Listen, be rational and manage the emotions

TORONTO, April 8, 2005 -- When not immersed in his specialty research into multi-modal and coalescent argumentation, York U. philosophy prof. Michael Gilbert teaches students how to identify what arguments are and how to win them.

“The trick to winning arguments is to listen carefully, identify the fallacies in your opponent’s claims and try to find a way to maximize everyone’s needs and goals,” he says.

In his book How to Win an Argument, Gilbert presents what he calls “surefire strategies for getting your point across.”

What most people think of as ordinary conversation, Gilbert considers to be arguing. “Whether you and your wife are trying to decide on what car to buy, or just where to go for dinner, you’re arguing, because you are presenting options to each other, weighing the pros and cons of each alternative, and perhaps eventually trying to persuade the other of a particular course of action.”

Simply blowing off steam isn’t arguing, Gilbert says. “We mustn’t make the mistake of equating arguing with quarrelling. All quarrels are arguments, but only some arguments are quarrels. Quarrelling is merely a particular style of arguing – a heated, emotional style to be sure – but just one of many styles.”

Gilbert stresses that good arguers do not tend to think in terms of inviolable, concrete rules, except for one: you have to listen. “In normal conversation, listening is nice but not critical, but when we enter into an argument, the situation changes. It is impossible to really persuade someone who has an opinion without listening to him or her very carefully,” says Gilbert.

Gilbert emphasizes that it is also vitally important that arguers know what their own goals really are. “We argue to achieve our goals, but if we are unclear in our own minds what it is we want, and are heedless of context and situation, we will not prevail in an argument,” he says. “If you don’t really know what you want, you can’t expect to get it.”

His goal is to expand the study of argument beyond the logical to the emotional, which relates to the realm of feelings. He has also identified two further modes of argument: the visceral, which has physical manifestations, and what Gilbert calls the kisceral, which covers the intuitive and non-sensory arenas. His current area of research is in the interrelation of emotion and argument: how to handle emotion, when it is good and bad to show emotion, and what it means.

While rationality is at the base of good, effective arguing, Gilbert allows that it is impossible not to be emotional in an argument. Without emotion, there would be no involvement and no concern for the outcome of the discussion. What is important is for the arguer to decide how much passion will help to win an argument and manage that emotion.

How to Win an Argument has gone to two print editions, and will soon be web-published by Gilbert himself. 

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For more information, or to arrange an interview, the media should contact:

Jeff Ball, Media Relations, York University, 416-736-2100, x22086 / jball@yorku.ca