Depending on what the argument is about, consequences of an argument can range from fairly minor to significant. You know before you speak with your boss that it is unlikely you will be able to rearrange your schedule on such short notice and that the reason you want to ask for the schedule change is not likely to sway him or her.
As a result, you need to come up with the best reasons and evidence possible to increase the chance of persuading your boss. These might include that you are one of the most dependable employees, as shown by the fact that you regularly arrive to work early and leave late when asked, as well as that you always switch with your coworkers when they need time off.
On the one hand, if you present sound reasons and evidence but are ultimately unsuccessful in your argument, then the only probable consequence to you is that you will still have to work on Saturday and miss the trip. On the other hand, if you say the wrong things e.
But a number of philosophers, most notably John Stuart Mill, maintain that interpersonal argumentative situations, involving people who truly disagree with each other, work best to realize the epistemic potential of argumentation to improve our beliefs a point he developed in On Liberty ; see entry on John Stuart Mill. When our ideas are challenged by engagement with those who disagree with us, we are forced to consider our own beliefs more thoroughly and critically. The result is that the remaining beliefs, those that have survived critical challenge, will be better grounded than those we held before such encounters.
Dissenters thus force us to stay epistemically alert instead of becoming too comfortable with existing, entrenched beliefs. On this conception, arguers cooperate with each other precisely by being adversarial, i. The view that argumentation aims at epistemic improvement is in many senses appealing, but it is doubtful that it reflects the actual outcomes of argumentation in many real-life situations. Indeed, it seems that, more often than not, we are not Millians when arguing: we do not tend to engage with dissenting opinions with an open mind.
Indeed, there is quite some evidence suggesting that arguments are in fact not a very efficient means to change minds in most real-life situations Gordon-Smith In particular, arguments that threaten our core beliefs and our sense of belonging to a group e. Furthermore, some arguments can be deceptively convincing in that they look valid but are not Tindale ; see entry on fallacies. Because most of us are arguably not very good at spotting fallacious arguments, especially if they are arguments that lend support to the beliefs we already hold, engaging in argumentation may in fact decrease the accuracy of our beliefs by persuading us of false conclusions with incorrect arguments Fantl In sum, despite the optimism of Mill and many others, it seems that engaging in argumentation will not automatically improve our beliefs even if this may occur in some circumstances.
Moreover, at least some concrete instances of argumentation, in particular argumentation in science see section 4. Another important strand in the literature on argumentation are theories that view consensus as the primary goal of argumentative processes: to eliminate or resolve a difference of expressed opinion. These consensus-oriented approaches are motivated by the social complexity of human life, and the attribution of a role of social coordination to argumentation.
Because humans are social animals who must often cooperate with other humans to successfully accomplish certain tasks, they must have mechanisms to align their beliefs and intentions, and subsequently their actions Tomasello The thought is that argumentation would be a particularly suitable mechanism for such alignment, as an exchange of reasons would make it more likely that differences of opinion would decrease Norman This may happen precisely because argumentation would be a good way to track truths and avoid falsehoods, as discussed in the previous section; by being involved in the same epistemic process of exchanging reasons, the participants in an argumentative situation would all come to converge towards the truth, and thus the upshot would be that they also come to agree with each other.
However, consensus-oriented views need not presuppose that argumentation is truth-conducive: the ultimate goal of such instances of argumentation is that of social coordination, and for this tracking truth is not a requirement Patterson In particular, the very notion of deliberative democracy is viewed as resting crucially on argumentative practices that aim for consensus Fishkin ; see entry on democracy.
In a deliberative democracy, for a decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic public deliberation—a discussion of the pros and cons of the different options—not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Moreover, in democratic deliberation, when full consensus does not emerge, the parties involved may opt for a compromise solution, e. Political argumentation is a form of communicative practice, so general assumptions for communicative practices in general apply.
However, additional assumptions apply as well Olson []. In particular, deliberating participants must accept that anyone can participate in these discursive practices democratic deliberation should be inclusive , and that anyone can introduce and challenge claims that are made in the public sphere democratic deliberation should be free.
They must also see one another as having equal status, at least for the purposes of deliberation democratic deliberation should be equal. Consensus-oriented argumentation seems to work well in cooperative contexts, but not so much in situations of conflict Dutilh Novaes forthcoming.
In particular, the discussing parties must already have a significant amount of background agreement—especially agreement on what counts as a legitimate argument or compelling evidence—for argumentation and deliberation to lead to consensus. Especially in situations of deep disagreement Fogelin , it seems that the potential of argumentation to lead to consensus is quite limited.
Instead, in many real-life situations, argumentation often leads to the opposite result; people disagree with each other even more after engaging in argumentation Sunstein This is the well-documented phenomenon of group polarization , which occurs when an initial position or tendency of individual members of a group becomes more extreme after group discussion Isenberg In fact, it may be argued that argumentation will often create or exacerbate conflict and adversariality, rather than leading to the resolution of differences of opinions.
Furthermore, a focus on consensus may end up reinforcing and perpetuating existing unequal power relations in a society. In an unjust society, what purports to be a cooperative exchange of reasons really perpetuates patterns of oppression.
Goodwin This general point has been made by a number of political thinkers e. The upshot is that consensus may not only be an unrealistic goal for argumentation; it may not even be a desirable goal for argumentation in a number of situations e. Despite these concerns, the view that the primary goal of argumentation is to aim for consensus remains influential in the literature. Finally, a number of authors have attributed to argumentation the potential to manage pre-existing conflict.
In a sense, the consensus-oriented view of argumentation just discussed is a special case of conflict management argumentation, based on the assumption that the best way to manage conflict and disagreement is to aim for consensus and thus eliminate conflict.
But conflict can be managed in different ways, not all of them leading to consensus; indeed, some authors maintain that argumentation may help mitigate conflict even when the explicit aim is not that of reaching consensus. Importantly, authors who identify conflict management or variations thereof as a function for argumentation differ in their overall appreciation of the value of argumentation: some take it to be at best futile and at worst destructive, [ 5 ] while others attribute a more positive role to argumentation in conflict management.
Thus seen, the function of argumentation would not be fundamentally different from the function of organized competitive activities such as sports or even war with suitable rules of engagement; Aikin When conflict emerges, people have various options: they may choose not to engage and instead prefer to flee; they may go into full-blown fighting mode, which may include physical aggression; or they may opt for approaches somewhere in between the fight-or-flee extremes of the spectrum.
Argumentation can be plausibly classified as an intermediary response:. With argument, we settle our disputes in ways that are most respectful of those who disagree—we do not buy them off, we do not threaten them, and we do not beat them into submission. Instead, we give them reasons that bear on the truth or falsity of their beliefs. Aikin This is not to say that argumentation will always or even typically be the best approach to handle conflict and disagreement; the point is rather that argumentation at least has the potential to do so, provided that the background conditions are suitable and that provisions to mitigate escalation are in place Aikin Versions of this view can be found in the work of proponents of agonistic conceptions of democracy and political deliberation Wenman ; see entry on feminist political philosophy.
For agonist thinkers, conflict and strife are inevitable features of human lives, and so cannot be eliminated; but they can be managed. From these observations on different types of argumentation, a pluralistic picture emerges: argumentation, understood as the exchange of reasons to justify claims, seems to have different applications in different situations. However, it is not clear that some of the goals often attributed to argumentation such as epistemic improvement and reaching consensus can in fact be reliably achieved in many real life situations.
Does this mean that argumentation is useless and futile? Not necessarily, but it may mean that engaging in argumentation will not always be the optimal response in a number of contexts. Argumentation is practiced and studied in many fields of inquiry; philosophers interested in argumentation have much to benefit from engaging with these bodies of research as well. To understand the emergence of argumentation theory as a specific field of research in the twentieth century, a brief discussion of preceding events is necessary.
In the nineteenth century, a number of textbooks aiming to improve everyday reasoning via public education emphasized logical and rhetorical concerns, such as those by Richard Whately see entry on fallacies. As noted in section 3. But with the advent of mathematical logic in the final decades of the nineteenth century, logic and the study of ordinary, everyday argumentation came apart, as logicians such as Frege, Hilbert, Russell etc.
As a result, their logical systems are not particularly suitable to study everyday argumentation, as this is simply not what they were designed to do. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century a number of authors took inspiration from developments in formal logic and expanded the use of logical tools to the analysis of ordinary argumentation.
Her book Thinking to Some Purpose , which can be considered as one of the first textbooks in critical thinking, was widely read at the time, but did not become particularly influential for the development of argumentation theory in the decades to follow.
This approach seeks to engage and analyze instances of argumentation in everyday life; it recognizes that, while useful, the tools of deductive logic alone do not suffice to investigate argumentation in all its complexity and pragmatic import. Its key idea:. They introduced the influential distinction between universal and particular audiences: while every argument is directed at a specific individual or group, the concept of a universal audience serves as a normative ideal encapsulating shared standards of agreement on what counts as legitimate argumentation see Eemeren, Garssen, et al.
The work of these pioneers provided the foundations for subsequent research in argumentation theory. They also founded the journal Argumentation , one of the flagship journals in argumentation theory. For these authors, argumentative discourse is primarily directed at the reasonable resolution of a difference of opinion. Pragma-dialectics has a descriptive as well as a normative component, thus offering tools both for the analysis of concrete instances of argumentation and for the evaluation of argumentation correctness and success see Eemeren, Garssen, et al.
Ralph Johnson and Anthony Blair further helped to consolidate the field of argumentation theory and informal logic by founding the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric in Windsor Ontario, Canada , and by initiating the journal Informal Logic. The historical roots of argumentation research in artificial intelligence can be traced back to work on non-monotonic logics see entry on non-monotonic logics and defeasible reasoning see entry on defeasible reasoning.
Since then, three main different perspectives have emerged Eemeren, Garssen, et al. An influential approach in this research tradition is that of abstract argumentation frameworks , initiated by the pioneering work of Dung Before that, argumentation in AI was studied mostly under the inspiration of concepts coming from informal logic such as argumentation schemes, context, stages of dialogues and argument moves.
By contrast, the key notion in the framework proposed by Dung is that of argument attack , understood as an abstract formal relation roughly intended to capture the idea that it is possible to challenge an argument by means of another argument assertions are understood as a special case of arguments with zero premises. Arguments can then be represented in networks of attacks and defenses: an argument A can attack an argument B , and B in turn may attack further arguments C and D the connection with the notion of defeaters is a natural one, which Dung also addresses.
Argumentation is also an important topic of investigation within cognitive science and psychology. Researchers in these fields are predominantly interested in the descriptive question of how people in fact engage in argumentation, rather than in the normative question of how they ought to do it although some of them have also drawn normative conclusions, e.
Controlled experiments are one of the ways in which the descriptive question can be investigated. Systematic research specifically on argumentation within cognitive science and psychology has significantly increased over the last 10 years.
Before that, there had been extensive research on reasoning conceived as an individual, internal process, much of which had been conducted using task materials such as syllogistic arguments Dutilh Novaes b. It is only somewhat recently that argumentation began to receive sustained attention from these researchers.
From this they conclude, on the basis of evolutionary arguments, that the function of reasoning must be a different one, indeed one that responds to features of human sociality and the need to exercise epistemic vigilance when receiving information from others. This account has inaugurated a rich research program which they have been pursuing with colleagues for over a decade now, and which has delivered some interesting results—for example, that we seem to be better at evaluating the quality of arguments proposed by others than at formulating high-quality arguments ourselves Mercier For example, deductively invalid argument schemes such as affirming the consequent AC and denying the antecedent DA can also provide considerable support for a conclusion, depending on the contents in question.
The extent to which this is the case depends primarily on the specific informational context, captured by the prior probability distribution, not on the structure of the argument. Thus seen, Bayesian argumentation represents a significantly different approach to argumentation from those inspired by logic e.
Argumentation is primarily though not exclusively a linguistic phenomenon. Accordingly, argumentation is extensively studied in fields dedicated to the study of language, such as rhetoric, linguistics, discourse analysis, communication, and pragmatics, among others see Eemeren, Garssen, et al.
Overall, research on argumentation within the language sciences tends to focus primarily on concrete occurrences of arguments in a variety of domains, adopting a largely descriptive rather than normative perspective though some of these researchers also tackle normative considerations.
One prominent approach in this tradition is due to communication scholars Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs. Another communication scholar, Dale Hample, has further argued for the importance of approaching argumentation as an essentially interpersonal communicative activity Hample , This perspective allows for the consideration of a broader range of factors, not only the arguments themselves but also and primarily the people involved in those processes: their motivations, psychological processes, and emotions.
It also allows for the formulation of questions pertaining to individual as well as cultural differences in argumentative styles see section 5. Another illuminating perspective views argumentative practices as inherently tied to broader socio-cultural contexts Amossy The Journal of Argumentation in Context was founded in precisely to promote a contextual approach to argumentation.
Once argumentation is no longer only considered in abstraction from concrete instances taking place in real-life situations, it becomes imperative to recognize that argumentation does not take place in a vacuum; typically, argumentative practices are embedded in other kinds of practices and institutions, against the background of specific socio-cultural, political structures.
Did you present them with lots of instances of your past trustworthiness? Did you whine until they just wanted you to shut up? These are all types of argumentation, and they exist in academia in similar forms. Every field has slightly different requirements for acceptable evidence, so familiarize yourself with some arguments from within that field instead of just applying whatever evidence you like best. What types of argument and evidence are they using?
The type of evidence that sways an English instructor may not work to convince a sociology instructor. Find out what counts as proof that something is true in that field. Is it statistics, a logical development of points, something from the object being discussed art work, text, culture, or atom , the way something works, or some combination of more than one of these things? Be consistent with your evidence.
You can often use more than one type of evidence within a paper, but make sure that within each section you are providing the reader with evidence appropriate to each claim. Information about how fan support raises player morale, which then results in better play, would be a better follow-up. Your next section could offer clear reasons why undergraduates have as much or more right to attend an undergraduate event as wealthy alumni—but this information would not go in the same section as the fan support stuff.
You cannot convince a confused person, so keep things tidy and ordered. One way to strengthen your argument and show that you have a deep understanding of the issue you are discussing is to anticipate and address counterarguments or objections. By considering what someone who disagrees with your position might have to say about your argument, you show that you have thought things through, and you dispose of some of the reasons your audience might have for not accepting your argument.
Recall our discussion of student seating in the Dean Dome. To make the most effective argument possible, you should consider not only what students would say about seating but also what alumni who have paid a lot to get good seats might say.
Once you have thought up some counterarguments, consider how you will respond to them—will you concede that your opponent has a point but explain why your audience should nonetheless accept your argument? Will you reject the counterargument and explain why it is mistaken? Either way, you will want to leave your reader with a sense that your argument is stronger than opposing arguments. When you are summarizing opposing arguments, be charitable.
Present each argument fairly and objectively, rather than trying to make it look foolish. You want to show that you have considered the many sides of the issue.
It is usually better to consider one or two serious counterarguments in some depth, rather than to give a long but superficial list of many different counterarguments and replies. Argumentation aims to gain adherence from an audience. People argue to gain assent for their positions. The world is filled with ambiguous situations that argument attempts to render more certain. Argumentation is a listener and audience-oriented activity—even if the audience is just one person.
Ulrimately, one wishes to persuade to audience the act on the advanced claim, whether it is to encourage action or gain support. Argument is an art. As an art, argument has techniques and general principles, therefore is a learned craft. Although there are suggested guidelines and argumentative tools, there is no science of argument. Argument involves contested issues. As a mode of influence, argument has persuasion as a central goal. Argument does not occur where there is consensus.
Argument fills much of our lives. Whether we recognize so or not, argument dominates our lives. We spend time arguing about what to eat, who to invite, when to do things, and where to go. To clarify thinking as individuals or groups.
Oftentimes, individuals and groups do not know what they believe but are still faced with information that requires interpretation. Argument can help individuals and groups learn about issues. To explain or defend actions or beliefs. People have reasons for doing what they do, though oftentimes the reasons are not made clear.
Argument seeks to shed light on those reasons and make them explicit and open to scrutiny. To solve problems or make judgments.
0コメント