The Uses of Argument – part III

 

 

Title: The Uses of Argument
Author: Stephen E. Toulmin
Year: 1958 [2003]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

reviewed here: Chapter III - “The Layout of Argument”
see chapter II – here, and chapter I - here

 

 

 

I have been keeping Toulmin’s almost legendary model (I’m exaggerating, of course, but not that much) at a tantalizing distance, beamingly reviewing the first two introductory essays as if no deep waters were to follow. It is no secret however that this chapter (“The Layout of Argument”) is the chief if unheeded point of interest for someone delving into the birthplaces of argumentation theory. I will therefore undertake to a) explain and illustrate the model, b) clarify purpose of the model, c) expound the implications of the model as seen by Toulmin. I believe the first task is somewhat undemanding, the second – often mistaken, whereas the third one is demanding and often mistaken. Respectively, a brisk form of the questions I will try to answer as regards Toulmin’s endeavor is this: “1. What are we doing?” “2. Why are we doing this?” and “3. What happens once we’ve done it?”

 

The model

In expanding the model of argument Toulmin keeps to the procedural view established in the first two essays, i.e., the “jurisprudential analogy” between ‘logical’ and ‘legal’ processes, both seen as appraisable on procedural criteria (if the procedure turns out well, the result is good). This clashes with the “geometrical” (standard) view of syllogistic logic, where arguments are appraised according to their “form” (note that the rules of syllogisms are nothing but prescriptions about form).

Toulmin starts from a basic three-steps model seen as follows: Step 1: we make an assertion, Step 2: we are being challenged to answer the question “What have you got to go on?”, Step 3: we answer the possible additional question “How do you got there?” (i.e. “How do you justify your step?”). At this point, the model corresponds neatly to a simple syllogism of the type: conclusion – (because) minor premise – (and) major premise. For purposes which will be made apparent in due course, the results of the first three steps are called: CLAIM – DATA – WARRANT.

Let us give our tedious example:

Of course, things are not that easy and from this point on two things may happen, namely Step 4: we could alter the bearing that the datum has on our claim by some QUALIFIERS (Q) - remember “probably” and “possibly” and “presumably” from the first two essays? – and that is because of the possibility of REBUTTALS may appear. And finally Step 5: the applicability of the Warrant itself could be called into question. When this happens, “Standing behind our warrants, as this example reminds us, there will normally be other assurances, without which the warrants themselves would posses neither authority nor currency—these other things we may refer to as the BACKING (B) of the warrants” (p. 96) The model would now look something like this:

Continuing our prosaic example:

OK. Now that the model is fully stretched out[1], that it’s components have been revealed and it’s procedural origins explained/contrasted with the simplicity of syllogistic forms, several questions come into one’s mind, of which one is of pressing importance:“What is this?!” Or, to be more accurate, “Except for a pedantic, if not excursive report of one simple argument, why all the effort?” The next point will try to clarify this question.

 

The point

Although the massive apparatus of new elements (D, B, W, C etc.) might point out differently, the model is no fandango. It’s point was not even to ordain a scheme of analysis for any future argument one would encounter (though in some respects it ended up this way, taking Toulmin by surprise), but to elaborate a model of argument which could account for aspects for which the syllogism, with its inoperative stiffness, could not account. These aspects, as I will hope to show by following Toulmin’s construction, are significant in theoretical as well as practical usage of argument. I would put it this way: the ‘universal premise’ of the classic syllogisms fails to do stuff which in normal usage of argument (i.e. not in logic textbooks) must be done in order to understand what’s going on.

2.1. ambiguity

The major premise of the classic syllogism is unfruitfully ambiguous. Toulmin argues that the major premise “All A’s are B’s”, while being charmingly simple, conceals two distinct procedures: a warrant-using statement (An A will be taken to be a B) and a warrant-establishing statement [i.e. the backing on account of which we use the warrant, in this case left implicit] (The proportion of A’s that are B’s is 100%). It means that a syllogism could be interpreted both as a D, W, so C string, or as a D, B, so C one. In any case, since the “All A’s are B’s” could be construed both as a warrant and as a backing, calling it a premise (just as the minor one, the datum) is at least inexact. This may seem a pale, if not trifling distinction, but note that while the warrant-using statement makes the syllogism formally valid, the later does not! So,

2.2. formal validity cannot be the criterion

“if we substitute the backing for the warrant, i.e. interpret the universal premiss in the other way, there will no longer be any room for applying the idea of formal validity to our argument.” (p.111), the references present in the backing (for example, the idea of proportion, the percentage etc.) “distroy the formal elegance of the argument” (p. 114). Construed as D, B, so C, the syllogism is “far from a tautology” (i.e. formally valid). However,

2.3. substantial can be formally valid and analytic can be formally invalid

As an illustration we may take the following: Anne is one of Jack’s sisters; All Jack’s sisters have red hair; So, Anne has red hair. […] If each one of the girls has been checked individually to have red hair, then Anne’s hair-colour has been specifically checked in the process. In this case, accordingly, the backing of our warrant includes explicitly the information which we are presenting as our conclusion: indeed, one might very well replace the word ‘so’ before the conclusion by the phrase ‘in other words’, or ‘that is to say’ In such a case, to accept the datum and the backing is thereby to accept implicitly the conclusion also […] So, for once, not only the (D; W; so C) argument but also the (D; B; so C) argument can—it appears—be stated in a formally valid manner” (pp. 115-116)

And also, as we have seen in 2.1.:

an argument may be analytic, and yet not be expressed in a formally valid way: this is the case, for instance, when an analytic argument is written out with the backing of the warrant cited in place of the warrant itself

Ok, to sum up, The Point is this: adopting the backing/warrant distinction sheds light on a number of conundrums which the classic “All A’s are B’s” failed to observe (or resolved too evasively). These issues are important because, as we have seen in 2.1. – 2.3. offer an answer to questions like: “Is the universal premise categorical?”, “Is validity a criterion for all arguments?”, “Can analytic vs. substantial provide a better account?”, and others upon which I didn’t insist here. I’ll be gallant and let Toulmin draw The Point:

This vast initial over-simplification marks the traditional beginning of much in logical theory. Many of the current problems in the logical tradition spring from adopting the analytic paradigm-argument as a standard by comparison with which all other arguments can be criticised. But analyticity is one thing, formal validity is another; and neither of these is a universal criterion of necessity, still less of the soundness of our arguments.

The next post will deal with the third question: “What happens once we’ve done this?”

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[1] In language form, it would sound like this: in support of the claim (C) that John must pay, we appeal to the datum (D) that he went over the speed limit, and the warrant can then be stated in the form, ‘A man speeding over limit is indictable with a fine’: since, however, questions of restrictions are always subject to qualifications and conditions, we shall have to insert a qualifying ‘presumably’ (Q) in front of the conclusion, and note the possiblity that our conclusion may be rebutted in case (R) it turns out that John is the authorized driver of an ambulance. Finally, in case the warrant itself is challenged, its backing can be put in: legal provisions governing the situation John put himself in.

 

Technorati Tags: stephen Toulmin,the uses of Argument,validity,substantial argument,analytic argument,data,backing,warrant,claim,qualifier,rebuttal

Just out of curiosity

Do they think them through before gracefully amassing them together? And if not, why do they do it, and where do they get the lists from? And, perhaps I should have started with this, what’s the point of ‘the 42 list’ anyway (that is, aside from the video, which is funny)?

I bet my readers could find perfectly acceptable/relevant/valid/reasonable/sound examples for half the list. They won’t try, because they’re busy little warrior ants, (not to mention not caring whatsoever), but I bet they could.

via http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/, and then cheerfully http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/

Aristotle, spiffed up and everything

Take a quick look at this picture.

You don’t seem to follow, you must stop reading this and take a look at the picture for a second. Ok, now the data: it’s Rembrandt's “Aristotle contemplating a bust of Homer” (1653). Enough with the data.

It may be offhand to razz one’s creative knacks, but then again, it’s pretty difficult not to be at least taken aback by Rembrandt’s vision of Aristotle’s gear right there. Yep. “The wide-brimmed, 15th century musketeer slouch hat is a bit anachronic,” I hear you scoff, but that’s just nitpicking. “Then what about the glittery aristocratic (see? Aristo-cratic?) seatbelt he’s wearing?”. You know, Athens fashion was way ahead of itself at that time. “OK, OK,”  I hear you quibbling furthermore, “what about … the 5 kilograms of I’m-a-French-emperor-and-I’m-about-to-conquer-something sleeves he’s having trouble holding on to? Is that a local Stagerian wont?” You see? Right there. That’s just narrow-mindedness. 

The Uses of Argument – part II

 

 

Title: The Uses of Argument
Author: Stephen E. Toulmin
Year: 1958 [2003]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

reviewed here: Chapter II – “Probability” – pp. 41-87
see Chapter I - “Fields of Arguments and Modals” here

 

 

 

I will refrain from protracting this post more than necessary. Not because the issue I’m about to present is free from ambiguity, but – and, in fact, au contraire – in order to avoid slants when presenting an issue I’m not terribly familiar with.

So: probability. What’s the big fuss about probability? (That’s the spirit! Contrive your scarce understanding with bold questions.) Actually, there are a number of different ‘fusses’ about probability. First, the term is unsafely close to the equally troublesome concept of induction (let Wiki lay this one before ye). Second, it has a wide grammatical application: we find it as a noun, as an adjective, as an adverb, then some authors tried to come up with ‘probabilification’ (I know … right?). And third, there are all kinds of everyday uses for these terms: we talk of chance as probability, of predictions are sometimes probable, frequencies or patterns render some future act probable, we talk of degrees of probability and lack of probability.

The first question coming to one’s mind is arguably this: “What do probability-statements stand for?”, or differently put: “When is some thing probable or more probable than another one?”. Toulmin’s answer? (One might note at this point that Toulmin was J. L. Austin’s student…)

the abstract noun ‘probability’—despite what we learnt at our kindergartens about nouns being words that stand for things—not merely has no tangible counterpart, referent, designatum or what you will, not merely does not name a thing of whatever kind, but is a word of such a type that it is nonsense even to talk about it as denoting, standing for, or naming anything (Toulmin, 1958, p. 60)

We need not assume, continues Toulmin, that probability-statements stand for something due solely to the fact that they are probability-statements. The entire misapprehension of the term probability (Kneale, Carnap and others) was in fact caused by needlessly operating with such assumption. What is wrong with this assumption? Well,

The effect of writing the evidence into all probability estimates is to conceal the vital logical step, from a hypothetical statement about the bearing of e on h to a categorical conclusion about h—from the inference-licence, ‘Evidence e, if available, would suggest very strongly that h’, to an argument in which it is actually applied, namely ‘e; so very likely h’ […] we have distinguished the probability of h from the bearing of e on h or the support which e gives to h (Toulmin, 1958, p. 75)

For someone just slightly familiar with Toulmin’s model, and just slightly familiar with our last post, you can see how this fits beautifully in all respects: 1. We thus make a clear-cut distinction between the “If… then…” clause and the “… therefore …” clause (which will be conceptualized more clearly in the next chapter), and 2. We are able to analyze probability as a modal in Toulmin’s sense, namely, in very much the same way he did with ‘possible’ and ‘necessary’. Which is to say, again, that the modal is not operating semantically – as standing for something – but pragmatically – as being used for something (feel the Austinian breeze …), and that something is: to assert guardedly. ‘Probable’ – and the somewhat fake brother-noun ‘probability’, when used in constructions such as ‘in all probability’ – is a qualifier which allows us to present guarded or qualified assertion. Moreover, in a sense, a guarded assertion (e.g. It will probably rain) is not even an assertion since it will not be properly falsified neither by rain nor by gilded sunshine. To this, Toulmin adds: “It cannot be said to fail to obtain the highest honours (namely, verification) since it is not even a candidate for them […] Only statements which are held out as the positive truth need be criticised for straight unverifiability: predictions made with an explicit qualification, such as ‘probably’, ‘the chances are good that’ or ‘five to one against’ must therefore be exempted” 76

The actual conclusion to which Toulmin arrives is, again, that the force/criteria distinction works. Theorists were led into controversies concerning the ‘actual meaning’ of ‘probability’ because they were unable to see that “there is nothing to choose between evaluations, promises and predictions [i.e criteria, my note]: all of them equally can contain the word ‘probably’, and its force in each case is the same” (Toulmin, 1958, p. 83), and that force is to restrain the degree of commitment as to a statement of belief. “Whether backed by mathematical calculations or no [i.e. whatever the criteria behind it, my note], the characteristic function of our particular, practical probability-statements [i.e. the force] is to present guarded or qualified assertions and conclusions” (Toulmin, 1958, p. 86).

As I said, these two first essays were something of an introduction to the actual ‘model’ which will make the subject of our next posts.

Technorati Tags: Stephen Toulmin,probability,modality,modal terms,probable,force,criteria,to assert guardedly,Carnap,Kneale

Sheldon’s (Albert’s) Münchausen-Trilemma

 

 

Sheldon, the quick-witted, cack-handed genius with no social aptitudes is asked to keep a secret from his roomie - Leonard. Nothing unsophisticated, he can do that… so he moves. But what’s with the “Münchausen-Trilemma”?

“This is a classic example of a Münchausen-Trilemma: either the reason is predicated on a series of sub-reasons leading to an infinite regression or it tracks back to axiomatic statements or it’s ultimately circular, i.e., I’m moving out because I’m moving out.”

Hans Albert, a German critical-rationalist philosopher born in 1921, coined the term “Münchausen-Trilemma” (as three-folded-lemma, see what he did? tri-lemma? man, these are geniuses…) in the frequently quotedTraktat über kritische Vernunft (1968), translated as Treatise on Critical Reason (1985, Princeton). The trilemma is actually an answer to the problem of justification, a hot spot of epistemology which is concerned with how can one justify one’s beliefs or statements. Albert resolves this by saying:

Here, one has a mere choice between:

1. an infinite regression, which appears because of the necessity to go ever further back, but isn’t practically feasible and doesn’t, therefore, provide a certain foundation;
2. a logical circle in the deduction, which is caused by the fact that one, in the need to found, falls back on statements which had already appeared before as requiring a foundation, and which circle does not lead to any certain foundation either; and finally:
3. a break of searching at a certain point, which indeed appears principally feasible, but would mean a random suspension of the principle of sufficient reason.

In other words, if we try to answer the question “How do you know?” (“How do you justify that statement?”, “Why do you hold that to be true?” etc.) we can never arrive at a satisfactory answer. Empiricists escaped from this trilemma by readily postulating the incontestability of sense-perception: point 1, they would say, is not necessarily applicable because all knowledge stems from sense-perception. Karl Popper (and few others before him) classically desisted from the empiricist point of view by saying that:

Every description uses universal names (or symbols, or ideas); every statement has the character of a theory, of a hypothesis. The statement, ‘Here is a glass of water’ cannot be verified by any observational experience. The reason is that the universals which appear in it cannot be correlated with any specific sense-experience. (An ‘immediate experience’ is only once ‘immediately given’; it is unique.)

Popper, 1935 [2002], p. 76

OK, so if the empiricist standpoint didn’t hold, what does hold against Münchausen-Trilemma. Well, depending on who you ask, i.e. depending of what concept of truth you are willing to adopt, it is either nothing or the problem is wrongly put. The positivist view abolished the distinction between sense experiences and statements therefore rendering the trilemma irrelevant. In this sense, some positivists could be called ‘empiricist’, since by adopting the “relationist tenet” (experience could be connected with statements, by the so-called ‘protocol statements’) they situate themselves in opposition with the rationalist “logical tenet” (statements could only be connected with other statements, i.e. never with experience, “no more than by thumping the table”, as Popper put it, 1935, p. 88).

The critical-rationalist view then, the one Popper and Albert assumed, ceased to confront it and postulated fallibilism, the idea that human reason is inherently tending (and even likely) to make errors. Therefore, our statements (in empirical science, at least) must be assumed tentatively, i.e. until falsified by experience. Which is, of course, another way of saying “statements (theories, hypotheses etc., could be accepted dogmatically, until further notice”. Because, notice that the trilemma does not function or even appear if you are willing to accept statements dogmatically: if you say, “OK, I accept that, hence question ‘How come?’ is no longer in befitting”. As Popper puts it (quite frankly):

Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led nowhere. […]  The basic statements at which we stop, which we decide to accept as satisfactory, and as sufficiently tested, have admittedly the character of dogmas, but only in so far as we may desist from justifying them by further arguments.

Popper, 1935, p. 87

Coming back to our subject, it is interesting to notice that Popper refers to the “Fries' trilemma” (dogmatism vs. infinite regress vs.psychologism[1]).  What’s more, Wikipedia cites it as Agrippa's Trilemma. So whose trilemma is it?

 

«»

 

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[1] I don’t know if Fries used the term psychologism to refer to “psychologism”, but it’s pretty clear that Popper equates Carnap’s definition of ‘protocol statements’ (which must be taken as ‘given’) as an instance of psychologism:  “They [‘protocol sentences’] describe (as Carnap himself puts it) ‘the contents of immediate experience, or the phenomena; and thus the simplest knowable facts’.8 Which shows clearly enough that the theory of protocol sentences is nothing but psychologism” (Popper, 1935, p. 77).

Technorati Tags: Münchausen-Trilemma,Carnap,Popper,Albert justification,epistemology,empiricism,rationalism,critical-rationalism

The Uses of Argument – part I

 

 

Title: The Uses of Argument
Author: Stephen E. Toulmin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 1958 [2003]

reviewed here, Chapter I - “Fields of Arguments and Modals”, pp. 11-41
see Chapter II – “Probability” – pp. 41-87, here

 

 

 

To start with, l shall note that the first two essays of Toulmin’s The Uses of Arguments are not what one might expect. If ‘methods and criteria of evaluating/producing/criticizing/reconstructing arguments’ is what one would expect (and I have a certain impression that this is what, largely, argumentation theory sometimes comes to mean) then you’re in for a slight disappointment. The questions Toulmin is trying to answer are not within argumentation theory, but about it. This is, possibly, one of the reasons why he is generally considered as one of ‘the starting points’ of argumentation theory (if using such a unifying term is at all appropriate).

“Logic,” says Toulmin, “is generalized jurisprudence” (p. 7). This simple phrase may seem like muffling things a little, but is actually a very important meta-theoretical presumption because of the other options it leaves out: logic as psychology “concerned with laws of thought”, logic as sociology “not the phenomena of the individual human mind […], but rather the habits and practices developed in the course of social evolution”, logic as method “in the sense of tips for those who wish to argue soundly, ‘If you want to be rational, here are the recipes to follow.’”, and logic as natural science “logic becomes in the understanding of a special class of objects called ‘logical relations’, and its business is to formulate the system of truths governing relations of this kind.” (pp. 3-6)

The first best (theoretical) consequence of such (meta-theoretical) postulation of the ‘jurisprudential analogy’ is this: it creates the possibility of brooding over logic ‘as if it were’ procedural: “Arguments can be compared with law-suits, and the claims we make and argue for in extra-legal contexts with claims made in the courts, while the cases we present in making good each kind of claim can be compared with each other […] we shall aim, in a similar way, to characterise what may be called ‘the rational process’, the procedures and categories by using which claims-in-general can be argued for and settled.” (p.8)

The next best (theoretical) consequence of it is this: if one compiles aesthetic, moral, mathematical, scientific and other instances of argumentation in respect of this view, one can then ask “What things about the form and merits of our arguments are field-invariant and what things about them are field-dependent?” (p. 15). In other words, to what extent can one hope for arriving at a unique set of ‘standards’ when analyzing the wide variety of field[1] (either legal or rational)? The essay “Fields of Arguments and Modals” is concerned with setting a first grip of this question and delivering a first hard-boiled answer.

A first answer is this: some broad phases are the same for legal processes as for rational ones regardless of the field in which the procedure occurs. “There must be an initial stage at which the charge or claim is clearly stated, a subsequent phase in which evidence is set out or testimony given in support of the charge or claim, leading on to the final stage at which a verdict is given, and the sentence or other judicial act issuing from the verdict is pronounced”. If one turns from judicial to rational situation, the same general distinction cold be made: first, we have a question to which a claim is offered as a possible solution among others ruled out as impossible, then, in the light of some evidence (or grounds or backing), it might be indicated that one of the possible solutions is necessarily the case (‘it must be that …’) or probably the case (‘It is probable that …’) or presumably the case (‘Provided that …, then …’). The essential feature of these phases is not their preciseness – Toulmin actually only offers a loose account – but their empirical essence. They are meant to be claims about what is “encountered equally whether our argument is concerned with a question of physics or mathematics, ethics or law, or an everyday matter of fact.”

A way to shed light upon this To start with, l shall note that the first two essays of Toulmin’s The Uses of Arguments are not what one might expect. If ‘methods and criteria of evaluating/producing/criticizing arguments’ is what you expect (and I have a certain impression that this is what, largely, argumentation theory sometimes comes to mean) then you’re in for a disappointment. The questions Toulmin is trying to answer are not within argumentation theory, but about it. This is, possibly, one of the reasons why he is generally considered as one of ‘the starting points’ of argumentation theory as we know it today.

Logic, says Toulmin, “is generalized jurisprudence” (p. 7). This simple phrase may seem like muffling things a little, but is actually a very important meta-theoretical presumption because of the other options it leaves out: logic as psychology “concerned with laws of thought”, logic as sociology “not the phenomena of the individual human mind […], but rather the habits and practices developed in the course of social evolution”, logic as method “in the sense of tips for those who wish to argue soundly, ‘If you want to be rational, here are the recipes to follow.’”, and logic as natural science “logic becomes in the understanding of a special class of objects called ‘logical relations’, and its business is to formulate the system of truths governing relations of this kind.” (pp. 3-6)

The first best (theoretical) consequence of such (meta-theoretical) postulation of the ‘jurisprudential analogy’ is this: it creates the possibility of brooding over logic ‘as if it were’ procedural: “Arguments can be compared with law-suits, and the claims we make and argue for in extra-legal contexts with claims made in the courts, while the cases we present in making good each kind of claim can be compared with each other […] we shall aim, in a similar way, to characterise what may be called ‘the rational process’, the procedures and categories by using which claims-in-general can be argued for and settled.” (p.8)

The next best (theoretical) consequence of it is this: if one compiles aesthetic, moral, mathematical, scientific and other instances of argumentation in respect of this view, one can then ask “What things about the form and merits of our arguments are field-invariant and what things about them are field-dependent?” (p. 15). In other words, to what extent can one hope for arriving at a unique set of ‘standards’ when analyzing the wide variety of field[2] (either legal or rational)? The essay “Fields of Arguments and Modals” is concerned with setting a first grip of this question and delivering a first hard-boiled answer.

A first answer is this: some broad phases are the same for legal processes as for rational ones regardless of the field in which the procedure occurs. “There must be an initial stage at which the charge or claim is clearly stated, a subsequent phase in which evidence is set out or testimony given in support of the charge or claim, leading on to the final stage at which a verdict is given, and the sentence or other judicial act issuing from the verdict is pronounced”. If one turns from judicial to rational situation, the same general distinction cold be made: first, we have a question to which a claim is offered as a possible solution among others ruled out as impossible, then, in the light of some evidence (or grounds or backing), it might be indicated that one of the possible solutions is necessarily the case (‘it must be that …’) or probably the case (‘It is probable that …’) or presumably the case (‘Provided that …, then …’). The essential feature of these phases is not their preciseness – Toulmin actually only offers a loose account – but their empirical essence. They are meant to be claims about what is “encountered equally whether our argument is concerned with a question of physics or mathematics, ethics or law, or an everyday matter of fact.”

The method of shedding light upon these “basic similarities of procedure” (p. 21) is this: if we engage in analyzing what are usually called ‘modal terms’ (i.e. possibly, probably, certainly etc.) then we shall find that, as their usage is encountered in different fields, some things change and some things stay the same. The first chosen term is ‘cannot’ – the modal verb of impossibility –, the second is ‘can’ – the modal verb of possibility. After illustrating their usage in different fields[3] two technical terms could be introduced to account for the results: the force[4] of the modal terms stays the same, whereas the criteria for using it are widely variable.

The force of ‘cannot’ is a term for designating “the practical implications of its use: the force of the term ‘cannot’ includes, for instance, the implied general injunction that something-or-other has to be ruled out” (p. 28). While the force remains the same, the criteria (standards, grounds, reasons etc.) for ruling out such-and-such possibilities are different from field to field. It could be either because (check footnote 3 for the actual examples) of physical impossibility as in (1), the capacity of a building (2), a linguistic convention (3), a social convention (5) and many others. The force of the term remains the same, namely it eliminates something, while the criteria for doing this differs markedly.

In the next essay, Toulmin applies pretty much the same operation to the term “Probability”, but touching upon the more general problem of ‘modality’.

 

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[1] Two arguments are said to belong to the same field if they are of the same logical type. In order for two arguments to be of the same logical type, their data and conclusion must ‘point to’ the same class of facts: “reports of present and past events, predictions about the future, verdicts of criminal guilt, aesthetic commendations, geometrical axioms and so on” (p. 13). Most often, of course – I say ‘of course’ in considerations of the general idea of Toulmin’s epistemology, see here – the transition is from data to conclusion consists in what Toulmin calls “a transition of logical type” (e.g. from a report of a past event to a prediction).
[2] Two arguments are said to belong to the same field if they are of the same logical type. In order for two arguments to be of the same logical type, their data and conclusion must ‘point to’ the same class of facts: “reports of present and past events, predictions about the future, verdicts of criminal guilt, aesthetic commendations, geometrical axioms and so on” (p. 13). Most often, of course – I say ‘of course’ in considerations of the general idea of Toulmin’s epistemology, see here – the transition is from data to conclusion consists in what Toulmin calls “a transition of logical type” (e.g. from a report of a past event to a prediction).
[3] For those interested, his examples are: (1) You cannot lift a ton, (2) You cannot get 100.000 people in the Albert Hall, (3) You cannot talk about a fox’s “tail”, (4) You can’t have a male sister (5) [A guard on a train] You can’t smoke in this compartiment, (6) You can expel your son out without giving him any money (pp. 22-27)
[4] Sometimes called the ‘moral’, as in the moral of a fable

 

Technorati Tags: Stephen Toulmin,The Uses of Argument,fields of argument,modals,modality,possibility,claim,force,criteria,logic.

The Toulmin days

[Well that was a long one … Don’t they fire you for such sluggish online behaviour? Of course they don’t. (they?) ]

Anyhow, now that this furlough has ruined the upward-sloping traffic of May – industriously built up only to be devoured by the ghastly, medieval aloofness of … not being online –, I thought I’d restart with Stephen Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument (1958). I believe there are two sides (or readings) of Toulmin’s book: the laic, quite famous one of ‘Toulmin’s model’ and the more intricate (unevenly celebrated) one of the implications of such ‘modeling’. I will attempt to touch upon both, although I will content myself with merely signalling the presence or possibility of the latter.

Some of you may agree that it is at least peculiar the way in which Perelman & Olbrecths-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric and Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument both appeared in 1958. It is not the year itself that is queer, but the alikeness of purposes; in their own way, both were endeavours to denounce the idea that rationality is proper to analytical thought, or, in reverse, that formal logic is the science of soundness in argumentation (i.e. it can provide universal norms for evaluating arguments). In other words, the “All men are mortal, Socrates is a man…”-approach is not the proper starting point. The criteria of formal deduction (where the conclusion is already contained in the premises) is rarely, if ever, the analytical tool to assess arguments. Keenly put: since our arguments are usually formally invalid while being sound (in Toulmin’s use of the word), then logic is not the organon of argument evaluation: “Formal validity in the logical sense, says Toulmin, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for soundness of argumentation” (Eemeren, Grootendorst et al. 1996, p. 133).

The now starting “Toulmin days” will consist firstly of an in-depth reading of each chapter of The Uses of Argument, which will eventually amount to being “a review”, an unusually large one, spread on several posts, and then of further considerations regarding the implications of such model. So … stay tuned!

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I dunno, Sheldon …

You may have had in mind the “logical” fallacy of straw man. There’s nothing “logically” fallacious with reductio ad absurdum, granted that the starting point is dialectically proper (not inflated when borrowed from the other party). The same, if by “extending someone’s argument” you meant “drawing conclusions from their previously put forward claims”, there’s nothing wrong with that either. If by “extending” you mean “exaggerating”, then I guess you meant straw man.

A Taxonomy of Speech Acts

 

[John Searle’s article, “A Taxonomy of Speech Acts”, was originally a lecture held in 1971 for the Summer Linguistics Institute in Buffalo, NY. It was published later as “A Classification of Illocutionary Acts” (1975, [I found this version more often than the others]) and finally in Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (1979).]

 

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I’ve entered the realm of speech acts theory several times so far, when I presented John L. Austin’s How to do things with words (here), Searle’s first work on the subject, Speech Acts (here) and Dutch argumentation theorists’ appropriation of the theory (here). We saw that the main aspect of the speech act theory is to view language-use as behaviour governed by rules rather than simply as linguistic representation. In Searle’s view especially, a speech act consists of two inter-dependent segments: the illocutionary force F (the “I assert that …”, “I declare that …” parts) and the propositional content p (the “…John was here yesterday”, “…you are fired” parts). Therefore, the basic illocutionary act is symbolized thus:

F(p)

Now for the classification of such acts. First question in any attempt to classify: what criteria should one choose? Speech acts are different in numerous ways and filtering them through a set of criteria is not an easy job. In fact, Searle sees 12 aspects in which any two random speech acts may differ (1979, pp. 2-9):

1. Differences in the point (or purpose) of the (type of) act - according to each speech act’s essential condition (the point/purpose of an order is to get the hearer to do something, that of a description is to offer a representation of the world etc.)

2. Differences in the direction of fit between words and the world – some speech acts try to get the words (i.e. the propositional content) match the world (like in the case of descriptions), while others try to get the world match the words (like in the case of promises or orders). [word-fits-world will be symbolized by , world-fit-word – by ]

3. Differences in expressed psychological states – “A man who states, explains, asserts or claims that^> expresses the belief that p; a man who promises, vows, threatens or pledges to do a expresses an intention to do a; 2L man who orders, commands, requests H to do A expresses a desire (want, wish) that H do A; a man who apologizes for doing A expresses regret at having done A; etc. [4]
The psychological state expressed in the performance of the illocutionary act is the sincerity condition of the act” (p. 4)

These three dimensions will constitute Searle’s “filter” for classification, but I’ll mention here some of the other ones: 4. Differences in the force or strength with which the illocutionary point is presented, 5. Differences in the status or position of the speaker and hearer as these bear on the illocutionary force of the utterance, 6. Differences in the way the utterance relates to the interests of the speaker and the hearer, 7. Differences in relations to the rest of the discourse, etc.

This being the criteria, Searle proposes a list of 5 categories (pp. 15-20). Any (simple) speech act will fall under at least one of these categories, and in some borderline cases, the categories will overlap:

Assertives. “The point or purpose of the members of the assertive class is to commit the speaker (in varying degrees) to something's being the case, to the truth of the expressed proposition.” (p. 12) “The simplest test of an assertive is this: can you literally characterize it (inter alia) as true or false” (p. 13)

• Examples: “John called”, “The sun will rise tomorow”, but also “I swear I saw him on the crime scene” etc.
• Some associated illocutionary verbs: affirm, assert, swear (that smth. is/was), put forward, state etc.
• Formalization: (read: assertion, word-fits-world, Belief, propositional content)

Directives. “The illocutionary point of these consists in the fact that they are attempts (of varying degrees, and hence, more precisely, they are determinates of the determinable which includes attempting) by the speaker to get the hearer to do something.” (p. 13) [Questions are a subclass here, because by questioning we are trying to get the speaker to do something, namely, to perform a speech act]

• Examples: “Clean your room!”, “I suggest you take the Volvo”, “Do you have some spare change?” (indirect)
• Verbs: ask, beg, order, command, plead, pray, entreat, invite, permit, advise etc.
• Formal: (read: directive, world-fits-word, Will, propositional content ascribing a future act A to the hearer H)

Commissives “are those illocutionary acts whose point is to committ the speaker (again in varying degrees) to some future course of action” (p. 14)

• Examples: “I promise I’ll clean the kitchen”, “You’ll get it done by Monday!”
• Verbs: promise, swear, commit oneself to
• Formal: (read: commitment, world-fits-word, Intention, propositional content ascribing a future act A to the speaker H)  

Expressives, “The illocutionary point of this class is to express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs specified in the propositional content. Notice that in expressives there is no direction of fit. In performing an expressive, the speaker is neither trying to get the world to match the words nor the words to match the world, rather the truth of the expressed proposition is presupposed.” (p. 15).

• Examples: “Congratulations for the award!”, “I hate Physics” (N.B. not ‘the physics of argumentation’!)
• Verbs: thank, congratulate, apologize, condole, deplore, welcome
• Formal: (read: express, world-is-already-as-words, psychological state, about a property S or H have)

Declarations. “is the defining characteristic of this class that the successful performance of one of its members brings about the correspondence between the propositional content and reality, successful performance guarantees that the propositional content corresponds to the world: if I successfully perform the act of appointing you chairman, then you are chairman” (pp. 16-17). “declarations do attempt to get the language match the world. But they do not attempt to do it either by describing an existing state of affairs (as do assertives) nor by trying to get someone to bring about a future state of affairs (as do directives or commissives)

• Examples: “You’re fired!”, “I hereby declare war on Germany”, “
• Verbs: declare, pronounce, announce, condemn etc.
• Formal: (read: declaration, makes-world-fit-words, no sincerity condition, propositional content)

The most important conclusion to be drawn is maybe this: an illocutionary act is not the same as an illocutionary verb. Two non-synonymous illocutionary verbs may represent different acts, but they do so by applying different criteria (4-12), and thus they do not represent different illocutionary points. For instance, the verbs “announce”, “hint” and “confide” do not mark “separate illocutionary points but rather the style or manner of performance of [the same] illocutionary act” (p. 28).

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The CP

 

In this post I had merely presented a terminology, one which involved the term “implicature”. We’ve seen that in some situations, besides what is said, there is something that is implicated and the latter can be either conventional (given by the conventional meaning of words) or conversational. I will now make a short review of the second part of Grice’s Logic and conversation (1975), the one which introduces the cooperation principle (CP) and thus explains our question No. 2, formulated in the last post as: how does the hearer understand what we say, when we mean more than we say?

For Grice, human talk exchanges are “purposive, indeed rational, behaviour” and therefore “cooperative efforts”. This means that, in them, “each participant recognizes, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction” (Grice, [1975]1989, p. 26). It follows that it is possible that some moves are acceptable (in view of the shared goal), while others are not. For example:

(1) A: Do you know what time it is?
B1: It’s half past ten
B2: My coffee is hot

It is easily acceptable that there’s at least an intuitive difference between B1 and B2: the first, comports with some sort of principle, whereas the second doesn’t. From this intuitive difference Grice puts forward a “rough general principle” of the sort: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (ibid.) This is the Cooperation Principle (henceforth, CP). 

Now, in this “rough” form, the cooperation principle wouldn’t be of much use. If one’s verbal conduct would not comport with the principle and the analyst would go on and say “He violated the CP”, no rocket science would have been produced. Therefore, Grice divides this principle into 4 maxims. Any sort of violation, he says, must fall under these 4 maxims: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. I’ll just put them down and then say something about them.

Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Relation

1. Be relevant

Manner

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief.
4. Be orderly.                                                                       (Grice, 1989, pp. 26-27)

How is this related to the notion of “conversational implicature”? Well, if the speaker “violates” a maxim or simply “opts out” of the CP entirely, then the relation between CP and conversational implicature is indeed scanty. However, it can be the case that the speaker flouts or exploits a maxim, i.e. he or she blatantly fails to fulfil it, knowing that the hearer – faced with this problem “How can what the speaker said be reconciled with the CP?” – will be able to understand what the speaker has implicated.

Consequently, with the introduction of CP, the conversational implicature can be characterized as such:

A man who, by (in, when) saying (or making as if to say) that p has implicated that q, may be said to have conversationally implicated that q, provided that (1) he is to be presumed to have observed the CP, (2) he is aware that q is required in order to make his saying p consistent with the CP, (3) the speaker thinks that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively that q is required

So I am able to say p and conversationally implicate q if: the hearer has no reason to suppose that I am opting out of the CP, if I let the hearer suppose that, if I somehow (conversationally) make him move towards q (with the use of meaning, context, background knowledge etc).

I’ll give two of Grice’s examples:

After Miss X’s paralysing performance, a sequence of boisterous and out of tune melodies, A remarks:
(a1): Miss X sang “Home Sweet Home”
(a2): Miss X produced a series of sounds that correspond closely with the score of “Home Sweet Home”

Why would A choose a2 instead of a1? In order to implicate “some striking difference between Miss X’s performance and those to which the word “singing” is usually applied”, by flouting the maxim of Manner (introducing unnecessary obscurity).

A, to his wife:
(a1) You are the cream in my coffee.

Again, literally, this is false. The fact that his wife is not the cream in his coffee is, strictly speaking, a truism. He is therefore doing something else, while flouting the maxim of Quality (being untruthful), and that is using a metaphor.

This is pretty much it. I will talk about Grice’s critics in a future post. But for now (and at least from what is said in Logic and Conversation) this is the CP.

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Avoiding definitions, wealth, power, money and a poodle

 

 

Oh, boy, do I enjoy these things … I swear I patiently read them every time, top to bottom, with my brain all eased off in what one may call “a good-natured mental sloth”. I revel in Internet-based sales pitch like a lorry driver in beer-based go-go bars. “It’s easy to deconstruct them, ‘cause you’re not the real target (or audience, or customer)”, I hear you say. It may be so. Nonetheless, I take it as a good exercise; not a very hard one, sure, but downright enjoyable.

Some of you following this blog might be, by now, closely acquainted with Mr. Michael Lee, The Expert Persuader (see here and here). After the second post regarding his “Groundbreaking Persuasion Secrets”, I thought I may had been slightly presumptuous, so I decided to leave it at that. But this morning I got an e-mail from him with the subject: This is so powerful it’s spooky, *my name*.

Hi *my name*, 
Have you heard of Cosmic Ordering?

[No?]
It's a very powerful method of placing an "order" with  the Universe for anything you want. Then you just sit  back and wait for the Universe to "deliver" it.

[Oh, so you mean like Santa?]
If this sounds too unbelievable, please set your doubts  aside until you've read this: *link*. Cosmic Ordering is perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring  methods of manifesting change in your life in the quickest way possible. And no matter how specific you are with your goals, you  could see them materialize - in just days (or even  minutes) from now.

So I clicked. Avidly. Let me at least walk you through one of the FAQs:

Q: What is Cosmic Ordering? [It’s the first question I would have asked, most certainly]

Cosmic ordering is a life-changing system for getting what you want out of life! [Since that is not  a genuine “definiendum-definiens” definition, i.e., no differentia, I’m guessing that’s not the actual definition. “Quitting smoking”, “working harder on my abs” or “the new puppy I bought” could be characterized as ‘life-changing systems for getting what you want’ – of course, if smoke-free, iron abs and a puddle is what you wish for]

It involves placing an "order" with the Universe, and waiting for that order to be "delivered." [Again, this is not a definition. When a four-year old writes to Santa, he’s placing an “order” and waiting to be “delivered.” Be that as it may, one also places an order with the Universe when one buys bubblegum; it’s a fast-moving demand-supply process. So I guess this is not the definition either. Moving on]

It's an exceptionally simple method, yet incredibly powerful [Same problem. So is sex. Sex is an exceptionally simple method, yet incredibly powerful. OK, I’m bluffing; but, say … eating. Eating is an exceptionally simple method, yet incredibly powerful. Everyday. So I guess this is not the definition either. Moving on.]

Cosmic ordering is endorsed by thousands of celebrities -- perhaps most famously by presenter Noel Edmonds, who used it to "order" the creation, development and hosting of the "Deal or No Deal" international TV franchise. [As tempting as Noel Edmonds’ name may sound (?!?), that is the answer to the question “Who else has used this method so far?”, not “What is this method”. Moving on.]

Cosmic ordering enables you to "order" exactly what you want from life: love, health, money, success, fame. [Well, no one really “disables” me from doing so, to be frank. The order part is easy (I want love, I want health, I want money, etc.). The receiving part is … wait, wait]

Just ask, and receive! [Oh, OK. It’s all clear now. I mean what obdurate, ill-fated wretch is going to look distrustfully at that limpid law? Just ask, and receive! What’s not to understand?]

Now, in the end, it goes somewhere near a definition, but a negative one:

Please note: Cosmic ordering does NOT involve tarot cards, astrology, spirituality, angels, or anything "kooky.”

Kooky? Hah … no, I wouldn’t bustle about that word when I’m selling Cosmic Order!

Ljubljana meets Ducrot

 

 

Title: Slovenian Lectures: Introduction into Argumentative Semantics
Author: Oswald Ducrot
Editor: Igor Ž. Žagar
Publisher: Pedagoški Inštitut
Year: 2009 [1996]

Entry in the Bibliography: Ducrot, 2009
PDF version here

 

 

 

 

Oswald Ducrot is a French linguist – and a very affable one, may I deduce from the lectures I am going to present –, who developed, along with Jean-Claude Anscombre (see Anscombre & Ducrot, 1983), the TAL: theory of argumentation in the language-system. The principal aim of the theory is to show that language and language-use could be better understood as argumentative rather than representative, i.e. that argumentation as a process is not only discernable at discourse-level (as a complex speech-act, a pragma-dialectitian would say) but within language-structure itself. Two “branches” of this theory are presented in these Slovenian Lectures (held in 1991 in Ljubljana, published in French in 1996), the polyphony theory and the topoi theory.

The descriptive/informative conception of meaning “consists in thinking that the fundamental value of a sentence consists in its truth-conditions. To describe the English sentence It’s warm is to say under which conditions it is true and under which is false. It is to say how the world must be for that sentence to be true” (p. 14). The first theory to partly break away from this classic conception was that of the Grammarians from Port-Royal. Basing their view upon Descartes’ distinction between “understanding” and “will”, they posited the two aspects to be observed within every sentence (and the utterances thereof): the dictum, which represents the information perceived by understanding, and the modus, which represents the attitude of the will. The modus is familiar to us now because we speak of the mood of the verb (indicative, imperative, subjunctive etc.).

This view of language has been classically adopted by speech-act theorists. Aside from some modifications (the modus is no longer seen as subjective – describing the speaker’s attitude – but as verbal behaviour – representing a responsibility which the speaker undertakes by means of the speech act), the modus-dictum distinction is now reinterpreted as the illocutionary force – propositional content distinction. This amounts to saying that whatever endeavors have been made to reject the representational aspect of the language – postulating the modus or illocutionary force as whole parts of sentence which are not meant to describe reality –, there were always some parts that did remain informative: the dictum or the propositional content.

This inability to thoroughly move away from the truth-conditional understanding of meaning is what Ducrot is set out to criticize by means of polyphony and topoi theories: “Indeed, I have the impression that nowhere in utterance-meaning nor anywhere in linguistic meaning is there a description of reality, so that for me the notions of true and false do not seem adequate ones to describe linguistic facts.” I will now try to outline the basics of these theories.

1. Polyphony

There is a systematic ambiguity in talking about “speaker” and “speakers” which, according to Ducrot, can be surpassed by dividing the “voices” of discourse-situations thus:.

• The producer of an utterance is – “the one whose activity results in the production of an utterance. The producer is the one who carries out the phonetic activity” (p. 30) – the real person producing an occurrence of a sentence (i.e. an utterance)
• The locutor – is the person who, “according to the very meaning of an utterance, is the person responsible for that utterance [...] He is the person who is designated, in the utterance itself” (p. 32) – the “I” in the “I must stay outside”[1]
• The enunciator – is the “source(s) of those different points of view which are represented within an utterance” (p. 35) – for example, in ‘echoic utterances’, the locutor is not the same as the enunciator – the one who holding that specific point of view is not the same as the one uttering it.[2]

In a negation, for example, we would have two enunciators: “If I have to describe a non-X (negative) utterance, I say that the non-X utterance represents two points of view, in other words, two enunciators” (p. 37). E1 states something, and E2 disagrees with it. But there can also be the case that in one utterance there are three enunciators. If I say: “Playing video games is not idleness”, then E2 and E3 are identifiable as constructing the negation (E1 asserts something with which E2 disagrees) but I also have a third enunciator E1 who says: “Playing video games is desirable”. This means that the linguistic description of the utterance “Playing video games is idleness”, in argumentative semantics, is this:

E1: Playing video games is good
E2: No, playing video games is idleness
E3: Playing video games is not idleness (the explicit utterance)

2. Topoi

The topoi theory starts with simple observations such as this: sometimes the argumentative orientation[3] of an utterance changes even though the informational content is the same. For example, “It’s eight” and “It’s only eight” say pretty much the same thing about the world, namely, that the clock is 20:00 or 08:00. However, while it would be natural to say both “It’s eight, hurry, you’re late” and “It’s eight, don’t worry, you’re on time”, it would be absurd to say: “It’s only eight, hurry, you’re late”, though it would be natural to say: “It’s only eight, don’t worry, you’re on time”. This means that “It’s only eight” is argumentatively oriented towards earliness, while, say, “It’s almost eight” is argumentatively oriented towards lateness. But to say this is practically to say that the linguistic structure of the sentence determines the argumentative function of the utterance, and this is the goal of the topoi theory.

The topoi theory is not very complicated in spirit, but it becomes quite catchy at some points. The main concept, topoi, is similar to Stephen Toulmin’s warrant and it refers to the sentence which “which allows to bridge the gap between argument and conclusion” [from DATA to CLAIM, in S.T.’s terms]. For instance, if I say: “The sky is gray, therefore it will probably rain”, the topos will be: “Grayness in the sky makes rain probable”.

Besides being “general” and “represented as a shared belief”, a topos is scalar: not only the notions connected by it are scalar (grayness, probability), but the principle itself is scalar (it allows expressions such as “The grayer the sky, the more probable it is that rain will fall”. Actually, since we can go either way on the scale (i.e. we could also say “The less grayer the sky, the less ...”), it means that “any topos has two topical forms” (p. 74), depending on the way we move along the scale[4].

What does this have to do with argumentative semantics? Well, with the help of the topoi theory, we can understand an argumentative string of the type: “It’s warm, but I’m tired” offered as a reply to “It’s warm, let’s go for a walk”. If one describe the former one can find four enunciators (p. 77): E1 and E2 are related to “It’s warm”, E3 and E4 are related to “I’m tired”. E1 introduces the topical form The warmer it is, the more pleasant the walk, E2 states “It’s warm” – this being oriented towards “Let’s go for a walk”. E3, on the contrary, introduces the topical form The less one’s physical state is good, the less going for a walk is pleasant, E4 states “I’m tired” and therefore orienting the string towards “Let’s not go for a walk”. E4 is to be identified with the locutor himself.

Is all this a step towards excluding informational aspects from linguistic analysis? Not really, and Prof. Ducrot admits that when he says: “There is no doubt that the informational component does obtain. When I use an utterance, I am giving you a certain amount of information in a certain way. If I say ‘It’s eight o’clock’, I am giving you quite a precise information, and if I say ‘It's almost eight o’clock’, the piece of information I am giving you is undoubtedly vaguer but is still a piece of information. So, the informational component does have a certain reality, which I cannot deny. What I’ve just done […] amounts to deriving the informational value from the argumentative value” (p. 92)

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[1] Ducrot’s example is a sign in a shop with a dog saying: “I must stay outside”, where the locutor is “a well-disciplined German dog” who “before going into the shop” says to himself “Careful now, I must stay outside” (p. 33)

[2] Suppose Mr. A and Mr. B are arguing. A says to B: “B, you’re a fool!” B answers using the very words A has used: “So, I’m a fool, am I? Well, just wait!” (p. 35). The locutor in B’s utterance is B, but the enunciator of B’s utterance is A.

[3] Argumentative orientation of an utterance “means that it is represented as being able to justify a certain conclusion, or to make that conclusion acceptable” (p. 49) Therefore, we will say that “It’s a beautiful weather” is argumentatively oriented towards “Let’s go for a walk!” Nota bene: “My notion of argumentativity is linguistic: it does not correspond to logical inferences.” (p. 55).

[4] „So, my topos T, relating P and Q, has two topical forms, TF’ and TF’’: TF’ = +P, +Q [The more P, the more Q], and TF’’ = -P, -Q [The less P, the less Q]” (p. 82)

 

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Weekend stuff

 

I must confess, I hate the guy in black interviewing Searle. I’m sorry. I don’t know who he is, I don’t know if he’s really that hateable, but that oozy, uppity, falsely-yielding smirk of his, reeking of ‘oh,-all-philosophy-is-so-easy’ makes me nervy. I’ve stumbled across him one or twelve times. I hate him. Why is he dangling his head like that? “John,” [dangle-dangle-dangle] “consciousness seems …”

Searle, on the other hand, is starting more and more to embody every person’s ideal, smart, agreeable grandpa.

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