How Do You Decide Who’s Right?
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One of the ways the Greek rhetors of old used to classify arguments was under the headings of ethos, pathos, and logos.1 Ethos referred to character and credibility: arguments appealing to one’s reputation, standing, experience, expertise, and trustworthiness. 2 Pathos referred to longings, drives, appetites—and what we today call emotions. Logos had to do mainly with facts and reasoning.
Those skilled in rhetoric were able to use all three in the work of persuasion, emphasizing one or the other depending on the situation.
The three categories of rhetorical argument also work pretty well for analyzing how we tend to approach conflicting views—and how we decide who’s right. In turn, that can help us better understand one another and better discipline our own thinking toward wise discernment.
A Default Thinking Style
As I’ve struggled to understand why many of my conservative Christian brethren see things the way they do on various hot topics of the day, I’ve come to believe that many of today’s conflicts—over medical science, vaccination, government health orders and suspected stolen elections—are not all that different from controversies I found myself embroiled in decades ago. In these past conflicts (over dress standards, music styles, Bible translations, etc.) and also in current ones, people do a whole lot of not understanding each other, talking past each other, and arguing in circles.
Sometimes it’s because a commitment to mutual respect and truth-seeking has taken a back seat to emotional venting and one-upmanship. But I’ve been involved in plenty of extended discussions and debates with individuals who are calm and respectful but can’t seem to even see my arguments. My case seems to be invisible. I think I’m seeing their arguments, but maybe it goes both ways and I’m really not?
One thing is quite clear to me: Sometimes it comes down to fundamentally different approaches to deciding what’s true. In a way, we’re trying to play a game together, but I’m playing ping-pong and they’re playing badminton (or maybe it’s ping-pong and dodge ball!). They often seem to be trying to engage with me in logos, when what really drives them is ethos or pathos. We may be using the same equipment and playing field, but we’re playing different games.
So I have a theory.
What if each of us has a default approach to deciding who’s right when we meet with conflicting claims? We could call this default thinking style or default concluding style. I’m tempted to go a bit deeper and call it epistemological orientation. Here’s the idea in a nutshell:
- Ethos: relies primarily and instinctively on the perceived trustworthiness of the source or perceived connectedness to the source; decides what’s true based mostly on who says so.
- Pathos: relies primarily and instinctively on an intuitive sense of trueness; decides what’s true based mostly on how the options feel.
- Logos: relies primarily and instinctively on available facts and sound reasoning; decides what’s true based mostly on logic.
Clarifications
I’m not really into rigid taxonomies when it comes to humans, whether we’re talking about Meyers-Briggs, the Four Temperaments, the Five Love Languages, or the latest fad, Enneagrams. So I’m not suggesting here some kind of explains-everything pigeon-holing approach to understanding why people have the opinions they do.
Certainly we all rely on “who says so” for quite a few things in life. As Christians, the very foundation of everything else we believe is “the Bible says.” But even our faith in the absolute trueness of God’s word to us is linked with both pathos and logos. The will and affections, spiritual state, and grammatical reasoning are all linked with the ethos of “God said it; I believe it; that settles it.”
So we’re all a mix, and that’s as it should be.
- We’re humans, not wild beasts (all pathos).
- We’re humans, not machines (all logos).
- We’re humans, not mere limbs or organs of our group/a trusted authority (all ethos).
That said, some people I know well definitely lean very heavily on ethos, and they never find my facts and logic very persuasive—except perhaps in service to the question, “Who should I trust?”
Others I know well rarely engage in consciously structured thought at all. That is, their deciding process is heavily intuitive, and they consistently struggle to identify reasons for strong opinions. When they do engage in dialog on a question, the reasoning is always self-contradictory, because it’s superficial. The real decision is made in a mysterious, unexaminable place, intuitively.
Because my style is logos, I find the pathos orientation most frustrating. I’ve often become judgmental. But the truth is that these folks are not necessarily undisciplined, lazy, impulsive, or random. There is sometimes a kind of rigor in their thought process, because deep commitments are included in their intuiting—and those can overrule other feelings and instincts.
Similarly, the ethos-oriented people aren’t always just delegating their thinking. They often evaluate sources by criteria, and use reason to decide who’s trustworthy.
And us logos-oriented folks don’t necessarily correctly identify facts or engage in sound reasoning, though that’s what we lean on as our approach to knowing truth.
Blessedly, in all of us, logic sometimes tempers excessive trust in a leader or group or in misguided feelings. The wisdom of elders or experts challenges our inner truth-sense or our logic. Relationships and stories stir our hearts to challenge cold logic or passive trust in authorities. In these ways, ethos, pathos, and logos—as thinking styles—check and balance one another.
So what, then?
If I’m right that we each have a style of knowing/deciding that tends to be our default, we each have a set of strengths and weaknesses that go with that. We do well to face these, leverage the strengths, and try to mitigate the weaknesses. We’re all called to glorify God by thinking, desiring, and acting in ways that please Him.
It’s not necessarily true that these three styles are equally good. In a particular culture, one or the other might be far overvalued and over-used and another neglected, with the result that what seems balanced is, in fact, privileging emotion or logic or group identity. Also, the Bible gives us unique insight into the nature of truth and the nature of human passions. These principles have huge implications for “how we decide who’s right.”
For reasons I might write about in the future, I tend to see logos as superior, on the whole. But, as an analytical type, I have to admit to a conflict of interest on that point. All that can be said with confidence is that a proper balance of ethos, pathos, and logos is necessary and good.
Meanwhile, I could stand to exercise a bit more patience and respect toward those whose approach to drawing conclusions is fundamentally different from my own. Couldn’t we all? Sometimes it’s a really difficult thing to do! It helps to remember what a mixed bag we all are, even at our best. We might think clearly but not for good purposes. We might think chaotically with noble intentions.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (ESV, Psalm 19:14)
Notes
1 See, e.g., “Classical Argument.” Some include kairos as a fourth type, but kairos is really a quality of each of the other three when used well: A word spoken “in due season” (Prov. 15:23).
2 Because these categories overlap, views vary on the scope and focus of each in rhetoric. It’s common to see ethos defined much more broadly to include all ethical arguments. But when these arguments move away from the character of persons and groups involved, they quickly become nothing more than logical arguments using ethical premises. So I use ethos more narrowly.
Aaron Blumer 2016 Bio
Aaron Blumer is a Michigan native and graduate of Bob Jones University and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He and his family live in small-town western Wisconsin, not far from where he pastored for thirteen years. In his full time job, he is content manager for a law-enforcement digital library service. (Views expressed are the author's own and not his employer's, church's, etc.)
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The language of Rom 14 is interesting here. Paul says something like “let each be fully persuaded in his own mind.” In other contexts, many of them, he is not content to be persuaded in his own mind and expends a lot of energy trying to persuade other people also.
There’s room for both, but isn’t it true that we can be sure in our own mind and simultaneously recognize that, objectively, the situation is only “very likely”? (I get that “objectively” is something we never really achieve, but we can do analytical distance and sort of approximate it to a degree.)
I do have a file, so to speak of things I’m “fully persuaded in my own mind” about, but when I back off an imagine it in the text of overall evidence, sure, it’s only really “very likely” from that perspective. … the tab on this file folder is a bit crowded: “Fully Persuaded within but Objectively Only Pretty Sure” :-)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Aaron Blumer]The language of Rom 14 is interesting here. Paul says something like “let each be fully persuaded in his own mind.” In other contexts, many of them, he is not content to be persuaded in his own mind and expends a lot of energy trying to persuade other people also.
In what things was Paul persuading others? I think if we made a list we would find Paul persuaded others in things that none of us would see as being difficult topics. I doubt Paul was persuading others on pre/post/pan/a-millennialism, The Kingdom, various nuances regarding divorce and/or remarriage, church membership, Daniel’s 70 weeks, or Jephthah’s vow - if he were, we wouldn’t be debating them still today (unless God gave him special revelation that was not included in the canon of scripture).
I agree that a person can be sure in his own mind, but I believe trying to persuading others of our own conclusions on matters that are reasonably unclear is dangerous - and, possibly, even sinful.
Ashamed of Jesus! of that Friend On whom for heaven my hopes depend! It must not be! be this my shame, That I no more revere His name. -Joseph Grigg (1720-1768)
Dave Barnhart wrote:
What you express here is a large part of the problem. Like Aaron, I’m also mostly a logos-oriented person. However, to discuss and argue about facts means being sure of the facts. When anyone uses “facts” that may or may not be facts, then all of a sudden, ethos (as defined above) comes into play. Which sources do I trust to help me determine the facts?
Can I trust something touted as a fact by experts I know, or Fox, CNN, Snopes, Politifact (which ironically has the nerve to have “fact” as part of the name) or any of the many others out there? As one example, these days even the WHO or the CDC can be suspect, let alone overtly political sources. Since none of us can know all the facts, we have to decide which sources to trust, how far, and in which context.
This is indeed a real issue. …or, at least, it’s the purported issue among many, when “hot-button” political issues, in particular, come into play.
“Can I trust something touted as a fact?” I think that needs to be separated out, as to me there are two distinct parts to this.
1) There are such things as facts. Let’s forget for a moment that all people may at any particular moment “tout” something as a fact when it isn’t: Perhaps they have accepted it as a fact because it was said by someone they “trust”; perhaps it was stated by someone in “their tribe” and they assume it is true; perhaps they haven’t checked it out and verified it; perhaps they are simply lying.
There are facts, and there are no “alternative facts”. As such, facts actually can be agreed upon — if people take the time to establish them; but they don’t.
2) It’s the interpretation of the facts where people disagree; the analysis; the opinions, biases, and blind-spots of those explaining them; the significance they are given; the way they are brought to the forefront and made a focal point at the expense of other facts, which may be unknown, suppressed, hidden, overlooked, or forgotten.
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Number 1 is all about Logos. But Ethos and Pathos quickly come into play with #2, to such a degree these days, that anything that is said by certain people, or people in certain camps, is immediately dismissed as non-factual. “Fake”, “Propaganda”, “Lies”, etc. This is extremely sad; and I think, an indictment on proper dialog as it should be conducted by those who call themselves Christians (by which, for example, we might extend others some benefit of the doubt on occasion — even if they are Democrats.)
I read all sorts of comments on all sorts of articles from all sorts of sources, and I am often struck by conservative and purportedly “Christian” commenters who respond, “fake news”, etc., and immediately condemn the article — usually due to its source.
Yet (and this is more to the point of those who worry about an overload of information), there is rarely an overload of information that would make it impossible to ascertain a set of facts one way or the other, when it gets right down to it. In any given article, there may be but 2 or 3 salient facts upon which the whole thing hinges. And even in the whole issue/episode that is being reported upon, I don’t know that the facts would truly overwhelm us… the facts, as “touted”, are often relatively simple. For example: either so-and-so said thus and such, or they didn’t. Either a medical study was carried out rigorously by widely accepted standards (“double-blind”, or what have you), and has published the standards used, within the study, or it wasn’t.
Can an article be dismissed as “fake news” when it quotes so-and-so, and there is video evidence provided? No. But, we may of course, quibble with the analysis about its significance, to our heart’s content.
My concern, is that those who regularly cry “fake news” about anything originating from outside their own pre-selected echo-chamber, are actually often declaring facts to be non-facts, and entertaining all sorts of contra-factual fantasies as factual — due to their own “trusted” sources. It’s a kind of knee-jerk reaction that doesn’t really attempt to deal with facts.
The “remedy”, if there is one, may be something to do with learning to distinguish between, on the one hand, a) what is purported to be a factual statement that can be established through some kind of verification that reasonable people would agree upon; and b) what is merely an opinion, or — better than an opinion — an analysis of a set of facts that draws a conclusion. Yet, there are numerous studies that show that people have trouble picking out statements and opinions and conclusions from a piece of writing. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t be that high of a bar to clear most of the time; unless we let tribalism put too much weight on ethos and pathos.
I would tend to argue that the salient facts are, in most cases, relatively few and fairly easy to ascertain one way or the other. However, I acknowledge that does involve a degree of trust since we can’t track down every one ourselves. For my part, I do, like you, use some basic pathos — having done some basic checking for corroboration and sensing the way a story was handled from different angles, how thoroughly it was investigated (or not investigated), etc.
If we’ve given some consideration to the facts, and after that we decide not to rehash all the reasoning from every side or re-establish facts, every time the topic comes up, then well and good. We shouldn’t have to. But that’s different than ascribing “Fake News” to something we disagree with, just because; which is far too prevalent these days, with “overload” and “mainstream media” cited as reasons to justify conclusions that are reached purely through ethos or pathos.
I think if we made a list we would find Paul persuaded others in things that none of us would see as being difficult topics.
Most of the epistles consist of Paul persuading churches to change their thinking and conduct on various points. Some of it is reviewing familiar truths. Galatians is one of the more obvious examples, because it’s so focused on persuading the church at Galatia (and all others by extension) of where the Mosaic covenant law fits into God’s plans for His people Israel and His people the church—and also of the truth of his own authenticity as an apostle.
I’m not sure what you mean by “difficult” in this context, but these truths are difficult enough that thousands of years later, many still don’t understand.
On how do you identify the facts with confidence…
It’s not all a question of the ethos of the sources. Not by a long shot. One way you can tell what are “very likely facts,” is to see what the opposing sides agree on. There are usually a few points there. But by ‘opposing sides,’ I mean serious/sane opposing sides. If you look at everybody for and everybody against, and list agreed upon items of fact, the list will get smaller the further you get out to the extremes until you’re at zero, or pretty close. It’s probably a solid principle that the more extreme a point of view is, the freer its advocates will feel to make up their own facts or reject facts that they don’t like—or that are just difficult.
Thoughtful opposing positions are going have enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge at least some of the facts that aren’t convenient. If they’re interested in being winsome and understand how that works, they’re going to want to anticipate objections and deal effectively with them—which includes the facts that are harder to explain. If they’re only trying to rev up those who already agree with them, or get into their wallets, they won’t care about such things.
So ethos is still a factor there, but it’s more a matter of process: who asserts A? who insists on not-A? What points of fact do they both accept? A whole lot of the time the rest is looking at reasoning, because errors of reasoning are far more common, in my experience, than errors of fact.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
A bit more on the “more extreme = more nonfactual” pattern. I’ve noted already that when trying to identify facts, looking at opposing views clustered near the middle and seeing where their fact-claims match is a key piece.
I wanted to add a bit on distinguishing between thoughtful/middle vs. fringe/extreme sources. Some factors:
- Integrity of rigor: better/nonextreme sources tend to show internal signs of rigor: well documented sources, methodology, evidence of having researched the history well, evidence of awareness of opposing views and the reasoning behind them
- Integrity of tone: sources that are more evenly toned—more calm and reasoned—are more likely to get their facts straight vs. emotional rants or lots of hyperbole or other signs of drama. (If we’re honest, we all know that when we’re emotionally worked up, facts are one of the first things to go out the window.) Look for analytical distance (aka “objectivity”).
- Internal consistency: if it’s full of logical contradictions or fact-claim contradictions, you can’t really count on any of their “facts” being reliable.
- Integrity of reputation: there are sources that are widely respected even by many (though never all) of their ideological enemies. That’s increasingly rare these days, but it still happens.
- Verifiability: facts that are referenced to public sources, normally collected by people who don’t do politics for a living or by bi-partisan/nonpartisan teams, are usually real facts. Some of them are clearly facts, as when, for example, a newspaper claims a leader said X during court testimony, you can look at the court documents. If it’s there, it’s a fact. Not that anything is “infallible,” but the probability of meaningful error is very low (again, because people on both sides have agreed that this is what was said.)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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