Actually Existing Rules for Closing Arguments

Abstract

F. H. van Eemeren, B. Garssen (eds.), Pondering on Problems of Argumentation, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9165-0_20, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Our interest in argumentation is provoked at least in part by the apparent paradox it presents. People are arguing because they disagree, sometimes deeply. But despite their disagreement, their transaction is orderly – at least, somewhat orderly. Furthermore, this orderliness apparently has a normative element; it establishes grounds for participants to critique each other’s conduct as good and bad. How is this normative orderliness achieved, even in the face of disagreement? – That must be a central question for any theory, especially one that aims to deepen our understanding of the normative pragmatics of arguing (Goodwin, 2002, 2007; Jacobs, 1999; van Eemeren, 1994). In this essay, I want to probe one rather abstract aspect of this question, about what I will call the general “shape” of the account we should be giving of argumentative orderliness. In attempting to understand or explain argumentative talk, how should we represent the activity? What basic model should we be using? In what terms should we explain the affairs? What story should we tell about them? Or, again, to put this generally, what shape should an account of arguing take? One common approach to this question has been to say that we should account for arguing as a form of following rules. This has been the approach of many theorists proposing “dialectical” models for argument, including Rescher (1977), Walton and Krabbe (1995), and of course most prominently, the pragma-dialectical school (e.g., van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1988, 1992). According to an account of this shape, although arguers disagree about many things, they agree about the rules of argument, which “provide established procedures for co-operation in order to reach solutions for disagreements” (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1988, p. 499). These rules of argument lend order to an argumentative transaction. They also express the fundamental norms or ideals arguers should live up to. Talk which follows the rules is normatively good, while talk which breaks them is bad. A theory of argument is thus “a system of descriptive and/or normative rules for the performance of the communicative act complex of argumentation” (1988, p. 506). Chapter 20 Actually Existing Rules for Closing Arguments