ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Points And Purposes Of Argumentative Texts

• by: Jason M. Dickenson and James A. Lorié - Law School Admission Council

1. Preliminaries
What does it take to understand an argument? We can’t hope to provide the answer to this question in full here. We will instead focus on an obvious point about which there is universal agreement: understanding an argument requires that one be able to identify the argument’s conclusion. This apparent truism, however, might not be quite as simple as at first it appears. Arguments do not spring forth from the universe by themselves; they have authors. And their authors have purposes in making their arguments that are not necessarily identical to their conclusions. Indeed, it is another common idea that it in order to fully understand an argument, it is a good idea to identify the author’s purpose in making that argument. We want to suggest that these two claims are in fact closely related, and that, in fact, comprehension of the conclusion of the argument and the argument as a whole is often heightened by seeing how the author’s activity of attempting to establish that conclusion can be re-described as activity of another (but related) sort.

We approach this matter as developers of a high-level reading and reasoning test—the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). The LSAT is a high-stakes test used for admission into law school in the US and Canada (also currently by one law school in Australia). We will be focusing here on reasoning as found in longish argumentative texts, which appear in the reading comprehension section of the test (our test has four scored multiple choice sections, one of which is reading comprehension). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – A Critical-Rationalist Approach To Premise Acceptability

• by: Antoni Diller - University of Birmingham

1. Introduction
In this paper I consider the problem: ‘When is a statement acceptable as a premise in an argument?’ This question is widely discussed in informal logic and practical reasoning circles, but most of these considerations presuppose the correctness of a justificationist epistemology: where the information comes from is of paramount importance in assessing its legitimacy. This is explicit in the title of an important paper by Freeman (1996): “Consider the Source”. Not only has justificationism got many faults, some of which I mention in the next section, but also the audience to whom the argument is addressed  tends to be overlooked. In an argument we are, typically, trying to convince one or more people of something that they are initially reluctant to accept. We do this by showing them that it follows from premises that they do accept. My approach puts the emphasis on the audience to whom the argument is addressed.

I see premise acceptability as being part of the broader issue of testimony and I have developed a critical-rationalist account of how we respond to the assertions of others: we accept them unless we have a reason not to. (Critical rationalism is opposed to all forms of justificationism.) We do not need a reason to accept testimony. We have a tendency to believe other people and the default position when we hear or read an assertion is simply to accept it. The proposal I present in detail below is that a premise is acceptable in an argument if the audience has no objection to it. I also show that this proposal is better than a widely accepted account of premise acceptability. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – “The Truth And Nothing But The Truth?”: The Argumentative Use Of Fictions In Legal Reasoning

• by: Ana Dimiškovska - Ss. Cyril and Methodius University Skopje

1. Introduction: the concept of legal fiction [i]
In eighteenth-century England, as we can see from a notorious story reproduced in different contemporary pieces of writing in the philosophy and history of law (Perelman 1999, p. 63; Perelman 1974, p. 348; Friedman 1995, p. 4, part II), the provisions of the criminal law insisted on the death penalty for every culprit accused of “grand larceny”. According to the same law, “grand larceny” was defined as the theft of anything worth at least two pounds (or 40 shillings). Nevertheless, in order to spare the lives of the defendants, the English judges established a regular practice which lasted for many years, to estimate every theft, regardless of its real value, as though it were worth 39 shillings. The culmination of that practice was the case when the court estimated the theft of 10 pounds, i.e. 200 shillings, as being worth only 39 shillings, and thus revealed an obvious distortion of the factual aspect of that, as well as of many previous cases.

The said situation and the corresponding judicial solution of it represent one of the most utilized classical examples of the phenomenon of what is called “legal fiction” (or more adequately in this case, “jurisprudential fiction”). This concept designates a specific legal technique based on the qualification of facts which is contrary to the reality, that is, which supposes a fact or a situation different from what it really is, in order to produce a certain legal effect (Perelman 1999, p. 62; Salmon 1974, p. 114; Foriers 1974, p. 16; Delgado-Ocando 1974, p. 78, 82; Rivero 1974, p. 102; de Lamberterie 2003, p. 5; see also Smith 2007, p. 1437,  Moglen 1998, p. 3, part 2 A). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Image, Evidence, Argument

• by: Ian J. Dove - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

1. Introduction
Suppose that visual argument skeptics are correct: there are no visual arguments apart from any associated verbal content. Does it follow, then, that there is no place for images in argumentation theory or informal logic? The answer to this question, I argue, is no – at least in the case of photographic images. Instead, photographic images can fill an evidentiary role in which the image acts as a verifier, corroborator or refuter of some claim within an argument. This result is satisfying in two ways. First, it makes room for images even under the most hostile conceptions of argument for visual argumentation. Second, it forms the basis of an answer to a related question in philosophy of mathematics. In philosophy of mathematics, there is a debate about the role of diagrams in mathematical reasoning. This debate, in some respects, mimics the debate about the use of visual elements in argumentation. I show that the use of images as verifiers in argumentative contexts can inform an answer about the use of some diagrams in mathematical contexts. Diagrams can verify, corroborate or refute claims in mathematical arguments.  Hence, though this doesn’t mean that diagrams are proofs, it means that diagrams can play an evidentiary role in mathematical contexts.

As a preamble to this discussion, I describe and label several positions one can take as regards visual evidence. On one end of the spectrum one finds the proponent of visual arguments. This is the position of Leo Groarke (Groarke 1996, Groarke 2002) and David Birdsell (Birdsell and Groarke, 1996, Birdsell and Groarke 2007). The proponent takes visual arguments to be no less legitimately arguments than any verbal arguments. For example, Groarke offers a poster from the University of Amsterdam as a putative visual argument (Groarke 1996, p. 112). Regarding the argumentative status of the poster, Groarke is unequivocal. He writes, “From the point of view of logic, the poster is something more than a statement, for it visually makes the point that the University of Amsterdam’s chief adminstrators are all men, to back the intended claim that the university needs more women.” (Groarke 1996, p. 111) A proponent of visual argument, then, takes the resources needed to analyze visual arguments to include logic broadly construed. Groarke doesn’t limit the analysis and evaluation of visual argumentation to just the rhetorical powers of images; though he doesn’t neglect these either. Instead, the proponent as I envision him or her, thinks that argumentation includes visual elements in the most robust forms possible. Therefore, Argumentation Theory and Informal Logic ought to expand to account for these visual elements explicitly. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Didactical Arguments And Mathematical Proofs

• by: M. Dufour - Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

There seems to be a mismatch between the classification of arguments given by Aristotle at the beginning of the Sophistical Refutations and some influential contemporary theories of argument for they do not pay much attention to a whole kind of Aristotelian arguments, namely didactical arguments.

An explanation could be that didactical arguments are implicitly included in these theories. But if you grant that didactical arguments differ from dialectical arguments in many respects and if you consider that for these theories the very notion of argument is dialectical, this interpretation of the demise of didactical arguments is not very plausible unless it results from equivocation on the word “dialectical”.
After a review of Aristotle’s classification we shall examine these theories to see if they are well suited to accommodate the kind of argument Aristotle called didactical.

1. Aristotle’s four arguments
In the Sophistical Refutations (II, 165a-b) Aristotle claims there are four kinds of διαλέγεσθαι λoγων, an expression generally translated by “argument (or reasoning) involved in a discussion”. This expression can also be interpreted simply as “dialogue” or “dialectic”, taken in the broad sense of “talking together”. Although Aristotle neither uses the word “syllogism” nor “enthymeme” it seems reasonable to agree with the translation using the word “argument” since the Philosopher stresses that these discourses have premises. And it is these premises which make the main difference between the four kinds of argument. In short:
Dialectical arguments are rooted in an endoxa, a common opinion.
Critical arguments start from premises accepted by the answerer but also granted by the arguer for his discourse aims at “showing that he [the arguer] knows”.
Eristic arguments reason from premises that appear to be generally accepted but are not so. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Bi-Logical Analysis Of Arguments In Political Propaganda: The Case Of The Chilean Press 1970-1973

• by: Claudio Durán - York University

This paper is an attempt to bring together ideas discussed in several papers that I have read in conferences of the International Society for Studies in Argumentation and the Ontario Society for Studies in Argumentation (Durán 2007, 2008 and 2010). Its main thrust is the view that the study of argumentation should include the analysis of emotional, physical and intuitive arguments as well as logical ones. However, this paper concentrates on the contribution that the psychoanalytic theory of Bi-Logic has to offer for the study of argumentation.

I begin this paper by summarizing the main aspects of my research on the propaganda of agitation developed by the Chilean daily newspaper El Mercurio of Santiago against the government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973). A fully developed account of this study appears in my 1995 book (Durán 1995), and a summary of it was published in the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (Durán 2007). In essence, El Mercurio represented the interests of powerful enemies of Allende that felt threatened by his government, from the Chilean upper classes to the United States’ government and some influential multi-national corporations. The purpose of the propaganda of El Mercurio was to undermine the Allende government by instilling fear and hatred in the middle classes and the military so that a coup d’état could be staged. This happened on September 11, 1973 followed by a military dictatorship of 16 years led by General Augusto Pinochet. Read more