ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Argumentation’s Black Box?

• by: Igor Ž. Žagar - Educational Research Institute & University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

My thesis is that argumentation, as formulated in speech, is based on scalar principles. Everything that I have said supposes a clear-cut distinction between reasoning and argumentation, and as a linguist, what I am interested in is what goes on in speech, not what goes on in people’s heads… From the logical point of view, the policeman does not need to rely on a scalar principle but once he opens his mouth, he injects scalarity into things, which in themselves have none. Scalarity is a constraint which speech imposes upon us (Ducrot 1996: 162; all italics are mine).
The thesis referred to in the quote is not mine, but the one Oswald Ducrot advocates (I do agree with it, though). But before it gets us to the distinction between what goes on in speech and what goes on in people’s heads, let us have a look at this policeman story, briefly mentioned in the quote.
In his Slovenian Lectures, published in 1996, Oswald Ducrot was defending the thesis that people base their arguments on principles (topoi) which are scalar, and come in four basic forms: +Q +P (More we are hungry, more we (have to) eat); -Q -P (Less we are hungry, less we (have to) eat); +Q -P (More we have eaten, less hungry we are); -Q +P (Less we have eaten, more hungry we are))(i). For the sake of the argument, he invented the following story (1996: 158-160):

Let us suppose, for example, that someone has been murdered, even here say, at four thirty, and that he has been stabbed to death (a very important detail for my demonstration). The culprit is being looked for and the police suspect a certain French linguist who is presently in Ljubljana: that linguist had reasons to resent his victim, who had been very unpleasant about the theory of argumentation in general and about scalarity in particular; moreover, the wound could very well have been made with the dagger which that linguist usually has in his luggage. At that moment of the inquiry, a new piece of information reaches the police: the information that at four thirty, the time of the crime, the French linguist was at his hotel and obviously could not have stabbed someone here. In virtue of the following argument, he is found not guilty: ‘It cannot be him, as he was at his hotel at four thirty’. Such an example does seem to show that the principles which arguments rest upon are not necessarily scalar. In that case, the argument rests on a principle according to which When a person is not in a place, he cannot do anything there, and there seems to be nothing scalar about that principle at all. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Felicity Conditions For The Circumstantial Ad Hominem: The Case Of Bush v. Gore

• by: David Zarefsky - Northwestern University

In popular usage and many textbooks on reasoning, the argument ad hominem is defined as a personal attack on one’s opponent, which is a distraction from the real issues at hand. Because it is a diversion, substituting personal for substantive argument, it is defined as a fallacy per se. As is often the case in informal reasoning, however, it is not as simple as that. Not all ad hominem arguments are fallacies, and in not all situations is the ad hominem inappropriate.

1. The Circumstantial Ad Hominem
In his recent book, Douglas Walton distinguishes among five varieties of the ad hominem argument, any of which may be strong, valid but weak, or fallacious depending on circumstances (Walton, 1998). Walton’s key distinction is between abusive and circumstantial forms of the argument. The abusive form – misleadingly named – suggests that a person’s claims should not be accepted because he or she has bad character. “Of course we shouldn’t accept Smith’s argument against European integration; after all he is a homosexual,” is an example of this type. The notion that sexual orientation has anything to do with one’s views on European unity is so farfetched that we can dismiss the argument as fallacious. Not all cases of abusive ad hominem are fallacious, however.
In contrast, the circumstantial ad hominem is not really an attack against a person’s character but the identification of a breach between one’s argumentative position and one’s own circumstances. It suggests that one’s actions deny one’s principles. The classic case is the chain-smoking parent who admonishes his or her child not to smoke, only to be met with the reply, “You can’t really mean that, since you smoke three packs a day yourself.” Although some person could make a case against smoking, this person cannot, because his or her own behavior undermines the force of the claim.
Walton suggests (Walton, 2001) that the circumstantial ad hominem was quite common in the ancient world, with philosophers often attacked for the discrepancy between their claims about what constituted the good life and their own behavior. The implicit assumption was that one’s inability to live out his own precepts is evidence of the weakness of those precepts.
As Walton implies, however, the discrepancy between statements and actions may not be the strongest case of the circumstantial ad hominem. Since humans are imperfect, one’s inability always to live out one’s values is not necessarily proof of insincerity. The chain-smoking parent may recognize that smoking is harmful, acknowledge that nicotine is addictive, and admit his or her inability to conquer the addiction, and therefore urge the child not to smoke. The target of a circumstantial ad hominem may be able to repair the argument simply by acknowledging his or her own imperfection and then urging the other person, in the familiar maxim, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Argumentum Ad Hominem In A Cross-Cultural Perspective

• by: Zhang Shuxue - Institute of Foreign Language, Dalian Maritime University, P.R.China

I. Approaches to and conceptualizations of ad hominem.
1. What does ad hominem  mean to the western scholars?
The study of ad hominem is currently one of the main issues in informal logic. This use of the term ad hominem in modern times in the west departs somewhat not from the more classical view that ad hominem arguments criticize a person for violating his or her own premises in elaborating them for theory, or in acting upon them in practice, but focuses on ad hominem which brings into question the arguer’s credibility or ability to enter into reasoned argument. According to some informal logicians an argument must satisfy the criteria of relevance, sufficiency and acceptability, and a fallacious argument violates one or more of these criteria (Johnson and Blair, 1997). However, the logico-centric treatment of the fallacies is incapable of constructing a theory for real-life arguments, in which ad hominem is defined as an argument that appears valid but is not. Based on a critical-rationalist philosophy of reasonableness, the pragma-dialectical theory provides a variety of norms for distinguishing between different kinds of violations of reasonableness, according to which ad hominem is a violation of the norm concerning the undisturbed expression of viewpoints and doubt (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 1992a). However, some ad fallacies are thought to be rooted in Ethics and Political science and suppressing evidence, guilt by association, and name calling are thought to be moral and skill defects by some scholars (Willard,1989).

1.1. The pejorative and non-pejorative senses of ad hominem
The discussion of the argumentum ad hominem in modern time can be dated back to the book of the 17th century philosopher John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)(i). However, new findings reveal that the origins of the ad hominem argument can be traced even further back (before Locke and Galileo to Aristotle) (Nuchelmans, 1993; Walton, 2001, p. 209). The term argumentum ad hominem dominantly treated in a pejorative sense currently refers to the fallacy of attacking the opponent personally in one way or another instead of responding to the actual arguments put forward in support of the standpoint (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1993). John Biro and Harvey Siegel (1992) define the fallacies as epistemic failures of rationality. There are other scholars who count the committing of an argumentum ad hominem usually as a flagrant violation of the politeness principle operative in ordinary conversation (Brown &Levinson, 1978; Leech, 1983; van Rees, 1992). However, not all the ad hominems are treated in pejorative senses. Johnstone contends that all philosophical argumentation is inevitably ad hominem (1959). Chaim Perelman regards ad hominem argumentation not as an error, but as an necessary condition for successful argumentation (1969). As to the abusive variant of the argumentum ad hominem, Woods and Walton (1977; 1997) distinguish between a correct and an incorrect use of this variant. John Woods  argued that fallacies are “idealized symptoms of misperformance of rational skills necessary for human survival.” (1977, p.30) The corollary is that not all fallacies (broadly constructed) are always fallacious. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Is There An Argument For This Audience?

• by: S. C. Stumpf & J.T. McDonnell - Department of Computer Science, University College London

1. Introduction
Argumentation theory, and particularly the New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969) provide a rich background against which to study interaction between two or more participants. It can bring a much-needed structure to inform the process of study, the questions that are asked and the interpretations that are put into place in analysing texts and speech. Crosswhite (1995) has provided an illustration how one’s background stance in argumentation theory shapes the question of fallacies. What people do can therefore be explained, made sense of, and maybe even predicted to a certain extent.
On the other hand, practical application offers an opportunity to better understand or refine a theory. Warnick & Kline (1992), for example, have demonstrated how TV discussions can be analysed in terms of New Rhetoric’s argumentation schemes. Sillince (1994), Crosswhite et al. (to appear) and Stumpf (2001) have included aspects of the New Rhetoric in computational models. But argumentation theory is not set in a vacuum. It impinges on or inspires many fields of research; in the same way, it can draw new understandings from other theories.

In this paper, two main theoretical aspects are employed. The argumentation theory background stems from the New Rhetoric, whilst inspiration is drawn from Personal Construct Psychology and the associated repertory grid technique (Kelly, 1955) to investigate the notion of audiences. The New Rhetoric gains its power from the central notion of audience from which all other principles radiate. In this paper, we will firstly examine the relevant understandings of audience that flow from the New Rhetoric. Secondly, we will interpret Personal Construct Psychology and the repertory grid technique in the context of the New Rhetoric. This leads to the ability to investigate audiences by making a comparison of repertory grids. This point will be illustrated by examples drawn from an investigation into the knowledge of a specialised, particular audience of experts in relation to retail crime investigations. The practical application of the New Rhetoric and the repertory grid technique opens up a discussion about the role of argument and audience, in terms of whether there is an argument for a particular audience.

2. The New Rhetoric and the notion of audience
The New Rhetoric employs a central notion of audience. In this respect, the relationship between and arguer and an audience is a meeting of minds to debate a question. The aim of argumentation is “to create or increase the adherence of minds to the theses presented for their assent” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, 45). To gain this adherence, the way that the argument is presented has to accord to some degree with the beliefs of the audience to make it acceptable and reasonable. The definition of a successful argument hinges solely on its acceptance by the audience.
The acceptance of an argument can be divided into two broad aspects. The arguer must pay attention to both premises and argument schemes; both independently may be rejected or accepted. In other words, an audience may accept a premise but may reject the way this premise is used further by rejecting the argumentation scheme. Conversely, certain argumentation schemes may be acceptable to the audience but premises are disagreed with. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 -The Argument Of Print: State Sovereignty And The Publication Of U.S Congressional Debates

• by: Zornitsa Keremidchieva - Hamline University

Deliberation has been associated with democratic theory, the promises and potential of collective self-government. Deliberation is hailed as the mechanism by which rule by consent, rather than force, can be enacted. It delivers the project of democracy, according to Darrin Hicks (2002), by holding certain promises. One such promise is the promise of inclusion, a procedural solution which shifts the burden of justification for the application of power from government to constituents. Another promise of deliberative democracy centers on the value of equality which distributes the time and resources of collective decision making equally among stakeholders. As with the promise of inclusion, the promise of equality is guaranteed internally and procedurally, rather than substantively by criteria of evaluation external to the process of deliberation. Even the last promise, the promise of reason, finds an internal solution as “the ideal of public reason does not refer to the heightened reasoning powers of the Leviathan. Public reason refers to the common – koinoi – reason, understood as a means of formulating plans, putting ends in order, and making decisions accordingly, of the public in its capacity as citizens constituting a polity . . . To be politically reasonable means citizens are willing to collaborate with others in proposing fair terms of social cooperation and have the commitment to act on these terms, even if doing so means that they must accept less than what was hoped for” (Hicks, 2002, pp. 241-242). Reason, then, is not transcendent, but embedded and internal to the workings of deliberation. This last promise, I would argue, turns deliberative democracy into a closed model of governance as the very commitment to participate and deliberate becomes itself an effect of deliberative reason. Paradoxically, all the while providing justification and legitimation for the application of power, and all the while relying on the enactment of procedural norms of communication, deliberative theories of government put forth a telos of their own. They are haunted by an ideal of a full democracy, captured in the very notion of the promise. Consequently, theorizing deliberation becomes a project of correction, adjustment, and normative enforcement, as procedures stubbornly fail to deliver on their promises.

One way to break the closed loop of theorizing on deliberation would be to differentiate the public from the state spheres of deliberation. Public deliberation is not necessarily political, and the arguments exchanged in a public or social sphere need to be differentiated from those taking place in the circuits of the state. To not differentiate the state as a special terrain of deliberation is to become complicit with the enforcement of state power and the globalization of sphere-specific norms of communication. It is also to become interpellated in a narrative of legitimation which asserts the state as the proper embodiment of social cooperation. The point is not simply that the state hijacks and co-opts deliberation, but that it manages to put the cart before the horse. When deliberation is viewed first and foremost as an inherent capacity of people coming together to form state policy, that is as the future-oriented, creative means behind common decisions, we fail to engage deliberation as a means for justification (McKerrow, 1977, Bates, 2003). Better understood as a form of justification, rather than persuasion, deliberation is a conservative technology of legitimation that is primarily an effect of the state, rather than an expression of constituents. After all, citizenship does not precede the state, and neither does deliberation. To understand deliberation as a constructive mechanism of the state, then, requires an investigation into the alignment of deliberative discourse with the politics of representation as well as a careful description and analysis of the norms, constraints, and technologies that frame what does and doesn’t count as deliberation within the institutions of the state.

This essay demonstrates that a closer look at the earliest debate over the printing and publication of Congressional deliberations can complicate common assumptions about the representative character of legislative deliberation, in particular the notion that Congressional deliberation is necessarily and directly responsive to public opinion (Levasseur, 2005). Rather, as Edmund Burke anticipated some fifteen years before the first session of the first U.S. Congress, the mandates of representation would exceed notions of public opinion and would be more oriented to the creation and legitimation of statehood as an institutional form distinct from the pressures of citizen participation. My argument is that this development cannot be explained without attention to the ways in which the print medium interacted with modes of political representation as conceptions of sovereignty and legitimacy were predicated on the state’s textual practices of governance. As Michael Warner testifies, “medium and political structure are identical with respect to the question of what it means to speak publicly, and a history of letters requires a history of the political conditions of utterance” (Warner, 1990, p. 35). In other words, a history of argument requires a history of political mediation as argumentative structures are predicated on media of communication. By examining the House debates of the first session of the first Congress over the printing and publication of the floor speeches, this essay sheds light on the role of the print medium in constituting the state as a distinct field of argumentation. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – The Rhetoric Of Emotions In Political Argumentation

• by: Margareth Sandvik - Oslo University College

The topic of this paper is emotions in election campaigns, and the following questions will be raised:
1. How do political scientists describe the present political situation?
2. What kinds of emotions occur in political argumentation, more precisely in election campaign discourses, and how are they displayed?
3. How are emotions in argumentation perceived?
3. Finally, in the presented case study, can the chairman of the Christian Democratic Party be accused for being fallacious?

1. The present political situation in western democracies
Political scientists describe the present political situation in following terms: Both inside and outside the European Union, party-political support and participation in political elections decrease. Politics is complicated and difficult to understand. Ideologies are proclaimed dead, and political alternatives appear indistinct (Engelstad 2006). However, large numbers of people are politically engaged, and they even participate with passion. There are frequent examples in the media of political leaders who brake off negotiations, who interrupt debates, who march under banners of identity and faith, and these images frighten political thinkers of today (Waltzer 2004). In other words, the political situation and its prospects are characterised in negative and pessimistic terms, and the description is given in times when it is urgent to be concerned about democracy and participation in democratic processes, at least on the background of the development of fundamental regimes and the growth of right-wing populism.
Before I go on to describe emotions in election campaign discourses, I will dwell on the political situation of today and ask: How do political philosophers meet the present situation? What are they concerned about? Some of them come up with interesting alternatives to standard theories, and among them Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau and Micheal Waltzer have received great interest, and in Norway particularly Mouffe (Engelstad 2006 and Moe 2006). Central in Mouffe’s theory about democracy, is her argumentation against an exaggerated conception of rationality which is fundamental in modern thinking about democracy, and in particular how it is represented by Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. While Habermas believes it is possible to reach agreement from discussions and to take neutral standpoints in that process, Rawls presupposes that human beings are fully rational and capable to decide what a good society is, independent of their knowledge, education and experience, even in an unskilled condition. Her argument is that both Habermas and Rawls disregard tensions in liberal democracies by assuming that it is possible to reach full agreement, and by claiming that rational solutions to fundamental political problems are possible (Mouffe 2000).

Pluralism is a starting point in Mouffe’s thinking. A “people” is not a unified, undifferensiated mass, even when they agree on something. In every agreement, i.e. in every consensus, there must be disagreement, i.e. there must be exclusion. A crucial question for democratic politics is to establish a pluralism that acknowledges differences of opinion, and to deal with the realities of pluralism.
Secondly, both Mouffe and Waltzer are concerned about the opposition between the contextualist approach as it is represented by Wittgenstein and the universalist and rationalist approach as it is represented by Habermas and Rawls. They reject that “context-independent” judgements can be made, and argue that it is important for the theorist to assume fully his status as a member of a particular community (Mouffe 2000).
Democratic politics is inherently conflictual in nature, and therefore Mouffe welcomes an agonistic discussion (Moe 2005:160). Agonistic discussion is seen in opposition to antagonism. An agonistic model of democracy presupposes that conflicts in a democracy neither can nor should be eliminated. Within democratic politics, it is required that “the others” never are regarded as enemies, but as antagonists whose ideas should be attacked, while their right to defend their ideas never should be questioned or attacked.
According to Mouffe, conflicts must never develop into antagonism, which is equivalent with a fight between enemies. Instead it is important to find ways that conflicts can develop into agonism, which is a fight between adversaries. The confrontation between adversaries is the core in an agonistic fight, which again is the condition for a living democracy, according to Mouffe. Important for Mouffe is her vision of democracy as a never ending struggle between antagonists that accept each other as antagonists. They agree to disagree, and thus they agree on the framework of democracy. Mouffe defines democracy as follows, and she says:
I use the concept of agonistic pluralism to present a new way to think about democracy which is different from the traditional liberal conception of democracy as a negotiation among interests and is also different to the model which is currently being developed by people like Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. While they have many differences, Rawls and Habermas have in common the idea that the aim of the democratic society is the creation of a consensus, and that consensus is possible if people are only able to leave aside their particular interests and think as rational beings. However, while we desire an end to conflict, if we want people to be free we must always allow for the possibility that conflict may appear and to provide an arena where differences can be confronted (Mouffe 2000). Read more