Deliberate invention: On the motive to create novel beliefs

Stephen R. Yarbrough University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Abstract

Forensic, dialectic, or scientific discourse cannot induce the desire to create novel beliefs, but deliberative discourse—a procedure for determining rules for future actions for which the interlocutors as yet have no determined rules—may induce such desire when interlocutors accept what Donald Davidson has called "the rule of charity," the rule that interlocutors must assume that what their counterparts say is mostly true. The need, and therefore the desire, for new belief emerges only once the possibility of resolving the problem using currently held beliefs exhausts and the need to reconceive the original problem presents itself.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2003-06-01
DOI
10.1080/02773940309391260
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
OA PDF Green

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Computers and Composition

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Also cites 5 works outside this index ↓
  1. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and …
  2. A Discourse on Novelty and Creation
  3. Hermogenes On Issues: Strategies of Argument in Later Greek Rhetoric
  4. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
  5. Heuretics: The Logic of Invention
CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →