Abstract
Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management.
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Notes
Examples in this paper were prepared for analysis by reconciling several published transcripts and correcting the result by comparison with multiple published videorecordings (seven in all; different videorecordings made different parts of the interaction audible). The correction process also added details such as placement of overlapped speech, and, whenever possible, identification of individual reporters so that multiple questions by the same reporter could be linked. Only selected segments of the interaction are used here; a complete videotape and transcript is available from the New York Times at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html (permalink https://nyti.ms/2uZQGj0).
Videotape is available at https://www.c-span.org/video/?432523-1/president-trump-condemns-violence-charlottesville-va; transcription has been corrected from c-span’s closed captioning.
A detailed summary of the events was published by the New York Times on August 16, 2017: “Inside the C.E.O. Rebellion Against Trump’s Advisory Councils,” by David Gelles, Langdon Thomas, Jr., Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Kate Kelly (permalink https://nyti.ms/2vEcpAL).
News and opinion journalism in the latter half of August 2017 contained repeated mentions of President Trump’s absent or unconvincing condemnations of the far right protestors. On August 23, 2017, the New York Times summarized much of the domestic and international criticism, and reported that a United Nations panel had joined the criticism of President Trump: “U.N. Panel Condemns Trump’s Response to Charlottesville Violence,” by Sewell Chan and Nick Cumming-Bruce (permalink https://nyti.ms/2vo1aZO).
Remarks made at a National Academy of Science Workshop, “Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research,” held Apr. 18-19, 2007, in Washington DC. Edited proceedings of the workshop have been published and are available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11946.html.
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Acknowledgements
Zhang Xiaoqi and Curtis Jackson-Jacobs provided invaluable assistance in preparing the transcripts shown in Exhibits 1–3, as well as helpful suggestions on the analysis. Special thanks are due to Scott Jacobs for repeated close readings of this paper and for the prior collaborative work that is fundamental to the arguments made here.
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Jackson, S. Reason-Giving and the Natural Normativity of Argumentation. Topoi 38, 631–643 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9553-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9553-5