Abstract
Arguments figure prominently in our practices of reason-giving. For example, we use them to advance reasons for their conclusions in order to justify believing something, to explain why we believe something, and to persuade others to believe something. Intuitively, using arguments in these ways requires a certain degree of self-reflection. In this paper, I ask: what cognitive requirements are there for using an argument to advance reasons for its conclusion? Towards a partial response, the paper’s central thesis is that in order to so use an argument one must believe the associated inference claim to the effect that the premises collectively are reasons that support the conclusion. I then argue against making it a further cognitive requirement that one be aware of one’s justification for believing such an inference claim. This thesis provides a rationale for the typical informal-logic textbook characterization of argument and motivates a constraint on adequate accounts of what are referred to as inference claims in the informal logic and argumentation literatures.
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Notes
For example, I take “All men are mortal, Socrates is a mortal; therefore, Socrates is a man” to express a premise-conclusion complex of propositions, and thereby express an argument regardless of how this discourse may be used. This follows those who distinguish between arguments as abstract objects and arguments in use (Biro and Siegel 2006, p. 92, among others). Since the metaphysics of argument is not a chief concern here, further elaboration and defense of this distinction is beyond the scope of this paper.
In a recent postscript to his 2007, Hitchcock remarks that he now thinks that this characterization of argument is too narrow since it rules out arguments whose premises are advanced as reasons against a claim or as hypothetical support of a claim (2017a, p. 519). It isn’t obvious to me that the characterization given above is so narrow. E.g., reasons advanced against a claim are reasons for its negation, and the premise-reasons of a piece of cogent hypothetical reasoning must support—in some sense—the conclusion. See note 7 below. Also, I am happy not to make it a desideratum for definitions of arguments that proofs qualify as arguments. I don’t have space to elaborate.
Hitchcock (2007) holds that arguments are composed of illocutionary act-types and takes the premises of an argument to be instantiations of such types (e.g., assertions, suppositions, guarded assertions, etc.). Such “reasons” would be true or false, either directly or derivatively from the truth-value of their propositional content.
A distinction is sometimes made between arguments that advance reasons for thinking something and ones that advance reasons for doing something. I follow Wright (1995) in thinking that, “we may assimilate the vocabulary either way: an argument for doing something is also one for thinking you ought, and, on the other hand, thinking is doing something” (p. 565). Here, I have chosen the former assimilation (as does Wright in his 1995).
For purposes of this paper, I adopt Harman’s (1986) distinction between explicit and implicit belief. Briefly, you believe something explicitly if your belief involves an explicit mental representation whose content is the content of that belief (p. 13). You believe something only implicitly if it is not explicitly believed, but, for example, is easily inferable from one’s explicit beliefs (p. 13). Given that you explicitly believe that Beth has at most four children, one can easily infer that Beth does not have five children, that Beth does not have six, and so on. So, all these propositions are things that you believe implicitly. For other ways that something can be merely implicitly believed see Harman (1986), pp. 13–14.
I take this to be compatible with there being insincere reason-giving uses of arguments. Understanding what are insincere reason-giving uses of arguments is parasitic on understanding sincere reason-giving uses of them. Briefly, a person S’s reason-giving use of an argument is insincere in contexts according to which it is reasonable to think that S claims that the premises are reasons that collectively support the conclusion, but S does not believe the associated inference claim. A defense of this would appeal to an account of reason-giving uses of arguments that incorporates the paper’s central thesis as presented above in the introduction and as expressed by Cognitive Requirement given just below.
In conjunction with his most recent, expanded version of the “reason-giving sense of argument” (see note 2 above), Hitchcock initially characterizes an inference claim as saying in effect that the reasons cited would if true or otherwise acceptable support (attack) the target (2017a, p. 529). As I indicated in note 2, I believe that Hitchcock’s 2007 characterization is more basic than this updated one. For example, an argument used to advance reasons that attack a target claim is defective unless it is true that the reasons collectively support the negation of the target claim. The italicized claim reflects Hitchcock’s 2007 characterization of inference claims.
For Toulmin, the elements of a fully developed argument beyond those mentioned here may include backing for the warrant, a qualifier modifying the conclusion indicator, and conditions of rebuttal (2003, p. 97). Backing justifies the truth of the warrant, conditions of rebuttal ground its applicability to legitimatizing the step from data to conclusion. Further discussion is beyond the scope of this paper.
Here I register a disagreement with Wright (2001). Taking (1) Why do I think C? and (2) why should I think C? to ask for my reason(s) that caused or sustain(s) my C-belief and that justify it, respectively, Wright thinks that both questions are answered by advancing a premise set P as supporting reasons for C (2001, p. 98). That my supporting reasons for my C-belief answers both questions, indicates that “giving reasons is essentially a normative enterprise, and part of this essentially normative activity is essentially causal” (p. 99). I agree, but I disagree that the responses to the causal (1) and normative (2) questions are the same. To briefly illustrate, (1) why do I think that Beth is at home? My response, “her car is in the driveway” suggest that I believe that Beth’s car being in the driveway is a reason that supports my belief that she is at home. It seems to me that (2) asks for my justification for believing this. Accordingly, these responses are decidedly different. That my response to (1) commits me to my (different) response to (2) reflects Wright’s worthwhile insight that that reasons plays both a normative and causal role that is essential to our institution of reasons-giving (2001, p. 99). Further discussion is needed, but beyond the scope of his paper.
In personal communication, Hitchcock emphasizes that it is open to the author of (A), if they are alleged to assume that Beth listens to music on the stereo whenever she is in the living room, to deny making this assumption and to cite contextual factors surrounding the utterance of (A) as limiting the scope of the assumed generalization. For example, Beth might have said earlier that she was going to listen to music in the living room after she finished what she was doing. The inference claim made in uttering (A) would then be substantiated by the generalization “Whenever Beth has recently said that she was going to listen to music in the living room after she finished what she was doing and is now in the living room, then she is listening to music on the stereo.” Hitchcock’s clarification of various facets of his account of inference claims in personal communication has been very helpful.
Here I presuppose that inference-claim beliefs are de dicto beliefs. A de dicto belief is a belief that a bearer of representative content (e.g., a proposition) is true (Gallois 1998). So, a de dicto belief relates a believer to a proposition, sentence, or a statement. On my view, an inference-claim belief is de dicto, because it relates the believer B to a proposition that expresses the inference claim. Hence, B understands the content of the inference claim that is believed. That is, B believes that the premises are reasons for the conclusion. Accordingly, B has—to some degree—the concept of a reason. So, to use an argument in a reason-giving way, to use the premises as reasons for the conclusion, presupposes that you have an understanding, half-baked or otherwise, of reasons for belief. This partly explains why reason-giving uses of argument, on my account of them, are reflective.
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McKeon, M.W. Arguments and Reason-Giving. Argumentation 36, 229–247 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-021-09561-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-021-09561-3