Argumentations Series Summary

Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning

Commentary: This has been a series on effective reasoning as it applies to project management. Using proper argumentation in a project while vetting risk, options, objectives, strategies, and workaround solutions can strengthen a project's performance, improve communications, and develop a sense of unity. Effective argumentations comes down to building the strongest case for a claim. In this series I will be summarizing points made by David Zarefsky in his Teaching Company coursework as well as drawing on other resources.   This series of posts may be reviewed at the Argumentation Series Posts link. I have been compressing several sessions into a single post. The same is true with this post. I have compressed several sessions into one in order to complete the series and move on to other topics.

This post is a combination of a light review and summary with some thoughts about argumentation. While I did not comment on every post in the series, I'll try to clarify some points in this post and return to some ideas in earlier posts.  

Through the posts there was considerable argumentation jargon was presented as in most disciplines.  I want to summarize some of the more pertinent terms here:

Circular Reasoning: The act of presenting evidence that supports a claim, then repeating that claim as evidence resulting in no progression in the argument.

Claim: A statement of fact, definition, value, policy, or occurence that an audience is asked to accept.

Credibility: The believability of a source, the product of competence, trustworthiness, good will, and dynamism as those are understood by the audience.

Deduction: Reasoning in which the evidence supports the claim with certainty. No new information is present in the claim, at least implicitly, than what is in the evidence.

Epistemic: Modal logic that deals with the formalization of or relating to knowledge concepts, such as the origin, range, nature, certainty, and limits of knowledge as well as ignorance.
Evidence: Statements offered in support of a claim. The character of the evidence is affected by the range of its truths; correlation to fact and/or epistemic assertations.

Formal Reasoning: Lines of logic that follows from evidence purely as a matter of form equated to mathematical reasoning, deduction, and symbolic logic with certainty. Context and content are not important.

Induction:  Reasoning that makes inferences based on probability of the evidence supporting the claim. Often the claim contain information not present in the evidence.

Inference: A mental move or quantum leap from evidence to a claim in such a manner as to support and accept the claim based on the evidence.

Informal Reasoning: Reasoning that is not a matter of form in which context and content are important.
Issue: A question that arises during an argument and vital is the arguments performance and/or success. Thus, the issue must be resolved.

Resolution: The ultimate claim an advocate seeks to prove or disprove and the substance of the controversy.

Stasis:  The 'point of rest' or the focal point at which the force of assertation meets the force of denial. It is the point around which the argument hoovers.

Arguments Between Friends And Experts

This session moves beyond strategies and apprasials to the practice of argumentation. Spheres of the argument are distinctive sets of expectations that provide contexts for arguing. Dialogues are the mode of discourse and participants seek to resolve any disagreements with critical discussion and coalescent argumentation as the way ahead.

In pluralistic and multi-cultural societies, argumentation becomes decentralized due to the abscence of universal standards for argument evaluation. Thus, a dependence on context that center on personal, technical, and public spheres.  Migrating between spheres during an argument is not uncommon. Personal concerns can be cast as public matters such as child abuse or abortion.

The personal sphere of argumentation has several dominant characterisitics such as focusing on resolving disagreements that affect themselves; naturally occurring speech with overt opposition apparent; dialogue is dominant mode of discourse; and there is little preparation as evidence and materials are what comes to mind.  Ideally, the argument would be a critical discusion modelled after cooperative problem solving reflecting normaitve standards. Typically, this involves coalescent argumentation having goals for all parties in which the discussion seeks to find ways to meet them. In short, typical of the democratic process.   

Unfortunately, arguementation within the personal sphere falls way short of the ideal standard. Interactions are often devoted to ending but not resolving disagreements. ie Let's agree to disagree. There is often a heavy investment in the outcome generating a passionate tenor. Often baggage and beliefs are brought into the discourse that adds no value to the agrument but affects it.  Rationales are often incomplete and require reading between the lines. There are inequalities in skill, social influence, and resources available to the proponents.  Nonetheless, argumentation in the personal sphere should strive towards the norm of critical discussion in order to resolve interpersonal disputes.

Argument among experts takes place in specialized fields with specific patterns of inference and appraisal. These fields are defined by the subject matter, worldview, or orientation. sometimes the dispute is across fields and become interdisciplinary disputes. Thus, we will explore resolutions and processes for these arguments which most often occur in the technical sphere.

Each field has its own norms and conventions that define the context for argumentation among its membership that is frequently not available outside the membership. Legal argumentation is such an example that reasons with rules applying relevant rules to the facts. Often the illusion of a objective and deductive conclusion is made in order to sway the resolution in their favor. There are compications to legal argumentation such as facts are subject to perceptions and judgments; there can be numerous relevant rules or none; numerous interpretations may emerge; and the model is normative from which practice may diverge. Strong patterns persist such as standards for evidence; literal analogy establishes thelink between rules and the case; authority defends warrants; and the stasis in place determines where the case belongs in the legal system. Specialized knowledge is required inlegal argumentation to handle relevant rules, burden of proof, and inferential procedures.

Scientific argumentation is more concise. The goal is to account for some phenomenon either by predictive outcomes or by descriptive explanation. This is achieved by developing a theory then 'normal science' applies and refines it. Claims are factual about the phenomenon and evidence is factual about the theory.  'Revolutionary science' calls into question fundamental paradigms.this shifts to a discussion of theories rather than the phenomenon. Paradigm disputes are settled by means other than facts. Ultimately, specialized knowledge is required as one must be familiar with the knowledge field and understand the scientific method.

Managerial arguments are another specialized field.  There are choices and decisions made under austere constraints on information and time. managers use simplifying instruments to guide decision making such as ratios, incrementalism, and satisficing. Arguments are about the means to achieve the objectives and values; ie measurable organizational value.

Other specialized argument include ethical and religious debates that focus on determining what is right.

Finally, there are times when it is not apparent what field the controversy belongs. This raises questions about how to proceed and who is the most qualified to argue.  Often this results in an interfield dispute that requires a means of translation. Interfield borrowing is one option and transferring the argument to the public sphere is another option.

Ends of Argumentation

Through the series we looked at how controveries begin and were conducted. The focus now shifts to how controversies end.  Ideally, the parties to an anagreement ending the discourse. However, there ae other outcomes such as time runs out and a judgment is rendered unilaterally; the discourse is overcome by events; conceptual breakthroughs result in a paradigm shift; and an undesirable outcome is a perpetual controversy in which new evidence or concerns increase the divide. These are more practical ends.

The most obvious end of argumentation is more academic serving collective judgment and decision making. Human affairs tend to be  uncertain and contingent, but require decisions. Argumentation is the instrument for making decisions under the condition of uncertainty.  

Argumentation serves a purpose of knowing or gaining intellectual perspective. Charles Pierce, a pragmatrist philosopher, identified four ways of knowing; tenacity, authority, self-evidence, and verification. Verification, specifically, is open to inspection, replication, and outcomes arise from design and not chance. However, verification is not the only acceptable path to knowledge. Topics that involve qualities like values, probabilities, predictions, and recommendations are known through thealternative analogues of which argumentation embraces. This view supports the realm of the uncertain as truth is relative to the argument that advances it and the resultant interactions.

In final conclusion, the culture of argumentation is an activity to be embraced and practiced rather than depised.

Commentary: This concludes the argumentation series. There are many excellent points that are made regarding argumentation that apply well to project management. Project managers should have a strong grasp of the argumentation process, learn to divest emotional pleas, and focus on that which moves a project forward. 

One final note on truth and argumentation. The matter is not about winning a personal argument but instead arriving at the truth having a well justified position. Argumentation is really about friendly collaborative problem solving, in this case a dispute.  The coursework tended towards a relativistic truth based on audiences that are pluralistic and multi-cultural. This brings the challenge of worldviews into the argumentation discipline. Thus, not only is the range of truth from correspondant to epistemic, truth is also relative to the worldview.  Fortunately, all humans aspire to a common set of moral and to some extent ethical principles. However, there are some conditional stipulations some worldviews place on ethics such as lying. For instance, one worldview forbids lying among thier own membership and actually makes it a moral imperative to lie to those outside the worldview. Project managers working in pluralistic cultures should appeal to the common moral and ethical principles knowing the limitation they may be confronted with during argumentation processes.  In the end, for the project manager knowing the people involved and thier effects and impact on a project is most important towards properly positioning the argument.  

References:

Spence, G (1995) How to argue and win everytime. 1st Ed. St Martin's Griffin, NY.

Zarefsky, D. (2005) Argumentation: the study of effective reasoning. 2nd Ed. the Teaching Company. Chantilly, VA