Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to draw attention to a kind of rational persuasion which has received little attention in argument studies even though its existence is acknowledged in other fields. I start with a brief analysis of the debates conducted in the comments on a philosophical blog. The posts are addressed to a non-academic audience, always end with a problem, and the reader is invited to offer a solution. In the comments we hardly ever find arguments in the usual sense, i.e. in the sense that an argument consists of a set of premises providing justification for a conclusion. It is not that the arguments are laid out carelessly and require a good deal of reconstruction: typically, there is no argument to reconstruct. The author simply states his view, then goes on to sketch a larger picture of which his view is a part. In the responses to the comments we find the same: identification of the point of disagreement, no argument, elaboration of the preferred view in some detail. One might say that this is just a failure of rational discussion; in pragmadialectical terms, the discussion gets stuck in the opening stage. But there is another way of looking at the matter. Since the participants do not have sufficiently rich common background knowledge to take premises from, they cannot offer arguments proper and must resort to a different sort of rational persuasion. They try to show that their view can be extended into a larger, coherent picture. This makes good sense from an epistemological point of view. If a view is false, in trying to work out its details we sooner or later run into problems, so allowing coherent elaboration provides some degree of justification. One might say that the participants argue in the broad sense of trying to persuade by rational means, but they do that without adducing arguments proper. The claim that there is a way of rational persuasion which does not proceed by arguments proper can be further substantiated by noting that there debates whose status as rational discussion, as opposed to the comments on the philosophical blog, is not controversial. In discussing the work of some outstanding contemporary philosophers Gary Gutting argues that even though they do offer arguments, it is not by their arguments that they have convinced others of the viability of their approach, but by what he calls „persuasive elaboration”. We may also think of Kuhn’s account of the debates surrounding changes in paradigms: the arguments fail to persuade because their premises are not shared, but showing that the new paradigm can be extended to a vast variety of phenomena eventually succeeds. I finish by listing some questions this kind of rational persuasion may raise for argument studies.