Argumentation Library Eddo Rigotti Sara Greco Inference in Argumentation A Topics-Based Approach to Argument Schemes Argumentation Library Volume 34 Series editor Frans H. van Eemeren, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Leiden University, The Netherlands Editorial Board Maurice A. Finocchiaro, University of Nevada, USA Bart Garssen, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands David Zarefsky, Northwestern University, USA Since 1986 Springer, formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers, publishes the international interdisciplinary journal Argumentation. This journal is a medium for distributing contributions to the study of argumentation from all schools of thought. From a journal that published guest-edited issues devoted to specific themes, Argumentation has developed into a regular journal providing a platform for discussing all theoretical aspects of argumentative discourse. Since 1999 the journal has an accompanying book series consisting of volumes containing substantialcontributionstothestudyofargumentation.TheArgumentationLibrary aimstobeahighqualitybookseriesconsistingofmonographsandeditedvolumes. It publishes texts offering important theoretical insights in certain major charac- teristicsofargumentative discourseinordertoinformtheinternationalcommunity of argumentation theorists of recent developments in the field. The insights concerned may pertain to the process of argumentation but also to aspects of argumentative texts resulting from this process. This means that books will be published not only on various types of argumentative procedures, but also on the features of enthymematic argumentation, argumentation structures, argument schemes and fallacies. Contributions to the series can be made by scholars from a broad variety of disciplines, ranging from law to history, from linguistics to theology, and from science to sociology. In particular, contributions are invited from argumentation theorists with a background in informal or formal logic, modern or classical rhetoric, and discourse analysis or speech communication. Aprerequisiteinallcasesisthatthecontributioninvolvedisoriginalandprovides the forum of argumentation theorists with an exemplary specimen of advanced scholarship. The Argumentation Library should enrich the study of argumentation with insights that enhance its quality and constitute a fruitful starting point for further research and application. All proposals will be carefully taken into consideration by the editors. If the prospects for including a certain project in the series arerealistic,theauthor(s) willbeinvited tosendatleast threerepresentative chaptersoftheirmanuscriptforreviewtotheeditors.Incasethemanuscriptisthen judged eligible for publication, the complete manuscript will be reviewed by outside expert referees. Only then a final decision can be taken concerning publication. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5642 Eddo Rigotti Sara Greco (cid:129) Inference in Argumentation A Topics-Based Approach to Argument Schemes 123 EddoRigotti SaraGreco Institute of Argumentation, Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics andSemiotics Linguistics andSemiotics Universitàdella Svizzera italiana(USI) Universitàdella Svizzera italiana(USI) Lugano,Switzerland Lugano,Switzerland ISSN 1566-7650 ISSN 2215-1907 (electronic) Argumentation Library ISBN978-3-030-04566-1 ISBN978-3-030-04568-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04568-5 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2018961722 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2019 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland To our students and colleagues and To those who wish to venture into this research with us Preface Why We Wrote This Book Thisvolumeintroducesatheoreticalproposalbasedonfifteenyearsofresearchon inferenceinargumentation.Thefruitofourwork,calledtheArgumentumModelof Topics (henceforth: AMT, see Rigotti and Greco 2006, 2010), has the ambition of providing a theoretical and methodological tool to analyze the inferential config- uration of arguments, as supported by loci. This book is the result of a shared endeavorandpresentsresearchontheAMTthatthetwoauthorshavedevelopedin continuous dialogue over the years, starting in September 2004.1 The two authors of this book are responsible for the foundation of the AMT and its presentation in this monograph (including possible mistakes). Yet, throughout the years, the dia- logue around this model has been animated by other colleagues at the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics in the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI)inLugano(Switzerland),especiallyAndreaRocciandRudiPalmieri,2andby othernationalandinternationalcolleagues.Tomentionbutthemostimportantand stable contributors to this stimulating dialogue, Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont and her colleagues at the University of Neuchâtel, Frans van Eemeren and his col- leagues at the University of Amsterdam, Sara Cigada, Maria Cristina Gatti, and Giovanni Gobber at the Catholic University of Milan (Italy) were continuously involved. TheAMTisanchoredincontemporaryargumentationstudiesandintendstobea tool for students, scholars, and analysts of argumentation interested in the analysis 1In this sense, the authorship of the book is shared between the two authors. However, Eddo RigottiwrotethefirstversionofChaps.1–3andSects.4.1–4.5ofChap.4;SaraGrecowrotethe first versionof Chaps. 5,7,8,plusSect.3.4 ofChap.3andSects. 4.6and4.7within Chap.4. Chapter6andthePrefacewerewrittenjointly. 2Notably,asaconcretesignofthiscontinuousdialogue,inChap.8(Sect.8.2)wereportpartofa scientificpaperontheAMTwrittenbyourcolleaguePalmieri(2012).Wearegratefultoboththe authorandtheeditorsofthejournalILCEA,whokindlygranteduspermissiontotranslateitfrom FrenchintoEnglish,andtore-elaborateandreproducepartoftheoriginalcontents. vii viii Preface of argument schemes.3 The roots of the AMT, however, ramify throughout the centuriesand involvescholars suchasAristotle,Cicero, Boethiusandthetradition of topics afterward. We have divided this book into two parts. Part I contains the reconstruction of these roots. Part II presents and discusses the AMT against the backdrop of this tradition. In other words, we make a theoretical proposal to our community of argumentation scholars while also explaining where this proposal comesfrom.InthewordsofwriterW.SomersetMaughan(1938,Thesummingup), “Traditionisaguideandnotajailer”:Suchhasbeenourattitudeandpolicyinthe relationship with the past tradition presented here. This means that, while acknowledging and reviving historical contributions, the AMT is not a synthesis of the past, but a novel and autonomous proposal for which we take full respon- sibility as authors and scholars. As a corollary, our reconstruction of the past in Part I of the book only covers the most significant contributions from a theoretical point of view; we do not have the ambition to cover all of the authors who have contributed to dialectic (logic) and rhetoric, and we do not take philology as our main aim (other authors have published valuable critical editions of ancient manuscripts,whichwewillciteineverychapter).Ourgazeonthepastmaintainsa contemporary focus: Starting from the problem of inference in argumentation as modern argumentation scholars would tackle it, we go back throughout the cen- turies and consider those contributions that, in our view, should be included in contemporary dialogue. We put ourselves in dialogue with the different authors within a kaleidoscopic tradition, trying to draw the most important contributions from it while consciously rereading them in light of our own proposal. Several reasons have brought us to base the presentation of our model on a reconstructionofprecedingaccounts.Aboveall,wefeelthatthepotentialofseveral aspectswithin previousresearch ontopicshasnotyetbeenadequately considered. Forexample,someauthorshavebeenoverlooked;forotherauthors,suchasCicero and Aristotle, albeit everybody agrees that their contribution to the study of argu- mentationingeneralandofinferenceinparticularisimmense,someaspectscould be better illuminated. A further gap in the current literature on argumentation schemes, as we understand it, regards a historical account of how the tradition of topics has been progressively abandoned in educational programs and in scientific accounts in continental Europe after the Middle Ages and then how it has been eventually revived. Our historical account contributes to explaining what has remained of topics and for what reasons. In what follows, before discussing the core elements of our model for the analysis of inference in argumentation, we will briefly introduce our general the- oretical view of argumentation and specify what we mean by inference. 3Itislargelyacknowledgedthatthetheoreticalconceptofargumentschemes,whichreferstothe inferential configuration of arguments in modern and contemporary argumentation studies, is somehow (at least from a functional viewpoint) the heir of topoi–loci (see Braet 2005 on this point). Preface ix Argumentation in Communication: A Dialogic Perspective Ourbookdeals withaveryspecificphenomenon:inference.Onourinterpretation, inference regards how arguments support standpoints; i.e., how the degree of cer- tainty attributed to an argument is transferred to an uncertain standpoint. Before detailing the basic definitions that we assume in this volume, it is important to say that we adopt the pragma-dialectical model (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 2004; van Eemeren 2010) as a general framework for under- standing argumentation. This does not mean that we completely comply with this modelandthatwedonothaverevisionstopropose.Onthecontrary,aswelayout the definition of inference and argument in this Preface, differences in our posi- tioning from the pragma-dialectical account will surface. Most importantly, the proposal of the AMT offers a different account of argument schemes than pragma-dialectics. Additionally, in other publications we have articulated our dis- tance from pragma-dialectics in other important regards. To mention but one example, Sara Greco, together with colleagues, developed an understanding of the notion of issue in argumentative discussions, attributing it a primacy over the pragma-dialecticalnotionofastandpoint,especiallyinthecontextofcollaborative argumentation(Greco2016;SchärandGreco2018;Grecoetal.2017;Schär2018). Despite these differences, however, there are important reasons why we frame theAMTwithinapragma-dialecticalframework.Asastartingpoint,theAMTdoes not intend to be a complete model of argumentation: It focuses on inference only, more precisely, on the standpoint–argument relation. This is the limited extent oftheintendedreachofourcontribution:Inasense,wewillonlytrytoilluminatea micro-spot, leaving many things out. Thus, the AMT is compatible with pragma-dialectics, so to say, in extensional terms, as pragma-dialectics covers a much broader territory than the AMT. More importantly, we assume the idea from pragma-dialectics that argumenta- tion is a dialogic and social process, in which different parties try to solve a differenceofopiniononthemerits,intheefforttoachieveareasonableresolution. As van Eemeren et al. (2014: 6) put it, Argumentationisnotaimedatmakingtheaddresseeacceptastandpointautomatically,as may happen in persuasion based on sentiments or prejudice. Instead, it is aimed at con- vincing the addressee of the acceptability of the standpoint by making them see that mutuallysharedcriticalstandardsofreasonablenesshavebeenmet.Tryingtoconvincethe addresseebymeansofargumentationreliesontheideathattheotherpartywillapproach the argumentation constructively, judging its soundness reasonably (van Eemeren et al. 2014:6). These words echo a fundamental and optimistic view of interpersonal dialogic exchange, which we have already commented upon in Rigotti and Greco (2005), andwhichmightultimatelybetracedbacktoaprinciplethatAristotleenunciatesin his Rhetoric: x Preface …buttrueandbetter[facts]arebynaturealwaysmoreproductiveofgoodsyllogismsand, inaword,morepersuasive(…).Andifitisarguedthatgreatharmcanbedonebyunjustly usingsuchpowerofwords,thisobjectionappliestoallgoodthingsexceptforvirtue,and mostofalltothemostusefulthings,likestrength,health,wealth,andmilitarystrategy;for by using these justly one would do the greatest good and unjustly, the greatest harm (RhetoricI,1354b-1355a,translationfromKennedy1991:35). This kind of approach is perfectly in line with our shared interest in argumen- tationindifferentcontextsofcommunicativeactivity(RigottiandRocci2006)and with a discourse-analytical, empirical approach to the analysis of real-life argu- mentative discourse. This intersection characterizes the research that both of the authors have conducted, jointly and independently, for more than a decade. In particular,Grecoisinterestedinthepotentialofargumentativedialogueasameans to prevent or resolve escalated interpersonal conflict (Greco Morasso 2011; Greco 2018),andintheareaofcollaborativeargumentationininterpersonalrelationships. These research focuses are compatible with the pragma-dialectical ideal of rea- sonableresolutionofadifferenceofopinion.Insum,theAMTistobeunderstood asaprocessofzeroinginonthestandpoint–argumentinferentialrelation,butinthis bookweframeitwithinawiderframeworkofargumentationasacriticaldiscussion (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 2004), which is realized in differing com- munication contexts and practices (Rigotti and Rocci 2006). AfurtherreasonwhytheAMTiscompatiblewithadialogicalapproachsuchas pragma-dialectics isthat we acknowledge that arguments areconstructed insuch a wayastobeinherentlydirectedtowardanaddressee(oranaudience).Inparticular, the fact that the AMT, as we will explain below, explicitly foresees material– contextual premises, depending on culture and on context, introduces this dialogic principle into the inferential structure of each argument, i.e., within its (explicit or implicit) premises. In this sense, the AMT, despite being a model focused on the micro-level, is intrinsically informed by a dialogical view of argumentation. Notably, some of the authors we consider throughout Part I of this volume do not share this dialogical approach. In fact, some of them have a dialogical–di- alecticalargumentationscenarioinmind(notably,Aristotle),whileothers(e.g.,see Agricola in Chap. 4) conceptualize inference as a process that extends beyond the limits of dialogic argumentation. Throughout this book, we openly adopt the dia- logic and communication-based concept of argumentation that we have just described, but when some author makes an interesting remark about how some notionsdevelopedwithinargumentationmightbeofusetodescribeotherformsof inference, we take note of this. To conclude, in Chap. 7 (Sect. 7.9), we explicitly discuss the reach of the notion of locus within and outside social argumentation. Inference in Argumentation We will now briefly introduce the main concepts at the core of our approach to inference in argumentation. By inference in argumentation we mean how a single argumentsupportsastandpoint,whichisthemainscopeoftheAMT.Wetakethe