ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Visualizing Recognition

• by: Tom Heeney - College of Charleston

1. Introduction
My point of departure will be several related articles and a review published recently in the journal Argumentation and Advocacy that focus renewed attention on the question of whether visual images can be understood as arguments. And if so, then how? Should logic, rhetoric, or aesthetics be taken as the foundation upon which images can be understood as depicting an argument? Indeed, is a conceptual approach alone sufficient, or satisfactory?
These recent position papers review many a traditional answer; the conflict between image and concept is as old as the rivalry between rhetoric and philosophy. Some of these articles advocate taking one side of this relentless antagonism against the other. For example, J. Anthony Blair (1996) and David Fleming (1996) doubt that images can be understood as arguments unless and until their (manifest and latent) content is reconstructed into propositional terms, thus repeating the familiar subordination of aesthetics, literature, and rhetoric to the perspective of logic as the proper and sole critical method in the field of argument studies.
Gretchen Barbatsis (1996) takes the opposite approach and imports critical methods from literature, aesthetics, and media criticism to show precisely how much the reduction of an image to a proposition is a misreading that fails to understand the potential for manipulation in modern mediated forms of communication. And a recent collection of articles reviewed by Lenore Langsdorf advocates ‘visual literacy’ and a “recognition that a visual argument is, despite appearances of spontaneity, in fact being made by an unacknowledged argument partner, for less than evident purposes, and culminating in other than obvious conclusions” (1996: 50).
In many ways, the dispute over critical methods in the analysis of images raises two additional theoretical issues. The first is whether a descriptive or a normative model is the most appropriate for understanding the image as communicative form. The second is whether ‘argumentation studies’ as a discursive field should welcome or resist this importation of analytical models and critical methods from disciplines other than logic. Fleming resists just these centrifugal tendencies and wonders, rhetorically, if we now are to recognize pictures as arguments, “do we risk losing something important in our conventional understanding of argument?” (1996: 11). But whose ‘conventional understanding’ is at stake?: his restrictive sense of ‘argument fields’ limits debate by accepting only those definitions of argumentation already advanced by recognized authors in the same scholarly journals that promote a limited (and primarily deductive) definition of argument. This is a legitimate, but ultimately sterile move, although in extreme cases it raises the specter of a possible incommensurability of assumptions when these move across divergent disciplines. Yet since most argument scholars accept the norm that narrowing differences of opinion should count as the operative definition of the purpose of argumentation, this should not pose a real danger (except in cases of unsuccessful argument). Finally, as David Birdsell and Leo Groarke remind us: “Most scholars who study argumentation theory are… preoccupied with methods of analyzing arguments which emphasize verbal elements and show little or no recognition of other possibilities, or even the relationship between words and other symbolic forms” (1996: 1). Read more

ISSA Procedings 1998 – Public Argument In The Post-Mass Media Age

• by: Thomas A. Hollihan - University of Southern California, James Klumpp - University of Maryland & Patricia Riley - University of Southern California

In recent years, the demise of the “public sphere” has been a frequent subject for discussion, among philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, cultural critics, and argumentation theorists (Goodnight 1982; 1987; Hauser 1998; Verstraeten 1996). The discussion has been provoked, at least in part, by Jurgen Habermas’ (1975; 1979; and 1989) declarations that the public sphere had been “colonized.” Habermas’ argued that we needed to emancipate public discourse and identify new communication practices that could both create and sustain a more democratic “lifeworld.”
Our own interest in this topic has resulted in a series of papers that examine both argumentation theory and pedagogy. In previous studies we explored the demise of the argumentative free marketplace for ideas, the importance of having students engaged in “real world” disputes, the poverty of conventional forms of argumentation in politics and democratic processes, and proposed alternative sites for a democratic lifeworld (Hollihan, Riley & Klumpp 1993; Klumpp, Riley & Hollihan 1995; and Riley, Klumpp & Hollihan 1995). This essay extends our project by considering how the changing media environment may impact the possibility for public argumentation and civic deliberation.
We argue that the era of the mass audience and mass media is ending. While an optimistic reading of the future might lead one to claim that the advent of new media technologies will enhance the possibilities for civic participation by increasing the opportunities for citizens to express themselves, the new technologies may serve only to further isolate citizens and decrease their political influence.

The paper proceeds by:
1.considering the origins and emergence of the notion of the public sphere and the liberal political philosophy it reflects;
2. discussing the development of mass society and the mass media as a modernist invention;
3. arguing that the era of mass media is coming to a close;
4. assessing the consequences of a post-mass media society on the abilty to form a democratically engaged citizenry; and
5) identifying some responses mandated for argumentation study and pedagogy by the new media world.

This essay raises many new questions as it offers insights on changing publics and arguments. It is only through such preliminary discussions and criticisms, that argumentation scholars can help ascertain the approaches available for public argument that can strengthen the citizenry’s voice in their own governance and place in the global milieux.

1. Origins of the Public Sphere Concept
The notion of an engaged, civic minded public capable of forming themselves through social interactions emerged as enlightenment thinkers contemplated the requirements for democratic civic engagement. This was an essentially bourgeois vision, conceptually described as a forum accessible to as many people as possible, where a wide variety of social experiences could be expressed. The public sphere, thus came to occupy a space between the state, and the private spheres of life where questions of individual beliefs or conduct remained autonomous (Habermas 1989; Balthrop 1989). This sphere was the salon, the coffeehouse, the pub, or in the early days of the American republic, the town meeting. Citizens engaged in the public sphere provided a rich storehouse of public opinion, defined as a body of discourse and arguments constituting public will and values, from which governmental officials and other societal leaders could draw rhetorical sustenance and legitimacy. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – The Use Of Ambiguous Expressions In Discussions

• by: Jan Albert van Laar - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

The fallacy of misusing lexical ambiguity in argumentation is called the fallacy of equivocation. I will explain what the fallacy consists of by sketching a dialectical situation. Starting from the notion of a precization, I will explore some possible moves of the opponent and proponent in that situation.
My main conclusions will be that it is polysemy rather than ambiguity in a narrow sense that is at the bottom of the fallacy of equivocation and that, partly in consequence of this, the proponent has some interesting possibilities after the opponent has detected the ambiguity. Before one accuses someone of the fallacy of equivocation one should not only check if a distinction is apt, but also whether there is any reasonable defence for the proponent.

1. The fallacy of equivocation
Equivocation is the fallacy of the misuse of the multiple meanings of an expression in argumentation. Two examples are:
(1) The money is in the bank, the bank is by the river, so you should go to the river. (Walton 1996: 72)
(2) All acts prescribed by law are obligatory. Nonperformance of an obligatory act is to be disapproved. Therefore, nonperformance of an act prescribed by law is to be disapproved. (Hamblin 1970: 292)

What’s wrong with these arguments? I will focus on the second, more realistic example. We can best understand the function of the elements of the argument from the perspective of a persuasion dialogue or critical discussion (Walton & Krabbe 1995: 68, Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992: 34). A proponent tries to persuade an opponent of his thesis. To achieve this end he needs a strategy.
The proponent should offer reasons that are plausible to the opponent. If the opponent does not object to these reasons, they count as commitments that cannot be withdrawn without explanation. The proponent will then have to show that the opponent is inconsistent when she is committed to the reasons that form part of his argument, but still maintains her critical attitude towards the thesis.
That means that when we are confronted with an argument for a thesis, we can evaluate the argument by (1) examining the plausibility of the reasons relative to the opponent and (2) checking if the position in which one is committed to the reasons but criticizes the thesis is inconsistent. So the evaluation is partly dependent upon the choice of the opponent. This choice is dependent upon the end of the evaluation. One can be interested in the tenability of the argumentation relative to oneself or relative to another actual or imagined group or individual.

When we imagine some reasonable and charitable opponent and look at the second example, we see an argument that could be successful. Both reasons have a certain plausibility. Acts prescribed by law are obligatory in a sense, because nonperformance of an act prescribed by law is often followed by sanctions of some sort. And nonperformance of an obligatory act is to be disapproved in a sense, because we should disapprove of the nonperformance of an act that one should perform. So, there is some ground to expect that this reasonable and charitable opponent will commit herself to the reasons.
We can picture the relevant fragment of dialogue as follows. Moves one and two form the confrontation stage, moves three and four are part of the argumentation stage (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992: 35). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Modelling Contractual Arguments

• by: Chris Reed & Aspassia Daskalopulu - Brunel University, UK.

1. Introduction
One influential approach to assessing the “goodness” of arguments is offered by the Pragma-Dialectical school (p-d) (Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992). This can be compared with Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (Mann & Thompson 1988), an approach that originates in discourse analysis. In p-d terms an argument is good if it avoids committing a fallacy, whereas in RST terms an argument is good if it is coherent. RST has been criticised (Snoeck Henkemans 1997) for providing only a partially functional account of argument, and similar criticisms have been raised in the Natural Language Generation (NLG) community – particularly by Moore & Pollack (1992) – with regards to its account of intentionality in text in general.
Mann and Thompson themselves note that although RST can be successfully applied to a wide range of texts from diverse domains, it fails to characterise some types of text, most notably legal contracts. There is ongoing research in the Artificial Intelligence and Law community exploring the potential for providing electronic support to contract negotiators, focusing on long-term, complex engineering agreements (see for example Daskalopulu & Sergot 1997). The negotiation process, which is a lengthy cycle of proposal and counter-proposal, can be seen as inherently argumentative in nature with each party involved trying to influence the agreement in a way that best serves their own interests. The negotiation process is conducted by parties exchanging proposed drafts of the contract, where each draft represents an argument put forward by one party to persuade the other. Furthermore the internal structure of any given contractual document can be analysed as an implicit discussion where an implicit opponent makes requests for clarification and specification (particularly of contingencies that might arise). Supporting these aspects of contracts depends upon a rich model of the argumentative structure of the complex pre-contractual documents, and it is therefore disappointing that RST fails to account for such text.
It has also become clear (Reed 1998) that RST is fundamentally inappropriate for representing argument structure in three important respects: RST admits multiple analyses of a given piece of text and this is in direct contrast to the argumentation theoretic approach; particular structures that are frequently encountered in arguments are not catered for by RST; and finally, patterns of reasoning that underlie an argument (such as modus ponens, inductive generalisation and so on) can neither be represented by, nor inferred from an RST analysis (and even more so where multiple analyses exist).
This paper provides a brief introduction to RST and illustrates its shortcomings with respect to contractual text. An alternative approach for modelling argument structure is presented (extending Reed & Long 1997a) which not only caters for contractual text, but also overcomes the aforementioned limitations of RST. Finally it is shown that this approach meets the criticisms expressed by both Snoeck Henkemans (1997) and Moore and Pollack (1992) by offering a truly functional account of illocutionary purpose.

2. An overview of rhetorical structure theory
2.1 RST assumptions, methodology and basic concepts
Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) developed by Mann and Thompson (1987; 1988) purports to evaluate text (including arguments) in terms of its coherence. The characteristics of RST as a descriptive framework for natural text are:
(i) It describes relations between parts of text in functional terms, whether such relations are grammatically signalled or otherwise.
(ii) It identifies hierarchical structure in text.
(iii) Its scope is written monologue and it is insensitive to text size. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – The Good Case For Practical Propositions: Limits Of The Arguer’s Obligation To Respond To Objections

• by: Fred J. Kauffeld - Edgewood College

1. Introduction
This paper will discuss several questions about public deliberative argumentation raised by Trudy Govier’s conception of a Good Case. In the interests of “developing realistic standards for the evaluation of arguments and argumentation,” Govier distinguishes between an Exhaustive Case for a proposition and a Good Case. Unlike the Exhaustive Case, she observes, “the Good Case does not require that the arguer respond to all objections and all alternative positions.” (Govier, 1997: p. 12) This important concept has special significance for studies of the public argumention which enables groups, institutions, polities, etc. to reach decisions regarding their future acts and policies. It may be that Govier’s conception of the Good Case identifies a basic contour of the normative ideal for public deliberative argumentation. To explore this possibility, I will, first, attempt to identify an ideal function for public deliberative argument which plausibly implicates a Good Case as its normative ideal. Second, I will try to clarify the concept of a Good Case as a norm for deliberative argumentation.

2. The Normative Status of a Good Case in Public Deliberation
The issue here is not whether Govier’s conception is important. Most approaches to the study of argumentation would, I think, recognize that given limitations of time, circumstances, etc., often an arguer could not reasonably hope to establish an Exhaustive Case for her position; the best that could be expected from an advocate in many situations is a Good Case – a body of argumentation which, at least provisionally, dismisses some remaining objections and (possibly) some alternative positions. Rather, the issue concerns the normative status a of Good Case as contrasted with an Exhaustive Case. Is the concept of a Good Case merely remedial, applying to argumentation which falls short of the ideal Exhaustive Case, or does the concept of a Good Case delineate an ideal appropriate to some modes of argumentation and, specifically, to those which involve interpersonal deliberation about practical concerns? I do not hope to answer this very difficult question; in the discussion which follows, I will only attempt to show it poses a serious choice for students of argumentation.
The view that an Exhaustive Case is the normative ideal against which all modes of argumentation are to be assessed has widespread and well articulated support in current studies of argumentation. It has able champions in the pragma-dialectical approach to the study of argumentation developed by Eemeren and Grootendorst and significantly elaborated by many others. According  to pragma-dialectics, the norm of an Exhaustive Case corresponds directly to the ideal end served by argumentation. In this well-known view, argumentation ideally serves to resolve disagreement on the merits. (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992: 34; Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson & Jacobs, 1993: 25) Resolving a disagreement is held to require more than merely settling a difference of opinion by setting aside or repressing doubts and objections; rather, resolution of a disagree occurs “. . . only if somebody retracts his doubt because he has been convinced by the other party’s argumentation or if he withdraws his standpoint because has realized that his argumentation cannot stand up to the other party’s criticism.” (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992: 34) A resolution-oriented system is “structured in such a way as to assure that if it comes to any settlement at all, the settlement is one recognized by both parties as correct, justified, and rational. Hence, one characteristic of the ideal model is an unlimited opportunity for further discussion; an ideal system does not constrain the possibilities for expansion of a discussion” (Eemeren et al., 1993: 25).
In short, the ideal of resolving a disagreement on the merits requires, according to pragma-dialectics, that proponents of a standpoint establish an Exhaustive Case, a case which answers all pertinent doubts and objections to the satisfaction of the parties to the disagreement. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Final But Not Infallible. Two Dimensions Of Judicial Decisions

• by: Harm Kloosterhuis - Erasmus University

1. Introduction
One of the forms of rule skepticism, found both in legal practice and in legal theory, learns that the law is what the courts say it is and nothing more. In his study The Concept of Law (1961) Hart criticizes this form of rule skepticism. Decisions of a court he says, are statements with a certain authority making them final but not also infallible. To clarify this, Hart uses the example of an umpire in a game. In a game the judgements of an umpire – for instance about the scoring – have a certain authority. His judgements are given, by the secondary rules of the game, a status which renders them unchallengeable. In this sense it is true, says Hart, that for the purposes of the game ‘the score is what the scorer says it is’. But it is important to see that there is a scoring rule and it is the scorer’s duty to apply this rule as best he can.[i] It is this scoring rule which makes decisions of the umpire, though final, not infallible, for this scoring rule offers reasons for criticizing the decision.
According to Hart the same is true in the law. Like the umpire’s decision in a game, the decisions of a judge like ‘X is guilty’ or ‘X has a right’ are – up to a certain point – final. But, like the umpire in a game, the judge has an obligation to apply the rules correctly according to the secondary rules in a legal system.[ii] As a result judicial decisions are fallible.
Austin (1962) made similar observations about the nature of judicial decisions. He argues that if it is established that a performative utterance is performed happily and in all sincerity, that still does not suffice it beyond the reach of all criticism. It may always be criticized in a different dimension, a dimension comparable with the true/false criterium used to evaluate constative utterances: ‘Allowing that, in declaring the accused guilty, you have reached your verdict properly and in good faith, it still remains to ask whether the verdict was just, or fair’ (1962:21)
Since the publications of Austin en Hart, the observations about the character of judicial decisions give rise to the question what type of speech act is involved. Both in legal theory and in argumentation theory it is posed as a problem whether these speech acts are, or are to be reconstructed, as declarative, or as assertive speech acts. For on the one hand, the judge declares that somebody is guilty, but on the other the judge justifies that this decision is right according to the law. And this justification is a reason to reconstruct the decision as an assertive or, to be more precise, as a standpoint in a context of a discussion.
In this paper, I want to discuss the problem of the speech act character of a judicial decision within the framework of the pragma-dialectical argumentation theory. My basic starting point is that it is a misunderstanding to treat speech acts in judicial decisions as either assertive or declarative speech acts. I think that, for an adequate analysis of the speech act, one has to make a distinction between at least two discussions in a legal process and related to this distinction different functions of the speech act in a final judicial decision.
I will proceed as follows. First, I will discuss the merits and demerits of reconstructing a final judicial decision as the mixed speech act called assertive-declaration. Then, I will differentiate between two discussions and two types of speech acts in a legal process. Finally, I will discuss how these two different types of speech acts can be reconstructed as a standpoint. Read more