In his recent article, "Why Liberal Religious Arguments Fail," Peter Laarman argues that it is not argumentation that changes people's minds but stories that change people's hearts. He suggests that endless argumentation is pointless because "hearts change before minds do. It rarely works the other way around." This is not a new position by any means. Rhetoricians have been making this claim for thousands of years. An argument should be constructed "to teach, to please, and to move" as Cicero stated. The issue here is how Laarman is making his point and framing his own argument.
I consider Laarman here to have adopted what Walter Fisher calls the narrative paradigm, and he further makes the assumption that we are meaning-making, story-telling animals, which is all correct. What he fails to do is make a more important connection to argumentative style. There are many different styles of argument, and Laarman lumps them all into one category and casually dismisses them...seemingly in the name of both religion and science. This is not inherently a weak position to take since stories are powerful persuasive tools, but many take this position while making certain other assumptions that are problematic.
Laarman suggests that endless argument gets us nowhere and that we don't even argue to find clarity. He suggests that it's all a win/lose scenario played out for the benefit of our own egos. I agree that this is often the case in our society. However, his own position is quite muddled. Most notably, he argues in the same paragraph that argumentation is an irrational "kink" in truth-seeking while at the same time lauding the defenders of rationality Rawls and Habermas as bastions of "small-scale forums." While this characterization of these two authors is somewhat accurate, it is certainly inconsistent with Laarman's own viewpoint since it is unlikely Rawls or Habermas would put much stock in either religion or story-telling.
The main issue is that Laarman is critiquing only a Western Greco-Roman form of argumentation that does prize a win/lose scenario; an honor/shame system. As we see from the sophistic tradition it is indeed true that humans will often fabricate information to win their case, and we have become quite good at it. On the other hand, argumentation in the more non-Western Jewish and even Eastern rhetorical tradition does not seek winners or losers. Flying directly in the face of Laarman's own argument, the endless argumentation within the Rabbinic tradition, for example, is supposed to bring clarity and, more importantly, wisdom. It will not bring it immediately, but the point is not to possess clarity. It is to keep the conversation open and moving towards a deeper wisdom about the reality of the situation.
I do realize that Laarman is operating within a Western argumentation paradigm, so I will move on. What he actually seems to be suggesting is not that we do away with argumentation outright but that we argue through stories. What he is suggesting is that we steer clear of making our arguments with cold hard facts and temper those with personal anecdotes. Here is where Laarman gets it right. As with Aristotle, Laarman suggests that emotion (pathos) champions logic (logos), which is what many rhetoricians and almost all sophists stated. The problem, however, is not logic, especially since logos is much more closely related to pathos than most people assume. The problem is that we no longer know how to argue. Although we may argue all the time, as Laarman offers, we don't necessarily know how to argue effectively or construct a well-reasoned, well-balanced argument.
The real crux of the issue, then, is that verbal back and forth is not necessarily arguing, which is why it is often unhelpful as Laarman suggests. It passes as arguing, e.g., in political discourse. It may even look like arguing, but it's likely not anything close. Shouting at each other isn't arguing, and neither is presenting a poorly constructed "argument," which leads to endless disagreement and dissatisfaction with a certain issue being addressed. The problem is that these "liberal religious arguments" are passing for arguments when they're actually just an amalgamation of words with facts thrown in to present the appearance of an argument. Yet, it takes skill to craft an argument. It takes the right balance of facts with anecdotes and examples. People's hearts may change before their minds, but their minds are certainly a large part of the equation. Perhaps what is no longer necessary is not argumentation but what is passing as an argument. What is no longer necessary is the appearance of a well-constructed argument that is actually, as Laarman suggests, a complete and utter failure.
