Locating the instability of the topic places: Rhetoric,phronesis and neurobiology |
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| Authors: | John Arthos |
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| Institution: | Assistant Professor, Department of Communication , Denison University , Granville, Ohio, 43023 |
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| Abstract: | Theory in the cognitive sciences around schemas, neural networks, and mapping supports and complements a hermeneutic rhetoric's championing of informal and practical reasoning against more rigid structures of logic, where concept, category, and judgment are born out of contingency and the to and fro of discursive practice. Contingency is not some extrinsic nuisance to adaptation for a neurobiological theory that posits a labile and dynamic structuring of cognition in the ongoing interaction of organism and environment. The endless reconfiguration and enrichment of neural patterns that come about through experience are born out of contingency and are suggestive, at their own level, for the performative view of rhetoric as the medium of reason at the level of discourse. This venture into cognitive science and neurobiology is undertaken to illuminate and develop our understandings of topical invention in rhetoric. |
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| Keywords: | topoi action assembly connectionism schema neurobiology performance phronesis relationality |
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