Persuasive and convincing

Don’t you also have to calibrate for the relative usage of “that” and “which,” depending on whether writers are British or American and the type of grammar rules they imbibed?

What’s the gripe about “he persuaded me that I was wrong”? What do you think it should be? Or what’s wrong with “convinced of” (consider that the first non-obsolete definition of “convince” in the OED is I.3, and I.3(b) is “of a fact”, first citation Dryden in 1697)?

Now that I look up “persuade”, the first “peruade that” is from 1600, and “persuade” with “that” is in the very first definition.

Ahhhh.

“Convinced that” has a long history too:

I.3(c). with subord. clause.
1609 Shakespeare Troilus & Cressida iii. ii. 160 That persuasion could but thus conuince me, That my integrity and truth to you, Might be affronted, etc.
1662 E. Stillingfleet Origines Sacræ iii. i. §2 Those who would not be convinced by them that there was a God.
1791 W. Cowper Let. 27 May (1982) III. 519 No man shall convince me that I am improperly govern’d while I feel the contrary.
1862 J. Ruskin Munera Pulveris (1880) 83 My neighbour cannot be convinced that I am wiser than he is.

Solipsistic skepticism is particularly fashionable in those precincts of economics, which are most resistant to interacting with reality. One should not discount the narcissistic satisfaction associated with acting as if one’s subjective experience of persuasiveness is, itself, persuasive evidence; it is the kind of pose of individual power, which will attract imitation.

I don’t really see the problem with “persuasive”/”convincing” in reviews; I mean, obviously, it doesn’t prove a problem with the book under discussion, but this just seems like the nature of book reviews. A reviewer’s claim might be plausible on its face, or the reviewer might be trustworthy based on prior accomplishments, but in the end, if you want to be sure about whether a book has persuasive arguments, you have to read it (a review that does summarize arguments is inevitably going to fail to do them complete justice anyway). Do you also have a problem with reviewers saying a book is “well written”?

I’ve never heard of these prescriptions/proscriptions before – in fact, I’m still not clear which usages are supposed to be proscribed.

Can a prescription be valid if no-one knows about it?

I think you have to explain more if an argument is unconvincing or unpersuasive. If you summarize a line of thought and say it’s plausible, then less explanation is forthcoming. Just like you wouldn’t have to explain that a book is well-organized. I don’t quite get the complaint about presenting several hypotheses and then arguing for one, either, that Rich complains about. Isn’t that the typical process of sorting through evidence we want and expect from academic history?

“I don’t quite get the complaint about presenting several hypotheses and then arguing for one, either, that Rich complains about.”

I’m complaining about the cases in which it’s really not an argument — cases in which the historian presents several hypotheses and then writes “I find hypothesis B [ persuasive / convincing ] and I think the others are not.” That’s fine if you want to present some evidence for hypothesis B, or at least allude to which evidence makes you think it’s convincing, but sometimes historians just don’t.

I changed context on the complaint a bit too, from “book reviewer or manuscript referee” to “writer of history book”. I don’t understand why someone would want to read a whole book about some special subtopic in history and then not have the author go through the actual evidence for disputed questions.

“Arguably” shows a steeper increase than “persuasive.”
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=arguably&year_start=1958&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=

There does seem to have been an irrationally exuberant rise in the use of “persuasive” – but the persuasive bubble popped just prior to the crash of the economy. Perhaps economists can use the rise and fall of “persuasive” in historical journals as a predictor of economic catastrophe?

Having reread the post, esp. the first sentence which I’d originally misread, I’m with Jonathan Mayhew and Neil Levy here. If I’m refereeing a paper submission, say, I’m not going to spend a bunch of time reconstructing parts of the argument that I think are good! (Well, not unless it’s an amazing paper or some such, and how often does that happen?) What’s most helpful I’d think is to point to the parts you think are good, and to spend time discussing what seem like flaws and weaknesses. This is obviously what’s most useful for the author, but in the vast majority of the cases also for the editor, no? (And yes, I’m only talking about refereeing here because that’s what I have first-hand experience of.)

Tony Lynch: either the reviewer has some expertise in the area or they don’t. If they do, it is informative for them to say they found the argumentative persausive. A reader learns that someone with relevant expertise thinks that the argument is persausive, which is some evidence that the argument is worthwhile. If the reviewer lacks the expertise, they have no business reviewing the book. I grant there are cases in which your worry might apply – eg, I am reviewing a book on a topic in my field, but the book uses resources on which I lack expertise – but this won’t be the rule.

How about ‘arguably’? Can’t get away from that milquetoast word. Another word count short cut probably, but still irritating.

If this were in my own discipline, philosophy, I’d take this trend in the use of the terms “persuasive” and “convincing” (if it exists), to be a good thing. I would even want to attribute it to the salutary effects of “standpoint theory” coming into practice, where reviewers are aware and make explicit that some of their claims are made from one particular perspective, and so are most likely to be accepted by others similarly situated. For many of the reasons others have mentioned, it may not be possible in a short review to provide the kind of detailed argument that would itself convince others of the view that the reviewer has come to hold. But in that case, it’s much better, I think (see?), for a reviewer to flag the fact that s/he is asserting a view that the reader will have to relativise to the reviewer’s credibility, standpoint, etc., rather than asserting it as though anyone who reads the book would reach the same conclusion, or else necessarily be in error. Since not all claims a reviewer might make about a book are likely to be as inflected by one’s standpoint, it is valuable to use such a flag to distinguish those that are from those that aren’t.

I say I’d like to attribute this trend to the osmosis of standpoint theory into philosophical practice because I think it would be a good thing, if in fact that has happened. I have no idea whether a similar trend to the one Eric notices has in fact taken place in philosophy, or whether there would be a causal connection between standpoint theory in epistemology and current practice, if it has. I have no reason to think that something similar would explain Eric’s data, but again I would be happy if it did.

“persuader sans convaincre”, that’s the way to go.

The use of “persuasive” in and of itself is no more subjective than other terms; failure to contextualize the way in which it is used, as opposed to the frequency of incidence, marks the problem with the OP. That is, the complaint is that reviewers says “I find this persuasive,” and then fail to explain why. But unless we know that reviewers are not saying “I find this persuasive, and this is why,” followed by an appeal to arguments, evidence, forms of inclusion, possible counter arguments debunked, etc., the language of persuasion is no more or less an indicator of “subjectivity.” Just as one can write a review and say “X is true” and give no reasons for reaching that conclusion means that “true” can stand in for objective or subjective. In other words, more close contextual reading, less what C. Wright Mills liked to call “abstracted empiricism!”

He’s not measuring the phrase “I find this persuasive,” only the incidence of “persuasive,” “convincing,” and their opposites. But without a context for the way in which those terms are being used, it’s not indicative of anything objective or subjective. The problem is using individual abstracted words as indicators for the attitude or perspective of those using them.

“The words, “persuasive” and “convincing”, only make sense in the context of relating personal experience.”

I don’t think so. If X says an argument is persuasive, he/she often generally means something more than “I agree with this.” Persuasiveness refers to a feature of the argument, not of the self who is persuaded by it. Since historians have generally given up on the idea that any argument “proves” some conclusion, they are inclined to find arguments compelling, persuasive, or convincing–all of which point to characteristics of the argument and not just to a personal feeling. How historians use the terms is the important thing–but the idea that this is inherently subjective language, absent an empirical demonstration based on close contextual reading rather than quantitative measure, is, if I may say so, unpersuasive. One term that historians often use in evaluating arguments, in lieu of truth, is “useful.” Is this a subjective term, because it apparently refers to the ways in which an argument can be turned to the uses that people have for it?

C. Bertram @30
“persuader sans convaincre”, that’s the way to go

I Googled the French phrase (without quotation marks) — never a good idea to google anything after having had some wine — and found, inter alia, an article about Rousseau that I was not up to dealing with, and also a short explanation (in French) relating the difference betw “persuader” and “convaincre” to a distinction drawn by Plato in the Gorgias, w “to persuade” having to do w appeals to ‘sensibility’ (i.e. sensitivity/emotion) and “to convince” having to do w logical demonstration. Maybe this distinction persists in French, but I don’t think it aligns w contemp. English usage, where the two verbs I think (w/o resort to a dictionary) are basically synonyms.

http://www.philonet.fr/reperes/persconv.html

Note: the above found on googling the phrase without quotation marks. If you google the phrase with quotation marks, all you get seems to be Rousseau-related stuff.

“The main thrust of [the book] is persuasive,” to quote something I’ve written in a book review, is, to me, just another way of saying “I agree with it.”

But doesn’t “X is persuasive” mean something like, “I agree with X based on publicly acknowledgeable reasons/rational grounds/etc.”? This is how I’m reading DBW’s comment, and this seems right to me. In that sense, it’s surely more than “merely subjective”.

It’s a different question whether these reasons need to explicitly spelled out every time the “X is persuasive” claim is made, and again, it’s perfectly comprehensible to me why in lots of contexts those reasons wouldn’t be and needn’t be spelled out in anything like adequate detail.

@LFC, yes, it’s a famous phrase from the Social Contract. The lawgiver, who has the job of moulding the raw individuals who have come together to form the state into citizens, has to get the people to pass the laws that properly developed citizens would pass. But the human beings he’s dealing with can’t appreciate good reasons (so can’t be convinced) but they can be persuaded, by someone with charismatic authority.

“I like chocolate ice cream” is objective. It describes a state of affairs, and the person speaking has unimpeachable evidence of the proposition’s truth, or, if he is a liar, its falsity.

“Chocolate ice cream is the best” is subjective. It’s a judgement, and doesn’t really carry a truth claim, unless it can be reduced, in context, to an objective claim about the speaker.

As several have noted above, objective/subjective aren’t discrete properties of words, but qualities (along a continuum) of communicative acts in (dense) contexts.

The problem isn’t whether or not what’s said is objective or subjective. It’s whether or not the statement provides information that a reader can use (whatever her purposes may be). And if there’s a growing problem in academic writing, it’s less narcissism than vacuity, IMO.

@PatrickinIowa 44
Noted. There may be a difference however betw the way philosophers of language use objective/subjective, and the way everyone else does.

Isn’t the whole thrust of the force of argument here based on slipping between reviews, where the review author may use subjective (perhaps more accurately described as intersubjective) language to assent to portions of the argument while laying out at least a skeletal critique of the points the reviewer dissents from, and actual books where the arguments the author is making must be supported.

Even then on a point which is tangential to the main thrust of argument a book might mention (especially in notes) that So-And-So’s Title is “perusausive” rather than re-arguing the matter. This can actually be invaluable because it gives you insight into where the author is coming from, which helps in evaluating the author’s actual argument.

Additionally, like other commenters I think that as a gesture of assent “So-And-So’s argument about doohickey is persuasive/convincing” is actually less “narcissistic ” than “So-And-So’s argument about doohickey is correct/true.” The former at least ritually acknowledges that a review is not a pulpit from which final judgement of truth can be dispensed.

If persuasive/convincing = ‘I can’t find any logical flaws’, then I don’t see why any explanation should be necessary. Explanations are in the manuscript.