(Daniel Cohen) Arguments and Metaphors in Philosop

Copyright 2004 by
University Press of America, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706
UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366
PO Box 317
Oxford
OX2 9RU, UK.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2003098795
ISBN 0-7618-2677-7 (paperback: alk. ppr.)
e""The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information
Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984
Introduction:
Philosophical Arguments and
Philosophical Metaphors
One of the curious things about philosophy is this: philosophers
have a great predilection for saying things that are either true, but
trivial, or interesting, but quite false. The middle ground has long since
been ceded to other disciplines - to historians and geographers,
physicists and psychologists. Philosophers have their own special
concerns, concerns that lead them to say such very peculiar things. As
"the Philosopher" noted, "to say of what is that it is, and of what is not
that it is not, is true,"} and more recently we have been told that the
world is indeed all that is the case.
2
But do these oddly roundabout
ways of saying that there is what there is really need saying? On the
other hand, no matter how much we might like to think so, we all know
full well that man is not the measure of all things, the present will not
eternally recur, and the laws of mathematics are not really rules of
grammar. There is indeed more under heaven than is dreamt up in our
philosophies: the world is made up of many things, not just one, the
world is more than what we see and what we say, it really does extend
beyond our ideas and our texts?
Philosophers find themselves in a dilemma. Trivialities can hardly
be of much value, but at least they are true, while even the profoundest
falsehoods are still wrong. And yet there can be something con1pelling,
almost irresistible, about both sorts of claims.
Philosophers have long recognized the dilemma of trivial truths
and profound falsehoods as their fate, so to say that philosophers suffer
from this disorder is itself an example of this disorder: asserting an all-
too-well-known truth! Some philosophers have embraced one or the
other hom of this dilen1n1a while trying to find some measure of dignity
in this; others have rebelled against it. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for
example, at one point explicitly counseled restricting philosophical
discourse to the simple assertion of truths, while simultaneously
admitting that those truths were inevitably both completely irrelevant to
philosophy and philosophically unsatisfying.
4
His student and
2 Arguments and Metaphors
colleague John Wisdom advocated the other course: at least sometimes,
philosophy positively requires trafficking in patent falsehoods!s There
is also a distinguished tradition of philosophers, extending from the
Medieval mystic Pseudo-Denis, with his via eminentiae
6
to post-
Modernists writing "under erasure" who have tried to escape the
dilemma entirely by designing completely new forms of language for
expressing the deepest philosophical thoughts, insights, or feelings.
There is, of course, another way out of the dilemma: avoiding
philosophy altogether. And that too has had its champions in the
history of philosophy.
7
As attractive as that sort of intellectual ostrich
act might be, it is not really a viable option. Philosophizing is
something that all rational beings do. Philosophical questions are
unavoidable for reflective creatures like us - if only because the
question of which questions are philosophical, worthy, or legitimate is
itself a philosophical question. Philosophy's form and content,
substance and style, are up for grabs, but not the act itself.
If we are to be rational beings, we must try to make sense of the
world around us. For that, philosophy is unavoidable. When it is done
poorly, without depth, the result is banalities: Life is a bowl ofcherries,
perhaps, or whatever will be, will be. From one angle, the first is just
silly and the second is the most banal of truisms. Life is not really a
bowl of cherries, and of course whatever is going to happen is going to
happen, so neither of these is at all worth saying. But that is only from
one angle. The literal truth is not the real issue. Philosophical
discourse, I shall argue, is thoroughly and essentially metaphorical and
needs to be interpreted accordingly, even when it is done very well and
at great depth. In many ways, the very best philosophy is the most
profoundly metaphoricaL However, it is when philosophy is at its best
that its metaphors are least recognizable as metaphors. Perhaps that
explains why the best philosophy is often the hardest to appreciate and
easiest to misunderstand.
This points to another aspect of philosophy that (again, from one
particular perspective) is equally puzzling. The process of working out
just what a philosopher is trying to say with his or her metaphors is an
analytic and argumentative process. The challenge presented by
reading philosophy as metaphors of a certain kind is multifaceted. In
general, the meaning of metaphor is neither obvious nor determinate.
Religion is the opiate of the masses, but how? Is the point about its
political conservatism and pacifying effects, or its personal and
financial costs? What about the effects of its addictiveness, and the
Introductions 3
attendant escape from the reality of the here and now? Is this a
warning to beware of its pushers as unproductive and dangerous
parasites on the economy, or a celebration of its anaesthetic, even
medicinal, powers against the unbearable pathologies of the human
condition? Is the claim that religious traditions have their origins in
poppy plants and hallucinations? Unlike this exalnple, most
philosophical metaphors are not presented as metaphors, so they are not
always recognized as such. That compounds the interpretive problem,
and it makes arguing with them even more difficult.
Poppycock or not, religion is not a derivative of certain species of
the poppy family of plants. But pointing that out is beside the point. It
does not contribute either to understanding or to evaluating the claim.
It can be hard to get a good grasp on things when meanings are so
elusive, but arguing with philosophical metaphors means using
metaphors against metaphors. The result is that philosophical
argumentation can seem a lot like trying to push a puddle uphill. Or,
better, since we know full well that religion is no more an opiate than
life is a bowl of fruit, and that even those who say so know it just as
well, maybe it is more like pretending to push an imaginary puddle up a
non-existent hill. To philosophize, to engage in philosophical debate, is
to speak a language with meanings that are always up for grabs. It is as
if they are pennanently under construction and never complete.
Partly because of the difficulties involved in working with fluid
meanings, there is an imperative to try to make things as precise as
possible. Often, this can take the form of a violent reaction against
literary style, especially in the serious business of argumentation:
If we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all
the art of rhetoric, besides order and clarity; all the artificial and
figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for
nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and
thereby mislead the judgment.
8
Con1plete precision is never possible, however, because some of
the meaning, or part of the meaning, is not there to be discovered. It
must be created. Thus, to engage in philosophical argumentation is to
enter a world that is not simply all that is the case. What is most
important may be what is patently not the case!
Understanding the workings of metaphorical language provides the
key to understanding philosophical arguments and an escape from the
philosopher's dilemn1a. But even as it answers some questions, it
creates many more. The best way to understand metaphors is through a
kind of argumentative engagement. Fortunately, arguing is something
that philosophers tend to do very well. (Or at least it is something that
they seem to enjoy very much.) Unfortunately, arguing is also the best
way to misunderstand metaphors. Things are never simple.
In addition to metaphorically re-imagining the world, there is
another way that philosophy involves entering an unreal world. We
need to argue about metaphors in order to engage with them, but the
analysis of arguments is intimately connected with the logic of
conditionals: a cogent argument can be translated into an assertible
conditional whose antecedent is a conjunction of the premises of the
argument and whose consequent is the conclusion of the argunlent.
That is, whenever we are willing to infer C, from Pi, P2, and P3, we
should be willing to assert the conditional Jf PI, P2, and P3, then C.
The most important feature of conditionals is that they can
accommodate uncertain, dubious, and even manifestly false antecedent
clauses. We can entertain the thought expressed by the claim that Had
Hitler invaded England in 1942, we would be speaking German now,
although we are aware of the historical fact that he did not. Even
logically impossible conditions can be intelligibly considered: both If
there were round squares, our perceptual and conceptual apparatus
would not be able to register them and If there were a greatest prime p,
p! +1 would have to be composite are reasonable things to say.
9
Philosophy is concerned with more than what is the case. It is also
concerned with what could be the case, what could not be the case,
what should be the case, and what must be the case. Conditionals are
one way of talking about the alternatives. Indeed, were we confident
that the antecedent is true, we would generally not assert the
conditional !iA, then Cbut the more assertive Since A, C.
1O
The quest for the proper analysis of counterfactuals is something
that has occupied many of the past century's best philosophers. 11 They
have asked themselves what is really meant by such claims as if
kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over, and in response have
constructed ingenious and elegant theories. Of course, kangaroos do
not topple over because they do in fact have tails. We know this full
well, as well as we know that there is no greatest prime, that life is not
a bowl of cherries, and that religion is not an opiate. Even so, we are
willing to entertain their negations as metaphors and counterfactual
hypotheses. Like metaphors, counterfactuals are an integral part of the
philosophical proj ect of making sense of our world. But proposing
Introductions 5
metaphors and imagining alternative possibilities are very different
intellectual moves. In one case, we are asked to see the world in a new
light; in the other, we are asked to imagine an entirely new world. To
consider a world with tail-less kangaroos is to imagine a world that
differs from the actual world. In contrast, to see religion as an opiate is
to re-imagine the actual world, unchanged in any of its particulars, but
now seen in an entirely new light.
As very different as they are, I believe that both of these are
characteristically philosophical moves in trying to understand the
world. Their similarities and their differences, and especially the
conflicted interaction between them, reveal something about all the
elements involved: metaphors, arguments and conditionals, and
philosophy itself.
Specifically: (1) Metaphorical reasoning and conditional reasoning
are both integral to philosophical argumentation. "Philosophy" is a
term that covers an extraordinarily diverse array of discourses - a
multitude of sins! - so generalizing may be unwise, but it seems safe to
say that with the exception of completely formal exercises in
mathematical logic, philosophy is thoroughly metaphorical. And
insofar as philosophy is analytic, it is also inevitably argumentative.
(2) There is, however, a deeply embedded incompatibility between
some of the roles that metaphors fill and some of the roles to be filled
by assertions in arguments. Thus, (3) there is a tension at the heart of
philosophy between two of its central vehicles. There are two distinct
moments to philosophy and two distinct modes of philosophizing, a
"provocative" radical or revisionary philosophy that is metaphorical
and a "pacificatory" exrlanatory philosophy that is largely
argumentative and analytic.
1
Therefore, (4) philosophers have special
reason not to mix their speculative metaphors - at least not with their
analytic arguments.
The structure of this book reverses the path just taken from
metaphors to arguments. Instead, the exploration begins with the
nature of argulnents and their place in philosophy. Beginning in the
first chapter with the puzzling example of arguing with God, I develop
a three-part schema for thinking about arguments and their roles in
philosophy. In the second part, the tools provided by this schema are
applied to the tasks of evaluating arguments logically, rhetorically, and
dialectically. The third part considers the nature of metaphors and their
role in philosophy, including their connections with arguments. They
too can be evaluated using several yardsticks. The concluding section
is explicitly meta-philosophical as it comes to grips with the
significance of thinking about philosophy in terms of its arguments, of
thinking of its arguments in terms of metaphors, and of the
phenonlenon that, in the end, everything is arguable.
Endnotes
1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV (G), 7, 1011b27.
2. Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 1.
3. Contra Spinoza and Hegel, Berkeley and Fichte, and Derrida,
respectively
4. Wittgenstein 1961, Proposition 6.53: "The correct method in philosophy
would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e.
propositions of natural science - i.e. something that has nothing to do with
philosophy. "
5. Wisdom 1936, in response to the closing admonition of Wittgenstein's
Tractatus, ends with, "Philosophers should be continually trying to say
what cannot be said."
6. The mystic Pseudo-Denis thought this could be a middle ground between
the Scylla and Charybdis of both Positive and Negative Attributions of
properties to God. See Spade 1994, p. 75-76.
7. Wittgenstein 1961, Wittgenstein 1956, Ayer 1952, Derrida 1976, and
Rorty 1982 all nlanifest an anti-philosophical attitude.
8. Locke 1959, Bk. III, ch. X, 34.
9. See Cohen 1985, 1988 and 1990 for discussions of "counterpossibles."
1O. See Goodman 1973. There are exceptions to this: "If I've told you once,
I've told you a thousand times" and "That's a mistake, if there ever was
one!." These locutions invite the audience to supply the implicit premise
needed for a modus ponens inference. The conclusion that is reached is
the consequent of the original conditionals, but the effect is its more
emphatic assertion because it comes from the hearers themselves.
11. Lewis 1973 arguably represents the high-water mark of these efforts.
12. The terms "provocative" and "pacificatory" are taken from Wisdom 1936.
CHAPTERl
Arguing With God
l
But I would speak to the Almighty,
And I desire to argue my case with God
2
My favorite moment in all of literature occurs in Dostoevsky's The
Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov, dreaming or delirious, is
arguing with the Devil. The Devil, however, is quite coherent, even
eloquent. At one point, in response to an accusation, the Devil
responds, "God forbid I should philosophize!,,3 There's something
about the image of the Devil appealing to God to save him fronl
philosophizing that I find absolutely hilarious and perhaps a bit
troublesome, but most of all deeply intriguing.
The role of the Devil in Judaeo-Christian theologies is multi-
faceted and problematic. A central strand, however, is determined by
Satan's role as "the Adversary." One thing the Adversary does is argue
with God - and not just in the role of Devil' s Advocate iri the judgment
of souls, but also in the genuine give-and-take of rational debate. How
can you argue with God? Surely, there could be no unconsidered
counter-considerations, no unanticipated objections, no dubious
premises among the divine ideas, or, God forbid, any fallacies in the
reasoning of a Being' with all Perfections. So what could be the point
of arguing when the outcome is foreordained? Why argue when you
know going into it that it cannot possibly end with a "See? I was right
and you were wrong"? If you find yourself arguing with omniscience,
you must be wrong!
And yet the Bible includes many examples of arguing with God.
Besides the Adversary, for whom arguing is part of the job description,
many of the characters with whonl God speaks argue: Abraham,
Moses, Job, Elijah, Jeremiah, and David all argue with God, not to
mention Jacob who wrestles with God physically and not just verbally.
Moreover, subsequent literature also provides us with coherent, even
deeply meaningful, examples. These range from the familiar
schmoozing and bargaining of Sholom Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman
to the profound exchanges Dostoyevsky crafted between Ivan
Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor, both in the 19
th
century, and
beyond them, in our own time, to the dark, adversarial, and personal
challenges of Peter Shaffer's Antonio Salieri in Amadeus and to Elie
Wiesel' s post-Holocaust moral protests to God. I would like to
juxtapose a couple of these in order to construct what I hope is a
helpful matrix for thinking not so much about God, but about
arguments. The extreme and distorted case of arguing with God sheds
light, by contrast, on other sorts of unwinnable arguments, including, I
believe, many philosophical arguments.
1. Moses. The first case to consider, and the easiest to analyze,
involves Moses. He argued with God when he offered reasons why he
should not be the one chosen to lead the people out of Egypt - the
Israelites will not believe you sent me, Pharaoh will not listen to me, I
am not eloquent.
4
It does not take foreknowledge to expect that each
reason Moses could offer would be met with a cogent reply. The
analysis is straightforward: one party offers a thesis (actually, a
command, but assertions are not the only speech acts for which we can
argue); an objection is raised by the second party and it is countered by
the first; a second objection is raised, and it too is countered; a third
objection meets the same fate; and finally there is acquiescence, so the
dialectic is complete. One side in the argument is simply overmatched.
God has the stronger argument. It cannot be defeated by any of Moses'
objections. And God is the better arguer insofar as God can answer
every objection to Moses' satisfaction. The result follows accordingly.
Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that there is just no arguing with
God.
In one sense, this is right: it is impossible to argue with God.
There are, inevitably, several senses available. Obviously there has to
be some sense in which it is possible, if we grant that Moses did it and
that there are other coherent stories to be told using this theme. The
first sense that suggests itself is that what is impossible is winning an
argunlent with God.
5
But isn't that, by definition, what each disputant
is trying to do? And even if winning is not itself the te/os of arguing, it
is surely the governing principle for the actions of the arguers. That
does seem to make the act of arguing with God pointless. Or is the
impossibility of arguing with God predicated on the impossibility of
engaging God in argument? While we Inay argue with the absent and
Arguing with God 9
the dead, they do not argue back. They engage us; we do not engage
them. A Transcendent God is altogether unreachable. Or does the
impossibility have something to do with God's nature? You cannot
argue with the weather, no matter how immanent a part of our lives it
maybe.
As Trudy Govier perceptively notes, the act of arguing involves an
implicit acknowledgement of the possibility of disagreement about the
question at hand. Writing on the genuine engagement that
characterizes the sort of rational exchanges we hope for, she writes,
The practice of argument implies a recognition that there
may be legitimate doubts about some of our beliefs and that
other persons, reasonable persons with whom we stand in a
relationship in virtue of the fact that we are speaking to them
or writing for them, and they are listening to us or reading our
work, can differ from us in their beliefs, judgments, values and
opinions.
6
That is, the act of engaging in argument puts the disputants into a
personal relationship of approximate parity. There are three parts to
this: the person-hood of argunlent-mates, a personal relationship
between them, and the parity of the disputants. All of these can be
called into question when one of the arguers is God.
The word "argunlent" has many senses. It often refers to the
content of what someone presents, but it can also refer to the
communicative exchange itself, the episode in discourse. In the
literature of argumentation theory, these are sometimes distinguished as
argument-l and argument-2.
7
They embody two different conceptions
of argunlent: argument-as-proof and argument-as-war. The paradigm
case of an argument in the first sense is a mathematical proof: given
premises, explicit inferences, and a final conclusion. It is almost as if
arguers were an optional extra. The extreme case of the second might
be a longstanding feud over a long-forgotten slight: all conflict without
substance or reasons. The arguments in which we find ourselves
typically involve elements of both: we argue both about something and
with someone.
Govier's point calls attention to the arguers, not just the arguments
they present. The act of arguing presupposes that there is another
person with whom we have a relationship that includes the possibility
of rational disagreement. We often provide that second voice to
ourselves, so we can be, or fill the role of, that other person in our own
arguments. Can God be that person?
Part of what is funny about arguing with God is the idea of God as
an arguer. There is a tension between the more abstract, deistic concept
of God developed in the universities and academies of the Ancient
Greek and Medieval Latin philosophical traditions, and the more
personal, theistic concept of God that was earlier presented by the
Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. Tevye, rooted in one tradition,
could argue with God, but he could also confide in God, with
God, and even joke around with God. Imagine trying to schmooze with
Spinoza's Substance-Itself, the epitome of the other tradition! Arguing
with God presupposes that God is a person. Arguments are not abstract
sets of propositions juxtaposed in logical space; they are instantiated in
the complex relations between persons.
8
Propositions do not argue any
more than rocks or trees do. If we find an argument in the impersonal
world, it is one more case of how we can find the strange in the
ordinary, just as we can see a bicycle seat or a urinal as a work of art, or
read a biography as a nove1.
9
For our part, we can argue at the world,
but we cannot really argue with it.
Arguers are persons, then. Of course, Moses' God was indeed a
personal God. relationship that the Ancient Israelites had with
God was based on a Covenant, and a covenant presupposes that same
kind of personal relationship. We cannot enter into a Covenant with
Spinoza's impersonal God any more than 'we can argue with it.
10
There is still something very odd about a mere human arguing with
even a personal God that does not apply to, say, argunlents that Gods
might have among themselves. The disparity seems too great. But it is
not only the difference between the disputants that generates the
problem because there is no comparable problem in arguing with Zeus
or Odin. The concept of an Omni-God that emerged in the Judaeo-
Christian traditions is not one among nlany, and could not be. It is
arguing with this God that seems pointless. More specifically, what is
absurd about arguing with a personal but perfect God is not the idea of
God giving reasons to humans, nor even the notion of God as judge
hearing reasons from humans, but the image of humans offering
reasons to God. What could we hope to accomplish?
Once we stop thinking of arguments as ordered sets of
propositions, as a form whose ideal is realized in proof, then there is
room for other, more helpful, models. It is absurd to argue with God, if
that means setting forth a deductively connected chain of theses
Arguing with God 11
beginning from putatively true ones in order to establish the truth of
another. Whatever epistemic value there might be in such an exercise
for us, it would surely have none here. It would be pointless to present
God with an argument of the first type, a logical proof. Are there any
serious and interesting examples of someone trying to demonstrate
something to GOd?I1 Arguments are not, in general, proofs, so
argument analysis has to be more than the analysis of logical
implication. The goals of argumentation cannot be assumed to be the
same as those of proofs.
In that case, the act of arguing with God need not require that God
is a person approximately like us. Moses does seem to have labored
under that assulnption, however. He had space to argue with God in
part because absolute omniscience, epistemic infallibility, was not the
defining-or even an especially prominent - characteristic of the God
of the books of Genesis and Exodus. That perfection was added (or, if
you prefer, recognized) later. Still, more needs to be said because
neither Moses, nor Abraham, nor Job, nor Jeremiah, nor any of the
other arguers with God was under any delusions about telling God
something new. God was at least sufficiently-knowing to be all-
knowing for all practical purposes within the contexts of these
arguments. But even absolute omniscience need not exclude argument.
Elie Wiesel's arguments with God are a counterexample because he
does presume omniscience and argues anyway. Arguing is an
interaction between persons that is part of the complex nexus of social
relations. There is no reason to suppose that argumentation serves only
logical and epistemological purposes, to the exclusion of political,
ethical, religious, of other ends.
There is no arguing with God, if the purpose is to give God new
knowledge.
12
That still leaves actions and attitudes as arguable points.
Like absolute omniscience, absolute omnibenevolence, or moral
infallibility, was not a prominent characteristic of God as portrayed in
the Books of Moses.
13
As Anson Laytner argues, when God has been
taken to task in the literary and theological traditions, it has been over
values and actions, not facts.
14
Abraham's argument with God over the
fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, was about justice. It was
not about the exact number of blameless citizens that actually lived in
those cities.
2. Job. Job's argument with God
IS
is more notorious and more
problematic. There are actually three different sorts of argunlents in the
Book of Job. First, there is God's argument with the Adversary, or
Satan. That leads to their wager, and then to Job's travails. It is an
argument whose disputants have con1parable stature. Second, there are
the arguments that Job has with his friends, defending himself against
charges that he must suffer quietly under these burdens, that he must
have sinned, or that he must not have been pious enough. These
arguments, too, are between equals, but they foreshadow the final
argument, Job's argument directly with God, in which Job rightly
claims that he has been treated wrongly.
Job's argument follows what has been called the "law-court
pattern" of argumentative prayers.
16
A complaint is brought before the
judge, in this case God, against a defendant, in this case also God. The
facts of the case are stated. Reasons are given substantiating the
complaint, including such things as God's promises, the Covenant with
Israel, and Job's "blameless and upright" life - to use God's own words
from the argument with Satan. Finally, a petition for redress is
submitted for judgment and action. God's response in this case was
manifestly inadequate from a juridical standpoint, and perhaps
theologically as well. Moreover, it was also inadequate as an
argument, no matter which axis of evaluation is used: it fails logically,
it fails rhetorically, and it fails dialectically. God pulls rank. The
response, in essence, is "Who are you to argue with the great and
powerful Yahweh?" - an answer that is no better than "Who are you to
argue with the great and powerful Oz?" when delivered by a displaced
charlatan from Kansas.
17
This might be read as an appeal to force of,
well, Biblical proportions, but I think it is something else. To use a
distinction that will be made in chapter four, it is more of a failure to
engage in argument in the first place rather than a fallacy within an
argument that is underway.
The distinction between failing to engage in an argument and
committing a fallacy within in an argument is important. Job was no
more successful in arguing with God than Moses was, but for different
reasons. Job tried to argue with God, but God did not listen and God
did not argue back. God's response responded to Job, the arguer; it did
not respond to Job's argument. It failed to engage rather than missed
the point. That is, God's response was inadequate not because it was a
bad argument, but because it was not an argument. It was a response of
a different sort, more like walking away from an argument or
filibustering to prevent debate than like arguing or debating illogically.
The failure to engage in argument is not a fallacy, a logical error per se
because ifyou do not argue, then you cannot argue poorly. Failing to
Arguing with God 13
argue can be an argumentative failing nonetheless. Arguments,
remember, are more than ordered sets of propositions. They are
relations between persons, and so subject to extra-logical conventions
and imperatives, including the social and ethical. In particular, they are
relations in discourse, so they are subj ect to such linguistic conventions
as Grice's maxims
18
and Peirce's imperatives of rationality. 19 Maybe,
then, there's no arguing with God for altogether different reasons.
Sonletimes it might be because we dare not enter into such an
argument, but sometimes it might be because God refuses to argue with
us!
A recent contribution to argumentation theory that can be of help
here is the concept of a "model interlocutor" as a tool for evaluating
arguments.
20
Model interlocutors have the requisite background
information relative to their comnlunities, raise the right sorts of
objections, are open to reason and appreciate the strength of an
argument. Roughly, an argument is a good one if it will convince a
model interlocutor, in parallel to similar references in epistemology and
ethics to ideal observers or perfectly moral agents. The concept of a
model interlocutor accommodates the insights that arguments
presuppose arguers, and that arguers are always contextually situated in
communities. What it needs to include is the insight that there are more
argumentative failings than fallacies in reasoning. A truly model
interlocutor would not just accept strong arguments and resist weak
ones, but would also engage in argument when that is called for and
refrain from argunlent when that is appropriate. Neither the willfully
deaf nor the compulsively contrary qualify. One way to fall short of
being a model interlocutor is to argue too much. The kind of relentless
quibbling at which philosophers can be so good is a prime example.
But another way to fall short is to remain apart from the fray of
argument completely. It really does not matter whether the cause is
dogmatic smugness, intellectual laziness, or personal cowardice. When
we need to argue, model interlocutors are there for us. Omniscience
notwithstanding, and regardless of whatever other perfections may be
supposed, God is not a model interlocutor, at least not for Job. All Job
really wanted was a fair hearing?1
3. Abraham. One other Biblical story, involving Abraham,
provides a good counterpoint to the arguments of Moses and Job.
Abraham, back in Genesis set the precedent for arguing with God.
Even that Knight of Infinite Resignation could summon up the
gumption to argue with God on occasion. He tried, for example, to
convince God not to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in their
entireties.
22
As in Moses' case, but not Job's, the argument was
unsuccessful because each objection was successfully countered. But
at least the argument was engaged, again as for Moses but not for Job.
It is, however, not this argument, but another episode that provides
the revealing counterpoint. It is a case of something missing - like the
dog that did not bark that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve one of his
cases.
23
Abraham argued to save Sodom, but inexplicably, and prima
facie shamefully, he did not argue with God when God conlmanded
him to sacrifice his own son. This is a disturbing omission: an occasion
where Abraham did not engage in argument but where it was surely
called for.
24
Arguably, the residents of Sodom did something to
deserve their fate; Isaac was innocent. Abraham's failure to raise
objections against God - a logical sin of omission rather than
commission - is no less an argumentative failure than God's refusal to
respond to the objections raised by Job. The argumentative counterpart
to Grice's maxim of quantity has been breached (or, on some readings,
flouted).
Why didn't Abraham argue with God? It cannot be because he
would not dare such an affront. He had already argued for the residents
of Sodom. It cannot be because he did not have the motivation. Isaac
was his beloved son. There is a mountain of commentary on the
meaning of this episode, but not much directly on the missing
argument.25 To be sure, Isaac was a gift from God, so perhaps there is
a proprietary relation justifying the call for his sacrificial return, but
children are not property like sheep or goats. Perhaps God's demand
could, in the end, be contextually justified because the story makes a
point about human sacrifice, religious rituals, and what was to
differentiate Israelite worship of God from the neighboring tribes.
Perhaps it could be justified by appeal to the notion of piety or
obedience or God's power. Perhaps applies to all these possible
explanations but perhaps is not enough here. None of these possible
justifications was given the chance to be actual, and some justification
was manifestly necessary.
The point I want to make is that even if Abraham knew all of these
possible justifications beforehand, and also knew beforehand that he
was going to lose whatever argument he might offer, he still should
have argued. He had an obligation to argue - a moral obligation,
certainly, but a rational dialectical one as well - precisely because of
the personal relationship he had with God. Their relationship was,
Arguing with God 15
among other things, dialogical. Abraham can be faulted here for failing
to argue, so he too falls short of model interlocutor status. 26
These are, then, all failed examples of arguing with God. Moses'
weak argument was unsuccessful because it was defeated. Job's strong
argument was unsuccessful because it was ignored. And the argument
Abraham should have pressed was stillborn, and so never had the
chance to succeed or fail. Abraham's failure differs in that it had
nothing to do with losing. The failure was in not arguing.
But why, exactly? What sense are we to make of the idea that
there can be a need for argument even when it is sure to lose? Could a
losing argument still count as successful? No debate with God can be
won, no proofs will surprise or teach God anything, but there are other
reasons to argue. There is reason to go down swinging, rather than just
going down.
Just as the model of arguments as mathematical proofs has to be
abandoned as too constricting to acconlillodate the full richness of
dialectical arguments, so too, we have to abandon the model of
arguments as essentially win-lose, adversarial moments in order to
accommodate the full social context and the broadly rational purposes
of arguers.
4. Tevye, Salieri, Wiesel. This brings me to the main point,
which is not about God or arguing with God, but about arguments
generally and the specific questions of why we argue and how
arguments end. There are many kinds of arguments and ways to
argue.
27
Arguments are composed of parts. 28 And there are different
sorts of obligations on arguers.
29
All of these have to be brought to
bear on the vexed question of arguing with God. Most of all, there are
many different purposes for arguing and many different ways for
arguments to reach resolution. Winning and losing are not the only
outcomes. There are other outcomes, like negotiation and compromise,
disagreement with the prolnise of continued dialogue, or the suspension
of belief and a con1mitment to further investigation. If an argument is
trying to justify an action or explain a position, rather than demonstrate
a thesis, then imparting understanding or earning an
acknowledgement may be more appropriate goals than persuasion.
There are other resolutions with their own criteria for success, so
arguers should try to align their reasons for arguing with the desired
closure. More attention needs to be paid to "exit strategies" for
argument.
30
The impossibility of arguing with God assumes winning is
the only successful outcome. (And also, of course, on particular
conceptions of God.
31
) When the circumstances are right, you can
indeed argue with God
Recall the distinction between arguments-l and arguments-2, or
arguments-as-proofs and arguments-as-war. It is typically supposed
that to succeed in the second of these, a dialectical argument with an
adversarial element, you need either the better reasons, i.e., the stronger
argument-I, logically, or the better presentation, rhetorically. With
both the stronger reasons and the better presentation, you should win
the day. That does not always happen, however, because of the third
element in arguments: the audience. Even the most rhetorically gifted
among us, armed with the strongest evidence, most compelling reasons,
and most cogent arguments will not convince a biased jury, hostile
observers, or an uninformed or uncomprehending crowd. Imagine
arguing for legalized abortion - before the National Right To Life Party
meetings; or critiquing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
physics - for a class of kindergartners; or pleading a defendant's case -
in English to a jury of monolingual francophones. Regardless of its
content and regardless of the performance, the English language
defense is not a good argument in that courtroom. Arguments cannot
be fully evaluated apart from their specific contexts. An adequate
analytic account of an argument has to include at least these three
factors: the arguer, the argument-I, and the audience. An adequate
analytic account of dialectical arguments may v ~ to consider each
factor twice. The presented arguments-l might dovetail, of course,
reducing the analytic task. When that happens, it is all to the good, a
tribute to the arguers, but it is not always so. Similarly, the disputants
may themselves be each other's audience, but that, too, is not always
the case. In political debates, the disputants often play to very different
audiences, and the success of their arguments has to be judged
accordingly.
This analytic framework provides a way to answer our questions.
Arguers may have all sorts of motives for entering into arguments.
There may, for example, be social agendas in effect. Arguing is a way
of engaging another person, often negatively, but that does not have to
be the case. Arguing can serve a political purpose by challenging
someone's authority, apart from the purported issue under discussion.
An argument can serve epistemological ends as part of an effort to
justify or explain oneself. For some philosophers, arguing seems to
serve hedonistic purposes. The presented arguments also differ greatly,
bringing to bear all the concerns that matter to us: political, ethical,
Arguing with God 17
theological, scientific, aesthetic, etc. And, as noted, arguers play to
different audiences. Recall the debates in the United States Senate in
1998 on censure as a replacement motion to the articles of
impeachment brought by the House of Representatives against
President Clinton. Democratic senators could argue for a censure
motion knowing they would never have to vote on it, while
Republicans could argue for impeachment, knowing that their votes
would be safely ineffective. Who were these arguments for? Not the
other Senators, certainly. None of the other Senators was likely to be
persuaded one way or the other by the presented arguments, and there
is no reason to suppose that the arguers ever really entertained any
delusions that their arguments would convert their political opponents.
But that does not mean that we have to see these arguments as idle
exercises in rhetoric. They were politically important gestures by the
Senators to justify their actions to their colleagues, their constituencies,
and, perhaps, themselves. If their constituencies back home were
satisfied, then in large measure their arguments succeeded.
This points to a general criterion for argumentative success,
connecting all the resolutions: an argument is successful when it
satisfies its audience. If the audience is an opponent, that means
winning the argument by rationally persuading him or her. If the
audience is some hypothetical model interlocutor, success means
producing a cogent argument. If the audience is oneself, then that
means re-affirming that one's decision or conclusion is rational.
Deductive validity satisfies just about everyone, but that is rarely what
arguments are about.
Apply these distinctions to arguments with God. Who is the
audience in each case? The simplest case, again, is Moses' losing
argument. He argued because he was afraid. He had misgivings that
prevented him from carrying out God's command. That is, the person
who needed to be persuaded was Moses himself. From that
perspective, then, his argument was a success: by "losing," he
overcame his own doubts. Sometimes we argue not to persuade others,
but to be persuaded ourselves.
The starkest contrast is provided by Abraham's unfilled obligation
to argue. His obligation to argue seems primarily an obligation to
Isaac. Abraham can be blamed for not speaking out on behalf of his
son, and Isaac, at the moment of sacrifice and realization, would have
had a just grievance. "Why didn't you argue?" But I think it also has to
be recognized that Abraham had at least as great an obligation to Sarah.
Regardless of her absence from the land of Moriah, and whether or not
she was witness to Abraham's initial encounter with God, she too was
wronged and had a right to an answer to the question she had a right to
ask: "Why didn't you argue?" Because of her relationship with
Abraham and Isaac, Sarah has to be counted as part of the audience.
Her perspective and her interests make her part of the context for
evaluating Abraham's actions - including both his arguments and his
silence. And, generalizing from this, the relevant audience for
Abraham, those for whom he has an obligation to argue includes us, the
readers of his story. We are cheated because he did not argue. We
need to hear his argument so that we can hear God's answer.
The case is similar for Job. The primary audience for his argument
is God the Judge, not God the defendant, but it is also we the readers of
the Book of Job. Job argues in order register his protest, to go on
record as obj ecting to his treatment. For that purpose, it is more
inlportant that his argument is loud and clear, and forceful and
memorably eloquent, than that it persuades God. It needs to speak to us
andfor us more than it needs to speak to God andfor Job.
Thus, at the end of this argument, we end up where philosophy
starts, with Plato, because Job can be read as more than just the paragon
of patience; he can be seen as a paradigm of that most Socratic of
virtues, unquestioning faith... in argument! I believe that that is also
the faith that Elie Wiesel brings to his post-Holocaust arguments with
God. He questions God and challenges God, but not as Salieri does, as
an adversary. Rather, after the Holocaust, arguing with God is seen as
the only alternative to severing all relations completely.32 No one
expects to win an argument with God, but that does not make the act of
arguing pointless. Faith in argument is also the faith that one brings to
philosophy. After all, in truth, does anyone of us ever really expect to
win - permanently and decisively - any of the sundry philosophical
arguments in which we engage? If winning and losing is not altogether
beside the point, at least it is not the whole point of arguing - or of
philosophy.
Endnotes
1. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Northern New
England Philosophical Association, St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH,
October 22, 1999.
Arguing with God 19
2. Job, 13,3
3. Dostoevsky 1970, p. 772. In Constance Garnett's and Robert McDuffs
translations, it comes out closer to, "God save me [from philosophizing]."
4. Exodus 3, 10 - 4, 17.
5. There is a counterexample to this at Exodus 32,11-15. See note 13 below.
6. Govier 1999a, p. 47. The emphasis is in the original text.
7. O'Keefe 1977 originally made this distinction between adversarial
arguments and arguments as proofs using the labels "argument-I" and
"argument-2."
8. This has become a well-accepted tenet of argumentation theory, but it has
not always been so, and its significance is debated. Gilbert 1997,
especially chapter 3, champions the idea that the social din1ensions to
argument must be prominent in argumentation theory.
9. Perioff 1996, chapter 2, discusses finding the strange in the ordinary in
relation to Wittgenstein's discussion in the Investigations of "ordinary"
language; Danto 1983 brings the notion of reading-as into clear focus.
The notion of reading something as an argument is not explicitly
addressed, but perhaps it should be.
10. Interestingly, the Covenantal relationship is missing from, or altered in,
the New Testament, and so, for the most part, is arguing with God. If
Jesus' cry on the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" is read as a
fragment of an argument, then it is a notable exception. Jesus, of course,
was Jewish.
11. Ayer 1952, pp. 85-86, citing Hans Hahn, offers the trope of a God
altogether bored with any deductive system. There are some fantasies that
have reversed the image: Deities spending (post-G6delian!) eternity
exploring the infinite realms of mathematics.
12. Job makes just this point about God's role as judge: "Will any teach God
knowledge?" Job, 21, 22.
13. Indeed, God's moral fallibility is evident in the one example of an
argument he did lose: in Exodus 32, Moses successfully convinces God
not to destroy the Israelites despite the Golden Calf. Moses reminded God
of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "And the Lord repented of
the evil which he thought to do to his people" (Exodus 32, 15).
14 This is one of the central theses throughout Laytner 1990.
15. Job, especially chapters 6-7.9-10. 12-14, and 26-31, and God's response
in chapters 38-41. At Exodus 32, 11-14, Moses apparently wins an
argument with God insofar as God is persuaded not to destroy the
Israelites who fashioned the Golden Calf. This is indeed about actions,
not the truth of propositions.
16. The pattern was established earlier in the Bible. It is most evident in
Lamentations. See Laytner 1990, esp. pp. xiii-xxii and chapter 1.
17. Although the allusion is to L. Frank Baum's, The Wizard of Oz, these
exact words are from the original movie version, and do not appear in the
text.
18. Grice 1975 is the locus classicus for the concept of conversational
implicatures. What is being suggested here is that the concept be extended
to accommodate other speech acts in addition to assertions, and that
argumentation may involve very different sorts of perlocutionary, if not
also illocutionary, acts. In any case, the principle of cooperation should be
read as sometimes mandating argument!
19. The imperatives of rationality would certainly include William James
"epistemological commandments" to believe he true and disbelieve the
false, but also C. S. Peirce's "Do not block the road to inquiry." To
Peirce's Thou shalt not I would add a Thou shalt, viz., "Argue!"
20. The term and concept "model interlocutor" is taken from A. Blair and R.
Johnson 1987. Prominent among its ancestry is the concept of universal
audiences in Pereleman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969. Also see Crosswhite
1989 and Tindale 1999, pp. 87ff. and 117ff.
21. Job asks only two things of God, prior to arguing: "withdraw thy hand far
from me, and let not dread of thee terrify me." If those conditions for
arguing are met, Job continues, "Then call, and I will answer; or let me
speak, and do thou reply" (Job, 13, 21-22). These are eminently
reasonable minimal conditions for interlocutors in rational debate. See
also Job 23, 3-5. In the end, Job 38-41, God does answer Job.
22. Genesis 18, 23-33.
23. The case was "Silver Blaze," appearing in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The
Memoirs ofSherlock Holmes.
24. Genesis 22.
25. There is (unsurprisingly) a Midrash on this, conjecturing that an argument
would have been an appropriate response, and. continuing to consider what
an appropriate argument for Abraham could be. See Laytner 1990, p. 48,
fn.22.
26. Elie Wiesel has suggested that Abraham and God were engaged in a game
of high-stakes chicken, and that Abraham was calling God's bluff. In that
case, the absence of argument flouted the imperative to argue to challenge
God's command by implicature rather than directly by argument. Justin
Ehrenwerth has suggested that the absence of an argument might be read
as a positive refusal to argue rather than as a simple omission. On that
reading, Abraham knew that he would lose any dialectical engagement,
but he also knew that if he were to engage in argumentation, he would
then become a party to the outcome. So, Abraham remained silent rather
than argue, much the same way that opposition factions boycott elections
that they suspect might be rigged in order to avoid being seen as endorsing
the unacceptable, but inevitable, outcomes.
Arguing with God 21
27. Chapter 3.
28. Chapter 4.
29. Chapter 7
30. Govier 1999b raises the issue of the importance of receIvIng
acknowledgement as an end of argument and how the recognition of that
goal should inform how we argue.
31. That this is something that distinguishes the Jewish and Christian strands
of the traditions that constitute the heterogeneous "Judaeo-Christian
tradition" is also a theme of Laytner 1990.
32. "A Jew today must argue with God." Wiesel 1978, p. 6; Laytner 1990, p.
226.
PART I:
Arguments in Philosophy
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single philosopher in
possession of a good theory must be in want of an argument.
1
Argument is incontrovertibly at the very center of philosophy
historically, methodologically, and substantively. However, in keeping
with the venerable philosophical tradition that all universally
acknowledged, incontrovertible theses should be challenged, this one
too shall be called into question.
The first chapter of this section motivates the thesis in order to see
why it is so appealing and why it seems so unassailable. In part, this
involves extracting the operative concept of argument, but it also
entails examining the implicit understanding of what philosophy is all
about in order to see how well the two notions mesh. What is of value
for the pursuit of philosophical goals should be preserved; what is
detrimental should be revised or jettisoned. The next chapter examines
the dominant model for thinking about arguments, the conception of
argument as war. War provides a vital, rich, and almost inescapable
metaphor for arguments, but in some ways, it is an unfortunate
metaphor, so alternative ways of conceptualizing arguments are
proposed. They have important consequences for how the philosophi-
cal project is understood and undertaken. The last chapter in this
section considers the curious case of filibusters and the challenges they
present to traditional models of argumentation. Neither the adversarial
model for arguments, argument-is-war, nor the mathematical model for
arguments, argument-as-proof, suffices: it is not enough to know
whether an argument won or lost, or even whether it was valid or
sound. A more complete system of argument evaluation needs to take
into account arguments' audiences, requiring that yet a third model be
on the table.
24 Arguments in Philosophy
Endnote
1. With apologies to Jane Austen and the marvelous first line of Pride and
Prejudice. As shall become clear, I regard this sentence as quite false and
assertible only ironically, given the popular conception of what arguments
are all about (although it is very likely true, given the popular conception
of philosophers!). On the conceptions of philosophy and argumentation to
be developed here, however, I think it expresses a deep truth about both of
its parts.
CHAPTER 2
To Philosophize is to Argue
The Western philosophical tradition is not so much a footnote to
Plato as it is an extended argument with Plato. There is, however, much
to be said for Whitehead's famous comment. It can be read as
intending to convey any of a cluster of compelling ideas: that Plato
raised all the questions with \vhich we are still struggling; that to this
day his answers remain both the starting point and background for our
discussions; and perhaps that even the sum of all subsequent
contributions is dwarfed by Plato's original and monumental genius.
Like any great metaphor, there is a virtually limitless amount that can
be read into the metaphor of a footnote.
1
Even so, it does not really do
justice to the complex nature of the engagement that contemporary
philosophy has with its history? It may well be that to understand any
stage in the history of philosophy, historical contextualization is
required, and that inevitably leads all the way back to Plato. Even so,
Plato's writings are not merely glossed or annotated. They are
critically engaged. Critical engagement is the distinguishing
characteristic of the discourse of philosophy as argumentative. It has
been from its very beginning, viz., from the Platonic dramatizations of
the Socratic elenchus on down. Philosophy was conceived in dialogue
and nourished on dialectic. Arguments remain the natural habitat for
philosophy.
Socratic elenchus occupies a special place in the history of
philosophy. The art of questioning as a means to elicit the knowledge
within us was the first well-defined philosophical methodology in two
important ways. First, it was the earliest peculiarly philosophical
methodology that was self-consciously chosen and articulated. Second,
it was the first method of philosophizing conscientiously put into
practice-with the conspicuous success of Plato's own philosophy!
The Socratic method has captured the imaginations, if not always
the explicit practice, of philosophers down through the ages. Even
philosophers whose "official" methodologies make no mention at all of
dialectical engagement implicitly exhibit it nonetheless. Rene
Descartes is a perfect example of this. Descartes' presentation of
himself could stand as a paradigm for the solitary philosopher. His
private meditations seem to be the polar opposite of Plato's public
dialogues. However, a closer look reveals two striking incongruities
that are grist for the deconstructionist mill. First, there is probably
more genuine dialogue in Descartes' monologues than in some of
Plato's dialogues.
3
Descartes struggled with his inner voices. The
questions he asked himself and his readers were not merely rhetorical.
They deserved and received substantial answers-not the platitudinous
"Yes, Socrates" and "Of course, Socrates" that are ubiquitous in Plato's
dialogues. And the objections he raised against himself were generally
serious ones that were treated with all due seriousness.
4
Second, the
Cartesian corpus is itself very much the product of a comlnunity
context and historical milieu. The fact that the initial publication of the
Meditations included both objections from Descartes' peers and his
own replies testifies to that. The objections and replies gave Descartes
the opportunity to clarify his presentation, and they provided the reader
with just the sort of heuristic interrogations of which Socrates would
have been proud!
Of course, that is not all the objections did. For the most part, the
questions that Hobbes, Gassendi, and others posed were really
dialectical critiques to the Cartesian project rather than heuristic
inquiries into the details of its mechanics or the meanings of its
concepts. Trying to fit these adversarial challenges into the Socratic
model of a midwife helping to deliver the Truth would be an exercise in
Panglossian interpretation.
This points to an important difference between the questions that
comprise Socratic elenchus and the argulnents that constitute dialectical
debate. The goal of the Socratic method of questioning was to elicit the
knowledge that already exists within us. Plato thought we would be
able to recognize knowledge when it is finally revealed. In practice,
however, the method operated under a slightly different assumption,
viz., that when our attention is properly focused, we would be able to
recognize our errors. If genuine Knowledge of Truth were ever
attained, it would be the result of systematically eliminating error.
Error is recognizable by comparison with the accessible Truth within
us.
To Philosophize is to Argue 27
Where elenchus leads one to find the Truth within, dialectical
debate has often been taken to be a process leading one in the direction
of Truth wherever it lies. Or, if not to an absolute or transcendental
Truth, then at least to mundane truths.
5
The term "dialectic" has meant
different things to different philosophers, ranging from the reductio ad
absurdum refutations of the pre-Socratic Sophists through the Socratic
elenchus and on down to the Hegelian movement in History and
beyond to the logical and dialogical phenomenon of concern to
contemporary argumentation theorists. Since the term "dialectic" has
its etymological roots in the Greek term for conversation, while the
subsequent accretion of meanings centers on the concepts of opposition
and movement, the term will be reserved here, at least initially, for
multi-voice discourses in which contrary positions enter into productive
confrontation. Ideally, the product of a properly philosophical
engagement would be truth, whether immanent or transcendent.
The distinctive value of dialectic as a test for truth is that it
includes all other tests. Physical evidence against a theory, for
example, in itself does not weigh against the acceptance of a theory
unless someone advances it against that theory. There are many sorts
of considerations that can be brought to bear on the question of the
acceptability of a thesis - empirical, doctrinal, ethical, political,
aesthetic - but they all share common element: they must be brought to
bear. Even something as damning as logical inconsistency will not be
counted against a theory until it is pointed out. However, this is to say
nothing more than that in order for obj ectionable features of theories to
become real objections, they must be raised by someone against that
theory, and that to raise objections is to engage in dialectic. As
Michael Gilbert puts it, "One does not need to believe that dialectics
produces truth, merely that the truth can stand up to fair
argumentation. .. One need not be a realist about truth to be a
dialectician. ,,6
Dialectic thus has a sort of universality as a test for truth insofar as
it analytically includes all of the other tests that might be proposed.
There is, however, nlore to the universality of dialectics than just the
truism that all objections must be raised to be counted or that every
challenge is a dialectical challenge. Dialectics also makes its own
characteristic contribution to theory evaluation by being universal in
another sense: no claim is immune from dialectical challenges.
Objections can always be raised. In a sense, then, everything is
objectionable! Not in the sense that there will inevitably be something
wrong with any theory or proposition that we might offer, but in the
more etymological sense that we are always able to object. To make an
objection is to raise a question, and all our claims are always open to
question. Everything is question-able; everything is arguable!
If dialectical questioning offers both the path to truth and the
universal test for truth, why not simply take it as the criterion for truth?
Alternatively, why not embrace dialectical acceptability or some other
argumentatively stable state as a substitute for truth as the goal of
inquiry? There is a tendency to think that however great the difference
might be between truth and rational consensus for the purposes of
metaphysical speculation, it has no immediate impact on how we argue.
After all, in practice when we reach a rational consensus, we take the
product as true, and, conversely, we suppose that anyone who is
rational could be convinced of whatever we take as true, provided only
that we have world enough and tinle to make the case. There are,
however, significant:, if less visible, practical differences between truth
and consensus as goals for inquiry. On the one hand, if the goal is
building a consensus, stated objections cannot be ignored. In the long
term, arguments that invite cooperative resolution will be more
effective than those that try to force a position on unwilling disputants.
This is all to the good. On the other hand, if disagreement is what fuels
the engine of inquiry, then there could be a counterproductive
complacency to consensus. For example, part of the reason that the
Aristotelian-Ptolemaic complex of scientific theories could withstand a
thousand years of challenges was that there were relatively few of
them. There are potentially damaging distortions for philosophy that
can accompany an overemphasis on the adversarial aspect of argument,
but there are dangers to be recognized at the other extreme as well.
There is a corollary to the claims that dialectics is universally
applicable insofar as it analytically includes all other truth tests and
acceptability criteria and insofar as no claim is immune (in principle, if
not always in practice) from dialectical challenge: dialectics has to be
topical-neutral. Philosophy, too, can be topic neutral insofar as
anything is potentially food for philosophical thought. We can think
philosophically about the "is" of physics and the "ought" of ethics, the
temporal flow of history and atemporal world of mathematics, or the
currencies of economics and the values of aesthetics. A popular trope
for the history of philosophy is that philosophy is the breeding ground
for disciplines. To find the historical roots for physics, chemistry,
psychology, linguistics, or other areas, one must look to philosophy.
Philosophy is where one finds pre-disciplinary thought, in Kuhn's
sense of speculative reflection without either the constraints or license
of an established paradigm. There is something to this picture, but it is
seriously flawed, or partial at best, if it cannot accommodate the
permanent possibility of philosophical reflection on even the most
disciplined of topics.
7
There is no end to the supply of philosophical
questions to be asked.
One area in particular in which the vision of a question-driven
methodology became thoroughly established was philosophical
pedagogy. From the formalized obligatione texts and quaestio format
of Medieval logicians to today's doctoral defenses, philosophers have
been schooled in the art of rigorous disputation. It is a kind of
indoctrination. albeit methodological rather than doctrinal. Those who
are not adept at dialectical give and take are weeded out, with the result
that there is an institutional and structural valorization of argument.
Argumentation has historically been so central to philosophy because
argument is integral to philosophical methodology. And it has been
central to philosophical methodology in part because it has been central
to philosophical pedagogy. Arguably, the explanatory chain runs in the
other direction as well - it is central pedagogically because it is central
methodologically. The pedagogical and methodological practices are
indeed mutually reinforcing.
Philosophers have always been extremely sensitive, perhaps to the
point of being pathologically self-consciousness, about philosophical
method. Is it linguistic or conceptual analysis in which we engage? Is
it a thoroughly a priori activity whose procedure is intuitive, logical, or
transcendental? Or should we be more respectful of a posteriori data
and rely on more experiments than just clever Gedankenexperimenten?
Is philosophy a private and solitary - a meditative - undertaking, or
does it require a dialogical, social context for its investigations?
Should we analyze or synthesize?
The phrase "The Philosophical Method" is no more uniquely
denoting than the even more abused counterpart phrase, "The Scientific
Method." Biologists and geologists do not go about their business in
the same way as physicists and chemists. Neither, for that matter, do
particle physicists and cosmological physicists. Neither Galileo's
ingenious thought-experiments nor Newton's carefully crafted,
reproducible laboratory experiments have exact counterparts in
Darwin's scientific practice. Kepler's elaborate mathematical
calculations on excruciatingly precise astronomical observations do not
resemble anything that the geologist Lyell did. Rather, there are many
scientific methods, answering to different areas, eras, and kinds of
science.
In like manner, there are as many philosophical methods as there
are philosophical styles, goals, and purposes. The kinds of empirical
investigations that can contribute to certain parts of the philosophy of
language may be entirely inappropriate for metaphysics. The formal
constructions of mathematical logicians may be an altogether irrelevant
methodology for ethicists. This is why, as Arthur Danto has noted,
philosophy has taken so many forms: "dialogues, lecture notes,
fragments, poems, exanlinations, essays, aphorisms, meditations,
discourses, hymns, critiques, letters," among many others.
8
And yet, as
Thomas Kuhn argued for the scientific case,9 there is a common
element: philosophical theories are subject to the tribunal of community
judgment. In practice, this means that all philosophical theories must
undergo trial by argument.
This is more than simply a sociological claim about the practice of
the tribe of philosophers. It is an external observation about a
conlmunity that may seem obvious once it is pointed out, but is not
always visible from within. And while there are few objections to this
characterization of philosophical practice, there are several contrary
interpretations of its significance. Robert Stalnaker once wrote, "I
assume that the world is the way it is independently of our conceptions
of it and that the goal of inquiry is to find out how it is." Adding as an
afterthought, "1 don't regard this as an exciting or controversial
philosophical thesis. ,,10 If trial by argument is the method of
philosophical inquiry - as opposed to, say, experimental methods in the
sciences or calculations and proofs in mathematics-and "the way the
world is" is a substitute phrase for "truth," then philosophical argument
must lead to philosophical truth. Isn't that what the Socratic dialectic is
all about?
Stalnaker is, of course, patently wrong about one thing: at least
with respect to philosophical inquiry, his thesis is tremendously
controversial. Some philosophers would take issue with the
assumption that there are any peculiarly philosophical truths at all, and
that the end of philosophical inquiry is something else, e.g., wisdom
rather than knowledge, enlightenment rather than confusion, or
something to be found in the process itself rather than in its results.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in both his earlier and later philosophies, falls
into this category. Other philosophers are skeptical about the concept
of truth itself. Richard Rorty, for example, provides a stark contrast
both with his general suspicions about truth as well as his specific and
with his emphatic insistence that truth is not the goal of inquiry.11 The
latter position dovetails well with emerging alternative conceptions of
argument. Argumentation can, of course, be understood as a dialectical
process asymptotically approaching tnlth. However, it can also be
conceptualized as a process for resolving disagreement, as a heuristic
process for building and exploring theories, as a logical process for
testing theories, and as a negotiating process for optimally satisfying
the desiderata of multiple parties.
12
There ought to be more to
philosophical argumentation than winning and losing - even when
winning is understood as reaching Truth.
The point to notice is that while anti-realists may reject the realists'
image of a dialectical avenue leading to Truth, they still see argument
as the proper vehicle for travelling down the road of inquiry.
Philosophers may disagree about where they're heading - or even if
they are heading somewhere at all - but there appears to be widespread
agreement on how to travel nonetheless.
13
But, as noted above, the
implicit agreement between realists and anti-realists that argument is
the proper methodology for philosophy can mask important differences
about how to argue.
In addition to the historical and methodological grounds for
thinking of argumentation as central to philosophy, there are
motivations arising from issues of significant theoretical substance.
These arise from concerns about the nature of philosophical claims, as
well as a more general uneasiness about philosophy itself.
First, there are questions about the nature of philosophical claims.
For the most part, philosophers do not intend to make the sort of
empirically verifiable truth-claims that constitute science. It would
seem, then, that their assertions do not contribute to a description of the
world.
14
Neither are philosophical claims meant to be sterile
tautologies, merely psychological or conceptual claims, or, like
mathematics, the inevitable products of deductive calculation. One
appealing alternative is to conceive of philosophical theories as having
a creative and aesthetic dimension - works of art except for the fact
that, for the most part, philosophical writing lacks the sort of art that
could compensate for abandoning any claim to cognitive content and
value.
In sum, philosophical theories do not fit on either side of the
analytic-synthetic divide, and they cannot be justified by appeal to art.
What is left for philosophy, then, is its status as a process, a matter of
how it is done, rather than what it says or the answers it gives to why.
Since argument is precisely what philosophers do well, by training and
by predilection, philosophy becomes identified with the process of
argumentation rather than any specific product.
The uneasiness that some philosophers feel with regard to
philosophical propositions has an echo in the discomfort that many
share concerning all the other products of philosophy. Philosophical
discoveries are few and far between. Philosophical theories do not
stand the test of time, but neither are they supplanted by obviously
better successor theories. And there is little enlpirical evidence that
studying philosophy really does help make us better human beings. For
all the rhetoric about philosophy as the foundation for all understanding
and knowledge - philosophy as the would-be "meta-narrative for all
justification narratives" - there is an uncertainty about the exact place
for philosophy in the constellation of intellectual endeavors. Is
philosophy like the sciences, as Russell thought?15 Or is it science that
is like philosophy, as on Quine's account?16 Is philosophy more like a
conceptual counterpart to therapeutic psychiatry than descriptive
psychology?l? Or, in the end, is it an Art? Regardless of the status of
its theories, a good argument deserves respect. It is the one currency
that philosophers mint that is recognized across all disciplinary
boundaries.
Endnotes
1. See Part III below for an account of metaphors and their special role in
philosophy.
2. It would undoubtedly be better to talk about the myriad relations that each
of the many discourses of contemporary philosophy has with its own
historical antecedents as well as with the various overlapping histories of
other philosophical discourses. Whitehead's remark can then be seen as
placing Plato in the intersection of the histories of all the sub-sets of
philosophy.
3. For relevant discussions see Kosman 1986, A. Rorty 1986, Lloyd 1993,
and Gordon unpublished.
4. For example, the whole series of arguments for skepticism in the
Meditations, culminating in the Evil Demon, is a sustained dialogic
engagement with skeptics.
5. The distinction between Truth and truths is drawn in the introductory
essay in Rorty 1982, and returned to frequently.
6. Gilbert 1997 p. 13.
7. This issue is returned to in the final chapter.
8. Danto 1983, p. 67 in Rajchman and West 1985.
9. See Kuhn 1970.
10. Stalnaker 1984 p. x.
11. Rorty 1998, pp. 19-42.
12. Gilbert 1997, p. 136, writes, "the most general goal of the activity of
argumentation is agreement." While this is one of the general assumptions
of coalescent argumentation, it is not equally applicable to all kinds of
arguments.
13. As the sage Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, "We may be lost, but
we're making good time!"
14. There is a striking articulation of this attitude in the Tractatus at
propositions 4.1 and 4.11. Wittgenstein 1961.
15. Russell, in "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," takes the task of
philosophy to describe the world. Analysis is necessary insofar as it
reveals the "ultimate constituents" of the world. The difference is that
"philosophy is that part of science which at present people... have no
knowledge about." Russell, 1918, Lecture VIII.
16. Quine's comtnent, "Ontological questions, under this view, are on a par
with questions of natural science," ought to be read as making a more
significant claim about science than about philosophy. Quine 1951.
17. Wittgenstein 1958, 133. See also Wisdom 1936.
CHAPTER 3
Argument is War ... and War is HeIr
What I now want to do but will not do - is argue against the
thesis of the previous chapter, viz., that argumentation is central to
philosophy. The strong counter-thesis here is that there is no place for
argumentation in either philosophy or education, and, accordingly, it is
especially true that there is no place for argumentation in philosophical
education. Since this is both a philosophical and pedagogical issue,
there would be something paradoxical, and self-defeating, about any
possible argument that I could offer, so I will not even try, although I
am sure some pretty interesting arguments for it could be constructed.
Instead, I shall try to explain what I mean by the thesis, rather than
argue for it or defend it, in the usual sense of the words, from critical
comment. Like a first proposal before a small town meeting, the ideas
suggested here are not offered as final products, but as fodder for others
to develop.
Any explanation needs to begin with the relevant concepts of
argument, of philosophy, and of education because the thesis at hand is
most provocative or objectionable only against some specific, but
common,. conceptual backdrops. Although these three concepts can be
thought of separately, there are important connections among them, and
it is not easy to weave them into a single coherent fabric that preserves
their integrity as autonomous concepts while respecting their nuanced
inter-relations. Certain conceptions of what philosophy is, for exalnple,
are incompatible with some teaching methodologies, and conversely,
some pedagogies implicitly depend on certain assun1ptions about the
nature of philosophy.
Specifically, I think the inclusion - or intrusion - of argument into
philosophy occurs in one of two ways, with very different
consequences for education. First, arguments may be thought of as the
testing ground for ideas, and thus the way of securing the truth. As
such, this implicates the kind of realist metaphysics that, at the
metaphilosophical level, is at odds with both the anti-dogmatic
conception of process education and the notion that education is really
Imore .a matter of edification than of indoctrination. In that case,
argumentation may well be an appropriate way to teach f!:.philosophy,
but it is an altogether inappropriate way to teach philosophy.
Alternatively, an argument-centered pedagogy might issue from a
Post-Modern rejection of logic and concomitant embrace of rhetoric
\\lith the result that, in effect, all possible philosophies are devalued in
favor of the act of philosophizing itself. In that case, argumentation
becomes an end in itself and a means to nothing at all. Skill in
argumentation would then be relevantfor training a philosopher, but at
the expense of making philosophical training irrelevant for any
philosophy. There has to be a middle ground.
As Lakoff and Johnson point out, our understanding of the concept
"argument" is both reflected by and molded by the particular metaphor
that argument-is-war? While this is not meant to serve as a definition
for "argument," it does characterize how we think about arguments,
talk about arguments, and engage in arguments. Despite any
ambiguities and subtle nuances of the word "argument," this metaphor
manages to dominate our discourse about arguments and our
argumentation practice. We routinely speak, for example, of strong, or
even killer, arguments and powerful counterattacks, of defensible
positions and winning strategies, and of weak arguments that are easily
shot down while strong ones carry a lot offirepower and are right on
target. Since success can be achieved in many ways, ready arguers
should have a well stocked arsenal at their disposal, one whose
weapons include the brute force of reason, the carefully constructed
ambush, the verbal jujitsu of Socratic elenchus, the enaging analogy,
the deadly barbs of satire, or perhaps even the bombshell of a surprise
revelation! If all else fails, there are filibusters that lay siege.
Moreover, we continue to use this language to describe arguments even
after we have very carefully and very conscientiously distinguished
what we do as philosophers, critics, and educators from the shouting,
name-calling, and animosity that characterize dysfunctional families,
relationships gone awry, and contentious faculty meetings.
3
The arguments that concern us as intellectuals are supposed to be
sustained chains of reasoning, impersonal in their execution and with
only the noblest provenance in the dispassionate search for tnlth. Our
arguments, it goes without saying, exhibit only the highest kind of
critical detachment and academic objectivity. In what may be called
the "official pedagogical" understanding of arguments, they are more
like mathematical proofs than they are like verbal warfare. Well, once
upon a time, that Enlightened, Modem story may have been plausible,
but we live in a Post-Modem, more cynically self-aware time. We now
Argument is War . .. and War is Hell 37
know that that story really does have to follow the words "once upon a
time" because it describes a fairy-tale sort of time and place. We do
want our arguments to be civil, of course, and our goal is carefully
reasoned sequences of the purest rationality, conceptual constructions
whose elegance, if not Truth, is plain for all to see. But we also want
them to be forceful and strong and, well, compelling. The language of
warfare remains. There is still a victory to be won. "Wouldn't it be
better," asks Robert Nozick, fancifully but both provocatively and
insightfully,
if philosophical arguments left the person no possible answer at all,
reducing him to impotent silence? Even then, he might 3it ,there
silently, smiling, Buddhalike. Perhaps philosophers need arguments
so powerful they set up reverberations in the brain: if the person
refuses to accept the conclusion, he dies. How's that for a powerful
argument?4
We need to take a reflective step back and ask, along with Nozick,
"Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is
that a nice way to behave toward someone?"
The point is that whether the operative notion of argument is as
proof-Ieading-to-truth or as language-game-Ieading-to-agreement,
arguments are being conceived as having an essentially adversarial
structure. The true beliefs that an argunlent's losers have been given,
are coerced beliefs; and, alternatively, the agreement to which they are
now party, is an imposed agreement. It should be obvious that
something has gone seriously awry when we are comfortable
describing someone who comes out of an argument with new, well-
justified beliefs as the "loser." This is the sort of consideration that,
carried to its extremes, has led one feminist critic to say that any intent
to persuade is an act of violence,s an attitude that effectively puts an
end to all rational discourse and any possible exchange of ideas. But
surely, education and philosophy do not need to be conceived as having
an adversarial essence
6
- if indeed they are thought to have any essence
at all. The argument-is-war metaphor does both reflect our thought and
inform our practice, but it is still just a metaphor. It is not an
immutable part of the conceptual landscape; it can be changed; and
indeed it should be changed to fit the contexts of philosophy and
education. They should have goals more in line with the original
Pragmatic vision than either Tru t h, whether thought of as a
transcendental ideal or even as Peirce's idealized notion of truth as the
end of inquiry, or else argumentative victory, the merely rhetorical
accomplishment of persuasion. A more orthodox Pragmatic goal for
philosophy and education is the simple "furtherance of inquiry." For
this, ne\v metaphors for arguments are needed, metaphors that can
accommodate cooperation as well as competition.
There are, of course, some very significant educational benefits to
be reaped by building the curriculum around arguments - conceived
now as chains of reasoning to convince, persuade, or (let's face it) force
the listener to accept a conclusion. But what if there just aren't any
propositions that it is so important for students to believe that teachers
are philosophically justified inforcing our students to believe thenl? If
the Truth really is mighty and shall prevail, our arguments should not
be necessary. Still, regardless of the metaphysics, there is an obvious
and legitimate place in the classroom for argumentation simply because
of the undeniable value of clear and careful thinking, of rigorous and
exact expression, and of quick and able evaluation. These skills are
intellectual coin of the realm, immediately recognizable as valuable in
any endeavor whatsoever, and so need not be rehearsed here.
7
Moreover, they can indeed be taught (or at least improved with the
right kind of tutelage), so their place in the classroom should be non-
controversial. Such skills are, to revert to the metaphor, effective
weapons in the intellectual arsenal. But, like all other weapons, they
can be misused, and that can be dangerous. And, like any weapons,
they practically beg to be used. Who is as insufferable as the beginning
logic student who has finally learned how to let post hoc ergo propter
hoc and argumentum ad hominem roll flowingly off the tip of her
tongue, or the first year law student as he eagerly cites burden of proof
precedents or insists on simple answers to complex questions?
I do not mean to be facetious in offering these minor nuisances as
examples of a possible downside to structuring the classroom
environment around competitive debate, but there are these costs, and
others, to be considered. Fronl the start, debates presuppose that the
subject at hand can be carved into distinct and opposing positions, and
this tends to squeeze the discussion of even the most complex questions
into a black-and-white view of the world.
8
And in the end, dialogues
framed by the argument-is-war metaphor require winners and losers.
There is, accordingly, a price to be paid in terms of "casualties," in this
case, the personal humiliation suffered by the vanquished. No doubt,
the ~ r of humiliation can be a very powerful motivational tool, one
that can be very, very effective. It has even been the pedagogical
method of choice in some long-standing and still vital traditions.
Argunlenf is War . .. and War is Hell 39
However, it has fallen into some disrepute recently - and not without
good reason.
There are a number of different ways that this can be counter-
productive to education. First, and most obvious, there is a high
personal price to be paid in terms of individuals' self-images. Even if
that is discounted as being outside the classroom or irrelevant or
negligible to the business of teaching some specific subject matter,
there is also an attendant risk of long-term alienation from education.
Both long-range utilitarian calculations and Kantian considerations
from the dignity of the person as a mernber of the kingdom of ends-in-
themselves converge on the idea that this is not how we ought to be
treating our students. This is not to say that we should be
overprotective in nurturing our students, although that direction has
probably not been the extreme more commonly taken, but simply that
we should enter into the business of actively promoting adversarial
argumentation with some circumspection.
There are also potential costs to be paid by the other side, by the
"winners" who are regularly successful disputants. These are much
easier to overlook. Victory can be intoxicating, and its effect can be
further magnified by the nearly irresistible positive reinforcement of the
full range of scholastic rewards. There is a clear message here, and it is
not the officially stated one: Insight and understanding are nice, of
course, but if you want to get ahead, cleverness and rhetorical dexterity
are what really matter in life. It is the flashy Philadelphia lawyers who
attain celebrity status, not the reflective legal scholars. Besides, who is
there to argue the point? It may be expecting too much of academics,
whose careers, after all, are often built precisely on the talents in
question, to offer sustained critiques of those talents.
One series of dangers, then, of arguments in the classroom is that
when such education is successful, i.e., when students acquire the skills
and become adept in the art of forensics, the result may well be not just
able arguers, but argumentative arguers: proficient, pedantic and petty.
And when the use of argumentation in the classroom is not successful,
the students have not just failed to gain anything, they may well have
lost something.
If we set aside the Realisnl that supposes arguments lead to truth--
that line of thinking that takes a mathematical proof as the paradigm
fonn of argument - a different set of benefits and costs can come into
focus. For exanlple, one of the great pedagogical virtues of
argumentation is that it demands a certain degree of engagement with
the subject matter. It combats "passive learning," the bane of educators
the world over. Even this may have a negative side. Without going so
far as to celebrate passivity, we can recognize that there can be as many
different successful learning styles as there are teaching styles. There
may be some students who really do learn best just by listening very
well. In that case, the classroom use of argumentation is a Procrustean
bed into which all students can be made to fit... but for some the fit
will be more damaging than for others.
Arguing about a topic does presuppose some engagement with that
topic, and that is all to the good, but what about the quality of that
engagement?9 Proficient debaters, like good lawyers, are prepared to
argue either side of a question, and that kind of preparation generally
precludes a strong commitment to one side or the other. What if a
genuine understanding of one side in the debate requires the
commitment of a sympathetic reading? If that is ever case, then
preparing to argue will get in the way of interpretation. Thus, when we
ask our students to argue for one side in a debate on some issue, we
could be making it harder for them even to understand the other side. 10
And shouldn't our students - and we ourselves, for that matter - have
some strong commitments? Everything may be debatable, but that does
not mean that everyone should in fact debate everything. Good trial
lawyers should not be the only recognized legitimate end product of an
educational system. There ought to be room for educating activists.
Put another way and with a slightly different emphasis, a pragn1atic
philosophy of education will recognize more ways of being practical
than just the vocational.
Along with these questions about the level and quality of the
engagement with the material required by arguments, and about
learning styles and pedagogical strategies, there is another, more
fundamental question to be considered, one that will be raised here, but
left to others to pursue: What is the ideology of argumentation?
Academic objectivity is presupposed by arguments-as-proofs, while
critical detachment is a presupposition for arguments-as-Ianguage-
games, yet from another perspective, both "academic objectivity" and
"critical detachment" are grotesque oxymorons. There is a largely
unexamined ideology to arguments that needs to be subject to its own
argumentative scrutiny. What the pervasive argument-is-war metaphor
reveals is that the operative ideology commits us, if not to truth and
falsity, or to right and wrong sides, at the very least to winners and
losers.
To be sure, there are alternative understandings of argumentation
available. I think it completely justified to speak of the progress that
has been made in characterizing argumentation by exploiting the
resources of speech act theory, critical theory, formal logic, rhetorical
analysis, and all the other relevant conceptual tools at our disposal. To
take one example, arguments can be characterized in terms of their
various linguistic roles or in terms of their perlocutionary effects as
conversational episodes. From that perspective, one of the primary
functions of an argument is "enhancing the acceptability of the speech
act for which it is an argument."}} What I like about this particular
formula, besides its succinct elegance, is how it abstracts to a level
from which the adversarial element can be regarded as merely an
accidental means to a more important end, thereby allowing for other
means to that end. It creates room for answers to the question of why
someone might seek arguments for something she already believes; the
argument-is-war metaphor does not. We are not at war with ourselves
when we create arguments to buttress our already held beliefs. The
formula at hand also endorses the possibility of arguing for something
without arguing against anybody; and again, the argument-is-war
metaphor cannot easily accommodate that. The acceptability of a
speech act can always be increased, which explains why "preaching to
the converted" is not necessarily an idle exercise. Another happy
consequence of this conception of arguments is that it helps explain
why explanations might qualify as arguments. This seems meet since
explanations constitute a large part of many arguments. Explanation
can indeed serve as a kind of justification, and justification generally is
the province of argument.
This points to a way to articulate the connection between
interpretation and argumentation that was suggested earlier: in order to
understand some texts, a certain kind of sympathetic reading can be
necessary. This might involve speculating about an author's motives,
providing a charitable interpretation for apparently inconsistent
passages, or the like. From the perspective provided by thinking of
arguments along the speech-act lines just presented, then reading looks
a lot like arguing with the author. Readers need to argue with, 111eaning
alongside, the author rather than with, meaning against, the author, in
order to enhance whatever it is that the text is saying, showing, or
doing. And, needless to say, authors and readers do not have to be
adversaries. The "argument" between them is not adversarial. This is
not, to be sure, how students of philosophy are typically taught to read
a philosophical text. They are trained to read "critically," Le., they are
trained to read with a combatant's eye, an eye that is open for any
weaknesses in the argument that can be turned to advantage in a critical
paper. All too often we read the way we argue in another respect: we
read with "our defenses up" lest we be convinced of something we did
not want to believe. "I'll be damned if I'm going to let this author
teach me something new!" Since this is not the attitude we want in the
classroom, we should entertain other tropes:
(1) Argument is not war; it is reciprocal reading.
Speech-act approaches have shown that they can shed light on the
subject of argumentation. Unfortunately, what should be understood as
helpful characterizations are all too often interpreted as definitive
analyses or necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., as definitions.
These can then be taken as challenges to other workers in the field to
find or construct both counterexamples that s,hould belong to the
category but do not fit the description, and counterexamples that do fit
the description but should not count as arguments. For the example at
hand, it might be pointed out that one way of enhancing a speech act is
to say it with a smile, but that should hardly count as an argument. Or,
again, revising a poem seems a clear example of a speech-act-
enhancing activity that is just as clearly not an argument. Arguments
may include interpretations, but that does not make all interpreters into
arguers. Conversely, when I tell my son to wear his seat belt, and
answer his question, "Why?" by offering appropriate reasons, I am not
arguing for or enhancing the acceptability of any speech-act, except
under sonle ad hoc reading, although I am certainly arguing for some
act: his buckling his seat belt. While it is certainly helpful to have as
wide a variety of examples as possible at hand, this can degenerate into
an idle academic exercise of exactly the same sort of nit-picking that I
have just done with the counter-examples here. I have taken a very
illuminating characterization and managed to show that, being very,
legalistic, it is, to no one's surprise, inadequate as an analytic
definition. What we need are not new definitions, but new metaphors.
Fortunately, Aristotle was wrong in thinking that metaphor is the work
of genius. On the contrary, metaphor is a linguistic commonplace,
something that every competent language user understands and
employs. It is the creation of those brilliant metaphors that
permanently reshape our thinking that requires genius.
I sometimes think that what good philosophizing and effective
teaching of any kind have in common is that they revolve around the
same kind of activity: the search for just the right metaphor. Metaphors
are more than merely elliptical sinliles or stylistic affectations for
embellished expression. They are vehicles for making the unfamiliar
familiar, which is what makes them particularly important for
education. There is, however, something funny about characterizing
metaphors as linguistic devices for articulating unfamiliar thoughts by
transplanting them into a more familiar context: it buys into the
questionable dichotomy of thought and language. The inlplied model is
that we think things, and then we somehow translate them into written
or spoken words. Thinking and speaking or writing are not nearly as
easily distinguishable as this model suggests. There is some wisdom in
the old chestnut "How am I supposed to know what I think until I hear
what I have to say?" Metaphors are not just elegant or clever ways of
conveying new thoughts; they are also ways of thinking new thoughts,
of grasping those thoughts, and even of formulating them in the first
place. This is what makes the art of metaphor so important for
philosophy. Because I think of both philosophy and education this
way, I think the question that we really should be addressing is not
where and how arguments fit into philosophy and education, but what
metaphors for arguments fit in with the goals of philosophy and
education. It is especially appropriate to ask the question in this form
when philosophy and education are being sung in a Pragmatist key.
The meaning of a metaphor is invariably, and notoriously, under-
determined. This is what stymies reading them as elliptical similes.
Sure, arguments are like war, but how? Everything is like everything
else in some respect, if we are but clever enough to see it. Arguments
are rafts on the sea of uncertainty carrying us to the terra firma of truth.
Arguments are verbal dances responding to inaudible Gricean rhythms
and unknown Jungian syllogisms. Arguments are the mortar holding
together the bricks out of which theories are built. Arguments are
mental exercises for athletes of the intellect. It is not hard, I think, to
make sense out of any of these metaphors, but it is an amazing ability
nonetheless. Interpreting metaphors is nearly the art that creating them
is.
In some respects, interpreting metaphors may actually be the
greater art. The exercise of creating tnetaphors can with relatively little
effort be extended indefinitely. Even restricting ourselves just to traffic
metaphors (and getting carried away with the exercise), we can say that
arguments are (i) conversational traffic jams - (ii) gridlock with a lot
of honking and little movement. Alternatively, (iii) arguments are
conversational traffic accidents. They are (iv) wrong turns, or (v)
detours, or (vi) dead ends or (vii) roundabouts on the streets of
discourse. Or should we say that (viii) they are short cuts to the truth at
the end of the road? Maybe, (ix) they are long and winding roads to
nowhere. Or, instead, we can conceive of arguments as (x) intellectual
one way roads to their conclusions - although maybe they are really
(xi) one-lane roads but with two-way traffic. More positively,
arguments can be thought of as (xii) the merging traffic of ideas or even
better as (xiii) conceptual roads-under-construction.
Conceptual connections like these can be constructed almost at
will. The list can be expanded, if not ad infinitum, then at least ad
nauseam, so that almost any arbitrarily constructed metaphor, even an
initially inscrutable one, such as that arguments are the road kill
alongside the highways of life (ad nauseam indeed!), can be made
intelligible and plausible: both arguments and road kill are to be
avoided, they are the tragic end for those who innocently enter areas of
high traffic, they are what can happen if we are not careful, and so on.
Admittedly, this is stretching the point, but that is exactly what
metaphors do so well. Still, the fact that so many traffic metaphors are
so readily available suggests that they identify an important set of
features about arguments, viz., something about their internal dynamics
and the possible interactions that can arise from them.
12
In contrast to the argument-as-traffic metaphors, the argument-is-
war metaphor makes a different point. What it emphasizes (or creates!)
is the adversarial aspect of argum.entation, which is why this particular
metaphor is objectionable in the classroom. But, interpretation being
an art, other conclusions could also be drawn from the metaphor.
There will always be an indefinitely large supply of abstractable
similarities between the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor, wars and
arguments in this case. Wars may involve n10re than just two parties,
but never less than two, and we usually assume that this is true of
arguments as well.
13
Wars can be ended by simple agreement of the
parties involved, and so can arguments. Wars are occasions that test
the national resolve and sense of identity, while arguments can do the
same for the individual. Wars need not end with a winner and a loser,
because both sides might claim victory, when in fact both sides may
have lost a great deal, and there is surely a counterpart for arguments.
Of course, there are also great differences that might be offered as
counterexamples or counterbalances to the value of this metaphor.
Wars can be prevented by diplomatic efforts, so they represent a failure
of diplomacy. Arguments are not always symptomatic of
communicative failure. Often they are the expressly intended products
of rational inquiry! Indeed, if we include rational engagement under
the rubric "diplomacy," then it is precisely argumentation that can best
prevent wars! Wars can be prevented by arguing, but arguing,
obviously, cannot. Argument, as rational engagement, is antithetical to
military engagement, and the metaphor would then have to be seen as
an ironic reversal. (Then again, if fighting for peace can make sense,
so might arguing for agreement.) If arguments are to be a positive way
of addressing differences, then
(2) Argument is not war; it is diplomatic negotiation.
Two of these just-mentioned features common to war and
argument merit particular attention. First, wars never end up where
they started. The status quo ante bellum can never really be achieved.
What starts out as a war of principle, especially when successful, might
well end up as a war of conquest, and, conversely, the unsuccessful war
for conquest is transformed into a war of principle. Successful
defensive re-actions inevitably seek to pre-empt any possible future
transgressions. What, for example, was the American Civil War all
about? The Vietnam War? The Gulf War? The answers that today's
history books offer differ from the answers given by those wars' own
contemporaries.
Something very similar happens in arguments, especially when
they are thought of as verbal wars. Interestingly, Imre Lakatos has
made just this point with respect to mathematical proofs, the very
paradigms for the "official" picture of arguments as exercises in pure
reason.
14
Proofs and refutations, he argued, are two parts of the same
dialectical process. Counterexamples to proposed theorems, he
maintained, do not in general function as real refutations. Rather, the
role they most often play in mathematics is to demand further
clarification of the intended range of the thesis or to seek greater
articulation in the definitions of the concepts used.
15
The theorems that
result from, or survive, this process are inevitably changed by the
process. That is, what a proof is "all about" changes as the proof
proceeds, and this is no less applicable to other kinds of arguments.
Thus,
(3) Argument is not war; it is the growth and adaptation of thoughts; it
is manifest rationality.16
Wittgenstein reached a very similar conclusion about mathematical
proofs, albeit for different reasons.
17
A proof, he asserted, never proves
what it set out to prove. Proofs establish new conceptual connections
between the thesis in question and other parts of the system of
mathematics. These connections are constitutive of the meanings of the
concepts involved, so the meaning of the sentence proved always has
new semantic-conceptual accretions. Therefore, the sentence that has
been proved, the theorem, can never have exactly the same meaning as
the sentence to be proved, despite their typographic identity. In just the
same way, to revert to an earlier example, no poem can really ever be
revised because any revisions would, in a very real sense, result in a
new and different poem. Is there a way to think of arguments as
altering, or even constructing, new nleanings? That is, can what an
argument is "all about" be subject to the same sorts of historiographic
revisions as the casus belli? It seems so. That is,
(4) Argument is not war; it is the metamorphosis of ideas.
The other feature common to wars and arguments I want to note is
that they are multiple-agent events (or, at least, multi-voice events, to
accommodate those of us who habitually argue with ourselves). It
takes more than one party to start a war or an argument, it takes more
than one party to sustain a war or argument, and it also takes more than
one to finish a war or argument. Just as a war is never really over until
both sides agree to a cessation of hostilities - otherwise there will be a
prolonged guerrilla war, pennanent tensions, or an uneasy truce without
real peace - so too, an argument is never really over until some sort of
consensus has been achieved. Without that, there will be continued
verbal sniping, simmering resentments, or a lingering grudge beneath
the surface. Arguments might result in situations that are analogous to
the results of wars, but there is also the possibility that they end
otherwise. Arguments may result in an exchange of ideas or the birth
of new ideas, rather than just the imposition of one side's ideas on the
other. And this is certainly a legitimate pedagogical role for arguments.
In the classroom, then,
(5) Argument should not even be like war; it should be a kind of cross-
pollination, leading to hybridization.
Alternatively, arguments can end in with the construction of a new
conceptual order, as the Second World War gave birth to the United
Nations. Ideally, in seminar
(6) Argument is not at all war; it is brainstorming.
The best arguments, then, rather than being destructively
adversarial, involve a constructive co-operation between their
participants. There can be a certain "complicity" between the arguer
and the audience.
18
If debate is, to be constructive for everyone
involved, then instead of being a kind of war,
(7) Argument can be more like a barnraising.
Although the language of warfare is so readily used to describe
arguments, there is a difference that is both obvious and important, but
still easy to overlook: arguments, like brainstorming sessions or bam-
raisings, can be desirable in a way that wars cannot. If we focus on the
possible outcomes rather than the origins, the ends rather than the
beginnings, then one way to conceptualize arguments is as those events
in rational discourse that tend to create or lead to consensus. This
combines the transformative-constructivist aspect with the multiple-
agency aspect of arguments in a way that accommodates the move from
philosophy as the pursuit-of-truth to philosophy as the pursuit-of-
wisdom by shifting the balance in emphasis from (to borrow a phrase
from Richard Rorty) objectivity to solidarity, while simultaneously
respecting the possibility of non-competitive or even cooperative
argumentation for educational ends. Simply put: "Let's hash it out"
does not have to mean "Let's fight it out."
Perhaps arguments are more like town meetings than anything else,
because they are sometimes contentious, but sometimes co-operative;
there may be several opposing factions, or only interested but as yet
undecided citizens; sometimes they are divisive and inconclusive, but
sometimes they are indeed constructive; they may begin with a
consensus for action, and serve merely as strategy sessions for
orchestrating actions, or they may begin with a cacophony of voices -
and end the same way.
For all its openness to the variety of forms arguments can take, the
purposes they can serve, and the many possible outcomes that can
result from them, in the end, I don't think the town-meeting metaphor
serves very well. It will not challenge the argument-is-war metaphor, if
only because town meetings do not occupy as prominent a place in our
conceptual geography as war. War, however prominent it may be
conceptually, provides a dangerous metaphor, particularly when it has
been allowed to form, to deform, argumentation in the classroom.
Other metaphors are available, and still others that are even better are
waiting to be created, but in the end I am skeptical that any single
metaphor can fit all the shapes that arguments take or serve all the
purposes that arguments serve. In that case, we do not really need to
come up with a new metaphor to reflect and reform our practice; we
need instead to traffic in as many metaphors as possible - including all
those traffic metaphors!
Endnotes
1. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Ontario Society for
the Study of Argumentation meetings in May 1995 and then appeared, in
modified form, in Informal Logic 17: 177-188.
2. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, pp. 1-6.
3. Many others have noticed this as well, e.g., Nozick 1981, pp. 4-5. Cf.
Michael Gilbert's concept of multi-modal arguments in Gilbert 1997,
ch.6.
4. Nozick, loco cit.
5. This statement has been attributed, on electronic bulletin boards without
citation, to the rhetorician Sally Gearheart.
6. Maryann Ayim 1988, 1991, and elsewhere, has also raised the question of
the metaphors we use to talk about our philosophical discourse and
educational practices.
7. See Govier 1999, esp. ch. 4, for a positive assessment of the adversarial
element in arguments.
8. This important observation was first suggested as being relevant here by
my colleague Jill Gordon. See Govier 1988 for a more extended treatment
of the issue.
9. Andrea Nye, beginning with Nye 1981, has also argued against
pedagogies that overemphasize rhetorical skills, and the combative
structure of discourse about philosophical discourse.
10. I think there is a very important, but all too often overlooked, connection
between argumentation and interpretation that becomes more visible here
than elsewhere. It is addressed more directly below.
11. Haft-Van Rees 1989 attributes this to van Eemeren and Grootendorst.
12. The fact that so many traffic metaphors spring so easily to mind is, of
course, also an indication of how important cars and roads are in our
culture. But arguments, too, must be conceptually high-profile for the
mappings to be so readily available.
13/ The apparent counterexample, arguing with oneself, is addressed below, in
chapter 4, and Part II. See also Perelnlan and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 6-
10.
14. Lakatos 1976, esp., ch. 1, parts 6 - 8.
15. In dialectical approaches to argumentation, the charge that a fallacy has
been committed functions the same way. Ideally, "the charge of fallacy
serves to extend the argument, not to cut off debate" (Johnson and Blair,
1977, p. 200)
16. This felicitous phrase is taken from the title of Johnson 2000.
17. Wittgenstein 1956, e.g., II-31: "One would like to say: the proof changes
the grammar of our language, changes our concepts. It makes new
connexions, and it creates the concept of these connexions. (It does not
establish that they are there; they do not exist until it makes them.)"
18. The term is used by Farrell, cited by Tindale 1999, p. 15.
CHAPTER 4
One Way to Lose an Argument!
Tolstoy's comment about families - that the happy ones all
resemble one another, but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own
way- can also be said of arguments. Good arguments, like happy
families, can provide an environment for growth, rather than just a
habitat for survival. They are worth seeking out and sustaining. When
they are successful - when there is serious, respectful, and constructive
dialogue - it can appear as if there were a natural and self-sustaining
equilibrium, with little to remark. In contrast, no one wants to be part
of either a dysfunctional family or a dysfunctional argument, but it
sometimes seems that the more dysfunctional the situation, the more its
participants feel the need to say. Fortunately for argumentation
theorists (if not family counselors and friends), it is generally the
unhappy examples that are the most interesting for speculative theorists
and the most entertaining for non-participant spectators. There is,
however, one very notable exception to this, an unhappy argument that
loses its appeal to spectators rather quickly - the interminable filibuster.
As uninteresting as filibusters may be to spectators, they are an odd
case that should be of great interest to argumentation theorists.
There are many ways of conceptualizing arguments.
3
T\vo models
were addressed in the previous chapter: arguments-as-war and
argunlents-as-proofs. These stand out prominently because they are so
COlllmon and so compelling yet they embody completely different
criteria for success and failure. For many, the first thing that comes to
mind when we ~ p k of arguments is the idea of some kind of verbal
warfare. This is the "adversarial" paradigm for arguments, sometimes
thought of as the subj ect of rhetoric.
4
Two arguers are each trying to
persuade the other of something, or to do something, while
simultaneously trying to resist all of the other's attempts at persuasion.
This is the notion of arguments that is enshrined in what Robert Nozick
has called "coercive philosophy" - making people believe things
whether they want to or not.
s
It is also manifest in what we saw in the
last chapter: the militaristic language we use to talk about arguments.
Even if the militaristic language of arguments-as-war is avoided,
6
other
common descriptions of arguments resort to the language of the agon
or sporting contest. Of these, boxing metaphors predominate.
7
Knockdown arguments carry lots of punch, while bad arguments are
weak. Strong, defensive positions should be able to withstand a
barrage of body-blows, but perhaps not cheap shots or, worse, low
blows that hit below the belt. And, if we are fortunate enough to be
called away from a losing argument, we can be indeed be saved by the
bel/.
The result of a successful argument, according to the adversarial
paradigm, is the end of resistance and a victory over the now converted
opposition who henceforth will believe or act in accordance with the
dictates of the winner. From the other side, this means that
unsuccessful arguments suffer a particularly ignominious kind of
failure: losing.
But isn't there something wrong with this picture? If someone has
successfully constructed an argument leading us to a true, or at least
now-warranted, conclusion, why should we feel that we have lost rather
than gained something? Why are we resentful rather than grateful?
The discomfort arises because there are other ways to conceptualize
arguments that also appeal to us as arguers and holds sway in our
thoughts. An argument is an extended chain of reasoning - a sequence
of elements, propositions or speech acts, say - in which acceptance of
the starting points, the premises, leads or commits one, in some logical
sense, to accepting the final elenlent, the conclusion. We subject
ourselves to the less arbitrary, more universal, and more benevolent
"dictates of reason" rather than to those of any lesser master. This is
the core of the "argument as proof' paradigm, the subject of logic. It is
the ideal of reasoning that is embodied (we like to think) in the pages of
academic journals of mathematics and symbolic logic. There is a
normative force to this ideal that is integral to our evaluations of
arguments.
As it has been characterized, the argument-as-proof paradigm is
not limited to propositions or indicative sentences. As in argunlents-as-
war, nothing rules out arguments ending in imperatives, questions,
promises, or metaphors. Since we do speak of the "logic of a situation"
when considering historical circumstances and dramatic narratives,
perhaps even non-linguistic acts can be seen as logical conclusions
How to Lose an Argument 53
from antecedent "reasons."g What this paradigm does suppose is an
irresistible path to its conclusion. Success for arguments-as-proofs,
therefore, is achieved when the path has been constructed or followed
to that conclusion. This concept of success allows for several different
ways to fail at arguments-as-proofs: a chain of reasoning can fall short
of reaching its conclusion, it can reach the wrong conclusion, or it can
reach the right conclusion in the wrong way, e.g., by an illicit shortcut.
That is, arguments as proofs are flawed when they exhibit any of those
old familiars, the fallacies.
9
As embarrassing as it may be to lose one's way in an argument, it
is still better than the indignity of losing an argument. Indeed, losing
an argument is possible only within the adversarial model.
You cannot lose an argument-as-proofargument!
We do speak of someone's having been "defeated" by a tough
proof, so after a fashion, there is a way to "lose" a proof, but this is
hardly the same phenomenon as losing an argument-as-war argument.
It presupposes the personification of logic, mathematics, or whatever
body of knowledge presented the challenge, but that personification
does not have to be made. The conceptual challenges that present
themselves to us need not be seen as having been presented to us by
anyone. Of course, for arguments-as-proofs to have any effect on us,
they have to be more than just inferentially connected sequences of
propositions: they have to be presented to us. Arguments are also
presentations.
The failures that beset argunlents-as-proof are peculiar to that
paradigm. They do not really apply to arguments-as-war. An arguer
can lose her way, reach the wrong conclusion, or make illicit inferences
in adversarial arguments, but these are failures only insofar as they
"weaken" the argument and thereby contribute to defeat. Since, as a
matter of empirical fact, red herrings, hasty generalizations, and other
classical fallacies often do succeed in convincing the audience, they can
actually help to win arguments - which is to say that they can
strengthen arguments-as-war even as they weaken arguments-as-proof.
A fallacy is an illicit form of argument, but all is fair in love and war.
Thus, in a very real sense:
There are no fallacies in argument-as-war arguments. 10
I take it that this is what is meant by the provocative claim, "The
axiom of all rhetoric is the principle of insufficient reason. ,,11 The
thing to worry about is contingently unsuccessful rhetorical strategies.
Necessarily invalid logical fallacies are worrisome only insofar as they
might be recognized as such, thereby disarmed, and rendered
ineffective.
Focusing on the differences separating these two paradigms does
an injustice to the class of arguments as a whole, however, if it means
ignoring their kinship. There are similarities and affinities to be
respected between the two models for arguments - more than just the
empirical, psychological facts about humans that the arguments that are
most persuasive happen to be the logically valid ones and vice-versa,
and conversely, that egregiously fallacious arguments tend not to be
persuasive - although with a distressingly smaller correlation.
Recall the common charge against the Sophists, that they make the
worse argument seem better, a charge often raised by Plato but raised
just as often against philosophers themselves.
12
It appears to endorse
the dichotomy between the logical and adversarial paradigms, and the
coordinate systems that measure good or bad arguments on the one
hand and successful or unsuccessful arguers on the other. This tacitly
identifies rhetorical skill with argumentative effectiveness, but they are
not the same thing. It is easy enough to let the difference go
unrecognized because they are so often congruent, but what happens
when we are confronted with either an argument that is both cogent and
well-argued that still loses, or an argument that is both fallacious and
poorly argued yet manages to win? Neither of these should be possible
on this scheme, but both do occur. There is some uncharted territory
between the adversarial and logical regions on our map of arguments. 13
Plato's charge seems to involve two elements, the arguers who are
skillful and their arguments, which misleadingly appear to be good. A
third party is implicated, however, because apparently good arguments
can only be apparently good when there is someone for them to appear
to an opponent or a jury or a witness - in sum, an audience. No one
accuses either Sophists or Philosophers of deliberately trying to pull the
wool over their own eyes. They have to have a target audience. Once
the audience has been given its place, the odd phenomena of well-
presented, valid, losing arguments and poorly presented, fallacious, but
winning arguments can be explained.
There is a model for arguments that explicitly accommodates the
audience, one that is midway between the extremes of the solitary
logician's crystalline proofs and the obstinate contrarian's disputatious
bickering. It is the classical model of argument-as-performance, and
the arguer as rhetor whose arguments were public presentations.
14
Argumentation is an art - like warfare. There is an art to choosing
one's weapons - and to choosing one's arguments. Different
opponents respond differently to different strategies. Just as a naval
blockade might succeed against some seaports, but not those with easy
overland access, so too, satire might work well before some audiences
but not others. At a political rally, lampooning the opposition is always
good sport; before the Justices of a High Court, it might not be so wise.
Classical rhetors would recognize the lawyer making his case
before a jury, a politician rallying her audience, and activists exhorting
their listeners as their modern-day counterparts. In each case, there is
an obvious performative element in presenting the argument. To
evaluate and even just to understand public arguments like these, the
performative dimension has to be distinguished from the question of
efficacy and then accorded its own theoretical prominence. We need to
focus for a moment on making the case, rather than on the case itself or
its e f f e t ~ Le., on the oratorical aspects rather than the purely
inferential or adversarial, rhetorical ones. (The performative dimension
to argument is not limited to the spoken word, so the use of the term
"oratorical" is unfortunate if it is taken to exclude viewing the
pontifications of editorial columnists or the polemics of other print
media propagandists through the arguments-as-performance lens. They
are open to many of the same sorts of performative successes' and
failures as orally presented arguments.)
Arguments-as-performances share features with both arguments-
as-proofs and argulnents-as-war. Like proofs, presented arguments
largely escape the give-and-take of dialogue that characterizes
arguments-as-war. Thus, a rhetor making a case does not need even an
opponent to argue. That gives her the option of totally ignoring her
opponents, if they are present, and adopting the form and trappings of
an argument-as-proof - including such rhetorically powerful linguistic
markers as "thus," "hence," and "therefore" that are characteristic of
proofs. (Thus, as should be obvious, authors of philosophical texts who
also present arguments have that same option!) Like adversarial
arguments, however, presented arguments have targets to persuade:
audiences. The target audience may just be the opponents, but not
necessarily. Not only can rhetors ignore their opponents, they can
ignore the canons of deductive reasoning and rational dialogue! All the
emotionally compelling appeals and techniques of adversarial
arguments are available including demonizing or ridiculing those
ignored opponents. Absent opponents are still opponents, and no less a
rallying point for their silence. Indeed, their silence just makes the
argument that much easier to pursue. For the determined rhetor, the
inconvenient lack of opponents can always be remedied by imagined
ones. Even just the potential opposition of residual internal doubts
serves to focus - as well as explain and justify - preaching to the
converted and arguing with oneself. IS
When arguments are viewed as perfonnances, they become subject
to evaluation by new criteria - in addition to the criteria used for
evaluating proofs and disputes. To be fully successful, arguments-as-
performances must be well presented. Even an argument that passes
both logical and rhetorical muster, reaching its conclusion both validly
and persuasively can be counted a failure of a sort if it does not do it
artfully as well. Naturally, additional criteria for success implicate
additional ways to go wrong. Arguments fail as performances when
they are boring, offensive, unimaginative, inelegant, inappropriate, etc.
Most of these failures are already recognizable as rhetorical failings
and so might be included in the argument-as-war paradigm - but not
all. Boring, offensive, unimaginative, inelegant, and inappropriate
arguments may yet be persuasive.
Presenting a good argument can, of course, be a factor in
presenting an argument well, so the performative paradigm for
arguments is not independent of the logical one. And since many of the
things that make the presentation of an argun1ent a good presentation
also serve to make it an effective one, the adversarial and performance
paradigms are also intimately connected. For example, one obvious
way of presenting an argument well is to do so with wit. The fact that
wit is an effective argumentative weapon, i.e., a good strategy to use in
arguments-as-war, has been recognized by writers on rhetoric from
Aristotle to the present day. Of course, the wittier arguer need not be
the one who wins the argument, so the categories do diverge. In a
similar vein, an argument can be "unconvincing" in two ways. It can
fail to convince the listener to accept its conclusion, which is an
argumentative failure, but it can also fail to convince the listener that
the arguer himself sincerely accepts the conclusion, which is a
performative failure on par with an "unconvincing" dramatic
performance. All combinations are possible. Artful and valid
arguments are 110t always persuasive, artful and persuasive arguments
are often invalid, and valid and persuasive arguments need not be
artful.
The two troublesome possibilities mentioned above - sound, well
argued but ultimately unpersuasive arguments and fallacious, poorly
argued but persuasive ones - can now be broached. Under what
conditions can unsuccessful arguers claim that they both had the better
argument and were the better arguers? Somehow, the cards n1ust have
been stacked against them. What if they were stuck having to argue a
losing proposition from the outset? Even the most accomplished
lawyers sometimes have to yield to the evidence. But in that case, they
cannot really clain1 to have had the better arguments. If an argument
really is a good one and the arguer really did present it well, wouldn't it
be unfair to deny her her rightful victory? Her case and what she
makes of it may be in her control, but there is that third element which
is not: the audience. Even the most artful arguer, armed with the most
cogent arguments, will not always win if he is not given a fair hearing,
say, or the audience was prejudiced against his position, or the audience
was incapable of recognizing the excellence of his argument. A fair
hearing requires an attentive, impartial, and competent audience.
Unfortunately, very often the only audience for our arguments is the
opposing disputant, so the ideal conditions for a fair hearing are as
rarely met in ordinary argumentation as a deductively valid argument.
Notice how the language of morals has inexorably worked itself
into the discourse: rightful victory will come with afair hearing from
an impartial audience. Good arguers with good arguments should win.
The same thing occurs in the contrary case, winning arguments that are
neither good nor well presented. Bad arguers with bad arguments
should not win. It is not just logically offensive. It is aesthetically
offensive. And it is morally offensive.
This could have been expected. When arguments are viewed as
acts, they are subject to judgment as acts, and moral judgments are the
most important judgments we make of acts. Thus, in assessing
arguments-as-performances, one of the ways we can consider them as
failures is when they fall short ethically. For example, even a well-
reasoned and successfully persuasive argument can be counted as a
kind of failure if by the use of certain language it is inappropriate or
offensive. Sirriilarly, winning an argun1ent but losing a friend is more
loss than victory, more of a tragedy than a success story. Arguments-
as-performances fail in their own ways.
It might be countered that these ethical, aesthetic, and larger-
context failures are largely irrelevant for argun1entation theorists
because they are not really argumentative failures. Offensive
arguments fail not as arguments but as interpersonal actions more
generally. Not all flaws that arguments are heir to are argumentative
flaws. An argument that has grammatical flaws, for example, may be
no less successful as an argument on that account. There are, however,
some performative failures, that are indeed relevant for evaluating
arguments qua arguments - and I think that the filibusters mentioned
above provide a case in point.
Over the years, the United States Senate has given logicians more
good examples of bad arguments-as-proofs than are really needed. The
Senate has also been most generous in filling rhetoricians' needs for
good examples of bad arguments-as-war. As chance would have it,
even some good examples of good arguments have managed to emerge
from that august institution. Yet curiously, neither logicians nor
rhetoricians have had much to say about the filibuster, the Senate's
most infamous contribution to the history of arguments. Filibusters
distinguish the U.S. Senate from most of the other parliaments and
legislatures around the world that have also been noteworthy
contributors to humanity's store of bad arguments. Filibustering is the
art of endlessly prolonging the debate to prevent any decisive action on
the issue at hand. If defeat is imminent, but there are no time limits on
what can be said, then the argument can be prolonged indefinitely - and
defeat can be postponed indefinitely, with the delaying tactics of the
filibuster ending only when the opposition gives in from sheer
exhaustion. They are the height of obstructionism - and
unsurpassingly frustrating.
For all the abuse that can be directed against them, the fact remains
that filibusters can be very effective. They make no pretensions to
logical validity, nor do they have any aspirations to oratorical
excellence. As would-be proofs, they may be abject failures.
Randomly reading from the telephone book has very little relevance for
just about any issue that could conceivably come before the Senate for
consideration. As performances, they may be utterly artless and so
equally abject. A few weeks seasoning will turn even the most
melodious drawl of the grandest Senate oratory into a mind-numbing
drone. There is no record that the poems that have been entered into
the Congressional record in the course of filibusters were read with any
great feeling or that Senatorial colleagues have ever been moved by
readings from the day's newspapers. And yet, filibusters' effectiveness
within the context of political debate remains unquestioned.
Castigating them as ineloquent or fallacious misses their point. Their
measure has to be taken with a different yardstick.
From one perspective, filibusters can be classed under the category
of the fallacious appeal to force or threat, Argumentum ad Baculum.
The threat is that unless the opposition yields, the filibuster will
continue. In the U.S. Senate, filibusterers take advantage of the time
limits given by the formal structure of their debates (viz., the
constitutional terms for congressional sessions) and the lack of any
time limits for individual Senators' speeches. While other arguers
might not be in exactly that situation, they can exploit the limited
resources of their audiences. Any parent of an insistent 5-year old can
attest to the effectiveness of ceaseless entreaties: uPlease, Daddy, Can
/? Please? Please? Please? Please? Can /? Can /? Can /? ... " UAll
right already!" (The opportunity to juxtapose whiny 5-year-old
children and cranky 95-year-old Senators is irresistible!) If there were
both an eternity of time and an infinitely patient audience, filibusters
would not work. You could not filibuster in an argument with God! 16
From the pragma-dialectical perspective, filibusters are fallacies
because insofar as they prevent debate, they violate the first rule of
critical discussion.
17
This is better, but remember that there are no
fallacies in arguments-as-war. That is why filibusters can be so
successful and so debilitating to a deliberative body like the Senate.
Indeed, Senators have used the mere threat of filibusters more often
than actual filibusters to obstruct the passage of undesired bills. But
does wresting an exhausted or exasperated "All right already!" count as
winning an argument? Since the issue was never really engaged, the
practical or political concessions were not really "won" in rational
argument so much as they were exacted as tribute in extra-rational
struggle. But isn't effective persuasion what the adversarial model for
arguments is all about? Being insistent is just one more time-tested
argumentative strategy, for children and Senators alike, one that is
reinforced by a history of success. In that respect, how does it differ
fronl ad Hominen ridicule, ad Misericordiam tears, or ad Populum
flag-waving - all logical fallacies but, when judiciously used,
rhetorically effective tactics? There is an important difference, though.
None of the classical fallacies work when they are done artlessly but
artfulness is wasted in filibusters: it is just not necessary.
There is another perspective for evaluating filibusters, however,
according to which they are neither dialectical transgressions, nor
logical fallacies, nor rhetorical tactics within structured arguments.
Instead, they are external attacks on the very possibility of argument. 18
Sometimes what filibusters do is block debate rather than win debate.
They do not beg the question; they prevent the question. That sort of
obstructionism has more in common with walking away from an
argument than it does with anything that goes on within the argument.
One way not to lose an argument is not to have the argument, and one
way not to have an argument is to prevent it. If I do not wish to engage
in debate with you, I can simply avoid you. Alternatively, I can shut
my ears so I do not hear what you have to say. Or I can shut your
mouth so you do not have the chance to say it! I can shout you down or
shut you down. Filibusterers effectively shut their opponents'
Inouths.
19
In J. L. Austin's language for describing performative
failures, filibustering as a way to win an argument would be an
"abuse," while filibustering to avoid argument would have to be some
sort of "misfire."zo
The distinction between using a filibuster to win an argument and
using it to prevent an argument is not always clear, but it is clear
enough, enough of the time, to be a useful distinction. The same is true
of walking away from an argument. It can be a way to avoid an
argument, a way to avoid losing an argument, or, if it is a case of
quitting while your ahead, even a way of winning an argument.
The argument-as-petformance model for arguments provides a
framework for accommodating this distinction and for evaluating the
different cases, as well as for recognizing the importance of the
audience and the relevance of the ethics of argumentation. Poor
performance and non-performance are kinds of performative failure,
but they are not the same kind. Criticism of a performance need not be
criticism of the performer, but such criticism perforce requires a
performance. People cannot be taken to task for arguing fallaciously or
ineffectively when they have not argued at all, but there are indeed
times when they can be taken to task for not arguing. This includes
those occasions when the failure of the performance as act is an ethical
failure for which the (non-)performer is the responsible agent. For
example, there are times and places in which we would be remiss were
we not to take issue with someone who said something horribly racist
or sexist. Letting that sort of comment slide may, of course, be the
socially easiest path, but sometimes it is not the right path. An analogy
is provided by some theological terminology: failing to argue may be
an sin of omission rather than a sin of commission. To
sin by commission, we must argue badly.
One immediately recognizable example of a flawed argument-as-
act is the rhetor who presents an inappropriately offensive argument -
successful or not. Suppose a lawyer wins her case but in doing so
managed to alienate the jury, the judge, and her client. That would not
bode well for her career in the long run. The argument was a success,
but certainly not an unqualified success. The qualifications are the
issue at hand. Similarly, a politician might convince you to vote for
him by a dirty, negative campaign directed against his opponent.
Again, the success is not altogether unqualified. There may be negative
How to Lose an Argulnent 61
consequence in future elections down the road - e.g., an increasingly
cynical and alienated electorate. But even if there are no such negative
consequences, the presented arguments should be seen as flawed
arguments. In each case, the rhetor can be said to have sinned. Unlike
fallacies, however, these are not sins against a logical god, but sins
against our fellow humans, viz., the audience.
Sometimes, filibusters are the argumentation counterpart to sins of
omission, and they are similarly blameworthy. Their failure is not in
the arguments they present - there nlight not be any argument
presented at all - but in their failure to present an argument and their
failure to listen to argument. Sometimes there is an obligation to
engage in argument, and when there is, then walking away, covering
one's ears, obstructing debate, or anything else that compromises a fair
hearing is a violation, by either omission or commission, of the ethics
of argument. It is the audience who is, as it were, the sinned-against
party.
All of this leaves completely open the questions of when we have
an obligation to engage in argument and the nature of our obligations,
but it does raise those questions. Moreover, it identifies the objects of
our argumentative obligations: audiences. It is the audience, after all, is
who is offended by our inappropriately offensive arguments, who is
silenced by our filibusters, and who is denied a fair hearing when we
walk away from debate.
Arguments as proofs may be regarded as merely formalist
achievements, but as performances and as adversarial moments in
discourse, arguments are inherently social phenomena. The inclination
to see them as proofs is, in part, an attempt to forget about that social
dimension. It is when we recognize and pay attention to it that we feel
the urge to resort to ethical discourse in characterizing arguments.
Perhaps there is a temptation to classify cases like these as wholly a
matter of ethical failure rather than argumentative failure, as if
argumentation theorists could leave them to the moralists. It is not that
easy, however. Not all performative failures are necessarily ethical
failures. Some performative failures in argument are indeed relevant
for evaluating arguments as arguments. It is not hard to conceive
circunlstances in which walking away from an argument would be
exactly the right thing to do from a larger ethical standpoint, but it
would still count as a performative failure from the argumentation
theorist's standpoint. Argumentation theory needs to say something
about its shortcomings.
The conclusions to be drawn from all this are things we have
known intuitively all along. They should come as no surprise. First,
the canons of reason enshrined in formal logic systems provide one
framework for assessing arguments. It is a normative framework,
transgressions against which are formal fallacies. Second, the
adversarial paradigm that informs so much of our thinking about,
speaking about, and practice of arguments comes with its own criteria
for judging arguments. It is a utilitarian, consequentialist framework.
But third, if these were the only yardsticks available, there would be
neither good arguments presented well that lose nor poorly presented,
fallacious arguments that win. There is a third elenlent in arguments,
the audience, and a third aspect to arguments, the perfonnative one.
We are doing something when we make a case. Actions are subject to
their own evaluative measures. These include, but are not restricted to,
the ethical.
So, if you want to win an argument, there are many ways to do it.
You cannot win if you do not play the game, so you must engage in
argument. No filibusters; no walking away. And you must engage in it
as if it were combat. To regard it heuristically, as a proof in which you
might possibly arrive at the truth, is the wrong approach. What if your
opponent had the right answer? You could not win then - but you
should not want to win then. The attitude needed is the one for hashing
something out or figuring it out, not for fighting it out. .Neither can you
win if you regard arguments wholly as performances. It does not
matter how well you perfonn. Victory does not come in degrees. To
win, then, you must adopt the adversarial stance. Then, present a good
argument. That should suffice. If not, present your best bad argument
very well. That will generally do the trick. If not, there is still a way to
win: choose your opponent and your audience carefully. An
acquiescent or incompetent opponent, and a synlpathetic or gullible
audience can guarantee victory.
But, if what you really want to do is lose an argument, there are
different strategies. You still have to engage in argument; you cannot
walk away. Once engaged, you can present a very bad argument.
Sometimes that is enough. If you have too much logical integrity to
resort to blatant Sophistry, you can present a good argument very
badly. If, however, what you have your heart set on is losing with a
good argument and doing it with style, then your options are more
limited but they are still not yet closed off entirely. You can simply
choose a bad audience, one that will give you a hearing, but neither a
fair nor conlpetent hearing.
If that is what is you want, then serious philosophy must be
avoided at all costs. Philosophy is where the responsibility for
respecting the art of rational argumentation is most acute because part
of reasoning rationally is reasoning about rationality. In the next part,
this principle, the "Principle of Meta-Rationality," becomes the
cornerstone for the project of evaluating arguments - and arguers and
argumentation itself.
Endnotes
1. An earlier version of this was presented at the IVth Congress of the
International Society for the Study of Argument, Amsterdam, Netherlands,
June 1998.
2. L. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, pt. 1, ch. 1.
3. Some of these conceptions, and possible alternatives, were addressed in
earlier chapters. A simpler, more helpful, schema is provided by the
product-procedure-process trichotomy of approaches to argument from
Aristotle's triad of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. See Habermas 1984 and
Tindale 1999. The discussion here will focus on the logical and
adversarial aspects; the dialectical dimension is integrated into the
evaluative scheme in chapters 5 and 6 below, where the adversarial, or
"agonistic," aspect is explicitly subsumed under the rhetorical.
4. If rhetoric is just the art of persuasion, then it can indeed be regarded as no
more than debate tactics, argumentation's counterpart to military strategy
(but see the previous chapter!). That all changes if, as was classically the
case, rhetoric's goal is recognized as "rational persuasion," rather than
persuasion simpliciter.
5. Nozick 1981, p. 4.
6. See, Nozick, p, 4-5, chapter 1 of Lakoff and Johnson 1980, as well as
chapter 3 above.
7. The subclass of boxing metaphors was suggested to me in correspondence
by Barbara Leclerc.
8. The equivocation between reasons as premises and reasons as causes -
e.g" between what causes our beliefs and what justifies them - can have
rather large philosophical consequences. The sixth, seventh, and eighth
essays in R. Rorty 1991 discuss this.
9. This is the "Standard Treatment" of fallacies, in the terminology of
Hamblin 1970. Pragma-dialectics offers an account of fallacies that is not
tied to the argument-as-proof paradigm, emphasizing their negative
contributions to resolving disputes. See van Eemeren and Grootendoorst
1984 and 1992, Walton 1991, and Tindale 1999. In chapter 5 below, the
tripartite schenle for evaluating arguments opens the way for
distinguishing "logical fallacies," "dialectical fallacies," and "rhetorical
fallacies" from one another, a theme that is developed in chapter 6..
10. This is one way to motivate the pragtna-dialectical re-conceptualization of
fallacies as, in Walton's phrase, "violation[s] of a code of conduct for
rational discussants" in Walton 1992, p. 265.
11. Blumenberg, 1987, p. 447.
12. For example, in Apology, Gorgias, and The Republic.
13. This territory is more fully explored in chapter 5.
14. Quintilian, 1921, Bk. V. ch. 10, offers a comparison between orators and
musicians to make these points. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 is
the locus classicus for contemporary attention to audiences in argument.
Leff, 1998, contains a brief but helpful discussion of how the performative
and interpretive elements of argument are related. Tindale 1999 develops
a full rhetorical model for arguments.
15. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 44
16. God, presumably, could filibuster us - assuming that to do so would not
be an indication of an imperfection. See chapters 1, 4, and 6.
17. Van Eemeren and Grootendoorst 1984. The point is that not all filibusters
are violations of the "argumentation stage" of disputes; some prevent even
the "opening stage," in the pragma-dialectical model.
18. Levi 1999, for different reasons, reaches a similar conclusion about ad
Baculum arguments. In both case, implicit rules for civil discourse have
been transgressed, but since the parties have not engaged in
argumentation, the transgressions cannot be counted as fallacies in
argument. These examples are relevant to argument theory only if there
are obligations to engage in (and refrain from) argument. See chapter 7.
The mugger, in Levi's example who presents his victim with the prenlise,
"Your money or your life!" is subject to civil law, rather than
argumentation rules; senators are subject to both.
19. In the 19th century, there were constitutionally mandated adjournment
dates for Congress, so preventing debate was easily accomplished. See
Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Congress of the United States:
Origins, History and Procedure.
20. In Austin's terminology, this would presumably would be a
"misexecution" rather than a "misinvocation." See Austin 1975 p. 18.
PART II
Thinking about Arguments
The models for arguments that emerged in the first section are put
to use in this section. Chapters 5 and 6 present a full, three-
dimensional co-ordinate system for evaluating arguments, positively
and negatively. The complete taxonomy of possible evaluations for
arguments reveals some unsettling possibilities. Of special note are
those arguments that are logically compelling and even dialectically
satisfying, but nonetheless do not succeed in persuading rational,
competent, and engaged audiences. The three-part approach finds
conceptual room for these curious arguments, and in so doing also
provides a general framework for conceptualizing argumentative
failures. Invalid inferences are not the only ways that arguments go
wrong.
The remaining chapters in this section considers the questions of
when and why we should argue. I attempt to explain why it is
sometimes rationally incumbent on us to argue. Returning to the
argunlent-is-war metaphor, and borrowing from Just War theory, I then
explore why, at other times, argument is rationally enjoined. There is,
in the end, a significant philosophical benefit to be gained from
working out the how's and why's of these arguments: a deeper
understanding of philosophy's own arguments.
CHAPTER 5
Evaluating Arguments and
Making Meta-Arguments'
This chapter explores the outlines of a general framework for
evaluating arguments. Among the factors to take into account are
these: the strength of the arguers' inferences, the level of their
engagement with objections raised by other interlocutors, and their
effectiveness in rationally persuading their target audiences. Some
connections among these can be understood only in the context of
meta-argumentation and meta-rationality. The Principle of Meta-
Rationality (PMR) - that reasoning rationally includes reasoning about
rationality - is used to explain why it can be rational to resist
dialectically satisfying arguments or accept logically flawed ones.
Introduction. There are many ways to take the measure of an
argument, many vocabularies and criteria available to help us answer
the question: Is the argument a good one? There are many questions
contained in this one. Ethics, politics, aesthetics, epistemology,
psychology, jurisprudence, and many other disciplines, all have
son1ething to contribute. For the purpose of rational persuasion,
2
however, the real core of argumentation theory rests on the tripod of
logic, rhetoric, and dialectic.
The different approaches to argument are not independent of one
another. Logic provides fodder for epistemological justifications or
conden1nations of argument forms; rhetorical analyses might well
include or intersect aesthetic considerations; psychological
explanations of why certain valid argument forms invite suspicion
while some invalid ones generally meet with assent would be relevant
for dialectic; and so on. Even among the tripartite core, there are
important connections: deductively valid inferences from well-
warranted premises generally make for dialectically satisfying
arguments, and dialectical closure is generally rhetorically compelling.
For all their connections, logical, dialectical, and rhetorical criteria
for taking the measure of arguments are separable, both conceptually
and practically. Neither logical validity nor dialectical success entails
68 Philosophical Arguments
the other. Moreover, neither one entails, or is entailed by, rhetorical
effectiveness. It is possible, therefore, for an argument to pass muster
logically and rhetorically, say, but not dialectically: a cogent argument
may succeed in convincing its audience despite their lingering
questions. And it is equally possible to argue rhetorically and
dialectically well, but not logically: logical flaws that escape both the
arguer and the audience will not detract from its effectiveness as a tool
for rational persuasion. Indeed, all the combinations are possible. It
will be helpful, even at the risk of pedantry, to articulate the different
standards more clearly and to consider systematically all possible
combinations. The exercise pays off in the end, with implications of
great philosophical significance concerning the concepts of
argumentative closure, rationality, and philosophy itself.
1. Evaluating Arguments. Logic, dialectic, and rhetoric can be
thought of as forming a three dimensional coordinate systems for
evaluating arguments. Each is needed to track a different part of the
social-linguistic complexes that constitute arguments. The logical axis
evaluates the inferences that the participants make (the steps linking the
components of 0' Keefe's "arguments-l "). The dialectical axis is for
the disputants' engagement with their opponents ("arguments-2" or the
"dialectical tier:t,3). And the rhetorical axis measures the efficacy of the
arguments (e.g., the effects on the "audience,,4).
In a purely deductive context, the logical axis could be replaced by
a bivalent function, the two values being "valid" and "invalid," for
assessing inferences. (If the inferential evaluation were thought of
numerically, then the O-point could be complete premise-irrelevance;
deductive validity would be the positive limit; and negative values
could be assigned to prelnises that would serve better as counter-
considerations.
5
) But even for evaluating purely formal arguments,
more is needed. The premises have to be weighed apart from their use
in the inferences at hand, so the evaluative vocabulary needs to be
enriched by "soundness" and "unsoundness." In real-life contexts,
logic is better conceived as providing a sliding scale measuring the
relevance, sufficiency, and acceptability - Johnson and Blair's "R-S-A
test" - of the premises as reasons for the conclusion.
6
Thus, "cogency"
is a better positive value for the logical evaluation of arguments, and
indeed this is the conceptual ground often claimed by critical thinking,
informal logic, and formal logic texts. The traditional identification of
logic, the focused study of inferences, with the full study of arguments
can be justified, however, only by a very narrow conception of
argument.
Evaluating Arguments 69
The dialectical perspective would properly have to include two or
more measures because dialectical engagement necessarily involves
two or more arguers.
7
An arguer has argued well dialectically when all
of the objections and questions that have been raised have been
answered satisfactorily. This standard applies to all the participants in
an argument. Typically, this is all that we are concerned with in the
dialectical evaluation of arguments. The shift in focus from arguments
to arguers naturally focuses on the agent producing the argument.
However, there are several distinct roles for arguers in arguments:
proponents and opponents, as well as arbiters, spectators, and other
sorts of audiences. Therefore, different criteria are needed.
Specifically, it is proponents who need to respond to objections; their
opponents need to raise those objections. An opponent is dialectically
praiseworthy when all the objections that really should be raised
against a proponent's argument are raised, but no more, and any points
that need to be clarified in order for the audience - including the
opponent - to understand the argument have been questioned. And
insofar as audiences have an interactive role in argumentative
discourse, they too serve as the opposition and thus have an obligation
to object to shoddy reasoning, dubious premises, and unclear
statements.
8
An argument may, of course, pass dialectical muster without being
logically valid, and even deductively valid arguments can be
questioned.
The rhetorical perspective examines an argument's effects on the
audience. One of the possible effects of an argument - and very often
the most desired one - is that the audience is successfully persuaded to
accept the conclusion. Thus, for most purposes, this third perspective
is the most important, if only because the argument-as-war model
remains such a dominant paradigm for thinking about arguments.
9
In
an adversarial setting, persuasion translates as victory. To be sure,
rhetoric is not concerned solely and wholly with winning arguments. It
is concerned with rational persuasion, rather than persuasion per see
There are ways to win arguments that are not rhetorically acceptable.
Some dialectically effective strategies, such as filibusters, are rhetorical
transgressions. "Winning" an argument without rationally persuading
the target audience, e.g., by force or parliamentary subterfuge, is not
really an argumentative victory. It is a victory of a different sort, a
victory in a different kind of competition. Effective communication,
tailoring an argument to the audience at hand, and respecting the social
context of the argument are all proper concerns for rhetoric. This is not
to deny that the "agonistic" concern - winning and losing - is a part,
but simply to affirm that it is just a part.
lO
The outline of a three-part evaluation scheme for arguments is
now visible. Arguers and their arguments can succeed or fail in three
separate ways. Arguments can be cogent or not; they can be
dialectically satisfactory or not; and they can be rhetorically -
agonistically - successful or not.
11
These determinations are all
independent, to some degree. If "vJinning" and "losing" are taken as
the relevant agonistic outcomes,12 and successful dialectical
engagement is called "satisfying," then all the possibilities are
displayed in the following table:
LOGIC DIALECTIC AGONISTIC
(1) -V-Cogent -V-Satisfying -V-Winning
(2) X-Not cogent -V-Satisfying -V-Winning
(3) ~ o g e n t X-Unsatisfying -V-Winning
(4) X-Not cogent X-Unsatisfying -V-Winning
(5) ~ o g e n t -V-Satisfying X-Losing
(6) X-Not cogent -V-Satisfying X-Losing
(7) ~ o g e n t X-Unsatisfying X-Losing
(8) X-Not cogent X-Unsatisfying X-Losing
The possibilities range from fully praiseworthy arguments, (1) -
well reasoned arguments that meet all objections and justifiably
convince their' hearers - to abject argumentative failures, (8) - illogical
configurations of dogmatic assertions that do not respond to questions
or objections and deservedly fail to persuade. It is not particularly hard
to come up with examples for each of the eight possibilities. The
context of a courtroom provides a rich vein to mine in the search for
instantiations. It is a setting in which winning and losing are precisely
defined by the jury's verdict, so the agonistic valuation is
unequivocal.
13
The dialectical value should measure the level of
satisfaction the jurors have with the attorneys' arguments - which need
not track their eventual judgment. Because the standard for convictions
is high in criminal cases, jurors may vote to acquit even though they
have unanswered objections to the defending attorney's arguments.
Alternatively, they may return a guilty verdict despite some confusion
about some parts of the prosecutor's case. That is, the dialectical and
rhetorical evaluations may diverge.
Of the eight possibilities, two are especially noteworthy and
deserve some separate consideration here
14
: categories (4) and (5),
arguments that should not win but do, and arguments that should win,
but do not. The former are unsound, unsatisfying arguments that
nonetheless carry the day; the latter are cogent, satisfying arguments
that nonetheless fail. We have already met both of these possibilities in
earlier discussions.
1s
In both cases, the apparent anomaly can be
explained away by referring to the audience. The former class includes
those filibusters that should count as arguments (as distinct from those
that are better understood as preventing argument
I6
). The strength, and
eventual success, of a filibuster depends on its audience's weakness. A
logically and dialectically deficient argument could also produce the
same result with an unduly acquiescent audience. The theoretical
possibility of the latter class can also be explained in terms of the
audience's shortcomings. There are audiences that sinlply do not listen
to reason, viz., unreasonable, unhearing, adamant, or incompetent ones.
We think that logically cogent and dialectically satisfying
arguments ought to be successful, and when they are not, something
has gone wrong. Finding fault with the audience preserves our sense of
what is argumentatively right and proper. Yet, there is another sort of
case that precludes that comfortable complacency. The anomaly of
good-but-Iosing arguments can just as easily result from audience
rationality and competence as from audience irrationality or
incompetence. In general, it may well be a sign of strength to bow
before a good argument,17 but in some circumstances, it can also be a
sign of strength to resist an argument - even a good argument!
To see how this situation can arise, consider the following sort of
example, from category (6) - an unsound argument that is unpersuasive
even though it is dialectically satisfactory: Suppose an argument is
presented leading to the conclusion that 1=0.
18
Obviously, the
accompanying "proof' cannot be cogent. It must be fallacious at some
point, but if the error in reasoning is subtle, it nlight easily be missed.
If the audience is sophisticated enough to recognize the fallacy, the
argument will not work. It can persuade only if the audience is
extraordinarily gullible. But what if the audience is not so incompetent
as to accept the conclusion, but not quite adept enough to recognize the
fallacy or raise any further objections? In that case, the stubborn
refusal to accept the conclusion despite the reasons offered and despite
the absence of any objections seems altogether reasonable.
Even relatively sophisticated arguers will not always be in a good
position to determine the objective soundness of an argument
definitively. There are many factors at play, in addition to logical
acumen, such as familiarity with the subject matter and the availability
of information. There is, then, a way to generalize from the case above.
Suppose an audience is presented with an argument for an altogether
unacceptable conclusion. Various objections are raised, and rebutted.
Alternative interpretations of the premises and data are considered and
rejected; divergent inferences from those premises are similarly closed
off; and no other explanations appear at hand. Still, for whatever
reasons, the conclusion cannot be accepted - perhaps because there is
another, equally compelling and undefeated argument for its contrary, 19
or perhaps because the conclusion itself is so unpalatable that one
literally cannot commit to it.
2o
In such a case, it need not be
unreasonable to resist the argument. One can adopt the attitude that
there must be something wrong with it somewhere, and that some
problem will be discovered by someone in the course of time. Indeed,
this is precisely the stance that was adopted by physicists when
confronted with evidence and arguments showing that light was both a
particle and a wave. The faith that eventually something would give
way - although it was unknown just what would was not
unreasonable.
The reason this sort of case deserves special attention is that it
describes a situation that is all-too-common in philosophy. Consider,
for example, the variety of responses to Berkeleyan Idealism.
Philosophical discussions often begin with the question, "What is
wrong with Berkeley's arguments?" instead of HIs something wrong
with Berkeley's arguments?" While there may be something odd about
this for a discipline that prides itself. on leaving no assumptions
unexamined, it is not irrational per see A similar comment can be made
about the history of responses to Anselm's Ontological Argument. For
many philosophers, the natural and proper approach to the argument
seems not to wonder whether there is something wrong with it, but
rather to debate just what is wrong with it. Again, while it may be
unphilosophical, it is not necessarily irrational for someone to take this
position - especially if the question of God's existence has already
been visited many times, personally and deeply.
Indeed, this sort of situation is so common as to be the norm in
philosophy. How often do philosophical arguments actually succeed in
persuading determined opposition? Does this mean that determined
philosophical opposition is, in general, a sign of irrationality? Or
should we conclude that despite the time and energy philosophers
invest in arguing, there just are not that many good philosophical
arguments? (For some, these could stand as examples of literally
unacceptable conclusions!) The point of the above example is to
emphasize that these are not the only options. Able arguers presenting
cogent arguments to rational audiences might still be met with
disagreement. A measure of logic, pragma-dialectically nlixed with a
dash of rhetoric is not, unfortunately, a surefire recipe for agreement.
2. Meta-Rationality and Argumentation. We often seem to
assume that there will always be counter-arguments to deliver us from
the clutches of any really repugnant arguments that confront us, if only
we are clever enough to find them. The problem of evil, for example,
has probably left luore theodicies than atheists in its wake. While this
may apply more to philosophical arguments than to other sorts, it does
apply in some measure to all arguments. Admittedly, philosophical
arguments are atypical in many ways. They do not provide a safe basis
for generalizing about all argumentation. They do, however, serve to
bring some features of argumentation into higher relief. In
philosophical contexts, we often engage in this sort of meta-
argumentation, arguing about arguments, quite explicitly. In other
contexts, it may be more implicit. In either case, we are appealing to a
fundamental assumption about reasoning and argumentation. It can be
called the "Principle of Meta-Rationality":
(PMR) Part of reasoning rationally is reasoning about rationality.
This principle is not simply an article of rationalist faith. It embodies
the fundamental assumptions about the practice of argumentation. It is
both a principle of rationality and a principle about rationality, a
principle and a meta-principle, because it concerns both reasoning and
its products. Arguments are the pre-eminent products of reasoning, so
they themselves can be the subjects of other arguments. An immediate
corollary to the PMR, then, is that part of arguing rationally is arguing
about rationality!21
There are profound consequences for argumentation theory
springing from the PMR. The same principle that justifies
argumentation also justifies for our resistance to unpalatable arguments.
Such resistance can be the conclusion of the following, perfectly
reasonable, but generally unarticulated, "meta-argument" about
arguments and reason:
(1) This argument seelns cogent but it has an unreasonable
conclusion;
(2) Cogent arguments do not lead to unreasonable conclusions;
So, (3) this argument must, in some way, be fallacious, i.e., it must fail
in some way - even if I do not yet see how or why.
There are two points to note about the Meta-Argument for
Resisting Good Arguments - call it the "MARGA move.,,22 First, it is,
for good or ill, always available, which is just another way of saying
that everything is arguable. Meta-rational thinking is indeed part of
thinking rationally. Argumentation is precisely for those areas in which
beliefs are not compelled?3 And if arguments do not force acceptance,
there will be room for dissent. The second point to note is that there
are occasions when the MARGA move is undeniably a rational
strategy. However, that only serves to raise another question (sending
us still higher into the "meta-sphere"): When is it rational to use
MARGA to reject an argument? Context matters. We do not approach
arguments with a tabula rasa. Nor are arguments isolated episodes in
our intellectual lives (or, for that matter, our spiritual, emotional, social,
political, and psychological lives). Recourse to this meta-argument is
rational at least in those cases in which, to borrow some language from
William James, the question is effectively "closed" against the putative
conclusion.
24
Since the proposition that 1=0 is a closed issue, any
argument leading to that conclusion certainly invites a MARGA
response whenever a more specific identification of an argumentative
error cannot be supplied. For James, the concept of closure was
relative to individual believers. For the purposes of argumentation
theory, it also needs to come in degrees - the way that argument
strength and rationality do. An argument against a weakly held belief
does not need to be as strong as an argument against a strongly held
belief to forestall recourse to MARGA. Conversely, it is less rational
to invoke MARGA against a strong argument on behalf of a weakly
held belief.
There is a counterpart situation with respect to bad arguments that
also flows from the PMR. A Meta-Argument for Accepting Bad
Arguments - a "MAABA defense" - can justify acceptance of a
conclusion despite the flaws in the supporting (ground-level) argument:
(Ia) The argument as it stands seems fallacious, but it has a
reasonable conclusion;
(2a) All reasonable conclusions can be supported by cogent
arguments;
So, (3a) the argument can be made cogent - even if I do not yet see
how.
This line of reasoning often serves as an apology for existing
beliefs. It might better be termed the "Tertullian Defense" after the 2
nd
_
3
rd
century Latin Apologist credited with the prototypical MAABA
defense: the "credo quia ineptum" defense of his faith?5 Despite
Tertullian's own case, the MAABA defense need not be irrational. For
example, it is not hard to imagine an intuitive, creative, and rational
mathenlatician who has great confidence in her theses before she is able
to construct satisfactory proofs. Despite the flaws that her colleagues
might find in her first attenlpts at proof, an induction on her past
successes might support her belief in the next proposed theorem?6 The
flawed "proof' might be taken as a promissory note to be redeemed at a
later date, e.g., as the starting point for further attempts at proof or as a
heuristic vehicle in its own right. Even if the "context of discovery" is
carefully distinguished from the "context of justification," there can be
independent grounds for the reliability of the processes of the former.
If the meta-logical space around arguments includes these meta-
arguments for overriding arguments, then perhaps we need meta-
arguments to reinforce the (ground-level) arguments and counter the
meta-arguments. A little exploration of that space reveals that the PMR
can provide such arguments, but with a curious twist. Consider first the
Meta-Argument for Accepting Good Arguments, or MAAGA:
(1b) This argument seems cogent and the conclusion is reasonable;
(2b) Apparently cogent arguments with reasonable conclusions
usually are genuinely cogent;
So, (3b) it is unlikely that flaws will be found: accept the conclusion.
Do we implicitly make this argument every time we accept any
argument?
I suspect that most of the time we do not reason that way. There is
no call to articulate the second premise, (2b) - unlike the counter-
consideration presented by (2). When we hear an argument for a
proposition, a course of action, or a conclusion of another sort, we
weigh the reasons that are presented. If we are responsible and
competent in our role as the audience to an argument, we also consider
whatever other information is relevant and available. If the pros duly
outweigh the cons, then we accept the conclusion. We do not, in
general, let the mere possibility of additional counter-considerations
serve as an excuse not to accept it. We could, of course, because that
possibility is a permanent feature of the landscape around (non-
deductive, non--formal) arguments: everything is arguable. We provide
the meta-argument only as needed, e.g., if our decision is challenged, if
there are residual doubts, or if there are other motivating factors.
Apparently, philosophical partisanship can be one such factor.
It is quite within proper argumentative practice that we do not
routinely use the meta-argument for accepting good arguments. That
way leads to Lewis Carroll's infinite regress: if in order to accept an
argument, I need to accept this other, meta-argument, then there would
have to be a meta-meta-argument for accepting the first meta-
argument!27 Ordinarily, we need not - and, arguably, should not-
ascend to that meta-level to accept other arguments. An argument for a
proposition, p, answers the question of why one should accept p. That
is usually the question at hand, and a good argument is a good answer
to that question. The question of whether the presence of good reasons
for accepting p is a good reason for accepting p is, in the normal course
of events, otiose. The principle of meta-rationality, PMR, breaches the
walls between arguments and meta-arguments. Yet, as will be seen,
there are times when it is rational to resort to explicitly meta-level
reasoning.
The complement to MAAGA would invoke a Meta-Argument for
Rejecting Bad Argunlents, a MARBA move:
(1 c) This argument seems fallacious and the conclusion is
unreasonable;
(2c) Arguments for unreasonable conclusions usually are really
fallacious;
So, (3c) it is unlikely that the argument can be fixed: do not accept the
conclusion.
This meta-argument, too, merely repeats and reinforces the
judgment made concerning the first argument. But there is an
asymmetry with MAAGA. This does not lead to an infinite regress. (It
could, however, quickly lead to paradox if it were itself a bad
argument, if the argument applied to itself, and if the conclusion were
to call for rejecting, as opposed to simply not-accepting, the conclusion
at hand.)
When should these meta-arguments be used? When do they count
as good arguments? In part, these questions have to be answered by the
purposes the (object-) arguments serve. The first two meta-arguments,
MARGA and MAABA, have important, deeply conservative, roles to
play. They ~ as the final line of defense in preserving pre-existing
beliefs against arguments. This is where the standards for belief
revision need to be higher than the standards for belief acquisition?8
Their use is justified when these purposes come into play. In contrast,
the other two, MAAGA and MARBA, are largely redundant in most
argumentation contexts. They do, however, have a visible role in self-
conscious, philosophical argumentation. More significantly, these
reinforcing arguments are at home in self-reflective deliberation - "T'he
argument seems good; should I accept it? How would I respond to that
objection?" - the context in which the distractions created by the
competitive and social aspects of argumentation are largely absent. Of
course, the same can also be said for the earlier pair as well, which
points to an important feature: all of these arguments are really
arguments with oneself. The use of the meta-argument against an
undefeated argument for p, for example, is part of one's own interior
dialogue, rather than part of the exterior argument with the proponent
of p. 29 The audience of the meta-argument is usually the meta-arguer
himself.
Once the audiences for these meta-arguments has been identified,
these instantiations of the PMR can themselves be evaluated as
successes or failures, as context determines, using the earlier tripartite
coordinate system of logic, rhetoric, and dialectic. The call for these
sorts of arguments is most pressing whenever there is a particularly
tenacious (nleta-)arguer present. That, of course, is something
philosophers are wont to be, which helps to explain why these
argum.ents seem so characteristically philosophical. It is one of the
reasons why conclusive dialectical success is so elusive in
philosophy.30
Endnotes
1. This chapter is a modification of my paper by the same title in Informal
Logic 21: 73-84.
2. There can be other purposes to argument, necessitating other criteria. For
example, R. Johnson 2000 p. 191ff. identifies rational persuasion as the
relevant one.
3. R. Johnson 1996, ch. 6.
4. See e.g., Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, Govier 1999, Tindale
1999, and chapter 4 above.
5. Hans Hansen, at the IVth ISSA Conference in Amsterdam (1998), raised
the following question: Consider a sequence of arguments, each from a
single premise (or the conjunction of several) to a constant conclusion.
They can be arranged in ascending order of the strength of the premises:
. . . P-2 P-1 r. [=C] P+1 P+2
... C C C C C
The inductive strength of the argument increases with the strength of the
concept of overdetermination. In some contexts, however, this could be
the rhetorical - albeit neither logical nor dialectical - fallacy of "Beating a
dead horse."
6. Johnson and Blair 1994, pp. 54f. Similar criteria can be found in other
informal logic and critical thinking texts, e.g., the "ARG conditions" in
Govier 1992 pp.69ff. Johnson 2000 adds a truth criterion.
7. It would be more accurate to say that dialectical engagement involves two
or more argumentative roles, rather than two or more arguers, since a
single arguer can be both proponent and opponent, e.g., when someone
r g u ~ with herself. Similarly, someone can be both the opponent and the
target audience for an argument.
8. Both the concept of a "universal audience," from Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca 1969, and the concept of "model interlocutors," from Blair and
Johnson (ch. 5 in R. Johnson 1996), while developed as part of the
standards for good arguments, can also be inverted to measure bad
audiences, thereby defining a category of "audience fallacies" or
"antagonist fallacies," distinct from the more traditional focus on
"protagonist fallacies." See chapter 6 below and also R. Johnson 1999.
9. Lakoff and Johnson 1980 use the argument-as-war metaphor as an
example for discussing Inetaphors. It was discussed in chapter 3 above
and will be returned to in chapter 8 below. It has also been subjected to a
number of other critiques by argumentation theorists as a model for
arguments, including Nozick, 1981, Ayim 1991, and Gilbert 1997.
10. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 use the term "eristic" for much the
same purpose. It is adopted by Gilbert 1997, inter alia. van Eemeren et
al. 1996 use the term "debate." "Agonistic" is preferred here because the
issue here is specifically the competitive aspect of a contest, as opposed to
the more general notion of controversy implied by the former and the
more artificial and formalized context suggested by the latter.
11. If this tripartite scheme for argument success is inverted, it provides a
taxonomy for argument failings - fallacies. Inferential flaws, such as
Hasty Generalization, would be "logical fallacies"; flaws in
communicative interaction, such as ignoring or misunderstanding
obj ections, would be "dialectical fallacies"; and negative or
counterproductive strategies, e.g., alienating the audience, could be
classed as "rhetorical fallacies." Traditional texts focus on the first of
these, while the pragma-dialectical school focuses on the second, and the
third is addressed by more classical rhetoricians. This approach is
developed in more detail in the next chapter.
12. The substitution of "success at rational persuasion" for "winning," and
"failure at rational persuasion" for "losing" would not materially change
the possibilities, but it would muddy the waters separating the dialectical
and rhetorical components. Unless rational persuasion is taken to be an
all-or-none outcome, it will be possible to be rationally persuaded but not
dialectically satisfied. One can be rationally persuaded to go along with a
plan of action, for example, while still harboring doubts and while
questions still linger. This is a corollary to the claim that beliefs -
including those of which we have been persuaded by good argument - can
always be reinforced. The use of "winning" here is meant to bring the
difference into higher relief, insofar as it covers everything from earning
begrudging acceptance to extracting reluctant acknowledgement and
achieving zealous conversion.
13. This is also provides a clear distinction between the narrowly agonistic
evaluation (winning versus losing) and a broader rhetorical evaluation
(performatively). One can imagine a case in which a lawyer produces an
exceptionally strong argument and presents it elegantly and forcefully, but
still loses - because, say, of a biased or even rigged jury. The lawyer's
performance cannot fairly be faulted from a rhetorical perspective, even
though the argument still lost. We should be able to say that the "art of
rational persuasion" was exemplified excellently even though no one was
rationally persuaded. Admittedly, this sounds rather uncomfortably like
the doctor who claimed that the operation was a success even though the
patient died.
14. Providing examples for the other six combinations is left to the reader
(albeit, perhaps as an exercise to assign in class).
15. Chapter 4 considered filibusters, when they do count as arguments, as
illogical, unengaged, but "winning" arguments. The following chapters
include examples of logical, engaged, but losing arguments: arguments
before incompetent or unhearing audiences.
16. Filibusters that prevent engagement are dialectically fallacious; filibusters
(or the threat thereofl) used to win arguments might be subsumed under
the Argumentum ad Baculum rubric - whose states as a logical fallacy is
itself a matter of some controversy. See Levi 1999.
17. Francisca Snoeck-Henkemans, Poster for the 4!h International Conference
on Argumentation, International Society for the Study of Argumentation,
Amsterdam, June 16-19, 1998.
18. There are several commonly offered spurious proofs. One such is: Let
A=1 and B=l. Thus, A=B. Then. Multiplying both sides by A, A2 = AB.
Subtracting B2 from both sides yields: A2 - B2 = AB - B2. Factoring,
we have, (A +B)(A - B) = B(A - B). Divide both sides by (A - B) to get
A +B = B, and then subtract B from each, proving that A = O. Since A=l,
we have 1=0. [The error is in the fourth step, dividing by (A - B), an
amount equal to 0.]
19. Gilbert Ryle's "dilemmas" would fit this characterization. See Ryle 1954,
chapter 1.
20. See Quine's definition of "paradox" in the title essay in Quine 1976.
Nozick's discussion of philosophy's need to be dignity-preserving is
another example of this sort of phenomenon, in the opening chaptefof
Nozick 1981.
21. Argumentation, along with rationality, is a "fixed point" under the "meta-"
operation: meta-reasoning about reasoning is still reasoning; and meta-
arguments are still arguments. This feature is characteristic of philosophy,
too: meta-philosophy is part of philosophy.
22. This way of formulating the argument was suggested in conversation by
my colleague Robert McArthur, but he is not responsible for the ungainly
name.
23. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 5.
24. James 1897.
25. This is the version cited by Hyman and Walsh, 1983, p. 10, although it is
more often cited as "credo quia absurdum." Both can be translated as, "I
believe because it is absurd."
26. The early career mathematician S. Ramanujan exemplifies this. He had
great faith in his theorems, although he was often, in the beginning, unable
to supply the sort of rigorous proofs that would satisfy his colleague G. H.
Hardy or the rest of the mathematical community. Henri Poincare could
also be a model for this. He claimed that his theorems often came to him
in dreams. Proofs came later.
27. See Carroll 1895.
28. See Harman 1984.
29. See Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 9.
30. The characteristic features that distinguish philosophical argumentation
from political, legal, critical, and other kinds of arguments are addressed
in chapters 14 and 15 below.
CHAPTER 6
Logical Fallacies, Dialectical
Transgressions, Rhetorical Sins, and
Other Failures of Rationality in
Argumentation!
Introduction. When does Preaching to the Choir become Beating
a Dead Horse? Is it ever wrong to argue - making Picking a Fight a
fallacy? Could it be a fallacy not to argue - the fallacy of Wrongful
Silence? If audiences are elements of arguments, is there a class of
Audience Fallacies?2 Quibbling and Nitpicking, Interrupting and
Turning a Deaf Ear, as well as Arguing Out of Turn, Arguing Out of
Place, and Arguing Out of Order are all bad things to do in
argumentation. Do they all deserve the name "fallacy"?
Arguments are more than just sequences of inferences, so we
should not limit our thinking about bad arguments to just those that
include bad inferences. include arguers, and there are more
ways for arguers to go wrong than simply to make bad inferences. And
arguments include audiences, whose presence creates ful1her chances
for problematic argumentation. Argument analysis requires more than
the toolbox of logical fallacies generally provides.
The task I am undertaking here is outlining a new taxonomy of
errors in arguments, to include not just logical missteps - fallacies - but
also rhetorical and dialectical mistakes. The organizing principle refers
to the norms that are violated, norms that are associated with the three
dominant conceptions - metaphors or models or paradigms, as you
prefer - for arguments. A second task, subsequent to the first al1d
approached only tentatively here, is completing the picture by the
raising the possibility of a new model.
1. Fallacies, Proofs, and Arguments. Following what has been
taken (perhaps mistakenly) to be Aristotle's lead, logicians have
generally been content to provide catalogues of fallacies for use in
argument analysis. These lists of errors have too often been regarded
as something of a sidecar to the main business of investigating,
characterizing, and justifying good arguments. They provide little in
the way of a serious theoretical framework for thinking about all of
arguments' failures.
One problem with a simple list of fallacies is that without any
theory it is just a list. There is no organization, no consensus on the
fallacies to include, and no closure. It is a collection of facts rather
than a body of science; it affords mere knowledge rather than genuine
wisdom. Fallacies are added to the list at the whim of the logician
writing the text (a prerogative I will indulge in myself in due course).
And therein lies another part of the problem: it has been logicians
writing the texts. Lists of fallacies have been limited from the outset to
logical flaws in argumentation. If we use the term "fallacy" more
generically for any flaw in an argument, then the point can be put this
way: not all fallacies are logical ones. And, we should note with a little
surprise but a lot of emphasis, not all logical fallacies - Le., not all
deductively invalid inference patterns - are necessarily fallacious.
The ideal for good arguments against which fallacies have been
defined is that of the mathematical proof - but not all arguments are
proofs! Two other important models or "root metaphors,,3 that reflect
our practice and inform our thinking about arguments have already
been noted - argumentation-as-war and arguing-as-presenting-a-case.
Together, these three paradigms provide a more comprehensive
structure for theorizing about bad arguments. They create more space
in our theories for the full range of problems that bedevil arguments,
and in so doing they point to some curious omissions from the
traditional lists, notably the sins (for lack of a better word) of arguing
when one should not and failing to argue when one positively should.
Another model is needed to fill that gap. Argumentation needs to be
thought of as a form of interpersonal engagement. At its worst, it is
merely aggressive socializing, but at its best, it is an expression of civic
character.
2. Historical Context and Recent Contributions. Aristotle's
characterization of sophisma defined the field originally as the study of
arguments that seem good but are not. That set the twin tasks of
explaining why certain bad arguments appear good, and then
explaining why they are nonetheless actually bad.
Note that the topic is not the study of bad arguments per se.
Arguments that are obviously bad should be of no more than peripheral
concern. How did it come to pass, then, that logic texts would offer
examples that do not "seem good" to anyone at all - examples that
Errors in Arguments 83
fonn a hackneyed collection of, in Hamblin's phrase, "traditional puns,
anecdotes, and witless examples,,?4
Several recent approaches to fallacies have helped rectify matters,
beginning with Hamblin's own historical analySis and diagnosis in
1970. Hamblin offered a fresh start by noting that many of Aristotle's
discussions presume a dialogical context for arguments, whether they
are of the dialectical, didactic, or contentious sort. In such contexts,
invalid inferences are not the pre-eminent danger: in debates between
reasonably sophisticated arguers, logical errors will generally be
detected and rejected by the opponents, and then retracted and
corrected by the proponents. Optimally, as Johnson and Blair note,
"the charge of fallacy serves to extend argument, not cut off debate."s
Dialectical transgressions present the more pressing concern. Thus,
when Aristotle included what came to be called Ignoratio Elenchi, it
referred to a kind of improper refutation - where a "refutation" is a
counter-argument rather than an inference pattern, something that has
more in common with debaters' rebuttals than with logicians'
reductios, and even less connection to Missing the Point, with which it
is now commonly associated.
6
Hamblin's dissatisfaction with a purely logical approach and his
own more dialectical approach inspired a good deal of good research on
fallacies. A brief mention of an eclectic and idiosyncratic selection of
some other recent contributions to our current thinking about fallacies,
inspired by Hamblin's lead, will help focus things.
Howard Kahane, in his widely used textbooks, Kahane 1969 and
Kahane 1971, both of which went through numerous editions, provided
a good general framework for thinking about fallacies. Start with a
characterization of cogent arguments as ones that have warranted
premises adequately supporting their conclusions and respecting all of
the available and relevant considerations, both positive and negative.
Thus, a fallacious argument is one that fails in any of three ways:
(I) it uses false, dubious, or Unwarranted Premises;
(II) the reasoning is inductively or deductively Invalid;
(III) it ignores counter-considerations, Le., it Suppresses Evidence.
Each of these ways for argun1ents to go wrong serves as the genus
for several species of fallacies. For example, Hasty Generalizations
fall under the category of Invalid Reasoning, Circular Arguments are
classified as invoking an Unwarranted Premise, and False Dichotomies
can be read as suppressing the alternatives.
Kahane's categories overlap. That is both a strength and a
weakness. False Dichotomies, for example, could be categorized as a
species of Unwarranted Premises, rather than Suppressed Evidence: to
claim the world is black and white is dubious; to present it that way
suppresses the grays - and reds, greens, and blues. Similarly,
Equivocation can also be put under either of two of the general
headings, Unwarranted Premises or Invalid Reasoning, depending on
how and whether the equivocal term is disambiguated. Not much
hinges on the generic classification, and the fact that several readings
are possible nicely highlights the re-constructive and interpretive nature
of argument analysis. The merits of starting from a coherent vision of
what a good argument is and locating the fallacies as deviations from
that ideal far outweigh some messiness in the details.
On the other hand, some traditional fallacies do not fit into
Kahane's taxonomy very well. Arguers go astray, for example, when
they Miss the Point, i.e., when they draw the wrong conclusion from
the premises at hand. But that can be done quite cogently! Arguments
consisting of manifestly valid inferences from thoroughly warranted
premises are missteps nonetheless if they are off the discourse track.
7
In a debate on capital punishment, for example, it would be inapposite
to conclude, no matter how cogently, that the u.s. ought to follow
Netherlands' lead on euthanasia.
A more serious problem with Kahane's account is that there are
other argumentative transgressions which are not traditional fallacies
and which cannot be accommodated. There is nothing to be said
against, say, Beating a Dead Horse, excessive argumentation after the
issue has been resolved, or Quibbling about minor issues along the
way. Kahane's approach to fallacies is still primarily an account of the
logical flaws in arguments to the exclusion of others.
Something similar can be said about the more developed and
programmatic Pragma-dialectical approach. It also provides a
comprehensive overall framework because it begins with an articulated
vision of the ideal. Thus, it is positioned to identify fallacies as
deviations from that nonn. Specifically, it identifies the stages of a
critical discussion and the implicit rules of conduct for each stage. It
can then associate each of the traditional fallacies with the violation of
a rule by one party or the other at some stage in the discussion.
Most tradi tional fallacies are accommodated very well.
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, for example, can be seen as either a
violation of the rule to defend a standpoint by the proponent during the
opening stage or a failure by the opponent to retract doubts during the
concluding stage.
8
Moreover, other non-controversially bad moves in
dialogical argumentation which have nonetheless not traditionally been
counted as fallacies also become visible. Various fonns of illicitly
Shifting the Burden of Proof or Evading the Burden of Proof, for
example, can now be located in the theory.9
One direction in which the P-D approach could be expanded
concerns the opening of arguments. The P-D account treats fallacies as
violations of the tacit imperatives governing critical discussions.
Something should also be said of the imperative for rational agents to
engage in critical discussions in the first place: Thou shalt argue!
There are times when the failure to enter into argutnent is an
argumentative failure - albeit not a fallacy in an argument.
IO
Something similar could be said for Arguing Out of Place - creating an
argunlent where there ought not be one.
One way in which P-D approach to fallacies could use SOUle
contraction concerns the resolution of difference as the telos of critical
discussions. Whatever serves as impediment to resolution is counted a
fallacy.
1
I The best that fallacious arguments can produce is mere
settlement. To put it neatly, the counterfeits of argument produce the
counterfeits of resolution!
This cannot be the whole story, however, because some moves
which might expedite progress towards genuine resolution are still
objectionable. Arguments are resolved not simply when the argument
is won or lost, but when the disputants reach some sort of equilibrium.
Fallacy identification usually focuses on the improper ways a
proponent can bring this about. There are two problematic assumptions
here. One is that when a consensus standpoint results from fallacious
argumentation, the fallacy is to be located in the proponent's
argumentation. But sometimes we ought to criticize the opponents for
giving in too easily - charge them with, say, the fallacy of Undue
Credulity. Ifwe can accuse a proponent of Missing the Point, why not
sometimes charge opponents with Missing the Objection? Generally,
when an interlocutor acquiesces too easily precisely in order to avoid
the confrontation of argumentation, what results is a settlement rather
than a resolution, but real resolution could arise from ready
agreeableness conjoined with maximal gullibility or minimal critical
acumen.
Agreeableness in the pursuit of resolution is no virtue; and
Tenacity in the defense ofsound conclusions is no vice.
12
The other assumption is that fallaciously achieved consensus
normally forms around the arguer's original standpoint. Proponents
and opponents alike can be guilty of Abandoning Ship too quickly. The
P-D approach does condemn consensus when it rests on insincerity; but
resolutions due to weak resolve or gullibility are also condemnable.
Ralph Johnson, who once offered a tripartite generic scheme for
argument cogency, and by extension for fallacies the "RSA test"l3---:
has more recently suggested some conceptual tools that can be used to
connect the concept of fallacy with both the structure and the telos of
argumentation. Structurally, arguments have both an inferential or
"illative" core and a dialectical tier.
14
Thus, we can neatly distinguish
arguments that go wrong because they include logical errors in the
RSA scheme from arguers who go wrong by making dialectical errors.
There may be a fly in the ointment, however. Johnson elsewhere
identifies the purpose of argument as rational persuasion, 15 so there
ought to be two other ways for arguments to fail: they can fail to
persuade or they can persuade, but not rationally. That seems right, but
how can these be melded together? Neither inferential strength nor
dialectical closure suffices for rational persuasion.
16
The audience is a
factor here.
The crucial concept here is rational persuasion, the goal of
classical rhetoric. This is a purpose for arguing, but it should be
stressed that there may be many different purposes for arguing. There
are, remember, several relevant models for what an argument is, what it
ought to be, and what it ought to do. An expansion of this can provide
the outlines of a more general framework for arguments in the hope
that it will accommodate some of those argumentation missteps that
have been omitted from traditional accounts.
3. Three Models for Argument. Three very different root
metaphors informing our thinking about arguments have been noted:
Arguments-as-proofs, Argumentation-as-war, and Arguing-as-making-
a-case.
17
These models should not be regarded as permanent features
of the conceptual landscape or transcendental properties of rationality
as such. Rather, they are palis of established conceptual structures that
furnish us with organizing schemes for all of our disparate knowledge
about argumentation. They are metaphors that reflect as well as
regulate the argumentation practices of our culture. In time, others
models may take their places, but they are good vehicles for reflection
about arguments. They can also be used to great advantage inthinking
about the different kinds of errors, fallacies, transgressions, and others
flaws in argumentation because each model brings with it its own
behavioral norms.
3.1. The first paradigm for thinking about arguments is provided
by proofs, the products of logicians and mathematicians. An argument
in this sense is an abstract, logical structure, a sequence of sentences
with a specifiable inferential structure. Consequently, there are two
sorts of ways for an argument to be a bad one. Either there is some
problem with its structure - a weak link in the sequence of inferences
structuring the propositions - or the chain of inferences fails to reach its
designated conclusion. That is, an argument can be criticized as
logically flawed when it falls short (the fallacy of Incompleteness?) or
when it reaches the conclusion by a faulty inference (Le., by an Invalid
Inference).
The goal of proofs is epistemic-rational. Logical fallacies
undermine that purpose. Unfortunately, as noted, this would-be nlodel
of rationality leaves out the agents in arguments, the arguers. Not
surprisingly, the argunlent-as-proof model is of limited help for
understanding actual, embodied arguments.
3.2. The argument-as-proof metaphor may be popular with
logicians, but a far more common conception of arguments is that they
are tantamount to verbal wars.
I8
If arguments are always born of
disagreement, then they really ought to be regarded as primarily
agonistic moments in discourse.
19
The adversarial component may
indeed be both genetic and essential.
The goal of proof nlight be demonstration, but the goal of a contest
is victory. Accordingly, the most danlning criticism within adversarial
argumentation concerns contingently losing strategies rather than
necessarily fallacious reasoning. Arguers fail most egregiously when
they lose the fight.
20
That explains why so many critical thinking
texts present themselves as either providing offensive weapons for
arguers - argumentation strategies - or defensive reinforcements to
help resist the wrongful argumentation of others.
21
And yet, there are other criticisms to be made. Wars are governed
by their own rules, and the same holds true for adversarial
argumentation. So, while there can be no logical fallacies in an
argument-as-war, there can be other kinds of violations, rough
counterparts, as it were, to war crimes.
It is worth pausing to note the locutions that we use here:
arguments may contain logical fallacies, but it is arguers who lose.
The arguments themselves do not lose, except derivatively. Arguers-
verbal warriors - can indeed be taken to task when they "fight dirty."
There might not be an explicit Geneva Convention governing the art of
verbal warfare, but there are sundry Peircean, Gricean, and Pragnla-
dialectical conventions. They serve very much the same function: they
define a category of illicit behavior, viz., dialectical transgressions
distinct from but complementing the logical fallacies.
Problematic as the war metaphor may be ethically, socially, and
pedagogically, I think it actually ought to be extended in at least one
way: whether or not there really are any "Just Wars,,,22 there are indeed
"Just Arguments." But, unfortunately, there are unjust arguments as
well.
Like the argument-as-proof model, the argumentation-as-war
model also leaves some things out, in this case the subject matter, the
reasoning about it, and any audiences. In the extreme case, we have
long-standing feuds over long-forgotten slights. It is all about the
arguers - and determined arguers do not really need anything to argue
about. For them, any logical structure to the exchanges would be
entirelyaccidenta1.
23
3.3. The third prominent model - arguing-as-presentations -
deserves attention because it is sometin1es presented as a mediating
third way (Tindale 1999 is an excellent example). The archetype here
is neither mathematicians' proofs nor debaters' exchanges, but
someone, perhaps a lawyer or a politician, making a case before an
audience. A defense attorney need not convince his counterpart, the
prosecutor in the trial, any more than a politician needs to convert her
opponent in an election campaign. The arguer's target is the audience-
the judge and jurors or the electorate at large. An opponent may, of
course, be part of the audience, or all of it, or the seed for an abstracted
ideal audience, but not necessarily.
The virtue of the arguing-as-presentation model is that by
highlighting the performative context, it opens the door for normative
concepts and considerations. This is where the goal can properly said
to be rational persuasion, and this is where to locate the two failures
noted earlier: failures to persuade at all and failures to do so rationally.
The presentation of the argument-as-proof, or the illative core, has to be
appropriate to the context and not just internally valid. The target
audience is crucial element in the performative context. Thus, even a
valid and sound argument that reaches dialectical closure by meeting
all objections may yet be unsuccessful in rational persuasion if it does
not speak to the audience. Eloquent and even persuasive obscurantism,
for example, would be rhetorically blameworthy, even if dialectically
successful.24
And yet, even the goal of rational persuasion needs something like
an obj ective check - truth as a condition on premises, for example, or
the injection of an idealized model interlocutor.
needs the fixed point of an ideal limit. If the premises of an argument
are criticized as irrelevant, it may be that more can be added to
establish their relevance. If they are criticized as insufficient to warrant
the conclusion, perhaps supplemental premises can be offered. And if
they are rejected as unacceptable, further support can be adduced to
make them more acceptable. But if they are criticized as false, the
game is over. Here is a case where the charge of fallacy is definitely
not an invitation to further argumentation. The charge that there are
false pren1ises, however, is a show stopper. It is, at least putatively, a
d
25
trump car.
4. Models and Metaphors. These three models correspond, very
roughly, to Logic, Dialectic, and Rhetoric respectively. Each model
defines a family of approaches to arguments and argumentation,
complete with its own conceptual vocabulary, its own methodology, its
own nom1S, and its own criteria for evaluation. Each has its own telos,
and each defines its own class of sophisma. They complement one
another in the project of understanding argumentation.
Arguments that violate the norms of the proof paradigm have
logical fallacies; arguers that violate the norms of the war metaphor
cOlnmit dialectical transgressions: and presentations that violate the
norms of the making-a-case n10del make rhetorical mistakes. (A fuller,
but still tentative, taxonomy of errors argument using this schema is
included as an appendix.)
What these models provide, then, is a complementary set of
approaches to argument analysis. Each is incomplete in ways that are
included in the other models. But even jointly, they are still
incomplete. The principles for argumentation tell us how we should
argue, but they do not tell us why we should argue, and they do not tell
us when we should argue - and when we should not.
For example, from the dialectical model, we can recognize our
obligations to ask questions when we do not understand and raise
objections when we see them - something about which the logical
model is completely silent. But thinking of arguments as contests first
and foremost obscures our obligations to sincerity, clarity, and fairness
- the province of the rhetorical model. And the imperative to reason
validly - objectively so, and not merely in the judgments of our
opponents and audiences, or even of ourselves as proponents - is a
logical imperative.
Again, these are all hypothetical imperatives: if you argue, do so in
these ways. That is a consequence of the particular models in play.
Completing proofs, waging verbal wars, and making presentations are
all things we do, but they are all optional. We need not engage in any
of those actions. At least sometimes, however, arguing is not optional;
it is something we ought to do, so that the failure to argue is itself an
argumentative failure.
None of the models on the table captures that obligation. There is,
however, no a priori justification for these particular models. Nor is
there anything sacred about the number three - at least not in this
context. Rather, there is only the a posteriori justification for this
trinity that comes with its success in explaining old fallacies and
locating and accomnl0dating other missteps in argumentation. Nor are
these three models permanent features of the conceptual landscape.
Models, after all, are metaphors of a kind
26
and metaphors change over
time. They shake up the conceptual kaleidoscope. They change how
we see the world. They become literal. More to the point, metaphors
can lose their vitality as metaphors as our ways of thinking change.
New metaphors can take their places as formative factors in our
understanding.
There are good reasons to think that the metaphors for thinking and
reasoning and arguing should be especially susceptible to deliberate
revision. The principle of meta-rationality cited in the previous chapter
- the principle that asserts that part of reasoning rationally is reasoning
about rationality - includes the imperative to revisit these metaphors.
But even that principle is at best an assertoric imperative: since you
want to be rational, you must also reason about reasoning. What is
needed is a model for arguments that hears the categorical imperative
that enjoins us to enter into dialectical, logical, and rhetorical space, in
the first place - in a word, to Argue.
5. Arguments as Expressions of Civic Character. Ralph
Johnson COUles near to conceptualizing argumentation in a way that
mandates arguing: argumentation as "manifest rationality. ,,27 That
understanding of argument connects argumentation's Ie/os with our
own. If we are rational beings, and argumentation is manifest
rationality, then we should argue. Argumentation is a form of self-
actualization. It is not just who we are and what we do, but who we
can be and what we ought to.
Still, it does not tell us when to argue and when not to argue. We
are rational beings every hour of the day, but that does not mean we
should argue all the time! We need to look at the larger context for
arguing - which is, let us not forget, primarily a social phenomenon.
28
There are times when the urge to argue is almost irresistible.
When we are criticized or accused, we offer justifications and
explanations, which are likely to be arguments of a sort. When we hear
unsubstantiated or offensive assertions, we feel it is incumbent upon us
to challenge them, perhaps hoping to initiate an argument. When
confronted with hard choices, we cannot help but deliberate, weighing
the pros and cons, in either simulated or genuine argument. These
cases are all to the good, and yet there are times and places when these
urges are to be resisted. If a verdict has been reached, the time for
further argument is past; in the middle of lecture, the time to challenge
outrageous assertions has not yet come; in the heat of battle, there may
not be time enough; at a religious ceremony, it is the occasion that
might be wrong; and when watching television, the image of the talking
head is just not a genuine audience.
Consider that last case, arguing with the TV. There can be no
argument because there is no dialogue. Arguments are interpersonal
exchanges. They are social. Now consider the penultimate case,
arguing with a member of the clergy giving a sermon, say, or worse,
delivering a eulogy at a funeral! The argument is completely out of
place, regardless of its logic, its rhetoric, or its careful dialectical
attention to the clergy-cum-opponent's main points. The violation of
social conventions is obvious.
But now consider silence - nun-argument - in an other context,
say, at a public forum when a speaker has said something that you
know to be false, or in a classroom when a student has said something
outrageous and offensive - or at an academic conference when a
speaker has shown evidence of a shocking misunderstanding of the
topic at hand. As participants in those occasions, it is (imperfectly)
incumbent upon you to speak up. It is a civic responsibility, so perhaps
we should think of arguments as an expression of civic character, as
well of individual self-realization. Presumably, there will be a set of
argumentative mistakes associated with that new nlodel, too.
APPENDIX: A TENTATIVE TAXONOMY OF FALLACIES AND
OTHER ARGUMENTATIVE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
I. LOGICAL FALLACIES
(VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF INFERENCE: INVALID REASONING
AND PROBLEMS WITH LOGICAL STRUCTURE)
FALSE CAUSE
* POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC
*NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA
* OVERSIMPLIFIED CAUSE
HASTY GENERALIZATION
* SMALL SAMPLE
* UNREPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE
BEGGING THE QUESTION/CIRCULAR REASONING
AMBIGUITIES
* EQUIVOCATION (LEXICAL)
* AMPHIBOLY(GRAMMATICAL)
* DIVISION/COMPOSITION
AFFIRMING THE CONSEQUENTIDENYING THE ANTECEDENT
"NOT" HOPPING
SLIPPERY SLOPE
MISSING THE POINT
ApPEAL TO IGNORANCE
WEAK ANALOGY
UNFINISHED DEMONSTRATION
II. RHETORICAL FAULTS
(VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF FAIR PRESENTATION:
MISREPRESENTATIONS, OMISSIONS, AND PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT
AUDIENCE ASSUMPTIONS)
SUPPRESSED EVIDENCE
UNWARRANTED PREMISE
FALSE DICHOTOMY (BLAQCK & WHITE THINKING)
COMPLEX QUESTION
SUBJECTIVISM
AD HOMINEM
* ABUSIVE
* CIRCUMSTANTIAL
* TUQUOQUE
* POiSONING THE WELL
Errors in Arguments
NONSEQUITUR
* DIVERSION/RED HERRING
ApPEAL TO (ILLEGITIMATE) AUTHORITY
ApPEAL TO EMOTION
ADPOPULUM
* ApPEAL TO MAJORITY
* PROVINCIALISM
INSINCERITY
STRAW MAN
OBSCURANTISM
III. DIALECTICAL OFFENSES
(VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF RATIONAL ENGAGEMENT)
ApPEAL TO FORCE
EXCESSIVE ARGUMENT
* QUIBBLING
* PICKING A FIGHTIUNmST ARGUMENT
* BEATING A DEAD HORSE
UNANSWERED OBJECTIONS (BY PROPONENT)
UNVOICED OBJECTIONS (BY OPPONENT)
UNASKED QUESTIONS
MISUNDERSTANDING (CF. STRAW MAN)
INSUFFICIENT ARGUMENT
* FILIBUSTERING (AS A MEANS TO PREVENT ARGUMENT)
* TURNING A DEAF EAR
INSUFFICIENT COUNTER-ARGUMENT
* CREDULITy/UNCHALLENGED ASSUMPTIONS
* UNASKED QUESTIONS
* UNVOICED OBJECTIONS
IGNORATIO ELENCHI
Endnotes
93
1. A version of this chapter was presented at the Fifth Conference of the
International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Amsterdam, June,
2002 and is in the Proceedings. A slightly revised version appears in van
Eemeren et al. 2003.
2. R. Johnson 1996, p. 95 gets close to this.
3. The term is from Pepper 1942. See also Lakoff and M. Johnson 1980 and
Hesse 1980.
4. Hamblin, 1970, P. 12.
5. Johnson and Blair, 1977,200.
6. Aristotle: Sophistical Refutations 167a21; Hamblin 1970 pp.31-32.
Hurley 2000, perhaps the most widely used logic textbook in North
America, explicitly identifies Ignoratio Elenchi and Missing the Point.
7. This would go under Aristotle's heading of "valid arguments inappropriate
to the subject matter."
8. van Eemeren et al. 1992, 188ff.
9. Ibid., 116ff.
10. The P-D approach is well-suited to describe this, e.g. as a failure to move
from the confrontation stage to the opening stage. Strictly speaking,
however, the move cannot count as a fallacy - if we understand fallacies
to be poor arguments: if you do not argue, then you cannot be charged
with arguing poorly!
11. Ibid,. 95.
12. After Barry M. Goldwater's famous line from his acceptance speech at the
1964 Republican National Convention: "I would remind you that
extremism in the defense of liberty is. no vice. And let me remind you also
that moderation in the pursuit ofjustice is no virtue."
13. Johnson and Blair 1977, p. 55.
14. R. Johnson discusses the illative core and dialectical tier in R. Johnson
2000, p. 165. "Illative" is the term used in R. Johnson and Blair, 1977, p.
13, to refer to conclusion indicators. Hamblin 1970, p. 228, makes
reference to Whateley's prior use of "illative." Peirce also used it.
15. Johnson 1996, p. 106.
16. Dialectical closure does not even suffice for settlement unless the concept
is expanded to include such unsettled cases as ending the argument by
walking away, by agreeing to disagree, and by the stubborn meta-
argument that something must be wrong even if I cannot yet identify it.
See the previous chapter for a discussion of the last case,
17. Chapters 14 and 15 below include discussions of metaphors for
arguments. There are obvious and important similarities between this
approach and Aristotle's tripartite approach, sometimes identified with the
product, process, and procedure of argumentation. Apart from any
disagreements in detail, the crucial difference comes with the addition of a
fourth model and, most of all, with the identification of the models with
metaphoric structures: they are entrenched but mutable features of the
conceptual landscape. Much of the discussion throughout Tindale 1999 is
structured on the process-procedure-product distinction.
18. In addition to the attention given the argument-as-war metaphor in chapter
3, see, e.g., Lakoff and M. Johnson 1980, Nozick,1981, Nye 1990, and
more recently and popularly, Tannen 1998.
19. For example, R. Johnson 1999 p. 150 claims that argument always has a
background of controversy, and Govier 1999 begins by finding the genesis
of arguments in some kind of disagreement and concludes (ch. 14) by
defending the "Positive Power of Controversy.
20. Let me repeat an important point from chapter 3: There is something
deeply ill-conceived in this picture. If, after argument, I have convinced
you of something, you end up with a new belief - a belief that is well-
warranted and comes complete with its supporting reasons. You have
gained son1ething very valuable. And yet we feel compelled to describe
you as the "loser" of the argument!
21. The ideology behind this is manifest in logic texts from the very start:
their titles. ~ x t often have such titles as Logical Self-Defense (Johnson
and Blair 1994), Attacking Faulty Reasoning (Darner 1987), and How to
Win an Argument (Gilbert 1996) or, going one better, How to Win EvelY
Argument (Capaldi 1999). Even pragma-dialectical discussions of
"critical discussions," like van Eemeren et ai. 1996, are marketed with
fisticuffs on the cover!
22. Walzer 2000, now in its third edition, has become the consensus entry into
contemporary discussions of just war theory. That discourse is extended
to arguments in chapter 8 below.
23. M Gilbert 1997 emphasizes how the most important features of arguments
can be their emotional, visceral, and "kisceral" dimensions ("modes"), to
the point that they eclipse the logical.
24. While some commentators took this approach to Alan Sokal' s parody of
post-modern science studies: it passed the (dialectical?) test of blind
review but failed to be either rational or persuasive. I think it is better
counted as just the reverse: rhetorically successful insofar as it was an
eloquent and deftly executed satire with great effect, but dialectically
incomplete, as the tidal wave of subsequent objections demonstrated.
And, of course, evaluated logically, it is a fiasco: an irremediable hash of
Hasty Generalizations, Weak Analogies, Slippery Slopes, and Straw Man
arguments - but logical validity is as utterly inappropriate a measure for
parodies as truth is for fiction.
25. Kasser and Cohen, 2003.
26. Hesse, 1980.
27. Johnson,2000,ch.6.
28. Ibid., p. 149
CHAPTER 7
Why Should I Argue?
Suppose you are having a family dinner. In the course of the meal,
you mention that there is a new Indian restaurant in town that serves an
excellent red curry. At this point, your great aunt remarks that she
never eats curries because it's eating curries that makes Indians and
Pakistanis smell the way they do. What are you to do? Do you
challenge her? You know from past experience that that would
precipitate a nasty argument. It would ruin the rest of the evening for
everyone and put added strain on the already frayed family ties. Should
you bite your tongue, instead? But you also know that that would leave
you feeling ashamed of yourself, more like a guilty accomplice than an
innocent bystander. What exactly would be wrong in keeping silent?
Is there anyone anywhere who would be wronged by it? If you do
object, why are you doing it? Is it for the sake of the Indians and
Pakistanis? They, of course, are oblivious to your great aunt's
comments. Is it for the sake of impressionable younger children who
are present? If so, does that mean if there were no children present, it
would be OK to let her comment slide? Or would objecting be for your
own sake, to put your own conscience at rest?
We can, of course, argue about anything,
l
but not all arguments are
justified. Nothing is beyond all possible dispute. In part, that is the
point of skepticism. However, just because it is always possible to
object rationally, does not mean it is always rational to object actually.
There are many factors that determine whether - and how and when
and why - we should engage in argument. It matters who is speaking.
It feels less incumbent upon us to engage the off-hand remark from an
elderly relative than a similar comment from our children. The context
matters, too. It seems more urgent that we challenge sexist remarks in
the personnel office at the workplace than the same comments at a
party. And can't it wait until the kids are asleep? Content matters, too.
If your uncle tells your aunt that it is absurd to generalize about all 400
million Indians that way, it does not seenl especially urgent to correct
his population figures. Does that mean the factually incorrect is
somehow less objectionable than the politically benighted or the
98 Philosophical Argunlents
morally offensive? How repugnant does something have to be before
we must raise an objection and offer an argument? And how innocuous
does something have to be before our objections become mere
quibbling? The starting point for sorting out the tangle of questions is
provided by the conclusion of the previous chapter: that arguments are,
in part, performances.
There are two immediate corollaries to recognizing the
performative dimension of arguments. First, arguments are actions. In
Trudy Govier's felicitous way of expressing it, "Arguments are more
than propositions in timeless relation to one another.,,2 Arguments
must be contextualized. Michael Gilbert elaborates, describing
arguments as "complex social activities that involve human egos
seeking to satisfy their intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual
needs.,,3 Consequently, they must be judged not only as chains of
inferentially connected propositions, but also as actions - ethically,
pragmatically, socially, politically, aesthetically, etc. Arguments can
be evocative, effective, or elegant; but they can also be immoral,
imprudent, or just plain impolite. The second corollary is that, in
addition to arguers, the context for an argument includes an audience.
There is always an audience. When we argue in a public sphere - not
only as lawyers, politicians, or advocates, but also as members of
families, social groups, and communities - the audience may be as
formally defined as a jury or as loosely defined as spatio-temporal
proximity allows, viz., whoever is within earshot. When two people
argue in private, they each provide the audience for the other. For
some of the purposes of argument, it is precisely those with whom \ve
argue who serve as the de facto juries of our words. When I argue to
myself, I am my own audience; I am the one who must be satisfied.
Without going so far as to assert that "argunlentation is a function
of the audience addressed, ,,4 we can note that the audience serves
several distinct and important functions for arguments, and so should
be one of the determining factors in constructing an argument. The
most important role for audiences is dialectical: audiences serve as
judges for our arguments. Accordingly, an arguer must satisfy. her
audience, whether that is an opponent in an adversarial argument, an
observing third party, or herself.
s
This means that being the audience
for an argument is, in a very real sense, being part of the argument.
Following an argument is not a passive activity. Losing the thread of
an argument is comparable to losing the plot when reading;
understanding disappears and the act of reading is transformed into
something else: a parade of words marching before uncomprehending
Why Argue? 99
eyes. "Reading" the words of an unknown language - in, say, the sense
of silently pronouncing them to oneself - is only distantly related to the
more familiar phenomenon.
6
In like manner, listeners who n1erely
listen without actively tracing the reasoning in arguments are not really
doing their job.
To say that audiences have a job to do is to say that there are
certain obligations on audiences. In certain formalized cases, the
source of the obligation is structural, and the bearers of that obligation
are narrowly specified. In the contexts of debates and trials, for
example, the obligation is institutionally imposed on the judges and
juries. Similarly, readers of students' essays are negligent if they do
not follow the arguments or if they do not do it well. The same can be
said of cases in which the responsibility is voluntarily assumed rather
than imposed, e.g., by challenging an assertion, by agreeing to serve as
the referee for a paper submitted to a journal, or simply by offering a
receptive ear.
In these examples, the audiences' obligations can be seen as
obligations to the arguers. We wrong our students when we do not pay
attention to the arguments of their essays; the jury wrongs the
defendants and plaintiffs if they do not carefully attend to the
arguments presented; and hearing someone out has to be more than
simply giving him a chance to talk - it must include active listening - if
it is not to be a hollow gesture.
In addition, there are some more general argumentational
obligations on us as audiences that are not obligations to the arguers.
There are duties that are not duties to anyone in particular. All the
voting-eligible citizens of a democracy, fQr example, have a duty to
engage with the arguments of the candidates and referenda that are
placed before them. Citizens who do not vote are remiss; but so are
citizens who do vote but do so without weighing the arguments. Here
the duty seems to be to oneself or one's fellow citizens, if anyone,
rather than to the arguers. More generally, there are obligations on us
as rational and moral agents to listen to reason, to be an audience, in the
conduct of our lives. Here, too, the duty seems not to be a duty to the
particular arguers - moral philosophers and visionaries like Aristotle,
Jesus, Buddha, Kant, Mill, or Rawls. Rather, it is somehow both a duty
to oneself and a duty to the arguments themselves, i.e., an obligation to
respect reason.
The puzzlement arises from the interface between three facts about
arguments and obligations. First, the multiple roles in arguments need
not be exclusive. We often argue with ourselves and for ourselves. For
example, we might rehearse an argument internally in the process of
deliberation in order to come to a decision or to reaffirm a decision
already made. As we raise and respond to objections until we are
satisfied, we are filling all three roles of argument simultaneously:
proponent, opponent, and audience. Second, argumentational
obligations form a complex network, running from the arguers to their
audiences and back. Audiences have obligations to arguers, but arguers
have obligations to their audiences in turn. And just as there are
obligations at titnes to be audiences, i.e., to listen to arguments, to hear
them out and take their measure, sometimes there are obligations to be
arguers. Failing to argue can be as blameworthy as failing to hear
arguments; sometimes those who do not reason are as culpable as those
who do not listen to reason. Third, there are several different kinds of
obligations to argue that may be present, not all of which, on the face of
things, are easily subsumed under the "duty-to-someone" model.
It will be helpful to consider several examples of situations where
there is an obligation to argue in order to identify some of the different
reasons and imperatives for arguing. The structured settings of
courtrooms are fertile sources for data because there are four markedly
different arguers that can make an appearance, each filling his or her
own obligation to argue. The defending attorney has a professional
obligation to her defendant to argue on his behalf; the prosecuting
attorney has an obligation to the plaintiff or, in a criminal case, to the
state; the jurors, in a juried case, need to argue with one another to
defend their positions as part of the process of coming to a consensus
verdict; and the judge in an appellate court might need to articulate a
legal opinion, which entails presenting an argument.
The arguments of the defendant's attorney are the most
straightforward. She is a surrogate for the defendant who could, in
principle, choose to argue for himself - or even choose not to contest
the charges. The defending attorney, however, does not have the
option of not arguing. As surrogate, she has to defend her client, even
if she believes the defendant is guilty of the charges leveled. The
institutional obligation to defend the accused has force even though the
accused is under no obligation to defend himself. Her primary duty is
to her client, not to the judge, the members of the jury, or her nominal
opponent, the prosecuting attorney. As an arguer, however, she does
indeed have responsibilities to the judge, the jury, and the prosecutor -
e.g., to be clear, to raise and respond to objections, etc - insofar as they
are all included in her audience, but these are secondary to the original
duty to argue. Her client, then, is as much a part of her audience as the
Why Argue? 101
judge and jury, and for some purposes it is the client who is the relevant
part of her audience. The presumptive criterion for determining
whether she has fulfilled her obligations is whether or not her client is
satisfied that she has argued well. Winning the case is not a necessary
condition for fulfilling the obligation to argue.
7
The situation of the prosecuting attorney in criminal court is
different. He usually does not represent anyone in particular. Thus,
there might not be anyone to whom we can turn for a prima facie
determination of the status his obligation to argue. In some case, of
course, there are identifiable individuals whose interests need to be
represented. The relatives of a murder victim, for example, have an
interest at stake in the trial. They can regard the prosecutor as their
representative. If there are any genuinely victimless crimes, however,
the prosecutor's duty would have to be to something like the abstract
interests of the state, rather than to any individuals. Here too, the
obligation to argue per se should not be confused with any imperatives
to win the case.
Although failed arguments may result from argumentative
incompetence or negligence, and so blameworthy on that account, they
are distinct from failures to argue. The effect on the criminal
population may be the same, there is a difference to be marked between
prosecutors who do not prosecute crimes and prosecutors who fail to
win convictions. The issue at hand concerns the former. Under what
circumstances is a district attorney who chooses not to prosecute a case
- Le., who chooses not to argue! - remiss? Insofar as we all have
certain responsibilities as moral agents, there is an analogy to the
conversationalist who must decide whether to challenge racist remarks
or sexist innuendo. There are many different considerations for public
prosecutors to balance, including the cost to society of the investigation
and prosecution, the effects on the acccused, and the seriousness of the
crime. Launching a full grand jury investigation into alleged parking
violations would be all out of proportion to the offenses. There are
counterpart considerations for the conversationalist who is met with an
offensive remark - and a counterpart excess: there is a place for
dissertation-length arguments on the inappropriateness of ethnic jokes.
In general, the dinner table is not that place.
The nature of the obligation to argue can be approached from
another angle: Who, if anyone, has the right to seek redress for the
failure? In the first case we considered, Abraham's failure to argue
with God,8 both Sarah and Isaac had the proper standing because their
interests were at issue. If there were reasonable grounds for a criminal
indictment in, say, a homicide, but no charges were pressed, it would
be the victim's relatives who would have grounds for complaint. They
have to be counted as part of the audience for the prosecutor's
arguments, whether or not they are in attendance at the trial. Who, if
anyone, would have the right to complain if no indictments were
handed down in a victirrlless crime? There are well-established
precedents and a well-developed literature concerning class action
suits, legal standing, amici curiae, and related topics. They all rest on
the assumption that there are always wronged-parties or parties whose
interests are at stake. Thus that there are always interested audiences
for prosecutors' arguments. Prosecutors too can be considered
surrogate arguers.
Jurors' arguments are very different from prosecutors' and
defenders' arguments on several scores. First, the jurors' arguments
among themselves take place in the relative privacy of the jury room.
There are no accused, accusers, victims, or their surrogates present.
They are their own audience. There is an important liberating aspect to
this because it allows them to consider, adopt, and abandon positions
with much less concern for the "face" problems that are present in more
public arguments.
9
On the other hand, there is the fact that juries are charged with
reaching a verdict. This is the source of their obligation to argue and it
places certain constraints on their arguments. They cannot decide to
ignore the issue, or table it until there is more evidence, or agree to
disagree. Some sort of resolution is mandated.
Third, juries need to come to a consensus. To some degree, this
also acts as a constraint. As such, the arguments they have among
thenlselves are more deliberative than polemical or partisan. The
balance between heuristic inquiry and eristic argument is not the same
as in the courtroom proper.
IO
The need to come to a consensus
resolution means their arguments must be more convergent than
agonistic.
1
I There is some space for negotiation and compromise
because the jurors themselves are the audience that nlust be satisfied by
their arguments.
Fourth, since it is a verdict that juries must reach, their arguments
can be more deliberative. They decide the case. Their decision is
constitutive. Disagreement as to whether a defendant was negligent in
some matter need not be a disagreement about the facts of the case. A
verdict of criminal negligence makes the defendant criminally
negligent, just as an umpire calling a pitch a "strike" makes the pitch a
strike whether it crosses the plate or not. This is not to say that the
Why Argue? 103
decision is arbitrary. There are good and bad verdicts, but it leads to
conceptual confusion to suppose that there is always a right and wrong.
That is not the nature of "verdictives.,,12
Finally, because juries are not advocates for or against one side or
the other, they need to take all the perspectives into consideration.
They might not have the luxury of relying wholly on deductive
reasoning, but they do have recourse to "conductive" argumentation
~ c u s e they are in "the domain of pro and con.,,13 In general, cogency
for conductive arguments requires that the pros "outweigh" the cons,
not simply that the supporting reasons pass the "RSA" test, i.e., that the
positive considerations are relevant, sufficient, and acceptable.
14
There is a qualification to be noted, one that points to an important
feature of argunlents. Juries operate under special rules. While the
nature of their obligation to argue does direct them to conductive
reasoning, there are unequal standards of proof for guilt and innocence.
The eristic argument between the prosecution and the defense is not
symmetrical, so the image of a balance scale for juries is not quite right.
A defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt. 15 Hence, 'Nhile jurors who are in favor of a guilty verdict need
to convince their co-jurors of the defendant's guilt, jurors who have
doubts about that do not in fact have to persuade their colleagues to
have similar doubts. They have only to get their co-jurors to
acknowledge those doubts as reasonable. As a juror, you must agree to
a guilty verdict, but you only need to go along with a verdict of not-
guilty. You need not be rationally persuaded that the defendant is not
guilty. The reason this is important is that it challenges the idea that the
goal of all argumentation is rational persuasion. A juror's argument for
acquittal does not have to be rational persuasive and so does not have to
have that as its goa1.
16
Unlike juries, who need only deliver a verdict, judges are
sometimes called on to articulate a written opinion. When there is a
written opinion by the judge (or opinions by the judges), these are the
last words from the courtroom. They might not be the last words on
the case, however. There is always the possibility of future
commentary on judges' opinions. Thus, judges' summary arguments
have a peculiar, dual role. In the short term, because the trial is over,
they do not really have to persuade anyone. Of course, they may be
used in persuasive arguments later on, e.g., in appeals or as a cited
precedent in later cases, but rational persuasion is not their primary
purpose. Their immediate roles are to explain and justify the decisions
being handed down. There is another role, however, played out in the
longer term, \\'hich is more important in evaluating these argulllents.
They are contributions to the on-going discourse that constitutes legal
tradition. And ultimately, it will be the audience for this role, the future
participants in the legal institutions, that determines whether the duty to
argue has been satisfactorily discharged.
The source and force of the obligation to argue is more visible in
courtrooms than elsewhere, but additional examples of the duty to
argue are not hard to find. Eulogists at funerals, customers returning
merchandise, students puzzled and upset about their grades, politicians
campaigning for office, government representatives in office, business
representatives in the marketplace, eager suitors, and the reluctant
sought all need to present their cases.
In all these examples, the justification we have for argument is that
we are arguing/or someone. Sometimes, this means arguing on behalf
of someone, whether ourselves or someone else. However, it could
also mean arguing before someone, as a performer before an audience
rather than a surrogate or representative in place of another. Often,
both kinds of reasons are present. Parents ought to provide reasons for
their actions and rules, if asked (and what parent isn't?), but they also
need to provide models for deliberative thinking, rational inquiry, and
reasoned debate. What is called for is the very act of engaging in the
give and take of rational debate, and this is largely independent of the
content of the argument. Here is a case where the interests of the
audience are not the interests at issue.
The claim that parents ought to argue can easily be misinterpreted.
What is appropriate is the presentation of instances of justifying,
explaining, and supporting discourse: of dialectical engagement. What
about the negative image of parents arguing? The problem is not
simply that they may be arguing with each other rather than with the
on-looking children; the problem is with the kind of argument and,
more to the point, that the children are indeed looking on. Can it wait
until the kids are asleep? The problem is with the audience.
Audiences are the source of obligations to argue. In general, this
will be because of some antecedent relations we have with the
audience, whether familial, social, or institutional. Conversely, it is the
relations that we have with the audience that can obviate the obligation:
it is because we need to maintain our relations with our aunts and
uncles that sometimes we should not argue with them. Similarly, while
it is the relationship that elected officials have to their constituents that
obliges them to argue (on their constituents' behalf), that same
relationship can also put constraints on their arguing. Because a
Why Argue? 105
politician may need to go before the voters again in the future, some of
the arguments he could present to win their votes this time ought not be
presented. For example, if negative campaigning turns out to alienate
the voters in the long run, then its immediate benefits may be
outweighed. False promises can and do win elections; but they also can
and do lose subsequent elections. Because our children are the
audience for so nluch that we do, we need to be careful when and how
we argue, and also when we fail to argue.
This way of thinking about the duties to argue and abstain from
arguing has wide-reaching consequences for philosophy, that most
argument-centered of activities. If there are mandates and prohibitions
for arguing, and philosophy is all about argument, then are there certain
obligations to philosophize? Who is the audience for philosophy that
gives rise to these obligations? And are there times when we simply
ought not philosophize?
Philosophical arguments are strange animals. They are not like
other arguments. Negotiation and compromise are not possible
outcomes. Filibustering to prevent an argument or simply walking
away to avoid it are not legitimate options for philosophers.
Abandoning a good argument is never philosophically justified.
Admitting defeat is something that philosophers rarely do. And yet,
these are all common phenomena in other argumentative spheres.
Good pOliticians, able lawyers, and other arguers and surrogates all
have recourse to these moves. Identifying the audience for
philosophical argumentation will go a long way to answering these
questions. For example, identifying an idealized standing audience -
but not a represented constituency - might help to explain why simply
walking away from philosophical arguments is not an option. But a
caveat is also in order. A complete understanding of philosophical
arguments has to take other factors into account besides the audience.
The absence of negotiation and compromise fronl philosophical
arguments, for example, is surely a function of the subject matter of
philosophy rather than the audience for philosophical arguments. The
fact that it may on occasion be politically wise to abandon a good
argument, but never philosophically justified, is due more to the
respective societal roles of philosophy and politics, as well as the
rational and temporal resources that are available to arguers in those
fields. As for the dearth of examples of philosophers who have
admitted defeat? I do not think the audience can be blamed for'that.
Endnotes
1. We can argue about anything because "everything is objectionable" in the
sense outlined in chapter 2 above but also because beliefs can always be
further intensified, as noted in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 44.
2. Govier 1999a, p. 14.
3. Gilbert 1997 p. 74.
4. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p.44
5. The presence of the audience and its role in argument evaluation was
introduced in chapter 1, and was further addressed in chapters 4 and 5.
This is at the heart of the "rhetorical model of argument," the subject of
Tindale 1999, especially chapters 3 and 4.
6. Cf. Wittgenstcin 1958, 156-171.
7. Winning would seem to be a sufficient condition, however, insofar as one
cannot win an argument in which one has not engaged. But trials are not
simply arguments. A client might want his day in court, rather than even
the most favorable plea-bargained resolution. If the prosecutor drops the
case, or the judge throws it out of court, the obligation can be said to have
been obviated rather than fulfilled.
8. In chapter 1 above.
9. See Tracy and Coupland 1990, pp. 1-14.
10. Gilbert 1997, p. 43.
11. Gilbert's concept of "coalescent argumentation" would seem to fit in here,
but the. relations among the jurors are so much more restricted than the
rich "multi-modal" relations among family members, friends, and even co-
workers that issues such as lingering resentment, differences in attitudes,
and so on are largely irrelvant. .
12. The horrible terminology is, of course, from Austin; also see Wisdom's
"Gods" for a discussion of kinds of reasoning that anticipates a good deal
of the conceptual machinery now routinely used in contemporary informal
logic.
13. Govier 1999a p. 157.
14. The RSA criteria for good (irguments is found in Johnson and Blair 1994,
pp. 54ff. Cf. The ARG test in Govier 1992 p. 68. Govier 1999a p. 170
offers the metaphor of "outweighing" as a criterion for conductive
argument cogency.
15. That is why philosophers rarely get tabbed for jury duty: they have a
distorted sense of which doubts are reasonable.
16. But see Johnson 1996, p. 106, for an argument that "Rational persuasion is
the te/os of argumentation."
CHAPTER 8
Just and Unjust Wars - and
Just and Unjust Arguments!
Of the three main models or metaphors we have considered - ar-
metaphor, argument-as-proof and arguing-as-
making-a-presentation - the war metaphor has received the most atten-
tion. It has been criticized by many authors in many ways. Many of
those critiques have raised important and relevant issues. Some offer
keen insights. Others propose creative alternatives. As an aggregate,
they ought to have a greater persuasive effect on our speaking and
thinking than they have in fact have had. For all that, the metaphor
remains as entrenched as ever in our collective thinking - and not with-
out good reason, for it is a rich vital metaphor. We are not done with it
yet. We must return to it once more.
The points of similarity between wars and arguments were re-
hearsed in chapter one. We can easily imagine overhearing someone
talk about attacks and counter-attacks, conflict and engagement, victory
and defeat, or triumph and surrender, without being able to determine
whether it was argumentation or war that was being discussed. The
argument-is-war metaphor creates a shared vocabulary.
Their vocabularies merely overlap; they are not identical. There
are some concepts from the vocabulary of war which are not commonly
applied to argumentation, but easily could be, such as sieges, blitz-
kriegs, appeasement, and ambushes. The ready transfer of concepts
also flows, albeit not as torrentially, in the other direction, from argu-
mentation to war. Establishing a position, making concessions, and
finding comfflon ground could all be readily applied to wars.
This is not to deny the dissimilarities, and the prominent elements
peculiar to each. Wars, but not arguments, typically include armies,
chains of command, POWs, and conquest, while arguments, but not
wars, typically include inferences, fallacies, premises, and conclusions.
Still, the argument-is-war metaphor should be accorded its due: it
is, after all, an apt metaphor insofar as it captures so much of our ar-
gumentative practice; it is a vital metaphor insofar as it informs as well
as reflects that practice; and it is a powerful one insofar as it is hard to
escape its conceptual gravity. It is not, of course, an exact fit, but that it
is simply to reiterate that it is a metaphor, a vehicle for organizing our
thinking about things, rather than an unorganized collection of facts
that could serve as a literal description. But, as noted, the war meta-
phor is also, in many ways, an unfortunate one insofar as its effects on
our thinking and practice can be counted as negative. For all that, the
argument-is-war metaphor is a very fertile one because its semantic
fecundity enables us to see certain features of arguments - and perhaps
of wars as well - that were less visible.
To see how this works, consider the phenomenon referred to by the
marvelously euphemistic military phrase "collateral damage." It refers
to the carnage wreaked on non-combatants by proximate military ac-
tions. A monlent's thought is all that is needed to find its counterpart
in argumentation: consider, for example, children within earshot of
heatedly arguing parents. They are indeed innocent but injured non-
combatants within proximity to the fighting. That feature of arguments
might have been (and largely does seem to have been!) overlooked
were not the telnplate of the language of war in play. Similarly, the
war-cluster concepts of simmering hostilities, wars of aggression, hu-
manitarian interventions, exit strategies, and possibly even war crimes
all have argumentative counterparts worthy of greater analytic elucida-
tion and philosophical attention.
The juxtaposition of war and argument is, of course, also a juxta-
position of argument and war, so, conversely, the conceptual vocabu-
lary of argumentation might be expected to provide new ways of look-
ing at war. Such concepts as burdens ofproof and the distinctions be-
tween persuading and convincing and between settlement and resolu-
tion are not typically applied to wars, but perhaps they ought to be.
Of particular interest here is one important part of our thinking
about wars and the light that that might shed on thinking about argu-
mentation, viz., the concepts of Just and Unjust wars. To what extent
can the literature on these concepts be applied to arguments? Are there
Just and Unjust Arguments? The conclusion I reach is that the con-
cepts are indeed applicable and they do help shed light on some argu-
mentation phenomena, but only within certain limits. In the end, how-
ever, what we not need is not a Just Argument theory, but an Unjust
Argument theory.
1. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The discourse of Just War
theory often begins with the distinction between jus in bello and jus ad
bellum, that is between justice in the conduct of a war and justification
Just and Unjust Arguments 109
for going to war in the first place. The distinction may be problematic
on careful analysis in sonle particular contexts, but it is clear enough
initially to be intuitive, acceptable, and helpful. Soldiers are responsi-
ble for how they wage wars and nations are responsible for why they
wage wars. Unjustifiable actions in war are counted as war crimes,
even if the wars in which they occur are just. If, however, the wars are
unjust, they are counted as internationally illegal acts of aggression for
which the national governments or military commands, rather than in-
dividual soldiers, are responsible.
Amazingly, there is no obvious counterpart to be found in the lit-
erature of argumentation theory. While much has been written about
the proper conduct in argumentation, there is no counterbalancing mass
of writing on when and why to engage in argumentation in the first
place.
The reasons for this are not hard to fathom. The costs of going to
war are inevitably so high morally, politically, and economically that
they create a very strong presumption against war. Moreover, because
the political and economic costs have to be paid by both sides, political
and economic gain by one side cannot play any part in the moral justi-
fication of military actions. Wars of conquest, for example, are unjusti-
fied even if there are very great economic and political benefits gained
and there are very few casualties on either side.
The corresponding costs for arguments are minimal: neither sol-
diers nor civilians lose their lives, cities do not get destroyed, cultures
are not endangered. It is true that personal relations may be put at risk
by an argument, but not necessarily. If someone initiates an argument
at a town meeting or at an academic conference, there might be no cost
at all. There could be a price to pay if the argument became nasty so
that any subsequent contact between the parties would be poisoned, but
that would be a consequence of the conduct of the argument rather than
the mere fact of the argument. Indeed, arguments are to be expected in
those contexts. More than that, they are welcomed and even desired.
Argumentation per se is not a bad thing. War per se is. Argumentation
is not something to be avoided. War is. Arguments - understood now
as critical discussions - are good things. They clarify our positions,
strengthen our convictions, lead us to new beliefs, and, for some of us,
even provide a measure of enjoyment. What's to justify?
Of course, arguments are not all light and goodness. Philosophical
argumentation may on occasion approach the ideal of critical engage-
ment - both passionate in its pursuit of resolution and dispassionate
insofar as its participants are emotionally distanced from any particular
outcome - but what is at best uncommon among academics is much
rarer still in other contexts. There is a lot of negative baggage that is
commonly associated with arguments. They can be acrimonious and
challenging. They can be en10tionally draining. They can be intellec-
tually upsetting. They can be wastes of time. These are the potential
costs, what have to be weighed against the possible benefits in justify-
ing arguments. The possible benefits include better-justified beliefs,
better-articulated beliefs, and intellectual satisfaction, and pleasure.
A straightforward utilitarian calculation might seem called for: you
ought to argue when the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs and
you ought not argue when the reverse is probably the case. But for all
its elegance, the simple utilitarian formula is naIve. Argumentation
serves many purposes, among which are the fulfillment of sundry logi-
cal, rational, epistemological, social, and ethical obligations. Argu-
mentation, in Ralph Johnson's felicitous phrase, is "Manifest Rational-
ity." If we are to be rational beings, and argumentation is indeed mani-
fest rationality, then, in pursuit of self-actualization, we should argue.
This line of thinking is independent of any utilitarian consequentialist
considerations. Even were it not worth living, striving for the exam-
ined life would still be an epistemological mandate (if not a moral one).
Three topics from Just War theory are especially applicable and
relevant to arguments: (1) self-defense as a justification for arguing, (2)
pre-emptive arguments, and (3) second- or third-party interventions.
These will provide data for principles concerning the mandates and
prohibitions for arguing.
2. Contexts. There are times and places for arguing. We have all
been socialized well enough to know this quite well. We argue when
something is arguable, but not always. It would, for example, be com-
pletely out of place to take exception to something kind, but unwar-
ranted, that was said about the deceased in the eulogy at a funeral
service. It is neither the time nor the place to argue. The interruption
would be unjustified. At the other extreme, it would be just as wrong
for a defending attorney to remain silent in response to something un-
favorable, even if it were warranted, that was said about the defendant.
And, in some contexts, arguments are welcome.
It is usually not that clear-cut. Several factors. are at play. Recall
the case of the family gathering in the previous chapter in which an
elderly and cranky relative made an off-hand remark that was offen-
sive, perhaps something like a derogatory comment about an absent
member of the family or a bigoted attack on some ethnic group.
Should you argue? On the one hand, there may be an intellectual obli-
gation to rebut the charge on behalf of the maligned parties, but if it's
your 92-year-o!d great uncle who suffers from Alzheimer's who said it,
perhaps it would be better to let it slide. However, if it was your 15-
year-old niece who said the same thing, and it was heard by your 10-
year-old son - who also hears your silence in response - then you
should indeed say something. The obligation to your son - the present
audience -is even stronger than any obligations you might have to the
direct targets.
The audience is the most important factor in determining when to
argue and when not, but it is not the only relevant factor. It also mat-
ters who the would-be arguers are. While all of us may have obliga-
tions to truth and justice, we are not equally bound in all circumstances
to defend them. Is a prosecuting attorney obligated to challenge helpful
testimony that she knows to be false? Perhaps, but certainly not to the
extent that the defens\e attorney would be! Similarly, a congressional
representative qua representative is qlore obligated to defend her own
constituents' interests than those of others. Personal circumstances are
relevant.
The subject matter of the argument is also a determinant. Even
though candidates for public office in a political debate are already
engaged in an argument, they should not argue about religious differ-
ences, no more than theologians in their own scholarly exchanges
should argue politics. Philosophers may be inclined to follow Socrates'
lead in thinking that pretty much everything is fair game for argumen-
tative scnltiny, that pretty much any time is a good tinle to argue, and
that just about the worst thing of all is to lose faith in argumentation.
The call to philosophical debate may be timeless, but there are other
considerations in life. As we have seen, there are times that preclude
certain Jlrguments or even argumentation per set There can also be a
timely urgency to, say, political debate that tlumps philosophy's more
leisurely demands.
3. Arguments in Self-Defense. The first and most obvious justi-
fication for going to war is self-defense. Nations are manifestly enti-
tled to defend themselves, so appeals to self-defense have historically
been the rhetoric of first recourse. Even when the fighting is not obvi-
ously about self-defense and sometimes even when it has obviously
not been about self-defense - that is the language used. When the U.S.
sent troops 10,000 miles across the world to Southeast Asia, to cite a
striking example, the "Domino Theory" was invoked to cast the war as
a war of se(fdefense. Where there might have been an interesting and
possibly cogent appeal to the legitimate interests of the South Vietnam-
ese people, there was instead a convoluted appeal to American national
security. Self-defense is a trump card.
Something similar seems to holds true of arguments. Direct per-
sonal attacks justify rebuttals. If the eulogist in the earlier example
abused the forum provided by the occasion to make scurrilous remarks
about a particular member of the audience, that might indeed count as
the kind of provocation that would justify an immediate response. In-
terrupting the eulogy would be, if not altogether forgivable, then at
least more readily understandable.
The Just War theory extension of the principle of self-defense to
other legitimate interests of the state besides just territorial integrity
also has a ready counterpart in argumentation - and with the same ca-
veats. Thus, for example, Israel is generally regarded (i.e., pretty much
everywhere except the Arab world) as having been justified in begin-
ning the hostilities of the Six-Day War of 1967 because of the Egyptian
blockade of the Straits of Tiran. That blockade, which was in contra-
vention of international law, was not an attack on Israel's territory. It
was instead an attack on its economy.
2
In contrast, the American inte r-
vention in Grenada cannot be justified this way because no serious in-
terests were at stake. Other justifications would be necessary.
What are our argumentative self-interests? Attacks on our person
merit replies, but so do criticisms of our beliefs. This is especially true
of those beliefs with which we strongly identify or with which we are
strongly identified. A member of the clergy, a political party appa-
ratchik, or activists in a cause would be expected to respond to criti-
cisms of his religion, her politics, or their cause, and the rebuttals
would be justified and permitted. Contextual factors may, of course,
override the pennission, but there is the prima facie justification.
4. Pre-emptive Arguments. Pre-emptive military strikes, like
any other military actions, need to be justified by reference to some
critical n t r s t s ~ but the pre-emptive aspect needs special attention.
Strategic first-strikes during the run-up to a war are unjustified so long
as that war can be reasonably regarded as avoidable. Justification for
pre-emption is, therefore, much more difficult - which explains why
diplomatic exchanges between belligerents often reduces to the level of
kindergarteners - "But they started it!" and military history is littered
with so n1any examples of trumped up provocations.
The analogy with arguments begins to break down here. When
presumptions against argumentative engagement do exist, it is always
contextual, not generic. Thus, while it is the possibility of Just Wars
that needs the kind of explanation provided by a theoretical framework,
it is the phenomenon of Unjust Argunlents that has to be explained.
The Socratic model is again revealing: the philosopher in the market-
place would need reasons not to argue, rather than reasons to argue.
With regard to pre-emptive arguments, then, no extra or special
justification is needed. Entering into argument pre-emptively is on par
with engaging in argument in response to some other interlocutor's
initial move - understanding the term "argument" here in the idealized
sense of a critical discussion designed to resolve differences.
In application, this apparently allows non-stop argumentation
among rational agents - which may be the implicit utopian ideal of the
philosophical community. (Do you know of any philosophers who
require a provocation to have an argument?) All that is needed is two
or more interlocutors and a subject matter about which there any kind
of "dissensus," by which I mean anything from outright disagreement
to simple lack of consensus. If you believe a proposition P and I dis-
believe it, believing Not-P instead, that is an occasion to argue. So is
the case \vhere I simply do not believe P rather than positively disbe-
lieving it. And so is the case in which I do believe P, but with less
commitment and enthusiasm, or for different reasons. Since dissensus
is a pennanent feature of the hunlan social condition, so is the opportu-
nity for argument.
5. Humanitarian Interventions. As the world has become more
interconnected, communication more immediate, and the possibilities
for military actions greater and more varied, the discourse of Just War
theory has included the subject of humanitarian interventions. It is not
enough to merely express moral outrage at the events in East ,Timor,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Rwanda and Burundi. Knowledge of those
events together with the ability to do something about them give rise to
certain positive obligations to intervene - whether or not there are na-
tional interests at stake. To be sure, there are costs and risks to be
weighed. If the potential risks are too high, the obligation is out-
weighed, so a case has to he made to the citizens of the intervening
country about those costs. There is also a case to be made to the com-
munity of nations about the goals of the action and assurances as to the
limits of the intervention. The presence of some great social injustice
or moral outrage in another country would still not justify a war of con-
quest. If all of these factors line up - the moral affront is great enough,
the cost to the intervening country is minimal enough, and the scope of
the intervention is sufficiently well circumscribed - then a decision
against military action can be blameworthy.
Just as the justifications for war can, in the presence of the right
combination of abilities and opportunities, actually create moral obli-
gations to go to war, the license to argue can, in the right circum-
stances, become a mandate to argue. Many of the obstacles to justify-
ing intervention are easier to hurdle - the potential risks and costs, for
example - but some obstacles could be more difficult - violations of
argumentative rights or intellectual rights do not demand redress the
way that violations of human rights or civil rights do.
Consider the following examples of third-party intervention. In
each case, the intervention seems either permitted or mandated, but for
different reasons, so extracting universal governing principles is not
easy:
an argument between young siblings that threatens to become
violent, when a parent is near at hand;
a factual dispute between students in class, to which the
teacher has knowledge that could settle the issue;
stalemated deliberations between union and management, who
agree to mediation;
a discussion between three people at a social gathering which
evolves into an argument between two of them, and then
reaches a stage of interest to the third;
an overheard argument between two people at a similar gath-
ering in which one disputant is clearly winning, but is doing so
by arguing unfairly, perhaps by arguing grossly fallaciously or
else without giving the other interlocutor a chance to speak;
an overheard argument at a social gathering on a subject that is
simply of interest to the third party;
In one case (the mediator), the intervention is actually invited and
welcomed; in two others, the outside voice (parent, teacher) has some
authority either by position or expertise. In all three cases, there is
some sort of mandate to enter the argument.
The other cases are more problematic as well as more instructive.
What makes them problematic is that the third-party is not part of the
discourse circle, ex officio, as it were, as teacher, parent, or mediator,
although in the first case, the conversational history licenses, but does
not require, involvement. Argument can be a form of social engage-
ment, and the new interlocutor is really just re-engaging. Intervention
in the next case, against the bullying arguer, can be justified by a gen-
eral appeal to fairness. Depending on how egregious the abuse is and
how high the contextual deterrents to intervention are, the contribution
to the argument could be justified, unjustified, or even required. Is
there anything peculiar to the nature of argumentation - as opposed to
general behavioral guidelines - to be gleaned? I think so. The canons
of rational debate, much like the moral law, are value-bearing and pre-
scriptive. The contextual deterrents and incentives to intervention can-
not be assessed without reference to the subject matter of the argument
or the semantic content of individual argulnentative moves. Truth may
be a counterpart to goodness in some ways, but not all truths are worth
arguing about - including some very important truths. And yet, the fact
that many metaphysical and other philosophical assertions often have,
to put it mildly, "minimal perlocutionary effect" does not mean that
intervention in philosophical disputation is never justified. On the
contrary, philosophical arguments, because they are impersonal, may
be the most open to outside contribution. In the abstract ideal of phi-
losophical argun1entation, no voice would ever be excluded - which is,
I take it, what Peirce was after when he wrote that the first directive for
philosophical enquiry was to keep all avenues open.
Now consider the last case, uninvited third-party intervention in an
argument that is being fairly conducted. While the intervention will,
presumably, be on one side or the other of a two-party dispute - unless
it opens a third position - it need not be on behalf of one side to coun-
terbalance the abuses of the other, so more information is needed.
Does the interested third party have an ulterior motive, like an evan-
gelist eavesdropping on a religious discussion, a real estate agent in-
sinuating herself into a discussion of the relative merits of selling house
independently or through brokers, or a rival to one of the arguers in
either business affairs or affairs of the heart? Is the intervention on
behalf of absent parties unable to speak for themselves? Or is it some-
one who simply has strong feelings about a certain movie who steps
into a critical discussion of its merits? There are many reasons why we
argue, and they are all relevant. There is a parallel here to military in-
tervention officially justified on humanitarian grounds but with other
ends in mind.
6. Winning and Losing. That brings us to one final case, Socra-
tes. Here is where the parallel to war breaks down most thoroughly.
Socratic interrogation was generally unprovoked, almost invariably
unwelcolne, and yet always admirable nonetheless. Part of the reason
is that there is a valuable by-product to successful argumentation that is
of benefit to all - not just the winning party. Indeed, losing an argu-
ment with Socrates was a sure way to end up gaining a great deal. It is,
after all, the so-called "losers" of arguments who gain something valu-
able: new, justified beliefs.- That is no mean benefit, and yet the war-
metaphor only allows for winning and losing as outcomes. Argument
is not like that. We should not enter into arguments thinking that win-
ning and losing are the only outcomes. If we welcome other resolu-
tions, we should have different exit-strategies. But that means aban-
doning the idea that arguments, like wars, always need justification.
That is why, in the end, there would be something curious about a the-
ory of Just Argumentation. We should not need it, and so should not
want it. Instead, a theory of Unjust Arguments - with its implication
that the default is that argumentation per se needs no justification -
would surely better serve our purposes.
Endnotes
1. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the meetings of the
Northern New England Philosophical Association, at Plymouth State
College, New Hampshire, in October 2002, and at the Ontario Society for
the Study of Argumentation, Windsor Ontario, May 2003.
2. The example is cited by Walzer 2000 in the context of discussing Israel's
pre-emptive strikes. Egypt, regarding itself as already in a state of war, did
not feel the need for any additional justification for the blockade beyond
its strategic effect against a belligerent nation.
PART III
Metaphors in Philosophy
The language of philosophy is manifestly metaphorical. In this, it
differs not in the least from any other area of discourse because
metaphors pop up in every corner of language. Even so, there are
features of philosophical metaphors that are so tied to their context in
philosophy so as to distinguish them from other metaphors.
Conversely, there is something about philosophy that is so intimately
tied to metaphors that the very idea of philosophy without metaphors is
very nearly an oxymoron. If argument is the heart of philosophy, then
metaphor is its life-giving blood. Of course, metaphors are not really
"tied" to philosophy, they do not really "pop up" anywhere, least of all
in the "comers" that language does not really have - no more than
philosophy has a heart and blood. But to point these things out is to
quibble in an especially sophistical, if not obtuse, sort of way.
1
On some accounts of the nature of philosophy, the ubiquitous
presence of metaphors is something of an embarrassment. After all,
aren't metaphors just stylistic embellishments, extraneous features of
our language that can be of only pedagogical or heuristic value? In the
end, aren't they unnecessary for the real business of getting at the truth
about the world? There is an extraordinarily tangled thicket of
assumptions about metaphors, language, truth and philosophy
embedded in this question.
In this section, the process of untangling that thicket begins in
earnest. The opening chapter focuses on the nature of metaphors. It
excavates the foundations for the earlier discussion, in chapter two. on
the argument-is-war metaphor. Metaphors are incredibly complex
phenomena, but they are ubiquitous features of our everyday language
nonetheless. The metaphors we use both reflect and inform our
practice. Even so, they are not immutable features of the conceptual
landscape. The next chapter narrows the focus even further, paying
particular attention to the special roles that metaphors play in
philosophical speculation. The concluding chapter in this part then
applies the insights from these first two, to reach the provocative
conclusion that the entire history of philosophy should be read as the
118 Metaphors in Philosophy
production of a series of "grand metaphors." On this view, many of the
greatest philosophical theories are seen as having been literally false
when originally formulated, but they can, nonetheless, become
fonnative or constitutive truths of the subsequent worlds in which we
have lived.
Endnote
1. There is an irresistible sorites preseht: Philosophers love to quibble;
Metaphors invite quibbling; Philosophy is full of metaphors; So is it any
wonder that philosophers love philosophy!
CHAPTER 9
On Metaphors
But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the
one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of
genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the
similarity in dissimilars.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a5
As our passions heat up, so do our metaphors. The language we
resort to for our worst insults and angriest epithets, as well as for our
highest compliments and warmest terms of endearment, is thoroughly
metaphorical. Our enemies are not pigs, dogs, ogres, or monsters. Our
loved ones are not really sugar pies, lamb chops, honeybunches, or
sweet-muffins. The world contains neither witches nor wizards, but
they commonly appear in our language.
Suppose a person, seeking quiet, yells at some noisemakers outside
his window, "Shut up, you water buffaloes!"} While we may be very
uncomfortable with the utterance socially and politically, neither the
assertion as a whole nor its component epithet presents much of a
linguistic challenge. We know, of course, that the noisy ones are not
really water buffaloes, and without having to give it any thought, we
can understand what the metaphor says. That is, we can respond to it
appropriately: "Yeah, they really are dumb buffaloes" or "Lighten up!
They're just having fun." Inevitably, some of the intended meanings,
possible meanings, and subtle nuances will be missed. For exanlple, it
might be taken as a comment on the revelers' intelligence, although it
could also be taken as a comment on their size, appearance, mating
habits, geographical origin, or any of a number of similarities. A full
accounting would have to consider the context of assertion, the cultural
context, the speaker, and the hearers. What would the epithet be taken
to mean if the object were athletes? Would it mean something else
directed at obviously overweight people? Does the gender of the
targeted group make a difference? What if they were African-
Americans but the speaker was not? What would it mean coming from
a speaker from India or China - where water buffaloes are common
cultural icons?
Despite the complex network of factors that can enter into
interpretation, somehow the epithet can be understood about as well as
most of the assertions that make up casual discourse. Thus, while
Aristotle might be right that really good metaphors are the sign of
genius, there is nothing nearly so special about most metaphors.
Metaphors of the fair to middling variety are common coin of the
realm. They appear naturally and spontaneously in our speech and
writing, and they are heard and understood without giving so much as a
pause. A great deal of what we say is undeniably metaphorical.
Cutiously, even though metaphors are so common, the topic of
metaphor was almost totally ignored by philosophers of language for
n1uch if the twentieth century. More curious still, it was precisely the
philosophers who were most concerned with the workings of language
and most sensitive to the essential role that theorizing about language
must have for philosophy, the analytic philosophers, who were most
blind to the ubiquity and importance of metaphors for language.
2
So it
was that a hard-headed philosopher like Bertrand Russell could
confidently assert, "The essential business of language is to assert or
deny facts.,,3 Metaphors have a different business. Of course, neither
metaphorical discourse nor the allegedly essential part of language
really has any business, so Russell's blithe reference to the "business of
language" must be taken as metaphor. While that transgression (on his
own terms) can be forgiven as an eliminable stylistic flourish, the
conceptual framework of essential (and accidental) features is
considerably more problematic. On the account of language that
followed, such talk can itself be understood only as irreparable
nonsense - or, I shall argue, as ineliminable metaphor!
According to the paradigm that emerged from the fusion of
linguistic empiricism and logical analysis, the three crucial terms for
understanding language are meaning, truth, and reference.
4
Meaning
was taken as the ultimate concern for the philosophy of language; truth
conditions ~ thought to be the proper way to explicate meaning
objectively and precisely; and reference was the only acknowledged
connection to the world to ground objectivity. Metaphors are
problematic on all fronts. Their meanings are often imprecise, open-
ended and indetenninate; such truth-conditions as can be supplied are
entirely irrelevant for evaluating metaphors; and neither actual
reference nor grounded objectivity is particularly important to a
successful metaphor. Consider the quip that Franklin Delano Roosevelt
On Metaphors 121
was Robin Hood reborn as an American. It is undeniably meaningful
and, insofar as his economic policies successfully effected a transfer of
wealth from the rich to the poor, it is arguably true. And it remains
true, whether or not there ever was an actual Robin Hood to serve as a
point of reference and despite the presumed falsity of metempsychosis.
The connection between truth-conditions and metaphors' meanings
is strained to the point of invisibility. As a rule, metaphors are not true,
at least not literally true. Indeed, they are often patently false.
Revelers are obviously not water buffaloes, and surely Roosevelt \vas
not Robin Hood reincarnated. Patent falsity has even been cited as the
conversational indicator of a metaphor.
5
The assertion of something so
absurd violates Grice's maxim of cooperation by flouting the principle
of quality, so the mechanics of conversational implicature come into
play.6 Some other meaning must be sought.
Literal falsity is not a necessary condition for metaphors, however.
No man is an island, and it really does rain on the just and unjust alike.
Both are true, albeit as literal truths they are quite bana1.
7
Neither the
literal truth nor literal falsity of a n1etaphor seems to have much effect
on whether a metaphor has meaning or what its meaning is. If I say
that Frege is the rock on which analytic philosophy is founded, and you
point out that, well, actually, Frege was a human and not really a rock,
you have completely missed the point. It would be fair to say you did
not understand what I said. If the metaphor is to be believed or
accepted, there is a story to be told about Frege and analytic
philosophy. Pointing out the literal falsity of a metaphor, then, is as
inappropriate as pointing out the literal falsity of fiction. It would be
like criticizing Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment by complaining
that, well there never really was anybody named "Raskolnikov" who
did those things. "You missed this target" is no criticism of someone
aiming at a different target. Metaphors are really just very short
stories!
8
One natural enough response is to set truth-conditions aside, with
their conceptual reliance on reference, in favor of assertibility-
conditions. The advantage gained by this is that assertibility conditions
allow the shift in focus from the (literal!) meaning of the words to the
use of the sentence. That is, it removes the question from semantics
proper to pragmatics. Assertibility conditions sidestep questions of
reference - which seems meet since metaphors may have nothing
whatsoever to do with objects in the world. I may say, "Derrida is
Abelard reborn, but possessed by Montaigne's spirit," despite the fact
that my disbelief in possession is as strong as my disbelief in rebirth.
A tempting solution is to treat metaphors as a pathology of
language, or, less negatively, as something accidental to language -
stylistic flourishes, perhaps, but neither linguistically necessary, nor
theoretically important, nor semantically fertile.
9
One might, for
example, regard a metaphor as an ellipsis for a simile, in which the
explicit comparison has been elided. This is the starting point for many
theorists. On that reading, "Edison was a wizard" would be read as
"Edison is like a wizard." This sweeps aside all the problems about
metaphors because it regards the meaning of metaphors as ultimately
derivative from literal discourse. This, too, can be augmented by an
appeal to Gricean conversational implicatures. Banal truisms, as much
as obvious absurdities, violate the principle of quality, so we re-
interpret it as the simile, and the simile, happily, is true. All our old
questions about meaning, truth and reference are answered just as in the
favored literal Snow-is-white cases. In this case, the original sentence
happens to be false, because the name "Edison" refers to something
that is not in fact a wizard, while the re-formulated version may be true,
depending on whether Edison is in fact like a wizard in the right way.
Unfortunately, the elliptical simile account is irreparably flawed in
all sorts of ways. First, it renders metaphors vacuous. Similes are
themselves all banal. Everything is like everything else somehow, in
some way, if only we are clever enough to recognize it. (Life is like a
bowl of cherries. Both are finite; when they are used up, they are gone
for good; they are best when they are fresh; and, as far as we can tell,
neither one is likely to be found on Mars.) That is, if metaphors are
read as similes, then they respect Grice's principle of quality, but at the
cost of violating the principle of quantity: they say nothing of note.
The situation is actually a bit trickier. Reading metaphors as literal
assertions of a sort, similes, in order to preserve their connection to
truth-conditions runs aground on other shoals. For one, the imputed
similarities need not be actual. In some contexts, labeling someone a
"gorilla" might be a way of calling them strong and aggressive - even
though real gorillas, despite their strength, are not particularly
aggressive. Aggressive gorillas are found in the popular imagination,
not the African mountains, but that is enough for the metaphor. The
literal simile, So-and-so is like a gorilla, is still true, but for other
reasons. Earl Mac Cormac reports this even more problematic
example:
Kenneth Johnson introduced the highly speculative metaphor of
colored quarks (red, blue, and yellow) as follows: "Quark color has
nothing whatsoever to do with visual color. The word color is used
On Metaphors
because the way different colored quarks combine in quantum
mechanics is renliniscent of the way visual colors combine."l0
123
rWhatever similarities there may be between blue quarks and blue
balloons (and remember that everything is like everything else
somehow) is irrelevant. The comparison is not really to the color blue
itself, but to the entire color spectrum, of which blue is but one part.
As translations for metaphors, similes say too little - and sOlnetimes
they even get that wrong.
A second problem with the elliptical simile account is that it seems
to presuppose that all metaphors are of the subject-predicate form: A is
B, when in literal fact A is not B. Metaphors appear in all manner of
syntactical fOffilS, appearing in assertions, questions, and commands. I I
And they can exploit any part of speech. The focus of a metaphor
12
can
be a noun in either the subject or predicate position (Nixon was a
weasel but Clinton is a chameleon; Has that cyclone been through here
again ?), a verb (The director has tral1lpled on our agenda), an
adjective or adverb (His volcanic passions erupted violently), or even
an interjection or an article (Ouch - another tax increase!; Professor
Zapp is the Austen scholar).
Beyond those problems, the elliptical simile translation of
metaphors does not fully capture what it is that metaphors do.
Metaphors invite us to see the world in a certain way. They challenge
our ways of thinking by giving the conceptual kaleidoscope a good
shake to bring disparate "semantic clusters" - e.g., those of war and
argument, or opiates and religion - into contact. The focus of a
metaphor serves as a "template" or filter through which we view the
subject.
13
In so doing, metaphors serve to point out previously
unrecognized similarities, as do similes, but they also do nlore. The
meaning of a term includes its common associations.
14
Thus, if the
that metaphors propose are attractive enough, they are
actually capable of establishing and sustaining those associations.
Metaphors create meaningsr
15
Thus, in some cases there can be
grounds for saying that the similarities a metaphor highlights may be
artifacts caused by the metaphoric speech act itself, rather than
discovered facts about the referent objects.
In the end, the questions of reference, truth and falsity appear to be
mostly irrelevant for explaining what is peculiar about the meaning of
metaphors. What a metaphor means is a question more concerned with
implicatures and presuppositions, and perhaps even conversational and
conceptual consequences, than actual assertions. It seems less
concerned, that is, with word- or sentence-meaning than either speaker-
or hearer-meaning. Is it then really a matter for pragmatics rather than
semantics proper? If so, then, serious philosophers of language can get
on with the real business of connecting language with the world, and
metaphors can be dismissed as interesting but unnecessary stylistic
devices that can be accommodated within standard semantic
frameworks. They pose no insurmountable or even especially
interesting philosophical problems.
At this point, it might be wise to isolate and identify some of the
important assumptions and attitudes that are implicit in the elliptical
simile account of metaphors.
(1) Literal meaning is prior. Metaphorical meaning, if there is
some such identifiable kind of meaning, is derivative.
16
(2) Whatever can be said, can be said literally. Metaphors can be
eliminated from discourse without loss of cognitive content.
I7
(3) Metaphors do not have a distinctive kind of meaning. What
they add to the language is stylistic, not substantive.
I8
(4) Literal meanings are essential to language. Metaphors are
accidental features of language. A completely literal language would
be possible, but a completely metaphoric language is impossible. 19
(5) Metaphors operate at the level of individual words. In calling
Richard a lion, it is the word "lion" that carries the weight of the
metaphor. In this example, the subject and predication are nonnal; it is
the predicate that is peculiar.
(6) The peculiarity of the predicate is evidence that metaphors are
deviations from the literal. Language is in some sense "naturally"
literal. There is something "unnatural" or "artificial" about metaphors
that begs for explanation.
(7) The meaning of a metaphor is to be explained in tenns of some
sinli1arity between the subject provided by the literal frame and the
imported focus. Richard must be like lions in some regard - if not real
lions, then perhaps the regal lions of popular conception.
2o
(8) The subject-predicate form is "canonical" for metaphors. Any
metaphor not explicitly in S-P form can be put that way without
damage. Thus, The ship ofstate lies rudderless in stormy political seas
would "really" (albeit roughly) be equivalent to The state is like a
rudderless ship and the political situation is like stormy seas.
These theses are not independent of one another. Individually,
they are all highly questionable and, as noted, controversial. Together,
they manifest a largely negative attitude towards metaphors.
Metaphors are semantically indeterminate and obscure. They are part
of "poetic discourse" rather than s i n ~ i f i language. They are,
On Metaphors 125
therefore, inappropriate and, because they are "seductive of reason,"
they can even be dangerous for truth-seekers. So, in addition to the
aforementioned general problems with the elliptical simile account of
metaphors, there is one more: that account of metaphors sees them as
especially problematic for philosophical discourse - provided, of
course, that philosophy is conceived, alongside the sciences, as a truth-
seeking endeavor. And if, as certainly seems to be the case, metaphors
are integral to philosophy, then philosophy itself also becomes suspect.
On the other hand, the door has been opened for a positive
conclusion. Because of the stylistic contribution they make to
expression, and because they "make the unfamiliar familiar,"
metaphors have an important pedagogical role. Because they are
semantically underdetermined and pragmatically deviant, they require
active interpretation. They are like Zen koans insofar as hearers need
to solve them to get the point.
21
And insofar as they involve innovative
uses of language, t ~ represent the cutting edge of linguistic - and
conceptual - growth. 2 For all these reasons, their most significant
value may be heuristic, pointing the way to significant new truths as
they articulate profound new insights. Rather than being sloppy,
dangerous, and sophistic weapons to be shunned by all upright
philosophers, sometimes metaphors are precisely the right tools for
creative philosophers to use in trying to make sense of the world.
Endnotes
1. This example is taken from a notorious incident testing the speech code at
the University of Pennsylvania. One student, a white, male freshman, was
accused of racial harassment in 1992 after directing those words at six
African-American women. The resulting controversy was given coverage
in both The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as the mainstream
press.
2; This discussion owes much to the Introduction to M. Johnson 1981. It
provides an excellent overview of the philosophical thinking about
Inetaphors up to that point.
3. Russell, "Introduction" to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, p. x.
4. Only later were speakers and hearers added to the mix, largely through the
efforts of Austin and Searle, for the former, and Grice for the latter. The
pragmatic coniext is particularly important for explaining metaphor.
5. For example, Loewenberg 1975, in developing an Austinian account of
metaphors, states, "It is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an
Metaphors in Philosophy
utterance to be a metaphor that, if taken as an assertion and interpreted
literally, it is false." Goodman 1968, chapter 2, and 1978 makes a similar
claim, but qualified to account for the apparently true examples cited
below. The truth, "No man is an island" he reads as implicating the
sorting system of geographical terms, so it becomes something like, "No
man is an island, but rather is connected to the mainland." Also see
note 7.
See Grice 1975.
Martinich 1984, in a largely Gricean approach, thinks that metaphors are
always taken as false, to trigger the mechanisms of implicature. Thus, he
concludes, metaphors that are not literally false are still taken as saying
something false so that we can reverse ourselves yet again and take them
as making-as-if-to-say something true.
Of course, metaphors are not really short stories. The claim is a metaphor,
and a good one, I think. The connection between metaphor and narrative
is further explored below. Note that "really" here means "metaphorically"
or even "not really," just as "literally" apparently so often means
something like "metaphorically (but emphatically)." We can say, for
example, "He was literally a giant among his peers," without in fact
meaning it literally! This is complicated by the fact that meanings change.
Dqes the literal meaning of "giant" now include "stand-out"?
Philosophers' animosity towards metaphors, and to rhetoric more
generally, has a venerable pedigree, extending back to the Ancients and
their felt need to distance themselves from the Sophists. Of more
immediate relevance is the tradition extending back to Hobbes (Leviathan,
Part I, ch. 5) and Locke (Essay, Bk. III, Chapter X, 34). Both strongly
warned against the dangers implicit in the use of figurative language for
philosophy.
Mac Cormac 1990, p. 1.
1. One curious restriction on metaphors is discussed in D. Cohen 1998: fresh
metaphors cannot be launched from the antecedent position of certain sorts
of conditionals. Some conditionals ask us to imagine other possible
worlds; some metaphors ask us to re-imagine this world. The tension
between philosophy's speculative and analytic modes comes to a head
here.
Max Black 1955 introduced the terms "frame" and "focus" (replacing
"tenor" and "vehicle") to refer to the literal background and the figurative
intrusion, respectively. It was adopted by Searle 1979 and will be the
preferred terminology here.
Black 1955 makes the comparison between filters and metaphors explicit.
He invokes the interaction between the subject and the predicate concepts
to explain the new meanings generated by some metaphors. Importantly,
it is the interaction between the shared platitudes a community entertains
about the subjects, not the truth about them. We can, for example,
On Metaphors 127
attribute nobility to people by calling them lions, whether or not lions are
noble in any way - and even regardless of whether we actually believe
they are. What is important is that our culture supports that image.
14. Like so many other important features, it was first suggested in Black
1955. It has been brought into higher relief in Lakoff and Johnson 1980.
See also Lakoff 1993. Metaphors are presented there as involving entire
conceptual domains.
15. Hesse 1980 expands upon this possibility for meaning-creation in the
context of thinking about scientific models as metaphors of a kind.
16. Locke 1959 may be the locus classicus for the view that language
acquisition proceeds from (literal) ostension, but the view is also
addressed by Augustine in De Magistre. Davidson 1978 downplays the
difference between literal and figurative meanings, in part by offering a
more holistic account of language acquisition. See the next footnote, as
well.
17. Davidson 1978 is often cited as the most articulate defender of the view
that the only kind of meaning there is, is literal meaning. While he does
indeed say that most emphatically ("Metaphors mean what the words, in
their most literal interpretation mean, and nothing n10re. "), the account of
literal meaning that emerges is embedded in larger pragmatic contexts.
Thus, it is far removed from the Tarski-style formal semantics of
reference, satisfaction, and truth that provided the background for his
earlier discussions of meaning, in, e.g., Davidson 1967 or Davidson 1973.
Searle's "Principle of Expressibility" - the thesis that whatever can be
meant can be (literally) said - is an endorsement of the eliminability of
metaphors. See Searle 1993.
18. Black 1955 and 1962 tentatively suggests that metaphors create meanings
(in addition to their role of temporarily plugging gaps in literal language).
Since then, many others have more forcefully championed that idea. The
"hostile tradition" fronl Hobbes and Locke is offset by a tradition of its
own that has become more vital in the last century. Nietzsche would
certainly be included as something of a patron saint, but anti-realism is not
a necessary accompaniment to the view that literal discourse exhausts the
field of meaning. See, for examples, Ricoeur 1977 and many of the
contributions to Ortony 1993. Mac Cormac 1976 and T. Cohen 1996 both
point to the "epiphoric" or emotional messages communicated by
metaphors.
19. This probably has to be understood as a claim in the "meta-language."
See the comments on the essence-accident distinction in the text
corresponding to footnote 3 above.
20. Black 1955 introduced the term "associated commonplaces" for this.
21. T. Cohen 1978 compares understanding a metaphor to getting a joke - part
of which is simply recognizing the joke as a joke, and sharing certain
beliefs and attitudes that can be used to get the point. Martinich 1984 opts
for a comparison to enthymematic arguments in which the hearer has to
supply the missing premises and make the unstated inference.
22. Lakoff 1993, among others, would argue that thought itself is primarily
organized by metaphors, so that this applies not just to the extraordinary
growth of language, but also to its origins.
CHAPTER 10
Metaphors and the
Discourse of Philosophy
The elliptical simile account of metaphors, in which a metaphor of
the fonn A is B is understood as a ~ t y l s t variation on the explicit
comparison in the simile fonn, A is like B, was subjected to a number
of criticisms in the previous chapter. The account was judged
inadequate for the task of explaining the full range of phenon1ena
associated with metaphors. It does serve to explain some metaphors,
some of their meaning, some of their use, and some of the contribution
they make to thought and discourse. It fails, however, to accommodate
the full range of syntactical diversity metaphors exhibit. It does not
account for the peculiar role and force of metaphors as speech acts.
Above all, it degenerates into either mystery or vacuity.
All of these criticisms could (and perhaps should) be taken, easily
enough, as invitations to amend and augment the theory, rather than
abandon it. The concluding criticism fron1 the previous chapter,
however, presents more of a challenge. The elliptical simile approach
was taken to task, not because of internal inadequacies or failures in
application, but because of its implications for philosophy. It rests on
several crucial assumptions about how language works. Together,
these general assumptions, which are common to many other
philosophical theories of language, call into question the intelligibility
of philosophical discourse, in particular. That charge is pressed in this
chapter.
The problems that are posed for philosophical discourse are
manifold. The traditional topics, methods, and goals for philosophy all
come under a cloud of suspicion. Consider, first, the assumptions
embodied in Bertrand Russell's claim, cited earlier, that the essential
business of language is asserting or denying facts.
1
Russell's point is
that the heart of language is describing the world. In taking description
as the primary task and raison d'etre for a language, Russell (inter alia)
is in a position to extend the project of classical empiricism in several
directions. Ostension can be taken as the grounds for reference, which
in tum becomes the grounds for meaning. Thus, language acquisition
could be subsumed within a generally empiricist account of knowledge.
In practice, this works better to identify word-meaning than to explain
sentence-meaning, but appeal to verifiability preserves the empiricist
connection. (However, the move to a more holistic account of
language also invites re-interpreting language acquisition, especially
first-language acquisition, as a process n10re like training than learning.
That, in tum, can lead to either a more empiricistic, behaviorist account
or else a less empiricistic, more pragmatist approach.)
That the question of meaning - and philosophy of language, more
generally - remains high on the philosophical agenda is testimony to
the lasting impact of the "Linguistic Tum" at the beginning of the
twentieth century. Philosophy's perennial concerns with knowledge
and truth became transformed into questions about language.
Consequently, they become subject to the same governing assumptions
that marginalize metaphor. If describing the world (asserting and
denying facts) is the "essence of language," metaphors arc inessential
to language and the project of describing the world. Truth must always
be expressible in literal language. Therefore, if metaphors do happen to
contain or convey any truth, it is despite their status as metaphors.
Indeed, this holds for any content that even might be true, so what is
distinctively metaphorical about metaphors must be devoid of all
cognitive content. Thus, metaphors should be superfluous for an
account of knowledge, the epistemological project, as well as for
articulating truths and for explaining truth, Le., the scientific and
metaphysical projects. After all, knowledge is true belief, and truth is
correspondence. Therefore, since metaphors do not correspond to the
world as descriptions, they cannot be true and they cannot be part of
knowledge.
What follows from this line of reasoning is that insofar as
philosophy can hope to be more scientific, or even insofar as
philosophy is conceived as a truth-seeking discipline, it does not need
to resort to metaphor. And if metaphors are not needed for
communicating truths, then their purpose must be to persuade by style
rather than to convince by reason.
2
They are, then, rhetorical devices of
no logical use, and philosophers would do well to avoid them. In sum,
metaphors are suspect because they are seductive of reason.
Metaphors and Philosophy 131
Although a great deal of philosophical discourse has centered
around truth and knowledge, and much of that has been understood in a
way that is inhospitable to n1etaphor, philosophy has traditionally
recognized other goals a well. Wisdom, personal enlightenment, social
justice, eudaimonia, sophrosyne, and even salvation have all been
regarded as venerable objectives for philosophy. But while the
discourses surrounding these have generally been n10re hospitable to
metaphors, insofar as these may be independent of truth and
knowledge, many contemporary philosophers regard them with the
kind of embarrassment usually reserved for backward kinfolk. That is
just not how many philosophers understand philosophy.
Understanding, however, is a notably different matter. It is not
completely outside the circle of interlocking concepts - science, truth,
knowledge, meaning, description, cognitive content, etc. - which were
invoked to exclude metaphor. The fabric of understanding may indeed
be interwoven with the thread of knowledge, and so respectably hard-
headed, but there is more to understanding than knowledge of facts, so
neither is it completely within that hermeneutical circle. In order to
understand relatively simple physical phenomena, it may suffice to
offer a description and allude to scientific theories - pretending all the
while that they are completely metaphor free and built on neutral
observational data. However, in order to understand anything
interesting - e.g., gravity, people, literary texts, and the world at large -
one has to go beyond the observable facts. Understanding results from
explanation.
There are, however, different kinds of explanation. Explanation is
a pragmatic notion, and sometimes it calls for more than even a very
detailed description. Would a detailed description explain a chess
move or a poem? I think not. I may be in possession of a good,
detailed, but merely descriptive account - say, Knight at B4 takes
Bishop at C6 - and still be completely in the fog about the "why" of the
move. Even the addition of a larger context - a record of the entire
game - may not help. Similarly, a word by word account, a
description, of a poem (the word "the" occurs in the first, sixth, and
eleventh places; the word "crake," a term for a crow in some dialects,
occurs in the second; etc.) is not what readers who do not understand
the poem generally need. For some contexts and some phenomena, a
satisfactory explanation has to transcend a literal description. That is,
some explanations must rely on figurative language.
The challenge for the philosophy of language with regard to
metaphors is clear: identify the relevant data about metaphors,
construct a theory explaining them, and, most important, explain the
relation between metaphors, on the one hand, and understanding and
explanation, on the other. A closer look at metaphors is needed.
Suppose I were asked about my early education and responded by
saying, liMy schools were prisons." On the one hand, there is nothing
extraordinary about this description at all. It is a sentence that any of us
might have used at some time to describe our childhood schools - and
an image that no doubt many children still use for their schools. Still,
the fact that it would be an unremarkable part of an ordinary
conversation is itself remarkable. It brings four distinct problen1s about
metaphors into immediate focus.
First, there is the fact that for most of us, presumably, this would
indeed be a metaphor, with schools providing the "frame" or "tenor"
and prisons providing the "focus" or "vehicle" for the metaphor. But
this exact same sentence could also be used literally by someone who
had attended reform schools: "My schools were prisons" is then a plain
statement of fact. There is nothing in the sentence itself to determine
whether a literal or metaphorical reading is in order. That is, there is no
purely syntactic mark identifying metaphors. The first problem about
metaphors is merely identifying which phrases are to be taken literally
and which are to be taken as metaphors. It is a non-trivial task.
Furthermore, even after a sentence has been identified as a
metaphor, there is the problem of understanding it. But just as there is
nothing in the sentence to mark it off as a metaphor, there is nothing
within the metaphor to indicate which part is the focus and which is the
frame. Suppose the sentence at hand was uttered by an ex-convict in
response to the question, "Wherever did you learn to pick-pockets like
that?" In that case, the frame and focus have reversed: prisons provides
the frame, schools provides the focus, and "My schools were prisons" is
a comment on the effectiveness of literal prisons as metaphorical
institutions of higher education for criminals. The problem of
interpretation begins with the second problem, then, of identifying the
frame and focus, determining which part is to be taken literally and
which part figuratively.
A third problem is interpreting the metaphor. My schools were
prisons - but how? In that they were repressive, disciplinarian
institutions whose primary goal was restricting individual liberty? Or
in that they were large brick buildings built by the state? Or in that the
food that they served seemed to have more punitive than nutritional
value? The point is not really all that mysterious, but it is mysterious
as to how we get that point.
Finally, there is the evaluative problem: Is the metaphor any good?
Is it true, even if only Inetaphorically true, that my schools were
prisons? Is that a warranted, viable, helpful, insightful, or reasonable
thing to say about them?3
Consider another example, to probe more deeply. The great
basketball player Hakeem Olajuwan ,vas once described as "A real lion
on the court, the king of the backboard jungle." Again, it is a perfectly
ordinary description, the kind that might have been found in any sports
reporter's commentary. And again, if there is nothing remarkable in
the description, there is something remarkable in the fact that we can all
immediately process and appreciate the metaphor - and generally do so
without ever being aware that it is a metaphor. From that other angle, it
is extraordinary. Olajuwan is, after all, quite human and not a lion (real
or otherwise), backboards do not make jungles, and jungles do not have
kings. And for all that, the description was really rather good
(including its pun on "The Black-board Jungle," the title of a well
known novel).
The patent falsity of the claim, when taken literally, together with a
Gricean spirit of interpretive charity, provides a start.
4
Olajuwan is
obviously not a lion, so why would anyone say otherwise? The first
recourse is reading it as an elliptical simile - Olajuwan is like a lion ..:-
and the search for similarities inlnlediately finds that he is strong and
aggressive. What if the claim had been that he was a real animal on the
basketball court, instead of a lion? The same basic point is made: he is
strong and aggressive. In this case, however, we have a claim that is a
platitudinous truth rather than an obvious falsity. Humans are animals,
albeit, we like to think, special ones. The call for a non-literal
interpretation is still heard clearly. Metaphors can be literally true.
The difficulty is not insuperable. Following Grice, we can be
suspicious - and then generous - with truisms as well as "false-isms."
A more vexing problem is that the meaning conveyed by a
metaphor may rely on supposed similarities that are thenlselves actually
false. A lion metaphor can be used to impute aggressiveness, even
though lions are not in fact particularly aggressive. Not only is
Olajuwan not a lion, he is not even like a lion in the intended way! The
reference is not to real lions, but to the lions of our common conception
- and the whole conceptual network of associations surrounding lions.
5
To claim that Hakeem Olajuwan is not actually like a lion in the
intended way assumes that there is an intended, more or less
determinate, interpretation. Hearers are expected to identify some
supposed similarities between the basketball player and lions, e.g.,
strength and aggressiveness. He is also like lions in other ways, too.
He is a mammal, he is from the continent of Africa, and he is bigger-
than-a-breadbox-but-smaller-than-an-elephant. What mysterious
mechanism enables us to rule all of these out as irrelevant, and do so
nearly instantaneously? It is as if metaphors are puzzles to be solved
before they can give infoffilation to be processed - with the really
difficult puzzle being why these puzzles are so easy!
These difficulties concerning the interpretation of metaphors -
identifying the set of relevant similarities, despite the irrelevance of the
literal truth or falsity of the metaphor and despite the irrelevance of the
truth of falsity of those supposed similarities - are largely mechanical.
There is a more intriguing issue, one that bedevils all interpretation but
is especially acute here. Even if we manage to restrict matters to the
relevant and intended similarities, we might end up missing something
of greater importance. Metaphors are richly suggestive. Their
meanings can be mined indefinitely. When we dig below the surface,
unintended images, "unmeant meanings" as it were, may be revealed.
6
The point of casting Olajuwan as the king of the backboard jungle
might have been simply to emphasize his dominance or pride of place
among NBA centers, but comparisons to kings are no less open-ended
than comparisons to lions. Once presented, the metaphor allows us to
see, what we could not see before: Olajuwan-as-king, Olajuwan's regal
bearing. This is an important part of what makes the metaphor a good
one. Metaphors focus the seeing-as faculty - that curious ability that
Wittgenstein eventually came to think was so important to the meaning
of meaning and to understanding human understanding.
7
There is also the case of the double metaphor here. Olajuwan is
juxtaposed with lions because they are the kings of the jungle -
although we all well know that jungles do not have kings, and that if
they did" lions, which do not really live in jungles would, if they did
live in jungles, probably be no more than pretenders to those non-
existent thrones! Thus, this really has nothing to do with real lions, or
even the aggressive lions of common conception, referring instead to
some supposed lions that are kingly. For all that, it does indeed
manage to say something about Hakeem Olajuwan. Metaphors can
exploit the kingly lions of popular imagination precisely because that
trope is so entrenched in our language that it has become a formative
factor in how we think about lions. Metaphors are the vehicles we use
for coming to an understanding of the world in which we find ourselves
at the same time that they are the tools we use for constructing that
world. The world we see, when we see the world as something, is the
creation of metaphors.
Part of this last point needs amplification. Metaphors can entrench
themselves in both the way we speak and the way we think. When they
do, they cease functioning as metaphors - or, better, the function of
these "dead" metaphors is different from the function of fresh ones.
Metaphors have lives of their own and different functions at different
stages of their lives. And, to pursue this metaphor, the life of a
metaphor need not end with its death. One way that entrenched
metaphors live on in the way we speak is as part of the literal language.
For example, we speak of clear texts, texts whose points can be seen
immediately, as opposed to dense, heavy, or impenetrable texts. But if
a text is written on paper, it is lightweight, flat and opaque; it is not
clear and it has no point at all, visible or otherwise. It seems to me that
these dead metaphors are not now metaphors at all. Full understanding
of the contemporary literal meaning of the word "clear" requires
knowing that it applies to texts and how it applies to texts, in addition
to its applications to transparent substances. Idioms like these are
metaphors that have become entrenched in the language. They have
become literal. Entrenched metaphors also live on in the way we think.
They become part of the conceptual framework determining
perceptions.
s
For example, we describe the voices of sopranos as
higher than those of altos or tenors, perhaps we even crane our necks
when we try to reach those heights, even though the spatial descriptions
higher and lower are metaphors and the scales need not literally be
scaled at all. It is, after all, an arbitrary convention that places those
particular notes higher on the page of a written score - it could just as
easily have been inverted. Even so, it is very hard not to think of those
notes that are to the right on a standard piano keyboard as higher.
9
The currents of linguistic evolution flow in the other direction, too.
As our world changes, so must our language. Atheists can still hope
for angels of mercy, despite their theology, and contemporary
psychologists who would not dare show anything but the utmost
professional scorn for homunculus or incubus imagery may still fight
the demons within. Expressions once intended to be understood as
literal can remain in the language as metaphors, even when the
occasions for their literal use have long since vanished. With the
advent of heavy farm machinery, farmers no longer face tough rows to
hoe; if we have electric heat, we no longer need to keep the home-fires
burning; and in an age of digital timepieces, the clocks have stopped
ticking. And yet, all those phrases still live in the language. Perhaps
idioms like these should be called "dead literals."
For even the deadest of metaphors, then, there is the possibility of
resurrection. Sometimes, several such changes can be tracked. When
Shakespeare wrote of "sable coloured melancholy" as the "black-
oppressing hurnour,,,lO was that metaphorical? At the time, medical
knowledge regarded the humours - blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black
bile - as determinants of temperament. "Humour" referred primarily to
bodily fluid, and to mood, their supposed effects, only secondarily.
When the theory of humours was discarded, the secondary,
metaphorical meaning became primary, then entrenched, and finally
literal again. When we describe someone now as being in a good
humour, are we referring or even alluding to the old medical theory?
The words themselves have not changed, but it is only the words that
have not changed. The language, and the world along with it, certainly
has.
In sum, metaphors are indefinitely polysemous texts, possibly
without any referential basis in reality, which nonetheless may be
constitutive of that reality, whose meanings evolve along with the
succession of interpretive strategies for reading them. More simply,
they are like literature written small: metaphors are really just very
short stories.
Consider that claim - that metaphors are stories. Was that literal
or metaphorical? The boundary is not nearly as clear as we have
supposed. Indeed, given the ongoing shifts in meaning from literal to
metaphorical and back, we should hardly expect that meaning would
ever be wholly in the one camp or the other. For similar reasons, the
traditionally assumed priority of the literal over the metaphorical is
equally suspect.
The claim that metaphors are really stories emphasizes that tnlth is
not the primary evaluative yardstick, that metaphors need to be
interpreted, and that making sense of a metaphor is a creative and open-
ended project. When we make sense of a metaphor, we are providing it
with a narrative context. We are not extracting or articulating a unique,
pre-existent, and fully determined sense that is somehow already there.
Meaning is created in the interpretive process. (One could, to use a
self-referential example, interpret the claim that metaphors are stories
as involving other - whether additional or alternative - points about
metaphors, e.g., that they properly need a beginning and an end, that
they are hard to translate, that they are the only way to elucidate the
human condition, etc.)
Similarity is a two-way street, so perhaps we could turn the
metaphor around, asserting that stories are really just long metaphors.
The point of this could be to emphasize the non-literal, facts-be-
damned, possible absurdity of stories. The virtue of this fonnulation is
that it brings into clear focus just what is objectionable to philosophers
about metaphors: they are too much like stories; they are fictions. And
while fiction can be used to make profound philosophical points, the
assumption is that whatever philosophical substance there is in a story
could be expressed without the artistic adornment and thus be more
open to direct philosophical scrutiny.
On the other hand - and when dealing with interpretive matters
there is always another hand - if the objection to metaphors is that they
are art rather than science, style rather than substance, and seductively
persuasive instead of rationally convincing, this can all be seen as
something positive. Even what appear as "mere" embellishments to
expression may also benefit communication, so metaphors can serve at
least as aids to apprehension, if not to proof And this works on two
different levels. First, metaphors have heuristic roles in
communication, especially education, in leading the hearer/student to
understand the concept. And second, this road to understanding might
well echo the original process. That is (to use a Positivist conception),
metaphors may well be part of the context of discovery. So, even if
they are later excluded from the context of justification, they may still
be integral parts of what can be called the "context of explanation."
Metaphors allow us to grasp new concepts by making the unfamiliar
familiar. I I
I think that what many philosophers have found most objectionable
about metaphors is that they are obscure - i.e., semantically
indeterminate. The discourse of philosophy is so often caught up in the
confusions of language, that quite naturally - and quite rightly! -
philosophers valorize clarity and precision. (How often is the first
move in a philosophical debate an attempt at an exact definition of the
central concept - whether it be justice, free will, the good, or whatever?
Plato taught us well.) Ambiguity and obscurity anathenla to clear
philosophizing.
However, obsc'urity is not the same as arrlbiguity. There are
different kinds of semantic indeterminacy, and some kinds may well be
taken as a sign of something positive, perhaps even as a sign of insight
or creativity. Obscurity might mean that the resources of the language
have been exhausted and are inadequate to the expressive task at
hand.
12
There is no way to rule out that possibility a priori. In that
case, there may be some real genius present, some deliberateness to the
convention-breaking and precedent-setting uses of language.
Of significantly greater interest is this: one of the bedrock
assumptions on which the analytic tradition of philosophy rests is that
the study of language is justified as the means of getting at the structure
of thought (in the Platonic sense) itself:
Only with Frege was the proper object of philosophy finally
established: namely, first, that the goal of philosophy is the analysis
of the structure of thought; secondly, that the study of thought is to be
sharply distinguished from the study of the psychological process of
thinking; and, finally, that the only proper method for analysing
thought consists in the analysis of language. 13
If that is correct, then the creation of new ways of speaking
indicates new ways of thinking about and conceptualizing the world.
Thoughts expressed in strikingly original metaphors must themselves
have their own special kind of originality. Of course, conditionals are a
tricky business. One philosopher's modus ponens is another's modus
tollens. Thus, while n1uch of the analytic tradition concluded that
metaphors are not different in kind from literal language, and so do not
represent new ways of thought, others made the converse inference:
metaphors are irreducible, and do reveal something important about
how we think. "Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison,
and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.,,14 This may seem
simply an updated expression of the Romantic privileging of poetic
discourse - "Figurative language was the first to be bom,,15 - but this is
really part of a more sustained challenge to the conceptual hegemony of
Reason. It is not simply that there are other aspects to being human
than the purely cognitive, but that the purely cognitive is itself
thoroughly imbued with the imaginative.
Thus, whether metaphors are the only possible vehicle for radical
reconceptualization of the ways we think about the world or a reflection
of all our thought, the implication for philosophy is manifest: any
visionary - or "revisionary" - philosophy will almost inevitably first
appear cloaked in metaphor.
Endnotes
1. Russell's claim, in the "Introduction" to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, was
mentioned in the previous chapter as representative of a traditional and
prevalent philosophical view about language - and, ironically, nlanifesting
an incongruous blindspot about metaphors, despite their ubiquity and
importance.
2. This is a bit of a distortion of the "convince/persuade dichotomy" as it has
entered the literature of argumentation theory. It is closer to the n10re
common philosophical prejudice, present in Kantian thought, valorizing
the former as objective and devaluing the other as subjective. Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 6 locate the difference in the intended
audience, either universal, for conviction, or particular, for persuasion.
Both have roles in argumentation theory. The distinction is challenged by
Gilbert 1997, inter alia.
3. Actually, nlY own schools were not prisons in any sense, but that didn't
stop me or any of the other students from thinking and calling them so.
4. One example of this is Searle 1979. Suggestions made in Grice 1975 are
further developed and then applied directly to the problem of metaphors.
5. Black raises this problem in "Metaphor" and offers the network of
"associated commonplaces as a partial explanation of the phenomenon.
There is a counterpart to this in Putnam's 1975 account of (literal)
meaning, which includes public "stereotypes" as components of any
meaning. These community-wide beliefs need not by held by every
individual in the community, or even by any individual at all, and they
need not be true, but they need to be recognized in order to understand the
language of the community.
6. In his controversial critique of the whole notion of a special kind of
meaning - metaphorical meaning - Davidson 1978 argues that regarding
this as part of the meaning of a metaphor confuses the meaning of an
expression with the effects of its assertion. Metaphors have special uses,
and as such they may create new meanings, but they do not have special
meaning.
7. Wittgenstein 1953, pp. 193-208.
8. See, e.g., Kuhn, 1970, pp. 62ff. and ch. X, for a discussion of how the pre-
existent conceptual framework can be a factor in the perceptual data
received..
9. See Lakoff and Johnson 1980 for a good discussion of this and other
spatiai metaphors.
10. Love's Labour's Lost, I, i, 230. The etymology of "melancholy" traces
back to the Greek words for "black bile."
11. The etymological connection between the locutions "making the
unfamiliar familiar" and "family resemblances" is itself a familial relation.
Family resemblances are used to explain the construction of (at least some
of) our conceptual categories; making the unfamiliar familiar is the first
(albeit, generally terminal) stage in the process of enlarging, or even
combining, already existent categories.
12. This is the motivation for the mystical language developed by Pseudo-
Denis the Areopagite to talk about God. (See footnote 9 in the
Introduction above.) The far less mystically inclined Thomas Aquinas
invoked metaphors specifically for this purpose: literal language,
reflecting our own cognitive limitations, is inadequate for theology. See
M. Johnson, "Introduction: Metaphors in the Philosophical Tradition," in
M. Johnson 1981, pp. 10-11, and R. McInerny 1961.
13. Dummett 1978, p. 458.
14. Richards 1936
15. Rousseau 1966, ch. 3.
CHAPTER 11
The Tragedy of
Philosophy's Metaphors
Philosophy is a peculiar discipline, and the language of philosophy
is equally peculiar. All language is imbued with metaphor, and
philosophical discourse is by no means an exception. But metaphors
have several distinctive roles in philosophy. By arranging the data
appropriately those roles become more visible. In the end, the
phenomena associated with metaphors have great significance for what
might be called "the semantics of philosophy."
Since one and the same sentence can used to make a metaphor in
one context and to make a literal assertion in another - "My schools
were prisons" was the example offered - we know that metaphors are
not identifiable solely by their syntax. Nor is there anything to prevent
someone from using a sentence as both metaphor and literal at the same
time: if a king calls to his daughter, "Come here, my little princess,"
both uses may be present. Moreover, if semantics is understood as
rooted in, or constrained by, the concepts of truth and reference, then
metaphors are not wholly semantic phenomena, either. The n1eaning of
a metaphor on an occasion is not determined by its truth conditions.
Indeed, its meaning need not be fully determined at all. It would be
better to say that metaphors do not have meaning, but they can be given
meaning in an act of interpretation. As with all interpretation, there
will be criteria against which the interpretation is to be evaluated, so
some interpretations will be better than others. Still, the possibility of
several good readings (and uncountably many bad ones) cannot be
excluded beforehand. The meaning that can be extracted from a
metaphor is limited mostly by the hearer/reader's imagination. What
meaning is found in a metaphor results from a nun1ber of factors,
including the "associated commonplaces" of the constituent concepts.
The conceptual associations that enter into the meanings of metaphors
are cultural artifacts. To a large extent, they are produced and
sustained by our linguistic practices, including, notably, our use of
novel metaphors. Thus, metaphors may have the effect of changing the
language - and themselves. Today's startlingly new metaphor may be
tomorrow's cliched truism. Metaphors have lives of their own. They
can become established as idioms, for example, and they can change
words' meanings, providing new entries for the literal lexicon. Despite
these remarkable features, most metaphors are unremarkable. They are
linguistic commonplaces. They can be produced, used, heard, and
understood without giving any pause. The boundary between the literal
and metaphorical is permeable, movable, and generally unnoted.
There is a way of piecing these together to reveal a picture in
which philosophy at its best, when it is most successful, is all about the
production of metaphors of a special sort: "Grand Metaphors." In the
end, the fact that these grand metaphors are only metaphors is, by the
discourse's own "official" standards, philosophy's great failure.
However, the fact that they are successful metaphors is, from another
perspective, the source of philosophy's great triumphs.
My own list of grand metaphors in philosophy would include such
things as Plato's theory of the Forms and Ockham's Razor, both
Descartes' Edifice of Knowledge and Quine's Web of Belief,
Nietzsche's Will to Power and James's Will to Believe, Wittgenstein's
Picture Theory of Meaning as well as his Language Games, Pepper's
WorId Hypotheses and Kripke' s Possible Worlds. In short, it includes
almost every interesting philosophical claim from Thales' assertion that
water is the principle of all things to Camap's logical reconstruction of
all things using remembered similarity. But wait, it might be objected,
this list is virtually co-extensive with the history of philosophy itself1
1
Great world hypotheses and entire philosophical theories have been
reduced to mere metaphors! Any such objection would rest on a
foundation of unstated assumptions about the nature of philosophy.
And, of course, this kind of objection would also rest on underlying
assumptions about the nature of truth and metaphors, and how their
respective roles relate. The proposal does regard grand theories as
metaphors, but most certainly not as mere metaphors.
Metaphors function in several distinct ways in philosophical
discourse. Some of these are common to all discourses, e.g, their
idiomatic and stylistic functions. Such metaphors are to be expected
fronl philosophy's more literary creations, e.g., Boethius' Lady
Philosophy decrying the monster Fortune,
2
or from polemical tracts
whose rhetoric is in the service of a political agenda, like the spectre
The Tragedy ofPhilosophy's Metaphors 143
that haunted Marx and Engels' Europe.
3
The very ubiquity of these
uses for metaphor, however, means that their presence in philosophical
discourse reveals little about philosophy in particular. Even Moritz
Schlick, arguing for the primacy of science over all other disciplines
and despite a conscious effort to avoid all "Art," writes "the higher the
level of abstraction attained by science, the deeper it penetrates the
essences of reality.,,4 Higher? Deeper? Penetration? Some have
argued that metaphors can be eliminated without any impoverishment
in the expressive power of the language, albeit with a great loss in the
expressive richness of the language, but that is "a bluff waiting to be
called."s If any figurative language could be eliminated, it would be
this embellishing use.
6
Whether or not language would be possible without metaphors,
neither philosophy nor literature would be. But while it is the literary,
stylistic, and idiomatic uses of metaphors that are necessary for
literature,7 philosophy's essential metaphors serve different purposes.
One other role that nletaphors in philosophy is heuristic. Philosophical
explanation would be impossible without them. The pre-established
harmony of Leibniz's Monads, for example, is so tied up with the
image of windowless mirrors that it is hard, for me at least, even to
imagine them in any other way. But this use, too, is common to many
discourses - indeed, all discourses in which there is any kind of
explanation - and so not peculiar to philosophy. The obvious
metaphors in scientific treatises are used this way (but, as Mary Hesse
argues, supposedly literal explanations can also be seen as metaphors,
if not obvious ones
8
). Whether it is the atomic theory of matter, the
particle and wave theories of light, or the Copenhagen interpretation of
quantum mechanics, figurative images are part and parcel of
explanation, scientific or otherwise.
There are, however, different ways of using metaphors that all
count as heuristic, and it is to these differences that we must turn in
order to triangulate in on philosophy's peculiar metaphors. Sometimes
explanation involves metaphors simply because no literal language yet
exists to communicate the novel ideas, thoughts, or insights of a new
theory. Metaphors have a creative-inventive role. There may be holes
in the language that only nletaphors can fil1.
9
When that is the case,
literal idioms are inevitably developed or, what amounts to the same
thing, the metaphors take on the literal role. "Iron horses" becanle
"trains," but the "Iron Curtain" stayed what it was until it was no more.
Alternatively, there may be limits to the language that only metaphors
can breach. Metaphors are how new ideas get talked about - perhaps
because that is sometimes how new ideas get thought in the first
place.
lO
Arthur Danto has suggested that John Locke's use of the "light
of reason" might be an example of this sort. Only later did the word
"intuition" get introduced as a technical term or term of art with an
intended Iiteral use. 1
1
Metaphors of this sort are new growth in the
linguistic jungle. Of course, new growth does not stay new for very
long.
Ironically, unlike stylistic and idiomatic metaphors, creative-
inventive metaphors are, at least initially, most certainly not eliminable,
but neither are they generally meant as metaphors. They are stopgaps
on the way to an enlarged literal vocabulary. There are other sorts of
explanatory metaphors, however, some of which may be ineliminable
for another reason: they can become inseparable from the theories they
explain.
Consider Augustine's Great Chain of Being. Can it be understood
as anything other than some kind of metaphysical ladder? God is
above the angels, they are above humans, we are above the animals,
and so on. The image was powerfully seductive, in part because it
plugged into the Medieval cosmology in which Heaven was literally
above the earth. Of course, humans are not spatially "above" other
terrestrial creatures, so the literal, spatial sense of "above" is inessential
to the metaphysics. No matter how high a bird may fly, it remains a
lowly bird. Still, the image of the ladder in the metaphor is ineluctably
spatial.
12
In the event, the metaphysics reinforced the geocentric
world-view and actually ended up in arguments against
Copemicanism.
13
Admittedly, this may be an equivocal example
because Ptolemy's geocentric astronomy antedated Augustine's
metaphysics, and the metaphor was partially shaped by the astronomy,
but the point renlains that the metaphysics via the metaphor later served
to shape astronomical debates. It is not too much of a stretch, then, to
see the nletaphor as contributing in at least some small part to the social
context for Galileo' s trial and imprisonment for heresy: The metaphor
became entrenched not merely idiomatically or Iiterally, but
dogmatically. This may seem an extreme case, but there is reason to
believe that the dogma of the Virgin Birth began as a metaphor, too,
and was only later elevated into dogma to combat Arianism.
14
What has happened in cases like this is that we have surrendered to
the dangerous impulse to let images substitute for arguments in the
discourse of philosophy. We have asked metaphors to bear the weight
of argument - a gross violation, no doubt, of the canons of Pure
Rationality. After all, philosophers are supposed to be in the business
of constructing theories to explain the world by logic, not painting
fanciful pictures with rhetoric. We are after Truth itself, right? Before
dismissing this noble, if now quaint bit of Platonism, consider the
alternative. If the goal of philosophy is taken instead to be wisdom,
and wisdom cannot be achieved without understanding, and
understanding results from explanation, and the mediulTI of explanation
is metaphor, and metaphors are just stories, then philosophy is really
just a kind of story-telling! There is a real danger here, but it is a
danger only for the grandiose self-image that some philosophers have
had.
The possibility that metaphors offered in the service of explanation
can assume - or usurp the role of argument is an acute danger for a
discipline whose self-image would put it at the center of intellectual life
but whose identity is in the perpetual crisis that such incessant self-
reflection inevitably engenders. That is why the suggestion that
philosophy is but another literary genre strikes such a raw nerve. If
everything is just text, then nothing could be understood until textuality
itself is understood. That would make critical theory the true "first
philosophy"!
This is, of course, an egregious simplification and distortion.
Recognizing that metaphors have their own roles to play in philosophy
does not entail the end of philosophy. What it does entail is that in
order to understand the full complexity of how that peculiar linguistic
phenomenon, metaphors, relates to that equally peculiar discourse,
philosophy, special attention has to be paid to peculiarly philosophical
uses of metaphor. Three uses, in particular, deserve mention because
they reveal the contours of those "grand metaphors" mentioned earlier.
First, metaphors often serve as exploratory vehicles for
investigating and articulating philosophical hypotheses. Hume' s gamut
of analogical explorations of the cosmological argument belongs in this
category. If the world can be seen as a creation, then why not as the
product of an immature apprentice deity, or a superannuated one, Of, as
sometimes seems likely, a contentious committee? Once the image of
world-as-artifact has freed us to indulge this sort of speculation, it is not
much of a leap to consider yet additional alternatives, such as the
world-as-vegetable or the world-as-creature. The salient feature of
philosophy is that it is not, in Thomas Kuhn's sense of the word, really
a "discipline" at all, or at least not a single discipline.
I5
There are no
bounds a priori and no permanent bounds to philosophical speculation.
As noted earlier, one of the important features of metaphors is precisely
their semantic It is almost as if Philosophy and
metaphor were made for each other!
Second, a good metaphor is more than just a for exploring
metaphysical hypotheses. It can itself be a metaphysical hypothesis, a
structural hypothesis in its own right about how to see the world. The
best metaphors, however, create the world as it is seen. As such, they
are less structural hypotheses than "re-structural hypotheses," because
they enable us to see the world anew, to see it as something else. And
while it is in the Philosophical Investigations that Wittgenstein worried
about duck-rabbits and the seeing-as phenomenon, he provides us with
an exemplary case at the end of the Tractatus: .
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone
who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical,
when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He
must, so to speak, throwaway the ladder after he has climbed up it.)16
He has asked us to look at what he has written in a different way, to see
it as something else. Everything has suddenly and permanently
changed - as surely as the duck becomes a rabbit in the classic line-
drawing once that possibility is pointed out. It is a remarkable passage
- not least because it is both a metaphor in its own right as well as a
pretty good characterization of metaphors in general,17 except that the
ladder, which was not a ladder until we saw it that way, comes up with
us, rather than being thrown away. At its best, philosophy can be a
transforrnative enterprise - in the same way that the best metaphors are.
To re-phrase something Marvin Minsky once wrote: Philosophy
teaches you such things as why, if you don't engage in philosophy,
you'11 never be the same again. 18
The third special use to which metaphors are put in philosophy is
as koans of a sort, intellectual knots that must be untied in order to
reach understanding. This has been part of philosophy since its
beginning, e.g., Socrates' dying breath which befuddles us still: "Crito,
we owe a cock to Aesclepius; do not forget it.,,19 What are we to make
of that? There are innumerable things that could be made of it, but
what is most important is that we do make something of it. Or, when
we are told by a poet that understanding is "sewing the thread of
knowledge onto the cloth of truth,,,20 the insight is not patent. In what
sense is this so? How are we to make sense of this? Again, the point is
that making sense of this is just what we have to do. Its sense is made,
not found. It was remarked at the outset that there is an element of
puzzles about metaphors, that they must be solved, as it were, before
they can be accepted or rej ected, incorporated into our way of seeing or
cast aside, or affirmed or denied. If it turns out, as may well be the
case, that the demands of the pragmatics of philosophical
understanding cannot be satisfied any other way, then the presence of
metaphors in philosophy truly is both integral and ineliminable.
Despite all the dangers, then, metaphors are essential to
philosophy. They fill roles that are sufficiently different from the
stylistic and idiomatic roles most notably exhibited in literature as well
as from the explanatory, heuristic roles they play in the sciences.
Unlike literature's metaphors, philosophy's metaphors - those that are
peculiarly philosophical - are all tied up with explanation and were
never really meant to be metaphors. Augustine's hierarchy of Being, to
stay with that example, was not offered as a metaphor for the world; it
was intended to he a literal, albeit a metaphysical rather than a physical,
description of the world. It became metaphorical only when it lost its
vitality as a literal metaphysics. But, unlike science's metaphors which
may evolve into literal discourse through their service in explanations
philosophy's grand metaphors arise when the necessarily metaphorical
parts of explanation end up assuming the burden of theory, with the
result that the explanation becomes inseparable from its metaphors and,
ultimately becomes wholly metaphorical itself! Rather than
explanatory metaphors becoming literal, literal explanations become
metaphorical.
That is, philosophy's most characteristic metaphors are exploratory
and structural .hypotheses that function, initially, more like the
challenges posed by Zen koans and, subsequently, more like the
constitutive paradigms of Kuhnian revolutionary science than like the
stylistic, idiomatic, explanatory, and heuristic metaphors with which
they are usually associated.
Earlier, Platonism was included in a proposed list of Philosophy's
grand metaphors. Now it can be explained in what sense it is, although
has not always been, a metaphor. Platonism is now part of the
intellectual terrain; we know what it means to characterize a position
that way - for example, if I characterize the view that meanings
determine use as Platonist, as opposed to the more Nominalist view that
use determines meaning. Platonism has become part of the world in
which we find ourselves - or, perhaps, part of the world we have n1ade
for ourselves. We may take Platonism as a metaphor, but it was not
given that way. It was meant to be a literal truth about the world. It
was not meant as a constituent part of it.
21
And yet, when we come to
map out the lay of the land now, we would be remiss were we to fail to
point out the Platonic Heights, the Cartesian Divide, the Leibnizian
Archipelago, Twin Earth, or any of the other great landmarks of
philosophical geography. They are part of our world.
There is an element of tragedy here for these grand metaphors.
These theories aimed at being Transcendental Truths, not mere
metaphors, grand or otherwise. Still, that we might now interpret them
as metaphors rather than as physical or metaphysical theories is not
condescension. Instead it is continuing testimony to the power that
those visions still have. We do not, after all, give by-passed scientific
theories such on honored place on our bookshelves and in our curricula.
Who studies Black's caloric theory or Ptolemy's epicycles now? Not
the scientists, but the historians of science, and they read them as
artifacts from an earlier age. That is not how philosophers read their
own past. There is something too valuable there to simply let go,
perhaps something more valuable than mere truth.
Then why not produce grand metaphors knowingly? If this is what
is enduring in philosophy, then why have philosophers engaged in the
self-deception that is entailed by the conceptions of philosophy-as-
truth, philosophy-as-science, philosophy-as-knowledge, and even
philosophy-as-wisdom? Would not a recognition of philosophy-as-
literature be closer to the truth, intellect:ually more honest, and
ultimately more healthy for the integrity of the discipline? Not
necessarily. Can the ironic stance - that extreme (if not altogether
pathological) self-consciousness of post-modern theorizing - generate
and sustain the passionate commitment that might be required? Is that
likely to be more productive than a Transcendental self-deception? It
may be that for grand metaphors, you have to aim even higher.
Keep in mind, first, because metaphors are "syntactically
invisible," it is entirely possible that a given text could be interpreted
either literally or as metaphor. Second, because metaphors have half-
lives, it is equally possible that different stages might call for different
interpretations, now literal, now metaphorical, or vice-versa. Third,
because metaphors are open-ended and polysemous, the intended
interpretation - even whether it should be interpreted as literal or
metaphorical - might not be the best one, and this too can vary over
time. And fourth, because metaphors are constitutive as well as
reflective of how we think, it is entirely possible, perhaps even to be
expected, that overarching world-views and entrenched ways of
thinking will inevitably "metaphorize." I think each of these
possibilities has been actualized time and time again in the history of
philosophy when grand theories lose their vitality as philosophy, but
claim an enduring spot on our bookshelves as metaphors.
There is, then, an acute irony in all this. It is only as metaphors
that these "failed truths" can be truths because as metaphors they do not
describe the world. Rather, they constitute a new world. They failed to
describe the world in which they were meant to be literal, but they
constitute the world in which they are understood as metaphorical.
If Wittgenstein is right that Philosophy is the attempt to transcend
the bewitchment of the intellect by language, but Heidegger is also
justified in seeing Language as the House of Being, then perhaps
Language is the jailhouse of Being. It is only with these grand
metaphors, then, that we can break out of the jailhouse of language, and
only temporarily at that, in order to be schooled in a new reality.
Endnotes
1. There are, of course, contributions to the discol.J.rse of philosophy that are
not easily read as metaphors. This is particularly true of more formal
offerings, like Russell's theory of definite descriptions or Godel's
incompleteness theorems (both of which are consensus choices as among
the most important contribution to philosophy in the twentieth century).
That it is hard to see them as metaphors does not mean it is impossible.
That we do not read them that way now does not mean that they will not
be read that way in the future. And that some parts of philosophy are
more metaphorical than others does not undermine the value of the claim
that the history of philosophy is a history of grand metaphors. As a lens
through which to view and organize the history of philosophy, that claim
is itself a metaphor!
2. Lady Philosophy appears throughout The Consolation ofPhilosophy; She
speaks of the monster Fortune in the opening prose section of Book II.
3. In the famous opening line of Marx and Engels' The Communist
Manifesto.
4. Schlick 1949, p. 5.
5. Richards 1936, p. 92, cited by M. Johnson 1980, p. 18.
6. E.g., Kreitman 1999 writes, "in scientific research ... [metaphor] serves a
crucial role in the development of fresh thinking. But in these disciplines
metaphor is an optiona' tool towards the elaboration of concepts which
can be set out in various ways, including, of course, by means of
mathematical expressions in many instances" (p. 114). And yet, in other
contexts, Kreitman regards metaphor as a "figure of thought" and not just
a "figure of speech."
7. This begs the questions as to whether some literature is itself metaphorical
(say, for the lived human experience), and whether "mere" story-telling is
a necessary or essential feature of any human language. These questions
are addressed below.
8. Hesse 1980 has argued eloquently that all scientific explanation is
essentially a "metaphoric redescription of the domain of the
explanandum." That is a stronger claim than is being made here, since it
implicitly challenges the entire literal-metaphoric dichotomy. As will be
clear, I think that that dichotomy is untenable in the end, but the comments
here refer only to unproblematically identifiable metaphors within larger,
non-metaphoric contexts.
9. Max Black calls this "catachresis," defined as "the use of a word in some
new sense in order to remedy a gap in the vocabulary." See Black 1955.
If the phenomenon is limited to single words, then it is not all that
conceptually significant. Metaphors, however, do not operate only at the
level of individual words. Metaphors may be the only way to
communicate what would otherwise be ineffable - as theologians from
Pseudo-Denis to Aquinas have noted. Many of the examples that Wisdom
1936 uses in his account of the role of nonsense in philosophy are
metaphors. While the discussion there is not explicitly directed at
metaphors, much of what he says can be applied to them very well, and,
when so applied, is quite insightful.
10. That new ideas are often thought in terms of metaphors is something that
was emphatically maintained by Richards 1936: "Thought is metaphoric"
(p.94).
11. Danto 1984.
12. See Lakoff and Johnson 1980, chapter 4, for an extended discussion
explicitly addressing spatial metaphors.
13. Lovejoy 1964 p.l02.
14. The connection between metaphors and myth, as applicable to the
question of the Virgin Birth, is suggested in passing in Wheelwright 1962,
pp. 129-131. The codification into Dogma did not come about until the
Council ofNicaea in 325.
15. Kuhn 1970, ch. II.
16. Wittgenstein 1961,6.54.
17. This observation is articulately made in Garver and Lee 1994.
18. The reference is to the jacket cover of Hofstadter and Dennett 1981.
19. Plato, Phaedo, II8a.
20. Max F. Cohen, "Ying and Yang," unpublished poem.
21. Davidson 1978 argues that it goes the other way, that the sentences Plato
used had no (literal) meaning initially, but in trying to accommodate them,
we give them, or they somehow acquire, (literal) meaning. The
differences between that view and what is said here are not as great as
might be thought, however, because the denial that there is a special
metaphorical kind of meaning should itself be seen as a transfonnative
metaphor that equally changes how we understand literal meaning. In
endorsing this view, Rorty 1991 also emphasizes how metaphors
constitute, rather than have, truth (albeit under a very transformed concept
of "truth").
PART IV
Metaphors versus Arguments
There is a tension between the account of arguments and their
place in philosophy, presented in the first two section, and the account
of metaphors and their place in philosophy, presented in the third.
Together, these set the stage, as it were, for a dramatic conflict. The
argument-centered conception of philosophy challenges and, in tum,
is challenged by - more literary visions. So it is that the age-old
conflict, bequeathed to us by Plato, between philosophy and poetry is
broached.
The first form that this conflict takes here is explicitly dramatic: a
dialogue between a philosopher and a poet. Whimsical though this
may be, there is a serious issue at hand, viz., the complex relations
between argument and narrative. Because the rhetorical element is so
pronounced in both arguments and stories, the performative dimensions
to arguing and story-telling cannot be ignored. This is equally
important for thinking about arguments and narratives from the
audience's perspective, Le., the activities of argument-hearing and
story-reading. It is through performance, appropriately enough, that the
performative aspects are explored here: the dialogue is meant to be
performed. Its audience and readers are actively a part of it.
The next chapter expands the focus beyond the juxtaposition of
philosophy and literature to include some of the other conceptual pairs
that have also been placed in opposition. These include the literal and
the figurative, logic and rhetoric, philosophy and literature, and
philosophy and science. To a greater or lesser degree, all of these
oppositions are artificial and, if relied on too heavily, unhelpful.
However, there is something to be gained by juxtaposing the more
extreme and distorted versions of the pairs.. Exaggerating the
opposition provides a clearer entry into the middle ground between
them. The "logic of rhetoric" extracted and displayed here is
admittedly an irreparable caricature, but serves well for the heuristic at
hand. The "rhetoric of logic" may be closer to the mark, but it is also
154 Metaphors vs. Arguments
in need of some repair. However, since the metaphors that dominate
that rhetoric are not in1mutable features of a world-view, it can be
repaired.
The concluding chapters are explicitly meta-philosophical. The
significance of thinking about philosophy in tenns of its arguments and
its metaphors is articulated. To engage in philosophical discourse
involves speaking a language replete with metaphors, an inexhaustible
language with meanings that are always up for grabs. The way to read
and understand metaphors is through argumentative engagement.
Conversely, the way to understand arguments is as metaphors, lenses
through which to view the world. Philosophy is the exercise of reason
in order to come to grips with the world's mystery. Perhaps not all
occasions for reasoning are occasions to argue, but all argunlents
should be occasions for reasoning. Philosophy is an ~ s i o n for both
because there is an inherent instability in the plurality of theories
produced by philosophical reasoning. In spite of this, philosophical
arguments rarely succeed in creating consensus out of the cacophony of
philosophical opinions. Indeed, philosophical arguments are peculiar
in that they apparently preclude negotiation and compromise, and they
do not presuppose that reaching consensus is either probable, possible,
or even especially desirable. And yet, lack of consensus remains
unstable, guaranteeing that arguments will continue. Whether we argue
in order to reconcile conflicting metaphors or we produce new
metaphoric visions of the world, to resolve arguments, there will
always be space for another move in the conversation. There is no end
to philosophy.
CHAPTER 12
Once Upon an Argument:
Being an Account of a Dialogue
between a Poet and a Philosopher,
both Ancient
1
(Co-authored by John Rosenwald, Beloit College, Beloit, WI)
Poet: Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious creatures Man.)
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh and Blood, I pleas'd to weare,
I'd be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear,
Or any thing but that vain Animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth to contradict the other Five;
And before certain instinct, will preferr,
Reason, which Fifty times for one does err.
2
Philosopher: You see, that is precisely why poets are potentially
so dangerous, and why they should be carefully watched, especially in
any society in which the voices of the many have some say. The saving
grace is the fact that no one of any intellectual moment pays any real
attention to either poets or poetry nowadays - preferring their
descendants, the propagandists of commerce - so there is no harm in
allowing poets free range, even in such a supposedly serious
intellectual community as is afforded by our academies.
But alas, in these degraded times, too few take philosophers
seriously either, and the great argument between poets and
philosophers only smolders when it should bum with fiery passion.
Poet: There is no argument between us. We have no argument;
You have an argument. The only arguments are the ones - did I hear
three or four - that you raise against me. I do not argue.
Phil.: Well and good! If there is no argument between us, then
there is no disagreement. And where there is no disagreement, there is
agreement. Thus, I can only conclude that you agree with me. Don't
you?
Poet: Do I?
Phil.: You agree that we disagree, so there is indeed an argument
between us.
Poet: But \vait. If I agree with you now that we argue, then the
disagreement disappears - and where there is no disagreement, there is
no argument - so in the end we do not argue!
Two can play at your word games. Still, I choose not to argue. I
prefer to put my words to different uses.
Phil.: Your denial rests on a clever equivocation. Surely, you
would admit that the argument one person presents is different than the
argument that engages two. Still, I nlust admit that you show a mastery
of the language of argunlentation.
Poet: Well, language is, after all, my specialty. However, I must
credit Protagoras, one of your own, for this particular rejoinder.
3
Phil.: Not all philosophers are so eager to claim him as one of
their own. He is too clever by half, but I suspect that he is only clever.
Poet: Since when is cleverness with words a failing? Even the
Philosopher himself considers mastery of metaphor a sign of genius!4 I
think you are unduly suspicious, and that can get in the way of learning.
You listen only to dispute, so you will never be able to hear the
wisdom others have to offer. Come, let me tell you a story...
Phil.: ~ If there is something you would teach me, tell it to me
directly, without the extravagances of art. The Truth can stand critical
Once Upon an Argument 157
scrutiny. It needs no embellishment; it need not hide behind the
trappings of a story. Tell me what you would have me learn.
Poet: Yes, I would teach you, but not all that can be taught must
be taught directly. What if I would teach a techne, not episteme?
Phil.: If what you mean by techne is what Homer and Hesiod and
the old poets meant - mastery of a craft - then you are right, but
philosophers are more wont to recognize that true techne must be
accompanied by episteme.
5
In any case, I should be more careful with
my words here. When I asked if there was "something" that you would
teach, what I meant was, if there is a "some-what," and not a "some-
how"...
Poet: If you are now more concerned with your language, and the
importance of choosing just the' right words for communication, then
you have already learned a great deal. And, I might add, without my
telling you. If you understand the importance of just the right word for
teaching, then perhaps you can begin to sense its importance for all the
other things that we do with language - including arguing and telling
stories. And once you appreciate that, then the art of putting the best
possible words in the best possible order is within reach. That is
poetry.6
Phil.: Yes, I know: "The poet presents his thoughts festively, on
the carriage of rhythm... [but] usually because they could not walk.,,7
Sometimes I think that you poets get too caught up in rhyme and
meter and imagery, forgetting all the while that what makes words best
is simply that they express the Truth.
Poet: Listen to my story. Perhaps it will be an answer.
Phil.: I grant that a story might be able to teach an Art - even the
art of living - by offering an example, a model to follow, but what can
a story contribute to reasoned debate? It can only seduce the senses,
capture the imagination, or play with the emotions.
Poet: So are you saying that poets, qua poets, have no Reason at
all?
If not to argue you call Treason,
And poets offer no excuse.
Then we're left bereft of Reason,
Strangers in the Land of Nous
But at least be gracious enough to admit that I was right all along
because if we poets have no arguments, then perforce we have no
argun1ents rvith philosophers. And, that being the case, I shall take my
leave.
Phil.: Even you can't seriously offer that as reason. You
equivocate unconscionably between arguments as carefully structured
reasoning and arguments as merely competitive wordplay. Come back
here and argue like a philosopher!
Poet: Contrary-wise, why don't you walk with me and rhapsodize
like a poet! Surely it's a more enjoyable way to share each other's
company.
Phil.: Irresponsible rhymester! Image-monger!
Poet: Ad Hominen! Ad Hominem! How delightful! How eristic!
Can I play, too? Now let me see... I know: Pedantic logophile!
Fatuous conceptualist! Phallocentric dogmatist! No, No, wait a
second, the muse has come...
Nitpicking hairsplitter,
Lost in the maze of market stalls,
Stops to ponder,
Whether he dreams these walls.
Proof eludes, frozen in wonder...
Darkness falls.
Phil.: That is supposed to teach me something? A witty verse it
may be but you are playing to the wrong audience.
Speaking of which, it seems to me that an audience is something
you need. Is that right? Do you languish if no one listens? The
achievement of Philosophy is wisdom, and that is its own reward, even
for the solitary philosopher. The achievement of poetry is pretty tropes,
of little value when there are no others around to enjoy them.
I am not surprise4 that your words are clever. I expect no less
from our poets - but as a philosopher, I hunger for more. I seek after
Once Upon an Argulnent 159
Knowledge and Truth, Understanding and Wisdom. Do you see
nothing noble in that pursuit so that it deserves ridicule from those who
do not hear its call?
Poet: It is the sirens' call. They would lead you astray from our
company. You cannot leave this ship.
Phil.: Getting lost isn't the only danger sailors face. What if the
ship flounders, runs aground, or takes on too much water? A safe port
for repair is sometinles needed.
8
Poet: Touche! You have turned my own metaphor back on me. I
am sure there is a term for it in the techne of the rhetoricians. Quite the
masterstroke and worthy of a true poet. You've been wasting your
talents chasing the rainbow. Welcome to the fraternity.
Phil.: Thank you, but I must decline. I have not argued anything
here...
Poet: Who asked you to argue?
Phil.: Apparently, I have only traded words with a clever
simpleton. There is no gain in besting a fool in argument.
Poet: Then why argue with a fool in the first place?
Phil.: A good question - and I have a good answer. Because, as
you've just now shown, even a fool can occasionally ask a good
question.
You see, I do not argue to win. Rather, I argue to learn. I submit
my thoughts and opinions to the crucible of argumentation, to make
them stronger, more complete, more articulate - in sum, to get closer to
the Truth. Argument is how we get there. An argument may "prove"
its conclusion in either sense: it may test it or it may establish it. As a
philosopher, I am accountable to reason, and only to reason - not to any
opponent in debate; nor to any audience; it is neither judge nor jury that
can justly weigh my words, although I hope they can be my guides,
helping me to judge rightly for myself.
Let me ask you a question: What is the measure of a poem? To
whom are you accountable?
Poet: Me? At this moment? Me. Myself. My craft. The story.
This moment. The audience... Why, then I an1 accountable to you.
There is no other. Aren't we alone?
All I ask is that you give me fair hearing before rendering your
judgment. Let me tell my story.
Phil.: You leave it up to me, then? If I disapprove, or deny, or
reject your story, then you will have lost - and acknowledge as much?
If I am the sole judge and jury, how can I not but like the odds!
Poet: Will I have lost? What is it to lose when there is no contest?
I will have failed, yes, in some sense. And yes, at this moment you are
the sole judge of my argument ...
Phil. : Your argument! You mean your story.
Poet: As you wish, but arguments are stories. As I said, for now,
you are the entire audience for my words, the only one that matters.
There may be others in the course of time, but really they do not matter
because the story changes with each new telling. And with each new
hearing. Even the same story can yet be very different.
Phil.: Paradoxes and riddles!
Poet: And one more thing, my friend. Do not forget your calling,
your personal accountability to reason. I know you suppose me
irrational and impervious to all reason, and you think, therefore, that
you cannot give me reasons to be reasonable, but I do know how very
important it is to you. And believe it or not, it is important to me, too.
Phil.: You are right. I will listen and try to give you a fair hearing.
That is your due.
Poet: My story, then. Or, if you prefer, my argument - but as a
story.
Once upon a time there was a philosopher who was thought to be
the wisest of all because his wisdom consisted in knowing that he knew
nothing. Of course, there are always very many who know nothing, so
that by itself is no great distinction. It is believing that about yourself
that is the trick. In his time, as in our own, many of the ignorant
arrogantly thought that they did know, and so they were not wise. Nor
were they very good, and in the end they killed our philosopher. This
story, you see, is a tragedy.
Phil.: I would be a poor student of philosophy if I did not
recognize the life of Socrates. But it is a true part of our past. It is
history and not a mere story at all.
Poet: Previously you complained that stories were not true so they
could not contribute to human knowledge. Now you complain that this
story is true. No matter. It is a story, but stories can be "true."
Whether a story is true or not, however, does not matter. What does
matter about stories is that they do matter, that they be important. One
way for a story to be important is to tell a truth, but that is not the only
way. At any rate, let me continue with my story.
As I said, this story is a tragedy, but not because it ends badly, but
because it ends badly precisely because our hero was tragically flawed.
His flaw \vas that while he was wise in the ways of the world and even
wise in the ways of Man, our philosopher was perhaps not so wise in
the ways of men. He knew the measure of all things and he saw very
deeply into human nature. He knew what it was to be a rational animal
in the order of the greater cosmos, but alas, he himself lived not in a
cosmos but in a world of chaos, and his fellow inhabitants in that messy
world were not always rational animals. They did not know about
Human Nature as he did, and so they did not live as he did, and as
humans ought. And yet they were humans nonetheless. They were like
the storied bumblebees who fly blithely on their way, never knowing
that by aerodynamical rights, they should be incapable of flying. He
was, alas, too rational for this world.
Phil.: But then it is the city-state and the other citizens that are
flawed. The tragedy is that the world is flawed, not he. We need to
change the world.
Poet: Wait. The reason I say he was not so wise in the ways of
men is that he took it upon himself to expose the ignorance of the
arrogant, and in so doing, he made powerful enemies. Shouldn't a
student of human nature have been able to expect that his provocative
action would meet with excessive reaction? Even a fool such as I could
have seen that he was heading toward a bad end.
Phil.: You're missing the point. His arguments were for everyone,
the ages, not just for the least adept among us. He was accountable to
eternal Reason, not to the audience of his day.
Poet: You're right, but that is my point. As his nursemaid once
remarked, he did not play well with others. Instead, he argued, which
is not always the best way to relate to others. He loved to argue and
couldn't resist doing so at every available opportunity, even with his
playmates. What makes this a problem is that pretty much any
occasion can be turned into an opportunity to argue.
In sum: our philosopher's tragic flaw was argumentativeness.
Well, not just argumentativeness per se, but argumentative
argumentativeness. Did I say he argued well? That is not quite right.
Remember that arguments are also stories and while he may have
argued reasonably, he did not argue well because he was not good at
telling stories.
Phil.: Again you're missing the point. His actions were deliberate.
Even when it seems that it might have been inappropriate to argue, he
knew what he was doing.
Poet: Do you really think so? What was he doing?
Phil.: He was trying to teach. He was showing the way to be
human, how to live a life worthy of a rational being. Above all, he was
trying to help the rest of us not to lose faith in argument. That would
be a tragedy.
Poet: Well, then he wasn't a very good teacher, was he? That is
my point. Good arguments need to be good stories, so good arguers
need to be good story-tellers. You see, in my story, his arguments
didn't work and his love of argument didn't take rqot among his fellow
citizens. They were not, shall we say, "model interlocutors," so no
doubt they deserve 111uch of the blame for the tragedy. But so does he,
because it was his arguments - his arguing - that caused the trouble.
He was arrested and tried and executed for his deeds. At each stage of
the ordeal, there were escapes for our philosopher - choices that would
have allowed him to continue his life's mission with honor and
integrity, and even choices that would have furthered that mission.
Alas, while he may have had enough reason to construct fine
arguments, he had too little imagination to tell a good story. He could
find no exit. Do you imagine that the wily Odysseus would ever have
found himself in this position?
Phil.: Odysseus was a different sort of hero - a soldier and
adventurer, but also a thief and a liar. He is not a role model on how to
live the good life.
Poet: Why do you call clever Odysseus a liar? Because he told
stories? But they were not lies meant to deceive. They were stories
meant to entertain and explain and serve the purposes of the wayfarer
and fulfill the duties of a supplicant guest. Surely, that's reasonable.
You can't really believe his hosts thought those marvelous stories of
monsters and gods were literal truth. Since the imperatives of
hospitality prevented them from challenging his stories, he was relieved
of the imperatives of truth-telling - and so became subject to the very
different imperatives of story-telling.
9
He is a fine role model ... for
story-telling. And they... for story-hearing.
Phil.: If you are trying to win sympathy for your own story, be
warned that I am losing patience.
Poet: You are right. I'll return to it forthwith.
In his own way, the philosopher was also arrogant. He was too
self-assured to seek the advice of those with more imagination and too
stubborn to hear it if it was offered. The result? He showed an
absolutely uncanny knack for doing exactly the wrong thing, choosing
the one action at each stage that would make things worse. Perhaps
when he was younger, he was different. Maybe he wasn't so set in his
ways, so adamant and persnickety. At the time of my story, however,
he showed a decided lack of, shall we say, "inter-personal skills." Over
time, these led to a series of social gaffes. Further blundering
transformed those transgressions into minor crimes. And finally, with
what can only be described as extraordinary forensic incompetence, he
was able to elevate those minor crimes into a capital offense.
You seem to regard argument as a philosopher's stone for
transmuting the lead of popular opinion into the gold of real
knowledge, but all this philosopher's stone managed to do was turn
farce into tragedy. Really, how do you get yourself executed for
schmoozing in tile agora? The gold that is needed is the golden mean
between the extremes of misology, the disillusionment with argument,
and what I suppose we could call logomania, an obsessive love of
argument.
Phil.: Are you finished? Then my verdict would have to be a
negative one because you have not told the story accurately. That is
what comes of your cavalier disregard for the Truth. You have
misportrayed the philosopher who, after all, was said to be fairly
described as "the wisest and the justest and the best. ,,10
Poet: Are you challenging my story? Then I guess we do have an
argument because that is how an argument begins. 1
1
Phil.: "Argument" is said in many ways. Didn't we agree on that?
The argument that one person presents is different than the argument
that engages two. Philosophical argumentation, as part of the solitary
quest for truth, welcomes but does not need disputants.
Poet: Yes, that is so. Arguments do take many forms.
Phil.: Consider the second form of argument, the argument that
two can have with each other. What is going on in such an exchange?
Poet: Do you mean what makes a dialogue an argument?
Phil.: What makes a dialogue dialectical?
Poet: What makes a dialogue confrontational?
Phil.: Are you confusing dialectical and confrontational?
Poet: Are we playing "Questions"? Then I ask: Can't we argue
with one another rather than against one another?
Phil.: Then I ask: Have you forgotten that I argue to learn not to
win?
Poet: No...
Phil.: Not a question. Point for me! (Does a little victory dance.)
Why do you think I am interested only in winning?
Poet: Why do you think I am interested in winning at all?
Phil.: If truth is not the goal of argument, then what else is there
but winning?
Poet: Can't there be an argument without winners and losers? Is
there no point to a hunt without a kill?
Phil.: Didn't I just grant that point? But isn't this still all about the
quarry and not the chase?
Poet: If the quarry escapes and does not fall prey, has there been
no hunt?
Phil.: So isn't it the quarry that is necessary, not the kill? Isn't
truth as a goal, therefore, the necessary and defining feature of
argument. .. even if we never get there?
Poet: Can't we have a dialogue without your incessant
questioning? Have you forgotten what happened to Socrates? Enough
with questions!
Phil.: If you cannot keep your emotions in check, how can you
possibly expect us to have reasoned debate?
Poet: How can you argue without emotion? And why should I
want reasoned debate?
Phil.: How can I convince you, ifnot with reason?
Poet: Why not persuade me instead. .. with art?
Phil.: Now it is you who continues with the questions.
Poet: So... is that our answer, that neither emotional conflict nor
rational disagreement, but questions themselves are the lifeblood of
argument? Oh, that was a question... Sorry. But now I think I see
where you were trying to lead me.
Phil.: Then I have succeeded this much, anyway: you have come
to see that what I have to say is not as unacceptable as you previously
thought,12 even if you do not accept it yourself. The goal's the thing.
Poet: And understanding is a fine goal. Agreement is not the only
successful end to an argument. What about acknowledgement?
Phil.: So in the end, did I really only need to explain myself,
rather than argue? Or, rather, was it that explanation was successful as
an argument precisely because it was not an argument?
Poet: I will allow you those questions. But see what happened.
You argued with my story. Doesn't that make my story an argument?
Stories are arguments!
Phil.: Ah, now it is my tum to say that I think I see where you are
heading with this. Our exchange on how to understand the life, and
death, of our argumentative philosopher might actually constitute an
argument. So I will grant you this: A story may include, or be included
in, or be used as an argument. But that is not to say that stories
themselves are arguments.
Poet: You are right. What I meant to say is the converse, not that
stories are arguments, but that arguments are stories. They are just one
of the kinds of stories that we tell. Thus, arguers must be story-tellers,
and like all story-tellers, they need to engage their hearers - invite them
along, compel them in, CARRY THEM AWAY!
Phil.: I think you listen to yourself too much, and have let yourself
get carried away by your own words.
Poet: A thousand pardons. But we agreed that stories can be
arguments and that arguers are story-tellers. I can't resist pointing out
that just a moment ago, when you were arguing against my story, you
yourself were using a story to make your argument!
Once Upon an Argument
Phil.: How was I using a story? What are you talking about?
167
Poet: The description of the philosopher that you offered - "the
wisest" and all the other trappings - is from a story - a different story
than the one I told.
Phil.: No, it is froni the same story, but a different'version of it. A
more accurate version I might add.
Poet: Why do you say that? Did my story get something wrong
the charges, the trial, the verdict, or the outcome? I thought you said
that is the sort of thing that matters, and that all the rest is art,
unnecessary and unwanted embellishment.
Phil.: But you have cast them in the wrong light. You presented
Socrates' as inadvertently or mistakenly antagonizing his fellow
citizens rather than doing so deliberately. You have misread his
actions. This is what I meant by saying that the story-telling act is
already partly an argument. I was merely challenging your premises.
Poet: Are you now saying that it is not only the actions that are
important, but how they are told? I find that strategic retreat most
congenial. How a story is understood depends in large measure on how
it is told.
Phil. : But only in large measure. How it is understood depends
even more on how it is heard. Do not forget the story-hearer, my good
story-teller!
Poet: How could I? Have you forgotten that I declared you the
sole judge and jury of illy story?
Phil.: Ten thousand pardons. I will grant you that arguers are
story-tellers of a kind, so that one way to be a bad arguer is to be a bad
story-teller. But I will also maintain that one way to be a bad story-
teller is to be a bad arguer. And that is how, for all your story-telling
art, you have been a bad story-teller. In particular, you have argued
from false premises. Our exchange was not really about the story 0
Socrates, but about how best to understand that story. The
interpretation - not the story itself - was the issue. We agree on what
happened to Socrates, don't we?
Poet: Such naivete is almost endearing in a philosopher, if it
weren't so annoying! How you tell the story of the events - and even
which events - already incorporates so much interpretation...
Phil.: Yes, yes, yes! But for someone to hear your story, to try to
make sense of it in order to understand it, is itself an interpretive act, an
argumentative act. Rather than think of arguers as story-tellers, think
of story-hearers with their continual silent questioning as arguers.
That, after all, is the same kind of critical engagement that lies at the
heart of good, philosophical argumentation, not the adversarial sort of
engagement that it is so easy to fall into - and so easy for the epigones
of Aristophanes to parody.
Poet: Well, I must admit that I do indeed often find myself
wanting to interrupt a story to ask the story-teller a question, to demand
explanation, to object to his picture of the world, or to tell him that his
characters simply would not behave the way he has them behaving.
Phil.: Yes, exactly! And that is what I was doing when I listened
to your story. I found myself arguing with it - even when I agreed!
The internal argument was simply louder and more noticeable when I
disagreed, such as when you misportrayed Socrates...
Poet: ... when you heard - if not misheard! - me as misportraying
Socrates.
Phil. : Let us not follow that red herring. The point is that if the
audience, the story-hearers, are engaged in argument, then one thing
that can make a story bad is that it is a bad argument! A story that
simply cannot be believed cannot be saved, not even by the greatest art
of the greatest story-teller.
Poet: Well, I will happily grant you this much: not even the
greatest art of the greatest story-teller is a match for the greatest density
of the worst story-listener. Not Homer, nor Orpheus, nor even
Amphion himself (despite our legends) could entertain the rocks in the
fields.
Phil.: And Socrates himself couldn't convince them of even the
simplest proposition.
Poet: Alas, unworthy audiences are the plague of story-tellers the
world over.
Phil.: I can do aught but sympathize, because unworthy disputants
are the bane of philosophers everywhere.
Poet: Ah, but a worthy audience...
Phil.: ... a worthy disputant...
Poet: .. .is a joy forever.
It comes to me now, to ask this question. We have distinguished
the argument that one person presents from the argument that two
people have with each other, but we have also spoken of arguments as
stories and arguing as story-telling, which then makes an argument of
three two disputants and the audience.
Phil.: Yes...
o t ~ And by stories and arguments you have convinced and
persuaded me...
Phil.: Reason triumphant!
Poet: ... that story-hearers are arguers engaging the story-tellers.
Phil.: Indeed.
Poet: But then who is their audience? Who is their judge?
Phil.: Yes, a question that must be asked. You are accountable to
your audience - to me. Doesn't the story-hearer likewise have to be
accountable? Surely an interpretation has to answer to something. The
text of the story is determinate even if the meaning is not. I am
accountable to Reason. It is a sign of strength to bow before good
argument.
13
I am pleased to see you are now willing to go along. At
long last, our disagreement has been ended.
Poet: You have misheard me. Indeed, you have not listened to us.
Were we not commiserating together about our unworthy audiences?
So haven't we set ourselves up as the judges of those who hear - and
argue - with us? The story-teller is accountable to the story-hearers
only because they are accountable to him! You may objectify,
personify, or even deify Reason as much as you like, but in the end, we
are alone. There is no Other.
Phil.: If you are correct, then, wouldn't it be possible for someone
to tell the story of our argument, to make a story of our argument?
And in that story, the winner of the argument would be determined not
by what actually transpired, nor by the quality of our arguments, nor by
the canons of Reason, but by the whim of the narrator? It is you who
would make a god - of the story-teller!
Poet: Quite possibly, but it would require an especially artful poet
to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. I doubt any poet
could do that - at least not without some training in philosophy!
Now if you are correct in what you have been arguing, then such a
narration could be used as an argument in its own right. Arguments
take many forms, and stories can be put to many purposes.
Phil.: But your claim that stories can be read in many ways means
that the story might well be used as an argument for very different
conclusions!
Poet: Just so... as you wanted to use my story about the
argumentative philosopher for your own purposes.
Phil. : Your story about the argumentative philosopher? Shouldn't
that be your argument about the story-telling philosopher? In the end,
it was really Plato, not Socrates, who was the subject of our argument.
Poet: Ah, I see your point.
Phil.: And you will finally admit that we did have an argument
this day?
Poet: Well, I will say that that is a very good way to tell the story
of this morning's exchange.
Phil.: In the end, you now equivocate on the word "story."
"Stories" can be said in many ways.
Poet: Yes, and they can be told in many ways, too.
Both, shaking hands: Agreed!
Endnotes
1. This dialogue was performed by the authors at the third OSSA conference
in S1. Catherines, Ontario, in May of 1999.
2. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester "A Satyr against Mankind"
3. See, for example, the discussion of the case of Euathlus and Protagoras in
D. R. Hofstadter 1985, pp. 70f.
4. Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a.
5. See chapters 1 and 2 in David Roochnik 1996.
6. This characterization of poetry is, roughly, Coleridge's.
7. F. Nietzsche 1954, 189, p. 54.
8. Cf. "We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never
able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it here out of the best
materials." O. Neurath 1959, pp. 199-208.
9. See, e.g., L. H. Pratt 1996.
10. Plato, Phaedo, 118.
11. "An argument ... begins when a proposition is challenged." John
Hoaglund, "Introduction" to R. Johnson 1996, p.vxii.
12. M. A. Haft-van Rees 1989, crediting van Eemeren and Grootendorst,
asserts the goal of argument is "to enhance the acceptability of the speech-
act it is an argument for." This may fall short, however, of "resolving
differences of opinion" which is "pivotal to the pragma-dialectical notion
of a critical discussion." F. van Eemeren, et al. (1996) pp. 280ff.
13. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, Poster for the 4fu International Conference
on Argumentation, International Society for the Study of Argumentation,
Amsterdam, June 16-19, 1998.
POSTSCRIPT TO CHAPTER 12
On Performance and
Interpretation
The original purpose of the preceding dialogue was to argue for
certain theses concerning the performative aspects of argumentation.
As such, it really was meant to be performed and observed in
performance, rather that written down or read as static text. In
particular, I was concerned with the role of audiences in arguments -
even when no audience is apparent. The characters in the dialogue
claim to be alone, but that is surely ripe for deconstruction. It is one
thing for a philosopher to conceive of her activity as so many private
meditations, but it is something entirely different for a character on
stage in a dramatic performance to say he is alone. Obviously he is
not! The irony is palpable in perfonnance; in print, however, whatever
is self-defeating about such a claim is easier to miss.
In a similar fashion, the philosopher's actions speak louder than his
words when the argument turns into a game of questions. He protests
that the competitive aspect of arguments, winning, is not what concerns
him in philosophical arguments - but that is not at all evident in his
behavior during this philosophical argument. And yet the low comedic
context at that point should give pause to anyone who would see this as
a vindication of the argument-is-war model or as an argument that
adversariality is essential to arguments.
1
The course of the argument
changes character shortly afterwards. The poet and the philosopher
agree to argue with one another rather than against one another. While
they have reached agreement on some points, they are still very much
at odds doctrinally. And yet, the dialogue exhibits significant
"coalescent" argumentation: in Gilbert's terms, the poet and the
philosopher are in accord emotionally and viscerally.2 At the end of the
dialogue, they are non-combatants, but the end of this dialogue need
not be the end of the their argument. We can easily imagine that the
next time they meet, they will take up their argument once again, but if
they have learned anything from this encounter, they will argue
differently.
Perhaps the reason I imagine the poet and the philosopher as
having an on-going relationship of which this argument is an on-going
part, is because that is how things often are in real Hfe. In many ways,
this dialogue is just a chapter in the long-running argument that I have
been fortunate to have with John Rosenwald, an argument that has
spanned many years and several continents. Perhaps it would be better
to say that it is part of a series of arguments. We seldom pick up
exactly where we left off, the subject can change radically with each
installment, and even when the subject does not change, there are no
guarantees that today's proponent will not be tomorrow's opponent.
Despite all that, there is an important continuity to the arguing.
Arguments really are more than the sum of their propositional parts!
As rhetoricians and dialecticians have long noted, the dynamic that
is found in dialogues does have its counterpart in interior monologues.
3
For example, the dialogic pattern of thesis, objection, and response can
be equally at home in genuine dialogues or reflective deliberation,
regardless of whether spoken language is the public manifestation of
pre-existent, private thought or private thought is a developmental stage
reflecting the internalization of speech.
4
Still, monologic re-creations
tend to be just that: simulations rather than the real thing. Inevitably,
there will be changes in an arguer's position during the course of an
argument. The emphasis n1ay shift in response to unforeseen pressures.
The exterior boundaries might change, reflecting strategic retreats in,
say, the intended range of application. Perhaps the constituent concepts
and theses will come into clearer focus in response to analytic
challenges.
5
And, if the arguer is fortunate enough to have the right
sort of opponent, there is the possibility of growth, as the contribution
of new ideas and perspectives is synthesized with the old.
Because the changes that occur in the course of arguing are hard to
recreate in shnulated dialogues, and because that dynamic was n1eant to
be part of the subject of this dialogue, it was particularly important that
the dialogue include genuinely distinct voices. That is, as a practical
matter, distinct authors were demanded. (That is why, not trusting my
own abilities to create two authentic voices, I drafted Rosenwald, who
is both an able poet
6
and an able arguer, for the part.) There are several
dangers to avoid. One is the "Yes, Socrates" and "Of course, Socrates"
sort of response that clutter many of Plato's dialogues. Has anyone
engaged in an actual argument ever had such obliging opponents? On
On Performance and Interpretation 175
the other hand, overcompensating is also a danger to avoid when trying
to avoid presenting Straw Man arguments. To present opponents'
positions fairly and sympathetically, their nuances and details have to
be included. That invites the juxtaposition, or simple interweaving, of
monologues to no good dramatic effect. The result would be a series of
extended soliloquies that present positions but do not represent the
argumentative engagement between them. And, at yet another extreme,
there is the temptation to get caught up in the dramatic elements and
over-emphasize the confrontational aspects, thereby losing sight of the
argument itself. (Poet: But the dramatic text is the important thing; we
must heed the dramatic muse!)
The challenges that dialogues present to their authors, while
significant, are overshadowed by the interpretive problems that
dialogues pose to their readers and that performances present to their
audiences. Does Cleanthes or Philo speak for David Hume in his
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion? What detennines which parts
are to be taken as ironic? Different performers will realize the
characters and their lines differently - thereby changing the dialogue
itself.
Consider just one possible variation. Suppose the sex of the
characters is changed. But changed how - from male to female or from
female to male? What assulnptions ground visualizing the characters
as, say, male? There is nothing in the text that explicitly identifies
them as being male or female. To be sure, the original perfonners - the
authors - are both male. It has also been suggested that the
argunlentative mode (and thus the entire Western tradition in
philosophy) is sonlehow male-gendered.
7
Still, in the absence of
categorical textual instructions, there is interpretive leeway. Readers
who are skeptical that fully determinate individuals have essential
natures should be at least as skeptical when it conles to
underdetermined characters. Similarly, audiences should be hesitant
about attributing the contingent properties of the performers to the
characters - let alone taking those properties as saying something about
all philosophers and all poets, or, worse, as saying sonlething about
Philosophy and Poetry hypostatized as abstract entities.
Even with these caveats in mind, readers are likely to find
something male about the characters and their argument. The
philosopher certainly decries the agonistic aspects of argument, lip
service though it may be. The poet has a marked preference to
narrative and is insistent that argumentation, like any discourse,
includes emotion. Still, there does seem to be something ineluctably
male about them. That says something interesting about us and our
society, viz., that the clusters of concepts of which our particular
notions of gender, argument, rationality, and philosophy are parts, are
not independent. To reiterate a theme from earlier chapters: those
concepts-clusters and the relations connecting them are not immutable.
They can be changed; they can be given different contexts; there are
other stories to be told around and about them.
That raises the final set of questions about the dialogue and its
conclusion. In the end, are stories arguments, or arguments of a sort?
Or would it be better to say that stories can be used as arguments by
their authors or read as arguments by their audiences? The latter is
safer, but I would argue for the more radical claim, the apparently
dramatic overstatement that all stories are arguments, perhaps on a par
with the infamous il n y a pas de hors-texte.
8
There is a difference, I
hope. The Derridean claim is banal. Is everything' a text? No, of
course not. But if by "text" we mean something to be interpreted, then
yes, everything can be subj ected to interpretation. Everything is
"textable." We can "read" anything, which is at bottom nothing more
than a high-falutin' expression of the truism that whatever we talk
about is something we can talk about - and we can talk about anything.
So, yes, stories are arguments in the sense that contexts can always be
supplied in which stories can be used and read as arguments. Trading
on an ambiguity, we can say that stories are arguable.
However, I think that stories are also arguments in a more
interesting way. Reading a story as an argument is one way for a
reader to engage with it, one way to make sense out of it. Note that
there are two things going on: sense is made, and then that sense is used
when it becomes the premises, as it were, for an argument. The duality
needs to be emphasized because it is this two-part harmony that is
peculiar to understanding stories. Although we sometimes speak as if
narratives make sense of a situation or a life, that is misleading. The
story does no so such thing. It is the author who does and the readers
who do. Philosophers run the risk of misunderstanding stories when
they abstract them from the conditions of being told and being heard, in
the same way that they risk misunderstanding philosophical arguments
when they abstract them from their social, historical, and textual
contexts - from their arguers and its audiences. It is a happy, but I
suspect not all that common, occasion when reconstructing a
philosophical argument as a putative proof in first-order predicate
logic, with identity, serves as a significant aid to philosophical
understanding.
When stories are read as arguments, they can, of course, be
especially persuasive. Ayn Rand's novels, for example, are often cited
as being particularly argumentative - and dangerously persuasive.
9
One way to respond is to focus attention on reconstructing the
argument and then assessing the validity and persuasive strength of that
argument. That puts one in the position of mapping out available
rebuttals when, as is the case for many with Rand's stories, the
conclusions are objectionable. I would like to back up for a moment
and consider the first part of that two-part harmony, the making-sense
of the story. This is the essential moment for persuasive stories
because this is the where the argument begins. Interpretation is the first
argumentative move. It is often here, in the interpretive moment, that it
is determined whether the game is won or lost - as well as what game
is even being played.
The claim that reading a text or hearing a story is an argumentative
move - and the crucial first move - needs to be glossed. What I mean
is that there is already an argumentative engagement with the author.
The process of making sense of a story is a constant but generally
unvoiced dialogue, a succession of Do you mean this? and What about
that? These will range from the fairly innocuous and concrete - Who is
narrating? - through the moderately reconstructive - e.g., in Plato's
allegory oj the cave, is the fire behind and above the prisoners in the
cave or below and in front of them but hidden? - then on to the highly
abstract - Is the blinding sun supposed to be a Transcendent God, an
inaccessible Truth? Once we are caphlred by the story, the questions
and reactions change. We entreat the author, advise the characters,
pray for the future: Please don't let the suitors force Penelope's hand
or Come on, Bilbo, surely you know better than to taunt a dragon! The
ability to elicit just the right questions, the questions the author wants
us to ask, is the mark of an artful author. When we ask - How come
it's her spineless brother who's running the railroads and not Dagny
Taggart? - rather than the questions that need to be asked - Are people
like this? Does society work this way? Could it work that way? - we
have already bit the Randian bait. We have already been hooked by the
premises of her argument.
All of these ways of engaging with the text are argumentative, but
not all of them are adversarial. They do not have to entail an
adversarial relationship with the author - although when we tell our
students to read critically that may be what they are hearing. That is
only one way to read, and it is but one way to argue. The process of
finding, or creating, a sensible meaning for a difficult text is more like
completing a formal proof or working out the solution to a logic puzzle.
Those involve arguments of a different sort. When the project is
finding an acceptable interpretation of a polysemous text (admittedly a
pleonasm), then the engagement takes on yet other argumentative
characteristics.
Since one way to criticize a story is as an argument, part of being a
good story-teller is being a good arguer. (And, as has been argued
elsewhere, vice-versa.) It is a legitimate objection to Rand's novels
that they do not pass critical muster. But in order to understand the act
of reading a story as an argumentative engagement, there must be
reference to both halves of the two-part harmony involved: making
sense and making an argument. This requires both literary criticism
and philosophical criticism. The question of whether the story should
work needs to be paired with the questions of why it does work.
Aesthetic, psychological, sociological, historical, economic, and even
scientific factors can all be brought to bear. The attempt to fight fire
with fire - responding to a story with another one - requires more
literary ability than most of us can muster. The suggestion that that is
how we should respond seems to rests on an endearing, naive faith that
reason will always have the better story-tellers.
A truly effective response to a persuasive story must pay attention
to the mechanics of interpretation as well as the argument. It is not
enough to point out that there are logical flaws in the story as an
argument. Will someone who has read Rand's novels and bought into
her conclusions renounce those beliefs once the flaws in her stories-as-
arguments have been identified? I think not. What is needed is not just
counter-argument but something closer to debriefing, or what Gilbert
Harman calls "positive undermining."l0 As with any argument, we
need to identify and assess the premises, consider the evidence both
what is included as well as any counter-evidence that may have been
excluded, and evaluate the strength of the inferences. In the case of
literary arguments, we also need to examine and how and why they
have succeeded in having had the effect on our thinking that they have
had.
The crucial point to keep in mind when considering stories -
including dialogues! - as arguments is that argumentative engagement
starts from the moment we pick up a book, enter a theater, or sit down
by the hearth to listen. Thus, responding to a story-as-argument
requires addressing all of its stages. Being an audience is engaging in
argument. This is not to say that all audiences are active disputants -
the passivity of televiewers is a cliche as old as the medium itself. But
it is to say that that sort of passivity is critically negligent. The
obligations and responsibilities that are incumbent on us as would-be
rational arguers are equally incumbent on as would-be critical readers.
Perhaps they are even more incumbent because of the subtle
effectiveness of persuasive stories. We are on our guard when we
argue combatively; we are not when we read leisurely. We need not, in
the end, exile the poets from our Republic, but we must recognize that
when we read them, we argue with them, and when we argue with
them, we must do so completely.
Endnotes
1. Trudy Govier, who had the unenviable task of trying to extract a single
voice from the performance in her role as commentater, has argued in
other contexts that some degree of disagreement is indeed essential to
arguments. See Govier 1999a pp. 46f.
2. Gilbert 1999 pp. 79ff.
3. See, e.g., Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 9.
4. The models might be labeled "Cartesian" and "Vygotskyan," respectively.
Lev Vygotsky, an early 20th century Soviet psychologist, argued that the
stage of oral "egocentric speech" in small children was prior to private
"inner speech," and part of the melding of the separate developmental
streams for language and thought. See Vygotsky 1962.
5. Lakatos 1976 presents a vivid demonstration of this - in dialogue form -
using the historical development, mostly in the 19th century, of a more
and more rigorously proven theorem from the proofs of an earlier
conjecture. Refutations of what had been earlier regarded as acceptable
proofs occasioned refinen1ents in the definitions of the concepts involved.
6. Thus, despite his complicity in the dialogue, Rosenwald should not be
held culpable for its doggerel.
7. See, for example, Bordo, 1987 for an historical perspective. Orr 1989 and
Nye 1990, among many others, present pointed critiques of traditional
argumentative modes.
8. Derrida 1974, p. 158.
9. Part of this postscript was developed as a commentary in response to
Kagan 1999, who uses Rand's Atlas Shrugged, along with Plato's allegory
of the cave and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, as case studies.
10. Harman 1984.
CHAPTER 13
The Logic of Rhetoric
and the Rhetoric of Logic!
Western philosophy is a veritable cacophony of arguments. And
what may be its most discordant note was first struck by that ancient
instigator of it all - Plato - when he, on behalf of philosophy, picked a
quarrel with poetry. That he did it so artfully, even poetically, served
only to make the subsequent history of commentary that much more
dissonant.
As the philosopher in the dialogue of chapter twelve noted, "the
great argument between poets and philosophers only smolders when it
should burn with fiery passion." The claims have been scaled back:
neither side purports to be the authoritative voice on all matters, and if
either side did, no one would listen. The "great argument" remains,
however, embodied in a myriad of successor oppositions: religion
versus science; science versus philosophy; philosophy versus literature;
the literal against the metaphorical as avenues to truth; and, most
general and wide-ranging, realists and post-modem anti-realists arguing
whether there is any truth at all?
The arguments between the various camps of post-modernists and
realists pose both a challenge and an opportunity for argumentation
theory. The arguments cannot be adjudicated until there is common
ground for evaluating arguments, but even that more modest goal
presupposes that there is some pre-existent way of sorting the noise into
arguments in the first place. This is manifestly not the case. There are
several concepts of argumentation in play, each with its own criteria for
what counts as an argument and what counts as success. As has
become evident, arguments can be approached, analyzed, and evaluated
from several perspectives. These include, most pronlinently, the
logical, the dialectical, and the rhetorical, but we have also seen that
arguments can be considered from political, social, ethical, and
aesthetic perspectives. For that matter, they can also be considered
simply as play. None of these tells a complete story about arguments.
All of these perspectives contribute to understanding the extraordinarily
rich and complex arguments in question here.
The arguments about realism appear irresolvable. After all, half
the disputants embrace the polysemy - the multiple meanings - of
interpretation as a discursive virtue, explicitly disavowing precision and
clarity of expression as ideals. The other half regards ambiguity as a
semantic sin, insisting on the procrustean bed of bivalence in which the
only escape from detenninable truth or falsity is utter nonsense. There
is, in short, a very great chasm between them and very little genuine
engagement across that divide.
As appealing as it would be to enter into the partisan fray (but
perhaps more appealing still to sit this one out) what needs to be done
is to find a way to satisfy the contradictory desiderata of both camps.
We feel the push of compelling reasons from both sides, at the same
time that we feel the pull of attractive visions coming from those
opposite directions. Interpretation is indeed a pluralistic matter, and
there are no intellectual activities that are interpretation-free. And yet,
there are constraints on the interpretations that are open to us in any
given area, and sometimes those very real constraints constitute very
realist contours. But is it even possible to be a post-modem realist, or a
pluralistic foundationalist? Could there be any better sign that
something has gone wrong than that we are attracted by apparently
contrary views? The dichotomy is false.
On the analysis that will be proposed here, there are two things at
fault: the internal logic of rhetoric and the external rhetoric of logic.
Separately, they are understandable extrapolations from reasonable
starting points. Together, they prevent any dialectical engagement, so
the agony continues unabated. What I hope to be able to do is explain
how and why these polar opposites attract us, as well as where and
when they become too extreme. Afterwards, the notorious hoax article,
appearing in the journal in Social Text, by the physicist Alan Sokal and
the responses to it will be used as case study for the analysis.
l. The faulty logic of rhetoric. What I mean by the "logic of
rhetoric" is simply the structures that govern those domains of
intellectual activity that are predon1inantly interpretive.
3
When we
come to theorize about a phenomenon - i.e., when we try to make sense
of part of the world - we have a wide variety of resources at our
disposal: the wisdom of the ages, the testimony of our senses, formal
calculi, and, if we are so blessed, divine inspiration or plain common
sense. In some contexts, we may be constrained by certain givens, such
Logic and Rhetoric 183
as undeniable empirical data, the text at hand, legal precedent, the
demands of logical consistency, or the dictates of orthodox dogma. In
other contexts, limits might be met by the lack of any such data, formal
criteria, or precedent. The limiting cases, if there are any, would be
those in which our theories are uniquely determined by those givens.
The classical empiricist ideal would have it that pure logic and neutral
evidence ought to suffice. They rarely do, of course, which is why
classical empiricism is "classical" rather than contemporary.
Interpretive contexts are those in which evidence and logic do not
suffice. Put positively, those contexts require something more, a
creative element. That element must be contributed by the critic.
Interpretation and criticism exemplify this point. The salient point
about interpretations of a literary text is that even the best of them have
to share the field. For example, one answer to the question of what
Homer's Odyssey is about, is that it is all about Greek ethnocentrism
and cultural imperialism. That explains why, in the text, a Cyclopes
can be blinded with moral impunity. He is not a fully civilized human
being; he is a non-Greek barbarian who gathers rather than raises crops
and even lives with his livestock. That may be a good answer but it
does not preclude also interpreting it in other ways. It can also be read
as the expression of a male mid-life fantasy: "Honest, Honey, I really
was trying to get home on time, but it's just that, you know, after the
boys and I had this war, some goddess kept me as a sex slave on her
island paradise!" Marxist, Fenlinist, Freudian, New Criticism, and
untold other readings can be had. The merit of a literary text is partly
measured by the interpretations it supports. Great texts speak anew to
every generation.
A reader who insists on asking which reading is correct, on what
The Odyssey is really all about, has missed this point. Texts are not in
themselves uniquely about anything. They can be read as being about
many different things. This is an important fact about interpretation,
but how we should respond to it is a matter for great debate. There are
two responses that I find particularly wrongheaded: one by Professor
Morris Zapp, the other by Professor Jacques Derrida.
Morris Zapp is fictitious, a character who lives only in the texts of
David Lodge's comic novels.
4
(Of course, since "II n y a pas de hors-
texte," it would not be unfair to say that Professor Derrida lives only in
texts, too!) In one of the novels, Professor Zapp described himself this
way:
"I used to be a Jane Austen man. 1think 1can say in all modesty
that 1 was the Jane Austen man. I wrote five books on Jane Austen,
every one of which was trying to establish what her novels meant--
and, naturally, to prove that no one had properly understood what
they Ineant before. Then I began a comtnentary on the works of Jane
Austen, the aim of which was to be utterly exhaustive, to examine the
novels from every conceivable angle - historical, biographical,
rhetorical, mythical, structural, Freudian, Jungian, Marxist,
existentialist, Christian, allegorical, ethical, phenomenological,
archetypal, you name it. So that when each commentary was written,
there would be nothingfurther to say about the novel in question."s
There is something very wrong with this picture, but it is hard to
articulate exactly what it is. If different perspectives give a different
interpretation, why couldn't there be a single multi-perspectival
interpretation that is complete, taking all of them into account? We do
seem to accept that there is a conlplete and consistent story to be told
about, say, an object like the sun which appears small and yellow from
one angle but large and orange from another, stationary within one
frame while in motion from another. What is the difference?
Consider a different sort of text: the score to the song "My Favorite
Things" from the Broadway musical The Sound of Music by Rodgers
and Hammerstein. It is an innocuous little ditty, mostly heard in
elevators now. And yet, there is a remarkable rendition by the great
John Coltrane. What he has done is taken a text - the Richard Rogers
score - and given it his own interpretation. Coltrane's version is
brilliant, a hard act to follow, but someday, someone will follow it, and
maybe even surpass it. The jazz version may have been, at one time,
the latest word, but it could not possibly be the last word.
Zapp is wrong in thinking that there can be a complete story for the
much the same reason that anyone would be wrong in thinking there
could be a definitive performance of a song.
6
Performance art is not
like that. The next generations will have to play it again, for
themselves. There is an element of performance in reading, too,
because reading is a kind of argumentative engagement with the author.
Future generations have to read the great texts for themselves.
It might be objected that the song itself, as embodied in the score,
is being confused with its various renditions. That is an important
distinction, but the same distinction applies to literary texts. The words
on the page, no less than the notes on the sheet, need to be respected,
but they also need to be interpreted. Each reading of a text - or
performance of a score - produces its own interpretation. The words
themselves do not uniquely determine the meaning that a reader will
take a way from the text, and they are not the only factor that goes into
determining that meaning. Indeed, someone can know all the details of
The Odyssey's text - exactly how many times each word appears and
where, as well as all the details of the plot - and still be without any
real understanding of it. The analogy between critical readings and
cover performances holds this far, and even a bit further.
Listen again to what Coltrane did. He used the old text but to his
own ends. Isn't that just what literary critics do to written texts? They
take an existing text, add their own embellishments, in their own styles,
and all to their own ends. In sum, they produce their own new texts
that happen to use other texts as the occasions for their production.
And, as often happens in the musical context, the new text might, for
some purposes, be as good or even better than the original. When that
is the case, that new text will occasion yet further texts. Since original
texts are themselves ineluctably inter-textual, they have essentially the
same genesis. The difference has disappeared.
7
In order to see critical essays this way, as original texts in their
own right, the conventional boundary between text and criticism has to
be transgressed. This can lead to extremes, however, because the
theoretical grounds for blurring that boundary apparently license
effacing all boundaries between genres - including the musical
distinction between composition and performance and the disciplinary
distinction between literature and science.
And that brings us to Professor Derrida, who would balk at the
thought that there is a complete story to tell even about something as
concrete as the sun. If everything is a text, the sun is, too. Mass and
momentum, space and time, and cosmic origins and destiny are the
vocabulary of but one solar story. There are other stories to be told.
The sun has had great symbolic significance for religions; it has its
important role in biology; and, to be sure, there is its place in literature.
The sun is at the center of a lot of stories. Some stories are
incompatible with each other - e.g., Kepler's story with its elliptical
orbits and Galileo's with its circular ones. Others maybe
conlmensurable - e.g., Kepler's heliocentric model and Tycho's so-
called Egyptian system in which the sun orbits the earth, but all other
planets orbit the sun. Others still are altogether incommensurable -
e.g., Kepler's lnystical cosmology and the mechanical cosmology that
later astronomers wanted Kepler to have had.
There are two points to keep in mind. First, the fact that multiple
interpretations are possible, and that nlultiple perspectives are even
called for, does not mean that all interpretations are possible. Although
many things go, it does not follow that anything goes. The immediate
question, then, is who decides? Is that a descriptive or prescriptive
question? What does happen, as Kuhn has taught us, is that the arbiters
of theories, whether they are scientific, philosophical or literary, are the
institutions of the relevant communities.
Second, the fact that anything can be regarded as a text - i.e.,
something subject to interpetation - does not nlean that everything is a
text. The reasoning looks patent, even syllogistic:
A text is whatever is subject to interpretation;
Everything can be subjected to interpretation;
:. Therefore, everything is a text.
Yes, everything can be textualized, put into context, but, as noted,
that just means that everything is "textable" not that everything is
already "textua1." As Wittgenstein pointed out in the Tractatus, every
picture can be regarded as a fact in its own right, but that does not mean
every fact is a picture nor that every picture is true. Any configuration
of parts counts as a fact - including those complex configurations of
written words, spoken words, and painted colors that we use to
represent other configurations. All of these can serve as pictures, Of, in
Derrida's terms, as "texts," but not all of them do serve that way. For
that to happen, readers are needed. And, significantly, not all pictures
are true. For that, it is the world that is needed. The syllogism fails
because of the ambiguous nlajor.
The relevant parts of the logic of criticism can be summarized in
the following principles, which I take to be acceptable commonplaces -
if not boring or trivial, at least non-controversial:
The Logic of Criticism
LeI. The existence of a satisfactory, insightful, or compelling
interpretation does not preclude the possibility of other satisfactory,
insightful, or compelling interpretations.
LC2. Satisfactory, insightful, or compelling interpretations may
be incompatible, inconsistent, and even incommensurable with one
another.
LC3. Some interpretations may be better than others. Not all
interpretations are equally satisfactory, insightful, or compelling.
LC4. There can be unacceptable interpretations.
LC5. Asking what a text is "really about" is itself an
interpretive question, and may not have a single answer.
Logic and Rhetoric
LC6. There can be no last word, no definitive or final
interpretation; the critical enterprise is a permanent part of the
human condition.
187
Zapp was wrong in thinking that there could be a final story about
a story. That some interpretations are better than others does not mean
!that there has to be a best of all possible interpretations. The existence
of critical standards entails neither a single "true" interpretation nor a
single all-encompassing truth of the matter. Realism does not follow.
On the other hand, Derrida is equally wrong in thinking that there are
only stories. Yes, there will always be another story to tell about a
good story, just as there will always be space for new versions of an old
song, but that does not mean that there never really was a single score
for that song. Critical pluralism does not entail anti-realism.
What is more important for present purposes is what might called
"the logic of rhetoric." These are unrestricted versions of the above
principles that are implicit in the logic of post-modern criticism and
revealed in some critical practice. Since the evidence provided by texts
is never univocal, and the task of constructing an interpretation is a
creative one for which there can be no algorithmic or "logical"
procedure, then comparative evaluations of interpretations is also an
extra-logical matter. It is a matter to be decided by whichever
rhetorical strategies are most effective within the relevant discourse
circles. The following principles -neither trivial nor boring but now
highly controversial! - can be extracted:
The Implicit Logic of Rhetoric
LRI. The only grounds for preferring one interpretation to
another are rhetorical.
LR2. Rhetorical grounds are always defeasible.
LR3. Thus, there can be no absolutely unacceptable
interpretations, only rhetorically defeated interpretations - and that
status is mutable.
Note what has happened: the critical principle of interpretive
pluralism has been elevated from a methodological imperative about
rhetoric to the metaphysical thesis of anti-Realism. The result is the
rejection of the unobjectionable pluralist principle LC4 in favor of the
implausible anti-realist principle LR3. The logic of rhetoric taken to
this point can accommodate theses about the world, whether physical or
metaphysical, only as one-among-many interpretations.
2. The faulty rhetoric of logic. The realist counter-arguments to
the post-modern embrace of rhetoric manifest an equally extreme
ideology: a complete and total rejection of rhetoric as a contributor to
rational discourse. Indeed, the ideology is implicated in the very
concept of a counter-argument. The "official" line accepts the
argument-as-proof paradigm. Arguments should be sustained chains of
inferences connected by objective, impersonal, and dispassionate logic.
However, an analysis of the common rhetoric of argunlentation reveals
the inlplicit and de facto conception of arguments as agonistic:
arguments-as-war.
The rhetoric of logic, the language realists use to talk about
arguments, ignores the performative model completely. It explicitly
embraces the argument-as-proof paradigm and implicitly errlbraces the
argument-as-war metaphor. That adversarial element in tum, is used to
buttress realist metaphysics. The bivalence of winners and losers
becomes a bivalence of truth and falsity. And the middle is most
definitely excluded! The middle ground of compromise is discouraged
as a no man's land of neither true nor false - or worse, in the
patriarchal mode, a woman's land of subjectivity, emotion, or other
forms of non-cognitive nonsense:
The Rhetoric of Logic
RL1. Arguments are essentially adversarial discourse events, with
winners and losers.
RL2. There are objective criteria for deciding the outcome.
RL3. Thus, the bivalence of winners and losers is tantamount to, or
evidence of, a bivalence of True and False.
RL4. Refutation is objective. Refuted theories are objectively False.
RL5. There is no middle. Whatever is not victorious or defeated - or
at least a contestant, and thus possibly victorious or defeated (i.e,
verifiable or falsifiable) - is nonsense.
The rhetoric is objectionable on various grounds. Social, ethical,
politico-pragmatic, and especially pedagogical objections can all be
raised.
8
But there is an easy way out, a way to weather those
objections. By the realist's own lights, it is merely the rhetoric of logic
that is problematic, the window dressing, and not the thing itself. Of
course, there is nothing "merely" about it. The metaphors we use
reveal the way we think. Still, the rhetoric of logic is mutable -
because the underlying conceptual structures are themselves subject to
change. The adversarial nature of arguments may be a feature of how
we conceptualize argumentation, but it is not essential. The war
metaphor is so entrenched that it is hard to see our way around it and
hard to see that there is a way out. Again, we need new metaphors.
Despite all this, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that
metaphysical realism per se does not have great epistemological
consequences. It does not entail that there is a theory-neutral
observational vocabulary. Nor does it entail that knowledge of any
truths is accessible. All that scientific realism really requires is that
there is a world about which there could be assertible tnlths. But the
sense of "could" here leaves itself open to all manner of interpretation.
Those assertible truths need not be assertible by us in any of our
languages. Truth might be something we must aim for but never
reach.
9
There is no end to the project of science - just as, but for very
different reasons, there is no last word in literary interpretation, no final
performance for a musical composition, and no permanent closure to
philosophical arguments.
There needs to be a caveat added to this. If there can be no last
word in science, it would be for very different reasons than in the
critical and musical cases, because the phenomena itself are very
different. In the interpretive cases, the open-endedness arises from the
inexhaustible possibility for new genres, new vocabularies, and new
perspectives. Perhaps those same considerations apply to the case of
scientific theories - certainly some have argued for that - but the open-
endedness implicated by the rhetoric of logic arises from the
inexhaustibility of any single vocabulary. Further refinement, greater
exactitude, and more precise articulation is always possible.
lo
The scientific story is generically a story of progress. Of course, it
is "progress" in a curious and problematic sense of the word. It is
curious because it is hard to make sense of the claim that we are getting
closer to an infinitely distant target; it is problematic because if hard
bivalence is taken seriously, then scientific stories in progress could
never really be literally true. They would have to be false, or worse.
There is an implicit ideology of scientific realism that needs to be
explicit:
The Ideology of Scientific Realism:
SRI. There is a complete, definite truth of the matter, a "God's eye
story," to be told about the world.
SR2. Ultimately, this Truth may be inaccessible, but perhaps it can
be approached indefinitely, asymptotically. Final success may be
impossible, but progress is always possible.
SR3. Thus, no last word can be expected; the scientific enterprise is
a permanentfeature ofthe human condition.
Do not confuse LC6 and SR3! One is about the permanent
possibility of new vocabularies; the other is about the permanent
possibility of new uses for old vocabularies. Their superficial
similarity invites seeing them as part of the same philosophical parcel,
but they have to be paid for separately.
3. A case study. In 1996, the physicist Alan Sokal' s published
an article tiutled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a
Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." He then wrote a
second article, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies,"
asserting that the first article was written as a hoax, a parody of post-
modernism and that provoked a firestorm of response. 11. The first
article was replete with the all the right jargon. It exhibited all the
requisite inter-textuality, including a ten-page bibliography that did fair
justice to the field, and ten more pages of dense footnotes. Above all, it
reached all the academically correct political conclusions. What it did
not have, according to Sokal, was anything like reasoned arguments or
a trace of evidence for any of its assertions. It had only apt allusions
and deftly deployed jargon.
The ensuing brouhaha was a microcosm ("micro-chaos"?) of the
larger cacophony. But what exactly had Sokal done? Sakal exposed
the vacuity of Science Studies in particular and the Humanities and
Social Sciences in general ... or else he did not, producing a straw man
of the worst sort. He produced a brilliant piece of biting satire, a time-
honored prerogative of the essayist. .. unless it was an incoherent and
shoddy failure of an attempt published only out of a sort of affirmative
action for scientists in a venue in which they are not often heard. He
challenged the political left, in order to provoke an intellectual house
cleaning... or he provided more ammunition for right-wing anti-
humanism. It "vas an indefensible, if not altogether unethical, violation
of academic protocol... or just possibly an inadvertent but partly
successful contribution to the discussion of science's location in the
larger culture!
What, then, was it really all about - science studies, the social
production of knowledge, science and anti-science, the privileged
position of the natural sciences in our universities, the lack of
intellectual rigor in the humanities, the politics of post-modernism, or
what? We should know better by now than to ask what a text is "really
all about." A better question to ask is what we should make of it. But
leven better, for the present purposes, is asking why others nlade of it
what they did.
Sokal claims that the point of the exercise was primarily political -
that as a m ~ m r of the Old Left, he was chagrined by the anti-
scientific attitudes and accompanying intellectual sloppiness prevalent
in the post-modernist-dominated New Left. Noble as that may be, it is
neither here nor there for present purposes. The concenl here is really
with the reactions to his article: the cries of "Foul!" and hoots of
disapproval from some quarters, and the squeals of delight and rounds
of cheers from others. To oversimplify matters: rhetoricians saw it as
malicious, logicians as delicious. What I would like to suggest is that
the logic of rhetoric cannot really justify this condemnation of Sokal's
article, but neither can the rhetoric of logic really justify the praise of
him. There is indeed room for a new rhetoric for logic.
3.1. Let me address the first part of my claim, that the logic of
rhetoric cannot really justify that condemnation. The first point is that
Sokal did indeed master the game. His article was a very successful
move in the "play" of this language game - and isn't that all there is to
it? Post-modernists overwhelmingly condemned the piece, but the
piece really is a rhetorical tour de force, an impressive display of
erudition, scholarship, and mastery of the conceptual vocabulary of
post-modernism. That is quite an accomplishment! For example, the
rhetorical strategies he employs to lull the reader into accepting some
of his more outrageous claims are all time-honored for their
effectiveness (and time and again dismissed by Logicians!). There are
copious citations of prominent or respected figures in the field (i.e.,
Appeals to Authority and Bandwagon Arguments). The evidence
offered is anecdotal at best (Hasty Generalizations). He grotesquely
overstates the opposing positions and understates the nuanced
alternatives (Straw Men and False Dichotomies). And, above all, the
misuse and abuse of scientific metaphors is egregious, exploiting all the
usual suspects: the Principle of Indeterminacy, the Uncertainty
Principle, the Theory of Relativity, and the tnore recently vogue Chaos
Theory (Equivocations and Weak Analogies).
Is it relevant that he was doing all these consciously? It would
seem as though authorial intent cannot legitimately enter into a post-
modernist assessment of Sokal' s piece. The texts of his confession in
Lingua Franca and his Ajterl1)ord
12
are fair game, but only as distinct
and autonomous texts. The original article by itself is already a rare
opportunity, an open invitation for deconstructionist potshots - but that,
I think, would serve only to further undernline those very critiques by
emphasizing how successful the article really was! As a text that can
be richly mined, it is a Critical Theorist's motherlode. As a move in
the Critical game, it was a smash, so shouldn't it be praised not
condemned?
The arguments that have been extracted from Sokal' s hoax are in
many ways rhetorically praiseworthy, despite all the logical fallacies
and dialectical transgressions that are present. And so it was that
rhetoricians were left condemning the logical failures of what was quite
a rhetorical accomplishment.
3.2. The analysis just presented leaves out an important point:
Sokal was not playing the rhetoricians' game, pursuing the art of
rational persuasion. He was not actually trying to persuade anybody,
rationally or otherwise, of the conclusions that the article putatively
reached. He was playing a different game, so any rhetorical success he
might have had is largely irrelevant. It is not something that logico-
realists should count as a legitimate or significant contribution. He is
supposed to have exposed one game, which is to playa different game.
But according to that second game, everything in the first game is all
nonsense, and not, therefore, something that could really be done well.
The situation is the reverse from what was described above: realist-
logicians were trapped by their own rhetoric into praising the rhetorical
accomplishments of a nlonunlentallogical fiasco.
What is it that Sakal can be taken as having proved? Well, if it is
all nonsense, then it is not an argument of any sort, and so cannot have
proved anything. But didn't he "demonstrate" or somehow "show" the
lack of any rigor or standards in post-modernism, the pretentiousness
and wrong-headedness of those who engage in science studies while
being incompetent and ignorant about science itself, and, finally, the
vacuity of post-modernism as a tool for the political left? There are
three very different claims here. There is some merit to each of them -
but some important qualifying disclaimers for each one, too.
3.2.1. The question of the lack of standards: Sokal's achievement
cannot be denied. Writing a passably coherent post-modem essay is no
mean feat. The fact that he did it well enough to merit publication
means that there are indeed standards, and he did in fact approach
them. More to the point, some of the things he wrote are not all that
bad. Attention has focused on the "howlers" in the article the grossly
egregious errors and the patently ludicrous claims. But part of what
made the article successful - Le., able to get past the desk of Andrew
Ross, that issue's editor - was that Sokal did not put the howlers up
front. For good stylistic and polemical reasons, they were presented at
the end of discussions that led to them. The goal was satire, not
slapstick. Now, granted, anyone with even a minimum of
sophistication in mathematics and physics who was still paying
attention six pages into the article would recognize the vacuity of the
claim that, "the 1t of Euclid and the G of Newton... are now perceived
in their ineluctable historicity." I agree with Sokal: if you do not
recognize that as hokum, you really have no business expecting anyone
else to bother listening to whatever you have to say about mathematics
or science. Therefore, the fact that Sakal was able to write something
like that and get away with it has to be regarded as quite an
accomplishment. The gambit he used was particularly clever. He
buried these claims at the end of two long, parallel series of theses.
One chain is nlore scientifically technical, but begins with relatively
innocuous assertions. The other starts with arguably plausible
counterparts for more general application. As the formal chain gets
progressively more theoretical it also gets more absurd, but by that
point most readers are not paying attention to the more technical side at
all, focusing instead on the more philosophical side, and hearing only
what they want to hear:
In this way, the infinite-dimensional invariance group erodes the
distinction between observer and observed; the 1t of Euclid and the G
of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now
perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the putative observer
becomes fatally decentered, disconnected from any epistemic link to
a space-time point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone.
13
"Wait a second... did he just say that 1t was a variable? Whatever, but
there was something there that sounded important about space-time and
relativity, and that the epistemological center cannot hold." The point
is that there really are lines of reasoning here. They obviously cannot
qualify as good arguments in the official sense - chains of Pure Reason
- but neither are they Pure Nonsense. They can, however, qualify as
good arguments in the implicit, unofficial sense. They do an excellent
job of exemplifying the de facto concept of arguments enshrined in the
rhetoric of logic!
3.2.2. The pretentiousness of science studies: The history of
philosophy contains enough embarrassing examples of its own
pretentiousness and dilettantism that the charge is not one to make in a
cavalier fashion. The indictment certainly does apply to some extent to
many, but not, of course, categorically to all. There is a parallel here to
the history of Positivism and its anti-metaphysicalism. First, just as the
Logical Positivists over-stated the case in tarring all speculative
philosophers with a brush that sonle, perhaps even many, thoroughly
deserved, so too, the conclusion that science studies is intellectual fraud
is equally unwarranted. Second, as unlamented as the death of
Positivism may be, it luust be admitted that the Positivist critique of
metaphysics did have a good and healthy effect in the long run. We
have not abandoned metaphysics, but perhaps we are a bit more careful
now, keeping a tighter rein on our speculations. I suspect, and hope,
that Sokal' s hoax will have a similarly salutary effect. Indeed, it may
well be that each and every significant contributor to science studies
can justifiably counter Sakal's lampooning with, "Sure, but that does
not really apply to me. My own work is more nuanced." It is the
nature of satire to distort its subject, to exaggerate the excesses and
ignore all the qualifying nuances. That is how the dangers of excess
are exposed. The counter-charge of inaccuracy is hardly a shield
against satire.
3.2.3. The inadequacy of post-modernism as a tool for the
political left, and that inadequacy as fodder for the political right: This
is the kicker. Logico-realists cannot credit Sokal with establishing the
vacuity of post-modernism. If the relevant criteria are logic and
evidence, Sokal's article is an abject failure - a menagerie, as noted, of
Straw Men, Weak Analogies, Slippery Slopes, and all other manner of
argumentative mis-steps. So he can only claim to have succeeded, by
some other criteria. But that requires recognizing that there are other
relevant criteria. Since those criteria are precisely the criteria of the
intended target, that target can not really be vacuous after all. There is
no recognizable distinction bet\\'een good nonsense and bad nonsense
for the ideology of scientific realism. It cannot be well done; it can
only be half-baked - but Sokal's article was well done. The
discussions that lead to his blatantly ridiculous assertions do indeed, in
some sense, "lead" to them. His article does show some things, but
manages to do so only because of the efficacy of the very same
rhetorical strategies he is supposedly exposing. Sarcasm and ridicule
are indeed effective - but, like hyperbole, metaphor, and other tropes,
they are only Rhetorically effective. There is nothing Logical about
them!
4. Conclusions. There is a fly in the ointment. What if,
regardless of how far in his cheek Sokal' s tongue may have been, son1e
of the fanciful connections he made, or the overstated assertions he
pretended to have inferred, or his avowedly ersatz arguments, contain,
or even just point to, "satisfactory, insightful, or compelling
interpretations" of the phenomena? Some have indeed suggested as
much. Would it matter whether he repudiated thetn? Are the profound
arguments against theism that Dostoyevsky put in Ivan Karamazov's
mouth any less profound simply because their author preferred Alyosha
Karamazov's naive pietism? How can we take anything from the
article when neither the rhetoric of logic nor the logic of rhetoric will
allow it?
Perhaps the fly is only caught in a fly-bottle rather than stuck in an
ointment. There is a way out, viz., dialectical mediation between the
logical and rhetorical. We need to recognize two things. On the one
hand, the adversarial and bivalent rhetoric of logic is a myth, a
powerful myth, but one that we ourselves have constructed and one that
we can deconstruct. On the other hand, the logic of rhetoric is a
deformed and unwarranted extrapolation of the logic of interpretation.
Stories are told in many ways and need to be interpreted in many ways.
One of those ways is to look for logical consistency and extract the
logical consequences, but there are other ways. We can look for the
argumentative coherence and contrive argumentative rejoinders; we can
appreciate the aesthetic integrity and imagine additional aesthetic
possibilities; we can marvel at the power of a vision and seek the
inspiration that leads to yet further insights. Recognizing that there are
different stories to be told does not mean that we can no longer argue
about them. Rather, it means that we can argue about them in different
ways, and need to be aware of what kind of arguments we offer if it is
argumentative engagement that is sought. That still leaves us with the
hard work of devising the new rhetoric for logic and revising the logic
of rhetoric, but at least it obviates the need to analyze all cacophonies
into discrete packages of the same sort.
Endnotes
1. An earlier version of this was presented at OSSA 1997.
2. The association of post-modernists with anti-realists is certainly not meant
to be an identification: many anti-realists would not count themselves as
post-modernist, but anti-realism does seem to be a necessary condition for
post-modernism.
3. This can be taken as referring, roughly, to Mill's "moral sciences," which
later became Hegel's Geisteswissenschaften. The boundary is sufficiently
elusive to make the whole category problematic, but even the fuzzy idea
that is part of the intellectual landscape is enough for present purposes.
4. However, it needs to be kept in mind that the claim that Professor Zapp
lives only in the pages of Lodge's novels is itself part of a text - this book
- that can be interpreted in several ways. Those readers who take Zapp to
be a caricature of the critic Stanley Fish would find the contrary claim also
assertable: he can also be said to exist outside the novels! Is Morris Zapp
really Stanley Fish? This is one of those "really" questions that is not
really a real question.
5. Lodge 1985, pp. 28-29.
6. It is the similarities that are relevant here. The differences can be safely
ignored for the moment, but not denied. They will be explored in the
chapters that follow.
7. As Leff 1997 notes, there are important differences between performative
and explanatory interpretations. I believe they are outweighed by the
significant similarities for the purposes at hand.
8. These were addressed in chapter 3.
9. See the role of truth in argument evaluation in Kasser and Cohen 2003.
10. This will addressed more directly in chapter 16.
11. A sampling of responses from the popular press around the world, as well
as some more academic responses, is included in The Sokal Hoax.
12. Sokal 1996b and 1996c.
13. Sokal 1996a p. 222
CHAPTER 14
Metaphors as Arguments
And Arguments as Metaphors)
"A metaphor, then, is not to be considered an argument,
but as an assertion that an argument exists."
John Stuart Mi11
2
Despite the traditional antagonism between more argument-
centered views of philosophy and the more literary counterparts,
arguments and metaphors are more alike than generally in1agined. The
possibility for greater alignment is very real.
The similarities between metaphors and arguments are patent.
Both are open-ended: all but the deadest of metaphors can always be
subjected to further elaboration, and there is always dialectical room for
questioning even the most cogent of arguments. Beyond that, both
entail the active participation of their audiences. Both are better
thought of as parts of complex conceptual structures rather than as
discrete linguistic elements. Both are integral to explanation and
understanding. Philosophy is in1possible without either one.
There are four positive points of contact that deserve special
attention: (1) the metaphors we use to talk about arguments, (2) the
roles for metaphors in arguments, (3) the ways we use metaphors as
arguments, and, finally, (4) the possibility of reading arguments as
metaphors. Together, these underscore the most important congruence:
the conceptual structures that constitute metaphors and arguments are
able to give rise to new ways of understanding the world because in
shaping language, they generate new meanings. Since this concerns
multiple connections between discrete meanings and entire networks of
meanings, it is a different kind of meaning than the kinds that can be
explicated using sense and reference, or truth and falsity conditions.
Even recourse to assertibility conditions is insufficient to account for
the sort of wholesale re-orientation that can retroactively change what
is and is not sayable.
1. Talking metaphorically about arguments. The first point of
contact, the metaphors we use for arguments, has already been
considered at length and will not be rehearsed again. The focus was on
the argument-as-war metaphor that informs so much of our talk about
arguments. While the main purpose of the earlier discussions was to
explore, critique and exploit that particular metaphor, several salient
features of root metaphors
3
were identified. First, the metaphors that
are entrenched in how we talk about a phenomenon may also govern
how we think about it.
4
Second, the sen1antics for these metaphors
extends far beyond anything that can be subject to a definitive analysis.
On the one hand, their meanings are functions of the entire system of
discrete meanings that constitute languageS - allusion is more important
than reference, associated commonplaces are more important than
truths, and pragmatic context is more important than either syntactic
formation rules or semantic transformation rules. On the other hand,
while their meaning is the product of a process of interpretive
construction rather than semantic analysis, that process does not end.
6
There is no finished product. Third, meanings change, so meaning
changes. That is, since the ways we use individual words and stock
phrases change over time, so do the networks of associations that make
a language into more than just the sirnple sum of a grammar and a
lexicon. One thing that original metaphors do is initiate and
encapsulate linguistic change. Thus, fourth, despite the fact that certain
metaphors - root metaphors - may become both linguistically and
conceptually entrenched, they too can change. And there is no reason
to suppose that such change cannot be consciously instigated and
conscientiously executed.
2. Using metaphors in arguments. The epigram opening this
chapter, from John Stuart Mill, succinctly articulates the ambivalent
~ t i t u e that philosophers have had towards metaphors. On the one
hand, metaphors are not themselves arguments.? On the "official
view," they are a rhetorician's tropes that attempt to persuade by an
appeal to the emotions rather than a philosopher's proper propositions
that can convince by an appeal to reason. Nonetheless, metaphors are
inextricably connected with reasoned argumentation. They cannot be
excluded from arguments, nor should they be.
Metaphors serve a variety of communicative functions, ranging
from the pedagogical - making the unfamiliar familiar - to the
revisionary - seeing the world in a new light, i.e., making the familiar
unfamiliar! For the most part, metaphors can fill those roles in
Metaphors as Arguments 199
arguments. Some of these functions assume greater importance in the
context of arguments, others are marginalized. For example,
metaphors' explanatory role is one that becomes more prominent in
arguments, especially when arguments are considered dialectically.
Metaphors are marvelously effective tools for explaining things
because their comparisons exploit pre-existent knowledge. And, since
the first step in arguing for a position is articulating that position,
metaphors' role in explanations can be particularly visible in
argumentation. Showing how - and that - a position works is an
important step in arguing for it. In contrast, metaphors' stylistic and
aesthetic contributions to discourse are usually less inlportant in the
context of an argument-as-proof, but their contributions are undeniably
important for evaluating arguments' rhetorical effectiveness. Which
functions are important will vary with the kind of argument. The goals
of deliberations, negotiations, criticisms, supplications, and
hypothetical arguments may be similar to those of adversarial and
persuasive arguments, but they are not identica1.
8
Related to the explanatory role of metaphors is their heuristic or
exploratory role. The familiar terrain of the vehicle or focus is
imported as, well, a vehicle for thinking about the tenor or frame. We
can use the internal relations in the cluster of concepts associated with,
say, opiates or machines or computers, to organize and explore the
relations among their counterparts associated with religion and the
proletariat, bodies and their functions, or minds and their operations.
While this sort of conceptual exploration may not be a prominent
feature of all arguments, it is very important for some arguments. It is
also a reminder that fresh metaphors make demands on their hearers.
Metaphors have to be solved. Thus, they serve to bring the hearer into
active engagement with the speaker. This is particularly relevant for
arguments whose audiences need to be more than just passive
observers.
9
There is a caveat to be noted. Because fresh metaphors do make
interpretive demands on their hearers, their role and value as premises
are subj ect to certain limitations. The kind of reasoning in arguments-
as-proofs is primarily analytic, extracting consequences from the
infoffilation provided in the premises. We can take as premises for an
argument anything we can suppose in order to see what follows. We
can suppose, for example, that kangaroos had no tails, to conclude that
they could not stand without toppling over. to Such an argument would
justifies the assertion of the counterfactual conditional, if kangaroos
had no tails, they would topple over. The supporting argument may be
explained, as David Lewis does, by reference to those possible worlds
whose kangaroos have no tails, but otherwise are as similar to the
actual world as that pennits. What we need to do to for the argun1ent is
conceive of different worlds. In contrast, to understand the metaphor
that, say, Wittgenstein is the round square of the philosophical world
involves re-conceiving the actual world. One thing we do not have to
do is conjure up a picture of another world, one in which both
Wittgenstein and geometry are different. Nor would we necessarily
have to change. anything at all about the picture (in the Tractarian
sense!) we have of this world, as if this were a new datum for his
biographers. Conceiving the world differently is not the san,e as
conceiving a different world. The former is part of the "revisionary"
and potentially revolutionary speculative movement in philosophy.
The latter is part of its analytic mode. The mixture can be volatile. I I
New metaphors involve the audience in interpretation, and rhetorically
that is all to the good, but for the purposes served by premises in the
presentation of an argument-as-proof in dialectical argumentation, it is
necessary that the arguer and the audience be on the same interpretive
page. Established and obvious metaphors present no special problem in
this regard (apart from the general problem of communication).
Exciting, novel, and challenging metaphors do.
The reason that audience involvement is so important for
arguments has to do with the various goals for arguments - and it
highlights the power of metaphors. Whether the goal of argumentation
is taken to he rational persuasion, resolution, agreement, acquiescence,
obedience, strengthened affirmation, or even acknowledgement, some
action on the part of the audience is required. You cannot argue with
the sky and the mountains.
I2
Consider those cases where at least part
of the goal is getting the target audience to accept the conclusion. For
that to he successfully achieved, it generally requires more than mere
assent. The proposition in question must be incorporated into the
audience's belief framework. Beliefs that lack that kind of epistemic
integration tend to be neither fully understood nor fully accepted. Their
tenure is tenuous. Arguments, like de-briefings, need to make the
connections that will both establish and sustain belief. Metaphors do
that. Even the simplest metaphor - Richard is a lion, to use the
standard example - is not simply a proposition to the effect that
Richard is a lion. It invokes entire networks of beliefs, associations,
and attitudes: lions as brave, bravery as noble, lions as kings, etc. Any
arguer who manages to tap so deeply into his audience's conceptual
framewolk has done well indeed. That is one of the reasons why
arguing with oneself, or, more generally, arguing for a conclusion that
is already accepted, is not always pointless. Arguments can establish
these connections, such connections strengthen belief, and beliefs can
always be strengthened. Thus, once again, there is always room for
further argument, and such argument is not necessarily pointless.
3. Metaphors as arguments. If metaphors are fully and
effectively integrated into argunlents in the ways just suggested, there
will be a shift in the metaphors we use to think about arguments. In the
end, it will also have an effect on how we think about metaphors.
Metaphors are invitations to see the world in a certain way. The
best metaphors can profoundly reshape the world that they present, but
even more mundane metaphors present a re-packaged world for
inspection and approval. Thus,. if we could get beyond the argument-
as-war paradigm and the accompanying idea that arguments need to
force agreement, metaphors could be seen as stand-ins for arguments:
ways to achieve consensus that work through attractive visions rather
than compelling reasons. Compare the historical n10vement of
philosophical argun1ents with episodes from the histories of other
disciplines. Philosophical debate has often been highly adversarial -
and rarely successful in persuading its opponents.
13
In contrast, some
non-adversarial discourses have had episodes of very successful
persuasion. What happened when Pablo Picasso first started painting
figures in the blocked-out angular style that became cubism or when
Scott Joplin first started composing in the oddly syncopated style that
became ragtime? They did not argue, in the common sense, that this is
how figures ought to be painted or that is how songs should be written.
Indeed, those assertions are not something that we can even reasonably
attribute to Picasso or Joplin. Yet, within a few years, there were many
others painting and composing in very much the same styles. Others
were brought into alignment not by a push, the force of compelling
argument, but rather by a pull, the attraction of an appealing invitation.
When arguments are understood as attempts at building consensus, the
category becomes immeasurably larger, large enough to include both
rationally compelling reasons and conceptually attractive metaphors.
Would it be better, then, to say that metaphors are really friendly
arguments rather than, as said earlier, short stories? Like so many good
philosophical questions, the answer to this one is both yes and no.
The reasons why it is helpful to think of metaphors as arguments
are manifest. There is a logical dimension, since the associations that
they invoke serve as the premises for conclusions. There is an
inferential component to interpretation: Richard is a lion? Oh, he must
be brave. There are also dialectical and rhetorical dimensions insofar
as they engage their listeners and serve as effective conduits to broader
consensus. While metaphors do not invite objections the way that
argulnents do, the hearers are engaged in the metaphoric project.
Metaphors come with an open invitation to be extended.
14
A metaphor
that is obscure for one audience may resonate profoundly with another.
The triad of elements in an argunlent - an arguer, her argument, and her
audience - has a counterpart in metaphors - a speaker, a language, 15
and a hearer.
16
Appropriately enough - in a self-referential illustration
of the suggestive role that metaphors have as heuristic vehicles - the
three-dimensional coordinate system for evaluating arguments
promises to provide an elegant measure for metaphors, too.
Of course, the claim that metaphors are arguments is itself a
metaphor, and should be interpreted accordingly. It establishes an
isomorphism between arguments and metaphors insofar as it puts
selected parts of one structure in correspondence with appropriately
selected parts of the other structure while preserving certain relations,
but it is not meant as a literal identity statement. There are also some
very real differences that should not be ignored. First, the inferential
structure of arguments - i.e., the argument-as-proof component of fully
contextualized arguments - is generally very different fronl that of
metaphors. The entailment relationship between the premises of an
argument and its conclusion differs greatly from the suggestive relation
between a metaphor and its point. Nor is the difference the same as
that between deductive and inductive arguments. Hearers interpret
metaphors, and the relationship that the (text of the) metaphor has to
those interpretations is not "functional," in the mathematical sense: it is
one-many. The statement that Richard is a lion, for example, might be
met with, "Yes, he certainly is strong and brave," but it could just as
easily give rise to, "Sure, he's lazy, hairy, and carnivorous!"
Second, and more to the point, metaphors do not always have "a
point." A danger in thinking of metaphors as arguments is the tendency
to hypostatize its cognitive content into a proposition, and then identify
that with the metaphor's meaning tout court. It could lead one to write:
[U]nderstanding a metaphor requires that the audience supply one or
more premises that will work in conjunction with the metaphor that
will (seem to) entail the conclusion, that is, the proposition that
expresses the point ofthe metaphor. (emphasis added) 17
But, as we have seen, what metaphors suggest is as important as what
they say - and, of course, they themselves do not really say anything.
They can, however, be read by their hearers as saying a number of
different things. Thus, the "propositionalization" of metaphors fails on
two counts. By focusing on the meaning of the discrete sentence, it
excludes the systemic aspect of metaphoric meaning. It cannot
accommodate the central part of a metaphor's meaning: its associations
with conceptual clusters and entire networks of beliefs, and their
connections with attitudes and other "non-cognitive" features. It also
fails in that it tries to define, which is to say, limit, the content of a
metaphor, when it is often metaphors' open-endedness that is
important.
4. Arguments as metaphors. Arguments are not metaphors, of
course, and yet the claim that they are is a metaphor worthy of an
argument. After all, the literal falsity of a sentence need not count
against it when read as a metaphor, and the fact that what a metaphor
says is not so, does not mean that it cannot become so: metaphors
change the conceptual and linguistic landscape. They alter and create
meanings, thereby rearranging and reshaping the world. Arguments
can be metaphors.
Just as most sentences that are normally used for metaphors can be
read as literal, so too most sentences with an established and literal use
can be read as metaphors. Richard is a lion? Metaphorical in England
during the Crusades, perhaps, but likely to be literal if heard in a
Disney movie. Snow is white and The cat is on the mat?
Excruciatingly literal in treatises on formal semantics, but liable to
metaphoric readings in other contexts: cocaine is for rich folks,
perhaps, and the jazz saxophonist, having been challenged, has stepped
up to the mike. This is the same phenomenon that we saw earlier in
interpreting larger texts as either fictitious or factual.
18
The texts
themselves are neither. We can read a story as history or history as a
story. We can read the Bible as the word of God, as an historical
record, or as a literary creation. In another form, this was part of what
was at issue between the poet and the philosopher in the dialogue in
chapter 12: was their exchange an argument? The answer was that it
could indeed be interpreted that way, and with good reasons. An
implicit part of that is that other readings, which do not read their
conversation as an argument, could not be ruled out in advance.
Can their argument be read as a metaphor? Of course. It could be
an extended metaphor for poetry's relation to philosophy. Or it could
be a metaphor for the history of two old friends: John Rosenwald and
me. Then again, poetry and philosophy could be the two old friends,
too, as could Protagoras and Socrates, rhetoric and logic, writing and
reading, or narrative and argument. More creative readers might be
able to articulate and defend interpretations in which the characters are
seen to represent passion and reason, music and science, truth and
beauty, or even such fanciful and conceptually distant pairs as man and
woman, France and England, or love and death. There are no a priori
limits to the project of interpretation. There are only a posteriori
criteria for success.
In order to read arguments as metaphors, the first thing to note is
that arguments are more than the simple assertion of their conclusions.
Perhaps because this fact is so obvious, it often goes unmentioned and
overlooked. It applies to arguments in all of the principle senses
considered: arguments-as-proofs, arguments-as-performances,
arguments-as-wars, and arguments-as-dialogues. These represent the
logical, the broadly rhetorical, the narrowly agonistic, and the
dialectical aspects of arguments respectively. To be sure, the same can
also be said of other ways of thinking about arguments, such as the
aesthetic, the ethical, and the personal. 19 For example, the ethical
problems raised in chapters 7 and 8 are visible only when attention
moves from a narrow focus on the conclusion to the entire social
context. Because arguments say more than their conclusions, they need
to be examined in the contexts appropriate for the kind of evaluation at
hand.
The context for arguments-as-proofs is a complex system of
beliefs, not an unstructured set of discrete beliefs. Arguments establish
the connections that are partly constitutive of their conclusions'
meanings. This hearkens back to Wittgenstein's remark that we never
prove what we set out to prove. The sentence that is proved may be
typographically identical to the target sentence at the beginning of the
proof, but the proof subtly but inevitably changes the sentence's
meaning.
2o
The styIe, kind, and content of the argument for a thesis all
become factors in how we understand it - in the meaning it has for us.
That is precisely what the best metaphors - philosophically grand
metaphors - do, too.
From one perspective, it is a bitter pun to point out that the
conclusion of an argument is almost never the argument's conclusion.
The conclusion i.e., the thesis in question - comes at the beginning of
the argument. It is the occasion for an argument, not the "conclusion"
- i.e., the terminus - of an argument. Arguments continue long after
their conclusions have been reached. The implicit context here,
however, is two-party arguments. Any changes in the conclusion here
are more likely to be due to strategic retreats in response to challenges
from the other disputant rather than due to the establishment of new
semantic connections. At first, that might seem to be a very different
phenomenon, but it is not really all that far off. Consider an
intennediate phenomenon: the strategic changes that an arguer might
take in response to the internal dynamic of her own position as she
articulates her position or works out the logic of her argument. One
way of describing this is to say that she is no longer willing to defend
her original statement. That is, she is now prepared to defend different
statements because she now understands the original statement as
involving different, and unacceptable, commitments or consequences.
The original statement might be modified because its implications are
now more fully appreciated. Alternatively, the original statement might
be abandoned because it is no longer thought to represent her original
position accurately or fairly. Or it might be that her position has indeed
changed in the course of the argument. In all three cases, the original
conclusion can fairly be said to mean something different to her at the
argument's end. The argument provides a new lens through which the
question can be viewed.
Arguments-as-performances also function like metaphors in
changing their own contextual environments. Their immediate effect is
on their audiences. The many different kinds of arguments we present
evoke an equal number of different kinds of responses. According to
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, in the presentation of an argument,
... there is the conditioning [of the audience] by the speech itself,
which results in the audience no longer being exactly the same at the
end of the speech as it was at the beginning.
21
There is an intriguing parallel between this comment on the effects of
arguments on audiences and Wittgenstein's remarks on the effects of
proofs on their conclusions. Nothing stays the same. The provenance
of this observation is a discussion of how an arguer should adapt to his
audience. The authors begin by noting that the targeted audience, is
"always a more or less systematized construction" of the speaker. That
is right: an important determinant of how we argue is how we conceive
our audiences. But even this focused attention on what arguers do in
argumentation cannot avoid the agency of their audiences. As arguers
adapt to their audiences, those audiences change and are changed in
response. Of course, not all arguers are so effective. Rote
presentations of stock arguments for well-worn positions are the dead
metaphors of argumentation. In metaphors and arguments alike, when
there is little originality, there is less demand on the audience. The
result is the same: there will be little effect in the end.
The decision to see an argument as a metaphor - a new lens
through which to view things - reaps its greatest benefits when
thinking about arguments-as-dialogues and arguments-as-war. In both
cases, the arguments are the tips of icebergs. In acrimonious and
adversarial arguments, the particular point of contention is often a
proxy for some other issue. The topic at hand nlight be a stand-in for
an entire constellation of issues. If the conversation between two
lovers degenerates into a hostile exchange of words about which movie
to see, you can be sure there is something else that divides them. If the
borrowed car that was returned with an empty tank of gas appears to
threaten a friendship of long standing, you know it is not really about
gas. There is more to it than that. The same applies even to arguments
between enemies. When rival colleagues who have been habitual
antagonists push the candidacies of different applicants for a single job,
as often as not who gets the job is not the whole story. The issue at
hand is but a microcosm - a metaphor - for the entirety of their
relations to each other. One cannot help but think that if the disputants
in these arguments were able to step back and see their arguments this
way, as proxies for other or larger issues, the chances for reasonable
and satisfactory resolution would greatly improve. That perspective is
precisely what the argunlents-as-metaphors metaphor encourages.
Endnotes
1. An earlier version of this chapter appeared as "Arguments and
Metaphors," in Arguing Communication & Culture, Volume One, edited
by G. Thomas Goodnight (Washington, DC: National Communication
Association, 2002).
2. 1. S. Mill A System of Logick, Bk IV, chap. V, 7, p. 800, cited by M.
Johnson 1980, p. 13.
3. The tern1"root metaphor" originates in Pepper 1942, an important ancestor
to the concept of a "structural metaphor" in Lakoff and Johnson 1980.
Although the two concepts are put to different uses - the former for
explaining entire world hypotheses for which "nothing is irrelevant" and
the latter for more restricted conceptual networks - the common element
is what is important here: both are organizing schemes for thinking about
the world or part thereof.
4. See Kreitman 1999, chapters 2 and 3. The topic of root metaphors in
particular is addressed in chapter 5 at pp. 128ff, in his discussion of Lakoff
and Johnson 1980.
5. See, e.g., Black 1955, Lakoffand Johnson 1980, and Lakoff 1993.
6. Several issues come to a head here. One is the question of whether
metaphors can be paraphrased in literal language without loss of content -
or loss of something else. See Henle 1958 for an argument that such
paraphrase is possible, in principle. Davidson 1978 accepts the
impossibility of exhaustive paraphrase, but concludes that it shows
metaphors do something rather than say something. Questions, too,
cannot be paraphrased away. Goodman 1978 questions whether the
possibility of paraphrase for metaphors is all that relevant: paraphrasing
for literal sentences is often equally difficult. There is another question to
be asked. Is the meaning of a metaphor determinate? As argued earlier,
insofar as sense has to be made of metaphors, the meaning is not
determinate so the interpretive project can always be extended.
7. Martinich 1984 does try to read metaphors as stand-ins for arguments -
syllogisnls, actually - whose minor premise is the metaphor in its literal
reading and whose major premises are statements of the vehicle's relevant
properties that are to be carried over to the tenor. Together, these are
supposed to entail "the proposition that expresses the point of the
metaphor."
8. There are several ways to distinguish kinds of arguments. The only caveat
I would add is that while not all occasions for reasoning are arguments, all
arguments are potential occasions for reasoning -and should be actual
occasions. See Walton 1989 for some distinctions among kinds of
arguments.
9. See Tindale 1999, pp. 11-12 for the rhetorical value of enthymemes in
activating the audience. Martinich 1984 reaches a similar conclusion about
the effect of metaphors on audiences.
10. The example is from Lewis 1973, a now-classic dissertation on
counterfactuals. The analysis sketched here combines Lewis's possible-
worlds semantics with Goodman's deductivist analysis.
11. This theme is developed further, using the logic of counterfactual, counter-
possible, and couter-literal conditionals as vehicles, in Cohen 1998.
12. See Govier 1999a and chapters 1 and 4 above.
13. Philosophical revolutions more often proceed like the revolutions Kuhn
described: new theories win their adherents from the not-yet-partisan
rather than fronl the mature opposition. Of course, this is not how the
discipline usually tells its own history.
14. This invitational, performative aspect of metaphors was mentioned in Part
III. It is part of the revisionary and speculative move that makes
metaphors so important in philosophy. It is, however, antithetical to
philosophy's analytic mode, limiting the function metaphors can playas
premises in arguments or as the antecedents of certain sorts of
conditionals. Again, see Cohen 1998.
The invitation extended by metaphors to proceed further is related to
another phenomenon: the fact that puns seem to invite further puns - a
momentum that increases with the push of each additional pun. Both
phenomena are corollaries to the Gricean assumption that there is
cooperative nature to conversations. There is a common foundation to the
pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation and pragmatic accounts of
metaphors.
15. Metaphors require a language in a very robust sense of the word: a
complex, culture-laden set of phenomena rather than a simple, theory-
neutral vehicle for communication.
16. See Bickerton 1969.
17. Martinich 1984, p. 433 (in Martinich 1996).
18. See Danto 1985 and chapter 9 above.
19. Cf. Gilbert 1997, Part II, on multi-modal arguments.
20. See Wittgenstein 1956, e.g., at p. 76, 25: the sense of a proved
proposition is to be read from the proof, not fron1 the propositional sign by
itself.
21. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 23.
CHAPTER 15
Words Without End, Amen.
1. The End of Philosophy. For some, including for a while its
author, the conclusion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus signaled the end of philosophy. At proposition 6.5, after
demarcating what can and cannot be "said" - meaning what can and
cannot be put into the purely literal and descriptive language of science
he wrote:
When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the
question be put into words.... If a question can be framed at all, it is
also possible to answer it.
We should be wary, then of questions that defy answer, because if
they really cannot be ans\vered, they are not real questions. Rather,
they are pseudo-questions arising from confusion about how our
language works. Philosophy, he tells us, is full of such fundamental
confusions.
l
Indeed, if there really are no genuine philosophical
propositions, then there can be no genuine philosophical questions to
which they are the answers.
2
The only apparent way to stop the endless
task of trying to answer philosophical pseudo-questions is simply to
stop asking them. Respect their semantic impossibility. The
impossibility of philosophy is a matter of logic; it is not a contingent
consequence of history, cultural, or psychology.3 Wittgenstein's
counsel is silence.
This negative interpretation of Wittgenstein' s conclusion about
philosophy reappeared at the center of Logical Positivism, but it is a
mistaken reading of that passage and the larger text. Wittgenstein may
have been the Positivists' "adopted father,,,4 but he was not himself a
Positivist, at least not when he wrote the Tractatus. There are two parts
to what Wittgenstein was trying to impart. First, and most notorious, is
the negative conclusion about the questions philosophers ask. They are
somehow not real; they are pseudo-questions. At the very least, they
are not like scientific questions whose answers are true or false
descriptions of some part of the world. There is a second part to this,
however, and it is the more important part. Wittgenstein' s final
assessment of the real questions, the scientific ones, is, in its own way,
equally negative. Those genuine questions may be answerable but they
are not important:
We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have
been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.
5
All genuine questions, questions that actually ask something about
the way world is put together, are for science to answer. Science, on
this picture, can tell us everything there is to say about the world.
6
Still, it cannot tell us everything we want to know. Science cannot
answer all of our questions to our satisfaction. This passage is
commonly read as locating the failure in us, not in science. The
problem is with our expectations, with what we feel and with what we
want, rather than in what science can tell us.
7
There are solid textual
grounds for that reading. It is, after all, just a feeling that there is more.
In the next sentence, he tells us that the answer to all the unanswered
questions lies in their disappearance as questions. Still, immediately
after that, Wittgenstein unequivocally affirms "There are, indeed,
things that cannot be put into words."s Those philosophers who would
make a science of philosophy reach this conclusion about the limits of
meaningful, scientific discourse reluctantly. The meaning of life is
forever just beyond our scientific reach. We, as his readers, have the
option of reading it as triumphant. It is not the discovery of the end of
philosophy; it is the discovery that there is no end to philosophy.
The things that cannot be put into words are left to philosophy -
but not, however, as things to know, as things we can say, or as answers
to our questions. Properly speaking, they are not even things! Any
attempted answer framed in literal and indicative, "picturing" discourse
.would land us squarely back in the morass of metaphysical mumbo-
jumbo from which we just escaped. Knowing, saying, and meaning are
co-conspirators here. The crisis for philosophy is in the end of its self-
image as a truth-producing discipline. The production of yet another
philosophical system is the wrong response. An altogether different
sort of response is called for.
One response is to disengage from philosophy completely. As
noted in the Introduction, this is not really an option for reflective
beings with intellectual integrity. As John Wisdom noted, removing an
"intellectual itch" is really quite easy since the available choice of
effective narcotics is equal to the task. That would not be
philosophically satisfying, of course.
9
To scratch the philosophical
Words Without End, Amen 211
itch, we need to make sense of the wondrous world around us. That
project has to include inquiries into the nature of the world and the
nature of sense, and especially inquiries into the process of making
sense. The Principle of Meta-Rationality demands it.
In some respects, the Positivistic response is a kind of
philosophical disengagement. The strident insistence on "philosophical
correctness" in all discourse amounts to a strategic retreat and
disengagement from traditional philosophical questions. On this view,
philosophy does have a contribution to make to the project of making
sense, but largely a custodial one: it identifies the boundaries between
sense and nonsense, cleans up the remediable transgressions, and warns
against the others. If these options do not satisfy, there is the later
Wittgensteinian recourse to the therapeutic linguistics of ordinary
language philosophy. Philosophy "assembles reminders" to help us
relocate our concepts vis avis one another.
IO
And, of course, there is
also Wittgenstein' s first response to the dilemma: the delightfully
enigmatic Tractarian silence that accompanies transcendental
contemplation of the ineffable. Perhaps it is time for to reconsider the
semantics of philosophical discourse.
2. Philosophical Arguments. A great deal has been said
concerning the nature of philosophical questions. There has been very
nearly as much commentary on the nature of the answers that have
been given: philosophical theories. Yet, there has been a curious (but
non-Tractarian) silence concerning the nature of what constitutes the
real substance of philosophical discourse: philosophical arguments.
This is particularly odd since philosophy is so often said to be all about
its arguments, more than its conclusions.
11
Philosophical arguments
differ markedly from their counterparts in other disciplines and other
contexts. To b-e sure, scientific arguments, political arguments,
religious arguments, critical arguments, interpersonal arguments, and
the rest are not all of a kind. On the contrary, they take very many
forms.
I2
Philosophical arguments, however, are too peculiar in too
many ways to fit easily into any other category.
Philosophical discourse is an unwieldy cluster of logical,
deliberative, combative, persuasive, interrogative, reflective,
reactionary, polelnical, and heuristic exchanges. Philosophical
argumentation occupies a special place within that discourse. It is
marked by some very odd features. First, unlike arguments in the
political arena, there is no con1pelling need to come to a quick
resolution or a general consensus. Indeed, it is debatable whether there
is any need for that kind of resolution at all. Why should it matter to a
supervenience theorist that her colleague is an eliminative materialist?
There is nothing particularly problematic about the possibility of
permanent disagreement, so there is no urgency about their arguments.
In contrast, arguments an10ng political representatives, perhaps in
legislative or deliberative bodies, really do need to reach some sort of
closure. Some sort of action needs to be taken. Because political
argumentation aims at actions, how their arguments are resolved may
be of great moment. While this may be true of some philosophical
debates - e.g., on the morality of certain medical procedures - the
majority of our problems can be tabled with impunity. Philosophical
argumentation, when successful, is "minimally perlocutionary" insofar
as the direct and immediate effect, getting opponents to change their
opinions, may also be the totality of effects. 13
A second odd feature of philosophical arguments is that the
arguers' motives are often obscure. The situation is unlike the
Democrat who is trying to convince her Republican neighbors of the
errors of their ways. Her reasons for arguing are clear: her neighbors'
votes directly effect her. A different motivation 'can be found for
religious debates. Proselytizers can at least claim to be doing God's
work or pretend to be motivated by a deep, altruistic concern for the
souls of their fellow humans. Neither of those explanations
comfortably applies to argumentative philosophers trying to convert
their colleagues. The value of political consensus is manifest in this
world; the value of religious consensus, beyond whatever contribution
it may make to the social order, may become evident in another; the
value of philosophical consensus is neither obvious nor beyond
question.
Third, unlike mathematical arguments, conclusive resolution by an
unassailable proof is not the norm. It is the rarest of exceptions in
philosophy. In contrast to arguments in the natural sciences, there is
rarely sufficient evidence to settle the matter. For that matter, unlike
many arguments in the social sciences, for which there may relevant
but insufficient evidence, some of the things philosophers argue about
are virtually independent of all empirical evidence. To exacerbate an
already problematic situation, philosophers distinguish their arguments,
especially from legal argumentation, by insisting that the verdicts they
reach about the world must be beyond all reasonable doubt - and
beyond most unreasonable doubts, too! Mere settlement is completely
unacceptable, and even resolution can be unsatisfactory unless it comes
with a guarantee of permanence.
Fourth, for the most part, the subject matter of philosophical
arguments precludes negotiation and compromise. There is no
bargaining. Coalitions cannot be built to strengthen one's hand.
Concessions in the spirit of compromise are not praiseworthy when
principles are at stake. In metaphysical debate, there is no opportunity
to "cop a plea" with the judging audience.
Why, then, do we argue in philosophy? What is the point? There
are yet additional distinctive, and troubling, features of philosophical
argumentation that sharpen these questions even further - until they
cut straight through to the heart of the matter. Like most other multi-
party arguments, arguments among philosophers always involve SOUle
form of "dissensus" - the term introduced in chapter 8 to apply to any
lack of consensus, ranging from simple difference of opinion, passive
disagreement or even just indifference to active dissension and overt
conflict. The mere co-presence of the untutored, the undecided, or the
unconvinced is dissensus enough to provide philosophers with an
occasion for arguing.
For arguments in general, it may be that the ideal goal is to replace
dissensus with some form of consensus whenever and wherever
consensus is lacking,14 but that picture does not fit well with the actual
practice of philosophical argumentation. Unlike political or
interpersonal arguments requiring joint action, there is no real need for
anything ~ v approaching universal agreement. This is probably just
as well, because unlike arguments in the natural sciences, there is no
appreciable probability of ever achieving consensus anyway. Indeed,
unlike most other arguments, even the possibility of reaching consensus
through reasoned argumentation cannot be presupposed. In some ways,
then, arguing as a philosopher with another philosopher is even worse
than arguing with God! There may be no chance of winning an
argument with God, but at least there is the opportunity to "lose" - Le.,
to reach consensus by being persuaded rather than by persuading.
Finally, there is the most curious and troubling feature of all: unlike
virtually all other arguments, most especially interpersonal arguments,
reaching consensus might not be all that desirable. At the very least, its
desirability is certainly arguable. There is a lot to be said for the co-
existence of reasoned and articulate but incompatible philosophies.
There is a value of diverse perspectives that extends beyond their
mutual cross-fertilization.
If the resolution of our philosophical differences is rarely
conclusive, never achieved by negotiation or compromise, hardly ever
urgent, generally unnecessary, always unlikely, and may be both
impossible and undesirable, then why do we bother?
The short answer is that we argue because we have to. There are
both internal and external sources for the imperative to argue. From
within, there is the continual need for self-validation and theoretical
affirmation. The Peircean doubts that motivate inquiry are a permanent
feature of our philosophical lives. From without, there is something
unstable about philosophical dissensus that fuels the engine of
philosophical argumentation. Philosophical disputation is not
academic. Philosophical speculation is not idle.
Philosophical differences of opinion are not like diversity of
religious persuasions in a heterogeneous but tolerant society. People
may have many different spiritual needs and correspondingly many
ways to satisfy them. There may be many roads to salvation. And if
not, at least there can be the civil decision to treat it as a private matter.
Nor are philosophical differences like aesthetic differences. There may
be no disputing taste, but there is no avoiding disputing philosophy.
Philosophical differences are more like the disagreement among rival
interpretations of a text: philosophies are interpretations of the world.
And yet, as argued in chapter 13, the possibility of plurality does not
preclude comparative evaluations. Even among interpretations that are
"good enough" for the purposes at hand, some may still be better than
others. However, as argued in chapter 9, "good enough" is not good
enough for philosophy. For the highest achievement of philosophy, the
creation of "grand metaphors" that shape and reshape our world, we
must aim even higher. The co-presence of different philosophical
interpretations, therefore, is a challenge to the adequacy of each of
them that cannot be ignored.
3. Words Without End, Amen. If we cannot achieve
philosophical consensus, and we cannot live with dissensus, then we
are condemned - or licensed - to argue ad infinitum. There are no
limits to philosophical speculation. There is no closure to
philosophical argumentation. There is no end to philosophy.
Philosophy, then, finds itself in the category of unending
endeavors. By itself, that classification tells us very little because the
category of open-ended activities is by no means a natural kind. It
covers an odd and diverse range. It includes activities as simple as
counting, as complex as poetry, as whimsical as joking, and as serious
as politics. No matter how high we count, we can always count still
further. There is always another poem to be written and another pun to
be committed. We will not run out of injustices to right. All of these
are open-ended activities, but they are open-ended in different ways
and for different reasons.
Logical grammar alone is sufficient to put philosophy in this
category. As young children and other philosophers know, we can
always ask the question, "Why?" It is a question for all occasions, a
move for al1laIlguage games. No matter what the situation, we can ask
why it is so, and no matter what answer it receives, we can always ask
it again: Why? However, it is not only the grammar of why-questions
that keeps philosophy open. There is a deeper reason, related to the
logic of their possible answers. Why-questions are deeply ambiguous.
Sometimes the desired response will be an explanation for an event. At
other times it will be a justification for an action. Events, which can be
described in many ways, can be given many kinds of explanations -
logical, physical, psychological, teleological, historical, etc. There are
also many different kinds of justifications for actions - ethical,
pragmatic, etc. Just as some, but not all, descriptions can serve as
explanations, some, but not all, explanations can serve as justifications.
In either case, the paradigmatic responses to why-questions will
inevitably involve metaphors or arguments. This too means that
philosophical closure is irrlpossible because few intellectual endeavors
are as open-ended as those philosophical perennials, creating new
metaphors and fighting old arguments.
In order to triangulate in on the peculiar open-endedness of
philosophy, consider some of the other disciplines and activities that
fall under this rubric. For example, there is no end to story telling. It is
sometimes said that there are really only three or fOUf different story
plots, albeit subject to many variations. Even if, as with most
hyperbole, there is a grain truth to it, there would always be another
story to be told anyway. No matter how hackneyed a story line may be,
it can always be given new life. There is life in variation, so that is
what is important. This phenomenon has echoes in other places. There
is always artistic room for yet another landscape of even the most
frequently painted scenes. New musical covers for old songs are
always possible. No matter how many times Hamlet has been staged,
the next production can still be profoundly original.
There is a similar phenomenon when we are talking about stories,
rather than actually telling them. In literary criticism, there is always
more that can be said. The critical space for interpretations is, if not
infinite, at least indefinitely expandable, given world enough and time.
When the Freudians, new critics, Marxists, feminists,
deconstructionists, and the other minions have had their say,
undoubtedly there will be post-deconstructionists or neo-Freudians
with an interesting contribution of their own for us to hear. Professor
Zapp is wrong: there will never be last words here.
Our inexhaustible ability to create new stories and the permanent
possibility of more interpretive criticism stem from the same source,
but there is a subtle, important difference to be marked between them.
One is about writing and story-telling; the other is about reading and
story-hearing. The common origins are to be found in the creative urge
to understand the world. Fronl one perspective, story-hearing is
manifestly dependent on story-telling. Without texts to read, there can
be no criticisln. There is also a deeper sense to the dependence.
Reading a story is an act of interpretation. That is to say, it involves
making sense out of the text. We make sense of something by telling
ourselves a story about it. Thus, in hearing a story, we have to tell
ourselves a story (albeit, not the story) about that story. Story-hearing
is part story-telling. In order to be able to hear a story, we must each be
able to tell a story.
Generalizing from this conclusion, we can say that for many
purposes, literary criticism should be considered a kind of story-telling,
just as covering performances can be considered as a kind of
composition. However, the asymmetric dependence relation remains
intact. Insofar as The World According to Garp and E. T., the Extra-
Terrestrial retell the Christ story, neither one could have been written
without the earlier texts as resources. But the impossibility of writing
The World According to Garp in the absence of those earlier texts is not
the same sort of impossibility that precludes critical commentary on
Garp in its absence. To be sure, there is some sense in which Garp
could have been written without the Gospels, just not as a re-telling of
the Christ story. The relation that Garp has to the Gospels parallels the
relation that Coltrane's cover of "My Favorite Things" has to earlier
renditions, but they are not identical. There are constraints on critics
and performers, however, that do not apply to writers or composers.
The difference is not to be found in any part of the text or performance,
just as the difference between a novel and a history is not be found in
the pages of the book and the difference between a metaphor and a
literal assertion is not to be found in the words of the sentence. For
that, one has to look to the readers and hearers, the audience. Part of
what makes a metaphor a metaphor is that it is interpreted that way.
Part of what makes a story a story, rather than, say, criticism, is that,
that is how it is read. Thus, there is also a sense in which story-telling
is reciprocally dependent on story-hearing: without an audience to hear
the story as a story, it is not a story. While an author may write a story
to be read as a story, it only becomes a story when it is read as a story.
While the absence of limits to both creative writing and criticism is
first and foremost a function of the infinity of the wellspring of
creativity, there are also other factors. It is these additional factors that
explain the difference. There is something dialectical about the
limitlessness of criticism. It is a function of interacting with the
audience in a joint project to make and affirm sense out of a text. The
audience for criticism is invited to challenge and raise questions about
the interpretation, including the challenging question posed by an
alternative reading. In contrast, story-hearers are not invited to offer
alternative stories, or alternative tellings of the story. Their
involvement is active insofar as hearing or reading is a kind of
engagement with the story, but it is not dialectical. It is more a
question of being affected in various ways, including the effect of being
caused to become an active sense-maker. That is, in addition to the
unlimited creative possibilities for story-telling, there is also the open-
ended rhetorical dimension of affecting the audience.
The differences just drawn bet\\'een story-telling and criticism are
most certainly not hard and fast. Aspects of both characterizations are
present, in greater and lesser proportions, in both activities. However,
while it has been important and fashionable to focus on the similarities
between them in so many recent discussions, we should not lose sight
of their differences. Philosophical discourse has elements of both.
However, because philosophical dissensus is unstable, sense-making
audiences cannot remain outside the dialectical engagement of
participants. The dialectical dimension cannot be bracketed.
Both history and science are also open-ended endeavors. They
merit consideration here because they provide distinctive and relevant
counterpoints for understanding the open-endedness of philosophy. It
is important to emphasize at the outset that neither history nor science
should be thought of as a single monolithic discourse. Both are
heterogeneous collections of many discourses. Bringing the
quantitative methods of the social sciences to bear on an historical
subject produces a very different sort of narrative and a very different
sort of understanding than those that begin with personal biography or
political dynamics. Similarly, the discourses of biochemistry and
particle physics, with their exact and repeatable experiments, differ
radically from the mathematical hypotheses and calculations of
cosmology or the historical narratives of evolutionary biology. In both
cases, however, the different discourses are united by their overarching
projects.
The ideal of a completed science is a chimera. In some ways, the
open-endedness of science is the closest counterpart to philosophy
because two things guarantee that the scientific vocation can be a
lifelong endeavor. Scientific theories can be elaborated and revised
without end, and there is always the possibility that they can be
replaced. To use Kuhn's language, there is always room for further
articulation of any given paradigm and there is always the possibility of
a new paradigm. There will always be "puzzles" to solve in science, if
only because the structural and institutional imperatives for research
programs demand them. Without them, science is at an end. Science is
"analytically" open. The puzzles that tum out to be recalcitrant become
the "anomalies" - puzzles with attitude - that occasion conceptual
revolution. In principle, science is "conceptually" open, too. To re-
cast this in the conceptual vocabulary being used here, there is always
room for new grand metaphors and there is always room to argue with
and about the existing ones.
The philosophical counterparts to the sciences' paradigm
articulation and paradigm revolution are evident. Our best
philosophical theories can also be elaborated and revised without end,
and there is always the possibility that they will be supplanted by
something entirely new. Despite these parallels, there is one very
important respect in which philosophy is very unlike science. If
success n1eans arriving at the "right" theory, one that is true or will
stand the test of time, then all philosophical theories are doomed to
failure. However, if failure means being relegated to the scrap heap of
history's mistakes, then the glories of philosophy's past have all
escaped that ignominy. They are still with us. Philosophy comes with
its past.
Like the best history, then, the best philosophy is self-consciously a
product of the past, especially of the present looking at its past. The
entry into contemporary philosophy is through its history. It is, of
course, true of any discourse that it is a product of its past. The
problems that garner attention, the assumptions that are taken for
granted, and the methodological protocols that govern the discourse all
develop over time. This is as true of physics as it is of philosophy.
However, one need not rehearse the complex Ptolemaic theories of
epicycles, eccentrics, and deferents nor even the convoluted evolution
of Kepler's own thought on the way to elliptical orbits in order to
understand today's theory. One cannot say the same thing, without
invItIng controversy, about, say, any contemporary philosophical
theories of mind, because even the concept of mind is an artifact
subject to historical critiques. In chapter 11, it was asked: Who studies
Stahl's Phlogiston theory or Ptolemy's epicycles now? The answer that
was given then was that it was historians of science, not contemporary
scientists. That answer can be supplemented now by contrast with the
history of philosophy. Contemporary philosophers who are not
engaged in historical proj ects continue to read Plato's original texts,
alongside historians of philosophy who are, and both do so in a way
that contemporary scientists do not read Newton's original texts. They
read is, if not fully as a contenlporary, then as part of the living past
rather than as dead artifact.
On the other hand, past philosophical texts are not read in the same
way that past literary texts are read. There is a story of progress and
growth that can be told. Part of the endlessness of philosophy's future
is due to philosophy's perpetual relation to its past. Philosophy, like
history, must be written anew with each generation.
The need for historical contextualization is more important for
understanding sonle phenomena than others. It is of the highest
importance for understanding who we are politically, culturally, and as
individuals who are part of larger communities. Coming to grips with
our past is part of the project of understanding who we are today. It is a
new project for each generation because the story we tell has to speak
to us. Even if we end up telling an old story with the same old words,
like Borges' Pierre Menard intent on the project of re-writing
Cervantes' Don Quixote word for word
15
- but genuinely writing it
anew, not simply copying it - the story will still be new in the ways
that count.
All of these endeavors - the literary, artistic, critical, philosophical,
historical, musical, and scientific vocations - are similar to one another
in being open-ended projects. In each case, closure is not a possibility;
there can be no "definitive" painting, story, history, performance or
theory. But they are only similar; they are not the same. For all their
likenesses, they also differ in very important ways. Accordingly, the
temptation to regard them as manifestations of a single phenomenon
should be resisted. The present danger is that distorted views of
philosophy - and correspondingly skewed philosophies themselves -
result when the open-endedness of art or science or literature is taken as
a model for philosophy's own lack of closure. Many of the sundry
forms of relativism, nihilism, and skepticism can be seen as pathologies
arising from over-extrapolations from the "logic of rhetoric."
4. Metaphors for Philosophy. Our descriptions of things are
meant to tell us something about those things, but they also reveal
something about us. They put our beliefs and attitudes on display. The
metaphors we use are especially indicative of how we think about a
subject. That is why so much attention was given to the predominance
of militaristic and pugilistic metaphors for arguments. Less attention
has been given to our metaphors for metaphors, but here too the
language commonly used is revealing. It brings to light a deep
ambivalence about them. On the one hand, metaphors are deviant uses
of language because they use words that properly mean one thing to say
something else. There is something unsettling about them. On the
other, they find similarity in dissimilars and make the unfamiliar
familiar, so they create a conceptual comfort zone.
Our arguments are also revealing. How we argue about a subject
may reveal as much as the content of those arguments. We may, for
example, cloak our arguments in deductive trappings by conspicuous
use of the language of logic. Such strong "indicator words" as hence
and thus indicate more than the presence of an inference to a
conclusion. They also indicate that the arguer believes the question at
hand is subject to definitive resolution by argument-as-proof - or, that
she wants the audience to believe that she believes that. Ergo brooks
no rebuttal; therefore closes the door on negotiation. In contrast, the
language of inductive, abductive and conductive arguments is evidence
of a very different attitude to the subj ect matter and the argumentation
process. The explicit recognition of counter-considerations - e.g., by
granted or even though - is sometimes an implicit acknowledgement
that there is something to argue about and other parties with which to
engage, i.e., an occasion for an argument-2 rather than a proof. There
is more to dialectical argumentation than inference, and that is shown
in its language.
These remarks about language apply equally when the subject is
philosophy itself. The arguments we use in philosophy and the
metaphors we use to talk about philosophy should be food for meta-
philosophical thought. The language used to talk about philosophy is
not nearly as distinctive as the idiosyncratic features of philosophical
arguments discussed earlier in this chapter. Philosophy has been
described in many ways, from a passionate state (the love of wisdom)
to a dispassionate activity (the exercise of pure reason), and from a
noble responsibility (the "guardian of rationality") to one that is simply
burdensome (the "battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by
means of language"). There is no single, dominant metaphor for
philosophy to compare with the war-metaphor for arguments. The field
may be too fragmented for that kind of unifying conceptualization.
One metaphor that has gained much currency lately is that
philosophy is "a voice in the conversation of mankind.,,16 Hun1anity as
a whole is not engaged in a conversation, philosophy is not literally a
voice, and if philosophy could speak in a conversation, it would
undoubtedly do so with many voices. Obviously, this has to be taken
as a metaphor. But what exactly is the image that this trope is supposed
to conjure? Are philosophy, economics, history, mathematics, and the
other disciplines, somehow incarnate, supposed to be standing around
at a cocktail party?
Meaning emerges when we use the lens provided by the vehicle of
a metaphor to look at its tenor. (But keep in mind that in this metaphor,
the lens enables us to see something not just larger, n10re clearly, or in
greater focus, but to see it as something else. The seeing-as ability that
is so characteristic of metaphors changes everything even as it leaves
everything the same.) In particular, we can look at philosophy and its
history through the lens provided by the cluster of concepts, beliefs,
and attitudes associated with conversations. Two pictures readily
emerge: in one, philosophy is one voice among many; in the other,
philosophy itself is the conversation of many voices.
In the first reading, philosophy fruitfully engages with the other
disciplines. Respect for the data provided by the empirical sciences has
governed philosophical discourse at its best. Conversely, the injection
of philosophical perspectives into empirical sciences has often served
as a catalyst to revolutionary progress and can continue to do so. This
is the sense in which philosophy can function as a "placeholder" to
keep certain questions open within disciplines, in part by maintaining
the lines of communication between disciplines.
17
In this picture,
philosophy has a definite and positive role in the conversation, viz.,
sustaining the conversation.
In the other picture, it is philosophy itself that is seen as a
conversation - or, more broadly, the conversation of humanity is seen
as philosophy. We still listen to Plato and Aristotle and Kant, but the
topics that interest us have changed, partly in response to the
developments in other areas. If the most exciting cultural development
is a revolution in science, then that is what becomes the urgent topic of
conversation. If there is a sea change in art, so that paintings that are
not even remotely representational are still recognizable as high artistic
achievement - something completely paradoxical to the old way of
thinking - then sense will have to be made of that. The new question
will move onto the agenda for discussion. One consequence of this
picture is the blurring disciplinary boundaries. Argumentation across
disciplines must remain a possibility, and that is what philosophy
becomes. It is Rorty's vision of "philosophy" as opposed to
"Philosophy."IB
The conversation metaphor for philosophy is indeed a rich one. It
succeeds on several counts, notably, the three measures which are
counterparts to the logic-dialectic-rhetoric triad used for evaluating
arguments. Analytically, the template of conversations matches up
well with the history of philosophy. Like any long-running
conversation, the focus is not fixed; many topics have been touched on,
some quickly abandoned, some abandoned but returned to later, and
others held on to for a longer time. Like any conversation with many
participants, it has broken up into smaller sub-groups, sometimes with
their own topics, but sometimes overlapping, with conversants
occasionally wandering among them, now taking part in one, then
joining another. Like any conversation with so many voices clamoring
to be heard, some are more interesting, more clever, or simply louder
than others, and they attract the most attention, while others, perhaps
unfairly, get ignored. The good philosophers are those who manage to
get others to listen to what they have to say. And, like any ongoing
conversation, would-be participants need to listen in for a while to
catch up on where the conversation has been and on the things that
have been said before they can make contributions of their own.
Undoubtedly, there are many more points of congruence to be noted
between the history of philosophy and the transcript of a well-attended
gathering of the educated and loquacious.
There is also a sense in which the conversational metaphor
succeeds dialectically. It can be questioned and challenged in several
ways, but it can also be extended to meet those challenges. For
example, it might be claimed that being a good philosopher is more
than being a good conversationalist - inviting the reply that the good
philosophers are precisely those to whom other philosophers do in fact
listen and respond. The mistake is in assuming that other philosophers
pay attention to them because they are good, rather than recognizing
that they are counted as good precisely because others, for whatever
reasons, listen to them. More generally, the conversational metaphor
can be challenged as lacking foundations, and thus is overly relativistic.
Of course, the insistence on objective criteria for measuring theories
and theorists that are external to the conversation can itself be heard as
a prominent voice and recurring theme within the conversation.
For many, the conversation metaphor also succeeds rhetorically. It
resonates with some pre-existing notions of what philosophy is and it
reinforces some attitudes about how philosophy should be conducted.
Indeed, once the metaphor is invoked, it is hard not to see the history of
philosophy as a long, ongoing conversation! In burnishing certain
aspects of philosophy's self-image, it helps to create a new one, with a
greater emphasis on the interpersonal dimension to the practice of
philosophy.
It is a mark of the richness of a metaphor that it can engage its
audience and then be mined for additional meaning almost indefinitely.
This one qualifies. It can be put to a large number of philosophical
uses. Richard Rorty puts it to meta-philosophical and (anti-)
epistemological ends as part of an anti-foundationalist story.19 It could
equally well be incorporated into a political argument for cultural
inclusiveness, as Cornel West does.
20
If Pascal were given the chance,
he might read it as saying that philosophy is a mere divertissement,
unworthy of our time. Marx might agree, with the addition that, like
the cocktail talk of the idle rich, it is the tainted product of the
bourgeois leisure class. Alternatively, Habermas could use the same
metaphor to make a contrary point: since Philosophy is but one voice in
a shifting and regrouping polyphony, "hybrid discourses" will result,
which provide a way to avoid the more extreme historicist and relativist
positions. The project of philosophy is noble because it brings the
subgroups of the conversation together. Thus, in addition to its
contributions to sustaining the conversation, philosophy works to keep
the conversation rational: "Philosophy is the guardian ofrationality.,,21
In the end, we cannot extract all the meaning from this
metaphor, no more than we can deduce all the consequences from an
hypothesis or capture all the critical perspectives on a work of art or
achieve exact accuracy in our descriptions of the world. Not for the
same reasons, to be sure, but with deceptively sin1i1ar results. The
point is that while meaning may indeed emerge from consideration of
the metaphor, there is no such thing as the meaning to emerge. The
only limits to the meaning that can be taken from a metaphor are given
by the finitude of our own imaginations. Like any rich metaphor, this
one is capable of being interpreted indefinitely, it presents a compelling
vision, and it is capable of transforming forever our sense of the
world.
22
And it helps make sense of the endlessness of philosophy.
The conversation-metaphor is a good metaphor, perhaps even a "grand"
one, but, to be sure, it is not the last word.
Endnotes
1. Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 3.324.
2. Wittgenstein 1961, propositions 4.1-4.112.
3. Thus, the "end of philosophy" means very different things in the context
of early Anglo-American analytic philosophy, in contrast to such more
recent developments as Rorty's neo-Pragmatist critiques of Platonic
Philosophy, Derrida's deconstructions of the metaphysics of Being, or
Lyotard's suspicion of all legitimation metanarratives.. See Rorty 1982,
Derrida 1976, and Lyotard 1984.
4. I believe this apt description should be attributed to Gilbert Ryle.
6. George Bernard Shaw expressed the optimistic reading this way: "All
problems are finally scientific problems" Quoted in Discover magazine,
March 2000, p. 24.
7. See, for example, Anscombe 1971, pp. 169-171.
9. The idea of a puzzlement-eliminating drug for philosophical problems is
raised in Wisdom 1936.
10. Wittgenstein 1958 127.
11. See chapter 2.
12. See, e.g., Walton 1989, pp. 3-6, on different kinds of argumentative
dialogues.
13. The Austinian phrase "minimally perlocutionary" was suggested for use in
this context by Jeffrey Kasser.
14. Gilbert 1997 p. 136.
15. Cf. "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," in Borges 1964.
16. Its recent popularity as a metaphor for philosophy is largely due to
Richard Rorty, citing Michael Oakeshott's characterization of poetry, in
Rorty 1979, p. 264.
17. See "Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter," in Habermas 1987.
18. Rorty 9 9 ~ Introduction.
19. Rorty 1979 p. 389ff.
20. Cornel West, explicitly citing this metaphor, approvingly offers Emerson
as an example of a Pragmatist who would not lose sight of the potential
political uses of "conversation." West 1989. p. 211. See also West 1993
ch.l.
21. Habermas, 1987..
22. See chapters 9-11 above.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aleichem, Sholom. 1979. The Best 0.( Sholom Aleichem, 1. Howe and
R. Wise, eds. New York: Sitnon and Schuster.
Anscorrlbe, G. E. M. 1971. An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus,
3
m
edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Aristotle. 1984. Poetics, I. Bywater, tr., in The Complete Works of
Aristotle, 1. Barnes, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Aristotle. 1984. Metaphysics, W. D. Ross, tr., in The Complete Works
of Aristotle, J. Barnes, ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Augustine. 1983. De Magistre, J. H. S. Burleigh, tr., in Philosophy in
the Middle Ages, 2
nd
ed., A. Hyman and J. Walsh, eds.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Austen, Jane. 1962. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Airmont Books.
Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things With Words, J. O. Urmson and
M. Sbisa, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ayer, A. J. 1952. Language, Truth and Logic. New York: Dover
Publications.
Ayim, Maryann. 1988. "Violence and Domination as Metaphors in
Academic Discourse," in Selected Issues in Logic and
Communication, T. Govier, ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing Company.
Ayim, Maryann. 1991. "Don1inance and Affiliation," Informal Logic,
13 (2), pp. 79-88.
Baum, L. Frank. 1997. The Wizard ofOz. New York: Random House.
Bickerton, Derek. 1969. "Prolegolnena to a Linguistic Theory of
Metaphor," Foundations ofLanguage, 5, no. 1, pp. 34-52.
Binder, Sarah and Smith, Steven S. 1997. Politics or Principle?
Filibustering in the United States Senate. Washington, D. C.:
Brookings Institute Press.
Black, Max. 1955. "Metaphors," Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society N.S. 55, pp. 273-294. Reprinted in Black 1962 and M.
Johnson 1981.
Black, Max. 1962. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
226 Bibliography
Blair, Anthony. and Ralph Johnson. 1994. Logical Self-Defense, U.S.
edition. NevI York: McGraw Hill.
Blair, Anthony and Ralph Johnson. 1987. "Argumentation as
Dialectical," Argumentation, Vol. 1, pp. 41-56. Reprinted in R.
Johnson 1996.
Blumenberg, Hans. 1987. "An Anthropological Approach to
Rhetoric," in After Philosophy, K. Daynes, J. Bohman, and T.
McCarthy, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boethius. 1962. The Consolation of Philosophy, Richard Green, tr.
Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Bordo, Susan R. 1987. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on
Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Borges, Jorge Luis. 1964. Labyrinths, D. A. Yates and J. E. Irby, eds.
New York: New Directions.
Capaldi. N. 1999. How to Win Every Argument. New York: MJF
Books.
Carroll, Lewis. 1895. "What the Tortoise said to Achilles," Mind, vol.
4, pp. 278-280.
Cohen, Daniel H. 1998. "What, What-if, and So-what?" PAIDEIA,
The World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, MA.
Cohen, Max. 1992. "Yin and Yang," unpublished poem.
Cohen, Ted. 1996. "Metaphor and Feeling," Conference on Narrative
and Metaphor Across the Disciplines, Auckland, NZ.
Cohen, Ted. 1978. "Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy,"
Critical Inquiry 5, No.1.
Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Congress of the United States:
Origins, History and Procedure. 1971. Washington, D.C.:
Congressional Quarterly Sevices.
Crosswhite, James.1989. "Universality in Rhetoric: Perelman's
Universal Audience," Philosophy and Rhetoric 22, pp. 157-173.
Darner, T. E. 1987. Attacking Faulty Reasoning. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Danto, Arthur. 1983. "Philosophy As/And/Of Literature," APA Eastern
Division Presidential Address. Reprinted in Post-Analytic
Philosophy, C. West and J. Rajchman, eds. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1985.
Davidson, Donald. 1967. "Truth and Meaning," Synthese, 17, pp. 304-
323.
Davidson, Donald. 1973. "In Defense of Convention T," Truth, Syntax
and Modality, H. Leblanc, ed. Amsterdam: North-Holland
Publishing Company.
Bibliography 227
Davidson, Donald. 1981. "What Metaphors Mean," Critical Inquiry, 5,
pp. 31-47. Reprinted in M. Johnson 1981.
Daynes, K., J. Bohman, and T. McCarthy, eds. 1987. After Philosophy:
End or Transformation. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jaques. 1976. Of Grammatology, G. C. Spivak, tr. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. 1970. The Brothers Karamazov, Andrew R.
McAndrew, tr. New York: Bantam Books.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. 1976. "Silver Blaze" in The Complete
Sherlock Holmes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company.
Dun1mett, Michael. 1978. "Can Analytic Philosophy Be Systematic,
and Ought it to Be?" in Truth and Other Enigmas. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Editors of Lingua Franca, eds. 2000. The Sokal Hoax. Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, J. A. Blair, C. A. Willard, and A. F. Snoeck
Henkemans. 2003. Anyone Who Has A View: Theoretical
Contributions to the Study ofArgumentation. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic.
Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendoorst. 1992. Argumentation,
Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-dialectical Perspective.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendoorst. 1984. Speech Acts in
Argumentative Discussions. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris
Publications.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, et ai. 1996. The Fundamentals of
Argumentation Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Publishers.
Garver, Newton and Seung-Chong Lee. 1994. Derrida & Wittgenstein.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gilbert, Michael. 1997. Coalescent Argumentation. Mahwah, New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gilbert, Michael. 1996. How to Win an Argument, 2e. New York: MJF
Books.
Goodman, Nelson. 1968. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill.
Goodman, Nelson. 1973. Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 3
rd
ed.
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Goodman, Nelson. 1978. "Metaphor as Moonlighting," in 0 n
Metaphor, Sheldon Sacks, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
228 Bibliography
Gordon, Jill. "Literature and Epistemology in Plato's Meno and
Descartes' Meditations," unpublished manuscript.
Govier, Trudy. 1999a. Philosophy of Argument. Newport News, VA:
Vale Press.
Govier, Trudy. 1999b. "What is Acknowledgement and Why is it
Important?" Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, 8t.
Catherines, Ontario.
Govier, Trudy. 1992. A Practical Study of Argument 3
rd
edition.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Govier, Trudy. 1988. "Are There Two Sides to Every Questions," in
Selected Issues in Logic and Communication, T. Govier, ed.
Behnont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Grice, H. P. 1975. "Logic and Conversation," in Syntax and Semantics,
vol. 3, P. Cole and 1. Morgan, eds. New York: Academic Press.
Habermas, lurgen. 1984. The Theory of Conlmunicative Action, T.
McCarthy, tr. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, lurgen. 1987. Moral Consciousness and Communicative
Action, C. Lenhardt, tr. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Haft-Van Rees, M. Agnes. 1989. "Conversation, Relevance, and
Argumentation," Argumentation, Vol. 3, No.4, pp. 385-393.
Hamblin, C. L. 1970. Fallacies. London: Methuen.
Hansen, Hans. 1998. "On Validity," Proceedings of the Fourth
International Conference of the International Society for the Study
of Argumentation, eds. Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst,
J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard, eds. Amsterdanl: SIC SAT.
Harman, Gilbert. 1984. "Positive Versus Negative Undernlining in
Belief Revision," Nous vol. XVIII, pp. 39-49.
Henle, Paul. 1958. "Metaphor," in Language, Thought, and Culture, P.
Henle, ed. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Reprinted in M. Johnson 1981.
Hesse, Mary. 1980. "The Explanatory Function of Metaphor,"
Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1997. Leviathan, M. Oakeshott, ed. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1985. Metamagical Themas. New York: Basic
Books, Inc.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Daniel C. Dennett, eds. 1981. The Mind's 1.
New York: Basic Books, Inc..
Hurley, Patrick l. 2000. A Concise Introduction to Logic, 7
th
ed.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Bibliography 229
Hyman, Arthur and James J. Walsh, eds. 1983. Philosophy in the
Middle Ages, 2
nd
ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
James, William. 1987. The Will to Believe. New York: Longmans,
Green, & Co.
Johnson, Mark, edt 1981. Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Johnson, Ralph H. 1999a. Manifest Rationality: A Pragmatic Theory of
Argument. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johnson, Ralph H. 1999b. "More on Arguers and their dialectical
obligations," in Argumentation At The Century's Turn:
Proceedings of the Third Ontario Society for the Study of
Argumentation (CR-ROM).
Johnson, Ralph H. 1996. The Rise of Informal Logic. Newport News,
VA: Vale Press.
Johnson, Ralph H. 1987.. "The Blaze of Her Splendors: Suggestions
About Revitalizing Fallacy Theory," in Argumentation 1, 239-253.
Johnson, Ralph H, and J. Anthony Blair. 1993. Logical Self-Defense,
3
rd
ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Kagan, Michael. 1999. "Persuasive Stories," in Argumentation At The
Century's Turn: Proceedings of the Third Ontario Society for the
Study of (CR-ROM).
Kahane, Howard. 1971. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. Belmont,
CA: Wadworth Publishing Company.
Kahane, Howard. 1969. Logic and Philosophy. Belmont, CA:
Wadworth Publishing Company.
Kasser, Jeffrey L. and Daniel H. Cohen. 2003. "Putnam, Truth and
Informal Logic." Philosophica (Belgium).
Kosman, Aryeh. 1986. "The NaIve Narrator: Meditation in Descartes'
Meditations," in Amelie Rorty, 1986.
Kreitman, Norman. 1999. The Roots of Metaphor. Brookfield, VT:
Ashgate Publishing.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure ofScientific Revolutions. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Lakatos, Imre. 1976. Proofs and Refutations. John Worrall and Elie
Zahar, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, George. 1993. "The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor," in
Metaphor and Thought, Andrew Ortony, edt Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laytner, Anson. 1990. Arguing with God. Northvale, New Jersey:
Jason Aronson, Inc.
230 Bibliography
Leff, Michael. 1997. "Argument and Interpretive Performance: A
Response to Cohen," Ontario Society for the Study of
Argumentation, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.
Levi, Don S. 1999. "Ad Baculum: Is it Logical or is it Rhetorical?"
Informal Logic, Vol. 19, Nos. 2&3, pp. 145-160.
Lewenstein, Bruce V. 1996. "Science and Society: the Continuing
Value of Reasoned Debate," The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Vol. XLII, No. 41, pp. BI-B2.
Lewis, David. 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1993. Being in Time: Selves and Narrators in
Philosophy and Literature. New York: Routledge.
Locke, John. 1959. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, A. C.
Fraser, ed. New York: Dover Books.
Lodge, David. 1985. Small World. New York: Macmillan.
Loewenberg, Ina. 1975. "Identifying Metaphors," Foundations of
Language 12, pp. 315-338.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1964. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Franc;ois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition.
Mhmeapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mac Cormac, Earl R. 1990. A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Martinich, A. P. 1984. "A Theory for Metaphor," Journal of Literary
Semantics 13, pp. 35-56. Reprinted in A. P. Martinich, ed. 1996.
The Philosophy ofLanguage, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford Press.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. 1970. The Communist Manifesto, F.
Engels, tr. New York: Pathfinder Press.
McInerny, Ralph M. 1961. The Logic ofAnalogy. The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff.
Murchland, Bernard. 1975. "Aristotle, Metaphor and the Task of
Philosophy," Diotima, Vol. 3, pp. 95-103. Also printed in
Philosophical Inquiry, Vol. XV, No. 3-4, 1993.
Neurath, Otto. 1959. "Protocol Sentences," in Logical Positivism, A. 1.
Ayer, ed. New York: The Free Press, pp. 199-208.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1954. Human, All Too Human, in The Portable
Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, tr. New York: Penguin Books.
Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press. .
Nye, Andrea. 1981. "The Practice of Philosophy: Response to Van Der
Bogert," Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 4, pp. 55 -59.
Nye, Andrea. 1990. Words ofPower. New York: Routledge.
Bibliography 231
O'Keefe, D. J. 1977. "Two Concepts of Argument," Journal of the
American Forensic Association, 13, pp. 121-128.
Orr, Deborah. 1989. "Just the Facts, Ma'am: Informal Logic, Gender
and Pedagogy," Informal Logic 11, pp. 1-10.
Ortony, Andrew, ed. 1993. Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge:
Pepper, Stephen C. 1942. World Hypotheses. Berkeley and Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Perelman, Chaim and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1959. The New Rhetoric.
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Perloff, Marjorie. 1996. Wittgenstein's Ladder. Chicago: lTniversity of
Chicago Press.
Plato. 1977. Phaedo, G. M. A. Grube, tr. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company.
Pratt, L. H. 1996. Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar. Falsehood
and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics. Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press.
Putnan1, Hilary. 1975. "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" in Language, Mind
& Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Quine, W. V. O. 1976. The Ways ofParadox and Other Essays, rev. ed.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. 1951. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." The
Philosophical Review.
Quintilian. 1921. Insitutio aratoria, H. E. Butler, trans. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Richards, 1. A. 1936. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. The Rule of Metaphor, R. Czerny, tr. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Roochnik, David. 1996. OfArt and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of
Techne. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rorty, Amelie. 1986. "The Structure of Descartes' Meditations," in
Essays on Descartes' Meditations, A. Rorty, ed. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror ofNature. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1982. The Consequences ofPragmatism. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Rorty, Richard. 1991a. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. New York:
Rorty, Richard. 1998. Truth and Progress. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
232 Bibliography
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1966. An Essay on the Origins ofLanguage, 1.
Moran, tr., in On the Origin of Language. J. Moran and A. Code,
trs. New York: Frederick Ungar.
Russell, Bertrand. 1918. "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism." The
M0 nis t . Reprinted in Bertrand Russell. 1990. Logic and
Knowledge, R. C. Marsh, ed. New York: Routledge.
Ryle, Gilbert. 1954. Dilemmas. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Schlick, Moritz. 1949. Philosophy of Nature, A. von Zeppelin, trans.
New York: Philosophical Library.
Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts. Calnbridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Searle, John. 1979. "Metaphor," in Expression and Meaning.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Pp. 76-116.
Reprinted in M. Johnson 1981.
Searle, John. 1993. "Metaphor," in A. Ortony, ed. 1993. Metaphor and
Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shaffer, Peter. 1980. Amadeus. Harper Trade Books.
Shakespeare, William. 1998. Love's Labour's Lost. Belmont,
CA:Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Sakal, Alan D. 1996a. "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a
Tranformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Social Text,
46/47, pp. 217-252.
Sokal, Alan D. 1996b. "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural
Studies," Lingua Franca, pp. 62-64.
Sokal, Alan D. 1996c. "Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword"
Dissent, 43 (4), pp. 93-99.
Tannen, Deborah. 1998. The Argument Culture: Moving From Debate
to Dialogue. New York: Random House.
Tindale, Christopher. 1999. Acts of Arguing. Albany: State University
of New York Press.
Tolstoy, Leo. 1985. Anna Karenina, D. Magarshack, tr. Dutton NAL.
Tracy, K. and N. Coupland. 1990. Multiple Goals in Discourse. Avon,
England: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Vygotsky, Lev. 1962. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Walton, Douglas. 1992. Plausible Argument in Everyday Conversation.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Walton, Douglas. 1991. "Hamblin and the Standard Treatment of
Fallacies," Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 24, pp. 353-361.
Walton, Douglas. 1989. Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical
Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bibliography 233
Walzer, Michael. 1977, 2000. Just and Unjust Wars, 3
rd
, ed. New
York: Basic Books.
Weinberg, Steven. 1996. "Sokal's Hoax," New York Review of Books,
August 8, 1996, pp. 11-15.
West, Cornel. 1993. Keeping Faith. New York: Routledge.
West, Cornel. 1989. The American Evasion oj' Philosophy. Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Wheelwright, Philip. 1962. Metaphor and Reality. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Wiesel, Elie. 1978. Jew Today, M. Wiesel, tr. New York: Random
House.
Wisdom, John. 1953a. "Philosophical Perplexity," Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Vol. XVI. Reprinted in Wisdom 1953.
Wisdom, John. 1953b. Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Wisdom, John. 1944. "Philosophy, Anxiety and Novelty," Mind, Vol
LIII, No. 210. Reprinted in Wisdom 1953b.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F.
Pears and B. F. McGuiness, trans. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1956. Remarks on the Foundations of
Mathematics, G. E. M. Anscombe, tr. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition,
G. E. M. Anscombe, tr. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Index ofNantes
Abelard-127
Abraham 14, 17, 19-22,23-26, 107
Aesclepius - 152
Shalom Aleichem - 13, 231
Amphion - 174
Elizabeth Anscolnbe - 230,231
Anselnl-78
Thomas Aquinas - 152, 156
Aristophanes - 174
Aristotle - 12,48,62,69,87-89, 100, 105 125, 126, 177,227,231
Augustine - 133, 150, 153,231
Jane Austen 30, 129, 190, 231
1. L. Austin 66,70, 112, 131,231
A. 1. Ayer- 25,231,236
Maryann Ayim - 54, 84, 231
Bilbo Baggins - 183
L. Frank Baum - 26, 231
George Berkeley - 12, 78
Yogi Berra - 39
Derek Bickerton - 214, 231
Sarah Binder 231
Joseph Black-154
Max Black - 132, 133, 145, 156,213,231
J. Anthony Blair - v, 26, 55,74,83,89, 100, 101, 112,232,233,235
Hans Blumenberg - 70, 232
Boethius - 148, 232
J. Bohman - 232,233
Susan Bordo - 185,232
Jorge Luis Borges - 225, 230, 232
Tycho Brahe - 191
Nicholas Capaldi - 101, 232
RudolfCamap -148
Lewis Carroll- 81, 86,232
Miguel de Cervantes - 225
Cleanthes - 181
236 Introduction
Bill Clinton - 23, 129
Daniel H. Cohen - 12, 101, 132,202,213,214,232,235
Max Cohen - 157,232
Ted Cohen - 133, 232
Samuel T. Coleridge - 177
John Coltrane - 190, 191,222
N. Coupland - 112,238
Crito - 152
James Crosswhite 26,232
T.E. Darner-lOl, 232
Arthur Danto - 25,36,39, 150, 156,214,232
Charles Darwin 35
David-13
Donald Davidson - 133, 145, 157,213,232
K. 1. Daynes - 232, 233
Denis the Areopagite - 8, 12, 152, 156
Daniel Dennett - 157, 234
Jacques Derrida - 12,127,185,189,191,192,193,230,233
Rene Descartes - 32, 148
Devil - see Satan
Arthur Conan Doyle 26, 233
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13, 14,25, 127,201,233
Michael Dummett - 152, 233
Thomas A. Edison 128
Frans H. van Eemeren - 54,69,99, 100, 101, 177,233
Justin Ehrenwerth - 26
Elijah - 13
Frederick Engels - 149, 155,236
Euathlus - 177
Euclid - 199
Thomas Farrell- 55
Johann Gottlieb Fichte - 12
Stanley Fish - 202
Gottlob Frege - 127, 144
Galileo Galilei - 35, 150, 191
Constance Garnett - 25
Newton Garver - 156,233
Philosophical Arguments and Philosophical Metaphors 237
Pierre Gassendi - 32
Sally Gearhart - 54
Michael Gilbert-25, 33, 39, 54, 84,101,104.112,145,179,185,214,
230,233
God - 13-21,23-27,65,70,78, 150, 183,209,218,219
Kurt Godel- 155
Barry M. Goldwater - 100
Nelson Goodman - 12, 132,213,233
G. Tholnas Goodnight - 212
Jill Gordon - 38, 54, 234
Trudy Govier - 15,25,27,54,83,101,104,112,185,213,234
H. P. Grice 19,20,26,127,128,131,132,139,145,234
Rob Grootendorst- 54, 69, 177, 233
Jlirgen Habermas - 69, 229, 230, 234
Agnes Haft-van Rees - 54, 177,234
Hans Hahn - 25
C. L. Hamblin -- 69,89, 100,234
Oscar Hanlmerstein - 190
Hans V. Hansen - 83, 234
Gilbert Harman - 86, 184, 186, 234
G. H. Hardy - 86
G. W. F. Hegel- 12,202
Martin Heidegger - 155
Paul Henle - 213,234
Hesiod - 163
Mary Hesse - 100, 101, 133, 149, 156,234
Adolph Hitler - 10
John Hoaglund - 177
Thomas Hobbes 22, 132, 133, 234
Douglas R. Hofstadter - 157, 177, 234
Sherlock Holmes - 20
Homer-163, 174, 189
Robin Hood - 127
David Hume - 181
Patrick J. Hurley -100,234
Arthur Hyman - 86, 235
Isaac - 20, 23, 24, 25, 107
Jacob - 13, 25
238 Introduction
William James - 26, 80, 86, 148,235
Jerenliah - 13, 17
Jesus - 25
Job - 13, 17-21. 24-36
Kenneth Johnson - 128
Mark Johnson - 42,54,69,84,100,131,133,146,155,156,212,213,
231,235,238
Ralph Johnson v, 20, 55,74, 83, 84, 89,92,96,99, 100, 101, 112,
116, 177,232, 235
Scott Joplin - 207
Michael Kagan - 186, 235
Howard Kahane-89, 90, 235
Itnmanuel Kant - 105, 227
Alyosha Karamazov 201
Ivan Karamazov 13, 14,201
Jeffrey Kasser - 101, 202, 230, 235
Johannes Kepler - 35, 191,224
Aryeh Kosman - 38, 235
Nonnan Kreitman - 155, 156,213,235
Saul Kripke 148
Thomas Kuhn - 35,36.39,145,151,156,192,213,224,235
Imre Lakatos - 51, 54, 185, 235
George Lakoff-42, 54,69,84,100,133,134,146,156,212,213,235
Anson Laytner 17, 25, 26, 27, 235
Barbara Leclerc - 69
Seung-Chong Lee - 156,233
Michael Leff - 70, 202, 236
Gottfried Leibniz - 149
Don S. Levi - 70, 80, 236
Bruce Lewenstein - 236
David Lewis - 12,206,213,236
Genevieve Lloyd - 38, 236
John Locke - 12,132,133,150,236
David Lodge - 189,202,236
Ina Loewenberg - 131, 236
Arthur O. Lovejoy - 156,236
Chares Lyell 36
Jean-Franyois Lyotard - 230, 236
Earl Mac COlmac 128, 132. 133,236
A. P. tv1artinich - 132, 133,213,214,236
Karl Marx - 149, 155,229,236
Robert McArthur - 85
T. McArthy - 232,233
Robert McDuff - 25
Ralph McInerney - 152,236
Pierre Menard - 225
John Stuart Mill- 105,202,203,204,212
Marvin Minsky - 152
Michel de Montaigne - 127
Toni Morrison - 186
Moses - 13, 14, 16-21,23-25
Benlard Murchland - 236
Otto Neurath - 177, 236
Isaac Newton - 25, 199, 225
Friederich Nietzsche - 133, 148, 177,236
Richard Nixon - 129
Robert Nozick - 43,54,57.69.84.85, 100,236
Andrea Nye - 54, 100, 185,236
Michael Oakeshott - 230
William ofOckham 148
Odin - 16
Odysseus - 168
D. 1. O'Keefe - 25, 74, 237
Hakeem Olajuwan - 139, 140
Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca - 26, 54. 70, 83, 84, 86, 112, 145, 185, 211,
214,237
Orpheus - 174
Deborah Orr - 185,237
Andrew Ortony - 133,237
Blaise Pascal - 229
Charles S. Peirce - 19,26,43, 100, 121
Penelope - 183
Stephen Coburn Pepper - 100, 148,212,237
Chaim Perelman - 26,54.70,83,84,86, 112, 145, 185,211,237
Marjorie Perloff - 25,237
Philo - 181
Pablo Picasso - 207
240 Introduction
Plato 24,31,32,38,60,143,148,157,159,176,177,180,183,186,
187,214,225,227,237
Henri Poincare - 86
Ptolelny - 150, 154,225
L. H. Pratt - 177, 237
Protagoras - 162, 177, 210
Hilary Putnam 145, 237
W. V. O. Quine 38,39, 85, 148,237
Quintilian - 70, 237
John Rajchlnan - 39
S. Ramanujan 86
Ayn Rand - 183, 184, 186
Raskolnikov-127
John Rawls - 105
1. A. Richards - 152,155,156,237
Paul Ricoeur - 133, 237
Richard Rodgers - 190
David Roochnik - 177, 237
Franklin D. Roosevelt 126
Amelie Rorty - 38, 237
Richard Rorty - 12,37,39,53,69, 157,228-230,237
John Rosenwald - 161, 180, 185,210
Andrew Ross - 199
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 152,238
Bertrand Russell- 38,39,126,131. 135, 145, 155,238
Gilbert Ryle 85, 230, 238
Antonio Salieri - 14, 21, 24
Sarah - 23, 24, 107
Satan, the Devil- 13, 17, 18
Moritz Schlick - 149, 155;238
John Searle 131, 132, 133, 145,238
Peter Shaffer - 14, 238
William Shakespeare 238
George Bernard Shaw - 230
Steven S. Smith - 231
Francesca Snoeck-Henkemans - 85, 177, 233
Socrates - 32, 117, 121,152, 167. 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 210
Alan D, Sokal- 101, 188, 196-201,202, 238
Spinoza - 12, 16
Ernst Stahl - 233
Robert Stalnaker - 36, 29
Dagny Taggart - 183
Deborah Tannen - 100,238
Alfred Tarski - 133
Tertullian - 80
Tevye the Dairyn1an - 14, 16,21
Thales - 148
Christopher Tindale - 26,55,69,70.83,94, 100, 112,213,238
Leo Tolstoy - 57, 238
K. Tracy - 112,238
Lev Vygotsky - 185,238
James J. Walsh - 86, 235
Douglas Walton - 69,70,213,230,238
Michael Walzer- 101,122,239
Steven Weinberg - 239
Conlel West- 39,229,230,239
Richard Whateley - 100
Philip Wheelwright - 156, 239
Alfred North Whitehead- 31,38
Elie Wiesel- 14, 17,21,24,26,27,239
John Wilmot - 177
Charles A. Willard - 233
John Wisdom - 8, 12,39, 112, 156,216,230,239
Ludwig Wittgenstein - 7, 12, 25, 36, 51, 55, 112, 131, 140, 145,
152,155,156,192,206.210,211,214,215,216,217,
239
Morris Zapp - 129, 189, 190, 193,202,222
Zeus - 16

(Daniel Cohen) Arguments and Metaphors in Philosop

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Daniel Cohen) Arguments and Metaphors in Philosop

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Copyright 2004 by

University Press of America, Inc.

You might also like