Argument Foreplay

The most prestigious articles in popular media tend to argue for a (value-adjacent) claim. And such articles tend to be long. Even so, most can’t be bothered to define their terms carefully, or to identify and respond to the main plausible counter-arguments to their argument. Such articles are instead filled with anecdotes, literary allusions, and the author’s history of thoughts on the subject. A similar thing happens even in many academic philosophy papers; they leave little space for their main positive argument, which is then short and weakly defended.

Consider also that while a pastor usually considers his or her sermon to be the “meat” of their service, that sermon takes a minority of the time, and is preceded by a great many other rituals, such as singing. And internally such sermons are usually structured like those prestigious media articles. The main argument is preceded by many not-logically-necessary points, leaving little time to address ambiguities or counter-arguments.

And consider sexual foreplay. Even people in a state where they are pretty excited, attracted, and willing are often put off by a partner pushing for too direct or rapid a transition to the actual sex act. They instead want a gradual series of increasingly intense and close interactions, which allow each party to verify that the other party has similar feelings and intentions.

In meals, we don’t want to get straight to a “main dish”, but prefer instead a series of dishes of increasing intensity. The main performers in concerts and political rallies are often preceded by opening acts. Movies in theaters used to be preceded by news and short films, and today are preceded by previews. Conversations often make use of starters and icebreakers; practical conversations are supposed to be preceded by small-talk. And revolutions may be preceded by increasingly dramatic riots and demonstrations.

What is going on here? Randall Collins’ book Interaction Ritual Chains explained this all for me. We humans often want to sync our actions and attention, to assure each other than we feel and think the same. And also that our partners are sufficiently skilled and impressive at this process.
The more important is this assurance, the more we make sure to sync, and the more intensely and intricately we sync. And where shared values and attitudes are important to us, we make sure that those are strongly salient and relevant to our synced actions.

Regarding media articles and sermons, a direct if perhaps surprising implication of all this is that most of us are often not very open to hearing and being persuaded by arguments until speakers show us that they sufficiently share our values, and are sufficiently impressive in this performance. So getting straight to the argument point (as I often do) is often seen as rude and offensive, like a would-be seducer going straight to “can I put it in.”

The lack of attention to argument precision and to counter-arguments bothers them less, as they are relatively wiling to accept a claim just on the basis of the impressiveness and shared values of the speaker. Yes, they want to be given at least one supporting argument, in case they need justify their new position to challengers. But the main goal is to share beliefs with impressive value allies.