ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Logically Defending For Publication: An Analysis Of The Review Process Of Logical Self-Defense

• by: Takuzo Konishi - University of Pittsburgh, USA

Although there has been some historical research on the development of argumentation studies in the US and Canada, it is safe to say that history of argumentation studies on the second half of the last century is less developed than the theory and empirical research of argumentation. As other fields of inquiries such as economics, political theory, and communication studies have history of those inquiries as their components, history of argumentation studies should exist and constitute the field of inquiry called argumentation. In addition to refining theories of argumentation proposed by Toulmin, the New Rhetoric Project, informal logicians, Pragma-Dialecticians, we need to examine under what historical contingencies those theories were proposed and defended. With a hope of developing history of argumentation as a legitimate subfield of argumentation studies, this paper attempts to offer a historical-rhetorical analysis of one pivotal argumentative exchange for the development of informal logic: the review process for publication of Logical Self-Defense[i].

In the review process of the manuscript of Logical Self-Defense, Johnson and Blair had to overcome arguments against publication by two reviewers. What were those objections and how did Johnson and Blair attempt to fulfill their dialectical obligations? Given that the triad criteria of argument evaluation (relevance, sufficiency, and acceptability) offered in Logical Self-Defense have been influential to introductory textbooks and research on informal logic, non-publication of Logical Self-Defense must have presented a different landscape of argumentation theory in general, and informal logic in particular. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Pragmatic Logic: The Study Of Argumentation In The Lvov-Warsaw School

• by: Marcin Koszowy - University of Białystok

1. The main question
Logical studies in Poland are mainly associated with the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS), labeled also the Polish school in analytical philosophy (Lapointe, Woleński, Marion & Miskiewicz 2009; Jadacki 2009).[i] The LWS was established by Kazimierz Twardowski at the end of the 19th century in Lvov (Woleński 1989, Ch. 1, part 2). Its main achievements include developments of mathematical logic (see Kneale & Kneale 1962; McCall 1967; Coniglione, Poli & Woleński 1993) that became world-wide famous thanks to such thinkers as Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Alfred Tarski, Bolesław Sobociński, Andrzej Mostowski, Adolf Lindenbaum, Stanisław Jaśkowski and many others (see e.g. Woleński 1995, p. 369-378).

In ‘the golden age of Polish logic’, which lasted for two decades (1918-1939), ‘formal logic became a kind of international visiting card of the School as early as in the 1930s – thanks to a great German thinker, Scholz’ (Jadacki 2009, p. 91).[ii] Due to this fact, some views on the study of reasoning and argumentation in the LWS were associated exclusively with a formal-logical (deductivist) perspective, according to which a good argument is the one which is deductively valid. Having as a point of departure a famous controversy over the applicability of formal logic (or FDL – formal deductive logic – see Johnson & Blair 1987; Johnson 1996; Johnson 2009) in analyzing and evaluating everyday arguments, the LWS would be commonly associated with deductivism.[iii] Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Ways Of Criticism: Four Parameters

• by: Erik C. W. Krabbe & Jan Albert van Laar - University of Groningen

1. Introduction [i]
The notions of criticism and of argument are very much related, both at a practical and at a theoretical level. In practice, a critical attitude is often manifested by ‘being argumentative’ in one’s comments and appreciations, whereas arguments are associated with a critical stance sooner than with a constructive one. In daily parlance, both “criticism” and “argument” even share some negative connotations, such as meddlesomeness and quarrelsomeness. In the theory of argumentation, there are no such connotations, but the theoretical concepts of criticism and of argument are all the same closely related. Argumentation can be either critical (opposing someone else’s point of view) or constructive (defending one’s own point of view) or both. Moreover, some sort of critical stance is often seen as essential for all argumentation, including the constructive kind, since argumentation is conceived as an instrument to overcome doubt, and doubt seems to imply a critical stance. In pragma-dialectics, the normative model for argumentation proposed is that of a critical discussion in which standpoints are critically tested (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004). Also, at the intersection of argumentation studies and artificial intelligence, dialogue protocols and models for persuasion dialogue have been developed that start from the assumption that argumentation and criticism are closely interwoven (Prakken 2005; Parsons, Wooldridge & Amgoud, 2003). Thus criticism seems not only to lie at the origin of argument, but also to pervade the whole argumentative procedure. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Cultural Diversity, Cognitive Breaks, And Deep Disagreement: Polemic Argument

• by: Manfred Kraus - University of Tübingen

1. Introduction
Almost every argumentation scholar will be familiar with the famous skit by Monty Python’s Flying Circus called The Argument Clinic (Monty Python 1987; video 2006). A man (played by Michael Palin) comes to the ‘Argument Clinic’, wishing to “have an argument”. After various failed attempts he finally enters the room where an “arguer” (played by John Cleese) offers such service. Yet the argument does not develop the way the client has expected, since when he double-checks that he is in the correct room, Cleese confronts him with a bluntly dishonest statement (“I told you once.”), thereby provoking contradiction from the client, but in the following dialogue confines himself to merely contradicting any statement the client will make. Even when the client tries to define that an argument is not “the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes”, but “a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition”, and tries to use logic and reason to defeat Cleese, the latter continues to proceed in exactly the same way, until in the end the enervated client rushes out of the room with an exasperated “Oh shut up!”

This sketch makes us laugh, and this is what it is meant to. But what it draws its funny esprit from is the fact that we will all remember having experienced such or similar scenes in reality. Seemingly futile polemic argument appears to be characteristic of our present-day argument culture. TV talk shows confront us daily with disputers yelling at each other and flinging arguments into each other’s faces without ever listening to the other side. And are not today’s political debates more often than not characterized by mere cantankerousness and gain-saying rather than by veritable argumentation? To be honest, even academic discussions oftentimes hardly do any better. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Expert Authority And Ad Verecundiam Arguments

• by: Gábor Kutrovátz - Eötvös University Budapest

While fallacies have been a major focus of the study of arguments since antiquity, scholars in argumentation theory are still struggling for suitable frameworks to approach them. A fundamental problem is that there seems to be no unique category or kind such as ‘fallacy’, and arguments can be seen as fallacious for many various reasons. This heterogeneity does not invalidate the need to study fallacies, but it poses serious difficulties for general systematic approaches. On the other hand, the numerous repeated attempts to find satisfactory perspectives and tools, together with the critical discussions of these attempts, have increasingly contributed to our understanding of the more local situations where different types of fallacies appear, of how and in what circumstances they are fallacious, and, of which contexts and disciplinary areas are relevant to the study of certain types of fallacies.

This paper [i] aims to illustrate these issues by selecting one fallacy type as its subject, the argumentum ad verecundiam. The main thesis is that argumentation studies can gain a reasonable profit from consulting a field, the social studies of science, where the problem of appeals to authority has lately become a central issue. The first section summarizes and modestly evaluates some recent approaches to ad verecundiam arguments in argumentation studies. The second section overviews the problem of expert dependence as discussed in social epistemology and science studies. The third section presents a rough empirical survey of expert authority appeals in a context suggested by the previous section. The paper concludes by making some evaluative remarks. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Metaphysics Of Argument: Two Proposals About Presuppositions

• by: Lenore Langsdorf - University of Texas at San Antonio & Darrin Hicks - University of Denver

Sometimes it is hard to know where politics ends and metaphysics begins: when, that is, the stakes of a political dispute concern not simply a clash of competing ideas and values but a clash about what is real and what is not, what can be said to exist on its own and what owes its existence to another.
–       J.M. Bernstein, ”The Very Angry Tea Party” (The New York Times, June 13, 2010)

All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality, particular and universal. The result always does violence to that immediate experience which we express in our actions, our hopes, our sympathies, our purposes, and which we enjoy in spite of our lack of phrases for its verbal analysis. We find ourselves in a buzzing world, amid a democracy of fellow creatures; whereas. . .orthodox philosophy can only introduce us to solitary substances, each enjoying an illusory experience. . .
–       A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 49[i]

We understand argumentation as a political practice, and propose that argumentation theory has neglected to attend to that “clash about what is real and what is not, what can be said to exist on its own and what owes its existence of another” that informs the diverse points of view – the “clash of competing ideas and values” – that is displayed in argumentative engagements. That neglect is due to a powerful presumption that has its roots in the primacy that Aristotle gave to substance, rather than relation, as well as the preeminence that Plato accorded to stable concepts (eternal Ideas) in contrast to changing things (the materiality of our “immediate experience”).[ii] Read more