Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Compliment of Rational Opposition: Disagreement, Adversariality, and Disputation

  • Published:
Topoi Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved

the compliment of rational opposition.

Jane Austin, Sense and Sensibility

Abstract

Disputational models of argumentation have been criticized as introducing adversariality into argumentation by mistakenly conceiving of it as minimally adversarial, and, in doing so, structurally incentivizing ancillary adversariality. As an alternative, non-adversarial models of argumentation like inquiry have been recommended. In this article I defend disputational, minimally adversarial models of disagreement-based argumentation. First, I argue that the normative kernel of minimal adversariality is properly located in the normative fabric of disagreement, not our practices of disputation. Thus, argumentation’s minimal adversariality is a hereditary, rather than an acquired, trait. Second, I show how attempts to model disagreement-based argumentation non-adversarially, as co-inquiry, misrepresent the normative commitments of disagreers. Indeed, such attempts backfire in their efforts to make argumentation less adversarial, by removing the normative, discursive mechanisms by which we may hold each other to rational account for our commitments. Finally, I show how regulative models of disputation, like the Pragma-Dialectical critical discussion, are designed to minimize ancillary adversariality thereby preventing its escalation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Disputational argumentative dialogues are those that are played out along the lines idealized in models of formal disputation (e.g., Rescher 1977). Informal examples include persuasion dialogues and the Pragma-Dialectical critical discussion. Characteristically, disputations are occasioned by disagreement and function to manage or resolve disagreement through the transaction of reasons between proponents and opponents.

  2. Cf. Stevens and Cohen (2020) who distinguish between (1) the adversarial attitude, (2) an adversarial stance, (3) adversarial functions, and (4) the persuasive-adversarial effects of argument.

  3. See, e.g., Stevens (2016), Aikin (2017), Casey (2020), and especially Stevens and Cohen (2020).

  4. Stevens (2016) and Stevens and Cohen (2020) contend that some forms of argumentative adversariality are virtuous while some forms of argumentative cooperation are vicious. I agree with them.

  5. On this point, I agree with Govier (1999) and Aikin (2017). And, my view resembles that of Casey (2020).

  6. See Paglieri (2009) for a discussion of those situational conditions under which the very activity of arguing can bring about an escalation, or multiplication and amplification, of disagreement.

  7. As one reviewer noted, any one of several dialectical, disputational systems that might have been chosen as an example here. I selected the Pragma-Dialectical model of a critical discussion because currently it is perhaps the most developed and widely-known contemporary, informal model of argumentation engineered to resolve disagreement. Unlike some dialogue games which are just that, games designed for a performative function, or formal systems which are not intended to model or regulate human conversational exchange, the critical discussion has been proposed as an ideal model for human conversational conduct with the aim of resolving disagreement in ordinary, rather than artificial or highly institutionalized, publics.

  8. Compare Brandom’s (1983) account of asserting.

  9. For similar defenses see Aikin (2011, 2017) and Casey (2020). For criticisms of this argument see Rooney (2010) and Hundleby (2013).

  10. In representing the canonical views of Pragma-Dialectics, I will rely on, and cite, only those works that include Frans H. van Eemeren as (first) author. Much of the Pragma-Dialectical canon was developed together with Rob Grootendorst and, later, Peter Houtlosser. For textual economy and ease of reading, I will refer to the holders of such views and the authors of quoted passages as ‘Pragma-Dialecticians’ or the views themselves as ‘Pragma-Dialectical.’ In-text citations reference the publication year of the cited text.

  11. Okay, you’re right. That’s no cognitive life at all.

  12. One explanation of this patent irrationality is that it is epistemically arbitrary. It violates the principle of sufficient reason: that we require some reason to epistemically prefer the view we have over any alternative, incompatible view. This suggests a norm of evidence proportionalism—that we accord the strength of our commitments to the quality of the evidence we have for the view (Adler 2002). The correct normative explanation is not, though, what is at issue here. Rather it is simply that we agree in our intuitive judgement that such a commitment-management policy is manifestly irrational.

  13. In the case imagined, ‘arational’ or ‘nonrational’ would be better descriptors. So, one might instead say: to be rational at all, requires that one sometimes be a proponent.

  14. It should be acknowledged that the Pragma-Dialectical policy of ascribing the role of proponent only to those who externalize their views can be gamed. While it correctly operationalizes attitudinal responsibilities as discursive responsibilities, when applied as written it excuses “silent proponents” from their attitudinal responsibilities. So long as I keep my (dissenting) views to myself, I may never be called upon to defend them, even though it is my having the view, rather than my expressing it, that is the source of my rational obligation (Aijaz et al. 2013).

  15. Granted, this default attribution of entitlement is retractable if, for example, further information yields the judgement that there is some problem with another’s standing in the space of reasons, even though they are correct in their judgement despite that defective standing. They believe correctly but for bad reasons—reasons that do not justify, or entitle them to, their belief.

  16. The arguments that follow take their inspiration from the Waltonian thoughts that (i) different types of argumentative dialogues are distinguished, in part, by their initial situations, and (ii) differences in the initial situation of a dialogue affect its main dialogue-goal, the participant goals, and the burdens of proof that properly belong to each discussant (e.g., 1998). Walton and Krabbe (1995, p. 66), for example, claimed that the initial situation of an inquiry is “general ignorance,” yielding the shared participant goal of discovery of proofs and refutations, while the initial situation of a persuasion dialogue is “conflicting points of view,” yielding different participant goals of each persuading the other.

  17. Granted, a “nebulous” doubt might just be experienced as an uncertainty, a cognitive hesitancy, about some claim. Here the cognitive dissonance is experienced as the tension between the cognitive inclination to believe, accept, or otherwise endorse the claim and the hesitancy to do so.

  18. By my lights, moves like Bertie’s at [3] are always unacceptable. To say otherwise is to grant that agents may hold their views entirely without reason—for no reason whatsoever. Notice, the demand at this point is not that their reasons “pass-muster”—that they be tenable, suasive, compelling, convincing, cogent, or even coherent. Rather, the demand is that proponents have reasons for their views, and can produce them as needed. To allow that a cognizer may, in general, adopt, hold, or abandon its views without any reason whatsoever is, on my account, not to adopt a forgiving, permissive, or lax set of rational, deontic norms for that being. Instead, it is to cease to treat that being as having rational agency. For rational agents, rational irresponsibly must be the exception, not the the norm. Otherwise, what follows is not that we are competent but generally irresponsible and unaccountable rational agents; rather, what follows is that we are incompetent, and are not generally capable of that kind of responsibility partly constitutive of rational agency itself. The norms of reason are not merely norms we use to hold each other to account in acts of persuasion or disagreement management; rather they are the norms to which we must hold ourselves to account in fixing our beliefs, if we are to be said to have views and rational agency at all.

  19. As noted by one reviewer, in addition to these first-order conditions for the reasonableness of a critical discussion, Pragma-Dialecticians recognize a set of higher, second- and third-order, conditions that must also be met in order that a critical discussion be reasonable (1993).

    “The reasonableness of an argumentative … discussion depends not only on the degree to which the procedural rules for a critical discussion are observed, but also on the satisfaction of certain preconditions regarding the participants’ states of mind and the political, social, and cultural reality in which their discussion takes place” (2004, p. 8).

    Clearly, just as the satisfaction of first-order conditions for reasonableness can be sites of cooperation and adversariality alike, so to can these higher-order conditions. Importantly, the normative model of the critical discussion presupposes that these higher-order conditions have been met, and is not designed to regulate those social and psychological situations within which all argumentation occurs in order to ensure that those situations are optimally cooperative, or at least not adversarial in ways that are adverse to the reasonable exchange of reasons in argument. Discussion of how these situations can be structured, regulated, and enacted so as to be optimally cooperative must be left for another occasion.

  20. For an analysis of the development of the Pragma-Dialectical RCD and CCRD, as well as a worthwhile reduction of these rules into four, readers should consult Frank Zenker’s (2007) “Changes in conduct-rules and ten commandments: Pragma-Dialectics 1984 vs. 2004.”

  21. For a more extensive discussion of this point see Davis and Godden (2021) and Godden (2021).

  22. The challenge might also be put as “Quo warranto?”.

  23. Here Stevens follows Okin (1989, p. 193) who makes this point about relationships generally. Those who can best bear strife or dissent within the relationship, or the degradation or dissolution of the relationship, can leverage that power in shaping the relationship.

  24. For an argument against the normative coherence of the this kind of move, and the view that prior agreement may be used as a condition for selecting, or granting entitlement to, those who may hold us to rational account, see Godden (2021).

  25. See Krabbe (2007) for a discussion of problems that can still arise within the opening stage of a critical discussion.

  26. Indeed, while the Unexpressed-premise Rule (2004, p. 192 emphasis added) as stated in the CCRD seems intended to apply to proponents, the neutral language in which it is articulated obliges that “Discussants may not … disown responsibility for their own unexpressed premises.” Any opponent’s commitment might count as an unexpressed premise should a proponent argue from it. And, Pragma-Dialecticians include sincerity in their understanding of the “responsibility condition” (2004, p. 77). The first way to take responsibility for one’s commitments is by conceding (i.e., avowing) them when called upon to.

  27. cf. Godden (2010). For a discussion one way we generally countenance satisfying that the obligation of the concluding rule without retraction after “losing” and argument see Aikin (2008).

References

  • Adler J (2002) Belief’s own ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Aijaz I, McKeown-Green J, Webster A (2013) Burdens of proof and the case for unevenness. Argumentation 27:259–282

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S (2008) Holding one’s own. Argumentation 22:571–584

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S (2011) A defense of war and sport metaphors in argument. Philos Rhetor 44(3):250–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S (2017) Fallacy theory, the negativity problem, and minimal dialectical adversariality. Cogency 9(1):7–19

    Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S (2020) The Owl of Minerva problem. Southwest Philos Rev 36(1):13–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S, Talisse R (2019) Why we argue (and how we should): a guide to political disagreement in an age of unreason, 2nd edn. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Aikin S, Talisse R (2020) Political argument in a polarized age. Polity, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailin S, Battersby M (2017) DAMned if you do, DAMned if you don’t: Cohen’s “missed opportunities”. In: Bondy P, Benquista L (eds) Argumentation, objectivity, and bias. Proceedings of the 11th Ontario society for the study of argumentation (OSSA) conference. OSSA, Windsor, pp 1–12. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA11/papersandcommentaries/90

  • Bondy P (2010) Argumentative injustice. Informal Log 30(3):263–278

    Google Scholar 

  • Brandom R (1983) Asserting. Nous 17(4):637–650

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casey J (2020) Adversariality and argumentation. Informal Log 40(1):77–108

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen D (1995) Argument is war … and war is hell: philosophy, education, and metaphors for argumentation. Informal Log 17(2):177–188

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen D (2005) Arguments that backfire. In: Hitchcock D (ed) The uses of argument. Proceedings of the 6th Ontario society for the study of argumentation (OSSA) conference. OSSA, Hamilton, pp 58–65. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA6/papers/8/

  • Cohen D (2008) Now THAT was a good argument! On the virtues of arguments and the virtues of arguers. Presented to the Centro de Estudios de la Argumentacion y el Razanamiento (CEAR), Santiago, Chile

  • Cohen D (2009) Keeping an open mind and having a sense of proportion as virtues in argumentation. Cogency 1(2):49–64

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen D (2015) Missed opportunities in argument evaluation. In: van Eemeren FH, Garssen B (eds) Reflections on issues in argumentation theory. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 121–130

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Davis J, Godden D (2021) Adversarial listening in argumentation. Topoi. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09730-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fricker M (2007) Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Godden D (2010) The importance of belief in argumentation: belief, commitment and the effective resolution of a difference of opinion. Synthese 172:397–414

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Godden D (2021) Getting out in front of the Owl of Minerva problem. Argumentation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-021-09554-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin J (2007) Argument has no function. Informal Log 27:69–90

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Govier T (1999) The positive power of controversy. In: Hoaglund J (ed) The philosophy of argument. Vale Press, Newport News, pp 241–256

    Google Scholar 

  • Hundleby C (2010) The authority of the fallacies approach to argument evaluation. Informal Log 30(3):279–308

    Google Scholar 

  • Hundleby C (2013) Aggression, politeness, and abstract adversaries. Informal Log 33(2):238–262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson S (2019) Reason-giving and the natural normativity of argument. Topoi 38(4):631–643

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kant I (1784) Was ist Äufklarung? Berlinische Monatsschrift [Reprinted as: Kant I (1996) An answer to the question: What is enlightenment? Schmidt J (trans) In: Schmidt J (ed) What is enlightenment?: Eighteenth-century answers and twentieth-century questions. Univ of California Press, Berkeley, pp 58–64]

  • Kelly T (2005) The epistemic significance of disagreement. In: Gendler T, Hawthorne J (eds) Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 1. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 167–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Krabbe ECW (2007) On how to get beyond the opening stage. Argumentation 21(3):233–242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moulton J (1983) A paradigm in philosophy: the adversary method. In: Harding S, Hintikka M (eds) Discovering reality: feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science. Reidel, Boston, pp 149–164

    Google Scholar 

  • Okin SM (1989) Justice, gender and the family. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Paglieri F (2009) Ruinous arguments: escalation of dis agreement and the dangers of arguing. In: J Ritola (ed) Argument cultures. Proceedings of the 8th Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA) Conference. OSSA, Windsor, pp 1–15

  • Rescher N (1977) Dialectics: a controversy-oriented approach to the theory of knowledge. SUNY Press, Albany

    Google Scholar 

  • Rooney P (2003) Feminism and argumentation: a response to Govier. In: Blair JA et al (eds) Informal logic @ 25. Proceedings of the 5th Ontario society for the study of argumentation (OSSA) conference. OSSA, Windsor, pp 1–9. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA5/papersandcommentaries/77

  • Rooney P (2010) Philosophy, adversarial argumentation, and embattled reason. Informal Log 30(3):203–234

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens K (2016) The virtuous arguer: one person, four roles. Topoi 35(2):375–383

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stevens K (2019) The roles we make others take: thoughts on the ethics of arguing. Topoi 38(4):693–709

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stevens K, Cohen D (2018) The attraction of the ideal has no traction on the real: on adversariality and roles in argument. Argum Advocacy 55(1):1–23

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens K, Cohen D (2020) Angelic advocates and the forms of adversariality. Topoi. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09726-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH (2010) Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: extending the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. John Benjamins, Amsterdam

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH, Grootendorst R (1984) Speech acts in argumentative discourse. Foris, Dordrecht

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH, Grootendorst R (1987) Fallacies in a pragma-dialectical perspective. Argumentation 1:283–301

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH, Grootendorst R (1988) Rationale for a pragma-dialectical perspective. Argumentation 2:271–291

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH, Grootendorst R (1992) Argumentation, communication, fallacies. A pragma-dialectical perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale

    Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren FH, Grootendorst R (2004) A systematic theory of argumentation. The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Walton D (1998) The new dialectic: conversational contexts of argument. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Walton D, Krabbe E (1995) Commitment in dialogue: basic concepts of interpersonal reasoning. SUNY Press, Albany

    Google Scholar 

  • Zenker F (2007) Changes in conduct-rules and ten commandments: Pragma-dialectics 1984 vs. 2004. In: van Eemeren FH et al (eds) Proceedings of the sixth conference of the international society for the study of argumentation (ISSA). SicSat, Amsterdam, pp 1581–1589

Download references

Acknowledgements

I offer my thanks to both anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive remarks, and, especially, the co-editors of this special issue of Topoi on adversariality in argumentation, Katharina Stevens and John Casey.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    David Godden

Authors
  1. David Godden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Godden.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Godden, D. The Compliment of Rational Opposition: Disagreement, Adversariality, and Disputation. Topoi 40, 845–858 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09768-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09768-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation