Arguments and Metaphors in Philosophy

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Introduction:

Philosophical Arguments and Philosophical Metaphors One of the curious things about philosophy is this: philosophers have a great predilection for saying things that are either true, but trivial, or interesting, but quite false. The middle ground has long since been ceded to other disciplines - to historians and geographers, physicists and psychologists. Philosophers have their own special concerns, concerns that lead them to say such very peculiar things. As "the Philosopher" noted, "to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true,"} and more recently we have been told that the world is indeed all that is the case. 2 But do these oddly roundabout ways of saying that there is what there is really need saying? On the other hand, no matter how much we might like to think so, we all know full well that man is not the measure of all things, the present will not eternally recur, and the laws of mathematics are not really rules of grammar. There is indeed more under heaven than is dreamt up in our philosophies: the world is made up of many things, not just one, the world is more than what we see and what we say, it really does extend beyond our ideas and our texts? Philosophers find themselves in a dilemma. Trivialities can hardly be of much value, but at least they are true, while even the profoundest falsehoods are still wrong. And yet there can be something con1pelling, almost irresistible, about both sorts of claims. Philosophers have long recognized the dilemma of trivial truths and profound falsehoods as their fate, so to say that philosophers suffer from this disorder is itself an example of this disorder: asserting an alltoo-well-known truth! Some philosophers have embraced one or the other hom of this dilen1n1a while trying to find some measure of dignity in this; others have rebelled against it. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for example, at one point explicitly counseled restricting philosophical discourse to the simple assertion of truths, while simultaneously admitting that those truths were inevitably both completely irrelevant to philosophy and philosophically unsatisfying. 4 His student and

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colleague John Wisdom advocated the other course: at least sometimes, philosophy positively requires trafficking in patent falsehoods!s There is also a distinguished tradition of philosophers, extending from the Medieval mystic Pseudo-Denis, with his via eminentiae6 to postModernists writing "under erasure" who have tried to escape the dilemma entirely by designing completely new forms of language for expressing the deepest philosophical thoughts, insights, or feelings. There is, of course, another way out of the dilemma: avoiding philosophy altogether. And that too has had its champions in the history of philosophy. 7 As attractive as that sort of intellectual ostrich act might be, it is not really a viable option. Philosophizing is something that all rational beings do. Philosophical questions are unavoidable for reflective creatures like us - if only because the question of which questions are philosophical, worthy, or legitimate is itself a philosophical question. Philosophy's form and content, substance and style, are up for grabs, but not the act itself. If we are to be rational beings, we must try to make sense of the world around us. For that, philosophy is unavoidable. When it is done poorly, without depth, the result is banalities: Life is a bowl ofcherries, perhaps, or whatever will be, will be. From one angle, the first is just silly and the second is the most banal of truisms. Life is not really a bowl of cherries, and of course whatever is going to happen is going to happen, so neither of these is at all worth saying. But that is only from one angle. The literal truth is not the real issue. Philosophical discourse, I shall argue, is thoroughly and essentially metaphorical and needs to be interpreted accordingly, even when it is done very well and at great depth. In many ways, the very best philosophy is the most profoundly metaphoricaL However, it is when philosophy is at its best that its metaphors are least recognizable as metaphors. Perhaps that explains why the best philosophy is often the hardest to appreciate and easiest to misunderstand. This points to another aspect of philosophy that (again, from one particular perspective) is equally puzzling. The process of working out just what a philosopher is trying to say with his or her metaphors is an analytic and argumentative process. The challenge presented by reading philosophy as metaphors of a certain kind is multifaceted. In general, the meaning of metaphor is neither obvious nor determinate. Religion is the opiate of the masses, but how? Is the point about its political conservatism and pacifying effects, or its personal and financial costs? What about the effects of its addictiveness, and the

Introductions

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attendant escape from the reality of the here and now? Is this a warning to beware of its pushers as unproductive and dangerous parasites on the economy, or a celebration of its anaesthetic, even medicinal, powers against the unbearable pathologies of the human condition? Is the claim that religious traditions have their origins in poppy plants and hallucinations? Unlike this exalnple, most philosophical metaphors are not presented as metaphors, so they are not always recognized as such. That compounds the interpretive problem, and it makes arguing with them even more difficult. Poppycock or not, religion is not a derivative of certain species of the poppy family of plants. But pointing that out is beside the point. It does not contribute either to understanding or to evaluating the claim. It can be hard to get a good grasp on things when meanings are so elusive, but arguing with philosophical metaphors means using metaphors against metaphors. The result is that philosophical argumentation can seem a lot like trying to push a puddle uphill. Or, better, since we know full well that religion is no more an opiate than life is a bowl of fruit, and that even those who say so know it just as well, maybe it is more like pretending to push an imaginary puddle up a non-existent hill. To philosophize, to engage in philosophical debate, is to speak a language with meanings that are always up for grabs. It is as if they are pennanently under construction and never complete. Partly because of the difficulties involved in working with fluid meanings, there is an imperative to try to make things as precise as possible. Often, this can take the form of a violent reaction against literary style, especially in the serious business of argumentation: If we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clarity; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment. 8

Con1plete precision is never possible, however, because some of the meaning, or part of the meaning, is not there to be discovered. It must be created. Thus, to engage in philosophical argumentation is to enter a world that is not simply all that is the case. What is most important may be what is patently not the case! Understanding the workings of metaphorical language provides the key to understanding philosophical arguments and an escape from the philosopher's dilemn1a. But even as it answers some questions, it

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Arguments and Metaphors

creates many more. The best way to understand metaphors is through a kind of argumentative engagement. Fortunately, arguing is something that philosophers tend to do very well. (Or at least it is something that they seem to enjoy very much.) Unfortunately, arguing is also the best way to misunderstand metaphors. Things are never simple. In addition to metaphorically re-imagining the world, there is another way that philosophy involves entering an unreal world. We need to argue about metaphors in order to engage with them, but the analysis of arguments is intimately connected with the logic of conditionals: a cogent argument can be translated into an assertible conditional whose antecedent is a conjunction of the premises of the argument and whose consequent is the conclusion of the argunlent. That is, whenever we are willing to infer C, from Pi, P2, and P3, we should be willing to assert the conditional Jf PI, P2, and P3, then C. The most important feature of conditionals is that they can accommodate uncertain, dubious, and even manifestly false antecedent clauses. We can entertain the thought expressed by the claim that Had Hitler invaded England in 1942, we would be speaking German now, although we are aware of the historical fact that he did not. Even logically impossible conditions can be intelligibly considered: both If there were round squares, our perceptual and conceptual apparatus would not be able to register them and If there were a greatest prime p, p! + 1 would have to be composite are reasonable things to say. 9

Philosophy is concerned with more than what is the case. It is also concerned with what could be the case, what could not be the case, what should be the case, and what must be the case. Conditionals are one way of talking about the alternatives. Indeed, were we confident that the antecedent is true, we would generally not assert the conditional !i A, then C but the more assertive Since A, C. 1O The quest for the proper analysis of counterfactuals is something that has occupied many of the past century's best philosophers. 11 They have asked themselves what is really meant by such claims as if kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over, and in response have constructed ingenious and elegant theories. Of course, kangaroos do not topple over because they do in fact have tails. We know this full well, as well as we know that there is no greatest prime, that life is not a bowl of cherries, and that religion is not an opiate. Even so, we are willing to entertain their negations as metaphors and counterfactual hypotheses. Like metaphors, counterfactuals are an integral part of the philosophical proj ect of making sense of our world. But proposing

Introductions

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metaphors and imagining alternative possibilities are very different intellectual moves. In one case, we are asked to see the world in a new light; in the other, we are asked to imagine an entirely new world. To consider a world with tail-less kangaroos is to imagine a world that differs from the actual world. In contrast, to see religion as an opiate is to re-imagine the actual world, unchanged in any of its particulars, but now seen in an entirely new light. As very different as they are, I believe that both of these are characteristically philosophical moves in trying to understand the world. Their similarities and their differences, and especially the conflicted interaction between them, reveal something about all the elements involved: metaphors, arguments and conditionals, and philosophy itself. Specifically: (1) Metaphorical reasoning and conditional reasoning are both integral to philosophical argumentation. "Philosophy" is a term that covers an extraordinarily diverse array of discourses - a multitude of sins! - so generalizing may be unwise, but it seems safe to say that with the exception of completely formal exercises in mathematical logic, philosophy is thoroughly metaphorical. And insofar as philosophy is analytic, it is also inevitably argumentative. (2) There is, however, a deeply embedded incompatibility between some of the roles that metaphors fill and some of the roles to be filled by assertions in arguments. Thus, (3) there is a tension at the heart of philosophy between two of its central vehicles. There are two distinct moments to philosophy and two distinct modes of philosophizing, a "provocative" radical or revisionary philosophy that is metaphorical and a "pacificatory" exrlanatory philosophy that is largely 1 argumentative and analytic. Therefore, (4) philosophers have special reason not to mix their speculative metaphors - at least not with their analytic arguments. The structure of this book reverses the path just taken from metaphors to arguments. Instead, the exploration begins with the nature of argulnents and their place in philosophy. Beginning in the first chapter with the puzzling example of arguing with God, I develop a three-part schema for thinking about arguments and their roles in philosophy. In the second part, the tools provided by this schema are applied to the tasks of evaluating arguments logically, rhetorically, and dialectically. The third part considers the nature of metaphors and their role in philosophy, including their connections with arguments. They too can be evaluated using several yardsticks. The concluding section

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Arguments and Metaphors

is explicitly meta-philosophical as it comes to grips with the significance of thinking about philosophy in terms of its arguments, of thinking of its arguments in terms of metaphors, and of the phenonlenon that, in the end, everything is arguable.

Endnotes Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV (G), 7, 1011b27. Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 1. Contra Spinoza and Hegel, Berkeley and Fichte, and Derrida, respectively 4. Wittgenstein 1961, Proposition 6.53: "The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science - i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy." 5. Wisdom 1936, in response to the closing admonition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, ends with, "Philosophers should be continually trying to say what cannot be said." 6. The mystic Pseudo-Denis thought this could be a middle ground between the Scylla and Charybdis of both Positive and Negative Attributions of properties to God. See Spade 1994, p. 75-76. 7. Wittgenstein 1961, Wittgenstein 1956, Ayer 1952, Derrida 1976, and Rorty 1982 all nlanifest an anti-philosophical attitude. 8. Locke 1959, Bk. III, ch. X, 34. 9. See Cohen 1985, 1988 and 1990 for discussions of "counterpossibles." 1O. See Goodman 1973. There are exceptions to this: "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times" and "That's a mistake, if there ever was one!." These locutions invite the audience to supply the implicit premise needed for a modus ponens inference. The conclusion that is reached is the consequent of the original conditionals, but the effect is its more emphatic assertion because it comes from the hearers themselves. 11. Lewis 1973 arguably represents the high-water mark of these efforts. 12. The terms "provocative" and "pacificatory" are taken from Wisdom 1936. 1. 2. 3.

CHAPTERl Arguing With God l But I would speak to the Almighty, And I desire to argue my case with God2 My favorite moment in all of literature occurs in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov, dreaming or delirious, is arguing with the Devil. The Devil, however, is quite coherent, even eloquent. At one point, in response to an accusation, the Devil responds, "God forbid I should philosophize!,,3 There's something about the image of the Devil appealing to God to save him fronl philosophizing that I find absolutely hilarious and perhaps a bit troublesome, but most of all deeply intriguing. The role of the Devil in Judaeo-Christian theologies is multifaceted and problematic. A central strand, however, is determined by Satan's role as "the Adversary." One thing the Adversary does is argue with God - and not just in the role of Devil' s Advocate iri the judgment of souls, but also in the genuine give-and-take of rational debate. How can you argue with God? Surely, there could be no unconsidered counter-considerations, no unanticipated objections, no dubious premises among the divine ideas, or, God forbid, any fallacies in the reasoning of a Being' with all Perfections. So what could be the point of arguing when the outcome is foreordained? Why argue when you know going into it that it cannot possibly end with a "See? I was right and you were wrong"? If you find yourself arguing with omniscience, you must be wrong! And yet the Bible includes many examples of arguing with God. Besides the Adversary, for whom arguing is part of the job description, many of the characters with whonl God speaks argue: Abraham, Moses, Job, Elijah, Jeremiah, and David all argue with God, not to mention Jacob who wrestles with God physically and not just verbally. Moreover, subsequent literature also provides us with coherent, even

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deeply meaningful, examples. These range from the familiar schmoozing and bargaining of Sholom Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman to the profound exchanges Dostoyevsky crafted between Ivan Karamazov and the Grand Inquisitor, both in the 19th century, and beyond them, in our own time, to the dark, adversarial, and personal challenges of Peter Shaffer's Antonio Salieri in Amadeus and to Elie Wiesel' s post-Holocaust moral protests to God. I would like to juxtapose a couple of these in order to construct what I hope is a helpful matrix for thinking not so much about God, but about arguments. The extreme and distorted case of arguing with God sheds light, by contrast, on other sorts of unwinnable arguments, including, I believe, many philosophical arguments. §1. Moses. The first case to consider, and the easiest to analyze, involves Moses. He argued with God when he offered reasons why he should not be the one chosen to lead the people out of Egypt - the Israelites will not believe you sent me, Pharaoh will not listen to me, I am not eloquent. 4 It does not take foreknowledge to expect that each reason Moses could offer would be met with a cogent reply. The analysis is straightforward: one party offers a thesis (actually, a command, but assertions are not the only speech acts for which we can argue); an objection is raised by the second party and it is countered by the first; a second objection is raised, and it too is countered; a third objection meets the same fate; and finally there is acquiescence, so the dialectic is complete. One side in the argument is simply overmatched. God has the stronger argument. It cannot be defeated by any of Moses' objections. And God is the better arguer insofar as God can answer every objection to Moses' satisfaction. The result follows accordingly. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that there is just no arguing with God. In one sense, this is right: it is impossible to argue with God. There are, inevitably, several senses available. Obviously there has to be some sense in which it is possible, if we grant that Moses did it and that there are other coherent stories to be told using this theme. The first sense that suggests itself is that what is impossible is winning an argunlent with God. 5 But isn't that, by definition, what each disputant is trying to do? And even if winning is not itself the te/os of arguing, it is surely the governing principle for the actions of the arguers. That does seem to make the act of arguing with God pointless. Or is the impossibility of arguing with God predicated on the impossibility of engaging God in argument? While we Inay argue with the absent and

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the dead, they do not argue back. They engage us; we do not engage them. A Transcendent God is altogether unreachable. Or does the impossibility have something to do with God's nature? You cannot argue with the weather, no matter how immanent a part of our lives it maybe. As Trudy Govier perceptively notes, the act of arguing involves an implicit acknowledgement of the possibility of disagreement about the question at hand. Writing on the genuine engagement that characterizes the sort of rational exchanges we hope for, she writes, The practice of argument implies a recognition that there may be legitimate doubts about some of our beliefs and that other persons, reasonable persons with whom we stand in a relationship in virtue of the fact that we are speaking to them or writing for them, and they are listening to us or reading our work, can differ from us in their beliefs, judgments, values and opinions. 6 That is, the act of engaging in argument puts the disputants into a personal relationship of approximate parity. There are three parts to this: the person-hood of argunlent-mates, a personal relationship between them, and the parity of the disputants. All of these can be called into question when one of the arguers is God. The word "argunlent" has many senses. It often refers to the content of what someone presents, but it can also refer to the communicative exchange itself, the episode in discourse. In the literature of argumentation theory, these are sometimes distinguished as argument-l and argument-2. 7 They embody two different conceptions of argunlent: argument-as-proof and argument-as-war. The paradigm case of an argument in the first sense is a mathematical proof: given premises, explicit inferences, and a final conclusion. It is almost as if arguers were an optional extra. The extreme case of the second might be a longstanding feud over a long-forgotten slight: all conflict without substance or reasons. The arguments in which we find ourselves typically involve elements of both: we argue both about something and with someone. Govier's point calls attention to the arguers, not just the arguments they present. The act of arguing presupposes that there is another person with whom we have a relationship that includes the possibility of rational disagreement. We often provide that second voice to

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ourselves, so we can be, or fill the role of, that other person in our own arguments. Can God be that person? Part of what is funny about arguing with God is the idea of God as an arguer. There is a tension between the more abstract, deistic concept of God developed in the universities and academies of the Ancient Greek and Medieval Latin philosophical traditions, and the more personal, theistic concept of God that was earlier presented by the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition. Tevye, rooted in one tradition, could argue with God, but he could also confide in God, negotiat~ with God, and even joke around with God. Imagine trying to schmooze with Spinoza's Substance-Itself, the epitome of the other tradition! Arguing with God presupposes that God is a person. Arguments are not abstract sets of propositions juxtaposed in logical space; they are instantiated in the complex relations between persons. 8 Propositions do not argue any more than rocks or trees do. If we find an argument in the impersonal world, it is one more case of how we can find the strange in the ordinary, just as we can see a bicycle seat or a urinal as a work of art, or read a biography as a nove1. 9 For our part, we can argue at the world, but we cannot really argue with it. Arguers are persons, then. Of course, Moses' God was indeed a personal God. 1~he relationship that the Ancient Israelites had with God was based on a Covenant, and a covenant presupposes that same kind of personal relationship. We cannot enter into a Covenant with Spinoza's impersonal God any more than 'we can argue with it. 10 There is still something very odd about a mere human arguing with even a personal God that does not apply to, say, argunlents that Gods might have among themselves. The disparity seems too great. But it is not only the difference between the disputants that generates the problem because there is no comparable problem in arguing with Zeus or Odin. The concept of an Omni-God that emerged in the JudaeoChristian traditions is not one among nlany, and could not be. It is arguing with this God that seems pointless. More specifically, what is absurd about arguing with a personal but perfect God is not the idea of God giving reasons to humans, nor even the notion of God as judge hearing reasons from humans, but the image of humans offering reasons to God. What could we hope to accomplish? Once we stop thinking of arguments as ordered sets of propositions, as a form whose ideal is realized in proof, then there is room for other, more helpful, models. It is absurd to argue with God, if that means setting forth a deductively connected chain of theses

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beginning from putatively true ones in order to establish the truth of another. Whatever epistemic value there might be in such an exercise for us, it would surely have none here. It would be pointless to present God with an argument of the first type, a logical proof. Are there any serious and interesting examples of someone trying to demonstrate something to GOd?I1 Arguments are not, in general, proofs, so argument analysis has to be more than the analysis of logical implication. The goals of argumentation cannot be assumed to be the same as those of proofs. In that case, the act of arguing with God need not require that God is a person approximately like us. Moses does seem to have labored under that assulnption, however. He had space to argue with God in part because absolute omniscience, epistemic infallibility, was not the defining-or even an especially prominent - characteristic of the God of the books of Genesis and Exodus. That perfection was added (or, if you prefer, recognized) later. Still, more needs to be said because neither Moses, nor Abraham, nor Job, nor Jeremiah, nor any of the other arguers with God was under any delusions about telling God something new. God was at least sufficiently-knowing to be allknowing for all practical purposes within the contexts of these arguments. But even absolute omniscience need not exclude argument. Elie Wiesel's arguments with God are a counterexample because he does presume omniscience and argues anyway. Arguing is an interaction between persons that is part of the complex nexus of social relations. There is no reason to suppose that argumentation serves only logical and epistemological purposes, to the exclusion of political, ethical, religious, of other ends. There is no arguing with God, if the purpose is to give God new knowledge. 12 That still leaves actions and attitudes as arguable points. Like absolute omniscience, absolute omnibenevolence, or moral infallibility, was not a prominent characteristic of God as portrayed in the Books of Moses. 13 As Anson Laytner argues, when God has been taken to task in the literary and theological traditions, it has been over values and actions, not facts. 14 Abraham's argument with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, was about justice. It was not about the exact number of blameless citizens that actually lived in those cities. §2. Job. Job's argument with God IS is more notorious and more problematic. There are actually three different sorts of argunlents in the Book of Job. First, there is God's argument with the Adversary, or

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Satan. That leads to their wager, and then to Job's travails. It is an argument whose disputants have con1parable stature. Second, there are the arguments that Job has with his friends, defending himself against charges that he must suffer quietly under these burdens, that he must have sinned, or that he must not have been pious enough. These arguments, too, are between equals, but they foreshadow the final argument, Job's argument directly with God, in which Job rightly claims that he has been treated wrongly. Job's argument follows what has been called the "law-court pattern" of argumentative prayers. 16 A complaint is brought before the judge, in this case God, against a defendant, in this case also God. The facts of the case are stated. Reasons are given substantiating the complaint, including such things as God's promises, the Covenant with Israel, and Job's "blameless and upright" life - to use God's own words from the argument with Satan. Finally, a petition for redress is submitted for judgment and action. God's response in this case was manifestly inadequate from a juridical standpoint, and perhaps theologically as well. Moreover, it was also inadequate as an argument, no matter which axis of evaluation is used: it fails logically, it fails rhetorically, and it fails dialectically. God pulls rank. The response, in essence, is "Who are you to argue with the great and powerful Yahweh?" - an answer that is no better than "Who are you to argue with the great and powerful Oz?" when delivered by a displaced charlatan from Kansas. 17 This might be read as an appeal to force of, well, Biblical proportions, but I think it is something else. To use a distinction that will be made in chapter four, it is more of a failure to engage in argument in the first place rather than a fallacy within an argument that is underway. The distinction between failing to engage in an argument and committing a fallacy within in an argument is important. Job was no more successful in arguing with God than Moses was, but for different reasons. Job tried to argue with God, but God did not listen and God did not argue back. God's response responded to Job, the arguer; it did not respond to Job's argument. It failed to engage rather than missed the point. That is, God's response was inadequate not because it was a bad argument, but because it was not an argument. It was a response of a different sort, more like walking away from an argument or filibustering to prevent debate than like arguing or debating illogically. The failure to engage in argument is not a fallacy, a logical error per se because if you do not argue, then you cannot argue poorly. Failing to

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argue can be an argumentative failing nonetheless. Arguments, remember, are more than ordered sets of propositions. They are relations between persons, and so subject to extra-logical conventions and imperatives, including the social and ethical. In particular, they are relations in discourse, so they are subj ect to such linguistic conventions as Grice's maxims 18 and Peirce's imperatives of rationality. 19 Maybe, then, there's no arguing with God for altogether different reasons. Sonletimes it might be because we dare not enter into such an argument, but sometimes it might be because God refuses to argue with us! A recent contribution to argumentation theory that can be of help here is the concept of a "model interlocutor" as a tool for evaluating arguments. 20 Model interlocutors have the requisite background information relative to their comnlunities, raise the right sorts of objections, are open to reason and appreciate the strength of an argument. Roughly, an argument is a good one if it will convince a model interlocutor, in parallel to similar references in epistemology and ethics to ideal observers or perfectly moral agents. The concept of a model interlocutor accommodates the insights that arguments presuppose arguers, and that arguers are always contextually situated in communities. What it needs to include is the insight that there are more argumentative failings than fallacies in reasoning. A truly model interlocutor would not just accept strong arguments and resist weak ones, but would also engage in argument when that is called for and refrain from argunlent when that is appropriate. Neither the willfully deaf nor the compulsively contrary qualify. One way to fall short of being a model interlocutor is to argue too much. The kind of relentless quibbling at which philosophers can be so good is a prime example. But another way to fall short is to remain apart from the fray of argument completely. It really does not matter whether the cause is dogmatic smugness, intellectual laziness, or personal cowardice. When we need to argue, model interlocutors are there for us. Omniscience notwithstanding, and regardless of whatever other perfections may be supposed, God is not a model interlocutor, at least not for Job. All Job really wanted was a fair hearing?1 §3. Abraham. One other Biblical story, involving Abraham, provides a good counterpoint to the arguments of Moses and Job. Abraham, back in Genesis set the precedent for arguing with God. Even that Knight of Infinite Resignation could summon up the gumption to argue with God on occasion. He tried, for example, to

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convince God not to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in their entireties. 22 As in Moses' case, but not Job's, the argument was unsuccessful because each objection was successfully countered. But at least the argument was engaged, again as for Moses but not for Job. It is, however, not this argument, but another episode that provides the revealing counterpoint. It is a case of something missing - like the dog that did not bark that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve one of his cases. 23 Abraham argued to save Sodom, but inexplicably, and prima facie shamefully, he did not argue with God when God conlmanded him to sacrifice his own son. This is a disturbing omission: an occasion where Abraham did not engage in argument but where it was surely called for. 24 Arguably, the residents of Sodom did something to deserve their fate; Isaac was innocent. Abraham's failure to raise objections against God - a logical sin of omission rather than commission - is no less an argumentative failure than God's refusal to respond to the objections raised by Job. The argumentative counterpart to Grice's maxim of quantity has been breached (or, on some readings, flouted). Why didn't Abraham argue with God? It cannot be because he would not dare such an affront. He had already argued for the residents of Sodom. It cannot be because he did not have the motivation. Isaac was his beloved son. There is a mountain of commentary on the meaning of this episode, but not much directly on the missing argument. 25 To be sure, Isaac was a gift from God, so perhaps there is a proprietary relation justifying the call for his sacrificial return, but children are not property like sheep or goats. Perhaps God's demand could, in the end, be contextually justified because the story makes a point about human sacrifice, religious rituals, and what was to differentiate Israelite worship of God from the neighboring tribes. Perhaps it could be justified by appeal to the notion of piety or obedience or God's power. Perhaps applies to all these possible explanations but perhaps is not enough here. None of these possible justifications was given the chance to be actual, and some justification was manifestly necessary. The point I want to make is that even if Abraham knew all of these possible justifications beforehand, and also knew beforehand that he was going to lose whatever argument he might offer, he still should have argued. He had an obligation to argue - a moral obligation, certainly, but a rational dialectical one as well - precisely because of the personal relationship he had with God. Their relationship was,

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among other things, dialogical. Abraham can be faulted here for failing to argue, so he too falls short of model interlocutor status. 26 These are, then, all failed examples of arguing with God. Moses' weak argument was unsuccessful because it was defeated. Job's strong argument was unsuccessful because it was ignored. And the argument Abraham should have pressed was stillborn, and so never had the chance to succeed or fail. Abraham's failure differs in that it had nothing to do with losing. The failure was in not arguing. But why, exactly? What sense are we to make of the idea that there can be a need for argument even when it is sure to lose? Could a losing argument still count as successful? No debate with God can be won, no proofs will surprise or teach God anything, but there are other reasons to argue. There is reason to go down swinging, rather than just going down. Just as the model of arguments as mathematical proofs has to be abandoned as too constricting to acconlillodate the full richness of dialectical arguments, so too, we have to abandon the model of arguments as essentially win-lose, adversarial moments in order to accommodate the full social context and the broadly rational purposes of arguers. §4. Tevye, Salieri, Wiesel. This brings me to the main point, which is not about God or arguing with God, but about arguments generally and the specific questions of why we argue and how arguments end. There are many kinds of arguments and ways to argue. 27 Arguments are composed of parts. 28 And there are different sorts of obligations on arguers. 29 All of these have to be brought to bear on the vexed question of arguing with God. Most of all, there are many different purposes for arguing and many different ways for arguments to reach resolution. Winning and losing are not the only outcomes. There are other outcomes, like negotiation and compromise, disagreement with the prolnise of continued dialogue, or the suspension of belief and a con1mitment to further investigation. If an argument is trying to justify an action or explain a position, rather than demonstrate a thesis, then imparting understanding or earning an acknowledgement may be more appropriate goals than persuasion. There are other resolutions with their own criteria for success, so arguers should try to align their reasons for arguing with the desired closure. More attention needs to be paid to "exit strategies" for argument. 30 The impossibility of arguing with God assumes winning is the only successful outcome. (And also, of course, on particular

16

Arguments and Metaphors

conceptions of God. 31 ) When the circumstances are right, you can indeed argue with God Recall the distinction between arguments-l and arguments-2, or arguments-as-proofs and arguments-as-war. It is typically supposed that to succeed in the second of these, a dialectical argument with an adversarial element, you need either the better reasons, i.e., the stronger argument-I, logically, or the better presentation, rhetorically. With both the stronger reasons and the better presentation, you should win the day. That does not always happen, however, because of the third element in arguments: the audience. Even the most rhetorically gifted among us, armed with the strongest evidence, most compelling reasons, and most cogent arguments will not convince a biased jury, hostile observers, or an uninformed or uncomprehending crowd. Imagine arguing for legalized abortion - before the National Right To Life Party meetings; or critiquing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics - for a class of kindergartners; or pleading a defendant's case in English to a jury of monolingual francophones. Regardless of its content and regardless of the performance, the English language defense is not a good argument in that courtroom. Arguments cannot be fully evaluated apart from their specific contexts. An adequate analytic account of an argument has to include at least these three factors: the arguer, the argument-I, and the audience. An adequate analytic account of dialectical arguments may hav~ to consider each factor twice. The presented arguments-l might dovetail, of course, reducing the analytic task. When that happens, it is all to the good, a tribute to the arguers, but it is not always so. Similarly, the disputants may themselves be each other's audience, but that, too, is not always the case. In political debates, the disputants often play to very different audiences, and the success of their arguments has to be judged accordingly. This analytic framework provides a way to answer our questions. Arguers may have all sorts of motives for entering into arguments. There may, for example, be social agendas in effect. Arguing is a way of engaging another person, often negatively, but that does not have to be the case. Arguing can serve a political purpose by challenging someone's authority, apart from the purported issue under discussion. An argument can serve epistemological ends as part of an effort to justify or explain oneself. For some philosophers, arguing seems to serve hedonistic purposes. The presented arguments also differ greatly, bringing to bear all the concerns that matter to us: political, ethical,

Arguing with God

17

theological, scientific, aesthetic, etc. And, as noted, arguers play to different audiences. Recall the debates in the United States Senate in 1998 on censure as a replacement motion to the articles of impeachment brought by the House of Representatives against President Clinton. Democratic senators could argue for a censure motion knowing they would never have to vote on it, while Republicans could argue for impeachment, knowing that their votes would be safely ineffective. Who were these arguments for? Not the other Senators, certainly. None of the other Senators was likely to be persuaded one way or the other by the presented arguments, and there is no reason to suppose that the arguers ever really entertained any delusions that their arguments would convert their political opponents. But that does not mean that we have to see these arguments as idle exercises in rhetoric. They were politically important gestures by the Senators to justify their actions to their colleagues, their constituencies, and, perhaps, themselves. If their constituencies back home were satisfied, then in large measure their arguments succeeded. This points to a general criterion for argumentative success, connecting all the resolutions: an argument is successful when it satisfies its audience. If the audience is an opponent, that means winning the argument by rationally persuading him or her. If the audience is some hypothetical model interlocutor, success means producing a cogent argument. If the audience is oneself, then that means re-affirming that one's decision or conclusion is rational. Deductive validity satisfies just about everyone, but that is rarely what arguments are about. Apply these distinctions to arguments with God. Who is the audience in each case? The simplest case, again, is Moses' losing argument. He argued because he was afraid. He had misgivings that prevented him from carrying out God's command. That is, the person who needed to be persuaded was Moses himself. From that perspective, then, his argument was a success: by "losing," he overcame his own doubts. Sometimes we argue not to persuade others, but to be persuaded ourselves. The starkest contrast is provided by Abraham's unfilled obligation to argue. His obligation to argue seems primarily an obligation to Isaac. Abraham can be blamed for not speaking out on behalf of his son, and Isaac, at the moment of sacrifice and realization, would have had a just grievance. "Why didn't you argue?" But I think it also has to be recognized that Abraham had at least as great an obligation to Sarah.

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Arguments and Metaphors

Regardless of her absence from the land of Moriah, and whether or not she was witness to Abraham's initial encounter with God, she too was wronged and had a right to an answer to the question she had a right to ask: "Why didn't you argue?" Because of her relationship with Abraham and Isaac, Sarah has to be counted as part of the audience. Her perspective and her interests make her part of the context for evaluating Abraham's actions - including both his arguments and his silence. And, generalizing from this, the relevant audience for Abraham, those for whom he has an obligation to argue includes us, the readers of his story. We are cheated because he did not argue. We need to hear his argument so that we can hear God's answer. The case is similar for Job. The primary audience for his argument is God the Judge, not God the defendant, but it is also we the readers of the Book of Job. Job argues in order register his protest, to go on record as obj ecting to his treatment. For that purpose, it is more inlportant that his argument is loud and clear, and forceful and memorably eloquent, than that it persuades God. It needs to speak to us and for us more than it needs to speak to God and for Job. Thus, at the end of this argument, we end up where philosophy starts, with Plato, because Job can be read as more than just the paragon of patience; he can be seen as a paradigm of that most Socratic of virtues, unquestioning faith ... in argument! I believe that that is also the faith that Elie Wiesel brings to his post-Holocaust arguments with God. He questions God and challenges God, but not as Salieri does, as an adversary. Rather, after the Holocaust, arguing with God is seen as the only alternative to severing all relations completely.32 No one expects to win an argument with God, but that does not make the act of arguing pointless. Faith in argument is also the faith that one brings to philosophy. After all, in truth, does anyone of us ever really expect to win - permanently and decisively - any of the sundry philosophical arguments in which we engage? If winning and losing is not altogether beside the point, at least it is not the whole point of arguing - or of philosophy.

Endnotes 1.

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Northern New England Philosophical Association, St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH, October 22, 1999.

Arguing with God

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14 15.

16.

19

Job, 13,3 Dostoevsky 1970, p. 772. In Constance Garnett's and Robert McDuffs translations, it comes out closer to, "God save me [from philosophizing]." Exodus 3, 10 - 4, 17. There is a counterexample to this at Exodus 32,11-15. See note 13 below. Govier 1999a, p. 47. The emphasis is in the original text. O'Keefe 1977 originally made this distinction between adversarial arguments and arguments as proofs using the labels "argument-I" and "argument-2." This has become a well-accepted tenet of argumentation theory, but it has not always been so, and its significance is debated. Gilbert 1997, especially chapter 3, champions the idea that the social din1ensions to argument must be prominent in argumentation theory. Perioff 1996, chapter 2, discusses finding the strange in the ordinary in relation to Wittgenstein's discussion in the Investigations of "ordinary" language; Danto 1983 brings the notion of reading-as into clear focus. The notion of reading something as an argument is not explicitly addressed, but perhaps it should be. Interestingly, the Covenantal relationship is missing from, or altered in, the New Testament, and so, for the most part, is arguing with God. If Jesus' cry on the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" is read as a fragment of an argument, then it is a notable exception. Jesus, of course, was Jewish. Ayer 1952, pp. 85-86, citing Hans Hahn, offers the trope of a God altogether bored with any deductive system. There are some fantasies that have reversed the image: Deities spending (post-G6delian!) eternity exploring the infinite realms of mathematics. Job makes just this point about God's role as judge: "Will any teach God knowledge?" Job, 21, 22. Indeed, God's moral fallibility is evident in the one example of an argument he did lose: in Exodus 32, Moses successfully convinces God not to destroy the Israelites despite the Golden Calf. Moses reminded God of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people" (Exodus 32, 15). This is one of the central theses throughout Laytner 1990. Job, especially chapters 6-7.9-10. 12-14, and 26-31, and God's response in chapters 38-41. At Exodus 32, 11-14, Moses apparently wins an argument with God insofar as God is persuaded not to destroy the Israelites who fashioned the Golden Calf. This is indeed about actions, not the truth of propositions. The pattern was established earlier in the Bible. It is most evident in Lamentations. See Laytner 1990, esp. pp. xiii-xxii and chapter 1.

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17. Although the allusion is to L. Frank Baum's, The Wizard of Oz, these exact words are from the original movie version, and do not appear in the text. 18. Grice 1975 is the locus classicus for the concept of conversational implicatures. What is being suggested here is that the concept be extended to accommodate other speech acts in addition to assertions, and that argumentation may involve very different sorts of perlocutionary, if not also illocutionary, acts. In any case, the principle of cooperation should be read as sometimes mandating argument! 19. The imperatives of rationality would certainly include William James "epistemological commandments" to believe he true and disbelieve the false, but also C. S. Peirce's "Do not block the road to inquiry." To Peirce's Thou shalt not I would add a Thou shalt, viz., "Argue!" 20. The term and concept "model interlocutor" is taken from A. Blair and R. Johnson 1987. Prominent among its ancestry is the concept of universal audiences in Pereleman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969. Also see Crosswhite 1989 and Tindale 1999, pp. 87ff. and 117ff. 21. Job asks only two things of God, prior to arguing: "withdraw thy hand far from me, and let not dread of thee terrify me." If those conditions for arguing are met, Job continues, "Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak, and do thou reply" (Job, 13, 21-22). These are eminently reasonable minimal conditions for interlocutors in rational debate. See also Job 23, 3-5. In the end, Job 38-41, God does answer Job. 22. Genesis 18, 23-33. 23. The case was "Silver Blaze," appearing in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Memoirs ofSherlock Holmes. 24. Genesis 22. 25. There is (unsurprisingly) a Midrash on this, conjecturing that an argument would have been an appropriate response, and. continuing to consider what an appropriate argument for Abraham could be. See Laytner 1990, p. 48, fn.22. 26. Elie Wiesel has suggested that Abraham and God were engaged in a game of high-stakes chicken, and that Abraham was calling God's bluff. In that case, the absence of argument flouted the imperative to argue to challenge God's command by implicature rather than directly by argument. Justin Ehrenwerth has suggested that the absence of an argument might be read as a positive refusal to argue rather than as a simple omission. On that reading, Abraham knew that he would lose any dialectical engagement, but he also knew that if he were to engage in argumentation, he would then become a party to the outcome. So, Abraham remained silent rather than argue, much the same way that opposition factions boycott elections that they suspect might be rigged in order to avoid being seen as endorsing the unacceptable, but inevitable, outcomes.

Arguing with God

27. 28. 29. 30.

21

Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 7 Govier 1999b raises the issue of the importance of receIvIng acknowledgement as an end of argument and how the recognition of that goal should inform how we argue. 31. That this is something that distinguishes the Jewish and Christian strands of the traditions that constitute the heterogeneous "Judaeo-Christian tradition" is also a theme of Laytner 1990. 32. "A Jew today must argue with God." Wiesel 1978, p. 6; Laytner 1990, p. 226.

PART I: Arguments in Philosophy It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single philosopher in possession of a good theory must be in want of an argument. 1 Argument is incontrovertibly at the very center of philosophy historically, methodologically, and substantively. However, in keeping with the venerable philosophical tradition that all universally acknowledged, incontrovertible theses should be challenged, this one too shall be called into question. The first chapter of this section motivates the thesis in order to see why it is so appealing and why it seems so unassailable. In part, this involves extracting the operative concept of argument, but it also entails examining the implicit understanding of what philosophy is all about in order to see how well the two notions mesh. What is of value for the pursuit of philosophical goals should be preserved; what is detrimental should be revised or jettisoned. The next chapter examines the dominant model for thinking about arguments, the conception of argument as war. War provides a vital, rich, and almost inescapable metaphor for arguments, but in some ways, it is an unfortunate metaphor, so alternative ways of conceptualizing arguments are proposed. They have important consequences for how the philosophical project is understood and undertaken. The last chapter in this section considers the curious case of filibusters and the challenges they present to traditional models of argumentation. Neither the adversarial model for arguments, argument-is-war, nor the mathematical model for arguments, argument-as-proof, suffices: it is not enough to know whether an argument won or lost, or even whether it was valid or sound. A more complete system of argument evaluation needs to take into account arguments' audiences, requiring that yet a third model be on the table.

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Endnote 1.

With apologies to Jane Austen and the marvelous first line of Pride and Prejudice. As shall become clear, I regard this sentence as quite false and assertible only ironically, given the popular conception of what arguments are all about (although it is very likely true, given the popular conception of philosophers!). On the conceptions of philosophy and argumentation to be developed here, however, I think it expresses a deep truth about both of its parts.

CHAPTER 2 To Philosophize is to Argue The Western philosophical tradition is not so much a footnote to Plato as it is an extended argument with Plato. There is, however, much to be said for Whitehead's famous comment. It can be read as intending to convey any of a cluster of compelling ideas: that Plato raised all the questions with \vhich we are still struggling; that to this day his answers remain both the starting point and background for our discussions; and perhaps that even the sum of all subsequent contributions is dwarfed by Plato's original and monumental genius. Like any great metaphor, there is a virtually limitless amount that can be read into the metaphor of a footnote. 1 Even so, it does not really do justice to the complex nature of the engagement that contemporary philosophy has with its history? It may well be that to understand any stage in the history of philosophy, historical contextualization is required, and that inevitably leads all the way back to Plato. Even so, Plato's writings are not merely glossed or annotated. They are critically engaged. Critical engagement is the distinguishing characteristic of the discourse of philosophy as argumentative. It has been from its very beginning, viz., from the Platonic dramatizations of the Socratic elenchus on down. Philosophy was conceived in dialogue and nourished on dialectic. Arguments remain the natural habitat for philosophy. Socratic elenchus occupies a special place in the history of philosophy. The art of questioning as a means to elicit the knowledge within us was the first well-defined philosophical methodology in two important ways. First, it was the earliest peculiarly philosophical methodology that was self-consciously chosen and articulated. Second, it was the first method of philosophizing conscientiously put into practice-with the conspicuous success of Plato's own philosophy! The Socratic method has captured the imaginations, if not always the explicit practice, of philosophers down through the ages. Even

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philosophers whose "official" methodologies make no mention at all of dialectical engagement implicitly exhibit it nonetheless. Rene Descartes is a perfect example of this. Descartes' presentation of himself could stand as a paradigm for the solitary philosopher. His private meditations seem to be the polar opposite of Plato's public dialogues. However, a closer look reveals two striking incongruities that are grist for the deconstructionist mill. First, there is probably more genuine dialogue in Descartes' monologues than in some of Plato's dialogues. 3 Descartes struggled with his inner voices. The questions he asked himself and his readers were not merely rhetorical. They deserved and received substantial answers-not the platitudinous "Yes, Socrates" and "Of course, Socrates" that are ubiquitous in Plato's dialogues. And the objections he raised against himself were generally serious ones that were treated with all due seriousness. 4 Second, the Cartesian corpus is itself very much the product of a comlnunity context and historical milieu. The fact that the initial publication of the Meditations included both objections from Descartes' peers and his own replies testifies to that. The objections and replies gave Descartes the opportunity to clarify his presentation, and they provided the reader with just the sort of heuristic interrogations of which Socrates would have been proud! Of course, that is not all the objections did. For the most part, the questions that Hobbes, Gassendi, and others posed were really dialectical critiques to the Cartesian project rather than heuristic inquiries into the details of its mechanics or the meanings of its concepts. Trying to fit these adversarial challenges into the Socratic model of a midwife helping to deliver the Truth would be an exercise in Panglossian interpretation. This points to an important difference between the questions that comprise Socratic elenchus and the argulnents that constitute dialectical debate. The goal of the Socratic method of questioning was to elicit the knowledge that already exists within us. Plato thought we would be able to recognize knowledge when it is finally revealed. In practice, however, the method operated under a slightly different assumption, viz., that when our attention is properly focused, we would be able to recognize our errors. If genuine Knowledge of Truth were ever attained, it would be the result of systematically eliminating error. Error is recognizable by comparison with the accessible Truth within us.

To Philosophize is to Argue

27

Where elenchus leads one to find the Truth within, dialectical debate has often been taken to be a process leading one in the direction of Truth wherever it lies. Or, if not to an absolute or transcendental Truth, then at least to mundane truths. 5 The term "dialectic" has meant different things to different philosophers, ranging from the reductio ad absurdum refutations of the pre-Socratic Sophists through the Socratic elenchus and on down to the Hegelian movement in History and beyond to the logical and dialogical phenomenon of concern to contemporary argumentation theorists. Since the term "dialectic" has its etymological roots in the Greek term for conversation, while the subsequent accretion of meanings centers on the concepts of opposition and movement, the term will be reserved here, at least initially, for multi-voice discourses in which contrary positions enter into productive confrontation. Ideally, the product of a properly philosophical engagement would be truth, whether immanent or transcendent. The distinctive value of dialectic as a test for truth is that it includes all other tests. Physical evidence against a theory, for example, in itself does not weigh against the acceptance of a theory unless someone advances it against that theory. There are many sorts of considerations that can be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of a thesis - empirical, doctrinal, ethical, political, aesthetic - but they all share common element: they must be brought to bear. Even something as damning as logical inconsistency will not be counted against a theory until it is pointed out. However, this is to say nothing more than that in order for obj ectionable features of theories to become real objections, they must be raised by someone against that theory, and that to raise objections is to engage in dialectic. As Michael Gilbert puts it, "One does not need to believe that dialectics produces truth, merely that the truth can stand up to fair argumentation. .. One need not be a realist about truth to be a dialectician. ,,6 Dialectic thus has a sort of universality as a test for truth insofar as it analytically includes all of the other tests that might be proposed. There is, however, nlore to the universality of dialectics than just the truism that all objections must be raised to be counted or that every challenge is a dialectical challenge. Dialectics also makes its own characteristic contribution to theory evaluation by being universal in another sense: no claim is immune from dialectical challenges. Objections can always be raised. In a sense, then, everything is objectionable! Not in the sense that there will inevitably be something

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Arguments in Philosophy

wrong with any theory or proposition that we might offer, but in the more etymological sense that we are always able to object. To make an objection is to raise a question, and all our claims are always open to question. Everything is question-able; everything is arguable! If dialectical questioning offers both the path to truth and the universal test for truth, why not simply take it as the criterion for truth? Alternatively, why not embrace dialectical acceptability or some other argumentatively stable state as a substitute for truth as the goal of inquiry? There is a tendency to think that however great the difference might be between truth and rational consensus for the purposes of metaphysical speculation, it has no immediate impact on how we argue. After all, in practice when we reach a rational consensus, we take the product as true, and, conversely, we suppose that anyone who is rational could be convinced of whatever we take as true, provided only that we have world enough and tinle to make the case. There are, however, significant:, if less visible, practical differences between truth and consensus as goals for inquiry. On the one hand, if the goal is building a consensus, stated objections cannot be ignored. In the long term, arguments that invite cooperative resolution will be more effective than those that try to force a position on unwilling disputants. This is all to the good. On the other hand, if disagreement is what fuels the engine of inquiry, then there could be a counterproductive complacency to consensus. For example, part of the reason that the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic complex of scientific theories could withstand a thousand years of challenges was that there were relatively few of them. There are potentially damaging distortions for philosophy that can accompany an overemphasis on the adversarial aspect of argument, but there are dangers to be recognized at the other extreme as well. There is a corollary to the claims that dialectics is universally applicable insofar as it analytically includes all other truth tests and acceptability criteria and insofar as no claim is immune (in principle, if not always in practice) from dialectical challenge: dialectics has to be topical-neutral. Philosophy, too, can be topic neutral insofar as anything is potentially food for philosophical thought. We can think philosophically about the "is" of physics and the "ought" of ethics, the temporal flow of history and atemporal world of mathematics, or the currencies of economics and the values of aesthetics. A popular trope for the history of philosophy is that philosophy is the breeding ground for disciplines. To find the historical roots for physics, chemistry, psychology, linguistics, or other areas, one must look to philosophy.

To Philosophize is to Argue

29

Philosophy is where one finds pre-disciplinary thought, in Kuhn's sense of speculative reflection without either the constraints or license of an established paradigm. There is something to this picture, but it is seriously flawed, or partial at best, if it cannot accommodate the permanent possibility of philosophical reflection on even the most disciplined of topics. 7 There is no end to the supply of philosophical questions to be asked. One area in particular in which the vision of a question-driven methodology became thoroughly established was philosophical pedagogy. From the formalized obligatione texts and quaestio format of Medieval logicians to today's doctoral defenses, philosophers have been schooled in the art of rigorous disputation. It is a kind of indoctrination. albeit methodological rather than doctrinal. Those who are not adept at dialectical give and take are weeded out, with the result that there is an institutional and structural valorization of argument. Argumentation has historically been so central to philosophy because argument is integral to philosophical methodology. And it has been central to philosophical methodology in part because it has been central to philosophical pedagogy. Arguably, the explanatory chain runs in the other direction as well - it is central pedagogically because it is central methodologically. The pedagogical and methodological practices are indeed mutually reinforcing. Philosophers have always been extremely sensitive, perhaps to the point of being pathologically self-consciousness, about philosophical method. Is it linguistic or conceptual analysis in which we engage? Is it a thoroughly a priori activity whose procedure is intuitive, logical, or transcendental? Or should we be more respectful of a posteriori data and rely on more experiments than just clever Gedankenexperimenten? Is philosophy a private and solitary - a meditative - undertaking, or does it require a dialogical, social context for its investigations? Should we analyze or synthesize? The phrase "The Philosophical Method" is no more uniquely denoting than the even more abused counterpart phrase, "The Scientific Method." Biologists and geologists do not go about their business in the same way as physicists and chemists. Neither, for that matter, do particle physicists and cosmological physicists. Neither Galileo's ingenious thought-experiments nor Newton's carefully crafted, reproducible laboratory experiments have exact counterparts in Darwin's scientific practice. Kepler's elaborate mathematical calculations on excruciatingly precise astronomical observations do not

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resemble anything that the geologist Lyell did. Rather, there are many scientific methods, answering to different areas, eras, and kinds of science. In like manner, there are as many philosophical methods as there are philosophical styles, goals, and purposes. The kinds of empirical investigations that can contribute to certain parts of the philosophy of language may be entirely inappropriate for metaphysics. The formal constructions of mathematical logicians may be an altogether irrelevant methodology for ethicists. This is why, as Arthur Danto has noted, philosophy has taken so many forms: "dialogues, lecture notes, fragments, poems, exanlinations, essays, aphorisms, meditations, discourses, hymns, critiques, letters," among many others.8 And yet, as Thomas Kuhn argued for the scientific case,9 there is a common element: philosophical theories are subject to the tribunal of community judgment. In practice, this means that all philosophical theories must undergo trial by argument. This is more than simply a sociological claim about the practice of the tribe of philosophers. It is an external observation about a conlmunity that may seem obvious once it is pointed out, but is not always visible from within. And while there are few objections to this characterization of philosophical practice, there are several contrary interpretations of its significance. Robert Stalnaker once wrote, "I assume that the world is the way it is independently of our conceptions of it and that the goal of inquiry is to find out how it is." Adding as an afterthought, "1 don't regard this as an exciting or controversial philosophical thesis. ,,10 If trial by argument is the method of philosophical inquiry - as opposed to, say, experimental methods in the sciences or calculations and proofs in mathematics-and "the way the world is" is a substitute phrase for "truth," then philosophical argument must lead to philosophical truth. Isn't that what the Socratic dialectic is all about? Stalnaker is, of course, patently wrong about one thing: at least with respect to philosophical inquiry, his thesis is tremendously controversial. Some philosophers would take issue with the assumption that there are any peculiarly philosophical truths at all, and that the end of philosophical inquiry is something else, e.g., wisdom rather than knowledge, enlightenment rather than confusion, or something to be found in the process itself rather than in its results. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in both his earlier and later philosophies, falls into this category. Other philosophers are skeptical about the concept

To Philosophize is to Argue

31

of truth itself. Richard Rorty, for example, provides a stark contrast both with his general suspicions about truth as well as his specific and with his emphatic insistence that truth is not the goal of inquiry .11 The latter position dovetails well with emerging alternative conceptions of argument. Argumentation can, of course, be understood as a dialectical process asymptotically approaching tnlth. However, it can also be conceptualized as a process for resolving disagreement, as a heuristic process for building and exploring theories, as a logical process for testing theories, and as a negotiating process for optimally satisfying the desiderata of multiple parties. 12 There ought to be more to philosophical argumentation than winning and losing - even when winning is understood as reaching Truth. The point to notice is that while anti-realists may reject the realists' image of a dialectical avenue leading to Truth, they still see argument as the proper vehicle for travelling down the road of inquiry. Philosophers may disagree about where they're heading - or even if they are heading somewhere at all - but there appears to be widespread agreement on how to travel nonetheless. 13 But, as noted above, the implicit agreement between realists and anti-realists that argument is the proper methodology for philosophy can mask important differences about how to argue. In addition to the historical and methodological grounds for thinking of argumentation as central to philosophy, there are motivations arising from issues of significant theoretical substance. These arise from concerns about the nature of philosophical claims, as well as a more general uneasiness about philosophy itself. First, there are questions about the nature of philosophical claims. For the most part, philosophers do not intend to make the sort of empirically verifiable truth-claims that constitute science. It would seem, then, that their assertions do not contribute to a description of the world. 14 Neither are philosophical claims meant to be sterile tautologies, merely psychological or conceptual claims, or, like mathematics, the inevitable products of deductive calculation. One appealing alternative is to conceive of philosophical theories as having a creative and aesthetic dimension - works of art except for the fact that, for the most part, philosophical writing lacks the sort of art that could compensate for abandoning any claim to cognitive content and value. In sum, philosophical theories do not fit on either side of the analytic-synthetic divide, and they cannot be justified by appeal to art.

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What is left for philosophy, then, is its status as a process, a matter of how it is done, rather than what it says or the answers it gives to why. Since argument is precisely what philosophers do well, by training and by predilection, philosophy becomes identified with the process of argumentation rather than any specific product. The uneasiness that some philosophers feel with regard to philosophical propositions has an echo in the discomfort that many share concerning all the other products of philosophy. Philosophical discoveries are few and far between. Philosophical theories do not stand the test of time, but neither are they supplanted by obviously better successor theories. And there is little enlpirical evidence that studying philosophy really does help make us better human beings. For all the rhetoric about philosophy as the foundation for all understanding and knowledge - philosophy as the would-be "meta-narrative for all justification narratives" - there is an uncertainty about the exact place for philosophy in the constellation of intellectual endeavors. Is philosophy like the sciences, as Russell thought?15 Or is it science that is like philosophy, as on Quine's account?16 Is philosophy more like a conceptual counterpart to therapeutic psychiatry than descriptive psychology?l? Or, in the end, is it an Art? Regardless of the status of its theories, a good argument deserves respect. It is the one currency that philosophers mint that is recognized across all disciplinary boundaries.

Endnotes 1. 2.

3. 4.

See Part III below for an account of metaphors and their special role in philosophy. It would undoubtedly be better to talk about the myriad relations that each of the many discourses of contemporary philosophy has with its own historical antecedents as well as with the various overlapping histories of other philosophical discourses. Whitehead's remark can then be seen as placing Plato in the intersection of the histories of all the sub-sets of philosophy. For relevant discussions see Kosman 1986, A. Rorty 1986, Lloyd 1993, and Gordon unpublished. For example, the whole series of arguments for skepticism in the Meditations, culminating in the Evil Demon, is a sustained dialogic engagement with skeptics.

To Philosophize is to Argue

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

33

The distinction between Truth and truths is drawn in the introductory essay in Rorty 1982, and returned to frequently. Gilbert 1997 p. 13. This issue is returned to in the final chapter. Danto 1983, p. 67 in Rajchman and West 1985. See Kuhn 1970. Stalnaker 1984 p. x. Rorty 1998, pp. 19-42. Gilbert 1997, p. 136, writes, "the most general goal of the activity of argumentation is agreement." While this is one of the general assumptions of coalescent argumentation, it is not equally applicable to all kinds of arguments. As the sage Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, "We may be lost, but we're making good time!" There is a striking articulation of this attitude in the Tractatus at propositions 4.1 and 4.11. Wittgenstein 1961. Russell, in "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," takes the task of philosophy to describe the world. Analysis is necessary insofar as it reveals the "ultimate constituents" of the world. The difference is that "philosophy is that part of science which at present people ... have no knowledge about." Russell, 1918, Lecture VIII. Quine's comtnent, "Ontological questions, under this view, are on a par with questions of natural science," ought to be read as making a more significant claim about science than about philosophy. Quine 1951. Wittgenstein 1958, §133. See also Wisdom 1936.

CHAPTER 3 Argument is War ... and War is HeIr What I now want to do but will not do - is argue against the thesis of the previous chapter, viz., that argumentation is central to philosophy. The strong counter-thesis here is that there is no place for argumentation in either philosophy or education, and, accordingly, it is especially true that there is no place for argumentation in philosophical education. Since this is both a philosophical and pedagogical issue, there would be something paradoxical, and self-defeating, about any possible argument that I could offer, so I will not even try, although I am sure some pretty interesting arguments for it could be constructed. Instead, I shall try to explain what I mean by the thesis, rather than argue for it or defend it, in the usual sense of the words, from critical comment. Like a first proposal before a small town meeting, the ideas suggested here are not offered as final products, but as fodder for others to develop. Any explanation needs to begin with the relevant concepts of argument, of philosophy, and of education because the thesis at hand is most provocative or objectionable only against some specific, but common,. conceptual backdrops. Although these three concepts can be thought of separately, there are important connections among them, and it is not easy to weave them into a single coherent fabric that preserves their integrity as autonomous concepts while respecting their nuanced inter-relations. Certain conceptions of what philosophy is, for exalnple, are incompatible with some teaching methodologies, and conversely, some pedagogies implicitly depend on certain assun1ptions about the nature of philosophy. Specifically, I think the inclusion - or intrusion - of argument into philosophy occurs in one of two ways, with very different consequences for education. First, arguments may be thought of as the testing ground for ideas, and thus the way of securing the truth. As such, this implicates the kind of realist metaphysics that, at the metaphilosophical level, is at odds with both the anti-dogmatic conception of process education and the notion that education is really Imore .a matter of edification than of indoctrination. In that case,

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argumentation may well be an appropriate way to teach f!:.philosophy, but it is an altogether inappropriate way to teach philosophy. Alternatively, an argument-centered pedagogy might issue from a Post-Modern rejection of logic and concomitant embrace of rhetoric \\lith the result that, in effect, all possible philosophies are devalued in favor of the act of philosophizing itself. In that case, argumentation becomes an end in itself and a means to nothing at all. Skill in argumentation would then be relevantfor training a philosopher, but at the expense of making philosophical training irrelevant for any philosophy. There has to be a middle ground. As Lakoff and Johnson point out, our understanding of the concept "argument" is both reflected by and molded by the particular metaphor that argument-is-war? While this is not meant to serve as a definition for "argument," it does characterize how we think about arguments, talk about arguments, and engage in arguments. Despite any ambiguities and subtle nuances of the word "argument," this metaphor manages to dominate our discourse about arguments and our argumentation practice. We routinely speak, for example, of strong, or even killer, arguments and powerful counterattacks, of defensible positions and winning strategies, and of weak arguments that are easily shot down while strong ones carry a lot of firepower and are right on target. Since success can be achieved in many ways, ready arguers should have a well stocked arsenal at their disposal, one whose weapons include the brute force of reason, the carefully constructed ambush, the verbal jujitsu of Socratic elenchus, the enaging analogy, the deadly barbs of satire, or perhaps even the bombshell of a surprise revelation! If all else fails, there are filibusters that lay siege. Moreover, we continue to use this language to describe arguments even after we have very carefully and very conscientiously distinguished what we do as philosophers, critics, and educators from the shouting, name-calling, and animosity that characterize dysfunctional families, relationships gone awry, and contentious faculty meetings. 3 The arguments that concern us as intellectuals are supposed to be sustained chains of reasoning, impersonal in their execution and with only the noblest provenance in the dispassionate search for tnlth. Our arguments, it goes without saying, exhibit only the highest kind of critical detachment and academic objectivity. In what may be called the "official pedagogical" understanding of arguments, they are more like mathematical proofs than they are like verbal warfare. Well, once upon a time, that Enlightened, Modem story may have been plausible, but we live in a Post-Modem, more cynically self-aware time. We now

Argument is War . .. and War is Hell

37

know that that story really does have to follow the words "once upon a time" because it describes a fairy-tale sort of time and place. We do want our arguments to be civil, of course, and our goal is carefully reasoned sequences of the purest rationality, conceptual constructions whose elegance, if not Truth, is plain for all to see. But we also want them to be forceful and strong and, well, compelling. The language of warfare remains. There is still a victory to be won. "Wouldn't it be better," asks Robert Nozick, fancifully but both provocatively and insightfully, if philosophical arguments left the person no possible answer at all, reducing him to impotent silence? Even then, he might 3it ,there silently, smiling, Buddhalike. Perhaps philosophers need arguments so powerful they set up reverberations in the brain: if the person refuses to accept the conclusion, he dies. How's that for a powerful argument?4

We need to take a reflective step back and ask, along with Nozick, "Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave toward someone?" The point is that whether the operative notion of argument is as proof-Ieading-to-truth or as language-game-Ieading-to-agreement, arguments are being conceived as having an essentially adversarial structure. The true beliefs that an argunlent's losers have been given, are coerced beliefs; and, alternatively, the agreement to which they are now party, is an imposed agreement. It should be obvious that something has gone seriously awry when we are comfortable describing someone who comes out of an argument with new, welljustified beliefs as the "loser." This is the sort of consideration that, carried to its extremes, has led one feminist critic to say that any intent to persuade is an act of violence,s an attitude that effectively puts an end to all rational discourse and any possible exchange of ideas. But surely, education and philosophy do not need to be conceived as having an adversarial essence6 - if indeed they are thought to have any essence at all. The argument-is-war metaphor does both reflect our thought and inform our practice, but it is still just a metaphor. It is not an immutable part of the conceptual landscape; it can be changed; and indeed it should be changed to fit the contexts of philosophy and education. They should have goals more in line with the original Pragmatic vision than either Tru t h, whether thought of as a transcendental ideal or even as Peirce's idealized notion of truth as the end of inquiry, or else argumentative victory, the merely rhetorical

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accomplishment of persuasion. A more orthodox Pragmatic goal for philosophy and education is the simple "furtherance of inquiry." For this, ne\v metaphors for arguments are needed, metaphors that can accommodate cooperation as well as competition. There are, of course, some very significant educational benefits to be reaped by building the curriculum around arguments - conceived now as chains of reasoning to convince, persuade, or (let's face it) force the listener to accept a conclusion. But what if there just aren't any propositions that it is so important for students to believe that teachers are philosophically justified inforcing our students to believe thenl? If the Truth really is mighty and shall prevail, our arguments should not be necessary. Still, regardless of the metaphysics, there is an obvious and legitimate place in the classroom for argumentation simply because of the undeniable value of clear and careful thinking, of rigorous and exact expression, and of quick and able evaluation. These skills are intellectual coin of the realm, immediately recognizable as valuable in any endeavor whatsoever, and so need not be rehearsed here. 7 Moreover, they can indeed be taught (or at least improved with the right kind of tutelage), so their place in the classroom should be noncontroversial. Such skills are, to revert to the metaphor, effective weapons in the intellectual arsenal. But, like all other weapons, they can be misused, and that can be dangerous. And, like any weapons, they practically beg to be used. Who is as insufferable as the beginning logic student who has finally learned how to let post hoc ergo propter hoc and argumentum ad hominem roll flowingly off the tip of her tongue, or the first year law student as he eagerly cites burden of proof precedents or insists on simple answers to complex questions? I do not mean to be facetious in offering these minor nuisances as examples of a possible downside to structuring the classroom environment around competitive debate, but there are these costs, and others, to be considered. Fronl the start, debates presuppose that the subject at hand can be carved into distinct and opposing positions, and this tends to squeeze the discussion of even the most complex questions into a black-and-white view of the world. 8 And in the end, dialogues framed by the argument-is-war metaphor require winners and losers. There is, accordingly, a price to be paid in terms of "casualties," in this case, the personal humiliation suffered by the vanquished. No doubt, the fe~r of humiliation can be a very powerful motivational tool, one that can be very, very effective. It has even been the pedagogical method of choice in some long-standing and still vital traditions.

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39

However, it has fallen into some disrepute recently - and not without good reason. There are a number of different ways that this can be counterproductive to education. First, and most obvious, there is a high personal price to be paid in terms of individuals' self-images. Even if that is discounted as being outside the classroom or irrelevant or negligible to the business of teaching some specific subject matter, there is also an attendant risk of long-term alienation from education. Both long-range utilitarian calculations and Kantian considerations from the dignity of the person as a mernber of the kingdom of ends-inthemselves converge on the idea that this is not how we ought to be treating our students. This is not to say that we should be overprotective in nurturing our students, although that direction has probably not been the extreme more commonly taken, but simply that we should enter into the business of actively promoting adversarial argumentation with some circumspection. There are also potential costs to be paid by the other side, by the "winners" who are regularly successful disputants. These are much easier to overlook. Victory can be intoxicating, and its effect can be further magnified by the nearly irresistible positive reinforcement of the full range of scholastic rewards. There is a clear message here, and it is not the officially stated one: Insight and understanding are nice, of course, but if you want to get ahead, cleverness and rhetorical dexterity are what really matter in life. It is the flashy Philadelphia lawyers who attain celebrity status, not the reflective legal scholars. Besides, who is there to argue the point? It may be expecting too much of academics, whose careers, after all, are often built precisely on the talents in question, to offer sustained critiques of those talents. One series of dangers, then, of arguments in the classroom is that when such education is successful, i.e., when students acquire the skills and become adept in the art of forensics, the result may well be not just able arguers, but argumentative arguers: proficient, pedantic and petty. And when the use of argumentation in the classroom is not successful, the students have not just failed to gain anything, they may well have lost something. If we set aside the Realisnl that supposes arguments lead to truth-that line of thinking that takes a mathematical proof as the paradigm fonn of argument - a different set of benefits and costs can come into focus. For exanlple, one of the great pedagogical virtues of argumentation is that it demands a certain degree of engagement with the subject matter. It combats "passive learning," the bane of educators

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the world over. Even this may have a negative side. Without going so far as to celebrate passivity, we can recognize that there can be as many different successful learning styles as there are teaching styles. There may be some students who really do learn best just by listening very well. In that case, the classroom use of argumentation is a Procrustean bed into which all students can be made to fit... but for some the fit will be more damaging than for others. Arguing about a topic does presuppose some engagement with that topic, and that is all to the good, but what about the quality of that engagement?9 Proficient debaters, like good lawyers, are prepared to argue either side of a question, and that kind of preparation generally precludes a strong commitment to one side or the other. What if a genuine understanding of one side in the debate requires the commitment of a sympathetic reading? If that is ever case, then preparing to argue will get in the way of interpretation. Thus, when we ask our students to argue for one side in a debate on some issue, we could be making it harder for them even to understand the other side. 10 And shouldn't our students - and we ourselves, for that matter - have some strong commitments? Everything may be debatable, but that does not mean that everyone should in fact debate everything. Good trial lawyers should not be the only recognized legitimate end product of an educational system. There ought to be room for educating activists. Put another way and with a slightly different emphasis, a pragn1atic philosophy of education will recognize more ways of being practical than just the vocational. Along with these questions about the level and quality of the engagement with the material required by arguments, and about learning styles and pedagogical strategies, there is another, more fundamental question to be considered, one that will be raised here, but left to others to pursue: What is the ideology of argumentation? Academic objectivity is presupposed by arguments-as-proofs, while critical detachment is a presupposition for arguments-as-Ianguagegames, yet from another perspective, both "academic objectivity" and "critical detachment" are grotesque oxymorons. There is a largely unexamined ideology to arguments that needs to be subject to its own argumentative scrutiny. What the pervasive argument-is-war metaphor reveals is that the operative ideology commits us, if not to truth and falsity, or to right and wrong sides, at the very least to winners and losers. To be sure, there are alternative understandings of argumentation available. I think it completely justified to speak of the progress that

Argument is War . .. and War is Hell

41

has been made in characterizing argumentation by exploiting the resources of speech act theory, critical theory, formal logic, rhetorical analysis, and all the other relevant conceptual tools at our disposal. To take one example, arguments can be characterized in terms of their various linguistic roles or in terms of their perlocutionary effects as conversational episodes. From that perspective, one of the primary functions of an argument is "enhancing the acceptability of the speech act for which it is an argument."}} What I like about this particular formula, besides its succinct elegance, is how it abstracts to a level from which the adversarial element can be regarded as merely an accidental means to a more important end, thereby allowing for other means to that end. It creates room for answers to the question of why someone might seek arguments for something she already believes; the argument-is-war metaphor does not. We are not at war with ourselves when we create arguments to buttress our already held beliefs. The formula at hand also endorses the possibility of arguing for something without arguing against anybody; and again, the argument-is-war metaphor cannot easily accommodate that. The acceptability of a speech act can always be increased, which explains why "preaching to the converted" is not necessarily an idle exercise. Another happy consequence of this conception of arguments is that it helps explain why explanations might qualify as arguments. This seems meet since explanations constitute a large part of many arguments. Explanation can indeed serve as a kind of justification, and justification generally is the province of argument. This points to a way to articulate the connection between interpretation and argumentation that was suggested earlier: in order to understand some texts, a certain kind of sympathetic reading can be necessary. This might involve speculating about an author's motives, providing a charitable interpretation for apparently inconsistent passages, or the like. From the perspective provided by thinking of arguments along the speech-act lines just presented, then reading looks a lot like arguing with the author. Readers need to argue with, 111eaning alongside, the author rather than with, meaning against, the author, in order to enhance whatever it is that the text is saying, showing, or doing. And, needless to say, authors and readers do not have to be adversaries. The "argument" between them is not adversarial. This is not, to be sure, how students of philosophy are typically taught to read a philosophical text. They are trained to read "critically," Le., they are trained to read with a combatant's eye, an eye that is open for any weaknesses in the argument that can be turned to advantage in a critical

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paper. All too often we read the way we argue in another respect: we read with "our defenses up" lest we be convinced of something we did not want to believe. "I'll be damned if I'm going to let this author teach me something new!" Since this is not the attitude we want in the classroom, we should entertain other tropes: (1) Argument is not war; it is reciprocal reading. Speech-act approaches have shown that they can shed light on the subject of argumentation. Unfortunately, what should be understood as helpful characterizations are all too often interpreted as definitive analyses or necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., as definitions. These can then be taken as challenges to other workers in the field to find or construct both counterexamples that s,hould belong to the category but do not fit the description, and counterexamples that do fit the description but should not count as arguments. For the example at hand, it might be pointed out that one way of enhancing a speech act is to say it with a smile, but that should hardly count as an argument. Or, again, revising a poem seems a clear example of a speech-actenhancing activity that is just as clearly not an argument. Arguments may include interpretations, but that does not make all interpreters into arguers. Conversely, when I tell my son to wear his seat belt, and answer his question, "Why?" by offering appropriate reasons, I am not arguing for or enhancing the acceptability of any speech-act, except under sonle ad hoc reading, although I am certainly arguing for some act: his buckling his seat belt. While it is certainly helpful to have as wide a variety of examples as possible at hand, this can degenerate into an idle academic exercise of exactly the same sort of nit-picking that I have just done with the counter-examples here. I have taken a very illuminating characterization and managed to show that, being very, legalistic, it is, to no one's surprise, inadequate as an analytic definition. What we need are not new definitions, but new metaphors. Fortunately, Aristotle was wrong in thinking that metaphor is the work of genius. On the contrary, metaphor is a linguistic commonplace, something that every competent language user understands and employs. It is the creation of those brilliant metaphors that permanently reshape our thinking that requires genius. I sometimes think that what good philosophizing and effective teaching of any kind have in common is that they revolve around the same kind of activity: the search for just the right metaphor. Metaphors are more than merely elliptical sinliles or stylistic affectations for

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embellished expression. They are vehicles for making the unfamiliar familiar, which is what makes them particularly important for education. There is, however, something funny about characterizing metaphors as linguistic devices for articulating unfamiliar thoughts by transplanting them into a more familiar context: it buys into the questionable dichotomy of thought and language. The inlplied model is that we think things, and then we somehow translate them into written or spoken words. Thinking and speaking or writing are not nearly as easily distinguishable as this model suggests. There is some wisdom in the old chestnut "How am I supposed to know what I think until I hear what I have to say?" Metaphors are not just elegant or clever ways of conveying new thoughts; they are also ways of thinking new thoughts, of grasping those thoughts, and even of formulating them in the first place. This is what makes the art of metaphor so important for philosophy. Because I think of both philosophy and education this way, I think the question that we really should be addressing is not where and how arguments fit into philosophy and education, but what metaphors for arguments fit in with the goals of philosophy and education. It is especially appropriate to ask the question in this form when philosophy and education are being sung in a Pragmatist key. The meaning of a metaphor is invariably, and notoriously, underdetermined. This is what stymies reading them as elliptical similes. Sure, arguments are like war, but how? Everything is like everything else in some respect, if we are but clever enough to see it. Arguments are rafts on the sea of uncertainty carrying us to the terra firma of truth. Arguments are verbal dances responding to inaudible Gricean rhythms and unknown Jungian syllogisms. Arguments are the mortar holding together the bricks out of which theories are built. Arguments are mental exercises for athletes of the intellect. I t is not hard, I think, to make sense out of any of these metaphors, but it is an amazing ability nonetheless. Interpreting metaphors is nearly the art that creating them is. In some respects, interpreting metaphors may actually be the greater art. The exercise of creating tnetaphors can with relatively little effort be extended indefinitely. Even restricting ourselves just to traffic metaphors (and getting carried away with the exercise), we can say that arguments are (i) conversational traffic jams - (ii) gridlock with a lot of honking and little movement. Alternatively, (iii) arguments are conversational traffic accidents. They are (iv) wrong turns, or (v) detours, or (vi) dead ends or (vii) roundabouts on the streets of discourse. Or should we say that (viii) they are short cuts to the truth at

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the end of the road? Maybe, (ix) they are long and winding roads to nowhere. Or, instead, we can conceive of arguments as (x) intellectual one way roads to their conclusions - although maybe they are really (xi) one-lane roads but with two-way traffic. More positively, arguments can be thought of as (xii) the merging traffic of ideas or even better as (xiii) conceptual roads-under-construction. Conceptual connections like these can be constructed almost at will. The list can be expanded, if not ad infinitum, then at least ad nauseam, so that almost any arbitrarily constructed metaphor, even an initially inscrutable one, such as that arguments are the road kill alongside the highways of life (ad nauseam indeed!), can be made intelligible and plausible: both arguments and road kill are to be avoided, they are the tragic end for those who innocently enter areas of high traffic, they are what can happen if we are not careful, and so on. Admittedly, this is stretching the point, but that is exactly what metaphors do so well. Still, the fact that so many traffic metaphors are so readily available suggests that they identify an important set of features about arguments, viz., something about their internal dynamics and the possible interactions that can arise from them. 12 In contrast to the argument-as-traffic metaphors, the argument-iswar metaphor makes a different point. What it emphasizes (or creates!) is the adversarial aspect of argum.entation, which is why this particular metaphor is objectionable in the classroom. But, interpretation being an art, other conclusions could also be drawn from the metaphor. There will always be an indefinitely large supply of abstractable similarities between the tenor and vehicle of a metaphor, wars and arguments in this case. Wars may involve n10re than just two parties, but never less than two, and we usually assume that this is true of arguments as well. 13 Wars can be ended by simple agreement of the parties involved, and so can arguments. Wars are occasions that test the national resolve and sense of identity, while arguments can do the same for the individual. Wars need not end with a winner and a loser, because both sides might claim victory, when in fact both sides may have lost a great deal, and there is surely a counterpart for arguments. Of course, there are also great differences that might be offered as counterexamples or counterbalances to the value of this metaphor. Wars can be prevented by diplomatic efforts, so they represent a failure of diplomacy. Arguments are not always symptomatic of communicative failure. Often they are the expressly intended products of rational inquiry! Indeed, if we include rational engagement under the rubric "diplomacy," then it is precisely argumentation that can best

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prevent wars! Wars can be prevented by arguing, but arguing, obviously, cannot. Argument, as rational engagement, is antithetical to military engagement, and the metaphor would then have to be seen as an ironic reversal. (Then again, if fighting for peace can make sense, so might arguing for agreement.) If arguments are to be a positive way of addressing differences, then (2) Argument is not war; it is diplomatic negotiation.

Two of these just-mentioned features common to war and argument merit particular attention. First, wars never end up where they started. The status quo ante bellum can never really be achieved. What starts out as a war of principle, especially when successful, might well end up as a war of conquest, and, conversely, the unsuccessful war for conquest is transformed into a war of principle. Successful defensive re-actions inevitably seek to pre-empt any possible future transgressions. What, for example, was the American Civil War all about? The Vietnam War? The Gulf War? The answers that today's history books offer differ from the answers given by those wars' own contemporaries. Something very similar happens in arguments, especially when they are thought of as verbal wars. Interestingly, Imre Lakatos has made just this point with respect to mathematical proofs, the very paradigms for the "official" picture of arguments as exercises in pure reason. 14 Proofs and refutations, he argued, are two parts of the same dialectical process. Counterexamples to proposed theorems, he maintained, do not in general function as real refutations. Rather, the role they most often play in mathematics is to demand further clarification of the intended range of the thesis or to seek greater articulation in the definitions of the concepts used. 15 The theorems that result from, or survive, this process are inevitably changed by the process. That is, what a proof is "all about" changes as the proof proceeds, and this is no less applicable to other kinds of arguments. Thus, (3) Argument is not war; it is the growth and adaptation of thoughts; it is manifest rationality.16

Wittgenstein reached a very similar conclusion about mathematical proofs, albeit for different reasons. 17 A proof, he asserted, never proves what it set out to prove. Proofs establish new conceptual connections

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between the thesis in question and other parts of the system of mathematics. These connections are constitutive of the meanings of the concepts involved, so the meaning of the sentence proved always has new semantic-conceptual accretions. Therefore, the sentence that has been proved, the theorem, can never have exactly the same meaning as the sentence to be proved, despite their typographic identity. In just the same way, to revert to an earlier example, no poem can really ever be revised because any revisions would, in a very real sense, result in a new and different poem. Is there a way to think of arguments as altering, or even constructing, new nleanings? That is, can what an argument is "all about" be subject to the same sorts of historiographic revisions as the casus belli? It seems so. That is, (4) Argument is not war; it is the metamorphosis of ideas. The other feature common to wars and arguments I want to note is that they are multiple-agent events (or, at least, multi-voice events, to accommodate those of us who habitually argue with ourselves). It takes more than one party to start a war or an argument, it takes more than one party to sustain a war or argument, and it also takes more than one to finish a war or argument. Just as a war is never really over until both sides agree to a cessation of hostilities - otherwise there will be a prolonged guerrilla war, pennanent tensions, or an uneasy truce without real peace - so too, an argument is never really over until some sort of consensus has been achieved. Without that, there will be continued verbal sniping, simmering resentments, or a lingering grudge beneath the surface. Arguments might result in situations that are analogous to the results of wars, but there is also the possibility that they end otherwise. Arguments may result in an exchange of ideas or the birth of new ideas, rather than just the imposition of one side's ideas on the other. And this is certainly a legitimate pedagogical role for arguments. In the classroom, then, (5) Argument should not even be like war; it should be a kind of crosspollination, leading to hybridization. Alternatively, arguments can end in with the construction of a new conceptual order, as the Second World War gave birth to the United Nations. Ideally, in seminar (6) Argument is not at all war; it is brainstorming.

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The best arguments, then, rather than being destructively adversarial, involve a constructive co-operation between their participants. There can be a certain "complicity" between the arguer and the audience. 18 If debate is, to be constructive for everyone involved, then instead of being a kind of war,

(7) Argument can be more like a barnraising. Although the language of warfare is so readily used to describe arguments, there is a difference that is both obvious and important, but still easy to overlook: arguments, like brainstorming sessions or bamraisings, can be desirable in a way that wars cannot. If we focus on the possible outcomes rather than the origins, the ends rather than the beginnings, then one way to conceptualize arguments is as those events in rational discourse that tend to create or lead to consensus. This combines the transformative-constructivist aspect with the multipleagency aspect of arguments in a way that accommodates the move from philosophy as the pursuit-of-truth to philosophy as the pursuit-ofwisdom by shifting the balance in emphasis from (to borrow a phrase from Richard Rorty) objectivity to solidarity, while simultaneously respecting the possibility of non-competitive or even cooperative argumentation for educational ends. Simply put: "Let's hash it out" does not have to mean "Let's fight it out." Perhaps arguments are more like town meetings than anything else, because they are sometimes contentious, but sometimes co-operative; there may be several opposing factions, or only interested but as yet undecided citizens; sometimes they are divisive and inconclusive, but sometimes they are indeed constructive; they may begin with a consensus for action, and serve merely as strategy sessions for orchestrating actions, or they may begin with a cacophony of voices and end the same way. For all its openness to the variety of forms arguments can take, the purposes they can serve, and the many possible outcomes that can result from them, in the end, I don't think the town-meeting metaphor serves very well. It will not challenge the argument-is-war metaphor, if only because town meetings do not occupy as prominent a place in our conceptual geography as war. War, however prominent it may be conceptually, provides a dangerous metaphor, particularly when it has been allowed to form, to deform, argumentation in the classroom. Other metaphors are available, and still others that are even better are

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waiting to be created, but in the end I am skeptical that any single metaphor can fit all the shapes that arguments take or serve all the purposes that arguments serve. In that case, we do not really need to come up with a new metaphor to reflect and reform our practice; we need instead to traffic in as many metaphors as possible - including all those traffic metaphors!

Endnotes 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13/

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation meetings in May 1995 and then appeared, in modified form, in Informal Logic 17: 177-188. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, pp. 1-6. Many others have noticed this as well, e.g., Nozick 1981, pp. 4-5. Cf. Michael Gilbert's concept of multi-modal arguments in Gilbert 1997, ch.6. Nozick, loco cit. This statement has been attributed, on electronic bulletin boards without citation, to the rhetorician Sally Gearheart. Maryann Ayim 1988, 1991, and elsewhere, has also raised the question of the metaphors we use to talk about our philosophical discourse and educational practices. See Govier 1999, esp. ch. 4, for a positive assessment of the adversarial element in arguments. This important observation was first suggested as being relevant here by my colleague Jill Gordon. See Govier 1988 for a more extended treatment of the issue. Andrea Nye, beginning with Nye 1981, has also argued against pedagogies that overemphasize rhetorical skills, and the combative structure of discourse about philosophical discourse. I think there is a very important, but all too often overlooked, connection between argumentation and interpretation that becomes more visible here than elsewhere. It is addressed more directly below. Haft-Van Rees 1989 attributes this to van Eemeren and Grootendorst. The fact that so many traffic metaphors spring so easily to mind is, of course, also an indication of how important cars and roads are in our culture. But arguments, too, must be conceptually high-profile for the mappings to be so readily available. The apparent counterexample, arguing with oneself, is addressed below, in chapter 4, and Part II. See also Perelnlan and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, §6-

10. 14. Lakatos 1976, esp., ch. 1, parts 6 - 8.

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15. In dialectical approaches to argumentation, the charge that a fallacy has been committed functions the same way. Ideally, "the charge of fallacy serves to extend the argument, not to cut off debate" (Johnson and Blair, 1977, p. 200) 16. This felicitous phrase is taken from the title of Johnson 2000. 17. Wittgenstein 1956, e.g., §II-31: "One would like to say: the proof changes the grammar of our language, changes our concepts. It makes new connexions, and it creates the concept of these connexions. (It does not establish that they are there; they do not exist until it makes them.)" 18. The term is used by Farrell, cited by Tindale 1999, p. 15.

CHAPTER 4

One Way to Lose an Argument! Tolstoy's comment about families - that the happy ones all resemble one another, but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way- can also be said of arguments. Good arguments, like happy families, can provide an environment for growth, rather than just a habitat for survival. They are worth seeking out and sustaining. When they are successful - when there is serious, respectful, and constructive dialogue - it can appear as if there were a natural and self-sustaining equilibrium, with little to remark. In contrast, no one wants to be part of either a dysfunctional family or a dysfunctional argument, but it sometimes seems that the more dysfunctional the situation, the more its participants feel the need to say. Fortunately for argumentation theorists (if not family counselors and friends), it is generally the unhappy examples that are the most interesting for speculative theorists and the most entertaining for non-participant spectators. There is, however, one very notable exception to this, an unhappy argument that loses its appeal to spectators rather quickly - the interminable filibuster. As uninteresting as filibusters may be to spectators, they are an odd case that should be of great interest to argumentation theorists. There are many ways of conceptualizing arguments. 3 T\vo models were addressed in the previous chapter: arguments-as-war and argunlents-as-proofs. These stand out prominently because they are so COlllmon and so compelling yet they embody completely different criteria for success and failure. For many, the first thing that comes to mind when we ~peak of arguments is the idea of some kind of verbal warfare. This is the "adversarial" paradigm for arguments, sometimes thought of as the subj ect of rhetoric. 4 Two arguers are each trying to persuade the other of something, or to do something, while simultaneously trying to resist all of the other's attempts at persuasion. This is the notion of arguments that is enshrined in what Robert Nozick has called "coercive philosophy" - making people believe things

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s

whether they want to or not. It is also manifest in what we saw in the last chapter: the militaristic language we use to talk about arguments. Even if the militaristic language of arguments-as-war is avoided, 6 other common descriptions of arguments resort to the language of the agon or sporting contest. Of these, boxing metaphors predominate. 7 Knockdown arguments carry lots of punch, while bad arguments are weak. Strong, defensive positions should be able to withstand a barrage of body-blows, but perhaps not cheap shots or, worse, low blows that hit below the belt. And, if we are fortunate enough to be called away from a losing argument, we can be indeed be saved by the bel/. The result of a successful argument, according to the adversarial paradigm, is the end of resistance and a victory over the now converted opposition who henceforth will believe or act in accordance with the dictates of the winner. From the other side, this means that unsuccessful arguments suffer a particularly ignominious kind of failure: losing. But isn't there something wrong with this picture? If someone has successfully constructed an argument leading us to a true, or at least now-warranted, conclusion, why should we feel that we have lost rather than gained something? Why are we resentful rather than grateful? The discomfort arises because there are other ways to conceptualize arguments that also appeal to us as arguers and holds sway in our thoughts. An argument is an extended chain of reasoning - a sequence of elements, propositions or speech acts, say - in which acceptance of the starting points, the premises, leads or commits one, in some logical sense, to accepting the final elenlent, the conclusion. We subject ourselves to the less arbitrary, more universal, and more benevolent "dictates of reason" rather than to those of any lesser master. This is the core of the "argument as proof' paradigm, the subject of logic. It is the ideal of reasoning that is embodied (we like to think) in the pages of academic journals of mathematics and symbolic logic. There is a normative force to this ideal that is integral to our evaluations of arguments. As it has been characterized, the argument-as-proof paradigm is not limited to propositions or indicative sentences. As in argunlents-aswar, nothing rules out arguments ending in imperatives, questions, promises, or metaphors. Since we do speak of the "logic of a situation" when considering historical circumstances and dramatic narratives, perhaps even non-linguistic acts can be seen as logical conclusions

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from antecedent "reasons."g What this paradigm does suppose is an irresistible path to its conclusion. Success for arguments-as-proofs, therefore, is achieved when the path has been constructed or followed to that conclusion. This concept of success allows for several different ways to fail at arguments-as-proofs: a chain of reasoning can fall short of reaching its conclusion, it can reach the wrong conclusion, or it can reach the right conclusion in the wrong way, e.g., by an illicit shortcut. That is, arguments as proofs are flawed when they exhibit any of those old familiars, the fallacies. 9 As embarrassing as it may be to lose one's way in an argument, it is still better than the indignity of losing an argument. Indeed, losing an argument is possible only within the adversarial model. You cannot lose an argument-as-proofargument! We do speak of someone's having been "defeated" by a tough proof, so after a fashion, there is a way to "lose" a proof, but this is hardly the same phenomenon as losing an argument-as-war argument. It presupposes the personification of logic, mathematics, or whatever body of knowledge presented the challenge, but that personification does not have to be made. The conceptual challenges that present themselves to us need not be seen as having been presented to us by anyone. Of course, for arguments-as-proofs to have any effect on us, they have to be more than just inferentially connected sequences of propositions: they have to be presented to us. Arguments are also presentations. The failures that beset argunlents-as-proof are peculiar to that paradigm. They do not really apply to arguments-as-war. An arguer can lose her way, reach the wrong conclusion, or make illicit inferences in adversarial arguments, but these are failures only insofar as they "weaken" the argument and thereby contribute to defeat. Since, as a matter of empirical fact, red herrings, hasty generalizations, and other classical fallacies often do succeed in convincing the audience, they can actually help to win arguments - which is to say that they can strengthen arguments-as-war even as they weaken arguments-as-proof. A fallacy is an illicit form of argument, but all is fair in love and war. Thus, in a very real sense: There are no fallacies in argument-as-war arguments. 10 I take it that this is what is meant by the provocative claim, "The axiom of all rhetoric is the principle of insufficient reason. ,,11 The thing to worry about is contingently unsuccessful rhetorical strategies. Necessarily invalid logical fallacies are worrisome only insofar as they

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might be recognized as such, thereby disarmed, and rendered ineffective. Focusing on the differences separating these two paradigms does an injustice to the class of arguments as a whole, however, if it means ignoring their kinship. There are similarities and affinities to be respected between the two models for arguments - more than just the empirical, psychological facts about humans that the arguments that are most persuasive happen to be the logically valid ones and vice-versa, and conversely, that egregiously fallacious arguments tend not to be persuasive - although with a distressingly smaller correlation. Recall the common charge against the Sophists, that they make the worse argument seem better, a charge often raised by Plato but raised just as often against philosophers themselves. 12 It appears to endorse the dichotomy between the logical and adversarial paradigms, and the coordinate systems that measure good or bad arguments on the one hand and successful or unsuccessful arguers on the other. This tacitly identifies rhetorical skill with argumentative effectiveness, but they are not the same thing. It is easy enough to let the difference go unrecognized because they are so often congruent, but what happens when we are confronted with either an argument that is both cogent and well-argued that still loses, or an argument that is both fallacious and poorly argued yet manages to win? Neither of these should be possible on this scheme, but both do occur. There is some uncharted territory between the adversarial and logical regions on our map of arguments. 13 Plato's charge seems to involve two elements, the arguers who are skillful and their arguments, which misleadingly appear to be good. A third party is implicated, however, because apparently good arguments can only be apparently good when there is someone for them to appear to an opponent or a jury or a witness - in sum, an audience. No one accuses either Sophists or Philosophers of deliberately trying to pull the wool over their own eyes. They have to have a target audience. Once the audience has been given its place, the odd phenomena of wellpresented, valid, losing arguments and poorly presented, fallacious, but winning arguments can be explained. There is a model for arguments that explicitly accommodates the audience, one that is midway between the extremes of the solitary logician's crystalline proofs and the obstinate contrarian's disputatious bickering. It is the classical model of argument-as-performance, and the arguer as rhetor whose arguments were public presentations. 14 Argumentation is an art - like warfare. There is an art to choosing one's weapons - and to choosing one's arguments. Different

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opponents respond differently to different strategies. Just as a naval blockade might succeed against some seaports, but not those with easy overland access, so too, satire might work well before some audiences but not others. At a political rally, lampooning the opposition is always good sport; before the Justices of a High Court, it might not be so wise. Classical rhetors would recognize the lawyer making his case before a jury, a politician rallying her audience, and activists exhorting their listeners as their modern-day counterparts. In each case, there is an obvious performative element in presenting the argument. To evaluate and even just to understand public arguments like these, the performative dimension has to be distinguished from the question of efficacy and then accorded its own theoretical prominence. We need to focus for a moment on making the case, rather than on the case itself or its effect~, Le., on the oratorical aspects rather than the purely inferential or adversarial, rhetorical ones. (The performative dimension to argument is not limited to the spoken word, so the use of the term "oratorical" is unfortunate if it is taken to exclude viewing the pontifications of editorial columnists or the polemics of other print media propagandists through the arguments-as-performance lens. They are open to many of the same sorts of performative successes' and failures as orally presented arguments.) Arguments-as-performances share features with both argumentsas-proofs and argulnents-as-war. Like proofs, presented arguments largely escape the give-and-take of dialogue that characterizes arguments-as-war. Thus, a rhetor making a case does not need even an opponent to argue. That gives her the option of totally ignoring her opponents, if they are present, and adopting the form and trappings of an argument-as-proof - including such rhetorically powerful linguistic markers as "thus," "hence," and "therefore" that are characteristic of proofs. (Thus, as should be obvious, authors of philosophical texts who also present arguments have that same option!) Like adversarial arguments, however, presented arguments have targets to persuade: audiences. The target audience may just be the opponents, but not necessarily. Not only can rhetors ignore their opponents, they can ignore the canons of deductive reasoning and rational dialogue! All the emotionally compelling appeals and techniques of adversarial arguments are available including demonizing or ridiculing those ignored opponents. Absent opponents are still opponents, and no less a rallying point for their silence. Indeed, their silence just makes the argument that much easier to pursue. For the determined rhetor, the inconvenient lack of opponents can always be remedied by imagined

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ones. Even just the potential opposition of residual internal doubts serves to focus - as well as explain and justify - preaching to the converted and arguing with oneself. IS When arguments are viewed as perfonnances, they become subject to evaluation by new criteria - in addition to the criteria used for evaluating proofs and disputes. To be fully successful, arguments-asperformances must be well presented. Even an argument that passes both logical and rhetorical muster, reaching its conclusion both validly and persuasively can be counted a failure of a sort if it does not do it artfully as well. Naturally, additional criteria for success implicate additional ways to go wrong. Arguments fail as performances when they are boring, offensive, unimaginative, inelegant, inappropriate, etc. Most of these failures are already recognizable as rhetorical failings and so might be included in the argument-as-war paradigm - but not all. Boring, offensive, unimaginative, inelegant, and inappropriate arguments may yet be persuasive. Presenting a good argument can, of course, be a factor in presenting an argument well, so the performative paradigm for arguments is not independent of the logical one. And since many of the things that make the presentation of an argun1ent a good presentation also serve to make it an effective one, the adversarial and performance paradigms are also intimately connected. For example, one obvious way of presenting an argument well is to do so with wit. The fact that wit is an effective argumentative weapon, i.e., a good strategy to use in arguments-as-war, has been recognized by writers on rhetoric from Aristotle to the present day. Of course, the wittier arguer need not be the one who wins the argument, so the categories do diverge. In a similar vein, an argument can be "unconvincing" in two ways. It can fail to convince the listener to accept its conclusion, which is an argumentative failure, but it can also fail to convince the listener that the arguer himself sincerely accepts the conclusion, which is a performative failure on par with an "unconvincing" dramatic performance. All combinations are possible. Artful and valid arguments are 110t always persuasive, artful and persuasive arguments are often invalid, and valid and persuasive arguments need not be artful. The two troublesome possibilities mentioned above - sound, well argued but ultimately unpersuasive arguments and fallacious, poorly argued but persuasive ones - can now be broached. Under what conditions can unsuccessful arguers claim that they both had the better argument and were the better arguers? Somehow, the cards n1ust have

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been stacked against them. What if they were stuck having to argue a losing proposition from the outset? Even the most accomplished lawyers sometimes have to yield to the evidence. But in that case, they cannot really clain1 to have had the better arguments. If an argument really is a good one and the arguer really did present it well, wouldn't it be unfair to deny her her rightful victory? Her case and what she makes of it may be in her control, but there is that third element which is not: the audience. Even the most artful arguer, armed with the most cogent arguments, will not always win if he is not given a fair hearing, say, or the audience was prejudiced against his position, or the audience was incapable of recognizing the excellence of his argument. A fair hearing requires an attentive, impartial, and competent audience. Unfortunately, very often the only audience for our arguments is the opposing disputant, so the ideal conditions for a fair hearing are as rarely met in ordinary argumentation as a deductively valid argument. Notice how the language of morals has inexorably worked itself into the discourse: rightful victory will come with afair hearing from an impartial audience. Good arguers with good arguments should win. The same thing occurs in the contrary case, winning arguments that are neither good nor well presented. Bad arguers with bad arguments should not win. It is not just logically offensive. It is aesthetically offensive. And it is morally offensive. This could have been expected. When arguments are viewed as acts, they are subject to judgment as acts, and moral judgments are the most important judgments we make of acts. Thus, in assessing arguments-as-performances, one of the ways we can consider them as failures is when they fall short ethically. For example, even a wellreasoned and successfully persuasive argument can be counted as a kind of failure if by the use of certain language it is inappropriate or offensive. Sirriilarly, winning an argun1ent but losing a friend is more loss than victory, more of a tragedy than a success story. Argumentsas-performances fail in their own ways. It might be countered that these ethical, aesthetic, and largercontext failures are largely irrelevant for argun1entation theorists because they are not really argumentative failures. Offensive arguments fail not as arguments but as interpersonal actions more generally. Not all flaws that arguments are heir to are argumentative flaws. An argument that has grammatical flaws, for example, may be no less successful as an argument on that account. There are, however, some performative failures, that are indeed relevant for evaluating

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arguments qua arguments - and I think that the filibusters mentioned above provide a case in point. Over the years, the United States Senate has given logicians more good examples of bad arguments-as-proofs than are really needed. The Senate has also been most generous in filling rhetoricians' needs for good examples of bad arguments-as-war. As chance would have it, even some good examples of good arguments have managed to emerge from that august institution. Yet curiously, neither logicians nor rhetoricians have had much to say about the filibuster, the Senate's most infamous contribution to the history of arguments. Filibusters distinguish the U.S. Senate from most of the other parliaments and legislatures around the world that have also been noteworthy contributors to humanity's store of bad arguments. Filibustering is the art of endlessly prolonging the debate to prevent any decisive action on the issue at hand. If defeat is imminent, but there are no time limits on what can be said, then the argument can be prolonged indefinitely - and defeat can be postponed indefinitely, with the delaying tactics of the filibuster ending only when the opposition gives in from sheer exhaustion. They are the height of obstructionism - and unsurpassingly frustrating. For all the abuse that can be directed against them, the fact remains that filibusters can be very effective. They make no pretensions to logical validity, nor do they have any aspirations to oratorical excellence. As would-be proofs, they may be abject failures. Randomly reading from the telephone book has very little relevance for just about any issue that could conceivably come before the Senate for consideration. As performances, they may be utterly artless and so equally abject. A few weeks seasoning will turn even the most melodious drawl of the grandest Senate oratory into a mind-numbing drone. There is no record that the poems that have been entered into the Congressional record in the course of filibusters were read with any great feeling or that Senatorial colleagues have ever been moved by readings from the day's newspapers. And yet, filibusters' effectiveness within the context of political debate remains unquestioned. Castigating them as ineloquent or fallacious misses their point. Their measure has to be taken with a different yardstick. From one perspective, filibusters can be classed under the category of the fallacious appeal to force or threat, Argumentum ad Baculum. The threat is that unless the opposition yields, the filibuster will continue. In the U.S. Senate, filibusterers take advantage of the time limits given by the formal structure of their debates (viz., the

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constitutional terms for congressional sessions) and the lack of any time limits for individual Senators' speeches. While other arguers might not be in exactly that situation, they can exploit the limited resources of their audiences. Any parent of an insistent 5-year old can attest to the effectiveness of ceaseless entreaties: uPlease, Daddy, Can /? Please? Please? Please? Please? Can /? Can /? Can /? ... " UAll right already!" (The opportunity to juxtapose whiny 5-year-old children and cranky 95-year-old Senators is irresistible!) If there were both an eternity of time and an infinitely patient audience, filibusters would not work. You could not filibuster in an argument with God! 16 From the pragma-dialectical perspective, filibusters are fallacies because insofar as they prevent debate, they violate the first rule of critical discussion. 17 This is better, but remember that there are no fallacies in arguments-as-war. That is why filibusters can be so successful and so debilitating to a deliberative body like the Senate. Indeed, Senators have used the mere threat of filibusters more often than actual filibusters to obstruct the passage of undesired bills. But does wresting an exhausted or exasperated "All right already!" count as winning an argument? Since the issue was never really engaged, the practical or political concessions were not really "won" in rational argument so much as they were exacted as tribute in extra-rational struggle. But isn't effective persuasion what the adversarial model for arguments is all about? Being insistent is just one more time-tested argumentative strategy, for children and Senators alike, one that is reinforced by a history of success. In that respect, how does it differ fronl ad Hominen ridicule, ad Misericordiam tears, or ad Populum flag-waving - all logical fallacies but, when judiciously used, rhetorically effective tactics? There is an important difference, though. None of the classical fallacies work when they are done artlessly but artfulness is wasted in filibusters: it is just not necessary. There is another perspective for evaluating filibusters, however, according to which they are neither dialectical transgressions, nor logical fallacies, nor rhetorical tactics within structured arguments. Instead, they are external attacks on the very possibility of argument. 18 Sometimes what filibusters do is block debate rather than win debate. They do not beg the question; they prevent the question. That sort of obstructionism has more in common with walking away from an argument than it does with anything that goes on within the argument. One way not to lose an argument is not to have the argument, and one way not to have an argument is to prevent it. If I do not wish to engage in debate with you, I can simply avoid you. Alternatively, I can shut

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my ears so I do not hear what you have to say. Or I can shut your mouth so you do not have the chance to say it! I can shout you down or shut you down. Filibusterers effectively shut their opponents' Inouths. 19 In J. L. Austin's language for describing performative failures, filibustering as a way to win an argument would be an "abuse," while filibustering to avoid argument would have to be some sort of "misfire."zo The distinction between using a filibuster to win an argument and using it to prevent an argument is not always clear, but it is clear enough, enough of the time, to be a useful distinction. The same is true of walking away from an argument. It can be a way to avoid an argument, a way to avoid losing an argument, or, if it is a case of quitting while your ahead, even a way of winning an argument. The argument-as-petformance model for arguments provides a framework for accommodating this distinction and for evaluating the different cases, as well as for recognizing the importance of the audience and the relevance of the ethics of argumentation. Poor performance and non-performance are kinds of performative failure, but they are not the same kind. Criticism of a performance need not be criticism of the performer, but such criticism perforce requires a performance. People cannot be taken to task for arguing fallaciously or ineffectively when they have not argued at all, but there are indeed times when they can be taken to task for not arguing. This includes those occasions when the failure of the performance as act is an ethical failure for which the (non-)performer is the responsible agent. For example, there are times and places in which we would be remiss were we not to take issue with someone who said something horribly racist or sexist. Letting that sort of comment slide may, of course, be the socially easiest path, but sometimes it is not the right path. An analogy is provided by some theological terminology: failing to argue may be an arg~mentative sin of omission rather than a sin of commission. To sin by commission, we must argue badly. One immediately recognizable example of a flawed argument-asact is the rhetor who presents an inappropriately offensive argument successful or not. Suppose a lawyer wins her case but in doing so managed to alienate the jury, the judge, and her client. That would not bode well for her career in the long run. The argument was a success, but certainly not an unqualified success. The qualifications are the issue at hand. Similarly, a politician might convince you to vote for him by a dirty, negative campaign directed against his opponent. Again, the success is not altogether unqualified. There may be negative

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consequence in future elections down the road - e.g., an increasingly cynical and alienated electorate. But even if there are no such negative consequences, the presented arguments should be seen as flawed arguments. In each case, the rhetor can be said to have sinned. Unlike fallacies, however, these are not sins against a logical god, but sins against our fellow humans, viz., the audience. Sometimes, filibusters are the argumentation counterpart to sins of omission, and they are similarly blameworthy. Their failure is not in the arguments they present - there nlight not be any argument presented at all - but in their failure to present an argument and their failure to listen to argument. Sometimes there is an obligation to engage in argument, and when there is, then walking away, covering one's ears, obstructing debate, or anything else that compromises a fair hearing is a violation, by either omission or commission, of the ethics of argument. It is the audience who is, as it were, the sinned-against party. All of this leaves completely open the questions of when we have an obligation to engage in argument and the nature of our obligations, but it does raise those questions. Moreover, it identifies the objects of our argumentative obligations: audiences. It is the audience, after all, is who is offended by our inappropriately offensive arguments, who is silenced by our filibusters, and who is denied a fair hearing when we walk away from debate. Arguments as proofs may be regarded as merely formalist achievements, but as performances and as adversarial moments in discourse, arguments are inherently social phenomena. The inclination to see them as proofs is, in part, an attempt to forget about that social dimension. It is when we recognize and pay attention to it that we feel the urge to resort to ethical discourse in characterizing arguments. Perhaps there is a temptation to classify cases like these as wholly a matter of ethical failure rather than argumentative failure, as if argumentation theorists could leave them to the moralists. It is not that easy, however. Not all performative failures are necessarily ethical failures. Some performative failures in argument are indeed relevant for evaluating arguments as arguments. It is not hard to conceive circunlstances in which walking away from an argument would be exactly the right thing to do from a larger ethical standpoint, but it would still count as a performative failure from the argumentation theorist's standpoint. Argumentation theory needs to say something about its shortcomings.

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The conclusions to be drawn from all this are things we have known intuitively all along. They should come as no surprise. First, the canons of reason enshrined in formal logic systems provide one framework for assessing arguments. It is a normative framework, transgressions against which are formal fallacies. Second, the adversarial paradigm that informs so much of our thinking about, speaking about, and practice of arguments comes with its own criteria for judging arguments. It is a utilitarian, consequentialist framework. But third, if these were the only yardsticks available, there would be neither good arguments presented well that lose nor poorly presented, fallacious arguments that win. There is a third elenlent in arguments, the audience, and a third aspect to arguments, the perfonnative one. We are doing something when we make a case. Actions are subject to their own evaluative measures. These include, but are not restricted to, the ethical. So, if you want to win an argument, there are many ways to do it. You cannot win if you do not play the game, so you must engage in argument. No filibusters; no walking away. And you must engage in it as if it were combat. To regard it heuristically, as a proof in which you might possibly arrive at the truth, is the wrong approach. What if your opponent had the right answer? You could not win then - but you should not want to win then. The attitude needed is the one for hashing something out or figuring it out, not for fighting it out. .Neither can you win if you regard arguments wholly as performances. It does not matter how well you perfonn. Victory does not come in degrees. To win, then, you must adopt the adversarial stance. Then, present a good argument. That should suffice. If not, present your best bad argument very well. That will generally do the trick. If not, there is still a way to win: choose your opponent and your audience carefully. An acquiescent or incompetent opponent, and a synlpathetic or gullible audience can guarantee victory. But, if what you really want to do is lose an argument, there are different strategies. You still have to engage in argument; you cannot walk away. Once engaged, you can present a very bad argument. Sometimes that is enough. If you have too much logical integrity to resort to blatant Sophistry, you can present a good argument very badly. If, however, what you have your heart set on is losing with a good argument and doing it with style, then your options are more limited but they are still not yet closed off entirely. You can simply choose a bad audience, one that will give you a hearing, but neither a fair nor conlpetent hearing.

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If that is what is you want, then serious philosophy must be avoided at all costs. Philosophy is where the responsibility for respecting the art of rational argumentation is most acute because part of reasoning rationally is reasoning about rationality. In the next part, this principle, the "Principle of Meta-Rationality," becomes the cornerstone for the project of evaluating arguments - and arguers and argumentation itself.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

An earlier version of this was presented at the IVth Congress of the International Society for the Study of Argument, Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 1998. L. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, pt. 1, ch. 1. Some of these conceptions, and possible alternatives, were addressed in earlier chapters. A simpler, more helpful, schema is provided by the product-procedure-process trichotomy of approaches to argument from Aristotle's triad of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. See Habermas 1984 and Tindale 1999. The discussion here will focus on the logical and adversarial aspects; the dialectical dimension is integrated into the evaluative scheme in chapters 5 and 6 below, where the adversarial, or "agonistic," aspect is explicitly subsumed under the rhetorical. If rhetoric is just the art of persuasion, then it can indeed be regarded as no more than debate tactics, argumentation's counterpart to military strategy (but see the previous chapter!). That all changes if, as was classically the case, rhetoric's goal is recognized as "rational persuasion," rather than persuasion simpliciter. Nozick 1981, p. 4. See, Nozick, p, 4-5, chapter 1 of Lakoff and Johnson 1980, as well as chapter 3 above. The subclass of boxing metaphors was suggested to me in correspondence by Barbara Leclerc. The equivocation between reasons as premises and reasons as causes e.g" between what causes our beliefs and what justifies them - can have rather large philosophical consequences. The sixth, seventh, and eighth essays in R. Rorty 1991 discuss this. This is the "Standard Treatment" of fallacies, in the terminology of Hamblin 1970. Pragma-dialectics offers an account of fallacies that is not tied to the argument-as-proof paradigm, emphasizing their negative contributions to resolving disputes. See van Eemeren and Grootendoorst 1984 and 1992, Walton 1991, and Tindale 1999. In chapter 5 below, the tripartite schenle for evaluating arguments opens the way for

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10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

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distinguishing "logical fallacies," "dialectical fallacies," and "rhetorical fallacies" from one another, a theme that is developed in chapter 6.. This is one way to motivate the pragtna-dialectical re-conceptualization of fallacies as, in Walton's phrase, "violation[s] of a code of conduct for rational discussants" in Walton 1992, p. 265. Blumenberg, 1987, p. 447. For example, in Apology, Gorgias, and The Republic. This territory is more fully explored in chapter 5. Quintilian, 1921, Bk. V. ch. 10, offers a comparison between orators and musicians to make these points. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 is the locus classicus for contemporary attention to audiences in argument. Leff, 1998, contains a brief but helpful discussion of how the performative and interpretive elements of argument are related. Tindale 1999 develops a full rhetorical model for arguments. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p. 44 God, presumably, could filibuster us - assuming that to do so would not be an indication of an imperfection. See chapters 1, 4, and 6. Van Eemeren and Grootendoorst 1984. The point is that not all filibusters are violations of the "argumentation stage" of disputes; some prevent even the "opening stage," in the pragma-dialectical model. Levi 1999, for different reasons, reaches a similar conclusion about ad Baculum arguments. In both case, implicit rules for civil discourse have been transgressed, but since the parties have not engaged in argumentation, the transgressions cannot be counted as fallacies in argument. These examples are relevant to argument theory only if there are obligations to engage in (and refrain from) argument. See chapter 7. The mugger, in Levi's example who presents his victim with the prenlise, "Your money or your life!" is subject to civil law, rather than argumentation rules; senators are subject to both. In the 19th century, there were constitutionally mandated adjournment dates for Congress, so preventing debate was easily accomplished. See Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Congress of the United States: Origins, History and Procedure. In Austin's terminology, this would presumably would be a "misexecution" rather than a "misinvocation." See Austin 1975 p. 18.

PART II Thinking about Arguments The models for arguments that emerged in the first section are put to use in this section. Chapters 5 and 6 present a full, threedimensional co-ordinate system for evaluating arguments, positively and negatively. The complete taxonomy of possible evaluations for arguments reveals some unsettling possibilities. Of special note are those arguments that are logically compelling and even dialectically satisfying, but nonetheless do not succeed in persuading rational, competent, and engaged audiences. The three-part approach finds conceptual room for these curious arguments, and in so doing also provides a general framework for conceptualizing argumentative failures. Invalid inferences are not the only ways that arguments go wrong. The remaining chapters in this section considers the questions of when and why we should argue. I attempt to explain why it is

sometimes rationally incumbent on us to argue. Returning to the argunlent-is-war metaphor, and borrowing from Just War theory, I then explore why, at other times, argument is rationally enjoined. There is, in the end, a significant philosophical benefit to be gained from working out the how's and why's of these arguments: a deeper understanding of philosophy's own arguments.

CHAPTER 5

Evaluating Arguments and Making Meta-Arguments' This chapter explores the outlines of a general framework for evaluating arguments. Among the factors to take into account are these: the strength of the arguers' inferences, the level of their engagement with objections raised by other interlocutors, and their effectiveness in rationally persuading their target audiences. Some connections among these can be understood only in the context of meta-argumentation and meta-rationality. The Principle of MetaRationality (PMR) - that reasoning rationally includes reasoning about rationality - is used to explain why it can be rational to resist dialectically satisfying arguments or accept logically flawed ones. Introduction. There are many ways to take the measure of an argument, many vocabularies and criteria available to help us answer the question: Is the argument a good one? There are many questions contained in this one. Ethics, politics, aesthetics, epistemology, psychology, jurisprudence, and many other disciplines, all have son1ething to contribute. For the purpose of rational persuasion, 2 however, the real core of argumentation theory rests on the tripod of logic, rhetoric, and dialectic. The different approaches to argument are not independent of one another. Logic provides fodder for epistemological justifications or conden1nations of argument forms; rhetorical analyses might well include or intersect aesthetic considerations; psychological explanations of why certain valid argument forms invite suspicion while some invalid ones generally meet with assent would be relevant for dialectic; and so on. Even among the tripartite core, there are important connections: deductively valid inferences from wellwarranted premises generally make for dialectically satisfying arguments, and dialectical closure is generally rhetorically compelling. For all their connections, logical, dialectical, and rhetorical criteria for taking the measure of arguments are separable, both conceptually and practically. Neither logical validity nor dialectical success entails

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the other. Moreover, neither one entails, or is entailed by, rhetorical effectiveness. It is possible, therefore, for an argument to pass muster logically and rhetorically, say, but not dialectically: a cogent argument may succeed in convincing its audience despite their lingering questions. And it is equally possible to argue rhetorically and dialectically well, but not logically: logical flaws that escape both the arguer and the audience will not detract from its effectiveness as a tool for rational persuasion. Indeed, all the combinations are possible. It will be helpful, even at the risk of pedantry, to articulate the different standards more clearly and to consider systematically all possible combinations. The exercise pays off in the end, with implications of great philosophical significance concerning the concepts of argumentative closure, rationality, and philosophy itself. §1. Evaluating Arguments. Logic, dialectic, and rhetoric can be thought of as forming a three dimensional coordinate systems for evaluating arguments. Each is needed to track a different part of the social-linguistic complexes that constitute arguments. The logical axis evaluates the inferences that the participants make (the steps linking the components of 0' Keefe's "arguments-l "). The dialectical axis is for the disputants' engagement with their opponents ("arguments-2" or the "dialectical tier:t,3). And the rhetorical axis measures the efficacy of the arguments (e.g., the effects on the "audience,,4). In a purely deductive context, the logical axis could be replaced by a bivalent function, the two values being "valid" and "invalid," for assessing inferences. (If the inferential evaluation were thought of numerically, then the O-point could be complete premise-irrelevance; deductive validity would be the positive limit; and negative values could be assigned to prelnises that would serve better as counterconsiderations. 5) But even for evaluating purely formal arguments, more is needed. The premises have to be weighed apart from their use in the inferences at hand, so the evaluative vocabulary needs to be enriched by "soundness" and "unsoundness." In real-life contexts, logic is better conceived as providing a sliding scale measuring the relevance, sufficiency, and acceptability - Johnson and Blair's "R-S-A test" - of the premises as reasons for the conclusion. 6 Thus, "cogency" is a better positive value for the logical evaluation of arguments, and indeed this is the conceptual ground often claimed by critical thinking, informal logic, and formal logic texts. The traditional identification of logic, the focused study of inferences, with the full study of arguments can be justified, however, only by a very narrow conception of argument.

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The dialectical perspective would properly have to include two or more measures because dialectical engagement necessarily involves two or more arguers. 7 An arguer has argued well dialectically when all of the objections and questions that have been raised have been answered satisfactorily. This standard applies to all the participants in an argument. Typically, this is all that we are concerned with in the dialectical evaluation of arguments. The shift in focus from arguments to arguers naturally focuses on the agent producing the argument. However, there are several distinct roles for arguers in arguments: proponents and opponents, as well as arbiters, spectators, and other sorts of audiences. Therefore, different criteria are needed. Specifically, it is proponents who need to respond to objections; their opponents need to raise those objections. An opponent is dialectically praiseworthy when all the objections that really should be raised against a proponent's argument are raised, but no more, and any points that need to be clarified in order for the audience - including the opponent - to understand the argument have been questioned. And insofar as audiences have an interactive role in argumentative discourse, they too serve as the opposition and thus have an obligation to object to shoddy reasoning, dubious premises, and unclear statements. 8 An argument may, of course, pass dialectical muster without being logically valid, and even deductively valid arguments can be questioned. The rhetorical perspective examines an argument's effects on the audience. One of the possible effects of an argument - and very often the most desired one - is that the audience is successfully persuaded to accept the conclusion. Thus, for most purposes, this third perspective is the most important, if only because the argument-as-war model remains such a dominant paradigm for thinking about arguments. 9 In an adversarial setting, persuasion translates as victory. To be sure, rhetoric is not concerned solely and wholly with winning arguments. It is concerned with rational persuasion, rather than persuasion per see There are ways to win arguments that are not rhetorically acceptable. Some dialectically effective strategies, such as filibusters, are rhetorical transgressions. "Winning" an argument without rationally persuading the target audience, e.g., by force or parliamentary subterfuge, is not really an argumentative victory. It is a victory of a different sort, a victory in a different kind of competition. Effective communication, tailoring an argument to the audience at hand, and respecting the social context of the argument are all proper concerns for rhetoric. This is not

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to deny that the "agonistic" concern - winning and losing - is a part, lO but simply to affirm that it is just a part. The outline of a three-part evaluation scheme for arguments is now visible. Arguers and their arguments can succeed or fail in three separate ways. Arguments can be cogent or not; they can be dialectically satisfactory or not; and they can be rhetorically 11 agonistically - successful or not. These determinations are all independent, to some degree. If "vJinning" and "losing" are taken as the relevant agonistic outcomes,12 and successful dialectical engagement is called "satisfying," then all the possibilities are displayed in the following table: LOGIC DIALECTIC AGONISTIC (1) -V-Cogent -V-Satisfying -V-Winning (2) X-Not cogent -V-Satisfying -V-Winning (3) ~-Cogent X-Unsatisfying -V-Winning -V-Winning (4) X-Not cogent X-Unsatisfying (5) ~-Cogent -V-Satisfying X-Losing (6) X-Not cogent -V-Satisfying X-Losing ~-Cogent X-Unsatisfying X-Losing (7) (8) X-Not cogent X-Unsatisfying X-Losing The possibilities range from fully praiseworthy arguments, (1) well reasoned arguments that meet all objections and justifiably convince their' hearers - to abject argumentative failures, (8) - illogical configurations of dogmatic assertions that do not respond to questions or objections and deservedly fail to persuade. It is not particularly hard to come up with examples for each of the eight possibilities. The context of a courtroom provides a rich vein to mine in the search for instantiations. It is a setting in which winning and losing are precisely defined by the jury's verdict, so the agonistic valuation is unequivocal. 13 The dialectical value should measure the level of satisfaction the jurors have with the attorneys' arguments - which need not track their eventual judgment. Because the standard for convictions is high in criminal cases, jurors may vote to acquit even though they have unanswered objections to the defending attorney's arguments. Alternatively, they may return a guilty verdict despite some confusion about some parts of the prosecutor's case. That is, the dialectical and rhetorical evaluations may diverge. Of the eight possibilities, two are especially noteworthy and deserve some separate consideration here 14 : categories (4) and (5), arguments that should not win but do, and arguments that should win, but do not. The former are unsound, unsatisfying arguments that

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nonetheless carry the day; the latter are cogent, satisfying arguments that nonetheless fail. We have already met both of these possibilities in 1s earlier discussions. In both cases, the apparent anomaly can be explained away by referring to the audience. The former class includes those filibusters that should count as arguments (as distinct from those that are better understood as preventing argument I6). The strength, and eventual success, of a filibuster depends on its audience's weakness. A logically and dialectically deficient argument could also produce the same result with an unduly acquiescent audience. The theoretical possibility of the latter class can also be explained in terms of the audience's shortcomings. There are audiences that sinlply do not listen to reason, viz., unreasonable, unhearing, adamant, or incompetent ones. We think that logically cogent and dialectically satisfying arguments ought to be successful, and when they are not, something has gone wrong. Finding fault with the audience preserves our sense of what is argumentatively right and proper. Yet, there is another sort of case that precludes that comfortable complacency. The anomaly of good-but-Iosing arguments can just as easily result from audience rationality and competence as from audience irrationality or incompetence. In general, it may well be a sign of strength to bow before a good argument,17 but in some circumstances, it can also be a sign of strength to resist an argument - even a good argument! To see how this situation can arise, consider the following sort of example, from category (6) - an unsound argument that is unpersuasive even though it is dialectically satisfactory: Suppose an argument is presented leading to the conclusion that 1=0. 18 Obviously, the accompanying "proof' cannot be cogent. It must be fallacious at some point, but if the error in reasoning is subtle, it nlight easily be missed. If the audience is sophisticated enough to recognize the fallacy, the argument will not work. It can persuade only if the audience is extraordinarily gullible. But what if the audience is not so incompetent as to accept the conclusion, but not quite adept enough to recognize the fallacy or raise any further objections? In that case, the stubborn refusal to accept the conclusion despite the reasons offered and despite the absence of any objections seems altogether reasonable. Even relatively sophisticated arguers will not always be in a good position to determine the objective soundness of an argument definitively. There are many factors at play, in addition to logical acumen, such as familiarity with the subject matter and the availability of information. There is, then, a way to generalize from the case above. Suppose an audience is presented with an argument for an altogether

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unacceptable conclusion. Various objections are raised, and rebutted. Alternative interpretations of the premises and data are considered and rejected; divergent inferences from those premises are similarly closed off; and no other explanations appear at hand. Still, for whatever reasons, the conclusion cannot be accepted - perhaps because there is another, equally compelling and undefeated argument for its contrary, 19 or perhaps because the conclusion itself is so unpalatable that one literally cannot commit to it. 2o In such a case, it need not be unreasonable to resist the argument. One can adopt the attitude that there must be something wrong with it somewhere, and that some problem will be discovered by someone in the course of time. Indeed, this is precisely the stance that was adopted by physicists when confronted with evidence and arguments showing that light was both a particle and a wave. The faith that eventually something would give way - although it was unknown just what would was not unreasonable. The reason this sort of case deserves special attention is that it describes a situation that is all-too-common in philosophy. Consider, for example, the variety of responses to Berkeleyan Idealism. Philosophical discussions often begin with the question, "What is wrong with Berkeley's arguments?" instead of HIs something wrong with Berkeley's arguments?" While there may be something odd about this for a discipline that prides itself. on leaving no assumptions unexamined, it is not irrational per see A similar comment can be made about the history of responses to Anselm's Ontological Argument. For many philosophers, the natural and proper approach to the argument seems not to wonder whether there is something wrong with it, but rather to debate just what is wrong with it. Again, while it may be unphilosophical, it is not necessarily irrational for someone to take this position - especially if the question of God's existence has already been visited many times, personally and deeply. Indeed, this sort of situation is so common as to be the norm in philosophy. How often do philosophical arguments actually succeed in persuading determined opposition? Does this mean that determined philosophical opposition is, in general, a sign of irrationality? Or should we conclude that despite the time and energy philosophers invest in arguing, there just are not that many good philosophical arguments? (For some, these could stand as examples of literally unacceptable conclusions!) The point of the above example is to emphasize that these are not the only options. Able arguers presenting cogent arguments to rational audiences might still be met with

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disagreement. A measure of logic, pragma-dialectically nlixed with a dash of rhetoric is not, unfortunately, a surefire recipe for agreement. §2. Meta-Rationality and Argumentation. We often seem to assume that there will always be counter-arguments to deliver us from the clutches of any really repugnant arguments that confront us, if only we are clever enough to find them. The problem of evil, for example, has probably left luore theodicies than atheists in its wake. While this may apply more to philosophical arguments than to other sorts, it does apply in some measure to all arguments. Admittedly, philosophical arguments are atypical in many ways. They do not provide a safe basis for generalizing about all argumentation. They do, however, serve to bring some features of argumentation into higher relief. In philosophical contexts, we often engage in this sort of metaargumentation, arguing about arguments, quite explicitly. In other contexts, it may be more implicit. In either case, we are appealing to a fundamental assumption about reasoning and argumentation. It can be called the "Principle of Meta-Rationality": (PMR) Part of reasoning rationally is reasoning about rationality. This principle is not simply an article of rationalist faith. It embodies the fundamental assumptions about the practice of argumentation. It is both a principle of rationality and a principle about rationality, a principle and a meta-principle, because it concerns both reasoning and its products. Arguments are the pre-eminent products of reasoning, so they themselves can be the subjects of other arguments. An immediate corollary to the PMR, then, is that part of arguing rationally is arguing about rationality!21 There are profound consequences for argumentation theory springing from the PMR. The same principle that justifies argumentation also justifies for our resistance to unpalatable arguments. Such resistance can be the conclusion of the following, perfectly reasonable, but generally unarticulated, "meta-argument" about arguments and reason: (1) This argument seelns cogent but it has an unreasonable conclusion; (2) Cogent arguments do not lead to unreasonable conclusions; So, (3) this argument must, in some way, be fallacious, i.e., it must fail in some way - even if I do not yet see how or why. There are two points to note about the Meta-Argument for Resisting Good Arguments - call it the "MARGA move.,,22 First, it is, for good or ill, always available, which is just another way of saying that everything is arguable. Meta-rational thinking is indeed part of

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thinking rationally. Argumentation is precisely for those areas in which beliefs are not compelled?3 And if arguments do not force acceptance, there will be room for dissent. The second point to note is that there are occasions when the MARGA move is undeniably a rational strategy. However, that only serves to raise another question (sending us still higher into the "meta-sphere"): When is it rational to use MARGA to reject an argument? Context matters. We do not approach arguments with a tabula rasa. Nor are arguments isolated episodes in our intellectual lives (or, for that matter, our spiritual, emotional, social, political, and psychological lives). Recourse to this meta-argument is rational at least in those cases in which, to borrow some language from William James, the question is effectively "closed" against the putative conclusion. 24 Since the proposition that 1=0 is a closed issue, any argument leading to that conclusion certainly invites a MARGA response whenever a more specific identification of an argumentative error cannot be supplied. For James, the concept of closure was relative to individual believers. For the purposes of argumentation theory, it also needs to come in degrees - the way that argument strength and rationality do. An argument against a weakly held belief does not need to be as strong as an argument against a strongly held belief to forestall recourse to MARGA. Conversely, it is less rational to invoke MARGA against a strong argument on behalf of a weakly held belief. There is a counterpart situation with respect to bad arguments that also flows from the PMR. A Meta-Argument for Accepting Bad Arguments - a "MAABA defense" - can justify acceptance of a conclusion despite the flaws in the supporting (ground-level) argument: (Ia) The argument as it stands seems fallacious, but it has a reasonable conclusion; (2a) All reasonable conclusions can be supported by cogent arguments; So, (3a) the argument can be made cogent - even if I do not yet see how. This line of reasoning often serves as an apology for existing beliefs. It might better be termed the "Tertullian Defense" after the 2nd _ 3rd century Latin Apologist credited with the prototypical MAABA defense: the "credo quia ineptum" defense of his faith?5 Despite Tertullian's own case, the MAABA defense need not be irrational. For example, it is not hard to imagine an intuitive, creative, and rational mathenlatician who has great confidence in her theses before she is able to construct satisfactory proofs. Despite the flaws that her colleagues

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might find in her first attenlpts at proof, an induction on her past successes might support her belief in the next proposed theorem?6 The flawed "proof' might be taken as a promissory note to be redeemed at a later date, e.g., as the starting point for further attempts at proof or as a heuristic vehicle in its own right. Even if the "context of discovery" is carefully distinguished from the "context of justification," there can be independent grounds for the reliability of the processes of the former. If the meta-logical space around arguments includes these metaarguments for overriding arguments, then perhaps we need metaarguments to reinforce the (ground-level) arguments and counter the meta-arguments. A little exploration of that space reveals that the PMR can provide such arguments, but with a curious twist. Consider first the Meta-Argument for Accepting Good Arguments, or MAAGA: (1b) This argument seems cogent and the conclusion is reasonable; (2b) Apparently cogent arguments with reasonable conclusions usually are genuinely cogent; So, (3b) it is unlikely that flaws will be found: accept the conclusion. Do we implicitly make this argument every time we accept any argument? I suspect that most of the time we do not reason that way. There is no call to articulate the second premise, (2b) - unlike the counterconsideration presented by (2). When we hear an argument for a proposition, a course of action, or a conclusion of another sort, we weigh the reasons that are presented. If we are responsible and competent in our role as the audience to an argument, we also consider whatever other information is relevant and available. If the pros duly outweigh the cons, then we accept the conclusion. We do not, in general, let the mere possibility of additional counter-considerations serve as an excuse not to accept it. We could, of course, because that possibility is a permanent feature of the landscape around (nondeductive, non--formal) arguments: everything is arguable. We provide the meta-argument only as needed, e.g., if our decision is challenged, if there are residual doubts, or if there are other motivating factors. Apparently, philosophical partisanship can be one such factor. It is quite within proper argumentative practice that we do not routinely use the meta-argument for accepting good arguments. That way leads to Lewis Carroll's infinite regress: if in order to accept an argument, I need to accept this other, meta-argument, then there would have to be a meta-meta-argument for accepting the first metaargument!27 Ordinarily, we need not - and, arguably, should notascend to that meta-level to accept other arguments. An argument for a

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proposition, p, answers the question of why one should accept p. That is usually the question at hand, and a good argument is a good answer to that question. The question of whether the presence of good reasons for accepting p is a good reason for accepting p is, in the normal course of events, otiose. The principle of meta-rationality, PMR, breaches the walls between arguments and meta-arguments. Yet, as will be seen, there are times when it is rational to resort to explicitly meta-level reasoning. The complement to MAAGA would invoke a Meta-Argument for Rejecting Bad Argunlents, a MARBA move: (1 c) This argument seems fallacious and the conclusion is unreasonable; (2c) Arguments for unreasonable conclusions usually are really fallacious; So, (3c) it is unlikely that the argument can be fixed: do not accept the conclusion. This meta-argument, too, merely repeats and reinforces the judgment made concerning the first argument. But there is an asymmetry with MAAGA. This does not lead to an infinite regress. (It could, however, quickly lead to paradox if it were itself a bad argument, if the argument applied to itself, and if the conclusion were to call for rejecting, as opposed to simply not-accepting, the conclusion at hand.) When should these meta-arguments be used? When do they count as good arguments? In part, these questions have to be answered by the purposes the (object-) arguments serve. The first two meta-arguments, MARGA and MAABA, have important, deeply conservative, roles to play. They se~e as the final line of defense in preserving pre-existing beliefs against arguments. This is where the standards for belief revision need to be higher than the standards for belief acquisition?8 Their use is justified when these purposes come into play. In contrast, the other two, MAAGA and MARBA, are largely redundant in most argumentation contexts. They do, however, have a visible role in selfconscious, philosophical argumentation. More significantly, these reinforcing arguments are at home in self-reflective deliberation - "T'he argument seems good; should I accept it? How would I respond to that objection?" - the context in which the distractions created by the competitive and social aspects of argumentation are largely absent. Of course, the same can also be said for the earlier pair as well, which points to an important feature: all of these arguments are really arguments with oneself. The use of the meta-argument against an

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undefeated argument for p, for example, is part of one's own interior dialogue, rather than part of the exterior argument with the proponent of p. 29 The audience of the meta-argument is usually the meta-arguer himself. Once the audiences for these meta-arguments has been identified, these instantiations of the PMR can themselves be evaluated as successes or failures, as context determines, using the earlier tripartite coordinate system of logic, rhetoric, and dialectic. The call for these sorts of arguments is most pressing whenever there is a particularly tenacious (nleta-)arguer present. That, of course, is something philosophers are wont to be, which helps to explain why these argum.ents seem so characteristically philosophical. It is one of the reasons why conclusive dialectical success is so elusive in philosophy.30

Endnotes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

This chapter is a modification of my paper by the same title in Informal Logic 21: 73-84. There can be other purposes to argument, necessitating other criteria. For example, R. Johnson 2000 p. 191 ff. identifies rational persuasion as the relevant one. R. Johnson 1996, ch. 6. See e.g., Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, Govier 1999, Tindale 1999, and chapter 4 above. Hans Hansen, at the IVth ISSA Conference in Amsterdam (1998), raised the following question: Consider a sequence of arguments, each from a single premise (or the conjunction of several) to a constant conclusion. They can be arranged in ascending order of the strength of the premises: ... P-2 P-1 [=C] P+1 P+2 ... C C C C C The inductive strength of the argument increases with the strength of the concept of overdetermination. In some contexts, however, this could be the rhetorical - albeit neither logical nor dialectical - fallacy of "Beating a dead horse." Johnson and Blair 1994, pp. 54f. Similar criteria can be found in other informal logic and critical thinking texts, e.g., the "ARG conditions" in Govier 1992 pp.69ff. Johnson 2000 adds a truth criterion. It would be more accurate to say that dialectical engagement involves two or more argumentative roles, rather than two or more arguers, since a single arguer can be both proponent and opponent, e.g., when someone

r.

6.

7.

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argue~ with herself. Similarly, someone can be both the opponent and the target audience for an argument. 8. Both the concept of a "universal audience," from Perelman and OlbrechtsTyteca 1969, and the concept of "model interlocutors," from Blair and Johnson (ch. 5 in R. Johnson 1996), while developed as part of the standards for good arguments, can also be inverted to measure bad audiences, thereby defining a category of "audience fallacies" or "antagonist fallacies," distinct from the more traditional focus on "protagonist fallacies." See chapter 6 below and also R. Johnson 1999. 9. Lakoff and Johnson 1980 use the argument-as-war metaphor as an example for discussing Inetaphors. It was discussed in chapter 3 above and will be returned to in chapter 8 below. It has also been subjected to a number of other critiques by argumentation theorists as a model for arguments, including Nozick, 1981, Ayim 1991, and Gilbert 1997. 10. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 use the term "eristic" for much the same purpose. It is adopted by Gilbert 1997, inter alia. van Eemeren et al. 1996 use the term "debate." "Agonistic" is preferred here because the issue here is specifically the competitive aspect of a contest, as opposed to the more general notion of controversy implied by the former and the more artificial and formalized context suggested by the latter. 11. If this tripartite scheme for argument success is inverted, it provides a taxonomy for argument failings - fallacies. Inferential flaws, such as Hasty Generalization, would be "logical fallacies"; flaws in communicative interaction, such as ignoring or misunderstanding obj ections, would be "dialectical fallacies"; and negative or counterproductive strategies, e.g., alienating the audience, could be classed as "rhetorical fallacies." Traditional texts focus on the first of these, while the pragma-dialectical school focuses on the second, and the third is addressed by more classical rhetoricians. This approach is developed in more detail in the next chapter. 12. The substitution of "success at rational persuasion" for "winning," and "failure at rational persuasion" for "losing" would not materially change the possibilities, but it would muddy the waters separating the dialectical and rhetorical components. Unless rational persuasion is taken to be an all-or-none outcome, it will be possible to be rationally persuaded but not dialectically satisfied. One can be rationally persuaded to go along with a plan of action, for example, while still harboring doubts and while questions still linger. This is a corollary to the claim that beliefs including those of which we have been persuaded by good argument - can always be reinforced. The use of "winning" here is meant to bring the difference into higher relief, insofar as it covers everything from earning begrudging acceptance to extracting reluctant acknowledgement and achieving zealous conversion.

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13. This is also provides a clear distinction between the narrowly agonistic evaluation (winning versus losing) and a broader rhetorical evaluation (performatively). One can imagine a case in which a lawyer produces an exceptionally strong argument and presents it elegantly and forcefully, but still loses - because, say, of a biased or even rigged jury. The lawyer's performance cannot fairly be faulted from a rhetorical perspective, even though the argument still lost. We should be able to say that the "art of rational persuasion" was exemplified excellently even though no one was rationally persuaded. Admittedly, this sounds rather uncomfortably like the doctor who claimed that the operation was a success even though the patient died. 14. Providing examples for the other six combinations is left to the reader (albeit, perhaps as an exercise to assign in class). 15. Chapter 4 considered filibusters, when they do count as arguments, as illogical, unengaged, but "winning" arguments. The following chapters include examples of logical, engaged, but losing arguments: arguments before incompetent or unhearing audiences. 16. Filibusters that prevent engagement are dialectically fallacious; filibusters (or the threat thereofl) used to win arguments might be subsumed under the Argumentum ad Baculum rubric - whose states as a logical fallacy is itself a matter of some controversy. See Levi 1999. 17. Francisca Snoeck-Henkemans, Poster for the 4!h International Conference on Argumentation, International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Amsterdam, June 16-19, 1998. 18. There are several commonly offered spurious proofs. One such is: Let A=1 and B=l. Thus, A=B. Then. Multiplying both sides by A, A2 = AB. Subtracting B2 from both sides yields: A2 - B2 = AB - B2. Factoring, we have, (A + B)(A - B) = B(A - B). Divide both sides by (A - B) to get A + B = B, and then subtract B from each, proving that A = O. Since A=l, we have 1=0. [The error is in the fourth step, dividing by (A - B), an amount equal to 0.] 19. Gilbert Ryle's "dilemmas" would fit this characterization. See Ryle 1954, chapter 1. 20. See Quine's definition of "paradox" in the title essay in Quine 1976. Nozick's discussion of philosophy's need to be dignity-preserving is another example of this sort of phenomenon, in the opening chaptefof Nozick 1981. 21. Argumentation, along with rationality, is a "fixed point" under the "meta-" operation: meta-reasoning about reasoning is still reasoning; and metaarguments are still arguments. This feature is characteristic of philosophy, too: meta-philosophy is part of philosophy. 22. This way of formulating the argument was suggested in conversation by my colleague Robert McArthur, but he is not responsible for the ungainly name.

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23. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 5. 24. James 1897. 25. This is the version cited by Hyman and Walsh, 1983, p. 10, although it is more often cited as "credo quia absurdum." Both can be translated as, "I believe because it is absurd." 26. The early career mathematician S. Ramanujan exemplifies this. He had great faith in his theorems, although he was often, in the beginning, unable to supply the sort of rigorous proofs that would satisfy his colleague G. H. Hardy or the rest of the mathematical community. Henri Poincare could also be a model for this. He claimed that his theorems often came to him in dreams. Proofs came later. 27. See Carroll 1895. 28. See Harman 1984. 29. See Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, §9. 30. The characteristic features that distinguish philosophical argumentation from political, legal, critical, and other kinds of arguments are addressed in chapters 14 and 15 below.

CHAPTER 6 Logical Fallacies, Dialectical Transgressions, Rhetorical Sins, and Other Failures of Rationality in Argumentation! Introduction. When does Preaching to the Choir become Beating a Dead Horse? Is it ever wrong to argue - making Picking a Fight a fallacy? Could it be a fallacy not to argue - the fallacy of Wrongful Silence? If audiences are elements of arguments, is there a class of Audience Fallacies?2 Quibbling and Nitpicking, Interrupting and Turning a Deaf Ear, as well as Arguing Out of Turn, Arguing Out of Place, and Arguing Out of Order are all bad things to do in argumentation. Do they all deserve the name "fallacy"? Arguments are more than just sequences of inferences, so we should not limit our thinking about bad arguments to just those that include bad inferences. Argum~nts include arguers, and there are more ways for arguers to go wrong than simply to make bad inferences. And arguments include audiences, whose presence creates ful1her chances for problematic argumentation. Argument analysis requires more than the toolbox of logical fallacies generally provides. The task I am undertaking here is outlining a new taxonomy of errors in arguments, to include not just logical missteps - fallacies - but also rhetorical and dialectical mistakes. The organizing principle refers to the norms that are violated, norms that are associated with the three dominant conceptions - metaphors or models or paradigms, as you prefer - for arguments. A second task, subsequent to the first al1d approached only tentatively here, is completing the picture by the raising the possibility of a new model. §1. Fallacies, Proofs, and Arguments. Following what has been taken (perhaps mistakenly) to be Aristotle's lead, logicians have generally been content to provide catalogues of fallacies for use in argument analysis. These lists of errors have too often been regarded

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as something of a sidecar to the main business of investigating, characterizing, and justifying good arguments. They provide little in the way of a serious theoretical framework for thinking about all of arguments' failures. One problem with a simple list of fallacies is that without any theory it is just a list. There is no organization, no consensus on the fallacies to include, and no closure. It is a collection of facts rather than a body of science; it affords mere knowledge rather than genuine wisdom. Fallacies are added to the list at the whim of the logician writing the text (a prerogative I will indulge in myself in due course). And therein lies another part of the problem: it has been logicians writing the texts. Lists of fallacies have been limited from the outset to logical flaws in argumentation. If we use the term "fallacy" more generically for any flaw in an argument, then the point can be put this way: not all fallacies are logical ones. And, we should note with a little surprise but a lot of emphasis, not all logical fallacies - Le., not all deductively invalid inference patterns - are necessarily fallacious. The ideal for good arguments against which fallacies have been defined is that of the mathematical proof - but not all arguments are proofs! Two other important models or "root metaphors,,3 that reflect our practice and inform our thinking about arguments have already been noted - argumentation-as-war and arguing-as-presenting-a-case. Together, these three paradigms provide a more comprehensive structure for theorizing about bad arguments. They create more space in our theories for the full range of problems that bedevil arguments, and in so doing they point to some curious omissions from the traditional lists, notably the sins (for lack of a better word) of arguing when one should not and failing to argue when one positively should. Another model is needed to fill that gap. Argumentation needs to be thought of as a form of interpersonal engagement. At its worst, it is merely aggressive socializing, but at its best, it is an expression of civic character. §2. Historical Context and Recent Contributions. Aristotle's characterization of sophisma defined the field originally as the study of arguments that seem good but are not. That set the twin tasks of explaining why certain bad arguments appear good, and then explaining why they are nonetheless actually bad. Note that the topic is no t the study of bad arguments per se. Arguments that are obviously bad should be of no more than peripheral concern. How did it come to pass, then, that logic texts would offer examples that do not "seem good" to anyone at all - examples that

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fonn a hackneyed collection of, in Hamblin's phrase, "traditional puns, anecdotes, and witless examples,,?4 Several recent approaches to fallacies have helped rectify matters, beginning with Hamblin's own historical analySis and diagnosis in 1970. Hamblin offered a fresh start by noting that many of Aristotle's discussions presume a dialogical context for arguments, whether they are of the dialectical, didactic, or contentious sort. In such contexts, invalid inferences are not the pre-eminent danger: in debates between reasonably sophisticated arguers, logical errors will generally be detected and rejected by the opponents, and then retracted and corrected by the proponents. Optimally, as Johnson and Blair note, "the charge of fallacy serves to extend argument, not cut off debate."s Dialectical transgressions present the more pressing concern. Thus, when Aristotle included what came to be called Ignoratio Elenchi, it referred to a kind of improper refutation - where a "refutation" is a counter-argument rather than an inference pattern, something that has more in common with debaters' rebuttals than with logicians' reductios, and even less connection to Missing the Point, with which it is now commonly associated. 6 Hamblin's dissatisfaction with a purely logical approach and his own more dialectical approach inspired a good deal of good research on fallacies. A brief mention of an eclectic and idiosyncratic selection of some other recent contributions to our current thinking about fallacies, inspired by Hamblin's lead, will help focus things. Howard Kahane, in his widely used textbooks, Kahane 1969 and Kahane 1971, both of which went through numerous editions, provided a good general framework for thinking about fallacies. Start with a characterization of cogent arguments as ones that have warranted premises adequately supporting their conclusions and respecting all of the available and relevant considerations, both positive and negative. Thus, a fallacious argument is one that fails in any of three ways: (I) it uses false, dubious, or Unwarranted Premises; (II) the reasoning is inductively or deductively Invalid; (III) it ignores counter-considerations, Le., it Suppresses Evidence. Each of these ways for argun1ents to go wrong serves as the genus for several species of fallacies. For example, Hasty Generalizations fall under the category of Invalid Reasoning, Circular Arguments are classified as invoking an Unwarranted Premise, and False Dichotomies can be read as suppressing the alternatives. Kahane's categories overlap. That is both a strength and a weakness. False Dichotomies, for example, could be categorized as a

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species of Unwarranted Premises, rather than Suppressed Evidence: to claim the world is black and white is dubious; to present it that way suppresses the grays - and reds, greens, and blues. Similarly, Equivocation can also be put under either of two of the general headings, Unwarranted Premises or Invalid Reasoning, depending on how and whether the equivocal term is disambiguated. Not much hinges on the generic classification, and the fact that several readings are possible nicely highlights the re-constructive and interpretive nature of argument analysis. The merits of starting from a coherent vision of what a good argument is and locating the fallacies as deviations from that ideal far outweigh some messiness in the details. On the other hand, some traditional fallacies do not fit into Kahane's taxonomy very well. Arguers go astray, for example, when they Miss the Point, i.e., when they draw the wrong conclusion from the premises at hand. But that can be done quite cogently! Arguments consisting of manifestly valid inferences from thoroughly warranted premises are missteps nonetheless if they are off the discourse track. 7 In a debate on capital punishment, for example, it would be inapposite to conclude, no matter how cogently, that the u.s. ought to follow Netherlands' lead on euthanasia. A more serious problem with Kahane's account is that there are other argumentative transgressions which are not traditional fallacies and which cannot be accommodated. There is nothing to be said against, say, Beating a Dead Horse, excessive argumentation after the issue has been resolved, or Quibbling about minor issues along the way. Kahane's approach to fallacies is still primarily an account of the logical flaws in arguments to the exclusion of others. Something similar can be said about the more developed and programmatic Pragma-dialectical approach. It also provides a comprehensive overall framework because it begins with an articulated vision of the ideal. Thus, it is positioned to identify fallacies as deviations from that nonn. Specifically, it identifies the stages of a critical discussion and the implicit rules of conduct for each stage. It can then associate each of the traditional fallacies with the violation of a rule by one party or the other at some stage in the discussion. Most tradi tional fallacies are accommodated very well. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, for example, can be seen as either a violation of the rule to defend a standpoint by the proponent during the opening stage or a failure by the opponent to retract doubts during the concluding stage. 8 Moreover, other non-controversially bad moves in dialogical argumentation which have nonetheless not traditionally been

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counted as fallacies also become visible. Various fonns of illicitly Shifting the Burden of Proof or Evading the Burden of Proof, for example, can now be located in the theory.9 One direction in which the P-D approach could be expanded concerns the opening of arguments. The P-D account treats fallacies as violations of the tacit imperatives governing critical discussions. Something should also be said of the imperative for rational agents to engage in critical discussions in the first place: Thou shalt argue! There are times when the failure to enter into argutnent is an argumentative failure - albeit not a fallacy in an argument. IO Something similar could be said for Arguing Out of Place - creating an argunlent where there ought not be one. One way in which P-D approach to fallacies could use SOUle contraction concerns the resolution of difference as the telos of critical discussions. Whatever serves as impediment to resolution is counted a fallacy. 1I The best that fallacious arguments can produce is mere settlement. To put it neatly, the counterfeits of argument produce the counterfeits of resolution! This cannot be the whole story, however, because some moves which might expedite progress towards genuine resolution are still objectionable. Arguments are resolved not simply when the argument is won or lost, but when the disputants reach some sort of equilibrium. Fallacy identification usually focuses on the improper ways a proponent can bring this about. There are two problematic assumptions here. One is that when a consensus standpoint results from fallacious argumentation, the fallacy is to be located in the proponent's argumentation. But sometimes we ought to criticize the opponents for giving in too easily - charge them with, say, the fallacy of Undue Credulity. Ifwe can accuse a proponent of Missing the Point, why not sometimes charge opponents with Missing the Objection? Generally, when an interlocutor acquiesces too easily precisely in order to avoid the confrontation of argumentation, what results is a settlement rather than a resolution, but real resolution could arise from ready agreeableness conjoined with maximal gullibility or minimal critical acumen. Agreeableness in the pursuit of resolution is no virtue; and Tenacity in the defense of sound conclusions is no vice. 12 The other assumption is that fallaciously achieved consensus normally forms around the arguer's original standpoint. Proponents and opponents alike can be guilty of Abandoning Ship too quickly. The

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P-D approach does condemn consensus when it rests on insincerity; but resolutions due to weak resolve or gullibility are also condemnable. Ralph Johnson, who once offered a tripartite generic scheme for argument cogency, and by extension for fallacies the "RSA test"l3---: has more recently suggested some conceptual tools that can be used to connect the concept of fallacy with both the structure and the telos of argumentation. Structurally, arguments have both an inferential or "illative" core and a dialectical tier. 14 Thus, we can neatly distinguish arguments that go wrong because they include logical errors in the RSA scheme from arguers who go wrong by making dialectical errors. There may be a fly in the ointment, however. Johnson elsewhere identifies the purpose of argument as rational persuasion, 15 so there ought to be two other ways for arguments to fail: they can fail to persuade or they can persuade, but not rationally. That seems right, but how can these be melded together? Neither inferential strength nor dialectical closure suffices for rational persuasion. 16 The audience is a factor here. The crucial concept here is rational persuasion, the goal of classical rhetoric. This is a purpose for arguing, but it should be stressed that there may be many different purposes for arguing. There are, remember, several relevant models for what an argument is, what it ought to be, and what it ought to do. An expansion of this can provide the outlines of a more general framework for arguments in the hope that it will accommodate some of those argumentation missteps that have been omitted from traditional accounts. §3. Three Models for Argument. Three very different root metaphors informing our thinking about arguments have been noted: Arguments-as-proofs, Argumentation-as-war, and Arguing-as-makinga-case. 17 These models should not be regarded as permanent features of the conceptual landscape or transcendental properties of rationality as such. Rather, they are palis of established conceptual structures that furnish us with organizing schemes for all of our disparate knowledge about argumentation. They are metaphors that reflect as well as regulate the argumentation practices of our culture. In time, others models may take their places, but they are good vehicles for reflection about arguments. They can also be used to great advantage in·thinking about the different kinds of errors, fallacies, transgressions, and others flaws in argumentation because each model brings with it its own behavioral norms. 3.1. The first paradigm for thinking about arguments is provided by proofs, the products of logicians and mathematicians. An argument

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in this sense is an abstract, logical structure, a sequence of sentences with a specifiable inferential structure. Consequently, there are two sorts of ways for an argument to be a bad one. Either there is some problem with its structure - a weak link in the sequence of inferences structuring the propositions - or the chain of inferences fails to reach its designated conclusion. That is, an argument can be criticized as logically flawed when it falls short (the fallacy of Incompleteness?) or when it reaches the conclusion by a faulty inference (Le., by an Invalid Inference). The goal of proofs is epistemic-rational. Logical fallacies undermine that purpose. Unfortunately, as noted, this would-be nlodel of rationality leaves out the agents in arguments, the arguers. Not surprisingly, the argunlent-as-proof model is of limited help for understanding actual, embodied arguments. 3.2. The argument-as-proof metaphor may be popular with logicians, but a far more common conception of arguments is that they are tantamount to verbal wars. I8 If arguments are always born of disagreement, then they really ought to be regarded as primarily agonistic moments in discourse. 19 The adversarial component may indeed be both genetic and essential. The goal of proof nlight be demonstration, but the goal of a contest is victory. Accordingly, the most danlning criticism within adversarial argumentation concerns contingently losing strategies rather than necessarily fallacious reasoning. Arguers fail most egregiously when they lose the fight. 20 That explains why so many critical thinking texts present themselves as either providing offensive weapons for arguers - argumentation strategies - or defensive reinforcements to help resist the wrongful argumentation of others. 21 And yet, there are other criticisms to be made. Wars are governed by their own rules, and the same holds true for adversarial argumentation. So, while there can be no logical fallacies in an argument-as-war, there can be other kinds of violations, rough counterparts, as it were, to war crimes. It is worth pausing to note the locutions that we use here: arguments may contain logical fallacies, but it is arguers who lose. The arguments themselves do not lose, except derivatively. Arguersverbal warriors - can indeed be taken· to task when they "fight dirty." There might not be an explicit Geneva Convention governing the art of verbal warfare, but there are sundry Peircean, Gricean, and Pragnladialectical conventions. They serve very much the same function: they

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define a category of illicit behavior, viz., dialectical transgressions distinct from but complementing the logical fallacies. Problematic as the war metaphor may be ethically, socially, and pedagogically, I think it actually ought to be extended in at least one way: whether or not there really are any "Just Wars,,,22 there are indeed "Just Arguments." But, unfortunately, there are unjust arguments as well. Like the argument-as-proof model, the argumentation-as-war model also leaves some things out, in this case the subject matter, the reasoning about it, and any audiences. In the extreme case, we have long-standing feuds over long-forgotten slights. It is all about the arguers - and determined arguers do not really need anything to argue about. For them, any logical structure to the exchanges would be entirelyaccidenta1. 23 3.3. The third prominent model - arguing-as-presentations deserves attention because it is sometin1es presented as a mediating third way (Tindale 1999 is an excellent example). The archetype here is neither mathematicians' proofs nor debaters' exchanges, but someone, perhaps a lawyer or a politician, making a case before an audience. A defense attorney need not convince his counterpart, the prosecutor in the trial, any more than a politician needs to convert her opponent in an election campaign. The arguer's target is the audiencethe judge and jurors or the electorate at large. An opponent may, of course, be part of the audience, or all of it, or the seed for an abstracted ideal audience, but not necessarily. The virtue of the arguing-as-presentation model is that by highlighting the performative context, it opens the door for normative concepts and considerations. This is where the goal can properly said to be rational persuasion, and this is where to locate the two failures noted earlier: failures to persuade at all and failures to do so rationally. The presentation of the argument-as-proof, or the illative core, has to be appropriate to the context and not just internally valid. The target audience is crucial element in the performative context. Thus, even a valid and sound argument that reaches dialectical closure by meeting all objections may yet be unsuccessful in rational persuasion if it does not speak to the audience. Eloquent and even persuasive obscurantism, for example, would be rhetorically blameworthy, even if dialectically successful. 24 And yet, even the goal of rational persuasion needs something like an obj ective check - truth as a condition on premises, for example, or the injection of an idealized model interlocutor. Argume~_~~h'~~

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needs the fixed point of an ideal limit. If the premises of an argument are criticized as irrelevant, it may be that more can be added to establish their relevance. If they are criticized as insufficient to warrant the conclusion, perhaps supplemental premises can be offered. And if they are rejected as unacceptable, further support can be adduced to make them more acceptable. But if they are criticized as false, the game is over. Here is a case where the charge of fallacy is definitely not an invitation to further argumentation. The charge that there are false pren1ises, however, is a show stopper. It is, at least putatively, a d 25 trump car. §4. Models and Metaphors. These three models correspond, very roughly, to Logic, Dialectic, and Rhetoric respectively. Each model defines a family of approaches to arguments and argumentation, complete with its own conceptual vocabulary, its own methodology, its own nom1S, and its own criteria for evaluation. Each has its own telos, and each defines its own class of sophisma. They complement one another in the project of understanding argumentation. Arguments that violate the norms of the proof paradigm have logical fallacies; arguers that violate the norms of the war metaphor cOlnmit dialectical transgressions: and presentations that violate the norms of the making-a-case n10del make rhetorical mistakes. (A fuller, but still tentative, taxonomy of errors argument using this schema is

included as an appendix.) What these models provide, then, is a complementary set of approaches to argument analysis. Each is incomplete in ways that are included in the other models. But even jointly, they are still incomplete. The principles for argumentation tell us how we should argue, but they do not tell us why we should argue, and they do not tell us when we should argue - and when we should not. For example, from the dialectical model, we can recognize our obligations to ask questions when we do not understand and raise objections when we see them - something about which the logical model is completely silent. But thinking of arguments as contests first and foremost obscures our obligations to sincerity, clarity, and fairness - the province of the rhetorical model. And the imperative to reason validly - objectively so, and not merely in the judgments of our opponents and audiences, or even of ourselves as proponents - is a logical imperative. Again, these are all hypothetical imperatives: if you argue, do so in these ways. That is a consequence of the particular models in play. Completing proofs, waging verbal wars, and making presentations are

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all things we do, but they are all optional. We need not engage in any of those actions. At least sometimes, however, arguing is not optional; it is something we ought to do, so that the failure to argue is itself an argumentative failure. None of the models on the table captures that obligation. There is, however, no a priori justification for these particular models. Nor is there anything sacred about the number three - at least not in this context. Rather, there is only the a posteriori justification for this trinity that comes with its success in explaining old fallacies and locating and accomnl0dating other missteps in argumentation. Nor are these three models permanent features of the conceptual landscape. Models, after all, are metaphors of a kind26 and metaphors change over time. They shake up the conceptual kaleidoscope. They change how we see the world. They become literal. More to the point, metaphors can lose their vitality as metaphors as our ways of thinking change. New metaphors can take their places as formative factors in our understanding. There are good reasons to think that the metaphors for thinking and reasoning and arguing should be especially susceptible to deliberate revision. The principle of meta-rationality cited in the previous chapter - the principle that asserts that part of reasoning rationally is reasoning about rationality - includes the imperative to revisit these metaphors. But even that principle is at best an assertoric imperative: since you want to be rational, you must also reason about reasoning. What is needed is a model for arguments that hears the categorical imperative that enjoins us to enter into dialectical, logical, and rhetorical space, in the first place - in a word, to Argue. §5. Arguments as Expressions of Civic Character. Ralph Johnson COUles near to conceptualizing argumentation in a way that mandates arguing: argumentation as "manifest rationality. ,,27 That understanding of argument connects argumentation's Ie/os with our own. If we are rational beings, and argumentation is manifest rationality, then we should argue. Argumentation is a form of selfactualization. It is not just who we are and what we do, but who we can be and what we ought to. Still, it does not tell us when to argue and when not to argue. We are rational beings every hour of the day, but that does not mean we should argue all the time! We need to look at the larger context for arguing - which is, let us not forget, primarily a social phenomenon. 28 There are times when the urge to argue is almost irresistible. When we are criticized or accused, we offer justifications and

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explanations, which are likely to be arguments of a sort. When we hear unsubstantiated or offensive assertions, we feel it is incumbent upon us to challenge them, perhaps hoping to initiate an argument. When confronted with hard choices, we cannot help but deliberate, weighing the pros and cons, in either simulated or genuine argument. These cases are all to the good, and yet there are times and places when these urges are to be resisted. If a verdict has been reached, the time for further argument is past; in the middle of lecture, the time to challenge outrageous assertions has not yet come; in the heat of battle, there may not be time enough; at a religious ceremony, it is the occasion that might be wrong; and when watching television, the image of the talking head is just not a genuine audience. Consider that last case, arguing with the TV. There can be no argument because there is no dialogue. Arguments are interpersonal exchanges. They are social. Now consider the penultimate case, arguing with a member of the clergy giving a sermon, say, or worse, delivering a eulogy at a funeral! The argument is completely out of place, regardless of its logic, its rhetoric, or its careful dialectical attention to the clergy-cum-opponent's main points. The violation of social conventions is obvious. But now consider silence - nun-argument - in an other context, say, at a public forum when a speaker has said something that you know to be false, or in a classroom when a student has said something outrageous and offensive - or at an academic conference when a speaker has shown evidence of a shocking misunderstanding of the topic at hand. As participants in those occasions, it is (imperfectly) incumbent upon you to speak up. It is a civic responsibility, so perhaps we should think of arguments as an expression of civic character, as well of individual self-realization. Presumably, there will be a set of argumentative mistakes associated with that new nlodel, too.

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APPENDIX: A TENTATIVE TAXONOMY OF FALLACIES AND OTHER ARGUMENTATIVE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS I. LOGICAL FALLACIES (VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF INFERENCE: INVALID REASONING AND PROBLEMS WITH LOGICAL STRUCTURE) FALSE CAUSE

* POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC * NON CAUSA PRO CAUSA * OVERSIMPLIFIED CAUSE HASTY GENERALIZATION * SMALL SAMPLE * UNREPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE BEGGING THE QUESTION/CIRCULAR REASONING AMBIGUITIES

* EQUIVOCATION (LEXICAL) * AMPHIBOLY(GRAMMATICAL)

* DIVISION/COMPOSITION AFFIRMING THE CONSEQUENTIDENYING THE ANTECEDENT "NOT" HOPPING SLIPPERY SLOPE MISSING THE POINT ApPEAL TO IGNORANCE WEAK ANALOGY UNFINISHED DEMONSTRATION II. RHETORICAL FAULTS (VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF FAIR PRESENTATION: MISREPRESENTATIONS, OMISSIONS, AND PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE ASSUMPTIONS) SUPPRESSED EVIDENCE UNWARRANTED PREMISE FALSE DICHOTOMY (BLAQCK & WHITE THINKING) COMPLEX QUESTION SUBJECTIVISM AD HOMINEM ABUSIVE CIRCUMSTANTIAL TUQUOQUE * POiSONING THE WELL

* * *

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NON SEQUITUR

* DIVERSION/RED HERRING ApPEAL TO (ILLEGITIMATE) AUTHORITY ApPEAL TO EMOTION ADPOPULUM

* ApPEAL TO MAJORITY

*

PROVINCIALISM INSINCERITY STRAW MAN OBSCURANTISM

III. DIALECTICAL OFFENSES (VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES OF RATIONAL ENGAGEMENT) ApPEAL TO FORCE EXCESSIVE ARGUMENT QUIBBLING * PICKING A FIGHTIUNmST ARGUMENT * BEATING A DEAD HORSE UNANSWERED OBJECTIONS (BY PROPONENT)

*

UNVOICED OBJECTIONS (BY OPPONENT) UNASKED QUESTIONS MISUNDERSTANDING (CF. STRAW MAN) INSUFFICIENT ARGUMENT FILIBUSTERING (AS A MEANS TO PREVENT ARGUMENT) * TURNING A DEAF EAR INSUFFICIENT COUNTER-ARGUMENT * CREDULITy/UNCHALLENGED ASSUMPTIONS * UNASKED QUESTIONS * UNVOICED OBJECTIONS IGNORATIO ELENCHI

*

Endnotes 1.

2.

A version of this chapter was presented at the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Amsterdam, June, 2002 and is in the Proceedings. A slightly revised version appears in van Eemeren et al. 2003. R. Johnson 1996, p. 95 gets close to this.

94 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

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The term is from Pepper 1942. See also Lakoff and M. Johnson 1980 and Hesse 1980. Hamblin, 1970, P. 12. Johnson and Blair, 1977,200. Aristotle: Sophistical Refutations 167a21; Hamblin 1970 pp.31-32. Hurley 2000, perhaps the most widely used logic textbook in North America, explicitly identifies Ignoratio Elenchi and Missing the Point. This would go under Aristotle's heading of "valid arguments inappropriate to the subject matter." van Eemeren et al. 1992, 188ff. Ibid., 116ff. The P-D approach is well-suited to describe this, e.g. as a failure to move from the confrontation stage to the opening stage. Strictly speaking, however, the move cannot count as a fallacy - if we understand fallacies to be poor arguments: if you do not argue, then you cannot be charged with arguing poorly! Ibid,. 95. After Barry M. Goldwater's famous line from his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is. no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit ofjustice is no virtue." Johnson and Blair 1977, p. 55. R. Johnson discusses the illative core and dialectical tier in R. Johnson 2000, p. 165. "Illative" is the term used in R. Johnson and Blair, 1977, p. 13, to refer to conclusion indicators. Hamblin 1970, p. 228, makes reference to Whateley's prior use of "illative." Peirce also used it. Johnson 1996, p. 106. Dialectical closure does not even suffice for settlement unless the concept is expanded to include such unsettled cases as ending the argument by walking away, by agreeing to disagree, and by the stubborn metaargument that something must be wrong even if I cannot yet identify it. See the previous chapter for a discussion of the last case, Chapters 14 and 15 below include discussions of metaphors for arguments. There are obvious and important similarities between this approach and Aristotle's tripartite approach, sometimes identified with the product, process, and procedure of argumentation. Apart from any disagreements in detail, the crucial difference comes with the addition of a fourth model and, most of all, with the identification of the models with metaphoric structures: they are entrenched but mutable features of the conceptual landscape. Much of the discussion throughout Tindale 1999 is structured on the process-procedure-product distinction. In addition to the attention given the argument-as-war metaphor in chapter 3, see, e.g., Lakoff and M. Johnson 1980, Nozick,1981, Nye 1990, and more recently and popularly, Tannen 1998.

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19. For example, R. Johnson 1999 p. 150 claims that argument always has a background of controversy, and Govier 1999 begins by finding the genesis of arguments in some kind of disagreement and concludes (ch. 14) by defending the "Positive Power of Controversy. 20. Let me repeat an important point from chapter 3: There is something deeply ill-conceived in this picture. If, after argument, I have convinced you of something, you end up with a new belief - a belief that is wellwarranted and comes complete with its supporting reasons. You have gained son1ething very valuable. And yet we feel compelled to describe you as the "loser" of the argument! 21. The ideology behind this is manifest in logic texts from the very start: their titles. T~xts often have such titles as Logical Self-Defense (Johnson and Blair 1994), Attacking Faulty Reasoning (Darner 1987), and How to Win an Argument (Gilbert 1996) or, going one better, How to Win EvelY Argument (Capaldi 1999). Even pragma-dialectical discussions of "critical discussions," like van Eemeren et ai. 1996, are marketed with fisticuffs on the cover! 22. Walzer 2000, now in its third edition, has become the consensus entry into contemporary discussions of just war theory. That discourse is extended to arguments in chapter 8 below. 23. M Gilbert 1997 emphasizes how the most important features of arguments can be their emotional, visceral, and "kisceral" dimensions ("modes"), to the point that they eclipse the logical. 24. While some commentators took this approach to Alan Sokal' s parody of post-modern science studies: it passed the (dialectical?) test of blind review but failed to be either rational or persuasive. I think it is better counted as just the reverse: rhetorically successful insofar as it was an eloquent and deftly executed satire with great effect, but dialectically incomplete, as the tidal wave of subsequent objections demonstrated. And, of course, evaluated logically, it is a fiasco: an irremediable hash of Hasty Generalizations, Weak Analogies, Slippery Slopes, and Straw Man arguments - but logical validity is as utterly inappropriate a measure for parodies as truth is for fiction. 25. Kasser and Cohen, 2003. 26. Hesse, 1980. 27. Johnson,2000,ch.6. 28. Ibid., p. 149

CHAPTER 7

Why Should I Argue? Suppose you are having a family dinner. In the course of the meal, you mention that there is a new Indian restaurant in town that serves an excellent red curry. At this point, your great aunt remarks that she never eats curries because it's eating curries that makes Indians and Pakistanis smell the way they do. What are you to do? Do you challenge her? You know from past experience that that would precipitate a nasty argument. It would ruin the rest of the evening for everyone and put added strain on the already frayed family ties. Should you bite your tongue, instead? But you also know that that would leave you feeling ashamed of yourself, more like a guilty accomplice than an innocent bystander. What exactly would be wrong in keeping silent? Is there anyone anywhere who would be wronged by it? If you do object, why are you doing it? Is it for the sake of the Indians and Pakistanis? They, of course, are oblivious to your great aunt's comments. Is it for the sake of impressionable younger children who are present? If so, does that mean if there were no children present, it would be OK to let her comment slide? Or would objecting be for your own sake, to put your own conscience at rest? We can, of course, argue about anything, l but not all arguments are justified. Nothing is beyond all possible dispute. In part, that is the point of skepticism. However, just because it is always possible to object rationally, does not mean it is always rational to object actually. There are many factors that determine whether - and how and when and why - we should engage in argument. It matters who is speaking. It feels less incumbent upon us to engage the off-hand remark from an elderly relative than a similar comment from our children. The context matters, too. It seems more urgent that we challenge sexist remarks in the personnel office at the workplace than the same comments at a party. And can't it wait until the kids are asleep? Content matters, too. If your uncle tells your aunt that it is absurd to generalize about all 400 million Indians that way, it does not seenl especially urgent to correct his population figures. Does that mean the factually incorrect is somehow less objectionable than the politically benighted or the

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morally offensive? How repugnant does something have to be before we must raise an objection and offer an argument? And how innocuous does something have to be before our objections become mere quibbling? The starting point for sorting out the tangle of questions is provided by the conclusion of the previous chapter: that arguments are, in part, performances. There are two immediate corollaries to recognizing the performative dimension of arguments. First, arguments are actions. In Trudy Govier's felicitous way of expressing it, "Arguments are more than propositions in timeless relation to one another.,,2 Arguments must be contextualized. Michael Gilbert elaborates, describing arguments as "complex social activities that involve human egos seeking to satisfy their intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual needs.,,3 Consequently, they must be judged not only as chains of inferentially connected propositions, but also as actions - ethically, pragmatically, socially, politically, aesthetically, etc. Arguments can be evocative, effective, or elegant; but they can also be immoral, imprudent, or just plain impolite. The second corollary is that, in addition to arguers, the context for an argument includes an audience. There is always an audience. When we argue in a public sphere - not only as lawyers, politicians, or advocates, but also as members of families, social groups, and communities - the audience may be as formally defined as a jury or as loosely defined as spatio-temporal proximity allows, viz., whoever is within earshot. When two people argue in private, they each provide the audience for the other. For some of the purposes of argument, it is precisely those with whom \ve argue who serve as the de facto juries of our words. When I argue to myself, I am my own audience; I am the one who must be satisfied. Without going so far as to assert that "argunlentation is a function of the audience addressed, ,,4 we can note that the audience serves several distinct and important functions for arguments, and so should be one of the determining factors in constructing an argument. The most important role for audiences is dialectical: audiences serve as judges for our arguments. Accordingly, an arguer must satisfy. her audience, whether that is an opponent in an adversarial argument, an observing third party, or herself. s This means that being the audience for an argument is, in a very real sense, being part of the argument. Following an argument is not a passive activity. Losing the thread of an argument is comparable to losing the plot when reading; understanding disappears and the act of reading is transformed into something else: a parade of words marching before uncomprehending

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eyes. "Reading" the words of an unknown language - in, say, the sense of silently pronouncing them to oneself - is only distantly related to the more familiar phenomenon. 6 In like manner, listeners who n1erely listen without actively tracing the reasoning in arguments are not really doing their job. To say that audiences have a job to do is to say that there are certain obligations on audiences. In certain formalized cases, the source of the obligation is structural, and the bearers of that obligation are narrowly specified. In the contexts of debates and trials, for example, the obligation is institutionally imposed on the judges and juries. Similarly, readers of students' essays are negligent if they do not follow the arguments or if they do not do it well. The same can be said of cases in which the responsibility is voluntarily assumed rather than imposed, e.g., by challenging an assertion, by agreeing to serve as the referee for a paper submitted to a journal, or simply by offering a receptive ear. In these examples, the audiences' obligations can be seen as obligations to the arguers. We wrong our students when we do not pay attention to the arguments of their essays; the jury wrongs the defendants and plaintiffs if they do not carefully attend to the arguments presented; and hearing someone out has to be more than simply giving him a chance to talk - it must include active listening - if it is not to be a hollow gesture. In addition, there are some more general argumentational obligations on us as audiences that are not obligations to the arguers. There are duties that are not duties to anyone in particular. All the voting-eligible citizens of a democracy, fQr example, have a duty to engage with the arguments of the candidates and referenda that are placed before them. Citizens who do not vote are remiss; but so are citizens who do vote but do so without weighing the arguments. Here the duty seems to be to oneself or one's fellow citizens, if anyone, rather than to the arguers. More generally, there are obligations on us as rational and moral agents to listen to reason, to be an audience, in the conduct of our lives. Here, too, the duty seems not to be a duty to the particular arguers - moral philosophers and visionaries like Aristotle, Jesus, Buddha, Kant, Mill, or Rawls. Rather, it is somehow both a duty to oneself and a duty to the arguments themselves, i.e., an obligation to respect reason. The puzzlement arises from the interface between three facts about arguments and obligations. First, the multiple roles in arguments need not be exclusive. We often argue with ourselves and for ourselves. For

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example, we might rehearse an argument internally in the process of deliberation in order to come to a decision or to reaffirm a decision already made. As we raise and respond to objections until we are satisfied, we are filling all three roles of argument simultaneously: proponent, opponent, and audience. Second, argumentational obligations form a complex network, running from the arguers to their audiences and back. Audiences have obligations to arguers, but arguers have obligations to their audiences in turn. And just as there are obligations at titnes to be audiences, i.e., to listen to arguments, to hear them out and take their measure, sometimes there are obligations to be arguers. Failing to argue can be as blameworthy as failing to hear arguments; sometimes those who do not reason are as culpable as those who do not listen to reason. Third, there are several different kinds of obligations to argue that may be present, not all of which, on the face of things, are easily subsumed under the "duty-to-someone" model. It will be helpful to consider several examples of situations where there is an obligation to argue in order to identify some of the different reasons and imperatives for arguing. The structured settings of courtrooms are fertile sources for data because there are four markedly different arguers that can make an appearance, each filling his or her own obligation to argue. The defending attorney has a professional obligation to her defendant to argue on his behalf; the prosecuting attorney has an obligation to the plaintiff or, in a criminal case, to the state; the jurors, in a juried case, need to argue with one another to defend their positions as part of the process of coming to a consensus verdict; and the judge in an appellate court might need to articulate a legal opinion, which entails presenting an argument. The arguments of the defendant's attorney are the most straightforward. She is a surrogate for the defendant who could, in principle, choose to argue for himself - or even choose not to contest the charges. The defending attorney, however, does not have the option of not arguing. As surrogate, she has to defend her client, even if she believes the defendant is guilty of the charges leveled. The institutional obligation to defend the accused has force even though the accused is under no obligation to defend himself. Her primary duty is to her client, not to the judge, the members of the jury, or her nominal opponent, the prosecuting attorney. As an arguer, however, she does indeed have responsibilities to the judge, the jury, and the prosecutor e.g., to be clear, to raise and respond to objections, etc - insofar as they are all included in her audience, but these are secondary to the original duty to argue. Her client, then, is as much a part of her audience as the

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judge and jury, and for some purposes it is the client who is the relevant part of her audience. The presumptive criterion for determining whether she has fulfilled her obligations is whether or not her client is satisfied that she has argued well. Winning the case is not a necessary condition for fulfilling the obligation to argue. 7 The situation of the prosecuting attorney in criminal court is different. He usually does not represent anyone in particular. Thus, there might not be anyone to whom we can turn for a prima facie determination of the status his obligation to argue. In some case, of course, there are identifiable individuals whose interests need to be represented. The relatives of a murder victim, for example, have an interest at stake in the trial. They can regard the prosecutor as their representative. If there are any genuinely victimless crimes, however, the prosecutor's duty would have to be to something like the abstract interests of the state, rather than to any individuals. Here too, the obligation to argue per se should not be confused with any imperatives to win the case. Although failed arguments may result from argumentative incompetence or negligence, and so blameworthy on that account, they are distinct from failures to argue. The effect on the criminal population may be the same, there is a difference to be marked between prosecutors who do not prosecute crimes and prosecutors who fail to win convictions. The issue at hand concerns the former. Under what circumstances is a district attorney who chooses not to prosecute a case - Le., who chooses not to argue! - remiss? Insofar as we all have certain responsibilities as moral agents, there is an analogy to the conversationalist who must decide whether to challenge racist remarks or sexist innuendo. There are many different considerations for public prosecutors to balance, including the cost to society of the investigation and prosecution, the effects on the acccused, and the seriousness of the crime. Launching a full grand jury investigation into alleged parking violations would be all out of proportion to the offenses. There are counterpart considerations for the conversationalist who is met with an offensive remark - and a counterpart excess: there is a place for dissertation-length arguments on the inappropriateness of ethnic jokes. In general, the dinner table is not that place. The nature of the obligation to argue can be approached from another angle: Who, if anyone, has the right to seek redress for the failure? In the first case we considered, Abraham's failure to argue with God,8 both Sarah and Isaac had the proper standing because their interests were at issue. If there were reasonable grounds for a criminal

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indictment in, say, a homicide, but no charges were pressed, it would be the victim's relatives who would have grounds for complaint. They have to be counted as part of the audience for the prosecutor's arguments, whether or not they are in attendance at the trial. Who, if anyone, would have the right to complain if no indictments were handed down in a victirrlless crime? There are well-established precedents and a well-developed literature concerning class action suits, legal standing, amici curiae, and related topics. They all rest on the assumption that there are always wronged-parties or parties whose interests are at stake. Thus that there are always interested audiences for prosecutors' arguments. Prosecutors too can be considered surrogate arguers. Jurors' arguments are very different from prosecutors' and defenders' arguments on several scores. First, the jurors' arguments among themselves take place in the relative privacy of the jury room. There are no accused, accusers, victims, or their surrogates present. They are their own audience. There is an important liberating aspect to this because it allows them to consider, adopt, and abandon positions with much less concern for the "face" problems that are present in more public arguments. 9 On the other hand, there is the fact that juries are charged with reaching a verdict. This is the source of their obligation to argue and it places certain constraints on their arguments. They cannot decide to ignore the issue, or table it until there is more evidence, or agree to disagree. Some sort of resolution is mandated. Third, juries need to come to a consensus. To some degree, this also acts as a constraint. As such, the arguments they have among thenlselves are more deliberative than polemical or partisan. The balance between heuristic inquiry and eristic argument is not the same as in the courtroom proper. IO The need to come to a consensus resolution means their arguments must be more convergent than agonistic. 1I There is some space for negotiation and compromise because the jurors themselves are the audience that nlust be satisfied by their arguments. Fourth, since it is a verdict that juries must reach, their arguments can be more deliberative. They decide the case. Their decision is constitutive. Disagreement as to whether a defendant was negligent in some matter need not be a disagreement about the facts of the case. A verdict of criminal negligence makes the defendant criminally negligent, just as an umpire calling a pitch a "strike" makes the pitch a strike whether it crosses the plate or not. This is not to say that the

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decision is arbitrary. There are good and bad verdicts, but it leads to conceptual confusion to suppose that there is always a right and wrong. That is not the nature of "verdictives.,,12 Finally, because juries are not advocates for or against one side or the other, they need to take all the perspectives into consideration. They might not have the luxury of relying wholly on deductive reasoning, but they do have recourse to "conductive" argumentation b~cause they are in "the domain of pro and con.,,13 In general, cogency for conductive arguments requires that the pros "outweigh" the cons, not simply that the supporting reasons pass the "RSA" test, i.e., that the positive considerations are relevant, sufficient, and acceptable. 14 There is a qualification to be noted, one that points to an important feature of argunlents. Juries operate under special rules. While the nature of their obligation to argue does direct them to conductive reasoning, there are unequal standards of proof for guilt and innocence. The eristic argument between the prosecution and the defense is not symmetrical, so the image of a balance scale for juries is not quite right. A defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 15 Hence, 'Nhile jurors who are in favor of a guilty verdict need to convince their co-jurors of the defendant's guilt, jurors who have doubts about that do not in fact have to persuade their colleagues to have similar doubts. They have only to get their co-jurors to acknowledge those doubts as reasonable. As a juror, you must agree to a guilty verdict, but you only need to go along with a verdict of notguilty. You need not be rationally persuaded that the defendant is not guilty. The reason this is important is that it challenges the idea that the goal of all argumentation is rational persuasion. A juror's argument for acquittal does not have to be rational persuasive and so does not have to have that as its goa1. 16 Unlike juries, who need only deliver a verdict, judges are sometimes called on to articulate a written opinion. When there is a written opinion by the judge (or opinions by the judges), these are the last words from the courtroom. They might not be the last words on the case, however. There is always the possibility of future commentary on judges' opinions. Thus, judges' summary arguments have a peculiar, dual role. In the short term, because the trial is over, they do not really have to persuade anyone. Of course, they may be used in persuasive arguments later on, e.g., in appeals or as a cited precedent in later cases, but rational persuasion is not their primary purpose. Their immediate roles are to explain and justify the decisions being handed down. There is another role, however, played out in the

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longer term, \\'hich is more important in evaluating these argulllents. They are contributions to the on-going discourse that constitutes legal tradition. And ultimately, it will be the audience for this role, the future participants in the legal institutions, that determines whether the duty to argue has been satisfactorily discharged. The source and force of the obligation to argue is more visible in courtrooms than elsewhere, but additional examples of the duty to argue are not hard to find. Eulogists at funerals, customers returning merchandise, students puzzled and upset about their grades, politicians campaigning for office, government representatives in office, business representatives in the marketplace, eager suitors, and the reluctant sought all need to present their cases. In all these examples, the justification we have for argument is that we are arguing/or someone. Sometimes, this means arguing on behalf of someone, whether ourselves or someone else. However, it could also mean arguing before someone, as a performer before an audience rather than a surrogate or representative in place of another. Often, both kinds of reasons are present. Parents ought to provide reasons for their actions and rules, if asked (and what parent isn't?), but they also need to provide models for deliberative thinking, rational inquiry, and reasoned debate. What is called for is the very act of engaging in the give and take of rational debate, and this is largely independent of the content of the argument. Here is a case where the interests of the audience are not the interests at issue. The claim that parents ought to argue can easily be misinterpreted. What is appropriate is the presentation of instances of justifying, explaining, and supporting discourse: of dialectical engagement. What about the negative image of parents arguing? The problem is not simply that they may be arguing with each other rather than with the on-looking children; the problem is with the kind of argument and, more to the point, that the children are indeed looking on. Can it wait until the kids are asleep? The problem is with the audience. Audiences are the source of obligations to argue. In general, this will be because of some antecedent relations we have with the audience, whether familial, social, or institutional. Conversely, it is the relations that we have with the audience that can obviate the obligation: it is because we need to maintain our relations with our aunts and uncles that sometimes we should not argue with them. Similarly, while it is the relationship that elected officials have to their constituents that obliges them to argue (on their constituents' behalf), that same relationship can also put constraints on their arguing. Because a

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politician may need to go before the voters again in the future, some of the arguments he could present to win their votes this time ought not be presented. For example, if negative campaigning turns out to alienate the voters in the long run, then its immediate benefits may be outweighed. False promises can and do win elections; but they also can and do lose subsequent elections. Because our children are the audience for so nluch that we do, we need to be careful when and how we argue, and also when we fail to argue. This way of thinking about the duties to argue and abstain from arguing has wide-reaching consequences for philosophy, that most argument-centered of activities. If there are mandates and prohibitions for arguing, and philosophy is all about argument, then are there certain obligations to philosophize? Who is the audience for philosophy that gives rise to these obligations? And are there times when we simply ought not philosophize? Philosophical arguments are strange animals. They are not like other arguments. Negotiation and compromise are not possible outcomes. Filibustering to prevent an argument or simply walking away to avoid it are not legitimate options for philosophers. Abandoning a good argument is never philosophically justified. Admitting defeat is something that philosophers rarely do. And yet, these are all common phenomena in other argumentative spheres. Good pOliticians, able lawyers, and other arguers and surrogates all have recourse to these moves. Identifying the audience for philosophical argumentation will go a long way to answering these questions. For example, identifying an idealized standing audience but not a represented constituency - might help to explain why simply walking away from philosophical arguments is not an option. But a caveat is also in order. A complete understanding of philosophical arguments has to take other factors into account besides the audience. The absence of negotiation and compromise fronl philosophical arguments, for example, is surely a function of the subject matter of philosophy rather than the audience for philosophical arguments. The fact that it may on occasion be politically wise to abandon a good argument, but never philosophically justified, is due more to the respective societal roles of philosophy and politics, as well as the rational and temporal resources that are available to arguers in those fields. As for the dearth of examples of philosophers who have admitted defeat? I do not think the audience can be blamed for'that.

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Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

We can argue about anything because "everything is objectionable" in the sense outlined in chapter 2 above but also because beliefs can always be further intensified, as noted in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 44. Govier 1999a, p. 14. Gilbert 1997 p. 74. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p.44 The presence of the audience and its role in argument evaluation was introduced in chapter 1, and was further addressed in chapters 4 and 5. This is at the heart of the "rhetorical model of argument," the subject of Tindale 1999, especially chapters 3 and 4. Cf. Wittgenstcin 1958, 156-171. Winning would seem to be a sufficient condition, however, insofar as one cannot win an argument in which one has not engaged. But trials are not simply arguments. A client might want his day in court, rather than even the most favorable plea-bargained resolution. If the prosecutor drops the case, or the judge throws it out of court, the obligation can be said to have been obviated rather than fulfilled. In chapter 1 above. See Tracy and Coupland 1990, pp. 1-14. Gilbert 1997, p. 43. Gilbert's concept of "coalescent argumentation" would seem to fit in here, but the. relations among the jurors are so much more restricted than the rich "multi-modal" relations among family members, friends, and even coworkers that issues such as lingering resentment, differences in attitudes, and so on are largely irrelvant. . The horrible terminology is, of course, from Austin; also see Wisdom's "Gods" for a discussion of kinds of reasoning that anticipates a good deal of the conceptual machinery now routinely used in contemporary informal logic. Govier 1999a p. 157. The RSA criteria for good (irguments is found in Johnson and Blair 1994, pp. 54ff. Cf. The ARG test in Govier 1992 p. 68. Govier 1999a p. 170 offers the metaphor of "outweighing" as a criterion for conductive argument cogency. That is why philosophers rarely get tabbed for jury duty: they have a distorted sense of which doubts are reasonable. But see Johnson 1996, p. 106, for an argument that "Rational persuasion is the te/os of argumentation."

CHAPTER 8 Just and Unjust Wars - and Just and Unjust Arguments! Of the three main models or metaphors we have considered - armetaphor, argument-as-proof and arguing-asmaking-a-presentation - the war metaphor has received the most attention. It has been criticized by many authors in many ways. Many of those critiques have raised important and relevant issues. Some offer keen insights. Others propose creative alternatives. As an aggregate, they ought to have a greater persuasive effect on our speaking and thinking than they have in fact have had. For all that, the metaphor remains as entrenched as ever in our collective thinking - and not without good reason, for it is a rich vital metaphor. We are not done with it yet. We must return to it once more. The points of similarity between wars and arguments were rehearsed in chapter one. We can easily imagine overhearing someone talk about attacks and counter-attacks, conflict and engagement, victory and defeat, or triumph and surrender, without being able to determine whether it was argumentation or war that was being discussed. The argument-is-war metaphor creates a shared vocabulary. Their vocabularies merely overlap; they are not identical. There are some concepts from the vocabulary of war which are not commonly applied to argumentation, but easily could be, such as sieges, blitzkriegs, appeasement, and ambushes. The ready transfer of concepts also flows, albeit not as torrentially, in the other direction, from argumentation to war. Establishing a position, making concessions, and finding comfflon ground could all be readily applied to wars. This is not to deny the dissimilarities, and the prominent elements peculiar to each. Wars, but not arguments, typically include armies, chains of command, POWs, and conquest, while arguments, but not wars, typically include inferences, fallacies, premises, and conclusions. Still, the argument-is-war metaphor should be accorded its due: it is, after all, an apt metaphor insofar as it captures so much of our argumentative practice; it is a vital metaphor insofar as it informs as well gumentation-as~war

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as reflects that practice; and it is a powerful one insofar as it is hard to escape its conceptual gravity. It is not, of course, an exact fit, but that it is simply to reiterate that it is a metaphor, a vehicle for organizing our thinking about things, rather than an unorganized collection of facts that could serve as a literal description. But, as noted, the war metaphor is also, in many ways, an unfortunate one insofar as its effects on our thinking and practice can be counted as negative. For all that, the argument-is-war metaphor is a very fertile one because its semantic fecundity enables us to see certain features of arguments - and perhaps of wars as well - that were less visible. To see how this works, consider the phenomenon referred to by the marvelously euphemistic military phrase "collateral damage." It refers to the carnage wreaked on non-combatants by proximate military actions. A monlent's thought is all that is needed to find its counterpart in argumentation: consider, for example, children within earshot of heatedly arguing parents. They are indeed innocent but injured noncombatants within proximity to the fighting. That feature of arguments might have been (and largely does seem to have been!) overlooked were not the telnplate of the language of war in play. Similarly, the war-cluster concepts of simmering hostilities, wars of aggression, humanitarian interventions, exit strategies, and possibly even war crimes all have argumentative counterparts worthy of greater analytic elucidation and philosophical attention. The juxtaposition of war and argument is, of course, also a juxtaposition of argument and war, so, conversely, the conceptual vocabulary of argumentation might be expected to provide new ways of looking at war. Such concepts as burdens ofproof and the distinctions between persuading and convincing and between settlement and resolution are not typically applied to wars, but perhaps they ought to be. Of particular interest here is one important part of our thinking about wars and the light that that might shed on thinking about argumentation, viz., the concepts of Just and Unjust wars. To what extent can the literature on these concepts be applied to arguments? Are there Just and Unjust Arguments? The conclusion I reach is that the concepts are indeed applicable and they do help shed light on some argumentation phenomena, but only within certain limits. In the end, however, what we not need is not a Just Argument theory, but an Unjust Argument theory. §1. Jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The discourse of Just War theory often begins with the distinction between jus in bello and jus ad bellum, that is between justice in the conduct of a war and justification

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for going to war in the first place. The distinction may be problematic on careful analysis in sonle particular contexts, but it is clear enough initially to be intuitive, acceptable, and helpful. Soldiers are responsible for how they wage wars and nations are responsible for why they wage wars. Unjustifiable actions in war are counted as war crimes, even if the wars in which they occur are just. If, however, the wars are unjust, they are counted as internationally illegal acts of aggression for which the national governments or military commands, rather than individual soldiers, are responsible. Amazingly, there is no obvious counterpart to be found in the literature of argumentation theory. While much has been written about the proper conduct in argumentation, there is no counterbalancing mass of writing on when and why to engage in argumentation in the first place. The reasons for this are not hard to fathom. The costs of going to war are inevitably so high morally, politically, and economically that they create a very strong presumption against war. Moreover, because the political and economic costs have to be paid by both sides, political and economic gain by one side cannot play any part in the moral justification of military actions. Wars of conquest, for example, are unjustified even if there are very great economic and political benefits gained and there are very few casualties on either side. The corresponding costs for arguments are minimal: neither soldiers nor civilians lose their lives, cities do not get destroyed, cultures are not endangered. It is true that personal relations may be put at risk by an argument, but not necessarily. If someone initiates an argument at a town meeting or at an academic conference, there might be no cost at all. There could be a price to pay if the argument became nasty so that any subsequent contact between the parties would be poisoned, but that would be a consequence of the conduct of the argument rather than the mere fact of the argument. Indeed, arguments are to be expected in those contexts. More than that, they are welcomed and even desired. Argumentation per se is not a bad thing. War per se is. Argumentation is not something to be avoided. War is. Arguments - understood now as critical discussions - are good things. They clarify our positions, strengthen our convictions, lead us to new beliefs, and, for some of us, even provide a measure of enjoyment. What's to justify? Of course, arguments are not all light and goodness. Philosophical argumentation may on occasion approach the ideal of critical engagement - both passionate in its pursuit of resolution and dispassionate insofar as its participants are emotionally distanced from any particular

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outcome - but what is at best uncommon among academics is much rarer still in other contexts. There is a lot of negative baggage that is commonly associated with arguments. They can be acrimonious and challenging. They can be en10tionally draining. They can be intellectually upsetting. They can be wastes of time. These are the potential costs, what have to be weighed against the possible benefits in justifying arguments. The possible benefits include better-justified beliefs, better-articulated beliefs, and intellectual satisfaction, and pleasure. A straightforward utilitarian calculation might seem called for: you ought to argue when the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs and you ought not argue when the reverse is probably the case. But for all its elegance, the simple utilitarian formula is naIve. Argumentation serves many purposes, among which are the fulfillment of sundry logical, rational, epistemological, social, and ethical obligations. Argumentation, in Ralph Johnson's felicitous phrase, is "Manifest Rationality." If we are to be rational beings, and argumentation is indeed manifest rationality, then, in pursuit of self-actualization, we should argue. This line of thinking is independent of any utilitarian consequentialist considerations. Even were it not worth living, striving for the examined life would still be an epistemological mandate (if not a moral one). Three topics from Just War theory are especially applicable and relevant to arguments: (1) self-defense as a justification for arguing, (2) pre-emptive arguments, and (3) second- or third-party interventions. These will provide data for principles concerning the mandates and prohibitions for arguing. §2. Contexts. There are times and places for arguing. We have all been socialized well enough to know this quite well. We argue when something is arguable, but not always. It would, for example, be completely out of place to take exception to something kind, but unwarranted, that was said about the deceased in the eulogy at a funeral service. It is neither the time nor the place to argue. The interruption would be unjustified. At the other extreme, it would be just as wrong for a defending attorney to remain silent in response to something unfavorable, even if it were warranted, that was said about the defendant. And, in some contexts, arguments are welcome. It is usually not that clear-cut. Several factors. are at play. Recall the case of the family gathering in the previous chapter in which an elderly and cranky relative made an off-hand remark that was offensive, perhaps something like a derogatory comment about an absent member of the family or a bigoted attack on some ethnic group. Should you argue? On the one hand, there may be an intellectual obli-

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gation to rebut the charge on behalf of the maligned parties, but if it's your 92-year-o!d great uncle who suffers from Alzheimer's who said it, perhaps it would be better to let it slide. However, if it was your 15year-old niece who said the same thing, and it was heard by your 10year-old son - who also hears your silence in response - then you should indeed say something. The obligation to your son - the present audience -is even stronger than any obligations you might have to the direct targets. The audience is the most important factor in determining when to argue and when not, but it is not the only relevant factor. It also matters who the would-be arguers are. While all of us may have obligations to truth and justice, we are not equally bound in all circumstances to defend them. Is a prosecuting attorney obligated to challenge helpful testimony that she knows to be false? Perhaps, but certainly not to the extent that the defens\e attorney would be! Similarly, a congressional representative qua representative is qlore obligated to defend her own constituents' interests than those of others. Personal circumstances are relevant. The subject matter of the argument is also a determinant. Even though candidates for public office in a political debate are already engaged in an argument, they should not argue about religious differences, no more than theologians in their own scholarly exchanges should argue politics. Philosophers may be inclined to follow Socrates' lead in thinking that pretty much everything is fair game for argumentative scnltiny, that pretty much any time is a good tinle to argue, and that just about the worst thing of all is to lose faith in argumentation. The call to philosophical debate may be timeless, but there are other considerations in life. As we have seen, there are times that preclude certain Jlrguments or even argumentation per set There can also be a timely urgency to, say, political debate that tlumps philosophy's more leisurely demands. §3. Arguments in Self-Defense. The first and most obvious justification for going to war is self-defense. Nations are manifestly entitled to defend themselves, so appeals to self-defense have historically been the rhetoric of first recourse. Even when the fighting is not obviously about self-defense and sometimes even when it has obviously not been about self-defense - that is the language used. When the U.S. sent troops 10,000 miles across the world to Southeast Asia, to cite a striking example, the "Domino Theory" was invoked to cast the war as a war of se(fdefense. Where there might have been an interesting and possibly cogent appeal to the legitimate interests of the South Vietnam-

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ese people, there was instead a convoluted appeal to American national security. Self-defense is a trump card. Something similar seems to holds true of arguments. Direct personal attacks justify rebuttals. If the eulogist in the earlier example abused the forum provided by the occasion to make scurrilous remarks about a particular member of the audience, that might indeed count as the kind of provocation that would justify an immediate response. Interrupting the eulogy would be, if not altogether forgivable, then at least more readily understandable. The Just War theory extension of the principle of self-defense to other legitimate interests of the state besides just territorial integrity also has a ready counterpart in argumentation - and with the same caveats. Thus, for example, Israel is generally regarded (i.e., pretty much everywhere except the Arab world) as having been justified in beginning the hostilities of the Six-Day War of 1967 because of the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran. That blockade, which was in contravention of international law, was not an attack on Israel's territory. It was instead an attack on its economy. 2 In contrast, the American inte rvention in Grenada cannot be justified this way because no serious interests were at stake. Other justifications would be necessary. What are our argumentative self-interests? Attacks on our person merit replies, but so do criticisms of our beliefs. This is especially true of those beliefs with which we strongly identify or with which we are strongly identified. A member of the clergy, a political party apparatchik, or activists in a cause would be expected to respond to criticisms of his religion, her politics, or their cause, and the rebuttals would be justified and permitted. Contextual factors may, of course, override the pennission, but there is the prima facie justification. §4. Pre-emptive Arguments. Pre-emptive military strikes, like any other military actions, need to be justified by reference to some critical interests~ but the pre-emptive aspect needs special attention. Strategic first-strikes during the run-up to a war are unjustified so long as that war can be reasonably regarded as avoidable. Justification for pre-emption is, therefore, much more difficult - which explains why diplomatic exchanges between belligerents often reduces to the level of kindergarteners - "But they started it!" and military history is littered with so n1any examples of trumped up provocations. The analogy with arguments begins to break down here. When presumptions against argumentative engagement do exist, it is always contextual, not generic. Thus, while it is the possibility of Just Wars that needs the kind of explanation provided by a theoretical framework,

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it is the phenomenon of Unjust Argunlents that has to be explained. The Socratic model is again revealing: the philosopher in the marketplace would need reasons not to argue, rather than reasons to argue. With regard to pre-emptive arguments, then, no extra or special justification is needed. Entering into argument pre-emptively is on par with engaging in argument in response to some other interlocutor's initial move - understanding the term "argument" here in the idealized sense of a critical discussion designed to resolve differences. In application, this apparently allows non-stop argumentation among rational agents - which may be the implicit utopian ideal of the philosophical community. (Do you know of any philosophers who require a provocation to have an argument?) All that is needed is two or more interlocutors and a subject matter about which there any kind of "dissensus," by which I mean anything from outright disagreement to simple lack of consensus. If you believe a proposition P and I disbelieve it, believing Not-P instead, that is an occasion to argue. So is the case \vhere I simply do not believe P rather than positively disbelieving it. And so is the case in which I do believe P, but with less commitment and enthusiasm, or for different reasons. Since dissensus is a pennanent feature of the hunlan social condition, so is the opportunity for argument. §5. Humanitarian Interventions. As the world has become more interconnected, communication more immediate, and the possibilities for military actions greater and more varied, the discourse of Just War theory has included the subject of humanitarian interventions. It is not enough to merely express moral outrage at the events in East ,Timor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Rwanda and Burundi. Knowledge of those events together with the ability to do something about them give rise to certain positive obligations to intervene - whether or not there are national interests at stake. To be sure, there are costs and risks to be weighed. If the potential risks are too high, the obligation is outweighed, so a case has to he made to the citizens of the intervening country about those costs. There is also a case to be made to the community of nations about the goals of the action and assurances as to the limits of the intervention. The presence of some great social injustice or moral outrage in another country would still not justify a war of conquest. If all of these factors line up - the moral affront is great enough, the cost to the intervening country is minimal enough, and the scope of the intervention is sufficiently well circumscribed - then a decision against military action can be blameworthy.

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Just as the justifications for war can, in the presence of the right combination of abilities and opportunities, actually create moral obligations to go to war, the license to argue can, in the right circumstances, become a mandate to argue. Many of the obstacles to justifying intervention are easier to hurdle - the potential risks and costs, for example - but some obstacles could be more difficult - violations of argumentative rights or intellectual rights do not demand redress the way that violations of human rights or civil rights do. Consider the following examples of third-party intervention. In each case, the intervention seems either permitted or mandated, but for different reasons, so extracting universal governing principles is not easy: an argument between young siblings that threatens to become violent, when a parent is near at hand; • a factual dispute between students in class, to which the teacher has knowledge that could settle the issue; • stalemated deliberations between union and management, who agree to mediation; • a discussion between three people at a social gathering which evolves into an argument between two of them, and then reaches a stage of interest to the third; • an overheard argument between two people at a similar gathering in which one disputant is clearly winning, but is doing so by arguing unfairly, perhaps by arguing grossly fallaciously or else without giving the other interlocutor a chance to speak; • an overheard argument at a social gathering on a subject that is simply of interest to the third party; In one case (the mediator), the intervention is actually invited and welcomed; in two others, the outside voice (parent, teacher) has some authority either by position or expertise. In all three cases, there is some sort of mandate to enter the argument. The other cases are more problematic as well as more instructive. What makes them problematic is that the third-party is not part of the discourse circle, ex officio, as it were, as teacher, parent, or mediator, although in the first case, the conversational history licenses, but does not require, involvement. Argument can be a form of social engagement, and the new interlocutor is really just re-engaging. Intervention in the next case, against the bullying arguer, can be justified by a general appeal to fairness. Depending on how egregious the abuse is and how high the contextual deterrents to intervention are, the contribution to the argument could be justified, unjustified, or even required. Is

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there anything peculiar to the nature of argumentation - as opposed to general behavioral guidelines - to be gleaned? I think so. The canons of rational debate, much like the moral law, are value-bearing and prescriptive. The contextual deterrents and incentives to intervention cannot be assessed without reference to the subject matter of the argument or the semantic content of individual argulnentative moves. Truth may be a counterpart to goodness in some ways, but not all truths are worth arguing about - including some very important truths. And yet, the fact that many metaphysical and other philosophical assertions often have, to put it mildly, "minimal perlocutionary effect" does not mean that intervention in philosophical disputation is never justified. On the contrary, philosophical arguments, because they are impersonal, may be the most open to outside contribution. In the abstract ideal of philosophical argun1entation, no voice would ever be excluded - which is, I take it, what Peirce was after when he wrote that the first directive for philosophical enquiry was to keep all avenues open. Now consider the last case, uninvited third-party intervention in an argument that is being fairly conducted. While the intervention will, presumably, be on one side or the other of a two-party dispute - unless it opens a third position - it need not be on behalf of one side to counterbalance the abuses of the other, so more information is needed. Does the interested third party have an ulterior motive, like an evangelist eavesdropping on a religious discussion, a real estate agent insinuating herself into a discussion of the relative merits of selling house independently or through brokers, or a rival to one of the arguers in either business affairs or affairs of the heart? Is the intervention on behalf of absent parties unable to speak for themselves? Or is it someone who simply has strong feelings about a certain movie who steps into a critical discussion of its merits? There are many reasons why we argue, and they are all relevant. There is a parallel here to military intervention officially justified on humanitarian grounds but with other ends in mind. §6. Winning and Losing. That brings us to one final case, Socrates. Here is where the parallel to war breaks down most thoroughly. Socratic interrogation was generally unprovoked, almost invariably unwelcolne, and yet always admirable nonetheless. Part of the reason is that there is a valuable by-product to successful argumentation that is of benefit to all - not just the winning party. Indeed, losing an argument with Socrates was a sure way to end up gaining a great deal. It is, after all, the so-called "losers" of arguments who gain something valuable: new, justified beliefs.- That is no mean benefit, and yet the war-

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metaphor only allows for winning and losing as outcomes. Argument is not like that. We should not enter into arguments thinking that winning and losing are the only outcomes. If we welcome other resolutions, we should have different exit-strategies. But that means abandoning the idea that arguments, like wars, always need justification. That is why, in the end, there would be something curious about a theory of Just Argumentation. We should not need it, and so should not want it. Instead, a theory of Unjust Arguments - with its implication that the default is that argumentation per se needs no justification would surely better serve our purposes.

Endnotes 1.

2.

Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the meetings of the Northern New England Philosophical Association, at Plymouth State College, New Hampshire, in October 2002, and at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, Windsor Ontario, May 2003. The example is cited by Walzer 2000 in the context of discussing Israel's pre-emptive strikes. Egypt, regarding itself as already in a state of war, did not feel the need for any additional justification for the blockade beyond its strategic effect against a belligerent nation.

PART III Metaphors in Philosophy The language of philosophy is manifestly metaphorical. In this, it differs not in the least from any other area of discourse because metaphors pop up in every corner of language. Even so, there are features of philosophical metaphors that are so tied to their context in philosophy so as to distinguish them from other metaphors. Conversely, there is something about philosophy that is so intimately tied to metaphors that the very idea of philosophy without metaphors is very nearly an oxymoron. If argument is the heart of philosophy, then metaphor is its life-giving blood. Of course, metaphors are not really "tied" to philosophy, they do not really "pop up" anywhere, least of all in the "comers" that language does not really have - no more than philosophy has a heart and blood. But to point these things out is to quibble in an especially sophistical, if not obtuse, sort of way. 1 On some accounts of the nature of philosophy, the ubiquitous presence of metaphors is something of an embarrassment. After all, aren't metaphors just stylistic embellishments, extraneous features of our language that can be of only pedagogical or heuristic value? In the end, aren't they unnecessary for the real business of getting at the truth about the world? There is an extraordinarily tangled thicket of assumptions about metaphors, language, truth and philosophy embedded in this question. In this section, the process of untangling that thicket begins in earnest. The opening chapter focuses on the nature of metaphors. It excavates the foundations for the earlier discussion, in chapter two. on the argument-is-war metaphor. Metaphors are incredibly complex phenomena, but they are ubiquitous features of our everyday language nonetheless. The metaphors we use both reflect and inform our practice. Even so, they are not immutable features of the conceptual landscape. The next chapter narrows the focus even further, paying particular attention to the special roles that metaphors play in philosophical speculation. The concluding chapter in this part then applies the insights from these first two, to reach the provocative conclusion that the entire history of philosophy should be read as the

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production of a series of "grand metaphors." On this view, many of the greatest philosophical theories are seen as having been literally false when originally formulated, but they can, nonetheless, become fonnative or constitutive truths of the subsequent worlds in which we have lived.

Endnote 1.

There is an irresistible sorites preseht: Philosophers love to quibble; Metaphors invite quibbling; Philosophy is full of metaphors; So is it any wonder that philosophers love philosophy!

CHAPTER 9 On Metaphors But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a5 As our passions heat up, so do our metaphors. The language we resort to for our worst insults and angriest epithets, as well as for our highest compliments and warmest terms of endearment, is thoroughly metaphorical. Our enemies are not pigs, dogs, ogres, or monsters. Our loved ones are not really sugar pies, lamb chops, honeybunches, or sweet-muffins. The world contains neither witches nor wizards, but they commonly appear in our language. Suppose a person, seeking quiet, yells at some noisemakers outside his window, "Shut up, you water buffaloes!"} While we may be very uncomfortable with the utterance socially and politically, neither the assertion as a whole nor its component epithet presents much of a linguistic challenge. We know, of course, that the noisy ones are not really water buffaloes, and without having to give it any thought, we can understand what the metaphor says. That is, we can respond to it appropriately: "Yeah, they really are dumb buffaloes" or "Lighten up! They're just having fun." Inevitably, some of the intended meanings, possible meanings, and subtle nuances will be missed. For exanlple, it might be taken as a comment on the revelers' intelligence, although it could also be taken as a comment on their size, appearance, mating habits, geographical origin, or any of a number of similarities. A full accounting would have to consider the context of assertion, the cultural context, the speaker, and the hearers. What would the epithet be taken to mean if the object were athletes? Would it mean something else directed at obviously overweight people? Does the gender of the targeted group make a difference? What if they were AfricanAmericans but the speaker was not? What would it mean coming from

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a speaker from India or China - where water buffaloes are common cultural icons? Despite the complex network of factors that can enter into interpretation, somehow the epithet can be understood about as well as most of the assertions that make up casual discourse. Thus, while Aristotle might be right that really good metaphors are the sign of genius, there is nothing nearly so special about most metaphors. Metaphors of the fair to middling variety are common coin of the realm. They appear naturally and spontaneously in our speech and writing, and they are heard and understood without giving so much as a pause. A great deal of what we say is undeniably metaphorical. Cutiously, even though metaphors are so common, the topic of metaphor was almost totally ignored by philosophers of language for n1uch if the twentieth century. More curious still, it was precisely the philosophers who were most concerned with the workings of language and most sensitive to the essential role that theorizing about language must have for philosophy, the analytic philosophers, who were most blind to the ubiquity and importance of metaphors for language. 2 So it was that a hard-headed philosopher like Bertrand Russell could confidently assert, "The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts.,,3 Metaphors have a different business. Of course, neither metaphorical discourse nor the allegedly essential part of language really has any business, so Russell's blithe reference to the "business of language" must be taken as metaphor. While that transgression (on his own terms) can be forgiven as an eliminable stylistic flourish, the conceptual framework of essential (and accidental) features is considerably more problematic. On the account of language that followed, such talk can itself be understood only as irreparable nonsense - or, I shall argue, as ineliminable metaphor! According to the paradigm that emerged from the fusion of linguistic empiricism and logical analysis, the three crucial terms for understanding language are meaning, truth, and reference. 4 Meaning was taken as the ultimate concern for the philosophy of language; truth conditions wa~ thought to be the proper way to explicate meaning objectively and precisely; and reference was the only acknowledged connection to the world to ground objectivity. Metaphors are problematic on all fronts. Their meanings are often imprecise, openended and indetenninate; such truth-conditions as can be supplied are entirely irrelevant for evaluating metaphors; and neither actual reference nor grounded objectivity is particularly important to a successful metaphor. Consider the quip that Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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was Robin Hood reborn as an American. It is undeniably meaningful and, insofar as his economic policies successfully effected a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, it is arguably true. And it remains true, whether or not there ever was an actual Robin Hood to serve as a point of reference and despite the presumed falsity of metempsychosis. The connection between truth-conditions and metaphors' meanings is strained to the point of invisibility. As a rule, metaphors are not true, at least not literally true. Indeed, they are often patently false. Revelers are obviously not water buffaloes, and surely Roosevelt \vas not Robin Hood reincarnated. Patent falsity has even been cited as the conversational indicator of a metaphor. 5 The assertion of something so absurd violates Grice's maxim of cooperation by flouting the principle of quality, so the mechanics of conversational implicature come into play.6 Some other meaning must be sought. Literal falsity is not a necessary condition for metaphors, however. No man is an island, and it really does rain on the just and unjust alike. Both are true, albeit as literal truths they are quite bana1. 7 Neither the literal truth nor literal falsity of a n1etaphor seems to have much effect on whether a metaphor has meaning or what its meaning is. If I say that Frege is the rock on which analytic philosophy is founded, and you point out that, well, actually, Frege was a human and not really a rock, you have completely missed the point. It would be fair to say you did not understand what I said. If the metaphor is to be believed or accepted, there is a story to be told about Frege and analytic philosophy. Pointing out the literal falsity of a metaphor, then, is as inappropriate as pointing out the literal falsity of fiction. It would be like criticizing Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment by complaining that, well there never really was anybody named "Raskolnikov" who did those things. "You missed this target" is no criticism of someone aiming at a different target. Metaphors are really just very short stories! 8 One natural enough response is to set truth-conditions aside, with their conceptual reliance on reference, in favor of assertibilityconditions. The advantage gained by this is that assertibility conditions allow the shift in focus from the (literal!) meaning of the words to the use of the sentence. That is, it removes the question from semantics proper to pragmatics. Assertibility conditions sidestep questions of reference - which seems meet since metaphors may have nothing whatsoever to do with objects in the world. I may say, "Derrida is Abelard reborn, but possessed by Montaigne's spirit," despite the fact that my disbelief in possession is as strong as my disbelief in rebirth.

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A tempting solution is to treat metaphors as a pathology of language, or, less negatively, as something accidental to language stylistic flourishes, perhaps, but neither linguistically necessary, nor theoretically important, nor semantically fertile. 9 One might, for example, regard a metaphor as an ellipsis for a simile, in which the explicit comparison has been elided. This is the starting point for many theorists. On that reading, "Edison was a wizard" would be read as "Edison is like a wizard." This sweeps aside all the problems about metaphors because it regards the meaning of metaphors as ultimately derivative from literal discourse. This, too, can be augmented by an appeal to Gricean conversational implicatures. Banal truisms, as much as obvious absurdities, violate the principle of quality, so we reinterpret it as the simile, and the simile, happily, is true. All our old questions about meaning, truth and reference are answered just as in the favored literal Snow-is-white cases. In this case, the original sentence happens to be false, because the name "Edison" refers to something that is not in fact a wizard, while the re-formulated version may be true, depending on whether Edison is in fact like a wizard in the right way. Unfortunately, the elliptical simile account is irreparably flawed in all sorts of ways. First, it renders metaphors vacuous. Similes are themselves all banal. Everything is like everything else somehow, in some way, if only we are clever enough to recognize it. (Life is like a bowl of cherries. Both are finite; when they are used up, they are gone for good; they are best when they are fresh; and, as far as we can tell, neither one is likely to be found on Mars.) That is, if metaphors are read as similes, then they respect Grice's principle of quality, but at the cost of violating the principle of quantity: they say nothing of note. The situation is actually a bit trickier. Reading metaphors as literal assertions of a sort, similes, in order to preserve their connection to truth-conditions runs aground on other shoals. For one, the imputed similarities need not be actual. In some contexts, labeling someone a "gorilla" might be a way of calling them strong and aggressive - even though real gorillas, despite their strength, are not particularly aggressive. Aggressive gorillas are found in the popular imagination, not the African mountains, but that is enough for the metaphor. The literal simile, So-and-so is like a gorilla, is still true, but for other reasons. Earl Mac Cormac reports this even more problematic example: Kenneth Johnson introduced the highly speculative metaphor of colored quarks (red, blue, and yellow) as follows: "Quark color has nothing whatsoever to do with visual color. The word color is used

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because the way different colored quarks combine in quantum mechanics is renliniscent of the way visual colors combine."l0

rWhatever similarities there may be between blue quarks and blue balloons (and remember that everything is like everything else somehow) is irrelevant. The comparison is not really to the color blue itself, but to the entire color spectrum, of which blue is but one part. As translations for metaphors, similes say too little - and sOlnetimes they even get that wrong. A second problem with the elliptical simile account is that it seems to presuppose that all metaphors are of the subject-predicate form: A is B, when in literal fact A is not B. Metaphors appear in all manner of syntactical fOffilS, appearing in assertions, questions, and commands. I I And they can exploit any part of speech. The focus of a metaphor 12 can be a noun in either the subject or predicate position (Nixon was a weasel but Clinton is a chameleon; Has that cyclone been through here again ?), a verb (The director has tral1lpled on our agenda), an adjective or adverb (His volcanic passions erupted violently), or even an interjection or an article (Ouch - another tax increase!; Professor Zapp is the Austen scholar). Beyond those problems, the elliptical simile translation of metaphors does not fully capture what it is that metaphors do. Metaphors invite us to see the world in a certain way. They challenge our ways of thinking by giving the conceptual kaleidoscope a good shake to bring disparate "semantic clusters" - e.g., those of war and argument, or opiates and religion - into contact. The focus of a metaphor serves as a "template" or filter through which we view the subject. 13 In so doing, metaphors serve to point out previously unrecognized similarities, as do similes, but they also do nlore. The meaning of a term includes its common associations. 14 Thus, if the juxtaposi~ions that metaphors propose are attractive enough, they are actually capable of establishing and sustaining those associations. Metaphors create meaningsr 15 Thus, in some cases there can be grounds for saying that the similarities a metaphor highlights may be artifacts caused by the metaphoric speech act itself, rather than discovered facts about the referent objects. In the end, the questions of reference, truth and falsity appear to be mostly irrelevant for explaining what is peculiar about the meaning of metaphors. What a metaphor means is a question more concerned with implicatures and presuppositions, and perhaps even conversational and conceptual consequences, than actual assertions. It seems less concerned, that is, with word- or sentence-meaning than either speaker-

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or hearer-meaning. Is it then really a matter for pragmatics rather than semantics proper? If so, then, serious philosophers of language can get on with the real business of connecting language with the world, and metaphors can be dismissed as interesting but unnecessary stylistic devices that can be accommodated within standard semantic frameworks. They pose no insurmountable or even especially interesting philosophical problems. At this point, it might be wise to isolate and identify some of the important assumptions and attitudes that are implicit in the elliptical simile account of metaphors. (1) Literal meaning is prior. Metaphorical meaning, if there is some such identifiable kind of meaning, is derivative. 16 (2) Whatever can be said, can be said literally. Metaphors can be eliminated from discourse without loss of cognitive content. I7 (3) Metaphors do not have a distinctive kind of meaning. What they add to the language is stylistic, not substantive. I8 (4) Literal meanings are essential to language. Metaphors are accidental features of language. A completely literal language would be possible, but a completely metaphoric language is impossible. 19 (5) Metaphors operate at the level of individual words. In calling Richard a lion, it is the word "lion" that carries the weight of the metaphor. In this example, the subject and predication are nonnal; it is the predicate that is peculiar. (6) The peculiarity of the predicate is evidence that metaphors are deviations from the literal. Language is in some sense "naturally" literal. There is something "unnatural" or "artificial" about metaphors that begs for explanation. (7) The meaning of a metaphor is to be explained in tenns of some sinli1arity between the subject provided by the literal frame and the imported focus. Richard must be like lions in some regard - if not real lions, then perhaps the regal lions of popular conception. 2o (8) The subject-predicate form is "canonical" for metaphors. Any metaphor not explicitly in S-P form can be put that way without damage. Thus, The ship ofstate lies rudderless in stormy political seas would "really" (albeit roughly) be equivalent to The state is like a rudderless ship and the political situation is like stormy seas. These theses are not independent of one another. Individually, they are all highly questionable and, as noted, controversial. Together, they manifest a largely negative attitude towards metaphors. Metaphors are semantically indeterminate and obscure. They are part of "poetic discourse" rather than scien~ific language. They are,

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therefore, inappropriate and, because they are "seductive of reason," they can even be dangerous for truth-seekers. So, in addition to the aforementioned general problems with the elliptical simile account of metaphors, there is one more: that account of metaphors sees them as especially problematic for philosophical discourse - provided, of course, that philosophy is conceived, alongside the sciences, as a truthseeking endeavor. And if, as certainly seems to be the case, metaphors are integral to philosophy, then philosophy itself also becomes suspect. On the other hand, the door has been opened for a positive conclusion. Because of the stylistic contribution they make to expression, and because they "make the unfamiliar familiar," metaphors have an important pedagogical role. Because they are semantically underdetermined and pragmatically deviant, they require active interpretation. They are like Zen koans insofar as hearers need to solve them to get the point. 21 And insofar as they involve innovative uses of language, the~ represent the cutting edge of linguistic - and conceptual - growth. 2 For all these reasons, their most significant value may be heuristic, pointing the way to significant new truths as they articulate profound new insights. Rather than being sloppy, dangerous, and sophistic weapons to be shunned by all upright philosophers, sometimes metaphors are precisely the right tools for

creative philosophers to use in trying to make sense of the world.

Endnotes 1.

2;

3. 4.

5.

This example is taken from a notorious incident testing the speech code at the University of Pennsylvania. One student, a white, male freshman, was accused of racial harassment in 1992 after directing those words at six African-American women. The resulting controversy was given coverage in both The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as the mainstream press. This discussion owes much to the Introduction to M. Johnson 1981. It provides an excellent overview of the philosophical thinking about Inetaphors up to that point. Russell, "Introduction" to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, p. x. Only later were speakers and hearers added to the mix, largely through the efforts of Austin and Searle, for the former, and Grice for the latter. The pragmatic coniext is particularly important for explaining metaphor. For example, Loewenberg 1975, in developing an Austinian account of metaphors, states, "It is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an

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utterance to be a metaphor that, if taken as an assertion and interpreted literally, it is false." Goodman 1968, chapter 2, and 1978 makes a similar claim, but qualified to account for the apparently true examples cited below. The truth, "No man is an island" he reads as implicating the sorting system of geographical terms, so it becomes something like, "No man is an island, but rather is connected to the mainland." Also see note 7. See Grice 1975. Martinich 1984, in a largely Gricean approach, thinks that metaphors are always taken as false, to trigger the mechanisms of implicature. Thus, he concludes, metaphors that are not literally false are still taken as saying something false so that we can reverse ourselves yet again and take them as making-as-if-to-say something true. Of course, metaphors are not really short stories. The claim is a metaphor, and a good one, I think. The connection between metaphor and narrative is further explored below. Note that "really" here means "metaphorically" or even "not really," just as "literally" apparently so often means something like "metaphorically (but emphatically)." We can say, for example, "He was literally a giant among his peers," without in fact meaning it literally! This is complicated by the fact that meanings change. Dqes the literal meaning of "giant" now include "stand-out"? Philosophers' animosity towards metaphors, and to rhetoric more generally, has a venerable pedigree, extending back to the Ancients and their felt need to distance themselves from the Sophists. Of more immediate relevance is the tradition extending back to Hobbes (Leviathan, Part I, ch. 5) and Locke (Essay, Bk. III, Chapter X, 34). Both strongly warned against the dangers implicit in the use of figurative language for philosophy. Mac Cormac 1990, p. 1. 1. One curious restriction on metaphors is discussed in D. Cohen 1998: fresh metaphors cannot be launched from the antecedent position of certain sorts of conditionals. Some conditionals ask us to imagine other possible worlds; some metaphors ask us to re-imagine this world. The tension between philosophy's speculative and analytic modes comes to a head here. Max Black 1955 introduced the terms "frame" and "focus" (replacing "tenor" and "vehicle") to refer to the literal background and the figurative intrusion, respectively. It was adopted by Searle 1979 and will be the preferred terminology here. Black 1955 makes the comparison between filters and metaphors explicit. He invokes the interaction between the subject and the predicate concepts to explain the new meanings generated by some metaphors. Importantly, it is the interaction between the shared platitudes a community entertains about the subjects, not the truth about them. We can, for example,

On Metaphors

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15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

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21.

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attribute nobility to people by calling them lions, whether or not lions are noble in any way - and even regardless of whether we actually believe they are. What is important is that our culture supports that image. Like so many other important features, it was first suggested in Black 1955. It has been brought into higher relief in Lakoff and Johnson 1980. See also Lakoff 1993. Metaphors are presented there as involving entire conceptual domains. Hesse 1980 expands upon this possibility for meaning-creation in the context of thinking about scientific models as metaphors of a kind. Locke 1959 may be the locus classicus for the view that language acquisition proceeds from (literal) ostension, but the view is also addressed by Augustine in De Magistre. Davidson 1978 downplays the difference between literal and figurative meanings, in part by offering a more holistic account of language acquisition. See the next footnote, as well. Davidson 1978 is often cited as the most articulate defender of the view that the only kind of meaning there is, is literal meaning. While he does indeed say that most emphatically ("Metaphors mean what the words, in their most literal interpretation mean, and nothing n10re."), the account of literal meaning that emerges is embedded in larger pragmatic contexts. Thus, it is far removed from the Tarski-style formal semantics of reference, satisfaction, and truth that provided the background for his earlier discussions of meaning, in, e.g., Davidson 1967 or Davidson 1973. Searle's "Principle of Expressibility" - the thesis that whatever can be meant can be (literally) said - is an endorsement of the eliminability of metaphors. See Searle 1993. Black 1955 and 1962 tentatively suggests that metaphors create meanings (in addition to their role of temporarily plugging gaps in literal language). Since then, many others have more forcefully championed that idea. The "hostile tradition" fronl Hobbes and Locke is offset by a tradition of its own that has become more vital in the last century. Nietzsche would certainly be included as something of a patron saint, but anti-realism is not a necessary accompaniment to the view that literal discourse exhausts the field of meaning. See, for examples, Ricoeur 1977 and many of the contributions to Ortony 1993. Mac Cormac 1976 and T. Cohen 1996 both point to the "epiphoric" or emotional messages communicated by metaphors. This probably has to be understood as a claim in the "meta-language." See the comments on the essence-accident distinction in the text corresponding to footnote 3 above. Black 1955 introduced the term "associated commonplaces" for this. T. Cohen 1978 compares understanding a metaphor to getting a joke - part of which is simply recognizing the joke as a joke, and sharing certain beliefs and attitudes that can be used to get the point. Martinich 1984 opts

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for a comparison to enthymematic arguments in which the hearer has to supply the missing premises and make the unstated inference. 22. Lakoff 1993, among others, would argue that thought itself is primarily organized by metaphors, so that this applies not just to the extraordinary growth of language, but also to its origins.

CHAPTER 10

Metaphors and the Discourse of Philosophy The elliptical simile account of metaphors, in which a metaphor of the fonn A is B is understood as a ~tylistic variation on the explicit comparison in the simile fonn, A is like B, was subjected to a number of criticisms in the previous chapter. The account was judged inadequate for the task of explaining the full range of phenon1ena associated with metaphors. It does serve to explain some metaphors, some of their meaning, some of their use, and some of the contribution they make to thought and discourse. It fails, however, to accommodate the full range of syntactical diversity metaphors exhibit. It does not account for the peculiar role and force of metaphors as speech acts. Above all, it degenerates into either mystery or vacuity. All of these criticisms could (and perhaps should) be taken, easily enough, as invitations to amend and augment the theory, rather than abandon it. The concluding criticism fron1 the previous chapter, however, presents more of a challenge. The elliptical simile approach was taken to task, not because of internal inadequacies or failures in application, but because of its implications for philosophy. It rests on several crucial assumptions about how language works. Together, these general assumptions, which are common to many other philosophical theories of language, call into question the intelligibility of philosophical discourse, in particular. That charge is pressed in this chapter. The problems that are posed for philosophical discourse are manifold. The traditional topics, methods, and goals for philosophy all come under a cloud of suspicion. Consider, first, the assumptions embodied in Bertrand Russell's claim, cited earlier, that the essential business of language is asserting or denying facts. 1 Russell's point is that the heart of language is describing the world. In taking description as the primary task and raison d'etre for a language, Russell (inter alia)

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is in a position to extend the project of classical empiricism in several directions. Ostension can be taken as the grounds for reference, which in tum becomes the grounds for meaning. Thus, language acquisition could be subsumed within a generally empiricist account of knowledge. In practice, this works better to identify word-meaning than to explain sentence-meaning, but appeal to verifiability preserves the empiricist connection. (However, the move to a more holistic account of language also invites re-interpreting language acquisition, especially first-language acquisition, as a process n10re like training than learning. That, in tum, can lead to either a more empiricistic, behaviorist account or else a less empiricistic, more pragmatist approach.) That the question of meaning - and philosophy of language, more generally - remains high on the philosophical agenda is testimony to the lasting impact of the "Linguistic Tum" at the beginning of the twentieth century. Philosophy's perennial concerns with knowledge and truth became transformed into questions about language. Consequently, they become subject to the same governing assumptions that marginalize metaphor. If describing the world (asserting and denying facts) is the "essence of language," metaphors arc inessential to language and the project of describing the world. Truth must always be expressible in literal language. Therefore, if metaphors do happen to contain or convey any truth, it is despite their status as metaphors. Indeed, this holds for any content that even might be true, so what is distinctively metaphorical about metaphors must be devoid of all cognitive content. Thus, metaphors should be superfluous for an account of knowledge, the epistemological project, as well as for articulating truths and for explaining truth, Le., the scientific and metaphysical projects. After all, knowledge is true belief, and truth is correspondence. Therefore, since metaphors do not correspond to the world as descriptions, they cannot be true and they cannot be part of knowledge. What follows from this line of reasoning is that insofar as philosophy can hope to be more scientific, or even insofar as philosophy is conceived as a truth-seeking discipline, it does not need to resort to metaphor. And if metaphors are not needed for communicating truths, then their purpose must be to persuade by style rather than to convince by reason. 2 They are, then, rhetorical devices of no logical use, and philosophers would do well to avoid them. In sum, metaphors are suspect because they are seductive of reason.

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Although a great deal of philosophical discourse has centered around truth and knowledge, and much of that has been understood in a way that is inhospitable to n1etaphor, philosophy has traditionally recognized other goals a well. Wisdom, personal enlightenment, social justice, eudaimonia, sophrosyne, and even salvation have all been regarded as venerable objectives for philosophy. But while the discourses surrounding these have generally been n10re hospitable to metaphors, insofar as these may be independent of truth and knowledge, many contemporary philosophers regard them with the kind of embarrassment usually reserved for backward kinfolk. That is just not how many philosophers understand philosophy. Understanding, however, is a notably different matter. It is not completely outside the circle of interlocking concepts - science, truth, knowledge, meaning, description, cognitive content, etc. - which were invoked to exclude metaphor. The fabric of understanding may indeed be interwoven with the thread of knowledge, and so respectably hardheaded, but there is more to understanding than knowledge of facts, so neither is it completely within that hermeneutical circle. In order to understand relatively simple physical phenomena, it may suffice to offer a description and allude to scientific theories - pretending all the while that they are completely metaphor free and built on neutral observational data. However, in order to understand anything interesting - e.g., gravity, people, literary texts, and the world at large one has to go beyond the observable facts. Understanding results from explanation. There are, however, different kinds of explanation. Explanation is a pragmatic notion, and sometimes it calls for more than even a very detailed description. Would a detailed description explain a chess move or a poem? I think not. I may be in possession of a good, detailed, but merely descriptive account - say, Knight at B4 takes Bishop at C6 - and still be completely in the fog about the "why" of the move. Even the addition of a larger context - a record of the entire game - may not help. Similarly, a word by word account, a description, of a poem (the word "the" occurs in the first, sixth, and eleventh places; the word "crake," a term for a crow in some dialects, occurs in the second; etc.) is not what readers who do not understand the poem generally need. For some contexts and some phenomena, a satisfactory explanation has to transcend a literal description. That is, some explanations must rely on figurative language.

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The challenge for the philosophy of language with regard to metaphors is clear: identify the relevant data about metaphors, construct a theory explaining them, and, most important, explain the relation between metaphors, on the one hand, and understanding and explanation, on the other. A closer look at metaphors is needed. Suppose I were asked about my early education and responded by saying, liMy schools were prisons." On the one hand, there is nothing extraordinary about this description at all. It is a sentence that any of us might have used at some time to describe our childhood schools - and an image that no doubt many children still use for their schools. Still, the fact that it would be an unremarkable part of an ordinary conversation is itself remarkable. It brings four distinct problen1s about metaphors into immediate focus. First, there is the fact that for most of us, presumably, this would indeed be a metaphor, with schools providing the "frame" or "tenor" and prisons providing the "focus" or "vehicle" for the metaphor. But this exact same sentence could also be used literally by someone who had attended reform schools: "My schools were prisons" is then a plain statement of fact. There is nothing in the sentence itself to determine whether a literal or metaphorical reading is in order. That is, there is no purely syntactic mark identifying metaphors. The first problem about metaphors is merely identifying which phrases are to be taken literally and which are to be taken as metaphors. It is a non-trivial task. Furthermore, even after a sentence has been identified as a metaphor, there is the problem of understanding it. But just as there is nothing in the sentence to mark it off as a metaphor, there is nothing within the metaphor to indicate which part is the focus and which is the frame. Suppose the sentence at hand was uttered by an ex-convict in response to the question, "Wherever did you learn to pick-pockets like that?" In that case, the frame and focus have reversed: prisons provides the frame, schools provides the focus, and "My schools were prisons" is a comment on the effectiveness of literal prisons as metaphorical institutions of higher education for criminals. The problem of interpretation begins with the second problem, then, of identifying the frame and focus, determining which part is to be taken literally and which part figuratively. A third problem is interpreting the metaphor. My schools were prisons - but how? In that they were repressive, disciplinarian institutions whose primary goal was restricting individual liberty? Or in that they were large brick buildings built by the state? Or in that the

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food that they served seemed to have more punitive than nutritional value? The point is not really all that mysterious, but it is mysterious as to how we get that point. Finally, there is the evaluative problem: Is the metaphor any good? Is it true, even if only Inetaphorically true, that my schools were prisons? Is that a warranted, viable, helpful, insightful, or reasonable thing to say about them?3 Consider another example, to probe more deeply. The great basketball player Hakeem Olajuwan ,vas once described as "A real lion on the court, the king of the backboard jungle." Again, it is a perfectly ordinary description, the kind that might have been found in any sports reporter's commentary. And again, if there is nothing remarkable in the description, there is something remarkable in the fact that we can all immediately process and appreciate the metaphor - and generally do so without ever being aware that it is a metaphor. From that other angle, it is extraordinary. Olajuwan is, after all, quite human and not a lion (real or otherwise), backboards do not make jungles, and jungles do not have kings. And for all that, the description was really rather good (including its pun on "The Black-board Jungle," the title of a well known novel). The patent falsity of the claim, when taken literally, together with a Gricean spirit of interpretive charity, provides a start. 4 Olajuwan is obviously not a lion, so why would anyone say otherwise? The first recourse is reading it as an elliptical simile - Olajuwan is like a lion ..:and the search for similarities inlnlediately finds that he is strong and aggressive. What if the claim had been that he was a real animal on the basketball court, instead of a lion? The same basic point is made: he is strong and aggressive. In this case, however, we have a claim that is a platitudinous truth rather than an obvious falsity. Humans are animals, albeit, we like to think, special ones. The call for a non-literal interpretation is still heard clearly. Metaphors can be literally true. The difficulty is not insuperable. Following Grice, we can be suspicious - and then generous - with truisms as well as "false-isms." A more vexing problem is that the meaning conveyed by a metaphor may rely on supposed similarities that are thenlselves actually false. A lion metaphor can be used to impute aggressiveness, even though lions are not in fact particularly aggressive. Not only is Olajuwan not a lion, he is not even like a lion in the intended way! The reference is not to real lions, but to the lions of our common conception - and the whole conceptual network of associations surrounding lions. 5

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To claim that Hakeem Olajuwan is not actually like a lion in the intended way assumes that there is an intended, more or less determinate, interpretation. Hearers are expected to identify some supposed similarities between the basketball player and lions, e.g., strength and aggressiveness. He is also like lions in other ways, too. He is a mammal, he is from the continent of Africa, and he is biggerthan-a-breadbox-but-smaller-than-an-elephant. What mysterious mechanism enables us to rule all of these out as irrelevant, and do so nearly instantaneously? It is as if metaphors are puzzles to be solved before they can give infoffilation to be processed - with the really difficult puzzle being why these puzzles are so easy! These difficulties concerning the interpretation of metaphors identifying the set of relevant similarities, despite the irrelevance of the literal truth or falsity of the metaphor and despite the irrelevance of the truth of falsity of those supposed similarities - are largely mechanical. There is a more intriguing issue, one that bedevils all interpretation but is especially acute here. Even if we manage to restrict matters to the relevant and intended similarities, we might end up missing something of greater importance. Metaphors are richly suggestive. Their meanings can be mined indefinitely. When we dig below the surface, unintended images, "unmeant meanings" as it were, may be revealed. 6 The point of casting Olajuwan as the king of the backboard jungle might have been simply to emphasize his dominance or pride of place among NBA centers, but comparisons to kings are no less open-ended than comparisons to lions. Once presented, the metaphor allows us to see, what we could not see before: Olajuwan-as-king, Olajuwan's regal bearing. This is an important part of what makes the metaphor a good one. Metaphors focus the seeing-as faculty - that curious ability that Wittgenstein eventually came to think was so important to the meaning of meaning and to understanding human understanding. 7 There is also the case of the double metaphor here. Olajuwan is juxtaposed with lions because they are the kings of the jungle although we all well know that jungles do not have kings, and that if they did" lions, which do not really live in jungles would, if they did live in jungles, probably be no more than pretenders to those nonexistent thrones! Thus, this really has nothing to do with real lions, or even the aggressive lions of common conception, referring instead to some supposed lions that are kingly. For all that, it does indeed manage to say something about Hakeem Olajuwan. Metaphors can exploit the kingly lions of popular imagination precisely because that

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trope is so entrenched in our language that it has become a formative factor in how we think about lions. Metaphors are the vehicles we use for coming to an understanding of the world in which we find ourselves at the same time that they are the tools we use for constructing that world. The world we see, when we see the world as something, is the creation of metaphors. Part of this last point needs amplification. Metaphors can entrench themselves in both the way we speak and the way we think. When they do, they cease functioning as metaphors - or, better, the function of these "dead" metaphors is different from the function of fresh ones. Metaphors have lives of their own and different functions at different stages of their lives. And, to pursue this metaphor, the life of a metaphor need not end with its death. One way that entrenched metaphors live on in the way we speak is as part of the literal language. For example, we speak of clear texts, texts whose points can be seen immediately, as opposed to dense, heavy, or impenetrable texts. But if a text is written on paper, it is lightweight, flat and opaque; it is not clear and it has no point at all, visible or otherwise. It seems to me that these dead metaphors are not now metaphors at all. Full understanding of the contemporary literal meaning of the word "clear" requires knowing that it applies to texts and how it applies to texts, in addition to its applications to transparent substances. Idioms like these are metaphors that have become entrenched in the language. They have become literal. Entrenched metaphors also live on in the way we think. They become part of the conceptual framework determining perceptions. s For example, we describe the voices of sopranos as higher than those of altos or tenors, perhaps we even crane our necks when we try to reach those heights, even though the spatial descriptions higher and lower are metaphors and the scales need not literally be scaled at all. It is, after all, an arbitrary convention that places those particular notes higher on the page of a written score - it could just as easily have been inverted. Even so, it is very hard not to think of those notes that are to the right on a standard piano keyboard as higher. 9 The currents of linguistic evolution flow in the other direction, too. As our world changes, so must our language. Atheists can still hope for angels of mercy, despite their theology, and contemporary psychologists who would not dare show anything but the utmost professional scorn for homunculus or incubus imagery may still fight the demons within. Expressions once intended to be understood as literal can remain in the language as metaphors, even when the

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occasions for their literal use have long since vanished. With the advent of heavy farm machinery, farmers no longer face tough rows to hoe; if we have electric heat, we no longer need to keep the home-fires burning; and in an age of digital timepieces, the clocks have stopped ticking. And yet, all those phrases still live in the language. Perhaps idioms like these should be called "dead literals." For even the deadest of metaphors, then, there is the possibility of resurrection. Sometimes, several such changes can be tracked. When Shakespeare wrote of "sable coloured melancholy" as the "blackoppressing hurnour,,,lO was that metaphorical? At the time, medical knowledge regarded the humours - blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile - as determinants of temperament. "Humour" referred primarily to bodily fluid, and to mood, their supposed effects, only secondarily. When the theory of humours was discarded, the secondary, metaphorical meaning became primary, then entrenched, and finally literal again. When we describe someone now as being in a good humour, are we referring or even alluding to the old medical theory? The words themselves have not changed, but it is only the words that have not changed. The language, and the world along with it, certainly has. In sum, metaphors are indefinitely polysemous texts, possibly without any referential basis in reality, which nonetheless may be constitutive of that reality, whose meanings evolve along with the succession of interpretive strategies for reading them. More simply, they are like literature written small: metaphors are really just very short stories. Consider that claim - that metaphors are stories. Was that literal or metaphorical? The boundary is not nearly as clear as we have supposed. Indeed, given the ongoing shifts in meaning from literal to metaphorical and back, we should hardly expect that meaning would ever be wholly in the one camp or the other. For similar reasons, the traditionally assumed priority of the literal over the metaphorical is equally suspect. The claim that metaphors are really stories emphasizes that tnlth is not the primary evaluative yardstick, that metaphors need to be interpreted, and that making sense of a metaphor is a creative and openended project. When we make sense of a metaphor, we are providing it with a narrative context. We are not extracting or articulating a unique, pre-existent, and fully determined sense that is somehow already there. Meaning is created in the interpretive process. (One could, to use a

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self-referential example, interpret the claim that metaphors are stories as involving other - whether additional or alternative - points about metaphors, e.g., that they properly need a beginning and an end, that they are hard to translate, that they are the only way to elucidate the human condition, etc.) Similarity is a two-way street, so perhaps we could turn the metaphor around, asserting that stories are really just long metaphors. The point of this could be to emphasize the non-literal, facts-bedamned, possible absurdity of stories. The virtue of this fonnulation is that it brings into clear focus just what is objectionable to philosophers about metaphors: they are too much like stories; they are fictions. And while fiction can be used to make profound philosophical points, the assumption is that whatever philosophical substance there is in a story could be expressed without the artistic adornment and thus be more open to direct philosophical scrutiny. On the other hand - and when dealing with interpretive matters there is always another hand - if the objection to metaphors is that they are art rather than science, style rather than substance, and seductively persuasive instead of rationally convincing, this can all be seen as something positive. Even what appear as "mere" embellishments to expression may also benefit communication, so metaphors can serve at least as aids to apprehension, if not to proof And this works on two different levels. First, metaphors have heuristic roles in communication, especially education, in leading the hearer/student to understand the concept. And second, this road to understanding might well echo the original process. That is (to use a Positivist conception), metaphors may well be part of the context of discovery. So, even if they are later excluded from the context of justification, they may still be integral parts of what can be called the "context of explanation." Metaphors allow us to grasp new concepts by making the unfamiliar familiar. I I I think that what many philosophers have found most objectionable about metaphors is that they are obscure - i.e., semantically indeterminate. The discourse of philosophy is so often caught up in the confusions of language, that quite naturally - and quite rightly! philosophers valorize clarity and precision. (How often is the first move in a philosophical debate an attempt at an exact definition of the central concept - whether it be justice, free will, the good, or whatever? Plato taught us well.) Ambiguity and obscurity anathenla to clear philosophizing.

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However, obsc'urity is not the same as arrlbiguity. There are different kinds of semantic indeterminacy, and some kinds may well be taken as a sign of something positive, perhaps even as a sign of insight or creativity. Obscurity might mean that the resources of the language have been exhausted and are inadequate to the expressive task at hand. 12 There is no way to rule out that possibility a priori. In that case, there may be some real genius present, some deliberateness to the convention-breaking and precedent-setting uses of language. Of significantly greater interest is this: one of the bedrock assumptions on which the analytic tradition of philosophy rests is that the study of language is justified as the means of getting at the structure of thought (in the Platonic sense) itself: Only with Frege was the proper object of philosophy finally established: namely, first, that the goal of philosophy is the analysis of the structure of thought; secondly, that the study of thought is to be sharply distinguished from the study of the psychological process of thinking; and, finally, that the only proper method for analysing thought consists in the analysis of language. 13

If that is correct, then the creation of new ways of speaking indicates new ways of thinking about and conceptualizing the world. Thoughts expressed in strikingly original metaphors must themselves have their own special kind of originality. Of course, conditionals are a tricky business. One philosopher's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. Thus, while n1uch of the analytic tradition concluded that metaphors are not different in kind from literal language, and so do not represent new ways of thought, others made the converse inference: metaphors are irreducible, and do reveal something important about how we think. "Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.,,14 This may seem simply an updated expression of the Romantic privileging of poetic discourse - "Figurative language was the first to be bom,,15 - but this is really part of a more sustained challenge to the conceptual hegemony of Reason. It is not simply that there are other aspects to being human than the purely cognitive, but that the purely cognitive is itself thoroughly imbued with the imaginative. Thus, whether metaphors are the only possible vehicle for radical reconceptualization of the ways we think about the world or a reflection of all our thought, the implication for philosophy is manifest: any

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visionary - or "revisionary" - philosophy will almost inevitably first appear cloaked in metaphor.

Endnotes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

Russell's claim, in the "Introduction" to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, was mentioned in the previous chapter as representative of a traditional and prevalent philosophical view about language - and, ironically, nlanifesting an incongruous blindspot about metaphors, despite their ubiquity and importance. This is a bit of a distortion of the "convince/persuade dichotomy" as it has entered the literature of argumentation theory. It is closer to the n10re common philosophical prejudice, present in Kantian thought, valorizing the former as objective and devaluing the other as subjective. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, §6 locate the difference in the intended audience, either universal, for conviction, or particular, for persuasion. Both have roles in argumentation theory. The distinction is challenged by Gilbert 1997, inter alia. Actually, nlY own schools were not prisons in any sense, but that didn't stop me or any of the other students from thinking and calling them so. One example of this is Searle 1979. Suggestions made in Grice 1975 are further developed and then applied directly to the problem of metaphors. Black raises this problem in "Metaphor" and offers the network of "associated commonplaces as a partial explanation of the phenomenon. There is a counterpart to this in Putnam's 1975 account of (literal) meaning, which includes public "stereotypes" as components of any meaning. These community-wide beliefs need not by held by every individual in the community, or even by any individual at all, and they need not be true, but they need to be recognized in order to understand the language of the community. In his controversial critique of the whole notion of a special kind of meaning - metaphorical meaning - Davidson 1978 argues that regarding this as part of the meaning of a metaphor confuses the meaning of an expression with the effects of its assertion. Metaphors have special uses, and as such they may create new meanings, but they do not have special meaning. Wittgenstein 1953, pp. 193-208. See, e.g., Kuhn, 1970, pp. 62ff. and ch. X, for a discussion of how the preexistent conceptual framework can be a factor in the perceptual data received..

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9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

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See Lakoff and Johnson 1980 for a good discussion of this and other spatiai metaphors. Love's Labour's Lost, I, i, 230. The etymology of "melancholy" traces back to the Greek words for "black bile." The etymological connection between the locutions "making the unfamiliar familiar" and "family resemblances" is itself a familial relation. Family resemblances are used to explain the construction of (at least some of) our conceptual categories; making the unfamiliar familiar is the first (albeit, generally terminal) stage in the process of enlarging, or even combining, already existent categories. This is the motivation for the mystical language developed by PseudoDenis the Areopagite to talk about God. (See footnote 9 in the Introduction above.) The far less mystically inclined Thomas Aquinas invoked metaphors specifically for this purpose: literal language, reflecting our own cognitive limitations, is inadequate for theology. See M. Johnson, "Introduction: Metaphors in the Philosophical Tradition," in M. Johnson 1981, pp. 10-11, and R. McInerny 1961. Dummett 1978, p. 458. Richards 1936 Rousseau 1966, ch. 3.

CHAPTER 11

The Tragedy of Philosophy's Metaphors Philosophy is a peculiar discipline, and the language of philosophy is equally peculiar. All language is imbued with metaphor, and philosophical discourse is by no means an exception. But metaphors have several distinctive roles in philosophy. By arranging the data appropriately those roles become more visible. In the end, the phenomena associated with metaphors have great significance for what might be called "the semantics of philosophy." Since one and the same sentence can used to make a metaphor in one context and to make a literal assertion in another - "My schools were prisons" was the example offered - we know that metaphors are not identifiable solely by their syntax. Nor is there anything to prevent someone from using a sentence as both metaphor and literal at the same time: if a king calls to his daughter, "Come here, my little princess," both uses may be present. Moreover, if semantics is understood as rooted in, or constrained by, the concepts of truth and reference, then metaphors are not wholly semantic phenomena, either. The n1eaning of a metaphor on an occasion is not determined by its truth conditions. Indeed, its meaning need not be fully determined at all. It would be better to say that metaphors do not have meaning, but they can be given meaning in an act of interpretation. As with all interpretation, there will be criteria against which the interpretation is to be evaluated, so some interpretations will be better than others. Still, the possibility of several good readings (and uncountably many bad ones) cannot be excluded beforehand. The meaning that can be extracted from a metaphor is limited mostly by the hearer/reader's imagination. What meaning is found in a metaphor results from a nun1ber of factors, including the "associated commonplaces" of the constituent concepts. The conceptual associations that enter into the meanings of metaphors are cultural artifacts. To a large extent, they are produced and

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sustained by our linguistic practices, including, notably, our use of novel metaphors. Thus, metaphors may have the effect of changing the language - and themselves. Today's startlingly new metaphor may be tomorrow's cliched truism. Metaphors have lives of their own. They can become established as idioms, for example, and they can change words' meanings, providing new entries for the literal lexicon. Despite these remarkable features, most metaphors are unremarkable. They are linguistic commonplaces. They can be produced, used, heard, and understood without giving any pause. The boundary between the literal and metaphorical is permeable, movable, and generally unnoted. There is a way of piecing these together to reveal a picture in which philosophy at its best, when it is most successful, is all about the production of metaphors of a special sort: "Grand Metaphors." In the end, the fact that these grand metaphors are only metaphors is, by the discourse's own "official" standards, philosophy's great failure. However, the fact that they are successful metaphors is, from another perspective, the source of philosophy's great triumphs. My own list of grand metaphors in philosophy would include such things as Plato's theory of the Forms and Ockham's Razor, both Descartes' Edifice of Knowledge and Quine's Web of Belief, Nietzsche's Will to Power and James's Will to Believe, Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Meaning as well as his Language Games, Pepper's WorId Hypotheses and Kripke' s Possible Worlds. In short, it includes almost every interesting philosophical claim from Thales' assertion that water is the principle of all things to Camap's logical reconstruction of all things using remembered similarity. But wait, it might be objected, this list is virtually co-extensive with the history of philosophy itself1 1 Great world hypotheses and entire philosophical theories have been reduced to mere metaphors! Any such objection would rest on a foundation of unstated assumptions about the nature of philosophy. And, of course, this kind of objection would also rest on underlying assumptions about the nature of truth and metaphors, and how their respective roles relate. The proposal does regard grand theories as metaphors, but most certainly not as mere metaphors. Metaphors function in several distinct ways in philosophical discourse. Some of these are common to all discourses, e.g, their idiomatic and stylistic functions. Such metaphors are to be expected fronl philosophy's more literary creations, e.g., Boethius' Lady Philosophy decrying the monster Fortune, 2 or from polemical tracts whose rhetoric is in the service of a political agenda, like the spectre

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that haunted Marx and Engels' Europe. 3 The very ubiquity of these uses for metaphor, however, means that their presence in philosophical discourse reveals little about philosophy in particular. Even Moritz Schlick, arguing for the primacy of science over all other disciplines and despite a conscious effort to avoid all "Art," writes "the higher the level of abstraction attained by science, the deeper it penetrates the essences of reality.,,4 Higher? Deeper? Penetration? Some have argued that metaphors can be eliminated without any impoverishment in the expressive power of the language, albeit with a great loss in the expressive richness of the language, but that is "a bluff waiting to be called."s If any figurative language could be eliminated, it would be this embellishing use. 6 Whether or not language would be possible without metaphors, neither philosophy nor literature would be. But while it is the literary, stylistic, and idiomatic uses of metaphors that are necessary for literature,7 philosophy's essential metaphors serve different purposes. One other role that nletaphors in philosophy is heuristic. Philosophical explanation would be impossible without them. The pre-established harmony of Leibniz's Monads, for example, is so tied up with the image of windowless mirrors that it is hard, for me at least, even to imagine them in any other way. But this use, too, is common to many discourses - indeed, all discourses in which there is any kind of explanation - and so not peculiar to philosophy. The obvious metaphors in scientific treatises are used this way (but, as Mary Hesse argues, supposedly literal explanations can also be seen as metaphors, if not obvious ones 8). Whether it is the atomic theory of matter, the particle and wave theories of light, or the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, figurative images are part and parcel of explanation, scientific or otherwise. There are, however, different ways of using metaphors that all count as heuristic, and it is to these differences that we must turn in order to triangulate in on philosophy's peculiar metaphors. Sometimes explanation involves metaphors simply because no literal language yet exists to communicate the novel ideas, thoughts, or insights of a new theory. Metaphors have a creative-inventive role. There may be holes in the language that only nletaphors can fil1. 9 When that is the case, literal idioms are inevitably developed or, what amounts to the same thing, the metaphors take on the literal role. "Iron horses" becanle "trains," but the "Iron Curtain" stayed what it was until it was no more. Alternatively, there may be limits to the language that only metaphors

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can breach. Metaphors are how new ideas get talked about - perhaps because that is sometimes how new ideas get thought in the first place. lO Arthur Danto has suggested that John Locke's use of the "light of reason" might be an example of this sort. Only later did the word "intuition" get introduced as a technical term or term of art with an intended Ii teral use. 11 Metaphors of this sort are new growth in the linguistic jungle. Of course, new growth does not stay new for very long. Ironically, unlike stylistic and idiomatic metaphors, creativeinventive metaphors are, at least initially, most certainly not eliminable, but neither are they generally meant as metaphors. They are stopgaps on the way to an enlarged literal vocabulary. There are other sorts of explanatory metaphors, however, some of which may be ineliminable for another reason: they can become inseparable from the theories they explain. Consider Augustine's Great Chain of Being. Can it be understood as anything other than some kind of metaphysical ladder? God is above the angels, they are above humans, we are above the animals, and so on. The image was powerfully seductive, in part because it plugged into the Medieval cosmology in which Heaven was literally above the earth. Of course, humans are not spatially "above" other terrestrial creatures, so the literal, spatial sense of "above" is inessential to the metaphysics. No matter how high a bird may fly, it remains a lowly bird. Still, the image of the ladder in the metaphor is ineluctably spatial. 12 In the event, the metaphysics reinforced the geocentric world-view and actually ended up in arguments against Copemicanism. 13 Admittedly, this may be an equivocal example because Ptolemy's geocentric astronomy antedated Augustine's metaphysics, and the metaphor was partially shaped by the astronomy, but the point renlains that the metaphysics via the metaphor later served to shape astronomical debates. It is not too much of a stretch, then, to see the nletaphor as contributing in at least some small part to the social context for Galileo' s trial and imprisonment for heresy: The metaphor became entrenched not merely idiomatically or Ii terally, but dogmatically. This may seem an extreme case, but there is reason to believe that the dogma of the Virgin Birth began as a metaphor, too, and was only later elevated into dogma to combat Arianism. 14 What has happened in cases like this is that we have surrendered to the dangerous impulse to let images substitute for arguments in the discourse of philosophy. We have asked metaphors to bear the weight

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of argument - a gross violation, no doubt, of the canons of Pure Rationality. After all, philosophers are supposed to be in the business of constructing theories to explain the world by logic, not painting fanciful pictures with rhetoric. We are after Truth itself, right? Before dismissing this noble, if now quaint bit of Platonism, consider the alternative. If the goal of philosophy is taken instead to be wisdom, and wisdom cannot be achieved without understanding, and understanding results from explanation, and the mediulTI of explanation is metaphor, and metaphors are just stories, then philosophy is really just a kind of story-telling! There is a real danger here, but it is a danger only for the grandiose self-image that some philosophers have had. The possibility that metaphors offered in the service of explanation can assume - or usurp the role of argument is an acute danger for a discipline whose self-image would put it at the center of intellectual life but whose identity is in the perpetual crisis that such incessant selfreflection inevitably engenders. That is why the suggestion that philosophy is but another literary genre strikes such a raw nerve. If everything is just text, then nothing could be understood until textuality itself is understood. That would make critical theory the true "first philosophy"! This is, of course, an egregious simplification and distortion. Recognizing that metaphors have their own roles to play in philosophy does not entail the end of philosophy. What it does entail is that in order to understand the full complexity of how that peculiar linguistic phenomenon, metaphors, relates to that equally peculiar discourse, philosophy, special attention has to be paid to peculiarly philosophical uses of metaphor. Three uses, in particular, deserve mention because they reveal the contours of those "grand metaphors" mentioned earlier. First, metaphors often serve as exploratory vehicles for investigating and articulating philosophical hypotheses. Hume' s gamut of analogical explorations of the cosmological argument belongs in this category. If the world can be seen as a creation, then why not as the product of an immature apprentice deity, or a superannuated one, Of, as sometimes seems likely, a contentious committee? Once the image of world-as-artifact has freed us to indulge this sort of speculation, it is not much of a leap to consider yet additional alternatives, such as the world-as-vegetable or the world-as-creature. The salient feature of philosophy is that it is not, in Thomas Kuhn's sense of the word, really a "discipline" at all, or at least not a single discipline. I5 There are no

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bounds a priori and no permanent bounds to philosophical speculation. As noted earlier, one of the important features of metaphors is precisely their semantic open-~ndedness. It is almost as if Philosophy and metaphor were made for each other! Second, a good metaphor is more than just a v~hicle for exploring metaphysical hypotheses. It can itself be a metaphysical hypothesis, a structural hypothesis in its own right about how to see the world. The best metaphors, however, create the world as it is seen. As such, they are less structural hypotheses than "re-structural hypotheses," because they enable us to see the world anew, to see it as something else. And while it is in the Philosophical Investigations that Wittgenstein worried about duck-rabbits and the seeing-as phenomenon, he provides us with . an exemplary case at the end of the Tractatus: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throwaway the ladder after he has climbed up it.)16

He has asked us to look at what he has written in a different way, to see it as something else. Everything has suddenly and permanently changed - as surely as the duck becomes a rabbit in the classic linedrawing once that possibility is pointed out. It is a remarkable passage - not least because it is both a metaphor in its own right as well as a pretty good characterization of metaphors in general,17 except that the ladder, which was not a ladder until we saw it that way, comes up with us, rather than being thrown away. At its best, philosophy can be a transforrnative enterprise - in the same way that the best metaphors are. To re-phrase something Marvin Minsky once wrote: Philosophy teaches you such things as why, if you don't engage in philosophy, you'11 never be the same again. 18 The third special use to which metaphors are put in philosophy is as koans of a sort, intellectual knots that must be untied in order to reach understanding. This has been part of philosophy since its beginning, e.g., Socrates' dying breath which befuddles us still: "Crito, we owe a cock to Aesclepius; do not forget it.,,19 What are we to make of that? There are innumerable things that could be made of it, but what is most important is that we do make something of it. Or, when we are told by a poet that understanding is "sewing the thread of knowledge onto the cloth of truth,,,20 the insight is not patent. In what sense is this so? How are we to make sense of this? Again, the point is

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that making sense of this is just what we have to do. Its sense is made, not found. It was remarked at the outset that there is an element of puzzles about metaphors, that they must be solved, as it were, before they can be accepted or rej ected, incorporated into our way of seeing or cast aside, or affirmed or denied. If it turns out, as may well be the case, that the demands of the pragmatics of philosophical understanding cannot be satisfied any other way, then the presence of metaphors in philosophy truly is both integral and ineliminable. Despite all the dangers, then, metaphors are essential to philosophy. They fill roles that are sufficiently different from the stylistic and idiomatic roles most notably exhibited in literature as well as from the explanatory, heuristic roles they play in the sciences. Unlike literature's metaphors, philosophy's metaphors - those that are peculiarly philosophical - are all tied up with explanation and were never really meant to be metaphors. Augustine's hierarchy of Being, to stay with that example, was not offered as a metaphor for the world; it was intended to he a literal, albeit a metaphysical rather than a physical, description of the world. It became metaphorical only when it lost its vitality as a literal metaphysics. But, unlike science's metaphors which may evolve into literal discourse through their service in explanations philosophy's grand metaphors arise when the necessarily metaphorical parts of explanation end up assuming the burden of theory, with the result that the explanation becomes inseparable from its metaphors and, ultimately becomes wholly metaphorical itself! Rather than explanatory metaphors becoming literal, literal explanations become metaphorical. That is, philosophy's most characteristic metaphors are exploratory and structural .hypotheses that function, initially, more like the challenges posed by Zen koans and, subsequently, more like the constitutive paradigms of Kuhnian revolutionary science than like the stylistic, idiomatic, explanatory, and heuristic metaphors with which they are usually associated. Earlier, Platonism was included in a proposed list of Philosophy's grand metaphors. Now it can be explained in what sense it is, although has not always been, a metaphor. Platonism is now part of the intellectual terrain; we know what it means to characterize a position that way - for example, if I characterize the view that meanings determine use as Platonist, as opposed to the more Nominalist view that use determines meaning. Platonism has become part of the world in which we find ourselves - or, perhaps, part of the world we have n1ade

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for ourselves. We may take Platonism as a metaphor, but it was not given that way. It was meant to be a literal truth about the world. It was not meant as a constituent part of it. 21 And yet, when we come to map out the lay of the land now, we would be remiss were we to fail to point out the Platonic Heights, the Cartesian Divide, the Leibnizian Archipelago, Twin Earth, or any of the other great landmarks of philosophical geography. They are part of our world. There is an element of tragedy here for these grand metaphors. These theories aimed at being Transcendental Truths, not mere metaphors, grand or otherwise. Still, that we might now interpret them as metaphors rather than as physical or metaphysical theories is not condescension. Instead it is continuing testimony to the power that those visions still have. We do not, after all, give by-passed scientific theories such on honored place on our bookshelves and in our curricula. Who studies Black's caloric theory or Ptolemy's epicycles now? Not the scientists, but the historians of science, and they read them as artifacts from an earlier age. That is not how philosophers read their own past. There is something too valuable there to simply let go, perhaps something more valuable than mere truth. Then why not produce grand metaphors knowingly? If this is what is enduring in philosophy, then why have philosophers engaged in the self-deception that is entailed by the conceptions of philosophy-astruth, philosophy-as-science, philosophy-as-knowledge, and even philosophy-as-wisdom? Would not a recognition of philosophy-asliterature be closer to the truth, intellect:ually more honest, and ultimately more healthy for the integrity of the discipline? Not necessarily. Can the ironic stance - that extreme (if not altogether pathological) self-consciousness of post-modern theorizing - generate and sustain the passionate commitment that might be required? Is that likely to be more productive than a Transcendental self-deception? It may be that for grand metaphors, you have to aim even higher. Keep in mind, first, because metaphors are "syntactically invisible," it is entirely possible that a given text could be interpreted either literally or as metaphor. Second, because metaphors have halflives, it is equally possible that different stages might call for different interpretations, now literal, now metaphorical, or vice-versa. Third, because metaphors are open-ended and polysemous, the intended interpretation - even whether it should be interpreted as literal or metaphorical - might not be the best one, and this too can vary over time. And fourth, because metaphors are constitutive as well as

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reflective of how we think, it is entirely possible, perhaps even to be expected, that overarching world-views and entrenched ways of thinking will inevitably "metaphorize." I think each of these possibilities has been actualized time and time again in the history of philosophy when grand theories lose their vitality as philosophy, but claim an enduring spot on our bookshelves as metaphors. There is, then, an acute irony in all this. It is only as metaphors that these "failed truths" can be truths because as metaphors they do not describe the world. Rather, they constitute a new world. They failed to describe the world in which they were meant to be literal, but they constitute the world in which they are understood as metaphorical. If Wittgenstein is right that Philosophy is the attempt to transcend the bewitchment of the intellect by language, but Heidegger is also justified in seeing Language as the House of Being, then perhaps Language is the jailhouse of Being. It is only with these grand metaphors, then, that we can break out of the jailhouse of language, and only temporarily at that, in order to be schooled in a new reality.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

There are, of course, contributions to the discol.J.rse of philosophy that are not easily read as metaphors. This is particularly true of more formal offerings, like Russell's theory of definite descriptions or Godel's incompleteness theorems (both of which are consensus choices as among the most important contribution to philosophy in the twentieth century). That it is hard to see them as metaphors does not mean it is impossible. That we do not read them that way now does not mean that they will not be read that way in the future. And that some parts of philosophy are more metaphorical than others does not undermine the value of the claim that the history of philosophy is a history of grand metaphors. As a lens through which to view and organize the history of philosophy, that claim is itself a metaphor! Lady Philosophy appears throughout The Consolation of Philosophy; She speaks of the monster Fortune in the opening prose section of Book II. In the famous opening line of Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto. Schlick 1949, p. 5. Richards 1936, p. 92, cited by M. Johnson 1980, p. 18. E.g., Kreitman 1999 writes, "in scientific research ... [metaphor] serves a crucial role in the development of fresh thinking. But in these disciplines

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8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

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metaphor is an optiona' tool towards the elaboration of concepts which can be set out in various ways, including, of course, by means of mathematical expressions in many instances" (p. 114). And yet, in other contexts, Kreitman regards metaphor as a "figure of thought" and not just a "figure of speech." This begs the questions as to whether some literature is itself metaphorical (say, for the lived human experience), and whether "mere" story-telling is a necessary or essential feature of any human language. These questions are addressed below. Hesse 1980 has argued eloquently that all scientific explanation is essentially a "metaphoric redescription of the domain of the explanandum." That is a stronger claim than is being made here, since it implicitly challenges the entire literal-metaphoric dichotomy. As will be clear, I think that that dichotomy is untenable in the end, but the comments here refer only to unproblematically identifiable metaphors within larger, non-metaphoric contexts. Max Black calls this "catachresis," defined as "the use of a word in some new sense in order to remedy a gap in the vocabulary." See Black 1955. If the phenomenon is limited to single words, then it is not all that conceptually significant. Metaphors, however, do not operate only at the level of individual words. Metaphors may be the only way to communicate what would otherwise be ineffable - as theologians from Pseudo-Denis to Aquinas have noted. Many of the examples that Wisdom 1936 uses in his account of the role of nonsense in philosophy are metaphors. While the discussion there is not explicitly directed at metaphors, much of what he says can be applied to them very well, and, when so applied, is quite insightful. That new ideas are often thought in terms of metaphors is something that was emphatically maintained by Richards 1936: "Thought is metaphoric" (p.94). Danto 1984. See Lakoff and Johnson 1980, chapter 4, for an extended discussion explicitly addressing spatial metaphors. Lovejoy 1964 p.l02. The connection between metaphors and myth, as applicable to the question of the Virgin Birth, is suggested in passing in Wheelwright 1962, pp. 129-131. The codification into Dogma did not come about until the Council ofNicaea in 325. Kuhn 1970, ch. II. Wittgenstein 1961,6.54. This observation is articulately made in Garver and Lee 1994.

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18. 19. 20. 21.

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The reference is to the jacket cover of Hofstadter and Dennett 1981. Plato, Phaedo, II8a. Max F. Cohen, "Ying and Yang," unpublished poem. Davidson 1978 argues that it goes the other way, that the sentences Plato used had no (literal) meaning initially, but in trying to accommodate them, we give them, or they somehow acquire, (literal) meaning. The differences between that view and what is said here are not as great as might be thought, however, because the denial that there is a special metaphorical kind of meaning should itself be seen as a transfonnative metaphor that equally changes how we understand literal meaning. In endorsing this view, Rorty 1991 also emphasizes how metaphors constitute, rather than have, truth (albeit under a very transformed concept of "truth").

PART IV

Metaphors versus Arguments There is a tension between the account of arguments and their place in philosophy, presented in the first two section, and the account of metaphors and their place in philosophy, presented in the third. Together, these set the stage, as it were, for a dramatic conflict. The argument-centered conception of philosophy challenges and, in tum, is challenged by - more literary visions. So it is that the age-old conflict, bequeathed to us by Plato, between philosophy and poetry is broached. The first form that this conflict takes here is explicitly dramatic: a dialogue between a philosopher and a poet. Whimsical though this may be, there is a serious issue at hand, viz., the complex relations between argument and narrative. Because the rhetorical element is so pronounced in both arguments and stories, the performative dimensions to arguing and story-telling cannot be ignored. This is equally important for thinking about arguments and narratives from the audience's perspective, Le., the activities of argument-hearing and story-reading. It is through performance, appropriately enough, that the performative aspects are explored here: the dialogue is meant to be performed. Its audience and readers are actively a part of it. The next chapter expands the focus beyond the juxtaposition of philosophy and literature to include some of the other conceptual pairs that have also been placed in opposition. These include the literal and the figurative, logic and rhetoric, philosophy and literature, and philosophy and science. To a greater or lesser degree, all of these oppositions are artificial and, if relied on too heavily, unhelpful. However, there is something to be gained by juxtaposing the more extreme and distorted versions of the pairs.. Exaggerating the opposition provides a clearer entry into the middle ground between them. The "logic of rhetoric" extracted and displayed here is admittedly an irreparable caricature, but serves well for the heuristic at hand. The "rhetoric of logic" may be closer to the mark, but it is also

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in need of some repair. However, since the metaphors that dominate that rhetoric are not in1mutable features of a world-view, it can be repaired. The concluding chapters are explicitly meta-philosophical. The significance of thinking about philosophy in tenns of its arguments and its metaphors is articulated. To engage in philosophical discourse involves speaking a language replete with metaphors, an inexhaustible language with meanings that are always up for grabs. The way to read and understand metaphors is through argumentative engagement. Conversely, the way to understand arguments is as metaphors, lenses through which to view the world. Philosophy is the exercise of reason in order to come to grips with the world's mystery. Perhaps not all occasions for reasoning are occasions to argue, but all argunlents should be occasions for reasoning. Philosophy is an ~ccasion for both because there is an inherent instability in the plurality of theories produced by philosophical reasoning. In spite of this, philosophical arguments rarely succeed in creating consensus out of the cacophony of philosophical opinions. Indeed, philosophical arguments are peculiar in that they apparently preclude negotiation and compromise, and they do not presuppose that reaching consensus is either probable, possible, or even especially desirable. And yet, lack of consensus remains unstable, guaranteeing that arguments will continue. Whether we argue in order to reconcile conflicting metaphors or we produce new metaphoric visions of the world, to resolve arguments, there will always be space for another move in the conversation. There is no end to philosophy.

CHAPTER 12 Once Upon an Argument: Being an Account of a Dialogue between a Poet and a Philosopher, both Ancient 1

(Co-authored by John Rosenwald, Beloit College, Beloit, WI)

Poet:

Were I (who to my cost already am One of those strange prodigious creatures Man.) A Spirit free, to choose for my own share, What Case of Flesh and Blood, I pleas'd to weare, I'd be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear, Or any thing but that vain Animal, Who is so proud of being rational. The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive A sixth to contradict the other Five; And before certain instinct, will preferr, Reason, which Fifty times for one does err. 2

Philosopher: You see, that is precisely why poets are potentially so dangerous, and why they should be carefully watched, especially in any society in which the voices of the many have some say. The saving grace is the fact that no one of any intellectual moment pays any real attention to either poets or poetry nowadays - preferring their descendants, the propagandists of commerce - so there is no harm in allowing poets free range, even in such a supposedly serious intellectual community as is afforded by our academies. But alas, in these degraded times, too few take philosophers seriously either, and the great argument between poets and philosophers only smolders when it should bum with fiery passion.

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Poet: There is no argument between us. We have no argument; You have an argument. The only arguments are the ones - did I hear three or four - that you raise against me. I do not argue. Phil.: Well and good! If there is no argument between us, then there is no disagreement. And where there is no disagreement, there is agreement. Thus, I can only conclude that you agree with me. Don't you? Poet: Do I? Phil.: You agree that we disagree, so there is indeed an argument between us. Poet: But \vait. If I agree with you now that we argue, then the disagreement disappears - and where there is no disagreement, there is no argument - so in the end we do not argue! Two can play at your word games. Still, I choose not to argue. I prefer to put my words to different uses. Phil.: Your denial rests on a clever equivocation. Surely, you would admit that the argument one person presents is different than the argument that engages two. Still, I nlust admit that you show a mastery of the language of argunlentation. Poet: Well, language is, after all, my specialty. However, I must credit Protagoras, one of your own, for this particular rejoinder. 3 Phil.: Not all philosophers are so eager to claim him as one of their own. He is too clever by half, but I suspect that he is only clever. Poet: Since when is cleverness with words a failing? Even the Philosopher himself considers mastery of metaphor a sign of genius!4 I think you are unduly suspicious, and that can get in the way of learning. You listen only to dispute, so you will never be able to hear the wisdom others have to offer. Come, let me tell you a story... Phil.: No~ If there is something you would teach me, tell it to me directly, without the extravagances of art. The Truth can stand critical

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scrutiny. It needs no embellishment; it need not hide behind the trappings of a story. Tell me what you would have me learn.

Poet: Yes, I would teach you, but not all that can be taught must be taught directly. What if I would teach a techne, not episteme?

Phil.: If what you mean by techne is what Homer and Hesiod and the old poets meant - mastery of a craft - then you are right, but philosophers are more wont to recognize that true techne must be accompanied by episteme. 5 In any case, I should be more careful with my words here. When I asked if there was "something" that you would teach, what I meant was, if there is a "some-what," and not a "somehow" ... Poet: If you are now more concerned with your language, and the importance of choosing just the' right words for communication, then you have already learned a great deal. And, I might add, without my telling you. If you understand the importance of just the right word for teaching, then perhaps you can begin to sense its importance for all the other things that we do with language - including arguing and telling stories. And once you appreciate that, then the art of putting the best possible words in the best possible order is within reach. That is poetry.6

Phil.: Yes, I know: "The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm... [but] usually because they could not walk.,,7 Sometimes I think that you poets get too caught up in rhyme and meter and imagery, forgetting all the while that what makes words best is simply that they express the Truth. Poet: Listen to my story. Perhaps it will be an answer. Phil.: I grant that a story might be able to teach an Art - even the

art of living - by offering an example, a model to follow, but what can a story contribute to reasoned debate? It can only seduce the senses, capture the imagination, or play with the emotions.

Poet: So are you saying that poets, qua poets, have no Reason at all?

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If not to argue you call Treason, And poets offer no excuse. Then we're left bereft of Reason, Strangers in the Land of Nous But at least be gracious enough to admit that I was right all along because if we poets have no arguments, then perforce we have no argun1ents rvith philosophers. And, that being the case, I shall take my leave.

Phil.: Even you can't seriously offer that as reason. You equivocate unconscionably between arguments as carefully structured reasoning and arguments as merely competitive wordplay. Come back here and argue like a philosopher! Poet: Contrary-wise, why don't you walk with me and rhapsodize like a poet! Surely it's a more enjoyable way to share each other's

company.

Phil.: Irresponsible rhymester! Image-monger! Poet: Ad Hominen! Ad Hominem! How delightful! How eristic! Can I play, too? Now let me see... I know: Pedantic logophile! Fatuous conceptualist! Phallocentric dogmatist! No, No, wait a second, the muse has come ... Nitpicking hairsplitter, Lost in the maze of market stalls, Stops to ponder, Whether he dreams these walls. Proof eludes, frozen in wonder... Darkness falls. Phil.: That is supposed to teach me something? A witty verse it may be but you are playing to the wrong audience. Speaking of which, it seems to me that an audience is something you need. Is that right? Do you languish if no one listens? The achievement of Philosophy is wisdom, and that is its own reward, even for the solitary philosopher. The achievement of poetry is pretty tropes, of little value when there are no others around to enjoy them. I am not surprise4 that your words are clever. I expect no less from our poets - but as a philosopher, I hunger for more. I seek after

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Knowledge and Truth, Understanding and Wisdom. Do you see nothing noble in that pursuit so that it deserves ridicule from those who do not hear its call? Poet: It is the sirens' call. They would lead you astray from our company. You cannot leave this ship. Phil.: Getting lost isn't the only danger sailors face. What if the ship flounders, runs aground, or takes on too much water? A safe port for repair is sometinles needed. 8 Poet: Touche! You have turned my own metaphor back on me. I am sure there is a term for it in the techne of the rhetoricians. Quite the masterstroke and worthy of a true poet. You've been wasting your talents chasing the rainbow. Welcome to the fraternity. Phil.: Thank you, but I must decline. I have not argued anything

here... Poet: Who asked you to argue? Phil.: Apparently, I have only traded words with a clever simpleton. There is no gain in besting a fool in argument. Poet: Then why argue with a fool in the first place?

Phil.: A good question - and I have a good answer. Because, as you've just now shown, even a fool can occasionally ask a good question. You see, I do not argue to win. Rather, I argue to learn. I submit my thoughts and opinions to the crucible of argumentation, to make them stronger, more complete, more articulate - in sum, to get closer to the Truth. Argument is how we get there. An argument may "prove" its conclusion in either sense: it may test it or it may establish it. As a philosopher, I am accountable to reason, and only to reason - not to any opponent in debate; nor to any audience; it is neither judge nor jury that can justly weigh my words, although I hope they can be my guides, helping me to judge rightly for myself. Let me ask you a question: What is the measure of a poem? To whom are you accountable?

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Poet: Me? At this moment? Me. Myself. My craft. The story. This moment. The audience ... Why, then I an1 accountable to you. There is no other. Aren't we alone? All I ask is that you give me fair hearing before rendering your judgment. Let me tell my story. Phil.: You leave it up to me, then? If I disapprove, or deny, or reject your story, then you will have lost - and acknowledge as much? If I am the sole judge and jury, how can I not but like the odds! Poet: Will I have lost? What is it to lose when there is no contest? I will have failed, yes, in some sense. And yes, at this moment you are the sole judge of my argument...

Phil. : Your argument! You mean your story. Poet: As you wish, but arguments are stories. As I said, for now, you are the entire audience for my words, the only one that matters. There may be others in the course of time, but really they do not matter because the story changes with each new telling. And with each new hearing. Even the same story can yet be very different.

Phil.: Paradoxes and riddles! Poet: And one more thing, my friend. Do not forget your calling, your personal accountability to ·reason. I know you suppose me irrational and impervious to all reason, and you think, therefore, that you cannot give me reasons to be reasonable, but I do know how very important it is to you. And believe it or not, it is important to me, too. Phil.: You are right. I will listen and try to give you a fair hearing. That is your due. Poet: My story, then. Or, if you prefer, my argument - but as a story. Once upon a time there was a philosopher who was thought to be the wisest of all because his wisdom consisted in knowing that he knew nothing. Of course, there are always very many who know nothing, so that by itself is no great distinction. It is believing that about yourself

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that is the trick. In his time, as in our own, many of the ignorant arrogantly thought that they did know, and so they were not wise. Nor were they very good, and in the end they killed our philosopher. This story, you see, is a tragedy.

Phil.: I would be a poor student of philosophy if I did not recognize the life of Socrates. But it is a true part of our past. It is history and not a mere story at all. Poet: Previously you complained that stories were not true so they could not contribute to human knowledge. Now you complain that this story is true. No matter. It is a story, but stories can be "true." Whether a story is true or not, however, does not matter. What does matter about stories is that they do matter, that they be important. One way for a story to be important is to tell a truth, but that is not the only way. At any rate, let me continue with my story. As I said, this story is a tragedy, but not because it ends badly, but because it ends badly precisely because our hero was tragically flawed. His flaw \vas that while he was wise in the ways of the world and even wise in the ways of Man, our philosopher was perhaps not so wise in the ways of men. He knew the measure of all things and he saw very deeply into human nature. He knew what it was to be a rational animal in the order of the greater cosmos, but alas, he himself lived not in a cosmos but in a world of chaos, and his fellow inhabitants in that messy world were not always rational animals. They did not know about Human Nature as he did, and so they did not live as he did, and as humans ought. And yet they were humans nonetheless. They were like the storied bumblebees who fly blithely on their way, never knowing that by aerodynamical rights, they should be incapable of flying. He was, alas, too rational for this world.

Phil.: But then it is the city-state and the other citizens that are flawed. The tragedy is that the world is flawed, not he. We need to change the world. Poet: Wait. The reason I say he was not so wise in the ways of men is that he took it upon himself to expose the ignorance of the arrogant, and in so doing, he made powerful enemies. Shouldn't a student of human nature have been able to expect that his provocative

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action would meet with excessive reaction? Even a fool such as I could have seen that he was heading toward a bad end. Phil.: You're missing the point. His arguments were for everyone, the ages, not just for the least adept among us. He was accountable to eternal Reason, not to the audience of his day. Poet: You're right, but that is my point. As his nursemaid once remarked, he did not play well with others. Instead, he argued, which is not always the best way to relate to others. He loved to argue and couldn't resist doing so at every available opportunity, even with his playmates. What makes this a problem is that pretty much any occasion can be turned into an opportunity to argue. In sum: our philosopher's tragic flaw was argumentativeness. Well, not just argumentativeness per se, but argumentative argumentativeness. Did I say he argued well? That is not quite right. Remember that arguments are also stories and while he may have argued reasonably, he did not argue well because he was not good at telling stories. Phil.: Again you're missing the point. His actions were deliberate. Even when it seems that it might have been inappropriate to argue, he knew what he was doing. Poet: Do you really think so? What was he doing? Phil.: He was trying to teach. He was showing the way to be human, how to live a life worthy of a rational being. Above all, he was trying to help the rest of us not to lose faith in argument. That would be a tragedy. Poet: Well, then he wasn't a very good teacher, was he? That is my point. Good arguments need to be good stories, so good arguers need to be good story-tellers. You see, in my story, his arguments didn't work and his love of argument didn't take rqot among his fellow citizens. They were not, shall we say, "model interlocutors," so no doubt they deserve 111uch of the blame for the tragedy. But so does he, because it was his arguments - his arguing - that caused the trouble. He was arrested and tried and executed for his deeds. At each stage of the ordeal, there were escapes for our philosopher - choices that would

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have allowed him to continue his life's mission with honor and integrity, and even choices that would have furthered that mission. Alas, while he may have had enough reason to construct fine arguments, he had too little imagination to tell a good story. He could find no exit. Do you imagine that the wily Odysseus would ever have found himself in this position? Phil.: Odysseus was a different sort of hero - a soldier and adventurer, but also a thief and a liar. He is not a role model on how to live the good life.

Poet: Why do you call clever Odysseus a liar? Because he told stories? But they were not lies meant to deceive. They were stories meant to entertain and explain and serve the purposes of the wayfarer and fulfill the duties of a supplicant guest. Surely, that's reasonable. You can't really believe his hosts thought those marvelous stories of monsters and gods were literal truth. Since the imperatives of hospitality prevented them from challenging his stories, he was relieved of the imperatives of truth-telling - and so became subject to the very different imperatives of story-telling. 9 He is a fine role model ... for story-telling. And they... for story-hearing. Phil.: If you are trying to win sympathy for your own story, be warned that I am losing patience. Poet: You are right. I'll return to it forthwith. In his own way, the philosopher was also arrogant. He was too self-assured to seek the advice of those with more imagination and too stubborn to hear it if it was offered. The result? He showed an absolutely uncanny knack for doing exactly the wrong thing, choosing the one action at each stage that would make things worse. Perhaps when he was younger, he was different. Maybe he wasn't so set in his ways, so adamant and persnickety. At the time of my story, however, he showed a decided lack of, shall we say, "inter-personal skills." Over time, these led to a series of social gaffes. Further blundering transformed those transgressions into minor crimes. And finally, with what can only be described as extraordinary forensic incompetence, he was able to elevate those minor crimes into a capital offense. You seem to regard argument as a philosopher's stone for transmuting the lead of popular opinion into the gold of real

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knowledge, but all this philosopher's stone managed to do was turn farce into tragedy. Really, how do you get yourself executed for schmoozing in tile agora? The gold that is needed is the golden mean between the extremes of misology, the disillusionment with argument, and what I suppose we could call logomania, an obsessive love of argument. Phil.: Are you finished? Then my verdict would have to be a negative one because you have not told the story accurately. That is what comes of your cavalier disregard for the Truth. You have misportrayed the philosopher who, after all, was said to be fairly described as "the wisest and the justest and the best. ,,10 Poet: Are you challenging my story? Then I guess we do have an argument because that is how an argument begins. 11 Phil.: "Argument" is said in many ways. Didn't we agree on that? The argument that one person presents is different than the argument that engages two. Philosophical argumentation, as part of the solitary quest for truth, welcomes but does not need disputants. Poet: Yes, that is so. Arguments do take many forms. Phil.: Consider the second form of argument, the argument that two can have with each other. What is going on in such an exchange? Poet: Do you mean what makes a dialogue an argument?

Phil.: What makes a dialogue dialectical? Poet: What makes a dialogue confrontational? Phil.: Are you confusing dialectical and confrontational? Poet: Are we playing "Questions"? Then I ask: Can't we argue with one another rather than against one another?

Phil.: Then I ask: Have you forgotten that I argue to learn not to win?

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Poet: No ... Phil.: Not a question. Point for me! (Does a little victory dance.) Why do you think I am interested only in winning?

Poet: Why do you think I am interested in winning at all?

Phil.: If truth is not the goal of argument, then what else is there but winning? Poet: Can't there be an argument without winners and losers? Is there no point to a hunt without a kill? Phil.: Didn't I just grant that point? But isn't this still all about the quarry and not the chase? Poet: If the quarry escapes and does not fall prey, has there been no hunt? Phil.: So isn't it the quarry that is necessary, not the kill? Isn't truth as a goal, therefore, the necessary and defining feature of argument. .. even if we never get there? Poet: Can't we have a dialogue without your incessant questioning? Have you forgotten what happened to Socrates? Enough with questions! Phil.: If you cannot keep your emotions in check, how can you possibly expect us to have reasoned debate?

Poet: How can you argue without emotion? And why should I want reasoned debate?

Phil.: How can I convince you, ifnot with reason? Poet: Why not persuade me instead. .. with art?

Phil.: Now it is you who continues with the questions.

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Poet: So... is that our answer, that neither emotional conflict nor rational disagreement, but questions themselves are the lifeblood of argument? Oh, that was a question... Sorry. But now I think I see where you were trying to lead me. Phil.: Then I have succeeded this much, anyway: you have come to see that what I have to say is not as unacceptable as you previously thought,12 even if you do not accept it yourself. The goal's the thing. Poet: And understanding is a fine goal. Agreement is not the only successful end to an argument. What about acknowledgement? Phil.: So in the end, did I really only need to explain myself, rather than argue? Or, rather, was it that explanation was successful as an argument precisely because it was not an argument? Poet: I will allow you those questions. But see what happened. You argued with my story. Doesn't that make my story an argument? Stories are arguments! Phil.: Ah, now it is my tum to say that I think I see where you are heading with this. Our exchange on how to understand the life, and death, of our argumentative philosopher might actually constitute an argument. So I will grant you this: A story may include, or be included in, or be used as an argument. But that is not to say that stories themselves are arguments. Poet: You are right. What I meant to say is the converse, not that stories are arguments, but that arguments are stories. They are just one of the kinds of stories that we tell. Thus, arguers must be story-tellers, and like all story-tellers, they need to engage their hearers - invite them along, compel them in, CARRY THEM AWAY! Phil.: I think you listen to yourself too much, and have let yourself get carried away by your own words. Poet: A thousand pardons. But we agreed that stories can be arguments and that arguers are story-tellers. I can't resist pointing out that just a moment ago, when you were arguing against my story, you yourself were using a story to make your argument!

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Phil.: How was I using a story? What are you talking about? Poet: The description of the philosopher that you offered - "the wisest" and all the other trappings - is from a story - a different story than the one I told. Phil.: No, it is froni the same story, but a different'version of it. A more accurate version I might add.

Poet: Why do you say that? Did my story get something wrong the charges, the trial, the verdict, or the outcome? I thought you said that is the sort of thing that matters, and that all the rest is art, unnecessary and unwanted embellishment. Phil.: But you have cast them in the wrong light. You presented Socrates' as inadvertently or mistakenly antagonizing his fellow citizens rather than doing so deliberately. You have misread his actions. This is what I meant by saying that the story-telling act is already partly an argument. I was merely challenging your premises. Poet: Are you now saying that it is not only the actions that are important, but how they are told? I find that strategic retreat most congenial. How a story is understood depends in large measure on how it is told.

Phil. : But only in large measure. How it is understood depends even more on how it is heard. Do not forget the story-hearer, my good story-teller! Poet: How could I? Have you forgotten that I declared you the sole judge and jury of illy story? Phil.: Ten thousand pardons. I will grant you that arguers are story-tellers of a kind, so that one way to be a bad arguer is to be a bad story-teller. But I will also maintain that one way to be a bad storyteller is to be a bad arguer. And that is how, for all your story-telling art, you have been a bad story-teller. In particular, you have argued from false premises. Our exchange was not really about the story 0 Socrates, but about how best to understand that story. The

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interpretation - not the story itself - was the issue. We agree on what happened to Socrates, don't we? Poet: Such naivete is almost endearing in a philosopher, if it weren't so annoying! How you tell the story of the events - and even which events - already incorporates so much interpretation... Phil.: Yes, yes, yes! But for someone to hear your story, to try to make sense of it in order to understand it, is itself an interpretive act, an argumentative act. Rather than think of arguers as story-tellers, think of story-hearers with their continual silent questioning as arguers. That, after all, is the same kind of critical engagement that lies at the heart of good, philosophical argumentation, not the adversarial sort of engagement that it is so easy to fall into - and so easy for the epigones of Aristophanes to parody.

Poet: Well, I must admit that I do indeed often find myself wanting to interrupt a story to ask the story-teller a question, to demand explanation, to object to his picture of the world, or to tell him that his characters simply would not behave the way he has them behaving. Phil.: Yes, exactly! And that is what I was doing when I listened to your story. I found myself arguing with it - even when I agreed! The internal argument was simply louder and more noticeable when I disagreed, such as when you misportrayed Socrates ...

Poet: ... when you heard - if not misheard! - me as misportraying Socrates. Phil. : Let us not follow that red herring. The point is that if the audience, the story-hearers, are engaged in argument, then one thing that can make a story bad is that it is a bad argument! A story that simply cannot be believed cannot be saved, not even by the greatest art of the greatest story-teller. Poet: Well, I will happily grant you this much: not even the greatest art of the greatest story-teller is a match for the greatest density of the worst story-listener. Not Homer, nor Orpheus, nor even Amphion himself (despite our legends) could entertain the rocks in the fields.

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Phil.: And Socrates himself couldn't convince them of even the simplest proposition.

Poet: Alas, unworthy audiences are the plague of story-tellers the world over. Phil.: I can do aught but sympathize, because unworthy disputants are the bane of philosophers everywhere.

Poet: Ah, but a worthy audience... Phil.: ... a worthy disputant...

Poet: .. .is a joy forever. It comes to me now, to ask this question. We have distinguished the argument that one person presents from the argument that two people have with each other, but we have also spoken of arguments as stories and arguing as story-telling, which then makes an argument of three two disputants and the audience. Phil.: Yes ... Poet~ And by stories and arguments you have convinced and persuaded me ...

Phil.: Reason triumphant! Poet: ... that story-hearers are arguers engaging the story-tellers. Phil.: Indeed. Poet: But then who is their audience? Who is their judge? Phil.: Yes, a question that must be asked. You are accountable to your audience - to me. Doesn't the story-hearer likewise have to be accountable? Surely an interpretation has to answer to something. The text of the story is determinate even if the meaning is not. I am accountable to Reason. It is a sign of strength to bow before good

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argument. 13 I am pleased to see you are now willing to go along. At long last, our disagreement has been ended. Poet: You have misheard me. Indeed, you have not listened to us. Were we not commiserating together about our unworthy audiences? So haven't we set ourselves up as the judges of those who hear - and argue - with us? The story-teller is accountable to the story-hearers only because they are accountable to him! You may objectify, personify, or even deify Reason as much as you like, but in the end, we are alone. There is no Other. Phil.: If you are correct, then, wouldn't it be possible for someone to tell the story of our argument, to make a story of our argument? And in that story, the winner of the argument would be determined not by what actually transpired, nor by the quality of our arguments, nor by the canons of Reason, but by the whim of the narrator? It is you who would make a god - of the story-teller! Poet: Quite possibly, but it would require an especially artful poet to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. I doubt any poet could do that - at least not without some training in philosophy! Now if you are correct in what you have been arguing, then such a narration could be used as an argument in its own right. Arguments take many forms, and stories can be put to many purposes. Phil.: But your claim that stories can be read in many ways means that the story might well be used as an argument for very different conclusions! Poet: Just so ... as you wanted to use my story about the argumentative philosopher for your own purposes. Phil. : Your story about the argumentative philosopher? Shouldn't that be your argument about the story-telling philosopher? In the end, it was really Plato, not Socrates, who was the subject of our argument. Poet: Ah, I see your point. Phil.: And you will finally admit that we did have an argument this day?

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Poet: Well, I will say that that is a very good way to tell the story of this morning's exchange. Phil.: In the end, you now equivocate on the word "story." "Stories" can be said in many ways. Poet: Yes, and they can be told in many ways, too. Both, shaking hands: Agreed!

Endnotes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

This dialogue was performed by the authors at the third OSSA conference in S1. Catherines, Ontario, in May of 1999. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester "A Satyr against Mankind" See, for example, the discussion of the case of Euathlus and Protagoras in D. R. Hofstadter 1985, pp. 70f. Aristotle, Poetics, 1459a. See chapters 1 and 2 in David Roochnik 1996. This characterization of poetry is, roughly, Coleridge's. F. Nietzsche 1954, §189, p. 54. Cf. "We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it here out of the best materials." O. Neurath 1959, pp. 199-208. See, e.g., L. H. Pratt 1996. Plato, Phaedo, 118. "An argument... begins when a proposition is challenged." John Hoaglund, "Introduction" to R. Johnson 1996, p.vxii. M. A. Haft-van Rees 1989, crediting van Eemeren and Grootendorst, asserts the goal of argument is "to enhance the acceptability of the speechact it is an argument for." This may fall short, however, of "resolving differences of opinion" which is "pivotal to the pragma-dialectical notion of a critical discussion." F. van Eemeren, et al. (1996) pp. 280ff. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, Poster for the 4fu International Conference on Argumentation, International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Amsterdam, June 16-19, 1998.

POSTSCRIPT TO CHAPTER 12 On Performance and Interpretation The original purpose of the preceding dialogue was to argue for certain theses concerning the performative aspects of argumentation. As such, it really was meant to be performed and observed in performance, rather that written down or read as static text. In particular, I was concerned with the role of audiences in arguments even when no audience is apparent. The characters in the dialogue claim to be alone, but that is surely ripe for deconstruction. It is one thing for a philosopher to conceive of her activity as so many private meditations, but it is something entirely different for a character on stage in a dramatic performance to say he is alone. Obviously he is not! The irony is palpable in perfonnance; in print, however, whatever is self-defeating about such a claim is easier to miss. In a similar fashion, the philosopher's actions speak louder than his words when the argument turns into a game of questions. He protests that the competitive aspect of arguments, winning, is not what concerns him in philosophical arguments - but that is not at all evident in his behavior during this philosophical argument. And yet the low comedic context at that point should give pause to anyone who would see this as a vindication of the argument-is-war model or as an argument that adversariality is essential to arguments. 1 The course of the argument changes character shortly afterwards. The poet and the philosopher agree to argue with one another rather than against one another. While they have reached agreement on some points, they are still very much at odds doctrinally. And yet, the dialogue exhibits significant "coalescent" argumentation: in Gilbert's terms, the poet and the philosopher are in accord emotionally and viscerally.2 At the end of the dialogue, they are non-combatants, but the end of this dialogue need not be the end of the their argument. We can easily imagine that the next time they meet, they will take up their argument once again, but if

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they have learned anything from this encounter, they will argue differently. Perhaps the reason I imagine the poet and the philosopher as having an on-going relationship of which this argument is an on-going part, is because that is how things often are in real Hfe. In many ways, this dialogue is just a chapter in the long-running argument that I have been fortunate to have with John Rosenwald, an argument that has spanned many years and several continents. Perhaps it would be better to say that it is part of a series of arguments. We seldom pick up exactly where we left off, the subject can change radically with each installment, and even when the subject does not change, there are no guarantees that today's proponent will not be tomorrow's opponent. Despite all that, there is an important continuity to the arguing. Arguments really are more than the sum of their propositional parts! As rhetoricians and dialecticians have long noted, the dynamic that is found in dialogues does have its counterpart in interior monologues. 3 For example, the dialogic pattern of thesis, objection, and response can be equally at home in genuine dialogues or· reflective deliberation, regardless of whether spoken language is the public manifestation of pre-existent, private thought or private thought is a developmental stage reflecting the internalization of speech. 4 Still, monologic re-creations tend to be just that: simulations rather than the real thing. Inevitably, there will be changes in an arguer's position during the course of an argument. The emphasis n1ay shift in response to unforeseen pressures. The exterior boundaries might change, reflecting strategic retreats in, say, the intended range of application. Perhaps the constituent concepts and theses will come into clearer focus in response to analytic challenges. 5 And, if the arguer is fortunate enough to have the right sort of opponent, there is the possibility of growth, as the contribution of new ideas and perspectives is synthesized with the old. Because the changes that occur in the course of arguing are hard to recreate in shnulated dialogues, and because that dynamic was n1eant to be part of the subject of this dialogue, it was particularly important that the dialogue include genuinely distinct voices. That is, as a practical matter, distinct authors were demanded. (That is why, not trusting my own abilities to create two authentic voices, I drafted Rosenwald, who is both an able poet6 and an able arguer, for the part.) There are several dangers to avoid. One is the "Yes, Socrates" and "Of course, Socrates" sort of response that clutter many of Plato's dialogues. Has anyone engaged in an actual argument ever had such obliging opponents? On

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the other hand, overcompensating is also a danger to avoid when trying to avoid presenting Straw Man arguments. To present opponents' positions fairly and sympathetically, their nuances and details have to be included. That invites the juxtaposition, or simple interweaving, of monologues to no good dramatic effect. The result would be a series of extended soliloquies that present positions but do not represent the argumentative engagement between them. And, at yet another extreme, there is the temptation to get caught up in the dramatic elements and over-emphasize the confrontational aspects, thereby losing sight of the argument itself. (Poet: But the dramatic text is the important thing; we must heed the dramatic muse!) The challenges that dialogues present to their authors, while significant, are overshadowed by the interpretive problems that dialogues pose to their readers and that performances present to their audiences. Does Cleanthes or Philo speak for David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion? What detennines which parts are to be taken as ironic? Different performers will realize the characters and their lines differently - thereby changing the dialogue itself. Consider just one possible variation. Suppose the sex of the characters is changed. But changed how - from male to female or from female to male? What assulnptions ground visualizing the characters as, say, male? There is nothing in the text that explicitly identifies them as being male or female. To be sure, the original perfonners - the authors - are both male. It has also been suggested that the argunlentative mode (and thus the entire Western tradition in philosophy) is sonlehow male-gendered. 7 Still, in the absence of categorical textual instructions, there is interpretive leeway. Readers who are skeptical that fully determinate individuals have essential natures should be at least as skeptical when it conles to underdetermined characters. Similarly, audiences should be hesitant about attributing the contingent properties of the performers to the characters - let alone taking those properties as saying something about all philosophers and all poets, or, worse, as saying sonlething about Philosophy and Poetry hypostatized as abstract entities. Even with these caveats in mind, readers are likely to find something male about the characters and their argument. The philosopher certainly decries the agonistic aspects of argument, lip service though it may be. The poet has a marked preference to narrative and is insistent that argumentation, like any discourse,

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includes emotion. Still, there does seem to be something ineluctably male about them. That says something interesting about us and our society, viz., that the clusters of concepts of which our particular notions of gender, argument, rationality, and philosophy are parts, are not independent. To reiterate a theme from earlier chapters: those concepts-clusters and the relations connecting them are not immutable. They can be changed; they can be given different contexts; there are other stories to be told around and about them. That raises the final set of questions about the dialogue and its conclusion. In the end, are stories arguments, or arguments of a sort? Or would it be better to say that stories can be used as arguments by their authors or read as arguments by their audiences? The latter is safer, but I would argue for the more radical claim, the apparently dramatic overstatement that all stories are arguments, perhaps on a par with the infamous il n y a pas de hors-texte. 8 There is a difference, I hope. The Derridean claim is banal. Is everything' a text? No, of course not. But if by "text" we mean something to be interpreted, then yes, everything can be subj ected to interpretation. Everything is "textable." We can "read" anything, which is at bottom nothing more than a high-falutin' expression of the truism that whatever we talk about is something we can talk about - and we can talk about anything. So, yes, stories are arguments in the sense that contexts can always be supplied in which stories can be used and read as arguments. Trading on an ambiguity, we can say that stories are arguable. However, I think that stories are also arguments in a more interesting way. Reading a story as an argument is one way for a reader to engage with it, one way to make sense out of it. Note that there are two things going on: sense is made, and then that sense is used when it becomes the premises, as it were, for an argument. The duality needs to be emphasized because it is this two-part harmony that is peculiar to understanding stories. Although we sometimes speak as if narratives make sense of a situation or a life, that is misleading. The story does no so such thing. It is the author who does and the readers who do. Philosophers run the risk of misunderstanding stories when they abstract them from the conditions of being told and being heard, in the same way that they risk misunderstanding philosophical arguments when they abstract them from their social, historical, and textual contexts - from their arguers and its audiences. It is a happy, but I suspect not all that common, occasion when reconstructing a philosophical argument as a putative proof in first-order predicate

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logic, with identity, serves as a significant aid to philosophical understanding. When stories are read as arguments, they can, of course, be especially persuasive. Ayn Rand's novels, for example, are often cited as being particularly argumentative - and dangerously persuasive. 9 One way to respond is to focus attention on reconstructing the argument and then assessing the validity and persuasive strength of that argument. That puts one in the position of mapping out available rebuttals when, as is the case for many with Rand's stories, the conclusions are objectionable. I would like to back up for a moment and consider the first part of that two-part harmony, the making-sense of the story. This is the essential moment for persuasive stories because this is the where the argument begins. Interpretation is the first argumentative move. It is often here, in the interpretive moment, that it is determined whether the game is won or lost - as well as what game is even being played. The claim that reading a text or hearing a story is an argumentative move - and the crucial first move - needs to be glossed. What I mean is that there is already an argumentative engagement with the author. The process of making sense of a story is a constant but generally unvoiced dialogue, a succession of Do you mean this? and What about that? These will range from the fairly innocuous and concrete - Who is narrating? - through the moderately reconstructive - e.g., in Plato's allegory oj the cave, is the fire behind and above the prisoners in the cave or below and in front of them but hidden? - then on to the highly abstract - Is the blinding sun supposed to be a Transcendent God, an inaccessible Truth? Once we are caphlred by the story, the questions and reactions change. We entreat the author, advise the characters, pray for the future: Please don't let the suitors force Penelope's hand or Come on, Bilbo, surely you know better than to taunt a dragon! The ability to elicit just the right questions, the questions the author wants us to ask, is the mark of an artful author. When we ask - How come it's her spineless brother who's running the railroads and not Dagny Taggart? - rather than the questions that need to be asked - Are people like this? Does society work this way? Could it work that way? - we have already bit the Randian bait. We have already been hooked by the premises of her argument. All of these ways of engaging with the text are argumentative, but not all of them are adversarial. They do not have to entail an adversarial relationship with the author - although when we tell our

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students to read critically that may be what they are hearing. That is only one way to read, and it is but one way to argue. The process of finding, or creating, a sensible meaning for a difficult text is more like completing a formal proof or working out the solution to a logic puzzle. Those involve arguments of a different sort. When the project is finding an acceptable interpretation of a polysemous text (admittedly a pleonasm), then the engagement takes on yet other argumentative characteristics. Since one way to criticize a story is as an argument, part of being a good story-teller is being a good arguer. (And, as has been argued elsewhere, vice-versa.) It is a legitimate objection to Rand's novels that they do not pass critical muster. But in order to understand the act of reading a story as an argumentative engagement, there must be reference to both halves of the two-part harmony involved: making sense and making an argument. This requires both literary criticism and philosophical criticism. The question of whether the story should work needs to be paired with the questions of why it does work. Aesthetic, psychological, sociological, historical, economic, and even scientific factors can all be brought to bear. The attempt to fight fire with fire - responding to a story with another one - requires more literary ability than most of us can muster. The suggestion that that is how we should respond seems to rests on an endearing, naive faith that reason will always have the better story-tellers. A truly effective response to a persuasive story must pay attention to the mechanics of interpretation as well as the argument. I t is not enough to point out that there are logical flaws in the story as an argument. Will someone who has read Rand's novels and bought into her conclusions renounce those beliefs once the flaws in her stories-asarguments have been identified? I think not. What is needed is not just counter-argument but something closer to debriefing, or what Gilbert Harman calls "positive undermining."l0 As with any argument, we need to identify and assess the premises, consider the evidence both what is included as well as any counter-evidence that may have been excluded, and evaluate the strength of the inferences. In the case of literary arguments, we also need to examine and how and why they have succeeded in having had the effect on our thinking that they have had. The crucial point to keep in mind when considering stories including dialogues! - as arguments is that argumentative engagement starts from the moment we pick up a book, enter a theater, or sit down

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by the hearth to listen. Thus, responding to a story-as-argument requires addressing all of its stages. Being an audience is engaging in argument. This is not to say that all audiences are active disputants the passivity of televiewers is a cliche as old as the medium itself. But it is to say that that sort of passivity is critically negligent. The obligations and responsibilities that are incumbent on us as would-be rational arguers are equally incumbent on as would-be critical readers. Perhaps they are even more incumbent because of the subtle effectiveness of persuasive stories. We are on our guard when we argue combatively; we are not when we read leisurely. We need not, in the end, exile the poets from our Republic, but we must recognize that when we read them, we argue with them, and when we argue with them, we must do so completely.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

Trudy Govier, who had the unenviable task of trying to extract a single voice from the performance in her role as commentater, has argued in other contexts that some degree of disagreement is indeed essential to arguments. See Govier 1999a pp. 46f. Gilbert 1999 pp. 79ff. See, e.g., Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969 §9. The models might be labeled "Cartesian" and "Vygotskyan," respectively. Lev Vygotsky, an early 20th century Soviet psychologist, argued that the stage of oral "egocentric speech" in small children was prior to private "inner speech," and part of the melding of the separate developmental streams for language and thought. See Vygotsky 1962. Lakatos 1976 presents a vivid demonstration of this - in dialogue form using the historical development, mostly in the 19th century, of a more and more rigorously proven theorem from the proofs of an earlier conjecture. Refutations of what had been earlier regarded as acceptable proofs occasioned refinen1ents in the definitions of the concepts involved. Thus, despite his complicity in the dialogue, Rosenwald should not be held culpable for its doggerel. See, for example, Bordo, 1987 for an historical perspective. Orr 1989 and Nye 1990, among many others, present pointed critiques of traditional argumentative modes. Derrida 1974, p. 158.

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Part of this postscript was developed as a commentary in response to Kagan 1999, who uses Rand's Atlas Shrugged, along with Plato's allegory of the cave and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, as case studies. 10. Harman 1984.

CHAPTER 13 The Logic of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Logic! Western philosophy is a veritable cacophony of arguments. And what may be its most discordant note was first struck by that ancient instigator of it all - Plato - when he, on behalf of philosophy, picked a quarrel with poetry. That he did it so artfully, even poetically, served only to make the subsequent history of commentary that much more dissonant. As the philosopher in the dialogue of chapter twelve noted, "the great argument between poets and philosophers only smolders when it should burn with fiery passion." The claims have been scaled back: neither side purports to be the authoritative voice on all matters, and if either side did, no one would listen. The "great argument" remains, however, embodied in a myriad of successor oppositions: religion versus science; science versus philosophy; philosophy versus literature; the literal against the metaphorical as avenues to truth; and, most general and wide-ranging, realists and post-modem anti-realists arguing whether there is any truth at all? The arguments between the various camps of post-modernists and realists pose both a challenge and an opportunity for argumentation theory. The arguments cannot be adjudicated until there is common ground for evaluating arguments, but even that more modest goal presupposes that there is some pre-existent way of sorting the noise into arguments in the first place. This is manifestly not the case. There are several concepts of argumentation in play, each with its own criteria for what counts as an argument and what counts as success. As has become evident, arguments can be approached, analyzed, and evaluated from several perspectives. These include, most pronlinently, the logical, the dialectical, and the rhetorical, but we have also seen that arguments can be considered from political, social, ethical, and aesthetic perspectives. For that matter, they can also be considered simply as play. None of these tells a complete story about arguments.

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All of these perspectives contribute to understanding the extraordinarily rich and complex arguments in question here. The arguments about realism appear irresolvable. After all, half the disputants embrace the polysemy - the multiple meanings - of interpretation as a discursive virtue, explicitly disavowing precision and clarity of expression as ideals. The other half regards ambiguity as a semantic sin, insisting on the procrustean bed of bivalence in which the only escape from detenninable truth or falsity is utter nonsense. There is, in short, a very great chasm between them and very little genuine engagement across that divide. As appealing as it would be to enter into the partisan fray (but perhaps more appealing still to sit this one out) what needs to be done is to find a way to satisfy the contradictory desiderata of both camps. We feel the push of compelling reasons from both sides, at the same time that we feel the pull of attractive visions coming from those opposite directions. Interpretation is indeed a pluralistic matter, and there are no intellectual activities that are interpretation-free. And yet, there are constraints on the interpretations that are open to us in any given area, and sometimes those very real constraints constitute very realist contours. But is it even possible to be a post-modem realist, or a pluralistic foundationalist? Could there be any better sign that something has gone wrong than that we are attracted by apparently contrary views? The dichotomy is false. On the analysis that will be proposed here, there are two things at fault: the internal logic of rhetoric and the external rhetoric of logic. Separately, they are understandable extrapolations from reasonable starting points. Together, they prevent any dialectical engagement, so the agony continues unabated. What I hope to be able to do is explain how and why these polar opposites attract us, as well as where and when they become too extreme. Afterwards, the notorious hoax article, appearing in the journal in Social Text, by the physicist Alan Sokal and the responses to it will be used as case study for the analysis.

§l. The faulty logic of rhetoric. What I mean by the "logic of rhetoric" is simply the structures that govern those domains of intellectual activity that are predon1inantly interpretive. 3 When we come to theorize about a phenomenon - i.e., when we try to make sense of part of the world - we have a wide variety of resources at our disposal: the wisdom of the ages, the testimony of our senses, formal calculi, and, if we are so blessed, divine inspiration or plain common sense. In some contexts, we may be constrained by certain givens, such

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as undeniable empirical data, the text at hand, legal precedent, the demands of logical consistency, or the dictates of orthodox dogma. In other contexts, limits might be met by the lack of any such data, formal criteria, or precedent. The limiting cases, if there are any, would be those in which our theories are uniquely determined by those givens. The classical empiricist ideal would have it that pure logic and neutral evidence ought to suffice. They rarely do, of course, which is why classical empiricism is "classical" rather than contemporary. Interpretive contexts are those in which evidence and logic do not suffice. Put positively, those contexts require something more, a creative element. That element must be contributed by the critic. Interpretation and criticism exemplify this point. The salient point about interpretations of a literary text is that even the best of them have to share the field. For example, one answer to the question of what Homer's Odyssey is about, is that it is all about Greek ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism. That explains why, in the text, a Cyclopes can be blinded with moral impunity. He is not a fully civilized human being; he is a non-Greek barbarian who gathers rather than raises crops and even lives with his livestock. That may be a good answer but it does not preclude also interpreting it in other ways. It can also be read as the expression of a male mid-life fantasy: "Honest, Honey, I really was trying to get home on time, but it's just that, you know, after the boys and I had this war, some goddess kept me as a sex slave on her island paradise!" Marxist, Fenlinist, Freudian, New Criticism, and untold other readings can be had. The merit of a literary text is partly measured by the interpretations it supports. Great texts speak anew to every generation. A reader who insists on asking which reading is correct, on what The Odyssey is really all about, has missed this point. Texts are not in themselves uniquely about anything. They can be read as being about many different things. This is an important fact about interpretation, but how we should respond to it is a matter for great debate. There are two responses that I find particularly wrongheaded: one by Professor Morris Zapp, the other by Professor Jacques Derrida. Morris Zapp is fictitious, a character who lives only in the texts of David Lodge's comic novels. 4 (Of course, since "II n y a pas de horstexte," it would not be unfair to say that Professor Derrida lives only in texts, too!) In one of the novels, Professor Zapp described himself this way:

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There is something very wrong with this picture, but it is hard to articulate exactly what it is. If different perspectives give a different interpretation, why couldn't there be a single multi-perspectival interpretation that is complete, taking all of them into account? We do seem to accept that there is a conlplete and consistent story to be told about, say, an object like the sun which appears small and yellow from one angle but large and orange from another, stationary within one frame while in motion from another. What is the difference? Consider a different sort of text: the score to the song "My Favorite Things" from the Broadway musical The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It is an innocuous little ditty, mostly heard in elevators now. And yet, there is a remarkable rendition by the great John Coltrane. What he has done is taken a text - the Richard Rogers score - and given it his own interpretation. Coltrane's version is brilliant, a hard act to follow, but someday, someone will follow it, and maybe even surpass it. The jazz version may have been, at one time, the latest word, but it could not possibly be the last word. Zapp is wrong in thinking that there can be a complete story for the much the same reason that anyone would be wrong in thinking there could be a definitive performance of a song. 6 Performance art is not like that. The next generations will have to play it again, for themselves. There is an element of performance in reading, too, because reading is a kind of argumentative engagement with the author. Future generations have to read the great texts for themselves. It might be objected that the song itself, as embodied in the score, is being confused with its various renditions. That is an important distinction, but the same distinction applies to literary texts. The words on the page, no less than the notes on the sheet, need to be respected, but they also need to be interpreted. Each reading of a text - or performance of a score - produces its own interpretation. The words

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themselves do not uniquely determine the meaning that a reader will take a way from the text, and they are not the only factor that goes into determining that meaning. Indeed, someone can know all the details of The Odyssey's text - exactly how many times each word appears and where, as well as all the details of the plot - and still be without any real understanding of it. The analogy between critical readings and cover performances holds this far, and even a bit further. Listen again to what Coltrane did. He used the old text but to his own ends. Isn't that just what literary critics do to written texts? They take an existing text, add their own embellishments, in their own styles, and all to their own ends. In sum, they produce their own new texts that happen to use other texts as the occasions for their production. And, as often happens in the musical context, the new text might, for some purposes, be as good or even better than the original. When that is the case, that new text will occasion yet further texts. Since original texts are themselves ineluctably inter-textual, they have essentially the same genesis. The difference has disappeared. 7 In order to see critical essays this way, as original texts in their own right, the conventional boundary between text and criticism has to be transgressed. This can lead to extremes, however, because the theoretical grounds for blurring that boundary apparently license effacing all boundaries between genres - including the musical distinction between composition and performance and the disciplinary distinction between literature and science. And that brings us to Professor Derrida, who would balk at the thought that there is a complete story to tell even about something as concrete as the sun. If everything is a text, the sun is, too. Mass and momentum, space and time, and cosmic origins and destiny are the vocabulary of but one solar story. There are other stories to be told. The sun has had great symbolic significance for religions; it has its important role in biology; and, to be sure, there is its place in literature. The sun is at the center of a lot of stories. Some stories are incompatible with each other - e.g., Kepler's story with its elliptical Others maybe orbits and Galileo's with its circular ones. conlmensurable - e.g., Kepler's heliocentric model and Tycho's socalled Egyptian system in which the sun orbits the earth, but all other planets orbit the sun. Others still are altogether incommensurable e.g., Kepler's lnystical cosmology and the mechanical cosmology that later astronomers wanted Kepler to have had. There are two points to keep in mind. First, the fact that multiple interpretations are possible, and that nlultiple perspectives are even

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called for, does not mean that all interpretations are possible. Although many things go, it does not follow that anything goes. The immediate question, then, is who decides? Is that a descriptive or prescriptive question? What does happen, as Kuhn has taught us, is that the arbiters of theories, whether they are scientific, philosophical or literary, are the institutions of the relevant communities. Second, the fact that anything can be regarded as a text - i.e., something subject to interpetation - does not nlean that everything is a text. The reasoning looks patent, even syllogistic: A text is whatever is subject to interpretation; Everything can be subjected to interpretation; :. Therefore, everything is a text.

Yes, everything can be textualized, put into context, but, as noted, that just means that everything is "textable" not that everything is already "textua1." As Wittgenstein pointed out in the Tractatus, every picture can be regarded as a fact in its own right, but that does not mean every fact is a picture nor that every picture is true. Any configuration of parts counts as a fact - including those complex configurations of written words, spoken words, and painted colors that we use to represent other configurations. All of these can serve as pictures, Of, in Derrida's terms, as "texts," but not all of them do serve that way. For that to happen, readers are needed. And, significantly, not all pictures are true. For that, it is the world that is needed. The syllogism fails because of the ambiguous nlajor. The relevant parts of the logic of criticism can be summarized in the following principles, which I take to be acceptable commonplaces if not boring or trivial, at least non-controversial: The Logic of Criticism LeI. The existence of a satisfactory, insightful, or compelling interpretation does not preclude the possibility of other satisfactory, insightful, or compelling interpretations. LC2. Satisfactory, insightful, or compelling interpretations may be incompatible, inconsistent, and even incommensurable with one another. LC3. Some interpretations may be better than others. Not all interpretations are equally satisfactory, insightful, or compelling. LC4. There can be unacceptable interpretations. LC5. Asking what a text is "really about" is itself an interpretive question, and may not have a single answer.

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LC6. There can be no last word, no definitive or final interpretation; the critical enterprise is a permanent part of the human condition.

Zapp was wrong in thinking that there could be a final story about a story. That some interpretations are better than others does not mean !that there has to be a best of all possible interpretations. The existence of critical standards entails neither a single "true" interpretation nor a single all-encompassing truth of the matter. Realism does not follow. On the other hand, Derrida is equally wrong in thinking that there are only stories. Yes, there will always be another story to tell about a good story, just as there will always be space for new versions of an old song, but that does not mean that there never really was a single score for that song. Critical pluralism does not entail anti-realism. What is more important for present purposes is what might called "the logic of rhetoric." These are unrestricted versions of the above principles that are implicit in the logic of post-modern criticism and revealed in some critical practice. Since the evidence provided by texts is never univocal, and the task of constructing an interpretation is a creative one for which there can be no algorithmic or "logical" procedure, then comparative evaluations of interpretations is also an extra-logical matter. It is a matter to be decided by whichever rhetorical strategies are most effective within the relevant discourse circles. The following principles -neither trivial nor boring but now highly controversial! - can be extracted: The Implicit Logic of Rhetoric LRI. The only grounds for preferring one interpretation to another are rhetorical. LR2. Rhetorical grounds are always defeasible. LR3. Thus, there can be no absolutely unacceptable interpretations, only rhetorically defeated interpretations - and that status is mutable.

Note what has happened: the critical principle of interpretive pluralism has been elevated from a methodological imperative about rhetoric to the metaphysical thesis of anti-Realism. The result is the rejection of the unobjectionable pluralist principle LC4 in favor of the implausible anti-realist principle LR3. The logic of rhetoric taken to this point can accommodate theses about the world, whether physical or metaphysical, only as one-among-many interpretations.

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§2. The faulty rhetoric of logic. The realist counter-arguments to the post-modern embrace of rhetoric manifest an equally extreme ideology: a complete and total rejection of rhetoric as a contributor to rational discourse. Indeed, the ideology is implicated in the very concept of a counter-argument. The "official" line accepts the argument-as-proof paradigm. Arguments should be sustained chains of inferences connected by objective, impersonal, and dispassionate logic. However, an analysis of the common rhetoric of argunlentation reveals the inlplicit and de facto conception of arguments as agonistic: arguments-as-war. The rhetoric of logic, the language realists use to talk about arguments, ignores the performative model completely. It explicitly embraces the argument-as-proof paradigm and implicitly errlbraces the argument-as-war metaphor. That adversarial element in tum, is used to buttress realist metaphysics. The bivalence of winners and losers becomes a bivalence of truth and falsity. And the middle is most definitely excluded! The middle ground of compromise is discouraged as a no man's land of neither true nor false - or worse, in the patriarchal mode, a woman's land of subjectivity, emotion, or other forms of non-cognitive nonsense: The Rhetoric of Logic RL 1. Arguments are essentially adversarial discourse events, with winners and losers. RL2. There are objective criteria for deciding the outcome. RL3. Thus, the bivalence of winners and losers is tantamount to, or evidence of, a bivalence of True and False. RL4. Refutation is objective. Refuted theories are objectively False. RL5. There is no middle. Whatever is not victorious or defeated - or at least a contestant, and thus possibly victorious or defeated (i.e, verifiable or falsifiable) - is nonsense.

The rhetoric is objectionable on various grounds. Social, ethical, politico-pragmatic, and especially pedagogical objections can all be raised. 8 But there is an easy way out, a way to weather those objections. By the realist's own lights, it is merely the rhetoric of logic that is problematic, the window dressing, and not the thing itself. Of course, there is nothing "merely" about it. The metaphors we use reveal the way we think. Still, the rhetoric of logic is mutable because the underlying conceptual structures are themselves subject to change. The adversarial nature of arguments may be a feature of how we conceptualize argumentation, but it is not essential. The war

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metaphor is so entrenched that it is hard to see our way around it and hard to see that there is a way out. Again, we need new metaphors. Despite all this, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that metaphysical realism per se does not have great epistemological consequences. It does not entail that there is a theory-neutral observational vocabulary. Nor does it entail that knowledge of any truths is accessible. All that scientific realism really requires is that there is a world about which there could be assertible tnlths. But the sense of "could" here leaves itself open to all manner of interpretation. Those assertible truths need not be assertible by us in any of our languages. Truth might be something we must aim for but never reach. 9 There is no end to the project of science - just as, but for very different reasons, there is no last word in literary interpretation, no final performance for a musical composition, and no permanent closure to philosophical arguments. There needs to be a caveat added to this. If there can be no last word in science, it would be for very different reasons than in the critical and musical cases, because the phenomena itself are very different. In the interpretive cases, the open-endedness arises from the inexhaustible possibility for new genres, new vocabularies, and new perspectives. Perhaps those same considerations apply to the case of scientific theories - certainly some have argued for that - but the openendedness implicated by the rhetoric of logic arises from the inexhaustibility of any single vocabulary. Further refinement, greater exactitude, and more precise articulation is always possible. lo The scientific story is generically a story of progress. Of course, it is "progress" in a curious and problematic sense of the word. It is curious because it is hard to make sense of the claim that we are getting closer to an infinitely distant target; it is problematic because if hard bivalence is taken seriously, then scientific stories in progress could never really be literally true. They would have to be false, or worse. There is an implicit ideology of scientific realism that needs to be explicit: The Ideology of Scientific Realism: SRI. There is a complete, definite truth of the matter, a "God's eye story," to be told about the world. SR2. Ultimately, this Truth may be inaccessible, but perhaps it can be approached indefinitely, asymptotically. Final success may be impossible, but progress is always possible. SR3. Thus, no last word can be expected; the scientific enterprise is a permanentfeature ofthe human condition.

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Do not confuse LC6 and SR3! One is about the permanent possibility of new vocabularies; the other is about the permanent possibility of new uses for old vocabularies. Their superficial similarity invites seeing them as part of the same philosophical parcel, but they have to be paid for separately. §3. A case study. In 1996, the physicist Alan Sokal' s published an article tiutled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." He then wrote a second article, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," asserting that the first article was written as a hoax, a parody of postmodernism and that provoked a firestorm of response. 11. The first article was replete with the all the right jargon. It exhibited all the requisite inter-textuality, including a ten-page bibliography that did fair justice to the field, and ten more pages of dense footnotes. Above all, it reached all the academically correct political conclusions. What it did not have, according to Sokal, was anything like reasoned arguments or a trace of evidence for any of its assertions. It had only apt allusions and deftly deployed jargon. The ensuing brouhaha was a microcosm ("micro-chaos"?) of the larger cacophony. But what exactly had Sokal done? Sakal exposed the vacuity of Science Studies in particular and the Humanities and Social Sciences in general ... or else he did not, producing a straw man of the worst sort. He produced a brilliant piece of biting satire, a timehonored prerogative of the essayist. .. unless it was an incoherent and shoddy failure of an attempt published only out of a sort of affirmative action for scientists in a venue in which they are not often heard. He challenged the political left, in order to provoke an intellectual house cleaning ... or he provided more ammunition for right-wing antihumanism. It "vas an indefensible, if not altogether unethical, violation of academic protocol... or just possibly an inadvertent but partly successful contribution to the discussion of science's location in the larger culture! What, then, was it really all about - science studies, the social production of knowledge, science and anti-science, the privileged position of the natural sciences in our universities, the lack of intellectual rigor in the humanities, the politics of post-modernism, or what? We should know better by now than to ask what a text is "really all about." A better question to ask is what we should make of it. But

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leven better, for the present purposes, is asking why others nlade of it what they did. Sokal claims that the point of the exercise was primarily political that as a m~mber of the Old Left, he was chagrined by the antiscientific attitudes and accompanying intellectual sloppiness prevalent in the post-modernist-dominated New Left. Noble as that may be, it is neither here nor there for present purposes. The concenl here is really with the reactions to his article: the cries of "Foul!" and hoots of disapproval from some quarters, and the squeals of delight and rounds of cheers from others. To oversimplify matters: rhetoricians saw it as malicious, logicians as delicious. What I would like to suggest is that the logic of rhetoric cannot really justify this condemnation of Sokal's article, but neither can the rhetoric of logic really justify the praise of him. There is indeed room for a new rhetoric for logic. §3.1. Let me address the first part of my claim, that the logic of rhetoric cannot really justify that condemnation. The first point is that Sokal did indeed master the game. His article was a very successful move in the "play" of this language game - and isn't that all there is to it? Post-modernists overwhelmingly condemned the piece, but the piece really is a rhetorical tour de force, an impressive display of erudition, scholarship, and mastery of the conceptual vocabulary of post-modernism. That is quite an accomplishment! For example, the rhetorical strategies he employs to lull the reader into accepting some of his more outrageous claims are all time-honored for their effectiveness (and time and again dismissed by Logicians!). There are copious citations of prominent or respected figures in the field (i.e., Appeals to Authority and Bandwagon Arguments). The evidence offered is anecdotal at best (Hasty Generalizations). He grotesquely overstates the opposing positions and understates the nuanced alternatives (Straw Men and False Dichotomies). And, above all, the misuse and abuse of scientific metaphors is egregious, exploiting all the usual suspects: the Principle of Indeterminacy, the Uncertainty Principle, the Theory of Relativity, and the tnore recently vogue Chaos Theory (Equivocations and Weak Analogies). Is it relevant that he was doing all these consciously? It would seem as though authorial intent cannot legitimately enter into a postmodernist assessment of Sokal's piece. The texts of his confession in Lingua Franca and his Ajterl1)ord12 are fair game, but only as distinct and autonomous texts. The original article by itself is already a rare opportunity, an open invitation for deconstructionist potshots - but that,

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I think, would serve only to further undernline those very critiques by emphasizing how successful the article really was! As a text that can be richly mined, it is a Critical Theorist's motherlode. As a move in the Critical game, it was a smash, so shouldn't it be praised not condemned? The arguments that have been extracted from Sokal' s hoax are in many ways rhetorically praiseworthy, despite all the logical fallacies and dialectical transgressions that are present. And so it was that rhetoricians were left condemning the logical failures of what was quite a rhetorical accomplishment. §3.2. The analysis just presented leaves out an important point: Sokal was not playing the rhetoricians' game, pursuing the art of rational persuasion. He was not actually trying to persuade anybody, rationally or otherwise, of the conclusions that the article putatively reached. He was playing a different game, so any rhetorical success he might have had is largely irrelevant. It is not something that logicorealists should count as a legitimate or significant contribution. He is supposed to have exposed one game, which is to playa different game. But according to that second game, everything in the first game is all nonsense, and not, therefore, something that could really be done well. The situation is the reverse from what was described above: realistlogicians were trapped by their own rhetoric into praising the rhetorical accomplishments of a nlonunlentallogical fiasco. What is it that Sakal can be taken as having proved? Well, if it is all nonsense, then it is not an argument of any sort, and so cannot have proved anything. But didn't he "demonstrate" or somehow "show" the lack of any rigor or standards in post-modernism, the pretentiousness and wrong-headedness of those who engage in science studies while being incompetent and ignorant about science itself, and, finally, the vacuity of post-modernism as a tool for the political left? There are three very different claims here. There is some merit to each of them but some important qualifying disclaimers for each one, too. §3.2.1. The question of the lack of standards: Sokal's achievement cannot be denied. Writing a passably coherent post-modem essay is no mean feat. The fact that he did it well enough to merit publication means that there are indeed standards, and he did in fact approach them. More to the point, some of the things he wrote are not all that bad. Attention has focused on the "howlers" in the article the grossly egregious errors and the patently ludicrous claims. But part of what

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made the article successful - Le., able to get past the desk of Andrew Ross, that issue's editor - was that Sokal did not put the howlers up front. For good stylistic and polemical reasons, they were presented at the end of discussions that led to them. The goal was satire, not slapstick. Now, granted, anyone with even a minimum of sophistication in mathematics and physics who was still paying attention six pages into the article would recognize the vacuity of the claim that, "the 1t of Euclid and the G of Newton ... are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity." I agree with Sokal: if you do not recognize that as hokum, you really have no business expecting anyone else to bother listening to whatever you have to say about mathematics or science. Therefore, the fact that Sakal was able to write something like that and get away with it has to be regarded as quite an accomplishment. The gambit he used was particularly clever. He buried these claims at the end of two long, parallel series of theses. One chain is nlore scientifically technical, but begins with relatively innocuous assertions. The other starts with arguably plausible counterparts for more general application. As the formal chain gets progressively more theoretical it also gets more absurd, but by that point most readers are not paying attention to the more technical side at all, focusing instead on the more philosophical side, and hearing only what they want to hear: In this way, the infinite-dimensional invariance group erodes the distinction between observer and observed; the 1t of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the putative observer becomes fatally decentered, disconnected from any epistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone. 13

"Wait a second... did he just say that 1t was a variable? Whatever, but there was something there that sounded important about space-time and relativity, and that the epistemological center cannot hold." The point is that there really are lines of reasoning here. They obviously cannot qualify as good arguments in the official sense - chains of Pure Reason - but neither are they Pure Nonsense. They can, however, qualify as good arguments in the implicit, unofficial sense. They do an excellent job of exemplifying the de facto concept of arguments enshrined in the rhetoric of logic!

§3.2.2. The pretentiousness of science studies: The history of philosophy contains enough embarrassing examples of its own

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pretentiousness and dilettantism that the charge is not one to make in a cavalier fashion. The indictment certainly does apply to some extent to many, but not, of course, categorically to all. There is a parallel here to the history of Positivism and its anti-metaphysicalism. First, just as the Logical Positivists over-stated the case in tarring all speculative philosophers with a brush that sonle, perhaps even many, thoroughly deserved, so too, the conclusion that science studies is intellectual fraud is equally unwarranted. Second, as unlamented as the death of Positivism may be, it luust be admitted that the Positivist critique of metaphysics did have a good and healthy effect in the long run. We have not abandoned metaphysics, but perhaps we are a bit more careful now, keeping a tighter rein on our speculations. I suspect, and hope, that Sokal' s hoax will have a similarly salutary effect. Indeed, it may well be that each and every significant contributor to science studies can justifiably counter Sakal's lampooning with, "Sure, but that does not really apply to me. My own work is more nuanced." It is the nature of satire to distort its subject, to exaggerate the excesses and ignore all the qualifying nuances. That is how the dangers of excess are exposed. The counter-charge of inaccuracy is hardly a shield against satire.

§3.2.3. The inadequacy of post-modernism as a tool for the political left, and that inadequacy as fodder for the political right: This is the kicker. Logico-realists cannot credit Sokal with establishing the vacuity of post-modernism. If the relevant criteria are logic and evidence, Sokal's article is an abject failure - a menagerie, as noted, of Straw Men, Weak Analogies, Slippery Slopes, and all other manner of argumentative mis-steps. So he can only claim to have succeeded, by some other criteria. But that requires recognizing that there are other relevant criteria. Since those criteria are precisely the criteria of the intended target, that target can not really be vacuous after all. There is no recognizable distinction bet\\'een good nonsense and bad nonsense for the ideology of scientific realism. It cannot be well done; it can only be half-baked - but Sokal's article was well done. The discussions that lead to his blatantly ridiculous assertions do indeed, in some sense, "lead" to them. His article does show some things, but manages to do so only because of the efficacy of the very same rhetorical strategies he is supposedly exposing. Sarcasm and ridicule are indeed effective - but, like hyperbole, metaphor, and other tropes, they are only Rhetorically effective. There is nothing Logical about them!

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§4. Conclusions. There is a fly in the ointment. What if, regardless of how far in his cheek Sokal's tongue may have been, son1e of the fanciful connections he made, or the overstated assertions he pretended to have inferred, or his avowedly ersatz arguments, contain, or even just point to, "satisfactory, insightful, or compelling interpretations" of the phenomena? Some have indeed suggested as much. Would it matter whether he repudiated thetn? Are the profound arguments against theism that Dostoyevsky put in Ivan Karamazov's mouth any less profound simply because their author preferred Alyosha Karamazov's naive pietism? How can we take anything from the article when neither the rhetoric of logic nor the logic of rhetoric will allow it? Perhaps the fly is only caught in a fly-bottle rather than stuck in an ointment. There is a way out, viz., dialectical mediation between the logical and rhetorical. We need to recognize two things. On the one hand, the adversarial and bivalent rhetoric of logic is a myth, a powerful myth, but one that we ourselves have constructed and one that we can deconstruct. On the other hand, the logic of rhetoric is a deformed and unwarranted extrapolation of the logic of interpretation. Stories are told in many ways and need to be interpreted in many ways. One of those ways is to look for logical consistency and extract the logical consequences, but there are other ways. We can look for the argumentative coherence and contrive argumentative rejoinders; we can appreciate the aesthetic integrity and imagine additional aesthetic possibilities; we can marvel at the power of a vision and seek the inspiration that leads to yet further insights. Recognizing that there are different stories to be told does not mean that we can no longer argue about them. Rather, it means that we can argue about them in different ways, and need to be aware of what kind of arguments we offer if it is argumentative engagement that is sought. That still leaves us with the hard work of devising the new rhetoric for logic and revising the logic of rhetoric, but at least it obviates the need to analyze all cacophonies into discrete packages of the same sort.

Endnotes 1.

An earlier version of this was presented at OSSA 1997.

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The association of post-modernists with anti-realists is certainly not meant to be an identification: many anti-realists would not count themselves as post-modernist, but anti-realism does seem to be a necessary condition for post-modernism. This can be taken as referring, roughly, to Mill's "moral sciences," which later became Hegel's Geisteswissenschaften. The boundary is sufficiently elusive to make the whole category problematic, but even the fuzzy idea that is part of the intellectual landscape is enough for present purposes. However, it needs to be kept in mind that the claim that Professor Zapp lives only in the pages of Lodge's novels is itself part of a text - this book - that can be interpreted in several ways. Those readers who take Zapp to be a caricature of the critic Stanley Fish would find the contrary claim also assertable: he can also be said to exist outside the novels! Is Morris Zapp really Stanley Fish? This is one of those "really" questions that is not really a real question. Lodge 1985, pp. 28-29. It is the similarities that are relevant here. The differences can be safely ignored for the moment, but not denied. They will be explored in the chapters that follow. As Leff 1997 notes, there are important differences between performative and explanatory interpretations. I believe they are outweighed by the significant similarities for the purposes at hand. These were addressed in chapter 3. See the role of truth in argument evaluation in Kasser and Cohen 2003. This will addressed more directly in chapter 16. A sampling of responses from the popular press around the world, as well as some more academic responses, is included in The Sokal Hoax. Sokal 1996b and 1996c. Sokal 1996a p. 222

CHAPTER 14

Metaphors as Arguments And Arguments as Metaphors) "A metaphor, then, is not to be considered an argument, but as an assertion that an argument exists." John Stuart Mi11 2 Despite the traditional antagonism between more argumentcentered views of philosophy and the more literary counterparts, arguments and metaphors are more alike than generally in1agined. The possibility for greater alignment is very real. The similarities between metaphors and arguments are patent. Both are open-ended: all but the deadest of metaphors can always be subjected to further elaboration, and there is always dialectical room for questioning even the most cogent of arguments. Beyond that, both entail the active participation of their audiences. Both are better thought of as parts of complex conceptual structures rather than as discrete linguistic elements. Both are integral to explanation and understanding. Philosophy is in1possible without either one. There are four positive points of contact that deserve special attention: (1) the metaphors we use to talk about arguments, (2) the roles for metaphors in arguments, (3) the ways we use metaphors as arguments, and, finally, (4) the possibility of reading arguments as metaphors. Together, these underscore the most important congruence: the conceptual structures that constitute metaphors and arguments are able to give rise to new ways of understanding the world because in shaping language, they generate new meanings. Since this concerns multiple connections between discrete meanings and entire networks of meanings, it is a different kind of meaning than the kinds that can be explicated using sense and reference, or truth and falsity conditions. Even recourse to assertibility conditions is insufficient to account for the sort of wholesale re-orientation that can retroactively change what is and is not sayable.

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§1. Talking metaphorically about arguments. The first point of contact, the metaphors we use for arguments, has already been considered at length and will not be rehearsed again. The focus was on the argument-as-war metaphor that informs so much of our talk about arguments. While the main purpose of the earlier discussions was to explore, critique and exploit that particular metaphor, several salient features of root metaphors 3 were identified. First, the metaphors that are entrenched in how we talk about a phenomenon may also govern how we think about it. 4 Second, the sen1antics for these metaphors extends far beyond anything that can be subject to a definitive analysis. On the one hand, their meanings are functions of the entire system of discrete meanings that constitute languageS - allusion is more important than reference, associated commonplaces are more important than truths, and pragmatic context is more important than either syntactic formation rules or semantic transformation rules. On the other hand, while their meaning is the product of a process of interpretive construction rather than semantic analysis, that process does not end. 6 There is no finished product. Third, meanings change, so meaning changes. That is, since the ways we use individual words and stock phrases change over time, so do the networks of associations that make a language into more than just the sirnple sum of a grammar and a lexicon. One thing that original metaphors do is initiate and encapsulate linguistic change. Thus, fourth, despite the fact that certain metaphors - root metaphors - may become both linguistically and conceptually entrenched, they too can change. And there is no reason to suppose that such change cannot be consciously instigated and conscientiously executed. §2. Using metaphors in arguments. The epigram opening this chapter, from John Stuart Mill, succinctly articulates the ambivalent a~titude that philosophers have had towards metaphors. On the one hand, metaphors are not themselves arguments.? On the "official view," they are a rhetorician's tropes that attempt to persuade by an appeal to the emotions rather than a philosopher's proper propositions that can convince by an appeal to reason. Nonetheless, metaphors are inextricably connected with reasoned argumentation. They cannot be excluded from arguments, nor should they be. Metaphors serve a variety of communicative functions, ranging from the pedagogical - making the unfamiliar familiar - to the revisionary - seeing the world in a new light, i.e., making the familiar unfamiliar! For the most part, metaphors can fill those roles in

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arguments. Some of these functions assume greater importance in the context of arguments, others are marginalized. For example, metaphors' explanatory role is one that becomes more prominent in arguments, especially when arguments are considered dialectically. Metaphors are marvelously effective tools for explaining things because their comparisons exploit pre-existent knowledge. And, since the first step in arguing for a position is articulating that position, metaphors' role in explanations can be particularly visible in argumentation. Showing how - and that - a position works is an important step in arguing for it. In contrast, metaphors' stylistic and aesthetic contributions to discourse are usually less inlportant in the context of an argument-as-proof, but their contributions are undeniably important for evaluating arguments' rhetorical effectiveness. Which functions are important will vary with the kind of argument. The goals of deliberations, negotiations, criticisms, supplications, and hypothetical arguments may be similar to those of adversarial and persuasive arguments, but they are not identica1. 8 Related to the explanatory role of metaphors is their heuristic or exploratory role. The familiar terrain of the vehicle or focus is imported as, well, a vehicle for thinking about the tenor or frame. We can use the internal relations in the cluster of concepts associated with, say, opiates or machines or computers, to organize and explore the relations among their counterparts associated with religion and the proletariat, bodies and their functions, or minds and their operations. While this sort of conceptual exploration may not be a prominent feature of all arguments, it is very important for some arguments. It is also a reminder that fresh metaphors make demands on their hearers. Metaphors have to be solved. Thus, they serve to bring the hearer into active engagement with the speaker. This is particularly relevant for arguments whose audiences need to be more than just passive observers. 9 There is a caveat to be noted. Because fresh metaphors do make interpretive demands on their hearers, their role and value as premises are subject to certain limitations. The kind of reasoning in argumentsas-proofs is primarily analytic, extracting consequences from the infoffilation provided in the premises. We can take as premises for an argument anything we can suppose in order to see what follows. We can suppose, for example, that kangaroos had no tails, to conclude that they could not stand without toppling over. to Such an argument would justifies the assertion of the counterfactual conditional, if kangaroos had no tails, they would topple over. The supporting argument may be

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explained, as David Lewis does, by reference to those possible worlds whose kangaroos have no tails, but otherwise are as similar to the actual world as that pennits. What we need to do to for the argun1ent is conceive of different worlds. In contrast, to understand the metaphor that, say, Wittgenstein is the round square of the philosophical world involves re-conceiving the actual world. One thing we do not have to do is conjure up a picture of another world, one in which both Wittgenstein and geometry are different. Nor would we necessarily have to change. anything at all about the picture (in the Tractarian sense!) we have of this world, as if this were a new datum for his biographers. Conceiving the world differently is not the san,e as conceiving a different world. The former is part of the "revisionary" and potentially revolutionary speculative movement in philosophy. The latter is part of its analytic mode. The mixture can be volatile. I I New metaphors involve the audience in interpretation, and rhetorically that is all to the good, but for the purposes served by premises in the presentation of an argument-as-proof in dialectical argumentation, it is necessary that the arguer and the audience be on the same interpretive page. Established and obvious metaphors present no special problem in this regard (apart from the general problem of communication). Exciting, novel, and challenging metaphors do. The reason that audience involvement is so important for arguments has to do with the various goals for arguments - and it highlights the power of metaphors. Whether the goal of argumentation is taken to he rational persuasion, resolution, agreement, acquiescence, obedience, strengthened affirmation, or even acknowledgement, some action on the part of the audience is required. You cannot argue with the sky and the mountains. I2 Consider those cases where at least part of the goal is getting the target audience to accept the conclusion. For that to he successfully achieved, it generally requires more than mere assent. The proposition in question must be incorporated into the audience's belief framework. Beliefs that lack that kind of epistemic integration tend to be neither fully understood nor fully accepted. Their tenure is tenuous. Arguments, like de-briefings, need to make the connections that will both establish and sustain belief. Metaphors do that. Even the simplest metaphor - Richard is a lion, to use the standard example - is not simply a proposition to the effect that Richard is a lion. It invokes entire networks of beliefs, associations, and attitudes: lions as brave, bravery as noble, lions as kings, etc. Any arguer who manages to tap so deeply into his audience's conceptual framewolk has done well indeed. That is one of the reasons why

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arguing with oneself, or, more generally, arguing for a conclusion that is already accepted, is not always pointless. Arguments can establish these connections, such connections strengthen belief, and beliefs can always be strengthened. Thus, once again, there is always room for further argument, and such argument is not necessarily pointless.

§3. Metaphors as arguments. If metaphors are fully and effectively integrated into argunlents in the ways just suggested, there will be a shift in the metaphors we use to think about arguments. In the end, it will also have an effect on how we think about metaphors. Metaphors are invitations to see the world in a certain way. The best metaphors can profoundly reshape the world that they present, but even more mundane metaphors present a re-packaged world for inspection and approval. Thus,. if we could get beyond the argumentas-war paradigm and the accompanying idea that arguments need to force agreement, metaphors could be seen as stand-ins for arguments: ways to achieve consensus that work through attractive visions rather than compelling reasons. Compare the historical n10vement of philosophical argun1ents with episodes from the histories of other disciplines. Philosophical debate has often been highly adversarial and rarely successful in persuading its opponents. 13 In contrast, some non-adversarial discourses have had episodes of very successful persuasion. What happened when Pablo Picasso first started painting figures in the blocked-out angular style that became cubism or when Scott Joplin first started composing in the oddly syncopated style that became ragtime? They did not argue, in the common sense, that this is how figures ought to be painted or that is how songs should be written. Indeed, those assertions are not something that we can even reasonably attribute to Picasso or Joplin. Yet, within a few years, there were many others painting and composing in very much the same styles. Others were brought into alignment not by a push, the force of compelling argument, but rather by a pull, the attraction of an appealing invitation. When arguments are understood as attempts at building consensus, the category becomes immeasurably larger, large enough to include both rationally compelling reasons and conceptually attractive metaphors. Would it be better, then, to say that metaphors are really friendly arguments rather than, as said earlier, short stories? Like so many good philosophical questions, the answer to this one is both yes and no. The reasons why it is helpful to think of metaphors as arguments are manifest. There is a logical dimension, since the associations that they invoke serve as the premises for conclusions. There is an

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inferential component to interpretation: Richard is a lion? Oh, he must be brave. There are also dialectical and rhetorical dimensions insofar as they engage their listeners and serve as effective conduits to broader consensus. While metaphors do not invite objections the way that argulnents do, the hearers are engaged in the metaphoric project. Metaphors come with an open invitation to be extended. 14 A metaphor that is obscure for one audience may resonate profoundly with another. The triad of elements in an argunlent - an arguer, her argument, and her audience - has a counterpart in metaphors - a speaker, a language, 15 and a hearer. 16 Appropriately enough - in a self-referential illustration of the suggestive role that metaphors have as heuristic vehicles - the three-dimensional coordinate system for evaluating arguments promises to provide an elegant measure for metaphors, too. Of course, the claim that metaphors are arguments is itself a metaphor, and should be interpreted accordingly. It establishes an isomorphism between arguments and metaphors insofar as it puts selected parts of one structure in correspondence with appropriately selected parts of the other structure while preserving certain relations, but it is not meant as a literal identity statement. There are also some very real differences that should not be ignored. First, the inferential structure of arguments - i.e., the argument-as-proof component of fully contextualized arguments - is generally very different fronl that of metaphors. The entailment relationship between the premises of an argument and its conclusion differs greatly from the suggestive relation between a metaphor and its point. Nor is the difference the same as that between deductive and inductive arguments. Hearers interpret metaphors, and the relationship that the (text of the) metaphor has to those interpretations is not "functional," in the mathematical sense: it is one-many. The statement that Richard is a lion, for example, might be met with, "Yes, he certainly is strong and brave," but it could just as easily give rise to, "Sure, he's lazy, hairy, and carnivorous!" Second, and more to the point, metaphors do not always have "a point." A danger in thinking of metaphors as arguments is the tendency to hypostatize its cognitive content into a proposition, and then identify that with the metaphor's meaning tout court. It could lead one to write: [U]nderstanding a metaphor requires that the audience supply one or more premises that will work in conjunction with the metaphor that will (seem to) entail the conclusion, that is, the proposition that expresses the point ofthe metaphor. (emphasis added) 17

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But, as we have seen, what metaphors suggest is as important as what they say - and, of course, they themselves do not really say anything. They can, however, be read by their hearers as saying a number of different things. Thus, the "propositionalization" of metaphors fails on two counts. By focusing on the meaning of the discrete sentence, it excludes the systemic aspect of metaphoric meaning. It cannot accommodate the central part of a metaphor's meaning: its associations with conceptual clusters and entire networks of beliefs, and their connections with attitudes and other "non-cognitive" features. It also fails in that it tries to define, which is to say, limit, the content of a metaphor, when it is often metaphors' open-endedness that is important.

§4. Arguments as metaphors. Arguments are not metaphors, of course, and yet the claim that they are is a metaphor worthy of an argument. After all, the literal falsity of a sentence need not count against it when read as a metaphor, and the fact that what a metaphor says is not so, does not mean that it cannot become so: metaphors change the conceptual and linguistic landscape. They alter and create meanings, thereby rearranging and reshaping the world. Arguments can be metaphors. Just as most sentences that are normally used for metaphors can be read as literal, so too most sentences with an established and literal use can be read as metaphors. Richard is a lion? Metaphorical in England during the Crusades, perhaps, but likely to be literal if heard in a Disney movie. Snow is white and The cat is on the mat? Excruciatingly literal in treatises on formal semantics, but liable to metaphoric readings in other contexts: cocaine is for rich folks, perhaps, and the jazz saxophonist, having been challenged, has stepped up to the mike. This is the same phenomenon that we saw earlier in interpreting larger texts as either fictitious or factual. 18 The texts themselves are neither. We can read a story as history or history as a story. We can read the Bible as the word of God, as an historical record, or as a literary creation. In another form, this was part of what was at issue between the poet and the philosopher in the dialogue in chapter 12: was their exchange an argument? The answer was that it could indeed be interpreted that way, and with good reasons. An implicit part of that is that other readings, which do not read their conversation as an argument, could not be ruled out in advance. Can their argument be read as a metaphor? Of course. It could be an extended metaphor for poetry's relation to philosophy. Or it could

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be a metaphor for the history of two old friends: John Rosenwald and me. Then again, poetry and philosophy could be the two old friends, too, as could Protagoras and Socrates, rhetoric and logic, writing and reading, or narrative and argument. More creative readers might be able to articulate and defend interpretations in which the characters are seen to represent passion and reason, music and science, truth and beauty, or even such fanciful and conceptually distant pairs as man and woman, France and England, or love and death. There are no a priori limits to the project of interpretation. There are only a posteriori criteria for success. In order to read arguments as metaphors, the first thing to note is that arguments are more than the simple assertion of their conclusions. Perhaps because this fact is so obvious, it often goes unmentioned and overlooked. It applies to arguments in all of the principle senses considered: arguments-as-proofs, arguments-as-performances, arguments-as-wars, and arguments-as-dialogues. These represent the logical, the broadly rhetorical, the narrowly agonistic, and the dialectical aspects of arguments respectively. To be sure, the same can also be said of other ways of thinking about arguments, such as the aesthetic, the ethical, and the personal. 19 For example, the ethical problems raised in chapters 7 and 8 are visible only when attention moves from a narrow focus on the conclusion to the entire social context. Because arguments say more than their conclusions, they need to be examined in the contexts appropriate for the kind of evaluation at hand. The context for arguments-as-proofs is a complex system of beliefs, not an unstructured set of discrete beliefs. Arguments establish the connections that are partly constitutive of their conclusions' meanings. This hearkens back to Wittgenstein's remark that we never prove what we set out to prove. The sentence that is proved may be typographically identical to the target sentence at the beginning of the proof, but the proof subtly but inevitably changes the sentence's meaning. 2o The styIe, kind, and content of the argument for a thesis all become factors in how we understand it - in the meaning it has for us. That is precisely what the best metaphors - philosophically grand metaphors - do, too. From one perspective, it is a bitter pun to point out that the conclusion of an argument is almost never the argument's conclusion. The conclusion i.e., the thesis in question - comes at the beginning of the argument. It is the occasion for an argument, not the "conclusion" - i.e., the terminus - of an argument. Arguments continue long after

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their conclusions have been reached. The implicit context here, however, is two-party arguments. Any changes in the conclusion here are more likely to be due to strategic retreats in response to challenges from the other disputant rather than due to the establishment of new semantic connections. At first, that might seem to be a very different phenomenon, but it is not really all that far off. Consider an intennediate phenomenon: the strategic changes that an arguer might take in response to the internal dynamic of her own position as she articulates her position or works out the logic of her argument. One way of describing this is to say that she is no longer willing to defend her original statement. That is, she is now prepared to defend different statements because she now understands the original statement as involving different, and unacceptable, commitments or consequences. The original statement might be modified because its implications are now more fully appreciated. Alternatively, the original statement might be abandoned because it is no longer thought to represent her original position accurately or fairly. Or it might be that her position has indeed changed in the course of the argument. In all three cases, the original conclusion can fairly be said to mean something different to her at the argument's end. The argument provides a new lens through which the question can be viewed. Arguments-as-performances also function like metaphors in changing their own contextual environments. Their immediate effect is on their audiences. The many different kinds of arguments we present evoke an equal number of different kinds of responses. According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, in the presentation of an argument, ... there is the conditioning [of the audience] by the speech itself, which results in the audience no longer being exactly the same at the end of the speech as it was at the beginning. 21

There is an intriguing parallel between this comment on the effects of arguments on audiences and Wittgenstein's remarks on the effects of proofs on their conclusions. Nothing stays the same. The provenance of this observation is a discussion of how an arguer should adapt to his audience. The authors begin by noting that the targeted audience, is "always a more or less systematized construction" of the speaker. That is right: an important determinant of how we argue is how we conceive our audiences. But even this focused attention on what arguers do in argumentation cannot avoid the agency of their audiences. As arguers adapt to their audiences, those audiences change and are changed in response. Of course, not all arguers are so effective. Rote

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presentations of stock arguments for well-worn positions are the dead metaphors of argumentation. In metaphors and arguments alike, when there is little originality, there is less demand on the audience. The result is the same: there will be little effect in the end. The decision to see an argument as a metaphor - a new lens through which to view things - reaps its greatest benefits when thinking about arguments-as-dialogues and arguments-as-war. In both cases, the arguments are the tips of icebergs. In acrimonious and adversarial arguments, the particular point of contention is often a proxy for some other issue. The topic at hand nlight be a stand-in for an entire constellation of issues. If the conversation between two lovers degenerates into a hostile exchange of words about which movie to see, you can be sure there is something else that divides them. If the borrowed car that was returned with an empty tank of gas appears to threaten a friendship of long standing, you know it is not really about gas. There is more to it than that. The same applies even to arguments between enemies. When rival colleagues who have been habitual antagonists push the candidacies of different applicants for a single job, as often as not who gets the job is not the whole story. The issue at hand is but a microcosm - a metaphor - for the entirety of their relations to each other. One cannot help but think that if the disputants in these arguments were able to step back and see their arguments this way, as proxies for other or larger issues, the chances for reasonable and satisfactory resolution would greatly improve. That perspective is precisely what the argunlents-as-metaphors metaphor encourages.

Endnotes 1.

2. 3.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as "Arguments and Metaphors," in Arguing Communication & Culture, Volume One, edited by G. Thomas Goodnight (Washington, DC: National Communication Association, 2002). 1. S. Mill A System of Logick, Bk IV, chap. V, §7, p. 800, cited by M. Johnson 1980, p. 13. The tern1"root metaphor" originates in Pepper 1942, an important ancestor to the concept of a "structural metaphor" in Lakoff and Johnson 1980. Although the two concepts are put to different uses - the former for explaining entire world hypotheses for which "nothing is irrelevant" and the latter for more restricted conceptual networks - the common element

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is what is important here: both are organizing schemes for thinking about the world or part thereof. See Kreitman 1999, chapters 2 and 3. The topic of root metaphors in particular is addressed in chapter 5 at pp. 128ff, in his discussion of Lakoff and Johnson 1980. See, e.g., Black 1955, Lakoffand Johnson 1980, and Lakoff 1993. Several issues come to a head here. One is the question of whether metaphors can be paraphrased in literal language without loss of content or loss of something else. See Henle 1958 for an argument that such paraphrase is possible, in principle. Davidson 1978 accepts the impossibility of exhaustive paraphrase, but concludes that it shows metaphors do something rather than say something. Questions, too, cannot be paraphrased away. Goodman 1978 questions whether the possibility of paraphrase for metaphors is all that relevant: paraphrasing for literal sentences is often equally difficult. There is another question to be asked. Is the meaning of a metaphor determinate? As argued earlier, insofar as sense has to be made of metaphors, the meaning is not determinate so the interpretive project can always be extended. Martinich 1984 does try to read metaphors as stand-ins for arguments syllogisnls, actually - whose minor premise is the metaphor in its literal reading and whose major premises are statements of the vehicle's relevant properties that are to be carried over to the tenor. Together, these are supposed to entail "the proposition that expresses the point of the metaphor." There are several ways to distinguish kinds of arguments. The only caveat I would add is that while not all occasions for reasoning are arguments, all arguments are potential occasions for reasoning -and should be actual occasions. See Walton 1989 for some distinctions among kinds of arguments. See Tindale 1999, pp. 11-12 for the rhetorical value of enthymemes in activating the audience. Martinich 1984 reaches a similar conclusion about the effect of metaphors on audiences. The example is from Lewis 1973, a now-classic dissertation on counterfactuals. The analysis sketched here combines Lewis's possibleworlds semantics with Goodman's deductivist analysis. This theme is developed further, using the logic of counterfactual, counterpossible, and couter-literal conditionals as vehicles, in Cohen 1998. See Govier 1999a and chapters 1 and 4 above. Philosophical revolutions more often proceed like the revolutions Kuhn described: new theories win their adherents from the not-yet-partisan rather than fronl the mature opposition. Of course, this is not how the discipline usually tells its own history. This invitational, performative aspect of metaphors was mentioned in Part III. It is part of the revisionary and speculative move that makes

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16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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metaphors so important in philosophy. It is, however, antithetical to philosophy's analytic mode, limiting the function metaphors can playas premises in arguments or as the antecedents of certain sorts of conditionals. Again, see Cohen 1998. The invitation extended by metaphors to proceed further is related to another phenomenon: the fact that puns seem to invite further puns - a momentum that increases with the push of each additional pun. Both phenomena are corollaries to the Gricean assumption that there is cooperative nature to conversations. There is a common foundation to the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation and pragmatic accounts of metaphors. Metaphors require a language in a very robust sense of the word: a complex, culture-laden set of phenomena rather than a simple, theoryneutral vehicle for communication. See Bickerton 1969. Martinich 1984, p. 433 (in Martinich 1996). See Danto 1985 and chapter 9 above. Cf. Gilbert 1997, Part II, on multi-modal arguments. See Wittgenstein 1956, e.g., at p. 76, §25: the sense of a proved proposition is to be read from the proof, not fron1 the propositional sign by itself. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 23.

CHAPTER 15 Words Without End, Amen. §1. The End of Philosophy. For some, including for a while its author, the conclusion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus signaled the end of philosophy. At proposition 6.5, after demarcating what can and cannot be "said" - meaning what can and cannot be put into the purely literal and descriptive language of science he wrote: When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.... If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.

We should be wary, then of questions that defy answer, because if they really cannot be ans\vered, they are not real questions. Rather, they are pseudo-questions arising from confusion about how our language works. Philosophy, he tells us, is full of such fundamental confusions. l Indeed, if there really are no genuine philosophical propositions, then there can be no genuine philosophical questions to which they are the answers. 2 The only apparent way to stop the endless task of trying to answer philosophical pseudo-questions is simply to stop asking them. Respect their semantic impossibility. The impossibility of philosophy is a matter of logic; it is not a contingent consequence of history, cultural, or psychology.3 Wittgenstein's counsel is silence. This negative interpretation of Wittgenstein' s conclusion about philosophy reappeared at the center of Logical Positivism, but it is a mistaken reading of that passage and the larger text. Wittgenstein may have been the Positivists' "adopted father,,,4 but he was not himself a Positivist, at least not when he wrote the Tractatus. There are two parts to what Wittgenstein was trying to impart. First, and most notorious, is the negative conclusion about the questions philosophers ask. They are somehow not real; they are pseudo-questions. At the very least, they are not like scientific questions whose answers are true or false descriptions of some part of the world. There is a second part to this,

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however, and it is the more important part. Wittgenstein' s final assessment of the real questions, the scientific ones, is, in its own way, equally negative. Those genuine questions may be answerable but they are not important: We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. 5

All genuine questions, questions that actually ask something about the way world is put together, are for science to answer. Science, on this picture, can tell us everything there is to say about the world. 6 Still, it cannot tell us everything we want to know. Science cannot answer all of our questions to our satisfaction. This passage is commonly read as locating the failure in us, not in science. The problem is with our expectations, with what we feel and with what we want, rather than in what science can tell us. 7 There are solid textual grounds for that reading. It is, after all, just a feeling that there is more. In the next sentence, he tells us that the answer to all the unanswered questions lies in their disappearance as questions. Still, immediately after that, Wittgenstein unequivocally affirms "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words."s Those philosophers who would make a science of philosophy reach this conclusion about the limits of meaningful, scientific discourse reluctantly. The meaning of life is forever just beyond our scientific reach. We, as his readers, have the option of reading it as triumphant. It is not the discovery of the end of philosophy; it is the discovery that there is no end to philosophy. The things that cannot be put into words are left to philosophy but not, however, as things to know, as things we can say, or as answers to our questions. Properly speaking, they are not even things! Any attempted answer framed in literal and indicative, "picturing" discourse .would land us squarely back in the morass of metaphysical mumbojumbo from which we just escaped. Knowing, saying, and meaning are co-conspirators here. The crisis for philosophy is in the end of its selfimage as a truth-producing discipline. The production of yet another philosophical system is the wrong response. An altogether different sort of response is called for. One response is to disengage from philosophy completely. As noted in the Introduction, this is not really an option for reflective beings with intellectual integrity. As John Wisdom noted, removing an "intellectual itch" is really quite easy since the available choice of effective narcotics is equal to the task. That would not be philosophically satisfying, of course. 9 To scratch the philosophical

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itch, we need to make sense of the wondrous world around us. That project has to include inquiries into the nature of the world and the nature of sense, and especially inquiries into the process of making sense. The Principle of Meta-Rationality demands it. In some respects, the Positivistic response is a kind of philosophical disengagement. The strident insistence on "philosophical correctness" in all discourse amounts to a strategic retreat and disengagement from traditional philosophical questions. On this view, philosophy does have a contribution to make to the project of making sense, but largely a custodial one: it identifies the boundaries between sense and nonsense, cleans up the remediable transgressions, and warns against the others. If these options do not satisfy, there is the later Wittgensteinian recourse to the therapeutic linguistics of ordinary language philosophy. Philosophy "assembles reminders" to help us relocate our concepts vis a vis one another. IO And, of course, there is also Wittgenstein' s first response to the dilemma: the delightfully enigmatic Tractarian silence that accompanies transcendental contemplation of the ineffable. Perhaps it is time for to reconsider the semantics of philosophical discourse. §2. Philosophical Arguments. A great deal has been said concerning the nature of philosophical questions. There has been very nearly as much commentary on the nature of the answers that have been given: philosophical theories. Yet, there has been a curious (but non-Tractarian) silence concerning the nature of what constitutes the real substance of philosophical discourse: philosophical arguments. This is particularly odd since philosophy is so often said to be all about its arguments, more than its conclusions. 11 Philosophical arguments differ markedly from their counterparts in other disciplines and other contexts. To b-e sure, scientific arguments, political arguments, religious arguments, critical arguments, interpersonal arguments, and the rest are not all of a kind. On the contrary, they take very many forms. I2 Philosophical arguments, however, are too peculiar in too many ways to fit easily into any other category. Philosophical discourse is an unwieldy cluster of logical, deliberative, combative, persuasive, interrogative, reflective, reactionary, polelnical, and heuristic exchanges. Philosophical argumentation occupies a special place within that discourse. It is marked by some very odd features. First, unlike arguments in the political arena, there is no con1pelling need to come to a quick resolution or a general consensus. Indeed, it is debatable whether there

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is any need for that kind of resolution at all. Why should it matter to a supervenience theorist that her colleague is an eliminative materialist? There is nothing particularly problematic about the possibility of permanent disagreement, so there is no urgency about their arguments. In contrast, arguments an10ng political representatives, perhaps in legislative or deliberative bodies, really do need to reach some sort of closure. Some sort of action needs to be taken. Because political argumentation aims at actions, how their arguments are resolved may be of great moment. While this may be true of some philosophical debates - e.g., on the morality of certain medical procedures - the majority of our problems can be tabled with impunity. Philosophical argumentation, when successful, is "minimally perlocutionary" insofar as the direct and immediate effect, getting opponents to change their opinions, may also be the totality of effects. 13 A second odd feature of philosophical arguments is that the arguers' motives are often obscure. The situation is unlike the Democrat who is trying to convince her Republican neighbors of the errors of their ways. Her reasons for arguing are clear: her neighbors' votes directly effect her. A different motivation 'can be found for religious debates. Proselytizers can at least claim to be doing God's work or pretend to be motivated by a deep, altruistic concern for the souls of their fellow humans. Neither of those explanations comfortably applies to argumentative philosophers trying to convert their colleagues. The value of political consensus is manifest in this world; the value of religious consensus, beyond whatever contribution it may make to the social order, may become evident in another; the value of philosophical consensus is neither obvious nor beyond question. Third, unlike mathematical arguments, conclusive resolution by an unassailable proof is not the norm. It is the rarest of exceptions in philosophy. In contrast to arguments in the natural sciences, there is rarely sufficient evidence to settle the matter. For that matter, unlike many arguments in the social sciences, for which there may relevant but insufficient evidence, some of the things philosophers argue about are virtually independent of all empirical evidence. To exacerbate an already problematic situation, philosophers distinguish their arguments, especially from legal argumentation, by insisting that the verdicts they reach about the world must be beyond all reasonable doubt - and beyond most unreasonable doubts, too! Mere settlement is completely unacceptable, and even resolution can be unsatisfactory unless it comes with a guarantee of permanence.

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Fourth, for the most part, the subject matter of philosophical arguments precludes negotiation and compromise. There is no bargaining. Coalitions cannot be built to strengthen one's hand. Concessions in the spirit of compromise are not praiseworthy when principles are at stake. In metaphysical debate, there is no opportunity to "cop a plea" with the judging audience. Why, then, do we argue in philosophy? What is the point? There are yet additional distinctive, and troubling, features of philosophical argumentation that sharpen these questions even further - until they cut straight through to the heart of the matter. Like most other multiparty arguments, arguments among philosophers always involve SOUle form of "dissensus" - the term introduced in chapter 8 to apply to any lack of consensus, ranging from simple difference of opinion, passive disagreement or even just indifference to active dissension and overt conflict. The mere co-presence of the untutored, the undecided, or the unconvinced is dissensus enough to provide philosophers with an occasion for arguing. For arguments in general, it may be that the ideal goal is to replace dissensus with some form of consensus whenever and wherever consensus is lacking,14 but that picture does not fit well with the actual practice of philosophical argumentation. Unlike political or interpersonal arguments requiring joint action, there is no real need for anything ~ven approaching universal agreement. This is probably just as well, because unlike arguments in the natural sciences, there is no appreciable probability of ever achieving consensus anyway. Indeed, unlike most other arguments, even the possibility of reaching consensus through reasoned argumentation cannot be presupposed. In some ways, then, arguing as a philosopher with another philosopher is even worse than arguing with God! There may be no chance of winning an argument with God, but at least there is the opportunity to "lose" - Le., to reach consensus by being persuaded rather than by persuading. Finally, there is the most curious and· troubling feature of all: unlike virtually all other arguments, most especially interpersonal arguments, reaching consensus might not be all that desirable. At the very least, its desirability is certainly arguable. There is a lot to be said for the coexistence of reasoned and articulate but incompatible philosophies. There is a value of diverse perspectives that extends beyond their mutual cross-fertilization. If the resolution of our philosophical differences is rarely conclusive, never achieved by negotiation or compromise, hardly ever

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urgent, generally unnecessary, always unlikely, and may be both impossible and undesirable, then why do we bother? The short answer is that we argue because we have to. There are both internal and external sources for the imperative to argue. From within, there is the continual need for self-validation and theoretical affirmation. The Peircean doubts that motivate inquiry are a permanent feature of our philosophical lives. From without, there is something unstable about philosophical dissensus that fuels the engine of philosophical argumentation. Philosophical disputation is not academic. Philosophical speculation is not idle. Philosophical differences of opinion are not like diversity of religious persuasions in a heterogeneous but tolerant society. People may have many different spiritual needs and correspondingly many ways to satisfy them. There may be many roads to salvation. And if not, at least there can be the civil decision to treat it as a private matter. Nor are philosophical differences like aesthetic differences. There may be no disputing taste, but there is no avoiding disputing philosophy. Philosophical differences are more like the disagreement among rival interpretations of a text: philosophies are interpretations of the world. And yet, as argued in chapter 13, the possibility of plurality does not preclude comparative evaluations. Even among interpretations that are "good enough" for the purposes at hand, some may still be better than others. However, as argued in chapter 9, "good enough" is not good enough for philosophy. For the highest achievement of philosophy, the creation of "grand metaphors" that shape and reshape our world, we must aim even higher. The co-presence of different philosophical interpretations, therefore, is a challenge to the adequacy of each of them that cannot be ignored.

§3. Words Without End, Amen. If we cannot achieve philosophical consensus, and we cannot live with dissensus, then we are condemned - or licensed - to argue ad infinitum. There are no limits to philosophical speculation. There is no closure to philosophical argumentation. There is no end to philosophy. Philosophy, then, finds itself in the category of unending endeavors. By itself, that classification· tells us very little because the category of open-ended activities is by no means a natural kind. It covers an odd and diverse range. It includes activities as simple as counting, as complex as poetry, as whimsical as joking, and as serious as politics. No matter how high we count, we can always count still further. There is always another poem to be written and another pun to

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be committed. We will not run out of injustices to right. All of these are open-ended activities, but they are open-ended in different ways and for different reasons. Logical grammar alone is sufficient to put philosophy in this category. As young children and other philosophers know, we can always ask the question, "Why?" It is a question for all occasions, a move for al1laIlguage games. No matter what the situation, we can ask why it is so, and no matter what answer it receives, we can always ask it again: Why? However, it is not only the grammar of why-questions that keeps philosophy open. There is a deeper reason, related to the logic of their possible answers. Why-questions are deeply ambiguous. Sometimes the desired response will be an explanation for an event. At other times it will be a justification for an action. Events, which can be described in many ways, can be given many kinds of explanations logical, physical, psychological, teleological, historical, etc. There are also many different kinds of justifications for actions - ethical, pragmatic, etc. Just as some, but not all, descriptions can serve as explanations, some, but not all, explanations can serve as justifications. In either case, the paradigmatic responses to why-questions will inevitably involve metaphors or arguments. This too means that philosophical closure is irrlpossible because few intellectual endeavors are as open-ended as those philosophical perennials, creating new metaphors and fighting old arguments. In order to triangulate in on the peculiar open-endedness of philosophy, consider some of the other disciplines and activities that fall under this rubric. For example, there is no end to story telling. It is sometimes said that there are really only three or fOUf different story plots, albeit subject to many variations. Even if, as with most hyperbole, there is a grain truth to it, there would always be another story to be told anyway. No matter how hackneyed a story line may be, it can always be given new life. There is life in variation, so that is what is important. This phenomenon has echoes in other places. There is always artistic room for yet another landscape of even the most frequently painted scenes. New musical covers for old songs are always possible. No matter how many times Hamlet has been staged, the next production can still be profoundly original. There is a similar phenomenon when we are talking about stories, rather than actually telling them. In literary criticism, there is always more that can be said. The critical space for interpretations is, if not infinite, at least indefinitely expandable, given world enough and time. When the Freudians, new critics, Marxists, feminists,

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deconstructionists, and the other minions have had their say, undoubtedly there will be post-deconstructionists or neo-Freudians with an interesting contribution of their own for us to hear. Professor Zapp is wrong: there will never be last words here. Our inexhaustible ability to create new stories and the permanent possibility of more interpretive criticism stem from the same source, but there is a subtle, important difference to be marked between them. One is about writing and story-telling; the other is about reading and story-hearing. The common origins are to be found in the creative urge to understand the world. Fronl one perspective, story-hearing is manifestly dependent on story-telling. Without texts to read, there can be no criticisln. There is also a deeper sense to the dependence. Reading a story is an act of interpretation. That is to say, it involves making sense out of the text. We make sense of something by telling ourselves a story about it. Thus, in hearing a story, we have to tell ourselves a story (albeit, not the story) about that story. Story-hearing is part story-telling. In order to be able to hear a story, we must each be able to tell a story. Generalizing from this conclusion, we can say that for many purposes, literary criticism should be considered a kind of story-telling, just as covering performances can be considered as a kind of composition. However, the asymmetric dependence relation remains intact. Insofar as The World According to Garp and E. T., the ExtraTerrestrial retell the Christ story, neither one could have been written without the earlier texts as resources. But the impossibility of writing The World According to Garp in the absence of those earlier texts is not the same sort of impossibility that precludes critical commentary on Garp in its absence. To be sure, there is some sense in which Garp could have been written without the Gospels, just not as a re-telling of the Christ story. The relation that Garp has to the Gospels parallels the relation that Coltrane's cover of "My Favorite Things" has to earlier renditions, but they are not identical. There are constraints on critics and performers, however, that do not apply to writers or composers. The difference is not to be found in any part of the text or performance, just as the difference between a novel and a history is not be found in the pages of the book and the difference between a metaphor and a literal assertion is not to be found in the words of the sentence. For that, one has to look to the readers and hearers, the audience. Part of what makes a metaphor a metaphor is that it is interpreted that way. Part of what makes a story a story, rather than, say, criticism, is that, that is how it is read. Thus, there is also a sense in which story-telling

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is reciprocally dependent on story-hearing: without an audience to hear the story as a story, it is not a story. While an author may write a story to be read as a story, it only becomes a story when it is read as a story. While the absence of limits to both creative writing and criticism is first and foremost a function of the infinity of the wellspring of creativity, there are also other factors. It is these additional factors that explain the difference. There is something dialectical about the limitlessness of criticism. It is a function of interacting with the audience in a joint project to make and affirm sense out of a text. The audience for criticism is invited to challenge and raise questions about the interpretation, including the challenging question posed by an alternative reading. In contrast, story-hearers are not invited to offer alternative stories, or alternative tellings of the story. Their involvement is active insofar as hearing or reading is a kind of engagement with the story, but it is not dialectical. It is more a question of being affected in various ways, including the effect of being caused to become an active sense-maker. That is, in addition to the unlimited creative possibilities for story-telling, there is also the openended rhetorical dimension of affecting the audience. The differences just drawn bet\\'een story-telling and criticism are most certainly not hard and fast. Aspects of both characterizations are present, in greater and lesser proportions, in both activities. However, while it has been important and fashionable to focus on the similarities between them in so many recent discussions, we should not lose sight of their differences. Philosophical discourse has elements of both. However, because philosophical dissensus is unstable, sense-making audiences cannot remain outside the dialectical engagement of participants. The dialectical dimension cannot be bracketed. Both history and science are also open-ended endeavors. They merit consideration here because they provide distinctive and relevant counterpoints for understanding the open-endedness of philosophy. It is important to emphasize at the outset that neither history nor science should be thought of as a single monolithic discourse. Both are heterogeneous collections of many discourses. Bringing the quantitative methods of the social sciences to bear on an historical subject produces a very different sort of narrative and a very different sort of understanding than those that begin with personal biography or political dynamics. Similarly, the discourses of biochemistry and particle physics, with their exact and repeatable experiments, differ radically from the mathematical hypotheses and calculations of cosmology or the historical narratives of evolutionary biology. In both

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cases, however, the different discourses are united by their overarching projects. The ideal of a completed science is a chimera. In some ways, the open-endedness of science is the closest counterpart to philosophy because two things guarantee that the scientific vocation can be a lifelong endeavor. Scientific theories can be elaborated and revised without end, and there is always the possibility that they can be replaced. To use Kuhn's language, there is always room for further articulation of any given paradigm and there is always the possibility of a new paradigm. There will always be "puzzles" to solve in science, if only because the structural and institutional imperatives for research programs demand them. Without them, science is at an end. Science is "analytically" open. The puzzles that tum out to be recalcitrant become the "anomalies" - puzzles with attitude - that occasion conceptual revolution. In principle, science is "conceptually" open, too. To recast this in the conceptual vocabulary being used here, there is always room for new grand metaphors and there is always room to argue with and about the existing ones. The philosophical counterparts to the sciences' paradigm articulation and paradigm revolution are evident. Our best philosophical theories can also be elaborated and revised without end, and there is always the possibility that they will be supplanted by something entirely new. Despite these parallels, there is one very important respect in which philosophy is very unlike science. If success n1eans arriving at the "right" theory, one that is true or will stand the test of time, then all philosophical theories are doomed to failure. However, if failure means being relegated to the scrap heap of history's mistakes, then the glories of philosophy's past have all escaped that ignominy. They are still with us. Philosophy comes with its past. Like the best history, then, the best philosophy is self-consciously a product of the past, especially of the present looking at its past. The entry into contemporary philosophy is through its history. It is, of course, true of any discourse that it is a product of its past. The problems that garner attention, the assumptions that are taken for granted, and the methodological protocols that govern the discourse all develop over time. This is as true of physics as it is of philosophy. However, one need not rehearse the complex Ptolemaic theories of epicycles, eccentrics, and deferents nor even the convoluted evolution of Kepler's own thought on the way to elliptical orbits in order to understand today's theory. One cannot say the same thing, without

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invItIng controversy, about, say, any contemporary philosophical theories of mind, because even the concept of mind is an artifact subject to historical critiques. In chapter 11, it was asked: Who studies Stahl's Phlogiston theory or Ptolemy's epicycles now? The answer that was given then was that it was historians of science, not contemporary scientists. That answer can be supplemented now by contrast with the history of philosophy. Contemporary philosophers who are not engaged in historical proj ects continue to read Plato's original texts, alongside historians of philosophy who are, and both do so in a way that contemporary scientists do not read Newton's original texts. They read is, if not fully as a contenlporary, then as part of the living past rather than as dead artifact. On the other hand, past philosophical texts are not read in the same way that past literary texts are read. There is a story of progress and growth that can be told. Part of the endlessness of philosophy's future is due to philosophy's perpetual relation to its past. Philosophy, like history, must be written anew with each generation. The need for historical contextualization is more important for understanding sonle phenomena than others. It is of the highest importance for understanding who we are politically, culturally, and as individuals who are part of larger communities. Coming to grips with our past is part of the project of understanding who we are today. It is a new project for each generation because the story we tell has to speak to us. Even if we end up telling an old story with the same old words, like Borges' Pierre Menard intent on the project of re-writing Cervantes' Don Quixote word for word 15 - but genuinely writing it anew, not simply copying it - the story will still be new in the ways that count. All of these endeavors - the literary, artistic, critical, philosophical, historical, musical, and scientific vocations - are similar to one another in being open-ended projects. In each case, closure is not a possibility; there can be no "definitive" painting, story, history, performance or theory. But they are only similar; they are not the same. For all their likenesses, they also differ in very important ways. Accordingly, the temptation to regard them as manifestations of a single phenomenon should be resisted. The present danger is that distorted views of philosophy - and correspondingly skewed philosophies themselves result when the open-endedness of art or science or literature is taken as a model for philosophy's own lack of closure. Many of the sundry forms of relativism, nihilism, and skepticism can be seen as pathologies arising from over-extrapolations from the "logic of rhetoric."

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§4. Metaphors for Philosophy. Our descriptions of things are meant to tell us something about those things, but they also reveal something about us. They put our beliefs and attitudes on display. The metaphors we use are especially indicative of how we think about a subject. That is why so much attention was given to the predominance of militaristic and pugilistic metaphors for arguments. Less attention has been given to our metaphors for metaphors, but here too the language commonly used is revealing. It brings to light a deep ambivalence about them. On the one hand, metaphors are deviant uses of language because they use words that properly mean one thing to say something else. There is something unsettling about them. On the other, they find similarity in dissimilars and make the unfamiliar familiar, so they create a conceptual comfort zone. Our arguments are also revealing. How we argue about a subject may reveal as much as the content of those arguments. We may, for example, cloak our arguments in deductive trappings by conspicuous use of the language of logic. Such strong "indicator words" as hence and thus indicate more than the presence of an inference to a conclusion. They also indicate that the arguer believes the question at hand is subject to definitive resolution by argument-as-proof - or, that she wants the audience to believe that she believes that. Ergo brooks no rebuttal; therefore closes the door on negotiation. In contrast, the language of inductive, abductive and conductive arguments is evidence of a very different attitude to the subj ect matter and the argumentation process. The explicit recognition of counter-considerations - e.g., by granted or even though - is sometimes an implicit acknowledgement that there is something to argue about and other parties with which to engage, i.e., an occasion for an argument-2 rather than a proof. There is more to dialectical argumentation than inference, and that is shown in its language. These remarks about language apply equally when the subject is philosophy itself. The arguments we use in philosophy and the metaphors we use to talk about philosophy should be food for metaphilosophical thought. The language used to talk about philosophy is not nearly as distinctive as the idiosyncratic features of philosophical arguments discussed earlier in this chapter. Philosophy has been described in many ways, from a passionate state (the love of wisdom) to a dispassionate activity (the exercise of pure reason), and from a noble responsibility (the "guardian of rationality") to one that is simply burdensome (the "battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by

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means of language"). There is no single, dominant metaphor for philosophy to compare with the war-metaphor for arguments. The field may be too fragmented for that kind of unifying conceptualization. One metaphor that has gained much currency lately is that philosophy is "a voice in the conversation of mankind.,,16 Hun1anity as a whole is not engaged in a conversation, philosophy is not literally a voice, and if philosophy could speak in a conversation, it would undoubtedly do so with many voices. Obviously, this has to be taken as a metaphor. But what exactly is the image that this trope is supposed to conjure? Are philosophy, economics, history, mathematics, and the other disciplines, somehow incarnate, supposed to be standing around at a cocktail party? Meaning emerges when we use the lens provided by the vehicle of a metaphor to look at its tenor. (But keep in mind that in this metaphor, the lens enables us to see something not just larger, n10re clearly, or in greater focus, but to see it as something else. The seeing-as ability that is so characteristic of metaphors changes everything even as it leaves everything the same.) In particular, we can look at philosophy and its history through the lens provided by the cluster of concepts, beliefs, and attitudes associated with conversations. Two pictures readily emerge: in one, philosophy is one voice among many; in the other, philosophy itself is the conversation of many voices. In the first reading, philosophy fruitfully engages with the other disciplines. Respect for the data provided by the empirical sciences has governed philosophical discourse at its best. Conversely, the injection of philosophical perspectives into empirical sciences has often served as a catalyst to revolutionary progress and can continue to do so. This is the sense in which philosophy can function as a "placeholder" to keep certain questions open within disciplines, in part by maintaining the lines of communication between disciplines. 17 In this picture, philosophy has a definite and positive role in the conversation, viz., sustaining the conversation. In the other picture, it is philosophy itself that is seen as a conversation - or, more broadly, the conversation of humanity is seen as philosophy. We still listen to Plato and Aristotle and Kant, but the topics that interest us have changed, partly in response to the developments in other areas. If the most exciting cultural development is a revolution in science, then that is what becomes the urgent topic of conversation. If there is a sea change in art, so that paintings that are not even remotely representational are still recognizable as high artistic achievement - something completely paradoxical to the old way of

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thinking - then sense will have to be made of that. The new question will move onto the agenda for discussion. One consequence of this picture is the blurring disciplinary boundaries. Argumentation across disciplines must remain a possibility, and that is what philosophy becomes. It is Rorty's vision of "philosophy" as opposed to "Philosophy."IB The conversation metaphor for philosophy is indeed a rich one. It succeeds on several counts, notably, the three measures which are counterparts to the logic-dialectic-rhetoric triad used for evaluating arguments. Analytically, the template of conversations matches up well with the history of philosophy. Like any long-running conversation, the focus is not fixed; many topics have been touched on, some quickly abandoned, some abandoned but returned to later, and others held on to for a longer time. Like any conversation with many participants, it has broken up into smaller sub-groups, sometimes with their own topics, but sometimes overlapping, with conversants occasionally wandering among them, now taking part in one, then joining another. Like any conversation with so many voices clamoring to be heard, some are more interesting, more clever, or simply louder than others, and they attract the most attention, while others, perhaps unfairly, get ignored. The good philosophers are those who manage to get others to listen to what they have to say. And, like any ongoing conversation, would-be participants need to listen in for a while to catch up on where the conversation has been and on the things that have been said before they can make contributions of their own. Undoubtedly, there are many more points of congruence to be noted between the history of philosophy and the transcript of a well-attended gathering of the educated and loquacious. There is also a sense in which the conversational metaphor succeeds dialectically. It can be questioned and challenged in several ways, but it can also be extended to meet those challenges. For example, it might be claimed that being a good philosopher is more than being a good conversationalist - inviting the reply that the good philosophers are precisely those to whom other philosophers do in fact listen and respond. The mistake is in assuming that other philosophers pay attention to them because they are good, rather than recognizing that they are counted as good precisely because others, for whatever reasons, listen to them. More generally, the conversational metaphor can be challenged as lacking foundations, and thus is overly relativistic. Of course, the insistence on objective criteria for measuring theories

Words Without End, Amen

223

and theorists that are external to the conversation can itself be heard as a prominent voice and recurring theme within the conversation. For many, the conversation metaphor also succeeds rhetorically. It resonates with some pre-existing notions of what philosophy is and it reinforces some attitudes about how philosophy should be conducted. Indeed, once the metaphor is invoked, it is hard not to see the history of philosophy as a long, ongoing conversation! In burnishing certain aspects of philosophy's self-image, it helps to create a new one, with a greater emphasis on the interpersonal dimension to the practice of philosophy. It is a mark of the richness of a metaphor that it can engage its audience and then be mined for additional meaning almost indefinitely. This one qualifies. It can be put to a large number of philosophical uses. Richard Rorty puts it to meta-philosophical and (anti-) epistemological ends as part of an anti-foundationalist story.19 It could equally well be incorporated into a political argument for cultural inclusiveness, as Cornel West does. 20 If Pascal were given the chance, he might read it as saying that philosophy is a mere divertissement, unworthy of our time. Marx might agree, with the addition that, like the cocktail talk of the idle rich, it is the tainted product of the bourgeois leisure class. Alternatively, Habermas could use the same metaphor to make a contrary point: since Philosophy is but one voice in a shifting and regrouping polyphony, "hybrid discourses" will result, which provide a way to avoid the more extreme historicist and relativist positions. The project of philosophy is noble because it brings the subgroups of the conversation together. Thus, in addition to its contributions to sustaining the conversation, philosophy works to keep the conversation rational: "Philosophy is the guardian ofrationality.,,21 In the end, we cannot extract all the meaning from this metaphor, no more than we can deduce all the consequences from an hypothesis or capture all the critical perspectives on a work of art or achieve exact accuracy in our descriptions of the world. Not for the same reasons, to be sure, but with deceptively sin1i1ar results. The point is that while meaning may indeed emerge from consideration of the metaphor, there is no such thing as the meaning to emerge. The only limits to the meaning that can be taken from a metaphor are given by the finitude of our own imaginations. Like any rich metaphor, this one is capable of being interpreted indefinitely, it presents a compelling vision, and it is capable of transforming forever our sense of the world. 22 And it helps make sense of the endlessness of philosophy.

224

Metaphors vs. Arguments

The conversation-metaphor is a good metaphor, perhaps even a "grand" one, but, to be sure, it is not the last word.

Endnotes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 3.324. Wittgenstein 1961, propositions 4.1-4.112. Thus, the "end of philosophy" means very different things in the context of early Anglo-American analytic philosophy, in contrast to such more recent developments as Rorty's neo-Pragmatist critiques of Platonic Philosophy, Derrida's deconstructions of the metaphysics of Being, or Lyotard's suspicion of all legitimation metanarratives.. See Rorty 1982, Derrida 1976, and Lyotard 1984. I believe this apt description should be attributed to Gilbert Ryle. Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 6.52. George Bernard Shaw expressed the optimistic reading this way: "All problems are finally scientific problems" Quoted in Discover magazine, March 2000, p. 24. See, for example, Anscombe 1971, pp. 169-171. Wittgenstein 1961, proposition 6.522. The idea of a puzzlement-eliminating drug for philosophical problems is raised in Wisdom 1936. Wittgenstein 1958 §127. See chapter 2. See, e.g., Walton 1989, pp. 3-6, on different kinds of argumentative dialogues. The Austinian phrase "minimally perlocutionary" was suggested for use in this context by Jeffrey Kasser. Gilbert 1997 p. 136. Cf. "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," in Borges 1964. Its recent popularity as a metaphor for philosophy is largely due to Richard Rorty, citing Michael Oakeshott's characterization of poetry, in Rorty 1979, p. 264. See "Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter," in Habermas 1987. Rorty 1979~ Introduction. Rorty 1979 p. 389ff. Cornel West, explicitly citing this metaphor, approvingly offers Emerson as an example of a Pragmatist who would not lose sight of the potential political uses of "conversation." West 1989. p. 211. See also West 1993 ch.l. Habermas, 1987.. See chapters 9-11 above.

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Index ofNantes

Abelard-127 Abraham 14, 17, 19-22,23-26, 107 Aesclepius - 152 Shalom Aleichem - 13, 231 Amphion - 174 Elizabeth Anscolnbe - 230,231 Anselnl-78 Thomas Aquinas - 152, 156 Aristophanes - 174 Aristotle - 12,48,62,69,87-89, 100, 105 125, 126, 177,227,231 Augustine - 133, 150, 153,231 Jane Austen 30, 129, 190, 231 1. L. Austin 66,70, 112, 131,231 A. 1. Ayer- 25,231,236 Maryann Ayim - 54, 84, 231 Bilbo Baggins - 183 L. Frank Baum - 26, 231 George Berkeley - 12, 78 Yogi Berra - 39 Derek Bickerton - 214, 231 Sarah Binder 231 Joseph Black-154 Max Black - 132, 133, 145, 156,213,231 J. Anthony Blair - v, 26, 55,74,83,89, 100, 101, 112,232,233,235 Hans Blumenberg - 70, 232 Boethius - 148, 232 J. Bohman - 232,233 Susan Bordo - 185,232 Jorge Luis Borges - 225, 230, 232 Tycho Brahe - 191 Nicholas Capaldi - 101, 232 RudolfCamap -148 Lewis Carroll- 81, 86,232 Miguel de Cervantes - 225 Cleanthes - 181

236

Introduction

Bill Clinton - 23, 129 Daniel H. Cohen - 12, 101, 132,202,213,214,232,235 Max Cohen - 157,232 Ted Cohen - 133, 232 Samuel T. Coleridge - 177 John Coltrane - 190, 191,222 N. Coupland - 112,238 Crito - 152 James Crosswhite 26,232 T.E. Darner-lOl, 232 Arthur Danto - 25,36,39, 150, 156,214,232 Charles Darwin 35 David-13 Donald Davidson - 133, 145, 157,213,232 K. 1. Daynes - 232, 233 Denis the Areopagite - 8, 12, 152, 156 Daniel Dennett - 157, 234 Jacques Derrida - 12,127,185,189,191,192,193,230,233 Rene Descartes - 32, 148 Devil - see Satan Arthur Conan Doyle 26, 233 Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13, 14,25, 127,201,233 Michael Dummett - 152, 233 Thomas A. Edison 128 Frans H. van Eemeren - 54,69,99, 100, 101, 177,233 Justin Ehrenwerth - 26 Elijah - 13 Frederick Engels - 149, 155,236 Euathlus - 177 Euclid - 199 Thomas Farrell- 55 Johann Gottlieb Fichte - 12 Stanley Fish - 202 Gottlob Frege - 127, 144 Galileo Galilei - 35, 150, 191 Constance Garnett - 25 Newton Garver - 156,233

Philosophical Arguments and Philosophical Metaphors

237

Pierre Gassendi - 32 Sally Gearhart - 54 Michael Gilbert-25, 33, 39, 54, 84,101,104.112,145,179,185,214, 230,233 God - 13-21,23-27,65,70,78, 150, 183,209,218,219 Kurt Godel- 155 Barry M. Goldwater - 100 Nelson Goodman - 12, 132,213,233 G. Tholnas Goodnight - 212 Jill Gordon - 38, 54, 234 Trudy Govier - 15,25,27,54,83,101,104,112,185,213,234 H. P. Grice 19,20,26,127,128,131,132,139,145,234 Rob Grootendorst- 54, 69, 177, 233 Jlirgen Habermas - 69, 229, 230, 234 Agnes Haft-van Rees - 54, 177,234 Hans Hahn - 25 C. L. Hamblin -- 69,89, 100,234 Oscar Hanlmerstein - 190 Hans V. Hansen - 83, 234 Gilbert Harman - 86, 184, 186, 234 G. H. Hardy - 86 G. W. F. Hegel- 12,202 Martin Heidegger - 155 Paul Henle - 213,234 Hesiod - 163 Mary Hesse - 100, 101, 133, 149, 156,234 Adolph Hitler - 10 John Hoaglund - 177 Thomas Hobbes 22, 132, 133, 234 Douglas R. Hofstadter - 157, 177, 234 Sherlock Holmes - 20 Homer-163, 174, 189 Robin Hood - 127 David Hume - 181 Patrick J. Hurley -100,234 Arthur Hyman - 86, 235 Isaac - 20, 23, 24, 25, 107 Jacob - 13, 25

238

Introduction

William James - 26, 80, 86, 148,235 Jerenliah - 13, 17 Jesus - 25 Job - 13, 17-21. 24-36 Kenneth Johnson - 128 Mark Johnson - 42,54,69,84,100,131,133,146,155,156,212,213, 231,235,238 Ralph Johnson v, 20, 55,74, 83, 84, 89,92,96,99, 100, 101, 112, 116, 177,232, 235 Scott Joplin - 207 Michael Kagan - 186, 235 Howard Kahane-89, 90, 235 Itnmanuel Kant - 105, 227 Alyosha Karamazov 201 Ivan Karamazov 13, 14,201 Jeffrey Kasser - 101, 202, 230, 235 Johannes Kepler - 35, 191,224 Aryeh Kosman - 38, 235 Nonnan Kreitman - 155, 156,213,235 Saul Kripke 148 Thomas Kuhn - 35,36.39,145,151,156,192,213,224,235 Imre Lakatos - 51, 54, 185, 235 George Lakoff-42, 54,69,84,100,133,134,146,156,212,213,235 Anson Laytner 17, 25, 26, 27, 235 Barbara Leclerc - 69 Seung-Chong Lee - 156,233 Michael Leff - 70, 202, 236 Gottfried Leibniz - 149 Don S. Levi - 70, 80, 236 Bruce Lewenstein - 236 David Lewis - 12,206,213,236 Genevieve Lloyd - 38, 236 John Locke - 12,132,133,150,236 David Lodge - 189,202,236 Ina Loewenberg - 131, 236 Arthur O. Lovejoy - 156,236 Chares Lyell 36 Jean-Franyois Lyotard - 230, 236

Philosophical Arguments and Philosophical Metaphors

239

Earl Mac COlmac 128, 132. 133,236 A. P. tv1artinich - 132, 133,213,214,236 Karl Marx - 149, 155,229,236 Robert McArthur - 85 T. McArthy - 232,233 Robert McDuff - 25 Ralph McInerney - 152,236 Pierre Menard - 225 John Stuart Mill- 105,202,203,204,212 Marvin Minsky - 152 Michel de Montaigne - 127 Toni Morrison - 186 Moses - 13, 14, 16-21,23-25 Benlard Murchland - 236 Otto Neurath - 177, 236 Isaac Newton - 25, 199, 225 Friederich Nietzsche - 133, 148, 177,236 Richard Nixon - 129 Robert Nozick - 43,54,57.69.84.85, 100,236 Andrea Nye - 54, 100, 185,236 Michael Oakeshott - 230 William ofOckham 148 Odin - 16 Odysseus - 168 D. 1. O'Keefe - 25, 74, 237 Hakeem Olajuwan - 139, 140 Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca - 26, 54. 70, 83, 84, 86, 112, 145, 185, 211, 214,237 Orpheus - 174 Deborah Orr - 185,237 Andrew Ortony - 133,237 Blaise Pascal - 229 Charles S. Peirce - 19,26,43, 100, 121 Penelope - 183 Stephen Coburn Pepper - 100, 148,212,237 Chaim Perelman - 26,54.70,83,84,86, 112, 145, 185,211,237 Marjorie Perloff - 25,237 Philo - 181 Pablo Picasso - 207

240

Introduction

Plato

24,31,32,38,60,143,148,157,159,176,177,180,183,186, 187,214,225,227,237 Henri Poincare - 86 Ptolelny - 150, 154,225 L. H. Pratt - 177, 237 Protagoras - 162, 177, 210 Hilary Putnam 145, 237 W. V. O. Quine 38,39, 85, 148,237 Quintilian - 70, 237

John Rajchlnan - 39 S. Ramanujan 86 Ayn Rand - 183, 184, 186 Raskolnikov-127 John Rawls - 105 1. A. Richards - 152,155,156,237 Paul Ricoeur - 133, 237 Richard Rodgers - 190 David Roochnik - 177, 237 Franklin D. Roosevelt 126 Amelie Rorty - 38, 237 Richard Rorty - 12,37,39,53,69, 157,228-230,237 John Rosenwald - 161, 180, 185,210 Andrew Ross - 199 Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 152,238 Bertrand Russell- 38,39,126,131. 135, 145, 155,238 Gilbert Ryle 85, 230, 238 Antonio Salieri - 14, 21, 24 Sarah - 23, 24, 107 Satan, the Devil- 13, 17, 18 Moritz Schlick - 149, 155;238 John Searle 131, 132, 133, 145,238 Peter Shaffer - 14, 238 William Shakespeare 238 George Bernard Shaw - 230 Steven S. Smith - 231 Francesca Snoeck-Henkemans - 85, 177, 233 Socrates - 32, 117, 121,152, 167. 171, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 210 Alan D, Sokal- 101, 188, 196-201,202, 238

Philosophical Arguments and Philosophical Metaphors Spinoza - 12, 16 Ernst Stahl - 233 Robert Stalnaker - 36, 29 Dagny Taggart - 183 Deborah Tannen - 100,238 Alfred Tarski - 133 Tertullian - 80 Tevye the Dairyn1an - 14, 16,21 Thales - 148 Christopher Tindale - 26,55,69,70.83,94, 100, 112,213,238 Leo Tolstoy - 57, 238 K. Tracy - 112,238 Lev Vygotsky - 185,238 James J. Walsh - 86, 235 Douglas Walton - 69,70,213,230,238 Michael Walzer- 101,122,239 Steven Weinberg - 239 Conlel West- 39,229,230,239 Richard Whateley - 100 Philip Wheelwright - 156, 239 Alfred North Whitehead- 31,38 Elie Wiesel- 14, 17,21,24,26,27,239 John Wilmot - 177 Charles A. Willard - 233 John Wisdom - 8, 12,39, 112, 156,216,230,239 Ludwig Wittgenstein - 7, 12, 25, 36, 51, 55, 112, 131, 140, 145, 152,155,156,192,206.210,211,214,215,216,217, 239 Morris Zapp - 129, 189, 190, 193,202,222 Zeus - 16

241