Moira Howes and Catherine Hundleby ABSTRACT: While anger can derail argumentation, it can also help arguers and audiences to reason together in argumentation. Anger can provide information about premises, biases, goals, discussants, and depth of disagreement that people might otherwise fail to recognize or prematurely dismiss. Anger can also enhance the salience of certain premises...

Who is the best moral reasoner, the judge or the legislator? The aim of this paper is to refine this question, by distinguishing between different metaethical assumptions. If the meta-ethical assumptions of arguers are incompatible or if their institutional goal is to establish some truth, there is no way of entering in a constructive argumentative activity. My claim is that only when arguers renounce any epistemic temptation and feel empathy with respect to others’ arguments, can institutions improve the quality of (...) their judicial and democratic arguments, and therefore gain authority. (shrink)

Education and cognition research today generally recognize the tri-dimensional nature of reasoning processes as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, there is so far no theoretical framework articulating these three dimensions from a descriptive perspective. This paper aims at presenting a first model of how group emotions work in collective reasoning, and specifies their social and cognitive functions. This model is inspired both from a multidisciplinary literature review and our extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus of videotaped (...) student debates. The cognitive function of emotions is defined in reference to the process of schematization and associated emotional framing. On the other hand, the social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk, implying specific politeness rules or face-preservation systems. We believe that our multi-dimensional and multi-level approach to group reasoning, which mostly employs a linguistic perspective, can be applied to a diversity of contexts. We hope it will serve as a basis for further discussion on the role of emotions in reasoning among the interdisciplinary community of argumentation studies. (shrink)

This paper discusses how an understanding of Jung's psychological types is important for the relevance of Gilbert's multi-modal argumentation theory. Moreover, it highlights how the types have been confirmed by contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Based on Gilbert's approach, I extend multi-modal argumentation to the area of legal argumentation. It seems that when we leave behind the traditional fortress of “logical” legal argumentation, we "discover" alternate modes that have always been present, concealed in the theoretically underestimated rhetorical skills of arguers.

This paper explores the interrelations between temporality and emotion in rhetorical argumentation. It argues that in situations of uncertainty argumentation affects action via appeals that invoke emotion and thereby translate the distant past and future into the situated present. Using practical inferences, a threefold model for the interrelation of emotion and time in argumentation outlines how argumentative action depends on whether speakers provide reasons for the exigence that makes a decision necessary, the contingency of the decision, and the confidence required (...) to act. Experiences and choices from the past influence the emotions experienced in the present and inform two intertemporal mechanisms that allow speakers and audiences to take the leap of faith that defines decision-making under uncertainty: retrospective forecasting and prospective remembering. Retrospective forecasting establishes a past–future–present link, whereas prospective remembering establishes a future-past-present link, and, together, the two mechanisms provide a situated presence that transcends the temporal constraints of uncertainty. Finally, the applicability of the model is illustrated through an analysis of a speech delivered by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time where the need for decisive, yet argumentative action was crucial. (shrink)

During the last decade, one source of debate in argumentation theory has been the notion that there are different modes of arguing that need to be distinguished when analyzing and evaluating arguments. Visual argument is often cited as a paradigm example. This paper discusses the ways in which it and modes of arguing that invoke non-verbal sounds, smells, tactile sensations, music and other non-verbal entities may be defined and conceptualized. Though some attempts to construct a ‘multimodal’ theory of argument are (...) criticized, it advocates for an argumentation theory that makes room for visual arguing and for other non-verbal modes that have not been explored in depth. In the process, the paper provides a method for identifying the structure of multimodal arguments and argues that adding modes to our theoretical tool box is an important step toward a comprehensive account of argument. (shrink)

Arguments do not occur against silent backdrops. From the drone of televisions to the music in a retail space to the symphony of combustion engines on the street, we are perpetually immersed in sound. We live in a noisy world. The combined sounds of these environments, or soundscapes, provide the very conditions of social interaction. Charles Hirschkind remarked that soundscapes are as necessary "to politics and public reason as are markets, associations, formal institutions, and information networks". These soundscapes are far (...) from neutral and can be designed to promote desired outcomes: soothing tones as you board an airplane to alleviate fear, a blaring voice over the loudspeaker to compel... (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

In the last quarter-century, the emergence of argumentation theory has spurred the development of an extensive literature on the study of argument. It encompasses empirical and theoretical investigations that often have their roots in the different traditions that have studied argument since ancient times – most notably, logic, rhetoric, and dialectics. Against this background, I advocate a “thick” theory of argument that merges traditional theories, weaving together their sometimes discordant approaches to provide an overarching framework for the assessment of arguments (...) in a broad range of contexts. In sketching such a theory, I propose six steps that can “thicken” traditional approaches to argument in the interests of a comprehensive theory. (shrink)

This paper examines, in studies utilizing Gilbert’s Multi-Modal Argumentation Model, processing of emotional arguments in ads which, due to Western Society’s bias, has tended toward logical analysis, even though they are emotional arguments. It explores reframing the analysis in the culture of Informal Logic, with particular reference to issues of the alethic status of premises, the ethics of claims, the context of assumptions, and the question of what constitutes truth in the context of emotions.

In the context of cornerstone ideas of Western Culture, this paper focuses on the issue of why emotional arguments are studied and evaluated from the perspective of logic. Two other issues are briefly considered: whether logical and emotional arguments could/should be examined from the perspective of emotions.

From Spinoza to today, it has been noted that human beings respond to what is unusual in our lives. The advertising community knows this and struggles to find ways to be unusual in the face of an estimated 3,500 ads per day. One way is through emotion. This paper examines arguments made in advertisements where emotional cognition is appealed to and how they differ from ads that appeal to rational cognition.

I examine the concept of the relationship negotiation dialogue in the context of serial arguing. Between argument episodes, marital partners experiencing difficulty may think about entering counseling, or terminating their relationship. Removed from the dialogical context, such judgments involve the notions of argument as inquiry and argument0. I explore the dialectical obligations of a person who decides to end his relationship.