What is conviction and persuasion?

Richard Whately, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Richard Whately answers

Conviction and persuasion are not the same operation, and confusing them is one of the more persistent errors in the teaching of rhetoric. Conviction addresses the understanding. When you wish to convince a man, you may state your conclusion plainly, avow your intention of producing reasons for it, and even entreat his steady attention to the argument by which it is to be established.¹

The process is direct because the intellectual powers are, as I have said, under the immediate control of the will; you address them openly, and the hearer knows he is being reasoned with. This is not a weakness of conviction but its character. Persuasion addresses the will, and the will is not reached by the same road. No passion, sentiment, or emotion is excited by thinking about it and attending to it directly; it is excited by attending to such objects as are calculated to awaken it.²

The process is therefore oblique and indirect — and this indirection is what suggests to suspicious minds the idea of trick and artifice. But the suspicion is misplaced. The indirect process is precisely what a wise man practises towards himself when he wishes to alter his own state of feeling; the orator employs no artifice that a man of sense does not employ in his own private deliberations.²

There is a further complication worth naming. The feelings, unlike the understanding, are not permanent in their effects. A man who has been carried to a conclusion by excitement may, after a few hours, view the question in very different colours; whereas the sophistical argument by which his understanding was misled he may be as unable to detect as ever.³

This is why the association of deceit falls more readily on the address to the feelings — it is the more transient influence and therefore the sooner discovered. But notice what this implies: a conviction produced by bad reasoning is, in a sense, the more dangerous imposition, since it persists after the passion has cooled. One further distinction bears on conviction specifically.

Belief is not the same as certainty, and doubt is not the same as disbelief. The proper opposite to belief is either conscious ignorance or doubt; and even doubt, when deliberate and confirmed, amounts to a kind of belief — a verdict of not proven, a belief that the evidence does not suffice to determine the question either way.⁴ Men of ordinary minds tend to rush past this middle state: as soon as they perceive any preponderance of probability on one side, however slight, they decide with full conviction, as a man who has lost his equilibrium cannot hold a slanting position.⁵

The intelligent err in the opposite direction — they examine premises and care too little for conclusions, inquiring without deciding even when the case calls for a practical judgment.⁶ The practical upshot for the speaker is this: conviction and persuasion must both be sought, but by different means and in full awareness that the hearer's feelings and the hearer's understanding are distinct faculties, moved by distinct processes, and subject to distinct failures.

Sources

1. The conclusion you wish to draw, you may state plainly, as such; and avow your intention of producing reasons which shall effect a conviction of that conclusion: you may even entreat the hearers' steady attention to the point to be proved, and to the process of argument by which it is to be established.

   Elements of Rhetoric

2. No passion, sentiment, or emotion is excited by thinking about it, and attending to it; but by thinking about, and attending to, such objects as are calculated to awaken it. Hence it is, that the more oblique and indirect process which takes place when we are addressing ourselves to this part of the human mind, is apt to suggest the idea of trick and artifice; although it is, as I have said, just such as a wise man practices towards himself.

   Elements of Rhetoric

3. A few days, or even hours, will often allow them to cool, sufficiently, to view in very different colors some question on which they have perhaps decided in a moment of excitement; whereas any sophistical reasoning by which they have been misled, they are perhaps as unable to detect as ever.

   Elements of Rhetoric

4. The proper opposite to belief is either conscious ignorance, or doubt. And even doubt may sometimes amount to a kind of belief; since deliberate and confirmed doubt, on a question that one has attended to, implies a 'verdict of not proven' — a belief that there is not sufficient evidence to determine either one way or the other.

   Elements of Rhetoric

5. Such a person, as soon as he perceives any — the smallest — preponderance of probability on one side of a question, can no more refrain from deciding immediately, and with full conviction, on that side, than he could continue to stand, after having lost his equilibrium, in a slanting position, like the famous tower at Pisa.

   Elements of Rhetoric

6. As the one description of men rush hastily to a conclusion, and trouble themselves little about premises, so the other carefully examine premises, and care too little for conclusions. The one decide without inquiring, the other inquire without deciding.

   Elements of Rhetoric