Abstract
In this paper, a challenge is outlined for Walton’s recent analysis of the fallacy of poisoning the well. An example of the fallacy in action during a debate on affirmative action on a South African campus is taken to raise the question of how Walton’s analysis squares with the idea that disadvantaged parties in debates about race may be “epistemically privileged”. It is asked when the background of a participant is relevant to a debate and it is proposed that a proper analysis of the poisoning the well will outline conditions under which making one participant’s background an issue in a debate would be legitimate and illegitimate. Expanding Walton’s analysis to deal with the challenge, it is concluded that calling into question a participant’s suitability to take part in a debate is never legitimate when it is based simply on a broad fact about their background (like their race or gender).
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Notes
See Walton (1998) for a full discussion.
I appreciate the comments of an anonymous reviewer for Argumentation regarding the need to make Walton’s distinction more clear.
This is not to say that one cannot also act in an insulting way while excluding someone due to some technicality. Imagine telling John that he cannot enter the tennis tournament because entries closed at noon and it has just turned noon. Imagine also saying this in a particularly snide and officious way. Admittedly, one can insult John by acting in this way; however, in this example the insult would only be due to the perlocutionary force of the utterance rather than to what is directly said. The difference concerns the main thrust of what is said: is the person being excluded from a debate on the basis of an attack on his character or on the basis of some vaunted procedural reason? The first would be an example of an ad hominem attack and the second poisoning the well. I thank an anonymous referee for Argumentation.
In the light of this distinction, one wonders whether Walton would go further and also revise his view of the bias form of the ad hominem. If the hallmark of the ad hominem is the personal attack, it bears pointing out that one may allege that someone is biased in some matter, without personal attack; for instance, imagine telling a judge “I’m sorry Your Honour, but you just cannot be impartial enough to sit in your own daughter’s murder-trial.” If the hallmark of the ad hominem is an assertion of bad character, then, arguably, this assertion of bias is not ad hominem either.
Galgut (2007) agrees. The author thanks both Benatar and Galgut for sharing their views on which of the many responses to Benatar’s lecture they deemed to be ad hominem; the analysis that follows, however, is the author’s sole responsibility. (The author also disagrees that the attacks were all ad hominem—some were instances of poisoning the well—see below).
This example, as well as the previous two, all appeared in the column “Comments” of UCT’s newspaper Monday Paper on 7 May 2007.
Haupt makes the substantive point that one needs the vocabulary of race (e.g. words like “black” and “white”) in order to allow those discriminated against to discuss their position, but much of his article is taken up with casting doubt on white participation in the affirmative action debate (and Benatar’s specifically).
I mean “politics of identity” here in its everyday usage, without intending any particular theoretical view. See Alcoff et. al (2006) for a recent discussion of the prospects for a number of different theories of identity.
The notion of a “standpoint” is a term of art within feminist theory and should not be confused with notions perhaps more familiar to readers interested in argumentation, like “point of view” (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984: 79), “commitment” or “position” (Walton 1999: 59–89). The “standpoint” of the oppressed is not a specific claim or claims made in a debate by one party, but that party’s orientation towards political reality or understanding of it.
In what follows, I adopt Walton’s (2006) convention of referring to the proponent of some argument or attack by the female pronoun and to the opponent by the male.
Compare Davidson’s (1984) “principle of charity” according to which communication as such is only possible on the assumption that communication partners can understand each other and according to which communication is an exercise in maximising agreement. I intend the point I make about debate as a derivative of Davidson’s point about the possibility of language more generally. The relationship between Davidson’s principle of charity and Van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s freedom rule (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004) deserves greater attention.
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Kotzee, B. Poisoning the Well and Epistemic Privilege. Argumentation 24, 265–281 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-010-9181-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-010-9181-8