Abstract
While deductive validity provides the limiting upper bound for evaluating the strength and quality of inferences, by itself it is an inadequate tool for evaluating arguments, arguing, and argumentation. Similar remarks can be made about rhetorical success and dialectical closure. Then what would count as ideal argumentation? In this paper we introduce the concept of cognitive compathy to point in the direction of one way to answer that question. It is a feature of our argumentation rather than my argument or your argument. In that respect, compathy is like the harmonies achieved by an accomplished choir, the spontaneous coordination of athletic teamwork, or the experience of improvising jazz musicians when they are all in the flow together. It is a characteristic of arguments, not a virtue that can be attributed to individual arguers. It makes argumentation more than just the sum of its individual parts. The concept of cognitive compathy is brought into focus by locating it at the confluence of two lines of thought. First, we work up to the concept of compathy by contrasting it with empathy and sympathy in the context of emotions, which is then transplanted into epistemic, cognitive, and argumentative soil. Second, the concept is analytically linked to ideal argumentation by way of authenticity in communication. In the final section, we explore the extent to which argumentative virtues are conducive to producing compathetic argumentation, but reach the unhappy conclusion that the extra value of compathetic argumentation also transcends the evaluative reach of virtue argumentation theory.
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Notes
Moore invoked the “principle of organic wholes” as a bulwark against naturalistic, reductionist accounts of ethical concepts in Moore (1903, pp. 78ff). It is still an important caveat because of the tendency in analysis to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The aspect of “argument” that we are after here is very much the forest!
The idea of basic empathy outlined here is sometimes called “cognitive empathy” to highlight that it is about knowing others’ emotions rather than feeling, sharing, or experiencing them directly, which is then referred to as “emotional empathy.” See, e.g., Goleman (2006), but note the caveat in footnote 4 below.
The phenomenon of emotional contagion, e.g., feeling happy when others nearby are happy, is an example of a reactive effect rather than a result of conscious reasoning, especially since the subject might not have attended to the behavior of any of the nearby individuals. See Hatfield et al. (1993) for an account of these “automatic emotional resonances” (emphasis added).
We will employ the term “cognitive content” here in deference to its established usage, but as will become clear, we are deeply suspicious (i.e., we reject!) a contrastive dichotomy between cognitions and emotions. There are emotional components to cognitive states: an emotionless cognitive agent would be neither reasonable nor (fully) rational.
To a strikingly large extent, children are able to read others, perhaps because of psychological “mirroring.” There are exceptions, of course, to the claim that we do not reason to others’ emotional states. With familiarity, we get better at reading others, but along the way we might have to deliberate and infer what is going on with them emotionally. Some high-functioning autists teach themselves to make these inferences.
Simulation and related theories of empathy are in vogue because there is a wealth of empirical data indicating that much of the neural activity that transpires when we see that someone is happy or sad is also present when we ourselves are happy are sad, but that is more relevant for a casual explanation than a phenomenological analysis of the cognitive phenomena. Hatfield et al. (1993), for example, cite both synchrony and mirroring as causes of emotional contagion.
We are using the term “intelligence” in Howard Gardner’s sense of a problem-solving capacity that meets such criteria as having identifiable developmental stages, instances of prodigies as well as under-developed cases, and the potential for brain isolation. As we develop the concept here, empathy is closer to “interpersonal intelligence” in Gardner (1983) than to any of the various accounts of “emotional intelligence.”
David Hume is the locus classicus for sympathy theories of ethics (perhaps to contrast with Kant’s subsequent rights-based alternative), but Schopenhauer, Murdoch, Buber, and an array of feminists, phenomenologists, and animal rights theorists have delved deeply in this field.
Zahavi (2008) credits Scheler for this kind of example.
Let us repeat that while we recognize the heuristic value of contrasting cognitive and emotive aspects of consciousness—Descartes’ Error, in Antonio D’Amasio’s memorable phrase—we think the distinction is ultimately untenable. The literature often discerns a third kind of empathy, “concern empathy,” but that is “sympathy” here.
Zahavi (2008, p. 516).
Unlike the more faithful supporters of the Dutch team, the caring aspect was also absent from many of the visiting, “bandwagon” fans.
Believing and knowing neither exhaust our cognitive lives nor are they independent of its other parts, including understanding, emotions, behavior, and character. For expository reasons, we largely gloss over those complications here.
We are neutral with respect to the possibility of purely visual or auditory arguments, and neither are we denying visceral or even “kisceral” components but we do acknowledge that we are privileging the verbal. Other kinds of arguments and other aspects of argument are treated here as being in addition to the verbal.
We have in mind Donald Davidson’s concept of the “prior theories” that have to be modified by ad hoc “passing theories” for interpreting language in use. See Davidson (1986). Discourse is never a case of radical translation.
The internalization of meanings is amusingly evident when Wittgenstein challenges us, “Make the following experiment: say ‘It’s cold here’ and mean ‘It’s warm here.’ Can you do it?” Wittgenstein (1953, §510).
We believe this simple formula captures Aristotle’s characterization of what it is to be a rational animal (“All men by nature desire to know”), as well as encompasses William James’ twin commandments (Believe the truth; Avoid error) and Bernard Williams’ ethics of truth and truthfulness (seek the truth but resist dogmatic complacency). It also motivates Harry Frankfurt’s particular animus towards “bullshit”, the cavalier disregard for truth.
The idea that a certain kind of cognitive alignment—the cognitive counterpart to emotional empathy—is necessary for interpretation is an idea with a venerable ancestry at least as far back as Augustine’s striking (apparent) prioritization of understanding over faith in “Credo ut intelligam.”
The hermeneutics of suspicion is most strongly associated with Paul Ricoeur. The need for counter-balancing principles in interpretation and understanding, particularly in philosophical and theological contexts, has given rise to proposals for hermeneutics of respect (H. Gadamer), of good will (J. Robertson), of agape (L. Hurtado), of belief, of recovery, and more. See Scott-Baumann (2009), especially chapter 4, for an overview.
The claim that all arguments arise from differences and thus are inherently adversarial is widespread and intuitive—and worth questioning! It is granted here for the sake of argument.
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who raised the question of the apparent incompatibility of the unity in compathy and the difference in arguments.
This is a variation of the example of the argument-generating machine discussed in Godden (2016), in this volume, but to a very different conclusion.
For example, the criteria appropriate for measuring the success of an Austinian perlocutionary act would not be restricted to information-transfer, which would be relevant in some form for measuring the success of straightforward assertions as well as Gricean implicatures.
Only the most curmudgeonly (e.g. Cohen and Miller 2008) have hesitated about including open-mindedness as a paradigm case of an argumentative virtue.
“Creative listening” is a term with a fair bit of currency, a favorite of popular psychology and self-help motivational speakers. We think the sense characterized here is consonant with conventional usage.
Obviously, the guiding conception here has been the more dynamic model, so the “end” of the argument could be taken as dialectical closure, but it could all be fit into the rhetorical argument-as-presentation paradigm by identifying the “end” of the argument with the completion of the performance. The translation would have to preserve universal satisfaction.
One widely-used textbook (name withheld!) offers without irony the following as an argument: “Pierre and Marie Curie were physicists; therefore, Marie Curie was a physicist.” We confess to having a perverse soft spot for this example because it inoculates us from the charge of Straw Man when we characterize deductivist theories of argumentation (as distinct from accounts of inference) as forgetting about the arguers!
Cohen (2004, ch. 6) outlines a taxonomy of errors in argumentation that goes beyond just inferential errors to include “dialectical transgressions” and “rhetorical sins” alongside the more traditional logical fallacies.
Cohen (2013) offers the example cited in footnote 28 to justify counting judges, juries, arbiters, spectators, and critics as participants in arguments whose satisfaction is relevant. Von Radziewsky (Stevens) (2014) achieves a similar effect by focusing on different roles that arguers fill in arguments rather than different participants. (A revised and expanded version of her paper is included in this volume.)
For the ideal audience, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1959). Model interlocutors are discussed in Blair and Johnson (1987), and the idea is further developed in Johnson (1999). See also Tindale (1999, ch. 3), for a helpful discussion of the differences between universal and ideal audiences and ch. 4 for comparisons with model interlocutors.
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Cohen, D.H., Miller, G. What Virtue Argumentation Theory Misses: The Case of Compathetic Argumentation. Topoi 35, 451–460 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-015-9334-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-015-9334-3