Christopher W. Tindale-The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception-Cambridge University Press (2015) PDF

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARGUMENT
AND AUDIENCE RECEPTION
Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of

arguers and arguments along with various theoretical perspectives.
Less attention has been given to the third feature of any argumenta-
tive situation – the audience. This book fills that gap by studying
audience reception to argumentation and the problems that come to
light as a result of this shift in focus. Christopher Tindale advances
the tacit theories of several earlier thinkers by addressing the central
problems connected with audience considerations in argumenta-
tion, problems that earlier philosophical theories overlook or inade-
quately accommodate. The main tools employed in exploring the
central issues are drawn from contemporary philosophical research
on meaning, testimony, emotion, and agency. These are then
combined with some of the major insights of recent rhetorical work
in argumentation to advance our understanding of audiences and
suggest avenues for further research.
christopher w. tindale is Professor of Philosophy and Director

of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argument and Rhetoric at
the University of Windsor, Ontario. His key publications include:
Acts of Arguing (1999), Rhetorical Argumentation (2004), Fallacies and
Argument Appraisal (2007), and Reason’s Dark Champions (2010). He
is also the co-author, with Leo Groarke, of Good Reasoning Matters,
now in its 5th edition (2012).
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
A RG U M E N T A N D
AU D I E N C E R E C E P T I O N
C H R I S TO P H E R W. T I N D A L E
University of Windsor
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107101111
© Christopher W. Tindale 2015
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2015
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Tindale, Christopher W. (Christopher William)
The philosophy of argument and audience reception / Christopher W. Tindale,
University of Windsor.—First [edition].
â•… pagesâ•‡cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbnâ•‡ 978-1-107-10111-1 (hardback)
1. Logic. 2. Audiences.â•… I. Title.
bc50.t56â•…2015
168—dc23
2014045673
isbnâ•‡978-1-107-10111-1â•‡Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
For my fellow members of the Centre for
Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric at the
University of Windsor, who succeed in fostering
such a rich environment in which to work.
Contents
Acknowledgements xi
1 The role of audience in a theory of argumentation 1

1.1 Approaching argumentation 1
1.2 Argumentative speeches and journeys 3
1.3 Rhetorical proofs 12
1.4 Theories of argumentation 14
1.5 The place of audience 18
2 Argumentation and its issues 20

2.1 Argumentation as an expression of social nature 20
2.2 A dynamic view of argument 22
2.3 Consequences of an audience-centered approach 24
2.4 The structure of the study 32
3 Aristotle and the natures of audiences 36

3.1 Introduction: poetic parallels 36
3.2 Rhetoric as insight 37
3.3 Aristotle’s arguer 44
3.4 What counts as evidence in the Rhetoric: the power of signs 46
3.5 Aristotle’s rhetorical audiences 50
4 Perelman’s audiences: a meeting of minds 58

4.1 Introduction: what is this audience? 58
4.2 Three audiences 60
4.3 The goals of philosophy 63
4.4 Audience adherence 66
4.5 Adherence and the epideictic genre 74
4.6 Perelman and composite audience 75
5 Habermas and the ideal audience 79

5.1 Introduction: Habermas and the strands of
argumentation theory 79
5.2 The public sphere 80
vii
v i i i Contents
5.3 Communication and consensus 83
5.4 Dimensions of the lifeworld 85
5.5 A theory of argumentation 87
5.6 The force of the better argument 92
5.7 Cultural differences and the universal 95
5.8 Listeners, hearers, and the universal audience 96
6 Meaning and reasons 99

6.1 Introduction 99
6.2 Gricean pragmatics 100
6.3 Revising Grice 105
6.4 Gricean meaning 106
6.5 The role of audience 107
6.6 Two important criticisms 110
6.7 Relevance theory and its critique of Grice 111
6.8 Introducing Brandom 116
6.9 The role of reasons 119
6.10 Communication 119
6.11 Objectivity 122
6.12 Conclusions 125
7 Evidence and reasons: the place of testimony 127

7.1 Sources of evidence 127
7.2 Concerns with testimony 128
7.3 Aristotle’s evidence and the role of testimony 131
7.4 Learning from others: the foundational role of testimony 133
7.5 Reductionism and non-reductionism 134
7.6 The epistemology of testimony 137
7.7 Community knowledge 141
7.8 Cognitive environments 144
7.9 Conclusion 146
8 Emotion and reasons 148

8.1 Introduction 148
8.2 Ancient views on emotions and cognition 149
8.3 Modern views on emotions and cognition 155
8.4 Situated nature of the emotions 159
8.5 Role of the emotions in argumentation 160
8.6 Value and emotions 164
9 Agency and reasons 167

9.1 Introduction: acting for reasons 167
9.2 Personhood 169
9.3 Non-Cartesian selves 172
9.4 Situated agents and questions of identity 174
9.5 Persons and reasons 177
9.6 Conclusion 179
Contents ix
10 Making meaning present 181
10.1 Introduction: the shift of perspective 181
10.2 The presence of an argument 182
10.3 Philosophical views of presence 183
10.4 Choice 187
10.5 Meaning and the environments we share 191
10.6 Reconfiguring arguments 194
11 Audiences and addressees: the experience of reception 197

11.1 Introduction: a voice of our own 197
11.2 Recent views on reception 198
11.3 Received meaning 200
11.4 Commitment 202
11.5 Personalization through metaphor, irony, and allusion 205
12 Historical arguments and elective audiences 212

12.1 Introduction: effectiveness and objectivity 212
12.2 The historical audience 213
12.3 The power of the universal audience 216
12.4 Revisiting the cognitive environment 222
References 225
Index 238
Acknowledgements
This project began to take shape in 2009, but much of it grew out of
discussions that occurred much earlier. Naturally, many people have
made direct or indirect contributions, and the following expressions of
gratitude are in order:
I was fortunate to be Visiting Professor at Macquarie University,
Sydney during 2009–2010, where drafts of the first nine chapters were
completed. I am grateful to the Department of Philosophy there and
especially to Nick Smith and Peter Menzies.
Many conversations on Aristotle’s Rhetoric with Andreas Welzel have
influenced my understanding of that important work, and those discus-
sions also had an influence on the treatment of the emotions in Chapter 8.
My view on the nature of energeia in the Rhetoric has benefited from
conversations with David Mirhady and Christian Kock, to both of whom
I express my gratitude. I have learned an enormous amount from conver-
sations with Fred Kauffeld, and I particularly recall a long evening in San
Francisco where his gentle promptings led me to see important distinc-
tions between audiences and addressees. Phil Rose in the Philosophy
Department at Windsor listened to a lot of the frustrations that arose
from some of these chapters, and always had something useful to offer.
I would also like to thank Harvey Siegel for pointing me in the direction
of the “felt reasons” that play a role in Chapter 10.
A number of students at the University of Windsor have had some
input into the ideas developed here, and I am grateful to the members of
my graduate courses in 2010 and 2012 for the thoughtful discussions that
occurred there. I would particularly like to thank Katharina von
Radziewsky who took an interest in the project to the point of working
with me on a related paper. Justin Morris and Cameron Fioret worked as
research assistants at various stages of the project. I would like to thank
both of them for their interest and energy.
xi
x i i Acknowledgements
Given that this is a work in part on the nature of audiences, it seems
appropriate that so many of them have contributed through their
responses at different venues over the years: Large portions of Chapter 3
were read to the philosophy colloquium at Macquarie University, Sydney
in June, 2010. Parts of Chapter 5 were read at the third conference on
Logic, Argumentation and Critical Thinking, in Santiago, January 2013.
A short version of Chapter 6 was read at the seventh international confer-
ence of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation,
Amsterdam, July 2010. Many of the ideas of Chapter 7 are drawn from a
paper read to the Rhetoric in Society conference, Antwerp, January 2011.
A version of Chapter 9 was read to a members of the Centre for Research
in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University
of Windsor in the fall of 2010. And versions of Chapter 10 formed my
Martin Wesley lecture at the University of Windsor in January, 2012, and
were also delivered to audiences at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa,
Portugal, in October, 2012 and at the V Congreso Colombiano de
Filosofía, Medellín, Colombia in July 2014. In all cases I am grateful for
the many thoughtful comments from participants, too numerous to
mention by name. I would also like to thank the following for their invi-
tations: Hilde van Belle, Álvaro Corral, Fabrizio Macagno, Antonio
Rossini, and Cristián Santibáñez Yáñez.
Some of the ideas here have already appeared in print: parts of the
discussions in Sections 4.3 and 4.4 appeared in my paper “Ways of Being
Reasonable,” published in Philosophy & Rhetoric, 43.4 (© 2010), and used
here by permission of the copyright holder, The Pennsylvania State
University Press; parts of Chapter 7 appeared in Verbal and Visual Rhetoric
in a Media World (2013), Hilde van Belle (ed.), Leiden: University of
Leiden Press, and parts of Sections 9.2 and 9.5 appeared in Pragmatics and
Cognition, 19.3 (2011). I am grateful for permission to include them here.
Gratitude is also due to the team at Cambridge. To my editor, Hilary
Gaskin for her willingness to take on the project, and to Gillian Dadd
whose assistance has proved invaluable. I would also like to thank
David Mackenzie who saw the book through production, and Jon
Billam for his very efficient copy-editing. I am also grateful to the two
reviewers for the Press, whose helpful suggestions led to improvements
in the text and who saved me from several errors.
Finally, I continue to be the beneficiary of membership in one of the
strongest groups of theorists in the field, those working at the Centre for
Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric at the University of
Windsor, to whom the book is dedicated.
chapter 1
The role of audience in a theory

of argumentation
1.1â•… Approaching argumentation

In words that could be a commentary on our own times, Albert Camus
once observed: “We live in terror because persuasion is no longer
possible” (Camus 1972: 21). Indeed, in a world divided along so many
lines by disputes over fundamental social and political questions, we
could easily be forgiven for thinking that the art of constructive persua-
sion has been lost and that human beings might even be better off if they
did not argue. Of course, there are many things without which we might
be better off, yet which form essential parts of our nature. But without
the resources of argument and argumentation in particular, we would
be hard pressed to even begin addressing those very disputes. Camus’
observation might serve us better today if we replace the “because” with a
“where,” and even then we might reject the pessimism that would suggest
there are occasions where persuasion cannot operate successfully.
Contemporary research suggests we have evolved our reasoning skills
not just to become better decision-makers and improve our knowledge
but in order to devise and evaluate arguments (Mercier and Sperber
2011). In fact, if we could divest ourselves of the practice of arguing we
would not be better off. This practice is a fundamental aspect of our
social nature, and as the current project strives to show, it defines us in
crucial ways as well as enriching our interactions.
The negative ideas that might be associated with the nature of argu-
ment and arguing may well have their source in two quite distinct experi-
ences: the ways many of us were first introduced to the elements of
technical arguments and, at the other extreme, the disorganized quarreling
that often passes as arguing. On the first count, arguments are conveyed
to us as related structures of statements of support. Organized on a page,
such structures have premises and conclusions and properties of being
valid or invalid, depending on the relationships that pertain between the
1
2 The role of audience in a theory of argumentation
statements. This view sees argument as a product, but it is often difficult
to see of what it is a product. The statements are isolated from any social
dynamic that might conceivably have produced them. Even where they
can be traced back to people that issued them, attention has shifted to
the product alone and we are asked to decide whether it is a “good” argu-
ment. The terms on which it might be deemed good, however, are not
terms that take us beyond the statements themselves to consider the
person or source who produced them or, more importantly, the person or
people for whom they were produced. Thus, our common experiences
with arguments in this technical sense are not with products of social
interaction that in their evaluation might tell us something about those
who produced and received them. This is not to deny that there are bene-
fits to understanding the strengths of arguments as units of sentences and
learning how to test their validity. It is just that we have difficulty seeing
any connection between that kind of practice and the exchanges that go
on around us and in which we engage, and that reflect and address issues
of real disagreement in the social domain.
Likewise, quarreling seems equally unlikely to provide any positive
contributions to social debates, and as an example of an argumentative
exchange the quarrel is as unattractive as the isolated logic exercise in the
classroom. In his dialogue Euthydemus, Plato captured a particularly egre-
gious kind of quarrel in the practices of the Sophist brothers Euthydemus
and Dionysodorus.1 These practices, technically termed eristics, involved
attempts to win an argument at any cost using whatever means, fair or
unfair, deemed necessary to meet that goal. Thus, one of the brothers can
say of a young man who has been asked a question that could be
answered along two alternative lines that it doesn’t matter which one he
chooses, he will be refuted in either case. Such eristical play, so often at
the heart of the modern-day quarrel, suggests that arguing itself is rather
pointless and lacking in the positive tools necessary to help resolve
disputes or even understand them.
Contrary to these views, argumentation involves the practices of using
arguments to interact with, explore, understand, and (sometimes) resolve
matters that are important to us. It opens up conduits between people,
introducing us to other minds and other perspectives. Even what to
many is the paradigm of argument use – the courtroom scenario – offers
only an artificial reflection of actual argumentation. When an argument
1â•‡ A practice often unfairly attributed to other Sophists and even deemed characteristic of sophistic
argument itself.
1.2â•… Argumentative speeches and journeys 3
is directed to a jury or judge, that audience is not expected to be predis-
posed one way or the other. But in everyday argumentation people do
have a prior stake in the issue and are specifically addressed in relation to
their interests. Hence, they are already disposed towards receiving the
argument in a certain way.
We are argumentative beings as is witnessed by the fact that we disagree
about so many things and worry not only that things could be other than
they are, but that they should be other than they are. To see the world as
other than it is and to think about how it might be changed accordingly is
to think in terms of the argumentation that might be used to bring about
the desired changes. Of course, if we are essentially Â�argumentative beings,
and this is a constructive component of our make-up, then to change this
would require a fundamental change to our own nature, and for the
worse. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World envisaged a world in which
homogeneous agreement was achieved through the use of a drug. People
did not need to think; everything was decided for them. This particularly
unattractive view of human beings is not something we would choose for
ourselves – which was Huxley’s point. We want the hardships of decision-
making, with any ill consequences that might follow from it. We value
disagreement, even when it has unfortunate outcomes, because this is how
we express ourselves while retaining our independence. Autonomy and
the responsibility that comes with it are important things that we prize for
ourselves but that were missing from Huxley’s dystopia. Argumentation is
something through which we assert ourselves and measure the assertions
of others; it is part of the fabric of the social world.
As a practice involving arguments, then, argumentation has little
interest in the classroom example or the quarrel. It encompasses a wider
practical situation in which the arguments produced are simply one
component, and never one that is to be divorced from the rest. Equally
essential both to understanding an argumentative situation and
Â�evaluating it are the arguer who at least initiates the exchange, and the
audience of that exchange.
1.2â•… Argumentative speeches and journeys

The source of argumentation is itself a topic that attracts considerable
debate. Traditionally, we would see the arguer as a speaker or writer who
inventively composes a discourse with an audience in mind, transfer-
ring intentions from mind to voice or page with skill and fluency, and
thus communicating a meaning that the audience can in turn “pick up”
and understand. The source of this argumentation is a single individual,
isolated in the performance of an activity over which he or she has full
and final control. If we need to know what a discourse means, we go to
this source who provides the authoritative word.
This is a picture with which few working within the field of argumen-
tation theory would now agree. Every element of the account could be
contested in some way. Argumentation has a dynamic nature to it, with
arguers and audiences wedded in an active relationship of exchanges to
such a degree that the audience provides much of the content of the
discourse because they are so central to the context. The discourse is for
them, and so is composed in their terms. In this way the arguer is
constrained in what he or she can say if persuasion is the goal. The arguer
is not an isolated performer but an engaged co-constructor of the
discourse. In fact, more modern (or post-modern) appreciations of the
arguer’s role bring into question the individuality of the arguer altogether.
Speakers and writers are the conduits of a multitude of influences, from
what they’ve read, to what they’ve experienced and the people they have
listened to. Drawing on such an understanding in his dispute with John
Searle over intentionality and the nature of speech acts, Jacques Derrida
(1988: 29–107) went so far as to suggest that each speaker is a company of
limited responsibility (a limited inc.). Searle’s practice of deferring in his
acknowledgements to all those who had contributed to his ideas played
into this conception of shared authorship.
Certainly, such ways of thinking serve to undermine the authority of
the author, whether speaker or writer, as the one who knows the meaning
of what is uttered. That is, the smooth transition of intentions to words is
questioned.
In the modern world, we may think of speechmakers as corporate enti-
ties, at least with respect to the speeches that have the greatest impact on
societies. We fully expect public figures to have “representatives” whose
words those figures will convey or who may even speak on their behalf.
And politicians will front a team of writers who convert policy into
language and construct the speeches that will convey them. It may not
even be left to the speaker to decide the manner of delivery, since even
that can be carefully orchestrated to achieve the desired effect, or at least
avoid undesired effects.
While the focus of this project is on the audiences that are addressed
and the range of problems associated with understanding such audiences
in argumentative contexts, we cannot ignore the other principals in the
argumentative situation. The dialogical nature of the enterprise that
engages us here dictates that we isolate elements, whether the audience,
argument, or arguer at our peril. Matters of audience can be addressed
apart from the relationships from which they emerge, but only to the
degree that what is said and learned reflects those relationships. Actual
audiences, as they are discussed (and used to illustrate general features of
“audience”) always belong to a context, and are audiences of, whether
that “of ” refers to argumentations or speakers.
So it is appropriate to begin with discussions of some speeches that
reflect types of argumentation and the skills and strategies that can be
employed. These speeches illustrate some of the principles that will
become important as the project develops, while also reflecting the kinds
of difficulties to be addressed.
Speech #1: A new Lincoln

On Saturday February 10, 2007, in Springfield Illinois, a young senator
stood on the steps of the Old State Capitol and announced his candidacy
for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States in
2008. While observers who had followed this man’s political career would
have been unsurprised by his actions that day, for the majority of people,
even in America, it was their first real introduction to Barack Obama.
Thus, it was an occasion for the senator to present himself in his own
terms. In language that Greek rhetoricians set down centuries earlier, this
was the opportunity for Obama to create his image through his words, to
construct his ethos (or character).
On many fronts, this is a typical introductory speech in which a candi-
date makes his or her introduction, provides credentials for a proposed
task, sets an ambitious agenda, and invites an audience to share in the
venture. But each phase of the speech is rhetorically textured to suggest
something momentous and compelling. On the one hand, there is a
simple content to the discourse, and on the other, there is how that
content is packaged and delivered.
The speech begins with Obama acknowledging the journey the crowd
has made to be there on that occasion. But this is quickly translated into
a metaphorical journey to build a “more perfect union.”2 By the end of
the speech this has become a quest, rooted in a shared destiny, that the
audience is invited to adopt. Before he can fully issue such an invitation,
2â•‡ All quotes from the following speeches are from the official transcripts, available at: http://
obamaspeeches.com/
however, it is important that they (and the larger audience that stands
behind them) know with whom they will be travelling on this quest.
Obama explains how he came to be there, working with the poor for
little pay, living out his Christian faith, until he decided it was by
entering the legal profession that he could best continue to play his part
in “building a better America.” With this background, he was elected a
state senator, and thus arrived in Springfield, the state capitol. This auto-
biography is described with the important attendant values that both
explain his behavior in the past and equip him for the future.
These values are also reflected in his accomplishments and the positions
he took as a senator: reforming the death penalty system, providing health
insurance to children in need, improving the tax system for working fami-
lies, passing ethics reforms, and opposing the war in Iraq. His interest with
ethics is repeated later, when he reminds his audience that he “was proud
to help lead the fight in Congress that led to the most sweeping ethics
reform since Watergate.” This reminder follows his detailing of the current
state of affairs in American politics, thus inviting an important contrast.
The agenda he introduces is one of fundamental change. But in antici-
pation of the skepticism this may evoke, he roots his discussion in the
nation’s accomplishments of the past: defeating a tyrannical Empire,
surviving the Depression, and achieving justice in the face of hatred and
discrimination. The agenda of change in fact involves a recovery of the
past in the sense that he issues a call to take back the government and
heal a union that has been divided. The government needs to be taken
back from the cynics, and lobbyists, and special interest groups, and the
ethics reforms that Obama has championed are offered as evidence that
the change is already in progress.
To pull these threads together and capitalize on the sense of place he
had evoked earlier through the choice of Springfield, “where North,
South, East and West come together,” and where Lincoln called for a
divided house to stand together, he resurrects that “tall, gangly, self-made
Springfield lawyer,” calling him into the present: “He tells us that there is
power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction … He tells
us that there is power in hope.” Obama, another gangly, self-made
lawyer, differing only in color – which he never mentions and will never
make an issue in his campaign – exploits the place, the voice, and the
character of a predecessor that he would emulate in his audience’s eyes. If
Lincoln is present on the day, it is in the figure of Obama. As the invita-
tion is then given to join the quest, the identity of the one making the
call has been deliberately made ambiguous.
For all the recalling of the past, this is a speech about the future. He is
asking his audience to deliberate, to weigh some important decisions and
decide. And he is offering crucial advice for that deliberation, guiding it
towards the only conclusion that his discourse can imagine. It is a call for
action as an outcome of deliberative choice.
Who is that deliberative audience? The immediate audience stands
before him: those who have travelled “from far and wide” to hear him.
Among them are the members of the media who act as conduits for a
larger audience of Americans who have the opportunity to face the chal-
lenges of the “millennium together, as one people.” But buried within
this larger audience are those that he wants to specifically address, and
who he refers to as “our generation.” This is the larger group of impor-
tance to which he and those standing before him belong: “Each and
every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be
done. Today we are called once more – and it is time for our generation
to answer that call.” Obama closes the gap between himself and those he
is addressing and turns an “I” and a “you” into a “we.” It is no longer
about him, as he tells them, it is about them. The agenda is a shared
venture, and so midway through the speech he issues a call: “let us
begin.” That “let us” refrain is repeated twenty times in the next few
minutes of the speech (or seven paragraphs of the text), and gradually
interwoven with the repetition of “we can.” Obama will use the figure of
repetition several times during the speech, including the later repetition
of “he tells us” attributed to Lincoln. In the history of rhetoric, names
have been given to strategies of repetition. Anaphora3 describes the repe-
tition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive
clauses or sentences.
As noted earlier, permeating the whole speech are the central values
that Obama wants both to weave into the picture of his character and
stimulate in his audience. These are values that distinguish past events
and that he will project into the future. In fact, the whole speech is char-
acterized by a value-focused rhetoric. Obama presents himself as a
compassionate man, working as a community organizer in a job where he
gave far more than he got. But he is also an accomplished man of
achievement and he wants to pass this ethic on to others. Core to this is
3â•‡ Since later discussions may invite confusion on this, I should distinguish the traditional rhetorical
term from Chastian’s (1975) development of anaphoric chains. In this sense anaphora denotes a
primitive recurrence structure characteristic of many terms (like indexicals and proper names).
This is the sense we will see Robert Brandom (1994) adopt in a later chapter.
the accepting of responsibility reflected in the “we can” refrain. And this
is backed with a vision of a united nation that can “disagree without
being disagreeable,” that can compromise and listen to other perspectives,
which can assume the best in people. Accountability, fairness, courage,
honesty, are all values that are evoked and encouraged.
A final thing to note at this point about Obama’s speech is its proleptic
quality. He anticipates objections that are likely to be made (worries that
may arise in his hearers’ minds) and responds to them before they can
arise. It is true that he is not from Illinois, but he explains how he came
to be there and why, making the details of that explanation a natural part
of his candidacy. People may worry about his name and possible Muslim
associations. But without making explicit reference to these, he talks early
on about his Christian faith and its importance to him. He is young and
inexperienced and so may seem arrogant: “But I’ve been here long
enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” The most
significant aspect of his candidacy is never mentioned or referred to, lost
perhaps in the image of a new Lincoln.
Speech #2: Architect of change

A year and half after the Springfield speech, on November 4, 2008, Obama
stood at the podium in Grant Park, Chicago as president-elect. A lot of
speeches had been written and delivered in the interim, including the
crucial speech distancing him from his former pastor. But the Grant Park
speech differed in its focus. Attention was given to how they had arrived
at that historical moment and what was at stake in getting there. And the
speech attempts an analysis and interpretation of what this means.
The speech begins with anaphoric force. Any doubters have had their
answer that night, but what that answer means is carefully spelled out
with a series of repeated “It’s the answer.” So, for example, it’s the answer
demonstrated by long lines at polling stations because people believed
that on that occasion their voices would make a difference. And it’s the
answer of the rich diversity of Americans that they were united, not
divided. These opening passages are important to the kind of interpreta-
tive analysis that the victory is being given in the speech.
The next move is to thank the many people who have had a hand in
the achievement, ending as might be expected with the “you” that had
most made it happen. This “you” will be addressed directly because it
accounts for the remarkable victory. To emphasize this, Obama creates a
contrast by first analyzing the early stages of the campaign, born in
backyards and living rooms and supported by the contributions of
everyday working people. Given this unlikely origin, the victory can only
be explained by the belief and industry of the people.
He then begins to directly address them: “I know you didn’t do this just
to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me.” So he tells them
why they did it: because they understood the task ahead, a difficult path. In
rallying his listeners to persevere he again recalls the words of Lincoln
recounting the bonds of affection that bind even those Americans who disa-
gree among themselves.
The speech culminates with the example of the 106-year-old Ann
Nixon Cooper. She had seen a century of remarkable changes, changes
that had convinced her how much America could change, and thus that
it could be changed again. The progress she has seen is linked to the
potential of the future and the final invocation of the speech to answer
the call of progress.
Unlike Speech #1, this speech spends more time analyzing the path
that has led to the victory than looking ahead. The invocations about the
future are vague and indistinct, while the analysis of the past is used to
recall the values that Obama wants to highlight and reinforce. This
judging of the past calls for a different kind of judgment than that
involved with deliberations about the future. The past exists; it needs now
to be interpreted so that its meaning can provide lessons for the future.
This judging audience extends far beyond the deliberative audience of
Springfield. Obama begins by addressing those who voted for him, and
extends his address to speak to those who helped him directly and worked
for the campaign. Then, given the message of unity that pervades the
speech, he includes those Americans whose support he has yet to earn,
promising to represent them. And then he extends his address to “those
watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces
to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our
world.” The message of unity is extended to these: their story is a singular
one, the destiny shared. It should strike us how ambitious, or amor-
phous, this audience really is. Rhetoricians speak of addressing all human
beings, but few speakers find themselves in a position to attempt such a
feat. It will be one of the concerns of this project to consider the prob-
lems inherent in such an attempt.
This speech may be unlike the Springfield speech in its concerns and the
direction of its analysis, but it is similar in that it too is enriched with
value-focused rhetoric. The lessons, accomplishments and examples are
vehicles for the values that are to be embraced and championed. Those who
believed in the campaign and worked for it are deemed to have shown
courage and sacrifice. Building on this, Obama summons “a new spirit of
patriotism: of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch
in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.” The
message of unity is underlined by emphasizing that the Republican Party
was founded on “values of self-reliance, individual liberty and national
unity.” These are values, Obama insists, shared in common by Republican
and Democrat. And the widest audience “beyond our shores” is offered the
lesson of the enduring values of America: “democracy, liberty, opportunity,
and unyielding hope.”
That hope is captured graphically in the example of Ann Nixon
Cooper, who over the course of seven paragraphs comes to represent the
nation itself. The history she has seen over one hundred plus years is
the history of America. The changes she has seen have been America’s
changes. And her hopes have been a nation’s hopes. That the example
offered, brought before the eyes of the audience, is a frail, elderly woman
symbolizes the inner spirit that can endure and overcome physical weak-
ness to succeed. As this figure of hope comes to represent America itself,
another repetitive refrain is introduced to show how hope can be
successful, this time at the end of each clause: “Yes we can.” Like
anaphora, the figure of antistrophe involves repetitions but at the end of
successive clauses. Each simple “Yes we can” contrasts a point in
American history when things looked bleak, when women’s voices were
silenced or tyranny threatened democracy. The refrain is repeated six
times and then one last time at the end of the speech.
Speech #3: About a man

The final speech to consider here was given by president Obama in
Washington, DC in August 2009. It was a speech of a different nature,
even genre, to those discussed above, insofar as it was a eulogy for
Senator Edward Kennedy. Eulogies play an important role in the lives of
states and communities. They offer an opportunity to reflect on the char-
acter of a person and the values he or she possessed. Eulogies are occa-
sions when the values of a community can be highlighted and reinforced.
The Kennedy eulogy, as we would expect, focuses on the life and
accomplishments of one individual. Albeit an extraordinary individual
whose life (like that of Ann Nixon Cooper) witnessed pivotal events in
America’s social history and who comes (in the course of the speech) to
represent the society’s achievements of progress and improvement on
important landmark decisions like the Civil Rights Act and the Americans
with Disabilities Act.
Obama rehearses the details of Ted Kennedy’s life, selectively avoiding
the negative, as befits the occasion. His remarks are flavored with a series
of anecdotes that reveal the man and focus on his resilience in the face of
adversity. Through the painful experiences of his life and the lessons learned
from them, it is suggested, Kennedy was able to become a champion of
other sufferers, and a voice for those who had none. Attention is paid to
what he represented from what may be seen as a “golden age” of politics:
“when the joy and nobility of politics prevented differences of party and
philosophy from becoming barriers to cooperation and mutual respect – a
time when adversaries still saw each other as patriots.” Thus, a theme of
earlier speeches – the prospects for unity – is carried over here, with that
struggle for unity personified in the life and attitudes of the eulogized man.
Then, in the second half of the speech, the attention shifts from “him”
to “we.” A series of sentences about what we cannot know (“We cannot
know for certain how long we have here”) introduces a further series of
statements about what “we can do.” Here the lessons of the life eulogized
are projected onto the lives of the audience, particularly the prospect of
having “a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings.” This effort
is carried over into the final image of the speech: a man on a boat, jour-
neying out, “ready for what storms may come.”
The eulogy, as noted, is primarily a vehicle for conveying ethos. It is a
core type of character discourse (or discourse concerned with character),
not in the sense that we saw in Speech #1, where a speaker must create his
own image through words, but in the sense that the character of another
person serves as an example for others. The one eulogized becomes a
receptacle of a community’s values, representing what is best about that
community and what others can emulate. The rhetoric involved is
epideictic – that rhetoric engaged in praise and blame – and the audience
is addressed primarily at the level of values, as agents of actions that can
reflect those of the exemplary person being praised. Thus, of all the value-
focused speeches, this one is most fundamental.
The audience here is first and foremost the Kennedy family, identified
at the start. But if the speech is to be effective as a eulogy and to success-
fully accomplish the goals of epideictic, a much wider national or state
audience must be envisaged. And so Obama directs his address to family,
guests, and “fellow citizens.” It is the latter, wider, audience that can most
benefit from the efforts of the eulogizer; the more intimate audience
already knows what is to be rehearsed in the speech.
The example of Ann Nixon Cooper was used at Grant Park to repre-
sent the journey of a nation to a pivotal point in its history. But Ted
Kennedy symbolizes the core values that made such a journey possible –
resilience in the face of repeated adversity. The great eulogies of the past
praised a state’s heroes, honoring the sacrifices they made. There are two
references to Kennedy as a hero in the speech. The first comes in a quote
from Jacqueline Kennedy: “On you the carefree youngest brother fell a
burden a hero would have begged to be spared.” And then from Obama
himself: “we loved this kind and tender hero.” Interestingly, this is not
the warrior hero of old, although he is first mentioned as “the lion of the
U.S. Senate” and his fist-pounding forcefulness in debate is emphasized.
But the values drawn from this hero and offered for emulation are found
in his kindness and tenderness. He represents a “sense of service and self-
lessness” and his many acts of kindness are given prominence in the anec-
dotes relayed. The core paragraph that conveys the lessons to be learned
reinforces these values: we can care for those close to us, treat others with
kindness and respect, and “strive at all costs to make a better world.”
Kennedy is praised as the proverbial servant of the state, and other fellow
citizens are encouraged to follow the example and serve the state with the
same attitude of giving.
1.3â•… Rhetorical proofs

In Chapter 3, attention will turn to Aristotle’s early work on rhetoric and
the features he highlighted as of particular importance. But we can already
anticipate in these three speeches of Obama lessons of Aristotelian insight.
In each case, the speaker strives to be effective and uses different means
to that end. At the same time, being “effective” might be understood in
different ways. The speech at Springfield will have been effective if it
creates in its audience (or a sufficient portion of them) a spirit of deliber-
ation so that its members weigh the merits of Obama’s candidacy and
finds the strengths outweigh any weaknesses. And, importantly, that
conclusion must then be taken up in the appropriate actions. To be
persuaded to deliberate in this way, the audience must first be persuaded
both that the issues matter and that the speaker has the kind of character
to deliver on the promises. Hence, a lot of effort is expended on empha-
sizing the importance of the issues and constructing an image of Obama
as a person with the qualities needed to deliver on his claims.
The Grant Park speech is designed to place the events of the day in
their place in a series of pivotal events in the nation’s history. Thus it is a
1.3â•… Rhetorical proofs 13
speech that looks to bring about understanding in the audience and to
have them interpret events according to the understanding that is being
offered. The character of the speaker has faded from importance; other
matters move to the fore.
The eulogy has as its apparent focus a man, but its actual interest is in the
values that that man can be used to promote. It is a speech rich in the rhet-
oric of praise and the lessons that can be drawn from a life. Importantly,
attention is diverted away from the speaker, who offers a common voice,
and onto an object of adoration that becomes “larger than life.”
These three kinds of speech, ones that promote deliberation, evalua-
tion, and praise, each possess a trace of the other two. But it is the last
type that is most noteworthy in this respect, since there is more than just
a trace of the epideictic in the other two. While the epideictic is purely
concentrated on value, the other two types of rhetoric are also value-
focused. Obama cannot successfully launch his campaign without regis-
tering the values that require it, the values that will characterize it, and
most importantly the values that he possesses as a candidate. And the
explanations provided at Grant Park would lack the power to grip
the imagination and place the events in the appropriate historical chain
if the values that brought it about are not identified and championed.
The “proofs” of the rhetoric – logos, ethos, and pathos – used in these
speeches are all influenced by the focus on values. The logos, or rhetorical
reasoning used to persuade, operates, as we have seen, at the level of
anaphora, metaphor, prolepsis, and so forth. But this is not reasoning
detached from the interest in value. The examples used (Lincoln, Cooper,
Kennedy) in quite different ways are all examples that reflect positive
values and encourage strong commitments on the part of the listeners.
Likewise, the use of character discourse (ethos) to describe those exam-
ples, and to describe Obama through association with the first, works
insofar as the positive values of those characters become evident. Obama’s
constructed ethos is that of an ethical champion of change, infused with
the spirit of one of the nation’s champions of change.
The final proof, pathos, is the most value-heavy, since it ignites and
creates emotion in the audience, stirring those involved with the language
of repetition, reinforcing in them a belief in themselves, and mirroring
them in exemplars like Ted Kennedy. Emotion plays a central role in a
coherent response to the messages delivered and the creation of the right
dispositions to bring about positive actions.
The embedded audiences of these speeches also point to some
Â�problems that become apparent when we focus on the nature of
audiences. I refer to them as embedded audiences because in each case
there is more than one audience being addressed, even when there is a
clearly identifiable “immediate” group in front of the speaker. Like
a Russian nesting doll levels of an audience can be unpacked, each within
the others. Related in a multitude of ways, these audiences may react in
common ways or experience internal conflicts along different lines.
Argumentation is often at its most useful in addressing such conflicts, to
reveal and manage them as much as to resolve them.
1.4â•… Theories of argumentation

Three principal strands of theorizing about argumentation weave their
ways through the tradition, although not all share the same continuity.
The most pronounced of these is what I will call the “logical” strand. We
see it clearly in the tradition that values formal validity, which treats an
argument as the product of claim/conclusion and reasons/premises that
results from argumentation, and that has its historical roots in Aristotle’s
logical syllogism. A second strand, equally Aristotelian in its origins,
emphasizes the way argumentation involves exchanges between partici-
pants in a dialogue, usually with the intention of winning or resolving
a dispute. This is characterized by the kinds of procedures (or rules) that
govern successful outcomes of argumentation as illustrated in Aristotle’s
Topics (and carried over into the Rhetoric). I will call this the “dialectical”
strand. Thirdly, as the earlier mention of the Rhetoric and the previous
discussion of rhetorical “proofs” would indicate, we can have a largely
“rhetorical” strand which emphasizes the various means of persuasion
and the features of audience that align with these. This strand, more than
the others, draws on ethos and pathos and recognizes their role in moving
audiences toward accepting claims. In this project, I will have most to say
about this third strand of argumentation theory, but much of the discus-
sion will also involve the other two and I will first indicate some central
ways in which we might think about these other two and in which they
are usefully operative at the moment.
Much of the recent embracing of argumentation theory as an inter-
disciplinary (and multi-disciplinary) field is in reaction to the authority
of formal deductive logic (FDL). Principal figures in argumentation like
Stephen Toulmin (1958), Charles Hamblin (1970), and Chaim Perelman
(with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca) (1958/1969) have questioned the ability of
FDL to express ordinary arguments and have introduced theoretical
models to remedy the gap. In its favor, FDL has traditionally been more
1.4â•… Theories of argumentation 15
focused on implication than argument, with no real expectation that it
could serve as an adequate theory of everyday arguments; it seems more
the case that everyday reasoning fell beneath the radar of prominent logi-
cians since it lacked the precision that was sought and modeled in FDL.
Toulmin suggests this in the ways he approaches the domination of FDL
as if its practitioners had unintentionally assumed it had the power to
address argumentation across a range of fields. It was a strength of
Toulmin’s analysis that he could show how mistaken such an assumption
was, although his fellow philosophers did not thank him for making the
observation. The need to deal usefully with everyday reasoning (as well as
a range of specialized reasoning that exceeded the limits of FDL) led
theorists to develop accounts of argumentation outside of the formal
requirements of validity and soundness, even if vestiges of that language
still haunt areas of argumentation theory like the study of fallacies.
Some of the more compelling alternative logical accounts fall under
the general label of “informal logic” (IL), a theoretical and practical
perspective that both seeks to develop non-formal criteria for the assess-
ment of arguments and respond coherently to the problems associated
with everyday reasoning, like the apparent prevalence of fallacies. Driven
by the pioneering work of Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair in the
1970s (Johnson and Blair 1980), and developed by them along with a
cadre of other researchers among whom Douglas Walton took a creative
lead, IL has developed a strong pedagogy and research agenda. While
adherents diverge, common features of the approach are sufficient to
categorize it within the “logical” strand, since it stresses a central product
of propositions that make up the “argument” and discusses ways in which
this argument can be cogently constructed and reasonably evaluated.
Questions of dialectics indeed come into play through features like
Johnson’s (2000) dialectical tier which surrounds the illative core of the
product, and informal logicians have increasingly paid attention to
rhetorical features like context, audience, and the possibility of non-
verbal arguments (Groarke 1996). But the core account remains logical.4
Principal among the dialectical approaches currently being employed
is the pragma-dialectical theory developed by the Amsterdam School
(van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004). The focus here is on
rules and procedures that can and should be employed to achieve a
4â•‡ It should be acknowledged that while Walton contributes much to the logical side (a theory of
argumentation schemes, for examples), he would align himself more closely with the dialectical.
David Hitchcock (2006) also places him in that sphere.
desirable outcome in a critical discussion. That outcome is the successful
resolution of a difference of opinion; successful, in that the participants
agree to the resolution and abide by the rules for arriving at it in a
reasonable fashion. Clearly, this is a normative model of argumentation
that does not so much describe how people do argue but how they
should do so if they want to proceed rationally.5 The pragma-dialectical
theory is pragmatic in that it focuses on the communicative processes
involved in argumentation, principally on how argumentation is
conducted through speech acts (Searle 1969); and it is dialectical in that
it assumes a discussion between two parties intent on resolving a disa-
greement between them. A range of empirical studies has been done to
add credence to the model. Challenges to pragma-dialectics stem in part
from two general claims made by its proponents: that in spite of its
principal attention to dialogues, the model deals equally well with
monological arguments, and that all argumentation can be reduced to
attempts to resolve differences of opinion. A further criticism that does
not stem from claims made for the theory has to do with its rejection of
rhetorical features of argumentation (Crosswhite 1996; Tindale 1999;
Frank 2004). But the latter has been addressed by a new program of
research conducted by Frans van Eemeren along with Peter Houtlosser
(van Eemeren 2010; van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999, 2000, 2002)
that explores how rhetoric fits with pragma-dialectics under the heading
of strategic maneuvering. This new avenue of research is motivated by
the recognition that arguers do not only want to resolve disagreements,
they want to resolve them in a way that favors their own interests, and
to that end they adopt various rhetorical devices and strategies.
A tension thus emerges between reasonableness and effectiveness. The
standard version of pragma-dialectics had overlooked the latter, and
the extended version aims to remedy this. Thus, strategic maneuvering
is the attempt to monitor the relationship between reasonableness (seen
in dialectic) and effectiveness (seen in rhetoric). Rhetoric is always
subordinate to dialectic (van Eemeren 2010: 82), and whenever it tries to
dominate the discussion is “derailed.”
The final perspective that can be described broadly as rhetorical argu-
mentation has achieved some of its strongest proposals in the New
5â•‡ Note, however, that pragma-dialecticians also claim that their normative approach has been
confirmed by empirical research: “this experimental empirical research has shown indisputably that
the norms of reasonableness incorporated in the pragma-dialectical discussion procedure are to a
large extent intersubjectively acceptable to ordinary arguers” (van Eemeren 2010: 35–36).
1.4â•… Theories of argumentation 17
Rhetoric Project of Chaim Perelman, in association with Lucie
Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969). A philosopher writing first for philosophers,
Perelman set out to develop a logic of value and saw the principal route
to this to stem from the tradition of rhetoric and its Aristotelian
origins. The New Rhetoric Project is notable for the centrality that it
gives to the role of audiences both in the development and evaluation
of argumentation. All arguments are aimed at an audience, in
particular at gaining (or strengthening) the adherence of an audience
for the theses put forward. And to this end, the argumentation must
begin in the belief set of the audience (the claims to which they already
adhere) and move to conclusions that they may then be persuaded or
convinced to adopt and from there to act accordingly. A principal
measure of the success of this argumentation, then, is its efficacy in
achieving the right uptake in the audience. And a variety of rhetorical
means is employed to achieve this, including “choice,” “presentation,”
and, importantly, “presence.” Perelman writes: “Every argument implies a
preliminary selection of facts and values, their specific description in
a given language, and an emphasis which varies with the importance
given them” (1982: 34).
The New Rhetoric Project’s concerns for value and its history in
Perelman’s earlier work on justice (1963, 1967) serve to distance Perelman’s
conception of rhetoric from any negative associations that such an idea
might have with attempts to persuade at any cost and exploit audiences
for the arguer’s ends. Fairly presented, argumentation animates human
freedom (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 514), germinating that
sphere in which reasonable choice can be exercised. And it does this
because the rationality of the activity itself is predicated upon the exist-
ence of a community of minds.
Any community requires a range of commonalities of language and of
interests that binds it. But entering into argumentation with others
also confers value upon them, recognizes them as worth persuading and
attaches importance to their agreement (1969: 16).6 Establishing communion
with an audience (in the rhetorical sense) involves understanding their
positions, viewing things from their perspective and sharing that perspec-
tive to some degree. Moreover, this attitude elicits “some concern for the
interlocutor” and requires that the arguer “be interested in his state of
mind” (16).
6â•‡ Not all argumentation aims at gaining adherence. Some techniques, like Illustration (Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 357) are designed to strengthen an adherence that is already present.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca illustrate the nature of this concern
with remarks that bear on the use of the ad baculum (or the “appeal to
force”). The negative use of force is contrasted with the use of reasoned
argument, which appeals to the free judgment of the other person or
persons, who are not seen as objects. “Recourse to argumentation assumes
the establishment of a community of minds, which, while it lasts, excludes
the use of violence” (55). There is even an exhortation to employ one’s
own beliefs in persuasion only to the extent that the interlocutor is willing
to give assent to them. Clearly, such advice tells against a pejorative sense
of rhetoric where any means may be used to persuade an audience.
The concern for the other parties in argumentation is not, of course,
absent from the logical and dialectical models that have been mentioned,
although it may fairly be said that it is not as pronounced. Informal logi-
cians, while focusing on the argumentative product and evaluating it, pay
attention to the contexts from which they arise and the interests of those
involved. We see this in the attention given to matters like obligations
incurred by arguers in presenting their cases and following through with
them. And among those obligations, importantly for informal logicians,
is the commitment to avoid fallacious reasoning. In a similar fashion,
many of the pragma-dialectical rules are designed to allow a freedom of
expression within argumentative contexts and to prevent one party from
blocking the views of another or refusing to take them seriously. Still,
given the different general aims of each of these models, witnessed in the
different answers that would be given to the question “Is this a good
argument?”, the rhetorical strand holds most promise for insightful
discussion of the roles that audiences play in the construction and evalua-
tion of argumentation.
1.5â•… The place of audience

Each model and school of argumentation mentioned above offers what
might be seen as a complete account of the subject on its own terms,
where those terms are connected to the particular goals of argumenta-
tion favored by the account, whether it is the improvement of reasoning
generally through the avoidance of fallacies, or the resolution of a disa-
greement. Still, much attention is given in these accounts to the argu-
ment or dialogue that is produced, with less specific interest in the
audience for whom it is produced. This is less the case with developments
of Perelman’s work, although even here we may have difficulties uncov-
ering a clear theory of audience with all that that might entail.
1.5â•… The place of audience 19
Informal logicians in particular have been ambivalent about the role
that audiences play in matters (Tindale 2006a), some going so far as to
question the usefulness of focusing on audience (Govier 1999: 183ff.).
Even in the recent rhetorical focus in pragma-dialectics that indicates
some appreciation of a role for audiences there is still a primary focus on
the arguer and much that is important about the audience is overlooked
(Tindale 2006b). One of the three central aspects of strategic maneu-
vering is “audience demand” (van Eemeren 2010: 108–13) and in his
discussion of this aspect van Eemeren recognizes some of the identity
problems associated with questions of audience. He notes, for example,
that there may be primary and secondary audiences, where the latter is
used to reach the former, which is the intended audience. Debates
between politicians can express this relationship, where the primary audi-
ence is the general electorate and the political opponent merely the
means to address that electorate. Van Eemeren also acknowledges that
composite audiences may involve a diversity of perspectives or a homoge-
neity. The proposed way of addressing a diverse audience is similar to
what we will see suggested by Chaim Perelman. That is, the arguer
attempts to provide multiple argumentation which includes different
arguments for each subset of the larger audience. Van Eemeren insists:
“Whatever its make-up, if the whole audience is aimed at by strategic
maneuvering, all views and preferences of the audience that are pertinent
to determining the starting point of the argumentative discourse must be
taken into account” (2010: 110, italics mine). As we will see in the next
chapter, and as the italicized phrase should suggest, this solution masks
several problems.
Theories of argumentation must not only have an appreciation for the
importance of audience and a role for the concept, they must be devel-
oped around it. This is a substantial claim the support for which will be
worked out over the course of the project. We can begin by considering
how the perspective of the audience provides each of us with our initial
entry into argumentation.
chapter 2
Argumentation and its issues
2.1â•… Argumentation as an expression of social nature

“Readers and writers,” suggested Salman Rushdie, can acquire an under-
standing of a broad-based identity that they can then take out into the
world to “find common ground with their fellow human beings” (2012:
627). Like literature, argumentation offers a similar prospect, in part
because it is part of our social existence. We are argumentative beings,
but we are so most fundamentally from the perspective of audiences.
James Crosswhite (1996) spells out ways in which we are “in audience.”
This is part of our social nature in terms of how the world approaches us
and how we find ourselves in the world. In later work Crosswhite (2013)
goes further, noting how we are rhetorical beings and thus “give ways of
being to each other and receive them from each other” (Crosswhite 2013:
17). We cannot escape the influences of the social upon our beliefs and
behaviors. John Dewey (1927) employed an analogy between cells within
the body and the human being within society to emphasize the kinds of
dependency involved. As he conceived it:
Any human being is in one respect an association, consisting of a
Â�multitude of cells each living its own life. And as the activity of each
cell is conditioned and directed by those with which it interacts, so the
human being whom we fasten upon as individual par excellence is
moved and regulated by his associations with others; what he does and
what the consequences of his behavior are, what his experience consists
of, cannot even be described, much less accounted for, in isolation.
(Dewey 1927: 188)
But it is more than a matter of describing and accounting for what a

person does and the consequences of behavior. We are interested in the
deeper implication behind “what his experience consists of,” because it
is the social dimensions of our experience that capture our entries into
argumentation.
20
2.1â•… Argumentation as an expression of social nature 21
Even though we may constantly move among audiences as our alle-
giances and interests change, we never lose the perspective of “audience”
as a fundamental way in which we receive the world. Discourses, argu-
ments, and claims are directed at us or we come upon them and recog-
nize them for what they are. How do we do this? In part, the answer
suggested by our experience is that we have grown up doing this and we
have learned the practices involved from a very early age. Part of how
we have learned to interact with the world is by responding, and such
responding presupposes an understanding of being addressed in relevant
ways. I am, as it were, “primed” to receive as I turn the pages of the news-
paper, peruse the billboards on the city street, and apprehend the mix of
discourses coming at me through the crowd or from a passing radio. In
fact, being-in-audience in this way describes my normal inattentive (but
waking) state. Occasionally, something grasps my attention, asserts itself
in a more conspicuous way as being of interest to me. But these occasions
of overt reception require me to be always potentially in this state. That
is, I constantly assume the perspective of an audience.
We appreciate the relevant messages for what they are because we are
constantly open to being addressed, aware of what it means to be
addressed and thus able to understand a message from an audience’s
perspective. It is this general state of openness that interests me and first
suggests the importance of audience to fully understanding the argumen-
tative situation. It is clear, as was previously indicated, that we also
express our argumentative nature by asserting ourselves, that we operate
as arguers. But the suggestion here is that we can operate in this way only
because we first operate as audiences, because we fully live the condition
of being an audience. On such terms the audience is the more funda-
mental argumentative experience. It also suggests that our appreciation of
being arguers and entering the practice of arguing starts from a prior
appreciation of being in audience. This is to explicitly reverse the tradi-
tional assumption that the arguer is at the center of the argumentative
situation by virtue of being the one who produces the argument and
controls its meaning.
Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) model of dialogism can be drawn on here to
appreciate the question of control in the argumentative situation. In fact,
we might be advised to drop the assumption of control altogether, since
what emerges is a dual venture of cooperation between the parties
involved. Words, Bakhtin claims, have an “internal dialogism” whereby
they are directed toward an answer and influenced by the answering
words that they anticipate (1981: 280). He stresses the importance for
22 Argumentation and its issues
rhetoric of understanding how the relationship with the audience enters
into the structure of discourse. Traditionally, rhetoric has treated the
listener or audience as passive. By contrast, Bakhtin envisages a more
active role for the audience: “Responsive understanding is a fundamental
force, one that participates in the formulation of discourse, and it is
moreover an active understanding” (Ibid.). Argumentation conceived
from this perspective sees both the arguer and audience personalized in
the argument, with each contributing actual and anticipated responses
in a unique argumentative situation. Hence, while the arguer may be
judged in some sense the “principal” author of the exchange, the audi-
ence is elevated to the role of co-author, having been directly addressed in
the very make-up of the argument.
2.2â•… A dynamic view of argument

The above shift in how we understand the argumentative situation also has
implications for the third main component – the argument. As we have
already come to appreciate, arguments are essentially social products. The
exercises of the logic book in the classroom may have encouraged us to
think otherwise, but any semblance of a real argument in the classroom
owes its credibility to the way it reflects actual argumentative practice in
the social world.
In a fundamental way, the practice of arguing (which gives us the argu-
ment specimens of the text books) involves the giving and consuming of
reasons. In a dialogical exchange, those reasons are characterized by
considerations of both parties. Robert Brandom (1994) contrasts what he
calls dialogical reasoning with monological reasoning. The monological
focuses on the commitments of one individual, expressed in premises and
conclusions. But dialogical reasoning involves assessments of what
follows from different social perspectives and different background
commitments (1994: 497). It is Brandom’s contention that the monolog-
ical is “parasitic on and intelligible only in terms of the conceptual
contents conferred by dialogical reasoning” (497). What this means and
the consequences that follow from it will be taken up in a later chapter.
For now, it suffices to appreciate the social character of the processes
involved and the ways in which Brandom’s analyses are given from the
perspective of the social. One of the core ideas in Brandom’s model is the
commitment made by a speaker. That commitment is understood in
terms of what is attributed to the speaker as much as what the speaker
acknowledges. That is, it is from the perspective of the audience’s
2.2â•… A dynamic view of argument 23
attributions that meaning should be understood. Of course, a speaker can
assert commitments that they are not entitled to make, and thus be called
upon by the audience to provide reasons that justify the assertion or
entitle the speaker to it (Brandom 2000: 193). It is part of an audience’s
task, in the processes of communication, to police such assertions by
judging when entitlements exist and insisting on reasons when in doubt.
This more dynamic view of “argument” (than has been traditionally
acknowledged) is closely related to that which can be extracted from
Aristotle. Adopting a rhetorical perspective on argumentation involves
the recognition that an argument’s purpose and not just its structure
must be part of its definition. By that I mean, we have been used to
defining an argument as a series of statements (minimally two), at least
one of which (the premise) provided support for another (the conclu-
sion), and it has the goal of persuading an audience. Bringing the audi-
ence into the definition marks the engagement with rhetoric and the rich
collection of ideas available from that tradition. But still there could be a
tendency to separate out the “structural” part of the definition and treat
arguments in what I would now call the static way, as mere products.
This effectively tears the product from the process in which it was
produced and pins it down for review and assessment, like a butterfly on
a display board – colorful, perhaps, but also lifeless. When the argument
is then analyzed it is so on its own terms and without sufficient regard for
the situation that produced it, along with the participants involved in
that situation. Treating arguments in this detached, static way amounts to
a failure to recognize the dynamic nature of what is involved.
Stephen Toulmin hinted at what was at stake when he wrote: “An
argument is like an organism” (1958: 87). In saying this he meant that it
has parts, an integrated structure. Toulmin’s statement recalls the
Aristotle of the Poetics describing the work of art like an organism, with
head, body, and tail. But it was also seen there to be like an animal
because it was alive, another animated thing among animated things.
The Poetics, with its demand for probable and necessary sequences in
plots, evinces reasonableness here at the heart of the poetic – a moving
train of logic. But if the poetic has a movement, so too must logic itself:
logic has a life, and its structures have internal movement. This sense
needs to be transported to the study of argumentation. An argument is
alive; it is a message of activated potential. To recall some particularly
important Aristotelian terms that capture the way he conceived natural
and social objects, an argument is a potentiality (dunamis) and two actu-
alities (energeia).
The relationship between these terms is complicated. Aristotle used it
famously in De Anima as a way to capture the interactions of the parts of
a human being (body and soul): a soul is the first actuality (activation)
of a body that has life potentially. Then, the second actuality is any
expression of that initial activation. For example an eye (a “body”) has
the potential for sight (the first actuality) but may be asleep. When the
eye is actively seeing it expresses the second actuality.
In argumentation, the first actuality is achieved in the movement
within an argument from the premises to the conclusion (while there is
not yet any uptake, any adoption (literally) of the claim involved). This
internal movement already indicates the way in which an argument is
alive with action, dynamic on its own terms. Something of this “life” was
suggested in the ideas drawn earlier from Mikhail Bakhtin. The second
actuality is in the audience, the one that adopts ideas in the process of
“uptake.” This uptake is a complicated matter that will be explored in the
chapters of this book.
We might see, then, that as a type of discourse an argument is both an
organization and a dissemination, since it collects ideas and then moves
them internally from premises to conclusion, and then externally to an
audience. And it has features that facilitate both of these movements. Or
at least the arguer has access to such features, many of which are to be
found in the wealth of ideas available in the rhetorical tradition.
2.3â•… Consequences of an audience-centered approach

Placing the audience in the center of a theory of argumentation, while
doing much to correct previous imbalances, serves to draw attention to a
range of difficult issues that then emerge. It is such difficulties that form
the central concerns of this book. I will introduce these problems here
under three general categories: (i) Identity, (ii) Persuasion, (iii) Evaluation.
Identity
There are several ways in which questions of identity enter the interests
of argumentation. From the thread that is being followed here, one
primary interest is in general audience identity or make-up. As noted
at the start of this chapter, we can use our knowledge of broad-based
identity to find common ground with each other (Rushdie 2012: 627).
But we also should note that argumentation, or being involved in argu-
mentation, is fundamental to the understanding and development of the
2.3â•… Consequences of an audience-centered approach 25
personal identities of individuals. That is, arguers and audience members
are persons, and just as being persons impacts the kinds of arguers and
audiences they may be, so, more importantly, being arguers and audi-
ence members impacts the kinds of persons that are involved and has
important bearing on how we should understand “personal identity” (cf.
Tindale 2011).
Problems of audience identity begin with the question of who is the
audience of any particular argumentative discourse and extend to the ques-
tion of how an arguer can accommodate a composite audience comprised
of different groups and individuals. A simple answer to the first question
is that the audience is just whomever an arguer wishes to address by her
or his argument. As we will see, this is a common enough suggestion. But
it fails to appreciate the social character of much argumentation that
circulates in spheres of influence rather than the more limited domains of
particular groups or individuals. We might take a simple historical argu-
ment as an example. It is standard practice in many educational institu-
tions to teach students the major arguments for and against set positions,
and to trace those arguments to their sources. The philosopher David
Hume, for example, is a major proponent of arguments against the exist-
ence of God and in his Dialogues on Natural Religion sets those argu-
ments out and debates them in a series of dialogues between several
speakers. Whoever was Hume’s intended audience, we can be fairly confi-
dent it did not include the current generations of undergraduates who
now consider his arguments. This is a concern we might have for histor-
ical arguments in general.
One response to this concern would be to distinguish between
particular localized arguments that have a limited impact in a family, for
example, or a specific court case and more global arguments where an
arguer intends her discourse for a “general” audience of those who may
be prepared to listen. But this solution also presents its own difficulties.
Can we, for instance, clearly demarcate a line between the local and the
global? Specific courtroom arguments can set precedents and become
part of the body of case law that will inform later legal decisions and
become instrumental in the training of future lawyers. Moreover
informal logicians such as Trudy Govier have raised the specter of an
audience not known by the arguer or present to her, a “noninteractive,
heterogeneous audience whose views are unknown and unpredictable”
(Govier 1999: 187). Anyone who aims their arguments at people in
general, or communicates using mass media, confronts such a non-Â�
interactive audience. Govier judges this to be a particularly difficult kind
of indirect audience. We might be able to deal with historical arguments
indirectly, insofar as we judge their cogency in relation to persons other
than ourselves. Here we are making judgments about the audience that
was originally addressed (193). At the same time (and we will return to
this in a later chapter) there is a sense that the writer of historical argu-
ments (like Hume’s) that still engage us wanted to address a wider audi-
ence who shared an interest in larger (global) questions. But beyond
explicit historical arguments, the non-interactive audience is vague or
empty of concrete features that an arguer needs in order to develop and
improve her argument. On these terms, trying to understand an audi-
ence’s beliefs in order to tailor one’s argument accordingly is a fruitless
enterprise. There seems no possible interaction on this important,
fundamental, level. Consequently, Govier suggests, it is not useful for
informal logicians to appeal to audiences to resolve issues like whether
premises are acceptable, and theorists should fall back on other criteria
to decide such things.
The concerns with audience identity do not end here. In fact, they
have barely begun. When we advance beyond this point, we encounter
the further difficulty that some audiences, even when intended, are
comprised of such diverse elements that it is difficult to be sure who is
being addressed and on what terms. Composite audiences invariably
divide along group lines, and different groups subscribe to different
perspectives that affect their beliefs and alter how they would react to
aspects of a discourse. Advocating that an arguer know her audience in
terms of the beliefs and attitudes involved (along with background
knowledge) brings this problem to the fore. Even when such diverse
elements are identified, the question remains how such diversity can be
accommodated in argumentation.
The problem of diversity that pertains to groups is not avoided when
we address only specific individuals. Emmanuel Eze (2008) argues that
“[t]he modern mind cannot but think diversely … diversity constitutes a
necessary condition of thinking in general” (2–3). Moreover, he insists
that diversity and identity are so wedded in our thinking that we can
only understand one through the other. Amartya Sen (2006) suggests
something similar when he observes that we are “diverse diversities” (13).
That is, individuals do not have a simple singular identity. We have
different commitments that all bear on how we see and understand
ourselves at any particular moment. These commitments can result in
different beliefs on a variety of issues. Associations with religions, fami-
lies, preferred lifestyles, and so forth can pull us in different directions on
different issues, depending on what is brought to the fore on any
particular occasion.
Moreover, while we are indeed members of such groups, these groups
overlap in so many complex ways that any undue emphasis on one or
another aspect serves to distort the whole picture. Identity is thus not
something foisted on people, but a matter of choice and reasoning. Sen
writes: “Along with the recognition of the plurality of our identities and
their diverse implications, there is a critically important need to see the
role of choice in determining the cogency and relevance of particular
identities which are inescapably diverse” (2006: 4). At any particular
time, we deliberate about facets of our identity in deciding what to fore-
ground and what to background. Our citizenship, residence, place of
origin, class, race, gender, education, occupations, family relations,
leisure habits, cultural pursuits, religious interests, and so on, form a web
of belongings from which we emerge and understand ourselves. Thus,
categories like a “Western perspective” can be negatively reductionist,
similar to the kind of thinking that promotes the currently popular “clash
of civilizations.” “Civilizational partitioning … lays the foundations for
misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world,” argues Sen (2006: 42).
Along similar lines, Markus Kornprobst (2008) argues for the narrative
nature of identity: “Identities are constructed through communicative
acts and symbols that, by connecting events of past, present as well as
desires and expectations about the future, tell stories about the Self and
its relationship to Other” (23). Such choosing and constructing indicates
that identities are not fixed and static things that arguers and other
communicators can categorize and depend on across times and space.
They are essentially fluid and characterized by an elusiveness that can
challenge the best attempts to consider them in preparing audience
profiles. These ideas will be important to our considerations of agency in
later chapters. It is at this level that questions of personal identity become
relevant to those of audience identity.
This individual complexity and the choices involved only serve to
compound the previous questions that governed the composite audience.
On these terms, every audience is composite, every audience is diverse,
every audience is in the process of change. And the task of knowing an
audience and then using that knowledge to construct argumentation
becomes quite forbidding.
Finally, here, identity itself is a subject for argumentation. Neta
Crawford (2002) identifies identity arguments as one of four ideal-type
categories of argument important in international relations, along with
the practical/instrumental, ethical, and scientific.1 On her terms, iden-
tity arguments “posit that people of a certain kind act or don’t act in
certain ways and the audience of the argument either positively or nega-
tively identifies with the people in question. Identity arguments may
apply to groups or to individuals, but they are specifically about the
characteristics of those individuals and what those characteristics imply
in terms of actions or reactions” (24–25). A necessary constraint emerges
for us here, for just as the “products” of arguments (statements) are
lifted out of their dialogical contexts and, as it were, frozen under the gaze
of Â�analysis, so similar decisions must be made about the fluidity of audi-
ences and characteristics captured that will serve to represent those
Â�audiences in identity arguments. There is something correct in what
Crawford suggests insofar as we can (and do) speak of types of people
and associated
Â� actions. Our early ancestors in argument, the Greeks,
certainly thought in such terms, for we find them attempting to show
that “x” was a certain kind of person on the assumed premise that if this
can be established then it could be concluded that “x” would or would
not have engaged in certain kinds of behavior because that is behavior
in which such a person would or would not engage. We have no reason
to suspect that our own ethotic reasoning deviates from this in any
significant manner. So there are ways in which we can employ assump-
tions about identity to our advantage. But on the balance of the points
reviewed, issues of identity present more challenges for argumentation
than they offer benefits.
Persuasion
The second range of questions concerns persuasion. If audiences are
comprised of such complex parts, then how are they persuaded at all?
Parts of a composite audience may react positively to argumentation
and act accordingly, while other members of the same audience are
left unmoved or, worse, react negatively to what they have heard. On
reflection, of course, this is simply a description of what happens, and
the discussion of identity goes some way to explaining why. The larger
an audience the greater the challenges for the speaker who would be
1â•‡ She calls each of these political arguments since she is interested in the process of argument in
world politics, rather than theories of argument, and she views reason as “the process individuals
go through in deciding how the world works and how they will act in it. Political argument is
public reason” (Crawford 2002: 12).
persuasive, who must draw on all her skills and resources so as to have the
greatest impact on the largest number of people.
Aristotle seems to appreciate such difficulties in his Rhetoric when he
proposes to canvass the available means of persuasion. Such means are
wide-ranging and diverse and distributed over the three types of proof
noted in the first chapter: those to do with reason (logos), those to do
with character (ethos), and those to do with emotion (pathos). He
observes, for example, that audiences are more likely to be persuaded
by someone they trust, and hence the attention a speaker pays to her
own ethos and her ability to convey positive qualities of character
through her words becomes important. We saw an example of such
character construction in the Springfield speech of Obama, along with
some of the means that might be used in this type of proof. From a
different perspective altogether, the judgment of members of an audi-
ence will alter depending on how they are disposed toward an issue or
person, and this involves what emotions they are feeling or expressing
at the time. Hence, an arguer can work to stimulate certain emotions
in an audience to encourage subsequent responses. These kinds of
example – among the many that Aristotle discusses – serve to illustrate
the diverse ways in which argumentation can be directed at an audi-
ence. Since these proofs are not mutually exclusive, then insofar as
argumentation works on these different levels, we can expect different
members of an audience to be affected in different ways. An accom-
plished arguer can draw on such different threads in presenting a case
for a position.
All of this, of course, assumes we have some idea of what persuasion is.
In general terms, we think of it as a form of social influence. Daniel
O’Keefe defines it as “a successful intentional effort at influencing anoth-
er’s mental state through communication in a circumstance in which the
persuadee has some measure of freedom” (O’Keefe 1990: 17). This
suggests that the influence involves the use of reasons. Persuasion may
have a wider sense than that involving the influence of reasons – popular
psychology treatments, for example, may approach persuasion in terms of
comparison strategies used by salespeople, or the expectations of reci-
procity that seem to govern a lot of social interactions (Cialdini 1984) –
but our interest here is restricted to the influence or power of persuasive
reasons. In these terms, traditional views of persuasion see it as involving
one person imposing ideas on another or others and “getting them” to
change their views or act in a certain way. More recent attention to “invi-
tational” rhetoric (Foss and Griffin 1995; Tindale 2004) challenges such a
view. In fact, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) encourage us to
think of ways in which an audience might persuade itself. This follows
from the active ways in which we have seen audiences involved in the
processes of argumentation, rather than a traditional view of the audience
as the mere passive receptor of argumentation. Aristotle leaves the exact
nature of persuasion unclear. But the details of his lengthy discussion
over several books of the Rhetoric would suggest that it is more than a
simple influencing of an audience to act in a certain way. In its deepest
sense, it involves encouraging an attitude in people, which in turn creates
a disposition to think and act in specific ways, and that disposition subse-
quently causes the action (Ryan 1984: 188). This again conforms with
one of the points raised by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in their
discussion of audience adherence.2 Argumentation need not, and often
does not, have an immediate impact. There may not be an occasion for
the audience to respond in an appropriate way until later (someone may
be moved by a politician’s argument to cast a vote for that person, but
cannot do so until the date of the election, and in the intervening period
other candidates have time to alter that decision by displacing the
“persuasive” argument with a stronger one). This also opens up questions
about persuasion’s durability and the relation between persuasion and
conviction. Durability concerns the lasting effects of an argument over
time. Conversion experiences that characterize some religious positions
tend to be long lasting. We might think here that the source of that expe-
rience, perhaps in argumentation, was not only persuasive but also
created conviction, and that the best way to achieve such an end is to
encourage a disposition in a person, that is, to change a person so that
they are disposed to act in certain ways. In the study that follows I will
assume that persuasion builds on conviction rather than aiming to
produce it. That is, we are convinced of many things at a very general
level (that human activity affects changes in the climate, for example)
without being personally persuaded to act on such beliefs (changing our
behavior in ways that will ameliorate the impact on climate). Thus,
persuasion is taken to be the personalizing of claims about which we are
generally convinced.
One response to the issue of persuasion might just be to insist that a
persuasive argument will simply be a good one (perhaps logically good)
and vice versa. Of course, we must then consider what counts as “good” in
2â•‡ “Adherence,” as it is employed by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in the New Rhetoric and else-
where by Perelman, is itself a complex idea. I explore this in detail in Chapter 4.
argumentative terms (and the discussion on “evaluation” that follows will
explore some of this), but the “personalized” view of persuasion already
suggests something of an answer. The related concern then becomes one of
relativism: if the quality (validity, cogency, goodness) of an argument is
specific to the audience who accepts it, then there seems little prospect for
“objective” standards. A number of argumentation theorists have wrestled
with this dilemma.
In Chapter 5 we will explore Habermas’ theory of argumentation where
he appeals to the “force of the better argument,” suggesting there is some-
thing compelling about strong arguments that force consent. On the other
hand, experience may tell us that “good” arguments, however we under-
stand them, are not always persuasive. People do not always do what is in
their best interests, for example, even when they are aware of what those
interests are and the reasons for acting accordingly. Something “more” is
needed in order to tip the scales one way or the other. Daniel Dennett
(1995) observes at the start of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea that he has given up
offering arguments because they have not persuaded people. He turns
instead to offering narratives. This, of course, assumes (wrongly) that argu-
ments and narratives are exclusive of each other. In fact, Dennett may
simply have an answer for that “more” that is required for persuasion.
Evaluation
In turning to evaluation, we consider further what makes an argument
good, or strong, or cogent – or whatever criterion is preferred – and how
this is recognized. Once again, audience considerations compound the
difficulties involved. In Chapter 4, we will see Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca ask whether a good argument is an effective argument that gains
the adherence of the audience at which it is addressed, or is it a valid argu-
ment that ought to gain it? (1969: 463). This speaks to a tension at the
heart of matters when rhetoric is brought into the domain of traditional
argumentation. In addressing audiences, rhetoric judges success in terms
of the uptake involved. But this would appear to open the door to arbi-
trariness and exploitation, and all the concerns associated with rhetoric in
its pejorative sense. The preference for a criterion that privileges validity
seems to set matters beyond audience concerns alone, to insist that irre-
spective of the audience uptake there must be criteria of evaluation that
operate outside of the particular argumentative situation, providing a
standard against which arguments can be judged. But this does several
things: it returns us to the earlier suggestion that arguments can be torn
from the dynamic relations in which they arise and evaluated apart from
those relations. It further raises the question of who provides such evalu-
ation, pointing toward what has been described as the “god’s eye view”
(Hamblin 1970: 243). As we will see in later chapters, such a position
comes with its own baggage. The “god’s eye view” is also the view from
nowhere, and it commands only as much confidence as the theoretical
apparatus that supports it. What is important for our considerations here
is that somehow in such views the audience is lost, and we are concerned
to never lose sight of the audience.
Of course, if we are to stay with the audience and insist on its
centrality in matters of evaluation, then the bifurcations within audiences
that created difficulties in the discussions of identity and persuasion are
no less challenging here. Judging an argument in terms of its effectiveness –
that is, the audience’s uptake – is a challenge where composite audiences
are involved. How much effectiveness or uptake should count? If
members of an audience adhere generally to an argument, should we
judge the argument a success? That is, can we think rhetorically of effec-
tiveness in the way we think logically of probability, where fifty-percent-
plus-one is often enough to judge an argument good? A provisional
answer to such questions would suggest that much depends on the
context of argumentation and what expectations are alive in that context.
Charities who solicit support through mass marketing campaigns, who
mail requests to large numbers of households, consider their efforts
successful if only a small percentage of people respond (as low as 2
percent on some readings). Whereas activists encouraging community
responses to local government high-density building plans would
consider their campaign a massive failure if so few people reacted posi-
tively. Even considering matters in these terms would imply that success
can be determined by the degree to which an arguer’s goals have been
met, a suggestion that shifts attention back to the arguer. What counts as
a good argument, then, is an issue that will stand in the background of
many of the discussions that are to follow.
2.4â•… The structure of the study

Some of the concerns introduced above have indeed been touched on,
although not resolved, by theorists for whom audience considerations are
important, and in Chapters 3 to 5 I will address some of those responses
as I explore the treatments of audience apparent or suggestive in the
appropriate works of Aristotle, Perelman, and Habermas.
2.4â•… The structure of the study 33
The major set of issues that I have discussed remains largely unad-
dressed in any ways that could be deemed satisfactory, and so later chap-
ters will attempt to remedy that situation. In particular, the arguments
raised by Govier against using a concept of audience at all because of the
nebulous ideas involved, and the web of concerns over identity and
persuasion associated with the issue of complex audiences need serious
attention and response. The tools for doing so, I believe, lie in recent
philosophical treatments of core ideas integral to understanding the
nature of social argumentation. These are the ideas concerning meaning,
testimony (as a principal form of evidence), emotion, and agency. Each of
these ideas bears in some central way on how people interact argumenta-
tively, and several of them, like those involved with meaning and agency,
impact the kinds of understanding that emerge. I explore these ideas in
Chapters 6 to 9 with a view to abstracting points relevant to constructing
a philosophical (rather than psychological) understanding of audiences.
The first study in this part of the book (Chapter 6) involves Robert
Brandom’s pragmatic theory of meaning (1994, 2000, 2008) as a supple-
ment to the Gricean theory of meaning that has been widely adopted in
argumentation theory. A careful review of Grice’s theory shows a limited
appreciation of audience. Under his theory of meaning (1989), for a
speaker to mean something she must intend the audience to produce
a certain response and for the audience to recognize this intention and
respond on the basis of this recognition. Problems arise when Grice
suggests there are utterances by which a speaker could be said to have
meant something but where no actual audience is being addressed (Grice
1989: 112–13). “Keep out” signs, journal entries, and “silent thinking” are
examples he considers. It is hard to see Grice’s formula for meaning oper-
ating in at least the last case. Brandom’s theory does not confront such
difficulties because it does not depend on the intentions of the speaker
being recognized. Brandom’s focus on the practice of giving and receiving
meanings and the commitments involved contrasts what we have seen
him call dialogical and monological reasoning. The monological focuses
on the commitments of one individual, expressed in premises and conclu-
sions. But dialogical reasoning involves assessments of what follows from
the social perspectives of several individuals with different background
commitments (1994: 497). The social character of the processes involved
and the ways in which Brandom’s analyses are given from the perspective
of the social have important applications for argumentation theory. One of
the core ideas in his model is the commitment made by a speaker, under-
stood in terms of what is attributed to the speaker as much as what the
speaker acknowledges. That is, it is from the perspective of the audience’s
attributions that meaning should be understood.
In defending an assertion, a speaker lends her authority to the asserted
content, licensing others to undertake a corresponding commitment
(Brandom 2000). This is one of the ways in which testimony becomes a
fundamental source of evidence in social contexts. Chapter 7 explores
recent work in the epistemology of testimony and focuses on challenges
to traditional views of testimony that are transmissive and non-generative
(Fricker 1987; Adler 2002, 2006). This position holds that testimony
succeeds by transmitting beliefs from a testifier to an audience, where the
audience comes to hold the testifier’s belief as a result of her testimony.
No new knowledge emerges. By contrast, work by Jennifer Lackey
(2008), and to some extent Paul Faulkner (2000), challenges this view.
Lackey’s work is particularly relevant for the present project for two of its
principal features: Her position is an audience-centered approach that
shifts attention away from what speakers know or believe and onto what
they say. We learn from another’s statements rather than her beliefs. She
calls this the Statement View of Testimony, defined as: “a speaker offers a
statement to a hearer, along with the epistemic properties it possesses,
and a hearer forms the corresponding belief on the basis of under-
standing and accepting the statement in question” (2008: 72). Secondly,
she believes testimony can generate new knowledge: audiences can learn
from a testifier’s statements something other than what the testifier
believes (because attention is on statements rather than beliefs).
Importantly, the epistemic work is shared between speaker and audience.
This opens up the investigation to include work like that of Martin
Kusch (2002) and John Hardwig’s research on science communities (1985,
1991) that suggests testimony is generative and that knowledge is held by
groups rather than individuals. An associated aspect of the recent work
on testimony is the central importance given to trust (Govier 1998, 1997;
Hardin 2006, 2002; Johnstone 2011). Focusing on trust further contrib-
utes to shifting attention from the testifier to the audience who weighs
testimony as a form of evidence.
The earlier examinations of Aristotle and Perelman emphasize the
important role played by the emotions in any understanding of audience
response. The next part of the study (Chapter 8) addresses this further,
looking at ways in which Aristotle’s treatment of emotion anticipates
contemporary work in neuroscientific and philosophical accounts of the
emotions (Lazarus 2001, 1984; Modrak 1987; Damasio 1999, 1994;
Thagard 2006, 2000; De Sousa 1987). Paul Thagard, for example, in his
2.4â•… The structure of the study 35
theory of emotional coherence (2006), emphasizes ways in which neuro-
science supports conclusions that the same systems in the brain are
involved in reasoning, decision-making, and emotion, with emphasis on
the social domain. His integration of emotion and cognition is a base
from which to explore the situated nature of the emotions and their role
in audience responses.
Chapter 9 involves an exploration of recent material relevant to the
primary questions of group and individual identity that drive the project.
But at this point the study is also informed by the previous conclusions
drawn from Brandom’s insights on the centrality of giving and receiving
reasons with the consequences seen for an epistemology of testimony,
and the conclusions drawn about the situated nature of emotion and
cognition. The view of personhood evident in the work of people like
Annette Baier (1995) and Seyla Benhabib (1992) reinforces that of Sen
(2006, 1999) on the relationships between personal identity and group
identity, and Christine Korsgaard’s work on the public nature of reasons
(1996a, 1996b) and its relation to her more recent studies of agency
(2009, 2008), insofar as it reinforces some of Brandom’s insights, adds to
a wealth of material that promises to inform an understanding of audi-
ence and its place in argumentation theory.
In the final chapters of the book (10 to 12), the relevant ideas and
insights gleaned from these studies are taken and integrated with recent
work on rhetorical argumentation in providing a sense of audience that
addresses the earlier problems. In these chapters, several claims are devel-
oped and defended. Among these is the claim that attention to audience
commitments in the giving and receiving of reasons expands the cogni-
tive environments in which audiences operate and helps fix identities in
terms of the belief systems present. Secondly, an emerging distinction
between audiences and addressees helps us understand how people may
experience the reception of argumentation in a way more conducive to
moving from the stage of conviction to that of persuasion.
Overall, the studies developed here aspire to open up an area of argu-
mentation theory that needs more attention. None of the solutions
offered to the problems of audience is definitive, but through the shift of
focus that attending to audience involves, each sheds new light on the
study of argumentation itself.
chapter 3
Aristotle and the natures of audiences
3.1â•… Introduction: poetic parallels

Aristotle’s work is a primary source for the tradition of rhetoric and
rhetorical argumentation. And as Thomas Farrell points out, for Aristotle
“rhetoric literally could not come into existence without a certain type of
hearer, what we understand as the audience” (1993: 68). The task of this
chapter is to explore the importance of audience in the rhetorical theory.
Aristotle’s engagement with audiences from which we might derive a
conception of “audience” is distributed over several texts but most
pronounced in the Poetics and Rhetoric. These texts address ways by
which ideas are received by hearers or spectators. While the Poetics (what
we have of it) refers only to the third book of the Rhetoric, a wider set of
parallels is implicit in the way the author describes the construction
of tragedies and poetry in terms that facilitate the audience’s capacities to
grasp, retain, and benefit from the content. When it is asked whether
tragedy should be judged in itself or in relation to an audience (Poetics 4),
the answer given is ambiguous. Clearly, there is a sense in which any
object must meet specific criteria internal to its nature in order to be an
exemplary instance of that object. But among those criteria sits the telos
or final end of the object, and in the case of tragedy that must be audi-
ence oriented. The balance between text and audience permeates the
discussion, with an importance (over character, diction, song, and
thought) given throughout to the structure of incidents in the plot (6).
The core goal of arousing pity and fear in the audience (however this is to
be understood) is best accomplished (even though the spectacle can also
suffice) by the inner structure of the piece (14). And incidents must
always be treated from the same points of view as dramatic speeches.
Less attention is focused, however – and therefore less insight into the
understanding of audiences themselves – on the nature of those who are
to be moved to feel pity and fear, and to learn from their appreciation of
36
3.2â•… Rhetoric as insight 37
the portrayal of events, as these follow the demands of necessity or proba-
bility. For that we need to turn to the more developed account in the
Rhetoric where, as Farrell notes, audience is required for rhetoric to even
come into existence.
3.2â•… Rhetoric as insight

One of the core ideas of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is that the rhetor must know
many things in the process of learning the means of persuasion. Shortly,
I will review some of the things required; but the project is quite onerous
and more than a little challenging. It is no surprise that Aristotle’s
successful rhetor should be so hard to approximate.
Among the things that must be understood is the nature of rhetoric
itself. Unlike dialectic with its characteristic asking and answering of
questions, rhetoric is marked by continuous speech. Beyond its character-
ization, we must also be clear on its nature. Routinely, “rhetoric” is
defined as persuasion with attention then focused on the various means
(legitimate or otherwise) that might be employed in order to persuade.
But as Aristotle introduces the concept, at least in the first book, the core
idea is not persuasion itself but seeing the available means of persuasion:
“Let rhetoric be [defined as] a capacity [dunamis], in each [particular]
case, to see [theorēsai] the available means of persuasion” [i.2.2].1 That is,
it is theoretical in its first instance. But what kind of seeing/theorizing is
involved? And, what is available?
Persuasion itself centrally involves enthymemes, the “body” of persua-
sion (i.1.3). In overlooking this component, the early writers of handbooks
had missed what Aristotle takes to be core to rhetoric and so arguably
could not have understood rhetoric as he did (see Schiappa 1999). In fact,
as we will see below, one of the most important questions that we might
ask is “how one may become enthymematic [ènthymematikos]” (i.1.9).2
There has been a tradition of reading enthymemes as arguments with a
missing premise. But more recent attention (Hitchcock 1995; Burnyeat
1994) has shown that, while there may well be such instances, this does
not fully capture Aristotle’s understanding. The concern behind the
enthymeme is the audience. On one level, Aristotle’s view of audiences
for rhetorical argumentation is not very flattering: Since they cannot be
1â•‡ This translation is based on that provided by George Kennedy (Aristotle 2007), reading “capacity”
for dunamis. Future references are to Kennedy’s translation, unless otherwise noted.
2â•‡ Freese (1926) translates this phrase as “[making] a man a master of rhetorical argument.”
38 Aristotle and the natures of audiences
expected to understand anything lengthy or complex, arguments must
be kept simple, and so enthymemes will involve short arguments with the
focus on the audience’s ability to grasp the ideas involved. Additionally,
this goal will be achieved with greater success if the audience already
knows part of what is being put forward, if they can contribute to the
argument by way of completing it (Tindale 1999). What emerges is
the idea of an argument in which material is suppressed because it does
not need to be stated – the audience already knows what is involved. But
there is nothing in this that restricts the enthymeme to an argument with
just one expressed premise and another that is suppressed. Moreover, the
unflattering view of audiences behind this conception conflicts generally
with the way Aristotle develops his attention to audiences throughout the
Rhetoric, just as it sits awkwardly with the idea of rhetoric being
concerned with speeches alone.
Beyond this, there is a more important sense, implicit in what has
been said, by which enthymemes bring the audience centrally into the
picture, since a primary meaning of “enthymeme” is “something in
the mind.” The seeing that rhetoric is is an internal seeing, an insight. The
arguer must, in some important ways, see into the mind of her audience
and compose the speech accordingly. George Kennedy (2007) points to
various ways this sense of enthymeme has been understood. Isocrates, for
example, takes the “something in the mind” to be a “striking thought”
(Against the Sophists, 17). But we need not restrict the sense to a particular
thing (thought) within the mind, rather than understanding the focus to
be on the mind generally and its way of seeing. The contrast between
seeing with the body’s eye and seeing with the mind’s eye is an important
one that Aristotle exploits in several of his works. Theorizing is an
internal seeing, albeit as this has application to some external state of
affairs in the world. This theorein of the Aristotelian definition of rhetoric
has not shed Plato’s image of looking with and within the mind, the only
source for truth, and seeing there what is available. On one level,
Aristotle’s rhetor is a Platonic theōros – one who sees and reveals.3 As the
treatment continues through the second book, there is a move from
3â•‡ The spectator, the one who ‘sees’, or the theōros, is the constant spectre of the Republic, with three
specific accounts that bind together its disparate parts, from the beginning, where Socrates and
Glaucon go down to the Piraeus to see the festival in honor of the goddess Bendis and learn how it
would be conducted; to the end, where Er returns from the underworld to relate what he has
witnessed; connected in the middle books by the more abstract, journey of the philosopher who
passes beyond the cave, up the Line, into the intelligible realm, and returns equipped with philo-
sophical insight to relate (cf. Nightingale 2004).
interior spaces to social spaces, since it is only in the latter that the
important innovations of Aristotle’s understanding can be found. Even
the more limited interpretation of the enthymeme involving just a
particular idea still assumes an insight into another’s mental awareness in
order to appreciate what is or is not already there. At the least, what we
should take away from this is the importance that audience considera-
tions are given from the very start of the Rhetoric.
Of the various features of the Aristotelian account that might provide
further insight here, his introduction of the topoi would seem to be fore-
most. Drawing on the geographical metaphor implied by the term, a
topos is a place we might go for an argument or the essential details of an
argument (Rubinelli 2009). But there is considerable debate over what
kinds of places are involved. The discussion so far would encourage us to
look first for internal spaces, places in the mind. In this respect some of
Kenneth Burke’s (1950) remarks on the topoi are instructive. Burke
considers those of the Rhetoric to be primarily places of “opinion,” in the
sense of the audience’s opinions with which an arguer or speaker needs to
connect. Thus, Aristotle reviews the acts, conditions, personal characteris-
tics, and so forth, about which people have specific opinions. All such
opinions are presented as available means of persuasion.
Of most interest here, though, are Burke’s suggestions around the
purpose of using such topoi. Essentially, they enhance collaboration in
the argument on the part of the audience. An audience is moved not just
by receiving an assertion, but by creatively participating in it. “Thus, you
are drawn to the form, not in your capacity as a partisan, but because of
some ‘universal’ appeal in it. And this attitude of assent may then be
Â�transferred to the matter which happens to be associated with the form”
(Burke 1950: 58). For example, gradation, where an argument builds to a
conclusion, is a “strongly formal device.” By the time an audience reaches
the second stage of the gradation, they will “feel” how it is to develop (we
might better say here that they will “see” how it is to develop), and on the
level of “purely formal assent” they will collaborate in fulfilling that form
and completing the argument. And, we must add, they do this because the
topoi are universals in the mind; they are not just places that arguers go, but
to which audiences are led to complete reasoning. What seems tenuous in
Burke’s proposal is the suggestion that the attitude of assent will be trans-
ferred to the issue that the form was carrying. The act of completing the
argument oneself should contribute to the kind of self-persuasion character-
istic of rhetorical argumentation; yet further aspects of persuasion may also
be required. But for our purposes the point to be made lies in the
availability of common “places” that both arguers and audiences can have
recourse to in packing and unpacking argumentative discourse.
This emphasis on common places that are internal to minds also rein-
forces the egalitarian tone with which the Rhetoric begins. Rhetoric is not
a separately definable art because it belongs to all people: just as everyone
tests and constructs arguments, so they defend themselves and attack
others (i.1.1). Everyone has the basic capacity for rhetoric. Where art
comes into play is in the consideration that some people are successful,
while others not.
This relationship between capacity and art speaks to another matter of
controversy in the Aristotelian account. Some commentators speak only of
rhetoric as an art; others regard it a capacity. The focus of this debate
should be on one of the central terms in the definition of rhetoric: dunamis.
According to the definition, dunamis is an individual faculty or capacity to
see or discover in any case the available means of persuasion. It is fertile and
unconditioned. But on a deeper level the capacity conditions other potenti-
alities to develop the ability, the art of rhetoric. In his commentary on the
Rhetoric, William Grimaldi (1980) suggests the art precedes the capacity.
He writes: “the faculty resides in the person who has mastered the rules and
principles of the τεχνη. Thus one with the δυναμις is able to scan the
subject and perceive [the available means of persuasion] that which will
move the auditor toward a reasoned acceptance” (1980: 36). But as we
will see, a stronger reading would root the developed art in a deeper
capacity to function as rhetorical beings. Certainly, to master the art allows
the rhetor to recognize rhetorical possibilities. But rhetoric itself is more
than this; as a capacity it is more than this.
It is this idea of dunamis, a term so common in Aristotle’s vocabulary,
which moves the definition of rhetoric squarely forward. Found in
tandem with energeia (actuality), dunamis, as explained in the
Metaphysics, can denote either a passive or active capacity in relation to
change. And there are two basic senses that should interest us: a thing can
be so constituted as to bring about change in itself; and a thing may be
such that change is brought about in it by something else. In the Posterior
Analytics Aristotle accounts for perception and experience being built up
in the mind because the mind has a capacity to act this way [ii.19]. By
contrast, the change in a building is brought about by a cause external to
it. In the Metaphysics, we find the basic definition:
We call a capacity a source of movement or change, which is in another
thing or in the same thing qua other, e.g. the art of building is a capacity
which is not in the thing built, while the art of healing, which is a
capacity, might be in the man healed, but not in him qua healed. Capacity
then is the source, in general, of change or movement in another thing or
in the same thing qua other, and also the source of a thing’s being moved
by another thing or by itself qua other. (Metaphysics, v.12)
In the strongest understanding, then, dunamis is the power that a thing
has to produce a change from a source within itself.4 This is identi-
fied as the primary kind of potentiality, the starting point of change.
Importantly, the exercise of such a power is a kinêsis – a movement or
process. So, for example, the housebuilder’s art is a power whose exercise
is the process of housebuilding.
In the traditional reading of Metaphysics Book ix (or Θ) Chapter 6,
dunamis is related not to movement (kinêsis) but to actuality (energeia).
A dunamis in this sense is not a thing’s power to produce a change but
rather its capacity to be in a different and more completed state. But there
is a problem with this reading since throughout the Aristotelian corpus
energeia is itself understood as movement. It is only Metaphysics Book ix.6
that opposes actuality to movement (kinêsis), thus removing motion from
actuality (and affecting the relation to dunamis). Burnyeat (2008) has
explained the inconsistency in a helpful way. In a lengthy study, he shows
that the section in question (1048b18-35), while being authentically
Aristotelian because of its style and the nature of the thought involved,
does not belong in the Metaphysics. The distinction between energeia and
kinêsis does not fit the overall program of Metaphysics ix (Burnyeat 2008:
220). Moreover, the contrast in the passage does not occur anywhere else
in the Aristotelian corpus (259). The source of the problem lies in the
open tradition of the text, reaching back to two branches: α and β.
Through a detailed analysis, Burnyeat shows that the relevant passage
from chapter 6 is “well attested in branch β, not at all in α” (236).
He then studies the route that brought the β version into our editions.
The consequences of Burnyeat’s analysis are several, but for current
purposes it serves to conclude that the non-motion sense of energeia is
unique to the problem passage in chapter 6 and should not be exported
elsewhere. Burnyeat identifies the Nicomachean Ethics (10) and De Anima
(2.5) as works that should not have energeia read with this gloss, but we
should also add the Rhetoric to this pair. With its appropriate sense
restored, dunamis is the capacity to bring about change through a move-
ment actualized through energeia.
4â•‡ In his Penguin English translation of the Rhetoric, Hugh Lawson-Tancred (1992) renders dunamis
as “power.”
In the Rhetoric, dunamis is an active, learnable capacity or potentiality
(cf. Makowski 2009), and it captures the gaze of the rhetor following the
movement within what has persuasive potential. But an important ques-
tion now asserts itself: namely, how, if at all, is this capacity to construct
messages that is fundamental to the definition in the first book different
from or related to an audience’s capacity to receive messages? If rhetoric
involves a capacity to see the available means of persuasion, is it not also
operative in an audience’s capacity to be persuaded? Here it matters,
I think, whether rhetoric is judged an art or a capacity. If the former,
then its interest lies mainly with the rhetor who is concerned with the
skills involved. If the latter, then it speaks to a general capacity to “be
rhetorical,” to both construct and receive rhetorical messages. The
Aristotelian definition supports this.
Susan Allard-Nelson (2001) identifies this problem, albeit indirectly, in
her treatment of virtue in the Rhetoric. She is concerned with an apparent
inconsistency between the discussions of virtue (arête) as a capacity in the
Rhetoric and a state or condition in the Nicomachean Ethics. She resolves
it by treating the audience of the Rhetoric as passive and the rhetor as the
originator not just of the object of choice, but also of choice that subse-
quently arises in the audience (257). In the Ethics, by contrast, the deliber-
ator is the source of her own choice.
My discussion of dunamis clarifies the problem at hand, since neither
of the primary senses (change in the thing itself or in another (passive)
object) completely fits the treatment of the Rhetoric. Of course, if the
audience is viewed as a passive object, then the second sense does fit and
Allard-Nelson’s reading is correct. But as will be seen even the simple
conceptions of audience are not passive. The audience contributes too
much to the process of persuasion seen, as noted above, in the nature of
the enthymeme, which assumes that which the audience brings to it. It
is the case that persuasion must create desire in the audience, but
therein lies the problem, since we have, effectively, a clash of desires:
those the rhetor strives to create in the audience, and those that
members of the non-passive audience bring about in themselves. Allard-
Nelson recognizes the problematic implications (both metaphysical and
ethical) of viewing human beings as the passive objects of rhetoric, in
part because, as she puts it, “the product of oratory is represented by the
desires, thoughts, and actions of human beings who must, surely, be
given some degree of responsibility for these same desires, thoughts, and
actions” (256).
In spite of recognizing this problem, her concluding “image” of the
hearer/audience is disappointing. She suggests that the success of rhet-
oric in the Aristotelian model depends upon the average nature of audi-
ences and contrasts them to the phronimos of the Ethics who is the
source of her own choices. The final concept of audience thus remains
passive:
The dynamis of virtue, then, which is a rational capacity internal to the
listeners that requires a choice to be set in motion, is supplied with
that choice by the orator. As they become persuaded, the listeners internalize
the choice, the object of choice, and the reasons for choosing for which the
orator argues. Thereby, choice, or a determinate desire to act, is contained
within the internalized and completed state of persuasion. All deliberation
ends once the agent has internalized the rhetorician’s choice, and she now
desires in accordance with this choice. (258)
This explanation would fit Plato’s idea of persuasion leading the soul
(Phaedrus 261a-b), or rhetoric creating slaves of those addressed (Gorgias
452e), or even Gorgias’ account of Helen being led against her will
(DK 82 B11), but it lacks what Aristotle’s idea of rhetorical capacity is
adding to the discussion. Still, acknowledged here is what should be
seen as an important way forward. The dunamis of virtue is a
rational capacity internal to the listeners. Rhetoric, we have seen, involves
a capacity on the part of the rhetor to see. It is the driving force of an
active rhetorical agent. And audiences, insofar as they operate rhetori-
cally, must have a corresponding capacity. James Crosswhite (2013) speaks
of rhetorical capabilities, and while most of these appear as what we
might identify as second-order capabilities, they assume an underlying
first-order capacity to think or see rhetorically5 – to recognize rhetorical
messages and judge them in line with our own interests and desires.
In this way resulting choices are our own – audiences are persuaded, but
not passively. Therefore, there must be a balance between the rhetor’s
use of the modes of persuasion and the capacities of the audience. This is part
of why it is still so relevant to go back to Aristotle with his rich account of
human nature. In spite of the controversial nature of such essentialism, it
remains an assumption of his account.
5â•‡ In fact, Crosswhite argues that rhetoric creates the possibility for there being any leading or being
led (in the Platonic sense), and he sees this in the ways in which we are rhetorical beings (2013: 17).
This must be the foundation that makes possible the kinds of capabilities he goes on to describe,
like that which allows us to change our minds or which allows us to acknowledge the significance
of others’ views (63).
3.3â•… Aristotle’s arguer
The previous section has shown how the composer of arguments, or
speeches, needs a particular kind of insight, a theoretical seeing which
will facilitate successful persuasion. But Aristotle requires much more
of his arguers and we might consider the range of skills and knowledge
involved before examining further his understanding of audiences, since
similar requirements will be made of them.
There is a complex set of things that the argumentative agent needs to
know. Included in such knowledge are the modes of persuasion or
“proofs” I discussed in Chapter 1, essentially those of logos, ethos, and
pathos. Each of these has its own particular set of details. In the first
instance (logos), the arguer must know the rules of reason. These relate to
the construction of dialectical and rhetorical arguments, as well as those
that govern demonstrations. The arguer will also appreciate the differ-
ences between good arguments and their fallacious counterfeits, as well as
the facts related to any subject on which they wish to speak (ii.22.4).
Secondly, under the ethotic mode the arguer will understand human
character and goodness in their various forms. Some of Aristotle’s
remarks on this front corroborate features of his ethical philosophy found
in the Nicomachean Ethics (and elsewhere). This suggests the arguer
should have a similar background, understanding the nature of virtue
and vice as well as the various spheres of human existence in which these
operate.6 Under pathos the arguer will need an understanding of the
emotions – that is, they should be able to name them, describe them,
know their causes, and how they are stimulated (ii.2.8).
Beyond these central features, there is the need to be able to distin-
guish between those proofs that are given in the argumentative situation
(atechnic)7 and those that the arguer has some inventive control over
(technic). For example, the arguer or speaker is constrained by the testi-
mony of witnesses, but free to employ different rhetorical figures to
present her case.
Aristotle’s rhetoric is noted for his division into three genres – the
deliberative, the forensic, and the epideictic – and each of these makes
specific demands of the arguer in terms of the factual background knowl-
edge expected. The deliberative rhetor, for example, gives advice about
6â•‡ In general ethos and pathos provide strong connections with Aristotle’s larger moral theory,
including the related understandings of practical wisdom, virtue, and good will.
7â•‡ Especially as these are used in forensic rhetoric (i.15).
3.3â•… Aristotle’s arguer 45
such things as finances, war and peace, national defense, and the framing
of laws. Accordingly, such a person needs to know “what and how exten-
sive are the revenues of the city” (i.4.8), and “what wars [the city] has
waged and how and with whom there is a likelihood of war” (i.4.9), and
to know these things about neighboring cities as well. The deliberator
must also know the nature of happiness and its component parts, like
good birth (i.5.5) and beauty (i.5.11). In addition, the deliberator “should
grasp the elements of the good and advantageous in the abstract” (i.6.1),
including (since people disagree about such things) the “greater good and
the more advantageous” (i.7.1). Finally, and perhaps most challenging,
under this heading, the arguer needs to have an understanding of “all
forms of constitution [politeia]” (i.8.1), appreciating the customs and
legal uses of each. This sums up the extent of the political knowledge
required of Aristotle’s arguer.
The person engaging in epideictic has as her or his point of reference
the values involved in praising and blaming. Knowledge is required, then,
of what is fine, and of virtue and vice in general. Aristotle then gives an
account that is consistent with that in the core books of the Nicomachean
Ethics, including justice, courage, self-control, magnanimity, prudence
[phronēsis], and wisdom (i.9.5-13). These are important considerations
given the negative way in which rhetoric is often viewed and the tendency
of parts of the Rhetoric to play to that prejudice. Given Aristotle’s general
association of knowledge and action, it seems impossible that he should
think the rhetor he is describing anything but a person of virtuous intent,
and several of his remarks corroborate this. Knowledge transforms the
knower, and the knowledge requirements of the rhetor make for an indi-
vidual apprised of the dimensions of an ethical life and actively concerned
for those who would be persuaded by what is said.
The last of the three, forensic or judicial rhetoric, requires much of the
knowledge already assumed by the other two, like the nature and types of
wrongdoing. But this is also where features of psychology are more explic-
itly broached. The rhetor needs to not only know the number and purposes
for which people do wrong, for example, but also “how these persons are
[mentally] disposed” and what their victims are like (i.10.1). This leads him
to probe more deeply into the reasons why people harm others,
and attribute such actions to things like vice (kakia) and Â�incontinence
(akrasia). Thus: “people do everything they do for seven causes: through
chance, through nature, through compulsion, through habit, through reason,
through anger, through longing” (i.10.8). Implicit here is the expectation
that the rhetor will gain an understanding of these causes.
This demanding set of requirements expects a lot of the Aristotelian
arguer, and insofar as failings on several of these fronts would undermine
the goal of persuasion it is no surprise that success should elude the grasp
of so many. It must raise the question in our minds as to how really prac-
tical all this was. Could Aristotle expect many people to match up to such
rigorous criteria, or do we have no more than an ideal model at which he
expected people to aim? More surprising still is the appreciation that as
much as has been said about the arguer, it is the audience that lies implicit
in so much of this. What the arguer requires most of all is a firm under-
standing of her or his audience, since the details of the rhetoric given here
are essentially audience-centered. In order to decide how to draw from this
vast repertoire of skills and knowledge, the rhetor must understand those
to be persuaded in order to decide how to approach that task.
3.4â•… What counts as evidence in the Rhetoric: the power of signs

Earlier, it was noted that one of the goals of the Rhetoric is “becoming
enthymematic.” The person will be most enthymematic “who is best able
to see from what materials, and how, a syllogism arises” (i.1.11). This is
because rhetorical demonstration is enthymeme and the enthymeme is a
type of syllogism (or reasoning), since not all syllogisms are demon-
strative ones. Moreover, this person must grasp what sort of things an
enthymeme is concerned with and how it differs from a logical syllogism.
Indeed, while much of the attention accorded by commentators to the
Rhetoric focuses on ethos and pathos (and appropriately so), the under-
lying idea that must first be clarified is the logos that is involved. This is
made difficult in part because, as James Allen (2001) observes, the text
seems to reflect different moments in Aristotle’s own clarification of the
rhetorical syllogism. As Aristotle proceeds in the same opening section
of Book i, the distinction he has in mind is between truth (logical syllo-
gism) and opinion (rhetorical). Humans, he believes, have a natural
disposition for the true. Corresponding to this is an ability to aim at
commonly held opinions. And this is the domain of the enthymeme.
In the Prior Analytics, the enthymeme is defined as “a syllogism from
likelihoods or signs” (ii.27), and this understanding is carried through
into the Rhetoric where likelihoods (eikota) and signs (sēmeia) are deemed
the base from which enthymemes are derived (i.2.14).8 In the same
8â•‡ In chapter 25 of the second book, the sources of material for enthymemes are expanded to include
examples (or paradigms).
3.4â•… The power of signs 47
section of the Prior Analytics, a “sign” is understood as a premise that is
reputable or generally accepted (endoxos), an understanding that carries
over into the Rhetoric and applies to some of the signs there. Moreover, a
“sign” itself is defined as “for anything such that when it is another thing
is, or when it has come into being the other has come into being before
or after” (Prior Analytics, ii.27).9 This account of signs in the Prior
Analytics stands with that in the Rhetoric as one where Aristotle seems
most receptive to them as a mode of evidence. Allen suggests that what
we see in the Rhetoric is a developing attitude toward the argument from
signs, with the larger part of the Rhetoric influenced by the Topics and
Sophistical Refutations, followed by shorter sections in which Aristotle
applies the categorical syllogism to the enthymeme (Allen 2001: 21). This
suggestion is useful when we consider some of the ambivalence that
Aristotle seems to have towards such arguments in the Rhetoric.
The argument from signs is distinguished from the argument from like-
lihood in that likelihood depends on the knowledge of a generalization
under which the particular in question is being brought; the sign hinges
on a new piece of evidence that the speaker is introducing. Hence, the
focus in each case is in a different direction (toward what may be thought
of as the major premise or the minor premise), and the expectation of
what the audience will already accept will vary accordingly. Important
sections of the Rhetoric are devoted to these ideas, particularly the argu-
ment from signs which constitutes a core kind of evidence in this area.
Within signs, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of evidence: that which
is necessary (tekmēria) and that which is not (and which has no name).
Necessary signs are those from which a logically valid syllogism can be
formed, and these are incontestable. As a case in point, Aristotle offers
the sign that a woman has milk as evidence that she has given birth
(i.2.18). We can judge this as a first-figure sign inference, following
Aristotle’s categorization in the Prior Analytics (ii.27) of three ways
according to the position of the middle term in the figures:
p1: All women who have milk have given birth.

p2: This woman has milk (the crucial minor premise).
c: Therefore, this woman has given birth.
The middle term here is “women who have milk.” As Allen points out,
the influence of Aristotle’s development of the categorical syllogism can
9â•‡ Barnes’ translation.

be seen in the promotion of tekmēria as the strongest kind of evidence
because the conclusion must follow from true premises.
Non-necessary signs, by contrast, are refutable, although they may still
carry weight in an argument. That is, they can be reputable (endoxos).
Because they are formally invalid, it seems, they have no distinguishing
name, although Aristotle later will refer to them simply as signs. So we
can recognize the two types of evidence here as necessary signs (tekmēria)
and simple signs (sēmeia). Aristotle then offers a distinction that explains
what amount to second- and third-figure inference signs. Some signs are
related as the particular to the universal, while others as the universal to
the particular. As an example of the first, he offers:
p1: Socrates was wise.
p2: Socrates was just.
c: Therefore, the wise are just.
Here, “Socrates” is the middle term. The sign is refutable since we may find
a wise person who is not just. That is, in terms of the theory of the syllo-
gism, the “wise” in the conclusion covers all cases, while that in the premise
covers only the particular. Unfortunately, we can only speculate about the
legitimate use of such an argument because no complete theory is provided.
Moreover, the more problematic case is where the universal is related to the
particular. Here we are offered:
p1: All who have a fever breathe hard.10
p2: This man breathes hard.
c: Therefore, this man has a fever.
Again, as Aristotle notes, this argument can be refuted even if the fact is
true because it is possible for a man to breathe hard without having a fever.
Part of the difficulty for those who would understand the development
of Aristotle’s theory is that in chapter 24 of the second book of the
Rhetoric where he discusses only apparent enthymemes, what I have been
calling simple signs are included. The two cases offered match the
patterns of the refutable examples above: “For instance, if one were to say
that those who love one another are useful to States, since the love of
Harmodius and Aristogiton overthrew the tyrant Hipparchus; or that
10â•‡There is some dispute over the order of the terms in this major premise. See Weidemann (1989)
for a discussion of this and his argument that the order of the last two examples should be
reversed.
3.4â•… The power of signs 49
Dionysius is a thief, because he is a rascal; for here again the argument is
inconclusive; not every rascal is a thief although every thief is a rascal”
(ii.24.5).11 The difficulty is compounded when in the very next chapter
both necessary signs and simple signs are included (along with likelihoods
and paradigms) among the four sources for legitimate enthymemes. We
seem to have before us one of those perplexing inconsistencies that
plague the text of the Rhetoric and fuel questions of authorship and unity.
Since the account in the Prior Analytics treats simple signs as reputable
and the corresponding sections of the Rhetoric influenced by that account
include them, then one plausible explanation is that we are witnessing a
theory in transition (Allen 2001: 29). The sections that exclude simple
signs are the “earlier” sections influenced by the account in the Topics and
Sophistical Refutations. What emerges is a change in sympathy towards
the argument from (simple) signs. While this still stays short of giving us
an explanation of how the author considered as legitimate the problem-
atic cases noted above, it could explain the inconsistency.
Of course, the very fact that the Rhetoric takes as its domain of argumen-
tation those cases that might be otherwise suggests that it is the simple sign
that ought to be embraced in its reputable nature and the necessary
sign moved to the margins. To draw this back to our principal concern
with audiences: Rational audiences will grasp the necessary conclusions,
but will they be persuaded by them? That is, in terms that will be put
forward by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca centuries later,
demonstrations do not require persuasion; they do not belong to the
larger domain of argumentation. It is those conclusions that might have
been otherwise that require the skills of persuasion (Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 14).
The Rhetoric looks to cover all the arguments that might be used in
persuasion, in both their legitimate and illegitimate forms, since the
rhetor should know both sides even though it is wrong to do both
(i.1.12). Thus, the invalid arguments remain by nature refutable yet can
still be reputable if used in an appropriate way that is warranted by the
11â•‡ The Harmodius/Aristogiton argument matches the argument using Socrates:

p1: Harmodius and Aristogiton loved one another.
p2: Harmodius and Aristogiton were useful to the state (overthrew a tyrant).
c: Therefore, those who love one another are useful to the state.
And the Dionysius argument matches that of the hard breather:
p1: All thieves are rascals.
p2: Dionysius is a rascal.
c: Therefore, Dionysius is a thief.
audience. This is the account that remains absent from the text. It is wrong
to conclude that all the wise are just on the evidence that Socrates was both
wise and just. What follows is that some are just. But again, that would be
to insist on what follows necessarily, not what is persuasive. Of course,
the generalization in the conclusion does not have to be absolute and
while we can only speculate again, a defeasible generalization would meet
the requirements of many audiences. The “wise are just generally” is refu-
table but not defeated by a counter-instance. Attention shifts to the right
kind of evidence that would make such a claim seem reasonable, and to a
specific audience the case of Socrates would be the right kind of evidence.
The power of a sign (like the example or paradigm) lies in the appropriate
choice, and that will be governed by the demands of the audience. The
right sign that has currency for an audience will help it grasp a point (a
principle or general statement) towards which it may already be sympa-
thetically disposed and thus bring about a persuasive result. That we fail
to see this in the Rhetoric is due to its character as a textbook and not a
compendium of lived argumentation. Thus, what will count as evidence
(whether signs or likelihoods and paradigms, for which similar cases
could be made) will depend upon the circumstances involved and,
crucially, the audience at issue in those circumstances.12
With such arguments from signs (as with likelihoods), Aristotle is able
to extend his account beyond the logos itself into the other two proofs. In
the third book, for example, Aristotle argues that a sense of character
flows from a person’s moral state (a position consistent with that offered
in the Nicomachean Ethics). Hence, “proof from signs is expressive of char-
acter, because there is an appropriate style for each genus and moral state”
(iii.7.6). Genus here refers to categories like “boy,” “old woman,” and
“Spartan.” This wider concept of evidence is important to Aristotle
and the contexts that his rhetoric addresses. Each of the three genres of
rhetoric invites arguments based on common opinions that can be judged
persuasive in the absence of necessary evidence.
3.5â•… Aristotle’s rhetorical audiences

In the first book of the Topics, Aristotle judges those opinions to be repu-
table “which are accepted by everyone or by the majority or by the wise –
i.e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable or reputable
12â•‡ Sidgwick (1883) notes that the argument from signs also has its dangers (286ff.).
3.5â•… Aristotle’s rhetorical audiences 51
of them” (i.1). This is because opinions don’t “show their character entirely
on the surface” (Ibid.) and so may not be as reputable as they appear.
Even people who have little power of comprehension, however, may
recognize such deceptions. Thus, Aristotle extends the arguments
of the Topics to the widest of audiences, requiring only the minimum of
cognitive abilities to discern those opinions that are reputable. It perhaps
should go without saying, but it is worth noting that any attempt to
persuade assumes that an audience can be persuaded. That they are
equipped with reason sufficient to review a case and recognize the power
of a good argument, perhaps even setting aside personal bias to embrace
that argument. Such an assumption underlies the project of the Rhetoric
and arises from the capacity to be rhetorical that was discussed earlier.
One reason for judging the Rhetoric to have been composed (at least in
some of its early drafts) during Aristotle’s tenure at the Academy is the
influence that Plato’s views on rhetoric has on many of the ideas in
Aristotle’s work. We see it, for example, in the mixed view of
the emotions, where pleasure and pain are important stimulants. In the
Phaedrus, where Plato presents a more constructive view of rhetoric to
that in the Gorgias, Socrates is made to argue that a true art of speaking
requires knowledge of the audience (or, in his terms, the soul). The
speaker must understand the different types of audience in order to
construct the appropriate argument for each. This is the thinking that
Aristotle most clearly takes up and develops in the Rhetoric.
Aristotle’s decision to identify three genres of rhetoric naturally leads
us to wonder why three, and why these three? (Garver 2009). Of course,
Aristotle is an inveterate categorizer, approaching the parts of a text in the
Poetics along the same methodological lines as he had the parts of animals
and other subjects. Things have a natural telos and an internal logic that
drives them, thus a text, like an animal, will be constructed according to
what is necessary or likely (Poetics, 6). Knowing the ends towards which a
thing moves is to know part of its function and thus to grasp an overall
understanding of it. So, by extension, to know the various ends towards
which rhetoric can be employed helps one appreciate the subject matter.
But as Garver reminds us (2009: 3), rhetoric is the complement of
dialectic, and Aristotle makes no such division in the parts of dialectic.
What Aristotle does do in explaining the three genres of rhetoric is
align them with specific audiences, or hearers. For him, it seems, there
are three main types of audience. As explained, “The species [eidē] of
rhetoric are three in number; for such is the number [of classes] to which
the hearers of speeches belong. A speech consists of three things: a speaker
and a subject on which he speaks and someone addressed, and the objec-
tive [telos] of the speech relates to the last (I mean the hearer)” (i.3.1).
Without question, then, the audience is being centered out for impor-
tance. But why the writer of this text would think there are three classes
of audience is unclear. The account proceeds: the hearer must be either
an observer [theōros] or a judge, with the latter attending to past or
future events, which correspond to the forensic and deliberative genres.
The observer, of course, could attend to all three. But we are told that the
observer is concerned with the ability of the speaker, which focuses
the observer’s interest in the present, the domain of epideictic rhetoric.
Hence, on the terms set out, there are three genera of rhetoric because
there are audiences that judge the past, audiences that judge the future,
and audiences that observe the present.
Details of each of these audiences are implicit in the discussions of the
corresponding types of rhetoric. The judging-audience of deliberative rhet-
oric is concerned with practical matters regarding the welfare of the state
and their role in it. These concerns extend to financial, economic, mili-
tary, and legal matters. And Aristotle must have in mind an audience
whose background knowledge embraces these areas. Since we deliberate
about only what might come about and not what must happen, the
judging audience here is able to weigh likelihoods about the future.
Presumably, this requires reflecting on past experience and understanding
what is most likely to occur by drawing on that experience. The delibera-
tive audience will thus be skilled in eikotic arguments or arguments from
likelihood.13 Aristotle sees the members of this audience as agents of the
future, both in practical and moral terms and the nature of that agency
will be reflected in the kinds of discussion we see him developing later in
the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.
On its own terms, the audience of forensic rhetoric is another judging-
audience, but it judges the past, which Aristotle thinks is easier to
address. A key source of evidence with respect to the past will be signs, so
we may expect here an audience versed in the argument from signs and
able to distinguish the stronger tekmēria from their weaker cousins iden-
tified simply as sēmeia. As Aristotle discusses the nature of forensic rhet-
oric, he considers the treatment of enemies and takes for granted that
people will seek vengeance. So he has in mind here an audience charac-
terized by what he takes to be natural human foibles. These are people
that disagree and understand the nature of conflicts, large and small.
13â•‡ See Tindale (2010, chapter 5) for a discussion of eikos argumentation prior to Aristotle.
By apparent14 contrast with the other two, the audience for epideictic
rhetoric is an observer-audience, which recalls to mind the importance of
observation and insight in Aristotelian rhetoric generally. Kennedy notes
that this variety is the most problematic of the species since it becomes
the holder for all forms of discourse that are not clearly deliberative or
judicial (2007: 47). On the other hand, Chaim Perelman (1982: 19–20)
will single it out as the primary category,15 since all rhetoric involves value
and this is the speech that appeals to, invites, and intensifies adherence to
values. This is the audience that sees and acts in the present. It engages
core values like the fine (kalon), and it is the audience that measures its
agreements with trust.
In common to all these species of rhetoric, Aristotle’s understanding of
audiences involves people who are moved by emotions in a rational
manner. Emotions, as they are discussed in the Rhetoric, are states of
mind rather than aspects of character. They arise from perception and
influence judgments. But because of this, they can be stimulated or
weakened and the corresponding judgment influenced. If they were
deeper features of character they would be far more difficult to sway in
the kinds of ways Aristotle imagines. As it stands, audiences can be
moved by emotions so as to be put in states of mind from which to
judge. Thus, the project of the rhetoric is not simply involved in persua-
sion itself but involves also preparing the ground upon which persuasion
can build. Success in such matters also assumes certain details about the
society involved. Given the attention paid to shame and shamelessness,
for example, we can see an expectation of people for whom social embar-
rassment is a motivating factor in how they behave. Likewise, it is a
society in which pity and indignation are important responses to states of
affairs that might arise. Aristotle understands people in these ways.16
Aristotle’s conception of audience also extends the Platonic idea in at
least one other important direction. The Socrates of the Phaedrus seems
unaware of the difficulty of addressing different groups, but this awareness
is evident in the second book of the Rhetoric (chapters 12–17). Here,
Aristotle looks at groups in terms of different stages of life and key social
14 I say “apparent” here because the audience of epideictic is also (later) identified as a judge: In the
second book, chapter 18 we read: “a judge is, so to speak, simply one who must be persuaded …
and similarly in epideictic the speech is composed for the theōros [spectator] as a judge” (ii.18.1).
The context here is the ways in which speeches should be made ethical.
15 “[A]ll practical philosophy arises from the epideictic genre” (Perelman 1982: 20).
Perhaps there is too much essentialism involved. See Gross (2006) for a discussion of the
16
emotions as social phenomena. I pursue this question in Chapter 8.
factors that may influence people to respond in particular ways. Thus, he
categorizes audiences in terms of the young, the old, and so forth. And also
considers how such groups will respond under the influences of things like
wealth and power. We may worry that the exposition has devolved to the
point of stereotyping (“the young are prone to desires and inclined to do
whatever they desire” – ii.12.3). But, within reasonable limits, we can and
do generalize about people at different stages of life; their interests
and desires do influence them to react in common ways. We can reasonably
imagine that some factor with respect to a person’s youth could be taken as
a sign (albeit a refutable one) that they will act in a certain way.
This extension of Plato’s account indicates a recognition of general
groups and the different ways they have to be accommodated. Less clear
is any sense of how individuals within such groups must be addressed
and, more particularly, how the varied commitments that individuals
hold to different groups could be addressed. In the third book of the
Rhetoric, the discussions of style and delivery do involve several remarks
that implicate the audience and move in the direction of these larger
problems.
Under the discussion of style, or lexis, the reader is introduced to
tropes and figures of both speech and thought. A trope is semantic in
nature, involving the alteration of a word or phrase from its normal
sense. A figure of speech, on the other hand, involves a change in the
syntactical patterning of a phrase. The third category, figures of thought,
seems the most enigmatic. It involves neither a semantic nor syntactic
shift but something more pragmatic in nature. As we will see below, it
involves bringing about an effect in the mind of the audience by bringing
something “before the eyes.” Fahnestock (2000) suggests these figures of
thought work like modern-day speech acts (170).
Clearly, the choice of any stylistic device will involve careful considera-
tion of who it is that is being addressed. Failure to grasp a metaphor will
contribute to a failure to be persuaded. So the arguer must be aware of
the common pool of metaphors shared with the audience. In the Poetics,
Aristotle suggests the ability to construct new and creative metaphors is
an important skill of the more proficient writer (Poetics, 22), but the
rhetor will not wish to exceed the audience’s ability to see the connection,
to be carried across from one sense to the other. Even as it stands, the
employment of tropes such as this recognizes a more able conception of
audience than the earlier remarks about audience competence implied.
Likewise, figures of speech activate common understandings between
arguer and audience. The figure discussed at length here is the antithesis,
which works (on one level) in terms of balanced cola. We are aware of
such syntactical patterning in popular examples like “Ask not what your
country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Here, the
two cola sit in balance such that having heard the first phrase, the audi-
ence is able to supply the second phrase (whether or not it is subsequently
uttered by the arguer) and complete the figure. Thus, this figure is invita-
tional in a way explained earlier in the discussion of the enthymeme.
Under energeia, Aristotle stresses his conception of actualization. Here
the idea of insight in Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric is made complete.
The phrase bringing-before-the-eyes [pro ommaton poiein], or visual
conceptualization, captures the immediacy of what is experienced by an
audience: “for things should be seen as being done rather than as going to
be done” (iii.10.6). In his next chapter, a fuller explanation of visual
conceptualization and what brings it about is given. “To say that a good
man is “foursquare” is a metaphor, for both are “complete”; but it does
not signify activity [energeia]. On the other hand, the phrase “having his
prime of life in full bloom” is energeia, as is “you, like a free-ranging
animal” (iii.11.2). Something comes alive for the hearer through being
actualized in such a way.
This visualization encourages attentiveness and provokes, as we later
discover in the discussion of arrangement or taxis, receptivity
[eumatheia]. If they are not attentive, hearers will not be receptive,
“because the subject is unimportant, means nothing to them personally”
(iii.14.7, emphasis mine). Implicitly here is a concern for more than just
large types of judger- or observer-audiences or the groups comprised by
age. The subject must be brought alive for each member of an audience,
and that involves making it important to each one personally in order for
reception to occur. One final comment on this receptivity is found in
chapter 17, when Aristotle resorts to a further spatial metaphor to capture
the idea of making something present in another’s mind. The mind is not
receptive toward a speech if the opponent to that position appears to
have spoken well. “One should thus make room in the hearer’s mind for
the speech one is going to give, and this will happen if you take away [the
impression that has been left]” (iii.17.15). We have here another prepara-
tory act to clear the ground for persuasion. In a startling, if awkward,
metaphor, Aristotle seems to suggest that you cannot bring something
before the eyes (of the mind) if that space [chóran] is already occupied. So
one needs first to clear that space to make room for the speech that is to
follow. Here is Aristotle again inside the mind of the audience; observing
himself what is likely to be observed.
Like arguments as they were defined in Chapter 1, speech moves. It is
not simply an activity, but a movement between speaker and hearer. The
metaphor carries meaning from one thing to another, with a corre-
sponding movement taking place within the hearer’s mind whenever the
trope is used successfully. The antithesis moves through the process of
anticipation as the hearer runs ahead of the speaker, completing the phrase
and taking ownership through the contribution made to that completion.
Actualization moves within the mind of the hearer, demanding attention
in a compellingly visual manner. Such stylistic features “carry” the argu-
ment, expressed in enthymemes and examples [paradeigma], moving the
audience toward a persuasion in which they participate as co-authors in a
rhetorical process.
Some summary remarks are in order about the conception of audience
to be found in the Rhetoric. While the work attends to the rhetor’s seeing
of the available means of persuasion, those means are discussed and
understood in terms of the audience, which is the central concept
involved. In general the audience is conceived as an active participant in
the processes of persuasion rather than a passive recipient of persuasive
arguments. Audiences contribute the details of arguments; their beliefs
and knowledge form the materials that arguers must use in conjunction
with the topoi chosen to convey them. And audiences contribute the
parts of arguments that are unspoken, because these are already aspects of
their belief structures.
In spite of some of the uncharitable things said about the capacity of
audiences to grasp and understand complex chains of reasoning, the
demands made on audiences are really quite high, from the extensive
factual fund of information about finances, strategy, and politics on
which the arguer can then draw, to the more complex details of language
meaning and structure that allow them to appreciate the intent behind
the usages of tropes and figures. More personally, to take a concern in the
questions that drive deliberative, forensic, and even epideictic rhetoric
speaks to a deeper appreciation of the abilities of citizens who comprise
the audiences addressed and of wanting to share in common ventures on
a societal level. That is, one addresses a society that one is interested in
belonging to and which is comprised of members that one appreciates as
being worth interacting with and among whom can be found like-
minded people with whom the finer aspects of societal life can be shared.
Much of this account sees audiences in their larger constitutions
(congregates), but there is also an appreciation of the individual hearer
whose receptivity is important and who must therefore be addressed in
ways that matter personally. While still far from addressing the complex
identity of the individual, there are ideas here that can be drawn on in
developing a fuller account of audience that accommodates such prob-
lems. In such general ways, Aristotle’s account provides much that is of
preliminary importance without really engaging the complexities of iden-
tity that were discussed in Chapter 2. He discriminates from among audi-
ences, distinguishing judges from spectators, and focusing on their
different interests according to, for example, their age. In isolating group
identities Aristotle begins to ask how things like wealth or authority may
have different effects on groups. Much of this is simple in its statement,
but it points ahead to the kinds of complexity we now see.
Finally, linking the threads of the Rhetoric as we have it from start to
end (and thus implicitly addressing criticisms of the work’s unity) is a
rich array of visual metaphors, from the insight associated with the
enthymeme to the stylistic features that bring matters before the eyes of
the audience members for their attention. Aristotle’s audiences are not
isolated, unreachable beings, cloaked in their differentness and to be
understood only through analogical means. They are knowable agents
engaged in activities in which the arguer may share. They possess a fund
of background beliefs, knowledge and values – cognitive and evaluative
environments – that can be accessed and appreciated (even if particular
items among the beliefs and values are not themselves shared). They are
partners in a dialogical enterprise of which social argumentation is the
currency of exchange.
chapter 4
Perelman’s audiences: a meeting of minds
4.1â•… Introduction: what is this audience?

The philosopher Chaim Perelman was a major influence in bringing
together the concerns of ancient rhetoric and modern argumentation
theory. As Wayne Booth observes, he corrected the Cartesian slide toward
“valueless facts, which can be known, and unreasonable values, which
cannot be” (Booth 1974: 43n). Yet in contrast to the rhetoric of Aristotle
and the principal audiences he was concerned to address, Perelman’s
new rhetoric expands the range of audience to encompass “any sort of
audience” (Perelman 1982: 4). Within this larger grouping, Perelman
and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca make three specific identifications: We may
treat ourselves as an audience in private deliberation; we may argue
with specific others in a dialectical situation; or we may try to address
all “reasonable people” and consider a universal audience (Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 30). I will look more closely at this triad of
types below because, as Ralph Johnson (2009) has observed, they involve
very different considerations. But on close examination we will see that
what is common to each is a meeting of minds, and so each one qualifies
as a genuine audience under terms that fit Perelman’s general treatment
of rhetoric.
“What is this audience around which argumentation is centered?” asks
Perelman (1982: 13), and follows it with a series of further questions to
penetrate the issue: Is it everyone who hears an address? Is it the inter-
viewee responding to the interviewer, or is it some larger audience that
will read or hear the interview? Much of this addressing seems accidental,
and so Perelman concludes that the audience is not necessarily comprised
of those directly addressed, but “the gathering of those whom the speaker
wants to influence by his or her arguments” (14). Regardless of who may
actually be receptors of an argument (and who may even have been influ-
enced), the “audience,” as defined here, is only those the speaker wanted
58
4.1â•… Introduction: what is this audience? 59
to influence, and thus had specifically in mind. This will be immediately
limiting in ways that are likely to be apparent after the discussion of
Chapter 2. What are we to make, for example, of historical arguments? In
generation after generation, the force of some of Plato’s arguments
persuades people. But the audience of his argumentation is restricted, on
Perelman’s terms, to those he wanted to persuade, and those desires are
far from retrievable. Perhaps he had in mind the audience of posterity,
but even then he could not have imagined its make-up. Whatever the
case may be with such intentions, what are we to call those who read and
are now persuaded by Plato’s discourse if not an audience? Perelman’s
limitation might help us if we could be sure about an arguer’s intentions,
but that itself is a matter of much controversy.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca warn that when one engages in mere
essay-making, with no intent to persuade concrete individuals, then rhet-
oric loses its vitality and the corresponding audiences become no more
than stereotypes (1969: 20). Although it is agreed that the audience is still a
construction of the speaker, this construction must conform to the reality
of the anticipated audience. But the construction involved is one of back-
ground knowledge, a construction that imagines the beliefs of the intended
audience as accurately as possible in order to provide reasons for that audi-
ence and not another one. This construction, then, is not a free act of the
imagination, but an activity constrained by the exigencies of a real situa-
tion with a real audience to be addressed.
The discussion of the three key types of audience follows that of the
distinction between persuasion and convincing. In general terms, the two
can often become intertwined and the difference always imprecise. But
an important distinction is allowed such that persuasion is associated
with discourses aimed at a specific audience and conviction with those
addressed to a universal audience (1969: 28). Thus, when discussion does
turn to the three kinds of audience that are singled out they are so
because they “enjoy special prerogatives as regards” their function in
“enabling us to judge on the convincing character of an argument” (30,
emphasis mine). Not surprisingly, then, it is the universal audience that
emerges as of primary importance, since the other two can reflect this in
some way.1
1â•‡ The relationship between persuasion and conviction is far from clear. Perelman’s stress on the
universal audience would seem to place conviction as the stronger. As noted in Chapter 2,
I assume in this project that persuasion builds on conviction. Since the universal audience under-
lies particular audiences, we can understand it to be the audience that is generally convinced, while
it is particular audiences that need to be moved (persuaded) to act on that conviction.
60 Perelman’s audiences: a meeting of minds
4.2â•… Three audiences
Arguing with oneselfâ•›: Self-deliberation (to take first what they treat last)
is both particular, with its individual reactions, and universal in the sense
that a person engaged in self-deliberation is thought to be in an impar-
tial position, and unlikely to be interested in special pleading or seeking
partial reasons. Rather, such a person would be concerned to marshal all
arguments of value, pro and con, and weigh them accordingly. But this
is very much a traditional image, one Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
associate with the Descartes of the Meditations. It is an image of isola-
tion, with individuals turned in toward themselves, depending on their
own resources. Such an image is captured by Rodin’s famous statue of
The Thinker, a solitary figure drawn in upon himself and deep in thought.
One is reminded here of the importance Plato placed on the interior elen-
chus (or questioning) with Socrates’ concern to convince himself first and
foremost before ever venturing to address others (Tindale 2010: 33).
This image of isolation clashes with the essentially social nature of
argumentation in the New Rhetoric Project. In fact, this is a point of
emphasis: the individualistic point of view has proved damaging for both
rhetoric and argumentation (1969: 41). In contrast, Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca will insist that self-deliberation can be a kind of argu-
mentation insofar as the arguments we use to address others are those we
use to address ourselves. Hence, “it is by analyzing argumentation
addressed to others that we can best understand self-deliberation and not
vice versa” (41). The person who wants to justify her actions to others
moves among various audiences offering reasons that she judges will be
acceptable to them, having first prepared those reasons with different
audiences in mind. She rehearses them with herself, but her reasons
always have a social character. Their origin and destination are both
outside of her, but their organization is within. Along such lines,
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca propose that “it is legitimate that the
person who has acquired a certain conviction should be at pains to
strengthen it for himself and, more especially, against possible attack
from without” (42). So self-deliberation, as it is understood in the new
rhetoric, is other-influenced and not the isolated reasoning of the
Cartesian tradition. I will have more to say later about the social char-
acter of reasons.
Arguing with others: One way to approach the differences between
dialectic and rhetoric is in terms of the audience addressed. Rhetoric,
with its natural affinity with the long, developed speech (as seen in the
practices of the fifth-century Greek Sophists) would seem an odd choice
4.2â•… Three audiences 61
for addressing a solitary hearer. In such a case, the occasion calls for the
dialectical exchanges characteristic of those between a speaker and a
single hearer. The practices of Plato’s Academy, later championed by
Aristotle in his Topics, encouraged the promotion of a thesis by one
person and the subsequent attempts by another to refute that thesis
through appropriate questions and answers.
This last point is a crucial aspect of this type of argumentation. As
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca note, the single hearer has the opportu-
nity to ask questions and raise objections (1969: 36). A form of this might
arise in self-deliberation, but the other hearer’s otherness brings a
different perspective to the activity. The exchanges can become truly
dialogical in the sense understood by Bakhtin (1981), where each person’s
utterance carries something of the reply it anticipates. There is here a
greater intimacy even than in self-deliberation and a richer sense of
sharing. This is the attitude Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca convey when
they suggest that what is at stake is not a debate in which opposing
parties each defend their positions, but a discussion where parties search
honestly and without bias for the solution to a problem (37). Such an
understanding is conveyed by the centrality given to the critical discus-
sion in the pragma-dialectical school of argumentation (van Eemeren and
Grootendorst 2004).
Most of the arguments that arise in daily life are instances of what
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca call “ordinary dialogue” (39), where
participants are simply trying to persuade another person in order to
bring about immediate or future actions, rather than instilling in them
some new truth or overpowering them with an eristical display. And
invariably when that single hearer is regarded as the embodiment of an
audience, it is a particular audience. Perhaps one they addressed indi-
rectly through association, as a teacher will address a class through
speaking to a single member.
Universal audience: Both the self-deliberator and the single hearer can
act as an incarnation of what is called a “universal audience.” This is one
of the most difficult concepts in the Perelmanian repertoire, and the one that
has caused most confusion. But if we approach it through these others,
we may better appreciate its nature and its role in argumentation,
because the challenge of the universal audience will be one that hovers
over all social argumentation. The single hearer, for example, may be
“assumed to have the same reasoning power at his disposal as the other
members of the universal audience” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
1969: 37). And again with respect to the self-deliberator: “It does seem
that a man endowed with reason who seeks to convince himself is bound
to be contemptuous of procedures aimed at winning over other people. It
is believed that he cannot avoid being sincere with himself and is in a
better position than anyone else to test the value of his own argument”
(40). Certain traits are pronounced here: a capacity for reason, objec-
tivity, and sincerity. The assumption is that in this guise the audience
loses its self-interest and reasons dispassionately.
It is a challenging picture, even more so when we consider how often it
is contradicted by individuals who cannot see past their own involve-
ments and who lack the ability to reason in a shared manner. But,
bearing in mind the normative discussion in which the concept is
presented, it is also representative of an audience that we must imagine at
work in those we hope will respond to the power of the better argument,
who will see the quality of our arguments and interact with them in a
reasonable way. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggest that the single-
hearer audience and the self-deliberator can never amount to more than
“floating incarnations” of the universal audience (31), and so it needs to
be fully explained on its own terms. This is the audience that provides a
norm for objective argumentation. It stands aside from contingent factors
like prejudice and self-interest.
Historically, an audience described in such universal terms has been
understood as having a kind of atemporal, aspatial validity associated
with the paradigm of Cartesian reason. And Perelman’s concept has been
confused with this ideal, in part because he seems to describe it favorably
in such terms.2 In fact, having created the confusion, Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca proceed to clarify matters, insisting on the temporally
and geographical rootedness of the audience. In contrast to the Cartesian
model, “Everyone constitutes the universal audience from what he knows
of his fellow men, in such a way as to transcend the few oppositions he is
aware of. Each individual, each culture, has thus its own conception of
the universal audience” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 33). This
in turn has elicited further criticism regarding the apparent relativity of
the standard. If the universal audience is the standard of what counts as
good argumentation, and each arguer conceives this in her or his own
terms then, the criticism goes, so we will have as many universal audi-
ences (and standards) as we have arguers (van Eemeren and Grootendorst
1995: 124). We will consider this and other criticisms of this idea below.
2â•‡ And so we see critiques like those of Ray (1978) and Ede (1989) that are grounded in such an
interpretation.
4.3â•… The goals of philosophy 63
For now, it suffices to see this audience as a standard of reasonableness
that is alive in all particular audiences. Because the universal audience is
certainly not some abstract ideal divorced from all real contexts. Each
particular audience has a conception of reasonableness operating within
it, and one way to describe this reasonableness is to see it as (the revised)
universal audience. The point to note is that Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca are not reducing the rich variety of audiences to three. They are
rather focusing on the normative consideration of universality and the
audiences that provide some insight into what that entails. We will
consider further the contrast between the traditional universal audience
and that of the new rhetoric in Section 4.4.
Throughout his work with Olbrechts-Tyteca and alone, Perelman
maintains the contrast between argumentation and formally correct
demonstration. We do not argue about the latter, which trades in self-
evident truths. Argumentation, by contrast, is the domain of the prob-
able or likely, as Aristotle envisaged this in the Topics, or of uncertainty, as
we may describe matters today. Demonstration aims to derive conclu-
sions from strict premises. In these terms it is an altogether different
enterprise to argumentation, which involves, essentially, a meeting of
minds. Argumentation is social in just the ways that demonstration fails
to be. The goal of argumentation, then, is to “elicit or increase the adher-
ence of the members of an audience to theses that are presented for their
consent” (Perelman 1982: 9). Even in private deliberation, where the
advocate and recipient of reasons is the same person, a meeting of minds
is still necessary. The rest of the account can be described without too
much simplification as the various means by which adherence can be
achieved. Thus, at the center of the treatment of argumentation, and
implicated in the understanding of audience, is the concept of adherence.
As the above comment about private deliberation indicates, this concept
affects even the ways we think about the earlier problem of the three
different types of audience. It is therefore crucial that we are clear on
what adherence means. To understand this, we need first to consider the
nature and goals of philosophy as Perelman conceived them.
4.3â•… The goals of philosophy

What Perelman shares with philosophers on both sides of what is
deemed the analytic/continental divide, is a refusal to see philosophy
as a body of fixed ideas, an accumulation of truths that should inform
future inquiry. Instead, philosophy is a way of thinking and speaking,
a discourse addressed to the world. It is, as the close of his Realm of
Rhetoric would propose, a subject that embraces all that falls outside
of science and whose proper method is argumentation (1982: 160). As
Nathan Rotenstreich observes of The New Rhetoric, “Philosophy is always
underway” (1972: 12).
For Perelman, a core technique of argumentation involves what he
calls the dissociation of concepts. The strategy of dissociation involves
taking an established concept and dividing it along particular lines, with
one of the separated elements promoted as the Type ii term and having a
value over its more traditional counterpart, left as the Type i term. What
triggers such a dissociation is an incompatibility in the way a concept
appears. This gives rise to the break among the original unity of elements
within the single concept. A paradigm example used by Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca to illustrate this technique is the use of dissociation in
the philosophical tradition to distinguish appearance from reality.3 Earlier
in his work Perelman had effected such a dissociation on the concept of
“philosophy.” While not of the distinctive appearance/reality type, it no
less breaks the links that join independent elements and brings about a
“profound change in the conceptual data that are used as the basis of
argument” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 412). Perelman’s valued
Term ii he calls “regressive” or “open” philosophy, as opposed to “first
philosophy” out of which it is drawn and against which it is set
(Perelman 1949/2003: 191).
Like first philosophy, regressive philosophy also studies the funda-
mental propositions concerning being, knowledge and action, but it
differs in the weight given to the starting points: “Regressive philosophy
considers its axioms, its criteria, and its rules as resulting from a factual
situation, and it gives them a validity measured by verifiable facts” (191).
But unlike first philosophy that may see itself aimed uniquely at knowing
the real, regressive philosophy aspires to an ontology that is able to guide
action (Perelman 1979: 103).
The value of regressive philosophy arises in a sense from the very limi-
tations of first philosophy. For once having established a system of abso-
lute truths, the first philosopher must then explain how disagreement
emerges in the domain of knowledge or action (1949/2003: 193). First
philosophy imagines its own otherness, which it devalues. Perelman
inverts that value system.
3â•‡ For a fuller discussion of the process of dissociation whereby Term ii is drawn from Term i see
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 416ff.) and Perelman (1982: 126–37).
4.3â•… The goals of philosophy 65
Regressive philosophy sees all knowledge as incomplete and subject to
the revision of later experience, hence its stress on openness. “It opposes
progressive knowledge to perfect knowledge, it opposes dialectical knowl-
edge to dogmatic knowledge” (203). This philosophy is, indeed, “always
underway,” and is the philosophy of the New Rhetoric Project. Its open-
ness gives rise to the need for a philosophic pluralism (Perelman 1979: 103).
The character of disagreement is what encourages this philosophic
pluralism. Without agreement, we must accept a pluralism and different
scale of values, and this in turn makes fruitful the dialogues that emerge
in which opposing views can be expressed (Perelman 1949/2003: 115). This
pluralistic attitude tells against the dominant aspirations of first philos-
ophy, since “having as its starting point the concrete human being
engaged in social relationships and groups of all kinds, philosophical
pluralism refrains from granting to any individual or group, no matter
who they are, the exorbitant privilege of setting up a single criterion for
what is valid and what is appropriate” (Perelman 1979: 71). It provides
human solutions, rather than final solutions. It provides solutions that
are open to change in recognition of the problems created by human
coexistence. And it does all this under the sign of reasonableness. But the
concept of reason at stake here is a complex one, since in his promotion
of philosophical pluralism Perelman also appeals to a universal idea. The
appeal to reason is an appeal to the agreement of (and here the recom-
mendations appear to vary) “all men who are not disqualified as members
of this universal audience” (1979: 70): that is, excluding for legitimate
reasons “those which are not part of it” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
1969: 31); or “an audience attuned to reason” (1979: 57); or “those who are
disposed to hear [the philosopher] and are capable of following his argu-
mentation” (Perelman 1982: 17). This is essentially the universal audience
that was discussed above.
One way or another, “the philosopher must argue in such a manner
that his discourse can achieve the adhesion of the universal audience”
(Perelman 1979: 58), because the quality of a discourse cannot be judged
by its efficacy alone, but also by the quality of the audience on which it is
efficacious. These are matters that have concerned philosophers like
Henry Johnstone Jr. (1978), who judged that there was actually no way to
test the uptake of the universal audience, and thus that there was no need
to mention audiences at all (103–4). Moreover, truths reached by
reasoning that is acceptable to all rational beings would be empty truths,
and so Johnstone doubts that philosophers do address a universal audi-
ence as Perelman proposes. Such concerns will be explored below.
In summation, pluralism and openness are the key characteristics of
Perelman’s philosophy. It promotes a logic of value judgments through an
emphasis on what is preferable rather than what is true. Moreover, and in
terms that distance Perelman from his contemporaries, the philosophical
enterprise itself is understandable because of its rhetorical nature (1979:
50). The primacy of audience in his work remedies the post-Cartesian
omission that afflicts philosophy (and which contributed to rhetoric’s
decline in the eyes of philosophers – Perelman 1982: 152). Philosophical
argumentation is a new rhetoric; made new by the circumstances of its
revival and the tasks to which it is set. And the philosopher is a rhetori-
cian (Perelman 1989: 244). The domain of rhetoric embraces every
discourse that does not claim the impersonal validity of first philosophy,
since “[o]ne hardly needs a discourse to submit to what is present or what
imposes itself naturally” (Perelman 1979: 103). But in this regard,
Perelman’s new rhetoric is at its core still philosophical argumentation. It
serves philosophical purposes, conveys philosophical ideas, and
is primarily addressed to a philosophical audience. And again, as such it
cannot avoid the universalizing tendencies of its past. What characterizes
philosophical discourse is that it is aimed at all reasonable people.
4.4â•… Audience adherence

Perelman’s vision for the future with its possibilities for philosophical
discourse also involves, as we have seen, a return to the past insofar as
that vision reanimates key features of Aristotelian rhetorical thought.
Aristotle’s work is a breeding ground for much contemporary thinking,
but his discussions of rhetoric are rarely the texts of choice. One of
Perelman’s many interesting claims is that he amplifies and extends
Aristotle (Perelman 1982: 4). And he does this in ways that match the
ideas to the contemporary settings that beckon Perelman. The philosoph-
ical discourses of rhetorical argumentation, while acknowledging a barely
visible epideictic core, speak to a wider range of audiences, including
those for written texts, and speak in more expansive ways beyond the
short discourses that, as we saw in the last chapter, an Aristotelian audi-
ence was judged to be able to follow.
In spite of any amplification, Perelman’s empirical philosophy remains
thoroughly Aristotelian in its essential sensibilities. Consider Aristotle’s
analysis of the Platonic Form of the Good (and of Forms generally) in
chapter 6 of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics. What, he asks, is
the good of the Good? We cannot know it, and if we could, we cannot
4.4â•… Audience adherence 67
use it. We do not see such universals; we see the particulars, and the
universal only appears incidentally in the particular. The physician does
not “see” health, but a patient. And seeing enough patients the physician
will come over time to accumulate the experience that enables a more
general judgment to be made. In turn, through the natural reciprocities
of the process that allows the knower to grow with the knowledge
acquired, the practitioner (physician or otherwise) will become better:
better at recognizing, and judging, and acting. That is, knowledge of
particulars is not sufficient; the appreciative accumulation of the
universal is crucial to success, whatever that success may involve.
Perelman’s rhetorical philosopher is similarly empirical in method and
practice, accumulating knowledge of audiences, given through the reci-
procities that such experiences provide. He or she does not see the
universal except incidentally, but recognizes all the time that it is there
operative in the particulars. Here, the particulars in question are actual
audiences – vehicles of reason and emotion. One comes to know what is
reasonable, as well as to understand the emotions, through experiencing
particular audiences that express them. Johnstone was concerned by the
value of arguments addressed to an abstract reason. As for Aristotle, for
Perelman there is no abstract reason, only particular expressions of it
from which a general understanding can be drawn. To appeal to an audi-
ence is to appeal to it both in its particular and universal modes. We
“invent” this universal insofar as it is a product of our experience, of what
we know of the audiences we confront. It is not something fully under
the control of the arguer (what Aristotle called an entechnic feature of the
argumentative situation), but atechnic, or part of the given with which
the arguer must deal. Still, its expression or depiction depends on the
arguer who invokes it by addressing it, by addressing the way that audi-
ence understands and conforms to the reasonable.
This view of experience and universality, drawn from Aristotle, is
another way to approach the problematic concept of the universal audi-
ence. We can illuminate the concept further by applying the same tech-
nique of dissociation that was employed on “philosophy” in the last
section. The universal audience of the philosophers, traditionally
conveyed, seems empty of content, while arguments addressed to it must
possess a self-evident character that has an absolute and timeless validity.
This Cartesian certitude, as we noted, binds all. Now employing the tech-
nique of dissociation, we can call this our Term i Universal Audience,
that which was confusedly first expressed in The New Rhetoric (1969: 32).
From what has been said about Perelman’s project and his idea of
philosophy, we can see how incompatible this traditional concept appears
such that it necessitates a break within the original unity of the concept
involved and a new Term ii constructed. This universal audience corrects
the failings of that from which it is dissociated. It is not absolute, it is not
timeless, and it does not possess a self-evident character. It is relative to
the particular audience, time and place, to the argumentative situation,
for which it is relevant. In this regard, we see a central feature of
Perelman’s account as an amplification of the Aristotelian.4
Other features of Perelman’s work are more apparent as extensions of
Aristotle’s treatments, pushing the dialectic further into contemporary
situations. A prime case here is the concept of “adherence” that was
singled out above for its importance. This is a concept so central to the
project of the new rhetoric, and yet one that still begs for the clarity of
philosophical analysis. This concept contributes as much to philosophy as
it does to rhetoric, because the concept of “adherence” speaks to prob-
lems, like that of basic premises or warrants, which have long perplexed
philosophers, and continue to do so.5
We are told in The New Rhetoric that all argumentation aims at gaining
the adherence of minds and in this way assumes an intellectual contact
(Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 14). Earlier, the criterion is set out
in distinction to that of demonstration:
[T]he object of the theory of argumentation is the study of the discursive
techniques allowing us to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the
theses presented for its assent. What is characteristic of the adherence of
minds is its variable intensity: nothing constrains us to limit our study to a
particular degree of adherence characterized by self-evidence, and nothing
permits us to consider a priori the degrees of adherence to a thesis as
proportional to its probability and to identify self-evidence with truth. It is
good practice not to confuse, at the beginning, those aspects of reasoning
relative to truth and those relative to adherence, but to study them sepa-
rately, even though we might have to examine later their possible interfer-
ence or correspondence. Only on this condition is it possible to develop a
theory of argumentation with any philosophical scope. (1969: 4)
Hence, “adherence” is a state or characteristic of minds and appears by
degrees, from lesser to greater intensity, since “audiences adhere with
variable intensity” (Perelman 1982: 48). Adherence registers the degree of
agreement or assent to a thesis.
4â•‡ For a much fuller interpretation of the universal audience as Perelman uses the concept see Tindale
(2006 and 2004, chapter 6).
5â•‡ See, for example, Plantinga (1993) and Freeman (2005).
Here, adherence is the aim of argumentation. At a different level, it is
the starting point. The whole structure of the argumentation has no other
basis, we are told, “than a factor of psychological nature, the adherence of
the hearers” (1969: 104). This adherence is presumed to exist and is built
upon. It is the level of agreement contained in basic premises, those
premises which need no further support and can be taken as given. Thus,
initially, an arguer employs techniques to recognize adherence, looking
for “tokens” of its presence (105), although in many cases we may have no
better guide than the presumptions of social inertia.
“Adherence” is attachment to ideas. But the metaphor of the mind as a
core structure to which things (theses) are adhered with varying degrees of
stick and intensity is an odd one. In fact, Jean Goodwin (1995) defines
“adherence” as the sticking of a person and a proposition, and then
explores the ways such “sticking” can issue in conviction.6 By contrast,
Mieczyslaw Maneli (1994) defines “adherence” as a decision on the audi-
ence’s part to cooperate with the speaker at some foreseeable time (52).
No change of perspective is required, nor any deeply felt opinion, and no
sense of “sticking.”
Our experience tells us that people agree with us and that that agree-
ment may be strong or weak, may be strengthened and may fall away
completely. But the metaphor of “sticking” does repay serious considera-
tion in what it suggests about the durableness of ideas to which one
becomes attached. Many reviews of ideas addressed to us are so fleeting
that they never assume any level of commitment. But those that do
engage us in serious ways and command a response on the level of
commitment have the potential of becoming durable and prompting
further commitments or actions. If we can build our argumentation on
agreements and move the audience through a process of reasoning to new
agreements,7 those new agreements are likely to be firmer, and more
durable, than if we build the argumentation on weaker structures like
assumption or speculation. We look for tokens of this agreement in all
kinds of behavior, not just in what people say, but how they spend their
money and the social uniforms they wear and the books they read and
6â•‡ Goodwin sees an essential problem in Perelman’s account: He wants to show a relationship between
adherence and conviction that will characterize philosophical discourse, but, suggests Goodwin,
philosophers seem not to be aiming at convictions in anyone. I suspect this is indeed the kind of
dissonance that has prevented philosophers generally from taking up Perelman’s ideas. But the
problem lies not in the account, as I attempt to show below, but in the understanding of it.
7â•‡ “Thus each argument exhibits stages, marked out by the agreements that should be reached”
(Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 110).
the newspapers they carry, and so on. Aristotle understood the impor-
tance of adherence to basic premises and the visible tokens of their pres-
ence in his theory of topoi – lines of argument “seen” by the arguer and
drawn on insofar as it can be expected that the audience will also “see”
them since they share a fund of basic agreements on which argumenta-
tion can be built. The importance of these topoi if successfully chosen is,
as Perelman notes (1979: 159), that they justify choices without in turn
having to be justified. In Perelman, the topoi are converted to the Latin
loci, thus reinforcing the physicality of the ideas involved, set out in the
geography of the mind.
Aristotle’s topoi also include those that relate to pathos, seen, for
example, in his discussion of calmness: “Clearly, then, those wishing to
instill calmness [in an audience] should speak from these topoi”
(Rhetoric, ii.3.17). This claim should encourage us to look more carefully
at the Perelmanian concept of adherence. Indeed, adherence begins as a
state of the mind, as an intellectual contact, but as it develops it encom-
passes the entire person and is no longer just the intellectual connection
of its origin. The aim is not purely intellectual adherence, but the inciting
of an action or creating a disposition to act, since the uptake need not be
immediate (1982: 13). We may think of this incitement and creation as
aims in addition to adherence, but it is more plausible to see them as part
of adherence. Perelman is not interested simply in adherence to abstract
ideas, but also to values (1982: 19, 1979: 159). Hence, the centrality of the
epideictic genre, with its emphasis on promoting or discouraging values
through praise and blame. Without such adherence, he writes, discourses
directed at provoking an action “cannot find the lever to move or inspire
their listeners” (1982: 19). The deepest adherence involves a change of
character (consistent with the ethical prescriptions of an Aristotelian
virtue theory rooted in character development) where people are disposed
(though not guaranteed) to behave in certain ways. This adaptation to
beliefs and values, I would suggest, is the strongest sense of adherence we
might imagine. At the other end of the spectrum we might envision a
weaker adherence captured in no more than an appreciation of another’s
point of view. This, too, depending on the circumstances, could be a
successful outcome of argumentation. And it could result in a durable
attitude toward that point of view. But it is not the strong sense of dura-
bility previously envisaged, where the recipient becomes personally
committed to the view and whatever that commitment entails.
So we move from one set of adherences to another, from one that
already exists in the audience to another that is brought to exist. But
having looked for tokens of the first, we may be more concerned to find
measurable tokens of the second, since this involves the determination of
the strength of arguments and its relationship to the nature of adherence
in the Perelmanian scheme. This is a puzzle that Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca themselves present to us. On the one hand, it looks as if adherence
should be measured by the actions of the audience, as those actions and
audience are intended by the arguer. Hence, Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca speak of ongoing argumentation until the desired action is actually
performed (1969: 49). And thus adherence can be measured by how audi-
ences behave: what obstacles they overcome, what sacrifices they make,
and so on. But this, as the authors concede, leads to a hazard: since the
adherence can always be reinforced, we cannot be sure when to measure
the effectiveness of the argumentation. If audience uptake is the only crite-
rion, we may be premature in judging the quality of the argumentation or
left unable to decide. After all, if adherence involves creating a disposition
to act, then until circumstances call for the appropriate actions we cannot
measure the extent of the argumentation’s effectiveness.
This focus on the effectiveness of argumentation as the sole criterion of
strength can obscure the full weight of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
proposals and lead to the kind of dismissive judgments we see from some of
the new rhetoric’s critics. Such a focus overlooks the way this issue is
brought to the fore in one of the key questions of The New Rhetoric: “Is a
strong argument an effective argument which gains the adherence of the
audience, or is it a valid argument, which ought to gain it?” (1969: 463). Just
posing the question in this way puts us outside the chronology of argumen-
tative events where we are left waiting for the tokens of efficacy. Here, we
might appraise the argumentation as it develops in terms of how well the
arguer has mustered the elements that should bring about adherence (but
does not guarantee it), given what is known of the audience. Here, we can
work with a notion of validity. Johnstone called for some way to test
the uptake of the universal audience, and in its apparent absence judged the
appeal to audience otiose. But Perelman provides the test in the recourse to
validity. Not “validity” as it has been understood in formal logic. We have
already seen that concept to be incompatible with the goals of argumenta-
tion such that through the technique of dissociation
Â� we look now for a
Term ii replacement. Such a distinction is Â�predicated in Perelman’s identifi-
cation of quasi-logical arguments. As Johnstone (Nathanson and Johnstone
1965: 148) rightly observed, quasi-logical arguments assume that audiences
already understand validity in order to see the similarity. But this is not so
much a problem as a confirmation that there is a parallel sense of validity
alive in audiences attuned to the exigencies of argumentation. It does not
preclude formal validity, the power of which was never denied. It just
restricts formal validity to its domain and renders it a Type i term from
which the Type ii is drawn.
It is still necessary to reconcile efficacy with validity in argument evalua-
tion. As the question is put to us, is the strong argument the one that
persuades the audience addressed, or the one that must convince a
universal audience drawn from it? This question is directed at the audience
and since The New Rhetoric is nothing if not self-referential, that audience
is expected to contribute to the answer. Here, also the relationship
between particular and universal audiences is brought back with the ques-
tion of strength. As with so many features of this account, they cannot be
extricated from each other; each feeds the other in answer to the puzzle.
We will always be intrigued by the prospects of efficacy, by the kinds
of uptake on the part of audiences by which effectiveness is measured.
Further clues to how this uptake can occur appear in the concept of the
fluid audience that changes through the process of argumentation, “to the
degree that speech is effective” (Perelman 1982: 149, my emphasis).
I emphasize this phrase because it captures the measure involved: one sees
in the interaction with the audience the impact of the argumentation –
through the points raised, those resisted, where repetition and emphasis
are required, and where other points are skirted over because the audi-
ence has quickly ceded them. Argumentation is a process of change (for
both the audience and arguer, although Perelman’s account is concerned
first and foremost with the audience). So efficacy is experienced in the
collaborative exchanges between arguer and audiences. The arguer’s own
responses are to the successes and failures of the attempts at efficacy.
Persuasion, rarely an all-or-nothing matter, develops in the give and take
of argumentative exchanges, with each participant contributing.
Validity then stands out as the more crucial concept, with its heavy
philosophical history cloaking it like a shroud. There is, and can be, no
rationalist model of validity working here in a project marked at every
turn by its anti-Cartesian sentiments. In an early paper, Raymie
McKerrow (1977), influenced by Allen Scult’s (1976) interpretation of the
universal audience, groups Perelman with other theorists who assume
arguments justify rather than verify their claims. The sense of validity he
sees operative is the sense in which the universal audience validates
rhetorical transactions (McKerrow 1977: 137). But the understanding of
the universal audience involved here sees it as deeply impersonal – a
dispassionate object which “will dispense answers to my queries about the
efficacy of my argument” (138). Perelman, however, conjures up, if only
implicitly, the idea of a personal validity by speaking explicitly of the way
in which the realm of rhetoric embraces every discourse that “does not
claim an impersonal validity” (1982: 162). This validity is the Term ii that
we seek. In an empiricist terrain, the valid argument will also be experi-
enced. Unlike the isolated arguments of a demonstration, argumentation
always has a social history. The community of reasoners that judges the
strength of an argument has reasoned before, and those decisions will
influence future decisions, just as they are recoverable in an empirical
analysis. When Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggest that strength
must be appraised by the rule of justice, this is the idea that comes to the
fore: That arguments are directed at audiences who have a history, who
do not emerge anew at each step, but draw on their past judgments in
making the next one. While the efficacy of the argument affects them
now; the validity stands apart from this, and draws on their past and is
projected into their future. No claim is made to an impersonal validity
here. But the appreciation can be made that any audience reasoning
through just this situation, with this history at this time, with these values
and beliefs, would find this outcome reasonable. This validity, this layer
of confirmation that reinforces the persuasive choice, can be anticipated
by the arguer who knows well the audience involved, can be experienced by
the audience, and can be evaluated in the aftermath of the argumenta-
tion. The validity can be anticipated, experienced, and evaluated. In sum,
it provides that second important aspect of the criterion of strength. To
judge Perelman’s account as one interested only in the effectiveness of
argumentation fails to appreciate the whole picture.
Arguments, then, are experienced within communities that have their
different measures of strength, their ways of being reasonable. That disa-
greements arise over the reasonable is empirically evident. That is why the
need for argumentation exists. What supports the above interpretations
are the statements made on the reasonable: “what is reasonable must be
able to be a precedent which can inspire everyone in analogous
Â�circumstances, and from this comes the value of the generalization or the
universalization which is characteristic of the reasonable” (Perelman 1979:
119). Reasonableness on such terms involves generalizations of our experi-
ence to an audience that, for want of a better term, is universal. We may
ask whether this move is necessary: given the uniqueness of argumentative
situations, no others will experience those that we experience, so judging
as if they might is an empty gesture. The universalizing move aligns us
with an audience that does not exist apart from the particular situation,
and hence is imagined. But it is a way of seeing the universal in the
particular, of seeing reason at work. Like the Aristotelian recognition of
the universal, we can abstract the idea of what it means to be reasonable so
as to recognize it in other communities and reasoners. Reasonableness
becomes a source for future decisions and a check on self-interested deci-
sions that cannot be justified more generally. It provides the shared
content for the basic premises in which we ground our arguments.
At the same time, such reasonableness does not guarantee unanimity of
thought. History is replete with examples of opposing arguments that draw
allegiance from people we would judge to be reasonable. Insofar as they
“express thoughtful and recognized ways of thinking … they are both
reasonable” (Perelman 1979: 113). Success is too often measured in terms of
reaching logical “truths” or resolving disagreements. But in the way the
reasonable comes alive here, it is the manner in which we hold our disa-
greements that is influenced by successful argumentation – respectfully,
thoughtfully, and with an openness to other perspectives. A rhetorical
model of argumentation, with its focus on value, brings the reasonable into
the core of our existence, rejecting the view that it is simply a tool for
solving problems. It provides a web of connection with others, now and in
the future, and within which to appreciate the beliefs they hold.
4.5â•… Adherence and the epideictic genre

Richard Whately suggested that Aristotle spent too much time on the
epideictic genre of rhetoric (Whately 1963: 272);8 it was, after all, merely
a matter of praise and blame. And George Kennedy, as we have seen in
the last chapter, views it as a kind of “grab bag” to contain everything
left over that does not fit under either deliberative or forensic rhetoric.
But praising and blaming reflect the central values to be promoted and
discouraged, and as was seen in the speeches from Obama in Chapter 1,
such values are integral to persuasive discourse. Thus, Perelman can insist
that the epideictic genre is central to all. This is clearly a controversial
claim and the reasons given for it are worth considering.
Perelman expresses his preference along the following lines: “in my view
the epideictic genre is central to discourse because its role is to intensify
adherence to values, adherence without which discourses that aim at
provoking action cannot find the lever to move or to inspire their
listeners” (Perelman 1982: 19). Elsewhere, the complaint is made that
8â•‡ Elements of Rhetoric, pt. iii, chap. i, para. 6.

4.6â•… Perelman and composite audience 75
theoreticians of speech since Aristotle have failed to see the importance of
the epideictic genre to argumentation, limiting it to the realm of literature.
Thus, rhetoric itself was divided with only the deliberative and forensic
genres adopted by philosophy and dialectic (Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca 1969: 49). Like the other two, however, epideictic is fundamentally
caught up with the notion of adherence. And since adherence is not
limited to the intellectual but concerns the whole person, epideictic is
crucial to addressing aspects of the person. Its particular importance
is seen in that by focusing on values “it strengthens the disposition toward
action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds” (1969: 50).9
Again, Perelman insists, “all practical philosophy arises from the
epideictic genre” (1982: 20) because it aims at future action and organizes
the support of the values it promotes towards that goal. This suggests, but
falls short of directly claiming, that epideictic is not only central to
discourse, but is integral to the success of the other two Aristotelian genres,
and especially deliberative rhetoric. We cannot deliberate about the future
without considering, at least implicitly, a set of values that connects
ourselves now with that future. Less clearly, but also plausibly, our judg-
ments about what has already occurred are directed by values held now or
determined to have been important then. Moreover, since our delibera-
tions do not take place in a vacuum, our judgments of the future will be
informed, again at least implicitly, by our judgments about the past,
whether we decide to reinforce and perpetuate past values or break with
them. So, two things become clear: the three genres, while distinct enough
for us to identify and discuss them, are connected with each other such
that rhetorical discourse will reflect all three. This, we have seen illustrated
earlier in the speeches of Obama. Secondly, the underlying genre that is not
just central to all discourse but explicitly informs the other two, is
epideictic. This, and some implications of it, will be seen more clearly in
the later discussion of the emotions and their social nature.
4.6â•… Perelman and composite audience

The discussion so far has assumed a lack of diversity within audiences.
Left open is the question of how efficacy might be achieved with audi-
ences that are composite in nature. How is the central concept of
9â•‡ At the same time, they warn, because it draws so widely on the devices of literary art in connecting
with an audience, epideictic is the genre most vulnerable to becoming rhetoric in the pejorative
sense (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 51).
adherence achieved, or experienced, when the audience is composed of
what we have seen Amartya Sen call “diverse diversities”? Many audi-
ences are comprised of a variety of people who, while associated in some
way that justifies calling them an audience, still have a range of commit-
ments and beliefs that they may not share with any other member of that
audience. Moreover, what counts as important for them among those
commitments and beliefs may change depending upon the circumstances
and even during the course of listening to or engaging in argumentation.
Even the single hearer and the self-deliberator each is complex in this
way since their “identity” has many facets, some of which may conflict
depending upon the issue at stake. The universal audience does not
necessarily help us here, since it is always moored to a particular audience
that is complex in just these ways mentioned.
What Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have to say directly about the
composite audience is limited in its detail, although it does illuminate more
of how they understand the processes involved in argumentative practice.
It often happens that an orator must persuade a composite audience,
embracing people differing in character, loyalties, and functions. To win
over the different elements in this audience, the orator will have to use a
multiplicity of arguments. A great orator is one who possesses the art of
taking into consideration, in his argumentation, the composite nature
of his audience. (1969: 21–22)
On these terms, the thinking seems to be that the composite audience
can be broken down into discrete parts and then arguments composed
to address each, hence, the multiplicity of arguments. To then appreciate
this, we need to review the performances of great orators. This does not
take us very far, however. We must, for example, already have an idea of
how such composite audiences should be successfully addressed before
we can decide who are the likely “great orators.” But more problematic is
the implicit concept of an audience as in some way an accumulation of
parts. While we may reach some agreement on what such parts may be –
character, loyalties, functions, and so forth – larger questions about them
emerge: How do they stand in relation to each other? Are they isolatable
as this suggests or is there a dynamic relationship between them? How
many parts or facets of a complex audience should the arguer consider?
That is, which different elements are to count on a particular occasion
and how are these decided? Finally, what values should be assigned to
each of these elements, which are of greater importance, or should they
all carry equal weight? All of this, of course, assumes that we can identify
discrete elements in a composite audience as the account suggests, and
4.6â•… Perelman and composite audience 77
not find various elements impacting on each other such that their isola-
tion becomes no more than an academic exercise.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca illustrate, if unintentionally, some of
the problems involved when they observe that even when an orator
stands before even just a single auditor, it is possible that he or she will be
unsure what arguments will be most persuasive. To compensate, the
orator will “insert his audience into a series of different audiences” (1969:
22). Illustrating this idea is the case of Tristram who, in Tristram Shandy,
describes an argument in which his father tries to persuade his mother to
have a midwife. The father argued the matter with her from six different
points of view: those of a Christian, heathen, husband, father, patriot,
and man. Whereas the mother could answer only as a woman, and so,
Tristram complains, was unfairly unmatched.
This example, as appropriate as it may be, fails to accomplish the task
that was set for it. It is the father who draws on his complex identity,
presenting his case in different guises. But the mother fails to be inserted
into the different audiences. While Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
conclude that it is not only the father who changes his mask, but also the
wife, who is transformed in her husband’s fancy, the authors must
concede that it is to the father that the various terms are applied, and
thereby emphasize how the example fails to make the case they need.
While the wife might well relate to the experiences of a Christian,
patriot, and even a heathen, she can hardly find within her identity
anything that allows her to share in the audience of men or fathers.
When an audience has members belonging to different, even
opposing, groups, the orator can proceed by dividing the audience into
social groups along political, religious, or occupational lines. Here, the
suggestion is that groups can be broken down into sub-groups, although
not necessarily ones that are mutually independent (1969: 23). Again,
though, none of this begins to imagine the complexities involved and
the full nature of a composite audience. Still, we do have a fairly clear
idea of how the concept of a “composite audience” is being conceived in
the project of the new rhetoric. It is comprised of discrete constituent
parts that can be broken down for the purposes of argumentation, and
those parts are understood in terms of sub-groups of a social nature.
This understanding becomes important later in The New Rhetoric when
attention is given to the accumulation of arguments. The accumulation
of different arguments is advantageous when confronting a diversity of
audiences (474). This in turn can explain why a discourse can contain
arguments that appear to be inconsistent with each other (477). Having
to deal with sub-groups who may hold different and even opposing
views requires using arguments that may not sit well together while ably
addressing the appropriate groups within the larger audience.
It seems apparent, then, that the set of problems that is directing this
study did not occur to the authors of the New Rhetoric Project, or at
least not in their full depth and complexity. Different conceptions of a
“composite audience” can require different treatments, and while the
breaking of audiences into sub-groups that need to be addressed is an
important maneuver that still deserves further attention, the deeper issues
of audience diversity and identity that we have already anticipated and
that will occupy attention in later chapters shift the focus onto a different
understanding of “composite.” We must consider not just different sub-
groups within an audience, but also both the conflicting allegiances
within the composite audience that the members of the sub-groups
possess as well as the complex make-up of the individual identities of
those members. That is, audiences are tiered insofar as composites have
sub-groups, sub-groups have individual members with different commit-
ments, and individual members have complex identities that can prompt
them to respond differently to similar argumentation on different occa-
sions. For all the advances that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca provide
for the understanding of audiences in argumentation, they cannot help us
with this deeper set of problems. Nor do we find any help for addressing
the issues related to historical audiences. In fact, the primary definition of
audience – as those the arguer intends to influence – ignores many unin-
tended audiences that continue to consume arguments from the past, and
in this way it ignores part of the experience of many audiences.
On the positive side, Perelman encourages the shift in argumentation
studies from focusing almost entirely on arguers and their arguments to
the perspective of the audience for those arguments. With Perelman we
begin to see that it is important to ask how audiences experience argu-
mentation. He also takes us further than Aristotle into the important
question of how audience-considerations operate in the evaluation of
argumentation. To this end, the identification of three audiences and the
way one of these – the universal audience – is anticipated in the struc-
tures of the other two are important innovations. Moreover, the distinctly
invitational nature of the Perelmanian model builds on Aristotle’s similar
insight in bridging the divide between participants in argumentation,
giving audiences a shared responsibility in the processes through which
they come to be persuaded. This idea of an active, engaged audience is
one we will carry forward throughout the study.
chapter 5
Habermas and the ideal audience
5.1â•… Introduction: Habermas and

the strands of argumentation theory
Perelman closed the gap between rhetoric and philosophy; a similar
claim has been made with respect to Habermas (Crosswhite 2013: 99). In
spite of criticisms aimed at his theory of argumentation and some of the
crucial accompanying concepts like that of the public sphere, increased
recent interest points to the importance of Habermas’ ideas, especially
in light of Crosswhite’s observation and as we consider the nature of
differences within audiences and the value of individuality. The standard
treatment of the history of argumentation theory gives relatively little
space to Habermas’ ideas, casting him in the philosophical tradition of
Diskurstheorie while seeing similarities with the dialectical approach
of the Amsterdam School (van Eemeren, et al. 1996: 311, 342). But several
recent threads of scholarship that engage Â�argumentation theory stem
from firm Habermasian roots, especially as this scholarship pertains to
questions of international politics (Kornprobst 2008; Crawford 2002;
Risse 2000) and scientific reasoning (Rehg 2009, 2003). Moreover, in the
importance Habermas places on the giving and receiving of reasons, and
the obligations that result from such interactions, “obligations that are
contained in the meaning of what is said” (1990: 59), we can see an antic-
ipation of some of the central ideas of Robert Brandom (1994), whose
relevance for argumentation will be developed in a later chapter.
The model of communicative action presents argumentation as the site
for weighing competing validity claims in circumstances where the possi-
bility of consensus seems limited (Goodnight 2003: 130). And it does so
within a generally non-Cartesian perspective that we see shared by
Perelman (Habermas 1984: 159), which stresses, in contrast, the web of
everyday communications that surrounds us with its intrinsic intersubjec-
tive and cooperative nature.
79
80 Habermas and the ideal audience
On the other hand, the model is not without its problems and
tensions. Most particularly, there are aspirations to an objective position
detached from the local influences of culture or social authority.
Aspirations that, in their ideal nature, seem to undermine the project at
its heart (Hesse 1995: 367). Habermas recognizes the ways people are
embedded in their personal and social histories, and yet seems to
promote a hypothetical position when seeking consensus that requires
people to detach themselves from the very commitments that have
formed them. This tension also threatens the project (Endres 1996).
5.2â•… The public sphere

An appreciation of Habermas’ theory of argumentation must begin in
the oft-visited locale of the public sphere. His work here, while revolu-
tionary in its insights, has long been surpassed, at least with respect to its
essential features.1 Habermas’ groundbreaking study (1989) tracked the
appearance of the public sphere and a related notion of public opinion
as they emerged in early capitalism as a space between the state and
society. In Habermas’ terms, a bourgeois public sphere was “the sphere
of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public
sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves,
to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations
in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity
exchange and social labor” (1989: 27). In short, he conceived a sphere
that could be accessed by all citizens, in which they could debate openly
about matters that were of general interest to them. It was “the locus
of emergence for a civil society’s rhetorically salient meanings” (Hauser
2001: 36). Importantly, for our interests, the concept of public involved
here differs from that of “community.” “Community” implies a homoge-
neous group within fairly clear boundaries and in which we might expect
some measure of agreement. A “public,” however, is disparate and plural
in make-up and without clearly defined boundaries. As a site for impor-
tant debate it does not assume the levels of agreement that characterize a
community (Fraser 1992: 141n28).2
1â•‡ Habermas (1992) seems less than convinced of the need for wholesale changes, although
he proposes some important revisions. In more recent work (1996), he clearly acknowledges the
importance of multiple spheres and the vagueness of the line between private and public.
2â•‡ Noting the plural make-up of the public in this way is already to anticipate one of the criticisms
brought against Habermas’ early conception and thus necessitates his later revision.
5.2â•… The public sphere 81
As noted in Habermas’ definition, there is an assumed relationship
between what is basically private and yet publicly relevant. In the devel-
opments of the 1700s, a sense of subjectivity is judged to emerge that
constituted the “innermost core of the private,” and which was always
oriented to an audience (Habermas 1989: 49). This found its expression
in a major literary achievement of that century: the domestic novel that
emerged from the audience-oriented subjectivity of the diary or letter.
Habermas saw this as an important prerequisite for the takeover of an
already functioning public sphere in the world of letters by a public of
private people looking for a space for the criticism of public authority.
Another contributing idea seen to appear in the late eighteenth
century is a specific understanding of “public opinion.” Habermas
proposes two important senses of the concept of opinion. The first
meaning is that of everyday language from Plato onwards, where it has
the sense of an uncertain, undemonstrated judgment. The second sense
of opinion has to do with one’s reputation or public regard: how one is
considered in the judgment of others. There seem strong parallels here
with Aristotle’s concerns for the development of ethos in civic affairs,
although nothing of this is taken up by Habermas. The importance to
him of this second sense of opinion is that it allows for the emergence of
a “public opinion” as the considered view of a public, or “the critical
reflections of a public competent to form its own judgments” (1989: 90).
Much later, at the close of his detailed analyses, he can conclude that
“A concept of public opinion that is historically meaningful, that norma-
tively meets the requirements of the constitution of a social-welfare state,
and that is theoretically clear and empirically identifiable can be
grounded only in the structural transformation of the public sphere itself
and in the dimension of its development” (244).
Habermas’ analysis was very much for a specific time and place
(Germany in its post-war reconstruction) and under particular circum-
stances.3 Thus it is no surprise that when measured against the expecta-
tions of a wider audience some of its features are found provisional or
inadequate. The thrust of these criticisms of the early work – which have
served to strengthen the basic insight into the existence and importance
of the public – has been in terms of the exclusions that are apparent
(Asen and Brouwer 2001: 5; Fraser 1992: 113). As Nancy Fraser notes,
members of groups such as women, workers, peoples of color, and gays
and lesbians have traditionally been excluded from or marginalized in the
3â•‡ See Peter Hohendahl’s (2001) very biographical discussion.

public sphere by virtue of the power relations that governed it. There was
an unfortunate (false) assumption that it was possible for the interlocu-
tors in a public sphere to deliberate as social equals (or as if they were
equal). Against such a view, excluded groups who were patently not equal
found it necessary to constitute alternative publics. Fraser calls these
“subaltern counterpublics” (1992: 123), thus signaling the existence of
arenas where counter-discourses circulated and in which opposing inter-
pretations of members’ identities and interests were developed. The rise
of studies of counterpublics complicates many matters, since with them
come multiple meanings of “public” (Asen and Brouwer 2001: 9),
differing in terms of their density and degree of access. But importantly
for our concerns, differing public spheres, or counterpublics, can be the
sites in which members come to claim or reconstruct their identities
(Fraser 1992: 140n24).
A second related assumption uncovered by Fraser that is also of value
to our discussion (she uncovers four in total) is that a multiplicity of
competing public spheres undermines any move toward a greater democ-
racy and thus that a single, comprehensive public sphere is to be
preferred over a network. Habermas, of course, also comes to reject this
assumption (Habermas 1996: 312–14). As Fraser observes, an essential
aspect of counterpublics is that they remain “publics,” and thus not
enclaves. They are predicated on the desire to disseminate discourse in a
wider arena, and remain hinged to a wider public. What distinguish
them are more the common interests of their discussions. Any vision we
may have of a multicultural society built on egalitarian premises must
exist as a network of interacting publics; the very definition of a multicul-
tural society would assume this (Fraser 1992: 126).
Many of the revisions to Habermas’ early conception of the public
sphere have ramifications for the study of argumentation. As Asen
points out, “Reconfigurations of the public sphere through metaphors
of networks or constellations have highlighted the differential power
relationships that inform discursive exchanges in multiple forms”
(2005: 119). Thus, in different spheres or counterpublics we might
expect argument to function in different ways as people interact on
different terms. The “force of the better argument” – a Habermasian
refrain to be examined shortly – cannot be taken as a prescriptive
requirement of deliberations in multiple spheres, and would seem to
stand as an ideal standard interpreted according to the different
demands of a respective sphere.
5.3â•… Communication and consensus 83
5.3â•… Communication and consensus
Even as we turn to consider the central role of the theory of communi-
cative action in Habermas’ theory of argumentation, then, its apparent
goal of consensus seems in jeopardy. That is, if we are to understand
“consensus” as something connecting a network of publics.
The theory of communicative action is the vehicle by which Habermas
explores the nature of rationality and some of the problems he sees
attached to it. In a sense, it aims to capture the appropriate (that is,
rational) ways in which a public may communicate with a more informal
domain of non-public opinion (Habermas 1989: 249–50). Actions are
communicative in which the participants organize their plans of action
consensually and according to the mutual recognition of validity claims
(Habermas 1990: 58). Thus, there is an essential cooperativeness at work
in the theory. A communicative practice involves actions regulated by
constative speech acts, along with norms, expressive self-presentations,
and evaluative expressions, and with the goal of achieving or maintaining
consensus. The mutual recognition of validity claims on which
this consensus is based is judged rational insofar as, and to the degree
that, communicatively achieved agreement is reached through the use of
reasons. The rationality of the parties involved is likewise judged on
whether, if called upon, they could provide reasons for their expressions.
Hence, the recourse to argumentation is required to explain the intercon-
nection of universal validity claims on which communicative rationality
is judged to depend (Habermas 1984: 17–18).
The validity claims that are raised with conviction when we interact
are deemed to transcend the contexts in which they arise, to point
beyond the spatiotemporal situations of their occurrence. They possess,
thus, the intersubjective validity that is the requirement for any subse-
quent agreement. And such validity claims are not restricted to the realm
of empirical truth, but include claims to what is morally right, ethically
good, personally sincere, and aesthetically valuable: “Only the truth of
propositions and the rightness of moral norms and the comprehensibility
or well-formedness of symbolic expressions are, by their very meaning,
universally valid claims that can be tested in discourse” (Habermas 1984:
42). Habermas, then, recognizes a plurality of validity claims. This will
be an attraction he sees in Stephen Toulmin’s theory of argumentation
(1984: 31). It does not mean he rejects a concept of validity in the sense of
truth. Rather, he is not restricted to it, and gathers it in among others that
are appealed to in the wide range of claims across human experience.
His theory of argumentation must therefore be equipped with a more
comprehensive concept of validity.
There are important similarities between the ideas involved in
Habermas’ theory and those of pragma-dialectics, especially in the early
formulations of that school (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992).
A speech situation stripped of power relations in which the parties agree
on how to proceed and test each other’s validity claims is an ideal situa-
tion shared by both models. But subsequent developments of pragma-
dialectics to accommodate a rhetorical dimension through strategic
maneuvering (van Eemeren 2010) would seem to deviate sharply from
Habermas’ train of inquiry. A presupposition of strategic maneuvering is
that parties not only want to settle a dispute, they want to do so in terms
that favor them and so they adopt certain strategies in, for example, the
presentation of the issue that will encourage an outcome that favours
them; that will allow them to win. Habermas, however, sharply contrasts
communicative action to strategic action: “If the actors are interested
solely in the success, i.e., the consequences or outcomes of their actions, they
will try to reach their objectives by influencing their opponent’s defini-
tion of the situation, and thus his decisions and motives, through
external means by using weapons or goods, threats or enticements. Such
actors treat each other strategically” (1990: 133). Such strategic behavior
counters both the spirit of communicative action, which is directed
toward agreement rather than success, and, as we will see, the discourse
ethics that accompanies it. For Habermas, parties must be prepared to
harmonize their plans of action and, while they pursue their goals, they
do so only on the condition of existing or negotiated agreements. Yet this
may also be a symptom of an aspect of the theory – the ideal speech
Â�situation – that deviates from everyday communicative experience and at
which much subsequent criticism has been directed.
It is in this ideal speech situation that people are lifted out of the
specific situations that define them, conditioned by their circumstances
and commitments, and, “relieved of the pressures of action and experience”
(1996: 228, my emphasis), adopt a hypothetical attitude to test another’s
claim with reasons. This is a situation and practice that the early
Habermas believes anyone who wants to convince others of something
must adopt; these are the ideal conditions of a speech situation. Although
the later Habermas never seems to drop the underlying appeal to
universal standards that this implies, in fairness, we might see dual stand-
ards at work here. On one level, the truth of a claim does depend on the
securing of rational consensus within a relevant speech community. But
5.4â•… Dimensions of the lifeworld 85
such claims are justified against the background of a wider (universal)
audience. “Participants in argumentation,” he claims, “proceed on the
idealizing assumption of a communication community without limits in
social space and historical time” (1996: 322). But this ideal community is
understood in relation to the actual communication community of
which an individual is a member, where the “identity of the participants
and sources of conflict originating in the lifeworld” are untouched by the
idealization (1993: 57). Habermas warns against being misled into
thinking that the ideal involved can be approximately realized. And,
similarly, the “ideal speech situation” could be misunderstood to present
the system of validity claims as concrete reality. As Hilary Putnam notes
in regard to Habermas’ theory, many of the more egregious misreadings
“depend on the double mistake of supposing that Habermas believes that
an ‘ideal speech situation’ will actually be reached at some particular time
in the future and supposing that such a situation is precisely the ‘final
court of appeal’ that [others reject]” (Putnam 2002: 115). The point is,
rather, that participants in argumentation should think counterfactually,
which involves contrasting their social situation with a universal on
which it might be predicated. While we cannot escape from our social
contexts, the argumentative practices of justification allow us to think
outside of them (Habermas 1996: 323).
As with the public sphere, Habermas has revised or rejected some of
his ideas related to the theory of communicative action. The consensus
theory of truth, for example, has been replaced by a more pragmatic
model (Habermas 2003a). But the universalizing that underlies the ideal
speech situation remains an important fixture in his thinking, understood
as it is against the background of an intersubjectively shared lifeworld.
I will return to this ideal speech situation below.
5.4â•… Dimensions of the lifeworld

The concept of the lifeworld, or Lebenswelt, first introduced by
Habermas in 1967 (Habermas 1988), has seen subsequent modifica-
tions.4 The lifeworld operates on three levels or in three dimensions, two
of which involve commonalities: there is an objective world of objects
and states of affairs, shared by all in common and a source of claims
about facts; against this is an intersubjective world of norms and values; and
4â•‡ Alan Gross (2010) traces the first explicit philosophical analysis of the lifeworld to Husserl (Gross
2010: 120).
there is also an individual’s subjective world of private thoughts and
emotions. These dimensions will play an important role in the later
chapters of my study of audiences.
Such a complex lifeworld forms the horizon within which people
acting communicatively must come to their understandings. Importantly,
the lifeworld background serves as a source of basic understandings and
definitions that can be presupposed by participants as unproblematic.
Habermas is reluctant to refer to this as background knowledge, because
for him all knowledge is fallible, while what is at stake here does not rise
to the level of criticizable validity claims (Habermas 1996: 22). Members
of a communicative community set the one objective world and their
shared social world off from the subjective worlds. Separated in this way,
world-concepts and associated validity claims form the structures on
which agreements can be built. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969)
had talked about a level of social inertia that formed the background of
presumption from which argumentation could draw but that was not
itself challenged. Habermas suggests a similar inertia when he speaks of
the way a lifeworld also holds the interpretive work of earlier generations,
describing this as “the conservative counterweight to the risk of disagree-
ment that arises with every actual process of reaching understanding”
(Habermas 1984: 70). As William Rehg illuminates this idea in his
Introduction to Between Facts and Norms: “The implicit agreement repre-
sented by such a lifeworld background stabilizes a communicatively inte-
grated group insofar as it removes a large body of assumptions from
challenge – as it were, fusing validity with the facticity of a given cultural
background” (Habermas 1996: xvi). Thus, the background offers
resources for assessing claims while also decreasing the number of issues
about which debates must ensue. This forms an important strata of
stability required for effective communication.
A person who can operate well within these dimensions of their expe-
rience achieves a “decentered” understanding of the world. Such decen-
tering allows the person to align matters of truth with the objective
world, matters of justice with the social world, and matters of taste with
the subjective world. Decentering also combines two things: “first,
perspectives that are grounded in the formal three-world reference system
and linked with the different attitudes toward the world, and second,
perspectives that are built into the speech situation itself and linked to the
communicative roles” (Habermas 1990: 139). This decentering, or
“standing apart” will be important for achieving the hypothetical attitude
required by the theory of argumentation.
5.5â•… A theory of argumentation 87
5.5â•… A theory of argumentation
As he turned to questions of argumentation and a theory that could
address those questions, Habermas was attracted by the work on informal
logic coming out of the University of Windsor in Ontario (1984: 22–24),
especially as he saw the convictions expressed in that work shared by the
(then) more theoretically developed theory of Stephen Toulmin (1958).
In a later text,5 Habermas argues that a theory of argumentation must
take the form of an “informal logic” (1990: 63),6 insisting that in order
to provide substantive content arguments must escape the restrictions of
deduction. Rehg also finds Habermas’ approach to argumentation to be
“consistent with that of mainstream informal logic” (Rehg 2009: 132).
At the core of the impulse toward argumentation is the need to
moderate the different validity claims put forward by members of a
community. For Habermas, the only criterion by which beliefs can be
judged valid is that they are based on agreement reached through argu-
mentation. “This means that everything whose validity is at all disputable
rests on shaky foundations” (Habermas 1990: 14). Hence, argumentation
is defined as the type of speech in which validity claims are contested
through arguments. Accordingly, an argument provides the reasons or
grounds related to the validity claim of a problematic expression
(Habermas 1984: 18). The strength of the argument is thus measured on
whether the participants in a discourse are convinced to accept the
validity claim under question. What is striking here is that argumentative
success is measured in terms of effectiveness; an argument is judged good
according to some notion of acceptance on the part of those involved. At
this point, no external standard for judging the strength of arguments is
considered. We can see in this the basis for describing argument as prag-
matic in nature (Habermas 1996: 227): a “good reason” is judged so rela-
tive to the contribution it makes to an argumentation game in which it is
decided whether a contested validity claim may be accepted.7 But that
decision must be a rational one, and so we have an assumed distinction
between rational acceptance and the mere acceptance of a claim (cf.
Habermas 2000: 344).
5â•‡ Not as late as the date of the English translation (1990) might suggest. This work appeared origi-
nally in German in 1983, thus following by only two years the first volume of Theorie des
Kommunikativen Handelns.
6â•‡ By contrast, Perelman rejected the label of “informal logic” for his theory of argumentation,
explicitly adopting a more rhetorical title (Perelman 1989: 247).
7â•‡ The wording of this later text does seem to move the decision of strength from whether it is
accepted to whether it may be accepted, where “may” could assume the sense of “should.”
An argument, then, is not context-independent, as those examples in
so many logic classes might suggest. Escaping the restrictions of deduc-
tion where we might assess the soundness of an argument in part by
examining its structure, Habermas considers more context-dependent
features in judging the rationality of argumentative exchanges. In
language that anticipates Robert Brandom’s (1994) later reflections,
Habermas suggests that an audience is not motivated by the validity of
what a speaker says but by the guarantee that the speaker will support the
claim that has been made (Habermas 1990: 58–59).8 The obvious way in
which this will be accomplished, at least for claims to truth or rightness,
is through the giving of reasons. Thus, argumentation can be seen as the
activity of the giving and receiving of reasons. Moreover, when the audi-
ence accepts the speaker’s guarantee, obligations arise that have conse-
quences for the interaction.
Habermas traces the study of argumentation to the Aristotelian triad
of logic with its products, dialectic with its procedures, and rhetoric with
its processes (1984: 26–27, 1990: 87–88). Each of these perspectives, or levels
(as he calls them) of argument has a different structure and goal. Rhetoric
as a process of communication, for example, has “the structures of an
ideal speech situation immunized against repression and inequality in a
special way.” It has the goal of “convincing a universal audience and
gaining general assent for an utterance” (1984: 26). Dialectic involves “the
structures of a ritualized competition for the better arguments.” Its goal is
to end “a dispute about hypothetical validity claims with a rationally
motivated agreement” (Ibid.). Logic is characterized by “the structures that
determine the construction of individual arguments and their interrela-
tions.” It has the goal of “grounding or redeeming a validity claim with
arguments” (Ibid.).
Each level has its own feature of ideality: rhetoric embraces an ideal
speech situation that is free of any repression and inequality; dialectic is
centered by a hypothetical attitude where participants are “relieved of the
pressures of action and experience” (1990: 87); and logic’s arguments have
an intrinsic cogency (Ibid.). But together they provide a multi-level theory
for meeting the demands of communicative actions, under the conditions
and with the goals set out earlier. It is important that they operate
together: “At no single one of these analytic levels can the very idea
intrinsic to argumentative speech be adequately developed” (1984: 26).
8â•‡ In his discussion of Brandom, Habermas (2000) has no difficulty couching Brandom’s key ideas in
formal pragmatics and inferential semantics in the language of his own account.
This forms the basis of his critique of two other theories of argument,
those of Wolfgang Klein and Stephen Toulmin.
Klein replaces the concept of validity with that of acceptance, which is
not itself a problem. But he operates only at the level of abstraction of
rhetoric while avoiding “also analyzing consensus-forming processes from
the start as the achievement of rationally motivated agreement and as the
discursive redemption of validity claims” (1984: 30). Thus, Klein fails to
provide a concept of rationality that would establish relations between
the standards of the participants. What is called for, suggests Habermas,
is a plurality of validity claims, and on this front Toulmin’s approach
recommends itself.
Yet this approach also suffers from a failure to mediate levels of
abstraction. One of Toulmin’s innovations is to distribute argumentation
across different fields, each with its own institutional standards of
validity: law, science, medicine, management, art, and engineering.
Lacking here, in Habermas’ view, is a critical sense of validity that tran-
scends the others. There is a level of connectedness in the sense that
Toulmin identifies the same argumentation schema across fields. But in
other contexts he eschews such universality, questioning the kind of
underlying rationality that Habermas favours (Toulmin 1972: 498). Thus,
Toulmin overlooks the standpoint of impartiality. Like Klein, he develops
the logic of argumentation on only one level. In his case, he fails to
address the levels of procedure and process (Habermas 1984: 34).
Habermas draws on the work of Robert Alexy in legal argumentation
(cited in Habermas 1990: 87–92; see also Alexy 1989) to provide a series
of presuppositions or rules9 for argumentation. At each level of argumen-
tation, following the Aristotelian triad, different rules pertain. For
example, at the logical level we find rules that police against contradic-
tion, inconsistency, and equivocation. At the dialectical level, rules
govern correct behavior (“Every speaker may assert only what he really
believes”) or the obligations that ensue (“A person who disputes a propo-
sition or norm not under discussion must provide a reason for wanting to
do so”). And at the rhetorical level, rules monitor the process by
preventing coercion (other than that of the better argument) or the
9â•‡ The kinds of rules here are like those familiar to argumentation theorists from Grice (1989) and
van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984; 2004). But in 1996, Habermas draws a distinction between
rules and principles in the logic of argumentation (the context there is the justification of deci-
sions). In that context, rules always contain an antecedent “if ” clause that constitutes the condi-
tions of application; principles are governed by more general conditions that need to be
interpreted (Habermas 1996: 208).
influence of inappropriate motives. We learn here that “Every subject
with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in
discourse,” – a rule that identifies the range of audience that interests
Habermas – and “Everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires,
and needs” (Habermas 1990: 89).10
These rules of discourse are taken to be unavoidable presuppositions
rather than conventions, a truth which Habermas believes to be verified
by the “intuitive preunderstanding” that every competent communica-
tive agent brings to a process of argumentation (1990: 90). Also, once
such rules are accepted, we have the premises from which to derive one
of Habermas’ more significant principles – that of universalization (U).
This is the kind of principle that was absent in Klein and Toulmin’s
projects and that Habermas has set down after his critiques of those
ideas: “(U) All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects
its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of
everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those
of known alternative possibilities for regulation)” (Habermas 1990: 65).
After the introduction of the rules of discourse, this principle receives a
slight modification: there is no consensus on a contested norm “Unless
all affected can freely accept the consequences and the side effects that
the general observance of a controversial norm can be expected to have
for the satisfaction of the intentions of each individual” (1990: 93). This
stringent test of argumentation governs its rationality and registers
consensus at its heart.
The discourse theory with which Habermas’ name may be most readily
associated emerges from the theory that underlies the principle of univer-
salization. Discourse ethics, he tells us, can be formulated in terms of a
principle of discourse (D), which reads: “Only those norms can claim to
be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in
their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (Ibid.).11 This move
into moral argumentation serves to scale back Kant’s categorical impera-
tive to the principle of universalization (U) (which measures by what is
10 As noted earlier, there are significant connections between Habermas’ work and that of the Dutch
school of pragma-dialecticians and perhaps this is nowhere better seen than in rules of this type
(Goodnight 2003: 128). In the Dutch case, however, the rules are considerably more developed
(van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004) and not directed at the same goals.
11 This discourse principle is the entry into moral theory that will also settle disagreements by
consensual means, but Habermas stresses that it does not itself form part of a logic of argumenta-
tion (1990: 93). The model is preferred by many theorists because it avoids the greater abstractness
of proposals like Rawl’s “original position” for “an actual dialogue among actual selves who are …
individuals with irreducible differences” (Benhabib 1992: 169).
found acceptable to real human beings rather than Kantian intelligible
agents).12 But importantly, in such rational discourses, (U) will play the
part of a rule of argumentation (1990: 197).
The rules of discourse and the principle of universalization (U) rein-
force the decentering that adopting the hypothetical attitude requires. As
noted, such an attitude does not allow participants to favor their own
positions, to pursue the resolution of a dispute on their own terms.
Whether it is realistic to expect participants in argumentation to shed the
biases of their personal commitments is a reasonable concern to raise.
Certainly, the criticisms that issued from the proponents of counterpub-
lics would suggest otherwise. If such is the case then the fundamental
goal of consensus may be in jeopardy. And, indeed, this too is a matter of
concern. Paul Redding (1989) argues that disagreements in ethics and
politics “are so fundamental to civic life that the notion of consensus is
challenged even as an ideal” (1989: 23). It is difficult to challenge an ideal.
Ideals are whatever the aspirations of theorists dream up. What may be in
question is whether consensus is so much of an ideal as to be impractical
and our energies would be better expended on more realistic projects.
But consensus is achieved on issues everyday. It is as much a feature of
our coexistence that we agree as that we disagree. And if we can agree on
some things, then we can agree on more. And if we can agree that agree-
ment is a good and desirable outcome, then it behooves us to develop
any tools that might promise achieving more of it. The existence of coun-
terpublics does make for greater challenges in this respect. But they do
not disqualify the project out of hand.
Elsewhere, Redding criticizes Habermas for broadening the notion of
argumentation by extending the validity function approach into the
moral and aesthetic realms (Redding 1989: 18–21). But such criticism
would seem to miss the innovative nature of Habermasian argumentation
theory, or the significance of what he has recovered from ancient roots.
As Redding explains his concern: “Argument has for Habermas a type of
pyramidal structure. If one can secure agreement at a more general level,
12 Habermas stresses this in implicit response to Steven Lukes’ (1982: 141) criticism that participants
in argumentation could find consensus on generalizable interests only if the theory requires
homogeneous societies or abstract participants. Thus, it transforms real humans into intelligible
beings under the communicative presuppositions of rational discourse. Such participants would
be disengaged from their own interests. Habermas insists (1993: 58) that this objection miscon-
ceives the kind of idealization involved. As I note in Section 5.8, the conditions of the “ideal
speech situation” are prerequisite for engaging in argumentation, but the social world of partici-
pants and their identity within it are not affected.
then the disagreement at the less general level will be dissolved by the
force of deductive inference” (1989: 20). This would appear to fall afoul
of the very error of which Habermas accused Klein and Toulmin –
reducing argument to just one of the triad of logic, dialectic, and rhet-
oric. By insisting on a model that draws on all three and cannot be
reduced to any one, Habermas does indeed promote a richer conception
of argumentation that has every prospect of extending across the fields of
human experience. Redding, it seems, has assumed that when Habermas
repeatedly appeals to the force of the better argument, the force he has in
mind is deductive force. But is it?
5.6â•… The force of the better argument

Habermas puts a lot of weight on the force of the better argument,
but the meaning behind the phrase is far from clear (Hesse 1995: 368).
Commentators are no less obscure in their glosses. Goodnight, for
example, offers that “Interlocutors are compelled reciprocally to a conclu-
sion as they become ‘rationally motivated’ to an accord on a matter of
mutual concern” (2003: 127). That force compels does not move the
insight very far. But that the compulsion is reciprocal, or shared, is
useful. This is something that both parties “see,” and it is a crucial last
step to consensus. Some remarks that Habermas himself makes in rela-
tion to the theory of argumentation, however, do enable us to uncover at
least the importance of the idea involved, and clarify our intuition that
the force referred to is not deductive.
On one level, the sense of the “force of the better argument” is exclu-
sionary. That is, the intent seems to be to exclude any other influence
beyond the operation of reason itself. This means that biases and self-
interest cannot interfere with the efforts of participants to reach some
consensus. We have seen the grounds for this exclusiveness in the earlier
discussion, but Habermas also offers remarks that reinforce this: “In
discourse what is called force of the better argument is wholly unforced.
Here convictions change internally via a process of rationally motivated
attitude change” (1990: 160). To say that it is unforced is to confirm that
no external pressures are brought to bear on the situation or the partici-
pants. The force involved is internal.
Why would we (or scholars like Redding) be led to believe that the
force involved is deductive? One answer to this lies in what Habermas
has to say when he discusses the logical level of argumentation. The argu-
ment products involved are convincing by virtue of their “intrinsic
5.6â•… The force of the better argument 93
properties” (1984: 13); and the rules governing this level prevent contra-
diction, inconsistency, and equivocation (1990: 87). Good deductive
arguments would certainly fit such descriptions, and a common appeal of
such arguments is the clarity of force with which the mind is led from
premises to conclusion. But we must also remember that argumentation,
especially good argumentation, could not be expressed in such a restric-
tive way. A failure of the Toulminian model was its exclusive promotion
of the logical level without regard for the other two.
Again, when we recall the preference for an informal logic as a theory of
argumentation (1990: 63), we recall also that this is justified because deduc-
tion cannot force agreement on theoretical or practical matters. Similarly,
some of Habermas’ more insightful remarks about the force of the better
argument arise in the context of argumentation as process, that is, at the
rhetorical level. Participants must presuppose that their communication
“excludes all force – whether it arises from within the process of reaching
understanding itself or influences it from the outside – except the force of
the better argument (and thus that it also excludes, on their part, all
motives except that of a cooperative search for truth)” (1984: 25). External
influences are again excluded, along with any compulsion within the
process, but this time it is in the context of the rhetorical level.13
Furthermore, good argumentation, characterized by good reasons –
reasons that force agreement – involves observation of rules of discourse,
and these rules exist at all three levels. For example (and this is one of
several that Habermas offers in illustrating the operation of the rules at
each level) someone might argue: “Having excluded persons A, B, C, …
from the discussion by silencing them or foisting our interpretation on
them, we were able to convince ourselves that N is justified” (1990: 91).
This aptly demonstrates what might be involved when force is used within
the process of reaching understanding. But in attempting to justify this
argument, an individual contradicts the rules governing good argumenta-
tion at the process level, including most clearly that no one be prevented
by internal or external coercion from exercising a right to speak.
The force of the better argument is not simply logical force (and
certainly not deductive force), where logical is restricted to describing one
level of argumentation. It is, however, still cloaked in ideality. Real argu-
mentation takes place in situations where influences cannot be avoided.
13â•‡ That there is no suggestion of the rhetorical level being in any sense foundational or “core” is
implied by the fact that while he begins with it in (1984) and then moves to the dialectical
followed by the logical, in (1990) he begins with the logical and discusses the rhetorical last.
Several commentators suggest Habermas is aware of this. In Rehg’s judg-
ment, for Habermas “intrinsic force functions more as an idealized posit
than a directly perceptible impact, inasmuch as participants always offer
and weigh reasons in particular socio-institutional contexts in which any
number of other social-psychological influences are also at work” (Rehg
2003: 176). And Robert Asen offers, more by way of critique of the orig-
inal idea, that the force of the better argument “does not wholly decide
how people deliberate about public matters. This is not simply the partial
attainment of a praiseworthy standard. If we fail to take into account
how difference informs public deliberation, then we fail to appreciate the
full dynamics of actual discourse practices” (Asen 2005: 126).
Part of what is at stake, perhaps, is that good arguments are not always
persuasive. Or, rather, that the goodness alone (however that is under-
stood) is not enough. Participants in argumentation must see both that
the argument is good, that it meets whatever criteria are used to measure
such matters within a particular theory of argumentation, including rules
governing its logical, dialectical and rhetorical levels, and they must see
that this argument is for them. Persuasion involves taking it up and
acting upon it or according to it, adapting one’s beliefs and values accord-
ingly. Sometimes Habermas speaks as if the rationally motivating force of
good reasons operates in a vacuum immune to all other influences. This
is the praiseworthy standard that Asen notes. Across the various life-
worlds communicators must endorse levels of objectivity (including
intersubjective givens). These levels require addressing audiences of a
universal or ideal nature. On other occasions he recognizes the concrete
situations in which people operate and whose influences they cannot
shed. Better arguments, it seems, can operate across these boundaries if
the tensions are properly observed. We cannot lose sight of Habermas’
overall project of exploring rationality, for which his theory of argumen-
tation was developed. Better arguments, in his judgment, will depend on
the motivations of reason alone, and where participants in argumentative
situations are mutually moved by this and grasp the truths (or values, or
judgments) that reason dictates, then consensus will emerge. It is ideal,
and it is not achieved in all circumstances or even often, but it is a
promise that has to be recognized and promoted if the nature of ration-
ality is the subject of investigation. In an endnote to Between Facts and
Norms Habermas speaks as if ideal audiences will be limited to bounda-
ries of the communities for which they are relevant (he has in mind a
legal community). Such an audience (community-specific, shall we say, as
Rehg and Asen propose) “consists of rational persons who allow the
5.7â•… Cultural differences and the universal 95
unforced force of the better argument to determine whether they take a
yes or no position – though only within the context of a concrete form of
life they already share” (1996: 541n58). We should not miss the import
of the last clause: argumentation may require that we adopt hypothetical
attitudes and address ideal audiences, but its insights have value only to
the extent that they can be then integrated into the everyday lives of
those participating, and improve those lives in some measurable way.
5.7â•… Cultural differences and the universal

The kinds of tensions that Habermas recognizes in the discussion of good
argumentation can be seen further in some of what he has to say about
cultural differences. In The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas
takes issue with some of the work in cultural anthropology (and specifi-
cally the comments of the philosopher, Peter Winch). To what degree can
the standards of rationality by which an investigator judges other cultures
claim universal validity? The universalism that we have seen throughout
the discussion of Habermas’ work is again prominent here. The particular
culture that forms the case for discussion is that of the Zande and their
belief in witchcraft. According to Winch, the anthropologist has no
right to judge the Zande’s beliefs according to the standards of scientific
rationality (cited in Habermas 1984: 57). But Habermas contests this
claim. Granted, what count as good reasons will vary and change over
time. But this does not mean that ideas like those of truth and norma-
tive rightness are also context-dependent in the same way. Habermas
insists that a true statement “merits universal assent, no matter in which
language it is formulated” (58). Thus, contrary to Winch, he claims that
worldviews can be compared and judged in terms of cognitive adequacy.
The Zande, he believes, are bound to inherited interpretations that do
not permit consciousness of alternative interpretations. They are, in terms
of the lifeworld model, blinded by the interpretative work of preceding
generations that serve as presumptions that are judged unproblematic. In
this sense, the concept of the lifeworld uncovers difficulties in communi-
cation as much as it offers positive explanations. The point here is not to
review Winch’s arguments and Habermas’ reasons for contesting them.
The point is rather to see reflected in this debate the extent of Habermas’
commitment to an underlying sense of universal validity. Ultimately,
Winch cannot satisfy Habermas that inherent to different cultures are
incommensurable concepts of rationality. The task would seem to be to
get members of different cultures to adopt a decentered understanding
of their world that would enable them to look at objects, norms, and
experiences in a different way than they have been accustomed. They
need to “presuppose a formal concept of the world… as the reference
system in the context of which they can decide what is and what is not
the case” (Habermas 1990: 136). And they also need to adjust their social
and subjective worlds accordingly. This is a tall order, but the motive
for expecting it rests on beliefs both in the possibility of a decentered
perspective and an underlying universality.
5.8â•… Listeners, hearers, and the universal audience

While it may be lost among the trees of the theory, audience is central to
Habermas’ concerns. He wrestles with audiences that are context-specific
and that are universal, those that are instantiated in the common concerns
of an intersubjective lifeworld, and those that are ideal. His rules for argu-
mentation across the three levels assume inclusive audiences of competent
speakers, and his discussion of validity claims assumes audiences uttering
claims across the full range of human interests, from the descriptive to the
normative, from evaluative to the explicative (Habermas 1984: 39).
An important distinction in his idea of audience arises in some of the
critical comments made against Brandom’s scorekeeping theory of
communication (Habermas 2000). Habermas discusses a Brandomian
example in which a judge and jury listen to an exchange between lawyers.
In terms of Brandom’s scorekeeping model (to be reviewed in the next
chapter), it is the judge and jury who are keeping account. But the
primary communication is between the parties to the dispute, who
address utterances to each other. In Habermas’ view: “Listeners have a
different role than hearers. The listeners behave in the role of third
persons waiting to see what happens, while those directly involved adopt
a performative attitude and, in thus behaving towards each other in the
attitude of a first person towards a second, expect an answer from each
other” (2000: 345). We will consider the fuller merits of Brandom’s
philosophy later. For now, it is the implications of this remark for how
Habermas conceives audiences in communication that is of relevance.
Clearly, those being addressed by a communication are the immediate
audience; they are engaged in an interactive dialogue in which they take
positions. But behind this is a further audience to the communication,
one that, in this case, weighs and judges the merits of the exchange.
Listeners are not directly addressed, but they perform an important
Â�audience-role, even if of a subsidiary nature.
5.8â•… Listeners, hearers, and the universal audience 97
The listener role in the case of the courtroom might be seen to repre-
sent the larger audience that judges validity claims in Habermas’ theory,
the audience that stands apart as a standard of judgment. This seems the
audience that populates the “ideal speech situation.” As Rehg (2003)
observes, although Habermas initially “spelled out the notion of an inclu-
sive and reasonable audience in terms of the “ideal speech situation”, a
phrase like “process idealizations” is less misleading. Process standards of
inclusiveness, open discussion, and the like articulate counterfactual
idealizations that real participants must presuppose” they have approxi-
mated (Rehg 2003: 165). Indeed, this echoes Habermas’ own revision of
the ideal speech situation in an interview with Torben Hviid Nielsen
(Habermas 1993: 147ff). When asked by Nielsen to clarify the status of the
“ideal speech situation,” Habermas expresses regret at having used
the term to describe the idealizing presuppositions of argumentation
(accessibility of all relevant voices, the best arguments available, and the
determination of only the force of the better argument). It is a term,
he says, “whose concretistic connotations are misleading” (1993: 164). He
proceeds: “The point is, rather, that if we want to enter into argumenta-
tion, we must make these presuppositions of argumentation as a matter of
fact, despite the fact that they have an ideal content to which we can only
approximate in reality” (Ibid.). This “ideal” audience, then, is assumed
implicitly by us whenever we argue. It listens in the background, like the
judge and jury. But it also “speaks” to us insofar as it makes implicit
demands of us vis-à-vis the rationality of our argumentation.
Thus, when Habermas speaks of winning the assent of a universal
audience (1996: 228), it is such an audience that he has in mind, one that
provides a non-coercive context for better arguments, given the social
contexts of the situations concerned. Redding (1989: 30) attacks the idea
of such an audience, drawing a distinction between scientific arguments
on one side, and moral, aesthetic, and humanistic discourse on the other.
The former, he insists, is directed not at “audiences” but at “other
members of a specialized community.” The latter, by contrast, requires a
different kind of participation. But, as Rehg (2009) has pointed out,
science is no different in this respect. Arguments across all fields are
directed at participants while a background audience (a universal audi-
ence) pertinent for that field is assumed as a standard of presuppositions
aimed at regulating the rationality of the outcome.
There are tensions in argumentation that reflect the tensions in social
reality: disputes arise in contexts characterized by the different perspec-
tives of their participants, but all parties expect reasonable outcomes,
assume that better arguments can come to the fore, and that where such
arguments can be agreed to, such agreements will emerge from the force
of the arguments involved.
This understanding of audience may be less explicit than that which
was retrieved from Aristotle and Perelman, but it is useful for what it
suggests for questions of persuasion and evaluation. The distinction
between listeners and hearers captures one way in which audiences come
alive and recognize a discourse as being “for them.” Hearers become
active participants in a similar way to the invitational features of the
previous two accounts. Behind these hearers is the evaluative role of
the listener, those who stand apart as judges; they serve as a standard for
judging the rationality of arguments. Thus, effectiveness is again not
enough: better arguments are judged against community standards of
rationality themselves instantiated in an audience that necessarily has an
aspect of the “ideal” about it while remaining concrete in the relevant
social context.
chapter 6
Meaning and reasons
6.1â•…Introduction
The last three chapters (3 to 5) reviewed three theories of argumenta-
tion that gave serious consideration, whether explicit or implicit, to the
subject of audience. In each case something of the problems associated
with audience concerns that were identified in Chapter 2 had been recog-
nized, if only indirectly. But none of these theories appreciates the full
range of problems discussed nor offers responses to all of them. Still, they
serve as a beginning on which to build. The next four chapters provide
resources for that construction, starting here with an exploration of the
concept of meaning as this is relevant to the concerns of argumentation.
Sometimes, when we are reading a translation that does not quite seem
to make sense, we have the suspicion that the translator has translated the
language but not the concept. That is, what is being said has a meaning
in the original that has not been carried over into what is being said in
the translation. The communication of meanings in argumentative situa-
tions is vulnerable to just such problems of transfer. The transmission of
arguments between arguers and audiences is a particular case of the trans-
mission of meaning in general, such that it warrants serious consideration
from argumentation theorists. The popular direction in which to turn is
to pragmatics, and recent work done here rewards this attention.
One of the chief “pragmatic” theories of meaning that has been widely
endorsed by argumentation theorists is that of Paul Grice (1989, 2001).1
This “intentional” theory sees the source of meaning to lie primarily with
the intentions of a speaker or arguer and the task becomes how to under-
stand and appreciate how such intentions are communicated, implicitly
and explicitly, to an audience. In this chapter I will review the core
components of Grice’s model, including the ideas involved with his
1â•‡ See, for example, Kauffeld (1986) and van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992).
99
100 Meaning and reasons
cooperative principle, and consider some of the criticisms that have been
brought against it, particularly by relevance theorists. My aim is to
measure the degree to which a conception of audience is apparent in his
thinking. This will also involve an assessment of how he understands
“reasons” and the concept of the “rational.” The theory will then be
contrasted with a competing “pragmatic” model that has recently
emerged, after that new theory has first been explicated. This is the infer-
entialist model of Robert Brandom (1994, 2000). His ideas are also
proving attractive to argumentation theorists, but the full import of what
he has to offer has not, I believe, been taken up in the work influenced.
In particular, the social nature of the practice of giving and asking for
reasons that forms the core of his model has important implications
for any theory of argumentation that aspires to place meaning in the
hands of the audience.
6.2â•… Gricean pragmatics

Grice gives us two principal theories original enough to warrant the
attention they have received: one deals with implicature (conversational
and conventional), the other is a theory of meaning based on speaker-
intentions. As we will see, the latter assumes the details of the former, so
it is with the ideas on implicature that we should begin.2 His “later” work
(2001) on reasons and reasoning, and the value attached to them, in turn
assumes the details of the theory of meaning. Or at least, he adopts the
same basic formulas describing speaker-intentions.
We might attribute various aims to Grice in the body of his work. In
the “Prologue” to his retrospective collection of essays (1989), including
his William James lectures (delivered at Harvard in 1967), he announces
his primary aim as determining how any “distinction between meaning
and use is to be drawn, and where lie the limits of its philosophical
utility” (1989: 4). But several concomitant aims emerge from the work as
a whole, especially when viewed together with the account of reasons
(2001). He is interested, for example, in determining the features of what
he calls informal or natural argument (in contrast to formal argument):
there are too many inferences and arguments expressed in natural
language which are valid while not cast in terms of formal devices.
2â•‡ The chronology of the papers does not fully justify this ordering. There was often a considerable
time lapse between Grice’s completion of a project and his being prepared to see it in print. The
paper “Meaning” was published in 1957 but had existed in final form as early as 1948 (See
Chapman 2005: 63).
6.2â•… Gricean pragmatics 101
“So there must be a place for an unsimplified, and so more or less unsys-
tematic, logic of the natural counterparts of these devices” (24). This is an
important enough concern to be reiterated in the “Retrospective
Epilogue” (1989: 339–85), where he insists that what he calls the
Modernist school of logic, led by Russell, does not give a faithful account
of the nature of the logical connectives of ordinary language. Thus, we
need two kinds of logic (1989: 372–74). Arguably, then, Grice’s work can
be taken as an effort toward elaborating such an “informal” logic.
Second, he expresses an abiding interest in rationality and its valua-
tional nature. His exploration of reasoning and the different ways in
which we use the word “reason” leads him to ask why we assign the judg-
ment “rational” to some reasoning but not to others. His core cases
include a former peer at the University of Oxford, dubbed “Shropshire,”
who expressed the belief that the immortality of the soul was evident
from the fact that a chicken continued to run around for some time after
being decapitated, and a logician, dubbed “Botvinnik,” who developed a
proof six pages in length. To account for the view that the latter was
rational while the former not, Grice relies on a distinction between “flat”
and “variable” rationality (2001: 20). “Flat” rationality describes the basic
capacity of all rational animals. In this sense the unfortunate Shropshire
qualifies, since he could presumably negotiate the demands of daily life.
But “variable” rationality differs in value. It is better to be more rational
as expressed in the kinds of activity performed by Botvinnik. Moreover,
the focus on more specific values allows the account of rationality to be
expanded to include qualities of excellence like clear-headedness, a sense
of relevance, flexibility, and inventiveness (31).3 This concern in Grice’s
work should not be overlooked. For him, the notion of value is crucial to
the idea of a rational being (1989: 298). While Grice’s ultimate account of
reasoning has its problems (Harman 2003: 282), it allows him to explore
principles that apply to both alethic and practical reasoning. Setting aside
naturalistic accounts of the nature of reasoning, Grice holds that a
rational being is fundamentally one that evaluates (1989: 298). And lest
we be thought to be equivocating on the nature of “value” here, I would
suggest that such evaluation requires qualities of mind like clear-headed-
ness, a sense of relevance, and so forth.
Such qualities would seem to be assumed by the operation of the
Gricean maxims that inform his Cooperative Principle with its associated
sense of implicature. This is the first important idea that Grice introduces
3â•‡ Grice does not intend the list of characteristics to be exhaustive.

in his seminal paper, “Logic and Conversation” (1989: 22–40). The account
rests on the distinction between what one can say by an utterance and what
one can imply without saying it. To avoid dealing with the family of verbs
connected with implicate, Grice adds to this verb the nouns implicature and
implicatum (24). When I say, “I lost thousands in the financial crisis,”
I implicate that the money was mine. And when I ask, “do you have the
time?” I make a request that you tell me the time. The question is how such
implicatures work given that what is implicated is not what has been said.4
Grice divides implicatures into those that are conventional and those
that are conversational, but given the problems associated with conven-
tional implicatures (of which Grice seemed aware), I will restrict the
discussion largely to the more interesting conversational class.5 These he
identifies as a subclass of nonconventional implicatures. But before fully
defining them, he discusses features of language with which they are
connected and on which they would seem to depend. Such features are the
principles that govern conversation and the associated maxims.
Talking is a goal-oriented activity and so its purposes may be better
achieved in some ways than in others, depending on the specific goal
involved. So people might be advised to make their contributions to a
conversation such as is required by the purpose of the conversation, and
the stage involved.6 This, Grice calls the Cooperative Principle. The vague-
ness of a phrase like “such as is required” is largely removed by the intro-
duction of the various maxims operating under the headings of Quantity,
Quality, Relation, and Manner (26). The predilection among some
commentators to reduce the number of maxims (Horn 1984; Wilson and
Sperber 1981), warrants a close look at what Grice proposes and why.
4 By “said,” Grice means something approximating the conventional meanings of the words uttered.
5 For Kent Bach (1999), the insistence on a conventional implicature complicates that picture.
Conversational implicatures depend on the audience recognizing that what is said lacks in one or
more of the criteria of adequacy covered by the maxims such that an inference is invited that the
speaker would not have said what was said if something else had not been intended. Thus it differs
from a semantic presupposition. But a conventional implicature is significantly different in that “to
qualify as conventional, it must depend on the conventional meaning of a particular locution in
the sentence” (Bach 1999: 329). Consequently, Bach provides an analysis, depending in part on a
challenge to the assumption that each sentence expresses just one proposition, to show some
alleged conventional implicatures are really part of what is said and other candidate propositions
are utterance modifiers (vehicles for the performance of second-order speech acts) (365). I take
Bach’s arguments to be persuasive enough to restrict the current discussion to conversational
implicatures, even though they are not entirely free from difficulties – not the least arising from
Grice’s failure to define “conversation” (Chapman 2005: 191).
6 Grice tells us little more about such stages, but the importance is acknowledged in other models
like that of the pragma-dialecticians, who recognize four stages to a critical discussion (van
Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004).
6.2â•… Gricean pragmatics 103
Under “Quantity,” Grice essentially provides only one maxim: “make
your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose
of the exchange)” (26). A second maxim advising that the contribution
not be more informative than required is noted to be problematic and, as
Grice says, its effect is covered by the maxim addressing relevance.
The category of “Quality” provides a super-maxim (“Try to make your
contribution one that is true”), which is clarified in two others. The first
advises against saying what one believes to be false; and the other against
saying that for which one lacks adequate evidence (27). Implicit here is
the thought that a person by uttering a proposition can find themselves
committed to supporting it, an idea that will reappear in Brandom.
The “Relation” category is the most sparse, and yet the one that the
relevance theorists will find most able to encompass the others. Grice can
offer only “Be Relevant,” along with the confession that a number of
things vex him about this: how many kinds of relevance might there be
and how do they shift in an exchange, often legitimately?7
A last category of “Manner” (although Grice suggests that there might
be others; not fewer) relates not, like the others, to what is said but to
how it is said. A super-maxim advises to “Be perspicuous,” under which
other maxims cover the need to avoid obscurity and ambiguity and to be
brief and orderly (27). Much later, Grice will add a further maxim under
this category, although it is difficult to see how it promotes clarity. In the
paper “Presupposition and Conversational Implicature” (1989: 269–82),
Grice addresses the theory of definite descriptions, suggesting that such
descriptions carry a kind of conversational implicature. The details of his
involvement in this debate need not delay us, but he is concerned with
the way that some assertions invite a denial of all or part of what has
been said. In this respect, he suggests adding to his maxims of Manner
one which governs such invitations: ‘“Frame whatever you say in the
form most suitable for any reply that would be regarded as appropriate”;
or “Facilitate in your form of expression the appropriate reply”’ (1989:
273). This is an important addition on a number of fronts,8 but most
particularly because it constitutes an explicit movement toward the audi-
ence. What is said is said not just with an audience in mind, but in antic-
ipation of a response from that audience. Among other things, this means
7 Wilson and Sperber (1986) suggest that Grice’s maxim would be of little help unless degrees of
relevance could be defined, revising the maxim to read: “Try to be as relevant as possible in the
circumstances” (249).
8 It might be fruitfully considered alongside Mikhail Bakhtin’s claim, introduced in Chapter 2, that
an utterance is always addressed at an answer and anticipates such in its structure.
that a speaker must have quite a clear idea of who that audience is and
what range of responses is likely to follow. The maxim does not imagine a
passive audience receiving messages, as is often assumed in an account
founded on speaker-intentions, but one actively engaged in the exchange
of conversation.
In asking what reasons we have for believing that people cooperate in
these ways, Grice falls back onto experiential ground rather like Mill did
when he considered what reasons he had for believing that people desired
the general happiness. It is “just a well-recognized empirical fact that
people do behave in these ways” (29), although Grice worries that he
should provide further proof that people not only do follow the principle
but that it is reasonable for them to do so. Effectively, the examination of
reasons and reasonableness (2001) meets this requirement: we derive satis-
faction or happiness in general from exercising those capacities that allow
us to function as widely as possible under human living conditions
(2001). In the context of the discussion in (1989) we can understand that
cooperation provides a satisfaction stemming from the exercise of excel-
lences developing in us as rational beings. The actual discussion phrases
things a little differently in terms of interests: “anyone who cares about
the goals that are central to conversation/communication (such as giving
and receiving information, influencing and being influenced by others)
must be expected to have an interest, given suitable circumstances, in
participation in talk exchanges that will be profitable only on the
assumption that they are conducted in general accordance with
the Cooperative Principle and maxims” (1989: 30). But I think, as does
Grice, that this expectation of interest still requires a further explanation,
and the later examination of the character of rationality provides it.
Such a principle, and its maxims, can be violated, rejected, impeded, or
flouted, depending upon the circumstances involved, such as the goals of a
speaker and her available resources (she may not be able to be informative,
for example, without saying what she lacks the evidence to say, and so her
ability to obey the first maxim of Quantity is impeded). And it is these
“failures” to meet the maxims that complete the basic account leading to
the full characterization of “conversational implicature.”
A person has conversationally implicated q in the saying of p on the
understanding that “(1) he is presumed to be observing the conversational
maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle, (2) the supposition that he
is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to make his saying or
making as if to say p (or doing so in those terms) consistent with this
presumption; and (3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to
6.3â•… Revising Grice 105
think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the
hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned
in (2) is required” (30–31).
A conversational implicature, then, aims to be informative, truthful,
relevant, and clear. It is used in order to say p along these lines (later,
Grice tells us such implicatures are non-detachable, there being no other
way of saying the same thing), and is intended by the speaker to be
understood by the hearer and to be understood as so intended.
6.3â•… Revising Grice

Grice’s ideas did much to clarify the distinction between semantics
and pragmatics, but the idea of implicatures has had its critics; at least
with respect to the claims Grice makes. Laurence Horn (1984; 2005),
for example, reduces the conversational implicature maxims to two – a
Q Principle (QP) and an R Principle (RP). The QP is hearer based,
and the RP speaker based. The Q-based implicatures are founded on
the principle “Say enough”; a generalization of Grice’s first maxim of
quantity. And R-based implicatures are based on the principle “Don’t
say too much”; which does the larger job of subsuming the second
Quantity maxim along with those of Relation and Manner (Horn
2005: 196). The reason Horn gives for folding the Gricean maxims into
two general principles is that the “speaker and hearer are aware of their
own and each other’s desiderata, and this awareness generates a variety
of effects based on what was and what was not said” (196). But the
debate continues over the adequacy of Horn’s reduction (cf. Levinson
2000; Traugott 2004). Robyn Carston (2005), in particular, challenges
Horn’s account from the perspective of relevance theory. Her detailed
analysis targets the R Principle and is motivated by the observation
that “Conversational implicatures are assumptions that a hearer has
to attribute to a speaker in order to preserve the presumption that the
speaker is observing the maxims. But while a hearer has reason to be
concerned that a speaker is being relevant, informative, truthful, and
orderly, why would he care to preserve an assumption that a speaker is
minimizing her effort?” (2005: 313). This will have some bearing on the
larger concerns of relevance theorists to be canvassed below. For now, it
suffices to recognize the considerable importance of Grice’s achievement,
seen in part through such attempts to revise them, and the larger contri-
bution that conversational implicatures have made to our understanding
of pragmatics.
6.4â•… Gricean meaning
All the Gricean maxims are aimed at achieving the speaker’s intention
of influencing the hearer in specific ways. To this end, they fit the general
intentionalist account of meaning that Grice develops over a series of
papers. Succinctly put, a speaker both intends to communicate a meaning
to a hearer and intends that the hearer recognize this intention. But things
become far more complicated than this.
While in “Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions,” Grice expresses the
desire to formulate an idea of central meaning (1989: 88), he must spend
time unraveling distinctions between natural and non-natural meaning,
and even timeless and occasional meaning. One of the things (Grice
notes four others) that characterize natural meanings is a sense of entail-
ment. For example, in a case like “Those spots mean measles,” one cannot
then deny that the person in question has measles, because here “x means that
p” entails p. By contrast, a case like “Those three rings on the bell (of the
bus) mean that the bus is full” can be challenged – the conductor could
have made a mistake. Here, “x means p” does not entail p. When expres-
sions like “means” and “means that” are used in the first sense, Grice
understands the sense to be natural. And when they are used in the
second sense, he understands the sense to be non-natural, introducing
the abbreviation “meansNN” to distinguish it (1989: 214). Furthermore, the
particular sense of “saying” that was assumed by the Cooperative
Principle leads him to distinguish between timeless meanings of complete
or incomplete utterance types, and occasion meanings. Some sense of
what is at stake with these may be apparent from the general account,
but for our purposes it suffices to understand that an utterer’s occasion-
meaning can be explicated in terms of an utterer’s intentions, and time-
less meaning (and applied timeless meaning) can be explicated in terms
of an utterer’s occasion-meaning (along with other notions). So the basic
idea to be explored is the notion of an utterer’s intention. This makes
sense: given the ambiguity that haunts utterances and the terms
employed in them, audiences are advised to turn to the occasion of a
speaker’s utterance (the context in which it is uttered) to determine how
that speaker has drawn from a fund of meanings and made them her own
in communicating a specific intention. Thus, although Grice defines
meaning as determined by speaker-intention, his account also focuses
upon the context.
Grice begins by offering what he takes to be a basic definition, where
U denotes the utterer and A the audience:
6.5â•… The role of audience 107
“‘U meant something by uttering x’ is true iff, for some audience A, U
uttered x intending:
(1) A to produce a particular response r
(2) A to think (recognize) that U intends (1)
(3) A to fulfill (1) on the basis of his fulfillment of (2)” (1989: 92).
He then proceeds to consider objections to this account of utterer’s occa-
sion-meaning. The details of the objections could delay us here, especially
since they are followed by further objections. At each stage, Grice is led
to redefine his formula. He provides five such redefinitions, with two of
these having dual versions (94–114). The final formulation is, not surpris-
ingly, the one that is the most complex with the most levels of considera-
tion. Retained is the requirement of most pertinence to our study: that
the audience recognize the speaker’s intention to have her or his intention
recognized.
6.5â•… The role of audience

Three points of significance emerge in the course of Grice’s elabora-
tions of meaning, all of which are germane to our interests and warrant
comment: (1) His final definition is constructed so as to deal with the
possibility of an absent audience and so, implicitly tells us something
about how audiences are understood in the account. (2) Grice shows
why he (and we) cannot take away the recognition of intention. And
(3), related to this last point, the whole theory of meaning assumes the
Cooperative Principle.
Grice considers that there are utterances by which a speaker could be
said to have meant something but where there is no actual audience
being addressed and in whom the speaker intends to induce a response
(1989: 112–13). The kinds of utterances he has in mind are warnings like
“Keep out,” entries in journals, notes to oneself, soliloquizing, rehearsing
one’s contributions to a conversation, and “silent thinking.” In order to
have his definition of meaning fit the full range of such cases, he collects
them into three groups. The first such group involves utterances for
which there may at some time be an audience. Someone, perhaps himself
at a later date, may read the journal entries. Secondly, there are utterances
known not to be addressed to any actual audience but to an imagined
audience or type of audience in a kind of “pretend” address. Grice
suggests the rehearsal of one’s contributions to a prospective conversation
fit here. Lastly, there are utterances where the speaker “neither thinks it
possible that there may be an actual audience nor imagines himself as
addressing an audience, but nevertheless intends his utterance to be such
that it would induce a certain sort of response in a certain perhaps fairly
indefinite kind of audience were it the case that such an audience was
present” (113). Some aspects of “silent thinking” may fit this description,
if they are sufficiently “framed” for it to be appropriate to talk of having
meant something.
There is a recognition here that talk and the meanings we attach to it
has as a necessary correlate a notion of audience. But where an audience
is absent or ill-imagined, problems arise for a theory of utterance occasion-
meaning in which the audience’s recognition of the speaker’s intention to
mean something is an integral component. That is, unless we appreciate
that our experience of being “in audience” is fundamental to the ways in
which we approach talk and its cognates. To make an address is to assume
an addressee and, as the additional maxim of manner allowed, to facili-
tate the responses of that addressee in the way the utterance is
constructed. The groupings of “absent” audiences that Grice proposes can
mostly be understood in this way. One cannot have meant something
without some audience involved, actual or potential. The future reader of
the journal is evident to the utterer insofar as the entries are constrained
by such possible readers in ways that would account for the differences
between confessions and journalistic accounts of one’s travels. The
“pretend” audience of the rehearsed conversation cannot be so vague
insofar as it is a potential audience. That is, for such an idea to be viable
the “pretend” audience cannot be a void absent of any background and
beliefs. The context of the rehearsal supplies the possibilities (and the
impossibilities) here, but the imagined audience in order to be called such
must possess some of the fundamental features that we would attribute to
any real audience. Again, that additional maxim of manner is instructive
here. We cannot facilitate the responses of an audience to which we
cannot attribute an identity with respect to attitudes and beliefs.
The “silent thinking” is a more difficult matter to fit into the account.
Grice’s concept of a silent thinker has some coherence to it. That is, he
wants to set aside the mere flux of ideas through the mind and settle on
those that form expressions such that it would be appropriate to talk of
having meant something by them, to have chosen and advanced them in
some way. The concept involved seems similar to Perelman’s self-deliber-
ator, who stood apart from his other kinds of audience. But for Grice’s
account to be consistent, it must also allow for the structure of intention
6.5â•… The role of audience 109
and recognition of intention in this internal thinking. This must be to
recognize the silent thinking as a dialogue, or thought patterns that reflect
the dialogue form, where the self is its own respondent and recognizes the
intention to mean something.9 Grice’s way of speaking suggests that
he sees the audience as essentially “other,” such that with silent thinking
the utterer does not think it possible that there may be an actual audience
or imagine addressing an audience. But the internal dialogue addresses an
audience as actual as any other we experience. Grice’s final formulation of
what an utterer means by an utterance becomes sufficiently qualified to
capture the possibilities associated with the “absent” audiences, offering
such phrases as “U uttered x intending x to be such that anyone who has
[the properties of possible audiences] would think that,” and “U uttered x
intending that, should there actually be anyone” (114).
Some of the difficulties of the “absent” audience would disappear if the
recognition requirement was removed from Grice’s conception of
meaning. But this is not possible. For a person to mean something by x
she must intend to induce by x a belief in an audience and she must also
intend her utterance to be recognized as so intended. This is because the
recognition is intended to play a part in inducing a belief and if it does
not then something has failed in the fulfillment of the speaker’s inten-
tions. Grice illustrates the importance of this with the example of
frowning. A person can frown in the normal course of events such that
an observer would treat the frown as a natural sign of displeasure. But if
the person frowns deliberately, the observer who recognizes the intention
would still conclude that the frown signified displeasure. Since it does not
seem to make any difference to the observer’s reaction whether the frown is
regarded as spontaneous or intended to be informative, then the deliberate
frown would not seem to meanNN anything. Grice insists, however, “if we
take away the recognition of intention, leaving the other circumstances
(including the recognition of the frown as deliberate), the belief-
producing tendency of the frown must be regarded as being impaired or
destroyed” (1989: 219).
We may seem to have drifted away from the focus on the Cooperative
Principle, but it is still there in the background. Cooperation requires the
participation of both (or all) parties involved. While attention in
the Gricean account is directed at the speaker and her or his intentions,
9â•‡ Jaakko Hintikka (1986) reviews Grice’s maxims in terms of a purposive dialogue model with asser-
toric, interrogative, deductive, and definatory moves. He concludes that the maxims should then
be understood not in terms of an utterance alone, but its context in a discourse.
the role of the audience is not a passive one. I cannot be said to have
meant something without my intended effect being recognized. Some
uptake on the audience’s part is required.10 For an utterance to have a
non-natural meaning “the intended effect must be something which in
some sense is within the control of the audience” (1989: 221). The recog-
nition of the intention behind the utterance is a reason for the audience
to believe something (and perhaps to act). So the intended effect must be
something the audience can do, a belief that it is feasible to hold, an
action that they could perform once sufficiently motivated. The recogni-
tion of the intention supplied the requisite reason/motivation.
6.6â•… Two important criticisms

There seem to have been two general complaints leveled against the
Gricean model: that the account of meaning is unnecessarily complex,
and that he has misidentified the intended effect of communication.
We have seen reasons why the first complaint is unwarranted, that for
Grice the complex levels of intention-recognition are required to account
for the inducing of belief. Additional support can be found outside of the
Gricean corpus. Fred Kauffeld (2009) draws from one of Cicero’s
speeches to stress the importance of openness in Grice’s formulation of
utterer’s meaning. The kind of retrenchment to earlier versions of Grice’s
formula that appeals to certain critics is to be resisted, Kauffeld argues,
because it “strips the analysis of the means by which S openly takes
responsibility for her communicative effort and, thus, eliminates the
grounds which … S provides to assure her addressee of S’s accountability”
(2009: 242). The difference is between the speaker merely intending
that the addressee recognize her primary speaker-intention and the
speaker deliberately and openly giving the addressee to believe that she
is trying to secure a certain response. The case is made through an anal-
ysis of how Cicero uses the figure of apostrophe in his “First Catilinarian”
essay. That is (apropos the apostrophe), Cicero communicates meaning
to his primary audience (the Senate) through addressing points to his
secondary audience (Catiline). This accords with the structure of apos-
trophe, which requires two audiences. “In producing an apostrophe, S
is engaged in speaking to A1 about A2, and S turns from addressing A1 to
speak to (or as if to speak to) A2, and S casts A1 in the role of an affected
10â•‡ Although this is a point of contention, as we will see below.

6.7â•… Relevance theory and its critique of Grice 111
listener, who (i) is intended1 to overhear and respond appropriately to
what S says to A2 and (ii) is intended2 to recognize that S intends1 that
A1 overhear and respond appropriately to what S is saying to A2” (244).
Kauffeld casts the scheme in terms of the dual intentions of the speaker
to capture the way in which meaning is transported from the exchange
with one addressee into the exchange with the other. In Cicero’s case the
second condition governing openness is crucial because he lacks
the evidence to directly indict Catiline and so he must do so indirectly,
intending the Senate to act upon what they “overhear.” Thus, Kauffeld
shows that a second level of reflexive speaker-intentions is required in
order to seriously say and mean something. The import of his illustration
is its real-world origin: “far from being implausibly complex, our
preferred version of Grice’s analysis, marks distinctions important to
understanding the complexities of real world argumentation” (254).
The second general complaint concerns the intended effect of commu-
nication. Grice introduces and manages this complaint himself, attrib-
uting it to friendlier critics such as John Searle and Peter Strawson (Grice
1989: 351). The dispute centers on whether the intended effect of commu-
nication should be some form of acceptance like belief (as Grice holds),
or the kind of comprehension captured by J. L. Austin in the term
“uptake.” Acceptance may be a secondary target, the critic allows,
but “uptake” is the primary aim. Grice’s resistance to the charge is
suggested in the way he places the contested term in quotation marks.
The gist of his response is that his analysis accommodates “uptake” since
“in meaningNN a hearer is intended to recognize himself as intended to be
the subject of a particular form of acceptance, and to take on such an
acceptance for that reason” (352). He sees this, then, as an intention
towards a form of “uptake,” in the sense that it calls not just for an
ensuing belief or action on the part of the audience, but that such a belief
be founded on the appropriate understanding of what was intended.
6.7â•… Relevance theory and its critique of Grice

General complaints aside, the position of relevance theorists is more
threatening to the prospects of Grice’s theory, since they advance a major
alternative to contest for the hearts and minds of pragmatists. Principal
among their numbers sit the scholars Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber.
Some years before their seminal text, Relevance (Sperber and Wilson
1986), they set out the rudiments of a theory in distinction to Grice’s
(Wilson and Sperber 1981).
According to relevance theory, argues Horn (2005), the most funda-
mental task of a pragmatic theory is to explain how the hearer recognizes
the intended context. The focus is, accordingly, on utterance interpreta-
tion and only incidentally on why speakers utter what they do. This is
clear from the language that Wilson and Sperber adopt in their approach:
the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is more complex than
Grice’s theory would suggest, because the hearer uses the maxims not
only to decide what is implicated, but also to decide what proposition
has been expressed. Moreover, there is more to the interpretation of
figures like irony and metaphor than the mere knowledge of the maxims
of conversation (Wilson and Sperber 1981: 155). This is indeed an
Â�interpretation-oriented approach to the notion of implicature and the
maxims of conversation. For them, the maxims play a larger role, not only
with respect to disambiguation and the assignment of reference, but also in
deciding what proposition has been expressed by an utterance (157).
The question of irony and other related figures is an important one,
since here we have a genre of speech acts that mean other than what they
say, or in which the meaning is essentially taken up in what is implied.
Since Grice sees irony stemming from the maxim of Quality – “Do not
say what you believe to be false” – they take Grice to be claiming that all
figurative utterances are false (160). In “Logic and Conversation,” Grice
reviews examples of several figures (irony, metaphor, meiosis, and hyper-
bole) where the first maxim of Quality is flouted. “X, with whom A has
been on close terms until now, has betrayed a secret of A’s to a business
rival. A and his audience both know this. A says X is a fine friend” (Grice
1989: 34). Grice tells us that A must be trying to get across some proposi-
tion other than the one he purports to be putting forward. This must be
some “obviously related proposition.” And the most obviously related
proposition is the contradictory of the one he purports to be advancing
(34). Wilson and Sperber worry about this explanation. How does one
decide what counts as an “obviously related proposition”? Why not
comparison, for example? (Wilson and Sperber 1981: 161). That is, when
the hearer “looks around,” what tells them the direction in which to look?
Irony is an apt figure to explore when considering implicatures and
meaning, and I will return to it in a later chapter. As Claire Colebrook
(2004) suggests, the very question of the meaning of a text (or utterance)
indicates that there is more to it than just what lies on the surface. The
idea of irony seems to commit us to a stable meaning that is being chal-
lenged in some way (Colebrook 2004: 21), but that is an assumption that
appears unwarranted in the absence of the analysis itself.
In his “Further Notes” to the earlier essay, Grice recognizes that his
characterization of irony was too brief (1989: 53). The “fine friend”
example is too complex to support the gloss that had been provided,
since there are several other ways in which B may have understood A’s
utterance (as a protest, for example, since he is usually a fine friend). To
be ironical, a speaker must adapt a sentence that has a recognized
currency. We might avoid the suggestion that an utterance needs to be
false to be ironical; it need merely be at variance with established norms
of usage (Tindale and Gough 1987). Grice recognizes that just saying
something that is obviously false is not sufficient for irony. But his expla-
nation is that irony must be intimately connected with the expression of
a feeling, attitude, or evaluation. “I cannot say something ironically
unless what I say is intended to reflect a hostile or derogatory judgment
or a feeling such as indignation or contempt” (Grice 1989: 53–54). Again,
this seems too strong. Ironical utterances can convey a critical stance
without hostility or derogatory judgment, just as they can convey no
more than bemused “such is life” observations. The importance of Grice’s
discussion generally, though (and this is noted by Wilson and Sperber) is
the way in which it draws attention to the traditional rhetorical views of
figuration, since like them Gricean pragmatics recognizes that utterances
can have both “figurative” and “literal” meanings. But a stronger related
point made by Wilson and Sperber is that implicatures carried by figures
like irony cannot be the same as standard implicatures, because the audi-
ence must believe that the maxim has been violated rather than that it
has been observed (Wilson and Sperber 1981: 160).11
It is on the nature of implicatures that the relevance theorists are at
greatest variance with Grice. For them, the maxims are not all indepen-
dently necessary for the generation of implicatures. They reduce them,
not to Horn’s two, but to one principle of relevance. As is widely recog-
nized, for Wilson and Sperber: “Every act of ostensive communication
communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance” (Sperber
and Wilson 1986: 158). This is the fundamental insight that informs their
work, and it is clearly operative in their analysis of Grice. Relevance for them
is the production of the maximum amount of contextual effects for the least
amount of processing effort. This is entirely dependent on the context,
which will determine the possibilities of effect and effort.
11â•‡ In his paper on G. E. Moore (1989: 154–70), Grice did allow that ironic utterances involve special
uses of language.
The attention, as noted, is on the audience’s interpretation of utter-
ances, primarily in judging their relevance. This is determined in relation
to a set of beliefs and assumptions: “relevance is a relation between the
proposition expressed by an utterance, on the one hand, and the set of
propositions in the hearer’s accessible memory on the other” (Wilson and
Sperber 1981: 169). This principle of relevance serves as a guide to the
audience, assisting in disambiguation and assigning reference; deciding
the need for and identity of additional premises, and whether a figurative
interpretation is appropriate. In all of this, the principle of relevance is
judged sufficient to do the job for which Grice employed a larger set of
tools. It alone “provides an adequate, and we think rather more explicit,
account of all the implicatures which Grice’s maxims were set up to
describe” (171). They then illustrate this claim through the analysis of a
number of examples dealing with various maxims. There is one final, and
serious, divergence from Grice’s approach. It is not clear to them that the
ability to interpret utterances derives from ways in which conversation is
cooperative, and so their principle of relevance does not follow the
Cooperative Principle.
Two different reactions to the relevance theorists’ approach seem perti-
nent here. One is to ask whether the portrait they provide of Grice’s ideas
is an accurate one; another is to simply take what they provide as a
different pragmatic model, one that harbingers a different direction that
might be taken (while still benefiting from a range of Grice’s insights).
Jennifer Saul (2002) takes the first tack, arguing that the relevance theo-
rists’ objections to Grice are invalid because they focus too much on the
audience’s perspective. Grice’s intent, she argues, was never to provide an
account of utterance interpretation. Relevance theorists are interested in
the psychological processes by which utterances are interpreted; Grice is
focused on a quite different project, a different notion of what is said.
While the process of interpretation is indeed that in which the audi-
ence engages, there is a difference between what Grice was pursuing and
any actual interpretations that an audience might derive from utterances.
The crucial point, argues Saul, is that both speaker and audience may be
wrong about what is said. If that is the case, then what an audience inter-
prets is other than what was said. Grice’s theory “makes it very clear that
audiences can be wrong both about what is said and about what is impli-
cated. And this is where the important consequences come in. If the
audience is wrong about what is implicated, then what is implicated is
not a part of the audience’s interpretation, and it needn’t play any role at
all in the interpretation process” (Saul 2002: 352). Her case is illustrated
with the example of one of Bill Clinton’s responses in the Monica
Lewinsky affair. When he said, “there is no sexual relationship,” audiences
took him to be denying any involvement with Lewinski. Only subse-
quent closer attention to what he said brought the realization that he was
not actually denying what had previously taken place. “Intuitively, the
audience’s interpretation does not determine what Clinton said. So
Wilson and Sperber are wrong to claim that what is said is ‘what proposi-
tion the utterance is taken to express’” (357). She might also have
observed that Grice intends his model to accommodate cases with no
present audience, although, as we have seen, this is a problematic aspect
of the theory.
Of course, Grice makes it clear that the truth of a conversational
implicatum is not required by the truth of what is said, because the
implicature is not carried by what is said but rather by the saying of what
is said, the way it is put (Grice 1989: 39). But still, it is the speaker’s inten-
tion that is at issue. The account of reasons and reasoning is consistent
with this, viewing these matters in terms of a person’s intending or
believing (Grice 2001: 67). And while Saul is correct in the importance
granted to getting things wrong, Grice does not totally ignore the audi-
ence’s role. As we saw earlier, it is an active one. Grice explains that an
implicature-candidate is worked out in the hearer’s reasoning (1989: 31).
Even an intuition of a conversational implicature must be replaceable by
an argument in order for it to count as an implicature.
Moreover, Grice himself responded to the claim that the maxims
could be reduced to that of relevance. In his retrospective, he takes
Sperber and Wilson to task for failing to maintain a distinction between
Quantity and Relevance. In order to judge, as the Quantity maxim
requires, whether too much or too little information has been supplied,
one needs to identify the topic in question. But the relevance of this
(amount of information required) must be determined by the aim of the
conversation. It is not just a matter of accumulating the highest number
of contextual effects. Beyond the direction of relevance, information is
required with respect to the degree of concern the topic warrants and
with respect to the extent of opportunity for remedial action. As far as
implicature is concerned, he concludes, the principle of relevance is
“dubiously independent of the maxim of Quantity” (Grice 1989: 372).
A different response to the Wilson and Sperber critique is to accept it
as a break from Gricean pragmatics and a move in a different direction.
That is, to accept Saul’s primary claim that the two accounts are
analyzing different aspects of what is said, from different perspectives.
Grice is primarily (but not solely) interested in how the speaker’s inten-
tions convey meaning; the relevance theorists are interested in how audi-
ences interpret meanings. Together, they give a fuller sense of how
communication works from the different perspectives. The danger is
that committing fully to either account results in an incomplete picture.
Implicatures can be viewed as inferences drawn by the hearer, but this is
only a part of what occurs within a discourse context (Horn 2005: 193).
If audiences misinterpret an utterance, that is a genuine matter of
interest that requires attention, and part of that attention will ask both
the speaker’s original intention and how the (wrong) interpretation can
arise in some way from that intention. Communication is an activity of
exchange, and we are interested in the details of such exchanges. Clearly,
maxims require interpretation, especially when we are dealing with
potential figures of speech. Such interpretations must involve not just a
focus on what is said and how it is said, but also the relation of this to a
set of beliefs and assumptions held in common by speaker and audience.
In “Meaning Revisited” (1989: 283–303), Grice concludes that meaning
is not essentially connected with convention (although it is one of the
ways we fix what sentences mean). What a word means is what is
optimal for users of a language to do with that word (298–99). The
meaning of what is said will thus be tied to how it is used and
the context in which it is used. Both of these ideas become important
in the pragmatics of Robert Brandom.
6.8â•… Introducing Brandom

We are, suggests Robert Brandom, peculiarly susceptible to reasons (1994:
200). This is not so surprising, given how fundamental they are to our
social lives. It is this insight that forms the core of his model of norma-
tive pragmatics – a theory of social practice (649), particularly as this is
captured in the enterprise of deontic scorekeeping (2000: 81). As score-
keepers we keep track of the commitments that others make in conver-
sation and the entitlements that it is appropriate to attribute to them.
Determining such an entitlement (that is, whether someone is justified
in saying what they say) may involve requiring them to provide support,
and that is again where reasons enter the picture. We are thus all engaged
in the social practice of giving and asking for reasons. Reasons are inte-
grally linked to commitments, in Brandom’s terms, in the sense of what
count as evidence for commitments, what else we may be committed
to by them, and what other commitments they may be incompatible
6.8â•… Introducing Brandom 117
with such that they preclude entitlement. As he makes the matter clear:
“Giving reasons for a claim is producing other assertions that license or
entitle one to it, that justify it … Such a practice presupposes a distinc-
tion between assertional commitments to which one is entitled and those
to which one is not entitled” (2000: 193). Brandom’s model of discursive
practice is an ideal model of what we do when we make or receive asser-
tions, particularly when we receive them (1994: 158).12
Logic allows us to endorse in what we say what previously we could
not make explicit (2000: 19), and so it enables us to communicate. In one
of his more prosaic passages, Brandom applauds logic for making possible
the “development of the concepts by which we conceive our world and
our plans (and ourselves) to rise in part above the indistinct realm of mere
tradition, or evolution according to the results of thoughtless jostling of
the habitual and the fortuitous, and enter the comparatively well lit
discursive marketplace, where reasons are sought and proffered, and every
endorsement is liable to being put on the scales and found wanting”
(2000: 153). The marketplace metaphor may be judged apt insofar as it
evokes the space in which so much of our social activity takes place and
sees the core of that activity as the exchanges of negotiated meanings. It
marks the underlying web of a community’s indistinct overlaps where the
monological truly presupposes the dialogical (1994: 497).
From one point of view, Brandom’s model constitutes an approach to
inferentialism. That is, there is a specific understanding of inferences at
work, an understanding that seems friendly to the interests of rhetoric.
“The function of assertion,” he tells us, “is making sentences available for
use as premises in inferences” (1994: 168); or, more succinctly, “Asserting
cannot be understood apart from inferring” (158). This is because infer-
ring is a particular move in the game of giving and asking for reasons; it
is “an essentially social practice of communication” (Ibid.). It is on such
terms that rhetoricians Alan Gross and Marcelo Dascal judge Brandom’s
sense of inference as one that would have been endorsed by Aristotle
because of its social character (Gross and Dascal 2001: 277).
In making an assertion, I am doing several things: I commit myself to
justifying the original claim whenever called upon to do so. I also
authorize further assertions on my part that might be inferred from the
original claim and I authorize my audience to make the same assertions.
To be assertional, as he notes elsewhere (Brandom 2008a), a move in the
12â•‡ A Good overview of the core aspects of Brandom’s model can be found in his Articulating Reasons
(2000: 81–82).
game must make a difference, it must have consequences. Putting a
sentence in one’s belief box has consequences for how “else one ought,
rationally, to act, judge, and believe” (Brandom 2008a: 112). And these
consequences hold for both the assertor and the members of an audience,
who through the communicational function of assertion are licensed to
reassert it (Brandom 1994: 174).
Such licensing can be understood in terms of seeing the assertion as the
undertaking of a commitment (rather than the expression of a belief ).
This is an important shift for Brandom. It may seem a quirk of Brandom’s
to prefer talk of commitment to talk of belief, as he says: he just does not
“believe in belief ” (1994: 508). But the choice underlines an important
point (as well as the Kantian roots of many of the ideas). For Kant, judg-
ments and actions are things for which we are responsible, and viewing
assertions in terms of commitments explains why we should be expected
to justify them: “Judging or claiming is staking a claim – undertaking a
commitment. The conceptual articulation of these commitments, their
status as distinctively discursive commitments, consists in the way they are
liable to demands for justification” (2000: 164). Moreover, this is not the
only shift of note in the account (and we will see others ahead). As well as
replacing talk of belief with talk of commitment, he replaces the notion
of intentional state with that of normative status (1994: 201), in the sense
that claims are made on those who have them. Undertaking a commit-
ment involves adopting a normative stance with respect to the claim
involved (rather than attributing a property like truth to it). 13 Both
commitments and entitlements are kinds of normative status.
In the emphasis on responsibility, Brandom echoes and reinforces
important recent additions to Grice’s theory (Kauffeld 2009). Crucial to
Grice’s model is that the audience recognizes a speaker’s intention to have
that audience believe something. But it is not clear why that recognition
should serve as a reason for the subsequent belief. Kauffeld, following
Stampe (1967), shows how the speaker implicitly assumes responsibility for
the audience responding as intended. It is the speaker’s willingness to be
responsible that provides the basis for the audience’s belief. This extrapola-
tion from Grice is an important confirmation of Brandom’s insight.14
13â•‡ In Brandom’s terms, for a claim to be judged true by a scorekeeper is simply for that scorekeeper
to endorse the claim and undertake the same commitment that has been attributed to the
claimant (2000: 168).
14â•‡ A similar move is suggested in the pragma-dialecticians’ preference for responsibility conditions
rather than sincerity conditions in their adoption of a speech act model (van Eemeren and
Grootendorst 1992: 31–33).
6.10â•…Communication 119
6.9â•… The role of reasons
Asserting is crucial in the game of giving and asking for reasons because
it commits a person to justifying the original claim, that is, to providing
reasons.15 Part of being rational is to understand claims as potentially in
need of reasons (1994: 214). Indeed, we have noted that such recogni-
tion is part of what is involved in our make-up as argumentative beings.
On Brandom’s terms, the act of giving reasons for a claim “is producing
other assertions that license or entitle one to it, that justify it” (2008a:
114). Giving reasons presupposes the possibility of asking for them, or
of potentially standing in need of them. While we must allow that some
assertions are “bare” in that they stand as basic and without need of justi-
fication, the kind of practice that Brandom is describing “cannot consist
exclusively in the exchange of speech acts that are accorded the signifi-
cance of bare assertions” (1994: 229).
Importantly, reasons, whether they justify commitments or bestow enti-
tlements, are social. This was the aspect that recommended the account to
Gross and Dascal as one that conformed to the details of Aristotle’s rhet-
oric. In fact, reasons are described from the perspective of a social dimen-
sion: “Being a reason is to be understood in the first instance in terms of
what it is for a community to treat something in practice as such a reason,
on the practical side of reasons for action just as on the doxastic side of
reasons for claims” (1994: 253). Some accounts of reasons like that of Grice
(2001: 39–44) and Davidson (1980) see reasons as causes. They do not just
justify an agent’s action; they are causally instrumental in bringing it about.
Brandom’s account challenges this view. On his terms, the score determines
what ought to be done, not what is done. The effect of elements of the score
on what performances are done is indirect (1994: 259). On these terms,
while intentions are identified with the acknowledgement of commitments,
“reasons for or with which an agent acts [are identified] with the attitudes
or facts that entitle that agent to those practical inferences” (263).
6.10â•…Communication
Two popular ways of explaining intentionality are in terms of rational
agency or in terms of language. Grice has already provided us with an
example of the first. As the foregoing would indicate, Brandom’s account
15â•‡ While assertion receives the bulk of attention in Brandom’s account, it is not the only speech act
that warrants attention. He identifies disavowals, queries and challenges as being useful for score-
keepers (1994: 192). They are all ways in which an audience can test entitlement.
of intentionality is a linguistic one, stressing the relations between inten-
tional states and linguistic performances. In such an account, communi-
cation will involve intralinguistic interpretation.
Again, communication involves the social production and consump-
tion of reasons, but this practice needs to be understood in terms of the
ideas already related. That is, Brandom’s account of communication will
be at variance with the simple Lockean model that we saw at work for
Grice,16 where there is a movement from idea to word. The audience
receives far more explicit recognition and credit from Brandom, since
communication depends on the audience attributing the right commit-
ment to the person making the claim. But to do this, the audience must
draw from a wealth of other commitments or, in Quine’s terms, a whole
web of concomitant beliefs. Quine (1953: 42–43) judges the meaning of a
claim as something relative to the “total theory” of which it is part. The
need to draw on collateral beliefs in interpreting a claim’s meaning points
to why the Lockean model fails: “Given the relativity of the inferential
significance of a claim to the context of concomitant commitments avail-
able to serve as auxiliary premises, it follows that inferential significance is
not preserved in communication – is not conveyed or transported from
producer to consumer of communicational performances” (1994: 480).
This shifts the focus from the one making the claim to the audience who
receives it and the resources at the audience’s disposal in making an
appropriate interpretation (or, in the terms now operational, in attrib-
uting the appropriate entitlements).
The shift is emphasized in the acknowledged dependence of the mono-
logical on the dialogical. “The conceptual contents employed in
Â�monological reasoning, in which all the premises and conclusions are
potential commitments of one individual, are parasitic on and intelligible
only in terms of the conceptual contents conferred by dialogical
reasoning, in which the issue of what follows from what essentially
involves assessments from the different social perspectives with different
background commitments” (1994: 497). This is a crucial observation for
our purposes, reflecting the similar insight of Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca with respect to the source of a self-deliberator’s reasons. In the
aftermath of the rather tense exchanges between Searle and Jacques
Derrida, following the latter’s criticisms of Austin’s speech act model, talk
16â•‡ Just as Brandom’s pragmatics differ from those of Grice. Brandom insists that while for Grice
pragmatics is conversational heuristics, on his understanding it is the “study of the use of expres-
sions in virtue of which they are meaningful at all” (Brandom 2008a: 8).
6.10â•…Communication 121
of something being parasitical on something else may tend to lead the
discussion in unproductive directions. But the dependency of the indi-
vidual on the social and the expression of one’s commitments against the
fabric of communal commitments should arrest our attention and focus
it on the appropriate area. What someone becomes committed to by an
utterance can be assessed only against a background of collateral commit-
ments that can be brought in as other premises in drawing the inference
(1994: 509). Brandom stresses the differences in significance between a
sentence in the mouths of different people. In fact, without such differ-
ences communication would be redundant. It is because of, and across,
such variances in significance that we need to communicate.
Important to the toolbox that Brandom employs are de re and de dicto
ascriptions and the differences between them. Ascriptions de re attribute
belief about a thing (or res); ascriptions de dicto attribute belief in a saying
(or dictum) (2000: 170). Brandom’s example, first employed in Making it
Explicit (500) is the following sentence, uttered in 1994 (the year of that
book’s appearance):
The president of the United States will be black by the year 2000.17
Read de dicto it means that the sentence will be true by the year 2000.
Read de re, it means that the thing named, the president of the United
States, who in 1994 was Bill Clinton, will be black by the year 2000. The
distinction between these two readings is often the source of ambiguity
when one of the readings, unlike the case here, is not implausible. But
the distinction plays an important role in Brandom’s account in working
out appropriate propositional ascriptions.
Brandom is interested in the representational dimension of proposi-
tional content, which in his account is conferred on language by the
social dimension of the practice of giving and asking for reasons (1994:
496). One way of understanding this (the representational dimension) is
in terms of the de re propositional locutions that we commonly use:
“What are we doing when we make claims about what someone is
talking or thinking about? How must vocabulary be used in order for it
to deserve to count as expressing such de re descriptions?” (2000: 173).
In other words, and to bring this back to communication, successful
communication will involve audience members’ proficiency in moving
back and forth between their own perspectives and that of the speaker
in the way expressed by de re ascriptions, matching the significance of
17â•‡In Articulating Reasons, published in 2000, the date of the example is changed to 2020.
the propositional commitment attributed to the speaker against the
various substitutional commitments of the audience. The importance of
these two types of commitment comes courtesy of Quine (1966), who
emphasized the difference between the two types of ascriptions with
respect to the propriety of substitution for singular terms occurring in
them. They become particularly relevant in addressing the difficult ques-
tion of objectivity.
6.11â•…Objectivity
Early in Making it Explicit, Brandom observes that no two individuals
have the same beliefs or acknowledge the same commitments because
“everyone has noninferentially acquired commitments and entitle-
ments corresponding to different observational situations” (1994: 185).
Later, he notes that inferential significance must be understood rela-
tive to a total belief set, with the specter of incommensurability that
such an observation invites (481). The import of these points is brought
home by the central dependency of the individual on the community
and the difficulties implied for communal judging if each judge is
drawing from a specific set of collateral beliefs. In fact, at the outset
of his project Brandom challenges the very idea of communal verdicts.
Assenting is something done by individuals, not by communities. So
the authority of communal assent is a fiction (1994: 38). We would
expect a similar judgment with respect to communal assessments of
claims. So, how can notions of objective correctness emerge? In all our
talk of reasons, how do we identify good reasons? Against what criteria
are they to be decided?
Brandom salvages the objective view on two fronts: the commonality
of the res in de res ascriptions, and the fact that the conceptual norms
implicit in a community’s practices exceed the behavioral discriminations
made by its members.
In the first instance, consider this lengthy example that Brandom offers:
Suppose the Constable has said to the Inspector that he himself believes
that the desperate fugitive, a stranger who is rumored to be passing through
the village, is the man he saw briefly the evening before, scurrying through a
darkened courtyard. Suppose further that according to the Inspector, the
man the Constable saw scurrying through the darkened courtyard is
the Croaker, a harmless village character whom no one, least of all the
Constable (who knows him well), would think could be the desperate
stranger. Then the Inspector can identify the objective representational
content of the Constable’s claim by an ascription de re: “The Constable
6.11â•…Objectivity 123
claims of the Croaker (a man who could not possibly be the fugitive) that
he is the fugitive.” Of course he does not take it that the Constable claims
that the Croaker (a man who could not possibly be the fugitive) is the
fugitive. The Constable claims only that the man he himself saw scurrying
through a darkened courtyard is the fugitive. For the Inspector,
the contrast between the de re and the de dicto content specifications is the
contrast between saying what the Constable has in fact, willy-nilly, under-
taken commitment to – what object his claim is about, in the sense that
matters for assessments of truth – on the one hand, and what the
Constable takes himself to be committed to, acknowledges, on the other
hand. (1994: 595)
Several things are worth noting here: It is the Inspector who must
decide the objective representational content of the Constable’s claim,
the what he is talking about. And he does so successfully by drawing on
other information at his disposal (that the man the Constable saw was
the Croaker). The success of the communication lies with the Inspector
making the appropriate attributions with respect to the Constable’s
commitments. That is, the audience decides the objective correctness of
the matter by understanding what has been expressed by the de re speci-
fications of the contents of ascribed commitments. That things are not
always the way they are taken to be (in this case by the Constable) “is
built into the social-inferential articulations of concepts” (597).
But is this enough? Two people may use the same words to express
different commitments, but the inferential context may differ from one
person to the other because each has different collateral commitments.
The Inspector draws on what he knows (or, in these terms, what other
commitments he has) to interpret the Constable’s claim. But in this case
we may judge that they share an inferential context, which restricts the
possibilities in the right way. In other social settings, the different collat-
eral commitments of the interlocutors may become more of an impedi-
ment. In such contexts it becomes difficult to understand how people can
share the same meanings, and thus how they could resolve disagreements
or even form them. This is a common concern with the holistic view of
meaning. As Carlo Penco judges the matter: “[T]he devastating conse-
quence is that mutual understanding and successful communication
become unexplainable” (2008: 176).
We might begin to explore this problem by returning to the issue of
communal assent (which Brandom judges a fiction). The Inspector is in
a position to judge the incompatibility of what the Constable says (and
is implicitly asking the Inspector to commit to) with his own other
commitments. He can thus assess the incompatibility in a way that the
larger community cannot. This is in part why the kind of intersubjec-
tivity that privileges the perspective of the “we” is rejected: “it cannot
find room for the possibility of error regarding that privileged perspec-
tive; what the community takes to be correct is correct” (1994: 599). At
root, a relationship that Brandom calls I-thou, in which no perspective is
privileged in advance, is presupposed by the I-we social distinction (508).
We will consider later how viable such a relationship is for building the
larger networks of interconnectedness assumed by audiences such as
those that are composite. Essentially, Brandom’s holism does not depend
on shared meanings but on the understanding of communication as a
cooperative venture, although there is still a sense of sharing involved.
Objectivity derives from the ways in which we interpret the beliefs of
others and they of us.
The interaction between attributor of commitments and entitlements
and attributee is complex. Brandom returns to the marketplace meta-
phor: “Sorting out who should be counted as correct is a messy retail
business of assessing the comparative authority of competing evidential
and inferential claims” (601). Of course, correctness here can involve
more than one sense. In the first case we can ask of a person’s claim
whether all the evidence was taken into account, and were good infer-
ences made from that evidence. That is, there are certain rules that govern
the game of giving and asking for reasons, and speakers can be held to
account with respect to them (Brandom 2000: 197). In the second case,
we can turn from how the participants performed to look at the correct-
ness of what they said. Is the claim compatible with other claims made
within the community?
What is shared within a community is a set of norms at work when
members are taken to adopt the discursive scorekeeping stance toward
each other. Important here is Brandom’s claim that the conceptual norms
implicit in the practices of a community outrun or exceed the behavioral
discriminations made by its individual members. Concepts and the
commitments they involve can thus be said to be shared in spite of
the differences in attitudes of those involved (1994: 631). In fact, to be
engaged in a discursive practice is to be bound by objective, shared
concepts, whose proprieties for use outrun individuals’ dispositions to
apply them. Speakers do not control the significance of the words that
they use. “The members of a linguistic community who adopt the
explicit discursive scorekeeping stance to one another achieve thereby a
kind of interpretive equilibrium. Each one interprets the others as
engaging in just the same sort of interpretative activity, as adopting the
6.12â•…Conclusions 125
same sort of interpretive stance, as one does oneself ” (642).18 Such consti-
tutes one’s social self-consciousness.
6.12â•…Conclusions
The merits of Brandom’s model for our purposes lie in its social nature.
Meaning is viewed from the perspective of individuals engaged in the
shared practices of interpretation. What concepts mean lies in the ways
they are used in language, and these usages are derived from the commit-
ments and entitlements attributed to interlocutors. We inhabit a norma-
tive space (1994: 648). The details of those attributions, their manner and
correctness, might be set aside to consider the outlines of the model itself.
The problem of communication is brought on by the nature of inter-
pretation itself. The inferential significance of a commitment depends
upon one’s other collateral commitments (at least those that are relevant).
Thus, the unit of meaning is not the single sentence but the whole theory
involved (2000: 167). This means, however, that two interlocutors with
different commitments (or beliefs) will mean different things by their
utterances. Communication is salvaged by shifting from a search for
shared meanings to focus on reference. In terms of an example that
Brandom is fond to repeat: the Zoroastrian means something different by
the word “sun” than I do, but we are both taking about the same thing.
We have a different explanation here of what it means to be rational,
tied closely to the practice of using reasons. “Being rational is just being
in the space of giving and asking for reasons, and being a rational agent is
being in the space of giving and asking for reasons for what one does”
(1994: 253). In terms of the model, irrationality can be judged by an audi-
ence who decides whether a speaker (or agent) is entitled to the commit-
ment in question.
In some central ways the account is at odds with that derived from
Grice. Brandom’s focus on linguistic practices allows him to explain asser-
tions (and other speech acts) without appealing to intentions or conven-
tions. To identify rationality with playing a normative game of offering
and assessing reasons is to deny the identification of rationality with the
kind of logical competence and instrumental competence that we saw in
Grice. There is something both attractive and right about this, from our
18â•‡This is the extent to which Brandom adopts a sense of interpretation in spite of Wittgenstein’s
observation that our ground-level mastery of linguistic properties does not consist solely in the
capacity to interpret (Brandom 1994: 509).
perspective on social argumentation. It is a perspective that offers us
purchase on ways in which audiences experience reasons, both in their
evaluation and use (as they adopt those offered to them).
There are other quite fundamental ways in which the pragmatics of
Grice and Brandom diverge. The source of meaning lies in different
directions for these theorists – in the speaker, for Grice; in the interpreta-
tion of the audience for Brandom, who in this respect is closer to the
sensibilities of the relevance theorists. Or perhaps it is fairer to say that
neither really offers us so extreme a claim. Both Grice and Brandom
match their principal observations with a recognition of the other role
(audience or speaker) in the exchange. Grice, we recall, while attributing
meaning to the speaker’s intention, gives control of the effect “in some
sense” to the audience (1989: 221). And the perspective of the speaker
does not disappear in Brandom’s analysis – audiences must move back
and forth between their own perspectives and that of the speaker in the
way expressed by de re ascriptions. A fruitful hypothesis to explore in a
later chapter, then, is that meaning takes place between speaker and audi-
ence, arising from the network of commitments they share and the meas-
uring of utterances against that network.
Not only do Grice and Brandom differ on the source of meaning, but
also on the unit of meaning. As Brandom expressed this, it is a difference
between the sentence and the theory as the latter relates to a wider set of
beliefs. But again, there are ways to draw from both theories even as we
adopt Brandom’s position. For the set of beliefs and commitments
against which interpretation takes place is part of the wider context that
describes the communicative or argumentative situation, and the impor-
tance of context is not lost on Grice.19
Without denying the real differences between them, there are, then,
productive aspects of both positions that can be borrowed in addressing
the key problems prompting this study. Both provide important insights
into how audiences are formed and operate, even if some of those
insights follow from our disagreements over whether we can speak coher-
ently about “absent” audiences. And related to this recognition of the
roles of audience is a common understanding of communication as a
cooperative venture, even if, again, cooperation takes on different senses
for each scholar. But insofar as meaning is between the participants, with
control of effects distributed or balanced among them in some equilib-
rium, then cooperation underlies the procedures involved.
19â•‡Hintikka (1986) observes that while Grice often recognizes the importance of the whole discourse
in which a speaker is engaged, when he comes to conceptualize the results he often falls “back to
formulations that pertain to utterances taken one by one” (259).
chapter 7
Evidence and reasons: the place of testimony
7.1â•… Sources of evidence

The previous chapter focused on the nature of meaning and how this is
communicated. It drew heavily on an examination of some of Robert
Brandom’s core ideas, ideas that will become important as this study
develops. The current chapter continues the concern with communica-
tion, turning now to questions related to human testimony. Trudy Govier
has emphasized that while we may think alone and in dialogue, how we
look to confirm our thoughts is of equal importance. We do this with
other people, and so “we must listen to each other and, when appro-
priate, believe each other. To be able to do so, we must learn from each
other” (Govier 1997: 61).
Much of the argumentation received by audiences involves the
communication of evidence to provide warrants or justification for
claims. One of the main reasons why arguments are persuasive is that
they are deemed to provide the right kinds of evidence for the circum-
stances involved. Or, in terms we will review later in this chapter, they are
deemed to be trustworthy. What counts as evidence can vary enormously
across diverse disciplinary fields, from witnesses and statistics, to docu-
ments and experiments, and even divine revelation (Bell et al. 2008: 3).
But outside of the contents involved in evidentiary discourse, the types of
source are more limited. Perception, memory, inference, and testimony all
contribute to how we come to know and believe what we do. When we
are asked to defend our claims to know something, we may respond that
we saw it, remembered it, inferred it, or were told it, depending on which
of these four is deemed the principal source in a particular situation. One
might hold that all of these reduce to perception in some way, since
memory is of a previous perception and what we are told we perceive (by
hearing or seeing), and the data from which we infer is perceptual in
nature. But this seems no more than to equate perception with
127
128 Evidence and reasons: the place of testimony
experience in general, and we still find that the four traditional sources of
knowledge are quite distinct in nature. For our purposes, the most inter-
esting among these four is testimony. This is because while memory,
reason, and perception – whether of the outer world or introspection –
are faculties of the individual mind, testimony constitutes “the social side
of knowledge” (Kusch 2002: 15).
We will see that this is the case in a number of ways, and consider its
import. For example, in making an assertion under Brandom’s model, a
speaker does not just take on the responsibility to justify her claim with
reasons if challenged, she also lends her authority to the asserted content,
licensing others to undertake a corresponding commitment (Brandom
2000: 165). On these terms, testimony involves a kind of inherited
Â�entitlement and creates an epistemic interdependence. The audience is
entitled to undertake the commitment on the basis of the speaker’s
Â�testimony, although the legitimacy of that entitlement is presumably
predicated on the appropriate assessment having taken place.
7.2â•… Concerns with testimony

The importance attributed to testimony is a relatively recent observation.
In traditional epistemology it has not been highly valued, and for quite
serious reasons. Chiefly, we can surmise, testimony is viewed as a crutch
that encourages us to depend on others and forgo our own resources.
Immanuel Kant advocated as a principal maxim of human understanding
that one should “think for oneself ” (1951: 131) in order to avoid error, and
this advice is echoed by others. In his 1934 obituary of art critic Roger
Fry, E. M. Forster eulogized him in the following terms: “What charac-
terized him and made him so precious in twentieth-century England was
that, although he was a modern, he believed in reason … [He] rejected
authority, mistrusted intuition” (1936: 50–51). As Forster explains this,
Fry, when presented with the testimony of an expert, would express a
preference to rather think about it. There is irony here, of course, since
Forster’s plea for the mistrust of testimony is based in part on the appeal
to Fry’s practice conveyed through his testimony. But the point is still
well made that accepting the views of someone else somehow involves
circumventing the task of thinking through the matter oneself, and if
one could do this thinking, it would be preferable. I emphasize this phrase
because it captures the crux of the problem that should appear: can we
think through the diverse range of matters that impact our knowledge in a
way that obviates any dependence on others?
7.2â•… Concerns with testimony 129
The concern is illustrated further in the domain of science. By way of
clarifying an invocation to be wary of the argument from authority, Alan
Sokal and Jean Bricmont recommend following “the best of the natural
sciences’ methodological principles, starting with this one: to evaluate the
validity of a proposition on the basis of the facts and reasoning
supporting it, without regard to the personal qualities or social status of
its advocates or detractors” (1998: 178). While this might be deemed a
commendable sentiment, it is one that founders on two fronts.
In the first instance, it does not seem to conform to actual scientific
practice. Take as an example the investigation of the rock sample
ALH84001, deemed to be a Martian meteorite.1 Scientists working on the
case used various forms of reasoning, from causal to analogical reasoning,
in arriving at the conclusion that phenomena connected to the rock were
“evidence for primitive life on Mars” (McKay, et al. 1996). But they also
relied heavily upon the testimony of others. While the thrust of their
experimentation was on the chemical make-up of the rock, they based
their research on the assumption that the rock was of Martian origin and
supported this assumption by citing the work of other scientists as
reported in a paper by a further scientist in the journal Meteoritics. The
correctness of that earlier research becomes crucial to the acceptability of
McKay et al.’s conclusions about the rock sample. If this case is represent-
ative of the kinds of activities that go on in scientific practice, and we will
see more support for this view later in the chapter, then it illustrates the
reality that not only do scientists appeal to the testimonies of others, they
have to make such appeals in order to draw information from cognate
fields and avoid replicating studies that it would be impractical to repeat.
The second problem relates back to the Roger Fry case. Here it is not a
matter of whether we should investigate for ourselves rather than relying
on the say-so of experts; it is a question of whether we are able to do
anything but rely on others, whether they are experts or otherwise. The
kinds of testimony at issue in science and implicit in the Fry case
are those involving authorities or experts. Charles Willard (1990) presents
the problem of authority (and twentieth-century dependence upon it), as
not so much that we have difficulty assessing the claims made, but more
that the predisposition to acquiesce to such authorities or experts
threatens autonomy.
Willard argues that public decision-making is firmly rooted in a reli-
ance on authorities: “Public decision-making doesn’t use knowledge, it
1â•‡ I discuss this case of testimony in (Tindale 1999b).

uses testimony – a tapestry of positions maintained by authoritative
representatives of knowledge domains who presumably bridge the gap
between disciplines and public decision-making” (1990: 16). But this
poses a real dilemma, because while Willard believes that “it is presump-
tively rational in a consensualist world to argue from and acquiesce to
authorities” (11), this has the tendency to undermine personal autonomy.
This is seen in the problems of appraisal. Willard makes the important
observation that we are not concerned here with the appraisal of whether
experts are correct – that is the job for experts themselves. We are
concerned with deciding how expert testimony should be evaluated,
whether it is the direct attesting to some fact or experience, or the chal-
lenge of one expert by another.
The extent of this concern emerges when he turns to the responses that
have been made by argumentation theorists and critical thinkers. It has
become the norm for such scholars to argue that individuals must learn
to defend themselves against the “tyranny” of authority by developing
certain skills. Willard quotes Mickunas (1987) as typical of the kind of
thing advocated by such people: “While submitting to the authority
of what has been attained and established by scientific enlightenment –
the formal and technical disciplines – the person should reach through
education, a level of understanding, independent judgment, and crea-
tivity, at which the scientific-technical values and norms are established.
Only at this level can the person become competent to understand the
rules, and their embodiment in concrete social life, and be in a position
to pass an autonomous judgment and engage in free debate” (Mickunas
1987: 336–37).
It will be recognized how well this conforms to the sentiments
expressed by Fry as well as Sokal and Bricmont: the “problem” of
authority is that it subverts the power and opportunity of the individual
to think and decide for her- or himself. But as Willard suggests, the
deeper issue is that such thinking seems to advocate an ideal that is virtu-
ally unattainable. Willard writes: “If it puts a burden on individuals that
no individual in the late 20th century can discharge, then it is an empty
posture – a kind of arm-waving in the face of the problem of modernity”
(1990: 19). In this sense, we see in the appeal to experts a challenge to the
concept of autonomy that has significant implications for our under-
standing of epistemic competence and is an indictment of the activity of
most critical thinking advocates.
We are left with a dilemma: testimony is indispensable, but with its
rise comes an almost commensurate loss of autonomy. This is a dilemma
7.3â•… Aristotle’s evidence and the role of testimony 131
that should be astutely felt by those working in argumentation. As
Willard notes: “Argumentation and Informal Logic pedagogies won’t
come to much unless based on a coherent stance toward authority. They
are premised on rhetorics of mass enfranchisement that often do not
square with their commitments to acquiescence to expertise, and – more
important – they build a naive picture of the competent citizen” (20).
Implied here is a considerable challenge. But it also announces an impor-
tant shift of focus in discussions of testimony in argumentation, away
from the testimonies of authorities or experts and onto those who must
operate in their midst.
Willard’s analysis captures much that is important when we turn to
consider the value of testimony. But there is also a sense in which it fits
into and continues the thinking that relegates testimony to a position of
inferiority when sources of knowledge are considered. This is not because
testimony undermines individual autonomy, but because it is set in
opposition to knowledge. Recall that he writes of public decision-making
that it “doesn’t use knowledge, it uses testimony” (1990: 16). But recent
work in the epistemology of testimony has largely challenged this way of
thinking. And this is work that I will draw on in the present chapter by
way of arguing for the social fabric that characterizes our epistemic rela-
tions and the cognitive environments in which the audiences of argu-
mentation operate.
7.3â•… Aristotle’s evidence and the role of testimony

For Aristotle, as we saw in Chapter 3, much of the attention given to
evidence in his Rhetoric is in terms of necessary and non-necessary signs.
The enthymematic person must grasp the distinction between rhetorical and
logical syllogisms, the former concerned with generally held opinions and the
latter with truth. The definition from the Prior Analytics (ii.27) provides
us with an understanding of the enthymeme as a syllogism from likeli-
hood or signs, an understanding that will be carried into the Rhetoric.
There the argument from signs is distinguished from the argument from
likelihood in that likelihood depends on the knowledge of a generaliza-
tion under which the particular in question is being brought; the sign
hinges on a new piece of evidence that the speaker is introducing. Hence,
the focus in each case is in a different direction and the expectation
of what the audience will already accept will vary accordingly. Sections of
the Rhetoric are devoted to these ideas, with the argument from signs
constituting a core kind of evidence.
The kinds of signs that illustrate the examples provided tend to be
perceptual – a woman with milk signifies that she has given birth; hard
breathing signifies fever, or inferential – that the wise are just can be
inferred from Socrates having been both. And elsewhere (An. Post. ii.19)
memory is an important source of knowledge.2 The question relevant to
this chapter is Aristotle’s interest in or position on testimony.
In chapter 20 of Book ii of the Rhetoric Aristotle discusses paradigms
or examples as similar to an induction, suggesting that paradigms might
be used as witnesses to supplement enthymemes: “When the paradigms
are placed first, there is the appearance of induction, but induction is
not suitable to rhetorical discourses except in a few cases; when they are
put at an end they become witnesses [martyres], and a witness is every-
where persuasive” (ii.20.9). In fact, if paradigms are put first, many are
needed; if last, a single one is sufficient, “for even a single trustworthy
witness is useful.”
However, while we might be inclined to see a connection between
witnesses and testifiers, Aristotle’s meaning here seems broader and to
concentrate more on what the witness signifies than what a person might
be saying. Earlier in Book 1 (15.15) we find another discussion of witnesses
under the account of atechnic elements that the rhetor inherits. But the
gist of what is said there suggests that Aristotle has in mind more
the kinds of authoritative or expert testimonies that concerned Willard.
He talks, for example, of recent witnesses being well-known persons who
have given a judgment about something. As he proceeds, it becomes clear
(17) that he has in mind as witnesses people who can corroborate testi-
mony. Of course, the context here has to do with the available means of
persuasion and not necessarily the communication of belief to form
knowledge. Still, such testimonies can be judged useful (18) as they relate
things about the speaker, the opponent, the facts, or about character. In
fact, we might see an important connection between testimony and char-
acter since it is through what a person says that ideas about her or his
character are conveyed and beliefs formed about that character. People,
Aristotle reminds us, tend to believe those they trust. So trust becomes an
important element in persuasion, and testimony is a primary source of
such trust.3
2â•‡ But for the importance of memory’s unreliability if human intelligence is to function well see
Gigerenzer (2001).
3â•‡ Of course, we also saw in Chapter 3 that proof from signs can be expressive of character (Rhetoric
iii.7.6).
7.4â•… Learning from others 133
7.4â•… Learning from others: the foundational role of testimony
The dominant view of testimony is what I will call the transmission, non-
generative view. Its unattractiveness for this project will be clear from
the assumptions it shares with Grice’s intentional theory of meaning.
The transmission view of testimony is the position that testimony works
by transmitting beliefs or knowledge from one person (or source), the
testifier, to the audience. This process transmits the original belief. T,
the testifier, holds p and after a successful act of testimony, A, the audi-
ence, comes to hold p.4 Thus, no new knowledge emerges (other than
that it is new for A); nothing new has been generated. As explained by
Elizabeth Fricker: “A belief of S gives rise to an utterance by him, which
utterance produces in his audience H a belief with the same content;
and all this happens in such a way that, if S’s belief is knowledge, then
we may allow that title to H’s belief too” (1987: 57). On these terms,
the audience’s acquisition of knowledge depends upon the testifier
already possessing that knowledge. Jonathan Adler explains this, with an
emphasis on testimony as the medium of transmission: “If S knows that
p and S asserts that p to H, and H accepts p on the basis of S’s testimony,
then H knows that p” (2006). As we will see, while standard and straight-
forwardly plausible, this is a view that has come to be challenged quite
seriously (Lackey 2008).
Adler’s formulation of the basic conditions indicates that we need
more than just the transmission of a belief for a successful act of testi-
mony to occur. The audience must accept that p on the basis of the
Â�testimony. Moreover, the act of testimony is given as explicit and inten-
tional: S asserts that p to H. This latter point raises the issue of whether
we can learn from testimony that is not addressed directly to us, or
intended for us. Or would such instances not be regarded as technically
testimonial? Among the ways in which we learn from others is through
following directions on the side of the road and reading letters addressed
to others or journals intended only for the writer but made public at a
later time, perhaps posthumously. The requirement that the audience
accept p on the basis of the testimony points to the need for conditions
of such acceptance.
It is not sufficient for the testifier just to claim to know something. The
audience needs to have good reasons to believe not just the testimony,
4â•‡ Transmission is not restricted to a single case like this. Some activities that depend on testimony,
like scientific discovery, will involve chains of transmission where different bits of knowledge may
be distributed throughout the chain. We will review such cases later.
but also the testifier. This requires some judgment of the character
involved. John Hardwig argues that the testifier must be truthful, compe-
tent, conscientious, and have “adequate epistemic self-assessment” (1991:
700). This means that there is a reliance on the testifier, and that reliance
is best understood as trust.
Paul Faulkner (2000) offers a similar prescription in what he calls his
hybrid theory of testimony. It is hybrid because it includes both inter-
nalist and social externalist principles:
(A) An audience is warranted in forming a testimonial belief if and only
if he is justified in accepting a speaker’s testimony.
(B) If the audience is warranted in forming a testimonial belief, then
whatever warrant in fact supports a speaker’s testimony continues to
support the proposition the audience believes. (2000: 591)
Here, the acceptance of the belief in (A) requires a justifying argument
expressing the audience’s reasons. This, claims Faulkner, must be based
on the audience’s own experiences, such as that of credibility. The second
principle, (B), expresses a social externalist claim insofar as the audience in
accepting testimony will often believe a proposition whose warrant extends
beyond the justification the audience has to accept the testimony. The
social character is then seen in that “the existence of this warrant depends
on there being other agents for whom this proposition is warranted”
(Ibid.). Thus, a wider reliance comes into view, since the audience depends
not just on the testifier but also on a larger community of epistemic agents.
Unlike perception, memory and reason, testimony is grounded in our
dependence on others. In this way, we find questions of character
Â�introduced that do not pertain to the other three. We enter an ethical
dimension where trust and credibility become important (Adler 2002:
139). Learning from others cannot be appreciated without Â�consideration
of not just what is said but who is saying it and reasons an audience has
for believing them.
7.5â•… Reductionism and non-reductionism

An enduring debate among epistemologists who take testimony seri-
ously is the degree to which it is an independent source of knowledge for
an individual. Is it of primary value or can it provide knowledge only in
conjunction with information derived from one or more of the other
main sources? Traditionally, the two sides of this debate are identified
as reductionists, for whom testimony is one among several inductive
7.5â•… Reductionism and non-reductionism 135
sources, and non-reductionists, for whom testimony stands as an autono-
mous source.5 The traditional champions of these positions are David
Hume and Thomas Reid respectively.
Hume’s reductionism characterizes his account of testimony in several
places. In the Treatise, Hume explains that our faith in matters of fact
that we get from human testimony is based upon experience of the
governing principles of human nature. But we are more rash in drawing
our inferences from testimony since it depends on resemblance with our
own direct experience (i.3.9.12). Thus, what is acquired from testimony is
weighed against what is received from perception, and also depends
on reason. This theme is continued in the tenth chapter of the Enquiry,
“On Miracles.” Human testimony is the most common, useful and
necessary species of reasoning, he writes, but it is still subject to the
maxim that all inferences are founded on the constant conjunction of
objects in our experience: “The reason why we place any credit in
witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we
perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are
accustomed to find a conformity between them” (Hume 1977: 75). In
order to accept testimony, then, what is reported must correspond to
what is observed.
Contemporary reductionists, like Fricker (1987: 78), agree that the justi-
fication of testimonial knowledge must reduce to non-testimonial warrants
provided by perception, memory, and inference. Such an apparent
displacement of the value of testimony will worry some commentators.
Jennifer Lackey (2008), for example, wonders on what terms it would still
make sense to talk about testimony as a reliable source if its justification
depends on such corroboration (Lackey 2008: 147). For our purposes, we
see that the reductionist reduces the value of testimony as a social product
by subjecting it to the test of corroboration from other sources.
Reid’s version of the contrasting view is found in one of his more
popular essays:
The wise author of nature hath planted in the human mind a propensity
to rely upon human testimony before we can give a reason for doing so.
This, indeed, puts our judgments almost entirely in the power of those who
are about us in the first period of life; but this is necessary both to our
5â•‡ The two positions are not necessarily exclusive of each other. Faulkner holds that his hybrid theory
combines both kinds of claims depending on how the process of acceptance is viewed. Since what
we come to believe through testimony may be supported by a warrant that is of a different nature
to that supporting a judgment of credibility, then different sources of evidence can be combined
(2000: 594).
preservation and to our improvement. If children were so framed as to pay
no regard to testimony or authority, they must, in the literal sense, perish
for lack of knowledge.
I believe by instinct whatever they told me, long before I had the idea of
a lie, or a thought of the possibility of their deceiving me. Afterwards,
upon reflection, I found they had acted like fair and honest people, who
wished me well. I found that, if I had not believed what they told me,
before I could give a reason for my belief, I had to this day been little
better than a changeling. And although this natural credulity hath some-
times occasioned my being imposed upon by deceivers, yet it hath been of
infinite advantage to me upon the whole; therefore, I consider it as
another good gift of Nature. (Reid 1983: 281–82)
On Reid’s terms, testimony is a foundational source of knowledge, as
valuable as the three other basic sources of knowledge and not reduc-
ible to any of them. Testimony cannot be reducible to the others since
children rely on the reports of their parents before they can begin to
assess the nature of those reports. Contemporary non-reductionists,
like C. A. J. Coady (1992), continue in this tradition of assigning
to testimony a status equal to other primary sources of knowledge.
Lorraine Code (2006), for example, observes the strangeness of episte-
mologists who discredit testimony in favor of an image of the self-reliant
knower who learns directly from the world when testimony functions
“as the starting point for so many epistemic negotiations and justificatory
projects” (Code 2006: 173).
A number of objections can be raised to this position as well, and we
will see some of them ahead. The very structure of successful testimonial
acts that were central to the accounts of people like Adler and Faulkner,
where conditions of acceptability are included, seem absent from non-
reductionism. Granted there is a definite element of trust involved, but it
is at the least a naïve trust, and not the kind of justified trust envisioned
earlier. Acquiring knowledge through the testimony of others seems a
process far more involved than the simple paradigm of the childhood
model suggests. And even here we may wonder whether the early cogni-
tive activities performed by children accurately reflect the kind of social
interdependence that interests us. Which is to wonder whether we
should even call the simple model “testimony” in the senses we are
exploring it here.6
6â•‡ Lackey (2008) takes a different tack in challenging accounts like Reid’s. She draws on studies of
early childhood to argue (chapter 7) that the simple model of childhood learning is wrong and
that children are far more discriminating in what (and who) they choose to believe.
7.6â•… The epistemology of testimony 137
7.6â•… The epistemology of testimony
I now turn to one of the more detailed, and I think promising, accounts
of testimony provided by Jennifer Lackey in her book Learning from
Words (2008). Lackey’s work is noteworthy, and relevant for the present
project, for two principal features or theses that characterize it. Her
position is an audience-centered approach that shifts attention away
from what speakers know or believe and onto what they say. In the
first instance, then, we learn from another’s statements rather than her
beliefs. This is the initial feature or thesis of the account that should
interest us. She calls this the Statement View of Testimony (SVT) and
defines it accordingly as: “a speaker offers a statement to a hearer, along
with the epistemic properties it possesses, and a hearer forms the corre-
sponding belief on the basis of understanding and accepting the state-
ment in question” (72).7 We might recall Norman Malcolm’s insistence
fifty years earlier that when someone claimed to have dreamt we actually
learn nothing about the internal states of that person’s experience but
only about the phenomenon “telling a dream” (1959: 55). Our concept
of dreaming, claimed Norman, derived not from the behavior of the
dreamer “but his subsequent testimony” (63). While Norman went much
further with his claims about dreaming, the insightful point he made is
that we have access to the statements made in a way that we do not have
access to the beliefs or experiences behind those statements.
The second aspect of Lackey’s SVT that should interest us is the way it
offers a direct attack on the transmission model popular with epistemolo-
gists of testimony. Her principal method of delivering this and other
challenges is to offer hypothetical cases that undermine the traditional
view. Sometimes these work, sometimes they are less successful, but they
always invite scrutiny of assumptions that might otherwise go unques-
tioned. The primary case that addresses the transmission thesis is one she
calls CREATIONIST TEACHER.8 This case involves a fourth-grade
teacher who is a devout Christian committed to central Christian beliefs,
including the truth of creationism (and the falsity of evolutionary
theory). Yet she is aware that a vast body of scientific evidence contradicts
both these beliefs. She remains a steadfast creationist not because of the
science but because of her faith. So when required to teach evolutionary
theory in her biology lesson, she asserts propositions that she neither
7â•‡ Lackey holds a wide concept of “statement” such that it can include things like gestures, which
fulfill the role of communicating served by the statement paradigm.
8â•‡ She capitalizes the cases in this way.
believes nor knows, and withholds from her students her own faith-based
views. Lackey contends that the students subsequently “form the corre-
sponding true belief solely on the basis of her reliable testimony” (50). It
is hard to disagree that if the students learn from what she says rather
than what she believes (assuming this is unavailable to them), then they
will acquire knowledge from someone who does not believe what she has
asserted. Thus, the case shows that the transmission of beliefs is not
required for successful testimony to operate, that, in terms of the formula
provided by Adler for example, it is not necessary for S to know (or
believe) that p in order for H to then know (or believe) that p on the
basis of her testimony.9
Lackey’s thesis further accommodates situations like that of the post-
humous publication of letters or journals, where it may be impossible to
recover the author’s intentions. Where such materials provide informa-
tion from which an audience learns, the testimony involved depends not
on the speaker as much as on the needs of the audience. In realigning
things this way, Lackey provides an important service in shifting the
focus in discussions of testimony away from thinking of it as the act of a
testifier and seeing it instead as a source of knowledge or belief for the
hearer (27). As cases like the creationist teacher appear to show, a testifier
does not need to believe what she says in order for an audience to acquire
a belief that is justified on the basis of the testimony.
Lackey further develops her account of SVT so that the speaker’s state-
ments are reliable or otherwise truth-conducive. We might expect, for
example, that situations governed by something like Grice’s Cooperative
Principle would furnish the kinds of presumptions to support reliability.
She also adds a condition that the audience has no undefeated defeaters for
believing the statements in question. This negative condition provides that
there be no reasons against the statement – that the audience does not hold
the belief that the speaker is generally untruthful, for example.
The SVT feature of Lackey’s account addresses the transmission claim of
the traditional model. The next feature addresses its non-generative claim.
Like Faulkner, Lackey takes a middle course between reductionism and
non-reductionism that attempts to accommodate both positions. She
calls the result “dualism.” Lackey shares the concerns about reductionism
9â•‡ Lackey also argues that it is not even necessary for a speaker to know that p, nor even that she
reasonably believe that p, but only that it is reasonable to believe that p (106–40). This weaker
condition conforms well to the prescriptions of the cognitive environment that will be discussed
later in the chapter.
7.6â•… The epistemology of testimony 139
explored above, but also believes that non-reductionists have faltered in
not recognizing the need for audiences to be reliable recipients of testi-
mony (164), since she shows how they can be irrational or just lucky. She
believes her dualist position avoids such concerns. It is a reductionist
position because she holds that the acceptance of testimony must be
justified by other things believed by the audience. Her position accom-
modates non-reductionism because she still takes testimony to be an irre-
ducible source. The following provides a full statement of this dual
position (where “D” stands for “dualism”), a position that transfers
smoothly to the contexts of argumentation:
d: For every speaker, A, and hearer, B, B knows (believes with justification/

warrant) that p on the basis of A’s testimony only if:
(d1) B believes that p on the basis of the content of A’s testimony,
(d2) A’s testimony is reliable or otherwise truth-conducive,
(d3) B is a reliable or properly functioning recipient of testimony,
(d4) the environment in which B receives A’s testimony is suitable for the
reception of reliable testimony,
(d5) B has no undefeated (psychological or normative) defeaters for A’s
testimony, and
(d6) B has appropriate positive reasons for accepting A’s testimony. (177–78)
What is of note here is that the positions of both speaker and audience
are covered by conditions that govern the reliability of the first (like
D2) and the rationality of the second (like D5 and D6). The epistemic
work of testimony is shared between speaker and audience. We also have
acknowledgement of the importance of the environment in which testi-
mony takes place. Lackey has in mind (through one of her hypothetical
cases) environments filled with massively unreliable testifiers. But we do
not need to go to such an extreme to see how environments can impact
on successful testimony, since they can provide both the defeaters and
positive reasons that affect the rationality of the audience. It may be
unreasonable for someone to accept a speaker’s testimony if that person
lives in an environment where the speaker has a poor reputation.
One objection to the kind of model offered in Lackey’s dualism is that
ordinary agents do not have enough information to acquire positive
reasons as required. But as Lackey notes (180), while this does weaken the
case of reductionism generally, it is less damaging to dualism because of
the distribution of epistemic work between the parties involved. Since
her conditions require the reliability or competence of both speaker and
audience, the positive reasons then possessed by the audience must make
it rational to accept the testimony, or at least not irrational to accept it.
In the kinds of contexts with which an audience is familiar (in contexts
where they receive argumentation, for example) enough background
information will be available to support the judgment that an audience’s
acceptance of testimony is rational. An important distinction is suggested
between the information that ordinary agents have and the information
they have indirect access to and from which they can draw inferences
relevant to the judgments being made.
Some of Lackey’s hypothetical cases do stretch the limits of plausibility.
A case in point is that of Beatrice in COMPULSIVELY PARANOID
who does not believe anything, but who on the basis of testimony
decides “I will believe that there is a golden eagle’s nest in a local tree”
(162). As criticisms of Pascal and his wager have long recognized, a belief,
as complex as it is, is clearly not something we can just decide to hold
(Glover 1988: 158). I cannot believe there is an elephant in the hallway
(no matter how normally reliable the testifier is), but must weigh it
against other collateral beliefs and other supporting warrants. We may
prefer an account of testimony, then, that eschews such theoretical exam-
ples and prefer those drawn from everyday social practices (Olmos 2006:
214). But, then, some examples, like the creationist teacher discussed
above, do serve the argument that they are employed to support.10
Regardless of any reservations we may have, Lackey’s theory of testi-
mony provides several important proposals for exploring audiences in
social argumentation. In the first case, her statement view of testimony
shifts attention onto what is said, while not completely divorcing it from
who says it. The character of the testifier is an important consideration
when statements are assessed. But the beliefs or intentions of the testifier
are not at issue. Given the general inaccessibility of such matters,
compared to the public assertions, this is a welcome shift. Moreover,
because of this shift testimony can play a larger epistemic role than the
traditional transmission model would allow. On that model, what one
gets out is what was put in; a belief is transferred from one party to
another. But the SVT allows for testimony to generate new knowledge.
Testifiers do not need to believe what they say, while audiences may still
come to know what is the case through hearing it. Again, where the
beliefs and intentions behind statements – like those in journals, letters,
or historical documents – are lost, this is a valuable suggestion. Finally,
10 But perhaps this is because such an example does draw its plausibility from the real world
conflicts that teachers experience.
7.7â•… Community knowledge 141
the kinds of audience conditions suggested by the account place atten-
tion right where we would see it placed, on the audience whose own
competencies and rationality need to be considered and measured in
some way. The connections between individuals and an epistemic
community are implicit in these suggestions.
7.7â•… Community knowledge

John Hardwig’s principle of testimony – “If A has good reasons to
believe that B has good reasons to believe p, then A has good reasons
to believe p” (1991: 697) – issues in the strange result that he has observed
elsewhere (1985: 337) that A has good reasons to believe p but these
reasons somehow do not constitute evidence for the truth of p. Hardwig
concludes that we must allow A’s belief to be rational, otherwise we are
left with the result that a vast number of beliefs in any culture are simply
irrational (1985: 339).
One way to address this problem is to not see A as an isolated knower
but as a member of a community of knowers. Such a community is well
reflected in the activities of the scientific “community,” as illustrated
earlier by the collaborative efforts involved in the examination of the
meteorite ALH84001. Scientists in several fields depended on each other’s
research to complete their study and draw conclusions about the origin
of the rock. In the course of their work, it seems likely that individual
researchers did not know what other members of the group knew and
that no one individual understood all the work that contributed to the
overall conclusions. The dependency on testimony, whether through
direct reports or published papers, appears evident.
While it is rare to see such teamwork in the research of disciplines like
philosophy, it seems a necessary feature of scientific success. That such
cooperation is the norm in the scientific community is supported by
Hardwig’s work (1991, 1985): “Scientists, researchers, and scholars are,
sometimes at least, knowers, and all of these knowers stand on each
other’s shoulders in the way expressed by the formula: B knows that
A knows that p. These knowers could not do their work without presup-
posing the validity of many other inquiries which they cannot (for
reasons of competence as well as time) validate for themselves” (1985:
345). Hardwig’s test case to explore this involves a physics research paper
on charmed particles produced by ninety-nine authors representing different
specializations in particle physics. In such a community, one member
knows one thing, another knows another thing, and each knows that the
other knows. So where in the resulting chain (or, better, web) of knowing
does the knowledge really reside? Hardwig ventures the conclusion that p
may not be known by any one person but by the community, composed
of A, B, C, D, E, and so forth. “Perhaps D and E are not entitled to say
“I know that p,” but only, “We know that p.” This community is not
reducible to a class of individuals, for no one individual and no one indi-
vidually knows that p” (349). As Faulkner (2000: 596) observes of such a
community, the pronoun “we” could refer distributively to the subjects as
individuals, or it could refer collectively to the subjects as the members of
the community, raising the question of how a community as a single
entity possesses knowledge. Of course, some version of the transmission
model of testimony, where someone in the chain or web knows that p,
could explain such collaboration. But as Hardwig’s test case illustrates,
the transmission model places an enormous, perhaps impractical, burden
on a single knower; the community model has far greater appeal.
Martin Kusch (2002) notes an important aspect of Hardwig’s work on
testimony in science: “it provides us with empirical arguments for
granting testimony the status of a generative source of knowledge” (51).
The inputs from the various sub-groups in the teamwork of a project are
so rich and fertile that the lines between contributions begin to blur and
ideas are stimulated or adopted into new scenarios such that it becomes
impossible to treat testimony simply as the non-generative transmission
of fixed beliefs.11
The crux of Kusch’s own contribution to the testimony debate lies in
the claim that once such knowledge communities arise they are epistemi-
cally prior to individual members. “This is so since the individual
community members’ entitlement and commitment to claiming this
knowledge derive from their membership in this community. The indi-
vidual knows ‘as one of us’” (60). The language used to express this claim
deliberately brings Brandom’s work to mind, appropriately so, since
Kusch’s position is a serious challenge to some of Brandom’s ideas.
There is a growing appreciation among those working in the episte-
mology of testimony that it needs to be understood within the game of
giving and asking for reasons.12 As Paula Olmos captures the value of this:
11â•‡It is a further, although more controversial, feature of Kusch’s account that performative speech
acts count as testimony. On such terms, testimony would be even more clearly a generative source
of knowledge (2002: 64).
12â•‡Although Lackey’s challenge to the knowledge norm of assertion, which constrains one to assert
only what is known, is deemed a break with Brandom’s model (Lackey 2008: 103n3).
7.7â•… Community knowledge 143
“Once delivered and interpreted within a pragmatic frame of giving and
asking for reasons, utterances can become usable testimonies, that is
become part of a heritage belonging to a more or less extended group – a
field, a community – that can make use of them in subsequent
exchanges” (2006: 220). This places testimony within a dynamic social
frame involving a common ground of authority that licenses a communi-
ty’s inferences. This is Brandom’s inheritance of commitments stemming
from the authority of the speaker.
Kusch’s dispute with Brandom centers on the latter’s claim that objec-
tivity cannot be grounded exclusively in intersubjectivity, or a “we.”
Brandom’s main reason for this position is his belief that it fails to
account for the possibility of error: “what the community takes to be
correct is correct” (Brandom 1994: 599). Kusch argues to the contrary
that any judgment that a whole community is wrong can only come
from another community (or the same community at a different time),
and this judgment would have to be based on the consensus in that other
community (2002: 259). Judging beliefs to be right or wrong is itself an
activity that can be subject to error, and there is no right or wrong
outside of social institutions with their levels of consensus. A “we” is thus
presupposed and Brandom’s attempt to make the “I-thou” relationship
primary is unsuccessful.
As we saw in the last chapter, this clashes with the primary way in
which Brandom approaches the nature of judgment. For him, the idea of
communal performances, assessments, or verdicts is a fiction. Assent is
something done by individuals and so the authority of communal assent
is a heavily problematic idea (Brandom 1994: 38). His “I-thou” construal
of intersubjectivity thus replaces global privilege with local privilege. We
cannot resolve this dispute here. Its relevance for us lies with its perti-
nence for the role of testimony.
Examples of community-based knowledge dependent on testimony,
like those we see in scientific practice, do not necessarily replace the local
with the global. Both construals of intersubjectivity are consistent with
the results we see and the question of primacy practically (rather than
theoretically) depends upon the context and the stages involved in the
processes of developing knowledge. The complexity of research like that
in the particle physics example indicates that at some point individual
competence is replaced by community judgment of the team and, even-
tually, by the wider community judgment, rooted in peer review and
corroborative testing, of the community as an institution. At that level it
seems appropriate to say that what the community takes to be correct is
correct. But, importantly, this community response can always be identi-
fied in the persons of representative individuals. Teams have spokesper-
sons; journals have editors who vouch for their peer reviewers;
committees have heads who speak for the whole. And the correctness of
the community judgment is always open to challenge or revision (from
within that community at another time or, less likely, from within
another community). What is at stake in the Kusch/Brandom debate is
not so much a concern over the nature of testimony as over the nature of
objectivity itself.
7.8â•… Cognitive environments

Lackey’s shift of attention from what people believe or know to what they
say provides a useful way for helping us understand how testimony oper-
ates in the generation of understanding but it is not, of course, the full
story. A dualist or hybrid model still recognizes the roles played, often
corroboratively, by other sources of knowledge. Likewise, situating testi-
mony’s place within a community of knowers does not fully explain how
audiences receive and use such information within these communities.
Our dependence on others extends beyond just what they say to us, it
extends also to the ways in which they modify the social environments in
which we live.
Much of the work done in the epistemology of testimony shows some
dependence on the problematic idea of mutual knowledge. Even within
Hardwig’s studies of scientific research he relies to some degree upon
formula such as “B knows that A knows that p” (1985: 345). But there are
serious difficulties involved in explaining how B can know what A knows.
In a similar way, claims to know what is commonly known are difficult to
justify, and such difficulties support the reservations noted by Brandom.
How do we know what people know in common? Yet appeals to common
knowledge are so ubiquitous as to be presumed non-problematic.
Sperber and Wilson (1986) address these concerns by replacing ideas of
common knowledge and mutual knowledge with the concept of a cogni-
tive environment, modeled on an analogy with the visible environment
in which each of us operates. In this environment, manifest facts and
assumptions are for conceptual cognition what visible phenomena are for
visual cognition. A fact is manifest to someone at some time if that
person is capable of representing it mentally as true or probably true.
Note here that this is a claim about cognitive capabilities in a particular
time and place and need not involve a judgment of what is actually the
7.8â•… Cognitive environments 145
case. It follows that a cognitive environment is the set of facts that are
manifest to a person, and an assumption (which could be true or false)
is manifest if a cognitive environment provides sufficient evidence for its
adoption. A more detailed statement of what is involved is given in the
following description:
To be manifest, then, is to be perceptible or inferable. An individual’s total
cognitive environment is the set of all the facts that he can perceive or infer:
all the facts that are manifest to him. An individual’s total cognitive environ-
ment is a function of his physical environment and his cognitive abilities. It
consists of not only all the facts that he is aware of, but also all the facts that
he is capable of becoming aware of, in his physical environment. The indi-
vidual’s actual awareness of facts, i.e. the knowledge that he has acquired, of
course contributes to his ability to become further aware of facts.
Memorised information is a component of cognitive abilities. (1985: 39)
This defining statement may be as significant for what it omits as what it
includes. Sperber and Wilson talk here about what is “perceptible,” what
is “inferable,” and what is “memorized.” Thus, they accommodate three
of the four primary sources of knowledge that were noted at the start of
this chapter: perception, reason, and memory. Is there then a role, we
might ask, for testimony?
Cognitive environments, like physical environments, will overlap. In
this way we can begin to talk about an epistemic sharing that has rele-
vance for shared knowledge without being equivalent to it. When the
same facts and assumptions are manifest in the cognitive environments of
different people and can serve as references for negotiated interpretation,
we have a shared cognitive environment, and any shared environment in
which it is manifest which people share it is a mutual cognitive environ-
ment (41). Mutual manifestness is weaker than mutual or common
knowledge in just the right ways. No claim is made about mental states
or processes, about what people know, the claim is only about what they
could be expected to infer and come to know given the cognitive envi-
ronments they share. Depending on the nature of particular cognitive
environments it is reasonable to attribute knowledge to a person and
expect them to share references, although such attributions are quite
defeasible. Many things in our visual fields pass unnoticed until or unless
our attention is drawn to them. It is quite reasonable for people to make
assumptions about what we see or might have seen given what they know
about our physical environment, and they will often express surprise
should we seem not to have noticed something. Likewise, we can make
assumptions about what is manifest to other people, and make weaker
assumptions about what assumptions they are making. This is the crux of
much communication, occurring in situations where “a great deal can be
assumed about what is manifest to others, a lot can be assumed about
what is mutually manifest to themselves and others, but nothing can be
assumed to be truly mutually known or assumed” (45).
Such assumptions provide an important resource for communication,
for they allow Sperber and Wilson to claim that when we communicate
our intention is to alter the cognitive environments of those we address
and to thereby affect their actual thought processes. This is where what
people say becomes a source for knowledge. And part of the reason we
feel justified in trusting the testimony of some people (and not of others)
is because it is manifest to us that we share a cognitive environment with
them. We recognize the talk as we recognize the things talked about, and
our experience provides corroboration for what is said. This is only part of
the reason, because also available to us are signs of the person’s character.
Our cognitive environments in fact seem wider than what Sperber and
Wilson allow, for we have available not only the facts and assumptions
manifest to us, but also a fund of collateral beliefs in light of which we
interpret and understand those facts and assumptions once they become
noticed. While not directly part of cognitive environments as described,
and thus not mutually accessible, they form an important role in the
ways we relate to others and test what they say against what we under-
stand to be correct in an objective sense. Here, again, Brandom’s sugges-
tions are useful.
7.9â•…Conclusion
Hardwig’s work on testimony in modern science is also useful in drawing
attention to the role that trust must play in testimony. That scientific
research operates in a climate of trust indicates why reported cases of
fraudulent research send such deep reverberations throughout the wider
scientific community. Fraud challenges the very foundations on which
corroborative research is built, predicated on assumptions about truth-
fulness, competence, and conscientiousness. As Hardwig notes, peer
review and concerns for reputation police against the problem of fraud
(1991: 700). But they cannot eliminate fraud, no more than the primary
dependence on trust can be replaced. This is the dilemma confronting
all collaborative research and all use of testimony. Faulkner and Lackey
equip their models with conditions to justify the trust involved, but it
is still the case that none of these can remove that basic requirement.
7.9â•…Conclusion 147
Earlier in the chapter, we saw a number of thinkers marginalize the
importance of testimony. For them, we would expect an opposition
between knowledge and testimony based on trust. But it is the trust
involved that emphasizes the importance of testimony in social relations.
As Adler points out, “If testimony presumes trust and testimony can
transmit knowledge, trust and knowledge (or good reasons) are compat-
ible” (Adler 2002: 141). That the discussion of the chapter has favored a
different concept of knowledge transmission than Adler advocates does
not diminish the strength of his conclusion.
Trust then emphasizes the importance of personal credibility and char-
acter. As Trudy Govier pointed out at the start of the chapter, learning
from others requires believing them, and that involves judging them
credible (Govier 1997: 61). Not to be confused with reliability, credibility
can be seen as “a dispositional psychological property of a person”
(Thagard 2005: 306) that can be judged in different ways. The role of
ethos in communication was a central consideration for Aristotle and
should not be ignored by us because it describes very natural reactions of
audiences to speakers. As noted earlier, we are more likely to believe those
we trust, and we are more likely to trust those we judge to be of good
character. These natural human responses are part of what we will need to
explore in the next chapter.
chapter 8
Emotion and reasons
8.1â•…Introduction
Trusting others influences not just how we consider them, but how we
assess what they tell us. The decision to trust others is also one that mixes
emotional considerations with the cognitive. As Paul Thagard (2006:
227) points out, the decision to trust others and what they say involves
adopting emotional attitudes towards them. Yet for centuries “the life
of the emotions was repudiated, as distracting one from the demands of
clear-headed deliberation” (Toulmin 1990: 134).
In fact, the tension between emotion and reason has a very long
history. While it may precede him in texts like Gorgias’ Encomium to
Helen, traditional arguments for their separation find their source in
Plato. An essential enmity between the rational and the irrational is
established in many of the dialogues, with the emotions linked inextri-
cably to the irrational. In the tenth book of the Republic we find the
opposition expressed through the charges against poetry (604a10-b4),
most particularly that it addressed the irrational part of the soul, encour-
aging emotional responses and thereby supplanting the natural role of
reason. If poetry were to find admission to the state, it, or its champions,
would have to present an argument to show its benefits to society
(607d8-9). But since poetry by nature addressed the irrational, it seems
disingenuous to suggest it might ever direct an argument to the reason.
Plato’s antagonistic model of cognition and emotion influenced the Stoics
and Skeptics who strove for relief from emotional states (Bett 1998) and was
adopted by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, with adherents
encouraged to subdue their emotions by means of reason and acts of the will
(Lazarus 2001: 60). And the model formed the root of modern philosophy
in Descartes’ strict separation of body and mind – what Antonio Damasio
(1994: 249) has referred to as Descartes’ most serious error. As Stephen
Toulmin noted at the start to this chapter, the model persisted into the
148
8.2â•… Ancient views on emotions and cognition 149
mid twentieth century (Toulmin 1990: 134). Yet perhaps Plato’s greatest
disservice to posterity lies in the portrait he paints of a Socrates in full
control of himself at all times. Not only does this Socrates deliver the
arguments that would exclude poetry from the state and that make
virtues into epistêmai, he also exemplifies an individual who lives
according to such insights.
Nowhere is this more emphatic than in the Symposium where details of
Socrates’ biography are recast in a fictional account of someone who is
completely immune to the demands of the body, free from fatigue,
inebriation, and sexual desire. The love he promotes is a desire for ideas
far removed from physical pleasures. He stands between the divine and
the human, identified as a great daimon, and tasked with carrying
messages between the two realms. As such, he is non-human, something
which is often overlooked against the larger range of characteristics
attributed to him in the dialogues.
The image of the logical Socrates is an iconic one that had dominated
various traditions throughout the ages. We see in Socrates (as well as
Odysseus) the “beginnings” of fiction (Hunter 2006: 310), with the
former adopted by figures and movements as diverse as the Stoics and
Cynics (cf. Wilson 2007: 127–30). But the recognition that his is not a
human example is implicit in the claims that he cannot be emulated.
Similar “fictional” icons of more recent vintage, like Sherlock Holmes
and Star Trek’s Mr. Spock share in the championing of reason and the
suppression, if not exclusion, of emotion. Yet recent work on the cogni-
tive nature of emotion (or the emotional nature of cognition) indicates
that decision-making like Mr. Spock’s that is free of emotion is likely to
be defective (Thagard 2000: 215). The myth of pure reason that has domi-
nated certain strands of philosophy and popular thought invites visions
of an anomalous unemotional creature that on close inspection is neither
attractive nor desirable: “A truly emotionless being would be either some
Kantian monster with a computer brain and a pure rational will, or else a
Cartesian animal-machine, an ant, perhaps, in which every ‘want’ is
preprogrammed and every ‘belief ’ simply a releasing cue for a specific
response” (de Sousa 1987: 190).
8.2â•… Ancient views on emotions and cognition

Alan Gross and Ray Dearin (2003), judge Chaim Perelman one of
Aristotle’s most important rhetorical heirs, noting his insightful treat-
ment of two of the Aristotelian proofs – ethos and logos. But they
150 Emotion and reasons
complain that he is “almost entirely silent on pathos, that is, proofs that
derive from the emotional state of the audience” (2003: x). In this way,
they suggest, Perelman is a “true heir of the Enlightenment, distrustful
of emotional proofs as inimical to reason and rationality” (Ibid.). Of
course, we may quibble over how much is allowed by “almost silent,”
just as we need indeed to acknowledge how much of the New Rhetoric
Project does concentrate on the treatments of ethos and logos. But as
noted in Chapter 4, Perelman also made the rather startling claim that
epideictic is the primary category of rhetoric, giving rise to all practical
philosophy (Perelman 1982: 19–20; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969:
49). All rhetoric involves value and epideictic is the speech that appeals
to, invites, and intensifies adherence to values of all kinds, including, we
must recognize, those connected to our emotional responses. The audi-
ence for epideictic is the audience that engages core values like the fine
(kalon) and that measures its agreements with trust.
The values that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca seem most to associate
with Aristotelian epideictic are aesthetic values, which they believe
account for the subsequent association of this genre with literature rather
than argumentation (1969: 48). This tendency fails to appreciate the way
epideictic operates in argumentation as it “strengthens the disposition
toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds” (50). How it
might do this will be one of the questions pursued in this chapter, and
the answer will place the emotions in the centre of the picture, an inte-
gral part of “the entire personality of the hearers” (54). The values associ-
ated with epideictic, even those of the funeral speech, have changed as
new values take on importance for guiding action.
It is Aristotle who first corrects the picture that Plato had provided,
although that correction was largely ignored or misunderstood by the
subsequent tradition. In fact, Plato seems to have modified his own ideas,
as the later Philebus would suggest. In this dialogue, he clearly sees a rela-
tionship between emotion and cognition and offers an account that
contains mixed pleasure and pain, the influence of which is apparent in
the Rhetoric (cf. Fortenbaugh 1975; Aristotle 2007: 113n5). Aristotle,
however, provides the first clearly cognitive account of the emotions. It is
the details of that account and how the emotions are thought to figure in
persuasion that interest us here.
That we should find Aristotle’s only detailed account of the emotions
in the Rhetoric – or, rather, that we do not find it in the more natural
settings of De Anima and the Nicomachean Ethics is something that has
puzzled commentators. It may be that a fuller account appears in some
lost book, or that it is the subject matter of the Rhetoric, with its concern
with the persuasion of audiences, that is the most natural setting. Early in
the first book we are told that audiences are persuaded when led by a
speech to feel emotion (i.2.5). Regardless, the account given here is
largely consistent with what Aristotle has to say about the emotions else-
where (Fortenbaugh 1975; Modrak 1987), and this is the place on which
to concentrate for the most salient details.
The claim that audiences are persuaded when led to feel emotion is an
empirical one, and in support of it we are asked to reflect on our own
experience. We (all of us) do not give the same judgment when grieved as
we do when we are rejoicing, or when being friendly as when we are
hostile. These are taken to be universal statements about human nature1
and the impact of emotion on judgment. The causal line here is speech to
emotion, emotion to judgment. It would seem from this early statement
that in the developing cognitive account of the emotions, emotion might
ground judgment.2 We are also faced with the immediate question of how
emotion comes to affect judgment. Aristotle never specifically addresses
this issue (Leighton 1982: 145), but a close review of what he has to say in
the second book of the Rhetoric provides a number of useful suggestions.
The first eleven chapters of the second book are devoted to the
emotions, beginning with a general definition and proceeding to
accounts of a select group. “The emotions [pathê] are those things
through which, by undergoing change, people come to differ about their
judgments and which are accompanied by pain and pleasure, for
example, anger, pity, fear, and such things as their opposites” (ii.1.8). Two
central criteria characterize this definition: In the first case, emotions in
some way cause a change in judgment. They are directly related to how
we view things, what attitude we take towards them and the way we
arrive at decisions about them. Secondly, they are accompanied by pain
and pleasure. These may be physical or mental, and perhaps both. But it
indicates already a holism that will characterize Aristotle’s discussions.
The whole organism is addressed when speech aims at persuasion. And
the interactions between the parts will determine the outcome. While not
1â•‡ The validity of this claim has been brought into question by Daniel Gross (2006), who argues that
emotions are related to culture and not human nature. I comment on this position below.
2â•‡ There is some debate, generally, about which of the pair is more fundamental. As we will see, the
ancient and modern arguments favor reading cognition as primary, although neither position can
be definitively supported (Lazarus 1984) and modern discussions from neuropsychology and
philosophy favor a more integrated model (Damasio 1994; Morton 2013). See also Michel Meyer
(2000: 235), who argues that passion is what is beneath logos.
part of the opening definition, the accounts Aristotle gives of individual
emotions indicate their social nature – they arise in relation to a person’s
perceptions of what is expected of them or due to them in specific
circumstances. This shows a further connectedness between the organism
and its (social) environment.
These points are illustrated in the first individual emotion discussed,
that of anger. The plan is to divide each discussion into three parts: the
state of mind involved with each; who the people are towards whom
the emotion will be felt; and the grounds on which the emotion is felt.
Although this plan is not observed in every case, the idea is to understand
the nature of an emotion and the conditions that provoke it, presumably
so that a speaker may learn to create such conditions and the associated
emotions. Anger is defined as “desire, accompanied by distress, 3 for
apparent retaliation because of an apparent slight that was directed,
without justification, against oneself or those near to one” (ii.2.1). The
distress noted corresponds to the accompanying pain of the general defi-
nition. Since anger arises through a thought of outrage, that thought is
part of the definition.4 Moreover, the emotion arises from a judgment of
what is unjust since the slight was deemed unjustified. The mixture with
cognitive elements is clear both in the general definition and in that of
this first emotion. Pleasure is also mixed in here through the accompani-
ment of another emotion – hope. The angry person feels pleasure at the
hope of retaliation. Thus anger involves, in its nature for Aristotle,
projection and anticipation. People dwell in their minds on retaliating,
creating an image [phantasia] of what might be involved.
Aristotle completes the account by discussing those against whom
anger would be felt and addressing the causes of anger by detailing the
ways we feel slighted or belittled. But it is hard to see just how these
points could be used by a speaker or invoked to increase the speaker’s
own weight in an audience’s mind. Still, the chapter ends with the advice
that “it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] in the state of
mind of those who are inclined to anger and to show one’s opponents as
responsible for those things that are the causes of anger” (ii.2.17). George
Kennedy (Aristotle 2007: 121) suggests that this section was added to
adapt an ill-fitting discussion to the rhetorical situation, and observes the
3â•‡ In a note to this translation, Kennedy adds [mental and physical] to account for both kinds of
reaction that occur when someone is in a state of being angry.
4â•‡ In terms of Aristotle’s own theory of causation, Fortenbaugh (1975: 12) describes thought here as
the efficient cause of emotion.
need for illustrations. This is a problem that haunts much of the material
on the emotions, which often seems to derive from elsewhere and to have
been transplanted with minimal, and sometimes no, attention to the
rhetorical interests of the text. The discussions, as with anger, do not
always obviously meet the needs of the speaker or contain examples from
rhetorical contexts.
Still it is clear that someone, whether Aristotle himself or an early
editor,5 sees the need for the discussion of the emotions in the larger
consideration of persuasion. Thus, our own analyses can facilitate the
relevance where it is not apparent. The account of fear [phobos] in
chapter 5, for example, is combined with an account of confidence
[tharsos] and not explicitly related to rhetorical contexts. Yet its relevance
is not hard to uncover. Fear is defined as “a sort of pain and agitation
derived from the imagination of a future destruction or painful evil; for
all evils are not feared” (ii.5.1) The ability to imagine something that has
not yet happened but can be judged as likely to occur supplies the
cognitive element here. Confidence is defined as what is opposed to fear
(ii.5.16). When dreadful things have not yet happened and sources of
safety are near at hand, then feelings of confidence are experienced.
While the text does not go on to provide illustrations, we can appreciate
that a speaker may want to create fear in an audience towards an oppo-
nent and counter it by inspiring confidence in them through his or her
own example. An audience’s judgments about a person are altered if that
person is viewed as a source of fear or confidence.
The emotions of anger and fear are both practical in the sense of
involving a goal at which one aims. Other emotions are not practical in
this way (Fortenbaugh 1975: 81). Shame [aiskhynê], for example, has
neither a goal nor an action involved in its definition, and the same
holds for shamelessness. Shame is simply defined as “a sort of pain and
agitation concerning the class of evils, whether present or past or future,
that seem to bring a person into disrespect” (ii.6.1). Shame is concern
for – Aristotle says imagination [phantasia] about (ii.6.14) – a loss of
reputation. While lacking a clear goal, like anger or fear, it is social in
import insofar as it relies on thoughts about other people. Anger is
directed toward others; fear is of others. The common element here
is their social nature. Indignation is another non-practical emotion in
Fortenbaugh’s classification (1975: 82). But insofar as it is tied to the
5â•‡ There is little question whether the material is Aristotelian; just whether it was originally intended
for the book in which we find it.
thought of unmerited fortune in others (ii.9.1), it shares with the other
emotions this social aspect. Others are feared, pitied, envied, emulated,
and so forth. These emotions all find us outside of ourselves in the
world, navigating difficult interpersonal matters that can be understood
and converted to sources of persuasion.
Indignation had been introduced in relation to pity and judged its oppo-
site because it is impossible to feel pity when indignant (ii.9.16). Pity might
be thought of as another central Aristotelian emotion because of its impor-
tance in the Poetics. It is also an emotion that seemed to have an almost
institutional role in courtroom situations,6 such that Kennedy (Aristotle
2007: 139) wonders why the Rhetoric account is not flavored this way. But
as his analyses of the emotions progress, Aristotle seems more and more
centrally concerned to capture what is distinct about each emotion in its
social setting, while distinguishing them from each other, especially where
there is some natural connection as in the case of opposites.
Pity is often cited when concerns are raised about the irrelevance of
emotional appeals. Whether Socrates has sons who will be left father-
less has little bearing on the validity of the charges that are brought
against him in the Apology. But Aristotle is interested in how pity can
bring us to be moved in appropriate ways to consider something that
we might not have otherwise considered. The image of the hunger-
ravished child or the community devastated by a natural disaster
awakens sensibilities in us that might not be activated without the
effects of that image. Pity, Aristotle writes, is “a certain pain at an
apparently destructive or painful event happening to one who does not
deserve it and which a person might expect himself or one of his own
to suffer” (ii.8.2). Again, there is a judgment of what is just and fair
here; as indignation is aroused by undeserved good fortune, pity arises
from a judgment of undeserved misfortune. There is also the imagina-
tive placing of oneself or those one knows into a similar scenario. This
aspect of analogical reasoning is part of the definition of the emotion.
A final feature of the definition is the closeness of the events involved.
As we do not feel pity for things that happened ten thousand years ago,
so the Haitian earthquake of 2010 affects us in ways that stories of the
Lisbon quake in 1755 no longer can. This is important for the rhetorical
employment as the speaker can “make the evil seem near by making it
appear before the eyes” (ii.8.14).
6 Socrates’ insistence that he will not use it in his Apology, for example, speaks of a standard expecta-
tion in such cases.
8.3â•… Modern views on emotions and cognition 155
The analyses of the emotions are concluded in chapter 11 after the
socially relevant discussion of emulation. Clearly, only a selection of
emotions has been discussed and divisions can be seen within them, such
as Fortenbaugh’s distinction between practical and non-practical
emotions. But enough would seem to have been said to meet the stated
claim of explaining how emotions are created and counteracted. Aristotle
adds, “from which are derived pisteis related to them” (ii.11.1). This and
other uses for the emotions will be considered below.
As Deborah Modrak (1987: 71) notes, Aristotle’s account of the
emotions reflects his commitment to psychophysicalism – all the pathê of
the soul involve the body. As anger, for example, is the desire for retalia-
tion, it is also a boiling of the blood or heat around the heart (De Anima.
403a30-31). In many ways, this anticipates descriptions that will arise in
neuroscience centuries later. Damasio (1999: 67), for example, describes
how emotions work in terms of two paths: one is biological through the
bloodstream, where chemical molecules act on receptors in the body;
the other is neurological, through the actions of electrochemical signals.
Aristotle’s commitment to psychophysicalism is evident in the discussions
of the Rhetoric. But more importantly, we see in those discussions the
essentially cognitive nature of the emotions. A holism emerges here that
shows an interest in the entire being. Emotion, cognition, and the phys-
ical body are integrated in ways that anticipate similar holistic accounts
that have emerged centuries later. Some of these pay some recognition to
what Aristotle accomplished; others do not.
8.3â•… Modern views on emotions and cognition

The traditional view that emotions are inherently irrational is clearly
in retreat. In argumentation theory, Michael Gilbert’s (1997) work has
shown how crucial the emotions are to a healthy understanding of argu-
mentative activity. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have
not only closed the gap, they have found that the absence of emotional
consideration from decision-making actually results in poorer decisions
(Thagard 2000: 283, 2006: 66). The agreement on the cognitive nature of
emotions, however, has not issued in a further agreement as to what such
emotions are; their nature remains the subject of tight debate.
Richard Lazarus (1984: 125) distinguishes emotions from moods and
sentiments. Moods refer to general states, like sadness, that can be
sustained over time. If emotions are judged to be more situational, they
are unlikely to be deemed moods. Likewise, sentiments describe
characteristic dispositions of a person’s character. They will influence a
person’s emotional responses but not constitute them. Another useful
distinction made by Damasio (1994) is between emotions and feelings,
two things we might easily confuse. Damasio sees the essence of emotion
as “the collection of changes in body state that are induced in myriad
organs by nerve cell terminals, under the control of a dedicated brain
system, which is responding to the content of thought relative to a
particular entity or event” (1994: 139). Emotion combines mental evalua-
tion with dispositional response to that process. But while all emotions
generate feelings, not all feelings, he argues, originate in emotions.
Feelings describe what is experienced; emotions describe what is
expressed. In various places, Damasio draws on the examples of actors,
who may learn how to express emotions without actually experiencing
the corresponding feelings (and thus avoiding an exhausting experience
each night on stage). Politicians, he suggests, must also learn to do this
(149). But he further insists that feelings are just as cognitive as any other
perceptual image; they are about something different, but this is because
they are first and foremost about the body (159).
This discrimination between emotion and feeling is consistent with
more recent “hybrid” views that resist reducing emotions to pure feelings
or pure beliefs. Adam Morton’s (2013) position can be seen to involve
such a hybrid account since he judges an emotion to be a mental state
that generates a range of representations that involve both what is actual
and what is possible (2013: 14), and yet also involve a characteristic
feeling. The vestiges of Aristotelian thinking seem apparent here.
Ronald De Sousa (1987: 156) suggests something quite similar when he
argues that emotions are a class of attitudes. They share something with
beliefs in that they are not captured in specific organs, and they share
something with perceptions in that they must somehow be perspectival.
But unlike beliefs, emotions and attitudes are things that we cannot
adopt hypothetically.
Stephen Leighton (1985) also argues that while emotions may alter judg-
ments, they are not themselves judgments as philosophers like Robert
Solomon (1977: 185) have suggested. Leighton explores the ways in which
emotions and judgments are characterized differently, while still leaving
open the possibility that judgment plays a role in emotion (1985: 140).
Another important distinction to consider is within the class of
emotions. Some emotions are more primary or basic. Paul Thagard
(2006: 173) draws on Paul Ekman (1992) in identifying certain
emotions like happiness, anger, and fear, as being basic. This is because
8.3â•… Modern views on emotions and cognition 157
these emotions are universal. Similarly, Damasio develops a distinction
between those emotions he calls primary because they are innate, and
those he calls secondary because they are learned, often as adults (1994:
131–39).7 Such a hierarchy within the class of emotions may well reflect
a similar division that we saw suggested in the Aristotelian account,
where some emotions, like fear and anger, were judged practical
because there was a clear end involved, and others, like shame and
indignation, were judged non-practical because they lacked a clear end.
We can imagine here how these two classes involve a different kind of
social response, one innate the other learned. Such a perspective would
also allow for a reply (not to be developed here) to Daniel Gross’
(2006) thesis that shame indicates emotions are a response to culture
rather than descriptive of human nature in a way he finds suggested by
Aristotle. The division can also explain why conceptual thought is
necessary to make sense of emotion even though it creates a problem
when trying to understand emotions in animals and children (Griffiths
and Scarantino 2009: 441). Recognizing a category of higher cognitive
emotions that are learned in a culture goes some way toward addressing
such problems.
The larger question of interest here is not so much what the emotions
are, but where they are. The dispute noted above over whether cognition
or emotion is primary loses its force in some of the more recent proposals
for the kind of integration that regards neither as fundamental. At issue is
a dynamic relationship in which emotions are the result of cognition and
the cause of it (Lazarus 1984: 126). This suggests the kind of cohesiveness
of experience that was apparent in Aristotle’s work. In De Sensu
(447a15-17), Aristotle explains how a strong emotion like fear can inter-
fere with cognition such that we do not perceive what is in front of us.
Such competition between cognitive and affective states suggests a
complicated meshing underlying the unity of experience (Modrak 1987:
138). Likewise, practical decisions to choose certain actions are influenced
by the emotional values we associate with different outcomes. And deci-
sions and values must be weighed against different goals and the
Â�preferences involved with these. Thagard (2000) proposes a model of
coherence that includes both beliefs and emotional responses knit so
7â•‡ In (1999), Damasio identifies six primary, or universal emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger,
surprise, and disgust (50). He contrasts these with secondary emotions that he also calls social,
such as embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, and pride. And he adds a third class of background
emotions, such as well-being, malaise, calm, and tension (52).
closely in interwoven patterns of influence that their distinctiveness
seems possible only by means of theoretical analyses. “Emotional coher-
ence requires not only the holistic process of determining to how best
satisfy all the cognitive constraints, but also the simultaneous assessment
of valences for all relevant representations. The result can be an emotional
gestalt consisting of a cognitively and emotionally coherent group of
representations with degrees of acceptance and valences that maximally
satisfy the constraints that connect them” (2006: 55). In part, Thagard’s
way to this is through the neuroscience of Damasio and others.
Initially, Damasio’s early studies of brain-damaged patients focused on
a specific area of the brain, noting a correlation between declines in
reason and emotional experience. But further investigation revealed
similar results from damage in other specific brain sites, suggesting “an
interaction of the system underlying the normal processes of emotion,
feeling, reason, and decision making” (Damasio 1994: 54). Thus, he finds
that reason and emotion intersect not only in the amygdala, but also in
the ventromedial prefrontal cortices. Turning off one’s amygdala, notes
Thagard (2000: 214), if Damasio is right, would sever a person’s decision-
making from the emotional information about what matters to them.
This would essentially impair the decision-making process. As Damasio
summarizes matters, the same collection of systems in the human brain is
involved with reasoning, decision-making, emotion, and feeling, all with
special emphasis on the personal and social domain (1994: 70).
Material such as that supplied by Damasio opens the door for Thagard’s
theory of emotional coherence,8 which aims to explain some of the ways in
which emotion and cognition interact (2000, 2006). He is quite explicit as
to what he means by “emotional cognition.” It is not a special kind of
thinking assigned to emotions. Rather, since all thinking has an emotional
component, “emotional cognition comprises all of cognition viewed from
the perspective that emphasizes the integration of traditional cognitive
processes such as reasoning with emotional processes that attach values to
mental representations” (2006: 237). Traditionally, in coherence theories,
elements such as claims are accepted or rejected. Thagard argues that in
addition to this epistemic acceptability, elements carry an emotional valence,
which can be positive or negative (2006: 19). The valence of Mother Theresa
“for most people” is highly positive, that of Hitler is negative.
8â•‡ This fits within Thagard’s general coherence theory, where a belief is justified because it coheres
with other beliefs that provide mutual support. He addresses the vagueness that can affect such
talk of coherence, along with other standard objections to coherent theories (2000: 69ff.).
8.4â•… Situated nature of the emotions 159
It may be important here to note the qualification, “for most people,”
because this indicates the fluid nature of valences even in what might be
taken as strong, paradigmatic, cases such as these. This directs us to the
subjective nature of what is at stake. We can assess the value of such
valencing only from the perspective of individuals operating in specific
cases. Valences, like emotions themselves, may not tend to such sharp
general distinctions between positive and negative. Lazarus (2001)
observes how positively toned emotions can often involve harms and
threats, “and even when they have largely positive valences they some-
times originate in frustrating or negative life conditions” (63). It is better
to avoid assuming that words like “happiness” or “anxiety” have fixed
positive or negative tones associated with them, attending more to the
context and its associated mental state.
8.4â•… Situated nature of the emotions

As their name indicates, emotions are motions, they are movements.
Specifically, they are motions “out” or away from the source into a social
environment. In fact, even to describe things this way may be mistaken
because to speak of the emotions having their source in us overlooks the
degree to which the environment also serves the role of a source. Shame,
for example, is an emotion that readily exhibits its social connectedness.
Shame arises in response to our environment. If Robinson Crusoe feels
shame in his isolation, it is a learned reaction of his former social being.
De Sousa (1987) addresses the apparent objectivity of the emotions by
discussing our experience of them. We experience passion as being
evoked by something outside of us, but such an experience would be
nothing but an illusion if it had no objective ground (1987: 143).
Likewise, the experience of empathy finds us “out there” in another
person’s place, looking at the world from their perspective, sharing that
perspective and being moved accordingly. The trigger for this, writes
Thagard, “is information about the sender’s situation that reminds the
receiver of a similar situation that the receiver had personally experienced
emotionally” (2006: 72–73). The receiver can then infer that the sender is
experiencing a similar emotion. Note that here we have a mix of percep-
tion, memory, inference, and emotion operating together to form the
experience and make it understandable. The relationship between
emotions and feelings is also important here, as we match what others
express to what we feel or have felt and infer, on the basis of analogy,
what they are feeling.
From such common accounts it is clear that an emotional experience
cannot be understood just in terms of internal, subjective processes. Its
source and explanation lie in our interactions with the environment as we
transact and evaluate (Lazarus 1984: 124). Emotions are neither a sign of
corrupted reason nor irrational, they follow a strict logic, although we
must understand them from the point of view of an individual’s premises
about self and world that may not be realistic (Lazarus 2001: 60).
The work on understanding how cognition is situated in the world is
part of a paradigm shift that has taken place within much cognitive
science, seeing cognition as something that happens between the
organism and its environment rather than within the organism (Spivey
2007). This is a further challenge to the Cartesian tradition, judging it
wrong to think of mind as an inner entity of any kind: “Ontologically,
mind is much more a matter of what we do within environmental and
social possibilities and bounds” (van Gelder 1995: 380). As a dynamic
structure the mind extends not just into the body but also into the world.
From this perspective, combined with what we have seen about the inter-
relatedness of cognition and emotion, it is natural to conclude that the
cognition that is situated is an emotional cognition. As Griffiths and
Scarantino write, “a situated perspective on emotion emphasizes the role
of social context in the production and management of an emotion, and
the reciprocal influence of emotion on the evolving social context” (2009:
438). Emotions find us squarely situated in a social context, and it is in
such a context that we can best understand how they operate.
8.5â•… Role of the emotions in argumentation

If emotions play a crucial role in how we engage and understand the
world, as the above suggests, then they are important as a means to
persuasion. One goal of persuasion is to bring an audience to see the
world in different ways (Kasterly 2006: 229). What demands considera-
tion now is how emotions fit this role.
An important insight of Aristotle’s Rhetoric flows from his treatment of
the emotions. Because in showing that emotional responses are reason-
able and involve cognitive processes he also showed that they were open
to reasoned persuasion, even if he was less specific on how this could be
achieved with the different emotions.
De Sousa (1987) follows this line of thinking in arguing that emotions
supply what is needed to turn argument into action. Their principal role,
he claims, is to establish “specific patterns of salience relevant to
8.5â•… Role of the emotions in argumentation 161
inferences” (1987: 200) and as such they serve as arbitrators among
reasons, aligning beliefs with desires. They play a crucial dual critical role:
by situating us in a social environment wherein we can share emotions –
feel what others express – we come to acquire the kind of second-order
knowledge required in order to criticize another’s emotions (de Sousa
1987: 156). Aristotle’s accounts of various emotions assumed such a critical
stance. At the same time, since emotions can be assessed for their ration-
ality, we can turn the critical stance on ourselves (aided by a Â�speaker’s argu-
ment) and appraise the appropriateness of our own emotional responses,
moderating them where necessary.
This takes us back to the role emotions play in the altering of judg-
ments. De Sousa’s treatment presents emotions as kinds of judgments “in
the sense that they are what we see the world ‘in terms of ’” (1987: 196).
Leighton (1985), as noted above, opposes any thesis that identifies
emotions as judgments, but leaves open their having an important rela-
tionship. In his fuller treatment of the Aristotelian account of emotions
(Leighton 1982), while recognizing the vagueness of any answer to how
changes of judgment involve emotion, Leighton sees a position implicit
in the account. Being moved from one emotion to another, which is part
of what the rhetor aspires to achieve in an audience, involves being
moved to a different set of judgments. Thus, in moving to a given
emotion “one thereby alters one’s judgments” (1982: 147). Such a case, he
argues, can be made for all the emotions discussed by Aristotle. Of
course, insofar as the judgments of one emotion, like envy, exclude those
of another, like pity, then the account would seem to link specific judg-
ments to specific emotions. This can create difficulties when we consider
an experience of feeling mixed emotions. Are certain emotions precluded
from being mixed because of the judgments involved? Moreover, we
will need to think more carefully about the make-up of judgments associ-
ated with emotions and the other things that may influence them.
The Â�situated nature of emotions and cognition suggests it would be
Â�difficult to determine in advance or generally what judgments would
be associated with different emotions. Lazarus’ (2001) warning of the
need to view emotions in the contexts in which they are expressed would
imply as much.
Such context-dependency and the careful analyses likely to be required
if we are to understand how emotional responses have functioned in a
situation can also go part way to explaining the negative view that is still
often accorded the role of emotion in human behavior. If emotions have
a role that can be understood and employed in constructive ways, then
such processes can also be abused. Sometimes, Aristotle’s own discussions
seem to walk such a line.
People when in an emotional state are generally understood to be more
susceptible to coercion than when not, which is why philosophers and
psychologists have long advised guarding ourselves against such vulnera-
bilities. Emotional coercion can occur “when certain vocabulary or
certain propositions receive mental representations that are in some way
linked (neurologically, in fact) to emotive centres of the brain (the limbic
system). For instance, some kind of fearful response may be stimulated
by such terms as ‘urgency’, ‘national danger’ and ‘evil’, terms which are
dispersed through the text” (Chilton 2004: 118). Thagard (2006) relates a
perfect example of this in an example involving Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu:
Netanyahu compares Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to Gaddafi’s regime in
Libya in order to project to his audience, which includes prominent
Americans, his feelings about Arafat. However, Netanyahu’s choice of
Libya as the source analog is suggested not merely by any similarities
between it and the Palestinian Authority, but also by his knowledge that
Libya is particularly reviled by Americans. In other words, Netanyahu
empathizes with Americans enough to know that mention of Libya and
Gaddafi is likely to arouse strong, negative emotions in them. Certainly,
U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright found his choice of source
analog to be inflammatory. (Thagard 2006: 44)
Netanyahu knows his audience well enough to appreciate not just what
they believe but also how they are likely to feel on the basis of those
beliefs. Thus he attempts to transfer the feelings felt toward one group
onto another group by means of an analogical argument. Like other
fallacious reasoning, however, the problems here can be recognized
and addressed through objective analysis. In fact, because emotions are
rational their role in reasoning can be readily evaluated in this way. It is
an unavoidable consequence of the exercise of engaging in social argu-
mentation that we open ourselves to exploitation, whether emotional or
cognitive. We can only protect ourselves by understanding the processes
involved, as Albright seems to have done in the example above. In
Chapter 12 we will return to the kinds of risks indicated here.
It is, however, in matters involving reasoning, and especially reasoning
in situations involving uncertainty, that emotions may play their most
important role. Reasonable doubt in the courtroom is often judged in
terms of probabilities, but attention to the role of emotions in such judg-
ments brings the ability of probability theory to support such decisions
8.5â•… Role of the emotions in argumentation 163
into doubt. Thagard (2006: 167) notes that the sense of probability of
guilt in such cases is not the statistical, objective sense of probability: the
accused is not guilty in some measurable way within a margin of error.
Since people were making judgments of uncertainty long before the
advent of probability theory, Thagard proposes his model of coherence as
a more plausible account of non-statistical inference.
For similar reasons, Damasio (1994, 1999) describes what he calls
somatic markers as being instrumental in how we make decisions in
situations characterized by uncertainty. Somatic markers are the gut
reactions we have to imagined outcomes when we are weighing options
toward making decisions. 9 He uses the term “somatic” because it
involves a bodily response, and “marker” because it marks an image.
Such somatic markers function by encouraging us to quickly eliminate
certain options because of the negative outcomes (1994: 173). They serve
as heuristics or shortcuts in reasoning – a kind of “biasing device” – that
allows us to avoid the lengthier processes involved in giving every option
the same balanced consideration. They assist deliberation, without
substituting for it, by identifying options as either undesirable or desir-
able and so moving us more quickly to a point of decision. Damasio
suggests that the somatic markers we use for decision-making are based
on the process of secondary emotions, those learned as part of our
socialization (1994: 177).
This account sounds like the kind of description provided by Amos
Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) in exploring the heuristics
employed by people under uncertainty. They showed how ineffective our
everyday reasoning strategies can be. But Damasio judges that even if our
reasoning strategies were much better they would still be inadequate for
dealing with uncertainty and the complexities of personal and social
problems (1994: 191). Failures of rationality, he argues, are due not just to
weak calculation but also to desires for things like preserving self-esteem.
Devices are required that take into account such desires that are manifest
as emotions and feelings, devices like his somatic markers.
In a similar way, Thagard (2006: 253) highlights how emotion contrib-
utes to heuristic searches. Exploring the role that surprise plays in scien-
tific discovery, he notes the importance of facts that do not fit in with our
beliefs, facts that are incoherent. Surprise focuses attention and can lead
to facts being deemed emotionally important. The ensuing attention
can lead to scientific discovery, as his analysis of Watson and Crick’s
9â•‡ See also Gerd Gigerenzer’s treatment of intuition as a decision-making tool (Gigerenzer 2007).
procedures reveals (2006: 172ff.). Parallels are suggested between Thagard’s
use of experiences like surprise in the context of his theory of emotional
coherence and Damasio’s identification of the role of somatic markers in
highlighting desirable or undesirable outcomes. In both cases, emotional
considerations do not supplement the reasoning processes; they are inte-
gral to them and essential to a full understanding of complex
decision-making.
8.6â•… Value and emotions

As was noted earlier in the chapter and has been borne out by much of
the subsequent discussion, an audience’s judgments about a person are
altered if that person is viewed as a source of such things as fear or confi-
dence. Now is the time to consider the effect this has on the audience
in question: what does this alteration of judgment involve? Prior to his
descriptions of the emotions, Aristotle had claimed that audiences are
persuaded when led by a speech to feel emotion (i.2.5). Now we see the
ways in which reason plays a role in this. Emotions alter our judgments,
but they do so rationally and thus remain open to reason.
Obama’s invocations of hope in his Springfield speech (Chapter 1) need
to be understood in this way. Part of the discourse he develops operates at
the level of reason, engaging his audience with details of his accomplish-
ments and matching them with the image of a leader he is constructing.
But other portions of the discourse operate on the emotional level
(without ever losing touch with the cognitive), encouraging positive
responses to his proposals and his character. The transition of the “I” and
“you” into a common “we” and the “yes we can” refrain need to be under-
stood in this way – influencing judgment through emotional response. We
will return to Obama’s speeches and their emotional import when
we develop some of these ideas further in Chapter 12.
Each emotional state involves deliberation about the agent’s social situ-
ations and the expectations they have of others and that others have of
them. Their emotional orientation plays a role in “determining how an
audience sees and understands a particular situation” (Kasterly 2006:
225). An emotion like anger (or “hope,” in Obama’s case), for example,
affects the way we view people and what we take to be important. Insofar
as we feel anger and desire retaliation “because of an apparent slight that
was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one”
(ii.2.1), then what we value is crucially modified. The angry person
judges that another has behaved unjustly. Of course, this may be
8.6â•… Value and emotions 165
someone who was already thought of in this way and they have simply
added to a series of unjust acts. But more significant are cases where the
behavior does not conform to expectations. This may affect the intensity
of the emotion that is felt and expressed. People we expect to behave
justly – perhaps because of their position or power over others – elicit
greater anger when something they do (or that a speaker alleges they have
done) breaks with that expectation.10 We experience something on
parallel to the kind of surprise that Thagard identified in a more positive
context. This is the kind of emotional incoherence of which he was
speaking. We no longer see that person as fair (or as fair as we did) and
they consequently receive less weight in our eyes: we value them less.
In this way, not only do we see a close connection between pathos and
logos, but also a relationship to ethos (always implicit in Aristotle’s discus-
sion) emerges. As we saw illustrated in Obama’s Springfield speech, ethos
concerns the way a speaker builds character through discourse. In a
broader sense, it can refer to a range of argumentation that also addresses
the characters of others, from ad hominem reasoning to appeals to
authority. The crucial element in the building of character (as we saw in
the last chapter) is trust. People trust those they like; and like those they
trust. Trust is a feeling and a judgment. The decision to trust someone is
based on what we think of their proposals and their accomplishments,
but it is also based on an emotional response to them (Thagard 2006:
227). People who make us feel good (who stimulate somatic markers in
us) are assigned greater value in our eyes, which means that it is more
likely we will accept their judgments. If there is a range of choice of
whom to trust (as among election candidates), then the “gut feeling”
(good or bad) we have about one will facilitate the decision-making
process by quickly eliminating others (or that person, if the feeling is
negative).
We have moved here squarely into the field of axiology – the study of
quality or value. We tend to associate fields of ethics and aesthetics with
axiology, and rightly so. As we saw earlier, when Perelman identifies value
in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, he sees it in aesthetic terms. But we have uncovered
here a deeper sense of personal value at the heart of the Rhetoric. In
Aristotle’s terms now, rhetoric influences decision-making by altering the
value scheme of the audience. De Sousa (1987: 257) proposes that
emotional argument aims at “the apprehension by the hearer of a certain
10â•‡Consider the angry responses to revelations in 2009 that golfer Tiger Woods did not conform to
the character that people generally had of him.
axiological property – the feeling of a certain formal object.” We see this
in the worth that is to be judged in others as a result of persuasive
argumentation.
The speaker who understands the rhetorical nature of logos, pathos, and
ethos and the relationships between them understands part of what is
required to influence an audience’s sense of personal value – the value or
worth they assign to people, things, and even situations. In the section at
the end of the account of anger in the Rhetoric we are told that it is clear
that circumstances may require that a speech put an audience in the state
of mind of those who are inclined to anger and to show one’s opponents
as responsible for the things that cause anger (ii.2.27). As the circum-
stances require, the speaker brings about anger in an audience through
what is said, thus altering their judgments about the opponents (whether
of the speaker or the audience) and so affecting the weight those oppo-
nents have in the audience’s eyes. Their worth is diminished. It is hard to
think well of people with whom you are angry when that anger is
supported by reasons.
Even “non-practical” emotions like shame can operate in this way.
Shame, we recall, is “a sort of pain and agitation concerning the class of
evils, whether present or past or future, that seem to bring a person into
disrespect” (ii.6.1). People are concerned for their own reputations and
can be moved to act in different ways out of shame. Shame alters the
worth we attach to ourselves and our actions and can subsequently affect
the value we attach to others associated with our actions or with us. Who
could love such a shameful person? Someone who does so goes down in
our estimation. Speakers who understand this can encourage feelings of
shame, but they can also counter them. Either way, how a person assigns
value is affected.
In sum, persuasion alters judgments of value. This may be its most
significant power. It not only changes perceptions and incites actions; it
changes a person’s values. And in doing that, it might be suggested,
it modifies the person her- or himself.
chapter 9
Agency and reasons
9.1â•… Introduction: acting for reasons

Persuasion finds us active in the world. There are at least two senses in
which we should understand this phrase. (1) When we engage in attempts
to persuade, we move out into the cognitive environments of other
people; we are extended beyond ourselves into the “society” of others.
(2) On the other side of the matter, when we are persuaded or receptive
to being so, we are arrested in our social environment. We are met and
influenced there. But as the close of the last chapter suggested, persua-
sion’s involvement in the world amounts to much more. It is more than
an activity we engage in as persuaders and persuaded, but also a forma-
tive influence on the nature of the persons or agents that interact.1 As
Alberto Manguel suggests matters, reflecting much more than just the
construction of ethos with which we have been concerned so far, “we are
made of words, we know that words are our means of being in the world,
and it is through words that we identify our reality and by means of
words that we are ourselves identified” (2013: 120). Persuasion’s involve-
ment in the world, through words that identify us, is part of the web of
influences that affects the construction of persons in social contexts and
the various identities involved. In this chapter, I will explore the relevance
of particular theories of personhood, identity, and agency to the inter-
ests of social argumentation. Of particular concern is the sense in which
a “person” is an agent who engages in the social practice of giving and
receiving reasons.
Personhood and identity formation have received a lot of recent atten-
tion in humanities-focused disciplines with their common appreciation for
the creative powers of the discursive practices involved (Asen 2005: 131).
1â•‡ On the terms developed in this chapter, “persons” provide reasons, “agents” are persons who
provide reasons for what they do.
167
168 Agency and reasons
A growing disillusionment with the ability of the theory of the isolated
Cartesian self to explain practices of social interaction and to accord with
our experiences of self and otherness has led to radical revisions in our self-
understanding from relatively new fields like feminism and cognitive
science. To this group, we should add argumentation studies, where the
model of Cartesian reason and the person who might possess it has long
lost relevance in the realms of rhetoric and dialectics that understand
participants embedded in contexts which engage the whole “person” and
not just a detached logical being (Tindale 1999: 201).
Such persons act, we want to say, not just from a sense of reason but
according to reasons.2 But such a position immediately meets a tradi-
tional philosophical challenge in the form of Hume’s claim of the inferi-
ority of reason to the passions. In his Treatise (2000), Hume famously
argues contrary to a position passed down from Socrates that “Reason is,
and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (2.3.3, 4). A passion is
what he calls an “original existence” and not a copy of anything else. That
is, when I am angry, I am possessed by the passion, and the emotion has
no more reference to any other object than when I am thirsty or six foot
tall. Thus, it is impossible on his terms for the passion to be opposed by
or contradictory to reason, because contradiction consists in a disagree-
ment between an idea, considered as a copy, and the object which it
represents (2.3.3, 5). So, knowing which actions will produce which
effects will not itself motivate us to act (will not, in our terms, serve as
reasons). It does not matter what we know if we are not interested in
those causes and effects. Thus, further, reason must serve the passions.
They are not in conflict because they perform quite separate roles:
passions influence our choices; reason concerns relations of ideas and the
connections between matters of fact. And so Hume can conclude, rather
alarmingly, that it is “not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of
the whole world to the scratching of my finger” (2.3.3, 6).
Hume, then, sets down a problem of acting for reasons, and neo-
Humeans have followed in that tradition. On such accounts, agents are
simply caused to act by the strongest desires. Reasons, insofar as such
influences are so judged, are causes on us. In opposition to such views,
philosophers have looked for ways in which we can talk of ourselves as
being guided by reasons that result from some deliberative process on
our part. As Kenneth Baynes (2001) observes, “As agents who at least
2â•‡ The kind of distinction I have in mind here parallels that between justifying and motivating
reasons, see Smith (1987).
9.2â•…Personhood 169
sometimes deliberate, we must view ourselves … as deciding whether a
particular desire or pro-attitude fits in with some conception we have of
ourselves” (58). That is, we must act from those desires that accord with
and reflect the persons we are and conform to the goals we have set for
ourselves. Reasons, on such terms, are relative to persons. We will come
back to this issue later in the chapter. There are clearly some prelimi-
nary questions to ask, the first of which concerns what we are to mean
by “persons.”
9.2â•…Personhood
The philosophical tradition, especially from John Locke onwards,
has given rise to many conceptions of “person” and many suggested
key criteria involved in the definition of this concept. Added to this,
competing conceptions emerge from the relevant literature in psychology,
economics, politics, and so forth. So any review that can be attempted
must be necessarily restricted, and such restriction, for us, can be guided
by the need to include core ideas that are of relevance to the larger ques-
tions driving this study in social argumentation.
John Locke (1975) defines a “person” as “a thinking intelligent Being,
that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same
thinking thing in different times and places” (Essay, ii, xxvii, §9). In this
Locke continues an understanding that stretches from at least Aristotle
that would distinguish persons from animals, or personhood from a
human’s animal nature. As animals, we may be sensitive to our environ-
ment such that we are perceptive beings, and we pursue desires and inter-
ests. But persons enjoy the higher capacity of reason and the reflection
that comes with it. From this beginning, we may construct various lists of
person-making characteristics, or features that are regarded as essential
for something to count as a person, and these will vary through historical
periods and between cultures (Quante 2007: 68). So, for example, it is
important in Locke’s definition that a person has a sense of self-identity
over time, in a way that, presumably, non-human animals do not. This
allows for definitions that include the ability to project oneself into the
future, to imagine oneself other than in one’s current state, to plan and to
experience emotions related to those plans when they succeed or fail.
Other features will include the use of language and a capacity for moral
reflection along with the attitudes that accompany this. Foundational to
all such features is the possession of reason in some rudimentary or
complex fashion.
We might consider, then, that persons will be characterized by the
possession of a set of criteria that they hold as properties, and that this set
can be populated by a range of features according to the theory involved
and the context (historical or cultural) in which it is relevant. But core to
each theory of personhood will be the capacity for reason. This internal
definition of person involves capacities that are acquired and can be lost.
Thus, notoriously in such discussions, acknowledgement must be given to
the potential that human infants (and perhaps embryos) have to become
persons even though they do not possess the key capacities. Likewise, indi-
viduals in states where higher brain functions are lost due to the irrevers-
ible destruction of the brain stem are no longer persons, although they
remain at least human organisms and perhaps human beings.3
Lurking in such definitions is the specter of essentialism. This concept
has appeared in earlier chapters as well. It holds that things have a fixed
set of characteristics that make them what they are; that these characteris-
tics comprise a thing’s essence; and that this essence can be uncovered
through philosophical investigation. This is a controversial concept for a
range of reasons, not least because of its constraining assumptions. Sets of
fixed characteristics have been used to exclude as much as include, and it
matters very much who “controls” the definition and decides what
should count. In terms of the concept “person,” essentialism assumes an
objective nature that all persons have in common, and it is the idea of
such commonality and what it might involve that many want to contest.
We will return to this idea below and review some suggestions for
avoiding essentialism in this debate.
We have, then, reviewed some of the capacities that might be possessed
by a person and their root in the capacity of reason. We can take this as
an internal understanding of the concept. On such terms, persons are so
by virtue of their make-up and not with respect to any relationships they
hold (other than the capacity to have relationships with others). By
contrast to this, or in addition to it, we find definitions of persons as
social beings constructed through their social interactions. For example,
Michael Quante (2007) argues that persons are constituted by social
3â•‡ This is a complex and controversial question that need not delay us in the current discussion.
Suffice it to say that a distinction can be made between a human being, who although they may be
afflicted by a serious irreversible illness as with forms of dementia that eliminates the presence of
key criteria associated with persons, may still retain an awareness of their environment, a capacity
for language and social interaction, and so forth. An individual who has lost these capacities and is
in a state of coma characterized by brain death may not be regarded as a human being in the above
sense, but is still a human organism.
9.2â•…Personhood 171
relations. This means that integral to being a person is being so treated or
recognized by others. “Personhood is essentially constituted by social rela-
tions if it is possible to be a person only within such relations” (Quante
2007: 69). This is not to deny a capacities approach to personhood more
than it is to suggest that such an approach is insufficient to capture what
we really mean by persons or only tells part of the story.
In this second, external, sense personhood is a status conferred on me
by others. Interpersonal recognition flows both ways. Part of my under-
standing of myself as a person comes from my experience of being in the
presence of other persons, being recognized by them and recognizing
them. In the first case, I need situations in which to exercise the capaci-
ties I possess as a person. When I engage in self-reflection (or Perelman’s
self-deliberation – Chapter 4), for example, I do not discover an isolated
Cartesian ego. Rather, I discover myself among others and form impor-
tant parts of my identity through that interaction with others. And this
discovery took place with the emergence of consciousness, with my
earliest experience of the self. In the second case, a primary capacity
I possess is that for moral agency, and this requires others for its exercise,
understanding, and development. In important senses, then, I come to
be as a person, grow into my personhood, through social relations.
One important criticism of this external sense of personhood that
depends on the recognition of others comes from various Robinson
Crusoe scenarios. Such a castaway on an island is indeed, as the allegor-
ical nature of the story stresses, isolated from human society and exiled
from interpersonal relations. Such cases, imagined or real, would seem to
tell against defining personhood in the social sense, if Crusoe is to count
as a person. One simple response is to deny that “if,” and say that the
castaway is not a person, or at least not one in a full sense. Crusoe retains
the capacities that would allow him to engage with others were they
present. But he is a person only potentially in a sense similar to that of
the human infant who does not even possess all the required capacities
and is a person only potentially. Quante argues something like this by
appealing to Crusoe’s ability to recall being treated as a person and
having so treated himself and others. But he also takes a different tack
and proposes that the very asking, by us, of whether Crusoe is a person in
his isolation is “an instance of the necessary social relation” (Quante
2007: 72). There is, though, something suspicious in this answer. It
suggests for one thing that the important relationship involved can be
asymmetrical and not the kind of reciprocal relationship that allows for
an individual to experience herself or himself as a person. It also,
accordingly, devalues the experience of personhood: it is little consolation
to Crusoe to be recognized as a person by others with whom he cannot
interact and whom he does not know. The kinds of interaction that
would seem important are those between members of relevant communi-
ties among whom relations continue on a regular or semi-regular basis.
For argumentation theory, both internal and external senses of person-
hood are important. Persons need to possess reason-related capacities that
allow them to engage in the activity of giving and receiving reasons and all
the further associated activities such as assessing evidence and weighing
emotional responses that this entails. But it is also required that persons be
in relations with others, engaged in a social world that provides the
content and occasion for argumentative exchange. The secondary or meta-
relation that depends on personhood – that of being in audience –
assumes such involvement in the social world. Crusoe, on such terms can
only recall what it is like to be in audience but will not encounter situa-
tions where that experience becomes active. His self-deliberations where
he argues with himself and serves as his own audience can only simulate
the experience of actual argumentation and actual being in audience.
9.3â•… Non-Cartesian selves

In Chapter 8 we explored the situated nature of the emotions. Emotion,
we saw, is a motion out into the world. The emotions in Aristotle’s
account are social emotions, arising from and exercised in social situa-
tions. Related to this, given the close association between emotion and
cognition, were the senses in which cognition itself is situated in the
world. This idea was considered as part of a paradigm shift that chal-
lenges the Cartesian tradition in which the mind is judged as an inner
and independent entity. As Tim van Gelder reminds us: “Ontologically,
mind is much more a matter of what we do within environmental and
social possibilities and bounds” (van Gelder 1995: 380).
Similarly, Shaun Gallagher (2009) argues for the social situatedness of
cognition. It is not just that we find others in the world with whom we
communicate but that “communication and interaction shape our cogni-
tive abilities from the very beginning.” Cognition “not only involves a
deeply embodied and temporally structured action but also is formed in an
affective resonance generated by our surroundings and by others with
whom we interact” (Gallagher 2009: 48). This echoes the way cognitive
activity exploits structure in the social world, what Robbins and Aydede
call “the embedding thesis” (2009: 3). In The Constitution of Agency (2008),
9.3â•… Non-Cartesian selves 173
Christine Korsgaard suggests that the mind interacts with the perceived
world such that the activity of our senses alters the character of that world.
Still retained here, though, is a sense of the mind being separated from the
world. The embedded thesis goes further; the mind is in the world.
Experience takes place in the interaction between organism and experience
rather than in an independent Cartesian ego (Gallagher 2009: 37). Thus,
further, embodiment is crucial to the extension of the mind into the world.
The embedded mind thesis popular in strands of cognitive science
recalls the feminist innovation of Donna Haraway (1988) that she termed
situated knowledges. Also in rejection of the Cartesian tradition, situated
knowledges are about communities rather than isolated individuals
(Haraway 1988: 590) and the central concept involved is an “embodied
objectivity.” As she stresses this: “I am arguing for the view from a body,
always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus
the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity” (589). The view of
objectivity Haraway endorses challenges relativism and totalization, both
of which she calls “god tricks” because they suggest perspectives from
nowhere that are impossible. Embodied objectivity, by contrast, promises
“partial, locatable, critical knowledges sustaining the possibility of webs
of connections called solidarity in politics and shared conversations in
epistemology” (584). The distance that traditional views of objectivity
establishes between the knower and what is known is closed by
the embedded knower who finds herself always in a location, a situation,
from which she observes and understands. The perspective is always
partial, just as the knowing self is always partial, “always constructed and
stitched together without claiming to be another” (586). To suggest
otherwise, to lay claim to a knowledge that is complete and separate from
those who know, is a god trick.
The extended mind, the embedded mind, the embedded self, all
suggest a self which exceeds the boundaries of consciousness and breaks
with the tradition of a discrete Cartesian interiority (Clark and Chalmers
1998: 18). This is a natural extension of what we understood earlier about
our emotional being, something that we would be loath to separate
from our whole nature, and particularly from our cognitive being. Andy
Clark and David Chalmers suggest we look on ourselves as extended
systems that connect biological organisms with external resources. To
think otherwise, “we would have to shrink the self into a mere bundle of
occurrent states, severely threatening its deep psychological continuity.
Far better to take the broader view, and see agents themselves as spread in
the world” (1998: 18).
9.4â•… Situated agents and questions of identity
It is a consequence of the challenge to the Cartesian ideal, that persons
are seen to be mutually dependent on each other for their constitution
and development, and that values like those of self-sufficiency, which
have their roots even further back in the Aristotelian tradition, are
demoted in favor of values that stress cooperation. Annette Baier (1995)
argues for a naturalistic view of persons, which emphasizes their interde-
pendence. On her understanding, “Persons are born to earlier persons,
and learn the arts of personhood from other persons” (1995: 313). The
kinds of relations that exist between persons are, on this view, causal
relations. Persons are not sui generis creations defined by what separates
them. They are social creations defined by what connects them.
Beyond this causal sense, while clearly related to it, a richer view of
persons which also involves a social situatedness sees them as more
intrinsically connected because their identities are “constituted by
elements of the social context in which they are embedded” (Mackenzie
and Stoljar 2000: 22). This is not just to look at the antecedent events
that bring about persons – that is, other persons – but at a web of
elements that go into forming the identities that persons have. Here, the
embedded nature of persons is again crucial, since the social contexts
from which they emerge comprise a web of influential features like
gender, race, class, and so forth.
This is the sense of relation that is central to Amartya Sen’s under-
standing of personal identity: it is social identity or the idea of identi-
fying with others. Important here is not the traditional philosophical
sense of personal identity where being the same person over time is at
issue. For Sen, attention moves from “the notion of being identical to that
of sharing an identity, and to the idea of identifying oneself with others of
a particular group” (Sen 1999: 2). As will be seen below, this is not to
suggest that the individual person is lost in her or his social identity.
Rather, we must consider how such elements are balanced against a
robust sense of self that accounts for the freedoms experienced in deliber-
ation and the launching of actions in accord with those deliberations
(rather than simply caused by Humean passions). Seyla Benhabib (1992)
captures something of what is at stake in her criticisms of the Rawlsian
“veil of ignorance,” a device designed to encourage objectivity in moral
decision-making, since the agent has veiled from her any knowledge of
her social situation such that she cannot bias the decision in her favor.
For Benhabib, such a position ignores the concreteness of persons and
9.4â•… Situated agents and questions of identity 175
demands a perspective similar in its impossibility to the god view
deplored by Haraway. Benhabib insists:
Identity does not refer to my potential for choice alone, but to the actu-
ality of my choices, namely to how I, as a finite, concrete, embodied indi-
vidual, shape and fashion the circumstances of my birth and family,
linguistic, cultural and gender identity into a coherent narrative that stands
as my life’s story. Indeed, if we recall that every autonomous being is one
born of others and not, as Rawls, following Hobbes, assumes, a being “not
bound by prior moral ties to another,” the question becomes: how does
this finite, embodied creature constitute into a coherent narrative those
episodes of choice and limitation, agency and suffering, initiative and
dependence? The self is not a thing, a substrate, but the protagonist of a
life’s tale. The conception of selves who can be individuated prior to their
moral ends is incoherent. We could not know if such a being was a human
self, an angel, or the Holy Spirit. (Benhabib 1992: 161–62)4
This nicely captures both the causal and the intrinsic senses of the rela-
tions that bind persons to their social situations. There is retained a sense
of autonomy, but nothing like the self-sufficiency of the Cartesian model.
The stress is on the interdependence that constitutes identities in light of
which the agent emerges, deliberates, and acts. In this way we avoid the
harsher essentialism noted earlier that might be applied to “persons.”
The core rational being that underlies us all is indeed necessary, but, as we have
seen, woefully insufficient to explain or define our personhood. Too much of
the person is constructed in social contexts through the kind of choice that
Benhabib identifies. On such a view, in spite of the webs that connect us, we
are marked more by our differentness as persons than our sameness, even as
that differentness depends on the interactions with other persons.
A final confirmation of this view might be drawn from Jürgen Habermas.
In one of his contributions to the German debate over stem-cell research,
and reproductive issues generally (Habermas 2003b), Habermas argues that
the individual “can only emerge through the course of social externalization,
and can only be stabilized within the network of undamaged relations of
4â•‡ The concern might arise here that we have shifted from speaking of persons to talk of the self.
Insofar as we are interested in the complete, embodied individual situated in a social context, we
can treat the two as synonymous for our purposes. There is a philosophical tradition that views the
self as a substrate underlying experience and allowing for identity over time. This it is that has
experiences. But this is a contested idea – since it is not something that can itself be experienced –
and, as we see in the quote provided, is a concept that is dismissed by Benhabib. A person’s sense
of “identity” might be judged to cover both their sense of personhood and sense of self insofar as
persons are self-reflective.
mutual recognition” (2003b: 34). Birth, then, is not sufficient for a person to
emerge in the full sense; the further crucial requirement is the “integration
into the public context of interaction of an intersubjectively shared life-
world” (Ibid.). In terms of our interest in the nature of personhood, this
reinforces the importance of both internal (capacities) and external (status)
criteria, while laying stress on the latter.
Persons find their identities constituted in their social situations where
they are related to others through networks of interests and common
beliefs. It is natural in this to think of social groups in which persons
cohere as fixed and themselves identifiable in essential ways. Iris Marion
Young (1997) warns against such thinking, arguing that it gives rise to a
tendency to fix social relations that are actually fluid and to deny differ-
entiation within groups.5 There is a kind of essentialism here as well, one
that would define a group in terms of a particular set of attributes that
are shared by all members (Young 1997: 387). Just as we understand
persons in relational terms, so we should think of groups in a similar way.
They are not “self-identical substantial entities with essential attributes.
A social group is a collective of persons differentiated from others by
cultural forms, practices, special needs or capacities, structures of power
or prestige” (389). So on her terms, personal identity is not fully consti-
tuted by group identity. Such thinking fails to account for the freedoms
experienced by individuals and the multiplicity of group affiliations that
people hold. Young believes that a person’s identity is not so much
constituted by social positioning in the way some of the views canvassed
earlier would suggest, but is formed in “active relations” to that social
positioning (391). This does give an important sense of autonomy to
personal identity. While it may go too far in denying the influences of
social groups that we have seen to be important in the constitution
of persons, it does help to further correct a balance that gave full weight
to those influences. As Young insists: “Individuals are agents: we consti-
tute our own identities … Each person’s identity is a product of how he
or she deals with his or her intersecting social positions” (391–92).
As we might recall from Chapter 2, Amartya Sen (2006, 2004) draws
attention to just such matters when he notes in relation to the many asso-
ciations that impact our identities, that we are “diverse diversities” (2006:
13). Echoing the concern we see expressed by Young, he observes that
5â•‡ The concern is echoed by Nancy Fraser (2001) who sees in the imposition of a collective identity
on people an intrusive attempt to force conformity. “The result is often to impose a single, drasti-
cally simplified group identity, which denies the complexity of people’s lives, the multiplicity of
their identifications and the cross-pulls of their various affiliations” (Fraser 2001: 24).
9.5â•… Persons and reasons 177
while we are indeed members of groups, these groups overlap in so many
complex ways that any undue emphasis on one or another serves to
distort the whole picture. Importantly – and this makes clear a crucial
point alive in both Benhabib and Young’s discussions – identity is not
something foisted on people, but a matter of choice and reasoning. Sen
writes: “Along with the recognition of the plurality of our identities and
their diverse implications, there is a critically important need to see the
role of choice in determining the cogency and relevance of particular
identities which are inescapably diverse” (2006: 4). In situations that call
for decisions on our part, decisions that will arise from who we believe
ourselves to be, we deliberate about facets of our identity. We decide
what to foreground and what to background. Our diverse associations
based on citizenship, residence, place of origin, class, race, gender, educa-
tion, occupations, family relations, religious interests, and so on, form a
web of belongings from which we emerge and understand ourselves.
There is no capricious freedom surrounding the choices we make; we always
choose from somewhere. But at the same time, influences that we might take
to be determinate, like group pronouncements or cultural attitudes, need
be seen as, strictly speaking, no more than just influences (not determina-
tions in the strong sense). Such influences may shape our reasoning, but
need not condition it. Korsgaard (2009) goes so far as to claim that these,
what she calls practical, identities are contingent, because whether we treat
them as a source of reasons and obligations is our decision. We could break
with even factually grounded aspects of our identity like being a person’s
child because we no longer choose to identify ourselves in that role (2009:
23). The lessons of argumentation teach us the importance of critical doubt
as a constructive means of understanding ourselves and those around us.
Sen defines “cultural freedom” as the ability to move away from received
behavior patterns after reflection and reasoning (2006: 157), that is, again,
to have the condition of choice. Effective argumentation in such circum-
stances must do more than just facilitate the reflection and reasoning, it
must facilitate the prior ability to move away from behavior patterns, to
encourage the conditions for choice.
9.5â•… Persons and reasons

Korsgaard (1996a: 131, 1996b: chapter 10) also presents a case for
believing that all reasons have a public, shareable character. On her
view, reasons are not private and mental, but “out there” in the public
domain and accessible by others. We see again here a non-Cartesian
agent brought into play. As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca emphasized
earlier (Chapter 4), private reasoning, insofar as it can arise, is dependent
upon a prior practice of reasoning with others. An important, perhaps
fundamental, aspect of the status-sense of personhood is the recogni-
tion by others that I act for reasons and, when called upon, can provide
further reasons in justification of my actions. Likewise, in holding others
responsible for what they do I take them to be acting for reasons, reasons
for which they could present further justifying reasons. That is, it is part
of our recognition of personhood – in ourselves and in others – that the
reasons in question do not just involve explanations for what motivates
us but also those that issue from deliberation and choice. This stems
from the additional understanding of persons having the capacity for
self-reflection. Habermas gives voice to the same insight when he notes:
“If we describe an event as being a person’s action, we know for instance
that we describe something which can be not only explained like a natural
process, but also, if need be, justified” (Habermas 2003b: 107).
While the above extrapolates somewhat from what Korsgaard says, we
find some corroboration in Baynes’ (2001) commentary on her work:
Seeing others acting on considerations they are in turn prepared to justify
“plays an important part in our view of what unifies an agent – a person, so
to speak, by the normative force of the reasons that govern her conduct”
(Baynes 2001: 61). Baynes sees the concept of the person emerging here as
fundamental to the more practical identities we might have and one implic-
itly acknowledged by both religious and secular traditions: “It refers to the
general human capacity to respond to and act for reasons” (2001: 71).
Baynes further offers the insight that Brandom’s semantic pragmatism
is particularly useful for understanding the impetus behind such
thinking, because, as we have seen in Chapter 6, Brandom views reasons
in terms of the statuses that agents ascribe to each other in social prac-
tices (Baynes 2001: 63). This renders reasons public and shareable. Thus,
Baynes suggests, we can understand Korsgaard’s invocation of the inher-
ently public character of reasons in this way. “To be a reason-giver (and
thus capable of complex intentional states), for Brandom, is fundamen-
tally to be taken as or treated as a reason-giver by the relevant social
community” (2001: 63–64).6
6â•‡ There is a danger, as Korsgaard (2009: 207) notes, that viewing all reasons as public could lead to
the conclusion that none are private and thus, effectively, the individual disappears. To counter this,
she allows that there must be a sense in which some reasons are agent-relative (rather than all agent-
neutral). So, for example, my desire that someone I love should be happy means that her happiness
is something for which there is a public reason: someone should make her happy. But I also want to
be that person, the one who makes her happy. This is agent-relative, or private (2009: 211).
9.6â•…Conclusion 179
In bringing into clearer focus the social nature of reasons, such
thinking reinforces our sense that persons are in some important sense
reasoners. That is, to be a person is to have both the capacity, potential or
actual, to enter into what Brandom calls the game of giving and receiving
reasons, and to have the status conferred on them by others of being
reasoners in the exercise of such a capacity. Such a status is reflected in
Habermas’ talk of “second persons” to describe the other participant
in communication. “In our everyday dealings, we focus on others whom
we address as a second person” (Habermas 2003b: 107–8). This attitude
requires that we understand them as like our selves and our expectations
of them follow accordingly.
9.6â•…Conclusion
The concept of “person” itself has received little attention by argumenta-
tion theorists. Perelman is an exception to this judgment, as are Douglas
Walton (1998) and Henry Johnstone Jr. (1978), both of whom provide
what might be seen as “passing” observations that fail to fully capture the
important relationship between argumentation and the emergence of
personhood. Walton considers what notion of “person” must inform
strategies of personal attack in ad hominem arguments. Thus, “Person
in this sense means a participant in argument who is capable of arguing in
a coherent, consistent sequence of reasoning and who has commitments
and obligations to other persons by virtue of a role that the person has
in these relationships” (Walton 1998: 105). While the current analysis
reinforces this meaning, Johnstone’s insight comes closer to the position
developed when he insists that “argument is a defining feature of the
human situation” (Johnstone 1978: 112). A being that could not argue
would lack a self.
In speaking of an agent and his or her actions, Perelman draws a distinc-
tion between liaisons of coexistence and liaisons of succession. The latter
captures the relation between cause and effect. On such terms, we might
see persons preceding their actions, as the authors of them. But the
“person and his acts are in constant interaction, and it is difficult to say
which element precedes the other” (Perelman 1982: 90). Thus, the liaison
of interest between person and act is that of coexistence. Perelman does
not think that argumentation theory need take a stand in an ontological
debate and agree, for example, with those who believe that a person’s
existence precedes their essence. It is enough for him to recognize
the complex interaction between acts and agents. In this, he may miss the
more dynamic nature of the persons–act relationship, where the person
arises from his or her argumentative activities, because it is these activities
that bear on the formation and modification of beliefs.
We have seen a conception of personhood emerge throughout the
chapter that balances the capacity for reason with the social recognition
of being a reasoner (in the sense of giving and receiving reasons). The
capacities-sense of personhood suggests that there are some characteristics
inherent to all persons, characteristics particularly reflected in the posses-
sion of reason. But we avoid the specter of essentialism by recognizing
the general nature of such capacities such that they do not constrain and
fix, but provide the most basic features needed for the creation of the
person. Essentialism is further removed by the recognition of a second
contributing sense that sees the person formed in and through social
interactions as the internal capacities are exercised and developed through
the various levels of recognition accorded it by its status as a giver and
receiver of reasons. This is the primary sense we must give to “persons,”
those beings at the heart of argumentation, distributed through the ranks
of arguers and audiences, absorbed in the game of giving and asking for
reasons. This is the sense that defines them and in which they can find
their definition.
c h a p t e r 10
Making meaning present
10.1â•… Introduction: the shift of perspective

In spite of quite different subject matters, the previous four chapters
share one thing in common: they all involve a shift of perspective to the
concerns of the social. The relevant view of meaning considers the matter
not solely in terms of a speaker’s intentions but primarily in terms of
those who receive the communication. The same understanding affects
our interest in testimony, with a focus not on the traditional transmission
view involving a speaker’s beliefs but a view that instead highlights what
is said and how others can learn from those statements or utterances. The
model of the emotions that emerged from Chapter 8 is one that not only
sees them as cognitive but also as social, capturing aspects of what is “out
there” in the social world and by which we learn from (and influence)
others. Our social interactions also contribute to our development as
persons, an important aspect of which arises from the social practice of
giving and receiving reasons.
This thread of common interest has been viewed primarily through the
lenses of argumentation and in terms of what we might learn about both
the nature and practice of arguing, again understood primarily as the
giving and receiving of reasons. What has emerged is a growing apprecia-
tion of what argumentation looks like when viewed from the perspective
of the audiences that receive it. On these terms, this project has as its
most modest ambition to establish this perspective as one equal in
importance with those that approach argumentation either from an
interest in arguments themselves, their types and qualities, or from a
concentration on the nature and practices of arguers. Beyond this,
specific contributions to the theory of argumentation, accruing as
Â�obligations from the early chapters, are the responses that can be (and in
some ways already have been) made to the problems noted earlier that
arise from looking closely at audiences. Some of these problems, as we have
181
182 Making meaning present
seen, were addressed explicitly or implicitly in the theoretical work of
Aristotle, Perelman, and Habermas, and we have been able to develop
and refine several of those ideas. Other questions are still to be fully
addressed and it remains for the closing chapters of this study to return
to them, now in light of the discussions of the intervening chapters and
the relevant ideas that have been uncovered there.
The present chapter will look at audiences from the perspective of how
arguers can and should consider them, focusing on the rhetorical concept
of “presence” and how this functions in arguer–audience relations.
Essentially, what is being asked here is how audiences should be taken
into consideration by arguers and how such a consideration determines
the way argumentation is approached and arguments constructed. The
following chapter returns to the questions of audience identity, exploring
further the reception of argumentation and how successful argumenta-
tion is personalized so as to speak to specific aspects of an audience’s
identity. The final chapter pursues the questions of identity to those that
involve larger audiences, like the composite, the historical, and the
universal. In each case, the discussions will be enhanced by insights
drawn from the studies of meaning, testimony, emotion, or agency.
10.2â•… The presence of an argument

The cover of John Berger’s book Bento’s Sketchbook (2011) depicts a
hand-written question: How does the impulse to draw something
begin? In fact, we may ask, how does the impulse for anything begin?
What prompts the choices made in expressing things one way rather
than another, in adopting one strategy over other possibilities? In this
chapter, the interest is in a similarly originating impulse: the impulse
to argue, and, of course, the decisions that follow, leading ultimately to
the argument itself. An impulse is a wish or urge, usually sudden. But
in spite of any suddenness, impulses do not arise from nowhere; they
are related to past states, arising out of them. In physics, the impulse
changes the momentum of an object. In our terms, the impulse is the
catalyst of an argument and initiates its momentum. And an argument
is something made present, something drawn into a specific environ-
ment in a particular way, in order to have the greatest impact on those
to be persuaded.
The concept of presence has a long history in rhetorical theory, and we
need to consider some of that particularly as it relates to argumentation. In
making an argument present, an arguer strives to move an audience from a
10.3â•… Philosophical views of presence 183
passive state of conviction to an active one of persuasion. As was noted in
Chapter 2, persuasion involves the personalizing of claims about which we
are generally already convinced. We may be convinced of many things for
which we remain unpersuaded. Most people, for example, believe that
famine relief is a good thing and that those who suffer in this respect
should be helped. Where this belief comes from is not at issue here, the
point is only that this is something of which people are convinced. But
being convinced does not itself translate into action. Many people are not
personally persuaded to help in famine relief by contributing their money or
time. To bring this about the prior disposition that characterized convic-
tion must be tapped in a particular way and translated into persuasion.
Presence draws attention to the ways in which arguers interact with
addressees, explicitly considering them and their cognitive environments
(as these were explained in Chapter 7) and organizing their discourses to
foster the right kinds of connections. As such, presence is a concept –
perhaps the concept – that best captures the dialogical, interactive, coop-
erative nature of rhetorical argumentation.
10.3â•… Philosophical views of presence

Traditionally, “presence” has been understood as essentially making
certain elements present to the mind, and using various techniques to
accomplish this. A contemporary expression of this concern is provided
by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, who write “By the very fact of
selecting certain elements and presenting them to the audience, their
importance and pertinency to the discussion are implied. Indeed, such a
choice endows these elements with a presence, which is an essential factor
in argumentation and one that is far too much neglected in rationalistic
conceptions of reasoning” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 116).
An arguer may choose to emphasize elements within a cognitive environ-
ment, highlighting their nature, or associating them with other elements
(as through analogy). A speaker makes present “by verbal magic alone”
what is absent, or makes more present what is there, by drawing it to the
forefront of consciousness where it can be isolated (117–18). In this way,
the arguer influences how an audience perceives, conceives, and remem-
bers ideas, images, and topoi (See Karon 1976; Long 1983: 110). As we will
see later, the audience is not a passive partner in this. But the point of
impulse remains with the arguer.
Before any act of arguing takes place, the basic premises used “should
stand out against the undifferentiated mass of available elements of
agreement” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 142). In the terms of
this study, choices are made in light of the cognitive environments to be
modified. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca proceed: “[Presence] is
Â�essential not only in all argumentation aiming at immediate action, but
also in that which aspires to give the mind a certain orientation, to make
certain schemes of interpretation prevail, to insert elements of agreement
into a framework that will give them significance and confer upon them
the rank they deserve” (142). This speaks to the range of modifications
that presence effects: orienting the mind to see in certain ways, encour-
aging interpretations of ideas, and adding to previously structured frame-
works so as to emphasize or reassign values.
As was noted back in Chapter 3, Aristotle provided us with one of the
earliest accounts of presence in the Rhetoric in the discussion of what
he called bringing-before-the-eyes. It will be useful to review some of those
ideas here. In his discussion of urbanity, of a facility with language charac-
teristic of city living, or living in deep social contexts, Aristotle suggests
that it is achieved “by words bringing-before-the-eyes, for things should be
seen as being done rather than as going to be done. We should thus aim
at three things: metaphor, antithesis, and energeia” (iii.10.6). In earlier
chapters he had discussed metaphor and antithesis, but not energeia. Now
in the section that follows this passage (the longest section in the Rhetoric),
Aristotle proceeds to provide a series of examples in which metaphors
might be seen to “bring-before-the-eyes.” For example, “Greece uttered a
cry” is a metaphor and before the eyes (iii.10.7). While it is not clear how
metaphor and energeia are linked, Aristotle’s goal in the chapter is quick
and easy learning: metaphor, for example, “creates understanding and
knowledge [gnõsin]” in the audience. So the effect of “bringing-before-the-
eyes” must contribute to this goal in some central way.
At the start of the next chapter, matters are clarified a little: “I mean
that things are brought-before-the-eyes by words that signify [sēmainei]
activity” (iii.11.2). The sense is strengthened with further examples from
Homer, who often uses energeia in making inanimate things animate
through metaphor. His fame is achieved through creating actuality/
activity [energeia] in such cases (iii.11.3). For Homer “makes everything
move and live” and energeia is motion [kinêsis] (iii.11.4). This is as clear as
the explanation gets: energeia is the motion of bringing things alive, of
animation, not in reality but in the mind of the audience. It creates
immediacy and conceptual vividness.
What it does not create is visual vividness. In his translation notes
George Kennedy insists (2007: 117) that energeia should be distinguished
10.3â•… Philosophical views of presence 185
from enargeia, which means “clearness” or “distinctiveness.” This may
strike us as odd because it comes in spite of the prevalence of visual
imagery throughout the Rhetoric. Quintilian’s later association of
“bringing-before-the-eyes” with enargeia encourages confusion on the
relation: “I am complaining that a man has been murdered. Shall I not
bring before my eyes all the circumstances that it is reasonable to imagine
must have occurred in such a connection? Shall I not see the assassin
burst suddenly from his hiding place, the victim tremble, cry for help,
beg for mercy, or turn to run? Shall I not see the fatal blow delivered and
the stricken body fall?” (Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 6.2.31–32).
There is a large difference between a concept being active in the mind
and visual vividness, and the two etymologies are distinct. But one would be
forgiven for thinking Aristotle also had in mind the senses attributed to
enargeia. That “bringing-before-the-eyes” should involve some kind of
phantasia is suggested by its perceptual nature. The audience sees some-
thing, whether a concept or an image, and learns from this. Thus, we
have a cognitive effect arising from a perceptual cause. In Quintilian’s
case of enargeia the subject brings this on himself. In the atmosphere of
the Rhetoric, energeia is one of the means of persuasion that a speaker
employs to move an audience. But enargeia also came to have the wider
intersubjective sense, where an audience takes the description of a
speaker and creates “for themselves the images that the speaker describes”
(Kochin 2009: 392).1
Modern considerations of presence should accommodate both concep-
tual and visual ideas associated with energeia, the enlivening of ideas, and
enargeia, visual vividness. In his examination of the art of translation,
Umberto Eco (2003) attributes importance to hypotyposis as the rhetorical
effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene. Unfortunately,
he notes, the rhetoricians who have written about it provide only circular
definitions and don’t explain what is involved. He suggests: mentioning;
describing; listing; and piling up events. (Eco 2003: 104–5). Consider,
1â•‡ Quintilian’s usage of “bringing-before-the-eyes” is presaged in Aristotle’s De Memoria, where we are

told that it is “impossible even to think without a mental picture,” and that “the man who
is thinking … puts a finite magnitude before his eyes [tithetai pro ommatôn], though he does not
think of it as such” (450a). A similar understanding of “before-the-eyes” seems operative in the
Poetics, where the poet is encouraged to “keep the scene before his eyes [pro ommatôn tithemenon]”
when constructing plots and dialogue (1455a). O’Gorman (2005: 24) suggests these usages resemble
the rhetorical practice described in the Rhetoric. But if so, the resemblance is faint. In both De
Memoria and the Poetics the individual brings the image before his own eyes through an act of
imagination. The very different task of the rhetor is to achieve this in another person through the
use of words.
though, how Barack Obama achieves presence in one of the speeches
discussed in Chapter 1 when he announces his candidacy for the
Democratic nomination for the presidency, whether we want to classify
his move as energeia, enargeia, or hypotyposis:
But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells
us that a different future is possible.
He tells us that there is power in words.
He tells us that there is power in conviction.
That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and
station, we are one people.
He tells us that there is power in hope.
In this way, Obama, another “tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer,”
standing on the steps of the courthouse in Springfield, Illinois where
Lincoln launched his campaign, does more than invoke the memory of
Lincoln; he summons him, brings him to the podium and superimposes
his absence over Obama’s own presence. Or, in our terms, he translates
that absence into a presence. And he does this through words, through
knowing his audience and modifying their cognitive environment, by
taking something already there, and creating something new – an associa-
tion between himself and Lincoln.
Aristotle and Perelman present presence in ways that accommodate the
Obama example. He inserts elements into a framework so as to give them
significance but also to reorient the perception of that framework and
give it new significance. Suasory force arises from the connections made,
whether logical or psychological. This force accompanies a feeling that
provokes assent. As David Hume insisted, “An idea assented to feels
different from a fictitious idea” (Treatise, Bk. i, Part 3. Section 7). This
feeling he attempted to explain, “by calling it a superior force, or vivacity,
or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness.”
Something of this is captured in Harvey Siegel’s (1997)2 notion of “felt
reasons.” In a discussion of pedagogy and fiction, and in particular how
lessons are taught through Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Siegel
notes that reasons sometimes have a visceral quality, impacting on us as
feeling persons. “We feel the force of reasons in some circumstances in
entirely different ways than we feel the force of (what are propositionally)
the same reasons in other circumstances” (Siegel 1997: 48–49). Fiction
illustrates the force that reasons have to move people, especially when
characters are portrayed as persons who are themselves moved. What
2â•‡ I am grateful to Harvey Siegel for drawing my attention to this aspect of his work.
10.4â•…Choice 187
Siegel seems to have in mind, then, is an empathetic relationship between
character and reader whereby the latter feels the experience that the char-
acter describes. But he presents the idea of felt reasons primarily from the
perspective of the person conveying them. “Felt reasons are not a
different kind of reason; they are rather a particular kind of presentation
of reasons” (52). Hence, in the pedagogic context that interests him, felt
reasons are a pedagogical device.
Our interest, transported to the contexts of argumentation (and educa-
tion certainly falls within this larger domain), is on the reception of
reasons and how the audience feels them. We are interested in the ways
in which audiences are moved to form dispositions and beliefs and
further moved to action. Feeling the force of some reasons rather than
others suggests a relationship beyond the merely cognitive. A good reason
is not just a logical one. Feeling ideas in the mind gives them more
importance and influence over actions. Minimally, we might judge this
feeling, following Aristotle, to be the experience of ideas actualized in the
mind, converted from the potential that existed or had been prepared
there.3 Some ideas have greater power, or force; they feel stronger. To
achieve presence of one’s ideas on that level is the arguer’s real goal. We
will add to this further in Chapter 12.
10.4â•…Choice
Presence is achieved through choices made. Like Berger’s drawing, the
impulse begins somewhere and is captured in a range of primary choices.
The arguer must decide what to say and how to say it. Perhaps these
things could be decided in a vacuum, without any sense of those to be
addressed, but not if success is to be optimized.
Too often in argumentation theory the discussion begins with an
existent argument, and the focus is on a consideration of how this should
be evaluated, and whether it is “good.” But the discussion of choice
pushes us earlier in the argumentative process, to the decisions that are
made and not made and the factors that influence such decisions. To ask
about the origins of arguments is not just to ask what provokes them,
what background gives rise to debate or controversy. It is to ask what
thought processes and possibilities occurred to the arguer that led to the
3â•‡ Hume is interested in distinguishing realities and fictions, but it is the sense that denotes such a
distinction that is of interest here.
argument that is produced. By following the threads of choices made and
not made, we learn something about how an arguer envisioned an audi-
ence. We also learn about argument construction in a way that is
different from simply copying argumentation schemes to fit our subject.
Also, arguments have a direction, and so there are different points in
an exchange at which further choices are made. An argument as a speech
or text has a certain agency, infused by the thought of the participants.
We saw this in the definition of argument adopted earlier in the book,
one that looked beyond the structures to the movements within. Echoing
Aristotle’s thinking, we found an argument to be a living thing, with a
direction and telos.
In a discussion of rhetorical figures, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
separate the concepts of choice and presence as different types of effect.
As they phrase this: “the effect, or one of the effects, certain figures have
in the presentation of data is to impose or to suggest a choice, to
increase the impression of presence, or to bring about communion with
the audience” (1969: 172). Yet Alan Gross and Ray Dearin note in their
study of Perelman, the effect of choice in Perelman and Olbrechts-
Tyteca is obscure and hence difficult to elaborate (Gross and Dearin
2003: 117). Indeed, it is especially hard to separate choice from presence
when they are both presented as “effects” of figures. A supposedly illus-
trative example from Seneca compounds the difficulty. A son goes
against the expressed wishes of his father because he interprets the
father’s actual wishes to be other than those conveyed. What seems
useful here is the notion of interpretation, because that needs to be an
element in choice. But how this – in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
eyes – operates as a distinct effect on an audience remains unclear. A
later discussion by Perelman helps clarify the picture. “Every argument,”
he says, “implies a preliminary selection of facts and values, their specific
description in a given language, and an emphasis which varies with the
importance given them” (Perelman 1982: 34). Actual choices here are
juxtaposed against other possible choices, especially those that might
have been made from a different perspective. Recognizing such possibili-
ties turns what one might have thought to be an obvious and impartial,
even objective, choice into one that is clearly partial; that has been
chosen because it fits a position one endorses. As Perelman observes,
“Pluralism sharpens the critical sense” (Ibid.). This is also a place where
Perelman invokes Kant’s distinction between persuasion and conviction.
The imaginary interventions of others to test whether ideas have validity
beyond ourselves helps to decide which are based on conviction and
10.4â•…Choice 189
which on “mere persuasion.”4 There are two things to note about choice
as it is understood here: it involves the selection of details (identified here
as facts and values) to be stressed in an argument; and, secondly, it is
other-regarding. Perelman considers the choices others (even Â�opponents)
might make to test the validity of his views. But in a more general sense,
we make selections that we believe will result in arguments that best
fulfill the goals of the argumentation that we are developing.
As an aspect of presence, a direct contribution to presence, I am
treating “choice” in this more general sense; which is also closer to the
way Frans van Eemeren (2010) uses the concept of “topical potential.”
Choice, as the earlier discussion in this section would indicate, captures
the decision-making processes early in the argumentative process, as the
arguer gathers the relevant data on the audience and the issue. The canvas
she confronts appears blank but is actually haunted by possibilities.
Van Eemeren (along with Peter Houtlosser) has brought a range of
rhetorical considerations into the pragma-dialectical argumentation
theory under the umbrella of “strategic maneuvering.” Pragma-dialectics,
as was explained in Chapter 1, is a model of argumentation that provides
procedures that aim to resolve disputes in an optimal way. But arguers are
not only interested in resolving disagreements; they also want to do so in
ways that favor their interests. Thus they maneuver strategically to bring
about effective outcomes. As part of the apparatus involved, van Eemeren
discuses three “aspects” of strategic maneuvering: topical potential, audi-
ence demand, and presentational device. While these relate generally to
Perelman’s triad of choice, communion, and presence, they provide a
much clearer picture of the decision-making processes characterizing
argumentative situations. From what has been said above, for example,
we might better associate Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s interest in the
effect of figures with presentational devices (under which term van
Eemeren discusses figures), which will indeed help to create presence.
Communion we can match with audience demand (and discuss in
Chapter 11). But under “topical potential” van Eemeren is interested in the
choices arguers make in presenting the topic and organizing their argu-
mentation. He describes topical potential thus: “the (not always clearly
delineated) repertoire of options for making an argumentative move that
4â•‡ This understanding of the persuasion/conviction relationship can be seen to be consistent with
that of this project. Establishing convictions that we share with others still does not guarantee that
we are persuaded by that of which we are convinced. As noted above, I take persuasion to be an
active state that translates conviction into action.
are at the arguer’s disposal in a certain case and at a particular point in
the discourse” (van Eemeren 2010: 93–94).
We can appreciate how important such choices are because they will
influence how the argumentation develops. They effectively narrow the
range of later moves that would be possible or even permissible. On any
topic, I decide how I will approach it in my discourse, what angles I will
emphasize (and what I will ignore), what values to isolate and reinforce.
And I do this with some audience in mind, one that I know clearly, or one
that I imagine. Hence, the choices are not finite. When van Eemeren talks
about what is at the arguer’s disposal he hints at a range of limitations as
well as possibilities. An arguer is limited by her skills and training as an
arguer, by the repertoire of schemes that she understands, for example.
She is limited by her knowledge of issues and the values involved, and so
forth. But such limitations in no way detract from the richness of choice
as a real moment in the argumentative process. Because although these
choices are what Perelman characterized as “preliminary,” they still
announce the existence of an argumentative situation. The territory has
been entered, and the processes begun. Berger again:
In following a story, we follow a storyteller, or, more precisely, we follow
the trajectory of a storyteller’s attention, what it notices and what it
ignores, what it lingers on, what it repeats, what it considers irrelevant,
what it hurries towards, what it circles, what it brings together. It’s like
following a dance, not with our feet and bodies, but with our observation
and our expectations and our memories of lived life. (Berger 2011: 72)
What Berger identifies here is a series of choices: choices of emphasis,
and choices of omission. Replace “story” with “argument” and “story-
teller” with “arguer” and the parallel flows.
Berger’s inclusion of what the trajectory of attention ignores should
not itself be ignored. The choices rejected, the silences and spaces
between utterances, also tell us something about how an audience is
being envisioned, about what is judged not to work or what it is not
necessary to include. Argumentation is built on assumptions, the many
details of experience by which our cognitive environments overlap. It is
part of the invitational nature of rhetorical argumentation that audiences
are expected to fill in the gaps in reasoning that such assumptions
provide. Behind any discourse lies a wealth of assumptions to which
attention never needs to be drawn, and it would be distracting were an
arguer to attempt to do so. But some assumptions are lifted out of the
background and into the argument whenever what is assumed is contro-
versial or is needed as a bridge connecting explicit statements. And the
10.5â•… Meaning and the environments we share 191
argumentation is made more effective if it is the audience that is expected
to do that lifting, to identify the requisite assumption and contribute it as
an integral part of the argument. We will consider the invitational nature
of argumentation further in the next chapter.
10.5â•… Meaning and the environments we share

Arguments are vehicles that make something present, not in Grice’s direct
“sharing” sense, with the transfer of speaker meaning to hearer, but by
modifying the environments into which they are inserted. And they
modify such environments by adding to, subtracting from or reframing
what is already available. In this sense, they involve a mix of semantics
with what we shall call pragmatics (following the impetus drawn earlier
from Brandom’s work). While pragmatics in this sense involves the
actions behind advancing claims – actions like the choices we have been
considering – semantics concerns the claims themselves.
In Chapter 6 we recognized the importance of the different perspec-
tives on meaning held by Grice and Brandom. Grice stressed the role of
the speaker (while not ignoring that of the audience); Brandom
approached the matter from an audience’s perspective and the negotia-
tions that must take place in a discursive marketplace. For Grice,
“meaning” involved the transfer of ideas from the mind of the speaker to
that of the hearer via the utterance. Communication requires the sharing
of something specific and is successful insofar as there is some kind of
identity between intended meaning and received meaning. Brandom
challenged this understanding in ways we found more descriptive of
communication in social situations. The stress shifts to hearers or audi-
ences who must negotiate meanings between the perspective of the
speaker and that of their own, drawing on the supporting fund of
community beliefs. On this perspective, there is no single meaning
shared between parties. Audiences understand on their terms, against the
facilitating backdrop of a network of commitments they share. Such a
fund of “meanings” was also active in Grice’s theory. But there it served a
purpose of helping the audience understand the speaker’s intention by
exploring the context in which it was uttered. Here, the audience is freed
from such a search, and understands on its own terms. Wilson and
Sperber, the proponents of relevance theory, reinforce this understanding
in their dismissal of the code theory (where words encode concepts and
vice versa, representing the relationships between mind and world).
When a speaker tells a hearer that she is “tired” there is no ready way in
which he can access a clear sense of how she means this. He must
construct an “ad hoc concept of tiredness” (Wilson and Sperber 2012: 45)
that is unlikely to be the same as any she had in mind. But this could
only be judged a failure of communication if read from the entrenched
code theory or Gricean theory that expected a duplication of identical
meanings. This is consistent with the favoring of the audience perspective
that we saw relevance theory to have in Chapter 6. Moreover, as
Brandom insisted, while the meanings are not shared, the reference is.
The speaker and the hearer are still talking about the same thing (tired-
ness) even when they mean different things about it. And their subse-
quent “understanding” is negotiated in that context.
To phrase the matter in a slightly different way, we might ask: in the
game of giving and receiving reasons, is the content of the reasons received
identical to the content of the reasons given? Reasons, we recall, are under-
stood in relation to commitments, and those commitments stand in rela-
tion to others. The negotiation that goes on involves determining meaning
against a background of collateral commitments that will differ from one
person to another. The sense in which meanings can take place, therefore,
is quite other than what was understood by Grice. To again recall what was
established earlier, what concepts mean lies in the ways they are used, and
these usages are derived from the commitments and entitlements attrib-
uted to participants in dialogue (Brandom 1994: 648). Strictly speaking,
the unit of meaning is not the single word or even the reason conveyed in
propositional form, but the relationship of an individual’s commitments to
the network of collateral commitments derived from a community.
What then is shared, if it is not an identity of meaning? Brandom
allowed that what is shared is a set of norms at work when members of a
community adopt the discursive scorekeeping stance toward each other.
To be engaged in a discursive practice is to be bound by shared concepts
that outrun individuals’ dispositions to apply them, because the signifi-
cance of the words they use are not controlled by speakers.
This points squarely to and emphasizes the importance of the environ-
ment in which speakers and hearers interact. Or, rather, it points to the
environment within which hearers interpret meanings. The discussion of
testimony in Chapter 7 introduced the concept of a cognitive environ-
ment, an idea that is directly relevant for our understanding of the
conceptual make-up of arguments here. The application developed below
will be extended in the final chapters.
Collateral commitments differ from person to person, overlapping in
some ways but not in others. At the same time, we can both interpret the
10.5â•… Meaning and the environments we share 193
commitments involved in utterances and appreciate how others will
interpret commitments by knowing not the intentional states of speakers
and audiences but the cognitive environments in which they live, and
thereby the references that can be made to features of those environ-
ments. A function of one’s physical environment and cognitive abilities,
and consisting of the facts that can be perceived or inferred, one’s total
cognitive environment consists also of all the facts one is capable of
becoming aware of, in a physical environment (Sperber and Wilson 1986:
39). In my visual field, in order to notice something I must first see it.
Or rather, it must be visible to me. But so much that I see goes unno-
ticed. It is often only in moments of reflection that I can then recall what
I have “seen” but failed to notice. One way in which such things can be
recovered is by someone “drawing my attention” through word or gesture
to what is there. Cognitive environments are like visual fields, but they
denote the mental spaces by which we are surrounded, and which are
populated by ideas, “facts,” and assumptions. My attention can be drawn
to this content by means of words or images. These cognitive environ-
ments are clearly shared environments. They overlap in interesting and
unexpected ways, and it is only by paying close attention to them that we
can ascertain what it is reasonable to expect of those around us.
The reference to “facts” in this idea would seem to commit us to a
connection between minds and reality. This is how it has been under-
stood by some theorists (cf. Aikin 2008). But “facts” here refer to claims
and beliefs about the world held by a community (von Radziewsky and
Tindale 2012: 114–15). They are not fixed in some objective reality because
they are part of what can be modified through argumentation. Facts,
like truths, depend on a sense of coherence within communities. What is
true is the body of knowledge consensually agreed to by the community
of arguers. This body of knowledge remains always open to revision, even
while some truths acquire a state of inertia that makes them almost fixed
topographical features of the landscape. These are the source of the de re
ascriptions that can subsequently be made; they are the points of refer-
ence about which we talk.
Throughout this study we have encountered several concepts that
appear to have a similar currency. Central to Habermas’ concerns and his
treatment of argumentation is what he termed the “lifeworld.” This was
understood as a background environment of competences, practices, and
attitudes representable in terms of a person’s cognitive horizons. Brandom,
drawing from Willfrid Sellars (1997), directed attention to the “space of
reasons.” This is a space in which claims are advanced for consideration,
backed by the authority of the asserter, and where that authority is recog-
nized in the respect given to the asserter and the expectations held for such
claims (Tindale 2011). Cognitive environments share some aspects with
each of these: they are the “spaces” in which reasons are found, a source of
the commonplaces that Aristotle presented in his theory of topoi. They
form the background to our cognitive lives and the particular behaviors
that inform them, with the related necessary competencies. Living as we
now do in the “virtual” world of the Internet, it is much easier for us to
appreciate that we are surrounded by non-physical spaces or places. In fact,
the development of the Internet has considerably extended the range of
cognitive environments and particularly their ability to overlap.
In (2012), Wilson and Sperber reaffirm their advocacy of cognitive
environments as the “mental landscapes” that communicators should
seek to modify and they employ the idea of “cognitive effects” (87) as a
unitary notion to encompass “meaning” and “rhetorical effects” (rather
than contrasting them). This conflation is of particular interest for this
study, for it recognizes the cognitive environment as the place where
rhetorical effects have impact, and so goes part way toward appreciating
the cognitive nature of rhetoric itself. Indeed, a metaphor may modify
the mental landscape of an individual or group as readily as an argument.
On such terms Michael Leff takes metaphor as representative of rhetoric
itself. As he puts it: “Metaphor draws its materials from communal
knowledge, achieves its effects through the active cooperation of the
auditor, and assumes its form in relation to a particular context; and all
of these features surely apply to a description of the rhetorical process
itself ” (Leff 1983: 219). Metaphor and other rhetorical figures form an
integral part of the arguer’s toolbox. They are much more than stylistic
adornments, but fully argumentative (Tindale 2004). Far from the “usual
postcard’s-worth of crude common sense” that I. A. Richards detects in
the discussion of arguments under the heading of Style (Richards 1936:
8), these are part of the primary choices arguers make in approaching a
topic and audience and not secondary considerations of delivery. We will
return to this discussion in Chapter 11.
10.6â•… Reconfiguring arguments

The idea of accessing an audience’s cognitive environment is important
for appreciating how rhetorical arguments create presence. When it is
said that arguments make meaning present, it cannot be in the sense of
conveying meanings between arguers and audiences such that what is
10.6â•… Reconfiguring arguments 195
received is identical to what was sent. It must then be in an expanded sense
of presence where the aim is to modify the mental environments in which
people think. We have understood that people negotiate meanings through
an interpretative process that involves drawing on the collateral mean-
ings in the environment around them as well as their own history with
language. In this way, arguments address an “expanded sense of audience”
that involves their cognitive environment.5 That is, the target for arguers
extends beyond any physical groups and individuals being addressed to
include the overlapping mental landscapes in which they operate.
James Surowiecki (2004) proposes that intelligent groups do not
expect their “members to modify their positions in order to let the group
reach a decision everyone can be happy with.” What they must do
instead is employ various means “to aggregate and produce collective
judgments that represent not what any one person in the group thinks
but rather, in some sense, what they all think” (xix). Surowiecki’s
proposal is controversial, but if it is to make sense we must understand
groups to be operating in the kind of shared environment that is being
advocated here. Arguments thus add to or subtract from what is current
in those environments. Arguments reframe ideas to emphasize connec-
tions, highlight overlooked aspects, and challenge assumptions. They are
agents of modification. As vehicles of presence they deliver on the orig-
inal choices, confirming (or disconfirming) the arguer’s first impulse, but
they do not guarantee any fixed transmission. The success or failure of the
argumentative impulse depends upon an arguer’s ability to make choices
that are informed by an understanding of the audience-Â�environment
and its history.
When John Berger comes to address the question on the cover of his
book (“How does the impulse to draw something begin?”), he relates the
impulse to a generic human need to plot points and establish relation-
ships. But the impulse itself, identified as a movement of the imagina-
tion, remains mysterious. The artist carries his sketchbook with him, but
does not always feel the need to draw. Similarly, what provokes our argu-
mentative nature remains mysterious. We can produce arguments artifi-
cially just as the artist perfects skills through rote exercises. But as an
expression of our social nature, the arguments we produce, starting with
the preliminary choices, are personalized. Each drawing, asserts Berger,
has its own unique raison d’être, and the lesson we draw from the
5â•‡ The relationship between cognitive environments and an audience like Perelman’s Universal
Audience will be addressed in Chapter 12.
parallels we are pursuing is that each argument is unique because no two
argumentative situations are ever the same.
The interaction between arguer’s choices and audience environments
reinforces our understanding of argumentation as essentially dialogic.
In his work on Mikhail Bakhtin, David Lodge raises an important ques-
tion that follows from this recognition. “If language is innately dialogic,”
he writes,” how can there be monologic discourse?” (Lodge 1990: 90).
Indeed, much of what I have uncovered about presence would suggest
there is something false about the idea of monologic discourse. We find
instead a deep connectedness between participants at the heart of
discourse, of utterance, of the word. And as that connectedness is
exploited, in the most neutral sense of the word, the prospects for persua-
sion are enhanced. In this sense argumentation might not always be
expected to achieve agreement, or even the resolution of disagreements, but
the maintenance of diversity in consensual reasoning. In a simple, tradi-
tional sense, arguments continue to make present propositions, premises,
and conclusions. But in a deeper, more complex way that Â�characterizes this
study, they also make present a personality. But that’s the concern of the
next chapter.
c h a p t e r 11
Audiences and addressees: the experience

of reception
11.1â•… Introduction: a voice of our own

Deprived of any speech of her own, Echo was condemned by Juno
to never say anything new, but only repeat the words of others. Ovid
describes her in the following:
She, who in others’ words her silence breaks,
Nor speaks her self but when another speaks.
Echo was then a maid, of speech bereft,
Of wonted speech; for tho’ her voice was left,
Juno a curse did on her tongue impose,
To sport with ev’ry sentence in the close. (Metamorphoses Bk iii)
Linguistically, Echo had no identity. Over time, this impotence reduced
her to part of the environment; in her time, trees and rocks from which
her voice emanates; in our time, the social contexts of commonplaces.
Jonathan Rée describes her as “the last extreme of receptivity” (1999: 70),
thus presenting her as a purely absorbent being from whom nothing
original emerges.
Unlike Echo, we have voices of our own. While the words of other
people are important to our understanding of the world around us, we
also reciprocate, and others learn from our words. We interact with the
cognitive environments of others, environments populated by other
discourses. We blend the words of others into distinct positions. As the
last chapter indicated, our choices as arguers confirm the originality of
our argumentation. But as audience members our distinctive voices may
mask the diversity that characterizes each of us. Our multi-varied identi-
ties nestle within each other like the parts of a Russian doll. Effective
arguers must recognize this, isolate the most relevant levels, and construct
their argumentation accordingly.
197
198 Audiences and addressees: the experience of reception
11.2â•… Recent views on reception
If Echo is an extreme of receptivity it is because there is no engagement
between her voice and the voices of others. No such extreme character-
izes our social experience. We give and receive. But it is the nature of
the reception that interests us here because, indeed, there is reciprocity
between how we give and how we receive. Reception, as a literary or
aesthetic theory, has received considerable attention in recent decades.
And there is nothing to suggest the work done there would not extend
to the interests of the current inquiry.1 In both cases there is a common
direction of concern. Reception theory marked a shift of attention from
the author to the text and the reader, a shift comparable to that
from the arguer to the argument and audience in argumentation theory.
Just as reception theory is concerned with how readers experience texts,
we are interested in how audiences experience arguments. A focus on
our argumentative experience means looking at audiences as receptors in
ways that presuppose things about us as argumentative beings. Audiences
are expected to recognize and abide by the norms of argumentative
discourse. Statements stand out for them as claims, and specifically as
claims that may be addressed to them. And they further see the relation
of such claims to other statements or aspects (like images or gestures) of
evidence that serve as reasons for those claims. That is, audiences have
an acquired appreciation of relevance and of how reasons operate in
discourse. Other things follow from this, like an ability to see what is
implied by something else; what follows from it; and what is assumed by
it. Often these skills are undeveloped or dormant. But they are present
in sufficient strength that they can be activated, depending on the daily
demands of the individuals involved. These are features of argumentative
competence. They were expected in Aristotle’s ideal audience (Chapter 3),
and on a more accessible level they will characterize audiences universally.
These norms are part of what we appreciate through the life-long experi-
ence of “being in audience.”
The principal figures in reception theory are German scholars Hans
Robert Jauss2 and Wolfgang Iser.3 For both theorists, the reader is actively
1â•‡ Indeed, it has been appropriated elsewhere, as in the applications to media and communication
study by the British cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1973).
2â•‡ See his Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1982.
3â•‡ The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978,
captures the main points of his theory.
11.2â•… Recent views on reception 199
engaged in the interpretation of a text and not simply the passive recip-
ient of an author’s intended meanings. It is not my intention to elaborate
more on their general theories but simply borrow selectively from their
ideas those that may have relevance for the current project.
Jauss has several relevant concepts active in his work. Important, for
example, is the idea of a “horizon of expectations.” Here he is influenced by
other German writers, in particular Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer
described this horizon, part of the situation in which we find ourselves, as
“the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a
particular vantage point” (Gadamer 1975: 269). Jauss himself is vague about
the nature of this horizon (Holub 1984: 59); it seems to stand for a mind set
or system of references. But insofar as it accords with Gadamer’s insight we
can see the suggested parallel to the cognitive environment (itself a corre-
late of our visual field). The stress here would be on what “can be seen,” not
what is seen. It is the potential such horizons contain that is important. For
our purposes, the vantage point is always that of an audience.
More pertinent still is the way Jauss describes “poiesis,” one of three key
terms in the experience of reception (along with aisthesis and catharsis).4 Jauss
conveys the idea of “understanding enjoyment and enjoying understanding”
(Jauss 1982: 32). This unified experience brings together both the cognitive
and the affective in a way consistent with our discussion of emotion in
Chapter 8, and with what we will see developed in the next chapter.
Iser becomes interested in how meaning is extracted from texts by
readers. In the course of this he defines meaning as “an effect to be expe-
rienced” rather than an “object to be defined” (Iser 1978: 10). In so
phrasing matters Iser confirms the important shift from the “thing” to
the subject who is experiencing.
While not readily ranked among reception scholars, aspects of the
work of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin that has been referenced in
earlier chapters clearly qualify. Reception is an important idea in his
understanding of the utterance, and insofar as this understanding carries
over to our interests in argumentation (Tindale 2004), it helps to fill out
the current account. Utterances are conditioned by anticipation of a
response; they assume an active reception and are constructed accord-
ingly. Bakhtin’s approach to utterances is quite different from that which
we saw characterize Grice’s work in Chapter 6. Utterances personalize
speech, infusing sentences with the position of the speaker. Unlike
4â•‡ Aisthesis represents the reception of aesthetic experience, and catharsis the communicative compo-
nent between art and the recipients.
sentences, utterances are correlated with the extraverbal context of a situ-
ation and setting and with the utterances of other speakers (Bakhtin
1986: 73). And most importantly, utterances have a capacity that
sentences lack: to determine the responsive position of the other speaker.
Utterances are thereby characterized by the “quality of being directed to
someone, [by] addressivity” (95). And so anticipated in its construction is
the utterance’s receptivity, the experience of being addressed by it. This
can be no less than the experience of the utterance, how it is taken up by
the addressee and integrated into their understanding – understood in
relation to the beliefs and meanings already cohering there. This confirms
I. A. Richards’ theory of context and meaning where the meaning of
words is drawn from a combination of the immediate context together
with an individual’s experiences with the word (1936: 34). What is
brought into profile here is the fact that each of us has a history with
language, and that history plays a role in how we receive utterances.
While the notion of utterance is different from that operating in
Grice’s work, Grice did recognize the importance of reception in that
additional maxim of Manner that he added in the paper “Presupposition
and Conversational Implicature” (Grice 1989: 269–82). When considering
the way some assertions invite a denial of all or part of what has been said
Grice proposed adding a maxim to govern such invitations: ‘“Frame
whatever you say in the form most suitable for any reply that would be
regarded as appropriate”; or “Facilitate in your form of expression the
appropriate reply”’ (1989: 273). This explicit movement in the direction of
the audience parallels the ideas being extracted here from Bakhtin. For
both philosophers, what is said is said not just with an audience in mind,
but in anticipation of a response from that audience.5 In fact, many of the
ideas on reception could be usefully transferred to the interests of argu-
mentation theory through the adoption of some variant of Grice’s maxim.
11.3â•… Received meaning

Richards’ work allows us to add to the discussions of meaning in
Chapters 6 and 10 an understanding of the meanings rooted in a person’s
history. Richards developed an influential project aimed at replacing old
5â•‡ There is a sense, observed in Chapter 6, in which this maxim is strange for an account founded on
speaker-intentions, because it does not assume the passive audience receiving messages that we
would expect in such an account. Instead, it acknowledges an audience actively engaged in the
exchange of conversation.
11.3â•… Received meaning 201
rhetoric (that “usual postcard’s worth of crude common-sense” (1936: 8))
with a new rhetoric, the business of which involves how words come
to hold meaning (37). The metaphor he exploits to illuminate meaning
is that of a mature plant. Through its growth, it develops out of prior
states, carrying something of them with it. It is thus characterized by a
deep connectedness: “It is important … to realize how far back into the
past all our meanings go, how they grow out of one another much as an
organism grows, and how inseparable they are from one another” (30).
Moreover, words are “backed up by other words that are not uttered or
thought of ” (63).6 This position is founded on the notion of meaning
as “delegated efficacy,” a concept that captures the substitutive nature of
words involving the “powers of what is not there” (32). This in turn sets
up the special sense that he gives to “context.” By this term he means a
cluster of simultaneously occurring events:
[T]he modes of causal recurrence on which meaning depends are peculiar
through that delegated efficacy I have been talking about. In these
contexts one item – typically a word – takes over the duties of parts which
can then be omitted from the recurrence. There is thus an abridgement of
the context only shown in the behavior of living things, and most exten-
sively and drastically shown by man. When this abridgement happens,
what the sign or word – the item with these delegated powers – means is
the missing parts of the context. (34)
The best way to understand what is at stake here is to see the idea
of context enriched by an individual’s, or community’s, history with
language. The meaning of a word does not arise anew at each instance,
even though that instance has significant influence on how the word
should be understood. To modify an idea noted earlier from Brandom,
speakers do not control the significance of the words they use. The
meaning of a word does not arise in a vacuum. It comes with a past,
entangled with other words, with which it is associated yet from which it
is distinct. And each language user has such a personal history that they
bring to discourse and, of course, argumentation.
Further import of this comes when Richards insists on couching his
theorem of meaning in terms of our responsiveness. We are, he says, “pecu-
liarly responsive” (29). Which is to say that our responses are character-
ized by similar events from our pasts. Such response, coupled with our
interactions in an immediate situation, is one way to think of meaning.
6â•‡ Such an idea would seem to presage Derrida’s notion of the “trace”, where the meaning of a sign is
found in part in the difference it has from other signs (See Derrida 1974: 66).
It is difficult not to believe that this personal history of language in turn
affects how we understand our memberships in different groups, our
diverse identities. It is on the basis of such a background that we come to
form commitments.
11.4â•…Commitment
As we saw in the chapter on meaning, the traditional Lockean/Gricean
conception of communication involves the transfer of something from
speaker to hearer, with the result that they both share it in the same
sense. This conception also underlies the traditional understanding
of testimony that we explored in Chapter 7. Given the diversity of
our linguistic histories and our inferential lives (as per Brandom), the
commonality of this sharing is brought into question.
The focus on commitments shifts attention away from the intentional
stance and onto our social contexts. As Brandom observes, commitments
are not part of the natural world. They “are social statuses, instituted by
individuals attributing such statuses to each other, recognizing or acknowl-
edging those statuses” (Brandom 1994: 161).7 Crusoe has many beliefs, but
no commitments (except what he may retain from a former social life).
Part of understanding the social side of personhood identified in Chapter 9
is captured in the ability to make commitments. The authorizing of
commitments by others involves the reciprocal recognition of persons.
Other argumentation theorists have stressed the importance of
commitments in their work. Walton and Krabbe (1995), for example,
explicitly focus on commitment in dialogue. While distinguishing
commitments from intentions, they still give them a very personal slant
as they approach “commitment as a distinctively personal engagement
which, in its deepest form, comes from the individual’s heart or inner
conscience. My commitments are deeply and fundamentally mine, in an
important sense, as opposed to anyone else’s” (Walton and Krabbe 1995: 14).
As was the case for Brandom, to assert a proposition is to become
committed to it, and they are interested in propositional commitment as
a kind of action commitment. Dialogues are particular ways to incur
commitments, and this brings others into the picture, and it is a distinc-
tive feature of their work that commitments can be distinguished
7â•‡ Granted, as Brandom concedes, his model is an idealization and he is concerned to prescribe
rather than describe (1994: 158–59). But he also insists that it is “recognizable as a version of what
we do” (158).
11.4â•…Commitment 203
according to the different dialogue types involved. But it has to be noted
that the thrust of the account has been from the perspective of the one
making the commitment. Ultimately, Walton and Krabbe construct
systems of dialogue with associated rules and commitment sets.
Commitment itself changes its nature from one context of dialogue to
another (186), but always at stake are considerations of the arguer’s posi-
tion (and not that of the audience).
Van Eemeren’s account of commitments is closer in one sense to what
we find in Brandom. The pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation
identifies four stages: the confrontation stage; the opening stage; the
argumentation stage; and the closing stage. The important opening stage is
where commitments are most relevant in the extended version of the
theory named strategic maneuvering. Here, efforts are made to identify
views and preferences of the audience. “If they have been identified
correctly, these starting points are commitments the audience can be held
to in the argumentation stage and concluding stage of the exchange” (van
Eemeren 2010: 110). Van Eemeren refers back to the work of Perelman
and Olbrechts-Tyteca in distinguishing descriptive commitments relating
to “the real,” and normative commitments relating to “the preferable.”
Thus, both facts and values are included. Through the exchanges between
parties at the opening stage, many of these commitments should become
apparent, along with what are termed “pragmatic commitments” that
relate to the specific argumentative situation. This discussion refers
particularly to one of the three aspects of strategic maneuvering: audience
demand. The arguer should strive to adjust her or his argumentative
moves to the audience’s views and preferences, identified as a set of
commitments that can be relied upon to hold through the discussion.
In this extended pragma-dialectical account there is a clear connection
between commitments and beliefs. We see this in two ways. First,
accepted commitments are explained in terms of Aristotle’s endoxa, those
“views generally accepted in a specific culture or subculture” or
“commonly held beliefs” (111: fn44). Secondly, commitments can be
traced by observing the speech acts they perform, or fail to perform
(since silence can also communicate consent). Thus, the speech act
involved creates or expresses its own kind of commitment, thereby
bringing what is private into the public domain. Following Brandom,
while acknowledging the belief–commitment relationship, we have tried
to focus on the social aspect of commitments, as they are assigned to us
by others. There is something of this in the pragma-dialectical approach
when the arguer constructs the commitment set of an audience, but
again it is a matter of the focus involved. Similarly, while recognizing the
Aristotelian roots of our discussion, we have shifted the focus away from
the idea of common beliefs or knowledge, with its problems of access, to
that of shared social cognitive environments.8
For Brandom, the commitments are largely epistemic in nature, that
is, they make clear who is responsible for what beliefs. When we make
assertions, we authorize others to hold us responsible for what we say.
Communication involves navigating between different sets of commit-
ments, matching what we receive with what we already have.
Commitments have a longer history in philosophical circles than in
argumentation theory alone, stretching back to at least Socrates’
dialogues where the assertions made by interlocutors commit them to
both beliefs and actions. But that early Greek understanding is quite rele-
vant to what is of concern here. Socrates has high expectations of those
he converses with. They cannot just say anything to navigate their way
through the discourses; they must say what they believe, and their state-
ments constitute commitments that they are subsequently held to. Recall
how a character like Euthyphro becomes caught in a labyrinth of words
because he cannot take back a statement that he put forward at the start
of the dialogue. This practice contrasted dramatically with that of certain
Sophists, as Plato portrayed them in the Euthydemus. There, the Sophists
would say just about anything in order to achieve the optimum outcome
in their conversations and win the debates. But as Plato presents this
practice, it makes it very difficult for discussions to progress, because no
one can trust anyone else to stand behind what they have previously
asserted. When Socrates challenges one of the Sophists on just this point,
he is accused of being an old dinosaur for thinking that what was said
yesterday should hold today. But that is exactly the kind of expectation
we take with us when we go into conversations and it forms part of the
sincerity conditions that we assume characterize communication.
Commitments carry us forward into the social world and are markers of
consistency in our argumentation.
8â•‡ In many ways I have not done justice to the strengths of pragma-dialectical proposals, particularly
as these are expressed in the extended version. To do so would divert from the principal goals of
the project. But it is also to be noted that features of the account may preclude it from contrib-
uting further to those goals. Can pragma-dialectics construct non-problematic commitment sets of
all audiences, for example? In an important critique of the pragma-dialectical model’s ability to
offer an “adequate normative basis for intercultural dialogue,” Carlos Miquel Gómez (2012: 155)
raises three serious doubts. Of these, the most relevant for the current discussion is Gómez’s identi-
fication of the pragma-dialectical rules as mono-cultural (156–64). That is, there is a tendency for
the universalization of the participants’ specific cultural commitments.
11.5â•…Personalization 205
James Crosswhite captures what I have in mind here when he connects
such expectations of commitment with the adherence conditions of The
New Rhetoric: one must “‘adhere’ to the logoi, one must stick to them,
keep faith with them, be loyal to them, make a commitment that is
informed by them” (2013: 339). The Socratic experience of commitment
thus has the effect of personalizing the use of language. It is not just
words that the interlocutors used, drawn from a common fund of mean-
ings; it is an expression of their personality, deeply connected with their
situations, their place and actions in a community. Euthyphro’s life is
intimately connected with the beliefs he expresses through the statements
that are subsequently “tested.” He has indicted his father for impiety, a
huge step to take in the context of a society that places high value on the
filial bond. And he is firm in his conviction that this action is justified
until that conviction is weakened through conversation. His statements
are not simply expressions of beliefs, they are commitments that
authorize Socrates to hold him responsible for them and thus allow them
together to investigate the outcome of those commitments. Structuring
the cognitive environment around commitments rather than beliefs
further personalizes matters.
11.5â•… Personalization through metaphor, irony, and allusion

Aristotle and Perelman advanced our thinking in a number of important
ways that all gestured towards the necessity of the personalizing of argu-
ments, or, in terms discussed in the previous chapter, what both Aristotle
and Perelman would appreciate as making ideas present to an audience.
Given the diverse make-up of those to be addressed, how might an arguer
make what she says “for them,” such that they will experience the argu-
ment in ways that facilitate persuasion, or agreement, or understanding,
or other argumentative goals?
One suggestion involves reflecting on the different stages of persuasion
in a way that appreciates the problems of identity. Specifically, before
argumentation can begin, the ground needs to be prepared to enhance
the possibility of positive reception. We might think of this as the pre-
argumentative stage of persuasion. Audience members make choices. But
they do not do so in a capricious way: they are influenced by a range of
commitments (both to people and to ideas). What our earlier considera-
tion of Amartya Sen’s work made clear is that influences that we might
take to be determinate, like cultural attitudes, can be seen in a weaker
sense. Strictly speaking they are just influences and not determinations in
any strong sense. On this understanding, while such influences may
shape our reasoning, they do not condition it. The lessons of argumenta-
tion teach us the importance of critical doubt as a constructive means of
understanding ourselves and those around us. Sen defines “cultural
freedom” as the ability to move away from received behavior patterns
after reflection and reasoning (2006: 157), that is, essentially, to experi-
ence the condition of choice. This suggests two stages for the arguer to
consider: There is the accepted stage of encouraging an outcome of
thought or action by influencing the reflection and reasoning necessary.
At this stage, a claim is advanced along with the reasons for it. But there
is also suggested the prior stage of encouraging the conditions required
for this to be properly received, of emphasizing choice in the context of a
person’s commitments. Here, the nature of the argument to be delivered
is considered in light of the various identities of the audience members,
with those identities understood as being held within a range of choices.
Pre-argumentative discourse emphasizes the nature of this choice in ways
that can be built on by subsequent arguments. This is crucial for avoiding
the impersonal validity of which Perelman warned (1982: 162). As we saw
in Chapter 4, Perelman moves us away from validity as it has been under-
stood in formal logic. This was judged incompatible with the goals of
argumentation. We understood there, albeit vaguely, the contrast to be
with a personal validity captured by the experience of the audience. That
experience is now to be understood in terms of the choices made
regarding the commitments of the audience. Those that they are obli-
gated to defend and by which they authorize others to understand them.
This is the ground on which subsequent levels of argumentation should
be built. It addresses people at the level of their deepest concerns, and it
gives sense to what knowing one’s audience must involve.
When we turn our minds to the further personalizing of argumenta-
tion, certain rhetorical means, like metaphor, irony, and allusion, are
recommended because of their invitational nature. Metaphor, we saw in
the previous chapter, is an effective means of communicating argumenta-
tion in social contexts. Metaphors acquire their force from communal
networks and encourage the active involvement of audiences. Alberto
Manguel reflects this understanding in his reading of Aristotle’s use of
metaphor: “Aristotle suggested that the power of a metaphor resides in
the recognition conjured up in the audience; that is to say, the audience
must invest the subject of the metaphor with a particular shared
meaning” (Manguel 2013: 2). This is indeed the understanding of the
Rhetoric, with its concern with how everyday audiences will grasp ideas.
On this level, it is the commonality that is important.9 Metaphor belongs
among the invitational tools that rhetorical arguers have at their disposal.
This was the insight Michael Leff provided in the previous chapter. This
view treats metaphors not as adornments of style, but as essentially cogni-
tive in nature. Metaphor involves understanding and experiencing one
thing in terms of another. It has both conventional power insofar as
metaphors “structure the ordinary conceptual system of our culture”; and
inventive force insofar as they are “capable of giving us a new under-
standing of our experience” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 140). While some
theorists challenge the distinctiveness or even existence of metaphors, 10
others repeatedly stress their ubiquity in thought and language (Richards
1936). To be human is to make metaphors; they belong to our nature
(Derrida 1982: 249). Because they are part of our cultural experience
we can readily find them addressing us personally and can accommodate
them on terms that fit with our own history of meaning.
Also worth considering for their invitational force are irony and allu-
sion. Unlike metaphor that depends on comparison, at least in the associ-
ationist tradition, irony and allusion depend on absence. Irony, for
example, involves saying the opposite of what is meant in order to draw
attention to what is meant in an emphatic way. In Chapter 6 it was noted
that Grice had misgivings about his account of irony (noting that it
involved saying something that was false was not sufficient to explain it),
and his restriction of ironical utterances to those that “reflect a hostile or
derogatory judgment or a feeling such as indignation or contempt” (1989:
53–54) was simply too narrow. We need a broader sense of irony that
appreciates how norms are invoked and then questioned.
Arguers take a risk when they resort to irony. So they must believe it
can have a particularly effective payoff, not achieved through more direct
means, in order to judge the risk worthwhile. In recognizing irony, an
audience is drawn into complicity with an arguer (Tindale and Gough
9 In the Poetics, metaphor also lifts language out of the ordinary, arresting our attention and fixing
ideas in the mind.
10â•‡In attempting to replace associationist views of metaphor with an inferentialist account, Sperber
and Wilson (2012) insist that metaphors “are not a distinct category of language use, let alone a
discrete one” (115). A full discussion of their argument cannot be fairly developed in the space
available. They stress the absence of any criterion for distinguishing literal and metaphorical
utterances and they unpack allegedly metaphorical expressions in terms of a series of implicit
inferences that they believe “must” take place. In question is how metaphors are processed and we
might take issue with some of the assumptions (inferences) they attribute in their examples. But
their bottom line seems to be the explanatory power of their account in the absence of any candi-
date they judge to be better.
1987: 10) and the adherence that already exists on one level, that of
norms, is translated into an adherence on another level – that of the
conclusion of the argument. The success of an ironic argument depends
on a collaboration between the arguer and the audience. In this way, and
like metaphor, irony uses language against norms thereby both bringing
them into focus (where they may be unconscious) and challenging them.
Thus, irony requires a stability of language and norms (Colebrook 2004:
41). When effective, irony arrests an audience’s attention by forcing a
contrast in their expectation. Norms associated with an idea, a concept,
or a practice would dictate one response, and the ironic statement or
argument provides a contrasting one. Of course, if the audience already
agrees with the point being made, then the irony will work on a different
level – reinforcing adherence, confirming a position. But much irony is
delivered with the aim of bringing an audience to see things differently
than they currently do.
Allusions can be as difficult to manage as irony. There is still some
disagreement as to exactly how we should define “allusion” (Irwin 2001).
On a standard understanding, in order for an allusion to work, an audi-
ence must correctly make the association to which they are being
directed. What distinguishes allusions from irony is that this association
can be explicit as well as implicit. William Irwin identifies allusions as a
type of reference (2001: 287), although they involve more than the substi-
tutions of one thing for another. Irwin is also correct to insist that style
can allude as much as an utterance. Part of the power of Plato’s
Symposium, for example, is the artful way he imitates the styles of others,
like Gorgias and Aristophanes. But in each case there is an assumption of
authorial intent. Göran Hermerén (1992) captures what is at stake here in
a definition that readers will judge reflects the Gricean approach to utter-
ances (in fact, it may even allude to it):
1.) The artist intended to make beholders think of the earlier work by
giving his work certain features. 2.) As a matter of fact beholders contem-
plating his work make associations with that earlier work. 3.) These
beholders recognize that this is what the artist (among other things)
intended to achieve. (Hermerén 1992: 211)
Irwin has no disagreement with the first condition, but notes fairly that
the second and third essentially define successful allusion. It may be that an
audience fails to recognize the presence of an association and thus fails also
to behold the artist’s intention. What Irwin substitutes in both the second
and third condition are clauses that state that the association and artist’s
intention could “in principle” be recognized (Irwin 2001: 290).
Irwin also sets against this intentionalist view of allusion an internalist
view, “when the internal properties of one text resemble and call to mind
the internal properties of an earlier text” (289), and a hybrid of the two
(authorial intent and hybrid properties). It is his further view that autho-
rial intent is a necessary condition for any case of allusion, to the point
that where an audience might pick up an allusion that was not
consciously or unconsciously11 intended, he believes we have an “acci-
dental association” (291) on the part of the audience, not an allusion.
Internalist allusions are a strong cultural expression of the general
phenomenon. Gorgias’ Palamedes, Plato’s Apology, and Isocrates’ Antidosis
all share numerous internal features in terms of ideas, images, and
phrases, although in the case of the first two it is difficult to determine
which is the earlier text (see Tindale 2010: 121–28). In fact, such examples
and the way they are picked up by contemporary audiences suggest,
contrary to Irwin, that we can make important sense of allusion without
necessary recourse to the intentions of the authors. In these historical
examples, intent has been lost or is unclear. And in the rich cultural
fabrics of contemporary societies allusions can be recognized and have
influence in ways that are disconnected from direct authorial intent. Just
as the focus shifted away from the intentional stance onto our social
contexts with respect to commitments, so a similar situation can be
judged to pertain with respect to rhetorical features like allusion, irony,
and metaphor. What an audience sees in each case is a gap that is then
filled in. Such rhetorical figures thus operate like traditional enthymemes,
requiring an audience to actively participate in the construction of
meaning. Irwin’s corrections to Hermerén’s formula encourage this inter-
pretation. To speak of what is “in principle” graspable shifts the focus to
the activities of the audience and the environments in which they
operate. The audience must first see the gap that the allusion, irony, or
metaphor involves and then fill it. That is, the audience makes a connec-
tion that fills out the message in ways that can exceed the control of any
author. Obama’s allusion to Lincoln in his Springfield speech encouraged
an association on the part of his audience, but it did not determine the
nature and extent of that association. How the audience picks up and
makes sense of that association depends very much on how the ideas
11â•‡ Irwin discusses cases where an “author intended an allusion but was nonetheless unaware that he
or she was alluding” (2001: 291). While the notion of unconscious intention may puzzle us, it need
not delay us. It suffices for us to recognize that an author can be so immersed in a culture that all
kinds of allusions are made in a text of which he or she is unaware. In fact, we should suspect that
this happens all the time. What matters here is that a power is being subtly ceded to the audience.
involved connect with their history (how they feel about Lincoln and
what he accomplished, for example).
On one level, then, these devices seem to confirm the Gricean view of
meaning that has been dropped in this project in preference for Brandom’s
account, because authorial intent is important. But authorial intent has
never been excised entirely from the discussion. Brandom’s concern was in
part that it is inaccessible and a traditional reliance on it misses much of
the nature of communication in social situations. The general shift that
has been our concern is one of focus, from artist/arguer to beholder/audi-
ence. Once made, different concerns and ideas come to the fore.
Rhetorical devices like allusion and irony are effective because they operate
in cognitive environments, which they modify and expand. The argumen-
tation is received in ways that balance the objective and the personal.
Moreover, the audience actively contributes by filling the gap or seeing
the association. In doing this, they are expressly addressed by the argu-
mentation, and stand out from other recipients of the material who are
not personally affected. There is a parallel here with Habermas’ distinc-
tion between listeners and hearers in Chapter 5. There he noted, “listeners
behave in the role of third persons waiting to see what happens, while
those directly involved adopt a performative attitude and, in thus
behaving towards each other in the attitude of a first person towards a
second, expect an answer from each other” (Habermas 2000: 345). This
essentially identifies two audiences, one standing behind the other. One
potential, and the other activated. In a similar manner, addressees stand
out from audiences as those members who experience the reception
of argumentation in a way more conducive to moving from the stage of
conviction to that of persuasion, with the corresponding actions that
such a move suggests. The effectiveness involved lies in the invitation to
complete the reasoning, to see for oneself. The notion of “addressee”
personalizes the audience. Or, rather, it activates aspects of the audience,
moving them from potential to actual receptors of what is conveyed. On
these terms, an audience is a potential construct. My being in audience
means always being in a state of potentiality. Being addressed by argu-
mentation involves the activation of that potentiality. Rhetorical devices
facilitate this activation insofar as they are used to create or further pres-
ence. Presence, as this idea has been developed in the previous chapter,
transforms listeners into hearers, viewers into readers. Presence is about
hearing and/or seeing the (theo)rhetorical, that theoretical sense that
Aristotle first put forward in his definition of rhetoric: seeing the available
means of persuasion. Just such a seeing assumes a capacity for rhetorical
vision on the parts of both rhetor and recipient. That capacity is
grounded in our openness to messages, our potential state of being in
audience. Presence, then, draws addressees from the audience, bringing
alive concept and image. This gives argumentation the force that we saw
earlier (Chapter 5) could not be assigned to deductive force. The active
uptake of what the argument held potentially is felt with force when the
right audience experiences it. In its most ideal form all other senses of
force (like coercion) are absent, as Habermas suggested. The better argu-
ment is the one that both meets the demands of a reason that is active in
an audience and meets the specific interests of that audience.
The rhetorical devices involved in these activities can activate different
aspects of levels of our identity, depending on whether we relate to the
epistemic, the social, or the personal values that are at stake. We will
explore this idea further in the next chapter.
c h a p t e r 12
Historical arguments and elective audiences
12.1â•… Introduction: effectiveness and objectivity

The last chapter began to address the question of the evaluation of
Â�argumentation. At the start of the project it was asked: what makes argu-
mentation good? Models and theorists offer a range of related answers to
this question. Generally, we aspire to standards that are measurable and
avoid relativism. Such standards have always been difficult for rhetorical
argumentation, which is by its nature case-based (Leff 2000: 247).1
Stronger models of argumentation thus weave the rhetorical in with
the dialectical and logical to offer a balanced, comprehensive account
that accommodates things like dialectical rules and critical questions for
assessing logical argumentation schemes. Thus the particular insights
that rhetoric brings to the discipline are matched with more general
measurables.
This reflection of what may be judged the state of the art still sits
awkwardly with the rhetoricians’ continued focus on effectiveness along
with a recognition that some measure of objectivity must be derived from
somewhere, and an occasional suggestion of what that might be (like
Perelman’s universal audience). A point in case here is Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s question: “Is a strong argument an effective argument
which gains the adherence of the audience, or is it a valid argument,
which ought to gain it?” (1969: 463). Previous chapters have begun to
give more structure to this concern, understanding effectiveness in terms
of the personalizing of argumentation and suggesting ways in which this
may be approached in a case-based model. Effectiveness has now been
1â•‡ Michael Leff’s work in the late eighties and early nineties showed a keen interest in an idea of rhet-
oric that eschewed grand, theoretical designs, and for the interests revealed in concrete experiences
where the abstract was avoided and which addressed itself to situated problems. Rhetoric on such
terms could appear as “a serious philosophical subject” (Leff 1998: 45), one that involved not only
the transmission of knowledge, but also its generation.
212
12.2â•… The historical audience 213
understood in terms of how an audience experiences argumentation
“correctly.” That is, how the argumentation has been developed to address
them in terms of their commitments and the choices they are required to
make about the different levels of identity, the force and relevance of that
identity. These concerns continue in this chapter in the discussions of
pathos that will develop. But we turn first to the other criterion of evalua-
tion: the source of objective standards.
12.2â•… The historical audience

Perelman’s definition of audience as those who an arguer intends to influ-
ence seems to distance him from any clear solution to the problem of
how arguments delivered in one historical period find an audience at a
later time. Yet an answer is suggested in Perelman’s own structure of the
universal audience. The difficulty with historical arguments is that this is
a clear case where authorial intentions can be lost or hidden. Of course,
on one level an arguer may consciously want to address an audience she
has not yet encountered. Here, the arguer must anticipate reason in
the future. Or, again, when the arguer makes her choices and selects the
strategies she will employ, she may want to accommodate both those
intended and those who may later take up the text. The universal audi-
ence, standing behind any particular audience operates to accommodate
a common sense of reason. Indeed, arguments that today still engage
audiences, like those traditional arguments for the existence of a god, or
those that review basic ideas of justice are distinctive for their objective
nature, for the way they engage questions that transcend time and space.
But they also involve assumptions about what is reasonable, and they
address that idea in any audience the argumentation may have.
Undoubtedly, thinking in these terms an arguer will make different
choices about the issue involved and how best to present it than if she was
restricted to a more immediate and identifiable audience. The point is
really that we have at our disposal a tool to address the concerns raised by
the historical audience, if only we can develop that tool in the right way.
In her discussion of the non-interactive audience, Trudy Govier (1999)
sets Perelman’s universal audience apart from that which concerns her.
She writes:
The Non-Interactive Audience as I have defined it here is not the same as
Perelman’s universal audience, which is defined as the broadest class of
open-minded, intellectually astute people capable of following extended
argument … The Non-Interactive Audience is similar to Perelman’s
214 Historical arguments and elective audiences
universal audience in being of indeterminate and potentially large size. But
it is dissimilar with regard to ideal rationality. (Govier 1999: 189)
The universal audience, thus conceived, stands as an attractive propo-
sition, if mass audiences have to be addressed (196). The reading of
Perelman that she endorses is that supplied by Allen Scult (1989). For
Scult, the universal audience is a construct of the arguer, composed (as
Perelman indeed proposed) of all those competent to understand and
assess an argument. Over time the universal audience will find different
constructs. But the constructions are not arbitrary: they are necessarily
moored to particular audiences that form the ground of the construction.
In spite of much analysis that has been extended to the concept since
1989, this is still an agreeable reading of one of Perelman’s more opaque
ideas. We will return to it below.
Govier herself does not directly endorse the universal audience per se,
although she insists that audiences are becoming larger and more hetero-
geneous (and less interactive). Thus those who seek to understand argu-
ment must say something about the constructions. For her part, she
offers several strategies that might be adopted: “seeking out diverse actual
critics, striving for clarity, and using as many common-sense premises as
possible” (197). Indeed, we could imagine each of these as a reasonable
strategy to be employed in constructing a universal audience. But it
would remain, for Govier, a non-interactive audience.
On the face of it, the non-interactive audience sounds plausible. We
can imagine argumentation that is extended and general in its assertions
and that is disseminated in media that does not predetermine the
numbers and types of people who will hear or read it. We can also
imagine the source of such argumentation receiving responses that were
unexpected and bear no relation to anything that was originally intended.
But in another sense we may legitimately question the viability of such a
non-interactive audience when considered from the perspective of how
argumentation has been understood in this text. We are interested in
argumentation from the perspective of the audience, interested in how
the argumentation is experienced by an audience, taken up and reviewed.
On such terms, argumentation always has an audience and there is no
argumentation without one. But such a response is too simple, and
quickly invites the objection that such an ever-present audience is far
from the idea evoked by Perelman (those whom the arguer intends to
address). A better route to the same end is suggested by the first clause in
Govier’s title, “When They Can’t Talk Back.” She takes dialogue as in
some ways paradigmatic of argumentation, with a single arguer and a
12.2â•… The historical audience 215
single present interlocutor. This is the central case on which all others
could be deemed parasitic. It is important in such models that the audi-
ence/interlocutor can “talk back,” thereby giving the arguer crucial cues
like insights into her nature, beliefs, and likely objections.
As we saw in our discussion of Perelman in Chapter 4, all argumenta-
tion is social because it has such an interactive model as its foundation.
Even the self-deliberator who reasons with herself does so in terms she
has learned through social argumentation. And this would be the basis
for any form of interaction, implying in turn that there can be levels of
interaction. We can be more or less engaged with our audience, and we
are interested here in just how “less” engaged it is possible to be.
On one level, to recall the discussion of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas in the
previous chapter, the dialogical nature of language implies that all usage
is interactive in the sense that each utterance anticipates a response in its
very structure.2 Any talking back is no more than implicit. We build
through levels of interaction as our audiences become more explicit and
more complex. And we arrive at the kinds of difficult cases that Govier
imagines. But are these cases really non-interactive?
Paul Grice created some difficult cases in which there were utterances
by which he believed a speaker intended to mean something, but where
there was no actual audience (Grice 1989: 112–13). These were difficult for
us to understand in part because his theory of meaning entailed a hearer
who recognizes the intention. With an absent audience part of the struc-
ture of meaning was missing. Our question back in Chapter 6 was
whether there really are any absent audiences, and the same question can
be raised about the non-interactive audience. In light of the discussion of
“choice” developed in Chapter 10, the idea of a non-interactive audience
loses much of its initial plausibility. As detailed there, we never sit down
to write in a completely free forum. Any issue we wish to address already
has a history dense with voices that have contributed to that issue. Any
position we take on an issue involves choices about how to present it,
what to include and exclude, what specific strategies to develop. None of
these choices makes sense without the background presence of an audi-
ence, no matter how vague it may be. We are continuously interacting
with ideas, positions, concerns, and possible objections that do not float
abstractly in the air but belong to audiences relevant to our projects.
They can and do “talk back,” and we cannot function well without
listening to those voices. They have at least one point of view, and often
2â•‡ For a more developed account of Bakhtin’s relevance for argumentation theory see Tindale (2004).
several. And it is a measure of successful argumentation that it accommo-
dates the points of view that it anticipates.
It still remains, though, that in a mass audience there can be many
who remain untouched by the discourse. Here again we must focus on
sensible ways to understand “audience.” None of us is part of the audi-
ence of all the messages we receive. Many are ignored simply because we
do not judge them to be “for us.” It is our experience as audiences that
count here. Historical arguments remain a case in point. Depending on
our very specific backgrounds and interests some of the historical argu-
ments we encounter will interest us and some will have no resonance at
all. To return again to Hume and his case for skepticism about the divine,
we can judge that this is the kind of issue that will interest most people
across time and space. We will identify ourselves as part of the audience
for such an argument because it fits within the cognitive field of impor-
tant questions that we find sensible. Hume could not have imagined us
in our individual identities; but he did imagine us in our shared human
nature. He would have expected future people to be as engaged by his
arguments as contemporary audiences. In this sense there is a happy
agreement between arguer and audience, where we identify ourselves as
part of the audience that he intended to address.
12.3â•… The power of the universal audience

In Chapter 4 we first approached Perelman’s universal audience through
the other two audiences that he deemed important and judged to be
incarnations of the universal: the self-deliberator and the single hearer.
In this way we saw the importance of the key traits of reason, objectivity,
and compassion. But Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also suggest that
these other two audiences can never amount to more than “floating
incarnations” of the universal audience (1969: 31), and so it needs to be
fully explained on its own terms. This is the audience that provides a
norm for objective argumentation; that filters out contingent factors like
prejudice and self-interest.
Also in Chapter 4 I built on Perelman’s Aristotelianism by suggesting a
parallel between the ways each of these philosophers was able to grasp the
universal only through the experience of particulars. In the case of the
universal audience the arguer does not see the universal except inciden-
tally, but recognizes all the time that it is there, operative in the particular
audiences through which reason and emotion are conveyed. One comes
to know what is reasonable, as well as to understand the emotions,
12.3â•… The power of the universal audience 217
through experiencing particular audiences that express them. This is the
non-arbitrariness that Scult emphasizes and Govier endorses. It means
that anyone’s conception of a universal audience will be constrained by
their experience of actual audiences. The one who lives among unreason-
able people will operate with a distorted conception of what is reason-
able. To the objection that since the audience is the measure of
reasonableness then judging the unreasonable here would involve a rela-
tivistic clash, we should again appeal to our experience that has shown us
the presence of biased, irrational, and illogical views among groups and
individuals. We recognize and reject the illegitimate bias, the irrationality,
and illogicality, thus showing that a standard has been appealed to against
which these flaws appear. Reason is always more rational than the world
(Angenot 2008). It is fair to have recourse to this standard of reason
because it is one that the particular audiences share in; it is drawn from
the communities in which they operate. The wider our experience of
audiences, moving among different communities, the more accurate our
picture of what serves as current conceptions of the reasonable. It is this
distillation that we look for in identifying reason, not the artificial exer-
cises of the logic class.
Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford (1984) make a distinction between the
audience as a known entity, the “audience addressed,” and the creation in
the arguer’s mind, the “audience invoked.” Arguing requires a delicate
balance between the real and the imagined, with the latter providing
some standard of objectivity. The universal audience, as we understand it
here, is indeed a creation of the arguer’s mind. But at the same time
it also remains a known entity, or at least its aspects can be uncovered. It
stands in the background of the audience that is addressed, but it is
brought to the fore in interactions with that audience. This is because
producing any argumentation involves interactions with an audience, as
was insisted above. And at one level this interaction is an inquiry into
what is reasonable: rethinking it and modifying it (Tindale 2004: 147).
There is no alternative source for our standard of what is reasonable other
than the activities of reasoners themselves. On these terms, the imagined
is always an instantiation of the real. Audiences can change as a result of
argumentation. But this is the case not only for the particular audiences
that are directly addressed. Universal audiences must also develop over
time as our decisions about what is reasonable change. This is why
Perelman broke with the traditional, ahistorical universal audience of the
philosophers. Such a model with its aspirations of self-evident reason left
no room for rhetoric and argumentation (Perelman 1982: 159). Whereas
the contrary is experienced in areas of uncertainty, where the tools of
argumentation are necessary and effective. The universal audience is such
a tool. It involves no claim to an objective truth that transcends time and
place. It involves no necessary sameness of agreement. Freedom of speech
is protected in the United States in ways that permit anti-Semitic speech.
In Germany, freedom of speech excludes the same language. There are
reasons embedded in the backgrounds of each community that make
such apparently contradictory positions correct. Because it has an appre-
ciation of those backgrounds, the universal audience would recognize
this, seeing the reasonableness at work in each context.
As this account of the universal audience suggests, reason and emotion
operate together. In fact, the account of emotion we explored in Chapter 8,
tracing ideas from Aristotle through to Paul Thagard, emphasized
the inseparability of these two factors in decision-making (See Thagard
2006: 66, 127). And the discussion of “felt reasons” in Chapter 10 rein-
forced these insights. Audiences are repositories of reason. But they are
also places where beliefs and commitments coalesce, find expression, and
are felt.
In focusing solely on the reasonableness of the universal audience, and
thus connecting it to the idea of reason, we fall into the traditional trap of
separating, or appearing to separate, reason from the affective system of the
human being. Arguably, Perelman was a product of his times in at least
tacitly accepting this separation in his conception of the universal audience.3
Paul Thagard’s work resonates here, drawing us back to a more holistic
understanding of ourselves, of the human, and of the audiences we form.
If the universal audience is an audience, then it cannot just be a standard
of reason. It must also represent other dimensions of actual audiences.
Perelman was alert to the importance of values in argumentation. As
was noted in Chapter 4, his project aimed to develop a logic of values.
Michel Meyer (2010: 412) points out, that in order to negotiate the
distance between arguer and audience, one must speak of values. Values,
though, come in a variety of forms depending on the interests at stake.
Thagard, again, for whom values are “emotionally valenced mental repre-
sentations” (2012: 286),4 identifies three kinds of values: epistemic, social,
and personal. Epistemic value encompasses things like truth, objectivity,
bias, coherence, and explanation. Social value includes such things as
3â•‡ This accords with Gross and Dearin’s (2003) criticism of Perelman for failing to really accommo-
date pathos in his new rhetorical project.
4â•‡ “Valence” is the term used to denote associations that are emotionally positive or negative.
well-being, competence, autonomy, and isolation. And personal value is
seen in such things as fame, success, wealth, and power. What the arguer
needs to do when confronting an audience is establish the right kinds of
links between these types of values. We could also observe the coinci-
dence in concepts between Thagard’s value system and the complex struc-
ture of Habermas’ lifeworld that was noted in Chapter 5, operating on
three integrated levels: there is an objective world of objects and states of
affairs, shared by all in common and a source of claims about facts; an
intersubjective world of norms and values; and an individual’s subjective
world of private thoughts. This structure formed a horizon of implicit
agreements against which people came to understandings. It also allowed
for what Habermas called “decentering,” whereby an individual could
align matters of truth, justice, and taste – what we would now see as
three types of value. Decentering, or “standing apart” was important for
Habermas in achieving the hypothetical attitude required by his theory of
argumentation.
Aristotle’s account of emotions in Chapter 8 indicated the potential for
rhetoric to influence decision-making by modifying the value scheme of
the audience. Persuasive argumentation can, for example, enhance or
diminish the strength of feeling we have for an idea or person. It can
modify the ways we identify with groups, individuals, or ideas by linking
social values with personal values through both rational and emotional
means. We have not understood emotional experience just in terms of
internal, subjective processes. Much of our understanding of that experi-
ence lies in our interactions with the social environment (Lazarus 1984:
124). We have seen emotions to be “out there” in the social world and it
should not surprise us when they connect individuals to the social goals
of a community.
In the sample of Obama’s speeches that were drawn on in Chapter 1,
we repeatedly see him linking ideas with emotions and vice versa in what
was described there as a value-focused rhetoric. The ideas of union, of
agreement, and common ground are dressed in associated values of coop-
eration and shared responsibility. The idea of a more perfect union where
old divisions are recast in constructive ways is presented in the context of
responsibility and accountability.
We can also see now that one of the ways in which Obama constructs
his own ethos is by connecting his personal values to those of the commu-
nity, and how he extends the same linkage to people like Senator
Kennedy. This is an important way in which personal values are
connected to social values, as the argumentation encourages shared values
through emulation. In illustrating things like sacrifice in his own case
(a compassionate man working as a community organizer) and that of
Edward Kennedy (the paradigm servant of the state), Obama invites
others to share in those values, having also accepted the broader ideas
with which they are associated. Thus his “new spirit of patriotism: of
service and responsibility” that is promoted in the Grant Park victory
speech comes integrally connected with an explanation of events that
gives coherence to a long journey of American history: a logic of events
and values that reframe experience of the past and present and direct
minds toward the future.
With epistemic values we are closer to the basic understanding of the
universal audience that we drew from Perelman. Notions like “truth” and
“bias” have a currency across communities, recognized as of value by
social groups and individuals. Even where there are disagreements about
the specifics of truth or bias, it is the common value these ideas hold that
allows for argumentation to take root and develop. And as we see in the
examples from Obama, epistemic values like explanation and coherence
form the outer frame inside of which other values nest together. In fact,
these epistemic values would be important for different components of a
larger audience (even as large as that addressed in Grant Park). Both
Republicans and a wider global audience (itself fractured) can “make
sense” of events in ways that link their own values to the larger picture.
Of course, there are risks involved in all this. As we also saw in
Chapter 8, on the social level people who make us feel good are assigned
greater value in our eyes, which means that it is more likely we will
accept their judgments. If there is a range of choice about which of two
candidates to trust, then the “gut feeling” (good or bad) we have about
one will facilitate the decision-making process by quickly eliminating
others (or that person, if the feeling is negative). Such a structure
unavoidably opens us up to exploitation, whether emotional or cognitive.
Unscrupulous interlocutors can aim to stimulate trust in us through false
means (a kind of emotional parallel to fallacious reasoning). Moreover
there are further risks involved in managing the tensions between
different types of values. Epistemic values can be challenged because they
are overridden by personal values like a quest for fame, as when a scientist
falsifies data. Or a more serious clash can emerge between deeply held
personal values and social values like well-being and happiness, as when
an individual realizes that community good can only be enhanced
through a personal sacrifice that they are reluctant to make, perhaps by
providing access to private property that they personally enjoy. Whenever
emotions distort our ability to fully evaluate a set of options then their
negative influence emerges. At the same time, emotions can be “valuable
in communicating people’s preferences and satisfactions” (Thagard 2006:
261). And such information is important for arguers who need to under-
stand the audiences with whom they interact.
One response to this level of risk would be to return to the traditional
view that separates emotion from reason, relying on probability theory
and logical schemes that are shorn of any emotional content. But as
Thagard also reminds us, “many important decisions in science and
everyday life are hard to analyze using these tools, so that people naturally
fall back on emotionally encoded values” (2012: 300). Moreover, such a
“return” to the separation of emotion from reason would represent
a retreat from the social realities of argumentation that we have identified in
these chapters. Argumentation is addressed to the whole person (Perelman
1982: 13), and more importantly, the whole person experiences it.
If we return now to the problem of the historical audience, it is the
case that there remain challenges here that are absent with more direct
audiences. This is particularly the case if, as has been argued, the notions
of what societies accept as reasonable, and therefore what counts as
reasonable argumentation, changes through time. Historical authors can
be forgiven for addressing a universal audience that is reflective of reason
as it is embodied in immediate communities. We judge arguments on
exactly those terms, measuring them against what we know was accept-
able to both particular audiences and the universal audiences they
anchor. As a tool, the universal audience remains a check on the arguer,
preventing her from attributing just anything to her intended audience.
We are interested in historical arguments because they address us. We
then become collectively what should be called elective audiences.
We choose to receive; we choose to be addressees, identifying ourselves as
appropriate recipients of the argumentation. Immediately, we begin to
unpack the argument on our terms. We can judge it fairly in its context,
or unfairly in our own. But the meanings will be assigned in terms of our
current commitments.
No arguer can anticipate the future. A political leader may justify an
action with the claim that the future will judge him. But the assumption
in saying this is that the future will confirm his decision, not reject it. On
such terms what the politician does is project his own judgment into an
anticipated future and expect it to be accepted there. We might judge this
to be more successful if the reason for its non-acceptance by a contempo-
rary audience is because other issues have got in the way, drawing on
audience commitments that are simply incommensurable with the
proposal, combined with a disinclination on the part of the audience to
measure the proposal in terms of the standard of reason governing the
situation. Future audiences, while bringing their own commitments to
bear on the issue and influenced by the subsequent details associated with
the political action, are more likely to judge in terms of the standard of
reason governing them (and if they are evaluating the argument in its
context, more likely to judge it according to the standard of reason then
operating rather than the commitments of the contemporary audience).
12.4â•… Revisiting the cognitive environment

Previous chapters have introduced and explored aspects of the cogni-
tive environment, adding to it and fixing it as an important idea for
an understanding of audience response to argumentation. The cogni-
tive environment contains ideas, attitudes, and information generally
of which we may be unconscious but to which attention can be drawn
through argumentation. As a tool, the cognitive environment allows us to
shift attention away from a (fruitless) inquiry into what people allegedly
know and to focus instead on what they might reasonably be expected to
know. Our earlier considerations focused on cognitive environments as
sites, “mental landscapes,” in which facts reside. They were seen to share
with other comparable ideas like the “lifeworld” and the “space of reasons”
the important feature of being spaces where reasons are found. We are
now in a better position to appreciate the richness of those reasons as “felt
reasons”; not limited to the cognitive, but nuanced with the social and
personal values that inform the cognitive.
We can also now clarify the concept of cognitive environments in
important ways: (i) They are not simply cognitive, but cognitive in the
sense developed in this chapter and earlier in the study. They are both
cognitive and emotional; they involve both facts and values. In this
sense, “cognitive” environment may be a misnomer. (ii) They are modifi-
able spaces. In fact, they are continuously being modified as long as we
live in society (Crusoe’s cognitive environment may be more fixed, but
even it is open to change as his present interacts with memories of a
social past). (iii) It is a space that conditions the reception of argumenta-
tion. That is, it provides many of the preconditions of successful argu-
mentation, and its nature will in turn contribute to the eventual success
of argumentation. As we have seen, it is the place where rhetorical
effects have impact.
12.4â•… Revisiting the cognitive environment 223
Arguers can employ the cognitive environment by aiming to modify
an audience’s environment rather than directly addressing the audience in
it. In this sense, the audience is addressed indirectly, but particular
addressees are not identified. By this means, the number of people
conversant with relevant ideas increases and those ideas come to have a
hold on a community. We see this operating, for example, in public
awareness campaigns that aim to supply a community with information.
This impersonal addressing provides us with the standard for objectivity
to match with the personal effectiveness of the last chapter. But it points
also to something more important that has emerged. Throughout the
discussions of this and previous chapters the gap between the cognitive
environment and the universal audience has been steadily closing, and now
is the time to effect the final assimilation that this study would support. As
we have seen in several places, the universal audience has had a history of
misunderstanding and difficult application. As strong and important an
idea as it has been, its vagueness has also served to challenge its advocates
and fuel the discontent of critics to the rhetorical approach (Aikin 2008).
What it lacks in concreteness, we now see, the cognitive environment
provides, and little of significance is lost.
Universal audiences, it will be recalled, have no separate existence
outside the arguer’s mind other than the specific audiences in which they
are rooted, and out of which they emerge. The universal is seen in the
particulars. It serves as a non-fixed standard of reason that is operative in
rational communities. It provides that standard that we all recognize when
we change our minds, or insofar as we move from conviction to persua-
sion when our mind changes us.5 It is to real communities that we look to
identify reason at work, not to abstract principles. And unlike its earlier
instantiations, the universal audience that has been of interest in this
project does not transcend time and place or provide an objective truth.
With little difficulty, all these features can be transferred to our under-
standing of cognitive environments. What we gain in the transfer is a
tool that is more clearly identifiable in any particular case, that is epis-
temically weak in just the right way, and that is enriched by the presence
of values and commitments. The cognitive environment now provides
the impersonal evaluative standard to match the personal validity by
which we understand effectiveness. Good argumentation accords with an
5 As Christopher Hitchens so aptly phrases things: “It could be as true to say, as some of my tutors
in Oxford philosophy used to seem to argue, that it is your mind that changes you” (Hitchens
2010: 407).
audience’s commitments within the appropriate cognitive environment,
the latter providing the network of meanings and ideas in light of which
those commitments are recognized, as well as the standard of reason that
renders the giving and receiving of reasons reasonable.
As a site of rhetorical effects, the cognitive environment also is
the place where we see the influences of logos, ethos, and pathos. From the
logical point of view, we should be particularly interested in contempo-
rary versions of the traditional rhetorical argument suggested by
Aristotle, both in its enthymematic aspect as a discourse of invitation and
in its dynamic aspect as a movement within a discourse and then dissem-
inated to an audience. We are surrounded by active, inviting reasons and
arguments, which we receive and in turn give. From our fundamental
experience as receptors of reasons, as audiences, we learn to enter the
realm of argumentation as active contributors. But we are not purely
logical beings; our reasons are felt and impact the whole person, moving
us to action. As logical beings we can be convinced by many things, but
these can remain things on which we would never then be persuaded to
act. As argumentative beings, addressed as both logical and affective
systems, we understand persuasion as an important, necessary experience
to which we are always open.
Lastly, as sites for the giving and receiving of reasons, cognitive environ-
ments are founded on testimony. Of the values we have considered in this
chapter, epistemic credibility bridges the gaps between the epistemic,
social, and personal (indicating in turn that those values are not so inde-
pendent of each other). We learn, directly and indirectly, from the words
of other people as those words populate our cognitive environments.
Again, the lesson is that audiences can elect to be spoken to, can learn
things from what others say that those others never intended. We are no
less audiences of those discourses for finding there what was not intended,
or for not having been intended ourselves as audiences. It speaks to the
multi-dimensionality of our social experiences, which argumentation has
the task, in part, to understand, to explain, and to improve.
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Index
ad hominem reasoning, 165, 179 social dimensions of, 20, 56, 57, 61,
addressees, 35 126, 224
adherence, 30n, 63, 66, 68–72, 74, 75, 205 standards, 31
measurements of, 71 validity, 31
Adler, Jonathan, 34, 133, 134, 136, 138, argumentative beings, 3, 119, 198, 224
147, 225 argumentative situation, 3, 4, 21, 22, 31, 44, 67,
Against the Sophists, 38 68, 126, 190, 203
Aikin, Scott, 193, 223, 225 arguments
Alexy, Robert, 89, 225 as products, 2
Allard-Nelson, Susan, 42 as structures of statements of support, 1
Allen, James, 46–48, 49, 214, 225, 235 argumentum ad baculum (appeal to force), 18
allusion, 206, 207, 208–10, See also rhetorical Aristophanes, 208
figures Aristotle, 12, 14, 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36–57, 58,
defined, 208 61, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75, 78, 81, 98,
internalist view, 209 117, 119, 131, 132, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152n,
Amsterdam School, 15, 79, See also 153, 154, 155, 157, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165,
pragma-dialectics 169, 172, 182, 184, 185n, 186, 187, 188,
Angenot, Marc, 217, 225 194, 198, 203, 205, 206, 210, 218, 219,
arguer 224, 225, 228, 233
obligations of, 18 argumentative agent, 44
as source of argumentation, 3 bringing-before-the-eyes, 55
argument De Anima, 24, 41, 150, 155
assessment, 24 De Memoria, 185n
definition, 24, 188 De Sensu, 157
dynamic, 22, 23 genres of rhetoric, 44, 51, 75
historical, 25, 26, 59, 213, 216, 221 Metaphysics, 40, 41
non-verbal, 15 Nicomachean Ethics, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 52,
static, 23 66, 150
argumentation Poetics, 23, 36, 51, 54, 154, 185n, 207n,
defined, 2, 87 225, 228
dialectical, 14, 16, 18 Posterior Analytics, 40, 132
domain of uncertainty, 49, 63 Prior Analytics, 46, 47, 49, 131, 225
dynamic, 4 receptivity, 55
experience of, 72, 78, 181, 198, 214 rhetor, 37
goals, 63 Rhetoric, 14, 17, 29, 30, 36–42, 45–50, 51, 53,
logical, 14, 18 54, 56, 57, 70, 131, 132n, 150, 151, 154, 155,
normative models, 16 160, 165, 166, 184, 185n, 206, 225, 229,
objective standards, 31, 71, 212 231, 232
personalizing, 30, 55, 183, 205–11 Sophistical Refutations, 47, 49
rhetorical, 14, 16, 35, 36, 39 theory of emotions, 34, 53, 150–55, 219
schemes, 212 Topics, 14, 47, 49, 50, 51, 61, 63, 225
238
Index 239
Aristotle (continuedâ•›) intentionality, 120
topoi, 39, 70, 194 Making it Explicit, 121, 122
types of audience, 52, 54, 57 pragmatic theory of meaning, 33
virtue theory, 70 pragmatics, 120n
Asen, Robert, 81, 82, 94, 167, 225 scorekeeping theory of communication, 96
audience Brave New World, 3
active, 56 Bricmont, Jean, 129, 130, 235
adherence, 17 bringing-before-the-eyes, 184, 185
composite, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 75, 76, Brouwer, Daniel, 81, 82, 225
77, 78 Burke, Kenneth, 39, 226
defined, 58, 213 Burnyeat, Myles, 37, 41, 226
deliberative, 7, 9
elective, 221, 224 Camus, Albert, 1
embedded, 13 Carston, Robyn, 105
experience of, 21, 126, 198, 216 Cartesian certitude, 66, 67, 149, 177
historical, 78 Cartesian tradition, 58, 60, 62, 173
identity questions, 24 Chalmers, David, 173, 226
as judges, 9 Chapman, Siobhan, 100n, 102n, 226
non-interactive, 25, 213–16, See also Chastian, C., 7n, 226
Govier Chilton, Paul, 162, 226
passive, 42 choice
rhetorical capacity, 43 in argumentation, 17, 187–91, 215
uptake, 24, 31, 32, 72, 111 in identity questions, 27, 177
audience demand, 19, See also strategic Cialdini, Robert, 29
maneuvering Cicero, 110
Austin, J. L., 111, 120, 225 Clark, Andy, 173, 226
authority Clinton, Bill, 115, 121
appeal to, 165 Coady, C. A. J., 136
problem of, 130 Code, Lorraine, 136, 226
Aydede, Murat, 172, 228, 235 cognitive environment, 35, 144–46, 167, 183, 184,
192, 193, 194, 197, 199
Bach, Kent, 102n, 225 and meaning, 195
Baier, Annette, 35, 174, 225 and the universal audience,
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 21, 22, 24, 61, 103n, 196, 199, 222–25
200, 215n, 225 Colebrook, Claire, 112, 208, 227
addressivity, 200 collateral beliefs, 120, 140
the utterance, 199 commitments, 22, 33, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 124,
Barnes, Jonathan, 47n, 225 125, 192, 202–05
Baynes, Kenneth, 168, 178, 226 collateral commitments, 192
Bell, Andrew, 127, 226 commitments, 22
Benhabib, Seyla, 35, 90n, 174, 175n, common knowledge, 144
177, 226 communicative action
Berger, John, 182, 187, 190, 195 theory of, 79, 83, 95
Bento’s Sketchbook, 182 revisions, 85
Bett, Richard, 148, 226 communion
Blair, J. Anthony, 15 rhetorical, 17
Booth, Wayne, 58, 226 conviction
Brandom, Robert, 7n, 22, 23, 33, 34, 35, 79, 88n, and persuasion, 30, 59, 183, 189
96, 100, 103, 116–26, 127, 128, 142n, 143, Cooper, Ann Nixon, 9, 10, 12, 13
144, 146, 178, 179, 191, 192, 193, 201, Cooperative Principle, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107,
202n, 203, 204, 210, 226 109, 114, 138
act of giving reasons, 119 defined, 102
Articulating Reasons, 117n, 121n counterpublics, 82
commitments replace beliefs, 118 Crawford, Neta, 27, 28n, 79, 227
de re and de dicto ascriptions, 121 critical discussion, 16
2 4 0 Index
Crosswhite, James, 16, 20, 43n, 79, 205, 227 epistemology of testimony, 34, 35, 137–41, 144
Crusoe, Robinson, 159, 171, 172, 202, 222 eristics, 2
cultural differences, 95 essentialism, 43, 53n, 170, 175, 176, 180
ethos, 5, 11, 13, 14, 29, 44n, 46, 81, 147, 149, 165,
Damasio, Antonio, 34, 148, 151n, 155, 156, 157n, 166, 167, 219, 224
158, 163, 164, 227 values, 6
Dascal, Marcelo, 117, 119, 229 ethotic reasoning, 28
Davidson, Donald, 119, 227 eulogies, 10, 11, 13
de Sousa, Ronald, 34, 149, 156, 159, 160, 161, Euthydemus, 2
165, 227 Eze, Emmanuel, 26, 228
Dearin, Ray, 149, 188, 218n, 227, 229, 234
deliberative rhetoric, 44 Fahnestock, Jeanne, 54, 228
Dennett, Daniel, 31 fallacies, 15
Derrida, Jacques, 4, 120, 201n, 207, 227 Farrell, Thomas, 36, 37, 228
trace, 201n Faulkner, Paul, 34, 134, 135n, 136, 138, 142,
Descartes, René, 60, 148, 168 146, 228
Meditations, 60 figures of speech, 54
Dewey, John, 20 force of the better argument, 31, 82, 92–95, 211
dialectic, 15, 16, 37, 51, 88 forensic rhetoric, 45
dialectical tier, 15 formal deductive logic, 14, 15, 71
dialogical reasoning, 4, 22, 33, 120 Forster, E. M., 128, 228
dialogism, 21 Fortenbaugh, W. W., 150, 151, 152n, 153, 155, 228
Dialogues on Natural Religion, See Hume Foss, Sonia, 29, 228
discourse ethics, 90 Frank, David, 16
Diskurstheorie, 79 Fraser, Nancy, 80, 81, 82, 176n, 228
dispositions, 30, 46, 70, 71, 75, 150, 183 Freeman, James, 68n
dissociation, 64, See also Perelman, Chaim Freese, J., 37n, 228
on concept of philosophy, 64 Fricker, Elizabeth, 34, 133, 135, 228
on concept of validity, 71, 72
on the universal audience, 67 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 199
diversity, 26, 76 Gallagher, Shaun, 172, 173, 228
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 186 Garver, Eugene, 51, 229
The Brothers Karamazov, 186 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 132n, 163n, 229
dunamis, 23, 37n, 40, 41, 42, 43 Gilbert, Michael, 155
Glover, Jonathan, 140
Eco, Umberto, 185, 227 Gómez, Carlos Miquel, 204n, 229
Ede, Lisa, 62n, 217, 227 Goodnight, Thomas G., 79, 90n, 92, 229
effectiveness, 16, 32, See also audience:uptake Goodwin, Jean, 69n
as a measure of argumentation, 71 Gorgias, 43, 148, 208, 209
tension with reasonableness, 16 Encomium to Helen, 148
Ekman, Paul, 156, 228 Palamedes, 209
elenchus, 60 Gough, James, 113, 208, 236
emotions, 148–66 Govier, Trudy, 19, 25, 26, 33, 34, 127, 147, 213,
definition, 53 214, 215, 217, 229
distinct from feelings, 156 Greek Sophists, 60, 204
hierarchy of, 157 Grice, Paul, 33, 89n, 99–116, 118, 119, 120n, 125,
situated nature, 159–60 126n, 133, 138, 191, 192, 199, 200, 202,
Endres, Ben, 80 207, 215, 229
energeia, 23, 40, 41, 55, 184, 185 absent audience, 107–09, 126, 215
distinguished from enargeia, 185 account of reasons, 100, 104
enthymeme, 37, 38, 42, 46n, 48, 55, 56, 57, 131, Gricean theory of meaning, 33
132, 209 intentional theory of meaning, 118,
entitlements, 23, 116, 118, 120, 125, 128 See meaning: intentional theory
epideictic, 56, 66, 70, 74, 75, 150, pragmatics, 120n
See rhetoric rationality, flat and variable, 101
Index 241
Gricean maxims, 102 informal logic, 15, 87n, 93, 101, 131
Manner, 103, 200 and Habermas, 87
Quality, 103, 112 irony, See rhetorical figures
Quantity, 103, 104, 105, 115 Irwin, William, 208, 209, 231
Relation, 103, 115 Iser, Wolfgang, 198, 199, 231
revisions, 105 The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic
Griffin, Cindy, 29, 228 Response, 198n
Griffiths, Paul, 157, 160, 229 Isocrates, 38, 209
Grimaldi, William, 40, 229 Antidosis, 209
Groarke, Leo, 15, 229
Grootendorst, Rob, 15, 61, 62, 84, 89n, 90n, Jauss, Hans Robert, 198, 199
99n, 118n, 227 Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 198n
Gross, Alan, 85n, 117, 119, 149, 188, 218n Johnson, Mark, 207
Gross, Daniel, 53n, 151n, 157 Johnson, Ralph H., 15, 58, 231
Johnstone Jr., Henry, 65, 71, 179, 233
Habermas, Jürgen, 31, 32, 79–98, 175, Johnstone, Steven, 34
178, 179, 182, 193, 210, 211, 219,
229, 230 Kahneman, Daniel, 163, 236
adoption of the Aristotelian triad, 88 Kant, Immanuel, 90, 91, 118, 128, 188, 232
definition of argumentation, 87 Karon, Louise, 183, 232
listeners and hearers, 96, 210 Kasterly, James, 164
and the universal audience, 97 Kauffeld, Fred, 99n, 110, 111, 118, 232
Hall, Stuart, 198n, 230 Kennedy, George, 37, 38, 53, 74, 152, 184
Hamblin, Charles, 14, 32, 230 Kennedy, Senator Edward, 10, 13, 219
Haraway, Donna, 173, 175, 230 Klein, Wolfgang, 89, 90, 92
Hardin, Russell, 34 Kochin, Michael, 185, 232
Hardwig, John, 34, 134, 141, 142, 144, 146, 230 Kornprobst, Markus, 27, 79, 232
Harman, Gilbert, 101 Korsgaard, Christine, 35, 173, 177, 178n, 232
Hauser, Gerard, 80, 230 The Constitution of Agency, 172
Hermerén, Göran, 208, 209, 230 Krabbe, Erik, 202, 203, 236
Hesse, Mary, 80, 92, 230 Kusch, Martin, 34, 128, 142n, 143, 144, 232
Hintikka, Jaakko, 109n, 126n, 230
Hitchcock, David, 15n, 37, 230, 231 Lackey, Jennifer, 34, 133, 135, 136,
Hitchens, Christopher, 223n, 231 137–41, 144
Hohendahl, Peter, 81n, 231 Lakoff, George, 207, 232
Holub, Robert, 199 Lawson-Tancred, Hugh, 41n, 232
Horn, Laurence, 102, 105, 112, 113, 116, Lazarus, Richard, 34, 148, 151n, 155, 157, 159, 160,
226, 231 161, 219, 232
Houtlosser, Peter, 16, 189, 227, 228 Leff, Michael, 194, 207, 212n, 232
Hume, David, 25, 26, 135, 168, 186, 187, Leighton, Stephen, 151, 156, 161, 232
216, 231 Levinson, Stephen, 105, 233, 236
Treatise, 168 Lewinsky, Monica, 115
Husserl, Edmund, 85n lifeworld, 85–86, 193, 222
Huxley, Aldous, 3 decentering, 86, 95, 219
hypotyposis, 185, 186 likelihoods, 46, 47, 49, 50, 52, 131
Lincoln, Abraham, 6, 13, 186, 209, 210
ideal speech situation, 84, 85 Locke, John, 120, 169, 202, 233
identity personhood
personal, 174–77 defined, 169
implicature, 100, 113, 115 Lodge, David, 196
conventional, 100, 102n logos, 13, 29, 44, 46, 50, 149n, 151, 165,
conversational, 100, 102n, 105 166, 224
defined, 104 Long, Richard, 183, 233
defined, 101 Lukes, Steven, 91n, 233
impulse, 182 Lunsford, Andrea, 217, 227
2 4 2 Index
Mackenzie, Catriona, 174, 233 149, 150, 165, 171, 177, 179, 182, 183, 184,
Makowski, Piotr, 42, 233 186, 188, 189, 190, 195n, 203, 205, 206,
Malcolm, Norman, 137, 233 212–15, 216, 217, 218, 220, 221,
Maneli, Mieczyslaw, 69, 233 229, 234
Manguel, Alberto, 167, 206, 233 audience
McKay, D. S., 129, 233 self-deliberation, 60
McKerrow, Raymie, 72 single hearer, 60
meaning, 191 universal audience, 61
I. A. Richards’ theory, 200–02 audience uptake, 72
inferentialist theory, 100, 117, 125 conception of philosophy, 63
intentional theory, 99, 100, 106–07, 126, 133, empirical method, 67
192, 210 logic of value judgments, 66
transmission of, 99, 202 on justice, 17
Mercier, Hugo, 1 on the reasonable, 73
metaphor, 54, 56, 184, 194, 206–07, person and act, 179
See rhetorical figures philosophical pluralism, 65
Meyer, Michel, 151n, 218 Realm of Rhetoric, 64
Mickunas, A., 130, 233 regressive philosophy, 64
Modrak, Deborah, 34, 151, 155, 157, 233 rule of justice, 73
monological reasoning, 22, 33, 120, 196 strategy of dissociation, 64
Moore, G. E., 113n personal identity, 25, 27
Morton, Adam, 151n, 156, 233 personhood, 167–72, 174, 180
external definition, 171
Nathanson, M., 71 internal definition, 170
Netanyahu, Benjamin, 162 internal defintion, 170
New Rhetoric project, 17, 58, 60, 150 persons, 25, 167, 168, 174
The New Rhetoric, 205 as reasoners, 179
as philosophical, 66 persuasion, 4, 24, 28–31, 37, 51, 56, 59, 72, 94,
and philosophy, 65 167, 183
social nature, 60 definition, 29
Nielsen, Torben Hviid, 97 durability, 30, 70
Nightingale, Andrea, 38n, 233 pre-argumentative stage, 205–06
Norman, Malcolm, 137 Plantinga, Alvin, 68n
normative pragmatics, 116 Plato, 2, 38, 43, 51, 54, 59, 60, 61, 66, 81, 148, 150,
204, 208, 209, 234
Obama, Barack, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 29, Academy, 51, 61
74, 75, 164, 165, 186, 209, 219, 220 Apology, 154n
Obama speeches Euthydemus, 204
A new Lincoln, 5, 186, 209 Gorgias, 43, 51
About a man, 10 Phaedrus, 43, 51, 53
Architect of change, 8, 220 Philebus, 150
O’Gorman, Ned, 185n Republic, 38n, 148
O’Keefe, Daniel, 29, 233 Symposium, 149, 208
Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie, 14, 17, 18, 30, 31, 49, theōros, 38n
58–78, 86, 120, 150, 177, 183, 184, 188, pragma-dialectics, 15, 16, 61, 90, 118n, 189, 203,
189, 203, 212, 216, 234 204n
Olmos, Paula, 140, 142, 233 account of commitments, 203
Ovid, 197, 234 pragmatics, 126, 191
Metamorphoses, 197 presence, 211
presence (rhetorical), 17, 182–87, 210
Pascal, Blaise, 140 presentation
pathos, 13, 44n, 70, 150 in argumentation, 17
Penco, Carlo, 123, 234 public opinion, 81
Perelman, Chaim, 14, 17n, 18, 19, 30n, 31, 32, 34, public sphere, 79, 80–82
49, 53n, 58–78, 79, 86, 87n, 98, 108, 120, Putnam, Hilary, 85, 234
Index 243
Quante, Michael, 169, 170, 171, 234 Rotenstreich, Nathan, 64
quarreling, 1 Rubinelli, Sara, 39, 235
Quine, W. V. O., 120, 122, 234 rule of justice, 73
Quintilian, 185n, 234 Rushdie, Salman, 20, 24, 235
Institutio Oratoria, 185 Russell, Bertrand, 101
Ryan, Eugene, 30
rationality, 125
Rawls, John Saul, Jennifer, 114, 115, 235
veil of ignorance, 174 Scarantino, Andrea, 157, 160, 229
Ray, John, 62n, 149, 227, 229, 234 Schiappa, Edward, 37, 235
reasonableness, 16 Scult, Allen, 72, 214, 217, 235
tension with effectiveness, 16 Searle, John, 4, 16, 111, 120, 235
reasons self-deliberation, 60, 61
and commitments, 192 self-deliberator, 76
felt, 186, 218, 222 Sellars, Wilfrid, 193, 235
public nature, 178 Sen, Amartya, 26, 27, 35, 76, 174, 176, 177, 205,
Reception Theory, 198–200 206, 235
aisthesis, 199n Seneca, 188
catharsis, 199n Sidgwick, Alfred, 50n
poiesis, 199 Siegel, Harvey, 186n, 187, 235
Redding, Paul, 91, 92, 97, 234 signs, 46, 47, 49, 50, 131
Rée, Jonathan, 197, 234 argument from, 47, 50, 52, 131
Rehg, William, 79, 86, 87, 94, 97, 234, 237 necessary, 47
Reid, Thomas, 135, 136n, 234 non-necessary, 48
relativism, 31, 173, 212 single-hearer audience, 60, 61, 76
relevance theorists, 103, 105 Skeptics, 148
Relevance theory, 105, 111–16, 191 Smith, Michael, 168n
rhetoric, 16, 37, 194 Socrates, 38n, 48, 49n, 50, 51, 53, 60, 132, 149,
as an art, 40, 42 154, 168, 204, 205
definition, 37 Sokal, Alan, 129, 130, 235
deliberative, 44, 52 Solomon, Robert, 156, 235
domain, 66 somatic markers, 163, 165
epideictic, 11, 13, 45, 52, 53n, 75n speech acts, 54, 112, 118n, 120, 125
definition, 11 Sperber, Dan, 1, 102, 103n, 111–15, 144, 145, 146,
forensic, 45, 52 191, 192, 193, 194, 207n
history of, 7 Spivey, Michael, 160
invitational, 29, 207 Stampe, Dennis, 118, 235
as philosophical, 212n Statement View of Testimony, 34, 137–41,
and value, 150 See also Lackey, Jennifer
rhetorical argumentation, 74, 183, 212 Stoics, 148
invitational nature, 190 Stoljar, Natalie, 174, 233
rhetorical beings, 20, 40, 43n strategic maneuvering, 16, 19, 189, 204,
rhetorical figures, 112, 188, 194 See also pragma-dialectics
allusion, 208–10, 210 audience demand, 189, 203
anaphora, 7, 13 definition, 16
antithesis, 54 presentational device, 189
apostrophe, 110 topical potential, 189
gradation, 39 Strawson, Peter, 111
irony, 112–13, 206, 207–08, 210 Surowiecki, James, 195, 236
metaphor, 13, 194, 206–07
prolepsis, 13 testimony, 127–47, 224
Richards, I. A., 194, 200, 201, 207, 234 non-reductionist view, 135
delegated efficacy, 201 reductionist view, 134
Risse, Thomas, 79, 235 transmission view, 133, 138
Robbins, Philip, 172, 228, 235 defined, 133
2 4 4 Index
Thagard, Paul, 148, 149, 155, 156, 157, 158n, 159, values, 74, 150, 164–66, 218–20,
162, 163, 165, 218–19, 221 See also rhetoric:epideictic
emotional coherence, 34, 158, 164 epistemic, 218, 220
The New Rhetoric, 67, 68, 71, 77 personal, 218
as self-referential, 72 social, 218
Tindale, Christopher W., 16, 19, 25, 29, 38, 52n, van Eemeren, Frans H., 15, 16n, 19, 61, 62, 79,
60, 68n, 113, 129n, 168, 193, 194, 199, 84, 90n, 99n, 102n, 118n, 189, 190, 203,
207, 209, 215n, 217, 236 227, 228
Toulmin, Stephen, 14, 15, 23, 83, 87, 89, 90, 92, van Gelder, Tim, 160, 172
148, 149, 156, 232, 233, 236 von Radziewsky, Katharina, 193
Traugott, Elizabeth, 105, 236
trust, 127, 146, 147, 165 Walton, Douglas, 15n, 179, 202, 203, 236
Tversky, Amos, 163 Weidemann, Hermann, 48n, 236
Whately, Richard, 74
universal audience, 61, 65, 67, 72, 78, 88, 195n, Elements of Rhetoric, 74n
212, 213–14 Willard, Charles, 129, 130, 131, 132, 237
and cognitive environment, 223–24 Wilson, Deirdre, 102, 103n, 111–15, 144, 145, 146,
defined, 68 191, 192, 193, 194, 207n
expanded, 216–18, 218 Wilson, Emily, 149
as primary, 59 Winch, Peter, 95
as a standard of reasonableness, 63 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 125n
traditional model, 62 Woods, Tiger, 165n
validity Young, Iris Marion, 176, 177, 237

personal, 73, 206
as a standard for argumentation, 71 Zande beliefs, 95

Christopher W. Tindale-The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception-Cambridge University Press (2015) PDF

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARGUMENT

AND AUDIENCE RECEPTION

Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of

christopher w. tindale is Professor of Philosophy and Director

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

1 The role of audience in a theory of argumentation 1

2 Argumentation and its issues 20

3 Aristotle and the natures of audiences 36

4 Perelman’s audiences: a meeting of minds 58

5 Habermas and the ideal audience 79

6 Meaning and reasons 99

7 Evidence and reasons: the place of testimony 127

8 Emotion and reasons 148

9 Agency and reasons 167

11 Audiences and addressees: the experience of reception 197

12 Historical arguments and elective audiences 212

The role of audience in a theory

1.1â•… Approaching argumentation

1.2â•… Argumentative speeches and journeys

Speech #1: A new Lincoln

Speech #2: Architect of change

Speech #3: About a man

1.3â•… Rhetorical proofs

1.4â•… Theories of argumentation

1.5â•… The place of audience

Argumentation and its issues

2.1â•… Argumentation as an expression of social nature

But it is more than a matter of describing and accounting for what a

2.2â•… A dynamic view of argument

2.3â•… Consequences of an audience-centered approach

2.4â•… The structure of the study

Aristotle and the natures of audiences

3.1â•… Introduction: poetic parallels

3.2â•… Rhetoric as insight

3.4â•… What counts as evidence in the Rhetoric: the power of signs

p1: All women who have milk have given birth.

9â•‡ Barnes’ translation.

11â•‡ The Harmodius/Aristogiton argument matches the argument using Socrates:

3.5â•… Aristotle’s rhetorical audiences

Perelman’s audiences: a meeting of minds

4.1â•… Introduction: what is this audience?

4.3â•… The goals of philosophy

4.4â•… Audience adherence

4.5â•… Adherence and the epideictic genre

8â•‡ Elements of Rhetoric, pt. iii, chap. i, para. 6.

4.6â•… Perelman and composite audience

Habermas and the ideal audience

5.1â•… Introduction: Habermas and

5.2â•… The public sphere

3â•‡ See Peter Hohendahl’s (2001) very biographical discussion.

5.4â•… Dimensions of the lifeworld

5.6â•… The force of the better argument

5.7â•… Cultural differences and the universal

5.8â•… Listeners, hearers, and the universal audience

Meaning and reasons

6.2â•… Gricean pragmatics

3â•‡ Grice does not intend the list of characteristics to be exhaustive.

6.3â•… Revising Grice

6.5â•… The role of audience

6.6â•… Two important criticisms

10â•‡ Although this is a point of contention, as we will see below.

6.7â•… Relevance theory and its critique of Grice

6.8â•… Introducing Brandom