ISSA Proceedings 2002 – The Rational Reconstruction Of Pragmatic Argumentation In A Legal Context: The Analysis And Evaluation Of Teleological Argumentation

• by: Eveline T. Feteris - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In law, pragmatic arguments referring to the consequences of applying a legal rule play an important role. When a judge wants to show that the application of a legal rule in a concrete situation is justified from the perspective of the goals the rule is intended to realize, he is using a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. He argues that the favorable consequences of applying the rule in the concrete case consist of realizing a goal the law is supposed to promote. From an instrumental perspective of the application of law, pragmatic arguments are an important way of defending the desirability of a decision, because they clarify how the decision contributes to the realization of the goals of the law by specifying the consequences of the decision in the concrete case in relation to these goals(i).
A form of pragmatic argumentation often used by judges in the justification of a decision is teleological argumentation, argumentation referring to the goal of the rule. Judges use teleological argumentation in the context of the justification of the interpretation of a legal rule in a concrete case and argue that this interpretation can be justified from the perspective of the goal the rule is intended to realize. In legal theory, authors consider teleological interpretation as one of the methods of interpreting a legal rule, and teleological argumentation is therefore considered as an adequate way of justifying the application of a legal rule in a concrete situation.
Although teleological arguments are considered as an adequate way of justifying a legal interpretation, no instrument is offered for the analysis and evaluation of teleological arguments in concrete decisions. To be able to establish whether a teleological argument is acceptable in a concrete case, it is important to determine whether the argument is a suitable argument for defending that particular decision and whether the argument itself is acceptable. In the legal literature, no comprehensive and systematic instrument for a rational reconstruction consisting of an analysis and evaluation of the argument with respect to is rationality, is offered.

The aim of this paper is to develop an instrument for a rational reconstruction of teleological argumentation as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation in a legal context. I will do this by integrating ideas taken from legal theory in a pragma-dialectical framework for analyzing and evaluating pragmatic argumentation, thus providing a more systematic and elaborate instrument for assessing the quality of teleological arguments in a legal context. In 2 I will characterize teleological argumentation as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation and I will describe how a systematic instrument for a rational reconstruction of teleological argumentation can be developed from a pragma-dialectical perspective. In 3 I will explain the function of teleological argumentation in a legal context. In 4 I will discuss the various forms of teleogical argumentation distinguished in legal theory and reconstruct these forms in as a specific legal implementation of the argumentation scheme for pragmatic argumentation. From a pragma-dialectical perspective, I will clarify the structure of simple and complex forms of teleological argumentation and I will describe the elements of the various forms of teleological argumentation and the function of these elements. In 5 I will proceed by describing the norms which, from the perspective of legal theory, are relevant for the evaluation of legal argumentation and rephrase these norms from a pragma-dialectical perspective as critical questions relevant for the evaluation of the various forms of teleological argumentation.

2. The rational reconstruction of teleological argumentation as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation
Teleological argumentation can be considered as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. Therefore, to develop an instrument for the analysis and evaluation of teleological argumentation it is important first to determine the general characteristics of pragmatic argumentation.
In argumentation theory, pragmatic argumentation is considered as an argumentation scheme based on a specific form of a causal relation(ii). It is argued that a particular action X is desirable or undesirable because it ’causes’ certain desirable or undesirable effects. From a pragma-dialectical perspective, the basic form of this argumentation scheme can be represented as follows:
(1) Basic form of pragmatic argumentation
1    Action X is desirable
1.1a    Action X leads to Y
1.1b    Y is desirable

Underlying this scheme is also the following implicit premise: ‘if action X leads to Y and Y is desirable, then action X is desirable’. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – The 2000 American Presidential TV Debates: Dialogue Or Fight?

• by: Vadim Goloubev - St. Petersburg State University

This paper is an attempt to apply a maximally argumentative pragma-dialectical analysis to the first of the three 2000 Presidential Debates between the Democratic candidate for president, Vice President Al Gore, and the Republican candidate, Governor George W. Bush of Texas, with the aim of identifying how both form and substance of debate compliment each other in making a debate a fight or a critical discussion. Most commentators who have touched on both of these aspects aimed rather to establish the winner in the debate than to resolve whether the debate conformed with a reasonable exchange of ideas, a rational dialogue.

In terms of the goals the parties in dispute aim to achieve there are two different approaches to debating: rhetorical and dialectical. The rhetorical perspective looks at debate as a competition in which the parties engaged strive to win the dispute sometimes at any cost, because the ultimate goal for them is to persuade the audience of the rightness of their opinions. If the participants look at debate, however, as a critical discussion the purpose of which is to resolve the differences of opinion and arrive at the truth of the matter, they use the dialectical approach in an argumentative dialogue. In other words a rhetorical strategy can be defined as a confrontational strategy and a dialectical strategy as a cooperative one.

In order to achieve a resolution of the conflict of opinion, following the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation the arguers must comply with the following ten rules of critical discussion:
1. parties must not prevent one another other from advancing standpoints or casting doubt on standpoints;
2. a party who advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if the other party asks him to do so;
3. a party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party;
4. a party may defend his standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint;
5. a party may not falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party or deny a premise that he himself has left implicit;
6. a party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point;
7. a party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied;
8. in his argumentation a party may only use arguments that are logically valid or capable of being validated by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises;
9. a failed defense of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting his doubt about the standpoint; and finally
10. a party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and he must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible. (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, 1992, 208-9) Any violation of the pragma-dialectical rules is an unreasonable discussion move, interfering with the aim of resolving the difference. I believe such violations may turn the debate into a fight. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Enthymeme And Prosody – A Contribution To Empirical Research In The Analysis Of Intonation As Well As Argumentation

• by: Ines Bose, Halle - Norbert Gutenberg, Saarbrücken

The idea for this paper arose, when questions about analytical problems in two quite different corpora were exchanged:
Ines Bose is working on an empirical analysis of children’s role playing communication, focussing on the function of prosodic features for the establishment of play-roles. Norbert Gutenberg is analyzing the interdependency of linguistic and prosodic factors and their impact on the comprehensibility of broadcast-news. Both corpora consist of a large amount of video-taped (Bose-Corpus) and audio-taped (Gutenberg-Corpus) authentic (= not experimentally induced) communication processes and are transcribed and prosodically notated.
The prosodical notation of the B(ose)-Corpus comprises the whole scale of oral delivery: voice quality, pitch range, speech rate, pauses, stress and so forth. The G(utenberg)-Corpus focuses only on stress, pauses and the intonation (melody) before pauses. But with this – partly common – focus, in both corpora arose the same question: how to explain why speakers made just THIS pause, realized just THIS stress on THIS word. Those questions and their relevance need an explanation:
Stress, pauses, cadences (melody before pauses) are – in Indo-European dialects such as German, English, French, Russian etc. – systematically bound to linguistic features, or, in better words: syntactical patterns are realized together with prosodic patterns such as stress and pauses. Even more so: sometimes the meaning of a word combination, the grammatical function of a word is not perceptible from the written text, but only from the oral realization.

Just one example for the impact of pauses for the constitution of sentence meaning:
He doesn’t know how good meat tastes.
The early Chomsky declared this to be ambiguous. But every speaker of English – so an early critique of Chomsky – would have this combination of words in his mind either this way:
He doesn’t know how good meat / tastes.
or this way:
He doesn’t know how good / meat tastes. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Using Argument Types

• by: John Hoaglund - Center for Critical Thinking, Christopher Newport University

1. Introduction
In North America, serious students of natural-language argument are familiar with the four basic argument types given wide currency in the work of Stephen N. Thomas(1997): convergent, linked, serial, and divergent. Yet it is possible that these types are more discussed as theoretical possibilities than actually applied in the analysis and evaluation of arguments in natural language. Here I consider briefly two problems that may hinder such wider application. There is uncertainty over the role these types should play in our work with arguments, and in particular over what (if anything) remains to be done once an argument has been found to be of a certain type. These argument types will also be briefly compared with those of the Amsterdam School, and then also with the argument forms of formal logics.
The other factor that may currently limit application is that few arguments of interest to us fit a basic type. Such arguments are too complex. So the question is whether the typology can be extended to accommodate more complex arguments. What I say about these large questions in brief compass cannot hope to be more than suggestive, but my goal is to diminish barriers to the wider application of these types in the analysis and evaluation of arguments in natural language.
Arguments in natural language are claims backed up with evidence or reasons. They are found almost anywhere language is used, but especially where someone is trying to convince us that a claim is true. So virtually any print medium can present arguments, e.g. a website, but editorials in periodicals, material on op-ed pages in newspapers, or articles or books written to support a position or theory are particularly good sources. Debates in academe, indeed discussions of papers at conferences like this one, or exchanges like those on the TV program Crossfire are rich with oral arguments.
This argument typology developed from the use of arrow diagrams to portray relations of (claimed) logical support in arguments in print media. Whenever it is obvious what the argument is, and that the argument is strong or weak, diagraming isn’t needed. Diagraming and the argument types developed in the work of Monroe Beardsley(1975) and Thomas(1997) are here regarded as analytical tools, crafted to help us understand and evaluate arguments that need explaining or interpreting, or arguments so important that we must be especially careful in evaluating them. I will here refer to those informal logicians who work with arrow diagraming and the Thomas typology as argument analysts or analysts for short (Hoaglund 1999).

2. Role of the Types
It is useful to distinguish identifying, analyzing, and evaluating an argument. To identify an argument is to recognize a claim backed up with reasons or evidence. To analyze it is to understand how the premises are intended to support the conclusion. To evaluate it is to decide whether it is weak or strong, whether the premises actually support the conclusion. Working with an argument is often a process of trial and error with some backtracking, and identifying can shade into analysis, and the latter be affected by evaluative concerns. But deciding whether a specific statement is advanced as a premise belongs to identifying the argument, although it may involve some analysis. Determining whether all premises directly support the conclusion or whether the argument has one or more intermediate conclusions is part of analysis. Judging whether a premise is sufficiently reliable to provide considerable support for the conclusion pertains to evaluation.
Argument diagraming and types fall clearly into the analysis area of our work with arguments in natural language. Distinguishing a convergent argument from a linked will illustrate. Kate Phillips provided the following convergent argument (www.bloomington) about a position on procedures taken by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Risk, Vulnerability, And American Public Argument After September 11

• by: Hynes, Thomas J. Jr. - State University of West Georgia, GA, USA

During June of 2001, President George W. Bush traveled to Europe to meet with allies during his first such foreign trip of his then young presidency.  And for the press and the diplomats alike, different perspectives about risks and vulnerability to world ending threats were at the center of discussions. There was not a great deal of agreement about the ways in which such threats should be considered. The U.S. had formally announced it would not be signing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, widely supported by leaders in Europe, and generally thought to require participation by the United States, the world’s largest emitter of Greenhouse gasses. The support for the Protocol elsewhere was based on a generally perceived threat of the long term catastrophic implications of global warning. For the vast majority of the developed world participants, action was needed to avoid a future catastrophe, in the words of the Ghostbusters, “of biblical proportion.” But President Bush was not prepared to act on this mere risk of catastrophe for our climate, given the magnitude of Kyoto’s provisions immediate effects on the US economy, and what he argued were the uncertainties of the current data available on climate. Under such conditions of uncertainty and hopefully time to act, the world should not base immediate action on our vulnerability to a disastrous future, however horrible that future might appear.  And so wisdom would dictate, according to Mr. Bush, that “…the United States of America work within the United Nations framework and elsewhere to develop with our friends and allies and nations throughout the world an effective and science based response to the issue of global warming.” (New York Times, June 12, 2001, A12)
Even with the report of the National Academy of Science, there was not enough data to warrant action. “Yet the academy’s report tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much are climate could or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions will impact it…(N)o one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and, therefore, what level must be avoided.” (New York Times, June 12, 2001, A12). In other words, even in the face of huge potential vulnerabilities, we risk less if we wait until more study is completed on the climate.
Besides, President Bush was more concerned about other vulnerabilities facing the United States and other peace loving nations of the world. This threat was the continuation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, a “relic of the cold war” and a threat to those seeking answers to vulnerabilities of the 21st century. Mr. Bush explained to European listeners:” Part of the problem with the ABM Treaty is that it prevents full exploration of possibility. We’re bound by a treaty signed in 1972 that prohibits the United States from investigating all possibilities of how to intercept missiles…that we must fully explore in order to make sure that we have defensive capabilities necessary to prevent what I call blackmail…We must address the new threats of the 21st century if we’re to have a peaceful continent and a peaceful world.  Those new threats are terrorism, based upon the capacity of some countries to develop weapons of mass destruction, and therefore hold the United States and our friends hostage….” (New York Times, June 13, 2001, p. 20). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Emotion, Context And Rhetoric: Adam Smith’s Informal Argumentation

• by: Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein - University of North Dakota

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Adam Smith’s use of informal logic in contemporary terms. I intend to show that many recent advances in informal logic theory were, at least in some sense, anticipated by Smith, and that Smith’s moral theory bolsters the case that argumentation must be contextual and more rhetorically and emotively concerned. I will do this by emphasizing the ways in which Smith describes the psychology of argumentation in his work, and then advance this in terms of four core problems in informal logic: “premise acceptability; premise relevance, argument reconstruction (the problem of missing premises); and argument cogency (the problem of premise sufficiency” (M. Weinstein 1996, 26). After a brief discussion of the parameters of Smith’s argumentation theory, I will provide an overview of contemporary themes that will be relevant to my discussion. Then I will focus on a reconstruction of his theory of reasoning.
There are three difficulties that permeate this project, the first two are practical; the third is theoretical. The first difficulty is the historical impropriety of the problematic. Smith had no explicit theory of informal logic, and although it is possible to trace discussions of the topic, at least, to Aristotle’s conception of practical rationality, the terminology and methods of informal logic are themselves quite contemporary. Much of my investigation may appear “superimposed” on Smith’s work. Nevertheless, as I will argue, I do see a theory of informal logic implicit in Smith’s work, even if he himself would not have identified it as such. The second difficulty relates to time considerations. A detailed study of this topic would require much more attention to the text than I can provide in this paper. It is simply impossible to offer the examples and detail that any audience would prefer in such a short discussion. I therefore ask my readers to be sympathetic to the fact that this paper is more embryonic than conclusive.
The third difficulty – the first theoretical one – is the consequence of competing assumptions. Smith rejects the fundamental division between emotion and reason that underlies many traditional understanding of the “logical”. For Smith, there is no radical division between the rational and the emotive. He assumes that emotions initiate, are the consequence of, and are often indistinguishable from reason. One obvious consequence of this is that certain fallacies – the appeal to emotion, for example – may not, under his scheme, be fallacious. For Smith, appealing to a person’s sentiments may very well be a legitimate and “logical” way of accessing premises and coming to conclusions. According to his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the sympathetic process – the process by which a spectator imagines a “fellow-feeling” with an actor – is a component of, and sometimes even identical to, reasoning. Martha Nussbaum, who has indicated explicitly and by example, that her work is deeply influenced by Smith, shows how emotions may be understood as rational (Nussbaum 1995, xvi). About emotions, she writes:
First of all, they are about something: They have an object… Second, the object is an intentional object: that is, it figures in the emotions as it is seen or interpreted by the person whose emotion it is… Third, these emotions embody not simply ways of seeing an object, but beliefs – often very complex – about the object… Finally, we notice something marked in the intentional perceptions and the beliefs characteristic of the emotions: they are concerned with value, they see the object as invested with value or importance (Nussbaum 2001, 27-30). Read more