Abstract
The temptation to look for the “purely normative essence” of argument stems from the understandable ambition to distinguish rational persuasion from mere persuasion. But in seeking a purely normative notion of argument it is easy to overlook—or actually deny—that rational persuasion is a kind of persuasion. The burden of this essay is to show that the concept of reason from which our interest in argument derives can only exist and have normative force as a kind of persuasion, that is, as something (also) causal.
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Notes
By Salmon in (2006).
The sense of “answer” required here is what the erotetic logicians call a ‘proper’ or ‘direct’ answer, which is something like the answer you’d get credit for on a quiz show. This is obviously a context-sensitive regimentation and not meant to trouble ordinary interrogative diction. Many responses to such questions besides yes and no (e.g., I don’t know, go ask a meteorologist, even, a sibyl’s riddle) may be referred to as answers in the rich dialectic of everyday without misleading anyone. But keeping in mind the sense in which arguments, among these other responses, do not count as answers to Is C true? will be valuable for negotiating some subtleties to follow.
The schematized argument above, e.g., would not be acceptable if I had just filled up and am leaving the gas station when the car quits. Here, it would take very special additional circumstances to suspect the fuel level.
The intricacy of our dialectical competence here invites a level of complexity difficult to tidily address. If my interlocutor does not appreciate my appeal to snow in justifying the disappointing itinerary, for instance, it may be because he does not drive or has not experienced winter, in which case further articulation will usually be inadequate to fill the lacuna: training and experience that cannot be itemized may be called for.
The objection to deduction in these contexts actually has a long tradition in the general literature going back at least to Empiricus (1935), and manifest more recently in Mill (1941), Bk.II Ch.3, Russell (1959), esp. p. 80, Hamblin (1970), Ch. 7, and Harman (1984). Some representative examples from what I am calling “the argumentation literature” are Blair and Johnson (1988), Finnocchiaro (1981), Fogelin and Duggen (1987), and Scriven (1987). Although temperate synopsis of this intemperate literature is difficult (see Wright (1999) for an attempt to do so), some sense of its substance may be gained from paraphrasing Russell: in standard, substantive cases, the evidence we have supports the generalizations licensing deduction less securely than it supports the conclusion itself; so deduction systematically underrepresents the strength of our reasons
The crucial point is that we want to know what gives us the probability numbers, not what to do with them afterwards. In the vast run of cases in which giving reasons is useful and interesting, priors are not arbitrary and we do not have a long run to amortize them. More deeply, a general analysis of argument must accommodate normative conclusions, and these are not evaluated by their probability (see Blair (1992) for a longer discussion).
McPeck is centrally concerned to point out that reasoning always involves substantive competence of some sort. The dialecticians note that such competence is secure only in the rich detail of ordinary conversational contexts. I wish to preserve both insights in the ruminations that follow.
We can make sense of someone’s being his own interlocutor, but what’s required to make this work as a dialectical occasion is parasitic on our understanding of ordinary conversation. Talking to oneself is a derivative activity.
Most of this I have never dwelt upon of course; it is nevertheless reflected in my judgment in cases like this.
In another context my guest knows about the snow but still asks why I think the coast route preferable. Here (again, depending on details of circumstance) I may know the proper response is Because snow makes the route through the mountains dangerous and exhausting. In the previous context, this was taken as understood. In another context the answer would be that the inconvenience of the longer route is not enough to cancel the trip. In yet another it might be that my snow driver is indisposed.
The degree of doubt will of course vary from case to case. I may simply have been agnostic about C, not have had a firm conviction either way before encountering the reason I now give, or I may have actively thought not-C. Either way, the reason is what changed my mind about C: convinced me of something I was not convinced of beforehand.
We can indeed sometimes articulate a doubt directly. But this too requires a very special context, the significance of which is parasitic on the practice in which we need not be competent to do this. The issues this raises will become clearer as we treat cases that depart from the paradigms in the following sections.
Most importantly one with greater complexity than simply Why C? We in this way begin to rationalize the homologous structural vocabulary: ‘because’ clauses are grammatically attached to Why? questions. But without the forgoing exposition it is easy to misapprehend the relation between the explanatory and the justificatory ‘because,’ and the depth of the issues raised by their interconnection.
The subtler implications of some of these cannot be adequately addressed in a short essay, of course. But raising them in this way does allow a larger picture to emerge in bold outline, and this structures a longer essay of which the current one is the introductory chapter.
I take this to be an instance of what Kant had in mind by insisting that synthesis precedes analysis (1997, B 130), and Hegel did in talking of the “concreteness” of a universal (1991, many places but especially § 164 & § 165). .
The gauge has been wonky and I filled up recently, for instance.
This seems to be the point Kant is trying to make in section IX of the Jäsche Logic in claiming that the will has an only indirect effect on our objective judgments: the request for a reason (or whether we listen to it) is deliberate, a matter of volition; but its effect on our judgment is not and should not be (see Kant 1963, p. 64).
The hypothetical form “were I to learn S,” or “had I learned (known) S” is sometimes taken to be the fundamental form of argument. But this form is of interest only insofar as it captures a practice in which the antecedent is typically fulfilled; so cases in which it is fulfilled are better paradigms.
Other forms of the request for a reason share this convolution: How do you know? and How can you tell? for instance.
And incidentally learning a lot about ourselves and/or the world when we discover that confidence to be misplaced.
As our paradigms illustrate, adequately selective motive can range from urgent to relatively trivial. It may be immediate redirection (power failure), simple reassurance (out of gas), or just some information for future reference (neighbors away).
How this works in detail depends on human circumstances too complicated to regiment here. But a common possibility worth mention is that by providing a clearly relevant item that I might check out on my own if I cared to, my interlocutor has established his bona fides. So I may take reasonably his word for a reason in a way I am unable to do for the proposition in question.
This will be something I know that my interlocutor may not. So whether producing it will address the concern that motivated her asking will depend on interesting contextual detail that is nevertheless beyond the modest point of this example.
Its relevance for this issue is also treated in the longer essay of which this is part.
In some contexts, the light-timer in the earlier case might in this way count as a positive reason to think the neighbors are away.
The notion of a reason is systematically derivative of this in a way that does not raise further issues.
It may however be part of a neighboring practice with which reasoning is sometimes conflated, to the detriment of both dialogue and practice. For we sometimes accomplish something positive by simply articulating a settled perception without concerning ourselves with whether this articulation would be a good way for our audience, or for anybody, to come to share that perception who did not share it already. This can have the function of clarifying just what perception is under discussion or even simply encouraging group solidarity. But it is uniformly disappointing (or worse) when it is unwittingly confused with the practice of giving reasons.
The longer MS redeems some of this promise by showing how this nexus can be used to extend some insights already available in Twentieth Century philosophy of science and in the German Idealist tradition since Kant.
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Wright, L. Reasons. Topoi 38, 751–762 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9495-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9495-3