The purpose of this handbook is to furnish the reader with the basic methods of critical analysis of arguments, as they occur in natural language in the real marketplace of persuasion on controversial issues in politics, law, science, and all aspects of daily life. This is very much a practical (applied) subject, because each individual argument is, to some extent, unique. The technique of applying the general guidelines of criticism for each type of argumentation scheme to each individual case requires practical skills of good judgment and judicious interpretation in identifying the argument, and sorting out the main thread of the argument from the discourse it is contained in. These are pragmatic skills requiring prior identification of the type of dialogue in which an argument occurs.

Logical semantics is an important subject in its own right. It is the construction of consistent and complete theories based on semantical constants and the use of variables. Chapter 5 is about semantics, but the remaining eight chapters are mainly about the pragmatics of argumentation. For the most part, applying critical rules of good argument to argumentative discourse on controversial issues in natural language is an essentially pragmatic endeavor. It is a job requiring many of the traditional skills associated with the humanities: empathy, a critical perspective, careful attention to language, the ability to deal with vagueness and ambiguity, balanced recognition of the stronger and weaker points of an argument that is less than perfectly good or perfectly bad, a careful look at the evidence behind a claim, the skill of identifying conclusions, sorting out the main line of argument from a mass of verbiage, and the critical acumen needed to question claims based on expert knowledge in specialized claims or arguments.

One of the most common criticisms made in argument is the reply “That's beside the point!” or “That's irrelevant.” However, relevance is such a broad term that the criticism of being irrelevant could refer to many different kinds of failure or shortcoming in an argument. The study of relevance in argument begins by clarifying and classifying these different types of alleged failure that can prompt the criticism that a breach of relevance has been committed.

The primary basis of allegations of irrelevance stems from an important basic feature of all reasonable dialogue. Every argument presupposes a context of dialogue in which there is an issue, or perhaps several issues, being discussed. An issue means there is a proposition or question of controversy under discussion. Typically, an issue in dialogue suggests that there are two sides to the discussion. In other words, there is a certain specific proposition being discussed, and one participant in the dialogue is committed to that proposition being true while the other participant is committed to its being false. Of course, dialogues are not always this clear or simple, but when they are of this form, the type of dialogue may be called a dispute (or disputation). A dispute is a dialogue where one side affirms a certain proposition, and the other side affirms the opposite (negation) of that proposition.

The goal of this book is to help the reader use critical methods to impartially and reasonably evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. The many examples of arguments studied in this text are familiar, yet controversial specimens from such sources as political debates, legal arguments, international disputes on foreign policy, scientific controversies, consumer decision-making questions, ethical problems, and health issues. Any argument, including contexts of lively debate, conflict of opinion, reasoned persuasion, questioning, criticism or cross-examination, can be usefully analyzed by the methods that follow.

It is to be emphasized that the methods of this undertaking are essentially practical. They come as much or more under the topic of what is properly called logical pragmatics, as opposed to (semantical) logical theory. Logical theory traditionally has tended to emphasize semantic relationships, that is, relationships between sets of true or false propositions (the subject-matter of chapter 5 in this text). Logical pragmatics has to do with the use of these propositions by an arguer to carry out a goal of dialogue in reasoning with a second participant in the dialogue. One common and important type of goal is to successfully convince or persuade another arguer with whom the first arguer is engaged in reasoned dialogue. In logical theory, an argument is a set of propositions, nothing more or less. And all that matters is the truth or falsehood of these propositions. The wider context of dialogue is not taken into account.

The basic building blocks of arguments are propositions. Propositions, in contrast to questions, commands, challenges, and other moves made in arguments, are units of language that are true or false. Locating the propositions asserted in an argument can be the first positive step in identifying and evaluating the argument. In practice, real arguments are most often macrostructures made of many smaller arguments or sub-arguments. Often the best way to get a handle on a large and complex network of argumentation is to identify and clearly state one or more of these subarguments.

For this purpose, it is necessary to understand the concept of a deductively valid argument. With this ideal in mind, it will be much easier to organize an argument, and to fairly interpret it prior to considering evaluation. And of course, being able to identify deductively valid arguments is also a useful skill when it comes to evaluating arguments as reasonable or unreasonable.

In this chapter, we will see how once an argument is identified, the form of the argument can be revealed. Certain forms of argument are deductively valid, while others are invalid. Certain characteristic forms of deductive argument are very common in reasoning. To learn to identify these forms of argument is a valuable tool in the business of evaluating arguments reasonably. Another important concept related to validity is that of inconsistency. To allege that someone has adopted a stance in argument that is logically inconsistent can be a serious and damaging type of criticism.

The Strange Story of the Idea of Error Avoidance

Skeptics have claimed that there is no knowledge, that everything we say is doubtful; hence, error is unavoidable.

Socrates presented himself as a skeptic. By raising questions, he undermined assertions that his peers considered obvious truths. He concluded that one's wisdom rests on the awareness of one's ignorance. His most illustrious disciple was Plato, who founded the Academy and introduced an entrance requirement: one first had to know some mathematics. Plato took mathematics to be true knowledge and the foundation of all other true knowledge, including the political knowledge that is required for the best government. After his death, the Academy returned to the Socratic tradition and was renowned for its skepticism. The philosophers who taught there practiced the method of arguing for and against different answers to given questions and suspended all judgments about which answer is right.

The idea that the suspension of judgment is a virtue became the central teaching of Pyrrho and his followers, the Pyrrhonists. There is no written evidence attesting to Pyrrho's position, but the prevalent view regarding it follows Sextus Empiricus and presents Pyrrhonism as follows. Those who wish to dwell in a peaceful mood (ataraxia) should try to argue against every position that they tend to prefer: their view of any question should be as balanced as possible. As a result, they will refrain from assuming any position, and the outcome will be a permanent state of peace of mind.

Argumentation that takes place in the conversational marketplace of everyday persuasive appeals is heavily interlaced with emotional overtones and suggestions. Successful advertising, for example, seems for the most part to consist of well-orchestrated appeals to emotions, and it is quite plausible to suggest that many political debates and controversies are decided as much on the basis of emotional appeals and loyalties as on purely dispassionate reasoning.

Personal attack is often so successful as an argument tactic because of its hot appeal to personal emotions, as chapter 6 will indicate. However, here we turn to several other types of argument that have traditionally been regarded as problematic or fallacious because they use the pull of certain basic emotions. We will mainly be concerned with the emotions of pity, fear, and group solidarity.

Popular rhetoric is argument designed to persuade a specific target audience or readership. The objective is to build a personal bond with this audience, to establish a personal link between the arguer and the recipient of his message. The successful building of this emotional relationship invites the person to whom the argument is directed to trust the person who addresses him, to give him loyalty and to suspend the queries and criticisms characteristic of argument and reasonable dialogue. Personal rhetoric is therefore more directed to the instincts than to calculative reason. The emotional appeal is directed to the person's unthinking reactions, and so attempts to bypass the critical questioning and logical assessment normally characteristic of reasonable dialogue.

Philosophy consists of attitudes toward life or ways of life and inquiries in such regard, and they come in a great variety, of course. Philosophical tradition displays a regular bias in favor of the life of contemplation and equanimity. There was an effort to displace these values with a new tradition – nineteenth-century Romanticism – that emulated the heroes and despots of old and likewise glorified the life of achievements, especially great ones, military and political. The rise of brutal regimes that pride themselves on such achievements has somewhat attenuated the popularity of this enduring and sadistic tradition but, alas, not to the point of extinction.

Philosophical inquiries traditionally center on a small set of questions that presumably signify the choice of an attitude toward life or a way of life. Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, asserted his philosophy of life in his famous slogan: “the unexamined life is not worth living.” His way of life was devoted to preaching this idea by challenging people to examine their own life: he moved throughout the day from one place where people gathered to another, challenging the opinions of anyone who would accept his challenge.

Here are examples of questions that raise discussions that tradition considers philosophical. What are things made of? What kinds of things are there in the world? Is the soul immortal? How can we avoid errors when we seek explanations (of physical or mental events)? What are the right principles of the right moral conduct?

In the previous chapter, we discussed the criticism of skepticism as a view that blocks the endorsement of any view. We parried this attack by arguing that it rests on the false assumption that views are chosen by mere decisions, whereas beliefs are largely given. This objection meets with a standard protest: the concern is not with belief but rather with rational belief. The received assumption is that irrational belief is forbidden and rational belief is obligatory and that skepticism denies that some beliefs are rational. What belief is rational? They say, for example, that the belief in tomorrow's sunrise is rational. Even if this were true, we have to admit that we do not choose to believe that; rather, we believe it is the result of some highly complex psychological processes that take us back to our childhood. In our scientific culture, we do not believe as adults in what we believed in as children. How come? What are the processes that we undergo as we forge or rather modify our views of the world? Under what conditions does the belief arise that a given statement is true? These are the questions that we discuss in this chapter.

Normally in reasonable dialogue one is obliged to try to give a direct answer to a question, if one knows the answer, and if the question is reasonable and appropriate. If one does not know the direct answer, or for some reason cannot give it, then one is obliged to be as informative as possible. The reason behind this normal expectation is that our usual and reasonable presumption in many contexts is that a question is a sincere request for information where the questioner expects, or at least hopes, that the answerer may have this information and be able to give it. Therefore, if the answerer does not give a direct answer, his reply may be perceived as unhelpful or evasive.

Because of these normal expectations in reasonable dialogue, the most general purpose of a question is a request for information. Here, information refers to a set of propositions. So posing a question is a request to the answerer to supply a set of propositions.

There are several different types of questions each of which has a different format for requesting propositions. A whether-question poses a set of alternatives, and requests the answerer to select one. For example, the whether-question “Was she wearing the grey slacks or the red dress or blue jeans?” requests the answerer to pick one proposition from the disjunction. An example of a direct answer would be: “She was wearing the red dress.”

All the arguments and disputes we have been concerned with have been conducted and evaluated in the medium of natural language. But in natural language, words are vague and ambiguous. Words are most often not defined very precisely, and are therefore subject to the interpretation of the disputants in an argument. And since words in an argument may be interpreted in different ways, or according to different standards of precision, they can be used in a fashion that is friendly to the case of the arguer, and unfriendly to the case of the person to whom the argument is directed. Words can be used as weapons in argument.

When an Israeli border town is bombed, the newspapers in Israel describe the event as a terrorist attack, but Arab sources describe the same event as an action taken by freedom fighters in defence of their rights. However, when an Arab city is bombed, its inhabitants describe the event as a terrorist attack, unlike the Israelis, who describe it as a defensive strike against terrorists. The same group of individuals, in each instance, are described as “terrorists” by one side and “freedom fighters” by the other side. Now neither of these contentious terms has been defined, so they are subject to wide and various interpretations in a particular situation. For this reason, it is appropriate to question whether the two terms are being used in such a way that any action by the other side is routinely classified as that of “terrorists,” and any action by one's own side is classified as that of “freedom fighters.”

The previous chapter was devoted to discussions of applications of skepticism to moral philosophy. In this chapter, applications of skepticism to political philosophy are discussed. Once again, our starting point is that skepticism is true. We consider the implications of this to the questions that traditionally inhabit the agenda of political philosophy.

The Justification of Sovereignty

The basic question of traditional political philosophy is: What justifies sovereignty? Let us explain.

Rulers maintain their power even if some citizens oppose them, and then they rule by the application of force; the application of force is morally problematic. At the very least, it raises grave questions: Is this use of force moral? If so, under what conditions and on what grounds?

The most popular theory in the modern West is contractarianism, the doctrine of the social contract: rulers have the right to apply force because they are entitled to do it because they have the consent of their subjects to do so. This doctrine is obviously false because none of us has given blanket permission to the rulers to apply force, not even to apply force within the law, because none of us have given blanket consent to the law. Contractarianism came to distinguish between just and unjust governments, and it does not do that because no government is utterly just or unjust. Had it declared any government just, it would thereby declare it a utopia.