Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [19]
Now, let’s stop and ask some questions. First, were you convinced by the argument? Second, how did it make you feel? If you can accept the basic principle of utilitarianism, then you probably should be convinced that the argument is correct. (If you just don’t like utilitarianism, we could easily make the same argument from another ethical theory.) Actually, we might not even need a theory to justify our thinking that this exploitation is bad. On some level, we just feel that it is. But what’s the impact of a philosophic argument like this? Did it rile you up and cause the same feelings and thoughts that the “All I Need” video caused? Possibly for a few it did, but more than likely the somewhat vague “argument” of the video caused a much stronger reaction than the clear and precise philosophic argument. But how could that be? How can Radiohead argue about the way the world is without using anything like what we consider a traditional argument?
To answer that question, we’re going to have to look back to Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric—the practice of writing or speaking skillfully. He divides the art of rhetoric into three distinct categories: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos deals with the credibility of the one making the argument, pathos deals with the emotional appeal being made, and logos deals with the logical reasoning involved. This distinction gives us a much easier way to understand the difference between the two arguments we’ve been looking at.
The history of western philosophy has focused heavily on the importance of logos. In ancient Greece, the Sophists wrote about and went around teaching the art of rhetoric, often for a fee. For them, rhetoric meant giving a convincing speech—even if it wasn’t necessarily accurate; in other words they ignored the logos aspect. This disregard for the so-called truth upset philosophers like Socrates and Plato, who were contemporaries very critical of the Sophists. Plato, especially, believed in a form of Truth that was eternal and unchanging, while Socrates would find it appalling to charge money for helping others discover truth. Because Socrates and Plato have been taken as the founding fathers of philosophy, their view of the Sophists has been mostly adopted, and therefore, at least for most of the history of western philosophy, the emphasis has been placed on logos while ethos, and especially pathos, have been downplayed.
In a lot of ways this emphasis on the logos makes sense. The scientific method is seemingly founded on reason and rationality. A focus on the logos might be understood as an emphasis on the tool that has allowed society to progress as far and as quickly as it has. There is no doubt that the way of reason is important and necessary; however, emphasis was placed so heavily on that method alone that the ethos and pathos were almost entirely excluded.
All I Need: All about the World
If music is able to offer arguments about the world, it seems to do it without this emphasis on logos. Consider the way television commercials utilize pathos and ethos form arguments. They play on basic needs and emotions of humans (pathos), and sometimes draw on celebrities (ethos) to make the point. These commercials do seem to have some power over us, even if it is subconscious, but it would be quite a stretch to say that they are arguing a point. Yet, I want to claim that Radiohead is able to argue a point outside of logos. What’s the difference?
There’s another philosophical distinction (usually associated with logical positivism) that I need to invoke—the difference between cognitive information and expressive information. Cognitive information tells us something about the world and it should be possible at least in theory to verify whether a cognitive statement is true or false. “The moon is made of cheese