Abstract
Robert Fogelin argued that the efficacy of our acts of reasons-giving depends on the normalcy of our discourse—to the extent that discourse is not normal disagreements occurring in it are deep; and to the extent that disagreements are deep, they are not susceptible to rational resolution. Against this, Maurice Finocchiaro argues that meta-argumentation can contribute to the rational resolution of disagreements having depth. Drawing upon a competency view of reasons-giving, this article conducts an inventory and audit of meta-argumentation’s resolution resources for disagreements having depth. It concludes that, because Finocchiaro mischaracterizes the relationship between meta-argumentation and normalcy in the underlying discourse, he systematically overstates the rational resolution value of meta-argumentation. To the extent that meta-argumentation can contribute to the rational resolution of disagreements, those disagreements are normal, not deep. According to the competency view, the only way to resolve depth in disagreement is to first re-establish its normalcy.
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Notes
As Scott Aikin (2018a) has noted, resolving deep disagreements has the form of regress problems and shares structural similarities to the problem of the criterion.
Further, as Chris Campolo emphasized to me in correspondence, a distinction should be made between common ground continuing to elude us as our reasons-giving progresses, and its actually receding as a result of our reasons-giving. Relatedly, there is a difference between (i) discovering, via arguing, that the gap between us is larger than we first realized such that our prospects for resolution are worse than they first seemed to be and (ii) arguing widening the gap that separates us thereby making our prospects for resolution worse than they actually were at the outset. In the latter cases, continued reasons-giving risks making our discursive situation worse than it was at the outset (Campolo 2005, 2018; Campolo and Turner 2002). On my account, depth in disagreement is purely a resource availability problem, which can both be discovered and exacerbated by continued reasons-giving. The “receding” I have in mind in this paragraph is meant to envision both of these possibilities—namely the common ground apparently receding as we discover that our agreement space is less than what we first expected, and the common ground actually receding because our acts of reasons-giving increases, rather than just manifests, the space of our actual disagreement or (mutual) misunderstanding.
All citations from Fogelin are from this source. Note: Fogelin’s paper was republished in Informal Logic in 2005. Page references in this essay are to the original, 1985, printing.
As Aikin (2018b) notes, the depth of disagreement is gradable. To recognize a continuum of disagreements of increasing depth, from normal to deep, I shall speak of disagreements having depth, and I understand deep disagreements to vary in depth. Also, when I speak of the rational resolvability of disagreements having depth, I should be understood to be speaking specifically of those aspects of a disagreement that arise and persist because of its depth. Finally, notice should be taken that I follow Fogelin in taking a narrow and particular view of the nature and proper explanation of depth in disagreement. (See, e.g., fn. 6.).
For a useful catalogue of existing responses see Aikin (2018b).
Unless otherwise noted, all citations from Finocchiaro will be from this source.
The complete passage reads as follows:
A critical analysis of the meta-arguments by various theorists for or against various limitations of rationality for resolving deep disagreements yields the following conclusion: meta-argumentation is one of several effective instruments for rationally resolving deep disagreements and fierce standoffs, along with the art of moderation and compromise (identified as Ramsey’s Maxim), open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, complex argumentation, ad hominem argument (in Johnstone’s sense), and persuasive argumentation; these principles and practices are neither individually necessary, nor jointly sufficient; but they are jointly necessary and individually helpful. (243; cf. 119)
It is beyond the scope of this paper to address each of the points Finocchiaro identifies as potentially contributing to the rational resolvability of disagreements having depth. That said, it is worth noting that at least some of Finocchiaro’s proposed remedies for deep disagreement seem to indicate that he conceives of depth in disagreement differently than did Fogelin. For example, Finocchiaro includes open- and fair-mindedness among the resources for their rational resolution. Yet, Fogelin explicitly excluded participant qualities like bias and intransigence as contributing to the depth of disagreement. On this point, Fogelin wrote:
A disagreement can be intense without being deep. A disagreement can also be unresolvable without being deep. I can argue myself blue in the face trying to convince you of something without succeeding. The explanation might be that one of us is dense or pig-headed. And this is a matter that could be established beyond doubt to, say, an impartial spectator. But we get a very different sort of disagreement when it proceeds from a clash of underlying principles. Under these circumstances, the parties [to the disagreement] may be unbiased, free of prejudice, consistent, coherent, precise and rigorous, yet still [intractably] disagree. (5)
Since, on Fogelin’s conception (which I share), these factors do not contribute to the depth of disagreement, it is not obvious how their remedy should contribute to the rational resolution of disagreements having depth.
I am skeptical of Finocchiaro’s read on the nature and causes of depth in disagreement, and of his optimism about the rational resolvability of disagreements having depth. Yet, his position is so qualified—many things might increase the likelihood of rationally resolving a deep disagreement, without actually speaking to the root causes of depth in disagreements—that I will not deny it, or attempt to demonstrate its contradictory.
Crucially, neither our bare physical abilities such as differentially responding to sensory stimuli, nor our psychological capacities such as sensation, attention, and association should be counted among the competencies underlying our ability to reason. Admittedly, these too are required in order that we reason. But such processes are not of the kind that interest us or complete the picture of reasoning we have before us. Rather, the competencies that concern us require what Robert Brandom (1997: 140, cf. 120f.; 1998) has called sapience, an irreducibly normative capacity to respond differentially by applying a concept.
For example, it is by reference to the orienting question that otherwise structurally analogous and content identical arguments that C and explanations why C (rather than D) may be distinguished (Wright 2002: 37f.).
Anyone inclined to deem the description of such reasoners as “completely incompetent in the subject matter at hand” inaccurate or uncharitable is invited to consider their own diagnosis of the activities that passed for reasoning and the exercise of sound judgment that contributed to the design and application of methods of “witch” detection from the 14th through the 18th centuries in western Europe and colonial America, and suppose that at least some of those reasoners were not acting in bad faith. For an insightful analysis and dialectical salve of a contemporary example, see Aikin (2018b).
In other discursive contexts, these judgements can lose their paradigmatic status, and may come under rational scrutiny. They may stand in need of reasons, be criticized and supported on the basis of reasons, and revised or abandoned on the basis of reasons. The important point is that, in these discursive contexts, other judgments provide the paradigms that contribute to preventing such discussions from becoming unhinged.
Kuhn’s (1962) account of paradigm shifts might also have served as an example here.
Notice that contemporary normative theories of dialectical argumentation incorporate this point into the structure of their models. Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 2004), for example, provides the opening stage of a critical discussion to allow for the construction of the common normative and conceptual framework within which the subsequent argumentation, or normal reasons-giving, will take place. And, while the talk in the opening stage does not take the form of the talk in the argumentation stage, reasons may be deployed here also. These reasons will be different in character from the reasons employed in the argumentation stage. Nevertheless, the efficaciousness of reasoning in the opening stage is underwritten by exactly those conditions set forth by the competency view, except that they are likely not articulated in the way that the results of the opening stage provide a codification of the concepts and norms in play in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion. Notice finally that any argumentation involved in generating the results of the opening stage does not resolve the standpoint at issue in the critical discussion. At best, it may be said to “resolve” the conceptual framework and space of reasons within which the standpoint itself is to be resolved.
While such divergences can be motivated by, and symptomatic of, further differences in our underlying theoretical understandings which inform and underpin our inclinations to use the concept in one way rather than another, let us confine our present considerations to the base case of primitive differences in our understanding of a concept as exhibited by our different semantic intuitions as to the proper application of the concept on some occasion. For considerations more closely directed to meta-argumentation’s rational resolution potential in circumstances where conceptual determination is to be settled by deciding to adopt one of several incongruent theoretical frameworks see the discussion of Carnap’s framework-external questions in §5.4.
Depending on how each sense is connected to our surrounding commitments and situated in our overall understanding of things, it might even be said that each sense offers a different theory of going round.
And rough indeed the ground can be. No amount of conceptual acumen can prevent against, let alone direct, semantic drift. We cannot protect “begging the question” from colloquially coming to mean inviting or provoking the question, rather than assuming what you’re trying to prove, by pointing to the expression’s etymology, some coinage in a preferred jargon, or even settled cases of past common usage, if the tides of “semantic inertia” (Gregory 1987: 242–243) pull strongly enough against us.
The argument offered in this paragraph draws upon, adapts, and builds from a similarly structured argument given in Godden (2015: 102–104).
I again offer my thanks to Ian Dove for bringing this point to my attention.
In the passage cited, Lugg gave another description of such cases which he took to be equivalent but which I don’t—namely, “the case in which individuals are able to argue yet unable to settle their differences.” If “argue” is understood to mean transact reasons normally, cases of this sort could simply be cases where the evidence needed to settle the matter is unavailable, or the question remains undetermined within the framework. In such cases, there is a rational resolution: disputants should suspend judgment (Feldman 2005). If Lugg’s description were revised to read “the case in which individuals are [only apparently] able to argue yet unable to settle their differences,” meaning that they are unable to transact reasons normally, then we would have a disagreement with depth.
To some it might seem that this essay has an air of self-refutation to it: it seems to offer a meta-argument in an effort to resolve an apparently deep—certainly a persistent and recalcitrant—disagreement about the rational resolvability of depth in disagreement. Yet, its main conclusions are that depth in disagreement is not susceptible to rational resolution by argument per se, and that meta-argumentation offers no new resolution resources that might remedy depth in disagreement. The attentive reader, though, will have recognized that, rather than make a self-refuting argument for these claims, the paper instead seeks to enact the very prescription it offers for remedying depth in disagreement. That is, it undertakes to normalize the disagreement about deep disagreement’s rational resolvability, and it seeks to normalize that disagreement by engaging in the kind of rational persuasion (rhetoric of concept formation) explained in the paper. From the outset, the paper seeks to replace what I take to be a mistaken—indeed muddled—picture of the nature, operation, foundation, etc. of reasoning with one that I take to be essentially correct. I did not argue for this picture; rather I sought to present it to you in a compelling way such that it would “register” with you. Supposing that you did find the picture compelling, was your coming to look at things through the lens it offers irrational or non-rational? No. Rather, you adopted the view because, and to the extent that, you judged it to fit with, or correct, your existing understanding of things. Having sought to change your understanding in this non-incremental way, I then invited you to look at things from this new vantage point, expecting that, when you did, certain other things would become apparent. First, I counted on you to recognize that the framework I provided normalizes the disagreement about the rational resolvability of depth in disagreement and the role of meta-argumentation in such resolutions. Then, working from within this framework, I marshalled reasons in support of the paper’s main claims. That is, I counted on you to, having thought things through from within the framework offered in the paper, conclude that the paper’s main conclusions are thoroughly defensible and eminently plausible, if not manifestly correct.
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Acknowledgements
This paper began as a commentary responding to Maurice Finocchiaro’s paper “Deep disagreements: A meta-argumentation approach,” presented to the 9th international conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), Argumentation: Cognition & Community, May 18–21, 2011, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Both Finocchiaro’s paper and my commentary appear in the proceedings for that conference available in the OSSA Archive: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/. A revised version of Finocchiaro’s OSSA paper appears as chapter 7 of his 2013 monograph Meta-argumentation: An approach to logic and argumentation theory. The present paper also draws upon my commentary for Chris Campolo’s paper “Argumentative virtues and deep disagreement,” presented to the 10th OSSA conference, Virtues of Argumentation, May 22–26, 2013, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Again, the paper and its commentary appear in the conference proceedings available in the OSSA Archive. A revised version of Campolo’s OSSA paper appears as “On staying in character: Virtue and the possibility of deep disagreement” in Topoi (this issue). Thanks are due to the audiences of those presentations for their discussion, which was formative of this paper’s subsequence development, and to the anonymous referees for this paper. Special thanks are due to Ian Dove, Matt McKeon, and especially, Chris Campolo.
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Godden, D. On the Rational Resolvability of Deep Disagreement Through Meta-argumentation: A Resource Audit. Topoi 38, 725–750 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09682-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09682-1