RHETORIC AND COGNITION
Implicit in much ancient teaching on rhetoric is a particular understanding of the operations of the human mind. Unlike philosophers, who tended to regard thought as intrinsic to the individual thinker, rhetoricians were interested in the interaction between internal thought processes and external realities, including the objects of the world and the opinions and preconceptions of others. In calling rhetoric an art, rhetoricians suggested that the validity of rhetorical propositions was determined by their demonstrable impact on the minds and actions of others, rather than measured in terms of abstract principles of truth and falsehood. Rhetoricians’ interest in the interconnectedness of cognitive processes helps to explain their focus on externalized or artificial memory (discussed elsewhere in this book), their view of the underlying unity of all artistic styles (explained here by Crassus in Cicero, On the Orator), their application of a theory of ornament to multiple arts and their admiration for types of speaking that prompted a listener to visualize the people and actions being represented in language (discussed here by Quintilian). Generally speaking, ancient rhetoric seems to come closer to recent models of thought as embodied, externalized and enactive, than to traditional models that emphasize internal representations.