Abstract
This work analyses the speech-act of arguing as proposed by Linguistic Normative Model of Argumentation (LNMA) with the help of diagrams, examples and basic formalization techniques. The focus is set on one of the most novel issues of LNMA, modal qualification, and the distinction between epistemic and ontological modals. The first conclusion is that employing LNMA in order to analyse and evaluate actual argumentation as it is proposed is too complex to be applied as is. The second conclusion, at a theoretical level, is that the distinction between ontological and epistemic modals is highly problematic in LNMA.
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Notes
LNMA distinguishes between ‘semantic conditions, determining the correctness of a claim, and pragmatic conditions, determining how far a particular communicative act is a good means for showing something –namely, that a given claim is correct’ (Bermejo-Luque 2011, 40). Semantic conditions are related to the semantic appraisal of argumentation (considered in this paper), pragmatic conditions to the pragmatic appraisal of argumentation.
(Bermejo-Luque 2011, p. 109) seems to imply that em depends on both omi and omr, not only on omi. However, further on, in the same text and later papers presenting LNMA, she considers that em depends solely on omi, thus I take this as the actual position defended by LNMA.
In practice, it is not mandatory for those modals to be explicitly employed, or even with the same words. For example, in a legal context, ‘necessary’ can be expressed as ‘proven beyond reasonable doubt’. In a discussion among mathematicians, ‘necessary’ will be used differently, and with other alternative expressions as ‘therefore, it is proven that’.
For the sake of simplicity, I do not consider in this example the negation of modals (e.g. ‘it is not necessary’ or ‘it is not possible’), which can produce more modals (e.g. ‘it is not possible’ as ‘impossible’).
Another question is whether it makes sense to employ the weaker modal ‘possible’ when ‘probable’ is available. In general, the strongest available modal is expected to be employed, but there can be exceptions (see example presented prior Case 1). Anyway, argumentation can be good from a semantic point of view (i.e. assigned modals are correct, though weak) but it can be bad from a pragmatic point of view (e.g. the conclusion is acceptable, but so weak that it is irrelevant or useless for the audience, who rejects it).
Function θ could be also defined as θ(em, om c) = om’ c. I omit the propositional content for the sake of simplicity.
At first glance, modal qualification in LNMA can look like ‘unnatural’: distinction between ontological and epistemic modals does not seem to fit into actual speakers’ intuitions. The existence of θ ‘smoothens’ the translation between LNMA and ordinary language, but at the cost of raising doubts about modal qualification, as discussed below.
In this particular example, θ returns the weaker modal (ontological or epistemic) from the input. I think it makes sense in some well-known contexts. E.g., let us consider Golbach’s conjecture: its modern version asserts that (it is necessary that) ‘every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes.’ It has been proved to be true for integers up to 4 × 1018. But such a proof just allows us to say that, probably, the conjecture is a necessary truth (there are infinite integers, we just tried with a huge, but finite set). So, we have em = probably and om = necessary (‘probably, it is necessary that…’). The outcome for θ(probably, necessary) will be ‘probable’ (‘It is probable that every even integer…’). Of course, there may be other contexts where θ works differently.
Strictly speaking, a non-bijective function has no inverse function, but the notation θ −1 is, in this context, useful for a better understanding.
Perhaps only constative speech-acts should be considered here.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ana Colautti for her support in reviewing the English grammar and spelling of the manuscript. The research that led to this paper has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, EXCELENCIA program, Project No. FFI2016-79317-P.
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Secades Gómez, A. Modal Qualification and the Speech-Act of Arguing in LNMA: Practical Aspects and a Theoretical Issue. Argumentation 36, 1–15 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-021-09551-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-021-09551-5