A Normative Pragmatic Inquiry into the Volatility of Norms in Argumentation

‘Argument’ has multiple meanings and referents in contemporary argumentation theory. Theorists are well aware of this but often fail to acknowledge it in their theories. In what follows, I distinguish several senses of ‘argument’ and argue that some highly visible theories are largely correct about some senses of the term but not others. In doing so, I hope to show that apparent theoretical rivals are better seen as collaborators or partners, rather than rivals, in the multi-disciplinary effort to understand ‘argument,’ arguments, and argumentation in all their varieties. I argue as well for a pluralistic approach to argument evaluation and argumentative norms, since arguments and argumentation can be legitimately evaluated along several dimensions, but urge that epistemic norms enjoy conceptual priority.

The beginning of studying argumentation stems from the time of Old Greece and the development of rhetoric as discipline. Contemporary argumentation theory is based on Aristotle's rhetoric. The development of linguistics and discourse analysis has also brought new perspectives on argumentation. Today's theory looks at argumentation, arguments (as parts of it), assumptions, etc. from the position of pragma-dialectic. In the paper we present the basic characteristics of argumentation, which are supported by examples from our debate practice. We are talking about the basic concepts operated by contemporary argumentation. In this paper we also analyze some of the features of the macrostructure of the debate, the relationship between arguments and the structure of argumentation. Identified elements of argumentation, manifestations, structure, linguistic elements are also empirically substantiated through their existence in concrete discourse.

This article reviews the newspaper contributions by Isabel-Clara Simó, one of the most prestigious Catalan intellectuals today. Little has been discussed by critics about this part of Simó's writing and thus the primary focus of this article is to give a first overview of this production. Over the last few years opinion columns and articles have become a favorite topic for analysis in Spanish and Catalan studies. Publishing houses have also started publishing collections of newspaper articles, traditionally regarded as subordinate to fiction. The theoretical framework used is, on one hand, a contemporary argumentation theory —to examine columns as a persuasive genre— and, on the other, studies on discourse and power. Readings by Foucault and recent research on critical discourse analysis prove highly useful to understand Simó's political columns as an example of resistance discourse, which is characteristic of minority groups and ideologies and confronts the discourse of power or the social elite. It is organized around three main central themes in Simó's texts, namely feminism, Catalan nationalism and progressivism, which are respectively opposite to sexism, Spanish nationalism and conservatism.

La argumentación que implica dar cuenta y razón de algo a alguien o ante alguien, y que en la mayoría de los casos tiene lugar en el curso de una conversación o de una interacción discursiva entre dos o más agentes -siempre y cuando se tenga la intención de convencer o persuadir a alguien por medio de razones o justificaciones- tiene mucho que ver con la hermenéutica filosófica que da preeminencia a la comprensión, el diá- logo y la interpretación, y con el enfoque retórico que hace énfasis en los procesos de inducción de creencias, acciones o actitudes del destinatario. Por lo tanto, y teniendo en cuenta los planteamientos de la teoría de la argumentación y de la hermenéutica filosófica de H.G. Gadamer, este autor se propone escribir en este artículo una aproximación a dicha problemática como si de un “álbum de familia” se tratara, por considerar que se puede encontrar en el mismo álbum “fotos” de las teorías contemporáneas de la argumentación, la nueva retórica y la hermenéutica filosófica de Gadamer.

The present article deals with reported speech as an element of argumentation in the newspaper discourse of Great Britain viewed in the unity of its syntactic and semantic characteristics and argumentative functions. Theoretically, the research is based on the dialogic understanding of quotations, the dialogue theory by Bakhtin and contemporary argumentation theory. The proposed integral approach to reported speech combining linguistics with logic and argumentation theory revealed the relations between purely linguistic (syntactic and semantic) characteristics of reported speech with its functioning in argumentative discourse of contemporary British press.

Aristotelian dialectic has inspired important developments in contemporary argumentation theory, the rhetoric of science and the theory of controversies. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate these developments with respect to both Aristotle’s own approach—enriched as it might be by crucial historical developments—, and to the epistemic significance of dialectical reasoning. In the first part of the paper, I will analyze the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, two sister disciplines dealing specifically with effective discourse. In the second part, I will look more particularly at the meaning of ‘endoxa’, the premises of dialectical reasoning, and I will occasionally refer to important developments in the tradition of dialectic. Given this background, in the third part I will show how contemporary developments take different forms which correspond to two separate trends. The first trend emphasizes rhetorical persuasion and sees dialectic as a particular kind of discourse whose ultimate goal is to create a consensus about a controversial claim. The second trend, which better corresponds to Aristotle’s own approach, sees dialogue and disputation as the distinctive feature of dialectic. In the last section, I will highlight the specific contribution that dialectic can make to the advancement of knowledge: dialectic allows one of the two interlocutors in a disputation to shift the burden of proof and acquire a presumption of truth in his favor by forcing an adversary to concede to objectively acceptable premises. James Freeman, more than either Frans van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst and Douglas Walton, maintains a position similar to Aristotle’s. Claims to knowledge are thus tested in a fallible, albeit not contextually-dependent, way. In a slightly more skeptical approach, claims are “balanced” one against the other: the theory of controversies, at least in Marcelo Dascal’s approach, can also be seen as corresponding to Cicero’s interpretation of the Aristotelian legacy of dialectic.

The topic of the presence, legitimacy and epistemic worth of narrative explanations in different kinds of scientific discourse has already enjoyed several revivals within related discussions in contemporary philosophy of science. In fact, we have recently witnessed a more extensive, more unprejudiced and ambitious attention to narrative modes of making science. I think we need a systematic theoretical framework in order to categorize these different functions of narratives and understand their role in scientific explanatory and justificatory practice. My claim is that some distinctions and analytic tools developed within the field of contemporary Argumentation Theory might be of help.

Though they are often ignored in serious scholarship, editorial cartoons are an important vehicle for multimodal arguing. The present chapter outlines an “ART” approach to editorial cartoons which is rooted in contemporary argumentation theory. A series of examples are used to show how cartoons can be analyzed as instances of argument. To illustrate the significance of particular cartoon motifs, the chapter focuses on cartoons that depict political figures as Pinocchio – the magical wooden puppet in Carlo Collodi’s renowned children’s novel. In a number of ways, these cartoons challenge traditional assumptions that characterize conventional accounts of argument – among them, the common claim that pictures cannot negate.

In ‘‘Strategic Maneuvering in Mathematical Proofs,’’ Krabbe (2007) aims to show that argumentation theory, and specifically pragma-dialectics, can help us better understand the nature of mathematical proofs. Proofs are not always arguments, by Krabbe’s account, but he holds that ‘‘whenever in a proof the reasoning displays persuasive functions, the proof can be regarded as an argument.’’ In these cases, where proofs do have a persuasive function, their persuasive effectiveness may depend on strategic maneuvering, and this brings proofs within the scope of the recent extensions of pragma-dialectics that integrate rhetorical and dialectical principles. Agreeing with Krabbe’s overall point that proofs are often shaped by rhetorical considerations as well as dialectical ones, I wish to focus my own remarks on what an examination of proofs and proving might contribute to a broader understanding of argumentation. In contemporary argumentation theory, argumentation is assumed to have resolution of disagreement or difference of opinion as its characteristic purpose. In argumentative discourse, we drill down from disagreeing speech acts in search of contradictory source beliefs, and once the source of disagreement is identified and dispatched, argumentation typically returns to the original interactional business. The idea that argumentation is aimed at repair of disagreement is central to my own work (see my own article in this volume). The normal course of interaction is purposeful exchange of speech acts, from which an open-ended set of beliefs and intentions may be reconstructed by each participant. People search and examine these underlying beliefs and intentions when they need to in order to continue with a purposeful exchange. Whether as an expression of Gricean cooperativity (as argued by Jacobs and Jackson 1983) or as output from ‘a simple heuristic that makes us smart’ (as might be inferred from Gigerenzer et al. 1999; see also Jackson 1996),

It is first argued that dialectic was a form of regimented debate, which grew out of public debates in Ancient Greece. A set of rules for dialectical bouts is then given and their meaning explained. The transition from oral to written arguments is briefly examined, leading to the formulation of a delimitation problem in Plato’s dialogues, as he inserted dialectical arguments within ordinary dialogue contexts, turning them into discussions where one of the participants reasons hypothetically to make the other realize that they are not entitled to their view. Doing so, Plato adjusted dialectic to a variety of dialogue purposes and in order to explore this variety, a study of the early tradition of classifying Plato’s dialogues in terms of their ‘character’ is suggested, the results of which are then compared with types of dialogues in contemporary Argumentation Theory.

In this paper a tentative explanation of the competence of argumentation from an evolutionary point of view is offered. Because in contemporary argumentation theory and the informal logic approach the evolutionary perspective has been neglected, this paper gives an initial overview on the matter with the hope that core aspects of the argumentative faculty—such as argumentative normativity, the function of arguments, or fallacious moves, among others—can be seen differently afterwards. In order to specify the proposal, the main concepts considered are the notion of collective intentionality, cooperation, reputation, niche construction and, of course, basic evolutionary terms.

The study speculates about logic, rhetoric and heuristics as kinds of argumentation theory. Contemporary argumentation theories are informal logics, and it takes work to distinguish between them. The ultimate aim of traditional formal logic is to study proofs and refutations as logical forms, i.e., argumentation, so traditional logic can be seen as an argumentation theory. Classical and non-classical formal logics have traditional formal logic at their core. It allows them to be seen as argumentation theories. Rhetoric uses argumentation as a means of persuasion, and argument is understood much more broadly in rhetoric than in logic, leading to the practical indistinguishability of rhetoric and argumentation theory. In R. Inhetveen’s conception of heuristics, heuristics is understood as argumentation, which allows us to present heuristics (as a specific scientific discipline) as a theory of argumentation.

Despite Vancil’s (1979) proclamation over twenty years ago that topoi have been abandoned in argument theory, this essay contends that topoi should have a vital role in contemporary argumentation theory. Four key areas are identified where topoi are (or can be) essential tools for argumentation: Locating argument, building argument, development of critical thinking, and argument pedagogy. As a result, teachers and students of argument can both benefit from a (re)discovery of topoi.

This second edition of CRITICAL THINKING EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT: Can Higher Order Thinking be Tested? contains a series of important papers from the first edition and a new Introduction by Jan Sobocan. The essays are an important read for anyone interested in the issues raised by the teaching of critical thinking and consequent attempts to test its success. They discuss attempts to use testing to ensure educational accountability, the politics of testing regimes, and the shortcomings and the strengths of standard tests used to teach and assess students, courses, programs, and the tests themselves. The ebook can serve as a useful introduction to the questions that this raises, at the same time that it provides answers to these questions from the perspective of many different trends within contemporary argumentation theory.

Whereas formal mathematical theories are well studied, computers cannot yet adequately represent and reason about mathematical dialogues and other informal texts. To address this gap, we have developed a representation and reasoning strategy that draws on contemporary argumentation theory and classic AI techniques for representing and querying narratives and dialogues. In order to make the structures that these modelling tools produce accessible to computational reasoning, we encode representations in a higher-order nested semantic network. This system, for which we have developed a preliminary prototype in LISP, can represent both the content of what people say, and the dynamic reasoning steps that move from one step to the next.