Argumentation practice
without argumentation theory

The following remarks are based upon A. C. Graham’s views on the Chinese way of argumentation, as presented in his Disputers of the Tao. Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (1989). He writes (1989, p.  168) :

Although well aware of the difficulties of relating names to objects in the art of discourse, [the Moist] seems to see the lucid and self-evident relations between names as raising no theoretical problems. Chinese civilization never abstracted the forms in which we observe it reasoning in practice, as in this curiously familiar-sounding syllogism of Wang Ch’ung:

Man is a thing: though honored as king or noble, by nature he is no different from other things. No thing does not die, how can man be immortal?

Wang Ch’ung [1] uses a valid syllogism, that combines true propositions producing a sound conclusion, « Humans are beings, no being is immortal, no human is immortal.” In the unfriendly language of traditional logic, this reasoning is described as a syllogism of the fourth figure, said Galenic, and in the Camenes mode: « all H is B; no B is I; therefore no H is I. »
Wang Ch’ung presents this incontrovertible conclusion as a so-called “rhetorical » question, which is a challenge to any opponent (Toulmin, 1958: 97); this introduces a dialectical movement within syllogistic reasoning.

A little further on, Graham attributes to Mozi’s disciples

A sense of rigorous proof [combined with] a disregard for logical forms. (1989, p. 169)

Hsün-tzu, like the later Mohists, has no deductive forms like( the syllogism, but does mark off deductive inference as a separate type of thinking. (id. p. 267)

How is this possible? An analogy can be drawn from language and grammar. According to specialists, the ancient Chinese had no grammar [2]; and they certainly spoke excellent Chinese. By the same token, they did not develop a logic (an art of reasoning), and they argued very well. In other words, it is not necessary to have a clear view of what is a valid and sound argument, in order to master an effective practice of such arguments.
This conclusion can (a fortiori?) be generalized to non-syllogistic forms of argumentation: A theory of argumentation is not a prerequisite for an effective practice of argumentation.

The point of departure of the workshop and the conference from which this volume [Powerful arguments] emerged is the striking paradox between the abundance of practices and the virtual absence of theories related to the making of powerful arguments in late imperial China. (Hofman, Kurtz, Levine,  2020, p. 1) [3]

One can develop a clear idea and an effective critical argumentative practice without formalization, that is, without developing a a logical meta-language about the process of argumentation, and the correlative critical operations.

It follows that the teaching of argumentation can do without argumentation theory. Western-style theories of argumentation are not essential to the coherent articulation of ideas. Argumentation can be taught by showing and discussing paradigmatic examples of argument. Such examples can be paraphrased, denied, contradicted, generalized; their presuppositions and implications can be explored without ever leaving the level of natural discourse.

[1] Mozi (c. 479 – c.392 B.C.), eponymous author of the work Mozi.
Wang Chu’ng = Wang Chong, Lun Heng — Philosophical Essays, ch.24; trad. Forke V,I, 335f.  (Note Graham). Wang Chong, 27 – c. 97 AD, « developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic view of the world and man, and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe » (Wikipedia).

[2] « In ancient China, a few centuries before the Christian era, linguistic reflection had already begun to produce excellent results: we find important reflections on the nature of language, very elaborate dictionaries, systems of phonological description and dialectology. However, […] the analysis of grammatical structures is practically absent. Apart from an enormous production of studies on individual words or groups of words, there is almost nothing on the organic description of language » (Casacchia, 1989: 431).

[3] Hofmann M., J. Kurtz & A. D. Levine (2020), Powerful Arguments — Standards of Validity in Late Imperial China. Leiden, Brill.