Abstract
Following Chapter 2’s thesis that the only way to overcome the justification problem of Argumentation Theory’s normative models is to deal with the concept of argumentative value as the constitutive goal of the activity of arguing, I propose a characterization of argumentation as a communicative activity aimed at showing a target claim to be correct. My contention throughout this work is that this characterization makes it possible to integrate the logical, dialectical and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation, regarding both its interpretation and its evaluation.
In Section 3.2, I explain that the theoretical object of the linguistic normative model to be developed in this book is acts of arguing, and I distinguish these communicative acts from arguments as abstracts objects representing certain semantic features of acts of arguing.
Then, in Section 3.3, I characterize this theoretical object as a second order speech act complex. To this end, I adopt Bach and Harnish’s Speech Act Schema (SAS), as presented in Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts (1979). Despite Bach and Harnish do not consider second order speech acts or speech act complexes, I show that their schema can be extended so as to characterize both features of the speech act of arguing.
On this account, an act of arguing will be described, at the same time, as the illocution of showing a target-claim to be correct and as the perlocution of inducing reasonings.
In the last section of this chapter, I deal with the relationship between reasoning and arguing by considering one aspect of the relationship between justifying and persuading, namely, the way in which argumentation is able to induce reasonings paradigmatic perlocutionary effect. Thus, a parallelism is made between acts of arguing and acts of reasoning that enables the representation of both types of acts by means of arguments.
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Notes
- 1.
As we will see in Chapters 6 and 7, our characterization will be fine-grained enough to make distinctions that shed light on theoretical issues like the possibility of acknowledging non-verbal argumentation, of avoiding the collapse of any persuasive communication into argumentation, and of distinguishing between bad and false argumentation.
- 2.
In this sense, Pragma-dialectics could be considered to be the first theory adopting a linguistic-pragmatic approach to the normative study of argumentation.
- 3.
We can try to avoid this difficulty by thinking of the intrinsic perlocutionary goal of argumentation as the goal of achieving rational persuasion rather than mere conviction. Yet, as argued in Chapter 2, I do not think there is a non-question begging characterization of rational persuasion (something like “the only kind of persuasion that we can achieve when we argue and only when we argue”) which could accomplish this task.
- 4.
However, let me rule out something: if I want to show you that I am a good cook, I can ask you to try my soup by presenting a spoon in front of your mouth. To present the spoon in front of your mouth can be interpreted as a request, but this request would have as its consequence that you realize that my soup is nice indeed. The act of adducing consists of presenting evidence that the soup is nice, which in the right context will amount to presenting a reason for the claim that I am a good cook. The act of adducing does not consist of the request by means of which I have been able to present that evidence. Presenting evidence may involve requests like “look at this,” “think of this,” “try this,” etc. But they are just means for bringing about the corresponding acts of adducing, not the acts of adducing themselves.
- 5.
- 6.
In this case, the reason and the target-claim have been put forward straightforwardly as true, which is why I put “it is true that” in brackets, but on other occasions any of these claims can be ontologically qualified by modals such as “probable”, “possible”, “necessary,” etc., and these qualifiers should be made explicit in the inference-claim because they can alter the ontological qualifier that the inference-claim deserves.
- 7.
There is extensive literature on the interpretation of indicative conditionals. However, my thesis does not require a general answer to the question of whether indicative conditionals in English always stand for material conditionals plus some pragmatic constraints. Rather, for our purposes it is enough to make it plausible that one adequate interpretation of inference-claims is the one that Grice proposes, in general, for indicative conditionals in English.
- 8.
As we are going to see in Chapters 4 and 5, the reason which supports an inference-claim corresponds to the backing of the argument in Toulmin’s model.
- 9.
Remarkably, on this account, reasons and conclusions are speech-acts; particularly, second order speech-acts: by adducing, we turn a claim (first order speech-act) into a reason (second order speech-act); likewise, by concluding, we turn a claim (first order speech-act) into a target-claim or conclusion (second order speech-act). In Section 3.4, I also use the word “reason” to refer to a certain type of cognitive input. The idea that reasons, in general, are speech-acts – or contents adduced, one way or another, with a certain type and degree of force – is part of a wider philosophical project. However, in this work, this idea is not meant to be too controversial: the word “reason” in this account should be understood as a technical term.
- 10.
Bach and Harnish include two further inferential steps between L3 and L4 to the effect that the interpreter takes into account and then refuses the possibility that the speaker is speaking non-literally. I skipped them for the sake of clarity, because our example contains only literal speech-acts. Thus Bach and Harnish take into account the possibility of nonliteral utterances, namely, those whose meaning is changed because of features like intonation, gestures, etc. (Bach and Harnish 1979: 33). I leave these complexities aside, but it is my contention that Bach and Harnish’s model would suffice for fully interpreting also very complex argumentative discourses.
- 11.
If these claims were indirect or nonliteral, there would be previous inferential steps, as pointed out in the SAS for adducing and concluding.
- 12.
This step is unnecessary when S = S’.
- 13.
Again, if these claims are indirect or nonliteral, we will have to include previous inferential steps, as pointed out in the SAS for adducing and concluding.
- 14.
Also, it is strange to say that we “aim at arguing”: normally, we do not aim at arguing, but we can aim at justifying, which is an illocutionary achievement rather than an illocutionary act (just as making truthful assertions is an achievement that we can get by asserting).
- 15.
Searle takes the propositional content condition to specify the type of content that the corresponding illocutionary act must have. However, as far as adducing is a second order illocutionary act, its propositional content condition corresponds, instead, to the semantic and pragmatic content of the first order speech-act that it is based on.
- 16.
As in the case of reasons, given the fact that conclusions are second order illocutionary acts, their propositional content corresponds to the semantic and pragmatic content of the first order speech-act that they are based on. This is then, the content of the conclusion.
- 17.
If we consider that the content of a belief or judgment is whatever the subject takes it to be the case, then we give a trivial meaning to the idea that values and norms can also be “the case”: we can judge or believe that this picture is beautiful, that a certain policy is unfair, that Peter should do this and that, etc. This cognitivist perspective is the way I aim to avoid criticisms of the view that to argue is to try to show a target-claim to be correct. Certainly, people seem to argue about what they should do or whether something has a certain value, and I think that such argumentation is “real” and not a mere sham.
- 18.
Consequently, the distinction between direct and indirect judgments is not meant to be exhaustive regarding the possible ways of coming to believe new things. For there may be judgments prompted by other judgments in a non-inferential way. This would be the case, for example, of associations of ideas and processes like remembering something by noticing something else, etc.
- 19.
In general, I think that motivations involve desires in one way or another. In this respect, the motivation of an act of indirectly judging would rather be the cognitive element that, for this particular act of judging, shapes a pre-existing desire to obtain information, which is the desire that makes sense of the act of indirectly judging as a piece of intentional behavior, and not as a mere response of our minds.
- 20.
The reason for the conditional belief or judgment sanctioning the act of indirectly judging – what I named the “motivation to infer”- would correspond to the backing of the argument, following Toulmin’s model.
- 21.
I think this distinction might correspond, in the realm of reasonings, to the Toulminian distinction between warrant-using and warrant-establishing arguments.
- 22.
This move is easy to make in a linguistic-pragmatic account of argumentation: as a speech-act, its illocutionary force is that of showing a target-claim to be correct, whereas its characteristic perlocutionary force would be that of “inviting inferences”. The connection between argumentation’s illocutionary and perlocutionary forces was already pointed out in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984).
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Bermejo-Luque, L. (2011). Acts of Arguing. In: Giving Reasons. Argumentation Library, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1761-9_3
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