Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [68]
But why should improvements in the techniques of persuasion and in the distribution of information lead automatically to deterioration in intellectual standards? After all, might not advertisers, politicians, and others in the business of persuasion put these improved methods and technologies to the service of communicating cogently reasoned, fact-and-evidence-based messages in support of conclusions that they find to be true?
How Do You Sell a Mediocre Product?
Occasionally they do, but generally not, and for several reasons. First, while sellers of a genuinely superior product need not resort to deception in order to persuade potential customers to buy it, the truth will not serve sellers of inferior products nearly as well. And very few advertisers, whether they are selling toothpaste, lite beer, automobile insurance, or what have you, are blessed with the advantage of backing a product that significantly differs from its major competitors. The sad truth is that most products consist of basically the same ingredients in roughly the same proportions as are found in the products with which they compete. Those in the selling business have learned that it is easier, and more cost effective, to differentiate their products from those of their competitors by marketing them differently than by actually making them different. Creating a superior ad campaign, though neither easy nor inexpensive, turns out to be a more economically sound strategy than creating a better product. And if you’re trying to peddle an inferior or indistinguishable product, facts, evidence, reasoning, and the truth are not your friends. As a result, such reasoning as one finds in contemporary advertising tends to be fallacious, rather than cogent.
Advertising and the Avoidance of Reason
But a more significant result, and one that entails an even more drastic rejection of the norms of cogent reasoning, is that modern advertisements tend to avoid reasoning entirely. One would not go far wrong in thinking of modern advertising as an attempt, on a gigantic scale, to create a world in which concerns about issues of meaning and truth do not arise. Handsome people, perhaps celebrities, are shown using the product and smiling with enjoyment; animals speak; humorous incidents are depicted; catchy tunes featuring the name of the product are sung; but, typically, no specific claims or arguments are made. The advertisements seem designed to drill the name of the product into viewers’ minds, and to cause the audience to associate that name with pleasant sounds, images, and thoughts, thus predisposing these “consumers” to want to buy the product. Only an occasional commercial (and generally a very badly constructed one) provokes viewers to ask themselves what the claims in the commercial might mean.
One can readily see the utility of this attempt to bypass rationality. Cogent arguments cannot lend support to a decision to purchase an inferior or mediocre product. But fallacious arguments, when scrutinized by a public critically engaged with questions of meaning and truth, are likely to be seen through and rejected. The best solution, then, is to sell through non-rational means, that is, to persuade without engaging the audience’s rational faculties. Thus, to the extent that we are inundated with advertising, we are immersed in a world in which the concept of truth is a stranger.
Contemporary Politics
In the realm of politics, truth and the norms associated with it are enemies to those who back indefensible programs and policies. Politicians whose primary concern is to please their corporate sponsors, even at the expense of the general welfare, are hardly in a position to defend their actions with rationally compelling arguments. Little wonder, then, that contemporary political “debate” and “discussion” is carried