Abstract
In a dialogical situation, a plurality of participants propound, defend, attack, and modify their views. In a dialectical situation, the participants in addition are committed to the critical testing of their viewpoints. In a basic dialectical situation, exactly one participant propounds a viewpoint and responds to the critical questions of exactly one challenger. The situation is dialectical since opposition is involved, the participants proceeding through questions and answers, playing specifically defined roles. We may model how arguments are generated through the exchanges in a basic dialectical situation. An argument is logically good if the challenger’s comprehensive critical questions are all appropriately answered. We argue that this dialectical model gives a full picture of argument faithful to its purpose. This view has distinct points of agreement with those of Johnson and Blair (1987) and of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969). We address objections based on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of demonstration, Johnson and Blair’s understanding of inference, and Finocchiaro’s conception of what being dialectical involves.
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- 1.
The challenger/respondent terminology is derived from Wellman (1971).
- 2.
Roland Hall points out that Plato used “eristic” to describe such a degenerate form of dialectic in Sophist 231E. See Hall (1967, p. 386).
- 3.
The exception, as we have noted in Chapter 1, is when the proponent is presenting an argument involving a supposition. See pp. 6–9.
- 4.
Again, with the exception of arguments involving suppositions, which we have discussed in Chapter 1. See reference in footnote 3.
- 5.
In 1984, van Eemeren and Grootendorst regard this as a hallmark of being dialectical. “The crux of a dialectical approach is that argumentation is regarded as an attempt to defend a standpoint in respect of an expressed opinion against the critical reactions of a rational judge in a regimented discussion” van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, p. 18).
- 6.
“Perhaps the clearest, and surely historically the most prominent, instance of dialectical process is formal disputation.” Rescher (1977, 1.) See pp. 1–3 for an account of formal disputation.
- 7.
In response to questioning at his presentation “Argumentation and Fallacy Analysis in a Pragma-Dialectical Perspective” at The Fifth International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, August 3, 1987.
- 8.
Besides these authors, we may also mention that van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, Chapter 1) explicitly discuss the “dialectifying” approach to argument—that a proper study of argument must include the features we have identified as dialectical. This theme is central to the thought of these authors. The dialectical model appears also in van Eemeren (1987), and van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Kruiger, (1987).
In 1987, Joseph Kopperschmidt points out that the very act of asserting a claim is at least implicitly intersubjective. To assert a claim is to indicate not only that what is asserted is reliable for oneself, but reliable generally, trans-subjectively, or intersubjectively. Kopperschmidt (1987, p. 180) Certain claims are disputable or can become disputable under certain circumstances. Here again we have an interpersonal conception, for although there may be internal disputations, ordinarily disputes arise between two or more persons. Kopperschmidt credits Quintilian with asserting that arguments are necessary only when there are disputes. Kopperschmidt (1987, p. 180) Only arguments can legitimate claims. Kopperschmidt (1987, 180) An argument can legitimate a claim when it can rationally motivate persons to accept that claim Kopperschmidt (1987, p. 180) and a claim can be established by argument when it is possible that all participants in a dispute, capable and willing to argue, would agree to that claim. Kopperschmidt (1987, p. 180) This conception of argument is again clearly intersubjective and dialectical.
- 9.
Although Toulmin sees rebuttals as directed against a move from data to claim, if a rebutting defeater is a reason negatively relevant to a claim, there should be nothing wrong with a challenger claiming that the proponent has a burden of proof to counter that reason, even before he has presented any reasons positively relevant to his claim. The rules of formal disputation clearly allow her to make this move, structurally represented in our diagram.
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Freeman, J.B. (2011). The Dialectical Nature of Argument. In: Argument Structure:. Argumentation Library, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0357-5_2
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