Basics of Argumentation

Everyone argues. It’s a pastime, an affliction, and for us in the senate, it is often a necessity. This course will concern itself with argumentation, but since you have argued all your life it is really an introduction to the formal study of argumentation. As you already know, arguing can be fun when done well, a curse when done poorly, and at times a skill of great importance. It is not a foreign subject, since you’ve been doing it. This course just systematically explains the process of argumentation.

First you will learn some basic concepts of formal argumentation. The first of these is the Claim. A claim is simply a declarative statement or conclusion that is asserted for acceptance. The kind of claim that is put forward most often is called an Assertion. An assertion is a claim statement that is put forward without any reasons to back it up. The statement “My world could take over your world” is an assertion. There are no reasons given as to why this is true.

The second concept is Contradiction. Contradiction for our purposes has a very specific meaning. It is two unsupported, conflicting claim statements, for instance, 1: “My world could take over your world” 2: “No, My world would take over your world.” Here, two claims have been advanced without anything to validate them.

Now, we get to the third concept, the Argument. Now, the dictionary defines an argue as “to have a disagreement; quarrel; dispute.” However, one trained in the art of argumentation (as you soon will be) would realize this is not an argument. In argumentation, an argument is a claim supported by reasons. “My world could take over your world because we have 20 star destroyers” is an argument. Here, the claim is supported by reasons. Now, you might say that it isn’t supported by reasons because only one reason is given, but two are given.

This brings us to the structure of an argument. Any argument will have a claim, followed by at least two reasons, or premises. In the argument above, the claim is “My world could take over your world.” The premise, what we call the reason, is “because we have 20 star destroyers”. The first reason is supplied by the person hearing the argument, and is called the suppressed premise. In this case, it would be “20 star destroyers are a large number of warships”. Any argument can be broken down this way, what we call a syllogistic fashion. An argument need not have conflict involved in it to be an argument. Our example could have the second planetary leader agree with the first, but the first would still have advanced an argument. There need not have be a second person at all, as there is no conflict inherent in an argument.

Now we come to the last of the concepts, Debate. A debate is the process of logically evaluating a claim by entertaining arguments for and against the claim, and then adopting or not adopting the claim as a reasonable resolution to a dispute. Debate requires arguments to be involved, or it is simple contradiction. To return to our example once more, one planetary leader stated that his planet would win on the basis that their navy had 20 star destroyers. The other stated that his planet would win because he was part of the empire and could call on its resources for defense. Now we have a debate taking place.

There are two different points of debate. Public debate focuses on the “Truth” of a resolution. Academic/competitive debate focuses on how well the participants debated for their side of the motion.

Debatable Claims

There are many issues to debate about. Some are of a factual nature, some of a value nature, and some of a policy nature. All debates have different requirements of which the advocates and opponents must be aware. This section will give an overview of the requirements attached to these three different types of propositions.

In order to compete in any forum of debate, one must first have a debatable claim. The diagram above is called the “Claim Tree”. It is a series of criteria that must be fulfilled form the point when a claim is made to the point it may be debated. In order for a claim to be arguable, it must meet the first two requirements. It must have clarity and jurisdiction of logic.

Clarity simply implies that there must be an agreement between the two parties as to what the resolution means. Debate is a linguistic activity, and uses words. Unfortunately, words can have different meanings. Many times there is genuine disagreement over what a word means, but many times one side will find it strategically beneficial to define a term a certain way. In many instances, there will be a debate over the definitions of words, and this is known as a procedural issue. The saying goes that “During a debate, debaters debate about what they are going to debate about so they can then debate about what the want to debate about.” Definitions are important, as they define what are and are not topical issues. Topical issues are arguments that are germane to the resolution under dispute, and non-topical arguments, regardless of importance, are of no value in debate.

The second requirement for a claim is jurisdiction. Jurisdiction may be defined as the willingness of the parties to submit the claim to logic and presumably abide by the result. The concept of jurisdiction involves two concepts. First, a claim must be one that is susceptible to analytical argument. If the claim falls outside the boundaries of rational demonstration, it is unarguable. The second part of this applies to the parties involved. They must be willing to willing to think rationally If one has a closed mind and refuses to listen to reason, then jurisdiction is not being granted. Meeting clarity and jurisdiction gives you an arguable claim, but one more level is needed before it is a debatable claim.

The third requirement is controversy. A claim is not debatable if no reasonable person could hold a contrary position. Debate assumes that there will be a clash of opposites. Obviously, if there are no opposites, there is no debate. The process of debate demands that there be at least two sides. These sides might be created artificially by a devil’s advocate or by a genuinely held contrary position, but if there is no opposition, there can be no debate. This brings us to the three kinds of debatable claims, or propositions, there are, factual, value, and policy.

First, we will discuss factual. Factual issues are any objective statements. They are possible to prove with empirical evidence. This doesn’t mean that the empirical evidence can be found, but if it were present, it would prove the proposition. An example of this would be “Resolved: that the Empire’s judicial system did not put enough emphasis on the rights of the accused.” Now, this may seem like a value debate, but the resolution never stated that this was harmful or beneficial, just that it was. The stock issues in a factual debate are definitions, evidence, and inference. You must define what the terms of the resolution mean, what evidence you have to support it, and have some kind of inference made from it. You could define “enough” as the amount equal to the court system of Alderaan. Then, you would give evidence that that level of emphasis was not given. Then, the fact that not enough was given would be inferred.

The second type of proposition is a value proposition. A value proposition is something of a subjective nature, and can not be proven with empirical evidence. A value proposition will likely contain words such as better, worse, unjustified, etc. The stock issue of this debate is a value criterion. The criterion is used to measure the extent of benefit or detriment asked for by the resolution. In other words, a criterion is like a litmus test.

The final type of proposition is one of policy. A policy proposition must have two major parts, an agent and an action. One theoretical example would be “Resolved: the Imperial Senate should increase member activity” The agent would be the IS, and the action would be going back to increase activity. There are four things that a policy argument must have. The first is harms. This is simply something that the status quo is doing that is wrong. For this argument, one harm might be that low activity is detrimental to the senate and could cause the subgroup to collapse. The second part of this is inherency. Inherency is showing how the status quo is incapable of solving the problem. Here, the inherency would be that the current senate structure has not and cannot promote high levels of activity. The third element is a plan. The plan is what you would do to cure the problem. One plan for this problem would be to have the senate bring back the committee system. To have a complete plan, one must have an agent of action, an agent of enforcement, and a means of paying for it. Here, the agent of action would be the Imperial Senate leaders, the agent of enforcement could be the Command Staff of the EH, and the payment would be whoever’s time that would be used to recode the senate database and reformat the group layout, etc. The forth and final piece is solvency. Any plan must have a means to solve the problem. Saying that it “just will” isn’t acceptable. For this example, stating that this plan would solve our harm because during the committee system activity was higher than it is now would be an acceptable solvency. Also, a policy debate must also have a criteria, such as cost benefit analysis, with which to judge whether the plan is viable.

Any successful case made for these propositions must be what is called a prima-facie case. This is a case, which without refutation would convince a reasonable person to adopt the resolution.

Assignments in Debate

There are four inter-related factors in any debate, the presumption, burden of proof, burden of clash, and standard of proof. Together they may be spoken of as the assignments of the debate, as they tell the affirmative and negative what they must do. An argument is won when the party with the burden of proof meets the standard of proof and overcomes presumption. Thus the concepts of burdens, presumptions, and standards are closely related. The burden answers the question of who has the task of proving an issue, presumption rests automatically with the party that doesn’t have the burden, and the standard is the degree of certainty to which the claim must be proven.

Presumption is the first thing to assign in any debate, and is intrinsic to the phrasing of the resolution itself. The first step is to analyze the resolution to determine where the status quo lies. The status quo is best defined as “the way things are now” or “the existing state of things.” The presumption should always lie with the negative, as the affirmative is held to the burden of changing our minds. An example of a proper placement would be “Resolved: that the Imperial Senate should hold weekly mandatory meetings on IRC”. The presumption is given to the negative here, because if you do not adopt the resolution, the status quo is maintained.

The Burden of Proof is the reverse of enjoying presumption, and is a burden to establish good reasons for adopting the resolution. This is shown through one of the most elementary rules of debate, “The party which asserts a claim must prove it.” At the start of the debate, the affirmative asserts a resolution. Therefore, by the end of the debate, the affirmative must prove the resolution, or lose the debate. Also, while the affirmative has the burden of proof, both the affirmative and negative have a burden to prove their specific claims. This is called a burden of proof. Clearly when the debate begins, only the affirmative has a burden of proof. They must substantiate the specific claims they put forward as justification for adoption of the resolution. In theory, the negative doesn’t have a burden of proof which they must meet, because in theory they don’t have to put forward any arguments. If after hearing the affirmative argumentation in favor of a resolution the critic is not convinced, than it is a de facto negative win.

No matter what is used to explain the role of presumptions and burdens, the negative cannot simply rest on it’s presumption and await victory. Once the party with the burden of proof has set forth it’s argument, the opposing party must respond to the argument or it is considered granted. The burden of clash is the burden to respond to the opponent’s arguments, or by silence grant it. This burden of response or “clash” grows out of one of the oldest principals of argumentation, “Silence means consent.”

The last assignment is the standard of proof, or the degree of certainty to which the claim must be proven in order to warrant it’s adoption by the judicator. Common standards of proof are possibility, plausibility, probability, and certainty. Possibility is the lowest standard and the easiest to uphold. Basically, it means that if something can happen, no matter the odds of likelihood, it is possible. Plausibility suggests that the claim has a relatively good chance of being true, but one that is still less than likely to be true. Probability states that the claim will be more likely true than not. The forth standard of certainty is expressed in criminal case law as proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”. With no pun intended, one might say that believing something as a certainty is a conviction in which we have considerable faith.

Types of Arguments

Here is a list of most of the different arguments that one can put together in debate. Each one has questions that must be answered to find if it is a correct argument.

Testimony Argument: an argument that uses as it’s support the testimonial conclusion of another person.

1. Is the source an expert?
2. Is the source unbiased?
3. Is support available?

Causal Argument: suggests that some instance or event forces, gives rise to, or helps produce a particular effect.

1. Does the alleged cause proceed the effect?
2. Is the cause relevant to the effect?
3. Is the cause an inherent fact in producing the effect?
4. Can other possible causal explanations be ruled out?

Example Argument: an argument that examines the instances within a given classification or population in order to find the patterns or similarities within the grouping.

1. Are the examples relevant to the claim?
2. Are there a sufficient number of examples?
3. Are the examples typical?
4. Are counter examples insignificant?

Analogy Argument: Making a comparison between two similar cases and inferring that what is true in one case is true in another.

1. Are only literal (instead of figurative) analogies used?
2. Are the instances similar in significant detail?
3. Are the differences non-critical?

Sign Argument: Inferring relationships or correlation between two variables. This means that one sign is given, and conclusion is reached based on this through reasoning. One such example would be if upon signing on to IRC you saw the chancellor say “Thank you all for coming, I hope to see you next week. Stay tuned for trivia”. You would then reason, through inference, that a senate weekly meeting had just taken place, even though you had not witnessed it or had anyone state that one had just happened.

1. Is the known variable relevant to the unknown variable?
2. Is the sign relationship inherent?
3. Are other signs that reinforce the initial sign present?

Statistics: The use of numbers; conclusions to studies, results of opinion polls, or total number of people or objects within a certain classification.

1. Are the statistics descriptive or inferential? A descriptive statistic is one where you are looking at the entirety of a given classification. An example would be saying that 80% of senators hold the title of SEN. You would check the entire body of senators, and see how many SEN’s there are. An inferential statistic, on the other hand, takes a small cross section of the grouping to try to create a picture of the whole. Here, if you were to poll 40 senators and find that 90% of them favored the party/chapter system over the old committee system, you could infer that most of the senate would hold that opinion.
2. For inferential statistics:
   1. Is a representative sample collected?
   2. Is the sample size adequate?
3. Is the questioning technique appropriate?
4. Is either under or over representation a concern? (For example, all you surveyed people are from one group)
5. What is the central tendency utilized? (Mean, Median, or Mode)

Argument by Definition: determining whether something should be included within the realm of a particular definition or classification.

1. Is the definition clear?
2. Is the definition the accepted definition?
3. Does the phenomenon fit within the definition?

Now, you should have an understanding of the basics. Good luck on the exam!

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