Wallace - Topoi

388
The first major category is called the
Starting Points of Argument. These reflect
the premises on which contending
parties are in agreement. The first subclass
is labeled, Facts and Truths. By
facts Perelman means "objects of precise,
limited agreement," such as the
data acceptable in a given case. By
truths he means statements that emerge
from systems of thought, such as the
statements that embody the laws or principles
of a science or an art.

If rhetorical discourse by its
nature is concerned with people in general
rather than with people as specialists,
one wonders whether scientific
knowledge, particularly that represented
by the hard sciences, physics and chemistry,
can logically find a place in a system
of modern topoi. If there are clusters
of scientific generalities that should
be the property of all men, what are they
and who selects them? By refusing to
acknowledge the validity of this problem,
the scientists doomed the general
education movement in this country.
They poohpoohed the efforts of generalists
to decide upon ideas and materials
that should enter into general communication.


data
association and dissociation - "terrorist"  - political discourse - liberal/ teaparty etc.
390
"Topics like these, it should be observed,
demand elaboration through deductive
structures whose content and language
are the outcome of definitions.
The apparatus for finding topics of
disassociation is through the application
of what Perelman labels "philosophical
pairs." I present a few of his pairs:
Appearance / reality

lines of argument - argument/ counter argument

"Take the pair, appearance / reality. It is
a prototype of all conceptual disassociation,
says Perelman, for all our sensations
are responses to an object world.
Appearances are the immediately given;
reality is that which is independent of
experience. As a rule, people attach a
higher value to reality than to appearance.
The outcome is a master topic of
argument: Appearances differ, but reality
is fixed.

Perleman - style and content work in tandem to create an argument (MLK)