Bias in argumentation – do’s and don'ts. Mostly don’ts.

1.

“What if someone does say: ‘Why should I believe anything you have to say about God? You’re a Christian, you believe in God, you’ve been influenced, you’ve been biased’. Listen that closely: notice what it’s saying? It’s basically saying ‘I will not accept any theistic arguments that come from someone who believes in God’, in other words, in someone who believes those arguments to be valid [mini chuckle]. Equivalently, that’s saying ‘I will not accept any arguments offered by anyone who does not agree with my atheistic position’. When you phrase it that way, you see how this argument is truly fallacious.”

Interesting analysis! And I say ‘interesting’ confessedly ironical because, well, there’s no argumentation going on. Rewind, rewind. So the proponent says “I say that God this and that!”, after which, the opponent says “Why should I believe this and that? You believe in God”. Unless one of them has been mislead by the forceful use of English in the phrase “…that God”, these sprightly arguers are not actually arguing about the “this and that” part, but about the “God” part. Formalizing things a little bit, it would look like this

A: G, G(a,b) [God exists and he has property a and b]

B: ?G [How do you know that God exists?]

Although the miraculous reconstruction (what follows after “Equivalently …”) would get one to think otherwise, the opponent is not, in this situation, supporting his doubts by means of asserting “You are a theist”, but merely stating the obvious: “You believe in God”. The “I will not accept any arguments offered by anyone who does not …” is fully Mr. (wait, let me check his real name) Grammastola contribution.

So the “truly fallacious” retort is not even an argument, let alone an ad hominem (because, as we will see, this is the aim of this right-from-the-fauteuil lecture)

2.

“The personal viewpoint of the person offering argument is not relevant especially if they’re trying to offer argument for their position”

Let me just copy-paste this, to make sure it’s real:

“The personal viewpoint of the person offering argument is not relevant especially if they’re trying to offer argument for their position”

It’s real. I’m not even sure how to resolve this. It feels like just restating it the third time will do the trick…

Since A, the theist, is trying to offer argument for his position, his personal viewpoint is not only at issue but it is the clickity-clack which will determine if A and B will engage in argumentation or not. It is only if A externalizes his or her position that argumentation can take place. If A says: “I say God has property a and b” , and B says: “Pfff, I won’t even bother to refute a or b because God doesn’t exist” – they both externalized their positions and it is only now that they can proceed to the subsequent (real) discussion of “Does God exist?”.

But really, aside from this irreal butchering interpretation of Mr. Grammastola’s point, is there even possible such dispute? I believe not.

• If B knows about A that he believes in God, and he is not ready to accept this, then he couldn’t genuinely start arguing, since a) there would be no common ground to start from and b) he would not expect a critical reaction from A’s part.
• If B does not know about A that he believes in God and he only finds out when A uses “God” as the subject of his standpoint, than his answer is quite legitimate: I am not prepared to accept a and b because I do not believe in “God” in the first place (?G). No fallacy.

3.

Have you spotted that? Tell me you did. It’s not just me, right? You did. It’s the never before heard of ad hominem: “ You’re ugly!” Most often, I guess, it occurs in discussions regarding the existence of God: “God loves us” “You’re ugly!”, “God exists” “You’re ugly”. Ok, back to the case.

“If being influenced or biased is sufficient grounds for dismissing someone arguments or claims than we should automatically reject any arguments that are offered by someone who admits to be a fan of prominent atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Michael Sarver. Why? Because they’ve been influenced, by those authors; in fact, … they’ve been strongly influenced”

So, what Mr. Grammastola is saying is that: “If we are committed to the idea that bias is sufficient ground for dismissing a claim, than we should be committed to treating any arguments from Christopher Hitchens wannabe-s in a dismissive manner.” That either does not follow (maybe I’ll accept an argument about the best sauce for macaroni&cheese from such person) or is simply a re-statement (if “any” is “any about God”, than being a declared atheist in a conversation is not too different from being a declared Chr. Hitchens wannabe, so he’s practically saying: If theists don’t love atheists, theists don’t love Chr. Hitchens fans. Well …

Ok, let me draw a biiiiig line here. Literally.

What Mr. Grammastola is saying would be right if, in an argumentative situation, one would attack the other party of something obvious from the very beginning. If A predicates something about God, he is – in that situation – noticeably committed to believing in God. If B joins the dialogue and says “I do not agree with your claim because you believe in God” he is either terribly not paying attention, or he is actually saying: “I will not engage in a discussion about what you’ve asserted about God, because I do not believe in God in the first place” (which is an acceptable declarative in the opening stage of a discussion).

I cannot see anything fallacious in this refutation. B is being reasonable enough when not accepting A’s claim, moreover since he is not asserting anything (that a and b are false, for instance), he is just declaring his possition by means of a rhetorical question: Why should I believe a and b etc.

Tags: bias argumentation fallacy ad hominem God

The Rhetoric of Rhetoric

 

 

Title: The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication

Author: Wayne C. Booth

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

Year: 2004

Get it from Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

We all like Wayne Booth. He’s that friendly, cool, unstereotyped, downbeat theoretician whose books one could read before bedtime, as well as in the library – with one’s notes-taking tools all cranked up or not. He’s witty – and, at times, merciless –, he has those juicy phrases, and he definitely knows his way around fellow theorists. Here he is. Oh, wait, sorry, that’s the fake Wayne Booth from Facebook. Here’s the real Wayne Booth:

Is that him on the cover? Never mind. Moving on.

Let’s take a short, more serious look at this book. As far as I can tell, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: the Quest for Effective Communication (2004) lays somewhere outside the general spotlight, which I think is mainly concerned with the widely acknowledged The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). The major aim in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric is to consider, then scrutinize historically, then judge the status of this tremendously controversial art or technique, or “subject matter” called, you guessed it, rhetoric. “It’s hard to think of any academic subject with a history more confusing than that of rhetorical studies”, he begins. The aftermath of over two millennia of thought regarding rhetoric is certainly not promising, and that despite recent ‘rejuvenations’ of the subject. Short interlude for this catalogue of dim views on rhetoric:

…propaganda, bombast, jargon, gibberish, rant, guff, twaddle, grandiloquence, purple prose, sleaze, crud, bullshit, crap, ranting, gutsy gambit, palaver, fluff, prattle, scrabble, harangue, tirade, verbiage, balderdash, rodomontade, flapdoodle, nonsense… (Booth, 2004: 11)

The “major rescuers” of the 20^th Century (as he speaks of Chaïm Perelman, Kenneth Burke, Stephen Toulmin and others) have done a good job opening our eyes after the many sorts of positivisms which flourished starting at the end of 19^th Century, but they are still yet to be discovered as “universalist” – i.e. holding to the spirit of “everything is rhetoric”. On the other hand, widening the meaning of the term so that it spreads over all forms of communication doesn’t seem like a wise thing to do. It would seem that, no matter how one engages in the study of the subject (which would make one a “rhetorologist” – I’ll have to say that is an unfortunate morphology), defective approaches are somewhere nearby. “So the point of this ‘manifesto’ will be both to celebrate the recent flowering of studies and to lament their confinement to a tiny garden in a far corner of our academic and public world”.

Although I generally agree with the main ‘theme’, I’m not that comfortable with the approach. First of all, the main concept proposed in the book (the subject of the ‘manifesto’) is something coined “listening- rhetoric” (abbreviated LR). As much as this feels as a safe ethical ground for proposing further reconsiderations of rhetoric, the definition is rather puzzling:

Listening-rhetoric: The whole range of communicative arts for reducing misunderstanding by paying full attention to opposing views (Booth, 2004: 10)

 

Besides plainly referring to the dialectical corner of communication (not necessarily in the normative-critical sense, but to “dialogue”), the term seems misleadingly poor defined. The deeper this concept is being explained, the more you come to think the author actually means “dialectic”. Someone engaged in LR is described as thinking: “I am not just seeking a truce; I want to pursue the truth behind our differences.” or “Though I am quite sure that my opponent is determined to ignore my case, I will listen to his, hoping to discover some way to engage him in genuine dialogue”. (Oh, you mean dialogue…)

Secondly, we are presented with a threefold division of reality, conveniently defined: Reality One, Reality Two, Reality Three. The first one is made out of “Permanent, Unchangeable, Non-Contingent Truth”. Evidently, rhetoric has nothing to do with it. Reworded after the authors eerie words:

I must confess here, as much of my previous work reveals, that I am strongly on the ‘‘Platonic’’ side: torturing a child to death for the sheer pleasure of it is always wrong, and that fact will never be changed by any form of rhetoric.

I think I could have got the picture with the ol’ aprioristic explanation instead of this atrociously explicit description of one’s tenet. Anyway, the second reality is – well, Reality Two, but - “Realities Changeable but Still Not Created by Rhetoric: The History of How Nature Moves from Contingency to Contingency”. Ok, so the non-analytic truths about the world are rhetoric-free. Then what? Reality Three: Contingent Realities about Our Lives: Created Realities that are then Subject to Further Change”. Remember that Law of the Internet, frequently known as “Godwin’s Law”, which stipulated that “As a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches”? Wayne Booth’s examples of rhetoric-born realities starts with: “Hitler’s rhetoric – along with the rhetoric of many others – made, or created, World War II.” What do yo know …

An thirdly, I am not that sure about his attack on science. Wayne Booth corners the “strictly scientific” domain with the claim that it cannot escape the usage of rhetoric. He snappily illustrates:

The impossibility of escape is much more striking when we look at ‘‘strictly scientific’’ papers addressed to fellow scientists. Consider the famous essay on the double helix by James D. Watson and Francis Crick: two pages that transformed biological studies. In that report what do we find? Actually scores of rhetorical choices

They open, for example, with ‘‘We wish to suggest a structure’’ that has ‘‘novel features which are of
considerable biological interest.’’ (My emphasis, of course)

Why didn’t they say, instead: ‘‘We shall here demonstrate a startling, totally new structure that will shatter everyone’s conception of the biological world’’? Well, obviously their rhetorical choice presents an ethos much more attractive to most cautious readers than does my exaggerated alternative

A basic distinction between theoretical object and theoretical language is enough to notice that, even if making use of rhetoric – as it does, I guess there’s no controversy here –, “scientism” is not to be assaulted in this terms. Science could dress itself up in ceremonious rhetoric without there being any problem of the nature of its object: absolute objectivity of natural sciences’ truth could stand aside its method of presentation; which, by the way, takes WB’s criticism very far away from LR.

Aside from these three issues, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric is a nice read.  Handling the book, I think, should be done cum grano salis.

Tags: Wayne C. Booth The Rhetoric of Rhetoric The Rhetoric of Fiction positivism listening rhetoric scientists rhetoric argumentation persuasionn

Sloppy English = Sloppy Politics?

 

Usually, we think of language as a tool with which our mind (brain) operates. From a representational view, language is like post-it notes on things: we designate combination of sounds that conventionally stand for the objects in reality. Plain and simple. But what if it’s the other way around? Our on-the-scene reporter George Orwell expresses these thoughts:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes; it is not due simply to the bad influences of this or that writer. But an effect can become  a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on infinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is fool of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits, one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first-step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

George Orwell, “Politics and The English language” in A collection of Essays,

New York: Doubleday & Co. 1953

Does bad language equal the bad habit of unclear political thought? Shouldn’t it suppose to be the other way around? I’m just throwing questions into the air … 

 

Tags: George Orwell Essays language thought political thought bad English

Concept of the week#3: Chaim Perelman’s “universal audience”

Their New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969) is such a cluster of concepts, I could keep up this blog for three months with nothing but their fairytales. The universal audience is arguably one of the most important. First, let me just outline the theoretical background of its appearance.

“The very nature of argumentation is opposed to necessity and self-evidence,” wrote Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, “since no one deliberates where solution is necessary or argues against what is self-evident”. While this affirmation itself may seem axiomatic, philosophers seemed to systematically neglect it. “Positivistic empiricism”, as they name it (mostly referring to the analytic school of thought), could not account for value judgments such as those used in legal reasoning. This meant that arguing about values is (“logically”) irrational and the term “reasonable decision” is actually – technically speaking – meaningless. “No, it isn’t!” utter spiritedly the two Belgian authors.

“All argumentation aims at gaining the adherence of minds” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969: 14). While this sets argumentation aside formal thinking in (axiomatic) systems, it need not mean that justification (as opposed to demonstration) is irrational or based on interests, passions and prejudices.

The term audience should not be understood factually; rather, it is an arguer-generated “mental picture”:

AUDIENCE = “the ensemble of those whom the speaker wishes to influence by his argumentation. Every speaker thinks, more or less consciously, of those he is seeking to persuade; these people form the audience to whom is speech is adressed” (1969: 19)

= “The audience, as visualized by one undertaking to argue, is always a more or less systematized construction. The essential consideration for the speaker […] is that his construction of the audience should be adequate to the occasion” (idem)

Ok, now let’s consider the concept of “universal audience”.

Since argumentation is aimed at increasing the adherence of audience, a particular audience is always an inconvenience. One could, in principle, know all of those who compose his audience, but this sort of situation occurs all too rarely. “Argumentation aimed exclusively at a particular audience has the drawback that the speaker, by the very fact of adapting to the views of his listeners, might rely on arguments that are foreign or even directly opposed to what is acceptable to persons other than those he is presently addressing” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969) An inadequate anticipation of the audience (due to ignorance or unexpectedness) is, obviously, the least one could want. That is why, speakers often aim for the “highest point of agreement”: the universal audience.

UNIVERSAL AUDIENCE = the highest possible (in number and quality) mental construction of an audience, to which a speaker addresses his argumentation in order to persuade the (real) particular one.

“Argumentation addressed to a universal audience must convince the reader that the reasons adduced are of a compelling character, that they are self-evident, and possess an absolute and timeless validity, independent of local or historical contingencies” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969: 32)

Since argumentation starts form accepted knowledge and shared premises, its ideal of persuasiveness must take into account the totality of these instances. However, as P & O-T observe, “everyone constitutes the universal audience from what he knows of his fellow men, in such a way as to transcend the few oppositions he is aware of. Each individual, each culture, has thus its own conception of the universal audience” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969: 33)

Tags: Chaim Perelman Olbrechts-Tyteca The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation universal audience, audience, persuasion, convincing

Disadvantages of the Overkill

After the torturing logic the last post was, I’ll just let the reactions speak for themselves this time, you ssssssnakes.

“I’m glad that no one told her that Kirk Cameron is basically a sub-Stephen Baldwin joke at this point. If she knew that no one actually took him seriously, she wouldn’t have been able to deliver this so powerfully. It’s her belief that what Kirk Cameron says matters that makes the whole thing work. Wait until she sees Fireproof”

“I’m wearing an ankh. Your argument is invalid.”

“you had me at sssssssssssnake”

“I’d like to give her the ol’ 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days if ya know what I mean”

“You’d like to force her and her friend to have sex with you in exchange for a poorly performed back-alley abortion? You have quite a disturbing (though admirably specific) fetish.”

“I’m trying to make a Vlog the Impaler joke but her spiral perm is hypnotizing me.”

“there is something about they way the word “bullshit” is spoken with a Romanic tongue that sounds beautiful and ugly at the same time”

“No joke. This woman needs to run the liberal left here, what’s left of it. (Get it? Left? I know. I’ll stop.) Because she is doing exactly what needs to be done: tearing down and intelligently mocking, ignorant point by ludicrous point, this whole ridiculous farce of “belief” and doing what is right according to one religious zealot’s thinking, who happens to be a grown up church-going child star like a Lil Lebowski Urban Achiever”

“I want to marry this girl, even if she lures me into The Hostel and has me tortured to death.”

“Leave Charles Darwin ALONE! (sob) HE was A HUMAN! (gurgle) LEAVE HIM A L O N E!!!!””

sssssssource: http://videogum.com/

How can an icky syllogism ruin your lecture

This video comes from YoungPhilosophers.org, where, as they present themselves, the “SUNY Fredonia philosophy department invite[s] young philosophers (persons who have recently received their Ph.D. in philosophy) to give campus talks. They allow no comment or feedback whatsoever, they post everything for download, so I stole the toys and brought ‘em home to play.

Here’s the handout. The crazy part is, I personally agree with his conclusion … but on waay different terms.

1. Obviously enough, Mr. Tucker’s syllogism is imitating what is known as a modus tollens. If P, then Q. But Q is false, therefore P is false (could not have been the case). With arid notations:

P1: If God exists, then there is a good reason to allow every evil that does in fact exist. P2: There are no good reasons to allow much of the evil in this world. C1: Therefore, God does not exist. [P1, P2]

Before anything, let us plunge into some religious considerations. Why should one not ask oneself this: how come it is a contradiction between the fact that God is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnibenevolent (henceforth, 3-O) and the existence of Evil. It is a pretty reasonable question. I am not a master in theodicy, but as far as I know, this “it cannot be” part is actually attackable: “The 3-O’s do not imply the non-existence of Evil, and moreover, the existence of Good implies the existence of Evil” (it is as simple as this: Platinga’s defense). I’m not saying either of the thesis is true. But Mr. Tucker seems super-confident when neglecting and not mentioning neither of these. Be that as it may, we will accept his starting point.

I.

Now let us look closer at the syllogism. If God exists, then there is a good reason to … One of the obvious questions is: good reason to whom? Who is the “raisonneur” behind this reason? Who is doing the allowing based on it ?Good reasons according to humans? Well, if the definition of God is 3-O, and since these reasons relate to His actions, I’m assuming he’s the one having/giving and, of course, receiving the reasons. In order to be “good reasons”” (or simply “reasons”) that thing, whatever it may be, besides the object“… for” (I had a good reason for not diving into the pool) and the subject (It was me who thought of the reasons for not diving).

Therefore: “a good reason” could not but refer to God’s good reason (as we will se, this matters)

II.

Now let us look even closer at the syllogism. If God exists, then there is a good reason to allow every evil that does in fact exist. Again, according to Mr. Tucker’s definition of God as 3-O, if God is Omnibenevolent, and Omnipotent, normally he will not be at the origins of no form of Evil-as-we-know. When the baby is taking the shot, he thinks that is Evil-as-he-knows. Evidently, to Mommy, it is not Evil-as-She-Knows. So the Existing Evil we are talking about is not Evil in the eyes of God (since he wouldn’t do something he would consider Evil – the third O being the case). Which means we have two assumptions: a) if he (only) allows, then he is not at “the producer of”, he is not at the origins, b) if he does, than it is not Evil-in-his-eyes.

Of course, in a normal situation, this would close any discussion: Evil exist because something else exists in the world (Satan, Free Will, Unworthy Mommies) which produce it and God thinks allowing it is not Evil-in-His-Eyes. Any reasonable person would have said: “That’s it, goodbye”. But, again, Mr. Tucker doesn’t even consider his assumptions.

Ok. If these “now let’s look closer”-s (I & II) are true: if the reasons do belong to God (I), and the Existing Evil is in his eyes … Non-Evil (I), Mr. Tucker’s syllogism actually goes as follows.

P1: If God exists, then He has a good reason to allow Existing Evil (namely, he sees it as Non-Evil)

P2: God has no good reasons to allow much of the evil in this world

C1: Therefore, God does not exist.

You see it too, right? First of all, if we say, “God has a good reason to allow Existing Evil”, the presupposition behind this is that … God exists. If we say “God has no good reasons to allow much of the Existing Evil”, again, this entails that … God exists. From these two, we arrive to the conclusion that … God does not exist. In the original second premise, the ambiguity is so vague, is practically impossible for the listeners to make something of it. There are no good reasons to allow much of the evil in this world. Again, good reasons according to whom (because if it’s God, then he cannot appear as non-existent in the conclusion)? who makes the decision if there is or isn’t a reason (because if it’s God, then he cannot appear as non-existent in the conclusion)? There are no good reasons to allow (isn’t God supposed to do the allowing? how are we going to declare it non-existent in the conclusion, holding P2 as true?), what do you mean much of, are there two different species of “motivated” evil? so on and so forth…

So, although the speaker pronounces the good form of the argument, the content is crappy. P2 and C1 cannot both be true. If C1 is true, than God does not exist and this cannot be derived from his … existing reason-giving processes and allowing processes.

One last exercise: imagine it as an enthymeme of the form (P2) God has no good reasons to allow X, therefore (C1) God does not exist. This works if both C1 and P2 are true at the same time. But if God does not exist, how can he have “no good reasons”?

PS:notice that in the analogy, the mommy has the reasons (I) and “she thinks it’s best for him” (II).

PPS: evidently, the question with the Noseeam inference is whether or not “we can find” the reasons. But this has nothing to do with the incompatibility between C1 and P2.

LATER EDIT

But the truth is, even if we skip these difficulties, and pretend that reason can exist without someone to … take them as reasons, and allow something on the basis of their … reason-providing, this syllogism is not actually the simple modus ponens it seems to be. So let’s try to eviscerate something from it.

In earthy logic the idea goes as follows: “Well, Mr. God better have a good reason for it! He doesn’t? Baam! Gone …” Remember what I have told you about the unaccounted for 3-O’s <=> non-Evil? Here it is: “If God exists, then there is a good reason to allow every evil that does in fact exist”. You can’t see it? Well, that’s because what Mr. Tucker crammed into one premise-ish proposition (of a very ambiguous conditional form – it is not very clear of what implication we are talking about) is actually a half-page thinking line. First of all if a non-3-O’s God would exist (that is, if God would be “some spooky incompetent father figure who doesn't give a shit”, to quote George Carlin) there would be no need for “a good reason” to explain Evil – it would not contradict his all-prowess. But let us skip this overly pragmatic consideration and get right to the thorny part of:

It reads: “If there is Evil, either God has a Reason, or God doesn’t exist”. What fitted into the what seemed as a gigantic modifier, were actually 3 propositions. Rhetoric is starting to sound better and better, doesn’t it?

So, further on, since (8^th Grade defined) Evil “does in fact exist”, therefore the part is true. But since there is P2: “Actually no reason R” , therefore God does not exist.

Now this is of valid form indeed (more precisely, it’s a tautology – whatever truth values we would assign to its components, it would be true). After an hour of Popeye-like skibaribaripapaaaa, we managed to understand what this young philosopher is trying to say, and, guess what, this argument form is valid. You can check it out right here. Now, does this mean his argument a good one? As far as logic is concerned, “Hell Yeah” – notice the irony. From a dialectical point of view, does it provide anything new for the rapidly run over starting point that it cannot be the case that God exists and reason doesn’t? Namely, thatwhich is the same as this (it is false that God exists and The Reason doesn’t)?

So this is how an icky syllogism can ruin your lecture, Young Philosophers.

My brain is dead.

Tags: syllogsim, modus tollens, propositional logic, the problem of evil Chris Tucker YoungPhilosophers.org

Moderately reluctant or tricked up atheist?

 

Top 10 overexploited examples in Arg. Theory

 

If I think and think and think about it, I would say the reason why philosophers choose to re-use (actually, it’s not a re-use, so much as an act of “get that beaten up to death example and just smack him one more time ‘cause he’s such a damn good one”), what was I saying?, oh, so the motives behind this are mostly didactical if you ask me. If looks could kill, these examples would take a dirty look at our scholars and ask for a raise, if not for retirement. But they are easy to learn, easy to remember, easy to understand, easy to copy+paste, easy to (re)explain. So here’s my list. If you have some, don’t hesitate to share.  

 

#10

Searle’s example  of the difference between propositional content and illocutionary force :

1. Sam smokes habitually.
2. Does Sam smoke habitually?
3. Sam, smoke habitually!
4. Would that Sam smoked habitually! (Searle, 1969: 22)

The point of this example is to show that the propositional content of a speech act has an independent function within the speech act, namely, that of “referring” (Sam) and “predicating” (to smoke habitually), and that different illocutions can be made with the same propositional content (assertions, questions, orders, expressions of wish etc). Of course, the propositional content can occur only within an illocution, but he holds some sort of pragmatic autonomy in that it is not modified by the type of the illocution.

 

#9 

Austin’s first example of a performative speech act, Grice’s first example of conversational implicature.

Austin’s performative: “I do (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife) – uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony” (Austin, 1962: p.5)

This simple phrase, I do, was the first to open Austin’s theory of speech acts as utterances that “do not ‘describe’ or ‘report’ or constate anything, are not ‘true or false’; and the uttering of the sentence is, or is a part of, the doing of an action”

Grice’s implicature: “Suppose A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job and B replies: Oh, quite well, i think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet. […] The answer might be any one of such things as that C is the sort of person likely to yield to the temptation provided by his occupation” (Grice, 1989: 24)

Grice noted in a later passage: “It is clear that whatever B implied, suggested, meant in this example is distinct from what B said, which was simply that C had not been to prison yet. I wish to introduce, as terms of art, the verb implicate and the related nouns implicature (cf. implying ) and implicatum (cf. what is implied )”

 

#8

The guy at the bank example of circular reasoning (or petitio principii – though not quite the same thing, the two concepts are often cited together). This dialogue is present both in Hamblin, 1970: 34, and in Walton, 1995: 50/207. So, a man speaks to his bank manager: “My friend Jones will vouch for me.” “How do we know he can be trusted?” “Oh, I assure you he can”.

 

#7

One of the earliest example of Sophist’s lessons, given to someone whose friend is accused of murder:

“If he is small in stature, he must argue in his defense that it is unlikely that so weak a person committed the crime. If he is of sturdy build, he can argue that it is improbable that so substantial a person did the deed, since he would be suspected straight-away” (I forgot the source)

This example is usually cited to illustrate how sophists claimed they can argue persuasively for (or/and against) any given subject. After pro-argumentation, they would engage in contra-argumentation regarding the same subject.

 

#6

This dog is yours, It is a father. Therefore, the dog is your father.

This example was used by Aristotle as a language-dependent fallacy, and it’s taken from Plato’s Euthydemus Dionysodorus demonstrates his debating skills on one of the spectators, Ctesippus:

If you will answer my questions, said Dionysodorus, I will soon extract the same admissions from you, Ctesippus. You say that you have a dog.

Yes, a villain of a one, said Ctesippus.

And he has puppies?

Yes, and they are very like himself.

And the dog is the father of them?

Yes, he said, I certainly saw him and the mother of the puppies come together.

And is he not yours?

To be sure he is.

Then he is a father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your father, and the puppies are your brothers.

(298d-299a)

In a recent article ("Aristotle, the Fallacy of Accident and the Nature of Predication: A Historical Inquiry," Journal of the History of Philosophy [1988], 5-24), Aníbal Bueno has provided the Aristotelian analysis: "'the dog' is the subject, 'father' the accident and 'yours' the attribute. The fallacy consists in asserting that the attribute 'yours', which is true of the subject 'dog', is also true of the accident 'father'. What is true of the dog qua individual is not true of it qua father." "Of course, some of Aristotle's examples can also be explained in terms of other logical mistakes. Thus the famous dog argument exploits the ambiguity of the possessive pronoun 'yours'. 'The dog is yours' is an incomplete expression that can, if completed in different ways, convey a number of different relations. In the argument, it is an elliptic way of saying 'The dog is your property'. If the premiss is fully stated, we get a valid argument with the truistic conclusion, 'The father is your property'" (pp. 10-11). One can also explain (D13) as a fallacy of composition by calling attention to the fact that Dionysodorus has deviously subtracted  from the  clause and thus left "yours'' positioned beside "father"

source of this paragraph

 

#5

We should take the umbrella. Or do you want to get wet?

I have yet to find a book written by the two Dutch philosophers Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst in which this phrase isn’t cited (with slight variations). It embodies an implicit (and indirect) speech act of supporting the proposal (we should do X) with an argument presented as a rhetorical question (since we do not want to get wet, in case it rains).

 

#4

The King of France is bald

I’m not sure where do the roots of this sentence lay. I know Russell uses it quite often in his theory of descriptions but I’d have my doubts that he is the inventing father of it. Anyway, the question Russell tries to answer is: since France is a republic, is the proposition: true, false or nonsense? More simply, how come that we understand improper descriptions of the form “the X” without X actually existing: “the first man on Mars is gay”, “the 46th President of USA is Chinese”, “The King of France is Bald” etc. If these are taken as false, than their opposites should be taken as true – Law of Excluded Middle being given­; But “The first man on Mars is not gay” seems equally odd, and hardly qualifiable as true. Are they meaningless? Well, it seems so, but the fact is, we can understand them with no particular problem which means we comprehend their referring. This means they cannot be totally meaningless. Russell’s answer?

Good luck!

 

#3

Have you stopped beating your wife?

This is what is called “the fallacy of many questions”. Sometimes, this is called a “loaded question”. This fallacy appears in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, and definitely is one of the points scored by the Greek philosopher. Needless to say, the man who is supposed to answer the question (which usually belogns to some greatly accusative lawyer) hasn’t touched his spouse.

 

#2

This statement is false

If "This sentence is false" is true, then it is true and what it says is the case; but what it says is that it is false, hence it is false. This means that, although written in perfect English, with no errors, we cannot assign truth values to sentences of this type (that is, not without putting forward a contradiction).

But this raises serious questions regarding Mr. #4’s Law of Excluded middle, since this statement seems neither true nor false.

Nonetheless, some logicians noticed that, since every proposition embodies her own assertion of truth (“The cat is on the mat” and “It is true that the cat is on the mat” are virtually the same thing … BTW, this example is also present in Austin, as an early example of a “constative”)

#1

 

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therfore, Socrates is mortal

Is there anything left to say about this classic, ubiquitous, time-honoured Barbara which reminded us, much of a muchness, that Socrates is dead and gone?

However, agreement about the nature of this deduction is not without its problems. First of all, despite common belief, this syllogism did not belong to Aristotle, whose theory of logic in Analytics concerned categorical syllogisms; these syllogisms were meant to be built out of categorical statements, statements that relate to categories, or species – so to speak, because it was Aristotle’s belief that only in this manner they were a tool for Science (Aristotle’s Organon means tool). Socrates is not a species. Of course, the natural answer to this is that Socrates is a category of its own, in other words, a class with only one entity.

In A System of Logic (1843), J. S. Mill disoriented our classic view by rethinking the syllogism thus: if we know that “All men are mortal” we actually know that Socrates is mortal because we couldn’t have known that “All men are mortal” without including one of them. So, Mill averred, every argument is question-begging. Of course J. S. Mill had its reasons for stating this. His conception of knowledge was diametrically opposed to Aristotle’s: while the former stated that (scientific) knowledge came from the empirical world, the latter claimed that “all our knowledge comes from knowledge” and that some self-evident primary truths (called “first principles”) are the basis of all knowledge. One of the answers to this is that, the Barbara syllogism is not making an advancement of (true, scientific) knwoledge, but merely, restating things – so declaring hypotheses and conclusions in a more mundane (dialectical) set-up of “acceptance”.

 

Tags: argumentation theory examples begging the question circular reasoning Aristotle John Langshaw Austin John R. Searle H. P. Grice circular reasoning liar's paradox fallacy of many questions theory of descriptions Russell implicit speech act speech act performative sophism Douglas Walton

Concept of the week: Walton’s dialogue and dialogue types

The idea that dialogues should be divided into dialogue types was first introduced in Walton, 1989. The term used at that moment was “types of argumentative dialogue” – which is actually more explicit than the one we use now. Generally, the term dialogue is not on the controversy-list of scholars (assuming there is such a list). Walton himself produced quite simple definitions of it:

DIALOGUE (or conversation) = “is a sequence of exchanges of messages or speech acts between two (or more) participants” (Walton, 1989: 3)

“a conventionalized framework of goal-directed activity in which two participants interact verbally by taking turns to perform speech acts. […] The various speech acts are linked together in a sequence that has a purpose and direction as the dialogue proceeds” (Walton, 1995 : 98)

“In the new dialectic, a dialogue is conventionalized, purposive joint activity between two speech partners. This abstract definition of dialogue is applied to different types of ‘joint activities’ by means of dialogue types” (Walton, 2007b)

“five main characteristics of any dialogue containing argumentation can be identified: the issue, the viewpoints of the participants, the characteristic of civility [politeness], the opposition of viewpoints, and the use of arguments” (Walton, 2006: 173)

This being the genre, the species Walton is interested in are the ones in which argumentation occurs. Obviously enough, dialogues do not contain only arguments. “But argumentation is our central focus here, and we restrict the treatment here to contexts of argumentation. The contexts identified will be defined as structures in which an argument is embedded, as used in a wider passage of discourse” (Walton, 1995: 98)

One step further, the term “dialogue type” is also quite self-explanatory.

TYPE OF DIALOGUE = “a context or setting in which argumentation occurs in everyday argumentation” (Walton, 1995: 98), “these structures are called normative models, meaning that they stipulate how an argument should go as an ideal conversation exchange where two parties reason together for some common purpose” (idem).

Ok, ok, but what is the point of dividing general dialogue into different small types? According to Walton’s theory of fallacies, “often, with fallacies and other critical errors, the underlying problem is a subtle, undetected shift from one type of dialogue to another – often it is from a critical discussion to another type” (Walton, 1995: 100).

This means that we have to evaluate an argument as correct or incorrect, relevant or irrelevant, by means of seeing the big picture, so to speak, that is, examining the argumentative move(s) made by the participant(s) and see if they violate the standards implied by or generated from the context in which it occurs. Consequently, there are at least two complementary theoretical outcomes: a) first, we will have (some of the) fallacies recognizable as types of illicit dialectical shifts from one type of dialogue to another (remember Nick Naylor’s “you should be ashamed of yourself”?), b) second, we will have (some of the) contexts supporting argumentative moves which in a critical discussion would count as fallacious. In an eristic dialogue, the “argumentative standard” is set at its lowest rank – this means it’s made mostly out goddamns and other pieces of bad language. Of course, besides a) and b), the concept serves other purposes, but I think this is basic.

Down here, we have the ubiquitous table of dialogue types. I will present and explain them in my next review on one of Walton’s works.

(Walton, 2006: 183)

Tags: Douglas Walton, dialogue, dialog, types of dialogue, the new dialectic, dialectical shift, persuasion dialogue

When cartoons retort

Jake and Charlie Ep. 2: arguing outside the books

The most visited question in Argumentation Theory (capitals for an all-encompassing meaning) must be the one related to the/that real-life, debate-winning, well-grounded, well-founded, in...con..tro..ver...tible – incontrovertible!, all-suasive Argument (capitals for absoluteness). Of course, many theories have many ideals of reasonableness and looking way back, Aristotle’s account in Topics and Analytics seems like Ice Age business today. I think Stephen Toulmin was the first to divide approaches of reasonableness into “anthropo-relativistic” – roughly, the ones that relate their ideal with the characteristics of the audience­­ – and “geometric” – again, roughly, the ones that relate their ideal with the characteristics of a formal language. The pragma-dialectical approach dubbed her vision of “critical” (or dialectical) reasonableness – since it relates to norms of conducting a critical discussion. (Ah, who am I fooling? I have absolutely no book with me or near me. I’m reference-less. Anyhow, I’m going on with this post)

Aside from this frequently tackled and desired for “main part of the play”, another one – way, way smaller and less sought-after – is the bit-part question of “how can I apply/express argumentation theory in everyday situations?” I will take an example with our friends from Episode 1.

Charlie is at the supermarket with his friend Jake. They start a conversation about which sauce or wine should they choose for the dinner party next Sunday, or any other conversation about any other expressed opinion. The discussion heats up and Charlie commits a fallacy. His says:

"Psychologists repeatedly postulated that eyeglass wearers like you are lousy wine-pickers. Plus, if you disagree with the wine I’ll pick, I will smack you in the face with it. Plus, all the wines I have chosen before have been glittering successes at those parties which we both know I have never been”.

The problem of "ba-BAAM!" argumentation

I give you this text. It is not a funny dummy - it is a real argument found on a real forum and (I'm guessing) written by a real person.

Free Will is always used as an explanation as to why God cannot stop evil since he is omnipotent, omniscient, and good.

I can prove this argument to be false. There is no such thing as Free Will. Human beings are already slaves. We are slaves to our genetic programming (the combination of the sperm and egg from our parents) and our environmental programming (experiences and nutrients from conception until death).

These two elements dictate who we are and the choices we make in life. We cannot make decisions that defy this programming. At any one moment in our lives when faced with a choice the decision we make is completely dependent on our genetic programming and environmental programming which has been layered on top of the genetic programming chronologically.

Ergo we are slaves to that programming, ergo we do not have Free Will.

So if God exists as Christian thought has defined him and he is good, omnipotent, and omniscient, then he would be compelled to step in and stop evil. We are already slaves and have no free will, his stepping in would make us slaves to his will for that moment but we are already slaves with no Free Will as I have just shown. How can he be said to be denying us Free Will when we are already slaves and have no Free Will? He can't.

So either the God of Christianity is Not Good and in fact Evil or he just does not exist. Either way he is not the God that Christianity has defined.

The advantage of this text, for us, is that its components (statements/claims) are linked together with great (almost daring) explicitness. Some of the argumentative moves are easily identifiable (see linguistic markers such as the repeating "Ergo, ..." and "So, ..."), the conclusion at the end is posited in the form of a Christian-assaultive dilemma, and most of all the expository passage at the beginning ("I can prove this argument to be false"). It would seem that we are facing a rare example of straightforward "logical" exercise: one in which the author is set out to demolish a clearly expressed misconception, he constructs his case by means of definition and argumentation and brings the whole argumentation to that end in which Christianity is taken to be "on the horns of a dilemma": IF 'set of Christian statements' THEN either X or Y, both of which are incompatible with 'set of Christian statements'.

However, I think that if one would be at pains to formally reconstruct this argument, some (I would say typical) problems would come into sight.

a) There is no actual definition of the whole "Free Will" concept. This is not usually a problem - most of our argumentative claims often assume a whole set of definitions and mutually understood concepts. But in this situation, the (assumed and used) ambiguity specifically bares on the strength of the argument. The main critical questions remain unaddressed: How come Free Will is incompatible with our genetic programming ("ergo we do not have Free Will")? Is Free Will to be taken simply as the antonym of "programmed living being"?

b) Even if this problem would not be a real one (let's assume that the concept of Free Will is universally and univocally understood), the text would still fail to provide the entire necessary components of a formal reconstruction: the link between "Free Will does not exist" and "God of Christianity is either Not Good, or non-existent" is candidly left over.

c) The text is formulated in opposition with 2 major alleged Christian claims: 1. God does not interfere because he does not want us to lack Free Will (made explicit in the first sentence: "Free Will is always used as an explanation as to why God cannot stop evil ") 2. God can and will (and wants to) make Rightness and Good prevail ("if God exists as Christian thought has defined him and he is good, omnipotent, and omniscient, then he would be compelled to step in and stop evil"). Are these the real claims (i.e. the real form of the claims) put forward by the "Christian thought"? Is he really fighting the announced opponent?

d) A rapid simplification of the text (that is, one which would ignore a, b, and c) would look like this:

1. We have no Free Will (1.1. Programming is real 1.2. Free Will is the opposite of programming)

2a. (Religion's claims that) God is good and omnipotent and "compelled to step in".

2b. (Religion's claims that) God's absence and the presence of evil is the preservation of Free Will.

3. Since the world is full of Evil, than 2a can not be the case. Since there is no Free will, 2b can not be the case.

4. Therefore, Religion's claims 2a and 2b are false.

This could be further on formalized and fitted into a valid propositional sequence (with all the unexpressed premises fully explicitized). Does this make it a piece of sound argumentation? Or, in other words: is he right? To conceive of the argumentative reality, one would have to include dialectical insights - unexplainable by mere logical formalization; just to pick out a few strands:

To whom is the argumentation actually aimed at? How does this other party's "commitment store" really look like? What are the starting points and agreed-upon claims? Is Christianity really committed to claims 2a and 2b? How do they (Christians) understand Free Will and, most importantly, do they hold it together with biological programming? Is "compelled to step in" a part of their previous argumentative moves? Has the Church really been offering Free Will as an explanation of the Evil in the world? Is this alleged explanation the only one? etc.

But truth to be told, we do not have any answers to these quesitons. What we have here could easily be a seen as a valid form of argumentation, de-contextualized enough to hinder the answer to these questions (and any other ones), hence the impossibility to decide its soundness (namely, if the starting points are true or not, if the first statement about Religion is true etc). If we would try to - I don't know - read the Bible in search for the real question at issue, the real "commitment store", then we would be (act) outside the argumentative reality. We would be ourselves, the analysts.

My actual question is: how should a scholar react to such out of nowhere argumentative text. To put it differently: when lacking contextual details (i.e. with a, b, c, being major shortcomings of any subsequent logical analysis), is the argumentation theorist forced to disavow his principles or is he bound to draw out incomplete/conditioned conclusions of the kind: “Well, if Religion actually claims X, then ...”.

Tags: argument dilemma God

“Slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes …”

 

William Mathews (1818-1909) is that writer about which one cannot get any information. Note that it’s 2010, and what you did yesterday is probably being narrated with sarcasm, many views and appalling amount of detail on a blog or vlog at this very moment. William Mathews is an American writer (or poet, or essayist, or philosopher…). Internet Archive has a few works stored with his name on. Wikipedia plays ignoramus returning “disambiguisations” of English rugby players and famous mountaineers (?). Google Books desperately tries to sell some 20th editions of his essays: “Words: their use and abuse”, “Getting on in the world: or, Hints on success of life”, “Men places and thing”, and, to quote one of his prefaces: “Etc. Etc. Etc.” – isn’t this the most chesty thing you could write in the “By the same author” section? Anyway, you got the picture: here we have the obscure Malcolm Gladwell of the 19th century!

Perusing what I was told was his bestseller , “Words: their use and abuse”, I uttered a short golly when I came across this paragraph of flavoursome description of the stages of a critical discussion, the dispute and the fallacies thereof. I’m pragma-dialectifying everything I read these days.

 

ON some of the great American rivers, where lumbering operations are carried on, the logs, in floating down, often get jammed up here and there, and it becomes necessary to find the timber which is a kind of keystone and stops all the rest. Once detach this, and away dash the giant trunks, thundering headlong, helter-skelter, down the rapids. It is just this office which he who defines his terms accurately performs for the dead-locked questions of the day. Half the controversies of the world are disputes about words. How often do we see two persons engage in what Cowper calls " a duel in the form of a debate,"—tilting furiously at each other for hours,— slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes, hooking with dilemmas, and riddling with sorites,— with no apparent prospect of ever ending the fray, till suddenly it occurs to one of them to define precisely what he means by a term on which the discussion hinges; when it is found that the combatants bad no cause for quarrel, having agreed in opinion from the beginning! The juggle of all sophistry lies in employing equivocal expressions (1907: 259)

 

Tags: William Mathews fallacies critical discussion dispute Words: their use and abuse ambiguity

“You’re a lemon, Leon”

A few words for those who haven’t seen the movie. Walter Abrams (Al Pacino) is what in the gambling business is called a “gambling adviser” – he sells betting hints. Brandon Lang (Matthew McConaughey) is his new employee, who rethought his life after a career-ending injury and turned to betting industry. You should be able to infer the rest of the details from the scene.

First of all, sorry for the typo at 3:37

What we have here is a pretty simple argumentation structure; one might say the actual “trick” is somewhere else.

• (Everybody admits that) Leon’s problem is gambling (“It’s a disease, Leon”, “Yeah, man, admitting you have a problem is the first …”[S]

• “Gambling is not your problem” [~S]

• “You’re a lemon, Leon” [P]

  1. The gambling behaviour of a lemon looks like this: x, y, z … etc.
  2. Your gambling behaviour is very much alike what I’ve just statet as x, y, z … etc.

• Being a lemon is your problem (R)

  1. X, Y, Z means gambling-to-lose (“when we go to gamble, we go to lose”)
  2. Loosing is a (the real) problem in gambling

As a result, it’s not very difficult to reconstruct Walter’s (Al Pacino) point of view. For the sake of the reconstruction we will consider the sub-standpoint P as agreed upon. Of course, one could say “Well, the whole endeavour would be wasted if the audience does not accept that the psychological description of a lemon applies to «all of us in this room»”. This sort of defense (the attack on the attack) would definitely be heady one for Walter’s confidence. But let’s assume that everyone in the room accepts (more or less) that the description of being a lemon suits them (more or less). How is that a problem? When asking this question, we move from “Lemon-ness applies” to “Lemon-ness is the problem”.

Maybe the best way to figure out the strength of this argumentation is to try and refute it’s claim R. Let us make some attempts: a. “You are wrong, Walter, because gambling destroyed our life in the first place” [this would be a restatement of S] b. “You are wrong, Walter, because no sane man wants to lose” [this would be a refutation of R2] c.“You are wrong, Walter, because gambling takes away your money, lemon or not” [we will regard this refutation in due course]

Since, remarque banale, we do not have Walter’s response to these, we should look for the anticipations offered by the text beforehand.

In response to refutation a. Walter propounds a very powerful claim – namely, that the actual problem in gambling is loosing, not gambling itself. It’s actually very well put. If one would assume that Lemon’s betting picks could always render profits (that is, if we equate gambling with winning) gambling itself would cease to be the problem. We will return to this when considering refutation c.

In response to b. (and here is the “trick” I was talking about) Walter attaches a few sharp qualifiers to his argumentation. He makes use the distinction between wanting something and (and? and?) subconsciously wanting something. So Walter’s response would be: “You think that you do not want to lose [~R2], but subconsciously, you do! [subconsciously, R2]”. Extracted from the text, the assertions to which this qualifiers are attached would be:

“… there is something inherently defective in you”

“When we go to gamble, we go to lose. Subconsciously.”

“Us lemons, we fuck shit up all the time on purpose”

“Because we constantly need to remind ourselves we're alive”

I would say this is the strongest point of the argumentation and the weakest point altogether. The strongest, because it sets the topic far away from the action of gambling and onto the one of, well, psychoanalysis. In other words, if one would attack these (“How do you know my “inherent” defects or what do I do “on purpose” or what “needs” do I have and satisfy “subconsciously”?”) it would open a brand new fairly different discussion. The weakest point, because the only argumentation on which this argumentation relies is easily doubtable. So “Being a lemon is your problem” - “How do you know that?” - “Well, you inherently, subconsciously lose on purpose to satisfy this fucked up need” - “How do you know that?” – [nothing else than] “… believe me I know, I heard your story, I’ve been there etc. etc.”

In order to analyze refutation c. we should return to refutation a. and admit sincerely that one cannot equate gambling with winning. The whole purpose of gambling is that you win some, you lose some. Well, if this is the case, then refutation c. seems pretty watertight: “Gambling takes away your money, even if you subconsciously wish for it or not”. Walter’s response to this? There’s actually none. But what he does in the last scene is handing a business card to one of the men in the room. So “Here’s my card, Mr. Antagonist, with us you can equate gambling with winning”.

Ok, enough with the first dispute. What about the ad hominems? I figured the response to those accusations was brilliant because it establishes an analogy between the present situation and the “ex-alcoholic bartender” invoked situation. Is this argumentation scheme from analogy sound? Does his arguments respond to your question? Is it pretty much alike, or do they differ in many respects? I’ll let you handle that. Please note that “brilliant” refers to that particular context of protagonists and antagonists. If you would have received this answer from Walter, what would your reply sound like?

Tags: Two for The Money argumentation analysis reconstructing argumentation discourse critical discussion ad hominem

Fallacies in pragma-dialectics

 

 

Title: Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies – A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective

Authors: Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst

Year: 1992

Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Entry in the bibliography: Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992 

Entry in the glossary: the pragma-dialectical approach 

Buy from Amazon: here

 

 

I foresee that this will be a “longy”, so I’ll cut right to the chase. That is, our chase for the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacy analysis. In the previous review on the subject (Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions) I tried to partly cover the question of “what kind of speech act would argumentation be?”, and at some point I decided to stop because the review was getting rather lengthy. More clearly, we’re done with the “pragma-“ part, and up for the “-dialectical” one. The standard next-stop in this itinerary is the issue of unexpressed premises. Although I’m not very satisfied with the results of it, I think this post and this one could be an acceptable introduction to the subject.

Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992) starts the analysis of fallacies (mostly like any other of their works) with a tiny review of “the state of art in the study of fallacies”. As you might expect, the state of art is not contentful in the eyes of the two Dutch scholars, therefore the subsequent chapter (the actual analysis) gains his raison d’être. Their disapproval could be summarized thus:

• TST (the standard treatment) of fallacies is full of inconsistencies and Mr. Hamblin did a great job eliciting a devastating criticism (for this, see this review)
• The “Walton & Woods” approach (which would be the post-standard treatment) is quite impressive at pinpointing fallacies and appropriating a particular logical system (other than the syllogistic or propositional logic) to each of the fallacies, but the shortcoming is that “Every fallacy needs, so to speak, its own logic” and for practical purposes “this approach is not very realistic”. Besides, another disadvantage is that “relying on so many different logical systems, one only gets fragmentary descriptions of the various fallacies, and no overall picture of the domain” (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992: 103);
• informal logicians pay very much attention to the “argumentative practice” (that is, the actual context in which fallacies appear and therefore making them treatable as such) and less to the theory that should underlie this kind of judgment;
• formal dialectics (or dialogue logic, also known as The Erlangen School of Lorenzen) is the closest thing to pragma-dialectics, and we (E&G) have taken from them the idea of a finite collection of rules which, if complied with, cannot render any fallacies at all; as you might have guessed, the insufficiency of this approach is their inability to integrate the pragmatic view upon language (which we explained here, here, and here); in other words they are perfect as “normativists” but imperfect as “pragmatists”

This being said, the analysis proceeds in three steps: 1. the utterance must be reconstructed as a speech act, 2. the construed speech act must be seen as a violation of a norm, and 3. it must be established that the situation in which the speech act occurred is a critical discussion (that is, that the aim of the parties engaged in a dispute is to resolve it). So there we have it, fallacies as “illegitimate argumentative moves” (which hider the process of resolving a difference of opinion, or frustrate it).

The hot spot of this procedure is, of course, the second step. Since a fallacy must be seen as a norm which has been violated, we should ask ourselves 1) what norms are we talking about and 2) what violations could we encounter. Although these norms are not “a gift from heaven”, and the authors do provide an explanation for each one, we are now less interested in the background theoretical apparatus of this set of rules. Anther thing I won’t mention is which conversation stage every rule relates with (because most of them do), and I won’t mention it because, as you will see, this is quite obvious from the formulation of the rules.

1. Discussants may not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from casting doubts upon standpoints.

In order to resolve a dispute freely, every one has, in principle, the right to advance any standpoint and call any standpoint into question (did I just restate the rule?…) One is not allowed to:

• ban standpoints
• declare standpoints sacrosanct
• put pressure on the other party by pandering or threatening
• make personal attack (depicting him as stupid, bad, unreliable and so forth)

Consequently, the fallacies that relate to this rule are the illegitimate ads: ad baculum, ad hominem (all types), ad misericordiam, to which we ad these specific ones: declaring a standpoint sacrosanct, prohibiting the other party’s move

2. A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if the other party asks him to do so.

This could be basically translated as: (one type or another of) failure to meet the burden of proof. (see burden of proof)

Consequently, the fallacies that relate to this rule are: evading the burden of proof (presenting a standpoint as self-evident – see my objection to this in the glossary entry link above –, giving a personal guarantee of the rightness, immunizing the standpoint against criticism) and shifting the burden of proof (argumentum ad ignorantiam)

3. A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party

Of course this rule can only be broken by an antagonist, and only in a mixed dispute. The point is that “if the parties talk at cross purposes like this, it will be impossible for them to resolve the original dispute. It is, therefore, essential that the propositions with respect to which standpoints are adopted should be the same for both parties and that they do not change unnoticed during the course of the discussion” (Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992: 125)

Fallacies that break this rule: all of the many forms of straw man (imputing a fictitious standpoint to the other party or distorting the other party’s standpoint – by exaggeration, oversimplification, taking utterances out of context etc)

4. A party may defend his standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.

Remember all that times that you invoked relevance within an argumentative situation? This was the rule you were appealing to. So argumentation has to have some bearing upon the standpoint that is being defended. What I want you to think of is: if this rule is always applicable, how are we to distinguish weak arguments (which are poor at defending a standpoint), from illegitimate moves (which are … very poor at defending a standpoint).

The main fallacy related to this rule is: ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant argumentation). The ignoratio elenchi is like the twin brother of the straw men: whereas in the latter case, one party distorts a standpoint in orther to make it easier to attack, irrelevant argumentation is based on distorting a (that is, your) standpoint in order to make it easier to defend. Here also, are of course some of the ad fallacies which do not choose argumentation as means of defending a standpoint (e.g. ad populum, ad verecundiam).

Note: If you ask me, this rule is actually composed of two rules 1. advancing argumentation, 2. making your argumentation relate to the standpoint. Noticeably, a party can either advance non-argumentative moves (ad populum, ad verecundiam) or non-relevant argumentative moves (ignoratio elenchi). But then of course, we would have to have 11 rules, and 11 is not as round and perfect as 10. (this is a fallacy of the rule 6^th rule)

5. A party may not falsely present something as a premise that has been felt unexpressed by the other party or deny a premise that he himself has left implicit.

Well, this rule is pretty straight forward. If I am the protagonist (the one who advanced the argumentation) and make use of a certain unexpressed premise, I mustn’t deny my usage. The same, if the antagonist should not “falsely present” (magnify or amplify) my unexpressed premise in order to make it easier to attack.

There are no fallacies in the standard list relating to this rule, so the authors just name them: fallacies of distorting unexpressed premises.

6. A party must not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point.

Again, this is pretty much self contained. An illegitimate move which would relate to this rule would be:

• falsely presenting a premise as agreed-upon
• wrapping up a proposition in a presupposition (many questions)
• hiding away (?) a premise in an unexpressed premise
• advancing argumentation that amounts to the same thing as the standpoint already propounded (petitio principii – begging the question, circular reasoning)

7. A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied.

8. A party may only use arguments that are logically valid or capable of being validated by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises.

Rules 7 & 8 deal with what were once known as formal fallacies (composition, division, denying the antecedent – all being confusions between necessary and sufficient conditions etc.) as well as with other fallacies that make use of an inappropriate usage of argument schemes (ad consequentiam – for causal scheme, certain versions of ad populum – for symptomatic scheme, some versions of ad verecundiam etc.). I will deal with these when we would have explained the concept of argument scheme, soundness and logical validity (as seen in the p-d. approach)

9. A standpoint that has not been successfully defended must be retracted; a conclusively defended standpoint must result in the retraction of doubt.

One cannot:

• make an absolute of the success of the defense (conclude that the standpoint is always true in any respects whatsoever)
• make an absolute of the failure of the defense (conclude that the opposite standpoint is true – which would be another version of ad ignorantiam)

10. A party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and he must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible.

Problems arising in respect of this rule: structural unclearness, indefiniteness, vagueness, referential or syntactic ambiguity etc.

Fallacies: it is something called the fallacy of ambiguity (which means the underhanded method of using ambiguity in argumentation), and any other fallacies that make use of such problems (especially structural ambiguity).

Ok, this has been a long one. Let us shortly see what’s left.1) argumentation structure (yet to be covered although promised from the first review) and 2) validity, soundness, argument scheme, 3) what can go wrong with speech acts in different stages (that is, the not-that-hot spots 1&3 which we left unexplained)

Tags: the pragma-dialectical approach fallacies rules of critical discussion Frans H. van Eemeren Rob Grootendorst unexpressed premise fallacy