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p.1 Formal disputation is a method for conducting controversial discussions, with one contender defending a thesis in the face of objects and counterarguments made by an adversary.
p.3 It is worthwhile to study the process of disputation closely because it offers - in miniaturized form, as it were - a vivid view of the structure and workings of the validating mechanisms which support our claims to knowledge.
p.6-7 In the usual course of things, Americans learn English, fish are not mammals, men are capable of reasoning, birds can fly. And all of these linkages give rise to provisoed assertions. But none of these circumstances are inevitable. What is at issue in each case is a reasonably safe presumption rather than an airtight guarantee... The relationship at issue is one that deals with what is "normal, natural, and only to be expected." This is not a matter of mere probabilities... rather, it is a matter of how things go normally or as a rule.
p.17-18 It is worth stressing that there are certain crucial role-governed asymmetries or disparities in position between the parties in a disputation:
- The proponent must inaugurate the disputation. And he must do so with a categorical assertion of the thesis he proposes to defend.
- All countermoves involving categorical assertion (conditionalized counterassertion, strong distinction) are open to the proponent alone. Moreover, the proponent's every move involves some categorical assertion: he is the party on whom it is incumbent to take a committal stance at every juncture. The "burden of proof" lies on his side throughout.
- All countermoves involving a challenge or cautious denial (including provisoed detail and weak distinction) are open to the opponent alone. Moreover, the opponent's every move involves some challenge or cautious denial: he is the party who need merely call claims into question and carries no responsibility for making any positive claims.
p.18 Every step taken by the proponent involves a commitment of some sort, and the proponent is liable for the defense of all of these - he is vulnerable at every point to a call to make good his claims. The opponent, on the other hand, need make no positive claims at all. He need merely challenge the proponent's claims, and his work is adequately done if he succeeds in bringing to light the inadequacy of some one of the claims on which the proponent's case rests.
p.20 the proponent alone maintains an ever-changing variety of commitments during the course of the disputation - a shifting constellation of theses to whose defense he stands committed... A proponent discharges a commitment when he "exchanges" it for another
p.21 Given the ever-shifting pattern of commitment on the proponent's part (undertaking new commitments, discharging old ones, having others conceded), there will at each stage be a (constantly changing) group of living commitments on his part.
p.23 The proponent has to cover his commitments in a maximally plausible way; the opponent tries to force him into more difficult commitments by introducing cleverly contrived distinctions that push his adversary in this direction.
p.23-24 In a well-conducted disputation, one will always be able to extract by analysis of the exchanges of the pro-con tabulation a good (though certainly not necessarily a deductively valid) argument - a unilateral line of reasoning in support of a thesis.
p.24 The pivotal facet of the "determination" of a disputation is thus its crucial dependence upon a means for evaluating the plausibility (acceptability) of the theses upon which the proponent is - in the end - driven by the opponent to rest his case. This is what fixes the aim and object of the whole enterprise - and indeed determines its entire strategy. For the proponent is ever striving to lead his case towards the secure ground of plausible contentions and the opponent is ever seeking to prevent his reaching any such safe harbor.
p.25 No conception is more critical to a proper understanding of dialectical issues than that of the burden of proof.
p.26 The idea of burden of proof is interlocked with that of evidence. The concept articulates a basic rule of the evidence game. To say that the burden of proof rests with a certain side is to say that it is up to that side to bring in the evidence to make its case. Thus in the face of the presumption of innocence, the prosecution is, in criminal law, obligated to present to the court at least a prima facie case for maintaining the guilt of the accused. This is to be accomplished by furnishing information sufficient to show the guilt of the accused in the absence of counterevidence... But, of course, the development of such a prima facie case is capable of rebuttal by the deployment of further evidence
p.28 A prima facie case is, in effect, one that succeeds in shifting the burden of proof - it "demands an answer" from the adversary and, until one is forthcoming, inclines the balance of favorable judgment to its side. To make out a prima facie case for one's contention is to adduce considerations whose evidential weight is such that - in the absence of countervailing considerations - the "reasonable presumption" is now in its favor, and the burden of proof... is now incumbent on the opposing party.
p.33 Clearly, if the burden of proof inclined against every contention - if there were an automatic presumption of falsity against any contention whatsoever - it would become in principle impossible ever to provide a persuasive case... In "accepting" a thesis as presumptively true one concedes it a probative status that is strictly provisional and pro tem
p.35 For a proposition to count as a presumption is something altogether different from its counting as a truth. A presumption is a plausible pretender to truth whose credentials may well prove insufficient, a runner in a race it may not win. The "acceptance" of a proposition as a presumptive truth is not acceptance at all but a highly provisional and conditional epistemic inclination towards it, an inclination that falls far short of outright commitment... a presumption stands secure only "until further notice," and it is perfectly possible that such notice might be forthcoming.
p.37 Perhaps the single most important device for putting the idea of presumption to work is the conception of plausibility. For plausibility can serve as the crucial determinant of where presumption resides.
p.38
Presumption favors the most plausible of rival alternatives - when indeed there is one. This alternative will always stand until set aside (by the entry of another, yet more plausible, presumption).
[JLJ - plausibility is a trick that works - provided that no one else is using a trick that works better. Consider a rabbit eyeing carrots placed in a spring-loaded cage trap. To the rabbit, its nose and eyes tell it that the carrots represent a potential food source, and there appears to be no danger. It is entirely plausible that approaching and eating the carrots is a safe way to proceed. But the person who set the trap figures that this is a plausible way to catch a rabbit. The trick that usually works for the rabbit, does not, in the case of a trap placed by a human.]
p.40 uniformity can also serve as a plausibilistic guide to reasoning. Thus consider the Uniformity Principle:
In the place of explicit counterindications, a thesis about unscrutinized cases which conforms to a patterned uniformity obtaining among the data at our disposal with respect to scrutinized cases - a uniformity that is in fact present throughout these data - is more plausible than any of its regularity-discordant contraries. Moreover, the more extensive this pattern-conformity, the more highly plausible the thesis.
This principle is tantamount to the thesis that when the initially given evidence exhibits a marked logical pattern, then pattern-concordant claims relative to this evidence are - ceteris paribus - to be evaluated as more plausible than pattern-discordant ones (and the more comprehensively pattern-accordant, the more highly plausible).
p.42 If one is to assert (accept, maintain) the proposition in any way at all, does one not thereby assert (accept, maintain) it to be true? The answer here is simply a head-on denial, for there are different modes of acceptance... Putting a proposition forward as "possible" or "probable" commits one to claiming no more than that it is "possibly true" or "probably true." Similarly, to assert P as a presumption is to say no more than that P is potentially or presumptively true - that it is a truth-candidate - but does not say that P is actually true, that it is a truth.
p.43 in the dialectic of rational controversy "natural" presumptions are the determining guide. Here a winning position is reached by the proponent when every initiating burden of proof has been discharged by him.
p.44 Abstractly speaking, it would seem that the opponent is bound to win out. He simply counters any claim X with the automatic challenge of quo warranto: "But what right have you to maintain X?" And so we seem to be led down the primrose path of endless and seemingly futile regress... But the pivotal consideration here lies in the termination rule that the proponent is always striving to reach - and the opponent to prevent him from reaching - the safe ground of authenticated presumptions.
p.44-45 The proponent is in a "winning position" when all of his opponent's rebuttals - or at any rate those of them to which he has had a reasonable chance to reply when the point of termination is at hand - are covered by cogent counterarguments whose component premises are all presumptive truths (or highly plausible theses). The opponent is in a "winning position" whenever any one of the proponent's contentions is left unprotected in point of adequate support through presumptive truths (or highly plausible theses). [JLJ - in the OJ Simpson trial, the famous phrase "if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit" follows this logic.]
p.45 The ground rules of presumption and plausibility accordingly furnish a key element governing the termination (adjudication) of disputation. Rational dialectic is possible only in the presence of an established methodology of probative assessment: not, to be sure, agreement on the facts, but on the machinery for the evaluation of arguments - on the probative mechanisms for the weighing of evidence, the appraisal of plausibility, etc.
p.48 Plato... insisted on two fundamental ideas: [JLJ - formatting added for emphasis]
- that a starting point for rational argumentation cannot be merely assumed or postulated, but must itself be justified, and
- that the modus operandi of such a justification can be dialectical.
p.48 Plato... introduced the special device he called "dialectic" to overcome this dependence upon unquestioned axioms...
...If your premiss is something you do not really know and your conclusion and the intermediate steps are a tissue of things you do not really know, your reasoning may be consistent with itself, but how can it ever amount to knowledge? ...So... the method of dialectic is the only one which takes this course, doing away with assumptions... Dialectic will stand as the coping-stone of the whole structure; there is no other study that deserves to be put above it.
Plato's writings do not detail in explicit terms the exact nature of this crucial enterprise of dialectic. Presumably we are to gain our insight into its nature not so much by way of explanation as by way of example - the example of Plato's own practice in the dialogues.
p.49 The disputational technique is clearly of value as an instrumentality of inquiry... The technique of disputation affords a tailor-made device for the correlative assessment of pros and cons.
Approached from this general point of view, dialectic becomes a methodological instrument of inquiry for both discovery and exposition. It furnishes not only an instrument for mapping out the static probative rationale of support for a thesis, but also the dynamic mechanism of iterative deepening and refinement.
p.51 the function of dialectic is, as presently conceived, essentially that of a probative cost-benefit analysis that weighs the pros and cons of adopting a thesis in the face of its alternatives. It sets out the pro considerations and the con considerations that militate for and against the contention at issue.
p.55 To be in a position to "determine" on which side of the dispute the better case lies, one must have means of assessing the merits and demerits of undefended commitments - commitments that are not necessarily indefensible but remain undefended at this stage. Throughout rational controversy, such undefended commitments will and must always play a part in the defense of others, and their appraisal is a crucial - nay, indispensable - component of the rational adjudication of a dialectical venture.
p.56 What one must do in rational inquiry is pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps. We begin by provisionally accepting certain theses whose initial status is not that of certified truths at all, but merely that of plausible postulations, whose role in inquiry is (at this stage) one of regulative facilitation. Eventually these are retrovalidated (retrospectively revalidated) by the results of that inquiry. At that stage their epistemic status - though not their content changes. In the first instance these presumptions have a merely provisional and regulative standing, though in the final instance they attain a suitable degree of factual-constitutive substantiation.
p.57 One sometimes hears it suggested that in rational inquiry one must put all prejudgments, all cognitive "prejudices" regarding plausibility and presumption aside. This is simply wrong. It is clear that meaningful argument cannot proceed in vacuo. As Peirce rightly insisted, in inquiry we must always begin from where we are - with an established, "in place" criteriology of probative procedure, preeminently including the mechanisms of plausibility and presumption... these inputs of inquiry... are subject to criticism and revision and relate to how things stand in the first rather than in the final analysis... their corrigibility does not contravene their essentiality to the enterprise.
p.57-58 Dialectical inquiry thus needs standards of presumption and plausibility every bit as much as an adversary process of disputation does... The dialectical model of rational inquiry accordingly calls for a set of suitable standards for assessing the plausibility or acceptability of the presumptions relied on in argumentation. The conceptions of plausibility and presumption must be allotted an indispensable role also in the "unilateral dialectics" of inquiry.
p.58-59 The search for a persuasively solid rationale that is characteristic of disputation is isomorphic - structurally identical - with the search for an evidentially sound rationale in probative inquiry... The concept of a cogent argument or good reason is thus altogether invariant whether it is a matter of one's trying to convince another (in debate) or oneself (in rational inquiry)... The crucial and basic question is not "How do I convince myself that X is so?" but "How do we convince one another of it?" ...The business of giving - or probing for - a good reason for accepting a thesis will have to be the same in the context of personal inquiry as in public controversy.
p.60 The root issue in probative rationality is that of "building up a good case" to enlist the conviction of one's fellows. Accordingly, probative standards are person-indifferent; they are inherently public and communal. The testing standards of convincingness relate not to what convinces me or you... but to what is convincing in general... The very conception of duly validated knowledge-claims relates to publicly established and interpersonally operative standards.
p.64-65 Orthodox logic has it that an (well defined) thesis is either true or false. The truth-status of theses is determinate in any realizable circumstance or condition... Orthodox logic accordingly looks toward "how the world really is" - it takes an orthodox ontological perspective... In epistemic logic, on the other hand, where our concern is with the world as we know it rather than the world as it is, a third possibility opens up. One may perfectly well be so circumstanced as to know neither that P is the case nor that ~P is.
Now in this regard, the situation in dialectic as we presently construe it must be assimilated to that of epistemic logic. For dialectic is perspectival - its key procedure is to maintain theses relative grounding considerations via a probative relationship of the type: X/Y... It can thus happen under suitable dialectical conditions that a thesis can neither be maintained-to-be-true nor yet maintained-to-be-false. In this sense one must recognize the need to open up the middle ground by rejecting the Law of Excluded Middle.
p.75 The preceding discussion has contended that the probative ground rules governing the constructing of a persuasive case, a "good argument" for accepting factual contentions about the world, may with advantage be regarded as ultimately based on a dialectical paradigm.
p.76 This matter of "building a good case" for a thesis involves two things: [JLJ - formatted for emphasis]
- assessing the strength of the case for it when taken by itself, through determining the preponderance of pros over cons, and
- assessing the strength of the case for it on a comparative basis with respect to its rivals, the other alternatives at hand.
In furnishing the natural means for the realization of these objectives, the process of dialectic - of rational controversy - emerges as a crucial tool of cognitive rationality.
p.76 There is no rationality without an appropriate procedure for giving a rationale - a suitable fabric of good reasons in cases of the sort at issue.
p.77 the natural ground rules of probative rationality... It is not a matter of abiding by artificial rules, but by doing what is "the right and proper thing" in the setting of rational argumentation.
p.78 Cognitive rationality embraces both of these aspects of evidential thesis-introduction and inferential thesis-attunement within a coherently articulated belief-system... These considerations indicate the key role of such probative mechanisms for rational inquiry. Their status is determined by their functional task; they provide instruments basic to the working of rationality in probative contexts. To break the rules of proper argumentation is, in the final analysis, to opt out of the enterprise of rational controversy. It reflects a failure of rationality through a refusal to abide by the rules that define what it is to make out a proper case in the context of reasoned discussion.
p.80 the person who violates the evidential rules simply manages to reason badly... The interests that the man who departs from these rules damages are in the first instance his own - in falling away from the principles of right reason into irrationality, he frustrates his own aims and objectives (with certainty his cognitive objectives and with probability his practical objectives).
p.80-81 The person who is defective in point of rationality - who reasons inadequately, thinks poorly, and argues badly - is akin to the person who is defective in point of intelligence, and his offenses are not sins but gaffes.
p.84 The ordinary and standard probative practice of empirical inquiry stipulates a presumption in favor of the senses, of memory, the inductive ground rules, etc. We accept the claims derived from these sources as veridical until proven otherwise. When the sceptic refuses to grant this presumption, he effectively block any prospect of reasoning with him within the standard framework of discussion about the empirical facts of the world.
p.85-86 The sceptic immediately protests: "How can you be certain?"... Burden-of-proof considerations sweep all such worries aside. They say in effect: "Do not plague me with these merely hypothetical possibilities. If there are any positive, case-specific, indications that here and now, in the concrete circumstances of this particular claim, [that things are not as they seem]. Let us look into the matter more closely. But purely conjectural hypothetical possibilities just don't count in probative situations. What does count is only what the available evidence indicates to be a genuine prospect under the circumstances."
p.87-88 The case for a knowledge-claim should indeed be "conclusive," but conclusive not in some absolutistic and in principle unrealizable sense, but in the sense of being as good a case as one can reasonably be asked to make out under the circumstances, considering the sort of thing at issue.
p.89 One can appropriately assert "I know that P" when one has adequate rational warrant for this assertion, and this warrant may well stop at adequately conclusive - rather than comprehensively exhaustive - evidence for the claim.
p.90 The sphere of rational discourse regarding factual issues is such that there is a standard, inevitable, and perfectly acceptable evidential gap between the commitment content of our claims and the requisite warranting evidence at our disposal for making them (appropriately and justifiably). This circumstance is implicit in the very ground rules of rational discourse... to say of a thesis that it "is certain" is to say no more than it is as certain as, in the nature of the case, a thesis of this sort reasonably could be rendered.
p.90 A claim of knowledge ... simply means that one is to rest secure in the assurance that everything has indeed been done that one can possibly ask for within the limits of reasonableness to ascertain the fact at issue.
p.91 A claim to knowledge extends an assurance that all due care and caution has been exercised to ensure that any real possibility of error can be written off: it issues a guarantee that every proper safeguard has been exercised. [JLJ - knowledge is used by individuals who ask themselves: How might I proceed? or Should I believe this? Knowledge is used by individuals who want to figure out the best way to "go on" in living a life in a style they choose and in a way they choose.]
p.97 With respect to methodology, at any rate, the pragmatists were surely in the right - there is certainly no better way of justifying a method - any method - than by establishing that "it works" with respect to the specific tasks held in view... We justify the acceptance of a thesis by reference to the method by which it is validated, justifying this method itself in terms of the classical pragmatic criterion of methodological validation.
p.97 The sceptic too readily looses sight of a crucial fact regarding the very raison d'être of our cognitive endeavors. Their aim - as we have seen - is not just to avoid error but to engross truth. The task of rational inquiry is to provide information about the world. And here, as elsewhere, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" is the operative principle.
p.98 our argument has addressed itself wholly to the issue of cognitive rationality. The line we take runs not "If one wants to act effectively then one must accept certain theses," but rather "If one wants to enter into 'the cognitive enterprise' - that is, if one wants to be in the position to obtain information about the world - then one must be prepared to accept various theses." [JLJ - there is no reason why you have to play a complex game of strategy with a cognitive approach - you can try every move sequence until time runs out, then 'evaluate'. Or, you can enter 'the cognitive enterprise' and accept the thesis that certain move sequences deserve more critical analytical time-and-attention than others - our move will emerge from the results of these efforts.]
p.99 The "ought" in "Men ought to be rational" is in the final analysis a prudential ought... That is, one should be rational if one is to be effective and efficient in the realization of one's chosen objectives (whatever they may happen to be). The constraints to rationality are... those of purposive efficacy. Accordingly the rationale for subscribing to the established ground rules of probative procedure in inquiry ultimately lies in the domain of prudence and intelligent self-interest.
p.102 The ultimate justification of the established rational standards emerges in the light of these considerations as evolutionary in character... The justification of probative rationality (both on the side of what it is and what it does) is thus pragmatic and evolutionary - it is a matter of the confluence or consilience of pragmatic success with evolutionary survival through rational selection. The rationale of probative rationality is pragmatic - but with a markedly Darwinian twist.
p.103-104 An evolutionary approach oriented towards the more general level of probative methods seems to have substantially greater promise.
p.106 As a rational being, man must certainly have some sort of adequate rationale for proceeding in all three of these cases: [JLJ - added numbering for emphasis]
- the beliefs he deems worthy of acceptance,
- the actions he deems worthy of performance,
- and the procedures he deems it proper to follow.
p.107 there can be no real question that an established method - one which has "proven itself" over a wide variety of applications within its range of correlative objectives - has solid claims to a presumption in its favor.
p.107 evidence-in-hand regarding its record of success does not demonstrate that a method will succeed in future applications. But the probative weight of experience cannot be altogether discounted: established success must be allowed to carry some weight. A tried and successful method has a presumption in its favor. For while established success is no proof of further efficacy, it does succeed in shifting the burden of proof in a favorable direction.
p.114-116 We have seen how disputation hinges on certain characteristic initial assessments of presumption and plausibility... A positive presumption of acceptability is therefore to operate in favor of all the traditional parameters of systematization: consistency, uniformity, regularity (causality; rulishness and lawfulness in all forms), simplicity, connectedness/coherence, unity/completeness, etc. These are now to function as regulative presumptions - as principles of epistemic preferability... The principles of systematicity now represent presumptive principles regulatively governing the conduct of inquiry... Our disputational approach to inquiry thus casts the basic parameters of systematicity as regulative principles of plausibility and preference, transforming them from adequacy principles of system structure to selection principles for system inclusion. Their crucial features from this perspective are:
- They are regulative, that is, they guide our cognitive actions by telling us how to proceed in system design...
- They are preferential, that is, they guide the issue of cognitive precedence and priority...
- They are essentially negative, that is, ...they are to be construed negatively in terms of avoid!, shun!, minimize! with respect to such factors as complexity, disuniformity, etc.
p.122 But a pivotal aspect of the debate or disputation at issue is that it is wholly spontaneous: it is not arranged like a medieval academic exercise or a scheduled debate between competing collegiate teams.
p.124 the disputational approach can render a useful service to the theory of knowledge.
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