Argumentation theory

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Argumentation theory, or argumentation, embraces the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real world settings. Argumentation is concerned primarily with reaching conclusions through logical reasoning, that is, claims based on premises. Although including debate and negotiation which are concerned with reaching mutually acceptable conclusions, argumentation theory also encompasses eristic dialog, the branch of social debate in which victory over an opponent is the primary goal. This art and science is often the means by which people protect their beliefs or self-interests in rational dialogue, in common parlance, and during the process of arguing. Argumentation is used in law, for example in trials, in preparing an argument to be presented to a court, and in testing the validity of certain kinds of evidence. Also, argumentation scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify decisions they have made irrationally.

Key Components of Argumentation

Understanding and identifying arguments, either explicit or implied, and the goals of the participants in the different types of dialogue.

Identifying the premises from which conclusion are derived

Establishing the "burden of proof" — determining who made the initial claim and is thus responsible for providing evidence why his/her position merits acceptance

For the one carrying the "burden of proof", the advocate, to marshal evidence for his/her position in order to convince or force the opponent's acceptance. The method by which this is accomplished is producing valid, sound, and cogent arguments, devoid of weaknesses, and not easily attacked.

In a debate, fulfillment of the burden of proof creates a burden of rejoinder. One must try to identify faulty reasoning in the opponent’s argument, to attack the reasons/premises of the argument, to provide counterexamples if possible, to identify any logical fallacies, and to show why a valid conclusion cannot be derived from the reasons provided for his/her argument

Aspects of Argumentation

Argumentation theory was once based upon foundationalism, a theory of knowledge (epistemology) in the field of philosophy. It sought to find the grounds for claims in the forms (logic) and materials (factual laws) of a universal system of knowledge. As argument scholars gradually rejected the idealism in Plato and Kant, and jettisoned with it the idea that argument premises take their soundness from formal philosophical systems, the field broadened within the theory of pragmatism. In this theory argumentation is used with or without empirical evidence to establish convincing conclusions about issues which are moral, scientific, epistemic, or of a nature in which science alone cannot answer. Out of pragmatism and many intellectual developmnents in the humanities and social sciences, "non-philosophical" argumentation theories grew which located the formal and material grounds of arguments in particular intellectual fields. These theories include informal logic, social epistemology, ethnomethodology, speech acts, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of science, and social psychology. These new theories are not non-logical or anti-logical. They find logical coherence in most communities of discourse. These theories are thus often labelled "sociological" in that they focus on the social grounds of knowledge.

In general, the label "argumentation" is used by speech and communication scholars (such as Joseph W. Wenzel, James Klumpp,G. Thomas Goodnight, Robin Rowland, Dale Hample, C. Scott Jacobs, Sally Jackson, and Charles Arthur Willard) while the term "informal logic" is preferred by philosophers, stemming from University of Windsor philosophers Ralph Johnson and J. Anthony Blair. Trudy Govier, Douglas Walton, Michael Gilbert, Harvey Seigal, Michael Scriven, and John Woods (to name only a few) are other prominent authors in this tradition. Over the past thirty years, however, scholars from several disciplines have co-mingled at international conferences such as that hosted by the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Other international conferences are the biannual conference held at Alta, Utah sponsored by the (US) National Communication Association and American Forensics Association and conferences sponsored by the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA).

Some scholars (such as Ralph Johnson) construe the term "argument", narrowly, for instance as exclusively written discourse or even discourse in which all premises are explicit. Others (such as Michael Gilbert) construe the term "argument" broadly, to include spoken and even nonverbal discourse, for instance the degree to which a war memorial or propaganda poster can be said to argue or "make arguments." The philosopher Stephen E. Toulmin has said that an argument is a claim on our attention and belief, a view that would seem to authorize treating, say, propaganda posters as arguments. The dispute between broad and narrow theorists is of long standing and is unlikely to be settled. The views of the majority of argumentation theorists and analysts fall somewhere between these two extremes.

One rigorous modern version of dialectic has been pioneered by scholars at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, under the name of Pragma-dialectics. The intuitive idea is to formulate clearcut rules that, if followed, will yield rational discussion and sound conclusions. Frans van Eemeren, the late Rob Grootendorst, and many of their students have produced a large body of work expounding this idea.

Stephen E. Toulmin and Charles Arthur Willard have championed the idea of argument fields, the former drawing upon Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language games, the latter drawing from political science and social epistemology. For Toulmin, the term "field" designates discourses within which arguments and factual claims are grounded. For Willard, the term "field" is interchangeable with "community," "audience," or "readership." Along similar lines, G. Thomas Goodnight has studied "spheres" of argument and sparked a large literature created by younger scholars responding to or using his ideas. The general tenor of these field theories is that the premises of arguments take their meaning from social communities.

Toulmin's Special Contributions

Toulmin has argued that absolutism (represented by theoretical or analytic arguments) has limited practical value. Absolutism is derived from Plato’s idealized formal logic, which advocates universal truth; thus absolutists believe that moral issues can be resolved by adhering to a standard set of moral principles, regardless of context. By contrast, Toulmin asserts that many of these so-called standard principles are irrelevant to real situations encountered by human beings in daily life.

To describe his vision of daily life, Toulmin introduced the concept of argument fields; in The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin states that some aspects of arguments vary from field to field, and are hence called “field-dependent,” while other aspects of argument are the same throughout all fields, and are hence called “field-invariant.” The flaw of absolutism, Toulmin believes, lies in its unawareness of the field-dependent aspect of argument; absolutism assumes that all aspects of argument are field invariant.

Toulmin’s theories resolve to avoid the defects of absolutism without resorting to relativism: relativism, Toulmin asserted, provides no basis for distinguishing between a moral or immoral argument. In Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin suggests that anthropologists have been tempted to side with relativists because they have noticed the influence of cultural variations on rational arguments; in other words, the anthropologist or relativist overemphasizes the importance of the “field-dependent” aspect of arguments, and becomes unaware of the “field-invariant” elements. In an attempt to provide solutions to the problems of absolutism and relativism, Toulmin attempts throughout his work to develop standards that are neither absolutist nor relativist for assessing the worth of ideas. Toulmin believes that a good argument can succeed in providing good justification to a claim, which will stand up to criticism and earn a favourable verdict. In The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin proposed a layout containing six interrelated components for analyzing arguments:

1. Claim: conclusions whose merit must be established. For example, if a person tries to convince a listener that he is a British citizen, the claim would be “I am a British citizen.”

2. Data: the facts we appeal to as a foundation for the claim. For example, the person introduced in 1 can support his claim with the supporting data “I was born in Bermuda.”

3. Warrant: the statement authorizing our movement from the data to the claim. In order to move from the data established in 2, “I was born in Bermuda,” to the claim in 1, “I am a British citizen,” the person must supply a warrant to bridge the gap between 1 & 2 with the statement “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen.”

4. Backing: credentials designed to certify the statement expressed in the warrant; backing must be introduced when the warrant itself is not convincing enough to the readers or the listeners. For example, if the listener does not deem the warrant in 3 as credible, the speaker will supply the legal provisions as backing statement to show that it is true that “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen.”

5. Rebuttal: statements recognizing the restrictions to which the claim may legitimately be applied. The rebuttal is exemplified as follows, “A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen, unless he has betrayed Britain and has become a spy of another country.”

6. Qualifier: words or phrases expressing the speaker’s degree of force or certainty concerning the claim. Such words or phrases include “possible,” “probably,” “impossible,” “certainly,” “presumably,” “as far as the evidence goes,” or “necessarily.” The claim “I am definitely a British citizen” has a greater degree of force than the claim “I am a British citizen, presumably.”

The first three elements “claim,” “data,” and “warrant” are considered as the essential components of practical arguments, while the second triad “qualifier,” “backing,” and “rebuttal” may not be needed in some arguments. When first proposed, this layout of argumentation is based on legal arguments and intended to be used to analyze the rationality of arguments typically found in the courtroom; in fact, Toulmin did not realize that this layout would be applicable to the field of rhetoric and communication until his works were introduced to rhetoricians by Wayne Brockriede and Douglas Ehninger. Only after he published Introduction to Reasoning (1979) were the rhetorical applications of this layout mentioned in his works.

In Cosmopolis (1990), Toulmin traces the Quest for Certainty back to Descartes and Hobbes, and lauds Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Rorty for abandoning that tradition.

Artificial Intelligence

Argumentation is also a formal discipline within artificial intelligence where the aim is to make a computer assist in or perform the act of argumentation. In addition, argumentation has been used to provide a proof-theoretic semantics for non-monotonic logic, starting with the influential work of Dung (1995). Computational argumentation systems have found particular application in domains where formal logic and classical decision theory are unable to capture the richness of reasoning, domains such as law and medicine. Within Computer Science, the ArgMAS workshop series (Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems), the CMNA workshop series Computational Models of Natural Argument, and now the COMMA Conference Computational Models of Argument are regular annual events attracting participants from every continent.

Internal Structure of Arguments

Typically an argument has an internal structure, comprising of the following

a set of assumptions or premises
a method of reasoning or deduction and
a conclusion or point.

An argument must have at least one premise and one conclusion.

Q. What is an argument that is void of reason ? Is it not just opinion - theory ? One may leap to a conclusion but it must be traced back to the premise and the initial problem by building a bridge of justification else it is just a castle in the sky - an idea, not an argument. The idea may be true or false and may even get common acceptance because it 'feels' right or appeals to expectations. BUT it is not an argument.

Often classical logic is used as the method of reasoning so that the conclusion follows logically from the assumptions or support. One challenge is that if the set of assumptions is inconsistent then anything can follow logically from inconsistency. Therefore it is common to insist that the set of assumptions is consistent. It is also good practice to require the set of assumptions to be the minimal set, with respect to set inclusion, necessary to infer the consequent. Such arguments are called MINCON arguments, short for minimal consistent. Such argumentation has been applied to the fields of law and medicine. A second school of argumentation investigates abstract arguments, where 'argument' is considered a primitive term, so no internal structure of arguments is taken on account.

In its most common form, argumentation involves an individual and an interlocutor/or opponent engaged in dialogue, each contending differing positions and trying to persuade each other. Other types of dialogue in addition to persuasion are eristic, information seeking, inquiry, negotiation, deliberation, and the dialectical method (Doug Walton). The dialectical method was made famous by Plato and his use of Socrates critically questioning various characters and historical figures.

Psychological aspects

Psychology has long studied the non-logical aspects of argumentation. For example, studies have shown that simple repetition of an idea is often a more effective method of argumentation than appeals to reason. Propaganda often consists of such non-logical argumentation. Nazi rhetoric, and especially that of Adolph Hitler, has been studied extensively as, inter alia, a repetition campaign. Such studies bring argumentation within the ambit of persuasion theory and practice.

Some psychologists such as William J. McGuire believe that the syllogism is the basic unit of human reasoning. They have produce a large body of empirical work around McGuire's famous title "A Syllogistic Analysis of Cognitive Relationships." A central thrust of this thinking is that logic is contaminated by psychological variables such as "wishful thinking," in which subjects confound the liklihood of predictions with the desirability of the predictions. People hear what they want to hear and see what they expect to see. If planners want something to happen they see it as likely to happen. Thus planners ignore possible problems, as in the American experiment with prohibition. If they hope something will not happen, they see it as unlikely to happen. Thus smokers think that they personally will avoid cancer.

Notes

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Organizations

Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking
International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA)
American Forensics Association

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