Relevance In Argumentation This page intentionally left blank Relevance In Argumentation Douglas Walton University of Winnipeg LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London Camera ready copy for this book was provided by the author. Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the pub- lisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 Cover design by Sean Sciarrone Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walton, Douglas Relevance in argumentation / Douglas Walton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-4759-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8058-4760-X (pbk. : alk. paper) Logic. 2. Relevance. I. Title. BC199.R44W35 2003 168—dc21 2003044099 CIP Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 For Karen, with love This page intentionally left blank Table of Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xv CHAPTER 1: EXAMPLES OF IRRELEVANT ARGUMENTS 1 1. The Exclusionary Function 2 2. Irrelevance in a Political Debate 4 3. Murder is a Horrible Crime 8 4. Problems in Judging an Argument Irrelevant 10 5. Material Relevance 13 6. Other Fallacies of Irrelevance 15 7. Irrelevance in Legal Argumentation 17 8. The Straw Man Fallacy 21 9. Relevance as Relative to a Discussion 25 10. The Dialectical Nature of Relevance 28 CHAPTER!: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 31 1. Aristotle on Misconception of Refutation 32 2. The Ancient Concept of Stasis 35 3. Irrelevance and Digression 38 4. William of Sherwood on Ignoratio Elenchi 42 5. The Obligation Game 44 6. The Port Royal Logic 47 7. Isaac Watts's Logick 49 8. Whately's Elements of Logic 52 9. McCosh on Shifting Ground 55 10. The Perspective of Schiller and Sidgwick 57 CHAPTERS: TEXTBOOK TREATMENTS OF IRRELEVANCE 61 1. Minimalistic Aristotelian Accounts 62 2. Problematic Cases 64 3. The Dual Approach 68 4. Darner: Further Subtleties of Relevance 71 5. Johnson and Blair: Irrelevant Reason and Red Herring 74 6. Govier: Probative Relevance 77 7. Hurley: Another Variant of the Dual Approach 80 8. Straw Man and Relevance 82 9. The Current Predicament 85 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 4: THE PROBLEM OF ANALYZING RELEVANCE 89 1. The Paradoxes 90 2. Relevance and Conditionals 92 3. Relevance Logic and Formal Relevance Systems 95 4. Appeals to Emotion 100 5. Apparent Relevance 105 6. Pragmatic Conversational Failures 108 7. Conversational Implicature 111 8. Problems with the Gricean Approach 113 9. Argument Diagramming 115 10. Components of a Theory of Relevance 120 CHAPTER 5: THE DIALECTICAL NATURE OF RELEVANCE 125 1. Relevance in a Persuasion Dialogue 126 2. Relevance in Information-Seeking Dialogue 131 3. Other Types of Dialogue 135 4. Eristic Dialogue 139 5. Deliberation and Inquiry 141 6. Dialectical Shifts 147 7. Functional Embeddings 151 8. The Problem of Premise Availability 155 9. Functional Embedding and Relevance 158 10. Problems to be Solved 161 CHAPTER 6: EVIDENCE AND METHODS FOR MAKING RELEVANCE JUDGMENTS 167 1. The Target Concept of Relevance 168 2. Argument Chaining and Levels of Abstraction 172 3. The Method of Argument Extrapolation 177 4. Modeling Shifts, Embeddings and Fallacies 186 5. Analysis of the Currency Conversion Case 191 6. The Method of Profile Reconstruction 195 7. Outline of a Combined Method 198 8. Extensions of the New Theory 203 9. Limitations of the New Method 208 10. Irrelevance as a Procedural Charge 211 CHAPTER?: FALLACIES OF IRRELEVANCE 215 1. The New Dialectical Theory of Fallacious Irrelevance 216 2. Evaluation of Cases Using the Two Theories 219 3. Insufficiency and Irrelevance 223 4. Enthymemes and Relevance 226 5. The Red Herring Fallacy 230 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix 6. Diversion and Pettifoggery 232 7. The Separation Problem 235 8. Ad Hominem Arguments and Irrelevance 237 9. Irrelevance, Fallacies, and Shifts 238 10. Summary of the New Theory 240 CHAPTER 8: RELEVANCE IN LEGAL ARGUMENTATION AND POLITICAL DEBATE 247 1. Relevance Rules in the Canadian House of Commons 247 2. The Problem of Relevance in Political Debate 251 3. Relevance in Evidence Law 254 4. Wigmore on Relevance 259 5. Argument Diagramming in Evidence Law 264 6. Legal Exclusion of Relevant Evidence 268 7. The Natural System of Legal Relevance 272 8. Probative Weight in Argument Diagramming 276 9. The Trial as a Framework of Relevance 279 10. The Critical Standpoint 284 BIBLIOGRAPHY 289 AUTHOR INDEX 299 SUBJECT INDEX 303