Elevating Discourse using PEAQ

One of the aims of this site and my writing is to reintroduce a more substantive approach to thinking about and having conversations around subjects that are engaging but not dependent on invoking raw emotional impulses on any given topic. While it can be argued that emotionally charged headlines have a more entertaining value there is the side effect of a noticeable decline in informed public and popular discourse over time in the Black culture. Emotions are a part of our lives and are not a bad or evil thing. However, emotions by themselves are not always a wise criterion to judge a thing as good or bad, right or wrong. Even if there isn’t a nefarious intention behind a statement that produces a strong emotional response it's possible to react out of that emotional state rather than a sound assessment of a person, institution or situation.

Political and economic conversations in the U.S. in general (Black community in particular) tend to be emotionally polarizing due to many factors beyond the scope of this article. The need to be able to clearly assess a situation to determine if some information being presented is harmful or not, truthful or not, beneficial or not is becoming more apparent as numerous political and economic interest are vying for influence over the decisions people make. PEAQ is an acronym I came up with to describe a general process I use when reading books, articles or listening to lectures, presentations, interviews etc. Using PEAQ is a way to counteract an appeal based on an intense emotional response. PEAQ is defined as:

• Position
• Evidence
• Argument
• Quality of Argument
• Quality of Evidence

Let us take a brief look at each of the elements below.

Position
Position refers to the over all disposition towards a subject. It may be sympathetic, completely favorable, conditionally favorable, unfavorable, somewhere in between, and so forth.

Evidence
In my experience there is a general trend in popular discourse to introduce facts that are divorced from any context or contextual reading of the historical period from which those facts are derived. In other words people will introduce facts in ways that reduce them to an ahistorical data point that is then used in an eisegesis of the subject. In conversations ranging from economics and politics to business and public policy it can be appealing to attempt to freestyle a plausible explanation for an unexpected outcome of a decision or event. However, if we do not take the next necessary step to look for evidence that affirms or negates our proposed expiation then we’re left with conjecture. Conjecture is not a stand in for evidence but it is very often offered as evidence to popular discourse.

Argument
The argument that advances or expresses ones position is one area where communication tends to breakdown between differing perspectives. There are many factors for this, however, when the level of discourse is low or not very well informed you can find yourself in a situation where you are attempting to argue without an actual argument. That is to say, merely presenting something as a fact doesn’t constitute an argument or even illustrate ones position on a subject. Understanding how to construct a logical argument and logical argumentation generally is very valuable.

Quality of Argument
This step refers to making a distinction between an argument (valid or invalid) and a good argument.

Quality of Evidence
This generally refers to the integrity of evidence as well as where the evidence is sourced from.

The above is a small introduction into something that I have found extremely useful in cutting through much of the noise of the social media driven news and commentary era. Particularly when dealing with a layered and/or contextually dense subject that requires a heavily nuanced reading to understand.  

In the future I hope to explore each of these subjects in more detail Allah willing.