1. Argument of progress

By definition, “progress moves forward”; the argument of progress valorizes the most recent as the best. If F1 and F2 belong to the same category, if F2 comes after F1, then F2 is preferable to F1.

The argument from progress rejects the authority of elders and their practices, which are deemed outdated; the contemporary practices which follow their model are dismissed as regressive, indeed repulsive.

Cats are no longer burnt on cathedral forecourts, animal fights were banned in 1833, owls are no longer nailed on the doors of the barns, and rats are no longer crucified as targets for darting. Whatever may be said in bullfight circles, bullfighting with killing is doomed. (Le Monde, Sept. 21-22, 1986)

The argument is organized upon the following operations. Firstly, bullfighting is categorized as a case of animal abuse, whereby it is allocated to the same category as burning cats, organizing cockfights, nailing owls to doors and crucifying rats. In a second step, the practices belonging to this category are listed in the chronological order in which they disappeared. This factual line is then extrapolated to lead to the conclusion that bullfights should also be condemned in view of society’s progress — and the sooner the better.

2. Argument of novelty

Lat. ad novitatem; novitas, “novelty; condition of a man who, the first of his family, reaches an eminent position (senator)” (Gaffiot [1934], Novitas). Novitas is opposed to nobilitas. Its argumentative orientation can be positive (the dynamic of the novitas is opposed to the decadent nobilitas), or negative: the homo novus, the “New Man”, coming out of nowhere, is held in suspicion.

2.1 Traditional orientation 

The argument of progress reverses the traditional view of the higher appreciation granted to the old, particularly in the religious sphere, “the novitas is […] the index of heresy” (Le Brun 2011, §1). The argumentative orientation of the judgment “this is a novelty!” has been reversed.

The argument of progress is opposed to the argument of decay of civilization, which attributes all virtues to the ancients.

2.2 Contemporary orientation

The contemporary interpretation links the argument of novelty to the argument of progress: “what has just come out” is “super” exciting, and “déjà vu” is of little value. This argument values ​​innovation over routine, and the new over the old. It underlies the call:

Be the first to adopt it!

According to this rule, the recently published handbook would be necessarily better than its predecessors, and, in politics, the newest candidate is already seen as the much-needed savior.

The syzygy is a different vision of progress, as a passage from an imperfect world to a perfect and immobile world.

3. Ancients and moderns

The argument of progress structures the eternal quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. In its radical form, the argument affirms the absolute superiority of the latter over the former, in the domains of arts and culture as well as the sciences. Ultimately, this superiority would be that of the modern individual over his or her ancestors. In a relativized form, the argument of progress is compatible with the individual superiority of the ancients, “we are dwarves on the shoulders of the giants”, although not taller, we can see further ahead. This is classically refuted by the objection that the lice on the head of the giant sees no further than the giant.

The concept of presupposition can be approached as a logical or as a linguistic issue.

1. A logical issue

The problem of presupposition was first addressed within the field of logic. The logic of the analyzed proposition postulates that propositions such as “all As are Bs” have two truth-values, the true and the false. The problem arises when the reference of A and B is void (there are neither A nor B), as in “unicorns can fly (are flying beings)” or “no unicorn is a dragon”. In this case, is the proposition “all As are Bs” true or false? Let us consider the declaration “the king of France is bald”, as said in 1905. It is impossible to attribute a truth-value to this statement, since in 1905, and still today, the French Republic has no king (Russell 1905).

From the point of view of logical technique, it is sufficient to add the premises “there are As”, and “there are Bs”, or “there is one, and just one King of France”. An apparently mono-propositional statement such as “the king of France is bald” is then translated into logical language via the conjunction of three propositions, each having its own truth-value:

 “there is a King of France” & “there is only one King of France” & “he is bald”.

In 1905 or 2017, the first of the three propositions is false. It follows that the conjunction of logical propositions representing the statement “the king of France is bald” is simply false. This analysis was criticized for failing to reflect the linguistic intuition of the ordinary speaker, for whom the statements “there is a King of France” and “this King is bald” do not have the same status in the original sentence. This is true, but the objection is irrelevant, since formal logic does not aim to represent linguistic intuition, but wants to solve a technical problem, and this is what it does.

2. A linguistic issue

Ordinary statements can synthetize different judgments, having different semantic and discursive statuses.

2.1 The multi-layered structure of meaning

The presupposition is defined as an element of the semantic content of the utterance that resists negation and interrogation. The statement “Peter no longer smokes” presupposes that “Peter used to smoked”, and poses that “now, Peter does not smoke”. The negative statement “Peter has not stopped smoking” and the interrogative “has Peter stopped smoking?” share this presupposed content “Peter used to smoke”. Negation and interrogation deal with the posed content (“Peter smokes now”), and do not concern the presupposed content.

This multi-layered structure of sentences is one of the major features which differentiate statements made in ordinary language from logical propositions.

2.2 Presupposition as a speech act and the “many questions” issue

Ducrot redefines presupposition as a strategic action (an illocutionary act) made with the aim of influencing, that is to say, restricting the speech possibilities of the conversational partner. The act of presupposition is a discursive power grab by which the speaker performs “an act of legal value, and therefore an illocutionary act […] [this act] transforms the speech possibilities of the interlocutor, […] modifies the listener’s right to speak” (1972, p. 91).

Consider the following question:

Interviewer — What are you going to do to fight corruption within your own party?

The question presupposes that “there are corrupt people and practices within your party”. The interviewee is given a choice:

(i) Either he or she accepts the presupposed claim and gives an answer within the range of pre-formatted, expected answers such as:

Interviewee — I’ll exclude (suspend) all suspects (the members under investigation).

This answer respects the linguistic orientation of the question. It falls perfectly within the frame of dialogue as established by the first turn. The interviewee submits to the interviewer.

(ii) He or she might also reject the presupposed claim:

Interviewee — To my knowledge, there is no (proved) case of corruption within my party

This second answer reframes the routine consensual dialogue; the interviewee rejects the claim made by the interviewer, and the dialogue takes on a character, becoming uncompromising and polemical, opening an argumentative₂ situation structured by the issue “are there (proved) cases of corruption in the party?” The rejection of the presupposed assumption “[is] always regarded as aggressive: it personalizes the debate, which turns into a quarrel. […] To attack the opponent’s assumptions is to attack the adversary himself” (Ducrot 1972, p. 92). The presupposition seeks to impose an “ideological framework” (id., p. 97) on the later dialogue, that is, to direct the partner’s speech. S. Many Questions; Conditions of Discussion; Persuasion.

It goes without saying that presupposition phenomena are not limited to dialogue, but, as always, dialogue serves to clarify any issues. A monologue that would not respect its own presuppositions would be inconsistent, while, in a dialogue, the rejection of a presupposition is contentious. In reality, dialogue (i) develops under the same conditions as a monologue.

The argument from the precedent corresponds to the topic n° 11 of Aristotle’s Rhetoric:

Another line of argument is founded upon some decision already pronounced, whether on the same subject or on one like it or contrary to it. (Rhet., II, 23, 11; RR, p. 365)

“Judgment” not only refers to the sentence of a court but to any assessment or decision taken in the past, in ordinary life as well as in the political sphere or in the legal domain. And if the cause has not been settled in a formal assembly, it may have been by such authorities as known fables, parables or examples, proverbs or celebrated verses (Lausberg [1960], § 426).

Judgments are made in the context of past judgments concerning cases “of the same type”, that is belonging to the same legal category, S. Categorization. The importance granted to the precedent is a requirement of continuity and consistency between decisions made in the past and the decision to make, a particular application of the non-contradiction principle. The structural coherence of the involved discursive field is thus strengthened, and guarded against any ad hominem charge addressed to the institution, S. Ad hominem.

In much the same way as the argument ab exemplo, the argument from precedent motivates a decision or interpretation by relying upon data or examples drawn from tradition. It is a conservative principle, which limits innovation in all domains in which it applies. As such, it combines well with arguments appealing to “the wisdom of our ancestors” (Bentham, 1824; S. Political argument; Authority; Progress.

The precedent principle progresses in the following stages:

(i) A problem, P1, a case about which a decision has to be made.
(ii) Research of similar problems and cases, resulting in
(iii) A categorization: this case is similar to a prior case P0; it falls within the same category as P0, S. Analogy (II); Categorization.
(iv) The decision, judgment, evaluation … E was made about P0;
(v) By application of the rule of justice, a similar judgment has to be made about P1. “Similar” means here the same judgment, a judgment proportional, or opposite; or, more simply, a judgment consistent with E.

The invocation of the precedent can be blocked at the second stage, where it can be argued that there are essential differences between P1 and the previous case P0.

The appeal to the precedent saves time and energy. The problem of judgment is automatically solved as soon as analogy is drawn between the problematic fact and an established fact.

1. Pathetic argument

Pathetic as evaluative
A participant can dismiss an argument she utterly rejects as “a pathetic, pitiful argument” because childish, void or desperate. One can say “I find this argument pathetic” (evaluation), but not “I find this argument a pari”, only “In my view, this is an argument a pari” (description).
The label pathetic argument is evaluative and can be applied to any kind of argument scheme.

Pathetic as descriptive
The label “pathetic argument” can be descriptively applied to a variety of arguments based on negative or positive consequences. The conclusion is deemed impossible and rejected because it would frustrate the arguer; or taken for granted because agreeable to her.

I fear that P, so not-P.
I wish P, so P
It can’t rain on Sunday, our picnic would be ruined!
This is not possible, we couldn’t manage the consequences:

— Syldavia cannot suspend its payment, that is impossible, nobody knows what might happen, actually we wouldn’t know how to deal with such a situation.
— Such pollution is unthinkable, it would make thousands of victims.
— If this criticism were right, what would become of our discipline?

The pathetic argument applies to the field of knowledge a style of argument quite common in the field of practical action:

I wish that P, so I strive to achieve P, I pray for P, I try to bring about P.
I fear P, so I try to avoid, prevent P…

But wishing P is different from striving to achieve P. That kind of  argument can systematically be evaluated as pathetic that is, “naive and desperate”.

The pathetic argument is currently designated as the argument ad consequentiam or the appeal to consequences. Here, the pathetic argument is considered as just one particular kind of appeal to consequences.

Pathetic arguments are not pathemic arguments. Pathemic is a derivative from pathos; one can speak of a pathemic arguments to refer to ad passiones arguments, that is, to any emotion-based argument, such as appeal to anger, enthusiasm, pity, etc.
Pathetic, “pitiful”, it can only be considered as a sub-sort of the pathemic argument.

2. “Pathetic fallacy”

The label “pathetic fallacy” refers to the anthroTpomorphic attribution of human feelings to non-human, non-living beings; it condemns the use of the rhetorical figure of personification. The expression was coined by John Ruskin:

I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke,
They rowed her in across the rolling foam
The cruel, crawling foam.
The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ‘pathetic fallacy’.
John Ruskin, Of the pathetic fallacy, [1856][1]

The label pathetic argument is consonant with the label pathetic fallacy. The pathetic fallacy condemns the personnification of natural world, while the pathetic argument seems to consider that the natural world is subject to the human desires.Both moves blurs the boundaries between the human and the natural world.

[1] In Modern Painters, vol. III, part IV, London: Smith Elder, p. 160. Alton Locke is a novel by Charles Kingsley (1850).

Within the framework of classical Aristotelian logic, a paralogism is defined as an invalid syllogism. These paralogisms of deduction are “arguments of traditional syllogistic form which break one or another of a well-known set of rules” (Hamblin 1970, p. 44).

1. Syllogism rules

Traditional logic has established the following rules, which make it possible to eliminate invalid syllogisms. The following syllogisms respect all the rules of the syllogism; they are valid.

A syllogism contains three terms.

From two negative premises, nothing can be concluded

no M is P
no S is M
No conclusion

If a premise is negative, the conclusion must be negative

no M is P                       the major premise is negative.
some S are M,
so some S are not P           the conclusion is negative

In a valid syllogism, the medium term must be distributed at least once

no M is P                       M is distributed (universal).
all S are M,
so no S is P                     the conclusion is valid.

If a premise is particular, the conclusion is particular

no M is P
some S are M                  the minor premise is particular.
So, some S are not P          the conclusion is particular.

2. Paralogisms

A paralogism is a syllogism that does not respect one or several preceding rules. Of the 256 modes of the syllogism, 19 modes are valid; therefore, a syllogism can be fallacious in 237 different ways. The question of whether it “seems” conclusive or not is irrelevant. The term paralogism designates nothing other than a mistaken calculation.

The following are key forms of syllogistic paralogisms. The first form corresponds to the paralogism of homonymy, the others to an inadequate distribution of qualities and quantities.

(1) Paralogism of four terms.
(2) Paralogism concluding from two negative premises.
(3) Paralogism drawing a positive conclusion from a negative premise.
(4) Paralogism of the undistributed middle term.
(5) Paralogism of universal conclusion from a particular major.
(6) Paralogism of universal conclusion from a particular minor.

Examples

— The following paralogism consists of four terms:

Metals are simple bodies.
Bronze is a metal.
* Therefore bronze is a simple body.

Bronze is not a simple body but an alloy. In the minor premise, bronze is said to be a metal because it looks like an authentic metal such as iron, it can be melted and molded, etc. In the major premise, metal is used with its strict meaning. Metal is homonymous, and the syllogism actually has four terms; S. Ambiguity.

— The following paralogism concludes from two negative premises:

Some B are not C              some rich are not arrogant
No A is B                              no poet is rich.
* Therefore No A is C *       no poet is arrogant.

— The following paralogism concludes universally from a particular major:

all A are B                            all men are mortal
no C is A                               no dog is man
* Therefore No C is B          * no dog is mortal.

In the major premise, “all men are mortal”, the major term, mortal, is not distributed: this premise says nothing of all mortals, but only of certain mortals, namely, that “they are men”. Yet the conclusion “No dog is mortal” claims something of all mortals: “no mortal is a dog”. So the major term is distributed in the conclusion and not in the major premise. The conclusion thus affirms more than the premise, which is impossible.

3. Evaluation using the rules of the syllogism

Syllogisms are traditionally evaluated on the basis of a system of rules (§1), in a step-by-step process:

— Check the number of terms, and propositions.
— Identify the middle term, the major term, and the minor term.
— Determine the quantity and quality of the premises and conclusion.
— Identify the distribution of terms.
— Check the organization of the distribution of terms: check that the middle term is distributed at least once. If the major term or the minor term is distributed in the conclusion, make sure that they are also distributed in the premises; etc.

This laborious method is based on the notion, at the very least unintuitive, of the quantity of the predicates. It shifts the analyst’s attention from the understanding of the structure and articulation of the syllogism, from what the syllogism asserts, to the fragmented application of a system of rules. It may develop the ability to apply an algorithm, but it is far from an everyday critical thinking process.

4. Evaluation with Venn diagrams

The use of Venn diagram provides a more intuitive and clear base for syllogism assessment. Three intersecting circles represent the three sets which correspond to the three terms. The assertion made by each premise is carried to the corresponding circle. If a premise asserts that a set (made up of a circle or a portion of a circle) contains no elements, that circle or the portion of a circle is blacked out (striped). If a premise asserts that a set (id.) contains one or more elements, a cross is placed in the circle or portion of a circle. A portion of a circle is therefore either black, has a cross, or remains white. When white, nothing can be said about it.

The data of the premises having thus been plotted on the diagram, the result can be compared with what the conclusion asserts, the diagram shows whether the syllogism is or is not valid.

Consider the syllogism:

Some rich people are not arrogant
No poet is rich
* No poet is arrogant

The three intersecting circles represent the rich (R), the poets (P) and the arrogant (A), respectively.

— “Some rich are not arrogant”: consider the circle of the rich and that of the arrogant; put a cross outside of their intersection: there are some people within this zone.
— “No poet is rich”: consider the circle of the poets and that of the rich, and blacken their intersection: there is nobody within this zone.
— Finally, look at the circle of poets and that of the arrogant people. The conclusion affirms that the intersection of the circle of poets with that of the arrogant is black; but we see that this is not the case; it is partly white. This syllogism is a paralogism.

Consider the syllogism:

No M is P
All S is M
Therefore No S is P

The three intersecting circles represent the M set, the S set and the P set.

— “No M is P”: the intersection of the circles M and P is black (empty).
— “Every S is M”: the non-intersecting zone of the circles S and P is black (empty).
— Looking at the S circle the P circle, we can see that the intersection is black (empty); this is precisely what the conclusion claims, “No S is P”. This syllogism is valid.

5. Paralogism of quantifier permutation

By generalization, the word paralogism can refer to any error made in applying the rules of formal logic. For example, the paralogism of quantification is an error committed when the existential and the universal quantifier are permuted:

All human beings have a father; so they have the same father

For every human H, there is a human F, such that F is the father of H
* Therefore There is a human being F such that for every human being H, F is the father of H.

The following passage may contain such a paralogism, albeit complicated by a fallacious verbiage that is to say an eloquent amplification, S. Verbiage:

And all the geniuses of science, including Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Buler, Clarke, Cauchy, speak like [Newton]. They all lived in true adoration of the harmony of the worlds and of the all-powerful hand that threw them into space and sustained them.
And this conviction is not based on impulses, like poets. Figures, theorems of geometry give it its necessary basis. And their reasoning is so simple that children would follow it. They establish, first, that matter is essentially inert. It follows that, if a material element is in motion, it is because another has constrained it; for every movement of matter is necessarily a communicated movement. They thus claim that since there is an immense movement in the sky, which carries away in the infinite deserts billions of suns of a weight which crushes the imagination, it is because there is an all-powerful motor. They establish, secondly, that this movement of the heavens presupposes the solving of the problems of calculation, which have required thirty years of study, etc.
Ém. Bougaud, [Christianity and the Present Times], 1883.

[1] (My italics).
[1] Em. Bougaud, Le Christianisme et le temps présent, t. I. Paris: Poussielgue Frères, 5th ed., 1883.

1. Arguing for P weakens P

Arguing for P weakens P, firstly in virtue of the grounds substantiating the discourse against the arguments, which is often the same as the discourse against the debate, S. Debate. This discourse develops as follows:

People don’t accept living in doubt, not to being committed to some cause, not knowing, not having an opinion on everything, not challenging the other’s opinions. They are ready to argue for or against all and everything. They relish dispute, and are inherently unable to dispute, as shown by the Port-Royal philosophers. Disputes are just substitutes for fights or playground games, they always produce more heat than light. Querulousness is a disease. The will to be right, to attack and defend is the transparent mask of the will to power. Our most entrenched opinions are not grounded in argument, but in our reptilian brain, we don’t argue, we just reformulate our opinions. Conclusion: let us rather strive to clearly say what we have to say, etc., etc.

Secondly, arguing for P weakens P because argument-based knowledge is inferential, i.e., indirect knowledge. Indirect knowledge is frequently considered inferior to direct knowledge, which is expressed in a simple, plain statement of fact, especially to direct, revelation-based religious knowledge, S. Self-Evidence. Newman expressed this idea in particularly energetic words, first in the epigraph of his Grammar of Assent (1870), taken from St. Ambrose, “it did not please God to save his people through dialectic” (“Non in dialecticà complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum”), and further:

Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion. […] No one, I say, will die for his own calculations[1]: he dies for realities. (Id., p. 73)

To most men, argument makes the point in hand only more doubtful, and considerably less impressive. (Id., p. 74)

Arguing along the same line, Thomas Aquinas, when discussing the question of “whether one ought to dispute with unbelievers in public?”, envisages the following objection to a positive answer:

Objection 3: Further, disputations are conducted by means of arguments. But an argument is a reason in settlement of a dubious matter: whereas things that are of faith, being most certain, ought not to be a matter of doubt. Therefore one ought not to dispute in public about matters of faith. (ST, Part 2, 2, Quest 10, Art 7)

Arguments develop from a question; they are mirrored in counter-arguments, attested or conceivable. The same doubt is cast upon both positions. This explains the existence of the paradoxes of argumentation: to contest a position is both to accept that one’s own becomes debatable and to acknowledge the attacked position as debatable. This explains why the first step in the process of legitimizing a new position involves opening a debate about it and, to do so, one must first find some opponents.

2. Producing a question legitimates the variety of answers

Should there be a “scientific and public debate” on the issue of whether there were gas chambers in Nazi Germany? This is exactly what the revisionist Roger Garaudy has demanded: the organization of a debate would legitimize the various positions taken in this debate.

Roger Garaudy has a persisting doubt about the existence of gas chambers
Later in the book, Roger Garaudy evokes Shoah, the film of Claude Lanzmann, which he considers a “stinker”. ‘You are talking about “Shoah business”, you say that this film only brings testimonials without demonstration. This is a way of saying that the gas chambers do not exist’, suggests the President [of the Court]. ‘Certainly not’ protests Roger Garaudy. ‘Until a scientific and public debate is held on the issue, doubt will be allowed’. (Le Monde, 11-12 January 1998, p. 7)

Here, Garaudy claims the third party position. He may even say that the president fallaciously argues from ignorance — saying that P is not proved is not claiming that non-P. The refutation must take into account the contextual knowledge: here the affirmation is false, because the historical and scientific work is done, has been published and libraries stay opened late into the night. We are exactly in the situation of the Aristotelian indisputability, S. Conditions of Discussion.

3. Refuting P reinforces P; but not to, even more

To be criticized is much better than to be ignored. Being at the center of a polemic may be an ideal and comfortable position. Seeking somebody who can put forward an argument that contradicts one’s own is an argumentative strategy which gives initial legitimacy to a viewpoint. Refuting and opposing counter-arguments generates a question where there was none, and this question, by feedback, legitimizes all the speeches that give it an answer. The proponent is weak since he or she bears the burden of proof, but strong because he or she creates a question.

The historian P. Vidal-Naquet describes this argumentative trap as follows in the case of the negationist discourse.

I long hesitated before writing these pages on the alleged revisionism, about a book whose editors tell us without laughing that, “Faurisson’s arguments are serious. They must be answered”. The reasons for not speaking were multiple, but of unequal value. […] Finally, was not replying accrediting the idea that there was indeed debate, and to publicize a man who is passionately greedy of it? […]
This is the last objection that is actually the most serious one. […] It is also true that attempting to debate would be to admit the inadmissible argument of the two “historical schools”, the “revisionist” and the “exterminationist”. There would be, as is expressed a leaflet of October 1980, “supporters of the existence of homicide gas chambers” and the others, as there are supporters of a high chronology and of a low chronology for the tyrants of Corinth. […]
Since the day that R. Faurisson, a duly qualified academic, a professor at a leading university, was first allowed to write in Le Monde¹, even if it was immediately refuted, the question ceased to be marginal. This became central a central question, and those who had no direct knowledge of the events in question, especially young people, had the right to ask if some people wanted to hide something from them. Hence the decision made by Les Temps modernes¹ and by Esprit¹ to reply.
But how to reply, since the discussion is impossible? We have to reply as we do with a sophist, that is to say, with a man who resembles the one who speaks the truth, and whose arguments must be dismantled, piece by piece, to unmask the make-believe.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, [A Paper Eichmann], 1987.[2]

4. A weak refutation reinforces the attacked position

According to the law of weakness, a weak argument for a conclusion is an argument for the opposite conclusion, S. Argumentative Scale. Symmetrically, a weak refutation of a thesis reinforces this same thesis.

Gérard Chauvy appears in court for a libel against Raymond and Lucie Aubrac, two leaders of the French Resistance against the Nazis.
He quoted a brief from Klaus Barbie describing them as members of the resistance turned into double agents.
Gérard Chauvy, who has said that he discovered Klaus Barbie’s memoir in 1991, was the first to give these sixty pages, which had, until then, being “circulating under the cloak”, a broad public dissemination, reproducing them in extenso in the annexes of his work. Does he share this thesis, as the civil party maintains? Are his apparent reservations about this memoir but one more maneuver to accredit it? In any case, this document is at the center of the debate. (Le Monde, 7 February 1998, p. 10; my emphasis).

5. A strong refutation reinforces the attacked position

In 2001, Elisabeth Tessier, a renowned astrologer, successfully defended at the Sorbonne University her PhD dissertation in sociology entitled “Epistemological Situation of Astrology”. This dissertation was received with great indignation by a large number of academics. Four Nobel Prize winners and leading academics intervened to deny that it had any scientific value, dismissing it as supporting irrationality and pseudo-science.

As a result of this intervention, the debate was re-framed as follows: on the one hand, the authorities, renowned professors and scientists, pitted against a woman. Now, a quick peripheral reasoning, backed by the proportionate measure argument, is enough to conclude that the former are deeply disturbed by this dissertation; and the trap of the strong refutation closes on its own initiators: the very prestige of the opponents reinforces the rebutted thesis, at least in the eyes of the adepts of peripheral thinking, but they are many.

[1] May be alluding to Galileo who accepted to publicly recant heliocentrism and the movement of earth, while privately maintaining the truth: “E pur si muove” (And yet it moves)

[2] Pierre Vical-Naquet, Un Eichman de papier. In Les Assassins de la mémoire. Paris: La Découverte, 1987, p. 11-13. Le Monde, a major French newspaper; Les Temps Modernes, a philosophy journal, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre; Esprit, a philosophy journal, founded by Emmanuel Mounier.

The contrast between a rhetoric of figures and a rhetoric of arguments is a remainder and an exacerbation of the classical distinction between the two fundamental production stages of rhetorical discourse, the research of arguments and their verbal expression. The rupture between inventio and elocutio is generally attributed to Ramus (Ong, 1958). Only the elocutio and the actio would fall within the realm of rhetoric, the inventio, the dispositio and the memoria being independently re-assigned to thought (cognition). This opposition, which quickly became popular, between, on the one hand, an ornate, figurative, rhetorical discourse, and, on the other hand, an argumentative discourse ideally free from subjectivity or figuration, has been strongly reasserted by Locke in the modern perspective of a discourse aimed at the development of scientific thought. This antagonism has been pushed to the confrontation and mutual rejection of a discourse of pleasure and emotion and an austere discourse of reason.

1. Fallacious rhetoric?

The whole enterprise of rhetoric, as the art of constructing a persuasive discourse, has been rejected in the name of a transcendental truth, by Socrates, as staged by Plato in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, S. Argumentation (1); Persuasion; Probable. In the modern age, this age-old criticism was strengthened by a new wave of criticism developed on behalf of scientific discourse. Rhetorical discourse is now routinely belittled as substituting the search for pleasure for the search for truth. Rhetoric is seen to fulfill a perverse desire for ornament, and, to root out this evil, ornament, and therefore figures, should be eliminated.

Persuasive rhetoric is therefore reconstructed as an ornate discourse, a discourse of passion, perverse and magical. The figures and the tropes are defined within the framework of the ornatus, then, by synecdoche, the elocutio is assimilated to the ornatus, and finally rhetoric itself is reduced to the elocutio. It is this ornamental vision of a “makeup rhetoric” that has been opposed to the natural, healthy discourse of reasonable argument, S. Verbiage. The following extract from Locke serves as an authoritative reference in discourses attacking ornate language.

[34] Seventhly, language is often abused by figurative speech. Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to be informed: only I cannot but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation: and I doubt not but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality, in me to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived. (Locke, Essay, III, X; Fraser, p. 146-147)

De Man has shown that the issue here is the status of natural language in science and philosophy, “at times, it seems as if Locke would have liked nothing better than to be allowed to forget about language altogether, difficult as this may be in an essay having to do with understanding” (1972, p. 12). But this observation does not directly invalidate Locke’s thesis, for it is possible to consider that this thesis deals with ordinary language and its capacity to carry the new mathematical forms of scientific knowledge. In fact, in the modern age, the language in which “we preserve and develop truth and knowledge” is no longer natural language, but the languages ​​of calculation. Nevertheless, de Man rightly emphasizes the contradictory nature of an undertaking that would engage in an analysis of reasoning in natural language by first condemning natural language.

2. Against ornate discourse

The following are the main argumentative topoi of the discourse which condemns figures as fallacious ornaments.

2.1 Fallacy of irrelevance and inconsistency

In an unfolding argumentative discourse, all decoration is a form of entertainment, that is to say a distractor. As a result, the figures show a lack of relevance, they are fallacious by virtue of the ignorance of the question, permanently serving as “red herrings ».

The figures knowingly flout three Gricean principles, the maxims of quality, quality and relevance. To use Klinkenberg’s French term, figures are impertinences, that is, they are both “irrelevant” and “brazen” (Klinkenberg 2000; Klinkenberg 1990, p. 129-130). Moreover, they do not respect the non-contradiction principle. The metaphor is true and false, guilty of ambiguity and category mistake.

2.2 Fallacies of verbiage and emotion

The classical concept of figurative discourse is based on the possibility of choosing between two chains of signifiers to express the same idea, to refer to the same being, to the same state of the world or the same semantic content. This presupposes a superabundance of words compared with the strict requirements of the objective discourse. The coexistence of different signifiers to express the same thing or the same truth is at the root of the fallacy of verbiage, a kind of meta-fallacy that opens the way to all others S. Connective.

Furthermore, the figurative form systematically favors the intricate and the rare, the exact opposite of the ordinary, simple and direct manner of speaking. And when an apparently plain form appears in such elaborate discourse, it only seems plain due to a double subtlety. The unsophisticated addressee anticipates a simple expression; the sophisticated addressee knows that this expectation will be frustrated and thus anticipates the figuration. This second-level expectation is then itself frustrated by the simplicity of the expression. The ornamental figure is offbeat, and thus produces a surprise, the prodrom to emotion, opening the way for numerous ad passiones fallacies; aesthetic emotions are banned as any other passion. This link is explicit in Locke’s quotation.

2.3 The language transparency fallacy

Taking scientific language as the norm, in order to guarantee a direct access to objects and their natural connections, the language of argument should be regulated, unambiguous, without defect or excess, exactly proportioned to the nature of things, in other words, transparent, ad judicium. The figures, which pretend to glorify the truth, in fact veil it. Ornaments are worse than fallacies; they are their source and mask.

The problem is that figures are the bones and flesh of everyday expression; to get rid of them one would have to renounce natural language and argumentation in human affairs as a whole.

3. An etymological argument against the decorative view of the ornatus

Are the figures ornaments? The word ornament is a copy of the Latin ornamentum (adj. ornatus, verb ornare). The primary meaning of ornamentum is: “1. Apparatus, tackle, equipment […] harness, collar […] armor” (Gaffiot [1934], Ornamentum). The past participle adjective ornatus shares this fundamental meaning. The phrase: “naves omni genere armorum ornatissimae” (C. Julius Caesar [The Gallic Wars] 3, 14, 2) translates as “boats with ample equipment [weapons and tackles]” (ibid.). Thus, an ornatus speech is a speech well equipped to fulfill its function. When dealing with a choice to be made in public affairs, a well-equipped rhetorical discourse is a well-argued discourse. The arguments are indeed part of the ornamenta, the equipment of the discourse.

Considered to be part of the discourse equipment, figures can be integrated into argument analysis, for example as instruments for the construction of objects of discourse and schematizations. In any case, they should not be seen as constituting an extraneous “level” disfiguring the pure cognitive level, but as part and parcel of all the operations constructing the argumentative discourse.

The word pathos is patterned after a Greek word meaning “what we experience, as opposed to what we do” (Bailly, [Pathos]). In Latin, pathos is sometimes translated as dolor, which basically means “pain”; Cicero uses dolor to refer to passionate eloquence (Gaffiot [1934], Dolor).

In classical rhetoric, pathos is a kind of evidence, complementary to that drawn from logos and ethos. “Evidence” here means “persuasion”, in the sense of pressure and control exerted on the audience. The word pathos covers a set of socio-linguistic emotions upon which the speaker might draw in order to orient his audience towards the conclusions and actions he or she advocates.

1. Ancient rhetoric: Emotions as a manipulative tool

1.1 Ethos and pathos, two levels of affects?

The Trinitarian presentation “ethos, logos, pathos” isolates each of these components, in particular ethos from pathos; but Quintilian understands pathos and ethos as two varieties of feelings (adfectus):

Pathos and ēthos are sometimes of the same nature, the one to a greater and the other to a lesser degree, as love, for instance, will be pathos, and friendship ēthos, and sometimes of a different nature, as pathos in a peroration will excite the judges, and ēthos soothe them. (IO, VI, 2, 12)

Of feelings, as we are taught by the old writers, there are two kinds, the first of which the Greeks included under the term πάθος (pathos), which we translate rightly and literally by the word “passion” [adfectus]. The other, to which they give the appellation ἦθος (ēthos), for which, as I consider, the Roman language has no equivalent term, is rendered, however, by mores, “manners”; whence that part of philosophy, which the Greeks call ἠθική (ēthikē), is called moralis, “moral”. 9. […] The more cautious writers, therefore, have chosen rather to express the sense than to interpret the words and have designated the one class of feelings as the more violent, the other as the more gentle and calm, under pathos they have included the stronger passions, under ēthos the gentler, saying that the former are adapted to command, the latter to persuade, the former to disturb, the latter to conciliate. 10. Some of the very learned add that the effect of pathos is but transitory. (Id., 8-10)

The following table summarizes the main complementary oppositions between ethos and pathos.

As two complementary kinds of feelings, the ethos organizes the ongoing thymic basic tonality of the discourse, upon which the speaker will base the phasic variations of intensity which characterize episodes of emotion. The doses of ethos and pathos must be carefully balanced according to the objectives of the discourse.

1.2 The pathos: a bundle of emotions

Aristotle distinguishes in the Rhetoric a dozen of basic rhetorical social emotions assembled in complementary pairs (Rhet., II, 1-11; RR. p. 257-310):

anger vs. calm
friendship vs. enmity, hatred
fear vs. confidence
shame vs. impudence
kindness, helpfulness vs. unkindness (eliminating the feeling of kindness)
pity vs. indignation
envy vs. emulation.

This enumeration does not cover all the political and judicial emotions:

Aristotle neglects, as not relevant for this purpose, a number of emotions that a more general independently conceived treatment of the emotions would presumably give prominence to. Thus grief, pride (of family, ownership, accomplishments), (erotic) love, joy, and yearning for an absent or lost loved one (Greek pothos) hardly come in for mention in the Rhetoric […] The same is true even for regret, which one would think would be of special importance for an ancient orator to know about, especially in judicial contexts. (Cooper 1996, p. 251)

1.3 Manipulating through emotions

The question of the impact of emotion on judgment is that of the equilibrium between logo-ic demonstration on the one side, and ethotic and pathemic pressures on the other side. Logical arguments transform the representations, and representations determine the will; but, in some situations, pathos can nonetheless outweigh the will. This makes pathos something mysterious and powerful, a little bit superhuman, a little bit demonic. Classical texts abound in such declarations opposing the pathos to the logos, that is emotions to reason and judgment, in terms of their decision-making capacity:

Now nothing in oratory is more important than to win for the orator the favor of his public, and to have the latter so affected as to be swayed by something resembling a mental impulse or emotion, rather than by judgment or deliberation. For men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, or authority or any legal standard, or judicial precedent, or statute. (Cicero, De Or., 178 XLII).

In a resounding passage, Quintilian opposes the pedestrian character of argument to the violent and vicious action of emotion:

As to arguments, they generally arise out of the cause, and are more numerous on the side that has the greater justice, so that he who gains his cause by force of arguments will only have the satisfaction of knowing that his advocate did not fail him. 5. But when violence is to be offered to the minds of the judges and their thoughts are to be drawn away from the contemplation of truth, then is this peculiar duty of the orator required. This the contending parties cannot teach; this cannot be put into written instructions. (IO VI, 2, 4-5)

Such praises of passionate speech as capable of swaying the judge away from reality and truth is the source of the still prevailing manipulative vision of rhetoric.

2. Rhetoric and magic

One may be taken aback by such an open acknowledgement of the cynical, immoral and manipulative character of rhetorical pathemic persuasion. But one can remain skeptical as to the very possibility of such manipulation. Firstly such claims must be taken with a pinch of salt. They can be read as a form of professional advertisement intended to magnify the powers of the professional rhetorician, and push up course fees: “follow my teaching, and you’ll become a magician of spoken word!”.

More important, perhaps, as Romilly points out when referring to Gorgias, is the fact that these claims seem to transfer the virtues attributed to magic speech to emotional rhetorical speech: “what can we say about that, except that, by ways that seem irrational, the words bind and affect the listener in spite of himself?” (Romilly 1988, p. 102). This is precisely Socrates’ viewpoint when he holds that the art of speech-makers:

is part of the enchanters’ art and but slightly inferior to it. For the enchanter’s art consists in charming vipers and scorpions and other wild things, and in curing diseases, while the other art consists in charming and persuading the members of juries and assemblies and other sorts of crowds. (Plato, Euthydemus, XVII, 289e, p. 130).

Magic formulas, as chanted by Tibullus, had actually the power to alter the very physical perception of reality:

For me she [= the witch] made chants you can use to deceive.
Sing them thrice, and spit thrice when you have sung.
Then he [= your husband] cannot believe anyone about us, not even
if he himself has seen us on the soft bed.
Tibullus, Elegy I, 2, v. 55sq (my emphasis)[1]

Pericles’ persuasive speech had the same powers:

Plutarch quotes the words of an opponent of Pericles, who was asked who, out of him and Pericles, was the strongest in the fight. His answer was: ‘“when I bring him down in the fight, he argues that he did not fall, and he wins by persuading all the assistants” (Pericles, 8). (Id., p. 119)

Note that the defeated Pericles addresses his persuasive speech to the public, not to his victorious opponent, who holds him firmly on the ground. The argumentative situation is in fact a three-pole situation, involving the speaker, the adversary and the judge(s), S. Roles.

Whatever may be, these views express an age-old classical and popular theory of the functioning of the human mind, for which emotion, will and action oppose, distort and victoriously compete with reason, understanding and contemplation.

In contrast with all these declarations, Aristotle simply warns against the overly effective use of the pathos:

It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger, envy or pity — one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it. (Rhet., I, 1, 1354a25; RR, p. 96-97)

The judge is “the rule.” The rejection of pathos is not based on moral considerations but on a cognitive imperative; to distort the rule is harmful not only to others and to the world, but first to oneself; error is more fundamental than deceit.

3. Emotion, from proof to fallacy

The standard theory of fallacies considers affects as the major pollutant of rational discursive behavior; to be valid, the argumentative discourse should be an-emotional. Pathos, the essential component of rhetorical argumentation, is therefore the typical target of this criticism. The “passions” are collected into a family of ad passiones fallacies, and these are to be eliminated. This is an essential point of articulation and opposition between rhetorical and logical-epistemic argumentation. With the capacity to subvert the mind and bypass rational reflection, emotions are considered to be the most powerful of rhetorical tools and, for the same reason, they are prohibited by within critical argumentation.

3.1 Ad passiones arguments

The standard theory of fallacies considers that reason risks being overshadowed wherever emotion is allowed to blossom in discourse:

I add finally, when an Argument is borrowed from any Topic which are suited to engage the Inclinations and Passions of the Hearers on the side of the Speaker, rather than to convince the Judgment, this is Argumentum ad passiones, an Address to the Passions: or, if it be made publicly, ’tis called an Appeal to the People. (Watts, Logick, 1725, quoted in Hamblin 1970, p. 164; capitalized in the text).

In an argumentative situation, emotions, like fallacies, tend to be the emotion of the other, the opponent: “I try to remain cool and reasonable, why are you getting so excited?”. This is a current strategy in controversies on scientific as well as on political topics (Doury 2000). It can be considered to be a typical case of ad fallaciam argument, S. Evaluation.

These sophisms of passion are not included in the original Aristotelian list, S. Fallacy (2). The label “ad + Latin Name” was widely used in modern times to refer to “fallacies of emotion”, and traces of this use are still to be found. The ad passiones herbarium is well supplied: as shown by Hamblin’s list of fallacious arguments in ad: the labels making a clear and direct reference to the affects have been underlined.

The argumentum ad hominem, the argumentum ad verecundiam, the argumentum ad misericordiam, and the argumenta ad ignorantiam, populum, baculum, passiones, superstitionem, imaginationem, invidiam (envy), crumenam (purse), quietem (repose, conservatism), metum (fear), fidem (faith), socordiam (weak-mindedness), superbiam (pride), odium (hatred), amicitiam (friendship), ludicrum (dramatics), captandum vulgus (playing for the gallery), fulmen [thunderbolt], vertiginem (dizziness)) and a carcere (from prison). We feel like adding: ad nauseam but even this has been suggested before. (Hamblin, 1970, p. 41)

This list contains not only emotional arguments: for example, the appeal to ignorance (ad ignorantiam) is an epistemic, not an emotional argument. Others designate various forms of appeal to subjectivity, but the majority of the labels mentioned refers to personal interests and have a clear emotional content. Nonetheless, the concept of emotional language and the analytical method backing the diagnostic of these ad passiones fallacious appeals remain unclear.

The literature on fallacies mentions a dozen fallacies involving emotions, mainly fallacies in ad; as permitted by the generic ad passiones label, this list can be expanded to include all emotions.

— fear, designated either directly (ad metum) or metonymically by the instrument of threat, ad baculum, a carcere, ad fulmen, ad crumenam
— respectful fear, ad reverentiam
— affection, love, friendship, ad amicitiam
— joy, gaiety, laughter: ad captandum vulgus; ad ludicrum; ad ridiculum
— pride, vanity, ad superbiam
— calm, laziness, tranquility, ad quietem
— envy, ad invidiam
— popular feeling, ad populum
— indignation, anger, hatred: ad odium; ad personam
— modesty: ad verecundiam
— pity: ad misericordiam.

It should be pointed out that basic emotions mingle with vices (pride, envy, hatred, laziness) and virtues (pity, modesty, friendship), which are evaluated emotional states.

One can see that the list of emotions composing the pathos in the preceding paragraph and the list of emotions stigmatized as fallacies, largely overlap. The pathemic proofs of rhetoric have become the sophisms ad passiones in the modern standard fallacy theory.

3.2 Four “emotional fallacies”:
ad hominem, ad baculum, ad populum, ad ignoratiam

All emotions can intervene in ordinary argumentative speech, but not all of these emotions have received the same attention, the focus being placed on the emotional and subjective character of the following four fallacies.

— Arguments attacking the opponent, and other manifestations of contempt, S. Personal Attack; Dismissal. Ad hominem involves epistemic subjectivity, not emotions.

— The call to popular feelings in populist argumentation corresponds to a complex range of positive or negative emotional movements: the public is amused, enthusiastic, pleased, ashamed; the speech plays on its pride, vanity, incites hatred, etc., S. Ad Populum; Laughter, Irony.

— Ad baculum argument relies on various forms of threat or intimidation. Fear, possibly respectful, is opposed to the positive emotion of hope, created by the promise of a reward, S. Threat.

— The appeal to pity, ad misericordiam, may serve as a fundamental example of the role of emotion in argumentation. Firstly, the speaker S has to back his or her appeal to pity, justifications are necessary to produce in the listener L a movement of pity. Then, L will take his or her well-constructed emotion as a good reason to help L, S. Emotion.

In conclusion, rhetoric and argumentation can be opposed on the basis of their relation to affects. If there is a concept of argument defined within rhetoric (inventio), there is also a concept of argument defined against rhetoric. Rhetoric is oriented towards discourse production, whilst argumentation is oriented towards the critical reception of discourse. Confronting proactive, aggressive, rhetorical precepts, critical argumentation is defensive.

4. Emotion, rationality and action

The field of argumentation is built on the rejection of the evidence that rhetoric considers the strongest: the ethotic and pathemic proofs. This an-emotional vision of argumentation corresponds to a classical and popular vision of the functioning of the human mind, which opposes reason, understanding, and contemplation respectively to emotion, will and action. The following passage is a synthesis of this representation:

Hitherto we have dealt with the proofs of truth, which constrains human understanding when it knows them, and for this they are effective in persuading men accustomed to follow reason. But they are incapable of compelling the will to follow them, since, like Medea, according to Ovid, “I see and approve the best; I follow the worst.” This arises from the misuse of the passions of the soul, and therefore we must deal with them in so far as they produce persuasion, and this in the popular manner, and not with all this subtlety possible if one treated philosophically. (Mayans and Siscar 1786, p. 144)

Two functions are assigned to the “passions”: they alter the perception of reality, put knowledge between parenthesis and, in so doing, give a decisive impulse to action. This vision or emotion as a stimulus to action seems to be grounded in an etymological argument. The word emotion derives from Lat. emovere, e- (ex-) “out of” and movere, “to move”; an emotion is something that “sets people in motion”. In any case, passions are the almighty manipulative instrument of action-oriented discourse favored by rhetoric, and the main enemy of truth oriented discourse favored by logicians.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the psychologists Fraisse & Piaget considered that emotion is not an organized reaction but a disorder of conduct, resulting in a “decrease in the level of performance” (1968, p. 98):

People get angry when they substitute violent words and gestures for efforts to find a solution to the difficulties they experience (solving a conflict, overcoming an obstacle). […] [Anger] is also a response to the situation (hitting an object or a person who resists you), but the level of that response is lower than it should be, given the standards of a given culture. (Ibid.)

According to this vision, emotion would trigger low-quality behavior, and therefore poor reasoning. In interaction, it would be necessarily manipulative: the candidate cries in an effort to distract the examiner from his or her shortcomings, magically reframing the examination situation into a more interpersonal, private, relation.

This leads to a kind of paradox: for rhetoricians, emotions lead to action while psychologists on the other hand, consider that emotions deteriorate action. Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca share this vision of emotions as “obstacles” to reason, and thus consider emotions to be incompatible with sound argument. Yet they retain the motivational quality of emotion in order to explain the relevance of argumentative discourse for action. The solution is found in a dissociation^@ opposing emotions to values:

We should point out that the passions as obstacles must not be confused with the passions that provide a support for a positive argument. The latter will generally be designated by a less pejorative term, such as value, for instance. (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca [1958], p. 475 ; my emphasis)

By this skillful operation, emotions are disposed of, and these remain pejoratively marked as obstacles to reason, while their dynamic potential is transferred to values. So the effect of argument can be extended beyond the mere production of mental persuasion to become the determiner of action,  (id., p. 45); S. Persuasion

5. Emotion, alexithymia and everyday rationality

If emotions are seen as the ideal manipulative tool, the equation “emotion = fallacy” seems more than justified, so, extending the example of scientific language to ordinary linguistic practices, a solution can be found in the pure and simple elimination of emotions. But the price to pay for the elimination of emotions from ordinary discourse is high: in everyday circumstances, the use of an-emotional discourse is actually considered to be the symptom of a mental disturbance, alexithymia. The word alexithymia is composed of three lexemes a-lexis-thymos, “lack – of words – for emotion”; alexithymic language is defined as a language from which all expression of feelings and emotions is banished:

Alexithymia: term proposed by Sifneos to describe patients predisposed to psychosomatic disorders and characterized by: 1) the inability to verbally express the affects; 2) the poverty of imaginary life; (3) the tendency to resort to action; and (4) the tendency to focus on the material and objective aspects of events, situations and relationships. (Cosnier 1994, p. 160)

Such a discourse which is deprived of emotion is reduced to the expression of operational thinking, mirroring, “a mental mode of functioning organized on the purely factual aspects of everyday life. The discourse that makes it possible to spot it is characterized by objectivity and ignores any fantasy, emotional expression or subjective evaluation” (id., p. 141).

Similarly, the repression of affect by the neurotic personality can lead to the same result. From a neurobiological perspective, Damasio has shown that a theory of pure logical reasoning, leaving aside the emotions, cannot account for the way people actually deal with everyday issues:

The ‘high-reason’ view, which is none other than the common­ sense view, assumes that when we are at our decision-making best, we are the pride and joy of Plato, Descartes and Kant. Formal logic will, by itself, get us to the best available solution for any problem. An important aspect of the rationalist conception is that to obtain the best results, emotions must be kept out. Rational processing must be unencumbered by passion. (1994, p. 171)

Pure reasoning on everyday affairs can actually be observed in patients having suffered prefrontal damages:

What the experience with patients such as Elliot suggests is that the cool strategy advocated by Kant, among others, has far more to do with the way patients with prefrontal damage go about deciding than with how normals usually operate. (Id., p. 172)

The exclusion of subjectivity and emotions risks transforming argumentation into an operative alexithymic practice. As far as argumentation studies are interested in the treatment of everyday problems in common language, they cannot adopt as ideal discourse the discourse of neurotic, alexithymic or brain damaged individuals. The question of how emotions develop in argumentative discourse demands much more than simple a priori censorship. The adequate level of emotionality will be one of the by-product of a felicitous argumentative exchange.

[1] The Complete Poems of Tibullus: An En Face Edition. Trans. by R. G. Dennis and M. C. J. Putnam. With an Introd. by J. H. Gaisser. Berkeley, etc: University of California Press, 2013.

Lat. ad personam, Lat. persona referring to the actor’s mask, corresponding to the interactional face or social role of the person, not precisely to his or her personal identity.

The Latin label ad personam is also used to refer to personal attacks. Personal attacks can target all aspects of the person, public or private, including his or her human dignity. Such attacks flout the rules of politeness and all ethical prohibitions that protect the individual, as a unique human being.

The personal attack against the adversary is, in principle, quite distinct from the ad hominem attack. The latter refers to a marked contradiction found between the positions taken by the opponent and his or hers beliefs or behavior, whereas personal attack bypasses the opponent’s positions, smearing the opponent in order to devalue the argument itself. Nonetheless the label ad hominem is frequently used to refer to personal attacks.

1. Open and covered attacks 

Insult is the simplest form of attack ad personam: “Sir, you are only a badly educated dishonest person!”. Open personal attack can be a very efficient strategy to undermine the debate and avoid the substantial issue. The opponent will be upset, he or she will lose track of the argument and will finally resort in turn to personal attacks and insults. Third parties will then be tempted to leave the arguers to their fight, or to simply enjoy the show.

The personal attack may invoke the opponent’s private life: “you’d better take care of your children!” said to an opponent whose children are badly behaved, is a personal attack which many would consider extremely offensive. In a debate, such a personal attack might be brought in more subtly by introducing the issue of family policy, emphasizing the need for parents to give priority to their children’s education, without openly mentioning the opponent’s circumstances. The rumor and the media will explain the innuendos.

He cannot rule his family, and he pretends to rule Syldavia!

2. Degree of relevance of the attack 

Personal attacks may be more or less relevant to the issue at stake. Consider the negative descriptions of the adversary made in the context of the argumentative question, “Should we wage war against Syldavia?”:

S1       — We must take military action against Syldavia!
S2_1   — Shut your mouth, stupid warmonger!
S2_2   — Please, stop this bullshit!
S2_3   — Poor fool, manipulated by the media!
S2_4   — Poor you, last week you couldn’t even locate Syldavia on the map!

Considering the available context, S2_1 and S2_2 are unprovoked and irrelevant attacks against the person. That is to say that they have very little relevance to the argumentative question. But in case S2_3, nothing is clear; S2 is certainly wrong in calling the opponent names, but he/she does provides an argument invalidating S1 for his or her lack of basic geopolitical knowledge. If we apply the principle “no argumentation without information”, the attack is certainly not irrelevant. A distinction must be made between calling a sensible upright citizen a fool, and calling a fool a fool. But if this were the case, all slurs and attacks would be reinterpreted as well-suited literal or metaphorical descriptions of the person; hence the general prohibition of insults.

The semantic concept of an argumentative morpheme, or orienting word, is developed by Anscombre and Ducrot as an essential part of the theory of Argumentation within Language. A morpheme (an expression) is said to be argumentative if its introduction into an utterance:

— does not modify the factual referential value of this statement (it has no quantifying function)

— modifies its argumentative orientation, that is to say, the set of conclusions compatible with this statement; the set of statements that may follow it, S. Orientation.

The concept has been applied to the linguistic description of “empty” words or “argumentative operators” such as little / a little, as well as to “full” words such as the helpful / servile pair.

1. Opposition of anti-oriented words

Consider the statements (1) “Peter is helpful” and (2) “Peter is servile”. Do these two statements describe two different kinds of behaviors, or one and the same attitude? Both positions can be argued.

(i) Statements (1) and (2) describe two behaviors. Helping one’s grandmother cut up the chicken would be helpful; accepting to carry your boss’ small suitcase would be servile. As a result, a different value is attached to each behavior; a positive value is attributed to helpfulness, whilst a negative value is placed on servility. In order to determine the nature of Peter’s behavior, one must scrutinize reality.

(ii) It can also be said that these two words describe a single behavior cast it in two different lights, i.e. two subjectivities, involving emotions and value judgments. I judge this behavior positively, and I say, “Peter is helpful”; I judge it negatively, and claim, “Peter is servile”. Reality says nothing about helpfulness or servility. The origin of the distinction is not grounded in reality, but in the active structuring operated by the speaker’s perception.

Statements (1) and (2) create opposed discursive expectations within the listener: Helpful is a recommendation, “A nice guy!”, while servile is a rejection, “I can’t bear him”.

If the job implies contacts with a person concerned specifically about deferential behavior, then Peter is servile might also serve as an ironic recommendation, encompassing the disapproval of the two people: “they will make a nice pair”.

These opposed orientations correspond to the rhetorical phenomenon known as paradiastole, “the world moves backwards, words have lost their meaning: the miser is economical, the unconscious courageous”; they are interpreted as the expression of linguistic bias by normative theories of logical inspiration. S. Orientation Reversal.

Antithetical designations — The opposition discourse vs. counter-discourse is sometimes reflected in the morphology of words, as in the previous case, S. Antithesis; Derivatives; Ambiguity:

disputation vs. disputatiousness
politician vs. politico
philosopher vs. philosophizer
scientific vs. scientistic

In general, parties will use different terms to refer to beings at the center of the debate: you are the persecutor, I am the victim; he is the bad rich man, I am the poor but honest person; your approach is scientistic while mine is scientific, S. Discursive Object.

According to what criteria can I categorize this individual as a terrorist or as a resistance fighter? Is the resistance fighter a successful terrorist, and the terrorist the resistance fighter of a lost cause? Should his acts be considered (categorized) as a coward act of terrorism or as a heroic act of resistance? Shall we say that everyone has dirty hands and that everything depends on the speaker’s partisan options? Humanity can and does establish universal criteria for deciding who is who, such as “targeting civilians; using and targeting children”, “torturing people”, S. Categorization.

2. Adverbial orientation operators

2.1 Even

The adverb even is argumentative in:

Leo has a bachelor’s degree and even a Master’s degree.

Statements “ p, and even p’ ” are characterized by their relative position on an argument scale:

There is a certain [conclusion] r determining an argument scale where p’ is [a stronger argument] than p [for the conclusion r]. (Ducrot 1973, p. 229)

In other words, even statements are inherently argumentative; they are oriented towards a conclusion r, that can be recovered from the context; they coordinate two arguments p and p’ supporting this conclusion; and they hierarchize those two statements, presenting p’ as stronger than p.

Statement (1) is argumentative; it coordinates two arguments “Leo has a bachelor’s degree” and “Leo has a Master’s degree”; both are oriented towards a conclusion, for example “Leo can teach some mathematics”; and it considers that the latter “Leo has a Master’s degree” is a stronger argument than the former for this same conclusion. This gradation can be represented as follows on an argument scale:

The relative positions of p and p’ on that scale depend on the speaker:

We had a great meal, we even had cheese pasta.

Some gastronomes may not consider cheese pasta to be an essential component of a great meal.

2.2 Too

The theory of scales is governed by a “plus” principle: the higher one is on the scale, the closer one is to the conclusion. But this principle leads to a paradox:

You reluctantly bathe in water with a temperature of twenty-two degrees, you’d be happier to bathe in water at twenty-five, at thirty, or even warmer. The hotter the water, the better for you; so you really should try bathing directly in the kettle.

Too often inverts the argumentative orientation:

S1       — that’s cheap, buy it.
S2       — (Precisely) that’s too cheap.

And sometimes reinforces this orientation:

S1       — It’s expensive, too expensive, don’t buy it

2.3 Almost / hardly

Almost is a paradoxical word: “almost P” presupposes not-P and argues as P. If Leo is almost on time, he’s not on time. Nonetheless, one can say:

Excuse him, he was almost on time, he should not be sanctioned.

In other words, “almost on time” is co-oriented with “on time”. The argumentative orientation of an almost utterance might be rejected by an inflexible superior, who rejects the positive framing being imposed upon him. The superior applies the topos of the letter of the law, S. Strict meaning:

So you do confirm that he was not on time. The sanction will be applied.

This co-orientation of P and almost P does not apply to predicates referring to the crossing of a threshold. When transporting a seriously ill patient, the nurse might urge the ambulance driver: “hurry, he is almost dead” but the nurse would not say, “hurry, he is dead”. Yet, in an alternative scenario, say that of a rather laborious assassination, the murderer can tell his accomplice, “hurry up, he is almost dead, and you still haven’t found anything to wrap his body in”, and a fortiori “hurry up, he is dead, etc.”

The permutation almost / hardly reverses the argumentative orientation of the statements in which they enter:

You’re almost healed, you can join our party!
I’m hardly healed, I cannot join your party.

The appeal to the strict meaning is opposed to the raising of the thresholds produced by almost and scarcely, S. Strict Meaning.

2.4 Little / A Little

These two adverbs give opposing argumentative orientations to the predicates that they modify:

(1) now, there is little trust in market mechanisms.
(2) now, there is a little trust in market mechanisms.

(1) is oriented towards “there is no trust at all”, while (2) is oriented towards “trust”. Little and a little are not quantifiers referring to different quantities of food (a little trust being more than little trust), but give opposed orientations to a quantity that is fundamentally the same.

3. Adjectives as orientation operators

Adjectives can modify the argumentative strength or the orientation of a sentence.

De-realizing operators are defined as follows:

A lexical word Y is de-realizing in relation to a predicate X if and only if the combination XY on the one hand is not felt as contradictory, and, on the other hand, reverses or lowers the argumentative strength of X. (Ducrot 1995, p. 147)

Consider the statements (Ducrot 1995, p. 148-150)

He is a relative, and even a close relative
He’s a relative, but a distant relative

Close is a realizing operator (id., p. 147) “they are close relatives” is co-oriented with “they are relatives”, towards conclusions such as “they know each other well”. They are situated as follows on the corresponding argument scale:

Distant is a de-realizing operator. The sentence “he is a distant relative of mine”:

— can be oriented towards “we don’t know each other well”, i.e., it has an opposite orientation to “he is a relative of mine”.

— can be oriented towards “we know each other well”, like “he is a relative of mine”, but with a lesser force: