ISSA Proceedings 2010 – ‘If That Were True, I Would Never Have …’: The Counterfactual Presentation of Arguments that Appeal to Human Behaviour

• by: Henrike Jansen - Leiden University

1. Introduction
In 2008, the Dutch Parliament held a debate on embryo selection. In this debate, the Christian political parties adopted a negative stance towards embryo selection. The newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported the debate citing a few reactions from a 23-year old girl who had watched it from the gallery. The girl countered the claim, made by the Christian Union, that more attention should be paid to the medical treatment of cancer, by saying:
(1)  “If my disease were treatable, I would not have had my breasts amputated.” (NRC Handelsblad, 5/6/08)

The standpoint in this argument is that the hereditary form of aggressive breast cancer from which this girl is suffering is not treatable. This standpoint is supported by assuming that the opposite standpoint is hypothetically true for the moment, and then deducing an implication from it that is falsified by reality. The implication is that the girl would not have had her breasts amputated. This implication is falsified in the implicit argument – that states the implicature of the counterfactual statement – that the girl has had her breasts amputated.[i]  In a schematic reconstruction of this argument based on the pragma-dialectical method, the standpoint has number 1, the explicit argumentation 1.1 and the element that remains implicit 1.1’:

The reason this girl gives as a support for her standpoint is remarkable for several reasons, but I’m interested in the fact that it is formulated with a counterfactual If…then-sentence. I have been studying this way of formulating an argument – or, in other words, this presentation mode of an argument – for some time. Over the years I have gathered a wide collection of arguments presented in the counterfactual mode, examples that I have found in newspapers and sometimes heard on radio or television and examples that my students have found for me. A large part of my collection consists of examples in which an appeal is made to human behaviour, as in the above argument displaying the girl’s opinion about whether breast cancer is a treatable disease. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Interpretation And Evaluation Of Satirical Arguments

• by: Ann Johnson - California State University Long Beach & Esteban del Rio - University of San Diego

Satire and argument are a dangerous mix. What makes satire pleasurable is often how it differs from more rational argument. Satirical texts exaggerate and distort for comic effect resulting in sometimes little more than an ad hominem attack. Satire asks us to laugh first and think second. Further, some critics warn, satire can backfire if presented to audiences who are unable to recognize the author’s “real” message. These concerns about satirical arguments arise, in part, due to the prevalence of satire in U.S. political discourse. Programs such as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report employ irony, sarcasm, parody, and satire while serving as a major source of information for many people in the U.S (Baym, 2005; Boler, 2006; Hariman, 2007; Reinsheld, 2006). Some programs best categorized as entertainment offer political arguments in the form of satire, such as Comedy Central’s persistently popular and controversial South Park. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Wittgenstein’s Influence On Hamblin’s Concept Of ‘Dialectical’

• by: Ralph H. Johnson - University of Windsor

1. Introduction [i]
While working on the question of what influence Wittgenstein had on the development of informal logic, I faced the question of whether Wittgenstein had any influence on Hamblin. I checked the references to Wittgenstein in Fallacies, and found that there were four, two to the Tractatus and two to works of the later Wittgenstein, one identified by Hamblin as the Preliminary Studies, known to us as the Blue Book and the Brown Book, the other to the Philosophical Investigations. I was particularly struck by the reference on p. 285:
If we want to lay bare the foundations of Dialectic, we should give the dialectical rules themselves a chance to determine what is a statement, what is a question. This general idea is familiar enough from Wittgenstein.
The footnote states that “The best examples of dialectical analysis are in the ‘Brown Book’: Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigations.’”

This text strongly supports the idea that Hamblin was influenced by his reading of Wittgenstein. That came as something of a surprise to me, and I found myself puzzling over the above reference to ‘examples of dialectical analysis.’  I also found myself puzzling  over Hamblin’s notion of ‘dialectical’, for it seemed to me that the use of ‘dialectical’ here was quite different from the way it had been used in Chapter 7.[ii]  I hope to out these puzzles to rest in this paper.

In the sections that follow, I proceed to examine Hamblin’s use of the term ‘dialectical’ in Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of Fallacies.[iii] In each case, I start by setting up the context in which his use of the term arises. I then state what I take to be the meaning of ‘dialectical’ in that context. I then take up any issues that occurred to me about that use.  In Section 5, I gather together the assorted meanings together and ask: What is the relationship among them? Can we fashion a coherent account of Hamblin’s use of ‘dialectical’ in these three chapters?  Then, in Section 6, I discuss, rather more briefly, the matter of Wittgenstein’s influence on Hamblin. Section 7 is my conclusion. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Fudging Speech Acts In Political Argumentation

• by: Charlotte Jørgensen - University of Copenhagen

A topos in Danish public debate is former Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag’s notorious remark: “You hold a position until you take another!”[i] Krag said this in 1966 when he formed the Social-Democratic Government, supported by the left wing party SF – the ‘Red Cabinet’ – in spite of his former statements that he would never do so (Wikipedia, retrieved June 22, 2010). Krag’s one-liner is frequently alluded to when politicians go back on their words and make a decision that is considered a breach of promise, in particular when, after the election, they break an election pledge.

The case that I present in this paper concerns such an election pledge and its aftermath. It is known as ‘the Five Thousand Cheap Flats’ and is a case that has caused intense public debate in Denmark. The case relates to the prominent Danish politician Ritt Bjerregaard of the party The Social Democrats. In her election campaign to become Lord Mayor of Copenhagen she made it a top issue to provide housing that ordinary citizens could afford. She was elected and took office as Lord Mayor for the period 2006-2009, but the great construction plan failed. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Youth Debates In Early Modern Japan

• by: Tomohiro Kanke - Tokai University & Junya Morooka - Rikkyo University

1. Introduction
This paper offers an alternative historical account of debate practices in Japan during the Meiji and Taisho eras (1868-1926). Most previous studies on the modern history of debate in Japan have focused on Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) or political advocacy by voluntary associations (minken kessha) in the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement (1871-1890). Contrary to the prevailing view that debate had largely dissipated by 1890 due to the Meiji government’s strict regulations and crackdowns, we demonstrate that debate continued to be an important activity of youth clubs across the nation. Emerging around the late 1880s, youth clubs regularly held intra-group debates on various topics in order to advance knowledge in academic and practical matters.

This paper also questions the popular belief that debate was primarily a means of fighting for democracy and people’s rights in early modern Japan. On the contrary, debate in youth clubs was instrumental in preparing the members to be respectable citizens who would contribute to their communities and country. Not surprisingly, the central government and local authorities encouraged debating in youth clubs, along with participating in athletic meets, playing football and music, and practicing karate and judo. At the same time, youths were strongly discouraged from becoming “too ambitious orators” who would dare to meddle in political affairs. The youth in farming villages, for instance, were dissuaded from debating political topics on the grounds that they were neither fitting nor well suited to their social status. We conclude by suggesting that far from suppressing debates altogether, political authorities tolerated, and even promoted, certain forms of debate they deemed fit for producing active yet subservient citizens. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – When Figurative Analogies Fail: Fallacious Uses Of Arguments From Analogy

• by: Manfred Kienpointner - University of Innsbruck, Austria

1. Introduction
In this paper, I would like to deal with potentially fallacious uses of figurative analogies. The latter can be briefly defined as follows: Figurative analogies (also called “a priori analogies”, cf. Govier 1987, p. 58 or “different-domain analogies”, cf. Juthe 2005, p. 5, Doury 2009, p. 144) are arguments where similarities between entities belonging to entirely different spheres of reality are invoked. Some scholars dismiss such analogies as rationally insufficient means of argumentation. For example, eminent philosophers such J. St. Mill (cf. e.g. Mill 2005, p. 520f.; on Mill’s view of analogy cf. Woods 2004, p. 254) stressed the fact that arguments from analogy are based on a weak notion of similarity and often rely on false analogies. More recently, Lumer (1990, p. 288) criticized that arguments from analogy were given a place as a rational means of argumentation by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1983); And Lumer even generally classified arguments from analogy as fallacies (cf. Lumer 2000, p. 414).

However, figurative analogies were considered not only as an ubiquitous, but also as a rational, albeit weak and often defeasible means of argumentation by other authors in many recent studies (cf. Kienpointner 1992, p. 392; Mengel 1995, p. 13; Woods 2004, p. 253; Juthe 2005, p. 15; Garssen 2007, p. 437; Langsdorf 2007, p. 853; Walton et al. 2008, p. 44). It is this perspective that I wish to take up and also consider to be the most plausible and fruitful one. The question, then, is not so much whether figurative analogies are fallacious. Rather, we have to ask which figurative analogies are fallacious, and in which contexts, and according to which parameters. Read more