Abstract
Is argumentation essentially adversarial? The concept of a devil's advocate—a cooperative arguer who assumes the role of an opponent for the sake of the argument—serves as a lens to bring into clearer focus the ways that adversarial arguers can be virtuous and adversariality itself can contribute to argumentation's goals. It also shows the different ways arguments can be adversarial and the different ways that argumentation can be said to be "essentially" adversarial.
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Notes
Importantly, there are many other positions one can take towards adversariality—DAM and CCAM are not exclusive and exhaustive, but instead contraries, in Govier’s (2020) terminology.
Some difference in standpoint or opinion is necessary for the confrontation stage of a pragma-dialectical critical discussion, but the existence of a difference is not sufficient for argumentation, and the difference does not need to be disagreement, it can also be doubt (see, e.g. van Eemeren 2018).
Govier (1999)
Bailin and Battersby (2017). See also Hundleby (2013). Among Walton and Krabbe’s six suggested models for different ways to engage in argumentation, we find models that pit arguers against each other such as persuasion dialogues and negotiations, but also models that unite arguers in the common pursuit of the answer to a problem or question, like deliberations and inquiries. So not all dialogue types that count as arguments pit arguers against each other in an adversarial relation (Walton and Krabbe 1995).
However, for an exploration of adversariality in the dialectic tradition, see Krabbe (2009)
We do not claim that this is the only way the concept of adversariality in argumentation could have been disambiguated. However, we think that a careful reading of the work already done supports the distinctions we suggest and that making them will help structure the broader discussion about the place of adversariality in argumentation and remove some of the confusion that we (at least) felt when we first started reading about it.
For example, it might be safest because it reduces face- and relationship-costs: Engaging in argumentation projects the image of valuing true conclusions or just decisions. If this image can be kept up during argument, winning via argument additionally provides the advantage of appearing to have won legitimately, which enhances face and reduces the amount of hostility that the losers of the argument or onlookers might feel towards the winner.
As mentioned above, Govier describes ancillary adversariality as characterized by a “lack of respect, rudeness, lack of empathy, name-calling, animosity, hostility, failure to listen and attend carefully, misinterpretation, inefficiency, dogmatism, intolerance, irritability, quarrelsomeness, and so forth” (Govier 1999, p. 245).
Hundleby (2013) criticizes Govier’s suggestion that politeness in argumentation might reduce aggression and thereby solve the problem associated with ancillary adversariality. She draws attention to the gendered and racialized nature of politeness norms. For example, the politeness-requirement for women are different than those for men and might damage the uptake women’s reasons get when engaged in argument. Women are subject to the politeness norm not to appear too assertive. When women follow it, they run the risk that those with whom they argue might mistake their assertions for suggestions or questions. When they refuse to follow, they run the risk of appearing impolite and being dismissed as irrational. Men are not held back by this politeness norm, or others like it. Hundleby then shows that even when everyone in an argument follows their respective politeness norms, some arguers might have their voices diminished. This problem cannot be solved by reducing rude behavior like name-calling, irritability and quarrelsomeness. Holding women to disadvantageous politeness norms is a strategy serving the adversarial attitude where it is done with the conscious or unconscious goal to “shut them up”. Govier herself shows that the way in which people offer their contributions may lead others to mistake, e.g. an assertion for a question (Govier 1993). Brockriede (1972) offers egregious examples of the globally adversarial attitude in the types of arguers unfortunately named the “rapist” and the “seducer”. The “rapist”, who will even resort to fallacies etc. to gain “assent” to her conclusions, is also an example of open aggression.
This has been noticed, e.g. in feminist research into the dynamics of deliberative styles of democracy such as town-hall meetings (Mansbridge 1980).
This does not necessarily mean that she needs to be “against” her interlocutor’s claim. She may play the opponent role without committing to a claim that is contrary or contradictory to the proponent’s claim (she does not need to defend non-p in order to make objections to p), rather she may play this role simply to test the strength of the case for the proponent’s claim. Govier (2020) discusses of this and calls it “logical opposition”. It is important to note that in (Govier 2020), Govier’s use of the term “adversarial” is a little more restricted than ours here—she requires some form of social opposition for adversariality. Our stance-adversariality alone therefore is not really adversarial for her in that paper because the two arguers who adopt the proponent and opponent roles are not what she would consider “real” opponents—they are not pitted against each other, they are “only” opponents in the “logical sense”. We are not entirely sure how this interacts with her idea of ancillary adversarialty in (Govier 1999).
The distinction between aggressive behavior in argument and argumentative adversariality as arguing against another has been accepted and integrated by several authors, especially those aware and critical of Govier’s contribution (see, e.g.Aikin 2011; Hundleby 2013; Rooney 2004). However, apart from Hundleby, we have seen little awareness that open aggression is not the core of the problem with Govier’s ancillary adversariality. Doing away with aggression will, therefore, not solve the problem. We hope that our distinction between an adversarial attitude and an adversarial stance, instead of the distinction between minimal adversariality (as arguing against each other) and ancillary adversariality (as arguing aggressively), preserves Hundleby’s important insight.
In (Stevens 2016), Stevens argues that an adversarial structure can only work when all arguers are aware of and capable to formulate their own reasons and are also able to communicate effectively. Where this is not given, switching to a cooperative structure will be helpful.
Rooney (2010) argues that the line between Govier’s minimal adversariality and Govier’s ancillary adversariality is porous.
We do not think it is entirely clear whether Aikin believes that every argument, by its nature, is an answer to a possible objection. That would be a controversial point. To show why, we can, once again, return to Hundleby (2013). Following her, we can point out that people might argue out of a position of complete non-committedness, merely to pool reasons that might offer an answer to a question they might find themselves having. In this case, arguing might take place but it would not be (directly or indirectly) addressed to those who might be able to deliver objections or criticisms.
For example, Foss and Griffin (1995) write: “Even discursive strategies can constitute a kind of trespassing on the personal integrity of others when they convey the rhetor’s belief that audience members have inadequacies that in some way can be corrected if they adhere to the viewpoint of the rhetor.” And Gearheart (1979) describes the feeling of having successfully changed someone via argument as a “rush of power” based on the success of controlling others.
Davis (2017) adds the important caveat that this is the case mainly or only when the argument is unwanted. Neither author seems to be aware of the literature on adversariality in argumentation, so they do not explain how they see their arguments interacting with the broader discussion on adversariality.
In fact, one of the authors of this paper has argued elsewhere that it is important to allow arguers to argue at least in part to win (Stevens 2019).
E.g. if you tell me that I should not go to the berry bushes for some picking because there is a bear, it is cheaper for me to evaluate your arguments for your claim and determine that there really is a bear than to creep carefully to the bushes in order to find out for myself (and potentially get detected and eaten).
Similar problems plague groups whose members are already in agreement: the my-side bias, exacerbated by other psychological and sociological aspects of human nature, leads agreeing groups to simply identify more and more reasons for their shared convictions. The result is the group-polarization effect (see Sunstein (2000, 2002).
Though what does “ideal” even mean? “Ideal” from which perspective? And at what evolutionary price would this more ideal reasoning-capacity be acquired? Which one of us would want to be Mr. Spock?
This means that the adversarial function and possibly the adversarial stance are essential in the same way in which Hart called laws against murder and theft “necessary” for human societies: they are not conceptually essential in that we can imagine both a legal system that does not contain a law against murder and an argument in which the adversarial function is not fulfilled (or without someone to take care of it), but they are essential in that human versions of legal systems and arguments would hardly work well without them (Hart 1958).
Similarly, a football coach chooses the starting quarterback from rival teammates, not from enemies. The successful candidate has a very different relation to the now-back-up quarterback than he does to quarterbacks from other teams. Barack Obama used exactly this analogy in the 2008 Democratic primary to prevent the competition between him and Hillary Clinton from becoming hostile (and he did indeed keep her on his team).
“In 1587, Pope Sixtus V established a process involving a canon attorney in the role of Promoter of the Faith or Devil's Advocate. This person argued against the canonization (sainthood) of a candidate in order to uncover any character flaws or misrepresentation of the evidence favoring canonization.” Wikipedia.
We thank our reviewer for pointing out that both the DAM and the CCAM can also be used as such descriptive models, for example in order to explain people’s argumentative behaviors. In this text, we concentrate on their normative function.
It is important to note here that the persuasive-adversarial effects of argument are not a feature special to the DAM. The kind of adversariality Casey identifies is supposed to be there even in the most cooperative of cooperative arguments.
There are, as noted earlier, DAM theorists who embrace adversariality precisely as a curative for, or at least a check on, our decidedly non-angelic faults, foibles, and vices as arguers.
One example are rules that require lawyers to disclose evidence to each other—originally intended to curb the worst effects of adversariality, they are abused by sending huge amounts of paperwork to the opposing lawyer, so much that her client could never pay for her to work through it all.
We should point out that in an earlier paper, (Stevens and Cohen 2018), we represented Bailin and Battersby’s position as more radically opposed to all kinds of adversariality than we now see that it is. For example, they integrate playing the devil’s advocate (as it is usually understood, not the ADA) into their critical thinking exercises, thereby giving a modest role to the adversarial stance in their otherwise generally CCAM approach. Thus, they are closer to the moderate end of the spectrum of CCAM proponents than our earlier paper suggests.
See our paper on the virtuous arguer’s need to select argumentative roles according to context (Stevens and Cohen 2018).
This advice is sometimes given in critical thinking textbooks (see, e.g. MacDonald and Vaughn 2016).
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Katharina Stevens is one of the editors of this edition of TOPOI. However, the paper was entirely handled by the other editor (John Casey), and the blind reviewing process was undisturbed. In addition, the chief-editor of the journal was aware that Katharina Stevens submitted a paper. The authors declare they have no financial interests.
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Stevens, K., Cohen, D.H. Angelic Devil’s Advocates and the Forms of Adversariality. Topoi 40, 899–912 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09726-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09726-x