunderstand?

5. Factual v. Verbal Disputes • Factual disputes involve propositions about facts and are settled only by getting more factual information • example: Dave: Lincoln was born in Indiana. I learned that in the third grade. Carl: No, he wasn’t. He was born in Kentucky. I says so in my college textbook.

6. Factual Dispute Examples • that two Soviet cosmonauts died in outer space in 1965 • that John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald • that the plurality of scientists has the aquarian astrological sign

7. Verbal Disputes • Verbal disputes involve statements that people think involve controversies over objects named by their words, when they really involve arguments about the words themselves • Cannot be resolved by investigating facts

8. Statements that Involve Verbal Disputes • Analytic statements, tautologies, and definitions: the meanings for words • Contradictions, paradoxes, and oxymorons • Attitude axioms • Metaphysical statements

9. Analytic Statements, Tautologies, and Definitions the meanings for words

10. Analytic Statements, Tautologies, and Definitions statements that assert that one term may be substituted for another the meanings for words

11. Analytic, Definition, and Tautology Proposition Examples • Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain • A yard is three feet long • The law is the law • All bachelors are unmarried

12. Standard for Verbal Disputes If no sense experience could verify or falsify a statement, then it is simply not about the world we experience with our five senses

13. Contradictions, Paradoxes, and Oxymorons • Contradiction: a statement that always must be false • Oxymoron: a contradiction in terms • Paradox: a statement that declares itself in contradiction

14. Contradictions and Oxymorons statements that must be false due to their very construction a noisy quiet fresh frozen jumbo shrimp anti-abortion protestors original copy

15. Paradoxes The statement in this square is false

16. Paradoxes Paradox of the Barber The statement in this square is false

17. Attitude Axioms statements that reveal how the speaker feels about things Example: The worst day of fishing is better than the best day of work I love what you do for me--Toyota

18. Metaphysical Statements • Statements about things that cannot be observed in this life • Examples: There is a God in heaven There is life after death There are seven astral planes The Jones house is haunted

19. Some Examples: Verbal or Factual? • Bigfoot exists • My Grandmother is in heaven. • All humans are born equal. • God created Himself. • “Nothing ever dies. Science tells us that. Nothing ever dies, it just changes form.” -- Shirley MacLaine • Abortion kills babies. • A: “The human embryo, even at the age of 14 days, has developed fingers and toes. My philosophy teacher told me that.”B: “That’s not true. At that point the embryo doesn’t even have limbs. You can look that up in any competent biology textbook.”

20. Overview of This Unit • Verbal Strategies of Self Disclosure • Overcoming Superstitions About Language • Why Argue About Pointless Matters? • Why do we Misunderstand?

21. Why Are There Misunderstandings? We forget that: 1. Language creates a social reality Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

22. We forget that: 2. Language is, by its very nature, incomplete the hazy claim ungrammatical incompleteness the incomplete comparison the non exclusive claim weasel words

23. We forget that: 3. Language reflects culture

24. Take a Break! We will resume in 10 minutes