This paper offers insights into the nature and design of critical questions as they are found in argumentation schemes. In the first part of the paper, I address some general concerns regarding their purpose and formulation. These include a discussion of their evaluative function, their relationship with the patterns of reasoning they accompany, as well as the differing formulations of critical questions currently on offer. I argue that the purpose of critical questions for humans ought to be to provide the (...) means for a scalar evaluation of the reasoning at hand. To do so, critical questions should be closely paired with individual premises in the accompanying pattern of reasoning and be open-ended. Doing so allows the roles of raising considerations relevant for the reasoning and scrutinizing those considerations to be clearly distinguished. In the second part of the paper, I offer a positive methodological proposal for the construction of questions and premises that aims at overcoming a number of the individual and systematic shortcomings of extant question styles. The paper concludes by arguing that the newly proposed approach is both normatively strong and practically useful for argumentation in context. (shrink)

Argumentation has remained under-researched in studies analyzing academic journal publications despite its importance in academic writing. This paper reports a study in which we investigated stereotypical argumentative trends, lexico-grammatical features, and interactional metadiscourse markers in 354 research article free-standing discussion sections from the journal of ESP over forty years. The field of ESP was chosen because of its maturity, which has given substance to a dynamic ground for arguments. We drew on the pragma-dialectical approach to analyzing argumentations in the corpus. (...) Findings indicated that due to the argumentative nature of the discussion section, certain argumentative trends recurred more often. The analysis of the lexico-grammatical features and metadiscourse markers of the standpoints also showed patterns of variability over time. The study concludes that it is imperative to incorporate relevant facets from various argumentation models to construct a comprehensive argumentation theory and gain deeper insights into argumentation in academic writing. (shrink)

The latest book is a timely application of the Pragma-Dialectical argumentative approach to medical consultation. The book consists of six chapters, which are concerned with topics pertaining to resolving differences of the opinion in doctor-patient interaction. With the publication of the book, the authors have made new contributions to the field of doctor-patient argumentative discourse.

Argumentation is the offspring of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Differences among them are matters more of degree than of kind, but each reflects basic underlying assumptions. This essay explicates five key assumptions of rhetorical approaches to argumentation: audience assent is the ultimate measure of an argument’s success or failure; argumentation takes place within a context of uncertainty, both about the subject of the dispute and about the process for conducting the dispute; arguers function as restrained partisans and accept risks that (...) follow from such a status; despite its seemingly adversarial nature, argumentation is fundamentally cooperative, pursuing the shared goal of making the best decision; and argumentation is grounded in the situational context of particular cases. (shrink)

According to the argument scheme approach, to evaluate a given scheme-saturating instance completely does entail asking all critical questions relevant to it. Although this is a central task for argumentation theorists, the field currently lacks a method for providing a complete argument evaluation. Approaching this task at the meta-level, we combine a logical with a substantive approach to the argument schemes by starting from Toulmin’s schema: ‘data, warrant, so claim’. For the yet more general schema: ‘premise; if premise, then conclusion; (...) so conclusion’, we forward a meta-level CQ-list that is arguably both complete and applicable. This list should inform ongoing theoretical efforts at generating appropriate object-level CQs for specific argument schemes. (shrink)

Addressing the slippery slope argument (SSA) in legal contexts from the perspective of pragma-dialectics, this paper elaborates the conditions under which an SSA-scheme instance is used reasonably (rather than fallaciously). We review SSA-instances in past legal decisions and analyze the basic legal SSA-scheme. By illustrating the institutional preconditions influencing the reasoning by which an SSA moves forward, we identify three sub-schemes (causal SSA, analogical SSA, and Sorites SSA). For each sub-scheme we propose critical questions, as well as four rules that (...) clarify when the SSA scheme is used reasonably. The institutional preconditions make the analogical SSA expectable in common law contexts; the Sorites SSA is expectable in civil law contexts; whereas the causal SSA is common to both contexts. This result should inform future work on the identification of typical argumentative patterns for the SSA in legal contexts. (shrink)

This article explains the design and development of the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies. In this approach fallacies are viewed as violations of the standards for critical discussion that are expressed in a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse. After the problem-solving validity in resolving differences of opinion of the rules of this code has been discussed, their conventional validity for real-life arguers is demonstrated. Starting from the extended version of the theory in which the strategic maneuvering taking place in (...) argumentative discourse is included, the article explains that the violations of the rules that are committed in the fallacies involve derailments of strategic maneuvering. This culminates in a discussion of the exploitation of hidden fallaciousness as an unreasonable way of increasing the effectiveness of argumentative discourse – a vital topic of research in present-day pragma-dialectics. (shrink)

In ‘The making of argumentation theory’ van Eemeren and van Haaften describe the contributions made to the five components of a full-fledged research program of argumentation theory by four prominent approaches to the discipline: formal dialectics, rhetoric/pragmalinguistics, informal logic, and pragma-dialectics. Most of these approaches do not contribute to all components, but to some in particular. Starting from the pragma-dialectical view of the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness – the crucial issue in argumentation theory – van Eemeren and (...) van Haaften explain the positions taken by representatives from the approaches discussed and indicate where they differ from the pragma-dialectical approach. It transpires that approaches focusing on dialectical reasonableness are, next to pragma-dialectics, formal dialectics and informal logic; approaches focusing on rhetorical effectiveness are, next to pragma-dialectics, rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, and the informal logician Tindale. When it comes to the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, some interest in it is shown in rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, but only in pragma-dialectics and in Tindale’s work is it a real focus. The main difference between Tindale’s view and the pragma-dialectical view is that in pragma-dialectics the decisive role in deciding about reasonableness is assigned to a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse and in Tindale’s approach this role is assigned to Tindale’s interpretation of the Perelmanian universal audience. (shrink)

This theoretical expose explores the complex notion of argumentative style, which has so far been largely neglected in argumentation theory. After an introduction of the problems involved, the theoretical tools for identifying the properties of the discourse in which an argumentative style manifests itself are explained from a pragma-dialectical perspective and a theoretical definition of argumentative style is provided that does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The article concludes with a short reflection upon the next steps that (...) need to be taken in argumentation theory in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style. (shrink)

The extended pragma-dialectical argumentation theory assumes that people engaged in argumentative discourse manoeuvre strategically. In argumentative reality, the strategic manoeuvring is often carried out according to an argumentative strategy. Language users make an effort to present their strategic manoeuvres in a specific way and the analysis of the stylistic choices in actual argumentative discourse is the most important basis for identification and analysis of argumentative strategies. In this article, it is shown what requirements must be satisfied by a systematic stylistic (...) analysis of argumentative discourse, and the results of such an analysis are illustrated by means of a case study. (shrink)

Is argumentation essentially adversarial? The concept of a devil's advocate—a cooperative arguer who assumes the role of an opponent for the sake of the argument—serves as a lens to bring into clearer focus the ways that adversarial arguers can be virtuous and adversariality itself can contribute to argumentation's goals. It also shows the different ways arguments can be adversarial and the different ways that argumentation can be said to be "essentially" adversarial.

El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer un concepto de agente crítico que dialogue con una práctica democrática deliberativa, considerando qué significa el acto de dar razones. Para tal efecto, en este trabajo se discute, primero, qué significaría ser crítico o tender hacia la criticidad tanto autorreferente como hacia terceros. Esta sección está apoyada principalmente con ideas provenientes de la teoría de la argumentación y de la lógica informal. En segundo término, se aborda el concepto de democracia deliberativa a la (...) luz de la sinergia conceptual que habría entre la participación -potencial- de un agente crítico en tal contexto sociopolítico. En esta sección se pasa revista a algunas de las ideas centrales de la teoría de la democracia deliberativa. Y en la tercera y última parte, se aborda el problema de dar y recibir razones discutiendo la propuesta semántica inferencialista de Brandom (2002, 2005) para observar de qué manera este acercamiento puede aportar a una teoría de la deliberación y a un concepto -y educación- de agente crítico. En las conclusiones se sintetizan las ideas principales y, además, se hace un contrapunto entre la noción de agencia, concepto que es importante en mi propuesta, y la noción de persona, concepto de especial valor en la teoría de la democracia deliberativa. (shrink)

The present paper analyses discursive representations and standpoint-arguments pairs, realized in articles of four mainstream Italian newspapers that report on migrants’ and refugees’ mobilization at the perceived peak of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. We draw on the scholarly agenda of Critical Discourse Studies, employing tools from corpus linguistic perspectives, which allow us to generalize over the way in which the relevant minorities are represented in our corpus. Then, focusing on a smaller sample of negative representations, we outline a methodological synthesis (...) in order to scrutinize instances of representational meaning in newspapers articles and trace what is argumentatively inferred in discursive representations. To that end we exploit tools from systemic functional and cognitive linguistics as well as the Argumentum Model of Topics for the analysis of inference. In this sense, we demonstrate how discriminatory representations do not only portray migrants and refugees in a negative light but also justify discrimination through the argumentative dynamic they develop. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the legal record on civil litigation from mid-March 2020 to mid-July 2021 and examine COVID-19 pandemic-related arguments in a sample of litigated cases heard in Polish courts, more precisely 41 cases. In an attempt to establish the number and types of court cases in which such arguments have been raised, the population of individual case records was accessed electronically from the Ordinary Courts Judgments Portal. The analysed research material consists of texts of (...) written justifications published along with rulings of courts of the first instance in the Portal, except for texts regarding criminal cases and widely understood labour cases. This paper refers to certain theoretical aspects of argument and argumentation. Then, it sheds light on the use of COVID-19 pandemic-related arguments by the parties involved in litigation—as reported by the courts in written justifications—considering, amongst others, whether those arguments were found convincing by the courts. Based on a survey of relevant cases, an attempt was made to identify categories of COVID-19 pandemic-related arguments of the parties involved in litigation, raised in their legal submissions. Also a look into the tendencies in this regard was taken to see whether any patterns emerge and it is possible to discern different trends in the analysed phenomena. The point of the analysis in this article is both descriptive and normative. (shrink)

TED Talks are still an unexplored genre of argumentation in which narrative arguments are often used in TED speakers’ strategic maneuvering to support a standpoint. In the present study, I combine the constructs of narrative positioning (NP) and strategic maneuvering (SM) to offer a conceptualization of how narrative is used in pragmatic argumentation as well as provide an exemplary analysis of a specific case of narrative arguments that were used in Winch’s (How to practice emotional first aid. https://www.ted.com/talks/guy_winch_the_case_for_emotional_hygiene.2014, 2014) TED (...) Talk. The proposed integration aims to provide a theoretical framework and empirical tools for reconstructing narrative arguments through connecting the underlying formal structure of narrative with aspects of TED speakers’ strategic maneuvering. Drawing on NP and SM constructs, the critical analysis explores how Winch’s narratives or “small stories” were strategically manipulated to support his stance with regard to the importance of mental health and to examine whether or not the use of narrative arguments as argumentation moves helped to enhance the dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness of Winch’s argument. The analysis shows that the macro context and the knowledge gap between TED speakers and the audience makes the use of narrative arguments extremely effective. Although narrative arguments often receive criticism about their validity in providing sufficient evidence for a standpoint, their dialectical power lies in the flexibility of describing events in different fashions to draw pragmatic inferences that support the speaker’s stance. The study fills an important gap in the literature as it integrates recent approaches in narrative theory in the reconstruction and evaluation of narrative arguments in TED Talks. (shrink)

Both questions as abstract objects and the speech acts, here called requests, by which we ask them play an enormous role in all argumentative practices. Nonetheless, there is hardly a proper systematic treatment of questions and requests in current argumentation theories. This paper is a first attempt at providing such a systematic treatment. This is achieved by following the ideal model of a critical discussion as elaborated over the years by the Amsterdam school of pragma-dialectics. After introducing the distinction between (...) questions and requests, the paper sets forth and illustrates the norms of questioning which implicitly underlie the four stages of a critical discussion in the standard order: confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. Among other things, it is shown that crucial insights of pragma-dialectics are illuminated by the questioning perspective, in particular the distinction between single and multiple differences of opinion, the duties of the antagonist and protagonist roles, the precise character of the argumentation stage, and the different ways in which a disagreement can be resolved. (shrink)

How can we make businesspeople more concerned about the truth of the information they spread or allow to circulate? In this age of ‘fake news’, ‘business bullshit’ and ‘post-truth,’ the issue is of the utmost importance, especially for business trustworthiness in the internet economy. The issue is related to a kind of epistemic responsibility, that consists in accounting for one’s own epistemic wrongdoings, such as making a third party believe something false. Despite growing interest in epistemic misbehavior in the literature (...) of business ethics, the question of epistemic responsibility has been neglected. The aim of this paper is therefore to address this gap, by proposing a notion of epistemic responsibility for business, that may help regulate undesirable epistemic behavior, such as the spreading of false information. To define this notion of epistemic responsibility, I have introduced the concept of epistemic fault. Being epistemically responsible consists in being disposed to account for alleged epistemic faults. This notion of epistemic fault relies on a theoretical framework which combines a typology of eight ‘epistemic values’, a normative stance regarding these values, and a dispositional approach to epistemic virtues and vices. I use this theoretical framework to integrate the various accounts of epistemic virtues and vices found in the literature into a single explanatory scheme. Combined with the notion of epistemic responsibility itself, such an integrative framework should facilitate the practical application of an operational epistemic ethics in business, i.e., the development of virtuous epistemic practices. (shrink)

The tradition of Nyāya philosophy centers on a dispassionate quest for truth which is simultaneously connected to soteriological and epistemic aims. This article shows how Vācaspati Miśra brings together the soteriological concept of dispassion with the discourse practices of debate, as a response to Buddhist criticisms in Dharmakīrti’s Vādanyāya. He defends the Nyāyasūtra’s stated position that fallacious reasoning is a legitimate means for a debate, under certain circumstances. Dharmakīrti argues that such reasoning is rationally ineffective and indicates unvirtuous qualities. For (...) Vācaspati, fallacies are a way to prevent the spread of morally weighty falsehoods when no other method is available to a debater. After showing textual relationships between Vācaspati’s defense and Dharmakīrti’s earlier criticism, it evaluates their arguments, concluding that Vācaspati’s position involves irresolvable tensions with other Nyāya commitments. (shrink)

Reasonable reconstruction of public statements is an essential component of civil discourse especially in contentious political contexts. This essay addresses the problems posed by irony through the perspective of the speaker and the audience. I argue that existing attempts to systematize the identification and reconstruction of irony focus unduly on forms of contrary irony, thereby neglecting the more complex figure of Socratic Irony. Socratic Irony, which can be characterized by the invocation of the voice of the other, is distinguished from (...) other important meanings of the word “irony” and illustrated by one ancient and three contemporary examples. When encountering this stylistic device, reasonable audiences must choose their principle of reconstruction. Of the five options for this choice, the final one reconstructing Socratic Irony using recurring markers is ultimately championed and its functionality demonstrated on the four earlier examples. (shrink)

In his Fallacies, Hamblin (1970) castigated what he called the “standard treatment” of fallacies in introductory textbooks of his day as debased, worn-out, dogmatic, and unconnected to anything else in modern logic. A bit more than 50 years later, I investigate the treatment of fallacies in six English-language introductory textbooks with a section on fallacies that have gone into 10 or more editions, to see whether their treatment of fallacies has taken account of the scholarship on fallacies that Hamblin’s book (...) evoked and is better than the treatment that Hamblin described. The answer is: not much. I conclude by setting out criteria for an adequate treatment of fallacies in an introductory textbook. (shrink)

Critical questions have been understood in the framework of argument schemes from their conception. This understanding has influenced the process of evaluating arguments and the development of classifications. This paper argues that relating these two notions is detrimental to research on argument schemes and critical questions, and that it is possible to have critical questions without relying on argument schemes. Two objections are raised against the classical understanding of critical questions based on theoretical and analytical grounds. The theoretical objection presents (...) the assumptions that are embedded in the idea of argument schemes delivering questions to evaluate arguments. The analytical objection, on the other hand, exposes the shortcomings of the theory when critical questions are used to evaluate real-life argumentation. After presenting these criticisms, a new theory of critical questions is sketched. This theory takes into account the dynamics of dialectical discussions to describe the function of critical questions and their implications for evaluating arguments. (shrink)

This appearance condition of fallacies refers to the phenomenon of weak arguments, or moves in argumentation, appearing to be okay when really they aren’t. Not all theorists agree that the appearance condition should be part of the conception of fallacies but this essay explores some of the consequences of including it. In particular, the differences between committing a fallacy, causing a fallacy and observing a fallacy are identified. The remainder of the paper is given over to discussing possible causes of (...) mistakenly perceiving weak argumentation moves as okay. Among these are argument caused misperception, perspective caused misperception, discursive environment caused misperception and perceiver caused misperception. The discussion aims to be sufficiently general so that it can accommodate different models and standards of argumentation that make a place for fallacies. (shrink)

“Why are millions of dollars worth of orders being left unpaid?”. With tweets like this questioning brands’ policies, activists advocating for sustainable fashion re-discuss material starting points that are assumed by fashion brands, who argue that they are sustainable because they care about their workers’ conditions. This paper argues that activists use tweets to open _subdiscussions on material starting points_ to engage citizens and consumers, re-discussing factual _data_ that brands take for granted, such as the fact that they provide fair (...) conditions for their garment workers. Activists justify their opening of subdiscussions, often through an argumentative pattern that includes an argument based on the _locus from effects to cause_. They argue that if there are negative effects, the brand cannot claim to care about the conditions of its workers. In discussing how subdiscussions are used by fashion activists, this paper also introduces a conceptualization of Twitter argumentation as a discussion that is not isolated, but is part of a polylogical argumentation that takes place in different venues. For this reason, the argumentation used in tweets is reconstructed as a response to a fashion brand’s communication campaigns around sustainability, which extend beyond the confines of Twitter. As an empirical illustration, this paper is based on the campaign targeting fashion retailer Primark; the dataset includes the brand’s website as well as activists’ tweets. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt characterised bullshit as assertions that are made without a concern for truth. Assertions, however, are not the only type of speech act that can be bullshit. Here, I propose the concept of argumentative bullshit and show how a speech acts account of bullshit assertions can be generalised to bullshit arguments. Argumentative bullshit, on this account, would be the production of an argument without a concern for the supporting relation between reasons and claim.

ABSTRACT This essay tells the story of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's “dissociation of concepts,” which they introduced in 1958 and is in use as a tool of criticism by many rhetorical critics. The story begins in England with John Locke's development of associative reasoning in 1770 and then moves to France, with Remy de Gourmont extending associative reasoning with the concept of dissociation in 1899. Gourmont's dissociation crosses the Atlantic and is then developed by Kenneth Burke in 1931. In turn, Perelman (...) and Olbrechts-Tyteca absorbed and expanded Locke, Gourmont, and Burke's theories of association and dissociation in 1958. They crafted a tool, the dissociation of concepts, that equips rhetorical reasoning with the capacity to navigate between the promise and perils of fission and fusion. Since 1958, many scholars have made productive use of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's innovation. The essay concludes with some possible futures for their dissociation of concepts. (shrink)

Douglas Walton’s multitudinous contributions to the study of argumentation seldom, if ever, directly engage with argumentation in mathematics. Nonetheless, several of the innovations with which he is most closely associated lend themselves to improving our understanding of mathematical arguments. I concentrate on two such innovations: dialogue types (§1) and argumentation schemes (§2). I argue that both devices are much more applicable to mathematical reasoning than may be commonly supposed.

Analytic philosophers have, since the pioneering work of B.K. Matilal, emphasized the contributions of Nyāya philosophers to what contemporary philosophy considers epistemology. More recently, scholarly work demonstrates the relevance of their ideas to argumentation theory, an interdisciplinary area of study drawing on epistemology as well as logic, rhetoric, and linguistics. This paper shows how early Nyāya theorizing about argumentation, from Vātsyāyana to Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, can fruitfully be juxtaposed with the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation pioneered by Frans van Eemeren. I illustrate (...) the implications of this analysis with a case study from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s satirical play, Much Ado about Religion (Āgamaḍambara). (shrink)