The claim that argumentation has no proper role in either philosophy or education, and especially not in philosophical education, flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and traditional pedagogy. There is, however, something to be said for it because it is really only provocative against a certain philosophical backdrop. Our understanding of the concept "argument" is both reflected by and molded by the specific metaphor that argument-is-war, something with winners and losers, offensive and defensive moments, and an essentially adversarial (...) structure. Such arguments may be suitable for teaching a philosophy, but not for teaching philosophy. Surely, education and philosophy do not need to be conceived as having an adversarial essence-if indeed they are thought to have any essence at all. Accordingly, philosophy and education need more pragmatic goals than even Pierce's idealized notion of truth as the end of inquiry, e.g., the simple furtherance of inquiry. For this, new metaphors for framing and understanding the concept of argumentation are needed, and some suggestions in that direction will be considered. (shrink)

In the pragma-dialectical approach, fallacies are considered incorrect moves in a discussion for which the goal is successful resolution of a dispute. Ten rules are given for effective conduct at the various stages of such a critical discussion. Fallacies are discussed as violations of these rules, taking into account all speech acts which are traditionally recognized as fallacies. Special attention is paid to the role played by implicitness in fallacies in everyday language use. It is stressed that identifying and acknowledging (...) fallacies in ordinary discussions always has a conditional character. Differences between the pragma-dialectical perspective, the Standard Treatment, and the formal logic approach to fallacy analysis are discussed. (shrink)

Coalescent argumentation is a normative ideal that involves the joining together of two disparate claims through recognition and exploration of opposing positions. By uncovering the crucial connection between a claim and the attitudes, beliefs, feelings, values and needs to which it is connected dispute partners are able to identify points of agreement and disagreement. These points can then be utilized to effect coalescence, a joining or merging of divergent positions, by forming the basis for a mutual investigation of non-conflictual options (...) that might otherwise have remained unconsidered. The essay proceeds by defining and discussing ‘argument’, ‘position’ and ‘understanding’. These notions are then brought together to outline the concept of coalescent reasoning. (shrink)

This volume gives a theoretical account of the problem of analyzing and evaluating argumentative discourse. After placing argumentation in a communicative perspective, and then discussing the fallacies that occur when certain rules of communication are violated, the authors offer an alternative to both the linguistically-inspired descriptive and logically-inspired normative approaches to argumentation. The authors characterize argumentation as a complex speech act in a critical discussion aimed at resolving a difference of opinion. The various stages of a critical discussion are outlined, (...) and the communicative and interactional aspects of the speech acts performed in resolving a simple or complex dispute are discussed. After dealing with crucial aspects of analysis and linking the evaluation of argumentative discourse to the analysis, the authors identify the fallacies that can occur at various stages of discussion. Their general aim is to elucidate their own pragma- dialectical perspective on the analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse, bringing together pragmatic insight concerning speech acts and dialectical insight concerning critical discussion. (shrink)