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

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Moral Argumentation From A Rhetorical Point Of View

• by: Lars Leeten - Universität Hildesheim

Practical thinking is a tricky business. Its aim will never be fulfilled unless influence on practical attitudes is gained. These attitudes, though, are no neat propositional structures, as is sometimes suggested. Whether or not a living human being is willing to act in a certain way is determined by dispositions that are non-codified, non-transparent, habitual, embodied and emotional. To reflect upon such attitudes is roughly as complex as reflect­ing upon the agent’s moral identity.

This poses some problems for moral argumentation. In practical matters, justifying practical beliefs as “true” is not enough. The motiva­tional dimension cannot be ignored. This is the original field of classical rhetoric. Rhetorical methods are not designed to examine theoretical truths but for the purpose of practical decision making. This is why rhetoric and ethics have always been closely related. The aristotelian doctrine of lógos, páthos and êthos reminds us of the fact that speech is persuasive not due to its rationality only but also due to the “moral character” of the speaker and the emotional dispositions of the audience. The adoption of a practical attitude cannot be reached by deduction alone. It takes more to persuade and motivate a human being to act in a certain way.

This being the case, one should think that any conception of moral argu­mentation reduced to rational argu­mentation in a narrow sense will be incomplete. However, such conceptions of moral argumentation seem to be wide spread. One of the basic assumptions of cognitivist – and roughly, Kantian – ethics is that moral argumentation has to be built on reason alone, on “rational discourse”, as representatives of discourse ethics like Haber­mas would prefer to say. Any reference to emo­tions, then, has to be regarded as “merely rhetorical”. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Definition And Prescription As Classifiers Of Arguments: A Comparison Of Two Models To Analyze Arguments, Sproule (1980) And Toussaint-Ducasse (1996)

• by: Alain Létourneau - Université de Sherbrooke

1. Introduction
As we can see, authors working in the field of argumentation can develop quite different theories and models, especially in a pedagogical context. Let us assume that it would probably be useful to review and reflect on these theoretical achievements, not only for historical reasons but also to reflect on the limits and resources of previous models. This is what I would like to attempt here, with two models developed in two books that I wish to consider and compare. It has been a few years since I was stricken by the differences between these two Argumentation handbooks, books that of course I have used in classes, one from J. Michael Sproule, and the other by francophone authors from Québec, Nicole Toussaint and Gaston Ducasse, helped by pr. G. A. Legault. The first book is Argumentation. Language and its influence (1980), the other one is Apprendre à argumenter. Initiation à l’argumentation rationnelle écrite, théorie et exercices (1996).[i]

When I am mentioning « models » here, discussing specifically the S model and the TD model, I am describing and discussing the analytical tool that is furnished in these books by their respective authors in the aim of helping students to discern the main characteristics of a given argument. Armed with these analytical tools, students are supposed to be then able to analyze arguments. These books are both destined to an undergraduate public, but they can also be used at a professional graduate level. They both can be especially useful as first books in argumentation studies. If the theoretical level and the written explanations of Sproule’s book seem more theoretically advanced than those from Toussaint-Ducasse, the latter has more guidelines, schemas and details to help a beginner to grasp the argumentation domain; in that sense it can be said to be more “user friendly” then the other, more complex one. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Collective Antagonist: Multiple Criticism In Informal Online Deliberation

• by: Marcin Lewiński - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
Argumentative practices in various forums for computer-mediated, or online, communication have been an object of increasing interest among argumentation researchers (see, inter alia, Aakhus 2002a, 2002b, Amossy this volume, Chaput & Campos 2007, Doury 2005, Jackson 1998, Lewiński 2010, Weger & Aakhus 2003). In accordance with the descriptive and normative functions of argumentation theory, such studies combine, in a more or less balanced manner, analysis of some modes or patterns of argumentation characteristic of online formats for discussion with attempts at evaluating the patterns under study, or the format at large, against a certain idealised context for argumentative discussion (such as the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion). In this paper, I focus on one pattern of argumentation – the collective antagonist – that can be distinguished in discussions held in political Web-forums accessible through Google Groups. In the pattern of the collective antagonist groups of individual arguers jointly criticise argumentation advanced by other arguers. The goal of the paper is to give a pragma-dialectical account of this pattern in both descriptive and normative terms. Hence the main questions to be addressed are: How can pragma-dialectics contribute to a more subtle understanding of a pattern of collective criticism? Is collective criticism conducive or obstructive to realising reasonable forms of argumentation embodied in the ideal model of a critical discussion? Finally, what are the possible challenges that the analysis and evaluation of collective online criticism opens for argumentation theory?

In order to address these questions, I will proceed in four basic steps. First (section 2), I will describe these characteristics of online discussion forums that are directly relevant to the task of investigating and assessing collective criticism. Second, (section 3), I will analyse the pattern of the collective antagonist on the basis of a fragment of an actual online discussion. Third (section 4), I will examine the potential of collective online criticism for supporting reasonable argumentative discussions. Finally (section 5), I will mention some methodological and theoretical challenges that the analysis and evaluation of online discussions can pose to argumentation theory, and pragma-dialectics in particular. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – How Critical Is The Dialectical Tier? Exploring The Critical Dimension In The Dialectical Tier

• by: Qingyin Liang & Yun Xie - Sun Yat-sen University

1. Introduction
About two years ago, one of the authors of this paper [i] once wrote another paper discussing the dialectical approach within Pragma-Dialectics and Blair and Johnson’s informal logic theory. In a section of that paper, he made the following two points about Johnson’s notion of dialectical tier: “The dialectical tier within an argument marks that the thesis is critically established, and a dialectical history of an argument reveals that the argument is critically developed.” And “the requirement of manifest rationality can be regarded as requiring a process of critical testing for seeking the strongest or the most appealing reasons and better arguments” (Xie, 2008). Both points, unfortunately, brought back Johnson’s negative comments in their later correspondence. Johnson’s remark on the first point is “This is not clear to me”, and on the second, “Not sure of this”.

Besides the author’s disappointment, still there are interesting topics emerged for further investigation. Why does Johnson disagree with this interpretation of his dialectical tier? And what is the relation between the dialectical tier and the critical scrutiny function in argument? In this paper we would like to dig deeper on these issues. We will begin with explaining the critical view of argument, and then re-examine the above two points based on a careful reading of Johnson’s own views on the dialectical tier and manifest rationality. On that basis, we will then try to further explore the critical dimension within dialectical tier by bridging together the critical view of argument and Johnson’s theory of argument. After that, we conclude with some remarks on exploring the critical dimension within the study of argument. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Inferential Work Of The Addressee: Recovering Hidden Argumentative Information

• by: Vincenzo Lo Cascio - University of Amsterdam

In a recent book (Lo Cascio 2009) was suggested that people from the south of Europe leave a lot of information unsaid, requiring of the decoder the very arduous task of filling the non given or unwritten information, and of recovering the content of the real, or deep meaning of the surface sentence or message. Actually, for somebody who comes from the Mediterranean area or Middle East, there are three ways of communicating:
1. The encoder gives only a partial message and the decoder must be intuitive enough to recover and to complete the remaining missing information. This gives the opportunity to the encoder to partially manifest his thoughts and hence the possibility to change his message according to the situation.
2. The encoder says something, but the real meaning of the message is something else. The decoder must then be capable of understanding the real message, i.e. of decoding the surface message but recovering its deep meaning. The advantage of this way of communicating for the encoder is enormous on the condition that the right decoder understands the real message. Understanding is based a) on the knowledge that the decoder has at disposal regarding the encoder’s background as well as b) on the evaluation he is able to give of the message he receives, according to the particular situation. Imagine for instance that somebody at a dinner says to someone else:
(1) I think they forgot to invite Heineken
in order to say:
(2) I am missing a glass of beer
3. The encoder does not say anything, but expresses his idea exclusively by means of his facial expression. The decoder then must be able to understand the situation and act accordingly. Read more