Yesterday on my lonely dog-walk I listened to an iTunes U podcast presentation from Oxford University on the Theory of Arguments as part of a series on Critical Reasoning.
I did not find the lecturer easy to follow, but then it’s not easy to explain simply entailment, causation, necessity and so on. She seemed to be failing to distinguish between different sorts of truth-statements, not least because that means drilling down into the way language works. Thus “my shirt is red” has or has not a different truth-quality to “this is a chair” or “London is north of Brighton”. On the other hand, a podcast based on the symbols of formal logic might not be much fun.
She at least started well on the difference between Argument and Contradiction, pointing her students to this:
All of which shows why the skill of listening is so important in mediation and negotiation technique – what is the other side really saying (and really meaning) in making that statement?
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"All of which shows why the skill of listening is so important in mediation and negotiation technique"
Not really.
Disagree.
One of the key aims of any negotiation is (or ought to be) to find out what the other side wants. Therefore listening carefully to what they say about what they want (and why they want it) is essential.
Being alert to inconsistencies in fact/logic is part of that careful listening. So it pays to know something about the different ways arguments can be inconsistent or imprecise. QED
Sorry, I was still in the video when I replied, so I still think you're wrong. Humor aside, I have preached for years "Everyone has a story to tell, but you must listen to hear it." oops my five minutes are up.