Abstract
In a critical discussion that proceeds in accordance with a pragma-dialectical discussion procedure, the protagonist and the antagonist try to find out systematically whether the protagonist’s standpoint is capable of withstanding the antagonist’s criticism.
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The logical starting point that an assertion and its denial cannot both be true at the same time has a consequence for the discussion that one of the two assertions has to be withdrawn. Some critical-rationalists concluded from this predicament that the dialectical scrutiny of claims in a critical discussion boils down to the exposure of contradictions. Barth and Krabbe (1982) have developed a dialectical method for detecting contradictions that entails examining whether a particular thesis does not lead to contractions with certain concessions, i.e., is tenable in the light of these concessions. If simultaneously maintaining the standpoint and the concessions leads to contradictions, either the standpoint or one or more of the concessions must be abandoned.
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The reasonableness of the procedure is derived from the possibility it creates to resolve differences of opinion (its problem validity) in combination with its acceptability to the discussants (its conventional validity). See Barth and Krabbe (1982, 21–22).
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In fact, the pragma-dialectical rules aspire to comply with the more specific norms implicitly posed by Barth and Krabbe (1982) such as systematicity, realism, thoroughness, orderliness, and dynamism.
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In the case of a mixed dispute, it is thus not the case that the onus of proof has to be conferred on one of the two discussants; both discussants bear a particular onus of proof.
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See van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2003).
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The following explanation might be didactically helpful. At this stage, the discussants have not yet reached full agreement on all the premises that, apart from the premise at issue, are to be accepted, and the discussion rules that are to be applied. The sub-discussion that is required, of course, cannot be conducted effectively until such an agreement has been reached.
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See van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992, 92–102).
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References
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van Eemeren, F.H., Grootendorst, R. (2015). A Pragma-Dialectical Procedure for a Critical Discussion. In: Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20955-5_13
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