Abstract
Pragma-Dialectics (PD) is an approach to argumentation that can be described as disagreement-centric. On PD, disagreement is the condition which defines argument, it is the practical problem to be solved by it, and disagreement’s management is the ultimate source of argument’s normativity. On PD, arguing in the context of agreement is taken to be “incorrect” and arguments where agreement already reigns are “pointless.” Even the PD account of fallacies is disagreement-centered: a fallacy is something that impedes resolution of a dispute. We argue here that the disagreement-focus of PD yields procedural errors of application in cases of arguments given explicitly for agreement-management, that there are explanations of fallacies better understood as agreement-focused (straw man and ad hominem in particular), and that there are unique meta-argumentative errors emergent in instances of agreement.
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1 Argumentation Theory and Disagreement
Pragma-dialectics (PD) is a disagreement-centric theory of argumentation. On PD, disagreement is the central problem argumentation solves, so disagreement is the essential prerequisite of argumentation. Further, and most critically, managing that disagreement is the ultimate source of argument’s normativity. We’ve argued elsewhere that disagreement-centric theories face what we have called the problem of agreement for argumentation theory (Aikin and Casey 2022c). The motivation for this problem is that we clearly seem to argue even when we agree, and, more importantly, arguing under conditions of agreement gives rise to unique and significant problems that demand analysis under these lights. Our aim in this paper is to show that the problem of agreement is particularly acute for Pragma-Dialectics. In the first place, PD’s disagreement-centricity is so strong that arguing under agreement is not possible because solving a difference of opinion is the singular goal of argumentation. More significantly, since the norms of argument are what should conduce agreement, and violations of the norms of argument are what stand in the way of agreement, there is no theoretical mechanism for managing the problems brought about by antecedent agreement. Fallacies, on PD, don’t stand in the way of agreement in these conditions, because agreement has already been achieved. But, we hold, there are certainly fallacious ways to maintain agreements. Indeed, as we will argue, that agreement has already been achieved is the best explanation for how and why particular fallacies are posed at all.
In what follows, we begin with a short discussion of what we call the disagreement-centricity of many theories of argumentation. We then turn to the very uniquely robust role of disagreement in the pragma-dialectical theory. With this background in place, we turn to our case that PD suffers from the problem of agreement for argumentation. Our focus, specifically, is on the way PD generates the norms of arguments in light of how they deliver reasonable agreement out of disagreeing background attitudes.
To say that argument regards disagreement is something of a bland truism. It might be to say that disagreement is what drives our interest in arguments, or that the most interesting arguments are the ones where there is the most disagreement; or alternatively, it might be something more robust, like argument just is disagreement, or that disagreement is required for there to be arguments at all. Or many other things. For limitations of space and ease of exposition, we’ll center our discussion on three main approaches to the question: disagreement is either the looming practical problem that argument is conjured to solve, or it is the theoretical condition that demarcates arguing from some other communicative activity, or addressing relevant contrasting alternatives is a responsibility of good arguing. Call these respectively the practical, theoretical, and contrastive takes on the relevance of disagreement to argument.
The practical approach comes in stronger and weaker versions. Stronger views claim that only arguments that concern controversial matters are real arguments (Hamby 2012). Weaker views hold that argument is what we turn to when we disagree in order to chart a path forward. Disagreement, on the weaker practical view, is what makes us turn to argument, but disagreement is not what constitutes argument (Godden 2019, 725).
The theoretical view is stronger than the practical one. It comes in broad and narrow versions. Broad versions expressly identify the concept of argument with disagreement. Thus, Michael Gilbert holds that “an argument is any disagreement—from the most polite discussion to the loudest brawl” (1997, 5). Sally Jackson writes that argument is “a kind of discourse characterized by disagreement that motivates the production of reasons on one or more sides” (2019, 632). Other examples abound. Narrow versions hold that argument is the means by which one moves from dissensus to consensus. Pragma-dialectics, along with Walton’s conception of a critical discussion, are examples of narrow theories: argument is that sort of discourse aimed at convincing a reasonable critic (Walton 1998, 36; Pinto 2010, 230).
Finally, the contrastive view holds that addressing potential disagreement is a normative feature of good arguing, because reasons are fundamentally contrastive (Aikin 2021; Aikin and Casey 2022b; Sinnott-Armstrong 2008). This means that the quality of an argument for p, for instance, is indexed (at least implicitly) to a set of proper contrasts; it’s not just that p is true, but p is true rather than q. Potential disagreement or contrary considerations are, on this view, built into the idea of a reason as such.
2 Disagreement in Pragma-Dialectics
For PD, disagreement is both a practical and theoretical condition of argument. Disagreement is a practical condition of argument, because disagreement is the problem that needs to be overcome. The very first page of van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s first full statement of the theory, Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions, puts the problem of argumentation clearly in terms of the “elimination of a difference of opinion” (1984, 1). The 1992 follow-up, Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies, puts the role of disagreement even more clearly: “the pragma-dialectical approach centers around resolving differences of opinion by means of argumentative discourse” (1992, 13). Nearly every statement of the aim of the theory since then contains some version of this basic claim: A critical discussion is “aimed at resolving a difference of opinion…” (van Eemeren 2002, 3); “Each party’s argumentation is directed at ending the difference [of opinion] by convincing the other party of the acceptability of certain standpoints” (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Snoeck Henkemans 2002); “A pragma-dialectical analysis starts from the assumption that argumentative discourse is basically aimed at resolving a difference of opinion” (Houtlosser 2002); “…the rationale for advancing argumentation is to resolve a difference of opinion” (van Eemeren and van Haaften 2023). A consequence of the strong practical view is that in the absence of such disagreements, argument is a waste of time. For, “without such a real or presumed confrontation, there is no need for a critical discussion” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 60) or if “there is nothing to resolve, and the argumentative discussion is superfluous” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 135). This initial practical interaction of disagreement between speaker and critic is the trigger that sets the theory into motion.
PD centers on the speech acts that comprise argumentative exchange. And these need to be understood in terms of their function to convince a reasonable critic. This function of convincing a critic is what “makes arguments and standpoints different from other utterances” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992, 13). Arguments between speakers are speech act complexes, rather than abstract assemblages of propositions. Speech acts are public performances of speaking agents, subject to various conditions of satisfaction or “felicity conditions.” Felicity conditions come in various forms: There are general conditions, preparatory conditions, propositional conditions, sincerity conditions, and essential conditions (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 21). That a speech act is aimed at convincing a reasonable critic is a preparatory condition, or a correctness condition, of the complex speech act of arguing. If the critic shares the standpoint, the preparatory condition is not fulfilled and the argumentation is “incorrect” (1984, 44).
That arguments are understood to be complex speech acts aimed at convincing a reasonable critic is the theoretical foundation of the normative end of PD. PD is a pragmatic theory in that it is based in an analysis of the speech act of argumentation; the norms of this speech act are generated by which speech act moves would settle a difference of opinion in the eyes of a reasonable critic. The entire theory, therefore, is focused on managing disagreement in the direction of reasonable agreement. Only those speech acts that are conducive to such agreement are allowed; those that are not are fallacies: “The proposed procedural rules are valid as far as they really enable the discussants to resolve their difference of opinion” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 16). Again, a take-away from the pragmatic approach is that viewing argumentation through the instrumental lens of finding procedures of reasonable disagreement resolution yields a sharp focus for what contributes to that end and what does not, but the question we will ask shortly is whether this is the only end for argument.
Given this overview, we think it is plausible to see the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation as a procedural approach to understanding the norms of reason-exchange. Procedural approaches to thick concepts attend to the processes of arriving at a target product. So, by analogy, procedural notions of fairness are focused on the fair means of distributing goods and opportunities – by lottery, for example. And procedural notions of justice highlight the legislative and political path policies must take to ratification and enforcement – so, legislative review and vote, for example. Criticisms of procedural approaches come in two general forms – substantive critical replies, and internal procedural critique. Substantive criticism of procedural approaches is posited on the thought that proper procedure can be productive of, but is not constitutive of, good results. So, substantive responses may concede that good procedure may regularly yield good results, but the goodness of the result is yet conceptually distinct from the procedure. And they may also simply not yield good results. So, fair procedures of distributing goods may yet yield unfair end distributions (e.g., imagine a fair lottery for wealth distribution, which by amazing luck, has only millionaires winning). And appropriate procedural paths of legislation and voting can yet yield substantively unjust laws. And so it goes for critics of the PD theory as a procedural theory. In essence, the PD theory is that:
[A]rgumentation in a dialectical approach is regarded as a procedure for resolving a difference of opinion on the acceptability of one or more standpoints by means of a critical discussion. (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 132)
The “rules of discussion and argumentation” outlined by the theory are the “necessary conditions” for a properly achieved resolution (2004, 157). Substantivist critics of PD have argued that these procedures do not address the substantively good-making features of arguments. In particular, epistemic theorists have argued that the justification- and knowledge-improving features of good arguments are neglected with the procedural approach (Siegel and Biro 2010, 458; 2008; Lumer 2005).
We are sympathetic with the substantive epistemic critique of pragma-dialectics, but we wish here to run an internal procedural critique of the view. Procedural critiques of procedural approaches point out failings of the procedure to reflect a menu of values we hope our best procedure to instantiate. So, a procedural critique of the procedural notion of fair distribution by lottery would point to how lotteries may be fair in one sense (by being products of disinterest), but they are unfair in that they do not reflect the authorship or desires of those receiving the goods. Those who haven’t done anything to ask for or even have desire for these goods suddenly get them, and others who ask and positively want them are treated as on the same level. The same goes for justice, as proper channels of legislation and debate can be followed, but those channels themselves can be captured by partisan interests, so that even if the results are optimal, the means of arriving at them hasn’t reflected goods of public participation. It is this form of procedural critique that we are out to bring to bear on the PD theory. Just as procedural critique of lotteries as models for fairness identifies other goods we would want to instantiate with the process (authorship) and procedural critique of legislative procedure identifies another political good neglected (citizen participation), our procedural critique of the PD approach will identify procedural goods neglected that should be represented. In particular, our objective is to say that the procedural goods neglected are those that argumentation achieves in disrupting too-easy agreements and the procedural bads neglected are those dependent on maintaining uncritical agreement. This is, as we’ve called it, the problem of agreement argumentation generally and for the pragma-dialectical theory in particular.
3 Pragma-Dialectics and the Problem of Agreement
The problem of agreement for an argumentation theory has two moving parts: (i) that there are many arguments given under conditions of agreement, instead of conditions of disagreement, and (ii) using the tools for analyzing disagreement-resolution with those agreement-arguments yields theoretically unacceptable results. We will show (i) first, and then we will turn to (ii).
That argument is bound up with disagreement, again, seems almost an obvious truism; argument is the means by which we manage and then resolve that disparity of commitment. Argument, then, is a means of fixing propositional attitudes of belief and commitment, and PD, as a procedure, does so in a way that resolves the disagreement by engaging the reasonable faces of the disputing parties. But we may yet fix belief and commitment by engaging with various parties’ reasons without the background of disagreement. That is, we not only reason with those with whom we disagree, but we do so also with those with whom we already agree. In those latter cases, the fixation of that belief is more in the service of ensuring its continued fixity. A few examples may help show this.
The ancient Stoics practiced a form of cognitive therapy whereby they reminded themselves of the core theses and supporting reasons of the philosophical program. The objective of these practices was not to change the minds of Stoic practitioners, but to act as reminders and attention-directors to the principles of right-living. Stoics gave themselves arguments, then, not so that they would resolve a disagreement but so that they would maintain agreement with themselves.Footnote 1 Epicurus, too, announces that his letters are not just introductions for new students, but also reminders for those who are already experienced and practiced Epicureans (Ep. Herod. 35 1993). Further, a good deal of religious devotional literature is not out to change a mind but to stoke an already burning passion for the divine. Those are all arguments given to those who agree. What else might ‘preaching to the choir’ be?
Consider the stump speech of a politician. On the one hand, we might interpret the speech as a bit of outreach to a yet unconvinced and undecided voter or perhaps even a voter who is only moderately committed to another candidate. This plausible approach would be the path of those committed to the disagreement-centrality thesis. But on the other hand, it is also quite plausible to interpret the target audience of a stump speech to be one’s own (already agreeing) base. One is not out to change their minds about the wisdom of the politics one supports or that one is the right person for the job, but rather one’s objective is to remind those people of why they cared to have a view on the matter in the first place. And why they were so wise to come to this result. Those who tune in for speeches at the political rallies and nominating conventions are not those who disagree with the party’s platform, but those who are inclined to accept it or accept it already. The purpose of the convention speech is to make sure the convictions of those in attendance stick, not to change them.Footnote 2
Our point here is that there are arguments given under conditions of agreement, and that the interpretive, explanatory, and normative evaluations of those arguments need this assumption. The purpose of those arguments is not to bring about belief-change, but belief-stability. So, one reminds agreeing others of reasons that support those beliefs, why purportedly defeating considerations are not so serious, and why it matters that one persists with those convictions. These are all arguments, and they are not out to resolve disagreement. Rather, they are posed to engender and ensure resolution on what’s already agreed.
Given the siloed nature of contemporary media, it’s perhaps not a surprise that news audiences have segregated into consumer groups for particular brands of infotainment. And so, the arguments given no longer reflect a disagreement with the target audience, but rather an assumed agreement. The arguer (perhaps as salesperson) reasons that arguments and expressed opinions that bolster the beliefs of the audience will keep them coming back, instead of those that challenge them. Praise one’s audience for their insight and mastery of the issues, instead of treating them as though they need to be educated.
Our point is quite easily made once the monetized and market-driven nature of media platforms for argument is clear – one gives consumers what they want, which is confirmation of their views. And one can further give them reason to persist in those views so that they will be loyal customers (and a reliable voting block). But this dynamic seems clearly at work in casual conversation, too, since a useful strategy in small talk is to find an item of agreement and rehearse the shared reasons for that agreement. Again, think of how comfortable it is to argue with someone who has the same political or religious (or philosophical) views as you. You very happily recognize each other for being so clearly rational and wise.
4 The Problem of Agreement With Fallacy Theory
Once we see how arguments can be given not just to those who disagree, but to those who agree, a few puzzles about particular fallacy forms begin to dissipate. Fallacies, broadly, are bad arguments or distortions of argumentative exchanges that appear to be good or convincing. The objective of fallacy theory is, then, three-part: (a) to explain what’s gone wrong with the reasoning or argumentative contribution, (b) explain how the fallacious contribution could nevertheless seem good, and (c) propose paths for detection and correction of the fallacies.Footnote 3 The trouble for PD is that with its procedure for reasonable discussion, there is an assumption that the arguments are addressed to disagreeing interlocutors. On PD, as a procedural theory, a fallacy is a violation of a rule of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse that “obstructs or hinders the resolution of a difference of opinion” (van Eemeren and Garssen 2023, 167). This makes certain fallacy types very difficult to theorize in terms of how they could possibly ever seem to be good arguments. However, if we identify the audience for these arguments as those who already agree, then these cases will seem clearer and the explanations more plausible. We think two fallacy forms are exemplary of this point: the ad hominem abusive and the straw man fallacy.
The core derailment of the critical discussion with ad hominem abusive is that it is an attempt to discredit a discussant’s views by discrediting the discussant, rather than addressing the views directly. The objective, on PD, of the fallacy is to bar the discussant from being taken seriously in the exchange. The ad hominem, then, on PD, breaks the freedom rule of discussion, since with it a speaker “rules (the opponent) out as a serious discussion partner” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1995, 225). With the ad hominem, the arguer acts to “deny an opponent the right to advance the standpoint he likes to advance or criticize the standpoint he likes to criticize” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1995, 138–39). The abuse is to “silence the other party…” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 178).Footnote 4 Further, the abusive argument could be simply a form of what Woods calls “slanging” (Woods 2007, 110), with the objective of driving the other party out of the discursive space by making it unwelcome for them. Finally, there is the possibility that the abusive ad hominem could be an attractive inference that given the speaker is bad in some way, we have reason not to accept what they have to say.Footnote 5 But this occasions the question: how could this inference, especially in fallacious cases, be appealing? And, particularly, for those who, by hypothesis, disagree? For the most part, arguers show facility at detecting bad reasoning when presented with it. This leads van Eemeren and Garssen to ask:
[H]ow can it be explained that fallacies so often occur in oral and written argumentative discourse without being recognized by the listeners or readers? (2023, 176)
Call this the puzzle of effectiveness for fallacies (Aikin and Casey 2022b). If argumentative participants are pretty good at identifying good and bad arguments, then how do fallacies even work? One answer to the puzzle is that the audience for these arguments are not those who disagree with the speaker, but rather those who already agree. Making fun of a person’s looks will not convince them that they are wrong about, say, economics, but it will be a reminder of how that person is wrong and contemptible to those who already agree that he is wrong and hold him in contempt. The same goes for circumstantial and tu quoque versions of the ad hominem – they attack the face of another in a way that undercuts their standing to speak to an audience who has already come to broad agreement on them and their views. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst do pause to note that there is an onlooking audience for these arguments beyond the target of the ad hominem abuse, but they hold that it is beside the point as a question of rhetoric:
[T]he first two variants of this fallacy are in practice not aimed at the other party, … but at a third party consisting of the spectators. We are not primarily concerned here with explaining the use of rhetorical devices, but it will be clear that all three variants can be used to silence the other party in the presence of a third party (2004, 178).
But the puzzle of effectiveness is pushed to the third party now – how are they moved by the argument if they are, by hypothesis, good at detecting unreasonable moves? Our answer is that audiences who already agree will not detect the fallacy because they have already discounted the views of others with whom they disagree.Footnote 6 Besides, if the result is further confirmation of their own views to begin with, then they are considerably less capable of detecting the erroneous inference. Belief-bias is a robust phenomenon, showing that if one believes the inputs and outputs of an argument, one is more likely to assess the reasoning as good than if one did not have those beliefs. The ad hominem fails to resolve disagreements with those with whom one disagrees because it is not designed to reach disagreeing parties but agreeing parties to remind them to refuse to take the opponent seriously. In this, the PD approach is half-right – with the ad hominem the arguer bars the target from participating, so breaks the freedom rule, but this can work only if the arguer is addressing an audience already in agreement.
A similar problem emerges with the straw man fallacy. We’ve addressed this shortcoming of PD with the straw man elsewhere (to see the longer version of our case, see Aikin and Casey 2022b), and the argument is similar to that of the ad hominem above. Straw-manning has a clear effectiveness problem, and PD’s approach, with its focus on disagreement, cannot address it. Just how could a straw man of your view work on you? At best, straw-manning is a form, like slanging with the ad hominem, of chasing an interlocutor from the dialectical space with uncooperative and confrontational behavior. But how could it work as an argument?Footnote 7 On the PD approach, the straw man fallacy breaks the standpoint rule – the view criticized is not the one put forward by the opponent (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004; van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Snoeck Henkemans 2002). But, again, the puzzle is that if the arguers are good at detecting violations of the rules, when and where are these arguments used effectively as arguments? And the answer, again, is that straw man arguments are not for the arguer’s opponents but their allies. A straw man of those with whom one disagrees is harder to detect as a bad representation, since one has already held the reasoning to be off and the conclusion to be false. Straw man audiences, as consumers of arguments, are not the straw man targets, but rather those who already reject (or at least don’t have a positive view of) the target. Straw-manning is a pathology of argument under conditions of agreement. What’s necessary, then, is that we focus not only on arguments that resolve disagreements on the merits but that maintain agreement on the merits. Our point is that straw man arguments do so inappropriately.
Van Eemeren and Garssen are motivated to theorize the general problem we have highlighted here as that of “hidden fallaciousness” in the fallacies, and their approach given their disagreement defaults is to hold that arguers strategically maneuver in order to camouflage their arguments as legitimate versions. On the principle of “mimicry, these arguments are given reasonable appearance,” because the arguer has used the “presumption of reasonableness” to their advantage (2023, 178). But anyone who has been called names in the midst of an argument or has been straw-manned to their face can attest, these mimics are not at all hard to detect. And sometimes, the entire point of the moves is for them to be overt. But for onlooking audiences, and particularly those who already agree with the arguer and hold the target in contempt, the insult is to be relished, and they nod their heads in approval of the misrepresentation of the opponent’s view as actually stating the truth of the matter in a way that is unvarnished and relevant. The argument, as such, is really for these agreeing audiences, not the disagreeing parties. Because these audiences have their beliefs and prefer to keep them, the fallacies need not mimic good arguments or be changed in any way. Belief bias and argument for agreeing audiences allow fallacies to hide in plain sight.
5 Agreement, Disagreement, and New Fallacies
An appealing feature of the PD approach with fallacies is its theoretical fecundity. On the one hand, standard fallacies can have variants as violations of different rules. So, for example, ad populum arguments can sometimes violate rules of relevance and at other times violate the rule of clearly stated premises. Consequently, what seemed a simple fallacious kind of argument has a more theoretically fine-grained variety. That’s just good philosophy by our lights. On the other hand, new, yet-to-be-named fallacies can be theorized, since the fallacies are violations of the various rules conducive of resolution of a dispute. Standing in the way of resolution might happen in innumerable ways. So, sacrosanct theses break the freedom rule, or one may dishonestly deny the suppressed premise of one’s enthymematic argument, or one may violate the starting points rule by treating some standpoint as self-evident (van Eemeren and Garssen 2023, 170). But this capaciousness of the theory is still limited by disagreement-primacy, since arguments under conditions of agreement occasion distinct inferences about how the argument is proceeding and what problems are emerging.
Consider what one might call the argumentum ad facilitatem – the argument from ease (of argument). On the assumption that scrutiny levels are lower when we agree (which is exactly what drives the belief bias), arguments will go quite swimmingly with our interlocutors who already agree. And it will feel as though we are cutting through so much confusion and nonsense with our clear sight and common sense. “See how easy this is?”, one might be tempted to say. And so, now, a meta-argumentative loop is created. The argument was easy, and ease with which a case is made is evidence not just for the conclusion but evidence about the overall evidence on the issue – that it overwhelmingly supports the conclusion just endorsed and any purportedly undercutting or rebutting evidence is either itself defeated or is not evidence in the first place. And so, the phenomenon of those arguing with those who agree prompts an illusion of overall argument quality – that there is a very good argument for the conclusion and that there is little to rebut that case. This is a meta-argumentative fallacy that occurs particularly when one argues with those with whom one already agrees.
There is a mirror image to the ad facilitatem, which is the outward-looking argumentum ad longum, namely, the argument from how long and detailed the opponent’s counter-argument is. Consider the fact that looking at a careful argument for a view one rejects tempts one to see the many steps and various considerations brought in as unnecessary complication and distracting sophistication. Falsche Spitzfindigkeit. All this complication is an attempt to hide the shoddiness of the support with trappings of a detailed case. Consequently, they are ‘tying themselves in knots’ or are covering up something. And so, the length and detail of their arguments really shows the tenuousness of the actual case. An arguer, then, may survey the opponent’s arguments for an agreeing audience and point to the many moves and retort, “Methinks they doth protest too much,” and thereby undercut the argument on the basis of the simple fact that it is long or detailed. Or imagine an interlocutor demonstrably yawning in the midst of being presented with the long details of an opponent’s argument. Their allies will delight in the indirect communication of boredom (and hence correlate meta-argumentative case that the argument is pointless dithering). But notice that this strategy would not work for the opponent or those in their own agreeing audience, who might view the detailed case as more a tour de force of the overall evidence and see the yawn as an incurious and stupid gesture.
6 Some Complications
We’ve argued that PD’s focus on the procedures of disagreement resolution as a source for general argumentation norms renders it mute in the face of problems arising from argument under conditions of agreement. In the first place, according to PD, arguments given under these conditions are not even arguments, though to us they very much seem to be. Second, PD generates argument norms from the moves that conduce agreement, with fallacies being those moves that unreasonably obstruct this transition. But it seems that many common fallacious moves are best seen as originating in agreement and are best theorized as inappropriately maintaining that agreement. Finally, just as the PD approach yields a wide theoretical variety of error possibilities, the agreement-management approach has a similar fecund and capacious consequence for fallacy theory.
Our case that PD eschews agreement in favor of disagreement is not an entirely novel one. Christopher Tindale noted as much, writing “the norms provided by the rules for critical discussions apply only where the discourse is actually aimed at resolving a dispute” (1996, 20). Though van Eemeren and Grootendorst recognize this, in Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies they insist that “the identification of fallacies is always conditional” on the discourse under evaluation being a critical discussion (1992, 105). And a critical discussion, of course, is “an interactional procedure aimed at resolving a difference of opinion” (1992, xii). Famously, Douglas Walton, as Tindale notes in his critical take, rejected the pragma-dialectical disagreement restriction on fallacies, and outlined a program where argumentative dialogues have many different purposes, such as negotiation, eristics, inquiry, and so forth. It was clear to Walton that fallacies, in the pragma-dialectical sense of a subversion of the dialogue’s purpose, can occur in these circumstances as well. They occur mainly by dialogue-shifting, in that the methods of one type of dialogue are inappropriately applied in the another. It’s easy to appreciate Walton’s emendation of the pragma-dialectical program, and in this, our critical response to PD’s disagreement-centrality is a close cousin to Walton’s response. (For our dispute with Walton about the variety of appropriate purposes and the utility of this approach for fallacy theory, see Aikin and Casey 2022a, b; and Casey 2022).
Tindale (1996) further anticipates our case that PD suffers specifically from problems of agreement. He notes that the PD account of fallacies is dependent, somewhat ironically (we’d say), on the agreement of the protagonist and antagonist. The agreement, however, is not on the issue between them (as is our point) but on the means or shared tools for resolution. If, for example, a protagonist and antagonist agree not to consider some move a fallacy for the purposes of the resolution of their discussion, then it would seem to follow that it isn’t. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst say as much (also cited by Tindale):
Whether this argumentation scheme is allowed to be used in a discussion, depends on whether the protagonist and the antagonist can agree on the conditions for its use. If they cannot and the protagonist nevertheless goes ahead using it, or if these conditions have not been fulfilled, he is guilty of one of the variants of the fallacy wrongful comparison or false analogy. (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992, 161)
Tindale’s concern is that discussants might accept fallacious arguments and reject “perfectly good arguments” in the process of resolving their dispute. These are, as we’ve indicated above, substantive (as opposed to procedural) concerns articulated also by PD’s epistemic theory critics. The point in noting such manifestly implausible consequences of agreement is that PD seems to require an objective standard – as van Eemeren and Grootendorst seem to recognize in their case that the method is tied to a form of ‘critical rationalism’ (2004, 131). To us, however, these problems of agreement strongly underscore a deeper problem with the way PD has derived its norms: as we’ve argued, when the norms of argument are oriented towards managing disagreement, a set of unique problems arises.
Earlier we described three approaches to disagreement as orienting assumptions for argumentation theory: practical, theoretical, and contrastive. So far we’ve discussed the practical and the theoretical approaches and how they bear on PD. We’ve maintained that there are specific and common cases of arguing under agreement that PD is structurally unable to manage given its practical and theoretical approaches to the connection between disagreement and argumentation.
Perhaps, however, there’s a response to the problem of agreement with the third take on disagreement, the contrastive approach. Recall that the contrastive approach locates disagreement in the nature of reasons as essentially contrastive. That is to say, arguments for p are, implicitly at least, arguments for p rather than q or r. So, when one gives an argument that, say, Bill is praiseworthy for giving a large gift to a charity, that argument has the force it does when it contrasts Bill giving that large gift with a variety of other relevant alternatives: Bill giving a large gift to himself, giving a large gift to an undeserving stranger, giving a smaller gift to the charity, or just doing nothing at all. Notice that we get the praiseworthy result when we see those reasons against those contrasts, but if we contrast with another possibility, say, of Bill giving an even larger gift or giving just as large a gift to an even more deserving charity, we mitigate that praise. We can imagine many other cases of how evidence is taken to be salient, given the relevant alternatives to be addressed. That a lunch partner’s drink is light brown and in a pint glass with ice is good reason to take the drink to be iced tea if the restaurant serves sodas, water, and iced tea. But it is not a good reason if the bar serves (very alcoholic! ) Long Island Iced Teas. The take-away, then, is that reasons have their supporting power by cutting through and eliminating particular relevant contrast cases.Footnote 8 And the consequence for our discussion is that a kind of background disagreement-relevance remains, in some sense at least, as an inextricable feature of arguing, as PD requires. Importantly, the contrastive view also preserves some of the procedural salience of disagreement with the relevant alternatives to be sorted, though without invoking the features of actual disagreements. The result is that, on this strictly contrastivist approach to argumentation and disagreement, two arguers can argue under agreement. What’s more, limitations of disagreement-first arguing disappear under the contrastive view: even though A and B argue and agree, they still must contend with the contrasts of their reasons. For example, they may agree on the matter at issue, but that agreement may be for different reasons – what we’ve elsewhere called reasons-individuating agreements (Aikin and Casey 2022c). Van Eemeren and Grootendorst seem to implicitly endorse this possibility as an approach to argument, and they note that even when we argue with ourselves (with whom we presumably do not disagree), we have to construct a kind of ideal disagreement in our minds, taking on the roles of protagonist and antagonist ourselves (2004, 59).
Despite the plausibility of this connection between contrastivism and PD, we do not believe that this contrastive approach to disagreement in argumentation saves PD from the problem of agreement. First, this is because the contrastive approach to reasons is no longer one about speakers, but contrast cases and relevant alternatives, which are abstract entities. It is possible that others and their disagreements may make some alternative relevant or a class in need of contrasting reasons, but it is also possible that disagreeing others don’t provide the relevant considerations. Consider a case where the disagreeing parties only represent a very narrow range of possibilities for a decision (Plato’s kalliopolis or Ciceronian Republicanism, say, as a model for justice). It certainly would not count as a successful case if we were to light on one as just without considering further possibilities, even if there were no standing disagreeing parties to stand as proponent or opponent (divine right of kings and liberal democracy, at least!). In these cases, we might need argument to perform less a disagreement-resolution function and more a means of exploring the space of reasons as a form of inquiry where the argument participants are neither protagonist nor antagonist but just searchers or inquirers. And that requires less a model for disagreement-management, but more a theory of how evidence sorts contrast cases.
Recall that PD, in its broadest outlines, depends on two claims: first, the function of argument is to resolve disputes between reasonable opponents on the merits. Second, given this aim, the rules of PD optimize those speech acts that aim at resolution. Since PD foregrounds dispute resolution, it is silent, and necessarily so, on the problems arising from arguments where there is no occurrent dispute, where the interlocutors are both protagonists, or both antagonists of suspension of judgment, as the case may be. Or, as we’ve proposed, neither antagonist nor protagonist. Now it is clearly not sufficient to claim that these are just not arguments. They seem, after all, clearly to be arguments.
Assuming we are right about these cases, it seems that we must have a theory for approaching cases where arguments maintain agreements well or not. That is so say, if belief bias is a problem for arguments in contexts of agreement, then there are different norms for evaluating arguments and theorizing their success from the perspective of participants. In fact, arguments that may threaten the agreement should, again in light of problems of easily achieved argumentative success with those with whom one agrees, be given some real consideration. This is why those who perform the role of ‘devils advocates’ are so useful for argumentative contexts where agreement seems too easy (Aikin and Clanton 2010; Aikin 2011; Stevens and Cohen 2021). That is, it seems that there should be a norm that ensures we attend to the evidential fragility of our agreements in these cases – it is a virtue of a contribution that endangers an agreement too easily achieved. PD’s useful contribution to fallacy theory is a set of tools for explaining how arguments can contribute to a reasonable resolution of a disagreement, and our thought is that we need a negative image of that theoretical approach: an explanation of how arguments can contribute to a reasonable maintenance of agreements. Again, the problem of agreement for fallacy theories arises when the focus is only on the former and we neglect the latter.
7 Conclusion
We’ve argued that Pragma-Dialectics, as a strongly disagreement-centric theory, suffers acutely from the problem of agreement for argumentation theory. Unlike other versions of this critique, our focus has been on two related theses. First, it is manifest that we often argue under conditions of agreement. Second, when we argue under conditions of agreement, we encounter different problems from those when we argue under disagreement. Some fallacies, like the ad hominem and the straw man, seem uniquely suited to be posed in circumstances of agreement, so our theoretical toolkit for understanding these arguments needs to be able to identify pathologies of argument in conditions of agreement. PD is a powerful explanatory tool for how resolution-seeking critical discussions can work and can be derailed, and this yields a robust program for argumentation theory and fallacy theory. However, singular focus on disagreement and its resolution makes argument under conditions of agreement hard to conceptualize. Given the dangers of agreement with those with whom we argue, there’s good reason to think that argumentation theory ought to go in both directions: we argue to agree when we disagree; but we should argue to disagree when we agree.
Notes
See Marcus Aurelius’s account of Stoic exercises of recollection in his Meditations 7.2. Additionally, Epictetus frames his Encheiridion as a collection of reminders for Stoic progressors (Ench. 33). For an extended discussion of the form of Stoic exercises, see (Aikin and Stephens 2023).
For a discussion of the political ramifications of taking argument to concern disagreement alone, see (Bitecofer 2018).
See also (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Snoeck Henkemans 2002, 112) for an account of the ad hominem thereby being also an evasion of the burden of proof.
Van Eemeren and Grootendorst make a version of this distinction in (2004, 175). Further, the standard approach in most textbooks of the fallacy is that of this third approach – that there is an inference being made about the target’s views and arguments on the basis of the slanderous premise.
As a side note, we believe that cases of argument under conditions of agreement make bad reasoning harder to detect by target audiences, given the problem of ‘belief bias’ with evaluating reasoning – that, essentially, if we already believe the conclusion of an argument, it is more likely (and more intellectually costly) to detect errors of the reasoning (Aikin and Casey 2024).
In our 2022b, we’ve argued that straw man arguments given in the second person (i.e., as posed in the form of ‘your argument’ with both the target of the straw man being also the audience of the argument) could work as an inference only if it is a form of gaslighting one’s dialectical opponent. In this case, we need more than an argumentation theory to explain how this works – we need a theory of how one could have internalized an other’s malignant views of oneself.
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Aikin, S.F., Casey, J. Pragma-dialectics and the problem of agreement. Topoi (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-024-10062-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-024-10062-7