ISSA Proceedings 1998 – The Nature Of Symptomatic Argumentation

• by: Bart Garssen - University of Amsterdam

1. 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

Issa Proceedings 1998 – The History Of The Enthymeme

• by: Susanne Gerritsen - University of Amsterdam

1. 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

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Language, Words And Expressive Speech Acts

• by: Michael A. Gilbert - York University

This 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

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Dialethic Dialogue

• by: Roderic A. Girle - University of Auckland

1. 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

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Looking At Argumentation Through Communicative Intentions: Ways To Define Fallacies

• by: Vadim Goloubev - Saint Petersburg State University

1. American print media argumentation and the notion of fallacy
The paper has three closely related purposes to fulfill. The first main purpose is to identify American print media arguers’ communicative strategies; establish a cause-effect relationship between the illocutionary forces of argumentative discourses as illocutionary act complexes and their perlocutionary effects; and, as stated in the title of the paper, to present ways to define fallacies by looking at argumentation through communicative intentions of the authors of the discourses. The second purpose is to present a tool with which it would be possible to describe the means by which emotional appeal is created. The third purpose is to make a clear distinction between an illocutionary force of asserting/claiming and that of stating, and demonstrate the importance of this distinction in the study of argumentation.
In order to identify fallacies, we should first make it clear how we define the notion of fallacy in this paper. To do that, we have to define the type of dialogue we deal with in the American print media. D. Walton identifies ten specific types of dialogue according to the goals parties seek to achieve. A dialogue is defined as “an exchange of speech acts between two speech partners in turn-taking sequence aimed at a collective goal” (Walton 1992: 19). With the exception of the genre of interview, whose analysis will not be a focus of our study since the goal of an interview is seeking information, not arguing points of view, American print media do not contain direct dialogues but rather are sites of a deferred type of dialogue where the two parties’ reactions are presented in monologues separated from each other in time and space. However, this type of dialogue allows American print media authors to carry on an ongoing discussion of various issues. The real target audience of an American print media arguer is not an “official” antagonist in discussion, but the reader who is presumed to be a real antagonist in dispute, since to communicate news and opinion to the reader are the two main mass media functions. The real goal of both parties in most American print media dialogues is not to arrive at the truth of a matter, but to win a dispute. In other words we witness in the American print media a deferred persuasion dialogue. In terms of extent to which the American print media deferred dialogue resembles the critical discussion in the format of a direct dialogue, three types of American print media discussion can be identified.

The first type of American print media discussion, the most similar to critical discussion, occurs in the genre of letters to the editor whose authors react directly either to an editorial or to another letter to the editor. The dialogue is focused on one specific topic, and the parties of the dialogue advocate opposite positions on the issue. Obviously, both parties in the discussion are rather concerned to defeat the official active opponent but the main goal, however, of either party still remains to achieve persuasion of the passive reader. The second type of American print media discussion is manifest on the Pro/Con section of a newspaper or magazine. Again, the discussion focuses on one particular topic. The arguers do not react directly to an opposing discourse because neither party is familiar with the particular discourse their discourse will be juxtaposed with. While they are only asked to submit a text in support of a position in the argument they advocate, because of the specificity of the topic, they often show good knowledge of opposing arguments and rebut them. The third type of American print media discussion may be reconstructed on a larger scale across various American print media sources. Publications can be found in different American newspapers or magazines that focus on a number of related issues, including an issue common to both opposing parties, but one will find almost no rebuttals of specific arguments contained in the opposing discourse. Obviously, the last type of American print media discussion is the least similar to the critical discussion we deal with in real dialogue.

In this paper we shall consider two discourses contained in two articles published in the Health magazine’s Pro/Con section (September 1993). According to our classification this discussion belongs to the second type of American print media discussion. Both parties’ primary goals are to achieve persuasion of the reader. That is why we ought to use a rhetorical audience-oriented discourse analysis rather than a dialectical resolution-oriented one. Since, therefore, our interest will be centered on the factors affecting the cogency of argumentative discourse, we will use the traditional “rhetorical” notion of fallacy where a fallacy is an argument that “seems to be valid but is not so” (Hamblin 1970: 12). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – How Rhetoric Became A Science

• by: Joseph Gonda - York University, Glendon College

Our day has witnessed the establishment of new disciplines running from women’s, to ethnic, to multi-cultural studies, to name but a few representative of this academic current. From antiquity to the end of the 19th century the aspect of Argumentation Theory which was understood as rhetoric was an officially recognised discipline. It was recognised as one of the traditional seven Liberal Arts. How did rhetoric achieve this status? What is there to be learned from the rationales that raised it to this status which is relevant to coming to grips with the status, inclusive of their justifications, their need for models, their self-understandings, of the new disciplines of our day? Can a recovery of the grounds for the establishment of the traditional liberal arts shed light on these and associated questions? To answer, however tentatively, these questions is the aim of this paper.
The seven liberal arts, the quadrivium and trivium, have had an extraordinary run. For two millennia in one form or another they provide the backdrop or the foreground of higher education. But of these seven there is only one which has a source text whose name is coextensive with the art. Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the trivial art of Rhetoric share this common trait. Moreover through all of the vicissitudes of the history of rhetoric from antiquity through the Christian ages, dark and middle, through the renaissance, and into the modern age, Aristotle’s text in sometimes hidden and other times manifest ways has been a source and authority for the discipline of rhetoric.
In order to appreciate what Aristotle accomplished for rhetoric with his Rhetoric it is necessary to orient ourselves along an appropriate chronological parameter. Looked at retrospectively from the perspective of 1998 or of 1298, in the decades of William of Moerbke’s translation of this work into Latin, it’s a done thing. But looked at prospectively, with the assumption that there is nothing in the text which suggests Aristotle anticipated future developments one can search for the conditions which transformed a sometime misprised techne into a Liberal Art. With that said, allow me to focus on a few selected ways of coming to grips with these issues. Read more