Reflections on argumentation theory and logic
Stefano Cazzato, La quasi logica. Pratiche del consenso e del dissenso, Giuliano Ladolfi Editore, Borgomanero (NO) 2020.
Nicola Cotrone
Stefano Cazzato's book, in carrying out an interesting and precise historical and philosophical journey on argumentation and logic theory, aims to highlight, also with empirical cases, how necessary and urgent it is today, even in the political sphere, to return to reflecting and rethinking the rules that underpin logic, rhetoric and reasoning.
The art of dialectics (from Gr. dialektikòs, der. of dialègomai "to converse" and, with a broader meaning, oratorical skill and technique aimed at persuading an interlocutor) together with "science - of which it was the weak relative - and with rhetoric - of which it was the strong relative -" (pp. 57-58) is the "art of reasoning". (pp. 57-58) was, according to the ancient Greek philosophers, at the origin of Western thought because it is the basis of correct reasoning both from a moral and a syntactic-grammatical point of view.
The history of ideas from Plato to Wittgenstein, via Austin, Perelman, Toulmin, Heidegger and Gadamer, is characterised by a continuous evolution and "semantic transformation of concepts" that is often closely linked to the historical horizon, society, the values shared - or not shared - at that time, traditions, the type of political power, majorities or minorities. The interdependencies between all these variables contribute, the author explains, to continuously transforming the meanings of the terms that underlie the ideas and that, apparently universal and unchangeable, are instead slowly changing.
The theory of argumentation and the development of logical-philosophical thought - as Stefano Cazzato well illustrates - shows that "at the basis of this becoming of concepts there is not chance, arbitrariness and subjectivity but rational criteria of negotiation and cooperation on the basis of which a meaning is accepted and shared only when it is justified in the eyes of an audience and succeeds in obtaining a consensus, in producing an agreement generated by persuasion and not by force" (p. 186).
Speaking, arguing, taking the floor, as the author well explains, identifies man's dialogical capacities which, necessarily, are "linked to speech, persuasion, propaganda, discursive proselytism" (p. 219). Through language it is possible to deceive, but also to give hope, to narrate a project, to construct an educational path, to set up a persuasive discourse, to argue a government programme, to structure a process of persuasion, to simply narrate one's own story - one thinks of the recent research on the importance of narrative strategies as an ontological condition of social life, particularly in migration issues.
With Heidegger, Gadamer and Feyerabend - argues Stefano Cazzato - a remodulation, a process of rethinking, a re-elaboration has begun in the philosophical thought of the twentieth century that goes to re-define the reasoning of inductive and / or analogical type that, like a red thread, and this is one of the main merits of the author, binds together the arguments of the various chapters and the many bibliographic references to contemporary authors of different schools of thought. These include: Habermas, Michelstaedter,
Carnap, Wittgenstein, Sandel, Taylor, Dworkin, Adorno, Putnam and Austin, to name but a few of the most significant. With his precise reflections, therefore, the author has been able to highlight the contrast - born in ancient times between Plato and Aristotle and continued in medieval times with the dispute between Augustine and Thomas - between the two forms of knowledge, one "stronger", the other "weaker". A dualism that sees the "logical and the quasi-logical" (p. 72), science on the one hand and wisdom on the other, a certain knowledge and one "produced by justification" (ibid). Ultimately, it is made clear how, in the search for knowledge - even if the Socratic type of argumentation leads to reliable conclusions and allows the epistemological leap from the philosophy of the Naturalists to the following one - one should not confuse and make a clear distinction between "what is 'known by itself' and what is known 'by means of other things', that is, by means of reasoning, lists of reasons, proofs". (ibid.). The argumentative process does not aim to prove and does not define its conclusions as unshakable certainties, but concedes that everything can be questioned and that only in the comparison is it possible to determine which may be the most valid idea and opinion. According to Theodor Adorno and Hilary Putnam, philosophy, thanks to its argumentative rationality, places itself in an intermediate position between "the objectivity of science and the subjectivity of worldviews, between a certain knowledge and a completely questionable one" (p. 19). The rebirth of the dialectic has initiated the process that is leading to the replacement, in contemporary philosophy, of the "scientist and positivist paradigm" - inaugurated with the modern age and which produced that caesura between classical rhetoric and Descartes' nascent and strong modern reason - with the hermeneutic-linguistic one. This redefines the argumentative model and directs contemporary Western thought towards new avenues of research.
Today, the theory of argumentation - dialectic in ancient Greece - is defined as New Dialectic thanks to the studies of Chaïm Perelman who, as the author (an expert scholar of the Belgian philosopher's thought) points out, "has rescued it from the oblivion it had fallen into in the modern age, restoring its theoretical and practical relevance and extending its applications to fields such as literature, linguistics, semiology, humanities and communication sciences". (p. 57). Perelman's Treatise on Argumentation (1958), in analysing a series of topics ranging from politics to philosophy, from ethics to journalism, became the point of reference for the philosophical current that did not recognise itself in the "positivist paradigm" and, also rejecting the neo-positivist perspective, intended to explore "a rationality of practical action, without foundations, capable of guiding men in the public space of the modern polis towards social and reasonable behaviour" (p. 58). In the same year, Stephen Edelston Toulmin published The Uses of Argumentation where, the British philosopher, starting from the assumption that logic is empirically oriented and underlies discussions and evaluations of practical arguments, cannot remain on the margins of science, but must play a pivotal role in the historical context, in social and political practice and in concrete dialectics. With these two works, Perelman and Toulmin undertake two projects of re-foundation of logic - which we could define as complementary -, they start a fundamental process of re-evaluation of the argumentative rules and procedures and they undertake an autonomous path that departs from science, as it is generally understood. In this sense, as Stefano Cazzato points out, they are "rational but not demonstrative procedures, rigorous but not in the sense of exactness and precision required by science. On the contrary, it is precisely the uniqueness, the universality, the exclusivity of the demonstrative methods, and their propensity to operate also in the sphere of practical discourse, regulated by fronetic and prudential wisdom, that Perelman and Toulmin, from different perspectives and with often different results, intended to challenge" (p. 61). Both authors, therefore, in opposing the Cartesian model, did not intend to deny rationality but, in fact, to redefine it starting from the model of "classical rhetoric".
Argumentation, argues Stefano Cazzato, is similar to demonstration but does not coincide with it. The premises of the one who argues "do not possess that degree of certainty that is typical of demonstrative procedures. Argumentative proofs are not as narrow and binding, necessary and evident, as logical ones. The conclusions of discourse are not so cogent" (p. 59). In politics, one of the most suitable venues for expressing one's opinions and being able to argue is, without doubt, the practice of deliberative democracy. Here, unlike the representative model that considers the mere aggregation of preferences, opinion must be supported and backed up by logic and effective arguments, regardless of who is speaking. For Seyla Benhabib, the deliberative process must follow norms of equality and everyone must have the opportunity to "initiate linguistic acts, ask questions, question and open a debate" (S. Benhabib, Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy, 1996, p. 69). It is here that the argument becomes rational even though its premises are not universal, "its conclusions plausible even if they always maintain a (more or less) low margin of opinability" (ibid).
Democratic participation, therefore, cannot, necessarily, do without logic because, as the author explains in a recent interview, we live in a democracy when we 'reject the reason for strength, for the strength of reasons'. Democratic processes and arrangements are not only about social balances, equity and economic redistribution, values and goals, but also about the procedures that initiate and enable decisions to be formed and taken. So-called 'charismatic democracies' direct their choices, proposals and decisions to the emotionality of individuals and the community, i.e. to the 'belly' of the electorate and its 'elementary reactions', and can therefore do without logic. True democracy, on the other hand, needs broad and shared participation. It needs to be conveyed by fair and truthful information that is pluralistic, thoughtful, exercised and practised with responsibility for the common good. In this sense, the logos and dia-logos are 'the salt of democracy' which must also include contrasts, disputes, discussions and oppositions in which everyone must be involved as citizens and individuals who have the right to take part in public discourse. Epistemic authority - according to Jürgen Habermas - is not a private matter of "individual speakers" but involves the social practices and practices of the whole "linguistic community". For the leading exponent of the Frankfurt School, "language is not the private property of an individual, but produces an intersubjectively shared connection of meaning, embodied in cultural utterances and social practices" (J. Habermas, Truth and Justification. Philosophical Essays, 2001, p. 135). The abstract subjective cognitive scheme will have to give way to the intersubjective paradigm that will have to lay the foundations for a new "communicative reason".
Participation in discursive communities is not reserved exclusively for beings with rational and argumentative capacities - as Habermas and Rawls have repeatedly advocated and argued - but also for concrete subjects, "people in the flesh, with their specific characters, experiences and cultural traits" (p. 22) and with moral capacities that make up "a situated, localised community" (ibid.). It is here that we can again find a comparison between the author's reflections and the Turkish-American political scientist Seyla Benhabib when she illustrates and imagines new "forms of agency and political subjectivity capable of anticipating new forms of political citizenship" (S. Benhabib, The Rights of Others, 2006, p. 143) which are presented through the concept of "democratic iterations": "complex public processes of argumentation, deliberation and exchange that take place between different legal and political institutions and in civil society associations" (ibid.). It is in the public sphere of liberal democracies, therefore, that it is possible, through public discussion and argumentation, to institutionalise deliberative democracy that is also open to civil society associations and the mass media. The aim is to find the synthesis between universalistic principles of law and particularistic claims that inevitably have to be "contested and contextualised, invoked and revoked, proposed and situated" (ibid.).
To conclude, or rather, as the author writes, to "pretend to conclude", among the various merits of Stefano Cazzato's work, it is possible to trace at least two other aspects.
The first, to remain in the furrow of a "rational rhetoric" and without falling into a "propagandistic rhetoric", highlights, among the main tasks of philosophical argumentation, that of being able to demonstrate, in a controversy, not the winning point of view linked to intuition, but the argumentative and rational discourse that manages to be shared by the majority of the audience. Here, in the rich and articulate Chapter V, the author highlights empirical cases of practical life such as those of Prof. Toby Ord and Mr. Kravinsky, borrowed from Peter Singer's interesting book. Here, not only the theoretical presuppositions are examined but, above all, the "applicative devices" that allow both the rebirth of logical argumentation and the implementation of foundations, procedures, techniques and "speculative aims" that define philosophical argumentative discourse together with the formative aspects that are typical of a political school (see the different types of syllogism - scientific, dialectical, rhetorical, eristic - that Aristotle deals with in the Topics).
The second consideration concerns the possibility and ability to "challenge the conclusions of a discourse even if they seem to be well-founded" (p. 153), referred to as "open argumentation". Paragraph 5.5 "Challenging and reopening" expressly refutes the thesis according to which the economic recovery in a given country - demonstrated by the unequivocal increase in the number of jobs - can be questioned through the question: "What is work"? As Socrates teaches in his dialogues, a priori reflection on the definitions of the terms in play allows one to steer the argument in one direction rather than another. If, therefore, by 'work' we mean a 'stable job of indefinite duration, guaranteed in terms of salary, protected by law, which allows those who have and continuously exercise it concrete projects of personal and family life' (p. 154) and most of the new jobs are precarious and occasional, then it is possible to demonstrate that not only is there no real increase in the number of jobs but also that the 'economic recovery seems a distant mirage' (ibid.). Here, the author rightly concludes that 'good words', investigating and searching for truthful definitions can disprove 'bad facts'.
The individual's ability to argue, if based on appropriate definitions and related to reality, can stimulate reflection and influence the community by involving it "actively in a common project of searching for meaning, of constructing truth" (p. 221). Similarly, the art of manipulating, persuading and convincing through lies and "emotional suggestions" can negatively orient public opinion, deceive and disorientate it within increasingly large and confused virtual communities.
Through language, as Wittgenstein states in Philosophical Researches (1953), a 'multiplicity of linguistic actions' is possible, such as: describing, constructing, commanding, elaborating, reporting, representing, acting, inventing, solving, translating, asking, etc. John Austin in How to Do Things with Words (1962) states that, through 'saying', language is characterised in three directions. It is possible to use locative acts that refer to grammar and phonetics and that refer to meaning in the most traditional sense; illocutionary acts to inform, attest, order, affirm and, finally, perlocutionary acts that allow - and this concerns the argumentative capacity - to achieve and succeed in doing something through language: "something, such as convincing, persuading, restraining, and even, to say, surprising and deceiving" (p. 218). For the physicist and philosopher Peter Janich, it is possible to understand each other's language, arguments and decisions thanks to sharing the same "cultural framework" that allows one to approach the argumentative-communicative path through justification and refutation in "a common network of expectations, beliefs and values, prescriptions and prohibitions" (p. 68).
Finally, it is interesting to close with the close relationship, proposed by the author, between the terms that define the perennial becoming of natural phenomena - potency and act (borrowed from Aristotle) - and the theories of argumentation: "a book on argumentation, therefore, cannot but remain open and lend itself to continuous integrations: new examples, observations, models, digressions, cases, doubts, confirmations, re-readings, reversals, rethinking, criticisms. It is a book in power. When it comes to words, there is no end to words. But the risk is that it never closes, that it never becomes a book in action". (p. 222).