I see. It IS that bad.
On 11/07/2011, at 7:28 PM, Dylan Harris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Surely the product marketed in intellectual argument is the person making the argument? I understood there to be a hard connection, in tertiary education, between numbers of papers published and career success, making the (hopefully valid) presumption that papers express intellectual argument. That can be, and is, directly measured.
>
>
> On 11 Jul 2011, at 10:21, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
>> Yes, both argument and marketing are a form of persuasion. But even
>> though a cat has four legs, it doesn't mean it's a table. Marketing
>> persuades solely in order to sell a product, while intellectual
>> argument is often intended towards very different ends. The
>> communication of ideas may be (or not) partly a product, but it is by
>> no means solely a product, and its effects can't be measured in purely
>> economic terms.
>>
>> Subsuming everything into the catch-all term "marketing" is a terribly
>> cutting edge means of totalising commodification. Is it really that
>> bad now? Maybe it is.
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Dylan Harris <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> Sorry, can't resist ... :-)
>>>
>>> On 11 Jul 2011, at 03:22, Alison Croggon wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I do think you're confusing intellectual argument with marketing. They
>>>> are not quite the same thing.
>>>
>>> Yes they are!
>>>
>>> Intellectual argument is a form of reasoning: reasoning evolved to persuade people, according to psychologists:
>>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1698090
>>> General discussion here:
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html?_r=1
>>>
>>> Marketing, according to google, is "The action or business of promoting and selling products or services". (google result for "definition of marketing"; your results might vary). That's persuading people. That's the same thing.
>>>
>>> I'll point out that those papers suggest that since reasoning evolved to persuade, rather than find the truth, it follows that flawed reasoning is an adaptive skill, so that anyone who suggests my argument is flawed is bolstering my point.
>>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Dylan Harris
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
> --
> dylanharris.org
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