Keeping with the theme of the Humanities’ potential to provide insights for the cognitive sciences, I offer this bit from my reading today, taken from Michael Billig’s “Psychology, Rhetoric, and Cognition” (The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences. Ed. R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good. Charlottesville: U P of Virginia, 1993. 119-136):

When rhetoricians argued about such a case as that of Epaminondas, they did not merely use the grammatical syntax of negation to oppose the counter-view. They may have used the identifiable proposition forms of negation — counterposing propositions of quantity to those of quality — but their arguments would have contained content as well as form. They argued about ideas, values, and character as they discussed over and over again what it meant to be a hero or a criminal, and whether Epaminondas’ character was such that a special case should be made for him. The important point, stressed by the textbooks of rhetoric, was that speakers might have to invent the particular arguments to be used on the rhetorical occasion, but they did not have to invent the basic materials from which these speeches where constructed. Thus the individual speaker does not invent the values (perhaps of heroism or of obedience to the law) to which an appeal is to be made. Instead the speaker draws upon the value-laden vocabularies which are shared with the audience. To use the old rhetorical term, the speaker will use ‘commonplaces’ in a discourse. In so doing, the speaker appeals to, and speaks within, the sensus communis, or the sense which is commonly shared.

There is an application from this rhetorical perspective concerning the nature of common sense or ideology. The basic oratorical situation is one in which two opposing speakers are making opposite cases, while attempting to appeal to the same audience. If both speakers are drawing upon the same common sense, or sensus communis, which is shared by the audience, then this common sense itself must contain contrary themes, or contrary commonplaces. In this way, the rhetorical perspective suggests that common sense or ideology is not, as is supposed in some sociological accounts, a unitary block, rather like a giant schema, which is imposed on the stimulus world and which acts to prevent thought. Instead, common sense will be dilemmatic, in that it contains contrary themes and commonplaces, and these [page break] will ensure that members of the community have the resources to think and argue about their social worlds.

The rhetorical textbooks illustrated this dilemmatic quality of common sense, when they provided lists of commonplaces to help the unimaginative orator. For example, Rhetorica Ad Herennium, the Roman textbook which was so popular during the Middle Ages, provided the sort of stock phrases which might be used to add colour to speeches. The point is that commonplaces could be provided for both sides: the prosecutor could be provided with the commonplaces about justice, while the defense was offered those concerning mercy. The fact that the audience would be expected to approve in the mercy, ensures that there would be much to argue about if speakers could bring these commonplaces into rhetorical collision. Francis Bacon included in his Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning a list of proverbs, arranged to show that for each proverb an opposing one could be found. In the nineteenth century, Bacon’s list was reproduced by Bishop Whately as an appendix to his textbook Elements of Rhetoric. In modern times the maxims of common sense likewise can be shown to have this antithetical character: “Many hands make light work” can be contrasted with “Too many cooks spoil the broth”; “look before you leap” with “Nothing ventured nothing gained”, etc. Moreover, the same people will accept the reasonableness of such competing maxims, without feeling impelled by some internal dissonance-reducing force to choose between the many hands or the few cooks. Social psychology textbooks sometimes cite these opposing pairs in their introductory chapters to show the “confusions” of common sense and to hold competing truths of the many hands lightening the work or the multiplicity of cooks spoiling the broth. However, from the rhetorical perspective, such contradictions are note considered to be matters in desperate need of resolution, but are part of the resources which enable common sense thinking. Moreover, such thinking would not be possible if common sense did not possess a dilemmatic, potentially argumentative structure, and it is this which permits the existence of what Moscovici refers to as “the thinking society”. (126-27)