Weaver

Sorry about that last one - decided to publish my title only.
Weaver...again
Weaver begins by describing how he sees the human - which he divides into mind, body, and soul. He dscribes also the different parts of these major sections.
The Rational capacity, which is part of the mind, is divided into three levels. The first level is shallow such as specific ideas like "measurements of a room." Response is habitual at this level and requires little thought to come to specific conclusuions. The second level deals with beleifs about facts. Third level knowledge is "the metaphysical dream." This level requires deeper thought and refers to the preious levels. Using these three levels, humans are able to form thoughts and opinions about the world. According to Weaver, truth is attained at the level of metaphysical dream, rather than the first level of fact. (160-161).
As far as culture is concerned, Weaver beleives that societies shape cultural ideals and act as a mold for humans to shape their lives around. Weaver calls this "tyrannizing image." He uses the idea of freedom in the nineteenth century to emphasis his point and ackowledge that no one contested this ideal of freedom, because it was accepted and coveted as the central point of perfection within the society. Also, because it provides a way to order and rank things, it provides a hierarchy for the society. (162)
Weaver moves toward how his beleives relate to rhetoric. Language is the way of communicating truth and two approaches are dialectic and rhetoric. Dialectic is abstract reasoning, but Weaver feels it is limiting because it can only define the intangible, such as morals and values. There are several problems with the dialectic approach, but the biggest in my opinion is that it does not relate to the world. He feels that using rhetoric is a better way of communicating truth.
He gives many examples of different arguments that can be used to communicate through rhetoric, which he beleives have differing degrees of effectiveness. He says that you can tell alot about a person by the way they argue and the approaches to argument and truth that they use. For example, one method of thinking about reality is cause and effect. This is an internal way of interpreting the world and varies in levels, but is seen as fairly low. Authority and testimony, however, is an external way of seeing the world. (168-169). This argument, unlike cause and effect, needs external truth and is not able to suatain itself without relying on other arguments.
He ends his discussion by addressing the grammatical choices of a rhetor. Like argument choice revealed much about a specific rhetors view of the world, word choice has the same implications.
Up to this point we have learned different ways of forming an argument and the foundation of rhetoric, but I found it very interesting to learn that the way a person argues and the words that they use determine the way they view the world.