Argumentation,Adversariality, and Social Norms

Janice Moulton's “The Adversary Method: A Philosophical Paradigm” articulated several criticisms of the popular idea of philosophy as adversarial debate. Moulton criticizes it on epistemic grounds, arguing that philosophy's overreliance on adversarial debate is to the detriment of its goals. Some, notably Trudy Govier, have argued in favor of at least a minimal adversariality, governed by norms of respectful argumentation. This paper suggests that Govier's faith in these norms is misplaced, because it neglects the social circumstances of the arguers. While some authors have argued that politeness and aggression apply differently to those of different genders, this paper extends that analysis to social identities other than gender. In fact, given certain assumptions about the philosophy of language, engagement in polite adversarial debate may not even be possible for people occupying certain social locations.     

Toward the “overthrow of Platonism”: Processist critical social ontology and ameliorative discourse

In this article, I argue that, for the purpose of developing an effective critical social ontology about gender groups, it is not simply sufficient to carve gender groups at their joints: one must have in view whether the metaphysical categories we use to make sense of gender groups are prone to ideological distortion and vitiation. The norms underpinning a gender group's constitution as a type of social class and the norms involved in gender identity attributions, I propose, provide compelling reason to think critical social ontological discourse is more processist-orientated, rather than substantival-orientated. The advantages of a processist critical social ontology of gender groups are that, unlike substance-discourse, process-discourse recognizes how gender group talk and gender identity talk are often messy and therefore require a conceptual scheme that can transform vocabulary for the emancipatory purpose of ending oppression, domination, and marginalization.     

The Normative, the Proper, and the Sublime: Notes on the Use of Figure and Emotion in Prophetic Argument

Too often in argumentation studies, an emphasis on argumentative norms fails to give adequate weight to elements of emotion and style that are essential to public speech at its best, not only in ordinary practice but especially in those rare moments where public speech arrives at the sublime. In this paper we examine the coordination of argument with figurative and emotive language whose combination yields sublime effects in the poetry of the Hebrew prophets as well as in examples of modern discourse. It is shown that poetic figures, while not fully reducible to argumentative norms, nor rational in the sense commonly applied to argumentation, do in fact contribute in propriety in public discourse; moreover, they surpass mere propriety to generate moments of the sublime.     

Practical-theoritical argumentation

This essay explores the dialectics of theory and practice in terms of argumentation theory. Adapting Jonsen and Toulmin's (1988) notion of a Theory-Practice spectrum, it conceives Theory and Practice as extreme ends of a continuum and discourses as falling at various points along the continuum. Every theoritical discourse has essential practical aspects, and every practical discourse has essential theoretical aspects. Practices are theorized to varying degrees but every practice is thorized to some degree. Reflective discourse, which is discourse about practice, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum. Reflective discourse involves argumentation. Practical argumentation connects theory to practice; it appeals to general warrants, which may be simple or may tap into elaborate conceptual structures, in order to establish grounds for practical judgments. A practical discipline is a relatively coherent intellectual-professional enterprise that cultivates a field of social practice by engaging within itself and with practitioners in a reflective discourse. The argumentation of a practical discipline, like ordinary practical reflection, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum but in more methodical steps informed by systematic methodological reflection on the reflective process itself.     

Mother–Child Conversation and Children's Social Understanding During Middle Childhood

The authors investigated the relationship between mother–child conversation and children's social understanding during middle childhood. Thirty-eight mother–child pairs participated, including a younger group (5–7 years old) and an older group (8–10 years old). Children completed 2 measures of social understanding and mothers and children discussed 4 stories involving social dilemmas. Results indicated that compared to the younger group, the older group (a) performed better on both measures of social understanding and (b) produced more basic mental talk (i.e., talk about beliefs, emotions, personality traits, and desires), and more advanced mental talk (i.e., talk about contrasting perspectives, recursion and relationship between mental states, and advanced emotions). Mothers of older children also produced more basic and advanced mental talk. Mothers' advanced mental talk predicted both children's social understanding and children's advanced mental talk.     

Group typicality,group loyalty and cognitive development

Over the course of childhood, children's thinking about social groups changes in a variety of ways. Developmental Subjective Group Dynamics (DSGD) theory emphasizes children's understanding of the importance of conforming to group norms. Abrams et al.'s study, which uses DSGD theory as a framework, demonstrates the social cognitive skills underlying young elementary school children's thinking about group norms. Future research on children's thinking about groups and group norms should explore additional elements of this topic, including aspects of typicality beyond loyalty.     

Cross‐sectional and longitudinal relations between mother‐child talk about conflict and children's social understanding

We examined the relations between the ways 48 mothers and their 3‐ to 5‐year‐olds talked about a conflict depicted in a picture book and their children's current and subsequent level of social understanding. We distinguished explanatory talk, which directed attention to the actions that generated the conflict, from non‐explanatory talk, which discussed the conflict in terms of, for example, making up or saying sorry. Controlling for child age and overall talk by mother, explanatory talk was positively associated with contemporaneous social understanding. Social understanding at time one was also positively associated with social understanding 30 months later. These data suggest that dialogue about conflict may be helpful for 3‐ to 5‐year old children's understanding of the mental world, to the extent that it facilitates their understanding of particular social situations.     

Zombie multiculturalism meets liberative difference: searching for a new discourse of diversity

This paper grapples with an unresolved tension – twenty-first century Britain is indelibly multicultural and yet diversity is increasingly depicted as a threat to social cohesion. A society characterised by superdiverse cities where some suggest that ‘multiculturalism has failed’. On the basis of an analysis of three dominant theoretical and ideological discourses – community cohesion, multiculturalism and interculturalism – it will be argued that there is an urgent need to forge a new understanding of diversity that can counter the zombie discourse that characterises current debates about diversity in Britain. Difference will be framed as a potential source of mutual liberation, not a problem seeking a solution. It will be argued that a critical engagement with political theology can help us to fashion a new discourse of diversity that is characterised by a hermeneutics of liberative difference, which can help to defeat the zombies sucking the life out of diverse Britain.     

School factors related to bullying: a qualitative study of early adolescent students

This article addresses the issue of bullying and analyzes a set of accounts that were collected from fourteen focus group interviews with 90 secondary school children. The aim of the research was to map out the ways in which young adolescents talk about their social relations at school in relation to home and the ways they construct bullying as a school-related issue. The findings suggest that young adolescents differ in their ability to participate in the construction of social order depending on the school/home context. Further, bullying is mainly framed as an issue of the school climate on the part of the participants. The student?Cteacher relationship (as a hidden curriculum), academic competition and pressure of academic achievement contribute significantly to the bullying discourse in the students?? talk.     

Using Toulmin's Framework for the Analysis of Everyday Argumentation: Some Methodological Considerations

This study used Toulmin's analytical framework of argumentative structure in order to examine employees' argumentative discourse on the way they handle conflict situations in their workplace. The way in which this analytical tool has been applied here challenges critics on the usefulness of the particular analytical tool for the analysis of real-life argumentation. The definition of argumentative elements according to their function in the context of a particular argument, together with the analysis beyond the level of what has been stated explicitly enabled a comprehensive understanding of how specific information, statements or assumptions are interpreted and utilized in arguments examined. Finally, the acknowledgment of the importance of `field-dependency' of argumentative discourse, through the consideration of the social context within which this discourse is embedded, elicited the way in which this context made employees' argumentation a meaningful and acceptable discourse in this particular setting.     

A Dialogic Account of Sense-Making in Scientific Argumentation and Reasoning

This article identifies aspects of argumentation in scientific practice that are key for scientific sense-making and articulates how engagement in these aspects happens both inter-mentally (between people) and intra-mentally (an individual's reasoning). Institutionally, peer review exerts critique on new knowledge claims in science and is comprised by a search for errors, which can be expressed as generation and evaluation of alternative possibilities that contrast with the new knowledge claim. Critique influences construction of claims, and this interplay motivates progress in sense-making. A classroom experiment is presented in which a high school physics class simulated the social interactions between authors and reviewers. These students’ subsequent ability to engage in various forms of sense-making is contrasted with a control class that did the same activity but without simulating the relevant social interactions. The results suggest important support for a principled, practice-based way to simulate scientific discourse in classrooms to support sense-making.     

Metaphysics, Reductivism, and Spiritual Discourse

Although significant revival of talk of the spiritual and spirituality has been a striking feature of recent public debate about wider social and moral values in contemporary Western liberal-democratic polities, it seems worth asking whether there might be any substantial philosophical basis for such renewal. On the face of it, any meaningful discourse about spirituality seems caught between the rock of an antiquated mind-body dualism—now widely regarded (some notable contemporary pockets of resistance aside) as implausible—and the hard place of a scientific physicalism that offers little harbor for irreducible spiritual entities. The present essay explores two possibilities of escape from this dilemma in the shape of eliminative dualism and noneliminative monism and argues for the conceptual advantages of the second over the first of these possibilities.     

“Know Whence you Came”: Psychoanalytic Theory,Queer Theory,and the Mixed-Race Experience

Deeply rooted U.S. cultural practices and legislative processes have facilitated the dissociation, erasure, and evasion of engagement with mixed-race subjectivities. As multiracial clinicians, we attempt to reexamine the discourse around race in psychoanalytic literature, questioning the process by which dominant monoracial norms have been constructed, reproduced, and codified as normal and acceptable. We propose that the absence of multiracial subjectivities from the psychoanalytic literature reflects a broader social discomfort with and cultural dissociation of the mixed-race experience. We further suggest that it is necessary to engage both analytically and queer-ly with the subjective experience of racial multiplicity—positing that multiracial subjectivities might best be understood as subjectivities that are “racially queer.”     

Boyhood Femininity,Gender Identity Disorder,Masculine Presuppositions,and the Anxiety of Regulation

This paper details the diagnostic discourse that has accumulated around feminine boys, including the traditional presuppositions of Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The GID discourse is examined for the ways in which it is built upon unquestioned beliefs about masculinity. Distinct from most modern considerations of gender, no effort has been made to critically theorize gender when thinking about feminine boys; masculinity is as masculinity was. Consequently, we are left with modes of diagnosis and treatment that are out of synch with modern social life, and a set of ideas that do not proceed from an adequate understanding of the range that is masculinity. New sustaining ideals are in play, and in accord with these ideals an argument is made for a new mode of psychotherapeutic address. The traditional individual trauma explanation for GID is questioned. Particular emphasis is given to the ways in which this traditional GID discourse fails to reckon with how masculinity is held in place by the strong arm of regulatory anxiety. A new position that incorporates a greater appreciation for the role of social trauma and melancholia is offered. It is argued that a theory that offers insight into the workings of melancholia as it builds the feminine boy affords a more robust set of ideas through which to contemplate the boy. In turn, we come upon a better avenue of psychotherapeutic action—one that does not employ behavioral strategies that reinforce social exclusion.     

Normative theories of argumentation: are some norms better than others?

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so.     

Tell Us More: Reading Comprehension,Engagement, and Conceptual Press Discourse

This study examines interactions between teachers and students during reading comprehension instruction to determine how certain patterns of teacher–student talk support student comprehension achievement and reading engagement. The central focus of the study is conceptual press discourse, a pattern of teacher response that includes requests for evidence, examples, clarification, and elaboration. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analysis of data from 21 fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms (495 students) indicated that in classrooms where teachers more frequently used discourse patterns that reduced conceptual press, students demonstrated weaker comprehension and engagement outcomes.     

Higher-Order Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentation

In a critical discussion, interlocutors can strategically maneuver by shading their expressed degree of standpoint commitment for rhetorical effect. When is such strategic shading reasonable, and when does it cross the line and risk fallacious derailment of the discussion? Analysis of President George W. Bush’s 2002–2003 prewar commentary on Iraq provides an occasion to explore this question and revisit Douglas Ehninger’s distinction between argumentation as “coercive correction” and argumentation as a “person-risking enterprise.” Points of overlap between Ehninger’s account and pragma-dialectical argumentation theory suggest avenues for harmonization of rhetorical and dialectical perspectives on argumentation. Out of this conceptual convergence comes theoretical resources for understanding strategic maneuvering, by accounting for ways that discussants exploit gaps between their externalized and actual “discussion attitude.” As such higher-order strategic maneuvering played a major role in the 2003 Iraq prewar “discourse failure,” perspicacious understanding of this particular argumentative maneuver carries practical, as well as theoretical import.