Arguing about human understanding

The concepts of human understanding and arguing are approached perspectivally by emphasizing one dimension of a construct as the figure and deemphasizing others as the ground. This approach is designed to supplement a more traditional mode of analyzing categories reductionistically. Human understanding may be thematized empirically, personally, or linguistically. Arguing may be thematized as rhetorical process, logical product, or dialectical method. The essay illustrates the interaction between the two constructs by suggesting how human understanding that features the empirical dimension may be pursued by a perspective that yields two dialectical methods of arguing: a traditional either/or approach or a holistic both/and mode. Although both methods of arguing and both approaches to human understanding have utility, the both/and method of arguing about a perspectival view of understanding probably is not used as often as might be valuable.