2010 Conference: Abstracts

To find an abstract of a conference paper, please click on the letter that the surname of the paper’s (first) author begins with.

Mark Aakhus (Rutgers University, New Brunswick)

Argumentation design in policy practice

An analysis of accounts by policy professionals about the uses of meetings and conflict in policy decision-making is reported. The accounts are drawn from interviews with policy professionals involved in conflicted policy decision-making. The analysis reveals how practitioners attend to articulating disagreement space by orchestrating forms of interactivity among the actors in the policy circumstance as a way to move the policy process forward. They attend to the affordances and constraints of the preparatory conditions for argumentative interaction (e.g., second-order social-psychological conditions and third-order socio-political conditions). The findings extend recent normative-pragmatic studies of third-party practices that shape argumentative possibilities in deliberative encounters. The findings have implications for reconsidering “invention” in terms of constructing argumentative activity. That is, argument activity types may function as rational models for inventing solutions to the problems of deliberation and as symbolic displays of the ostensibly rational management of differences of opinion.

Don Paul Abbott (University of California, Davis)

“War with Words:” I.A. Richards’ attack on argument

In The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) Richards proposed to revive “an old subject” that had “sunk so low” that it should be dismissed to “limbo.”  This “old rhetoric,” which began with Aristotle and ended with Richard Whately, was “an offspring of dispute” and thus “the theory of the battle of words … dominated by the combative impulse.”  I will examine Richard’s claim that rhetoric is merely “war with words.”  Even if Richards’ historical analysis is accurate, it does not necessarily follow that a disputation model must be abandoned if rhetoric is to prosper.   Indeed, Richards’ program to remove argument from rhetoric would, if enacted, eviscerate rhetoric.  Ultimately, Richards’ self-proclaimed “microscopic” view of rhetoric means that The Philosophy of Rhetoric has little to contribute to the development of rhetoric in the twenty-first century.

Andrew Aberdein (Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne)

Argumentation schemes and mathematical practice

This paper applies argumentation schemes to formal and informal mathematical reasoning. Two distinct strategies emerge: firstly, the development of fine-tuned, specifically mathematical schemes; and secondly, the application to mathematics of topic-neutral schemes. Examples of both approaches are discussed, in defence of four theses: 1. The repeated occurrence of high-level patterns in mathematical reasoning may be explicated by specialized argumentation schemes; 2. Much informal mathematical reasoning is defeasible, and exhibits patterns intelligible as instances of topic-neutral schemes; 3. Reduction of high-level mathematical reasoning to lower-level schemes is possible, but at the expense of concealing those features of high-level reasoning relevant to the understanding of mathematical practice; 4. Mathematics is an important test bed for the argumentation scheme methodology.

Angela J. Aguayo (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale)

Assessing visual argumentation, validity and the moving image

Jesús Alcolea-Banegas (Universitat de València, València)

Seduction and visual argumentation

The understanding of the strategic rationale behind the moves made in the discourse is indispensable to incorporate a rhetorical dimension into its reconstruction. The speech situation includes the conventions that explain arguing and the effects produced with some intention. The phenomenon of seduction is focused on the speaker’s willingness to alter mental states, and behaviours. But beyond the supposed passivity of seduced, the unidirectional relationship seducer/seduced is reversed, showing how the model of (rhetorical) argumentation must be extended, and how concerned is the páthos of the seducer and the seduced by the interaction. In this sense, the most appropriate means of seduction inevitably focus on the image. Such are the connotations of the word seduction itself that it exercises its power of seduction on us when studying the phenomenon, an action that can hardly be dissociated from anything that constitutes our visual knowledge.

Donka Alexandrova  (St. Kl. Ohridski” Sofia University, Sofia)

The political discourse of the transition (Pragma-dialectical approach)

In this paper I discuss three main questions: 1) How pragma-dialectical approach characterizes the political discourse of the changed social situation (during the different periods of the transition form totalitarianism to democracy); 2) To which degree the critical discussion of the political dialogue turns into political rhetoric? 3) Which are the prevailing strategies of the argumentation and how they influence on the process of democratization of the society? Twenty years after the Fall of the Iron Curtain the socialist  “sterilized” political correctness disappeared and was replaced by multi-colored  and contradictory language of the different opinions, the street tonality, vulgarity, pornography, but also of the liberal principle of the supremacy of the law. Among the argumentative strategies of the political language emotional appeals of hate prevail. At the present the political folklore is flourishing again as during the last pre-democratic years.

Rodica Amel (University of Bucharest, Bucharest)

The probable and the problem

The present study deals with a very specific aspect, that of the heuristic function of interrogation within doxastic dialectics. The research starts by establishing the coordinates of the issue: 1. any argumentative process is opened in an interrogative horizon and 2. the doxastic field (the field of opinion) belongs to the cognitive space of the PROBABLE. By taking for granted the above mentioned parameters, the researcher remarks that, in the space of doxastic dialectics,    the process of finding grounding arguments triggers off a problematising interrogation. The present study follows this process and checks the extent to which  the justifying reasons of doxastic arguments are able to saturate a justification principle. What we understand by „justification principle” is part of the proposed paper’s project. The topic of our contribution is situated at the intersection of two cognitive domains: that of doxastic dialectics and that of doxastic hermeneutics.

Bilal Amjarso (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam)

The effectiveness of mentioning and refuting anticipated counterarguments

In the context of a critical discussion the protagonist bases his choice of arguments on the type of critical reactions that the antagonist has put forward with regard to the protagonist’s standpoint. In case of doubt, the arguer reacts by providing supporting arguments. In case of a counterargument, the arguer reacts by refuting the counterargument. In a monological situation the arguer may not always know what type of reactions to expect from his addressee and, as a result, should determine in advance whether to simply mention supporting arguments or, in addition to doing so, point out possible counterarguments. The aim of this paper is to examine which of these two options is the most effective. Relying on the pragma-dialectical concept of strategic maneuvering, I argue that in the above situation it is more advantageous for the arguer to mention and refute possible counterarguments against his standpoint.

Ruth Amossy (ADARR, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv)

“Flaming” and polemical discourse on the net: Towards a rhetoric of dissent

Recent research on electronic exchanges between ordinary citizens has emphasized the phenomenon of “flames”, or incendiary messages expressing strong hostility. I would like to investigate this phenomenon, generally condemned on ethical grounds, in the framework of a theory of Argumentation in discourse (at the crossroad of Perelman’s New rhetoric and Discourse Analysis). After presenting current studies on flaming, I will relate it to ad hominem arguments while suggesting a shift in perspective: verbal attacks against the person of the opponent can be integrated into polemics understood as a specific, and legitimate, mode of argumentation. After looking into some concrete examples of polemical exchanges in talk backs borrowed from French newspapers (“forums de discussion”), I will raise the question of the ethical and social limits of flaming in online debates.

Corina Andone (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam)

The reasonableness of retracting a standpoint in a political interview

This paper concerns the question when the politician’s strategic manoeuvring by retracting a standpoint in response to an interviewer’s accusation of inconsistency in the confrontation stage of a political interview may be judged reasonable and when it must be seen as crossing the bounds of dialectical reasonableness. To answer this question from a pragma-dialectical perspective, a set of soundness conditions are proposed in the formulation of which dialectical and pragmatic insights are combined. Dialectically, the strategic manoeuvring is considered as part of a critical testing procedure to resolve a difference of opinion. Pragmatically, the strategic manoeuvring is dealt with as an illocutionary act that comes in response to the illocutionary act of accusation of inconsistency. The proposed set of soundness conditions will be discussed in the context of a political interview.

Txetxu Ausín (Spanish National Research Council CSIC, Madrid)

Argumentation in bioethics

Without a doubt, the realm of bioethics constitutes a field characterized by deep controversies and argumentative exchange. Polemic questions as euthanasia, abortion, embryonic research, human enhancement, or animal experimentation, involve a set of argumentative tools. We emphasize some of them: 1) Presumptive reasoning plays a very important role in bioethical reasoning since ‘presumptive consent’ is a usual tool in bioethical decisions in emergencies. 2) Analogical reasoning, linked to the concepts of similarity and proportionality, is related to some bioethical debates as the question of ordinary vs. extraordinary means at the end of life, or the recognition of a moral status to other animals. 3) The fuzzy approach to bioethical argumentation, since any term, whether properties or states of affairs, involved in the bioethical debate are likely to have fuzzy edges and as regards borderline cases, without precise lines of demarcation.