ISSA Proceedings 2006 – The Risk Of Arguing From Persuasion To Dissuasion

• by: J. Francisco Álvarez - Universidad Nacional de Educación

Bounded rationality theories are essentially characterized by incorporating limits of knowledge, resources and time as a central feature of the conditions in which we adopt our decisions. Connections between advanced systems of processing information and our usual manner of arguing allow us to analyze some argumentative strategies as quick mechanisms that reduce costs of information in a way that is not too different from the simple and frugal heuristics, as defended by R. Selten or G. Gigerenzer (Gigerenzer and Selten 2001; Gigerenzer, Todd, and ABC Research Group. 1999), that seem to play a salient role in the adoption of decisions in conditions of uncertainty.[i]
Taking part in an argumentative process, accepting it as a decision-making mechanism, implies taking some risks if you are not an omniscient agent. The possible dissuasive strength of argumentation arises as part of a procedural decision device and it can help us to show and account for some discursive strategies employed by agents in their argumentative activities.
Some of the problems that come into view when we try to understand polemics and types of polemics may be solved by attending to both participants’ spaces of values and the zone where these spaces overlap. A first step, an empirical one, could be to delineate the boundaries of the space of values that participants try to occupy. Their goal is not, or not only, to optimize some singular variables (such as truth, rhetoric force or consistency), but also to satisfy a set of values that they regard as important; their own authorship or agency could even be one of these values. For example, it could make a difference whether we obtain an inaction compromise from another agent after a dissuasion process (possibly including some argumentative interactions) or reach a superficially similar result after a simple refusal due to the proper conviction of the other agent.

I hope that, with some tools from ancient rhetoric, the philosophy of economics, and computer science, we can analyse, for example, the continuum between refutation and reputation (Dascal 2001, 2002; Dascal 2003) and some other non-traditional epistemological questions. There are two key ideas. First, some features of the context could generate rules. Usually, we are prone to ascribe these rules solely to the participants’ cognitive capabilities, but these rules could also be constructed as the output of the relationships themselves.  Second, we do not need to assume that participants in the dialogue are provided with absolute and common knowledge (each one knows what the others know), with all the time and all the computational capabilities possible, and both unlimited knowledge and unlimited memory store. Instead, all we need are some flesh and blood human beings in contextual interactions. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – The Challenging Force Of Dissuasion

• by: Rodica Amel - University of Bucharest

« Si, au contraire, on prend comme concept général de départ, non celui de monde, mais celui de culture, la question revêt aussitôt tout autre aspect.»
Ernest Cassirer, La philosophie des formes symboliques, I : 21

The issue: Our study takes as its starting point the general concept of culture, just as stated in the above quotation in French: “[il] prend comme concept général de départ celui de culture”, trying to analyze the dissuasive force of those ideas that are dominant within the social life and exercise a negative pressure upon a creative mind. The particular aspect of dissuasion we are interested in is neither discursive, nor explicit, but active in the form of an implied argument, the power of which has normative authority.
The premise: The argumentative force of dissuasion belongs to the doxastic field (the belief field) and has axiological foundations[i].
A remark: This paper continues our research within the field of argumentative dialectics, and the topics of several studies of ours count as premises of the present approach: (a) the mechanism of decidability in doxastic thinking follows the constitutive process of the moral object (Amel, 1999)[ii]. If our inquiry has in view only the argumentative behavior with reference to cultural notions, we are compelled to emphasize that the respective system of notions is characterized by argumentatative authority and presents the danger of promoting a prejudicial judgment; these considerations introduce two further premises: (b) we may judge authority as being sometimes a valid argument and sometimes a fallacious one (Amel, 2004); (c) from the point of view of the conversational logic, the preconceived idea has all the features characterizing the category of presupposition (it is a pre-judgment).
Actually, our contribution represents ‘une prise de conscience culturelle’, grasped in its dialectical unrest. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Addressing Anticipated Countermoves As A Form Of Strategic Manoeuvring

• by: Bilal Amjarso - University of Amsterdam

Introduction
Addressing anticipated countermoves is a commonplace practice in argumentative discourse. A speaker in a discussion may anticipate the objections of an opponent and deal with these before the latter expresses them. Likewise, a writer may make explicit to his readers that he does not expect them to take his views uncritically and proceed to address the criticism that he anticipates from them. With the help of the pragma-dialectical concept of strategic manoeuvring, I will investigate the different ways in which this strategy functions in argumentative discourse, both as a dialectical tool for critically testing the arguer’s position and as a rhetorical tool by which the arguer aims to provide the strongest possible defence for his position.

1. Addressing anticipated countermoves as a form of prolepsis
Anticipating the opponent’s countermoves has been studied in the rhetorical literature in terms of prolepsis or anticipation. Prolepsis is generally defined as a figure of thought by which the speaker anticipates the opponent’s objections and accusations (Pereleman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, Gerbrandy 2001). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) discuss the different ways in which the speaker can enhance the effectiveness of his argumentation when addressing opposing arguments.

Forget (1994) argues that the rhetorical effect of prolepsis is derived from the representation of argumentative roles in an argumentative exchange and that the principle at play in prolepsis is “He who is better should win.” The speaker who anticipates an objection will try to present his own thesis as more deserving of winning the exchange. This, Forget explains, proceeds in this way: by advancing one’s thesis first and then interrupting it, as it were, by mentioning the interlocutor’s thesis, the speaker exploits the value of taking the initiative of debate (1994, p. 72). The counter-thesis does not have the quality of initiating debate because it occurs later in the discourse (1994, p. 75). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Understanding The Strategy Of Attacking Premises

• by: Antoni Diller - University of Birmingham

1. Introduction
A common method of criticising an argument is to attack one or more of its premises. However, if we know that a valid argument has one or more false premises, this does not allow us to say anything at all about the truth or falsity of the conclusion. Is the procedure of criticising the premises of an argument, therefore, pointless? I show that an attempt to provide a rationale for this strategy, based on a traditional understanding of rationality, fails to adequately explain its value, but I then argue that there is a place for this tactic in argumentative discourse. However, in order to appreciate its value we need to consider how arguments are used to get people to believe things in the context of a dialogue and not just the formal properties of those arguments. (It should be noted that, in this paper, I assume that the strategy of attacking one or more of the premises of an argument is only used to criticise valid arguments.)

2. The strategy in practice
Many authors either advocate or use the strategy of attacking an argument by criticising one or more of its premises. I will mention several of these in order to illustrate how widespread the acceptance of this tactic is. Gilbert (1996) gives a lot of useful advice about how to improve your argumentative skills. Rather than talking about the conclusion and the premises of an argument, he talks about the claim that someone puts forward and the reasons that that person has for asserting that claim. In a situation where the person you are arguing with puts forward a claim that you disagree with, Gilbert (1996, p. 32) gives the following advice, ‘Always attack the reasons for a claim, not the claim itself’.’

Fogelin and Sinnott-Armstrong (1997, p. 366) are not as categorical as Gilbert. They acknowledge that there are several ways in which an argument can be criticised. However, they write:
The second main way to attack an argument is to challenge one of its premises. We can argue that there is no good reason to accept a particular premise as true, asking, for example, ‘How do you know that?’ If there is no way to justify a premise, then the argument usually fails to justify its conclusion. More strongly, we can argue that the premise is actually false. In this second case, we refute an argument by refuting one of its premises.

Like Fogelin and Sinnott-Armstrong, Schopenhauer, in an essay only published after his death, states that there are several ways in which an opponent’s thesis can be refuted. One of these he calls the direct method. He writes that the ‘direct course attacks the reasons for the thesis’ and that, if successful, this ‘direct refutation shows that the thesis is not true’ (Schopenhauer 2005, p. 174).
Some writers do not explicitly state this way of attacking an argument, but just use it. Reinard is one of these. He considers someone who ‘is opposed to the current welfare system because he or she believes benefits go to many who are capable of working’ (Reinard 1991, p. 308). The argument used here has an unexpressed premise and the conclusion is not fully expressed. We can take the conclusion to be the statement that the current welfare system is unfair and the unexpressed premise to be the proposition that, in a fair welfare system, benefits do not go to those who are capable of working. (Whether or not this is the best way to reconstruct this argument is not the issue here.) Reinard says that one way of criticising this argument is to ‘cite evidence that fewer than five percent of welfare recipients could work if jobs were available in their vicinities’. He is attacking the claim that the current welfare system is unfair by showing that one of the reasons given for this claim is false.
Shaw also uses the strategy of criticising an argument by attacking one of its premises without explicitly stating it. One of the arguments he analyses is, ‘Most of those who say they believe in capital punishment do not really believe in it. For if they were called upon to carry out an execution themselves they would not be able to bring themselves to do it ‘ (Shaw 1997, p. 61). He first notes that there is an unexpressed premise in this argument and he says that this is the statement, [Anyone] who sincerely believed capital punishment was right would be prepared to carry out the punishment himself’. Whether or not this is the most likely unexpressed premise is not the issue here. What is relevant is that Shaw criticises the argument he has reconstructed by showing that the unexpressed premise is suspect. He does this as follows, ‘A person might surely fail to carry out an execution because he regarded executions as unpleasant rather than wrong. It is only too possible to shirk unpleasant tasks one thinks ought to be done, leaving it to others to perform them’.’ Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – The Strategic Use Of Antithesis In The Argumentation Stage Of A Critical Discussion

• by: Corina Andone - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In this paper I am concerned with investigating the role that antithesis plays when arguers try to reconcile their dialectical aims with their rhetorical aims in the argumentation stage of a discussion. My intention is to show that different kinds of the usage of antithesis may help an arguer to present his arguments in such a way that they seem as strong as possible to the audience or they are difficult to attack.
Antithesis can be defined, starting from Aristotle’s comments and examples, as “a verbal structure that places contrasted or opposed terms in parallel or balanced cola or phrases” (Fahnestock 1999, p. 46). Although it received some attention in classical rhetoric, other figures such as metaphor have been more largely described and the functions that they play have been more closely examined. However, when looking into the description of this figure, one can easily notice that antithesis is not merely an ornament added to plain speech, but it can have different functions, such as giving emphasis to specific aspects. This effect occurs due to its placement most often in parallel balanced structures that attracts the attention of the readers more easily than if placed in sentences with different patterns. Therefore, I consider that the various kinds of effects of antithesis are worth investigating in argumentative discourse.

Before providing a detailed account of the possible effects of various forms of antithesis, I take a brief look at the history of this figure. An account of how this figure of speech is described by different authors can point to possible effects the figure of antithesis can have.
To start with, Aristotle pays special attention to antithesis in Book III of his Rhetoric where he shows that, along with metaphor and energeia, it stands as one of the devices employed to form a polished prose style. The reason for him to affirm this is determined by the fact that he believes that antithesis satisfies the syntactic criteria of being placed in a symmetrical parallel phrasing capable of drawing the attention of the audience through this strategic positioning. As an example he gives the following: “It happens often in these circumstances that the wise fail and the foolish succeed” (Kennedy: 1991, p. 239). As Fahnestock (1999, p. 47) rightly notices, “antithesis as a figure of speech at the sentence level builds on these powerful natural pairs, the use of one in the first half of the figure creating the expectation of its verbal partner in the second half”. Should this expectation be defeated, the consequence would be a loss of its force, otherwise supported by the syntactic pattern.

According to Aristotle, the contrasted wording in antithesis can use four modes of opposition: contraries such as good and bad, contradictions, such as certain and uncertain, correlatives, such as cause and effect and privation/possession pairs, such as blindness and sight. As concerns the last category mentioned, Fahnestock (1999, p. 49) argues, and I agree, that “it collapses readily into the other categories”. According to her, a pair such as blindness and sight can be treated either as a contradiction in the sense of to see and not to see or as a pair of contraries in the sense of blind and sighted. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Hurricane Katrina: An Argumentative Analysis Of Race And Gender Issues In The Media Coverage Of A Natural And National Disaster

• by: Kevin T. Baaske - California State University & Megan A. Baaske - University of Southern California

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, one of the strongest hurricanes to make U.S. landfall in the last hundred years, struck the central Gulf of Mexico U.S. coast. With gusts of up to 125 miles per hour, the storm wrought havoc and devastation on the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (National Climatic Data Center December 29, 2005). The city of New Orleans suffered the worst effects of the storm. The combination of a rainfall at the rate of an inch per hour, powerful sea swells and breeched levees resulted in the flooding of 80% of the city. Thousands of residents who had not or could not heed the order to evacuate were trapped and survived in squalor without adequate food, water, shelter or sanitation as they awaited rescue. Over 1,500 people died in the three states struck by the hurricane. The national and international media were there broadcasting the tragedy to audiences across the world. Everywhere people could see the world’s sole superpower dealing ineptly with the crisis.
There are many issues concerning this tragedy worthy of investigation: the failure to assure the integrity of the levee system, the inadequacy of evacuations, the delayed and incompetent rescues. This paper examines the argumentative frames presented through the media coverage of the hurricane and its after effects. We utilize a narrative approach and seek to illuminate issues of race and gender raised by this coverage. We argue that the media’s coverage can be profitably considered in phases, each employing its own narrative focus and argumentative lens. These phases are admittedly overlapping and imprecise; nevertheless the phases share certain characteristics that we believe are of significance to scholars of argument. Through an explication and analysis of each phase of the media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina we argue that the media distorted the narrative and distracted its audience from the lessons that should have been learned. Read more