The Natural Development of Argumentation as a Human Affair: A Fanciful History

Abstract

Introduction: Students who take my Argumentation and Debate class typically carry one of two different pieces of luggage. Those with no training in informal logic, debate, or the systematic construction and analys is of arguments carry the first. Their lack of training is not the luggage they carry; it can, in fact, be a strength. But their tendency is to tum this lack of personal experience into a piece of psychological luggage that weighs them down. In particular, many carry the opinion with them that their lack of experience makes them less able than others to reason logically, think critically, or construct and critique arguments well. They find this initial attitude reinforced when a whole new language is presented in the form of talk about inductive reasoning, fallacies, debate terminology, and argument components and analysis. The second set of students comes to the class with some formal training, usually in scholastic debate. The experience is not their luggage. However, many treat the ideas that result as accurate, when in some cases they are not; or as inclusive of the subject matter, when it never is; or as a laurel on which to rest, which inevitably results in lower than necessary scores on exams. The most problematic of these fonns is when students reify their conceptions of the practices involved in argumentation and debate into God 's truth or some lesser but still immutable conception. There is no sense, in such cases, that there was ever an evolution of thinking around how argument might best be accomplished. I want them to understand argument as a naturally evolving set of conventions/constraints that can help guide their thinking. Anything human has some history and is subject to change; that is where I begin my work. For a number of years I began my class by attempting to introduce students to the nature (definitions; models) and component parts (claims; warrants; elcelera) of an argument. As a result of the luggage my students carry, I have recently shifted my approach. I now begin by talking about why, if we lived in a world that did not have the fundamentals of reasoning and of argument, we wou ld have to invent them. This helps put all of the students, experienced, misguided, or otherwise, on a similar first footing. Then, over time in the class, we develop a system