ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Utilising Pragma-Dialectics For The Study Of Scientific Controversies: The Published Part Of The Newton-Lucas Correspondence, A Case Study From The 1670s.

• by: Gábor Á. Zemplén - Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany & Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary.

Abstract
I[i]use the pragma-dialectical model to study the published part of the Newton-Lucas correspondence from the 1670s. Through analysing Lucas’s letter I highlight the fruitfulness of the model: the dynamic nature, the ability to evaluate earlier historical work, and the fine-grained analysis. Via the analysis of Newton’s response I point to two difficulties that need to be overcome if the model is to become truly useful for the historian of scientific controversies: the unsatisfactory way rhetorical insights are incorporated into the analysis, and the positioning of meta-level, methodological arguments.

1. Incorporating argument-analysis into the study of scientific debates
History of science has significantly departed from the view that it should serve as a handmaiden for philosophy of science or be relegated as a discipline collecting facts and anecdotes about the past. And the study of scientific controversies has become one of the most important areas of post-Kuhnian history of science. The reasons are manifold, but one is doubtless the failure of “logic-centred” philosophy of science as a true and useful guide to assist historians. The disenchantment with logic coincided with the failure to entrench a meaningful internalist-externalist dichotomy, i.e. what factors influence science from the “outside” and what from the “inside”, and thus resulted in the decline of internalist approaches. But if not “logic” drives science forward then what? The practical turn in history of science introduced novel ways of investigating what actually scientists do, and how knowledge is produced and transmitted from the workbench through the scientific community to the wider public. Science became practice, and culture (Pickering, 1992), but when attention was given to a major focal point of knowledge production, the practice and culture of debating, that is the „argumentative” sphere of science (Caplan & Engelhardt, 1987; Pera, Machamer, & Baltas, 2000), historians have paid relatively little attention to what methods of analysis and reconstruction they use.
In the following I will investigate only a small part of an important scientific controversy, the debate that followed Isaac Newton’s first publication in 1672 (Newton, 1671-72), outlining his new theory of light and colours. I hope to show some symptomatic features characteristic of controversy-studies in general by concentrating on this single example. And while I feel the need to provide some background, I hope to keep this to a minimum (section 2), to be able to spend more time discussing the moves of the actors – and of analysts.

2. Background to the Newton-Lucas correspondence
Newton’s first publication connected two areas that up to the 17th century have generally been considered as separate: the study of light and the system of colours. It also employed the notion of the crucial experiment to prove Newton’s proposition that “Light consists of Rays differently refrangible” (Newton, 1671-72, p. 3079). Accepting that refrangibility determines colour entailed the rejection of the modificationist accounts of colour production dominant at the time, and the way Newton “proved” his theory also questioned a number of accepted methodological norms. Not surprisingly, a controversy ensued. This was one of the first major debates in a scientific periodical. The controversy was only settled – more or less – after the publication of Newton’s Opticks in 1704, and the public reproduction of the experiments in 1714 and 1715. My main interest is in the debates that followed Newton’s first publication in the Philosophical Transactions (Newton, 1671-72). The exchange of letters included well known figures, like Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens, and courteous correspondents like Ignace Gaston Pardies. But among the correspondents Jesuits from the college of Liège also appeared, among them Anthony Lucas. The controversy ended with Newton’s termination of the correspondence.

As the letters from Lucas are closely connected to those of his colleagues, a short recapitulation is in order before the analysis. In October 1674 the seventy-nine year old Francis Hall (Line or Linus, 1595-1675) suggested that the clouds near the sun could have disturbed Newton’s experiment (they do). The letter from an “old fool” (Westfall, 1966, p. 303), Newton’s “bitterest and least intelligent critic” (Kuhn, 1958, p. 34) was followed by a second one in February 1675. Their import and that of Line’s visit to London and to the Royal Society was that Newton decided to write a long letter to the Royal Society in the autumn. After the death of Linus, John Gascoigne continued his professor’s fight and raised objections to the crucial experiment. He was ‘wanting convenience’ to carry out experiments, and handed the case over to Anthony Lucas (1633-93). Originally from Durham, Lucas succeeded Line as Professor of Theology in 1672 in Liège, and became Rector of the English College at Rome after 1687. In 1693, shortly before his death, he was appointed Provincial of the order (Gjertsen, 1986). Lucas embarked on correspondence with Newton on 17 May 1676; (Turnbull, 1960, p. 8f), who was by this time probably eager to terminate the debate that was sparked by his “New Theory” of light and colours and consumed much of his time for over four years. In the following only the published part of the Newton-Lucas correspondence will be investigated. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Enthymemes: The Starting Of A New Life

• by: Luis Vega & Paula Olmos - Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

1. Introduction
The enthymeme is a well-known figure in the logical and rhetorical traditions, but its popularity goes with a certain sensation of irrelevance. According to the analytical classic, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an enthymeme is “[A] syllogism in which one of the premises or the conclusion is not explicitly stated”. In the more recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “it signifies any argument which, taken literally, is invalid, but which becomes valid when certain propositions thought too obvious or apparent to require explicit statement are taken as implicit premises”. This notion of an argument that would be valid but for a logical gap (a missing premise), seems to condemn it to trivial validation since adding any proposition that makes the argument formally valid would fill the gap it might have had. We also know that any explicit argument is a partial transcription of an argumentation; it represents – let’s say – the visible top of an argumentative iceberg; and accordingly any argument becomes enthymematic. Then: why keep on granting a special attention to enthymemes?
However, the enthymeme is nowadays, again a relevant subject from both a theoretical and a historical standpoint. Its changing role not only reveals some significant moves within the history of argumentation, but also indicates our own shifting interests in argumentation analysis. In this sense, we observe how the traditional view has tended to overlook its original rhetorical and dialectical features while upholding its logical structure and validation possibilities. Today, instead, we witness the decline of the formal-logical approach in connection with the increasing exchange between the theory of argumentation and its pragmatic object of study. And this move inspires the way we look back at history, so that both perspectives, the theoretical and the historical, mutually provide feedback.
Other motivations for our renewed interest in enthymemes could be their specific character as an effectively persuading, though formally inconclusive, type of argumentation; their relevance to certain basic and recalcitrant problems in the study of argumentation – identification and evaluation -; and the specificity of their pragmatic ground, their dialectical and rhetorical dimensions. This process of crisis and rebirth of the interest in enthymemes has resulted in very diverse consequences, but, surely, its most suggestive result probably lies in the possibility it opens for a new critical approach capable of integrating the different traditional perspectives – logical, dialectical and rhetorical – into a unified theory of argumentation.
In this paper[i], we will first take a brief look at some historical perspectives whose revival can help us to shape our issue while trying to understand how the conventional and restricted idea of the enthymeme as a logically defective deduction ever came to be. Then, we will give an account of the particular aspects of certain types of enthymeme from a contemporary viewpoint.

We will assume that the typical enthymeme is (or at least involves) some kind of argumentation, i.e. contains a line of inference aiming at the justification or persuasive underpinning of a certain claim or standpoint, based on particular data, grounds or reasons. This argumentative character of the enthymeme sets it apart from other types of discourse also based on the interplay between the implicit and the explicit: for example, irony. To be more precise, we will describe a typical enthymeme as a self-sufficient and convincing – even if formally defective – argument based on the propositional and/or inferential support of an unexpressed topic that belongs to a background of common knowledge and experience shared by both the agent and the audience, in such a way that the latter would feel led as well to fill the “gaps” in line with the mutual cognitive environment and other pragmatic conditions (e.g. the pursuit and maintenance of communication), as to determine which tacit elements should be made explicit. Accordingly, typical enthymemes will structurally consist of thematic inferences shaped on plausible and defeasible argumentation schemes, whose undeclared and critical components are not always pre-determined but can be moulded and brought up through an interactive argumentation process.

2. The classical heritage
So far as we know, Aristotle was the first to develop a theoretical account of the enthymeme in his Rhetoric, although he acknowledges to be working on (and arguing against) previous material. Pre-Aristotelian uses of the term, associated with Isocrates and the anonymous rhetorical textbook called Ad Alexandrum reveal to us that the basic and common meaning of ‘enthymema’ – “what is hold in the mind or the soul as the seat of thought and feeling” – had already a more technical bearing. Isocrates relates it to appropriateness and opportunity within the stylistic disposition of a discourse, as a display of rhetorical ingenuity: ‘enthymema’ means here something like “smart saying” or “finely wrought period”. In Ad Alexandrum, instead, we observe a more dialectical turn: the enthymemata “are oppositions not merely in language and action, but in all other things as well. You will acquire many of them by inquiry … and by examining whether the logos is anywhere in opposition to itself or the actions in opposition to justice, the law, the expedient, the honourable, the possible, the easy, the probable, the character of the speaker or the habit of the facts” (Ad Alex. 10, 1430a 23 ff). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Rhetorical Irony: Problems And Possibilities

• by: Donn W. Parson - University of Kansas & George Ziegelmueller - Wayne State University

It might perhaps be prudent not to attempt any formal definitions.
Since, however, Erich Heller, in his Ironic German, has already quite adequately not defined irony, there would be little point in not defining it all over again.(D.C. Muecke, The Compass of Irony)
At the 1998 International Conference on Argument, Ziegelmeuller and Parson proposed a perspective on what constituted linguistically sound arguments. After a tortured explanation they came to the conclusion that
A linguistically sound argument:
(1) conforms to the traditional field invariant standards of inductive and deductive argument,
(2) is based upon data appropriate to the audience and field, and
(3) is expressed in language that enhances the evocative and ethical force of argument. (Ziegelmueller and Parson, 1998)

What was not developed thoroughly was the third observation. The division of lexis and logos has remained part of our tradition, and the dominance of logos in that relationship should not be surprising. Whether borrowing from Aristotle, whose view of the validity of arguments is determined by a mathematical account of validity, or from Stephen Toulmin, who substituted the jurisprudential for the mathematical model, logos still dominates the approach to argument. Chaim Perelman argues that formal systems of logic, dependent on mathematical reasoning, seem to be unrelated to rational evidence. While the formal logician is free to combine symbols with artificial language, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca propose the need for a new look at argumentation – a new rhetoric (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 3-9).

While the problems of language in argument have been tackled by any number of scholars, the approach of Kenneth Burke may be effective in discerning the “language that enhances the evocative and ethical force of argument.” He suggests that we re-examine the nature of tropes more broadly than their initial literary context. In a summary section of The Grammar of Motives, “Four Master Tropes,” Burke develops four “literal” or “realistic” applications of these tropes:
For metaphor we could substitute perspective;
For metonymy we could substitute reduction;
For synecdoche we could substitute representation;
For irony we could substitute dialectic.
(Burke, Grammar of Motives, 503)

The purpose of the 2002 Parson and Ziegelmueller paper was to explore one of these tropes, metaphor, and how it applies to argument. It argued that lexis is a necessary part of argument. Second, it argued that the first born child of the relationship between lexis and logos has been the metaphor, which should be accorded some proprietary rights in the consideration of argument. (Parson and Ziegelmueller, 2002).
The purpose of this paper is to explore another progeny, irony, a rhetorical strategy which has some import in Burke’s thinking. It might be argued, with Burke’s penchant to create hierarchies, that irony may be his transcendent trope, especially since he substitutes for it another of his key terms, dialectic. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Quote … Unquote. Direct Quotation As A Strategic Manoeuvre In The Confrontation Stage

• by: Marian Pijnenburg - Universiteit van Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In argumentative texts in newspapers and especially in newsmagazines, speakers[i] frequently use direct quotations and they probably do so for a variety of reasons. They may find it difficult to improve on the source’s original words in a paraphrase or they may want to heighten the realism of the reported event by putting readers in direct contact with the very words of the quoted speaker. In case of a controversial opinion the speaker may also consider it safer to repeat the source’s own words to prevent being accused of libel. In many cases direct quotations are actually used as evidence that a specific opinion on a topic exists and that the quoted speaker can be held accountable for the standpoint that is presented. Although empirical analysis of direct quotations, in spoken and written texts, suggests that they are less likely to duplicate speech word-for-word than to selectively depict certain aspects while omitting others (Clark and Gerrig 1990) or distorting them (Lehrer 1989, p. 902-906, Slembrouck 1992, p. 104-110 ), the separation of direct quotes from other text constituents via inverted commas signals them as an exact replication of what somebody has said (Coulmas 1986, p. 2). As several researchers have indicated (Sternberg 1982, Waugh 1995, McGlone 2005) direct quotations even suggest that not only the words but also the intentions behind these words are replicated. In this paper I would like to discuss two examples in which this suggestion of replicating a speaker’s words and with these words the quoted speaker’s attitude, is exploited in the strategic manoeuvring aimed at presenting ones standpoint more convincingly.

2. Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse
In pragma-dialectics normative and descriptive dimensions of argumentative discourse are linked together by a methodical reconstruction of actual discourse from the projected ideal of critical discussion. Starting from the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion in which a procedure is developed for establishing methodically whether or not a standpoint is defensible against doubt or criticism, argumentative reality is investigated empirically to achieve an accurate description of actual discourse processes and the various factors influencing their outcome (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2001, p.150). According to van Eemeren and Houtlosser, the parties engaged in argumentative discourse may be assumed to be committed to the pragma-dialectical standards of reasonableness while at the same time attempting to resolve the difference of opinion in their own favour. Maintaining the image of people who play the resolution game by the rules, their speech acts may be assumed to be designed to reach particular rhetorical goals. It is this combination of dialectical and rhetorical objectives that typically gives rise to strategic manoeuvring: speakers and writers use the opportunities available in a certain dialectical situation ‘for steering the discourse rhetorically in the direction that serves their own interests best’ (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2001, p. 151).
For a more detailed and systematic specification of the rhetorical objectives of participants in a specific dialectical situation, the dialectical model can provide a starting point. As each of the four stages in the resolution process is characterized by a specific dialectical aim and as the parties involved want to realize this aim to their best advantage, the presumed rhetorical objectives of the speaker or writer can be specified according to stage. In the confrontation stage, where the difference of opinion is defined and the dialectical objective is to achieve clarity concerning the specific issue that is at stake and the positions that are taken, viewed rhetorically the participants will try to direct the confrontation in the way that is most favourable for them (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2002, p. 138). In order to define the difference of opinion in such a way that the chances for achieving a favourable result are optimal, the speaker or writer will for instance present his standpoint in a way that makes it look more acceptable. A possible way to present ones standpoint in such a way, is to confront the listener or reader with the sayings of another speaker – by means of direct quotation, by which the intentions and beliefs of the quoted speaker seem to be automatically demonstrated.

3. Manoeuvring strategically in the confrontation stage by means of direct quotation
I would like to look now at two excerpts from Dutch newsmagazines in which the use of direct quotations seems to be instrumental in achieving the objective of presenting ones standpoint in such a way that the reader may be more inclined to accept it as the facts seem to speak for themselves. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Moral And Legal Arguments In Modern Bioethics

• by: Yadvigha Yaskevich - Belarus St. University

Bioethics as an interdisciplinary scientific trend becomes outlined in the context of common stylistics typical for post-nonclassical science of the last third of the XXth century as a whole when it is enriched with such unusual for classical science ideals and arguments as well-being of a man and mankind, good and morals, duty and responsibility for the results achieved in the process of scientific investigation of human objects.
The introduction of new :medical technologies into practice (methods of artificial impregnation, surrogate motherhood, prenatal diagnostics), the actualization of problems of transplantation, euthanasia, biomedical experiments with involvement of human beings and animals, the necessity of moral, ethic and legal regulation of collisions arising in the process of biomedical investigations served as a specific social demand for the formation of bioethics.
The thirty years period of existence of this interdisciplinary trend uniting biological knowledge and human values and representing “a systematic investigation of human’s behavior in the field of sciences of life and health care so far as the behavior is considered in the context of moral values and principles” (Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 1995, 102) was connected with the dynamics of bioethical problems ranging from the empirical arguments and descriptions of doctor’s moral to the philosophic introspection of morals in the area of biomedical study. Beginning from the second half of 80s, quite a powerful layer of philosophic knowledge transforming the conceptual foundations of traditional model of bioethics of the Western type was formed alongside with the development of biomedical technologies. The problems of personal rights and liberties typical for bioethics were actualized in a new way; a wider understanding of freedom concept was formed including the recognition of personal autonomy. In the framework of contemporary interpretation of personal autonomy it is regarded as the basic ethic value manifested as a patient’s free choice of either medically possible or medically human. More profound ethics of dialogue combined with the principle of informed consent replaces the ethics of paternalism that dominated in traditional model of bioethics. Instead of priority absolutization of both the doctor or biologist (experimenter) and the patient (or probationer), the modern model of bioethics prefers the argument structures aimed at coordination in grounding the rights and duties of the sides, the active attraction of patients to make decisions in choosing treatment methods especially in case of risk for the person’s life.

As far as our knowledge of living matter becomes more extensive, the main philosophical accent in considering the category of freedom is shifted from the consumer’s freedom (“freedom from”) to the creative freedom (“freedom for. At the same time, the “freedom from” is interpreted as the present-day person ability to overcome the natural forms of dependency on the outer world and to satisfy its growing demands (prolongation of active life period including even life maintenance at a vegetable state, curing the illnesses that were incurable before, freedom in changing the appearance and/or gender, personal choice to have or not to have children even without a man, etc). The modern level of biochemical investigations makes it possible for a person to achieve a certain level of argumentation (“freedom from”), but getting separated from the nature and towering above the world the person sometimes becomes more and more dependant on the modern technique and only the natural unity of person and Space, creation of himself and moral self improvement makes a person closer to creative freedom of argumentation (“freedom for himself”). The value status of freedom in the process of development of our knowledge of the alive nature, in performing biomedical investigations dealing with the unique isolated objects (human genome, socio-natural systems) supposes the necessity of self-restriction from the side of researchers and the formation of argumentational concept of collective responsibility for the scientific study results as well as for the unity of the mankind. The concept of responsibility transforms from individual argumentation to a rank of collective responsibility argumentation for prejudice caused to people and nature.

Within the frames of bioethical argumentational discurse where morals appears traditionally in its highest sense since it affects inter-personal relations (doctor – patient, investigator – probationer) at existentional boundary situations (on the verge of life and death, health and illness), the categories of justice, duty and humanism are philosophically revised. It becomes clear, that humanistic paradigm in bioethics can be implemented not only in case of observance of moral arguments and principles but in case of strict adherence to legal arguments and standards too. The concept of justice supposes the presence of social component and corresponding equal access to common wealth and availability of pharmacological means required for health maintenance.
The traditional bioethical arguments and categories of duty and welfare that were expressed in the Hyppocrate’s formula “don’t make harm” (i.e. use only the medicines that make no harm to patient) were extended in the modern bioethics by transforming the above formula into “not only make no harm, but make good” although the interpretation of the good deed concept is not monosemantic especially in discussing the problems of life maintenance at vegetable level, cloning of living creatures and even a human being, etc.
Thus, the modern paradigm of bioethics is characteristic for the radical turn from the arguments of empirical description of medical morals to the thorough philosophic argumentation – the revision of grounds of morals in medical studies, concepts of moral values, widening of problem area of bioethics by enriching it with moral, philosophical, legal arguments and components and by integration of different arguments and kinds of values: biological (physical existence, health, freedom of pain, etc), social (equal possibility, availability of all medicines and services, etc), ecological (understanding of the nature self-value, its originality, co-evolution), personal (safety, self-esteem, etc).
The latter appears in the Western model of bioethics as an institutionally organized social technology with the system of standard liberal values providing the observance of personal rights and freedoms in the biomedical area. The protection of civil rights against the negative consequences of modern biomedical technique usage (being the main aim of bioethics) is implemented by using the ethical and legal arguments, developed ethical codes, laws and by increasing the area of responsibility of doctors and biologists as well as by extending their social duties fixed not only at personal but at legal level too. The ethical control mechanisms of doctors and scientists activities are added with developed system of legal supervision, foundation of special bioethical committees, and formation of bioethical education (Encyclopedia of Association, 1993, 1-40). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Questioning The Fallacy Of Many Questions

• by: Roosmaryn Pilgram & Leah E. Polcar - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In June 2001, BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman interviewed the Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, about his past term. During this interview, Paxman posed the following question: “But you said ‘over the five years of a Labour Government we will rebuild the NHS.’ Did you underestimate the task?”. Blair subsequently responded, “I don’t think we underestimated the task”. Paxman, however, continued asking “Why say you could do it in five years?”, to which Blair unceremoniously replied with “We didn’t.” (Newsnight, 2001, June 5).
Interestingly, even though the Prime Minister seems to accept the presupposition that he stated his government would rebuild the National Health Service in five years by means of answering the interviewer’s initial question, he later openly rejects this proposition. The answer to Paxman’s follow-up question reveals an interesting property of the initial question: answering it apparently tricked Blair into committing to a proposition he did not want to be committed to.
Within argumentation studies, these type of questions have been treated in the extant literature under the general title fallacy of many questions. Consequently, Paxman’s initial question could be analysed as an instance of this fallacy. However, given that later on in the interview Blair admits he has said the Labour government would rebuild the NHS in five years on two occasions – Blair: “It [the statement about rebuilding the NHS in five years] is in the manifesto [of my Labour Party].”; and Paxman: “It was a mistake to say it [the statement] then?” Blair: “No. We do have to rebuild the National Health Service. We are doing it.” – Paxman seems to have been wholly justified in presupposing it in his question.
So how do we practically analyse such potential instances of the fallacy of many questions? To answer this question, we will first discuss the few definitions of the fallacy of many questions presented in the extant literature and their accompanying difficulties. Second, we will examine the possible approaches the argumentation analyst could take to evaluating the fallaciousness of these kinds of questions. And third, we will present which approach s/he should take in the practical analysis of potentially fallacious questions and discuss the implications of this approach.

2. Literature Definitions
The fallacy of many questions, also known as the fallacy of the complex question, is traditionally illustrated by the question “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” (see Robinson 1936, p.196; Oesterle, 1963, p.259; Hamblin 1970, p.38; Hintikka 1976, p.28; Walton 1989, pp. 36-75). This example nicely illustrates the difficulties the respondent is confronted with in answering this question: answering it in any fashion, whether affirmatively or negatively, commits the respondent to the presupposition that s/he has beaten his or her spouse. Further, challenging the question might be interpreted as undermining the questioner’s credibility and can be thus impolite or otherwise face threatening. As this leaves the respondent with no reasonable chance to answer (or challenge) the question, this way of asking questions has been treated in the literature as fallacious. However, when it is perfectly clear from the situation that the respondent has been beating his or her spouse in the past, it would be strange to regard the question as a fallacy: the question includes a presupposition the respondent is committed to anyway. Although the fallacy of many questions is, therefore, context dependent, a definition of it would be helpful to analyse question-answer adjacency pairs in argumentative discussions.

Despite the frequent occurrence of the spouse-beating question as the fallacy’s illustration, only a few definitions of the fallacy of many questions can be found in the literature. A rather descriptive definition is provided by Walton who holds that this fallacy occurs when a complex loaded question is asked that, if answered, traps the respondent into “conceding something that would cause him to lose the argument, or otherwise be unfavourable to his side” and is thus interfering with “the respondent’s ability to retract commitments to allegations made by the other party who is asking the questions” (Walton 1999, pp. 379 and 382, resp.). So, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” is fallacious because, if the respondent answers it directly, s/he becomes committed to the complex presupposition – more specifically, the conjunctive proposition (Walton 1999, p.381) – of having beaten his or her spouse and, presumably, this is a proposition s/he does not want to concede.
Even though this definition emphasises an important characteristic of the fallacy of many questions, namely that answering such a question inherently means the respondent is committed to a proposition that s/he would not like to be committed to, it cannot sufficiently distinguish fallacious questions from non-fallacious questions. In argumentative discourse, one of the most straightforward ways to reasonably convince the opponent of a standpoint is indeed by demonstrating that the opponent’s commitment to a particular proposition is inconsistent with opposing the standpoint at hand – even if this commitment is obtained by the opponent’s answer to a question[i]. Imagine an interlocutor putting forward the standpoint “I have always treated my spouse well”. If the antagonist in a discussion about this standpoint would subsequently ask, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?”, and the protagonist would directly answer it in the affirmative or negative, then this complex loaded question is used to trap the protagonist into committing to the presupposition “I have beaten my spouse in the past”. Since this commitment is disastrous for the defence of the protagonist’s standpoint and the protagonist is unable to retract it, the posed question should be regarded as a fallacy of many questions in terms of Walton’s definition. Yet, taken as the antagonist’s argument – because you have been beating your spouse in the past, you cannot say that you have always treated your spouse well – the antagonist’s question accurately points out the inconsistency that undermines the protagonist’s case: it does not seem to be fallacious or in any way problematic. Read more