ISSA Proceedings 2014 – The Agentive Approach To Argumentation: A Proposal

• by: Douglas Niño & Danny Marrero, Department of Humanities, Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Bogotá-Colombia

Abstract: This paper outlines an agent-centered theory of argumentation. Our working hypothesis is that the aim of argumentation depends upon the agenda agents are disposed to close or advance. The novelty of this idea is that our theory, unlike the main accounts of argumentation, does not establish a fixed function that agents have to achieve when arguing. Instead, we believe that the aims of argumentation depend upon the purposes agents are disposed to achieve (agendas).

Keywords: Agent, agent centered theory of argumentation, function of argumentation

1. Introduction
The main goal of this paper is to outline an agent-centered theory of argumentation. Our working hypothesis is that the aim of argumentation depends upon the agenda agents are disposed to close or advance. The novelty of this idea is that our theory, unlike the main normative accounts of argumentation (i.e., rhetorical, dialogical and epistemological theories of argumentation), does not establish an a priori function that agents are expected to achieve when arguing. Instead, we believe that the aims of argumentation depend upon the purposes agents are disposed to achieve (i.e., their agendas). The problem with fixing an a priori function for argumentation is that some argumentative practices do not fit into the proposed end. Our concern is that when an agent does not aim for the fixed function of argumentation, his/her argumentative practice could be misunderstood or overlooked. That is why our agentive theory suggests that the agendas agents are disposed to close or advance by means of argumentation determine the goal of such communicative activity. If our intuitions are right, our account shows some promise understanding of a broader diversity of argumentative practices than each of the normative theories of argumentation individually considered. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 – The Legacy Of The U.S. Atomic Superiority, Supremacy And Monopoly: Dispelling Its Illusion In Barack Obama’s Berlin Speech

• by: Hiroko Okuda - College of Human and Environmental Studies Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

Abstract: The nature of the dilemma facing the world living with nuclear weapons is not technical, but political. This study reflects upon the extent to which the U.S. nuclear policy has been influenced by the mistaken assumption that the nation’s nuclear supremacy should be enduring. The study focuses specifically on the speech delivered by the U.S. President Barack Obama, who calls for international cooperation on nuclear matters, in Berlin on 19 June 2013.

Keywords: Atomic diplomacy, Barack Obama, Berlin speech, nuclear policy, nuclear weapons

The nature of the dilemma facing the world living with nuclear weapons is not technical, but political. To a certain extent, the end of the cold war changed reliance on nuclear weapons into their further proliferation. On the one hand, in negotiations between the United States and Russia, the desire to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons corresponds with the determination to cut back on either their number or variety. On the other hand, atomic diplomacy holds on to the position of strategic superiority. This study reflects upon the extent to which the U.S. nuclear policy has been influenced by the mistaken assumption that the nation’s nuclear supremacy should be enduring. The study focuses specifically on the speech delivered by the U.S. President Barack Obama, who advocates international cooperation on nuclear matters, in Berlin on 19 June 2013.

The U.S. nuclear supremacy has been founded upon a “popular fallacy”- a cause of the false sense of security and power. Nuclear weapons after the destruction of Hiroshima have not yet convincingly proved themselves to be an asset. However, the atomic superiority has locked the U.S. administration into a policy of trying to outrace other nations in the development of new and more means of mass destruction. Such efficaciousness in diplomacy as much as unforeseen events might lead to another fallacious assumption concerning the utility of nuclear weapons. That is, their alleged capacity to avert military confrontations. Since the collapse of its atomic monopoly in 1949, the experience of the U.S. foreign policy has confirmed that nearly the opposite of these political assumptions is true. Nevertheless, it survives as myth to the present by giving impetus to the nuclear arms race. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 – On What Matters For Virtue Argumentation Theory

• by: Fabio Paglieri - Goal-Oriented Agents Lab (GOAL), Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy

Abstract: Virtue argumentation theory (VAT) has been charged of being incomplete, given its alleged inability to account for argument validity in virtue-theoretical terms. Instead of defending VAT against that challenge, I suggest it is misplaced, since it is based on a premise VAT does not endorse, and raises an issue that most versions of VAT need not consider problematic. This in turn allows distinguishing several varieties of VAT, and clarifying what really matters for them.

Keywords: virtue argumentation theory, argument quality, validity, conflicting virtues.

1. Introduction
Virtue argumentation theory (henceforth, VAT) is a relatively new contender in the arena of argumentation theories – a martial metaphor that some virtue theorists may not be ready to endorse without reservation, by the way (see, e.g., Cohen, 1995). To the best of my knowledge, the name was coined by Andrew Aberdein as late as in 2007, in a paper where he outed Daniel Cohen as a sort of closeted virtue argumentation theorist, quoting persuasive textual evidence from Cohen’s previous work (2004, 2005). However, Aberdein (2007, 2010a) has made also abundantly clear that VAT is but the latest offspring of an illustrious scholarly tradition, to wit, virtue theory in general, dating back to ancient philosophy, and most notably to Aristotle’s ethical writings. As it is well known, that particular approach has been gaining a lot of momentum in recent years, in the context of virtue ethics (Foot, 1978; MacIntyre, 1981; Hursthouse, 1999) and positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), as well as in the area of virtue epistemology (Sosa, 1991; Zagzebski, 1996), which share many topics of concern with argumentation theories. So it should not come as a surprise to see that VAT is currently prospering: for instance, “Virtues of Argumentation” was the topic of the latest international conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argument (Windsor, 22-25 May 2013), with Daniel Cohen featuring as one of the keynote speakers; nor is the relevance of VAT confined to argumentation theories, given that a non-specialistic high-profile philosophy journal such as Topoi is currently preparing a special issue on “Virtues and Arguments”, guest edited by Andrew Aberdein and Daniel Cohen. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 – Access Denied: Crafting Argumentative Responses To Educational Restrictions On Undocumented Students In The United States.

• by: Edward Panetta - Department of Communication Studies, University of Georgia, United States

Abstract: The state of Georgia has enacted laws restricting the access that undocumented Latino/a students have to universities. The restrictions are comparable to those imposed on African-Americans in the old South. The students have formulated a set of argumentative responses to challenge the legitimacy of the restrictions. The strategies include enrolling in Freedom University. This underground university helps to both humanize the students for the public while affording them the opportunity to join an educational community.

Keywords: DREAMers, Freedom University, Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance, immigration, public argument, and student protests.

1. Introduction
Over the last decade a number of jurisdictions in the United States have enacted laws to restrict the access undocumented college students have to in-state tuition and scholarship opportunities. While some states have pushed back against this nativist impulse and enacted laws affording undocumented students access to post-secondary education, there continue to be students who are denied educational access. The most severe educational restrictions are found in the old segregated South, and they are often part of a larger package of laws intended to control the behaviors of the entire undocumented population in that state. The states of Alabama and South Carolina have instituted a total ban on the admission of undocumented students to state-funded colleges. My home state of Georgia has banned students from attending the most competitive schools and stripped undocumented students of the right to pay in-state tuition.

The suppression of an immigrant population is not a problem confined to the United States. France, for example, has struggled with political conflict resulting from a rising Islamic population and fear that French traditions could be lost. In the Netherlands, young immigrants have found themselves at risk of being ejected from the country, as they become adults. In France and the Netherlands, advocates for the undocumented have attempted to redefined the controversy by highlighting the ways in which restrictions would negatively impact families by tearing them apart (Nicholls, 2013, p. 176). This is consistent with a recurrent pattern employed by opponents of legislative restrictions on non-citizens – the redefinition of the conflict to focus on the values of community and family. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 – The Symbolic Meaning Of Radbruch’s Formula; Statutory (Non-)Law And The Argument Of Non-Law

• by: Marijan Pavčnik - Faculty of Law, Poljanski nasip, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Abstract: Statutory “law” that “intolerably” (Radbruch) violates supra-statutory law is non-law. The content of the argument is not based on eternal and unchangeable natural law that positive law should conform to, but upon the fundamental (human) rights that prevail in a historical period. In the modern state the catalogue of fundamental (human) rights is so extensive that it offers a sufficiently broad basis for the removal of any legal incorrectness (including statutory non-law). Thus, the argument of non-law also has great symbolic value. It persuades us that legal thought should always make sense.

Keywords: legal positivism, Radbruch’s formula, the argument of non-law, the symbolic meaning of Radbruch’s formula, legal sense, sense of justice, mutuality, coexistence.

1. Radbruch and his formula
One of the most penetrating critiques of legal positivism is the so-called Radbruch formula. Already at the beginning of his theoretical path, Radbruch (Gustav Radbruch, 1878-1949) was aware “that it equally belongs to the concept of right law that it is positive as it is the duty of positive law to be right as to content” (Radbruch, 1914: 163, and 1999: 74). The basic characteristic of Radbruch’s legal-philosophical thought was that, as a Neo-Kantian, he accepted value-theoretical relativism and advocated the standpoint that legal values cannot be “identified” (Germ. erkennen), but only “acknowledged” (Germ. bekennen) (Radbruch, 1914: 22, 162, and 1999: 15).[i]

An inevitable consequence of value relativism is that the sovereignty of the people and democracy are the central characteristics of the rule of law. The content of law has to be decided in a democratic, responsible and tolerant way. In the paper Der Relativismus in der Rechtsphilosophie (Relativism in Legal Philosophy), special importance is assigned to tolerance: “Relativism is general tolerance – just not tolerance of intolerance” (Radbruch, 1934: 21). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 – Ethos And Authority Argumentation: Four Kinds Of Authority In Medical Consultation

• by: Roosmaryn Pilgram - Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract: The authority that the patient ascribes to the doctor in medical consultation influences the way in which this consultation proceeds. In an argumentative discussion, this ascribed authority can affect the acceptability of the doctor’s argumentation. To analyse a doctor’s authority argumentation in medical consultation, I shall make a fourfold analytical distinction between ways in which authority can influence the outcome of an argumentative discussion.

Keywords: Authority argumentation, doctor-patient consultation, ethos, pragma-dialectics

1. Introduction
In medical consultation, a patient typically requests a medical consultation to have his health problem diagnosed by the doctor and, based on this diagnosis, to obtain medical advice. By his request, the patient indicates that he does not know what is the matter with him, how serious his health problem is, or how to best handle this problem, but trusts that the doctor knows this – or can refer him to a specialist based on a medical examination. The patient, thus, ascribes authority on his health problem to the doctor.

The authority ascribed to the doctor influences the way in which the consultation proceeds. The patient will expect the doctor to guide, and thereby structure, the communicative exchange in order to come to an appropriate advice (or parts thereof, such as the diagnosis and prognosis). Moreover, in case of an argumentative discussion in medical consultation, the authority that the patient ascribes to the doctor can influence the acceptability of his argumentation to the patient. First of all, the simple fact that the patient regards the doctor as an authority on his health problem might be enough for the patient to accept the doctor’s argumentation about this problem. Secondly, the doctor can attempt to convince the patient of a medical advice by emphasising his expertise in the course of the consultation or by presenting this expertise as an argument in support of the medical advice. Read more