Ethos vs. Logos

Or, Authority vs. Knowledge in a Complex World

I first remember coming across the terms Ethos and Logos in a college English class, where we were learning about the fundamental tools of discussion and debate. These terms were used by the ancient philosopher Aristotle in discussing means of persuasion. Logos has something to do with trusting an opinion about something based purely on the logic of the argument for that opinion, and Ethos has something to do with trusting an opinion about something due to the integrity of the person making the argument. If a Greek city was arguing about whether or not to go to war, and a young man that nobody knew stood up to make a case about how many people would die or how successful the campaign might be, he would be relying on logos. However, if a wise old leader that everyone trusted simply said what he thought everyone should do without explaining himself, he would be relying on ethos.

I think we begin our lives with ethos. When I was an infant without fully developed capabilities of reasoning, I quickly learned to trust my mother and father and the choices that they made or recommended. As we grow up I think we begin a transition to logos, where we being to reason things out for ourselves, especially when we hit the stereotypical “rebellious teenage” years where we may doubt that mother and father truly know best.

Indeed, at the time that I learned these terms, I thought it was fairly obvious that logos was a superior method for determining one’s worldview. If two people are debating an issue, why should the person with a greater perceived level of status be granted an advantage over the other? The raw arguments and facts should be the only factors that lead one to a conclusion. Logos is a level playing field where truth can rise to the top.

My pursuit of logos guided my theology. I sought logical proofs of God involving “first mover” arguments and ideas about the inability of our perceived dimensions to explain everything that occurs within them. And it guided my politics; I delved into pure libertarian ideology, which provided logical reasoning to explain why every life problem was caused by some government action and why removing such government would always make things better.

And yet as I observed the world around me and the things occurring within it, I found much of this logic unsatisfactory. The theories did not always seem to line up with reality. I began to realize that it was not that the logic itself was flawed, for there was no inaccuracy between the premises and the conclusions. The problem was that the real world rarely followed the simple logic of those premises and conclusions. The logic was correct, but there was much more logic that was not always taken into account. I began to realize the sheer complexity of the world and the varying viewpoints of those that reside upon it.

I will illustrate with a single subject: climate change. Logos should be all you need to come to a true conclusion about climate change, or so I used to think. Just gather all the facts and interpret them. Someone has a fact about recorded temperature increase in recent years. Someone else has a fact about the unreliability of those temperature records. Someone has a fact about the Arctic ice cap reaching record lows. Someone else has a fact about the Antarctic ice cap reaching record highs. Someone else has another fact about why that record high actually means the ice cap is weaker, and someone else has a fact about why the record low Arctic ice cap does not mean that ice cap is weaker.

I began to realize that relying on facts alone is not enough, because there are simply too many facts! I began to realize that there were biases at work. These biases did not distort or misconstrue the facts – usually – but they affected which facts were presented or highlighted or painstakingly tracked down, and which facts were omitted or glossed over or unexplored. I began to realize that whenever a new fact was presented to me I had to consider the source of the fact, because even if the fact was true, my knowledge about the source (and the way the source has presented facts in the past) might help me infer what types of other facts might be likely to be missing. Suddenly, I realized I was using ethos.

I now believe that a pursuit of truth requires a collaboration of both logos and ethos. The inherent foundation of truth is still logos, but it is simply too complex for one person to fully grasp. Logos must be guided by ethos. If you are pursuing the truth about a particular topic, you must familiarize yourself with the key players and their biases so that you have a proper context for the facts they bring forth. This has a double-sided benefit; you can put less weight on the conclusions drawn from a biased presenter of facts that support his bias, and you can also put more weight on such conclusions in the rare instances when a biased presenter presents facts that contradict his bias. If Paul Krugman attacks Republicans or Charles Krauthammer attacks Democrats, you learn to not pay a whole lot of attention. But more importantly, if Krugman opposes an Obama policy, or Krauthammer praises it, you learn to pay extra attention. And most importantly of all, if you learn that you can trust a player to present facts without much bias, then you can learn to pay more attention to him or her, period. Our pursuit of logos is not solo; we must learn to trust others to help us navigate its complexity.

I also believe ethos is much more effective than logos at overcoming biases. You might think that a logical conclusion is all you need to open someone’s eyes to the truth, but I think we all recognize, whether consciously or not, that the truth is complex, and as such we are suspicious of facts that contradict our biases. Good luck trying to change a liberal’s opinion on something with a fact you got from the Wall Street Journal or Fox News – the liberal “knows” those sources are biased and that they’re probably lying or taking something out of context. Same goes for a conservative and Michael Moore or the Huffington Post. But if someone you trust from your own side admits something you previously did not believe, you are more likely to be open to changing your mind.

This happens all the time with people we trust, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with politics. If I dislike a band because they’re cheesy or vulgar or whatever, but my trusted friend tells me he really likes their new album because of the brilliant way it reveals the human condition, that might cause me to rethink my opinion. If I dislike blockbuster explosion movies, but my indie hipster friend who normally doesn’t like that kind of stuff posts on Facebook or Twitter that this particular new blockbuster explosion movie was actually really well-done, that would do more to convince me to go see it than reading all the positive reviews in the world. And it would do much more to convince me than the same praise coming from my blockbuster explosion movie buff. Words coming from the hand of Chrales Krauthammer would change the minds of far fewer progressives than the same words coming from the hand of Paul Krugman. The logos is the same, but the ethos determines whether or not it affects us, depending on whether or not we’ve learned to trust the presenter of the logos.

I won’t begin to speculate on why people learn to trust presenters the way they do; there are likely many kinds of reasons. But for anyone who wants to pursue truth and reveal it to others, it’s important to think about how people form opinions and biases. This allows you to filter these biases in your own pursuit of truth, but it also better enables you to cultivate such filters in those you hope to convince. I’m sure my beliefs about ethos and logos will continue to change as I grow older, along with my beliefs about the ways that others use them, but this has been a brief history of the journey up to now.