ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Diagramming, Argumentation Schemes And Critical Questions

• by: Chris Reed - Department of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Scotland & Douglas Walton - Department of Philosophy, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Abstract
Argumentation schemes are forms of argument that model stereotypical patterns of reasoning. This paper is part of a project on the formalization of argumentation schemes. The paper shows how argumentation schemes and critical questions should be fitted into the technique of argument diagramming using the Araucaria software system. This XML system provides an interface through which the user can mark up a text of discourse to produce an argument diagram. We discuss several problems arising from the need to deal with enthymemes.
The formulation of the set of presumptive schemes in (Walton, 1996) was rough and ready. The variables and constants used in the schemes are quite a varied bunch, and have not been all incorporated into any single over-arching formal structure. Only the most rudimentary attempt was made to classify the schemes by a tree-structure exhibiting how some fall under others. In many cases, the organization of the premises of the scheme and the matching critical questions was obviously clumsy. For example, in some instances, it seemed that the critical question merely asked whether one of the premises was true or acceptable. Thus it looked like either the premise or the critical question was redundant. These same problems were perhaps even more evident in Hastings’ (1963) initial attempt to introduce a comprehensive set of schemes with matching critical questions.
Now that we have a new software system for argumentation diagramming that can accommodate argumentation schemes, many of these technical issues of how to clean up the schemes appear more pressing. Before this point they may have seemed relatively minor matters of detail to the working argumentation theorist or teacher of critical thinking. But now they demand our attention. In this presentation, some of the very most elementary of these technical questions of formalization of schemes are raised(i).To begin, some introduction to schemes is presented. But to confine the discussion to reasonable limits, the scheme for appeal to expert opinion is taken as a case in point.

1. Introducing Argumentation Schemes and Enthymemes
Most in this audience are familiar with argumentation schemes, but for those who may not be, it is best to begin with a brief explanation of what they are. Argumentation schemes are forms of argument (structures of inference) representing common types of argumentation. They represent structures of arguments used in everyday discourse, as well as in special contexts like legal argumentation or scientific argumentation. They represent the deductive and inductive forms of argument that we are so highly familiar with in logic. But they can also represent forms of argument that are neither deductive nor inductive, but that fall into a third category, sometimes called abductive or presumptive. This third type of argument is defeasible, and carries weight on a balance of considerations in a dialogue. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, in The New Rhetoric (1969) identified many of these defeasible types of arguments used to carry evidential weight in a dialogue. Arthur Hastings’ Ph.D. thesis (1963) carried out a systematic analysis of many of the most common of these presumptive schemes. The scheme itself specified the form of premises and conclusion of the argument. Hastings expressed one special premise in each scheme as a Toulmin warrant linking the other premises to the conclusion. Such a warrant is typically a defeasible generalization. Along with each scheme, he attached a corresponding set of critical questions. These features set the basic pattern for argumentation schemes in the literature that followed. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Rhetorical Argumentation And The New Journalism: A Case Study

• by: Stephen J. Ward, PhD - University of British Columbia & Christopher Tindale, PhD - Trent University

1. Critical thinking in journalism: the old model
One way to analyze argumentation in journalism is to use the tools of logic to evaluate the traditional medium of journalism – the printed word. Editorials and other forms of commentary are transformed into logical arguments that are checked for validity, fallacies and dubious premises. We argue that this approach is no longer adequate because journalism has changed. An increasing amount of journalism is on the Internet where journalists use many forms of media and new technology to inform and persuade.  Internet articles debate public issues by combining text, audio and video, supplemented by hyperlinks and ‘chat’ forums. Articles, written with specific audiences in mind, are embedded on web sites surrounded by persuasive elements, from background information to dynamic images. Sites encourage readers to go back and forth between the various levels and components of the presentation.
Let’s begin with a summary of the standard approach to evaluating journalistic argumentation. The analysis begins with a text, usually a newspaper editorial, opinion column or letter-to-the-editor. The text is put into the logical form of an argument – a string of premises attempt to support a conclusion(s). In many cases, a relatively clear logical form is extracted from an opaque, rambling text. The reader, or the student in a classroom, is asked to consider whether the argument is deductive or inductive, whether there are missing premises, whether the argument commits a fallacy and whether the piece contains ambiguous or loaded language. Elements that are not directly relevant to how the premises logically support the conclusion are irrelevant to the evaluation, and treated as distracting rhetoric.

This analysis can be found in journalism classrooms, media textbooks and manuals on how to detect biased media messages. The approach depends on assumptions about the form of communication being used and the most appropriate logical tools for this style of journalism.
The journalism to be analyzed is assumed to have the following features:
1. The argument uses only one medium, typically print, and the nature of the medium does not play a substantial role in the evaluation process.
2. The journalism article uses a “transmission” form of informing and arguing:
(i) The journalist (author) of the article transmits the results of his research and analysis
The journalist is active in researching, verifying and constructing an argument. The reader is a relatively passive recipient of the transmission.
(ii) The journalist writes from the article from a position of ‘authority’- a firm, settled view about a topic or issue.
2. The act of communication is from one person to many. It is not interactive.
3. The communication is a completed text, a finished product, not an on-going process or dialogue. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – A Pragma-Dialectical Analysis Of Televised Town Hall Meetings Following The Murder Trial Of O.J. Simpson: Competing Demands And The Structure Of Argumentation Practices.

• by: Harry Weger, Jr. - Department of Communication Studies, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, U.S.A & Mark Aakhus - School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, U.S.A

The “televised town-hall meeting” was originally instituted by the American Broadcasting Company on the television program Nightline. The program featured a round table of scientists, military experts, politicians and journalists joined by the people of Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence was the setting for a controversial television movie entitled ‘The Day After’, a fictional account of the aftermath of a nuclear war. The basic idea behind the televised town meeting is that a well known newsworthy person (or group of people sometimes joined by a group of experts on the topic) sits among a group of ordinary citizens to discuss the issues of the day. Given that anyone is allowed to voice an opinion, and that all participants are, at least in principle, to be treated equally, the program is fashioned to reflect the value of open and free democratic deliberation. The town meeting gives ordinary citizens access to government officials and to a mass communication outlet. Even the name of the program, “town meeting” brings to mind an old fashioned forum where the citizens of a town can gather together and test values and policies important to the future of the community. Although the televised town meeting was introduced on Nightline, a large variety of variations have arisen since. Both cable networks and the traditional broadcast networks routinely invite callers from around the country to engage in critical discussion with experts regarding issues important to the polis.

Televised town meetings present a significant research problem for argumentation critics for at least two reasons. First, televised town meetings provide an opportunity for argumentation researchers to extend and refine dialectical models of argumentation theory. Televised town meetings can be reconstructed as critical discussions and evaluated in terms of normative standards for ideal argumentation practices. The pragma-dialectical program of argumentation research and criticism attempts to understand argumentation practices as the result of the way in which argumentation forums are engineered.  Evaluating argumentation from this perspective requires that critics move beyond analyzing the logical rigor of individual arguers and arguments to the ways in which the communication environment invites or discourages ideal argumentation practices.
The second reason televised town meetings provide an important subject for argumentation scholarship involves the role of mass media and public sphere deliberation. Several scholars have discussed the loss of public argumentation in which ordinary citizens are able to engage each other in deliberative discussions concerning matters of public policy (e.g., Goodnight, 1982). By taking telephone calls from viewers or by allowing audience members to participate in discussions with a panel of experts, televised town meetings transform passive reception of media controlled messages into a potential platform for the common person to contribute to public dialogue. As Willard (1990) contends, argumentation scholars have a responsibility to examine and evaluate communication platforms and their potential for increasing the quality of public discourse.
Given the significance of studying televised town meetings, the aim of this essay is to examine the ways in which choices made by discussion moderators in response to competing situational demands help to structure the communication environment, as well as the degree to which this environment invites or discourages rational discussion in the public sphere. In order to accomplish this goal, transcripts from the television programs Nightline, and Rivera Live will be examined. All of the episodes of these programs revolve around the controversy surrounding the verdict in trial of the N.F.L hall of fame runningback, actor, and public personality O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. The Nightline episodes aired on A.B.C. October 4, and October 5, 1995. The Rivera Live transcript is from an episode that aired on C.N.N. on October 3, 1995. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – If At First You Don’t Succeed: Response To Johnson

• by: Mark Weinstein - Montclair State University

Ever since the first ISSA conference in 1986, I have been developing an agenda of relevance to argumentation theory that challenges many of the basic verities of informal logic and critical thinking (Weinstein, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999). The position, well known in the field, was generally not remarked upon in the theoretic literature until Ralph Johnson epitomized and criticized my views in his recent book Manifest Rationality (Johnson, 2000). Johnson, using a phrase from my early work sees me as taking an ‘ecological approach,’ proposing that ‘the study of arguments in their disciplinary environment as the proper way to proceed’ (Johnson, 2000, p. 301).  He rightly assimilates my view to both Toulmin (Toulmin, et. al., 1979) and McPeck (1981) and identifies my practical agenda. “Weinstein’s broad concern is educational reform. He believed that critical thinking, as an educational ideal is a serviceable construct for the purpose of educational reform, but that critical thinking should be seen within the context of the disciplines (ibid.).
My position is vulnerable to what Johnson calls the standard objection: ‘the fact that many arguments are not housed in any particular domain but borrow elements from several domains.’ (ibid. p. 306).  Johnson’s sees that my position as less vulnerable to the objection than Toulmin’s and McPeck’s might be, and after offering a somewhat elaborated perspective, modifies my view to be that ‘all significant standards are discipline specific.’ I agree, with the caveat that both formal and informal logic are among the disciplines. My view, as he notes, requires that in a given argumentation context a decision as to what standards from which disciplines need to be applied to deal with which significant aspects of the argument must be made. He asks: ‘To what (transdisciplinary ) standards will the evaluator appeal to decide this matter… from whose perspective will this meta-evaluative question be asked?’ (ibid.). The answer to the question is fairly straightforward: It depends.
In what follows, I will attempt to reconstruct my position as the basis for that indeterminate response. The first section will deal with informal logic and the theoretic core of argumentation evaluation. The next section will address the practical application of argument analysis within the context of critical thinking and education. Finally I will return to Johnson’s concerns. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Arguers’ Obligations: Another Perspective

• by: Joseph W. Wenzel - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Recent work by Ralph Johnson (1998, 2000, 2001) has made the question of arguers’ obligations an important one on the agenda of argumentation theory. I first heard Johnson address that topic when I responded to the paper he presented at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation conference on Argumentation and Rhetoric (Johnson, 1998; Wenzel, 1998). In that paper Johnson discussed some differences he perceived in the approaches of logic and rhetoric to the demands of argumentation. One important difference, he claimed, is that logic requires that, in addition to his main argument, the “illative core” as he calls it, the arguer must construct a “dialectical tier”. The dialectical tier would consist of the arguer’s replies to “dialectical stuff” that has come to cluster around the argument; it would include objections, criticisms and alternative positions. The telos of rational persuasion demands the dialectical tier, not only because the audience addressed may be aware of criticisms of and objections to the arguer’s position, but also because ignoring them would not be fully rational, even when the objections and criticisms may be unknown to the immediate audience or interlocutor. Without the dialectical tier, an argument would fail to meet the requirement Johnson calls manifest rationality. Like a judge who must avoid even the appearance of partiality while administering justice, “arguers are under a similar constraint in argumentative space, where rationality must not only be done, but it must be seen to be done, and where anything that compromises the appearance of rationality must be avoided” (1998, 4).

In contrast to logic’s telos of rational persuasion, Johnson held, rhetoric aims at (merely) effective persuasion. Unlike logic, rhetoric imposes no requirement such as manifest rationality on an arguer. The rhetor is concerned merely with winning over a particular audience by means of a case sufficient for the occasion; such a case need not contain the dialectical tier. As he put it on that occasion:
Thus we have come upon a second difference in how their respective teloi influence the structure of argument. From the perspective of Logic, the obligation to deal with dialectical stuff is unconditional; a dialectical tier is required. From the perspective of rhetoric the obligation is conditional (1998, 6).
The unconditional and comprehensive requirement of the dialectical tier – i.e., the arguer must answer any and all objections and criticisms – seemed to me rather unrealistic, but I did not focus on that in my response. Instead, I wanted to support the claim that there is a rhetoric of argumentation that is as fully concerned with achieving rational outcomes as is logic (Wenzel, 1998). By the rhetoric of argumentation I mean that special branch of rhetoric that comes into play when speakers or writers commit themselves to argumentation as a method of decision-making or problem solving, or, as Johnson might say, when they enter into “argumentative space” (1998, 3). The rhetoric of argumentation appears in many forms of critical discussion e.g., in courtrooms, legislatures, and in the debates of learned societies.  What these uses of rhetoric have in common is an understanding of and commitment to argumentation as a method of critical decision-making that aims to achieve rational outcomes. And these rhetorics are necessarily concerned with arguers’ obligations. So, I will return to that topic presently. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Vieques At The Vortex: Identity Arguments In Crosscurrents Of Puerto Rican And American Nationalism

• by: David Cratis Williams - University of Missouri, Rolla & Catherine Palczewski - University of Northern Iowa

As situations change, so too do argumentative opportunities and constraints (Bitzer; Burke, 1973). Identity is also transitory and adaptive: as circumstances change, so too may individual identities change (Burke, 1950). Those arguments which grow out of situational dimensions and adapt identity to circumstances we call constitutive arguments: it is by and through these forms of argument that we constitute who we are both individually and collectively at any given time, and these identity formations will change as both situations and constitutive arguments change (Lake, 1989; Lake, 1997; Winkler). Changes in identity may, in turn, change the nature and types of non-constitutive arguments which one subsequently advances (Hingstman). One of the most pervasive and influential forms of constitutive argumentation is that which involves national identity (Ishiyama, et al.; Williams) particularly when arguments of national identity are foreground by precipitating events, which, following Scheff (1994, 278), we will call “triggers,” and take the identity-coercive form of appeals to nationalism. In this study, we examine how situational “triggers” change constitutive arguments of nationalism, precipitating attendant shifts in collective and personal identity formations. Our case study focuses on constitutive arguments of national identification in the American territory of Puerto Rico in the wake of two distinctly different situational triggers: the death of civilian guard David Sanes Rodriguez by an errant bomb at the U.S. Navy practice range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in April of 1999 and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the ensuing “war on terrorism.”

Puerto Rico provides a relatively unique venue for the study of constitutive arguments of national identity. As a territory, Puerto Rico both is and is not a part of American national and political culture. A “spoil” of the Spanish-American War of 1898, Puerto Rico evolved from its initial status as military territory to that of semi self-governing “Commonwealth” in 1952. Yet fifty years “after the U.S. government announced to the United Nations” following the establishment of the Commonwealth “that Puerto Rico had ceased to be a colony” (Caban 19), the “Puerto Rican people and the United States government” still face what Melendez and Melendez have termed “the colonial dilemma” (1). Over the span of its hundred year history as a “neo-colony” (Melendez & Melendez 1), Puerto Rico has struggled to define itself within the tensions of unresolved colonialism, and as Puerto Rico has sought definition of its status so too have Puerto Ricans sought self-definition of their individual and collective identities as Puerto Ricans and, since 1917, U.S. citizens. Within this context, the question of national identity has remained a persistent conundrum for Puerto Ricans. As Juan Manuel Carrion has observed, “All national identities, the world over, have lots of ambiguity; in Puerto Rico, ambiguity seems to be a fundamental feature” (183).
In developing our analysis of changes in the constitutive arguments of national identity in Puerto Rico, we shall first discuss the rhetorical constructedness of “nation” and its attendant national identities before analyzing in sequence the argumentative contestation of national identity in the wake of the Sanes killing in 1999 and again in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Read more