I’ve often mentioned that I think Van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s rules for rational-critical argumentation are useful. But they’re written in a way that makes them really hard to understand, and I’ve long wanted to put them into more straightforward language. I’ve procrastinated doing that because first I have to explain a bunch of things. The first is one that most people don’t even consider: what are we doing when we disagree?
We’re in such a world of neoliberalism that the assumption is that we’re trying to sell each other something, or we’re competing for a market. But the notion that discourse must be a sales pitch is just one way of thinking about disagreement.
I’ve written and re-written about the various ways of thinking about what we might be trying to do when we disagree, and what I’ve written always ends up heady and abstract and hard to follow. So I’m going to go with a flawed analogy, one I’ve lifted from Aristotle.
Let’s think about wrestling. Also, let’s imagine the wrestlers are Winston and Emma (just so I don’t end up in ambiguous pronoun reference).
Why are Winston and Emma wrestling?
They might be wrestling because they’re trying to kill each other. This wrestling has no rules, no limits, and no goal other than the permanent extermination of the other.
They might be wrestling as champions of their communities; they’re not trying to exterminate the other, but to destroy the other’s political power, and generally to gain some specific political outcomes (change in territory, control of the government, exploitative relationships legalized). In other words, this would be modern warfare in light of the possibility of community judgment– post-Geneva convention warfare.
Or, perhaps, they’re wrestling for even more specific policy outcomes. They’re wrestling over who gets the salmon tonight. Tomorrow, they’ll wrestle again for who gets it tomorrow. This kind of wrestling may or may not have limits on what is allowed. If it doesn’t have limits, it’s outcome-specific demagoguery; if it has limits, particularly regarding tone and civility, then it’s decorous argument (note that’s “decorous,” not “rational”).
Perhaps Winston is a bully, or a faux-bully, who talks a lot about how he beat up others, and he’s using that status as a strong guy to recruit others to his group, or encourage them in their bullying. Emma might choose to wrestle with him to show he’s a bully and a fraud. Since this is most effective when it stays within the rules for rational-critical argumentation, I always think of it as the rational-critical alpha roll. (The point isn’t to engage Winston in rational-critical argumentation, since he probably isn’t interested in it, but to show show that he isn’t, and to shame him. Some people argue that’s what Socrates is doing in some dialogues.)
They might be wrestling as part of a for-profit show, in which everything is scripted, and they’re just following their scripts because the pay is great. This is argutainment. The point is the conflict, not resolving it, because the conflict becomes unprofitable the second it’s resolved. So, Emma and Winston have to keep fighting. But that’s also unsatisfying, since the audience will attach to one or the other.
The most profitable version of this scripted wrestling is that Winston is in-group for the audience, and always nearly loses, and rarely loses, and in which Emma cheats egregiously while the ref isn’t looking. Sometimes, after Emma has cheated relentlessly, Winston cheats once and wins. So, his win looks like payback. It’s still scripted, and it’s still really for show.
Another kind of argutainment is so dominant that I think I have to mention it. This is when Emma and Winston don’t actually wrestle at all. Winston wrestles with a plastic doll that has “EMA” written on it (or a man filled with straw) and wins (what a shock). I think of this as straw man argutainment.
Emma and Winston might be members of a college wrestling team, and the point of their wrestling is to bring honor to their college. (Or just to win.) There are lots of rules. This is decorous agonism.
Perhaps they’re friends, and they think it’s fun to wrestle. They each want to win, but not badly enough to hurt the other. There’s no referee because they’ll try to be fair. This is friendly wrangling.
Perhaps they believe that wrestling is a really good sport because it gives a healthy kind of flexibility and strength, and they want to wrestle with each other in order to improve themselves and each other. When we make the analogy to argumentation, this is rational-critical argumentation.
Sometimes Emma and Winston aren’t wrestling with each other at all. This is the tai-chi of argumentation, in which people simply admire the moves an individual makes. This has two types. One is very rigid, and says that there is a right way to make every move, and Emma and Winston can be assessed as to which one most fits the correct form, regardless of whether it’s actually a good way to wrestle. Let’s call this standardized testing. The second is that Emma and Winston each demonstrate the moves they like to make, and they simply watch each other, perhaps learning, perhaps not. I tend to think of that as the expressive model.
Generally, when people set out a list, it’s an expeditio—a list that sets one up for being the right choice. I think every one of these is a valid choice, depending on the circumstances. Every single one is also a bad choice, depending on the circumstances.
[As an aside, I’ll say that one grump I have about scholarship in rhetoric and writing is that it too often begins by assuming that only one of the above goals is valid, or that we all have to agree as to which is the model we should be promoting. That notion that there is only one kind of correct public discourse is a claim that can’t be defended through rational-critical discourse, which is kind of funny if you have the excessively pedantic sense of humor I have. I’m on the side of people arguing for various goals, various needs, various means, and teaching students that there are those different ways of arguing.]
One more piece of background information before I can get to the ten rules. The market model of knowledge says that the belief that sells the most is the best belief—that’s a version of the argutainment model. It says that the argument that pleases the most people is the best. There is, as far as I can tell, no evidence that claim is anything other than a Moebius strip of justification. Slavery, Nazism, eugenics, surgeons refusing to wash their hands, mullets—all of those meet the market model of belief standard for good belief. It’s a bad model. What’s popular, especially when not all opinions are weighted equally (the market model gives more preference to the opinions held by people with more money), is not necessarily what is ethical, in the long-term best interest of the community, or what the majority of people want.
If Winston and Emma are disagreeing about who should do the dishes, they could see it as a zero-sum argument—they win to the extent that they get the other to do the dishes. Their disagreement then becomes a way to get the other to submit. They’re either in outcome-specific demagoguery or decorous argument still oriented toward getting their way. If Winston and Emma see their disagreement about the dishes as a question of who wins, who gets the other to submit, or who is the better person, they’re seeing the disagreement about the dishes as just one of many instances that are really about a zero-sum contests as to which of them is a better person (or which one is doing more, or sacrificing more).
Fuck that shit. I had that marriage. It was bad.
So, let’s imagine that Winston and Emma disagree deeply but they don’t think the other is evil. They have, basically, two ways of approaching the disagreement that will serve them well. One is the expressive model, in which they each express what they believe, and they try to understand the other. Agreement, persuasion, argumentation—all of those are off the table. It’s just about listening. This way of approaching disagreement is incredibly powerful, as shown by projects like Hands Across the Hills or Divided We Fall.
That model is about resolving about our serious cultural problems that come from people who breathe deep in a media world that relies on the demonization of others. The expressive model is vexed when it comes to systemic issues, ones that don’t necessarily rely on the conscious intentions or feelings of individuals. Imagine that Winston refuses to wear a mask. He doesn’t intend to infect others or get infected; he thinks that, by doing exactly what his media tells him to do, he’s showing his individuality and independent judgment.
There is no way to get Winston to understand the irrationality of his position (and it is irrational) from within the expressive or argutainment model. From within those models, his position seems fine.
So here we are at the rational-critical model. It isn’t persuasive. It doesn’t work within the market model of discourse. It isn’t about selling anything. It isn’t about making everyone feel good. It isn’t about an agent who gains compliance on the part of the object.
It’s about both Emma and Winston believing, simultaneously, that their positions are so right that they can withstand the strongest counterarguments, and that they might be wrong, so they’re open to disproof. And these are the conditions of disproof. I find that, when I’m talking about this issue, I have to emphasize that these are not the rules everyone has to follow in every conversation (that’s why there’s this long lead up). You can have a great conversation without following these rules. If you’re playing soccer, and you pick up the ball and run with it, you’ve either committed a foul or you aren’t playing soccer any more. You might have just invented rugby.
If I say, “Here are the characteristics of warblers,” someone saying, “But kangaroos aren’t like that” is not actually proving me wrong. Kangaroos are great; I’m not saying they aren’t. But they aren’t warblers.
One more piece of background information. Because we are so polarized, if I say anything about Democrats or Republicans, hot cognition is triggered, so let’s imagine that there are two political parties—one led by Chester (called Chesterians), and the other led by Hubert (Hubertians), and they disagree about the best methods of keeping squirrels (considered bad by both parties) from getting to the red ball (considered good by both parties). Winston is a Chesterian, and Emma is a Hubertian.
Okay, the rules.
1. Freedom rule
“Parties must not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from casting doubt on standpoints.”
This rule prohibits argumentum ad baculum—Winston can’t threaten to hurt, fire, or harm Emma for disagreeing with him and still have their discussion be a rational-critical disagreement. Of course, there are lots of situations in which a good and productive disagreement might have Winston telling Emma she is not allowed to make certain arguments. If Emma is CEO and Winston is the company attorney, and Emma advocates a course of action that could get them sued, Winston would be wise to say, “If you advocate that ever again, I will quit as your attorney.” Winston might threaten to fire Emma if she keeps making racist arguments; Winston might threaten to break up with her if she says abusive things to him. It isn’t a rational-critical disagreement, but Winston might be wise to decide that a rational-critical argument was never on the table anyway.
Appeals to emotion aren’t necessarily a problem in rational-critical argumentation. They are fallacious (argumentum ad misericordiam) under some circumstances. If Winston says that it will break his heart if Emma makes certain arguments, and Winston really doesn’t want to hear that argument, he can set that boundary, but it isn’t a rational-critical disagreement from that point on.
In other words, people can set boundaries for discussions; if they can’t agree on those boundaries, then they might need to have a rational-critical disagreement about what those boundaries are. It might not be possible for them to agree on boundaries; it might be an issue that isn’t subject to rational-critical disagreement, or one of the people involved might be incapable of arguing rationally about it.
2. Burden of proof rule
“A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked by the other party to do so.”
In general, the rule of thumb is that the affirmative (“A is B” or “A leads to B”) has the burden of proof because negatives (“A is not B” or “A does not lead to B”) can be hard to prove. For instance, if Emma and Winston are arguing about whether a politician, Hubert, is racist, it’s going to be almost impossible to have a good conversation unless Winston first says why he thinks Hubert is racist (he’s making the affirmative case, affirming that something is true). Then Emma can refute it (since she has the negative case, saying that Winston’s claim is not true). But, once Emma starts to refute that claim, then she has the burden of proof to support whatever claims she is making (such as that Winston has a bad definition of “racist”).
People try to avoid the burden of proof by shifting the stasis (that is, trying to change what the argument is about). Motivism, ad hominem, genetic fallacy, and various fallacies that result from binary thinking fall into this category. If Emma says to Winston, “Oh, you’re just saying that Hubert is racist because you’re a Social Justice Warrior, and you think you’re so woke,” that’s motivism and ad hominem (Emma gets a twofer!). She’s violated this rule because she’s trying to make Winston’s character the issue rather than Hubert’s racism. If Emma believes that only Chesterians think Hubert is racist, and she believes that all Chesterians are socialists, and all socialists are Stalinists, then she might say, “Oh, Hubert is racist? Well, how did that whole gulag thing work out?” and try to engage Winston in a defense of Stalinism. That’s a violation of this rule—she’s trying to make Stalinism the issue.
Most people arguing for conspiracy theories violate this rule—the more that they’re claiming there is a huge coverup, the more likely they are to avoid the burden of proof. People arguing about the existence of God throw the burden of proof back and forth like a long and boring tennis game.
A move that is often (but not always) a violation of this rule is the fallacy of tu quoque (sometimes called the accusation of hypocrisy). If Winston says, “Hubert is racist,” and Emma says, “Well, what about that time that a Chesterian said something racist?” she might be violating the rule. It depends on what claim Winston is making. If Winston is claiming that Chesterians are better than Hubertians, what she’s saying is relevant. If he’s saying that Hubert shouldn’t be in charge of the Senate Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, it’s irrelevant, and a violation of this rule.
This point—what are we arguing about?—is important for understanding fallacies, since a lot of moves are fallacious because they’re irrelevant. If Winston says, “Chester is a young and strong dog who can withstand the stress of protecting the red ball,” then Emma pointing out that Winston has a long history of lying about Chester’s health is relevant. It’s part of a rational-critical argument. But Emma arguing that Winston shouldn’t be believed because he likes Nickelback is an ad hominem since it’s irrelevant.
If Emma points out that Winston has often lied about Chester’s health and so shouldn’t be believed now, and Winston says that Emma really hurt his feelings, and she owes him an apology for hurting his feelings, he’s trying to shift the stasis to the question of his feelings. If he says that Emma shouldn’t criticize him because he recently broke a nail, and he’s really upset about it—it’s either a violation of the first rule (some claims are off the table) or this one. Or both!
3. Standpoint rule
“A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party.”
This rule prohibits the straw man fallacy—if Emma has a complicated and nuanced argument, and Winston attributes to her a really stupid argument, he’s violated this rule.
People violate this rule while thinking they’re making good arguments for three reasons: first, in-group/out-group thinking (which reduces everything to us v. them); second, and closely related, the tendency to think in paired terms; third, and perhaps most important, inoculation.
In a culture of demagoguery, and we’re in one, people believe that our vexed, complicated, varied, and nuanced world of policy options is reduced to two groups: us and them. Us is narrowly defined, and “Them” is simply anyone who is not Us. The research on us v. them thinking (in-group v. out-group) is clear that people committed to this way of thinking about the world homogenize the out-group. So, if your in-group is Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, and you’re deep in a culture of demagoguery, then you’re quite likely to believe that Evangelical Lutherans, Muslims, atheists, Satanists are pretty much all the same. [1] Therefore, you think you have proven that this ELCA person is bad by presenting an example of something a Satanist did or said. [2]
This rule and the “unexpressed premise rule” have a complicated relationship. In a good argument, people sort them out. In the fallacious version, the unexpressed premise is inferred by identity: the sort of person who argues this is a member of that group, and they also argue that. An example of false inferences from identity would something like this. Imagine that Emma argues that we should be nice to little dogs, and Chesterians are known for hating little dogs, then Winston might infer that she must not be Chesterian. If Chesterians are also known for hating squirrels, then Winston might infer that Emma must like squirrels. (That’s how the false inference about ELCA Lutherans being Satanists works.)
It feels like a logical inference, but only if Winston falsely assumes that all Chesterians are the same. The way his argument works is:
Everyone is either A or B. All A do C. All B do D. Emma does not do C; therefore, she must not be A. Therefore, she must be B; therefore she must do D.
(Everyone is either Chesterian or Hubertian; all Chesterians hate little dogs; Emma does not hate little dogs; therefore, she must be Hubertian; all Hubertians like squirrels; therefore, Emma must like squirrels.)
His whole chain of inferences becomes at best a possible inference if there are options other than A or B (Chesterians or Hubertians), most (but not all) Chesterians hate little dogs, and so on. Winston is attacking Emma on a point not related to the standpoint she actually advanced.
4. Relevance rule
“A party may defend a standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.”
This rule is pretty straightforward; again, it’s about staying on-topic. It prohibits fallacies of relevance—such as ad hominem, ad misericordiam (irrelevant appeal to pity), ad vericundiam (irrelevant appeal to authority), and non sequitur (the large category of drawing a conclusion that doesn’t follow).
As mentioned above, an attack on the character of an interlocutor isn’t necessarily irrelevant and therefore not necessarily fallacious. Similarly, appeals to emotions or authority aren’t necessarily irrelevant. All arguments have an emotional connection—we disagree because we care about something. If we didn’t care at all—if we had no emotional attachment to the issue—we wouldn’t bother disagreeing. If Winston argues that being nice to little dogs helps squirrels get to the red ball, it’s because he believes that squirrels getting to the red ball is a bad thing. He doesn’t want it to happen. He is afraid of it happening.
If Emma believes that the Chesterian position about little dogs causes unnecessary cruelty to little dogs, then she cares about little dogs; it makes her sad. People who argue that a policy is good because it will save a lot of money or it’s bad because it will cost a lot of money have an affective attachment to money; they like it.
If Winston and Emma are disagreeing about whether little dogs are conspiring with squirrels, and Winston tells a highly emotional story about how a little dog once took food from a Great Dane puppy, that’s a violation of this rule. Not because it’s highly emotional, but because it’s irrelevant.
Appeals to authority are similar. Imagine Emma says, “Little dogs are not involved in the conspiracy; I am personally certain of this.” That’s probably an irrelevant appeal to authority—it’s an appeal to her personal conviction, and her personal conviction is irrelevant. It’s only relevant if she is an expert who has read every study on the issue, and looked at all the evidence. Emma saying, “Well, Ruth has concluded that squirrels are not involved, and she is a Supreme Court justice” (or Nobel prize winner, famous professor at a prestigious university, person with impressive degrees, tremendously successful entrepreneur) is a violation of this rule, since there isn’t a Nobel prize in the squirrel conspiracy.
Similarly, appeals to Scripture, a quote from Einstein, something your stylist told you that her brother-in-law’s chiropractor’s lawyer told him is an irrelevant appeal to authority.
It’s possible to have really fun and interesting conversations in which non-experts speculate on topics, but it’s just shooting the breeze.
The last fallacy of relevance I want to mention (there are lots more) is the big category of non sequitur. There are lots, and many lists of fallacies split them into different kinds. But, basically, they all come down to a tendency we have to think a true argument is a valid argument, and a true argument has the form of “true statement because another true statement.”
Emma might believe that “little dogs are good because many bunnies are fluffy.” Many bunnies are fluffy, but that has nothing to do with whether little dogs are good (although, personally, I do think they are). That argument about bunnies is irrelevant, even if true, so it’s a violation of this rule.
5. Unexpressed premise rule
“A party may not deny premise that he or she has left implicit or falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party.”
This one is really hard for some people to understand—that an argument they’re making might assume a premise of which they’re unaware. They think that you know what you’re assuming. We’re especially likely to violate this rule when we adopt an argument from another source that sounds good, and we haven’t really thought it through.
I got into this argument recently. Someone said something along the lines of, “Liberals are idiots because they appeal to stereotypes.” That’s appealing to a stereotype, but the argument assumes that appealing to stereotypes is idiotic. So, the person was saying they’re an idiot. I couldn’t get them to understand that their argument logically assumed a premise they didn’t believe. They got mad because they thought I was calling them an idiot, and I couldn’t get them to understand that by their own argument they were an idiot. They were calling themselves an idiot, and that’s what made it a bad argument.
We’re responsible for our premises. A lot of interesting disagreements arise because we disagree about the premises, and so we end up having to talk about things like whether stereotypes are bad, if we can reason without them (we can’t), what distinguishes good from bad stereotypes.
6. Starting point rule
“A party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point.”
This violation of the rule often goes by the phrase “begging the question” (a phrase that leads to a lot of confusion, since people now use that phrase to refer to something else entirely—when something we’re arguing leads us to have to consider another question), or “assuming what’s at stake.” It’s really a kind of circular argument.
So, if Emma were to say, “Okay, we both agree that size is unrelated to goodness,” that would violate this rule, since Winston assumes size and goodness are related. (Socrates does this all the time in Platonic dialogues, tricking his interlocutor to agree to a premise they don’t actually believe.) Van Eemeren and Grotendoorst give examples of people sliding premises into an argument via adjectives, adverbs, nouns or noun phrases (if Emma were to refer to “the ridiculous notion that size and goodness are related,” “Chester’s dishonestly arguing that,” “the delusion,” or “the proposition only promoted by idiots that…”).
Again, I’m not saying those sorts of moves are prohibited, but when a disagreement is in this realm, it isn’t rational-critical argumentation. It might be useful; it might be productive; it might be necessary. It just isn’t rational-critical.
I’ve run across the second part of this rule less often—when people try to deny a premise that is an accepted starting point (except in the kind of situation discussed in #5, and I don’t think that’s what they mean here). That’s probably because most of my disagreements are in social media, and so when people try to misrepresent the beginning of the argument, it’s easy enough to go up a thread and quote them.
It does happen sometimes—“I never said that…” when they clearly did. When it’s pointed out that they did say it, you can sometimes have a good conversation—they really did express themselves badly, leave out a word, use terms that have different meanings in different contexts. But if they did say it, and they won’t own it, this isn’t a good faith argument at all.
7. Argument scheme rule
“A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied.”
There are a few ways to think of this one, and here I part company with Van Eemeren and Grootendorst. They go on to describe a really limited way of thinking about argumentation that is hard to apply for how people actually think. They don’t seem to imagine disagreements that happen within the messy world of ideological commitments (including religion). I think we are all always within that world.
That we are always arguing from within our ideological commitments doesn’t mean we’re incapable of rational-critical argumentation.
They’re making a crucial point: it isn’t just what you say, but how you’re arguing for it. Winston might argue that little dogs are part of the squirrel conspiracy by:
– relying on a single example of a little dog that was friends with a squirrel;
– finding one quote from The Book of Dog that can be read as condemning little dogs;
– arguing that since Goehring liked little dogs, defending little dogs makes you a Nazi;
– appealing to one study that said little dogs are evil;
– describing a personal experience with a little dog.
These are all argument schemes, ways of arguing.
If Winston is engaged in rational-critical argumentation (or even good faith argumentation—a lower bar, and a different post), then he is committed to viewing those ways of arguing being valid, regardless of what position they support. So, if Emma can provide a single example, find one quote from the Book of Dog, point out Hitler’s love of big dogs, cite one study, describe one personal experience, if Winston is engaged in rational-critical argumentation, he has to abandon his claim or find new evidence.
If Winston won’t abandon the claim or find new evidence, then his argument is grounded in ways of arguing he thinks invalid. Winston is admitting that he is using “argument” to defend a position he will neither abandon nor open to scrutiny.
In my experience, the sort of person who thinks a single example proves them right, but dozens of counter-examples are irrelevant isn’t open to persuasion at all. They’re also total suckers for cons because they tend to reason from in-group loyalty, and so anyone who appears to them to be in-group can sell them a used car with neither engine nor wheels.
8. Validity rule
“A party may only use arguments in its argumentation that are logically valid or capable of being made logically valid by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises.”
For me, this is compressed in the previous rule, since I’ve never run across anyone who violates this rule who didn’t also violate #7. But, basically, if you’re engaged in rational-critical argumentation, you worry about the validity of the arguments you’re making, not just whether you’ve found talking points that make you feel good about the stance you already had.
9. Closure rule
“A failed defense of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting it and a conclusive defense of the standpoint must result in the other party retracting its doubt about the standpoint.”
Eh, kind of.
A lot of arguments on social media end up with someone doing their impression of the knight that clearly lost. People need to enter a disagreement with some clear sense as to what it would mean to be proven wrong. If Emma and Winston engage in rational-critical argumentation, and Emma can’t defend her position, she really should say, “Yeah, I can’t defend this.”
And that should be an important moment of self-reflection. But she shouldn’t abandon an important belief just because she “lost” one argument. She should, however, look into why she “lost” it. Perhaps she was relying entirely on arguments her in-group media had told her; perhaps the argument moved fast, and she didn’t notice the skeezy moves of Winston; perhaps she needs to develop a more nuanced argument.
Perhaps she needs to get out of her informational enclave, and try to find and read the smartest opposition arguments.
Yeah, actually, we all need to do that.
10. Usage rule
“A party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and a party must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible.”
It’s always puzzled me that Van Eemeren and Grootendorst make this the tenth rule (Habermas makes it the first).
It seems to me that the beginning of any disagreement is that people mean what they say.
The less charitable interpretation is that this rule is silly. I’ve spent years arguing with people, and I’ve rarely run across an individual who is deliberately ambiguous or who chooses to be unclear. People say things that seem clear to us at the time. If someone posts something, and later tries to say they meant something else, we’re litigating rule #6.
There are lots of people who are deliberately ambiguous (“what is is,” “quality,” “natural”), but that’s bad faith argumentation.
So,, if you do find yourself arguing with someone who refuses to clarify their position, they’re a jerk. They aren’t just refusing to engage in rational-critical argumentation; they’re also uninteresting.
[1] I’m sorry to say that this is not one of my ridiculous hypotheticals.
[2] It’s all about paired terms, which is another post I need to write, although Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecha already explained it very well.