Winning Arguments

What Works and Doesn’t Work in Politics, the

Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom
Stanley Fish
Harper © 2016
224 pages
[@] getab.li/27067
Book:

Rating Take-Aways

9
9 Applicability • Argument pervades life. Argument, not agreement, is humanity’s natural path. You
can’t escape it no matter how hard you try, so you might as well learn to master it.
9 Innovation
8 Style • Words have immense power. They can maim, hurt, and tear people and nations apart.
• People naturally will argue, but without resolution, since “old arguments never die; they
just get recycled.”
 
Focus • Resisting arguing takes monumental – often impossible – effort.

• Since you must argue, becoming more skilled in argument and rhetoric makes sense.
Leadership & Management
Strategy • Argument determines facts – not the other way around, especially in politics.
Sales & Marketing
• Arguments come in four categories with varying limits and boundaries: “Political
Finance arguments” and “domestic arguments” have no rules; people say anything.
Human Resources
IT, Production & Logistics • “Legal arguments” have written rules and boundaries. “Academic arguments” have
mostly unwritten rules but, in some cases, do have firm boundaries.
Career & Self-Development
Small Business • Skilled debaters – writers, orators and artists, for instance – move arguments beyond the
Economics & Politics boundaries meant to contain them.
Industries
• “Argumentation” exists everywhere and in everything: words, gestures, body language,
Global Business images, clothes, furniture, and more.
Concepts & Trends

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getabstract

getabstract
Relevance
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What You Will Learn
In this summary, you will learn:r1) Why argument, not agreement, is the natural state of humanity; and 2) What types
of arguments emerge in politics, law, marriage and academia.
getabstract
Review
Don’t expect to learn how to win arguments by reading law professor Stanley Fish’s treatise. His main premise is that
arguments pervade every aspect of life, never truly end and, therefore, cannot have a victor – at least, not a permanent
victor. If you accept the certainty of argument and embrace it as all encompassing, you have clear motivation to get
better at “argumentation.” At the least, you might learn to avoid the most fruitless of all arguments – those with
your partner or spouse. Fish writes more about the philosophy of argument than practical techniques, but if the way
discourse unfolds intrigues you, getAbstract – while always politically neutral – thinks you’ll enjoy his compelling
exploration of why and how people disagree.
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getabstract
Summary
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The Natural State of Argument
People may strive to get along and cooperate but, eventually, argument prevails. Even when
parties reach a resolution, their agreement rarely lasts. International agreements, peace
accords, trade deals and other covenants, no matter how solemnly undertaken, exist only
until one of the parties sees an opportunity to get more of what it wants. Small differences
grow into large ones. Human beings never reach a state of “universal agreement”; conflict
getabstract is the normal state of being.
“Conflict, not
agreement, is the
default condition of You can’t avoid argument, so you might as well master it. Learn the art and techniques of
mortality.” rhetoric – the manipulation of words and appeals – as well as when, where and how to use
getabstract
them. Such knowledge gives you awesome power, far stronger than “sticks and stones,”
tanks or missiles. Rhetoric and argument lie at the foundations of democracy, the rule of
law and the heart of war. Words and arguments don’t merely hurt; they can tear a person
in two and destroy worlds.

In John Milton’s Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost, Satan convinces Eve to eat the forbidden
fruit by first sowing a smidgen of doubt in her mind about what God really meant when
he warned her and Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Satan eventually makes
Eve believe that God actually wants her and Adam to eat the fruit to prove they have minds
getabstract of their own. Eve was lost the minute she listened to Satan – that master of rhetoric – and
“Knowledge, even the Devil knew it.
deep knowledge, of the
techniques of argument,
is no defense against By creating slivers of doubt in otherwise clear, well-understood truths, many people –
them.”
getabstract including rogue scientists, politicians and business leaders – have time and again actually
convinced significant numbers of people not to believe in broadly held scientific consensus.
This includes, for example, casting doubt on facts such as that smoking causes serious
health issues or that DDT causes environmental harm or that human actions contribute
to climate change. These “merchants of doubt” know they don’t have to take on the
overwhelming body of science, fact and evidence that they hope to dispel; they need only
point out that the science isn’t 100% “conclusive” and that scientific “consensus,” no matter

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 how overwhelming, sometimes changes with new discoveries. These naysayers argue that
government shouldn’t implement policies on the grounds of inconclusive evidence based
on loose consensus. They advocate letting people look at the evidence and making their
own decisions.
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“Argument is
everywhere, argument Unfortunately, most people fall prey to the master orator. They don’t have the time to inform
is unavoidable,
argument is themselves fully or the critical thinking skills to spot the flaws in a manipulator’s argument.
interminable, argument Small seeds of doubt, once planted, hang on with resilience. Ample expert opinion to the
is all we have.”
getabstract contrary doesn’t end an argument. Rhetoric is the only answer to rhetoric; only argument
beats argument.

“Political Arguments”
Obvious manipulation, even when the audience recognizes it, doesn’t blunt the orator’s
message – even when the members of the audience are experts in the forms and techniques
of argument. During the United States’ 2016 presidential election campaign, then-candidate
Donald Trump was all over the map, philosophically speaking. However, his apparent
getabstract
“If the power of incoherence seemed calculated to support his argument that he was different, unscripted;
argument can, like he wanted to show that he was talking “from the heart,” which he saw as being different
faith, move mountains,
it can do so in the from veteran politicians. Trump railed against the elite; everyone knew he was “one of the
service of bad as elite,” but that didn’t matter. His audience members heard what they wanted to hear. He
well as good motives.
Argument’s strengths aligned with them perfectly – illustrating that skilled argument can win against the most
are also its dangers.” staggering odds.
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Sound argument either sheds light on a question or obscures it. Aristotle knew the power of
skilled rhetoric and vainly sought to confine argument to presenting facts. He would have
agreed with US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (and others), “You are entitled to your
own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” But facts and opinions blur during
arguments. Skilled argument manufactures the facts and sways people. The only defense
is better, more skilled argument. Argument determines facts – not the other way around,
especially in politics. Politicians take a position and then look for “principled arguments”
getabstract to back it. Certainties don’t exist. “Truths” emerge only through argument and debate.
“Conversion is what
argument aims for, but
never finally achieves.” Argument involves persuasion. You attempt to convince other parties of the correctness of
getabstract
your position. But techniques and tactics of argument change depending on the discussion’s
context. Getting better at rhetoric and argument requires understanding context and rules.
An academic who borrows a politician’s techniques and tactics of argument will face quick
ostracism in a university atmosphere. Unlike discourse at a college, in politics, anything
goes, without “boundaries” or rules. “Spin” defines the process of argument. Spin arrives
as a “sound bite,” which sums up a position in a few words – like “death tax” – and hopes
the audience will use it as shorthand for the entire body of opinion on a complex topic.
Many people oblige. In politics, people tend to hold deep convictions that place them in
one camp or another. Entrenched differences rarely produce a winner, and debates continue
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for decades. Unpredictably though, singular events may dramatically alter the standoff. For
“Arguments about the instance, the debate over the Confederate flag raged for years but quickly evaporated in
world come first; the 2015 when a white supremacist shot and killed black parishioners in a Charleston, South
world comes second.
Words make the world.” Carolina, church. Yet the gun control debate has not reached a tipping point, despite many
getabstract horrific mass shootings, including this one.

Even after an old argument seems closed and its adherents appear “converted,” it can return.
No argument ever truly ends. Take racism and white supremacy. The Civil War didn’t end
it. The debate over racial-equality laws lasted decades after civil rights laws were passed

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 in the 1950s and 60s. Even the election and re-election of a black president didn’t end the
racial argument. President Barack Obama faced years of harassment over his citizenship.
The spirit of outlawed “poll taxes and literacy tests” permeates recent efforts to make voters
getabstract have “identity cards.”
“Academics always
know what they can say
and what they cannot “Domestic Arguments”
say, and that knowledge
remains a hallmark of The words and arguments that marriage generates affect people viscerally. The first couple,
their membership in the Adam and Eve, argued over her independence. When Eve suggested that the two work apart
enterprise, even when it
is being debated.” to get more done, Adam thought she was “tired of him.” Her response to his hurt feelings
getabstract was to claim hurt feelings of her own. She takes his arguing that she’d be safer with him
by her side as an insult to her strength and ability to look after herself. Their argument only
intensifies after the two eat the forbidden fruit; Adam blames Eve for leading him astray.
As in any marriage, the argument goes on. No one wins, and it never ends.

Couples estranged by years of argument sometimes try to understand what led to the demise
of their relationship and seek to fix it, but that brings its own dangers. People can’t determine
getabstract the origins of the disagreement because arguments have no official beginning. They start in
“The more practiced
you become in the course of normal conversation and escalate, seemingly out of nowhere. The person who
rehearsing the talking set off the argument often has no idea what he or she said or did to inflame the other person.
points on your side, the
less likely it is…that Spouses literally don’t hear each other. Other arguments last years or decades because
you will change your partners try to change each other – an impossible task. Marital arguments, like political
mind.”
getabstract ones, simply can’t be won. Marriage manuals acknowledge this and advise partners not to
engage in the first place.

Instead of pressing your position, stop, hug your spouse, offer a gift and make dinner –
let it go. Listen carefully to what your spouse says; try to understand the disagreement
from his or her perspective. Resist the temptation to respond with your “first thoughts.”
Repeat what your partner said, say it “makes sense” and give an example to show you
understand: Offering disarming empathy creates a “safe space” for discussion. Restraining
getabstract and measuring your words all the time is impossible. Even if you read every marriage
“Marital arguments
erupt when a manual, you’ll probably relapse when a crisis occurs. Gradually, the time between your bad
conversation goes reactions will extend as you learn to suppress your instincts. Just don’t expect this resolve
out of control –
things being said that
to hold your impulses at bay forever.
shouldn’t be said.”
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“Legal Arguments”
While political and marital arguments have no bounds except those that combatants place on
themselves, legal arguments have formal, structured rules. For example, rules of evidence
forbid lawyers to use arguments based on prior convictions or charges against the accused.
In the normal practice of law, a “fiction” emerges in which relevant information doesn’t
reach the jury members’ ears, so they can remain impartial.

Arguments don’t really occur in law or at least they’re not supposed to. Lawyers use
getabstract argument to bring out the evidence according to the rules that apply in court. In the
“The aphorism ‘sticks
and stones can break “adversary system” of law, each party presents evidence in a light that’s most favorable to
my bones, but names its case. The judge or jury decides which set of evidence carries the most weight. Even in
will never hurt me’
is false. Words can “closing” arguments, attorneys follow procedural rules and restrict themselves to arguments
eviscerate you.” based on the evidence from the trial.
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Good argument can demolish the rules. The First Amendment allows Americans to “say
whatever they like,” but not to do whatever they want. Yet saying and doing intertwine.
For example, effective lawyers can turn an act of defiance, like “burning the American

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 flag,” into a form of free speech – a protest. Other lawyers have argued that pornography
shouldn’t fall within First Amendment protections of free speech because it constitutes an
act against women. Lawyers use the bounds of legal argument to their clients’ advantage.
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Their knowledge of rules and context make attorneys essential to success in the fictionalized
“The same setting of a courtroom. Even contracts, which seem final once both parties sign off on their
argumentative moves
that bring about an
content, don’t stand up if a judge deems that they fail to “honor the intentions” of the parties.
outcome you like can… This exposes a fiction in the complex world of legal argument: Written words, agreed to and
bring about an outcome signed, are actually not a guarantee if a judge deems otherwise. This attests to the power,
you don’t like – the fall
of man or the victory of “malleability” and infinite interpretability of words.
the tobacco companies.
A merchant of doubt
is a merchant of doubt “Academic Arguments”
even if he flies your While anything goes in political and marital arguments, academic arguments, like legal
colors.”
getabstract ones, occur within strict boundaries. Academics have few documented rules to guide them;
their strictures are mostly unspoken. Academic arguments earn praise for their “originality,”
and academics lose stature – even jobs – when they commit plagiarism. But who determines
originality? Everyone builds on the work of others. Even those who advocate for universally
sharing and owning knowledge want credit for their thoughts and their originality. In
academia, nothing exceeds originality in value; it shapes the rules of academic argument.

getabstract Academic arguments don’t come out of nowhere. You join an old argument every time
“If you are waiting for
outrage at gun violence you engage in a debate. At best, most academic arguments bring a new perspective to
to turn the political an old argument. The rules demand that you ground new interpretations in evidence. In
tide, don’t hold your
breath. If it happens, a court of law, a judge can deem certain evidence “inadmissible,” such as arguments that
it will be by a route no break the rules. That doesn’t happen in academia. Students take hard personal and partisan
one had anticipated.”
getabstract positions in their papers and dissertation, and professors sometimes teach their personal
political views. Increasingly, the bounded argument space of academia is opening to near
unbounded argument.

If you want to argue that the Holocaust didn’t happen, for example, the rules overwhelm
the discourse as being built on falsity and the argument goes nowhere. Even on less
contentious matters, unless you have a professorship and acknowledged expertise, your
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arguments won’t get a serious hearing. As in the courtroom and other venues where bounded
“In politics, arguments argument prevails, expertise always wins. If scientific consensus supports evolution, for
alone don’t win the
day; the time must be
example, proponents of “intelligent design” can find no place in most classrooms or peer-
ripe, the setting must reviewed journals. Academic arguments don’t get things done; they shape thinking. This
be favorable, and the separation from direct action distinguishes academic argument from political, marital and
slogans like “marriage
equality” must be legal arguments. Academic arguments occur for their own sake. And most academicians
catchy and stand as know the rules and rarely stray.
arguments in their own
right.”
getabstract Argument Is Everything
Argument consists of words, pictures, gestures and even silence. Argument exists in almost
everything people say, see and do. Attempts to banish it to achieve peace, “harmony or
unity” always fail. You argue because you are human. So embrace argument, and get better
at it.
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About the Author
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Award-winning professor and former dean Stanley Fish teaches law at universities in New York and Florida. He
also wrote the bestseller How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One.

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