The Best Self-Help is Free: Focusing on Conclusions in Persuasion

When persuading another person, your primary interest is that the other person adopt the conclusion of your argument - and whether or not he or she adopts all of your premises is of secondary, if any, importance. After all, it is on the basis of the conclusions they have reached that people decide what they ought to do, and their actions are of much more direct relevance to your life than whatever goes on inside their heads.

When entering an argument, it is wise to keep in mind precisely what conclusion you want to persuade the other party to adopt. After you establish this, pursue this goal without being sidetracked by tangents or messy disagreements on premises.

In fact, within your premises, you already hold the conclusion you want to convey to the other person. The problem is that the other person does not share your premises, and his or her own premises were formed during the course of a lifetime. Hence, all of them are highly unlikely to change during the course of a single discussion. If and when they do change, it will only happen if the person thinks that the impetus for change was internal and caused by his or her own lengthy and careful reflection. If you try to directly change the other person's premises, you will not only fail, but you will also antagonize him or her in the process.

Nonetheless, when you defend a conclusion you hold, there are many lines of defense you can employ, just as there might be many lines of defense surrounding a military fortification. The innermost line of defense for you is the argument for your conclusion from your own premises. But this is unlikely to persuade anyone who does not already hold your premises. Each subsequent line of defense is a response to the question, "How many of the other person's premises can you concede, just for the sake of argument, and still be able to defend your conclusion?" Remember that, to argue outside your own premises, you do not have to actually reject anything that you believe. Your purpose in argumentation is simply to get the other person to improve his or her mental framework so as to fit your conclusion - which you consider correct - into it. All other things equal, a system of premises differing from your own plus one conclusion you agree with is preferable to the same system of premises without that conclusion.

The easiest way to persuade another person that your conclusion is correct is to acknowledge all of that person's premises, for the sake of argument, and to show that your conclusion logically must follow from these premises.

The next easiest task is to show the truth of your conclusion by pointing out facts that do not necessarily conflict with the other person's fundamental premises but were not acknowledged by that person before for some reason - likely a simple lack of information.

It is more difficult, though not impossible, to challenge a minor premise that another person holds, provided that the basic structure of his or her worldview can still stand even if that premise is rejected.

Finally, it is a Herculean task to attempt to reform another person's basic views of the universe, life, religion or the lack thereof, and the fundamentals of ethical behavior. You are welcome, of course, to present your own beliefs on these subjects, but this will be a much more successful endeavor if you approach it as an exposition rather than a persuasive attempt. Say to the other person, "This is what I believe, and I am explaining this to satisfy your curiosity or to enable you to understand me better. I am not necessarily trying to convince you to adopt my worldview at this time, unless you already have that inclination."

People have never stopped having major philosophical disagreements, and they never will. However, it is possible for many of the practical implications of widely differing worldviews to converge and to be in line with objective truth and virtue. The nearly universal ethical prohibition on murder is an excellent example of how such a convergence might look. If you as an argumentator are able to get a person with a different worldview to share what you consider to be a correct conclusion, then you will have worked toward achieving such a convergence - which is virtually always the best you can do.

Read all chapters of The Best Self-Help is Free.