ISSA Proceedings 2006 – A Pragmatic Analysis Of Critique And Evaluation

• by: Hengameh Irandoust - DRDC-Valcartier, Quebec, Canada

Abstract: It is generally accepted that a critique (or criticism) gives a more articulated account of the strengths and weaknesses of an argument than an evaluation. It will be argued in this paper that the difference between a critique and an evaluation is not one of depth, but of scope of analysis. An evaluation is concerned with the value of an argument relatively to a set of domain-dependent criteria, whereas a critique is mainly concerned with the claim of that argument with regard to the reality it is about.

1. Introduction
Critique (or criticism) and evaluation are close concepts that have been compared in argument studies (Johnson, 2000) as two means of argument appraisal. Johnson (2000) claims that a critique gives a more articulated account of the strengths and weaknesses of an argument (or a product, to be general) than an evaluation.
The aim of this paper is to show that the difference between a critique and an evaluation is not one of depth, but of scope of analysis. We argue that an evaluation basically consists of the appreciation of a product relatively to its domain, whereas a critique is mainly concerned with the opinion or position underlying the product.
First, we look at the context of use of the two terms (Section 2), then, we make a distinction between the two concepts in terms of objective and approach (Section 3). We distinguish them as two different types of discourse (Section 4), and finally, we discuss the dialectical nature of critique (Sections 5).

2. Meaning distinction
In English, the concepts of ‘critique’ and ‘criticism’ are often confounded, despite the negative connotation of the latter. We will use the term critique here to refer to an intellectually serious criticism that ‘evaluates on the basis of an interpretation’ – this is criticism which judges, but which, at the same time, explains and justifies its judgement (Nowlan, 2001). Moreover, our choice of the term critique is motivated by the fact that a critique, contrary to criticism, can not apply to individuals.
In argument studies, the concept of critique (called criticism) has been opposed to that of evaluation, both being related to argument appraisal. Yet, contrary to critique, the use of the term evaluation is not limited to the realm of argumentation. One can evaluate a person, an object or a situation, etc. in order to decide whether it has certain properties or whether it satisfies certain criteria. For example, one can evaluate the robustness of a system, the performance of an athlete, etc. Any phenomenon or product can be evaluated if there are criteria that allow it to be ‘measured’. Freeman (2000) shows that evaluative statements may have a number of uses, including expressing approval or disapproval of something as a means to some end, asserting that some person or thing satisfies or fails to satisfy certain normative criteria, or judging the merits of some policy.
The object of a critique, on the other hand, can only be the product of a reasoning. Critiquing a product necessarily implies that the structure behind it is traced back to a purposeful opinion or belief. Moreover, a critique can only be addressed to an opinion that seeks the commitment of an audience. One would not critique something that is not a ‘purposive act of communication’ (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992). As a matter of fact, contrary to an evaluation, a critique can only be directed at an argument.

3. Critique and evaluation: two different approaches to argument analysis
Restating the criticism and evaluation distinction made in Johnson’s Manifest Rationality (2000), Govier (2000) writes:
‘We evaluate, say, a movie, if we pronounce it good or bad – and when we do so, we presumably have some standards in mind. But to evaluate a movie is not yet to criticize it. To criticize it, we have to articulate our standards, show evidence as to why the movie did or did not meet them, and put our comments into some kind of coherent perspective. To evaluate something is to pronounce it good, bad, or indifferent – or somewhere along the spectrum. To criticize it is to develop an account of its strengths and weaknesses, an account that shows some discrimination between more and less significant strengths or weaknesses and can give assistance as to how the product might be improved.’ Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Actually Existing Rules For Closing Argument

• by: Jean Goodwin - Iowa State University

Our interest in argumentation is provoked at least in part by the apparent paradox it presents. People are arguing because they disagree, sometimes deeply. But despite their disagreement, their transaction is orderly – at least, somewhat orderly. Furthermore, this orderliness apparently has a normative element, making room for them to critique each other’s conduct as good and bad. So how is this normative orderliness achieved, even in the face of disagreement? – That must be a central question for any theory, especially one that aims to deepen our understanding of the normative pragmatics of arguing (van Eemeren 1994; Jacobs 1999; Goodwin 2004).
In this paper, I want to probe one rather abstract aspect of this question, about what I will call the general “shape” of the account we should be giving of argumentative orderliness. In attempting to understand or explain argumentative talk, how should we represent the activity? What basic model should we be using? In what terms should we explain the affairs? What story should we tell about them? Or, again, to put this generally, what shape should an account of arguing take?

One common approach to this question has been to say that we should account for arguing as a form of following rules. According to an account of this shape, although arguers may disagree about many things, they agree on the rules of arguing. When followed, these rules lend order to a transaction; talk which follows them is good, while talk which breaks them is bad.
There are good reasons to find this shape of account attractive to explain argumentative orderliness, for it has proved attractive for other fields. Consider: A current in social science initiated by Peter Winch takes off from one interpretation of Wittgenstein and holds that we understand any form of life when we know the rules of that particular game. Again, a Searleian approach to speech acts represents them by the rules that constitute them. Again, Chomsky’s model of syntax shows how what on the surface appears complex behavior can be the outcome of the recursive application of a limited number of simple rules. Again, contemporary cognitive science tells us that in acting humans are following “scripts” laying out the basic rules for an activity. And so on; other twentieth and twenty-first century tendencies could be cited, such as the axiom systems of formal logic and the instructions which constitute the activities of computers.
Working in parallel to these diverse projects, argumentation theorists may readily propose that arguing, too, is constituted through rules. The theory of argument should proceed by articulating those rules.
But is this so? Is rule-following the general shape of account we should be giving about arguing? Most of the above rule-following accounts have been criticized, and undoubtedly some of the criticisms bear against an account of rule-following in arguing as well. In this paper, however, I want to explore the very abstract question about the ruliness and possible unruliness of arguing using a very concrete, empirical method, by examining the shape of account arguers themselves give when they talk about their own activity.

Although arguers may be wrong, even fundamentally deluded or lying about what they are doing, there are nevertheless good reasons to take what they say about their activities, in their activities, as presumptively correct. The ultimate desiderata for an account of any shape, for any model, representational scheme or explanatory mode, are what have been termed “problem solving validity” and “conventional validity” (van Eemeren et al. 1993). That is, the account of argumentation must elucidate how arguing does some work, and further the account must be acceptable to the community of arguers. Now, the accounts of argument actually put forward by arguers in their arguing – the “native” theories of argument, of whatever shape – presumably are offered as attempts to get arguing to do its job, better; they are furthermore already “intersubjectively” accepted by them (or some of them). So “native” accounts of arguing meet the two desiderata, and are one good place to start building more sophisticated theoretical accounts (see also Craig, 1996, 1999).
The “natives” I will be studying here are participants in the closing arguments of trials in the United States. Although I do not follow authors such as Toulmin and perhaps Perelman in taking legal argument as the paradigm for argumentation generally, there still can be no doubt that (a) trial “natives” are arguing, and (b) that they’re arguing in a sophisticated fashion. As to (a), the practice I will focus on – the trial advocates’ final address to the jury – is variously called “closing argument, final argument, jury argument” or even just “argument,” and standard training manuals urge participants to “argue!” (Mauet 1996, p. 367), leaving little doubt that much of what is happening in this context is relevant to argumentation theory. As to (b), participants in closing arguments are trained and experienced professionals, inheriting a long tradition of practice, facing complex situations and with strong incentives to perform well; all of which assure us that what is happening in this context is worthy of attention.
Closing argument practice may furthermore provide a good window onto the specific question I’m asking here, about participants’ own accounts of their activities. Legal arguers not only are likely to argue well, they are likely to argue quite self-consciously – to be quite articulate about what they’re doing, thematizing matters that might in more relaxed contexts ordinarily remain implicit. This is in part because of the professionalism of the activity, which renders practitioners more self-aware, but even more because of its adversariality. Practitioners are likely to become very articulate when they can accuse their opponents of failing to perform correctly, and in such accusations they will be pushed to give an account of what went wrong (see also Philipsen 1992). And finally, in legal contexts there are judges – indeed, an entire array of trial and appellate judges – who are empowered to announce what ought to be done. For all these reasons, we can expect participants in closing argument to give us relatively extensive accounts of what they are doing.
Finally, participants in closing arguments are likely to be sympathetic to giving an account of their practice in terms of rules. Lawyers are used to thinking in terms of laws, viz., rules for all sorts of activities, including rules for arguments. If we find that even in closing arguments there are things going on that aren’t conceived of as following (or breaking) rules, then it is likely that arguing in other, less rule-oriented, contexts is at least that unruly, too. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – “Yucca Mountain Will Become Unhappy And Angry” : Culture, Metaphor, and Argument

• by: Danielle Endres - University of Utah

“Yucca Mountain Will Become Unhappy And Angry” – Southern Paiute Edward Smith [i]
Argumentation is a cultural phenomenon. It is a way of thinking and speaking that can vary slightly or vastly between different national, ethnic, regional, gendered, or racial cultures. George Kennedy’s (1998) examination of the rhetorical traditions of a variety of cultures provides support for the argument that the Western Greco-Roman tradition of argumentation that serves as the foundation for most American and European theories of argumentation is not a culturally-universal tradition (see also, Combs, 2004a). An increasing corpus of literature supports this thesis by showing both the similarities and differences in argumentation across cultures, most often defining culture as national culture[ii] (Combs, 2004a; Combs, 2004b; Becker, 1986; Dolina & Cecchetto, 1998; Ellis & Maoz, 2002; Endres, 2002; Garrett, 1993; Garrett, 1997; Lee & Campbell, 1994; Liu, 1999; McLaurin, 1995; Walker, 1987; Warnick & Manusov, 2000). Indeed, the diversity in argumentation across cultures can be categorized into variations of the form (preferred reasoning forms), function (goals of engaging in argumentation), and evaluation of argument (how ought we to judge a “good” argument) (Endres, 2002). However, the field of argumentation still focuses mostly on the Western Greco-Roman argumentation tradition. When non-western cultures are considered, they are often evaluated based in according to the Western tradition of argument and are sometimes considered to be cultures without an argument tradition. Littlefield and Ball (2004) concur stating, “There is a certain presumption in our acceptance of Greco-Roman forms of argumentation as proper, intellectual, even historical. But every society must have accepted forms of argumentation if its members are to solve conflict” (p. 99). The key is recognition that the Western tradition is not the only way of arguing and understanding the world. One goal of scholarship that explores the connection between culture and argument is to better understand the forms, functions, and evaluations of argument as understood and used by members of particular cultures.

Just as important as a focus on argumentation theory and practice in particular cultures is the study of cross-cultural argumentation in particular issues of controversy. In other words, what happens in the interaction of two or more argumentative traditions? In addition to showing how the forms, functions, and evaluations of argument differ across cultures, we must also turn our attention to how the differences and similarities in argumentation traditions play out in public debate and controversy (see Dolina & Cecchetto, 1998; Ellis and Maoz, 2002; Liu, 1999; Walker, 1987). This essay closely examines the arguments in a scientific and environmental controversy over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, the future site of the first permanent nuclear waste repository in the United States. Though there are multiple participants in the controversy, this essay focuses on the arguments of American Indians from the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Owens Valley Paiute and Shoshone in a situation that demands intercultural communication with non-Indian audiences[iii]. By examining the arguments of these American Indian tribal members in a public hearing session about the Yucca Mountain site, I reveal the forms of argument used by tribal members in this controversy, show how the European-American Western tradition of argumentation interprets these arguments, and examine how these arguments circulate in the Yucca Mountain controversy.
Interestingly, though some American Indian forms of argument can be classified and discussed under the rubric of Western argumentation theory, such characterizations do not tell the entire story of argumentation in American Indian cultures. Attending to role of history, values, worldview, and ritual in American Indian cultures provides a rich understanding of American Indian arguments in an intercultural controversy. For example, American Indian arguers often referred to Yucca Mountain as having living, human characteristics, which can be considered a form of prosopopoeia or of metaphor. Further investigation of the values, spirituality, and worldview of the tribes, however, discloses that what a Western argumentation theorist might classify as prosopopoeia is likely not seen by American Indian arguers as such, but is reflective of a worldview that assumes that mountains speak and feel. This difference in understanding has significant implications for the force of American Indian arguments and the outcome of the controversy.

Because this essay looks at a case of intercultural controversy as opposed to a case of argumentation within a particular culture, this finding has significant implications for the intersection of values, culture, and argumentation in controversy. Moreover, this essay contributes to the scholarly conversation with an improved understanding of American Indian forms, functions, and evaluations of argument, and the importance of considering the intersection of differing cultured ways of arguing in public argumentation over issues of controversy.
This essay begins with an examination of American Indian forms, functions, and evaluations of argumentation in general. This examination includes scholarship focused on individual American Indian nations and on American Indians as a whole. In this section, I identify some of the problems with current understandings of American Indian argument. Next, I investigate the particular case of American Indian arguments in the Yucca Mountain controversy as a way to show specific ways of arguing by the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Owens Valley Paiute and Shoshone, the difficulty of characterizing these arguments with Western theory, and the implications of this on the controversy. The paper concludes with implications and a call for further research. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Obscuring The Facts: The Bush Administration And The Politicization Of Science In The Greenhouse Debate

• by: Edward Panetta - University of Georgia

In an essay published in the journal Science, Naomi Oreskes reviewed 928 refereed essays published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and found that none of the studies disagreed with the consensus position that anthropogenic climate change is occurring (Oreskes). Despite widespread agreement in the scientific community, the Bush administration asserts that climate science remains uncertain. The thesis of this essay is that the Bush administration is committed to rekindling the debate over the uncertainty of climate research in the face of the scientific consensus on the subject. The Executive branch of government has embraced a distinctly minority viewpoint in an effort to portray the debate over the nature of climate change as a case in controversy. This rhetorical strategy is an effort to keep the focus on the status of “good science” and allows the administration to advance its policy of voluntary efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
To understand the administration’s public argument strategy, there is a need to understand the ways that climate arguments take place in two locations. Initially, one must have a sense of the appeals used in scientific fields by scholars who hold a distinctly minority point of view on the greenhouse question. These arguments serve as the cornerstone of the administration’s call for additional support for research. The circulation of these appeals is due in part to the way the media in America reports on climate change. The longstanding commitment to the journalistic principle of balancing the reporting on controversial subjects provides the critics of global warming theory with extensive coverage in print.

1. The “Controversy over Consensus” in Climate Research
While media outlets in the United States continue to report that there is disagreement in the scientific community over the unprecedented rate of global warming, one finds very little proof of a genuine debate in peer reviewed scholarly research. For example, in a report released shortly after the 2004 election cycle in the United States, the Natural Resources Defense Council indicated that a team of 300 climate researchers concluded that half of the Arctic may melt before the end of the Century This melting will be accompanied by a loss of most of the Greenland Ice Sheet and a warming in the region of 7-13 degrees F (St. Clair). This report affirmed the conclusion of the noted Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Third Assessment Report: “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. And in the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” (Connolley). Perhaps the most convincing evidence comes from the National Science Academies of the G-8 nations, Brazil, China and India in 2005. The group concluded that the scientific understanding on climate now justifies nation states taking policy action to curtail the emission of fossil fuels.

The alleged controversy surrounding publication of Oreskes’ 2004 survey on climate research highlights the strategy of obfuscation employed by climate skeptics. They are compelled to contest the scientific consensus to avoid the debate that would ensue over policy actions that might be implemented to stall the warming effect. Instead of a robust debate interrogating the economic, legal and moral implications of public policies, the skeptics continue to push the claim of uncertainty and call for the public to keep an open mind (which is translated by some into a rationale for voluntary emissions reduction strategies) on the subject of global warming.
Naomi Oreskes, a Historian at the University of California at San Diego, began her scholarly project as an effort to see if there is a disagreement between the public statements of opinion leaders in a scientific field and their research community. To test this position, she settled on looking at climate research to interrogate the nature of scientific consensus (Whipple). The review of the consensus proclamations of groups, like the IPCC, and the survey of refereed papers in the field of climate science found that the opinion leader’s assertions simply affirmed the work of researchers. In fact, she did not find a single article in the selected group of 928 that stood in opposition to the consensus claim. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – A Defeasible Pragma-Dialectical Model Of Argumentation

• by: Minghui Xiong - Institute of Logic, Cognition, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China & Yi Zhao - Politics & Administration School, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China

1. Introduction
What’s an argument? According to Daniel J. O’Keefe (1977), there are two types of argument. Argument1 is an argument characterized as “a kind of utterance or a kind of communicative act”. It can be thought of as a claim and its reason. Argument2 is described as “a particular kind of interaction” and denotes the process of arguing, or the act of making arguments for a certain claim. In other words, argument1 means argument-as-product while argument2 denotes argument-as-process (Reed & Walton, 2003). Habermas (1984) called the former “argument” and the latter “argumentation”. However, in the first half of 20th century, the structure (or form) of arguments had mainly been idealized, i.e., mathematical proofs had been taken as paradigm of successful argument. An argument was entirely abstracted away from the daily context. Most people focused on argument1 (argument-as-product) while neglected argument2 (argument-as-process). In the framework of argumentation evaluation based on classical or traditional logic, therefore, an argument is treated as static, context-insensitive, no goal-oriented, and zero-agent (van Benthem, 2003). Whereas, generally speaking, the basic characters of argument in everyday life is dynamic, context-sensitive, goal-oriented, and multi-agent.

Beginning in 1940s, as a matter of fact, many philosophers such as Strawson, Austin, Searle et al. focused on the pragmatic elements in assessing arguments. Toulmin (1958) presents a dialectical model, which is called Toulmin Model, differing from the CM in trying to describe the structure of argument as process. Toulmin has pointed out that formal logic lacks adaptability to different fields, but arguments can only be understood in a context. However, it is a pity that their works had little bearing on the formal semantic developed by Richard Montague and his followers. It was not until the rise of Informal Logic (in North America), Pragma-Dialectics (in Holland), and Radical Argumentativism (in France), that argumentation theorists or (informal) logicians paid attention to the importance of pragmatic elements such as context again. It is apparent that we cannot deal with the above character of argumentation with the classical model of argument evaluation. Therefore, another logical model is needed to evaluate a real argument.

2. Classical Model and Its Limitations
The model of argument evaluation based on classical logic is called the Classical Model (CM). This model, which is based on deductive validity, usually consists of at least two calculus systems: the one for propositional one and the other for predicate one, where the essential rule is,

R1 [Modus Ponens (MP)]
p→q, p├q

It means that if p then q, p, therefore, q. MP consists of three statements. The first statement is the “if-then” or conditional statement, namely that p implies q. The second statement is that p, the antecedent of the conditional statement is true. Following those two statements, it can be logically concluded that q, the consequent of the conditional sentence, must be true as well.
In order to grasp the CM, let us start with analyzing a classical example presented by Wilson (cf., Walton, 1989, p.2). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Scientific Demarcation And Metascience: The National Academy Of Sciences On The Greenhouse Effect And Neo-Darwinism

• by: Thomas M. Lessl - University of Georgia

Scholars who have followed up on Thomas Gieryn’s work (1983) on scientific boundary – work have often seen rhetorical behavior of this kind as an informal alternative to the kind of demarcation undertaken by philosophers of science. The functionality of informal demarcation was fleshed out in Charles Alan Taylor’s (1996) application of this model to various controversies in American science. Like Gieryn, Taylor regards boundary – work as a positive alternative to formal philosophizing on the nature of science. I do agree that the articulation of such dividing lines as arise from institutional challenges to science may achieve practical resolutions to problems that philosophers of science have never been able to resolve, but this exclusive focus overlooks some of the complexities arising from demarcation of this kind.
Certainly it is as important for scientists as it is for philosophers to develop what I will here call “metascience,” answers to the question: what is science? And so the informal argumentative work that achieves this may be as vital as Gieryn and Taylor suggest – especially if it succeeds where more academic exercises of scientific demarcation do not. But in this essay I will consider the complicating fact that the motives that inspire boundary-work are not strictly regulated by intellectual concerns. Because of this informal demarcation could easily misfire, causing scientists to define their own intellectual labors in ways that could weaken or perhaps even undermine public deliberations that bear upon scientific questions.

This problem is suggested by Gieryn’s own analysis of the three ideological pressures that inspire boundary-work (pp. 785-791):
(1) outside encroachments upon science such as might come from religious interests,
(2) challenges to the ethicality of science, and
(3) the need to protect scientific patronage by excluding pseudo-science.

Of course these efforts may have something to do with science as practice, but more often they have to do with the secondary concerns of science as an institutional body. This is shown in one of the cases that interested Gieryn, the informal demarcation undertaken in the energetic public campaign for science that was advanced in Victorian England by such figures as Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and John Tyndall. Focusing specifically on Tyndall, Gieryn (pp. 785-786) observed that the Irish physicist constructed these boundaries differently when he was working two different fronts of this campaign. The emerging scientific professions at this time felt threatened by the deeply entrenched power of the Anglican Church, which continued even in the face of science’s rising fortunes to wield considerable influence over faculty positions and curricular decision-making in English universities. But on another front (pp. 786-787) scientists like Tyndall were also wary of the growing power of the technical professions, since these competed with science for patronage and for a hold on the public imagination.

Gieryn observes that Tyndall demarcated science differently on each of these fronts. To show science’s epistemic superiority over technology, the physicist highlighted its purely theoretical powers, but to show its superiority to theology he was disposed to play up its concrete character and applicability. Science was superior to theology because it solved real problems, but it was superior to engineering precisely because it did not. While the pragmatic reasons why this influential scientist would have taken these contradictory stances are evident, Gieryn does not consider the rhetorical costs that demarcation of this kind might have accrued. In fact he does not regard this inconsistency as a problem at all. Tyndall, Gieryn tells us, was not “disingenuous” when he described science differently in various contexts. “It would be reductionistic, “he insists, “to explain these inconsistent parts of a professional ideology merely as fictions conjured up to serve scientists’ interests” (p. 787). This was a “genuine ambivalence” reflecting “an unyielding tension between basic and applied research, and between the empirical and theoretical aspects of inquiry” (p. 787). Of course Gieryn is right about this, but this explanation overlooks the obvious fact that Tyndall communicated these half truths with the intention of deceiving his listeners by masking this very ambivalence. Had the physicist explained this as forthrightly as Gieryn does, he would not have been able to achieve these boundary-work effects, for to acknowledge that science is both theoretical and applied, would be to admit that it cannot be utterly demarcated either from theology or engineering. In wanting to forgive Tyndall’s equivocation, in other words, Gieryn seems to suggest that it is okay to mislead the public, provided that one remains true to science. Read more