1. Persuasion Detectors The defensive side of ethos
Know Whom to Trust
Persuasion Detectors
The defensive side of ethos

2. Know Whom to Trust
Virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean. -Aristotle You want the truth! You can’t handle the truth! No truth handler you! Bah! I deride your truth handling abilities! -The Simpsons

3. Know Whom to Trust Review of the ethos techniques… Disinterest Virtue
Practical Wisdom

4. Know Whom to Trust
“A state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean.” -Aristotle

5. Know Whom to Trust
A State of Character—means rhetorical virtue, not the permanent kind. It only exists during the argument itself, and it adapts to the audience’s expectations, not the persuader’s. Concerned with Choice—Aristotle means that virtue comes out of the choices the persuader makes, or those he is trying to sell you on. A persuader who tries to prevent a choice lacks rhetorical virtue.

6. Know Whom to Trust
Lying in a Mean—the middle route, the “golden mean”. In deliberative argument, the middle road is the shortest to any decision. The mean lies smack in the middle of the audience’s values.

7. Know Whom to Trust
Virtue is the “sweet spot” between the extreme ranges of choice. I c

8. Aristotle
Aristotle defines moral virtue as a disposition to behave in the right manner and as a mean betweenextremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices. We learn moral virtue primarily through habit and practice rather than through reasoning and instruction.

9. Know Whom to Trust
A way to evaluate a persuader’s virtue is to ask yourself— How does he or she describe the mean? Extremists usually describe the middle course as extreme.

10. Know Whom to Trust
“Politicians try to make their opponents appear to be further from the middle than they really are.” “Conservatives can’t say the word ‘environmental’ without following it with ‘extremist’.” HIptwozb0 Y 4

11. Know Whom to Trust
People will also do the reverse of the extremist label by describing an extreme choice as moderate. “There is virtue in moderation.”