Pressure and Argumentation in Public Controversies

Argumentation, 2004

Argument is often taken to deal with conflicting opinion or belief, while negotiation deals with conflicting goals or interests. It is often accepted that argument ought to comply with some principles or norms. On the other hand, negotiation and bargaining involve concession exchange and tactical use of power, which may be contrasted with attempts to convince others through argument. However, there are cases where it is difficult to draw a clear distinction between bargaining and argument: notably cases where negotiators persuade others through "framing" and cases where the aims of negotiation have to do with public assertion and acceptance. Those cases suggest that the distinction between negotiation and argument is not absolute, and this raises the question whether rules about what is acceptable in argument and rules about what is acceptable in negotiation can all be viewed as instances of more general common norms about human interaction.

Journal of Argumentation in Context, 2016

Contemporary theory of argumentation offers many insights about the ways in which, in the context of a public controversy, arguers should ideally present their arguments and criticize those of their opponents. We also know that in practice not all works out according to the ideal patterns: numerous kinds of derailments (fallacies) are an object of study for argumentation theorists. But how about the use of unfairstrategiesvis-à-vis one’s opponents? What if it is not a matter of occasional derailments but of one party’s systematic refusal to take other parties seriously? What if one party continually forgoes any form of critical testing and instead resorts to threats or blackmail? Can this be countered by the tools of reason? Or should one pay one’s opponent back in the same coin? To gain some grasp of these issues, we describe a number of strategies used in the public controversy about induced earthquakes in Groningen. We check whether these strategies arefair,i.e.balanced, transpar...

Argumentation

Negotiation is not only used to settle differences of interest but also to settle differences of opinion. Discussants who are unable to resolve their difference about the objective worth of a policy or action proposal may be willing to abandon their attempts to convince the other and search instead for a compromise that would, for each of them, though only a second choice yet be preferable to a lasting conflict. Our questions are: First, when is it sensible to enter into negotiations and when would this be unwarranted or even fallacious? Second, what is the nature of a compromise? What does it mean to settle instead of resolve a difference of opinion, and what might be the dialectical consequences of mistaking a compromise for a substantial resolution? Our main aim is to contribute to the theory of argumentation within the context of negotiation and compromise formation and to show how arguing disputants can shift to negotiation in a dialectically virtuous way. Keywords Compromise Á Fallacy of bargaining Á Fallacy of middle ground Á Mixed difference of opinion Á Negotiation Á Resolution & Jan Albert van Laar j.a.

One of Mill’s main arguments for free speech springs from taking disagreement as an epistemically valuable resource for fallible thinkers. Contemporary conciliationist treatments of disagreement spring from the same motivation, but end up seeing the epistemic implications of disagreement quite differently. Conciliationism also encounters complexities when transposed from the 2-person toy examples featured in the literature to the public disagreements among groups that give the issue much of its urgency. Group disagreements turn out to be in some ways more powerful defeaters of rational belief, even when opposing groups are comparable in size and epistemic credentials. And conciliationism also shows us why determining the rational response to these disagreements can in certain cases (e.g. politics) be a particularly difficult and nuanced matter.

2006

In the public policy-making arena, stakeholders and decision-makers are engaged in a never-ending process of trying to influence each other's thinking and behavior. Sometimes, this is accomplished through option one: conversation in which one party seeks to convince another to do something (ie, lend support, change their mind) on the basis of evidence or argument. More often than not, though, an exchange of views–no matter how elegantly presented–is insufficient to alter strongly held beliefs.

Argumentation

The purpose of this paper is to show the pervasive, though often implicit, role of arguments in negotiation dialogue. This holds even for negotiations that start from a difference of interest such as mere bargaining through offers and counteroffers. But it certainly holds for negotiations that try to settle a difference of opinion on policy issues. It will be demonstrated how a series of offers and counteroffers in a negotiation dialogue contains a reconstructible series of implicit persuasion dialogues. The paper is a sequel to van Laar and Krabbe (2017), in which we showed that for some differences of opinion it may be reasonable to shift from persuasion dialogue, aimed at a resolution of the difference on the merits, to negotiation dialogue, aimed at compromise, whereas in the present paper we show that such a shift need not amount to the abandonment of argumentation. Our main aim in this paper as well as in the previous one is to contribute to the theory of argumentation within the context of negotiation and compromise formation.

Journal of Social Issues, 1985

Massachusetts lnstifute of Technologv Mediated negotiation has recently been used to supplement traditional methods of resolving complex public resource allocation disputes in the United States. Although many of these efforts have appurerit1.v been successful, procedural concerns have been raised by LI numbcr of unalysts. In this paper, we ,focus on five of these cotwerns: (I) problems of rqwesetztution, (2) the diJicu1tie.s of' setting an appropriate agenda, (3) obstacles to joint fact finding, (4) difficulties of binding parties to their commitments, und (5) obstacles to monitoring and enforcing negotiated agreements. Our discussion builds on three cases: a negotiated investment strategy undertaken by the state of Connecticut; a dispute over the siting of a low-income housing project in Forest Hills, New York; and an environmental dispute involving energy production facilities along the Hudson River. These experiences indicate that the difficulties associated with mediation can be overcome with the application of innovative techniques, and the assistance of a skillful and astute mediator. Disputes over the allocation of public resources are usually handled by legislative, administrative, and judicial bodies. More often than not these bodies produce results not as fair, efficient, or stable as they could be. Instead of reconciling contending interests, these traditional dispute resolution mechanisms tend to exacerbate underlying conflicts and leave the combatants in a worse position to deal with their differences in the future. Supplements to our traditional methods of resolving resource allocation disputes are needed to produce better results. Mediation has been used with

Academia.edu, 2024

In an era of deep political polarization, the art of debate has never been more essential. This op-ed explores how meaningful, ethical debate—rooted in respect, empathy, and intellectual humility—can foster autonomy, deepen mutual understanding, and strengthen democracy. Drawing on personal experiences and the philosophical insights of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, bell hooks, and Barry Lam, I argue that debate should not aim to persuade but to engage. Programs like the Ethics Bowl exemplify the transformative power of debate, showing how respectful dialogue builds intellectual autonomy and bridges divides. These initiatives provide a model for fostering ethical discourse in educational and public spaces, proving that debate is not merely about “winning” but about understanding. By embracing respectful dialogue and resisting the temptation to persuade, we enrich our intellectual autonomy while positioning ourselves to guide the republic toward a more informed, connected, and resilient future. Debate, when practiced with empathy and respect, transcends the exchange of ideas; it becomes a tool for collective progress, underscoring our shared commitment to understanding and growth.

2008

We present a game-theoretic model of debate and a laboratory experiment that explore how strategic incentives to make potentially persuasive arguments vary across different informational and institutional contexts. In our model, a key feature of the informational environment is the extent to which members of a debate audience are able to extract informational content from exposure to an argument that they find unconvincing. Our theoretical results show that when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively high, speakers are discouraged from arguing irrespective of the distinct institutional rules of debate that we consider. By contrast, when the informational content of unconvincing arguments is relatively low, debate rules matter: speakers may be lead towards maximally or minimally informative debate, depending on the debate rule. In a laboratory experiment, we vary the informational and institutional settings for debate across four distinct treatments, and ob...

Argumentation, 2024

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred normative framework, our main purpose is to illustrate the complexity of this theme.