Reasoning Dialogues

When people argue with others in conversation, they make a variety of conversational moves: They make claims, ask for justification of others' claims, attack claims, and attack claims' justifications. The arrangement of these moves gives argumentation its characteristic shape. This article illustrates a proposed format for conversations of this type, and it reviews some findings about the way people understand and evaluate these conversations. The findings suggest that judgments of the arguers' burden depend not only on the content of their claims, but also on the conversation's structure. In addition, judgments of the strength of a justification—an arguer's evidence or explanation—are a function of the argument's setting.     

Justifying My Position in Your Terms: Cross-cultural Argumentation in a Globalized World

A community of minds has long been presumed to be a condition of possibility for genuine argumentative interactions. In part because of this disciplinary presupposition, argumentation scholars tend to exclude from their scope of inquiry conflict resolution among culturally heterogeneous and ideologically incompatible formations. Such a stance needs to be reexamined in view of recent developments in the on-going process of globalization. The unprecedented worldwide economic and financial integration has created for the first time a generalized interest across national and continental boundaries. The need to countercheck global market forces has given rise to calls for a global legal/ethical system or even a transnational public sphere. Non-Western interlocutors in general are willing to debate cross-cultural issues in Western terms. Increasingly, Western interlocutors are also seeking to justify Western positions in non-Western terms. This emerging situation renders it both necessary and possible to argue across the boundaries of communities that do not share the same cultural or rhetorical tradition. It also poses a host of theoretical and practical issues whose exploration and analysis should become a new focus of argumentation studies.     

Argument from Consequences and the Urge to Polarize

Polarization is a generalized feature of intellectual life. Few authors however have studied polarities as they actually occur in every day life and discourse. This paper proposes two hypotheses to account for the pervasiveness of polarities. The first relates to uncertainty. Almost everything that touches our lives is filled with irreducible uncertainty. As a rhetoric, polarization uses arguments from (future) consequences in order to manage the future. The second hypothesis relates to phenomenology: body and behavior incorporate tensions or dualistic properties which are easily reproduced in language and thinking. Polarized thinking helps people to imagine extremes so that they may better anticipate the spectrum of possibilities available for action. The article concludes with remarks on the dangers of (over)generalizing and universalizing particulars (or extremes) in polarity based argumentation.     

Rethinking the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization

This paper makes a case for a refined look at the so- called fallacy of hasty generalization by arguing that this expression is an umbrella term for two fallacies already distinguished by Aristotle. One is the fallacy of generalizing in an inappropriate way from a particular instance to a universal generalization containing a for all x quantification. The other is the secundum quid (in a certain respect) fallacy of moving to a conclusion that is supposed to be a universal generalization containing a for all x quantification while overlooking qualifications that have to be added to the more limited kind of generalization expressed in the premise. It is shown that these two fallacies relate to two different kinds of generalization.The classification of fallacious generalizations is based on a new theory of generalization that distinguishes three kinds of generalizations – the universal generalization of the for all x type, used in classical deductive logic, the inductive generalization, based on probability, and the presumptive generalization, which is defeasible, and allows for exceptions to a general rule. The resulting classification goes beyond a logic-oriented analysis by taking into account how a respondent may oppose a potentially fallacious generalizing move by falsifying it. Using a dialectical interpretation of premise-conclusion complexes, the paper outline a richer concept of generalizing argument moves embedded in a communicational reconstruction of the strategic uses of such moves in which two parties take part in an orderly dialectical exchange of viewpoints.     

Argument as Inquiry in a Postmodern Context

Argumentation is a form of communication, rather than an application of(formal) logic, and is used in communicative activity as a means forinquiry, although it is more typically thought of as bringing inquiry toclosure. Thus interpretation is an intrinsic and crucial aspect ofconversational (interactive) argumentation. In order to further thisunderstanding of argumentative activity, I propose a procedure forinterpretation that draws upon hermeneutic phenomenology. In response tocriticisms by argumentation theorists (and others) who understand thistradition as oriented to psychological, perceptual, or textual objects, Iargue that hermeneutic phenomenology supports methods for analysis ofpublic communicative activity. The resulting conception of thick argumentation responds to contemporary (postmodern) claims that argumentation valorizes univocity, stasis, and certainty at the expense ofthe pluralism, fluctuation, and range of epistemic results thatcharacterize discourse in the public sphere.     

The Fallaciousness of Threats: Character and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ad Baculum</Emphasis>

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.     

The Burden of Proof and Its Role in Argumentation

The notion of “the burden of proof” plays an important role in real-world argumentation contexts, in particular in law. It has also been given a central role in normative accounts of argumentation, and has been used to explain a range of classic argumentation fallacies. We argue that in law the goal is to make practical decisions whereas in critical discussion the goal is frequently simply to increase or decrease degree of belief in a proposition. In the latter case, it is not necessarily important whether that degree of belief exceeds a particular threshold (e.g., ‘reasonable doubt’). We explore the consequences of this distinction for the role that the “burden of proof” has played in argumentation and in theories of fallacy.     

The Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan: A Rhetoric of Ideological Pronouncement

One manifestation of argumentation is in critical discussions where people genuinely strive cooperatively to achieve critical decisions. Hence, argumentation can be recognized as the process of advancing, supporting, modifying, and criticizing claims so that appropriate decision makers may grant or deny adherence. This audience-centered definition holds the assumption that the participants must willingly engage in public debate and discussion, and their arguments must function to open a critical space and keep it open. This essay investigates `ideological pronouncement,' a kind of rhetoric that undermines and limits the possibility of critical discussion among target audiences, as an enemy of sound argumentation. First, the essential characteristics of sound argumentation are explained. Next, the typical characteristics of ideological rhetoric are described. At the same time, the Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan, a Japanese wartime moral education textbook, is examined as a paradigm case of ideological rhetoric. Third, three key pronouncements of the Cardinal Principles are outlined and discussed. Finally, implications from the critical discussion are drawn.     

Intersex(es) and Informed Consent: How Physicians' Rhetoric Constrains Choice

When a child is born with ambiguousgenitalia it is declared a psychosocialemergency, and the policy first proposed byJohn Money (Johns Hopkins University) andadapted by the American Academy of Pediatrics(and more broadly accepted in Canada, the U.K.,and Europe) requires determination ofunderlying condition(s), selection of gender,surgical intervention, and a commitment by allparties to accept the ``real sex' of thepatient, all no later than 18–24 months,preferably earlier. Ethicists have recentlyquestioned this protocol on several grounds:lack of medical necessity, violation ofinformed consent, uncertainty of standards ofsuccess, among others. This suggests that thefaults in the protocol can be addressed andimproved. Through a rhetorical approachinformed by Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca, thedisciplinary pathologization and reconstructionof the body are explored as incidents ofconstraining rhetoric that enact theirpersuasion upon the body of intersexedchildren. This essay shows that thepresumptions, judgments, values, andpresuppositions brought by the physician to theidentification, diagnosis, and curativeprocedures create a network of constraints thatexclude alternative possibilities. The resultis a situation wherein parents, physicians, andintersexed patients have ``no choice' but toaccept the medical treatment guidelines.     

E Contrario Reasoning: The Dilemma of the Silent Legislator

Summary This contribution offers an evaluation of e contrario reasoning in which the interpretation of a legal rule is based on the context of the law system (contextual e contrario reasoning). A model is presented which will show all the explicit and implicit elements of the argument at work and will also point out how these distinct parts are interrelated. By questioning the content and justificatory power of these elements, the weak spots in the argument can be laid bare. It will be argued that e contrario reasoning inevitably requires a dubious argumentative step, which renders the argument intrinsically weak. The model is applied to a European lawsuit on French cheese.