Rhetorical Analysis Prompt - Essay Example

Rhetorical analysis Are people really conscious? The relationship between the minds of people and the physical world is perhaps a universal confusion to all humans. There have been concerns of whether the activities of the brain should be considered a type of biological instinct or merely a form of recognition. An argumentative article featured in New York Times and written by Michael S. A. Graziano, a neuroscience and psychology professor at Princeton, provides a comprehensive argument about awareness and its relationship with illusion.

The article entitled ‘Are We Really Conscious?’ was published in the New York Times on Oct 10th, 2014. Certain logos, ethos and pathos, are the techniques used skillfully to state the author’s point and to convince the audiences. The author bases his argument upon the fact that there has not been a definite answer to what the relationship between the human mind and the physical world could be. He claims that people should start viewing their perspective of consciousness differently because they have been unable to link the human mind to the physical world.

He says that perhaps people do not possess an inner feeling in the manner they think they do (Michael 1).The author of the article seems not to understand how the human brain goes beyond its usual duty of information processing to a rather complex mission of being aware of information. He supports this claim by giving an example of how the human brain perceived white color. Newton discovered that the white light is an amalgamation of multiple colors of observable spectrum. He, therefore, fails to understand the brain process that purifies the white color or white light.

He then concludes that people operate under the assumption that the white light or white color is pure as a result of the hypothesis of the brain. For this reason, he asserts that the theories of knowledge are based on peoples intuitions about awareness. Just like the assumption that while light or white color is pure, peoples intuitions concerning consciousness are derived from the unreal and incorrect information computed in the human brain (Michael 1). Michael’s argument about the relationship between brain activity and awareness is a convincing piece especially with the help of numerous argumentative elements applied in the article.

For instance, the article captures rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos and pathos) in the sense that he makes the article worth reading. He captures the concentration of his readers and vivifies his arguments with the use of practical and evidence-based examples. The best case is when he uses human’s perception of white light and compares it to the physical composition of white color as proven by Newton (Michael 1). It is noteworthy that the author also successfully uses logical (logos) appeals to present his case.

At the beginning of the presentation, he states that the answers to the two out of three fundamental scientific queries concerning the human condition have been answered (Wood 27). He indicates that the only question that has not been answered is the relationship between brain activity and reality. One ought to note that this introduction captures the attention of the reader and promotes further reading of the article.Another important aspect of this article that makes it successful in portraying its message is the manner in which the author uses emotional appeals to capture the interest of the reader (Wood 27).

Instead of addressing a rather general audience, the author uses first and second person, and this makes the argument more personal as compared to general.Works CitedMichael, Graziano S. A. "Are We Really Conscious?" The New York Times. 10 October 2014. Retrieved on 23rd October 2014 from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/opinion/sunday/are-we-really- conscious.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&_r=1Wood, Nancy V. Writing Argumentative Essays. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.