Rhetorical Materialism: The Cognitive Division of Labor and the Social Dimensions of Argument

Mercier and Sperber assign the human intent to persuade to the argumentative function of reasoning ("Why" 57). However, when pressed by reviewers to consider the "rhetorical" character of argument, Mercier and Sperber respond by emphasizing the "rhetorical and epistemic goals" of argument ("Authors' Response" 95). In doing so, they specifically assign the intent to persuade (rhetorical) to the speaker (argument production) and the goal of being informed (epistemic) to the audience (argument evaluation). Mercier and Sperber defend this "division of cognitive labor" ("Why" 65, 73) between argument production (a rhetorical goal) and argument evaluation (an epistemic goal) for its efficiency. We wish to isolate and evaluate this "division of cognitive labor" to offer a more socially dynamic approach to argumentation. First, rhetorical production is inclusive of all the social elements of argumentation. For Mercier and Sperber, the rhetorical consists of the production of arguments by a communicator to convince an audience, anticipate audience objections, and justify decisions. Mercier and Sperber render the production process of argument as a mental/verbal act of the speaker. The production of arguments is socially circumscribed by a "dialogic context," but the speaker produces arguments when s/he starts "from the conclusion and tries to find premises that will convince one's interlocutor" ("Why" 73). Yet, their assignment of the rhetorical to the speaker's side of the cognitive division of labor attenuates the social dimensions of rhetorical production. A more rhetorically materialist perspective should render all the molecular elements (speaker, speech, audience, occasion, change) of a rhetorical context (McGee 36) socially relevant. Moreover, argument participates in a material constitutive process of world making by assembling these molecular elements as an argumentative context. Mercier and Sperber seem to presuppose the social context that is produced and reproduced by the rhetorical dimension of argument. Yet, as a material-constitutive process, rhetoric inhabits every element of the social context (speaker, speech, audience, occasion, change) transforming it into a field of argumentation (Greene, "Aesthetic Turn"). Thus the intentions associated with argument (persuasive or otherwise) are socially produced by a rhetorical context (Burke). One consequence of our rhetorically materialist perspective is to approach argument less as a meta-representational inferential act of reasoning and more as a socially productive, and therefore, contingent, human technology (Greene, "Another Materialist"). Second, the general intellect in capitalist accumulation activates an antagonism in the cognitive division of labor. For Mercier and Sperber, the "optimal stance for pursuing the truth" requires the cognitive division of labor between argument evaluation (judging) and argument production (advocacy) ("Why" 72). From the speaker's standpoint, "rather than looking for flaws in our own arguments, it is easier to let the other person find them and only then adjust our arguments, if necessary" ("Why" 73). The receiver (audience) evaluates arguments with an informative intent to distinguish information from misinformation. Mercier and Sperber privilege face-to-face group discussion as the paradigmatic social situation to take advantage of psychological research suggesting that groups have an interest in making sure "truth wind' ("Why" 72). For Mercier and Sperber, groups have the ability to socialize argument production toward "a shared interest in truth" by providing the opportunity for argument evaluation to "filter" bad reasoning ("Why" 72). Their emphasis on group interest requires closer investigation because the world assembled by rhetorical argumentation should be set within a broader material ontology that contextualizes the argumentative function of reasoning. Here we want to maintain that Mercier and Sperber's "shared interest in truth" describes what Marx calls the "general intellect" or the "general social knowledge" harnessed as "a direct force of production" (706). …