ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Going For Broke: The Meta-Argumentation Of Desperation Strategies
I have always been intrigued by Hans Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification for induction (Reichenbach 1938; Salmon 1974). It is curiously compelling even as it leaves a lingering and unsatisfying aftertaste. The source for both its attraction and it aftertaste is its almost desperate appeal at the meta-argumentation level: we do not know if anything will work to give us knowledge of patterns in nature – we cannot even assume that there are patterns in nature – but if anything will work, inductive reasoning will work!
When the conditions are right, desperation arguments can be very strong. Reichenbach’s argument meets some of those conditions, but only some of them.
1. Measures for arguments
There is something exciting about desperation strategies like the “Hail Mary” passes on the last plays of American football games, when a team down to it last play throws caution to the winds and throws the ball up for grabs with hope and a prayer that it might be caught rather than dropped or intercepted, or the decision by a hockey team, down by a goal near the end of regulation time, to pull its goalie for a sixth attacking skater. The chances for success may be small and the risks may be high, but the potential payoff is great and they seem to be perfectly reasonable strategies in the circumstances. However, the reasoning behind those strategies is worth a closer look because not all structurally identical arguments are as compelling as Reichenbach’s appeal. We need the resources to tell them apart. Read more
ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Agent-Relative Fallacies
1. Introductory
My topic is an issue in the individuation and epistemology of fallacious inferences [i]. My thesis is that there are instances of reasoning that are fallacious not in themselves, that are not intrinsically fallacious, but are fallacious only relative to particular reasoning agents. This seems like a peculiar notion. It would seem that if it was fallacious for you to reason a certain way, and I do the same thing, I would be committing a fallacy as well. Bad reasoning is bad reasoning, no matter who is doing it. But it is useful to ask: What would it take for it to be possible for there to be such a thing as an agent-relative fallacy? Here are two sets of conditions, the obtaining of either of which would be sufficient for the existence of agent-relative, or extrinsic, fallacies. Type One is that there are two agents who are intrinsically alike, molecule-for-molecule doppelgangers, one of whom is reasoning fallaciously while the other is not, due to differences in their respective environments. The other scenario, Type Two, is that there are two agents (who are not doppelgangers) who engage in intrinsically identical instances of reasoning, one of whom reasons fallaciously while the other does not, due to differences located elsewhere in their minds that affect the epistemic status of their respective inferences. I will attempt to demonstrate that it is at least possible for agents to meet either set of conditions, and that in fact some people do meet the Type Two conditions, so agent-relative fallacies are not only possible, but actual. Read more
ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Re-Presenting Argumentation In The Traditional Romanian Parliamentary Debate
1. Introduction
This paper [i] is tackling two of the four meta-theoretical principles of pragma-dialectics, that is, socialization and externalization, in the context of a specific activity type – the parliamentary debate. The paper focuses on some mechanisms used in the traditional Romanian parliamentary debate for refutation (section 2). An overview of the parliamentary debate as an activity type will be given in the first section of the paper, as well as some general historical information about the XIXth century Romanian political world.
Following the pragma-dialectical model of van Eemeren & Grootendorst (2004), van Eemeren et al. (2008), socialization is achieved by identifying which members of Parliament (henceforth MPs) take on the roles of protagonist and antagonist in the context of an argumentative discourse. Throughout the interactions, MPs place themselves on different positions which they support with arguments; as far as externalization is concerned, our approach focuses on disagreement, as a discursive activity – a dispreferred marked response to an arguable act.
In the parliamentary debate, the MPs often externalise the implicit discussion; as a result, they position themselves in explicit contrast with other MPs, protagonists of a counter-standpoint, and manoeuvre strategically, in order to obtain the most favourable presentation of the disagreement (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002). Read more
ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Arguments About ‘Rhetoric’ In The 2008 US Presidential Election Campaign
Barack Obama’s prowess in the art of rhetoric, for which he had gained a national reputation with a stirring keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, was much commented upon during the 2008 US presidential election campaign and became a stimulus for public debate on the necessity, value, and danger of rhetoric as a political-communicative practice. Extending work by Craig (1996, 1999, 2008; Craig & Tracy 2005) on normative concepts and arguments in ordinary metadiscourse (practically-oriented discourse about discourse), this paper presents an initial survey of arguments about rhetoric that appeared in public metadiscourse of the 2008 campaign. Issues that emerged in this debate engaged classic lines of argument between rhetorical and critical traditions of thought concerning the legitimacy of rhetoric, thus showing the continuing relevance of those traditions and their capacity to illuminate essential tensions in democratic public discourse.
1. “Rhetoric” in the 2008 campaign
US presidential election campaigns follow an extended course in which candidacies for major party nominations are usually announced more than a year in advance of the national election. Candidates campaign to raise money and compete in a long series of intra-party state contests (primary elections and caucuses) that stretch through the early months of the election year and determine the selection of delegates to national party nominating conventions held in the summer. Party candidates are formally designated at those conventions and then campaign as standard bearers of their parties until the early November presidential election. The national discourse that surrounds the campaign is punctuated by the rhythms and contingencies of this long process. Thus, the debate about “rhetoric”, both leading up to and following the 2008 election, ebbed and flowed through a series of key news events, which it will be useful to chronicle briefly as background to the following analysis. Read more
ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Are Motivational Thoughts Persuasive And Valid?
1. Introduction
In this paper, I would like to examine the rhetorical status of the 1948 Human Rights declaration.
In order to do this, I first go back to Perelman’s theory of argumentation by shedding a light on its juridical thought. This approach will question the status of “natural law” from a rhetorical point of view, as it is expressed in the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, considered as an expression of natural law today.
Second, I describe four levels of belief expression, and their discursive and rhetorical functions, as they appear in the Human Rights charter:
– a literal level
– a conventional level
– a fictional level
– a motivational level
It will be argued that such a complex construction is possible thanks to rhetorical skills that are shared by every speaker and hearer.
Finally, I analyze the human rights charter’s first article in the light of four levels of representation. Read more
ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentative Structure In Octavius Of Minucius Felix: The Role Of The Thesis And The “Status Quaestionis” In The Development Of The Structure
1. Work and Author
Minucius Felix, the author of “Octavius”, is among the clearest and most original voices of Christian literature. A lawyer by profession, he was of African origins and lived and worked in Rome at the end of the second century. He was a contemporary of Tertullianus, but, unlike him, he is not in favour of an abrupt break with the classical tradition and prefers the ground of philosophical dispute. His literary work is the only one of the apologetical Latin literature in dialogue form. The dialogue takes place on the beach of Ostia and it involves three characters: the pagan Caecilius, the Christian Octavius and Minucius himself. Octavius reproaches Caecilius for worshipping a statue of the god Serapis and Caecilius suggests explaining their own reasons in support of their religious models, naming Minucius judge of the controversy. After the two speeches, however, the one made by Caecilius against Christianity and the other by Octavius in favour of Christianity, there is no need to come to a final judgment because Caecilius admits defeat. Minucius, with his dialogue, shows he is firmly convinced he is able to interact with his interlocutor, provided that they are both guided by reason and honesty. Minucius shows his argumentative intelligence not only in the tones he uses but also in the interweaving of the literary and philosophical references proposed by Octavius in his confutation of the pagan positions and consequent demonstration of the rationality of Christianity.
Since his work’s addressees are the learned pagans, the literary and philosophical sources he considers belong to the classical tradition, in particular to Cicero and Seneca, thus avoiding taking the Bible as the direct source of reference and authority. Minucius prefers emphasizing the differences in the continuity: “Octavius”, in fact, doesn’t mark the end of the classical world and the passage to Christianity on the line of an abrupt break with it, as proposed by Tertullianus, but on the acceptance, as common ground to share with the other, of the noblest principles of the Greek-Latin philosophical culture. In the cultural project of Minucius, there is no space for extreme radical positions; instead, features such as the search of coherence, the pursuit of knowledge and the fulfillment of the universal values of the “virtus” are central. Read more