ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Critical Thinking: Assessment, Flow Charts And Computers

ISSAlogo1998This paper will look at some new directions in the teaching of critical thinking. This project originally began as an assessment project to discover how well our students were mastering the critical thinking unit in our introductory philosophy course. By using computers to test the pre and post course skills of students, and by running some statistical analyses of what students were and were not learning, I became aware that students had little difficulty memorizing logical concepts – they could define arguments, they understood the difference between premises and conclusions, etc.What they were not able to do successfully, or as successfully as I would like, is apply these concepts to new material. They had difficulty distinguishing arguments from other forms of discourse, evaluating new arguments for strength and validity and recognizing examples of pseudoreasoning. What they most needed help in was learning the skills one uses to come to the decision that a passage does or does not contain an argument, or that a particular form of fallacious reasoning is being used.
My initial computer exercises focused on reinforcing the nature of the concepts – what an argument is, what a slippery slope involves, distinguishing between valid and invalid arguments, etc. These exercises improved student outcomes, but not as significantly as I had hoped. My next step was to develop flow charts to help students picture graphically the relevant reasoning processes. I have used three such charts, designed to help students recognize arguments, recognize valid arguments, and recognize several informal fallacies. The students could then use these flow charts to develop their own methods to accomplish these tasks.
By focusing on the processes used to make logical decisions, I hope to show that students can master logical concepts more easily. Most logic texts are problem based; yet little is offered on processes to solve the problems. For example, most texts include problems on identifying arguments, but do not show the steps necessary to distinguish arguments from other types of discourse. Notable exceptions to this are units on more complicated logical procedures such as diagraming arguments, using Venn Diagrams and logical proofs. Logic Texts address part of this problem when they teach students how to recognize premises and conclusions. The expectation seems to be that if students can understand the concept of an argument, they can therefore identify arguments in practice. But I do not find this to be the case. This is not enough to give students the ability to distinguish arguments from other types of discourse. Read more

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ISSA Proceedings 1998 – “Scorching Irony, Not Convincing Argument, Is Needed”: Frederick Douglass On Some Rhetorical Limitations Of Argumentation

ISSAlogo1998This is the fourth ISSA conference to which I have contributed a paper. Each paper, with the exception of the first, has discussed the ideas of some thinker who was, for one reason or another, largely opposed to the strong Western insistence upon argumentative justification. Thus in 1990 I rehearsed Friedrich Schlegel’s complex rationale for believing that “nothing should, and nothing can be proved,” while in 1994 I explored Plato’s attempt to “blame Lysias” for deviating from argumentative procedures which Plato advocated in theory but neglected to practice[i]. I have chosen to examine thinkers who are skeptical about, if not also opposed to, argumentation primarily because much of my own current work seeks to trace the long subalternated tradition of Western anti-argumentative, “declarative rhetoric.” I am interested, that is, in all of those thinkers who, for a wide range reasons, have come to believe that the process of providing reasons and inferences in support of claims, is not, or at least is not always, the best way to accomplish communicative, rhetorical or epistemological purposes. I must confess, however, that I especially enjoy discussing such argumentative agnostics and atheists at this particular conference, for this is a place which, more than any other I’ve encountered, abounds with the hubris of argumentation, and it gives me some small pleasure to play the role of the oracle of doom, to be the one who, however modestly, attempts to inject a smidgen of yin into a discourse that is otherwise so lopsidedly yang.
As part of my larger project of recuperating the long declarative protest to the hegemony of argumentative justification in the West, I am forever on the lookout for argumentative Nichtmitmacher, for those refractory types who refuse to accede to the conventional requirement that one be prepared to justify all of one’s assertions, or “declarations,” through recourse to argumentative justifications. I have by now collected quite a few odd characters in my declarative menagerie. Many of them, of course, oppose argumentation for rather poor reasons. But several of them, like Meister Eckhardt, Friedrich Schlegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin, provide objections to argumentation that deserve to be taken very seriously.

The author I wish to discuss today, that 19th century escaped American slave, polymathic autodidact, turned abolitionist orator par excellence, Frederick Douglass, is yet another who has some objections to argumentation which, I believe, are well worth the consideration of all who, like me, are interested in the many ways argumentation has been challenged by the subalternated declarative tradition.
Douglass’s thoughts regarding the rhetorical limitations of argumentation occur toward the middle of what is generally, and I think rightfully, considered to be his oratorical masterpiece, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852.” I frequently have my students analyze this speech as part of my course on “Rhetoric and American Culture.” There are, of course, many features of the work that lend themselves especially well to rhetorical examination. Douglass is a master stylist, so it is easy for students to discover and scrutinize all manner of rhetorical devices, with which the work, like most 19th century American orations, is replete. The speech also exemplifies the characteristically American form of the jeremiad, a form inherited from early Puritan oratory much discussed in recent years.[ii] Read more

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ISSA Proceedings 1998 – The Nature Of Symptomatic Argumentation

ISSAlogo19981. Introduction
There seems to be general agreement among argumentation theorists that argumentation schemes are principles or rules underlying arguments that legitimise the step from premises to standpoints. They characterise the way in which the acceptability of the premise that is explicit in the argumentation is transferred to the standpoint. The argumentation scheme that has been used by an arguer determines the specific relation that is established between the explicit premise and the standpoint that is being justified. This relation is not a formal but a pragmatic relation.
Argumentation schemes play an important role in the evaluation of argumentation. In order to evaluate an argumentation, one must first determine which argumentation scheme is employed. Then it can be established whether the premise is in an adequate way linked to the standpoint. For this purpose, one has to answer the critical questions that go with the argumentation scheme that has been used.

The pragma-dialectical typology of argumentation schemes is designed to enable an adequate evaluation of argumentation. In this typology, three types of argumentation are distinguished:
1. symptomatic or ‘token’ argumentation, where there is a relation of concomitance between the premise and the standpoint;
2. comparison or ‘similarity’ argumentation, where the relation is one of resemblance; and
3. instrumental or ‘consequence’ argumentation, where there is a causal relation between the premise and the conclusion.

These three argumentation types are categorised based on the way in which the argumentation scheme concerned is to be evaluated. With each type of argumentation go corresponding assessment criteria that pertain to the relation that is characterised in the argumentation scheme. This means that a new argumentation scheme should be distinguished only when it can be shown that “new” assessment criteria are needed to evaluate the corresponding type of argumentation.
Each of the pragma-dialectical argumentation schemes represents a category that can be subdivided into a number of subtypes. The reason for distinguishing between subtypes is that evaluating the argumentations concerned requires more specific evaluation criteria. Argumentation based on analogy is, for instance, a subtype of comparison argumentation which is to be distinguished because the critical question ‘Are the things that are compared (X and Y) comparable’ needs further specification. This way of classifying the argumentation schemes results in a typology that meets the requirements of an adequate classification: its categories are clearly demarcated, homogeneous, mutually exclusive, and non of them is superfluous. Read more

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Issa Proceedings 1998 – The History Of The Enthymeme

ISSAlogo19981. Introduction [i]
Enthymemes are on the agenda of modern rhetoric, argumentation theory, conversation and discourse analysis, formal and informal logic and critical thinking. However, in the various approaches to enthymemes there are many and sometimes large differences with respect to the definition of an enthymeme. In some cases the definitions do not even seem to refer to the same language phenomenon:
Some modern definitions of an enthymeme
An enthymeme is a truncated of abbreviated argument – (…) with either a missing premiss or an unstated conclusion (Crossley and Wilson, 1979: 106).
Enthymemes are arguments in which the support is matched to the questions and objections of the recipient (Jackson and Jacobs, 1980: 262).
The enthymeme does not require a particular linguistic frame, it is a form of thought, rather than a form of composition. (Nash 1989: 206)) This argument has all the earmarks of the enthymeme: the opening proposition, the syllogistic statement of contraries or incompatibles, the conclusion which is in effect a reformulation of the opening proposition (Nash, 1989: 210).
An enthymeme is an argument in which the speaker for pragmatic reasons left certain parts implicit, which means that at the logical level of analysis the missing part must be added in order to render the argument valid, while at the pragmatic level the particular assumption on which the argument relies has to be shown (Van Eemeren en Grootendorst, 1992).[ii]
These are just some examples. There are many other definitions that resemble one of them, but may differ in one aspect or another. This variety in definitions is puzzling. Are the differences only differences in stressing some aspect or another of essentially the same meaning, or do they reflect major theoretical differences? My main concern in this paper is to investigate and explain these differences, which I will do by giving you a historical overview. It is important to look into this, because it is often tacitly assumed that there is general consensus on what an enthymeme is, while in my view this is not the case. As a result of that, discussions on enthymemes sometimes suffer from a confusion of tongues. There are some thorough and helpful recent studies on the history of the enthymeme (e.g. Burnyeat, 1996; Braet, 1997), but these focus on one particular historical period, whereas I think that we need an overview of all the relevant periods. Read more

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ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Language, Words And Expressive Speech Acts

ISSAlogo1998This essay is in three parts; each subsequent part shorter than the previous. In the first I discuss the Principle of Pragmatic Emotionalization, (Gilbert, 1997a) and the role of emotion in argumentation. The specific issue concerns the role of emotional messages in argument. This is used as a foundation for the second part where I will describe the role of expressive speech acts, or, as I will call them, emotional message acts, in everyday argumentation. Finally, I say a very few words regarding the question as to whether or not we are doing Argumentation Theory or Psychology in studying emotional argumentation.
To begin with, I must reiterate that the role of emotion is significant and can be crucial to both the comprehension of a position and the resolution or settlement of an argument. I have argued these points at length elsewhere, and rather then repeat myself in the limited time available, in this discussion I shall simply assume the following. Emotions invariably enter into argumentation (Gilbert, 1996). Emotional interaction can be observed and structured as informational cues (Gilbert, 1995, 1997).

(3) Arguments can have emotional data, warrants or claims (ibid.).

1. The Principle of Pragmatic Emotionalization
The Principle of Pragmatic Emotionalization [PPE] is a cornerstone in interpreting the role that emotion plays in argumentation.
The principle relies on a discord or inconsistency between the words being uttered and the message being communicated. Put another way, when emotion and logic are in agreement, there is no difficulty; we know how to deal with such situations. Emotion plays the role we expect it to, communicating information about our internal states, feelings, beliefs and desires. However, in other circumstances, our communicative tools tell us that there is something wrong, a discordance. In these interactions the principle plays an important role. The principle is as follows.

The Principle of Pragmatic Emotionalization:
Given that a communicator is presenting an emotional message that is inconsistent with the logical message, then the recipient may assume that
1. the logical message may not be reliable, and/or
2. the complete message may be compound, and/or
3. the goals of the communicator may have been misidentified, and/or
4. the communicator’s position may not have been fully exposed. Read more

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ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Dialethic Dialogue

ISSAlogo19981. Introduction
In this paper we discuss the use of the Hamblin/Mackenzie Formal Dialectic (HMFD) for the classical/non-classical debate about the status of contradictions and of non-trival inconsistent theories. Some of the central issues have been addressed in (Mackenzie and Priest 1990), and we discuss their stance.
It will be argued that the Mackenzie-Priest stance poses difficulties for the classical viewpoint. These are difficulties which have to do with debating the questions. In a discussion of the difficulties about the debate, argument will be presented which is deeply pessimistic about the resolution of these debate difficulties. The question for us is, “How can the argument continue? Can such profound difference be amenable to rational or reasonable argument?”

We begin by setting out a HMFD system in a condensed form, with focus on the features which are salient to the question of the debate. The system contains certain restrictions which are classical in nature. These restrictions give HMFD an apparently strong bias against dialetheism.
We consider how the HMFD restrictions work in practice, and see if they need to be modified so as to better serve the debate about dialetheism without begging the question. In this context, we consider some comments of (John Woods 1997) about both the argument against disjunctive syllogism and the well known set theory paradox in the Russell-Frege correspondence.
The comments were made in response to a dialogue system presented in (Girle “Belief Sets and Commitment Stores” 1997).

2. Hamblin/Mackenzie Formal Dialectic (HMFD)
There are many formal dialogue systems. (We note in passing: Barth and Martens 1984, Hamblin 1970, Mackenzie 1979, 1984, Walton 1984, and Walton and Krabbe 1995.) Despite differences between the systems, they have several things in common.
There are four main elements in most dialogue-logics. First, there is interaction between dialogue participants – the minimal case being two participants. The interaction is represented in the obvious way as a sequence of locution events. The dialogue-logic also has syntactic stipulations concerning the types of locutions with which the logic will deal. The locutions include: statements, responses of various sorts, questions of various kinds, and withdrawals. Locutions are used by the participants in a dialogue to form a sequence of locution events. In setting out a dialogue we number locutions to indicate their order in the dialogue. These numbers are somewhat like the numberings of formulas in a proof.
The second element is a set of commitment stores, one for each participant in the sequence. Commitment stores are neither deductively closed nor necessarily logically consistent. The third element is a set of Commitment Store Rules. Each participant’s commitment store is added to and subtracted from according to what statements, questions, answers and withdrawals are used by participants in the dialogue, subject only to the rules. For example, there may be a rule that if a participant asserts that P, then P is added to everyone’s commitment store. If anyone disagrees, then they must explicitly deny P. Such a condition gives expression to the notion that we mostly believe what people say. Read more

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