Simple point: language mediates our understanding the world. Understanding - anything - only makes sense if we understand something with someone else. The only way to understand something with someone is to talk to them. If a conflict results there is no reason to assume, prior to talking about it, that an agreement cannot be reached, since if it is comprehensible by one person in language, it is, in principle, comprehensible by another person. If it does not prove to be something that can be understood, we call that art. ; )
>You misunderstand me if you think I say argument doesn't matter. What I
>said, rather, is that it doesn't _motivate._
This is a self-defeating proposition. What makes reason a reason *is* its inherent capacity to motivate. If it isn't motivating, it isn't a reason to begin with. Rhetoric has an inherently argumentative / communicative base. One cannot create rhetoric without first already having a preunderstanding about how language works. In short, linguistic mastery (rhetoric) sits on the back of communicative competence (interaction with other people oriented by the attempt to understand, not 'persuade' or 'deceive'). Which is another way of saying that communicative action comes before rhetoric.
>That's why I'm sort of a Humean. Reason is the slave of the passions,
>whether or not it ought to be. And I'm talking about fundamentals. Of
>course peiole get persuaded about means and about peripheral matters all
>the time, and even in ways that affect your behavior.
Reasoning is precisely that which raises out of a purely instinctual response. Naturally, reasoning has an instinctual base, but passions and instincts themselves are linguistically mediated - insofar as one has an ego.
ken