Argumentation

“ Every question, every controversy, theory, view, or supposition which arises, he subjects to the same test. It is another merit of the book that every question is submitted to common-sense argumentation. ”

“ The field of argumentation includes every kind of discourse that attempts to change man's actions or opinions. Exposition is explanation when only one theory or one interpretation of the facts is possible; when views of truth or of policy conflict, and one course is expounded in opposition to another, the process becomes argumentation. This art is used not only by professional speakers, but by men of every occupation. The schoolboy pleading for a holiday, the workman seeking employment, the statesman advocating a principle of government are all engaged in some form of argumentation. ”

“ In this respect argumentation is an art as truly as music, sculpture, poetry, or painting. The successful debater must be a master of this art if he hopes to convince and persuade real men to his way of thinking and thus to direct their action.
II. The object of argumentation. The object of argumentation is not only to induce others to accept our opinions and beliefs in regard to any disputed matter, but to induce them to act in accordance with our opinions and beliefs. The end of argumentation is action. ”

“ Cloth, 12mo, $1.10 In this work the peculiar difficulties which stand in the way of making a text-book at once teachable, practical, and easily understood, for use in teaching argumentation and debate, have been overcome. The treatment of the topics presented—the proposition, the issues, preliminary reading, evidence, kinds of arguments, fallacies, brief-drawing, the principles of presentation, refutation, and debate—is lucid and interesting as well as highly profitable. ”

“ The employment of the word Logic to denote the theory of Argumentation, is derived from the Aristotelian, or, as they are commonly termed, the scholastic, logicians. ”

“ It is hardly possible even to suggest all the various kinds of questions that may be asked about debatable subjects. An arguer must depend largely upon his own judgment and common sense in analyzing each proposition that he meets. ”

“ I will not waste time in contending against modes of argumentation which no person with the smallest practice in estimating evidence could possibly be betrayed into; which draw conclusions of general application from a single unanalyzed instance, or arbitrarily refer an effect to some one among its antecedents, without any process of elimination or comparison of instances. It is a rule both of justice and of good sense to grapple not with the absurdest, but with the most reasonable form of a wrong opinion. ”

“ This method of procedure presupposes a difference of opinion and belief among men, and holds that when each one tries to establish his ideas, the truth will remain, and that which is false will be swept away. ”

“ There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. ”

“ But most of those who hold that an action can be both right and wrong are, I think, in fact influenced by certain considerations, which do admit of argument. They hold certain views, from which this conclusion follows; and it is only because they hold these views, that they adopt the conclusion. ”

“ Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one’s contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught, and no more than dust in the balance. ”

“ To object is to argue; and to argue is to assert the validity of argument, and, therefore, of the primary evidence, from which the evidence of each succeeding proposition of the argument flows. To object to the authority of such primary intuitive belief, would thus be to reason against reason,—to affirm and deny at the same moment,—and to own that the very arguments which we urge are unworthy of being received and credited. ”

“ Must we not, in fact, say alike to the followers of Logic, of Ethics, of Religion, and of Art, “Your claims on the world are ultimately all of the same kind; they are made with equal right, and so long as any one of you is content to advance his postulate as a postulate, and at his own personal risk, no one of you has any pretension to criticise or reject the postulates of the others”? ”

“ But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. ”

“ Useful in the discussion of a controversy, in the demonstration of a theory, in the uncertainties of a commentary, it possessed more than any other the authority needful to lay down, without discussion, the value of a doctrine. ”

“ The answer is, that the objects of thought about which we make judgments are suppositions, and our judgments {88} concern their fulfilment, and their fulfilment is a relation external to them—it is their agreement or disagreement with reality. ”

“ In other words, we must analyze every statement which is the result of reasoning, or a statement of opinion, and see what objections, if any, can be brought against it, and then convince ourselves where the truth lies and why. ”

“ Argument has been defined as that form of discourse the purpose of which is to convince the reader of the truth or falsity of a proposition. It is closely allied with exposition. To convince a person, it is first necessary that the proposition be explained to him. ”

“ In an argument you aim in the first place to make clear to your audience that your view of the case is the truer or sounder, or your proposal the more expedient; and in most arguments you aim also so to touch the practical or moral feelings of your readers as to make them more or less warm partisans of your view. If you are trying to make some one see that the shape of the hills in New England is due to glacial action, you never think of his feelings ”

“ But since almost any extended argument will draw upon more than one source we must look, to answer the inquiry we are now starting, at the prevailing source, or the source which is most frequently called upon in the total persuasive effort. We shall say that this predominating source gives to the argument an aspect, and our present question is, what can be inferred from the aspect of any argument or body of arguments about the philosophy of its maker? All men argue alike when they argue validly because the modes of inference are formulas, from which deviation is error. ”

“ They arrived,—though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side,—at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns. ”

“ I am not able, sir, to discern, why truth should be obscured; or why any man should take pleasure in heaping together all the arguments that his knowledge may supply, or his imagination suggest, against a proposition which he cannot deny. Nor can I assign any good purpose that can be promoted by perpetual renewals of debate, and by a repetition of objections, which have in former conferences, on the same occasion, been found of little force. ”

“ The idea of knowledge which I have sought to express makes clear the grounds whereon thought and discussion ask for full liberty. As men differing in natural ability, temperament, education, and stand-point, strive to attain views of truth, their results must inevitably vary. ”

“ Hence our principle, as we ourselves have expressed it in all its rigour,—it and nothing else,—is our meaning, against which it is, and always will be, impossible to bring forward any essential objection. ”

“ But human nature, when placed in a conspicuous point of view, gives us every argument for appeasing the mind, and, to make this the more distinct, the laws and conditions of life should be explained in our discourse. ”

“ There is much to be said for the practice gained by hunting up pertinent material for arguments of this sort; but they tend to run over into irreconcilable differences of opinion, in which an argument is of no practical value. ”

“ But there are few things more strange than the history of argument. How often has a cause or an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much-96- better than its arguments. How often have we seen argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. ”

“ An argument that rejects not the phrase common sense only, which is of little consequence, but also what the phrase was intended, by its authors, to imply, is an argument confessedly founded upon nothing ”

“ It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'—like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others—give rise to reasonable objection. ”

“ Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dismissing the supposition that any of the received opinions may be false, let us assume them to be true, and examine into the worth of the manner in which they are likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and openly canvassed. ”

“ Summary.+—To summarize the preceding paragraphs, the authority we quote, the maxims we state, the facts we adduce become valuable because they appeal to general theories already believed by the reader. Success in argument demands, therefore, that we consider carefully what theories may probably be in the mind of our audience, and that we present our argument in such a way as to appeal to those theories. ”

“ It is necessary, therefore, as I have said, to regard the opinions which the persons have taken up, and to frame your argument in accordance with the error into which each has fallen, by advancing in each discussion certain principles and reasonable propositions, that thus, through what is agreed upon on both sides, the truth may conclusively be brought to light. ”

“ Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first object is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. ”

“ What, after all, is it that we mean to say of an action when we say that it is right or ought to be done? And what is it that we mean to say of a state of things when we say that it is good or bad? Can we discover any general characteristic, which belongs in common to absolutely all right actions, no matter how different they may be in other respects? ”

“ The remarks of the faculty are founded principally on theory, backed up by an occasional case which might very often be referred to some other cause with equal justice. But who does not know that practice often belies theory, or that theory is frequently at fault? ”

“ Therefore the decisions reached in the world of thought leave us equally in doubt regarding the absolute value of any standards, with those obtained through sense-perception, and the universal conflict of opinion regarding all questions of philosophy and ethics leads us also according to this Trope to the reserving of the opinion. ”

“ To question all things; never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism, letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, slip by unperceived; above all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it ”

“ It will be seen that, on these assumptions, we can raise many questions about right and wrong, which seem obviously not to be absurd; and which yet would be quite absurd—would be questions about which we could not hesitate for a moment—if assertions about right and wrong were merely assertions about men’s feelings and opinions, or if the same action could be both right and wrong. ”

“ For as every thing which can become the subject of debate, must rest upon one or another of these particulars, viz.—whether a fact has been really committed, or what name it ought to bear in law, or whether it is agreeable or contrary to justice ”

“ They are decided upon solemn argument, pro re nata, upon a doubt raised, upon a lis mota, upon a deep sense of their importance and difficulty, in the face of the nation, with a view to present action, in the midst of jealous interests, and by men capable of urging, or repelling the grounds of argument, from their exquisite genius, their comprehensive learning, or their deep meditation upon the absorbing topic. ”

“ Now when the workings of a given opinion, the empirical results to which, through our actions, it leads, agree with the expectations of the one who holds the opinion, the opinion is to be called true. ”

“ And if any Man will profess so little Knowledge of Human Nature, and so mean and unjust an Opinion of the Christianity, I might say the Humanity, of his Country, as to affect a contrary Opinion, notwithstanding all I have said, let him answer the following Instance, which may be called an Argument à posteriori, for the Truth of my Assertion. ”

“ To form a truth, two factors are needed—a fact and an abstraction. ”

“ Argument.+—Especially in argument is it evident that language presupposes an audience. The fact that we argue implies that some one does not agree with us. The purpose of our argument is to convince some one else of the truth of a proposition which we ourselves believe, and he who wishes to succeed in this must give careful attention to his audience. The question which must always be in the mind of the writer is, What facts shall I select and in what order shall I present them in order to convince my reader? ”