Abstract

This dissertation explores the problem of inappropriate resistance to persuasion, that is, the tendency of arguers to be unresponsive to cogent arguments and to use argumentation as an opportunity to entrench their pre-existing belief commitments. My treatment of the problem consists of two tasks, one involving clarification of the concepts of appropriate and inappropriate resistance to persuasion, and the other, the pedagogical task of suggesting ways in which the discipline of philosophy--particularly, the subspecialty of informal logic and critical thinking--might alter education in argumentation to minimize inappropriate resistance to persuasion. Chapter One introduces the central concepts of the project and explores both motivational and cognitive models of resistance to persuasion drawn from psychology. I introduce these models of resistance partly for explanatory purposes, but mainly to advance the two aforementioned tasks. In Chapter Two, I advance the task of clarification by questioning the normative status of motivations as grounds for resistance to persuasion. Can motivations ever be appropriate grounds for retaining belief in an empirical claim which has a lesser balance of evidence in its favor relative to a competing claim? In answering this question, I provide bases for distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate resistance to persuasion. In Chapter Three, where I pose the question of how informal logic and critical thinking education might address the resistance of social prejudices to argumentative persuasion, I advance the pedagogical task by proposing that we reconceive prejudice to highlight the role that errant social cognition plays in its persistence. I propose, in other words, that we de-emphasize the central role given to motivation under more conventional conceptions of prejudice found both within and outside informal logic and critical thinking. While psychological predispositions contribute to inappropriate resistance to argumentative persuasion, the commonplace adversarial conception of argumentation contributes to it as well. In Chapter Four, I propose that inculcating in students a conception of argumentation as a method of inquiry, that is, as a method of discovering what is rational believe about a topic, can diminish the power that this adversarial conception has in encouraging people to resist persuasion inappropriately.