Rhetoric can't handle complex causes

by phil on Sunday May 9, 2010 10:27 AM
rhetoric

One of the limitations of rhetoric is that it cannot concisely grapple with multi-dimensional, overlapping, and complex causes. Rhetoric has to "make sense" or "add up," which is why the nature vs. nurture debate is so enduring. Trying to identify what makes individuals the way they are is so fuzzy that only a nonsensical conclusion really works: "My position on this issue is simple: We are totally biological, totally environmental; the two are as inseparable as are an object and its shadow. Or as psychologist Donald O. Hebb has expressed it, we are 100 percent innate, 100 percent acquired." (Lauren Dundes writing in The manner born).