ISSA Proceedings 1998 – A Few Remarks On The Individuation Of Arguments

• by: Michael J. Wreen - Marquette University

1.
“An argument,” Irving Copi tells us in a much-quoted passage, “is any group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow from the others, which are regarded as providing support or grounds for the truth of that one.”[i] Copi’s usual elegance may have temporarily deserted him in the remark quoted, and his definition may be less explanatory than might be desired, but the general idea is clear enough – or at least clear enough for the great majority of people in this room to reject it. Where the Amstel flows and all pragmas are dialectical, propositional definitions of argument, such as Copi’s, have about as much purchasing power as the Indonesian rupiah. Not that that’s necessarily a mark – or even a guilder – against them, and not that that means that propositional views in general, or Copi’s in particular, aren’t worth exploring. Indeed, I think that examining what this Snidely Whiplash of argumentation theory – for so he’s many times considered – says almost always repays attention, and though my focus won’t be his definition of an argument so much as the related issue of the individuation of arguments, I think his views help to clarify both issues.

But let me introduce character number two in this little drama before getting back to Copi, character number one.
A more discourse-oriented definition of argument has been advanced by another arch-villain of argumentation theory, but one not nearly as often targeted for attack and refutation. According to Monroe Beardsley, “an argument is a discourse that not only makes assertions but also asserts that some of the assertions are reasons for others.”[ii] From the pragma-dialectical perspective, Beardsley’s definition may lack the shelter and clothing of the pragma and the dialectical, but at least it partakes of that staff of argumentative life, discourse. More striking than that single but pervasive difference between the two, however, that single but pervasive difference between Copi and Beardsley, are the similarities of their views. Substitute ‘set of propositions’ for ‘discourse,’ ‘propositions’ for ‘assertions,’ and ‘claims’ for ‘asserts,’ and Beardsley’s definition coincides almost precisely with Copi’s. If we bracket the discourse – or rhetorically- oriented elements of Beardsley’s definition, in other words, there is little difference between their views.

2
Which only goes to show that two people can basically agree on one fundamental issue – what an argument is – but profoundly disagree on other fundamental issues, such as what the identity of an argument consists in, and how to individuate arguments. To be clear about what I’m referring to here: the identity of an argument I take to be its self-sameness, the fact, in a sense, that it is what it is – namely, an argument, and, moreover, that argument — and not another thing, not even another argument. I know that’s not very enlightening, but it’s hard to say much more, on a general level, about what the philosophical issue of identity is than that it’s a metaphysical issue and concerns what constitutes, in the most important sense, the fact that a thing is what it is and not some other thing. Bishop Butler would no doubt be proud of me and give me his blessing for my remarks about identity, even if they’d win no awards for advancing the educated public’s understanding of philosophy. Anyway, when discussing the identity of a thing, philosophers generally speak of identity conditions for that thing, and many times the kind of a thing whose identity is being specified is built right into the statement of those conditions. In the case at hand, a typical statement of identity conditions would go something like this: x is the (numerically) same argument as y if and only if….. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Phenomenological Argumentative Structure

• by: Gilbert Plumer - Law School Admission Council, Newtown

1. Introduction[i]
What is the proper representation of phenomenological argumentative structure? By ‘phenomenological argumentative structure’ I mean the logical structure that an argument is perceived to have by mature reasoners – yet ones who are untrained in logic. Except for a few remarks, this paper will not be concerned with whether this informal ability to identify or match argumentative structure is an important reasoning skill; rather, it will be primarily concerned with judging or attempting to measure this skill. Instruments that have questions designed to do this include major standardized tests for graduate school admission, e.g., the United States-Canadian Law School Admission Test (LSAT), the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). Writers and reviewers of such tests need an appropriate foundation for developing such questions – they need a proper representation of phenomenological argumentative structure – for legitimacy, and because these tests affect people’s lives.
A further motivation is cost. A single question on these tests probably averages about $2,000 to develop, so it is not a trivial matter when a test item is miscast and fails psychometric statistical review. Even given this, however, it may be that an attempt to represent phenomenological argumentative structure through (probably expensive) empirical studies would not be advisable. The results could be bewildering and not generalizable (one study found that the diagramatic aids examinees drew when taking like tests tended to be quite idiosyncratic – Cox & Brna 1995). Instead, the approach that this paper will take will be mainly philosophical rather than empirical.
It would certainly appear that the informal or nontechnical ability to identify or match argumentative structure is fundamental to reasoning well. With only one putatively clear kind of exception, the validity (for deduction), or more broadly, cogency (for both deduction and nondeduction), of an argument is entirely (for deduction) or largely (for nondeduction) a function of its logical structure or form (cf., e.g., Sainsbury 1991: Ch. 1; also Walton 1995: Ch. 5 for a distinction of 25 nondeductive argument structures or “schemes”). The same applies to the invalidity or lack of cogency of an argument. The only arguments that supposedly constitute an exception are those that proceed through conceptual analysis, that is, those that are termed ‘materially’ valid or invalid; a classic example is ‘this is red all over, so it is not blue all over’ (e.g., Read 1994). So apart from such arguments, and apart from conversational and rhetorical matters and matters related to the actual truth values of premises and conclusions, to perceive the logical structure of an argument is to perceive that in virtue of which the argument is good or bad (deduction) or is to perceive much of what makes the argument good or bad (nondeduction). Naturally, then, a principal way of assessing the cogency of a given argument is to  match its structure with that of an argument whose cogency is known or obvious. In the case of showing lack of cogency, this tactic is called ‘refutation by logical analogy’. (Some of the presuppositions of these remarks will be defended in §3.) Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Duties Beyond Borders? Appeals To Moral Necessity In Statecraft

• by: Gregory A. Raymond - Boise State University

Speaking at the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum a few years ago, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel called for the Clinton Administration to take action to stop the carnage in Bosnia. “Something, anything, must be done,” he implored (Time, May 3, 1993: 48). Shocked by atrocities, the horror of systematic rape, and waves of panic-stricken refugees fleeing in the wake of “ethnic cleansing,” many other people joined Wiesel in urging the nations of the world to intervene for humanitarian reasons. “All humanity should be outraged,” asserted Thomas Buergenthal, former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a survivor of Auschwitz (cited in Lillich 1993: 574). “We cannot just let things go on like this,” insisted former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “It is evil” (Time, April 26, 1993: 35).
Whether prompted by genocide in the former Yugoslavia or political mass murder in such places as Cambodia or Rwanda, the issue of what should be done about human rights violations in other countries highlights an old debate over whether ethical considerations ought to influence foreign policy. Do political leaders have a moral obligation to alleviate human suffering no matter where it is located? Must they protect foreign nationals even at the expense of their countrymen? If so, should it be done through a quick rescue operation? Or should it include an effort to eradicate the underlying cause of the suffering? These questions have received renewed attention with the establishment of a United Nations’ War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, charged with conducting the first international war crimes trials since those undertaken in Nuremberg and Tokyo at the end of Second World War.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze appeals to moral necessity in persuasive dialogue on foreign policy issues. I begin by differentiating between two types of appeal: one based on duty; the other, on right. After comparing the deontological assumptions of duty-based appeals with the consequentialism of rights-based appeals, I discuss how metaphors are sometimes used in the latter to conflate legal right with moral obligation. Next, using a series of speeches that attempted to justify the 1989 intervention by the United States into Panama, I illustrate the rhetorical strategy employed by statesmen who mask legal permissibility as moral obligation. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the problems inherent in moral appeals that blur the distinction between the permissible and the obligatory.

1. Arguments From Moral Necessity
Throughout the ages, political leaders have justified the use of military force against neighboring states with a form of argument that stresses how foreign policy is driven by unavoidable necessities. In general, these necessities are portrayed in strategic terms; they are actions that supposedly must be carried out to advance national security interests regardless of whether they contravene prevailing ethical standards (Raymond 1995).
Recently a different conception of necessity has entered into debates about the use of military force. Rather than defending the resort to arms on the grounds of strategic necessity, it is often justified nowadays as a “categorical moral imperative” to stop a brutal government from violating the human rights of its citizens (Reisman 1973: 168; Schermers 1991: 592; Rodley 1992: 35). As one advocate of this view has put it, the military defeat of rulers who initiate massacres “is morally necessary” (Walzer 1977: 105). It is an absolute duty, one that holds at all times and in all places, and regardless of whether it advances the strategic interests of the intervening state. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 ~ A Formal Perspective On The Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Model

• by: Jacky Visser, Speech communication, Argumentation theory & Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam The Netherlands

Abstract: For the development of computation tools to support the pragma-dialectical analysis of argumentative texts, a formal approximation of the pragma-dialectical ideal model of a critical discussion theory is required. A basic dialogue game for critical discussion is developed as the foundation for such formal approximation. To this basic dialogue game, which has a restricted complexity, the more complex features of critical discussion can gradually be added.

Keywords: computerisation, critical discussion, dialogue game, formalisation, pragma-dialectics.

1. Formalisation in preparation of computerisation
Formalisation is one of the important developments in the field of argumentation theory emphasised by van Eemeren in his keynote address at the 8th ISSA conference. My contribution to the ISSA conference deals with the formalisation of one theory of argumentation: the pragma-dialectical theory (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004; van Eemeren et al., 2014, pp. 517-613). This study is intended to contribute to a more encompassing research project, the overall goal of which is to create a formal foundation for a computational application of the pragma-dialectical theory.

The computational application of argumentation theory in general has developed into several directions, as is evident from, e.g., the overviews by Rahwan and Simari (2009) and van Eemeren et al. (2014, pp. 615-675). Instead of trying to formalise and computerise every possible application of the pragma-dialectical theory at once, the current aim is to create a foundation for computational tools to support the analysis of argumentative discourse. Although fully computerised pragma-dialectical analysis will presumably not be feasible for quite some time, smaller digital tools to assist human analysts in their analytical tasks can be realised on a shorter term.

One area in which such a smaller tool can offer support is the composition of the analytic overview. As the outcome of a (standard) pragma-dialectical analysis of an argumentative text, the analytic overview “brings together systematically everything that is relevant to the resolution of a difference of opinion” (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004, p. 118).[i] In order to arrive at an analytic overview, the analyst applies a two-step method. First, the ideal model of a critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004, pp. 42-68) is used as a heuristic to determine which parts of the original text are (or can be considered as) argumentatively relevant. By applying four analytical transformation, the original text is reconstructed in terms of a critical discussion (van Eemeren et al., 1993, pp. 61-62). In the second step, an analytic overview is abstracted from this reconstruction. The composition of the analytic overview is fully determined by the content of the reconstruction in terms of a critical discussion. Based on the discussion moves made by discussants in the analytical reconstruction, the following is determined as part of the analytic overview: the nature of the difference of opinion, the distribution of discussion roles, the starting points, the arguments, the structure of the argumentation and the argument schemes (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004, pp. 118-119).

To develop a computational tool to support analysts in composing an analytic overview on the basis of a reconstruction of the original text in terms of a critical discussion, it is necessary to have a computational representation of the relations between the possible variations in the constitutive parts of the ideal model and those of the analytic overview. Preliminary to these relations, computational representations of the ideal model of a critical discussion, and of the analytic overview themselves are necessary. In the current paper a preparatory step towards the computational representation of the ideal model of a critical discussion is made by formalising part of the ideal model. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2014 ~ Story Credibility In Narrative Arguments

• by: Paula Olmos - Departmento de Lingüística, Lenguas modernas, Lógica y filosofía de la ciencia, Teoría de la literatura y literatura comparada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Abstract: Recent work on narrative-based arguments has insisted on the importance, for assessment, of construing a theory of story “credibility” or “believability”. The main tenet of most approaches is the idea that a credible story should resemble “reality”. However, “narrative realism” is a rather problematic concept. The paper proposes a more nuanced, multi-dimensional and explicitly meta-argumentative approach to the assessment of arguments involving narratives, that would not prejudge their argumentative form or function.

Keywords: argument assessment, narrative argument, narrative rationality, narrative realism.

1. Introduction
Narrative argumentation, narration in arguments or the inherent narrativity of arguing and debating, are, no doubt, trendy topics in the field of argumentation theory. We heard several papers on these issues in last year’s OSSA 10th Conference and here in ISSA 2014, we have two complete panels labelled “Narrative argument”. Of course, this implies a certain variety of approaches and some clarifications as to the referents and the scope of my own paper are required.

First of all, even if I take W. Fisher’s narrative paradigm of rationality (1989 [1987]) as a truly attractive philosophical stance, that could yield interesting insights regarding the cognitive basis of our reasoning, I claim some of its assumptions may turn our attention away from the particularities of real discourse. If we assume that:
regardless of genre, discourse will always tell a story and insofar as it invites an audience to believe it or act on it, the narrative paradigm and its attendant logic, narrative rationality, are available for interpretation and assessment (Fisher, 1989, p. xi) there would be nothing specific to arguments involving explicit narratives as obvious parts or as a manifest linguistic strategy. Again, Fisher insists “When narration is taken as the master metaphor, it subsumes the others” (1989, p. 62). So my first clarification is that here I don’t mean to use “narrative” as a metaphor (however insightful) of what’s happening when we argue and listen to or interpret arguments; nor as the cognitive key (however revealing) to the widespread features of our species’ argumentative practices (as allegeddly Homo narrans). I will focus, instead, on the straightforward recognition of a variety of argument types and argumentative discourses in which the particular linguistic features and genre-specific qualities of narration play a significant role. Read more