By J. Anthony Blair

About ten years ago, obviously inspired by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and motivated by the evident need, I sat down at my computer and typed out “Windsor Encyclopedia of Argument and Argumentation; Terms, Concepts, Theories, Important historical and contemporary figures”. Before too long, I compiled a list of close to 200 headings for entries. It struck me immediately that writing up those entries called for a team effort. Surely no one person, and certainly not I, had the necessary encyclopedic acquaintance with the field or the energy to acquire it. Over the years since then, I privately bemoaned the lack of such a reference work, however the time never seemed available to enlist a team of colleagues to undertake the task of writing it.

Then, in September of 2016, a copy of Dictionnaire de l’argumentation, Une introduction aux études d’argumentation arrived in the mail, the author’s name in self-effacing tiny print under the title on the front cover—my old friend—Christian Plantin. I riffled through the pages. “Accident (fal.)” three-quarters of a page; “Ad hominem” four pages; “Définition” eleven and a half pages; “Éthos” ten pages; “Émotion” five and a half pages; “Dialectique” three and a half pages; and on and on. It has 248 main entries and 67 secondary entries and runs to 635 pages. Although it serves as a dictionary, and is restricted to listing the terms used in argumentation and argumentation theory, with no entries for the names of theorists or of their theories, it is in fact more like an encyclopedia. For in its main entries it refers to and discusses the various different theoretical treatments of these terms. Its list of the references alluded to in the text tops 600. And Plantin consulted some four dozen colleagues to check the accuracy of his accounts (they are listed). This is the reference book I had dreamed of, and Christian Plantin had accomplished it by himself.

There was just one problem: it is written in French. Like it or not, the lingua franca of argumentation studies these days is English, and even if many scholars are bilingual or multilingual, the sad fact remains that if the Dictionnaire were available only in French it would not get nearly the distribution or the usage it deserves. For it should be on the reference shelf of every argumentation scholar and every student of argumentation in the world.

So when I wrote to Christian to thank him for sending me a copy, I suggested that he should try to get the Dictionnaire translated into English. He replied that he agreed, but how to accomplish that enormous task was the problem. Only an expert could know how to translate the technical terms into their English equivalents. Moreover many French terms of art in the field of argumentation have no precise equivalent in English—argument itself is a prime example. There was really only one person eminently suited to the task, namely the author himself. Plantin’s English is excellent and he has the requisite knowledge. So rather than relax and enjoy the much-deserved praise for having written the Dictionnaire, he turned to the gargantuan job of translating the book.

It remained to find a publisher. With the prices of books published by the commercial houses—the big scholarly presses even the prestigious university presses—in the stratosphere, if any of them published it, the book would not be affordable by its primary target audience, namely students. Plantin’s subtitle is, after all, “An introduction to the study of argumentation”. I contacted John Woods, a series editor at College Publications, to help us find out if they might be interested. A non-profit publisher dedicated to producing academic books of high quality and making them available at cost, it seemed an obvious choice. College Publications immediately welcomed the project. And here we have the wonderful result.

The Dictionary of Argumentation differs marginally from the Dictionnaire de l’argumentation. There are 303 entries, 225 main ones and 78 secondary entries. It is targeted at an Anglophone, not a Francophone audience. The author has taken advantage of the opportunity to make minor revisions and corrections.

I commend this book to students and established scholars of argumentation alike. All will discover new information in it. It bears the imprint of its author: astonishing erudition worn lightly; encyclopedic knowledge presented in an informal, accessible style; stuffed with eclectic examples; serious and amusing; with firm opinions and fair treatment of alternatives. It is a tour de force.

J. Anthony Blair

Center for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric
University of Windsor, Canada

December 2017

Translated by J. Anthony Blair

This Dictionary owes everything to Jean-Claude Anscombre, J. Anthony Blair, Oswald Ducrot, Frans van Eemeren, Jean-Blaise Grize, Rob Grootendorst, Charles L. Hamblin, Ralph Johnson, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, Chaïm Perelman, Stephen E. Toulmin, Douglas Walton, John Woods — and many others. They introduced new ideas, reconceptualized the field, reconnected it to contemporary scholarship, and opened new fields of research and perspectives whose exploration is far from complete.

Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian are the founding fathers of Western argumentation studies. The historical and cultural differences that separate us from them undoubtedly create an obstacle to reading them. No doubt influenced by the large body of contemporary American studies in rhetoric and argumentation, the definitions included in this Dictionary integrate their insights, at the same level as contemporary works.

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The general vision employed in this work makes no claim to originality; it seems to me, largely a posteriori, to be the following. Argumentation is approached as a linguistic activity, and more fundamentally, as a semiotic activity, rooted in the ordinary exercise of language. Ordinary speech has first of all an oral and dialogical existence. Key concepts of discourse and interaction studies can be effectively implemented in the practical analysis of everyday argument. This Dictionary articulates the study of argumentation in the framework of discourse studies, under their two aspects, monologal and interactional. This position agrees, for example, with the framework of discourse analysis as it is elaborated in the Dictionnaire d’Analyse du Discours by Patrick Charaudeau and Dominique Maingueneau (Le Seuil, 2002), to which I contributed the entries concerning argumentation. I owe the idea for the present enterprise to their example.

Arguing is exercising the critical function of language. Full-blown argumentative situations have a characteristic antiphonic structure, where the participants express and balance the pros against the cons.

Argumentation is both monologue and dialogue, and both are language and thought. Argumentation as reasoning in ordinary language should not be seen as the inconclusive, vague, weak and easy counterpart of scientific reasoning. Critical thinking is at work in everyday private and public human affairs as well as in the most recondite scientific disciplines. The acquisition of knowledge begins with the tools of ordinary language and reasoning, and these are forgotten when they are no longer needed. It is an extraordinary characteristic of ordinary language to be thus capable of engendering other languages capable of going where it can never go itself.

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This Dictionary is based on the experience acquired in teaching and research seminars on argumentation; certain propositions echo the discussions that took place there. The participants in those seminars were, as they no doubt will continue to be, a mix of experienced colleagues teaching and developing research programs in argumentation, junior researchers, and students beginning to develop their vision of the field. No doubt the odds are against appealing to these diverse groups at the same time. However, it is this triple audience that I constantly had in mind during the preparation of this Dictionary, with special emphasis on the last two.

I hope that consulting this Dictionary will prove useful not only to argumentation theorists, but also to the wide community of people wishing to better articulate their visions and practices of argumentation, and who, for that purpose need a meta-language of argumentation. To argue is, in effect, to express oneself – to speak or write, often both – in a space structured by a question defining an issue. This space is characterized by the presence of opponents, and the activity of arguing necessarily leads the speaker to refer to their discourses, that provide an alternative and distinctly different answers to the question. The arguer is inevitably led to speak about antagonistic discourses, whilst also developing “control loops” within his or her own argument.

Arguing is thus a meta-argumentative activity. The ordinary exercise of argumentation presupposes the systematic usage of a discourse about argumentation, or a sort of ordinary meta-language about argumentation, which theorists will develop into a full theory of argumentation. That’s why we hope equally that the practitioners of argument no less than the theoreticians will take some interest in this Dictionary, and that the observations that it contains will be able to be reinvested in argumentative practice.

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Beyond the requests for timely information, which find an answer on the internet, everyone working on argumentation, as in any other field of the human sciences, finds himself or herself confronted by questions of clarification, of definition, and of conceptual coherence.

To answer these questions is not necessarily difficult in an isolated case. But the difficulties increase with the plurality of definitions of the same term, or the plurality of terms corresponding roughly to one and the same definition. Things are further complicated when these definitions overlap, and function in a shifting stylistic continuum, in which, moreover, one may take a certain pleasure. The case of the cluster constituted by the arguments a pari, from similarity, from analogy, from categorization, not to mention per analogiam, is an example of such a situation. If one wants not only to admire, but also to understand, one must sometimes resolve to give up this or that conceptual nuance and accept that certain labels are simple synonyms or translations of one another.

A second major difficulty is that of the global coherence of the definitions. To stick with the example of analogy, one encounters this issue when one adds to the preceding terms the rule of justice and the precedent. Without claiming to give the notional field of argumentation the kind of compact structure that one could dream of in the early days of structuralism, one must not only expose the specificities of the concepts but also their commonalities.

In trying to resolve the first difficulty one runs the risk of arbitrary simplification; to resolve the second, one risks imposing on these notions an arbitrary organization. If one fails in these two ways, one will simply have aggravated the malady for which one was claiming to bring the remedy.

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This is not an encyclopedic dictionary that retraces the discussions about each concept, that presents each theory within its historical developments, its current structure and its research program, and that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each author. The works cited do not claim to constitute a bibliography or a reading list of argumentation studies.

This Dictionary brings together a collection of relatively technical terms which form a vocabulary shared by argumentation studies and implemented in the analysis of argumentative texts and interactions. From Argumentation to Topic and Waste, their degree of technicality is very different.

Certain terms correspond to terms that are used outside the field of argumentation studies. Only the particular meaning that such terms have within the theory of argumentation feature in this Dictionary. In the entry “Pragmatic” one will not find general considerations on pragmatics as a philosophy or a branch of linguistics, but only a definition of pragmatic argument.

This Dictionary presents 301 entries, 223 basic entries, with the addition of 78 secondary entries.

A main entry defines, comments and illustrates a specific concept, and, when necessary a set of closely related concepts.

A secondary entry refers back to a main entry. The main entry may correspond:

(i) To a more usual label equivalent to, or a translation of the secondary entry, for example “Ad Verecundiam ► Modesty”.

(ii) To an encompassing concept, for example “Amphiboly ► Ambiguity”. The grouping of several secondary entries under the same main, uniting entry prevents dispersions and repetitions and favors the discussion of closely related concepts.

(iii) To a main entry grouping two correlative concepts, which are defined contrastively, for example the secondary entry “Conclusion ► Argument”, “Argument” being an abbreviation referring unambiguously to the main entry, “Argument – Conclusion” (see Conventions, infra).

A system of cross-references connects the entries, to strengthen the conceptual coherence of the whole Dictionary.

The definitions are introductory. According to the fine catachresis used to refer to the items collected in a dictionary, the entries of this Dictionary should straightaway arrange an entrée to the idea. I have sometimes tried to add a bit of spice in the form of a commentary or a note that should open up the idea and prompts a questioning of it.

The examples are of various kinds: some are invented and only aim to give an idea of actual instances of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Others are borrowed from written texts; yet others come from oral exchanges, sometimes from recorded and referenced productions, sometimes simply caught on the fly and noted later; their oral indicators have been retained as much as possible.

The entries are listed according to alphabetical order. The numbering of some entries allows for certain thematic groupings, which should enable the reader to better follow the development of families of related key entries, for example regarding the large issues of argumentative analogy or causality.

One might find it strange that an entry is devoted to this or that minor form: that is because it is not so much minor as overlooked, and because it deserves its proper place in what can be considered the conceptual structure underlying argumentation studies.

The definitions, propositions and assertions presented in this Dictionary are certainly not intended to close down any discussion. They are rather trying to feed the debate, and sometimes to provoke it, pending criticism and improvement. I would be delighted if that were to happen.

Many dictionaries or logical and rhetorical lexicons define certain terms that are relevant to argumentation theory. To our knowledge, however — apart from Sztuka argumentacji – Slownik terminologiczny [The Art of Arguing – Terminological Dictionary] by Szymanek (2004) — there is hardly any other Dictionary of Argumentation.

Analogy, authority, causality and definition are fundamental argumentative resources; they can be found in Cicero’s typologies (1st century BC, S. Collections from Aristotle to Boethius), as well as in Janik, Rieke and Toulmin’s (20th century CE, S. Collections: Contemporary Innovations and Structurations).
The arguments related to these sources can be divided into two main categories.

(1) Arguments establishing (constructing, justifying…) the claim that:

— There is a causal relationship between two facts

— There is an analogy between two beings or two organizations of reality
S. Categorization; Intra-Categorical Analogy; Structural analogy.

— Such source is authoritative; S. Authority, §7.3

—Such definition correctly defines such word, or such concept.

(2) Arguments exploiting a pre-established (presupposed, well-known…)

— Causal relationship,
           S. Cause-to-Effect arg.;  Arg. from consequence and effect; Pragmatic arg.

— Analogical relationship;
S. Intra-Categorical Analogy; Structural analogy.

— Authoritative source, S. Authority, §6 – 67

— Definition.

This second type arguments can be rebutted on the ground that the underlying first-type claim is not correct.

Arguments “based on / establishing the structure of reality”

The previous distinction is different from the one found in the Treatise between “Argument based on the structure of reality”  ([1958], §60-77) and “Relations establishing the structure of reality” ([1958], §78-88), S. Collections (4). According to Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca,

— Causal arguments and authority are “based on the structure of reality”
— Analogy is a relation “establishing the structure of reality”
— Definition is a “quasi-logical” relation.

According to the previous distinction, these relations have to be grounded and can be exploited. The first argument establishes the structure of reality, the second ones are based on such local structuration of reality

1. The predicative rhetorical genre

The three classical rhetorical genres, deliberative, judicial, epidictic, all relate to civil life. Christian religious rhetoric has developed a new genre, preaching, where persuasion is put to the service of religious faith.

Predication is the action name associated with the verb to preach, and the noun preacher. It has not been affected by the derogatory orientations sometimes associated with these two words in contemporary usage. It is homonymous with the word predication as used in grammar and logic to designate the operation by which a predicate (a verbal group) is associated with a subject in a sentence; and with the word to predicate something upon, that is to base an action or a saying upon:

I predicated my argument on the facts. (tfd, Predicate)

Preaching as an argumentative genre fully complies with the definition of argumentation provided by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca as a discursive effort “to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent” ([1958]/1969, p. 4). The theses referred to in this case are religious beliefs, that are articles of faith for the preacher. Assuming that the audience is composed of believers, by preaching to them, the pastor assures their ongoing training and increases their degree of belief, in other words, “the soul’s adherence” to their creed (after Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, [1958], p. 4).

If the audience is composed of unbelievers, the missionary might preach them in order to instigate these same beliefs. If the audience is composed of heretics in a position of strength, rhetoric must give way to dialectic.

The tenants of the Catholic faith are given in the Holy Scriptures, and are commented on by the authorities, the Fathers of the Church. These contents are articulated and applied in sermons by means of various speech techniques, which have established themselves in a sometimes polemical tension between dialectical appeals to reason and rhetorical enthusiasm for faith, S. Faith.

2. The exemplum

The exemplum (plural exempla) is an instrument of preaching which has been particularly developed by the Dominican and Franciscan mendicant orders, from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Structurally, the exemplum is a narrative, exploiting the resources of the fable. The genus is legitimated by the very example of Christ who preached by parables. The exempla present models of action to be followed or avoided.

The exemplum is “a brief narrative given as truthful and intended to be inserted into a discourse (usually a sermon) to convince an audience by a salutary lesson” (Brémond & al. 1982, pp. 37-38). Brémond distinguishes metaphorical and metonymic exempla.

2.1 Metonymic exemplum

In such exempla, the fact is presented as being likely. There is then a certain identity of status between the heroes of the anecdote and the recipients of the exhortation. The parable of the evil rich is told to the rich, and the logicians are told the tale of one of their colleagues, who is tormented in hell for his sins, that is to say, his sophisms.

The following exemplum deals with the fate of souls after death, and especially with purgatory. The lesson it contains is a “Christian denunciation of vain pagan erudition” (Boureau, p. 94), and a call to the logicians to convert to a religious life.

For our edification, it may be useful to know that a harsh sentence is inflicted upon sinners at the end of their lives.
This is what happened in Paris, according to the Parisian Cantor (= Peter the Chanter, Petrus Cantor). Master Silo urged one of his colleagues, who was very ill, to come and visit him after his death and to inform him of his fate. The man appeared before him a few days later, wearing a cloak of parchment covered with sophistic inscriptions and full of flames. The master asked him who he was. He replied, “I am the one who promised you that he would visit.” When asked what his fate was, he said, “This cloak weighs me down and oppresses me more than a tower. They make me bear it for the vainglory which I have derived from the sophisms. The flames with which it is filled represent the delicious and varied furs I wore, and this flame tortures me and burns me”. And as the master found this slight penalty, the deceased told him to stretch out his hand to test the lightness of punishment. On his outstretched hand, the man dropped a bead of sweat, which drilled the hand of the master as fast as an arrow. The Master experienced an extraordinary agony, and the man said to him, “so it is with all my being”. Afraid of the harshness of this chastisement, the master decided to leave the world and enter religion. And in the morning, facing his gathered students, he composed these verses:

To the frogs, I give up croaking /To the ravens, cawing, / To the vain, vanity.
I attach my fate /To a logic that does not fear the conclusive ‘therefore’ of death.

And, abandoning the world, he took refuge in religion.
Jacobus da Varagine, The Golden Legend, written around 1260[1]

The practice of exemplum goes beyond the strictly religious domain. Fontenelle’s “Golden Tooth” is actually a lay metonymic exemplum illustrating the fallacy of finding the cause of a fact that does not exist, S. Cause – Effect.

2.2 Metaphorical exemplum

In such exempla, “the narrative no longer quotes a sample of the rule, but a fact that resembles it” (ibid.):

The hedgehog, it is said, when he enters a garden, takes on a load of apples which he fixes on his prickles. When the gardener arrives, the hedgehog wants to run away, but his load prevents him doing so, and thus he is caught with his apples. […] This is what happens to the unfortunate sinner who is taken, when he dies, with the burden of his sins.
Humbert from Romans, [The Gift of Fear or the Abundance of the Examples], written between 1263 and 1277.[2]

[1] Quoted after Jacques de Voragine, La Légende Dorée. Text presented by A. Boureau. In J.-C. Schmitt (ed.), Prêcher d’exemples [Preaching Exempla]. Paris: Stock, 1985. P. 7.
[2] Humbert from Romans, Le Don de Crainte ou l’Abondance des Exemples. Trans. from Lat. to French by Chr. Boyer. Lyon: PUL. 2003. P. 116.

Just as it is a structuring feature of ordinary language, subjectivity is a defining condition of argumentation. Argumentative discourse is all about people, their characters, emotions, values and interests, as well as their knowledge and beliefs.

1. The person as an issue

Essentially, when involved in an issue, an individual may be “objectified” and treated in the same way as any other discursive object. In particular, the person may be rhetorically constructed on the basis of a priori doxical knowledge, in order that he or she serve as a basis for pro or contra arguments concerning his or her role in the issue at stake, S. Common Place.

2. Values and interests

Values and interests, even the most specific and bizarre, contribute to the definition of a person’s identity; truth is one of these values. Consequently, they will intervene in all the argumentative operations involving an assessment, such as in an argument from the absurd or in a pragmatic argument. Values and desires are at work when a consequence is defined as absurd, undesirable, or unwanted.

3. Group character and emotions

One’s rhetorical ethos is not defined as an individual, specific, psychological identity, but as the public character of an individual. All the same, rhetorical pathos is composed of a set of public emotions, not private feelings.

Rhetorical theory considers that  group character and emotions play a central role in public persuasion. Critical argumentation and fallacy theories take some distance from such agglomerations of individuals, condemning the futility of their emotions, the baseless charisma and authority of their leaders, abundantly labelled and rejected as “ad –” fallacies”.

When it comes to these issues, a defensive argumentation opposes offensive rhetoric. By enrolling the whole person in the battle of ideas and action, rhetoric adopts an offensive outlook. Conversely, critical approaches to argumentation take rather a secondary, defensive position.

3.1 Pathemic arguments

Points of view come with affects; both are correlative realities. On this basis, a sustained affective activity is a defining feature of an argumentative situation. S. Pathos; Emotion.

3.2 Ethotic argument

Rhetoric proposes a global, multidimensional approach to the person-group social interaction. The character of the audience sets the intellectual and affective conditions of the interaction, as well as the strategic construction of the orator as such, as embodying the values and virtues formally acknowledged by the audience, which can be the seven gifts of the Catholic Holy Spirit as well as the three Aristotelian democratic virtues, or the scientific virtues claimed by a plenary session audience. S. Ethos.

Global ethotic advantage can be analyzed along different dimensions, from charismatic power to scientific prestige, to delegated institutional authority. Among the different form of authority we find expert authority, which consists in well-defined skills, which may be the easiest to assess. Insofar as it satisfies the condition of propositionality, any kind of authority can be sourced, quoted, and valued by default as peripheral evidence. S. Authority.

From a normative point of view, submission to an artfully designed charismatic-authoritarian ethos is analyzed as a fallacy of intellectual inhibition or unjustified humility (ad verecundiam), S. Modesty.

4. Universal or local knowledge

A specific subgroup of these fallacies concerns the knowledge and systems of representation specific to the target, the persons to be convinced or refuted.

From an epistemic point of view, the person is defined as a necessary limited synthetic focus of beliefs and knowledge. Commenting on Whately on the ad hominem, ad verecundiam, ad populum, and ad ignorantiam fallacies, to which he adds the ad baculum and ad misericordiam, Walton notes that these six fallacies taken as a whole are opposed to the ad rem and ad judicium argument (argument aimed at the thing itself, S. Matter). This opposition is based on the fact that the fallacious arguments all contain “a ‘personal’ element, meaning that they are source-based in some ways directed at a source or person (a participant in an argument) rather than at just ‘the thing’ itself. They all have a ‘subjective’ quality, as opposed to the ‘objective’ evidence traditionally appealed to in argumentation” (Walton 1992, p. 6).

These forms of argumentation take as premises the specific representations or circumstances of a person or a group; they are deemed fallacious because of their localism. In contrast to this judgment, the localism of the premises is at the root of the definition of argumentation as a “logic of subjects” (Grize), S. Schematization; Default reasoning. Subjectivity is seen not as a potentially manipulative limitation, but as the stamp of the fact that argumentation irreducibly does not deal with absolute truth but with a revisable process of combining knowledge with human interests, in critical discussions under the supervision of a more or less structured community.

4.1 Causal assertions and human interests

S. Cause to Effect argumentation

4.2 Arguments based on the beliefs of the target

The arguer can choose to base his arguments on the beliefs accepted and the information known by the audience, therefore limiting his discourse to reorganizing and expanding these representations, S. Ethos, §5 Character of the audience; Beliefs of the audience; Concession; Ex datis.

4.3 Arguments based on a specific body of representations

Such arguments are referred to by invalidating labels, as appeals to superstition (ad superstitionem), to imagination (ad imaginationem), to stupidity or intellectual laziness (ad socordiam). These forms are sometimes associated with fallacies of emotion (ad passiones), which is strange, unless we qualify as emotional all the beliefs, nonsensical or not, we do not approve of, S. Faith. S. Collections of arguments.

4.4 Arguments based on the lack of knowledge

This lack of knowledge can be attributed to a person, S. Ignorance, or to humanity at large, S. Vertigo.

5. Silencing the opponent

A set of arguments is oriented towards the invalidation or elimination of the individual as an arguer. To refute the truth of an assertion carried by a person it is shown that it leads to contradictions from the point of view of that person, which may result in silencing the person, S. Ad hominem.

In order to disqualify a point of view, negative characteristics are attributed to the individuals supporting this point of view, either in the particular encounter or in general. These negative features can bear any relation to the question under discussion, S. Personal attack.

Constructing / exploiting a reality

arguing to construct a relation or a property — arguing from a relation, appealing to a relation or a property

Four basic relations and properties : argumentative construction and argumentative exploitation

Four basic argument schemes

Before living in a house, you must first build it. Before using an analogy, you must first show that there is such a an analogy

The notions of analogy, authority, causality, and definition appear, by one name or another, in all collections of arguments.

These concepts fall into two types of argumentations.

First step, it must be shown that the relationship actually exists, if you want to exploit it later.

Stasis (1):

The existence of the relationship has to be proved through arguments that base, establish, construct, justify the answers given to these question.

The arguments and counter-arguments rely on the application of shared criteria methods and test for what is a proven causal link, a strong analogy, a true authority, and a substantial definition

Second step, this relationship can be exploited in argumentation from causality, analogy, authority or definition.  For example, if the answer are positive:

… so, it would be wise to limit  their use

… so, we must expect considerable political upheaval

… so, I will invest my money with them.

… so, why should I worry about all these elections fuss?

It is possible to admit that there is a causal link and tha

A radical rebuttal to these claims is to show that the underlying causal relationship  doesnot hold true ;  the analogy does not hold;   the authority is a sham; the definition is ridiculous.

Lat. distinguo, 1st person singular present indicative of the Latin verb distinguere, “to separate; to distinguish”.

Distinguo is a strategy developed in order to avoid a terminological difficulty or confusion, either perceived in the discourse of an opponent or envisioned in a polyphonical space as a possible mistake.
The word distinguo is also used as a synonym for paradiastole, S. Orientation Reversal.

1. Distinguo used as an analytical tool

Distinguos are useful for clarifying definitions of complex realities. In current language, to make a distinguo is to draw distinctions in order to clarify a complex notion.

The system of ‘territorial development’ is based on the interaction between its two components: the local economic system on the one hand, and the so-called ‘territorial’ system on the other.
The distinguo between the latter two systems stems from oppositions relating to the underlying logics that bear them. The economic system obeys principles that are recognized and exposed in economics. […] The territorial system, for its part, covers all the human, social, economic and urban functions of the place.
Lthe oinger & J.-C. Nemery, [Recomposition and development of territories], 1998.[1]

2. Distinguo used to rebut an argument

The distinguo is an instrument used to reduce ambiguity: “do not mix everything up!”. It can be used for example to detect a four terms paralogism , or, generally a shift in the meaning of a term in a reasoning. It is justified when it is based on socially recognized distinctions, independently established in a language dictionary or an encyclopedia, for example to eliminate the confusion created by the use of the word metal to refer to a chemically simple body as well as to an alloy.

In a second instance, distinguo is used to re-establish a blurred distinction (Mackenzie 1988). To make a distinguo is to say, “I distinguish [in your speech] some truth and some errors, and I’m going to rectify the mistakes”. Consider the following theological syllogism (after Chenique, 1975, p. 9):

Every man is a sinner
No sinner will enter heaven
No man will enter heaven.

The opponent says:

• • I agree with the minor proposition “every man is a sinner”.
  • In the major, “no sinner shall enter heaven”, distinguo, I distinguish two different statements:

— “(No sinner) as a sinner shall enter heaven”, I agree: “no man in a state of sin will enter heaven”;
— “(No sinner) as a forgiven sinner shall enter heaven”: I deny this proposition. The distinguo does not bear upon the meaning of the word sinner, but two categories of sinners.

(iii)     Therefore, I deny your conclusion.

The opponent therefore objects that the syllogism is fallacious, for the minor is true in one sense, and false in another.
This is not a case of a four terms syllogism fallacious by homonymy, S. Paralogism. Sinner is not ambiguous by homonymy, but because, it can be construed in two different ways in a theological context.

Distinguo is a figure traditionally dismissed as being “scholastic”, and used to draw spurious oppositions. Thomas Diafoirus courts Angélique, who hates him:

Angélique: — But the greatest mark of love is to submit to the will of her who is loved.
Thomas Diafoirus: — Distinguo, madam; in what does not have to do with possessing her, concedo; but in what does have to do with it, nego.
Molière, [The Imaginary Invalid], [1673][2]

Thomas Diafoirus is brutal and pedantic; he claims his right to possess Angélique, against her will; apart from this, however, he is ready to submit to her will. The distinguo is an instrument which prevents or rectifies ambiguities, but when it introduces distinctions into a perfectly clear expression, it can itself cause confusion.

In these cases, the distinguo may or may not be accepted according to the value of the distinction operated. In the case of the sinner, the distinguo might be justified by the parallel case of the criminal: a criminal having served his or her sentence cannot be called a criminal without qualification: one cannot say, “he is a criminal, let’s call the police!”, a distinguo is clearly necessary.
In the case of Angélique, the distinguo invokes an arbitrary, ad hoc distinction. In this case it can be countered by a third round of speech such as “stop it now!, enough with your scholastic distinguos!”, “stop quibbling please, you are obnoxious!”.

[1] Loinger G. & Nemery J.-C.. Recomposition et Développement des Territoires, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998. P. 126.
[2] Molière, Le Malade imaginaire [1673], act II, scene 6. Quoted after Ch. Franks, D. Lettau, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9070/9070-h/9070-h.htm (11-08-2017)

1. Current definition

The ad consequentiam argument scheme is currently defined as follows:

(1) Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for « argument to the consequence »), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. (Wikipedia, Appeal to consequences).
God must exist: if he does not exist, then very many people pray for nothing!
(Wikipedia, Argumentum ad consequentiam, in French)

Walton (1999) traces the “Historical Origins of Argument Ad Consequentiam”.

2. Different meanings of ad consequentiam

The Latin word consequentia means:

1. 1. “What comes after” in space or in time.
   2. The logical consequence: per consequentias, “it follows that” (Gaffiot, Consequentia)
      Lat. ex quo natura consequi ut… “from which it is a natural consequence that” [1]

In the first meaning, an argument ad consequentiam refers to something that happened after a central event. For example, a large sum of money was stolen from Paul. The investigator notes that after the date of the robbery, James, an acquaintance of Paul’s, spent large sums of money, while nothing changed in his income. The investigator uses  an argument based upon « what happened after (the theft) » to charge James with the theft, S. Circumstances.

In the second meaning, an argument ad consequentiam is an argument based on causal or logical consequences. With this meaning, the label ad consequentiam covers all the range of appeals to consequences (effect-to-cause arguments), be they positive or negative:
— The pragmatic argument appealing to positive consequences is an ad consequentiam argument.
— In the same way, appeals to absurdity are a form of refutative appeal to consequences deemed absurd a) from a logical point of view (they lead to a contradiction), or b) undesirable from a psychological or moral point of view, or c) contrary to the pragmatic interests and values of the speaker.

So, one may fear that definition (1) misleadingly reduces the various effect/consequence to cause arguments to what can more conveniently be called pathetic argumentation, if we are to judge by the example.

[1] « Again, [the Stoics] hold that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that = ex quo natura consequi ut we should prefer the common advantage to our own. 
(Cicero, De Finibus, Bk 3) https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Finibus/home.html]

Lat. “tu quoque!”; tu “you”, quoque “too”

In Latin and in English, the “you too” argument scheme is named after the statement that typically realizes the argument.
In the general case the reply:

S1:   — I do A because X does so.

is a strategy of legitimation by imitation. The fact that X makes A creates a precedent^@ legitimizing A, and if S1 considers X as a model, it gives A a second form of legitimacy. Such legitimations are part of the “You too!” argumentation; its scenario is as follows:

S1 performs such action A.
S2 blames him
S1 replies: “But you do it too! You do the same!”

S2 criticizes S1 for an action that he presents as blameworthy. S1 can reply in a variety of ways:

(i) He can first answer to S2 that others do the same: since Landru (a popular French serial killer) murdered his mistresses, why couldn’t I? The degree of legitimation depends on the severity of the transgression and the number of transgressors. I run a red light in the open country, when there is no traffic and the visibility is perfect, and I feel justified in saying “well, this is forbidden, but everyone does it, the guy ahead went through, I just followed him”.

(ii) In the case where the wrongdoer is not another third party but S2, S1 has two possibilities:

— As in the previous case, S1 can quietly legitimize his or her action by the (bad) example given by S2.

— S1 can also reply using a counter-accusation, which seeks to put S2 in the face of the contradiction between what he preaches and what he does, S. Ad hominem. S1 acknowledges his or her misbehavior, but considers that, due to his or her own misbehavior, S2 is in no position to teach him or her a lesson. In terms of stasis, the defendant does not recognize the legitimacy of the judge, S. Stasis:

S1: — It suits you well to blame me! Please, not you! I have no moral lessons to receive from you.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right”

The phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” can be understood in two different ways.

— First, as “one does not fight evil with evil”, that is, “evil must be fought by legal means”, a very important principle; many would be tempted to add the clause “as far as possible”. In other words, the good end — the struggle against evil — should not be pursued by evil means; such as torturing the former torturer to stop torture. This would amount to a case of autophagy.
This principle is invoked to reject the justification of a mistreatment made to somebody by arguing, in a sort of anticipatory law of retaliation, that, had he been in our place, this is what he would have done to us, S. Reciprocity (after FF, Two wrong).
— Secondly, it can express the rule that “bad behavior does not become legitimate because widespread”; many wrongs never make a right. The common transgression (argument from number) never creates an against-the-law legitimacy, S. Consensus.

In practical life, thanks to a minor miracle, an error sometimes compensates for another. This also seems to occur in science:

Kepler knows that Tycho Brahe [obtained] the best possible accuracy on the measurements of the positions of the planets (including the planet Mars), and this accuracy was of two minutes of degree. With the mathematical model of a circular orbit on the Mars planet that he (Kepler) used, Kepler noticed discrepancies of eight minutes of degree between the positions observed by Tycho Brahe and the calculated positions. Trusting the precision of Tycho Brahe’s measurements, Kepler renounces the circular orbit of Mars. He revises the orbit of the Earth and, thanks to two compensating errors, discovers his first law: “In the motion of a planet, the vector ray sweeps equal areas in equal times.”
Edgar Soulié, [Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), the Protestant astronomer who discovered the laws of motion of the planets], (no date).[1]

[1] Edgar Soulié, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) L’astronome protestant qui a découvert la loi du mouvement des planètes. http://www.astrosurf.com/rtaa/rtaa2016/documents/kepler-edgar-soulie.pdf (01-09-2017).

1. The scheme

The argument from waste is defined as follows by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca:

The argument of waste consists in saying that, as one has already begun a task and made sacrifices, which would be wasted if the enterprise were given up, one should continue in the same direction. This is the justification given by the banker who continues to lend to his insolvent debtor in the hope of getting him on his feet again in the long run. This is one of the reasons which, according to Saint Theresa, prompt a person to pray, even in a period of “dryness.” One would give up, she says, if it were not

‘… that one remembers that it gives delight and pleasure to the Lord of the garden, that one is careful not to throw away all the service rendered, and that one remembers the benefit one hopes to derive from the great effort of dipping the pail often into the well and drawing it up empty’. (1958], p. 279)

According to the tradition established by Aristotle in the Rhetoric, the Treatise introduces the scheme of waste by a definition immediately followed by two illustrations. The defining topos is given in the following passage:

as one has already begun a task and made sacrifices, which would be wasted if the enterprise were given up, one should continue in the same direction.

The topos is given as a generic sentence, outlining a typified situation. The agents are impersonal (“one”); “(one has) already begun” / “should continue”; “a task”, an “enterprise”; “(one has made) sacrifices.

The topos corresponds to the following script (the elements of the affective scenario are underlined):

(i) A complex initial situation:

(a) A task has been started in the hope of a significant benefice.
(b) The task is long and difficult: sacrifices have been made.
(c) Nothing has been obtained (implicit).

(ii) These hard conditions generate an interrogation:

(d) Implicit: despair looms; it is possible and one is tempted to stop: “should I continue?” This key point is not explicitly mentioned in the scheme.
(e) The situation is now radicalized, as a risk of losing everything:

— Either (e1) I “give up” and all the efforts will be wasted.
— Or (e2), I go on, “hoping” that things will finally turn better.

This key element, hope, is not mentioned in the scheme, it only appears in the first example.

(e2) can be derived from (e1) by application of the opposite scheme:

 give up and waste everything
continue and not to lose, or even to win (implicit).

(iii) Conclusion: A decision, actually a bet: “one should continue in the same direction”.

All these conditions are crucial, for example (e). If it was a cumulative task (like weight training), then one could justify the decision to stop by saying that, well, “it is something anyway”.

*

The scheme is structured by a concatenation of emotions:

hope → temptation of despair → renewed hope

2. Related forms

The scheme of waste is related to the proverbial scheme, “one does not stop in mid-stream”, to which one can reply “either you stop or you drown yourself”. It is vulnerable to a counter-discourse such as, “we have already lost enough time like that.”

Slippery Slope

The scheme of waste ratifies the slippery slope argument, “we must not begin, because, if we start, we will not be able to stop”. This last scheme justifies an initial abstention, whereas the argument of waste is that of perseverance in action, S. Direction.

Sunk cost fallacy

The sunk cost argument is discussed in Walton 2002, Walton & al. 2008, p. 326-327. Economic theory distinguishes between sunk costs (retrospective costs), which have already been incurred and are therefore irrecoverable, and forecast costs (future costs). This theory states that, in decision-making, only theforecast costs should be taken into account. It follows that taking into account past costs and sacrifices already made is irrational and fallacious (Wikipedia, Sunk cost).
The banker must know how to evaluate the situation of his debtor at any moment and then, according to this evaluation alone, without taking into account past costs, take his losses, as he knows how to take his profits.

3. Examples

The following example introduces a formula frequently associated with this scheme when used to justify the continuation of a war “then they would have died for nothing!”:

“Beating a retreat is tantamount to recognizing that all our guys died for nothing!” claims [John McCain’s ⁽¹⁾ fan] Private Carl Bromberg, having returned home.
 ⁽¹⁾ Republican Presidential nominee for the 2008 United States presidential election.
Marianne, 1-10 March 2008, p. 59.

The key elements of the scheme can be scattered across the passage (our emphasis):

He [the philosopher Alain] does not believe in the war in the name of law. From the end of 1914 on, he favors a peace of compromise, and he follows very closely, through the Tribune de Genève ⁽¹⁾ sent to him by the household Halévy, everything which looks like the beginning of a negotiation, however fragile. But he is under no illusion: precisely because it is so hideous, so murderous, so blind, so total, war is very difficult to stop. It does not belong to this category of armed conflicts that cynical princes can stop if they consider that the costs exceeds the possible gains, and that the game is not worth the candle. It is led by patriots, honest men elected by their people, who are locked up every day more and more in the aftermath of the decisions of July 1914⁽²⁾. The sufferings have been so great, the deaths so numerous that no one dares to act as if they had not been necessary. And how do we move forward without being labeled as a traitor? The longer the war lasts, the longer it will last. It kills democracy, from which it nevertheless receives what perpetuates its course.
⁽¹⁾ A Swiss newspaper ⁽²⁾ Date of the declaration of war.
François Furet, [The Past of an Illusion], 1995[1].

Leaders of democracies may be using the sunk cost argument when they decide to continue the war, despite heavy losses, thinking they had a good chance of winning.

*

On the method of identifying a topos in a passage, see Argument scheme, which uses the waste argument as an example.

[1] François Furet, Le Passé d’une illusion. Essai sur l’idée communiste au XXe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont & Calmann-Levy, 1995, p. 65. [The Past of an Illusion. Essay on the communist idea in the twentieth century]