ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Questioning The Fallacy Of Many Questions

• by: Roosmaryn Pilgram & Leah E. Polcar - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In June 2001, BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman interviewed the Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, about his past term. During this interview, Paxman posed the following question: “But you said ‘over the five years of a Labour Government we will rebuild the NHS.’ Did you underestimate the task?”. Blair subsequently responded, “I don’t think we underestimated the task”. Paxman, however, continued asking “Why say you could do it in five years?”, to which Blair unceremoniously replied with “We didn’t.” (Newsnight, 2001, June 5).
Interestingly, even though the Prime Minister seems to accept the presupposition that he stated his government would rebuild the National Health Service in five years by means of answering the interviewer’s initial question, he later openly rejects this proposition. The answer to Paxman’s follow-up question reveals an interesting property of the initial question: answering it apparently tricked Blair into committing to a proposition he did not want to be committed to.
Within argumentation studies, these type of questions have been treated in the extant literature under the general title fallacy of many questions. Consequently, Paxman’s initial question could be analysed as an instance of this fallacy. However, given that later on in the interview Blair admits he has said the Labour government would rebuild the NHS in five years on two occasions – Blair: “It [the statement about rebuilding the NHS in five years] is in the manifesto [of my Labour Party].”; and Paxman: “It was a mistake to say it [the statement] then?” Blair: “No. We do have to rebuild the National Health Service. We are doing it.” – Paxman seems to have been wholly justified in presupposing it in his question.
So how do we practically analyse such potential instances of the fallacy of many questions? To answer this question, we will first discuss the few definitions of the fallacy of many questions presented in the extant literature and their accompanying difficulties. Second, we will examine the possible approaches the argumentation analyst could take to evaluating the fallaciousness of these kinds of questions. And third, we will present which approach s/he should take in the practical analysis of potentially fallacious questions and discuss the implications of this approach.

2. Literature Definitions
The fallacy of many questions, also known as the fallacy of the complex question, is traditionally illustrated by the question “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” (see Robinson 1936, p.196; Oesterle, 1963, p.259; Hamblin 1970, p.38; Hintikka 1976, p.28; Walton 1989, pp. 36-75). This example nicely illustrates the difficulties the respondent is confronted with in answering this question: answering it in any fashion, whether affirmatively or negatively, commits the respondent to the presupposition that s/he has beaten his or her spouse. Further, challenging the question might be interpreted as undermining the questioner’s credibility and can be thus impolite or otherwise face threatening. As this leaves the respondent with no reasonable chance to answer (or challenge) the question, this way of asking questions has been treated in the literature as fallacious. However, when it is perfectly clear from the situation that the respondent has been beating his or her spouse in the past, it would be strange to regard the question as a fallacy: the question includes a presupposition the respondent is committed to anyway. Although the fallacy of many questions is, therefore, context dependent, a definition of it would be helpful to analyse question-answer adjacency pairs in argumentative discussions.

Despite the frequent occurrence of the spouse-beating question as the fallacy’s illustration, only a few definitions of the fallacy of many questions can be found in the literature. A rather descriptive definition is provided by Walton who holds that this fallacy occurs when a complex loaded question is asked that, if answered, traps the respondent into “conceding something that would cause him to lose the argument, or otherwise be unfavourable to his side” and is thus interfering with “the respondent’s ability to retract commitments to allegations made by the other party who is asking the questions” (Walton 1999, pp. 379 and 382, resp.). So, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” is fallacious because, if the respondent answers it directly, s/he becomes committed to the complex presupposition – more specifically, the conjunctive proposition (Walton 1999, p.381) – of having beaten his or her spouse and, presumably, this is a proposition s/he does not want to concede.
Even though this definition emphasises an important characteristic of the fallacy of many questions, namely that answering such a question inherently means the respondent is committed to a proposition that s/he would not like to be committed to, it cannot sufficiently distinguish fallacious questions from non-fallacious questions. In argumentative discourse, one of the most straightforward ways to reasonably convince the opponent of a standpoint is indeed by demonstrating that the opponent’s commitment to a particular proposition is inconsistent with opposing the standpoint at hand – even if this commitment is obtained by the opponent’s answer to a question[i]. Imagine an interlocutor putting forward the standpoint “I have always treated my spouse well”. If the antagonist in a discussion about this standpoint would subsequently ask, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?”, and the protagonist would directly answer it in the affirmative or negative, then this complex loaded question is used to trap the protagonist into committing to the presupposition “I have beaten my spouse in the past”. Since this commitment is disastrous for the defence of the protagonist’s standpoint and the protagonist is unable to retract it, the posed question should be regarded as a fallacy of many questions in terms of Walton’s definition. Yet, taken as the antagonist’s argument – because you have been beating your spouse in the past, you cannot say that you have always treated your spouse well – the antagonist’s question accurately points out the inconsistency that undermines the protagonist’s case: it does not seem to be fallacious or in any way problematic. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Aesthetic Argument: Moving Beyond Logic

• by: Kristine Warrenburg - University of Denver

1. Introduction
On April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy was spreading his message that “Most people in America want to do the decent thing,” across Indiana with his presidential primary campaign (Witcover 1997, p. 151). However, that vision was being coldly questioned on this same day in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr., was supporting striking black sanitation workers. King and his crew abandoned their daily work to go to dinner at the home of a local minister. A few minutes before six o’clock, a chauffeured car arrived outside, when King decided to step outside on his second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. One shot exploded and shattered the jaw of Martin Luther King, Jr. as he stood on his balcony outside Room 306. The shot exploded and the street fell quiet. King collapsed to the floor of the balcony, one foot caught in the railing and blood gushing from a three-inch tear in his face. King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead at five minutes past seven (Witcover 1997, p. 153).

Rioting or racial disturbances exploded that night and over the next two days in such major cities as Washington, D.C., Boston, New York, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago, as well as in over a hundred smaller cities and towns (Witcover 1997, p. 157). Cities burned and people raged. Racial division hit the streets in fervent form. Hundreds of U.S. cities were surrounded by the National Guard troops as fires erupted and looters took to the streets. President Johnson quickly moved Federal troops into the nation’s capital. Newspapers reported that Federal troops – some sources said 10,000 – were poised for possible deployment. In Chicago, “Police reported more than 150 arrests in connection with disturbances throughout the city and more than 200 persons were treated in hospitals for injuries” (“Troops Patrol,” 1968). In Michigan it was the youths, which took to the streets as they marched on the City-County building, who were confronted by an armed police force at every turn. Massachusetts was also under the watch of the National Guard, which surrounded the Greater Boston area with police, as they sealed off downtown streets and businesses. Philadelphia, similar to Boston, took precautionary measures to halt vandalism by groups of looters and Tallahassee closed Florida A&M University in effort to head off violence (“Troops Patrol,” 1968). Memphis, the city of King’s assassination, also was victim to racial violence: “Police reported a sniper opened fire on a white man’s car on Interstate 95 …. A fireman received slight injuries battling fires in a variety store. More than 25 firebombings were reported in several hours” (“Troops Patrol,” 1968). Unlike these other U.S. cities, Indianapolis, Indiana, remained calm in spite of King’s assassination.

Political campaigning is what brought Robert Kennedy to Indianapolis on April 4, 1968; however, mere chance and what some have called a miracle placed him in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of the city to relay the horrific news that the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Accompanied by the announcement of the tragic Memphis shooting, Kennedy (1968) added:
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

The Indianapolis crowd dispersed “… quickly and in an orderly fashion” (“Branigin’s Favorite,” 1968). Rather than reactions steeped in violence the people of Indianapolis, did in fact, maintain a peaceful composure that illuminated Kennedy’s plea for “… understanding and compassion towards one another” (Kennedy, 1968). Such an extraordinary historical moment – when Indianapolis remained nonviolent where many other cities did not – raises questions regarding emotional argumentation, rhetorical effects, situational context, and opportunities for convergence between a rhetor and audience, or what is entailed in a dialogic rhetoric.
Both social commentators and citizens in the audience claimed that Kennedy’s speech was the primary reason why violence did not befall Indianapolis. Since then few rhetorical critics, historians, and political scientists have examined Kennedy’s address to see why it may have had this profound effect. The review of literature specific to Kennedy’s announcement of King’s assassination presents a problem of isolated rhetorical effect, because, to date all of these inquiries have focused only on Kennedy’s verbal message (Murphy, 1985, 1990; Nordlund, 1968).

This speech, to anyone who has seen it, realizes that its power lies beyond the words. Abie Robinson (2006), Indianapolis resident, remembers what it was like to be in the audience that fateful April night in 1968:
I was in that astonished crowd the night we learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King from the Senator Robert Kennedy. I remember the intense emotion that enveloped everyone present, the profound grief, the disbelief, the despair followed by anger and a desire to retaliate, but the inspiring impromptu speech given by Senator Robert Kennedy that tragic night caused us to reflect on the life of Martin Luther King and what he proclaimed to be the right response to violence. I believe it was a super-natural power, which caused us not to respond in lawlessness, but to hold on to the principles and ideas of non-violence that were the bench mark of Martin Luther Kings’ legacy. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Evaluating Attacks On The Credibility Of Politicians In Political Debates

• by: H. José Plug

1. Introduction
When analysing political argumentative discourse, we regularly come across attacks on the credibility of the participants in the discourse. By discrediting tactics, politicians intend to discourage their colleague politicians and the general public from supporting the standpoint of their opponent. In Dutch media it is suggested that the use of personal attacks in Dutch political debates has increased under the influence of international politics.[i] Although there is no empirical evidence for this claim, very recently there have been several examples in Dutch politics in which the credibility of politicians has been subject of debate.
On June 24 2006 for instance, the Dutch progressive liberal party, Democrats 66 (D’66), organised elections in order to find a new party leader. The two most prominent candidates were the current Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations, Alexander Pechtold, and chair of the parliamentary party, Lousewies van der Laan. In one of the debates in the build-up to the elections, van der Laan stated that her opponent Pechtold, had completely lost his credibility. First of all because Pechtold, when he was a minister, had agreed on the Uruzgan mission whereas, on an earlier occasion, he had said that under no circumstances he would agree on that mission. Secondly, because he characterised himself as an analytical person, whereas, according to van der Laan, this is not in keeping with the way in which he had profiled himself in an interview, claiming to be ‘a man who often shoots and some shots are successful’. After the debate, Pechtold was furious about these accusations: ‘she portrayed me as person who lacks credibility: that is damaging for me and for the party’.
In that same period, the credibility of the Minister of Immigration was under attack. On 15 May 2006, the Dutch parliament called an emergency debate to discuss the decision by Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, to revoke the Dutch nationality of the Somali-born Dutch politician, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Most MPs didn’t agree with the Minister’s standpoint. They questioned her credibility and suggested that Verdonk had ulterior motives for defending this standpoint at this particular moment: she was accused of trying to boost her chances in the race to become the new leader of Conservative Liberal Party by taking this decision
Questioning an opponent’s credibility in a political debate often involves an ad hominem argument. From a pragma-dialectical perspective, an attack on the credibility of the opponent may be regarded as a violation of one of the ten rules for critical discussion, the so-called freedom rule. This rule formulates the fundamental right to advance or criticise any desired standpoint without being hindered in any way. Attacking the opponent personally may constitute an infringement on this right. When analysing and evaluating political debates, it may, however, be difficult to decide when an argumentative move is indeed an infringement of the freedom rule. In this contribution I will look into the ways in which the credibility of a politician may be challenged and what complications may occur when deciding on the fallaciousness of these challenges. First I will look into what criteria there are to determine credibility. Then, I will discuss some examples of how the credibility of political opponents is challenged in parliamentary debate. Finally I will discuss some difficulties when classifying a personal attack as being a fallacy.

2. Criteria for credibility
The credibility of a protagonist of a certain standpoint may be criticised in different ways. In literature on argumentation and communication we come across various criteria for determining a person’s credibility. Empirical studies in the field of political communication suggest that (source) credibility is made up of expertise and trustworthiness. In a research on negative political advertising by Yoon, Pinkleton and Ko (2005), the anchors for expertise include experience, knowledge, skills and qualifications. The researchers measured trustworthiness using the criteria honesty, reliability and sincerity.
In literature on argumentation, Govier (1999: 26) brings forward that in a normative sense, a person’s credibility may be defined as his or her worthiness to be believed. It depends on a person’s sincerity, honesty, and reliability.[ii] A person is normatively credible if and only if he or she is honest and is in an appropriate position to be a believable asserter of claim made.
When discussing ad-hominem arguments, van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992: 110) state that an opponent’s credibility may be seriously undermined by portraying him as stupid, unreliable, inconsistent or biased. Walton (2006: 122) says that attacking the other party’s honesty or sincerity may lead to the conclusion that a person lacks credibility as an arguer who can be trusted to play by the rules. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Equality In Utilitarian Reasoning Or: How Useful Is The Pragma-Dialectical Approach As An Analytical And Critical Tool?

• by: Lambèr Royakkers - Eindhoven University of Technology & Bart van Klink - Tilburg University

1. Moral Equality
In normative reasoning, equality still is a popular point of departure. Actions, policies, drafts and so on may be defended or rejected because they support the principle of equality or not. As a common place, loaded with mostly positive connotations, it has evoked in ethical, political and legal theory a lot of controversy about, among other things, its meaning, its scope and its relation to justice. Therefore, Ronald Dworkin (2000, p. 2) qualifies ‘equality’ as an essentially contested concept: “People who praise it or disparage it disagree about what they are praising or disparaging.” As different as they are in other respects, all contemporary political theories seem to share some basic notion of moral equality (Kymlicka 2002, p. 5).
Moral equality can be defined as the prescription to treat persons as equals, that is, with equal concern and respect, instead of simply treating them equally, which would often lead to undesirable consequences (Dworkin 1977, p. 370). To recognize that human beings are all equal does not mean having to treat them identically in any respects other than those in which they clearly have a moral claim to be treated alike. Opinions diverge concerning the question what these claims amount to and how they have to be balanced with competing claims (based on, e.g., the principle of freedom). How should goods be distributed if we set out to treat people as equals?
For lack of space, we will restrict ourselves in this paper to one current type of normative reasoning, starting from the general concept of moral equality. The utilitarian conception of equality will be addressed, since it still constitutes, implicitly or explicitly, the normative background from which many people in daily life defend or reject equality claims.[i]
According to Bentham, who founded utilitarianism, the interest of all should be treated equally without taking into account the content of the interest and possible differences in people’s material situation because nobody counts more than any other person. From a utilitarian perspective, morally justified actions are those that maximize utility. This conception of equality will be analysized by means of the pragma-dialectical approach. By applying it on a concrete normative discussion, we expect to get an indication of the general usefulness of this approach as a an analytical and critical tool. Although the pragma-dialectial approach has primarily been applied to legal reasoning, there is no a priori reason why it could not be applied to other types of normative reasoning as well.[ii] Any kind of discussion can be subjected to a pragma-dialectical analysis as long as the discussion aims at resolving a difference of opinion, irrespectively whether the difference of opinion concerns factual statements, value judgments, or normative standpoints (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, p. 57).

After a short presentation of the utilitarian view on equality (section 2), we will – building on Van Eemeren & Grootendorst (1992) in particular – reconstruct the schemes of argumentation that underlie the given type of normative reasoning and show which critical questions follow from these schemes of argumentation (section 3). Next, these critical questions will be compared to the criticism that the utilitarian view has evoked in scholarly debates (section 4). What, if anything, does it add to the existing repertoire of objections? Subsequently, possibilities and limitations of the pragma-dialectical approach will be discussed (section 5). In dealing with normative issues such as moral equality does it really help to pose critical questions derived from argumentation schemes? Does the pragma-dialectical approach succeed in performing its self-acclaimed heuristic and critical functions? Van Eemeren & Grootendorst (2004: 59) describe the heuristic function as “being a guideline of analysis” and the critical function as “serving as a standard in the evaluation.” In the final section we will focus on the ideal of reasonableness to which the pragma-dialectical approach is dedicated (Feteris 1989, pp. 8 ff.; Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, especially chapter 6). Can it contribute, as it claims, to a rational and reasonable ending of debates? And, moreover, by committing itself to the ideal of reasonableness, can it maintain its formal and neutral character?

2. A Utilitarian Conception of Equality
In many ethical theories, some notion of equality plays a central role. For example, utilitarians like Mill and Bentham and deontologists like Kant and, more recently, Dworkin share a commitment to the idea of equality of persons. In utilitarianism, people are equal in the value accorded their preferences and goals, whereas Kantian theory considers persons to deserve equal respect. Also, as Dworkin has suggested in his theory of rights, the notion that everyone possesses fundamental and inviolable moral rights is one way of giving expressions to the idea of equality. In each of these theories, it is a requirement of morality that people should be treated equally, regardless of individual differences. As explained above, we focus in this paper on the utilitarian conception of equality.
Utilitarianism is commonly recognized as having a strong intuitive appeal. Its general assumption is that an action is morally acceptable if and only if that action brings about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. The Utility Principle requires that we perform actions that produce the maximum possible happiness. To determine an action’s moral value, one has to add up the total happiness to be produced, subtract the pain involved, and then determine the balance, which expresses the moral value of the act. By doing so, one calculates in a literal sense what ought to be done morally. The utilitarian insists that the main question is always: ‘What should I do now?’ and not ‘What has proved generally valuable in the past?’ Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – On Justified Belief In The Link Of An Argument

• by: Juho Ritola - University of Tartu

1. Introduction
A natural requirement for justifiably believing the conclusion of an argument is that the arguer or an inferer must justifiably believe the premises. This paper studies the question whether we should also require that an arguer or an inferer must justifiably believe the link of an argument in order to justifiably believe the conclusion. I will first draw some theoretical divisions and then present an intriguing argument by Andrew D. Cling (2003) that appears to show that this requirement is necessary for justifiably believing the conclusion. I will then present four different arguments that challenge Cling’s argument. Finally, I discuss the implications of rejecting the requirement.

2. Preliminaries
An argument is an ordered pair of a set of propositions, the premises, and a proposition, the conclusion. We acquire indirect beliefs, i.e. beliefs based on other beliefs through the use of arguments and inferences, and the propositions of the abstract argument structure express the content of those beliefs. The uses of arguments may have varying purposes but here I will only discuss the core case of using the propositional structure of an argument with the intention of becoming justified in believing the conclusion. Obviously, not every use of an argument results in justified beliefs. We should also note the difference between being justified in believing that C and justifiably believing that C. The former is evaluative in the sense that it merely means that a person S has justification for believing that C, has a good reason to believe C, but it does not imply that S actually believes that C. If S justifiably believes that C, S has good reason to believe C and actually has the belief that C. It is thus evaluative and factual. Further, S can have justification for C, and believe that C, without justifiably believing that C. This would be the case if S were to base her or his belief not on the justified belief that P, but on some other belief R that is not justified. In this case, P would not be the reason for which S believes that C.[i] In what follows, I will discuss cases where the arguer or reasoner bases his or her belief that C on the premises. But even if S is justified in believing the premise P and bases her or his belief that C on P, S is not necessarily be justified in believing that C, if S’s belief that C was generated from P in an intellectually dubious manner, for example, by a fallacious argument).

3. The argument for justified belief in the link of an argument
It seems reasonable to accept the following principle:

(JP) Necessarily an argument P therefore C is justification-affording for S only if S justifiably believes P. (Cling 2003, p. 286)[ii]

If the arguer is not justified in her or his belief in the premises, the argument cannot make the belief in the conclusion justified. But Cling argues that we also need the following requirement:

(JCC) Necessarily, an argument P therefore C is justification-affording for S only if S justifiably believes if P, then C. (Cling 2003, p. 287)

Cling argues that if one does not include the (JCC), we end up drawing arbitrary distinctions between different arguers. Namely, there can be an argument

(1) P therefore C.

that can be justification-affording for persons who do not justifiably believe if P then C. Given the principle (JP), the corresponding argument

(2) (P and if P then C) therefore C.

– the argument that results from taking (1)’s corresponding conditional as a premise – will not be justification-affording for the same persons, if only because they do not justifiably believe a crucial premise of (2). Among those for whom (1) is but (2) is not justification-affording will be some persons whose predicaments are such that the only non-epistemic differences between (1) and (2) are those that result from the fact that the corresponding conditional of (1) is a premise of (2). Since such differences are epistemically irrelevant, the epistemic distinction that is drawn between (1) and (2) is arbitrary. (Cling 2003, pp. 299-300) Read more

XISSA Proceedings 2006 – Russian Political Talk Show: Glamour Of Argumentative Discussion – A Case Study

• by: Elena Lisanyuk - St Petersburg State University

Summary
In this paper [i], I present an argumentation analysis of a popular Russian political talk show “K barieru” (hereafter referred to as “KB!”), a duel of words that could be translated something like “To the Wall”. I argue that the type of the discussion plays an important role in the analysis of argumentation. The task of describing the type of discussion goes beyond describing the actual interaction. In order to reveal fallacies and tricks one should take into account the pragmatic framework of the discussion: the preliminary rules, the responsibility rules, the rules of the Gricean principle and the type of the discussion. The latter involves the initial situation, the goal of the discussion and the participants` goals. I argue that we can employ the Gricean principle to identify the type of discussion.

Key words: argumentation, discussion, fallacies, pragma-dialectics, pragmatic rules, Gricean principle of cooperation.

One of the most usual rational ways to surmount disagreements is to discuss them. Discussion opens opportunity for expressing opinions as well as for arguing in favor or against them. Arriving at a reasonable solution that would be satisfactory to all parties is commonly considered to be the most successful result of a discussion. Sometimes it is enough that not all but at least most parties share the decision. Obviously, not all discussions are successful as far as reaching an agreed opinion is concerned.
Some arguers do not seek such a resolution and therefore such discussions are not argumentative. A discussion is argumentative if for every discussant to persuade the other party is the ultimate goal. According to the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, this condition functions as pragmatic constitutive system of rules; this consists of two kinds of rules: preliminary and responsibility rules.
The preliminary rule says that a disputant should (P1) have a viewpoint and let her audience know that she has it and (P2) consider the latter to disagree with the expressed viewpoint. At the same time, the disputant expects (P3) that the audience that she addresses is ready to accept the arguments in favor of the viewpoint both in principle as an action aiming at persuasion and essentially as possibly true propositions.

J.R. Searle was the first to introduce the responsibility rule, which he originally referred to as the sincerity condition (Searle J.R. et al. 1980, p. 27 and ff). It provides the basis of persuasive power for the whole act of argumentation and says that the speaker (R1) has to be sincere in adhering to her viewpoint and to the arguments meant to support it and (R2) should believe that the arguments contribute to the success of the whole process of argumentation (Eemeren, Frans, van, Grootendorst R., 1994, p. 52-56).
In cases when at least one party does not meet the whole or part of the condition, the discussion bears somewhat different character. It may happen that no party meets the abovementioned rules but still there is a discussion. For instance, it happens in an information-seeking discussion in which parties just exchange their views and neither intends to argue them. Apparently, such a brainstorming discussion is non-argumentative.
D. Walton and E.C.N. Krabbe provide an extensive classification of discussions using the initial situation, main goals and discussants` aims as the criteria of identifying discussion types (D.N. Walton, E.C.W. Krabbe, 1966, p. 66). According to them, there are seven types of discussions: persuasion, negotiation, inquiry, deliberation, information-seeking, eristic and mixed discussions. Read more