The New York Sophist

Stumbled across this article arguing that all of Freud’s theories as to the working of the mind, notably the unconscious and the source of emotional reaction, are predicted and theorized in the Bhagavad Gita a long, long time before he picked up a pen.

The question: Does this validate or invalidate Freud? Could go either way. Also perhaps dovetails with some of the argumentative insights from the work of Sen on argument in Indian culture.

A good friend of mine sent me this link where Stephen Fry argues that British people are more into having robust arguments than Americans. The author of the linked blog post tends to agree with Fry, and in a why that is almost comical itself. He relates the story of a dinner with very religious attendees where he decides to announce that he doesn’t think God exists. Here’s the best quote:

But looking back, why should I have felt bad about saying what I honestly felt and which was not a personal attack on any one? I had not called anyone an idiot or punched them in the face. All I had said to a group of religious people was that I did not believe that god existed.

His choice to voice his view is defended by a strange, albeit implicit, philosophy. He seems to see argument as based on an intrensic, knowable, and internal good intent/belief that should be expressed. He is confused why this upsets his listeners as he did not verbally or physically assault them. All he had “merely” done is present living proof that their belief system wasn’t true.

This brings up the first responsibility in any general argument – your fidelity should be toward making the persuasive moment sustainable, keeping open the possibility for assent to your claim by careful attention to your ethical treatment of your listener/audience/opponent.

Of course there will be moments where incommensurability appears. But we shouldn’t invite those moments with our first utterance. This poor guy needs to recognize that words can be as violent as a punch (and I think he somewhat does since “calling someone an idiot” is immediately mentioned as well). In these cases, the ethic is one where you know that the expression will hurt the other person, but they must hear it. These cases are somewhat rare, and are often twisted into justifications to pronounce one’s beliefs honestly and directly without care for the listener.

Maintaining that liminal potentially persuasive space is incredibly important if one wants to engage in productive argumentation like Stephen Fry seems to want as he’s quoted in that post. But if you want grandstanding and to make yourself feel better about your ideas, go with honest and direct pronouncement. The trick to good argumentation is nuance and attentiveness to every moment, not worry about the metaphysics of “good argument” or fidelity to some ancient moral subjectivity of laying bare the soul no matter the effect. The view of argument from rhetoric is one of negotiation, which comes with it the most important postulate – that when advancing a belief one risks giving it up if the rejoinder is persuasive enough. One puts oneself on the line quite literally in an argument – and such openness should be treated with care.

One big difference was pretty clearly pointed out to me in a couple of conversations I had surrounding the Hart House tournament at The University of Toronto. This was a fabulous tournament, but a few American debaters started a conversation about how wrong it was that they might have been forced into taking positions they found morally offensive. They were ok with losing though because their arguments were “right.” I call this idea the “theory of the righteous four.”

This theory postulates that it’s not only fine, but morally acceptable to get ranked a four in a debate where you, by virtue of your position on the table, had to say or engage in argumentation that you find morally or ethically objectionable from your own political views. If you (rightly) refuse to engage, you will get ranked four. But that’s ok, because you are on the side of justice, rightness, virtue, and many other noble truths in life.

When I first came to coach in the Northeastern U.S. in 2001, I first encountered this idea. I found it baffling – a bizarre at best, unhealthy at worst conflation of speech in debate and personal politics. The best description I mustered to myself at the time was that it was a simple logical fallacy – substitution of effect for cause – that made people think, “because she’s saying this she must believe it.” But surely, only the most rank amateur would believe such a post hoc. But there were a number of students around the circuit that would say to me during the criticism, “Don’t you dare indict my voice.” The conflation of debate with personal advocacy I found then to be confusing and dangerous, and I believe the same thing now.

First, it’s a fallacy – probably a good idea to reject “effect for cause” reasoning. But the more critical claim at work here is the political function of a debate tournament. If you believe that debate is important because it is one of the last places where every idea can be treated on its merits with fair, critical evaluation then you have to accept, I think, that occasionally you will have to inhabit ideas that are not your own. These ideas are not always better ideas than your own; they can easily be ideas that you have had, or that you entertained and rejected on ethical or moral grounding. But either way, you should still embody them again, and in a manner that is not a straw dog, but a serious, strategic attempt at defending the idea.

The reason why is in service to debate as a whole. Good ideas glimmer more when the light of their alternative is present. Better, more persuasive accounts of thoughtful ideas can be crafted if someone smart is taking the other, more insidious side. Everyone benefits if a fair, persuasive attempt to represent all appropriate (read: kairotic) arguments are attempted in the debate. Relevancy and attention to nuance must be considered as well. In the end, the benefits of debate are extended when the debate is handled for the sake of debate, and not individual personal politics.

Here is what happens under the “righteous four” model – all of the discourse in debate shifts to the left. Instead of developing insights into argumentation that has a large representation in the public, the discourse becomes about “out-lefting” one another. If nobody will inhabit the “reprehensible” ground, then no chance appears for understanding why an argument we believe to be a priori “evil” would ever find assent. I would also suggest that those who refuse to take up objectionable positions within debates ensure a future of assent to those same reprehensible positions – they intellectually disarm all participants in the round from valuable defensive practice against such ideas. Just because you don’t prefer a certain weapon doesn’t mean that you should forgo training in how to defend yourself from that weapon.

A great example of this is the recent Hart House IV final round – This house would not contact undiscovered human populations. After a fairly good proposition case was established, the Opening Opposition speaker stood up and did something incredible – the first words out of her mouth were, “Madam Speaker, we kinda like exploitation.” Brilliant. Is it because it’s offensive? Because it’s rejected by modern conceptions of the good, liberal politics and the like? Is it because it advocates violence and mayhem and that’s cool? Not any of these. It’s because it is an argument that is both relevant and contains the potential for great intellectual investigation within the context of this debate.

The debate was framed around the idea that contact, historically, leads to exploitation. I think it is intellectually responsible in the service of debate to offer the idea that exploitation is a situational term. Politically, this loaded language can do a number on an audience. It is up to the skilled debater to give it the nuance and articulation it needs to become a believable point. Is it really exploitative in all cases? Is the connection definitely solid? And in which instances would we prefer “exploitation” over the alternative of no contact whatsoever? These are the major clash points that arise from entertaining an idea that many, especially those in the academy fields of anthropology, sociology and others would find to be a repugnant position. Everything hinges on the definition, and the nuance of the speaker in establishing that definition and its limit.

Unfortunately, the speaker backed off of pursuing this line of reasoning possibly due to the laughter and reaction of the audience. But it’s a shame she did. I think they could have won with a careful analysis of what this means, instead of the fear of a neo-liberal “bad word” can generate. “You said a dirty word” is not that persuasive a reason to reject someone, unless you are a High School teacher.

In certain debate communities, such as NPDA and American Policy debate, you can find regions where people do occupy ground where, if the audience is unskilled in the basics of debate practice, their personal view might be mistaken for their advocacy. I think we in the BP community want to provide the same excellent tradition of switch-side argumentation that these other communities have provided. Avoiding the sentimentally nice idea that “I lost because I refuse to compromise my principles” is a very important step in the service to much larger principles of intellectual rigor, argumentative development, and persuasive realism – all of which serve the members of the community in their development not as political radicals, but something much better: Moderates who critically examine public discourse and are not afraid to entertain the idea that they might not know it all, they might need more information, and more time might be needed to figure out what’s best – all of which work very well in the service of pluralistic democracy.

The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation by Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca

A masterwork, read it only 2 times all the way through because it is both massive and technical. Many of the examples don’t resonate with modern American readers since they are all mid 20th century European social science or literary examples. And many of them are somewhat obscure even if you think you are pretty well-read.

The plus sides of the book far outweigh. Here is a comprehensive attempt to map in totality the common topoi of contemporary argument from a purely inductive basis. No discursive stone is left unturned – philosophy, courtrooms, literature, sociology, and more are examined for the presence of the new rhetorical forms.

If the book intimidates, check out Perelman’s later book The Realm of Rhetoric for a boiled down approach to what is in the Treatise.

Uses of Argument by Stephen Toulmin

Essential, game-changing study for rhetoricians that study argumentation. For philosophers or others who study argument, the book is not so revolutionary. For people involved in academic debate or intercollegiate debate, the Toulmin model is almost not a model, but the right way that arguments are made.

More important of a contribution, I think, is the situatedness of argument that Tolumin suggests. The idea that argumentation is field dependent is a vital concept that places real importance on the method of argument over the truth of the argument. This allows for evaluation of argument away from tools from empirical science, or analytic philosophy.

Informal Logic by Douglas Walton

This is a nice treatment of the formal, validity-based discipline of logical reasoning in the terms of the Toulmin turn, or the turn toward the study of argument that has some resonance with the daily practice of argument. One critique that can be lodged at philosophers who study argumentation is that there’s too much theory, not enough practice in their analysis. Not a lot of discussion of the daily practices of argument and the way people reason in and out of arguments all day long. This book bridges the gap between the situatedness study of rhetoricians and the theoretical structures of the philosophers interested in argument.

Rhetorical Argumentation by Christopher Tindale

A great attempt at looking through the eyes of argumentation studies at rhetoric, and then at argumentation studies through rhetoric’s eyes. A wonderful read, very lucid, and with plenty of ideas for praxis between the two fields. The idea of argument as object in recent years, brought about by many field’s attention to argumentation, finds some needed complication in the pages of this good book.

But these are scholarly treatments of argument! What about teaching it to debaters or potential debaters?

I always havethe Art of Deception by Capaldi hanging around. Great intro to formal reasoning, critical thinking, emotional appeals, formal fallacies, and causal reasoning. Cheap and easy to read with tons of examples and exercises. A fantastic book for anyone interested in improving his or her argumentative skill.

Also perhaps Argumentation Schemes by Walton might be good for teaching, but it’s fairly technical and complex, and mostly for argument analysis. But there are some good ways in that book of breaking down arguments into structural forms or elements just to see how they work.