Abstract
The study of argumentation is prospering. After its brilliant start in Antiquity, highlighted in the classical works of Aristotle, after an alternation of ups and downs during the following millennia, in the post-Renaissance period its gradual decline set in. Revitalization took place only after Toulmin and Perelman published in the same year (1958) their landmark works The Uses of Argument and La nouvelle rhétorique (co-authored by Olbrechts-Tyteca and translated into English in 1969). The model of argumentation presented by Toulmin and Perelman’s inventory of argumentation techniques inspired a great many scholars in various ways to take up the study of argumentation in a serious manner. Nowadays there are well-established (formal as well as informal) logical approaches to argumentation, but also social and socio-psychological, linguistic, juridical and other approaches. In most of these approaches traces can be found of the influence of the classical and neo-classical argumentation theories just mentioned.
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The dialectical conception of reasonableness is inspired by critical rationalists and analytic philosophers, such as Popper (1972, 1974), Albert (1975), and Naess (1966), and by formal dialecticians and logicians, such as Hamblin (1970), Lorenzen and Lorenz (1978), and Barth and Krabbe (1982). The pragmatic conception of argumentative discourse as consisting of making regulated communicative moves is rooted in Austin (1962) and Searle’s (1969, 1979) ordinary language philosophy, Grice’s (1989) theory of rationality in discourse, and other studies of communication by discourse and conversation analysts. It is in the first place the combination of dialectical and pragmatic insight that distinguishes pragma-dialectics from ‘formal dialectics’ as developed by Barth and Krabbe (1982) that incorporates dialectical insight in a formal (logical) approach.
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For a definition of argumentation as a complex speech act, see van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 39–46, 1992a, 30–33). For the speech act of advancing a standpoint, see Houtlosser (1994). And for the distinction between identity conditions and correctness conditions, see van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992a, 30–31).
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The term disagreement space was introduced in Jackson (1992, 261).
- 5.
A kindred approach to argumentation in which commitments as well as other basic concepts of pragma-dialectics also play a crucial role is Walton and Krabbe (1995).
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In accordance with their critical rationalist philosophy, dialecticians place great emphasis on the consequence of the fact that a proposition and its negation cannot both be acceptable at the same time. The testing of standpoints is thus equated with the detection of inconsistencies (Albert 1975, 44).
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If the rules of the pragma-dialectical discussion procedure are regarded as first order conditions for having a critical discussion, the internal conditions for a reasonable discussion attitude can be viewed as ‘second order’ conditions relating to the state of mind the discussants are assumed to be in. In practice, people’s freedom to satisfy the second order conditions is sometimes limited by psychological factors beyond their control, such as emotional restraint and personal pressure. There are also external, ‘third order’ conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to be able to conduct a critical discussion properly. They relate to the social circumstances in which the discussion takes place and pertain, for instance, to the power or authority relations between the participants and to the discussion situation. Together, the second and third order conditions for conducting a critical discussion in the ideal sense are higher order conditions for resolving differences of opinion. Only if these conditions are satisfied critical reasonableness can be fully realized in practice.
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An improved version of the pragma-dialectical rules for critical discussion is to be found in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004, Chap. 6).
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The pragma-dialectical identification of fallacies is always conditional. An argumentative move may be regarded as a fallacy only if the discourse is correctly viewed as aimed at resolving a difference of opinion.
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Only in exceptional cases, when interpreting a move as a potential contribution to the resolution process is the only charitable option left, an unsupported reconstruction may be warranted “for reason’s sake”. See van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004, Chap. 5).
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For a brief survey of the various approaches to the analysis of discourse and their empirical basis, see van Eemeren et al. (1993, 50–59).
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For the conceptual distinction between analytical relevance and evaluative relevance, see van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992b).
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In van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992a, 2004) and van Eemeren et al. (1996) the stages are specified that the critical testing process has to go through and the crucial obligatory moves are represented. Snoeck Henkemans (1992) gives a specification of the first round of moves in the argumentation stage.
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See van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 2004) for the distinction between non-mixed disputes, in which the other party merely doubts the first party’s standpoint but has no standpoint of his own, and mixed disputes, in which the other party counters the first party’s standpoint by advancing an opposite standpoint.
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The rationale for not including party A’ questioning P’s proposal (“Why X?”) as a fourth possible response is that asking such a question would initiate a sub-discussion and for practical reasons we would like to restrict ourselves here to the discussion at the main level. For the distinction between discussions at the main level and discussions at a sub-level, see van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992a, 2004).
- 20.
For the analyst, the degree of implicitness of the communicative ‘force’ of a speech act corresponds conversely to the degree of contextual information that is needed to justify the reconstruction of the communicative function of that speech act. See, for instance, van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992a).
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A difference with the situation envisioned in Ducrot’s analysis is that in Ducrot’s analysis Y is not first proposed but simply used.
- 22.
‘But’ can also play a part in rejecting a proposal to adopt a proposition as a starting point. When ‘but’ is used in a dialogue to introduce a direct reaction to such a proposal in a dialogue, it indicates without any exception that an objection to this proposal is about to be advanced.
- 23.
These questions were earlier formulated and accounted for in the pragma-dialectical theory (van Eemeren and Kruiger 1985). (2) questions the supposed causal relation as such (“How on earth could you believe that smoking (automatically) causes lung cancer?”), while (3) and (4) can be viewed as specifications of (2). In (3) the antagonist suggests that the cause that is mentioned is not a sufficient cause to effectuate the consequence represented in the standpoint: there could be consequences that are different from, and perhaps even incompatible with, the one that is mentioned (as in “Couldn’t it be the case that people like you precisely because you are sometimes a bit unfriendly to them?” in response to “I am sure they hate me, because I’m so unfriendly sometimes”). In (4), the antagonist suggests that the supposed cause is not necessary to effectuate the consequence mentioned in the standpoint: apart from the cause that is mentioned in the argument, there could be, or there are, only other causes that have this consequence (as in “You become schizophrenic because of genetic features, not because of having had a cold-hearted mother, don’t you?” in critical reaction to “That one will become a schizophrenic, having the cold-hearted mother he has!”). (3) and (4) may, of course, subsume more specific critical reactions in which particular nuances of the mentioned aspects of the supposed causal relation are questioned.
- 24.
Strictly speaking, the content of the argument that the protagonist has advanced can at this stage of a critical discussion no longer be subjected to critical scrutiny because, if all has gone well, it has been accepted (or not accepted) by both parties as a common starting point at the opening stage of the discussion. In practice, however, starting points are not always proposed as such, but simply used as arguments in the argumentation stage of the discussion. We therefore include the questioning of the content of a starting point that is used in an argument in the argumentation stage in our dialectical profiles.
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Acknowledgments
This article was written as part of the project “Argumentative indicators in Dutch” subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO (project no. 200-41-012). We would like to thank Agnès van Rees and Erik C.W. Krabbe, as well as the participants in the Wake Forest/ISSA Conference held in Venice, June 2004, for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.
We would like to thank Erik C.W. Krabbe and Assimakis Tseronis, as well as the referees of the Journal of Pragmatics, for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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van Eemeren, F.H., Houtlosser, P., Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, A. (2015). Dialectical Profiles and Indicators of Argumentative Moves. In: Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20955-5_36
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