A Challenge and an Opportunity for Argumentation Studies

The body of research reported by Mercier and Sperber, taken as a whole, strongly supports what they call the argumentative hypothesis: that people are prompted to produce reasons not by the desire for either truth or better decision-making but by the prospect of prevailing in an argument. Indeed, they note, examination of human reasoning reveals that people generate reasons that are manifestly poor if judged by epistemic or decision-making standards but that facilitate success in argumentation. On the surface, these findings suggest both that interaction with an adversary will prompt the production of stronger reasons than will solitary thought, and also that the prospect of argumentative success is a stronger motivator than is the search for truth or high-quality decisions. While others may be troubled by these findings, readers of this journal should take heart. Argumentation studies, after all, are oriented to the principle that reasoning with others is the basis of collective decision-making, especially in the absence of knowledge that is certain. But wait. Mercier and Sperber do not mean by "argumentation" what many of us do. They are not talking about normative concepts such as justification, good reasons, or critical thinking. They rely entirely on an effectiveness standard: good arguments are those that will elicit agreement with one's own point of view. They go so far as to claim that reasons judged to be strong by that standard may very well be weak by normative or critical standards. Their findings provide scant support for the justifications often invoked for teaching argumentation, much less for proclaiming its centrality in a liberal arts education. Beyond that, they offer little reassurance to those who would reject a cynical view of human nature in the belief that altruism and cooperation are among our strong motivations. Yet I am not convinced that there is cause for great despair. Indeed, in an important sense Mercier and Sperber's findings validate pedagogical and theoretical approaches that many of us embrace. Consider their claim, for example, that arguers are motivated primarily by the prospect of competitive success in an adversarial environment. The question then becomes: How can an environment be structured in order to use this motivation and direct it toward results that meet the tests of soundness and critical thinking? In other words, can it be the case that the motives of the individual arguers are for competitive success and yet the process of argumentation is likely to achieve a constructive purpose? The answer to this seeming paradox is not hard to find. Let us counter the desire by one party to gain the other's adherence with a competing arguer equally motivated to call the first advocate's claims into doubt or, even better, to dislodge them. Let them interact in a situation where there are ground rules about the proceeding (ranging from the need to take turns to the responsibility not to lie to the authority granted to evidence) that the competitors implicitly accept by virtue of their participation in the proceedings. Anyone violating the ground rules can be called to account by others. Then an argumentative equivalent of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will operate: even as each advocate is working to convince the other to accept his or her views, they are together working toward an outcome that, while not deductively certain, can be embraced with confidence that it is justified for its contribution to knowledge or good decisions. This is the sense of argumentation envisioned by Douglas Ehninger over 40 years ago when he portrayed argumentation as a method for reaching sound conclusions about matters that are uncertain. It is a sense that also underlies systems of procedural validity such as pragma-dialectics. It establishes norms for resolving disagreements that channel the desire of advocates to prevail so that they will still fulfill their obligations to the dialectical process while seeking their own individual success. …