SYZYGY

The word syzygy is an adaptation of the Greek word meaning “conjunction”.
In astronomy, a syzygy occurs when three celestial bodies are aligned, such as the sun, earth and moon during a  lunar eclipse.

In traditional Catholic exegesis, there is a syzygy correspondence between two entities, events, actions, when 1) they are not contemporaneous; 2) they bear a strong analogy; 3) and the first prefigures, signifies, or announces the second.
The first, the forerunner, is called the type and the second is called the antitype.
The Old Testament presents the types, the New Testament presents the antitypes [1]:

“The antitype not only repeats the type but completes and perfects it. […] Noah, Abraham, Moses … are “types” of Christ” (Ellrodt 1980, 38).

The syzygy principle orders history and the world, and, as such, provides the basis for the syzygy argument, which is used to establish significant links between the two “type vs. antitype” spheres. It uses the resources of structural analogy, proportion and proportionality and a variant of the progress argument, what comes before is analogous to what comes after, but has less being and substance than what comes after, in a two-state world.

A variant of the syzygy principle projects the mundane world, regarded as a type, onto the hereafter or eternal world, its antitype, where it finds its raison d’être.

The syzygy argument retains its pedagogical function, which is to give the believer an idea of future conditions: The monarch is the type, of which the Almighty Father is the antitype.

For him [man], too, He [God] has varied the figures of combinations [syzygies], setting before him first small things, and then great things, such as the world and eternity. But the world that is now, is temporary; that which is to be is eternal.
Clementine Homilies, 3^rd century (disputed).[2]

Syzygy-like principles can still be used, perhaps ironically, to support a historical analysis.

In France, on Brumaire 18 (November 9th), 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup in order to establish his dictatorship. Half a century later, his nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte also seized power by force. Karl Marx commented on the relationship between these two coups as follows.

Hegel makes the observation that all great events and historical figures repeat themselves, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce […]. And we find the same caricature in the circumstances in which the second edition of the 18th Brumaire appeared.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, 1851[3].

The principle that “history repeats itself the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce” is a kind of inverted syzygy.

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[1] This vocabulary is specific, it has nothing to do with the model / anti-model perspective.

[2] Clementine Homilies. Edimburgh: Clark, 1870, p. 38 (Homily II, Chapter XV. Quoted from www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf08.html.

[3] Brumaire is the second month of the French Revolutionary Calender, corresponding to October-November; the Revolutionary year began in the fall. “The second edition” is the nephew’s coup. Quoted from: www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf. P. 5. (09-20-2013)

SYSTEMIC Argument

The systemic argument is an overall argument, referring to a definition of a whole (i.e. a code, etc.) as a structure in which nothing is superfluous, nothing is missing, nothing is contradictory, the elements fit together perfectly.

– Nothing is superfluous, or the principle of economy, : see redundancy.
– Nothing is missing: see completeness.
– Nothing is contradictory, see consistency. In law, the argument from the title postulates that the text is locally thematically coherent.
– The elements fit together perfectly : this principle asserts that each element of the system takes on its full meaning only in the light of its relationship to the other elements of the same system, and that it must be interpreted and applied accordingly.

The application of the argument a pari, opposite, a fortiori, schemes depends on the effective realization of these systemic requirements in the system under consideration.
In the case of law, the systematic aspiration of the Code is directly confronted with the destabilizing, complex forces of social and historical developments.

The systemic argument applies to specific laws in collections of laws, as well as to statements and passages in sacred texts and literary masterpieces.

Why Hammurabi’s “Code” is not a code

According to Wikipedia, the Code of Hammurabi is a code:

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text dating from around 1750 BC, the most complete of the known codes of law from ancient Mesopotamia. (Code of Hammurabi, 27-08-20)

As early as 1982, Jean Bottéro showed that the text engraved on the stele of Hammurabi was not a code. He concludes that this term, which has come into use, is erroneous and can only be maintained if it is placed between quotation marks. The question is this:

Is the Code of Hammurabi really a code of laws? The answer is no! And here’s why.
Jean Bottéro, Le “Code” de Hammourabi, 1982 [1]

The demonstration is based on the following observations.

– The text is not exhaustive, it has shortcomings, “gaps in the legislation” (Id.), for example, certain crimes are not mentioned,

While the beating of a son on his father is covered, neither parricide nor infanticide. (Id., pp. 196-197)

– The text is redundant. The same offense, a case of failure to return a deposit, is dealt with twice.

– The sanctions are contradictory. In one case, it says

There is no legal recourse in this case,

while in the second case, it says that the depositor “shall be put to death”.

This text is not a code, because it does not fulfill any of the conditions that characterize a code as a system.
Bottéro concludes that the articles are not laws, but “sentences”, and that the “Code” of Hammurabi is a “collection of jurisprudence”, which is not subject to the structural constraints of the legislative code.

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SYLLOGISM

In the Aristotelian world, the theory of the syllogism encompasses all reasoning, whether in science, dialectic or rhetoric. In science, that is, in logic, the syllogism is defined as

an argument in which, certain things being laid down, something other than these necessarily comes about through them (Aristotle, Top., I, 1).

The classical syllogism is a discourse consisting of three propositions, where “certain things being established” are the premises of the syllogism, and “something other than these necessarily follows from them” is the conclusion.

Syllogistic inference involves two premises, while immediate inference is based upon one premise, see proposition.

The logic of the analyzed propositions concerns the conditions of validity of the syllogism. A valid syllogism is one such that, if its premises are true, its conclusion is necessarily true. The premises of a syllogism cannot be true and its conclusion false.
The conclusion of a syllogism need not be a necessary truth, it’s a truth that necessarily follows from the premises.

In Aristotle’s words, the syllogism, is a “demonstration”,

when the premises from which the reasoning starts are true and primary, or are such that our knowledge of them has originally come through premises which are primary and true” (ibid.).

1. Terms of the Syllogism

The syllogism articulates three terms, the major term T, the minor term t and the middle term M:

— The major term T is the predicate of the conclusion.
The premise containing the great term T is called the major premise.

— The minor term t is the subject of the conclusion.
The premise containing the minor term t is called the minor premise.

— The middle term M connects the major and the minor terms, and consequently disappears in the conclusion, which is of the form < t is T >.

2. Figures of the Syllogism

The form of the syllogism varies according to the position (subject or predicate) of the middle term in the major and minor premises. There are 4 possibilities, which form the 4 figures of the syllogism, see figures. For example, a syllogism in which the middle term is subject in the major premise and predicate in the minor premise is a syllogism of the first figure:

Major Premise          M – T               man-reasonable
Minor Premise          t – M                horse-man
Conclusion                 t – T                 horse-reasonable

3. Modes of Syllogism

– The mode of the syllogism depends on the quantity of the three propositions that make up the syllogism. A proposition can be universal or particular, affirmative or negative, giving a total of four possibilities.
– Each of these four possibilities for the major premise can be combined with a minor premise, that also admits four possibilities, to give a conclusion that also admits four possibilities, for a total of 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 forms.
– Moreover, each of these forms admits the 4 figures, making a total of 256 modes. Some of these modes are valid, others are not.

For example, the first figure of the syllogism corresponds to the case where, a universal conclusion is derived from two universal premises. This deduction corresponds to the valid mode:

Major Premise             All humans are rational
Minor Premise             All Greeks are human beings
Conclusion                   All Greeks are rational

This mode is known as Barbara, where the three occurrences of the vowel a mark that the major, minor and conclusion are universal, see proposition.

4. Example: The conclusive modes of the first figure

Syllogistic reasoning is clearly expressed in the language of set theory.
— Two (non-empty) sets are disjoint if their intersection is empty; they have no elements in common.
— Two sets intersect if they have some elements in common.
— One set is contained in the other if all the elements of the first set also belong to the second set.

In the following, M will be read as “set M”, similarly for P and S. The first figure of the syllogism admits four conclusive modes.

A – A – A syllogism

A          every M is P
A          all S are M
A          hence all S are P.

A – I – I syllogism

A          every M is P
I           some S are M
I           hence some S are P

E – A – E syllogism

E          no M is P
A          all S are M
E          therefore no S is P

E – I – O syllogism

E          no M is P
I           some S is M
O          therefore some S is not P

These basic forms of reasoning are used in classification, §3, Syllogistic reasoning about natural taxonomies.

5. Evaluation of syllogisms

See Paralogisms

6. Syllogisms with premise(s) having a concrete subject

The above definitions correspond to the traditional (Aristotelian) categorical syllogism, using quantified variables.
The word syllogism is also used to refer to a form of reasoning in which a premise has a concrete subject. A concrete subject is a subject that refers to a unique single individual, by means of various expressions such as this, this being, Peter, the N who.

Syllogisms that instantiate a universal proposition are examples of such syllogisms. These assign to an individual the properties of the class to which it belongs:

the x-s are B	human beings have a right to respect
this is an x	this man is a human being
this is B	this man deserves respect

The following type of reasoning is based on two concrete propositions. It can also be called, rather metaphorically, “syllogistic”. It disproves universal propositions like as “all swans are white”, see proof by fact.

This is a swan      the proposition refers to a concrete individual
This is black         the proposition attaches a property to the same individual
Applied to the same subject, “to be black” and “to be white” are opposite predicates
Therefore the claim “all the swans are white” is false.

7. Syllogistic Forms

A polysyllogism, is « a series of syllogisms connected in such a way that the conclusion of one serves as a premise for the next. » (Chenique 1975, p. 255). The polysyllogism is also called a logical sorite.
The term sorite can also applies to an abbreviated polysyllogism “in which the conclusion of each syllogism is not expressed, except in the last one” (Chenique 1975, pp. 256-257).

In the polysyllogism stricto sensu, the rules of syllogism apply at each step; the previous conclusion enters as a premise in the following one, and a new premise is introduced, that allows the reasoning to continue. The transmission of the truth is flawless, from the first argument to the final conclusion.

A chain of propositions whose syntactic form and mode of linking more or less imitate those of a syllogism may also be called a syllogism, with more or less justification; see expression; linked argument; epicheirema

The famous syllogism “Everything rare is expensive, a cheap horse is a rare thing, so a cheap horse is expensive” is based on two contradictory premises, so it is natural that its conclusion is absurd.

Argument from the REDUNDANCE OF THE LAW
Ab inutilitate legi

Argument ab inutilitate (legis); lat. utilitas “utility, interest”, lex “law”; argument from the uselessness (of the law).

The argument from the uselessness or superfluousness of the law is a matter of legal logic, see legal argument. Because it is based on the principle of legislative economy, it is also called the economy argument.

This argument requires that the code be designed as a system, so that none of its provisions paraphrase another. The code must be laconic (principle of non-redundancy).
This principle applies when several interpretations L1, L2, of the law L0 are possible. If it can be shown that one of these interpretations, say L1, makes L0 equivalent to another law Lx, belonging to the same code, then interpretation L1 must be rejected.
“Under interpretation I, the passage L0 becomes equivalent to the passage Lx, which then becomes redundant and useless. We must therefore favor an alternative interpretation of passage A”. This is a form of argument from the absurd (undesirable consequences). The new interpretation is sought, for example, in the intention of the legislator.

By extension, the argument from the superfluousness of the law applies to cases where the application of a law presupposes a state of fact. If teenagers under the age of 16 are not allowed to enter a nightclub, there is no need for a law prohibiting the sale or service of alcohol to them in such place; such a law would be superfluous.
But if it is forbidden to sell alcohol to people under the age of 16, s they are free to enter such establishments; otherwise the law forbidding them to consume alcohol would be superfluous.

Suppose a rule prohibits attendees at a meeting from voting on matters that directly affect them. The question then arises: Can attendees participate in discussions about these matters? Should the rule state that their presence at the meeting is permitted?

— Law redundancy argument: Yes, they can participate. No, there is no need for a specific rule. It is sufficient to say observe that you must be a member of the meeting in order to vote; if you are prohibited from voting, it is precisely because you are a member of the meeting. If you were not admitted in the meeting, then it would be superfluous to prohibit you from voting. No further explanation is needed.

— Argument “Things that are self-evident are better said”: So, let’s make the rule that “all those concerned may not vote but may participate in the discussion sessions of the issues that concern them”. The new rule is safer. In the first case, the cost is a subtle semantic inference; in the second, a slight redundancy.

 

The same principle of economy also applies to sacred texts. Consider the problem of applying the scheme of opposites to a prescription expressed as: “Do not do this under such and such circumstances”. In ordinary cases, the application of the rule of the opposites leads to the conclusion that: “Outside of these circumstances, you may do it”.

Sometimes the Qur’anic text explicitly mentions the opposite case (Khallâf,1942; Qur’an, 4-23), according to the scheme:

Do not do it under such and such conditions. Out of these conditions, you may do it.

Whereas in other cases, the opposite is not explicitly stated:

Do not do this under such and such conditions.

So the question in this second case is can one appeal to the scheme of the opposites to complete the text? If one adds “under other circumstances, do it!”, the literal precision given in the first case is rendered useless. Assuming that the Holy Text is perfect, it does not express anything useless or superfluous. In this case, no one has the right to add anything to it, or to infer anything about what should or should not be done.
If the supreme legislator is silent, the judge’s decision is based on tradition, or on some other recognized source of law.

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VALUE-2 in Argument

In the field of argumentation studies, the word value can refer to:

• In logic, the truth value of a proposition, see proposition.
• The cogency of an argument, see evaluation; force.
• Value as a founding concept of the New Rhetoric, see value-1.
• Conductive argument
• The place of values​ in argument: this entry.

1. The Bipolar Scale of Values and Anti-Values

The concept of value refers to questions of subjectivity, emotion, and the orientation (or bias) of words and statements.
Values are the structuring axes of desire and basic components of emotion production.
In common language, a value term is an indicator of preferences, a reference that serves to explain and legitimize choices.
From the lexical point of view, value terms go through pairs of anti-oriented terms {value, counter-value}.

A (positive) value term is the positive pole of a bipolar scale, the negative pole being a negative value term expressing the corresponding negative value (counter-value, anti-value).

truth/untruth, falsehood knowledge/ignorance good/bad beauty/ugliness honor / shame, humiliation rich/poor, destitute

pleasure/pain, misery, virtue/vice harmony/chaos love/hate  justice/injustice  freedom/oppression.

The multiplicity of negative term is an index of the plurivocity of the positive term.

The relation value / countervalue can be reversed:

aesthetics of ugliness/beauty,
baroque aesthetics of instability/ classical constancy.

Without specification, the cover term moral value is equivalent o virtue, quality or gift. Its antonyms correspond to the counter-values of defect – sin – lack.

2. Stasis of Evaluation : Value/Counter-Value, praise and blame

Among the basic value systems, the triad of ascetic disinterested moral values, the true, the good, the beautiful certainly comes first [1]. These values are publicly presented as good reasons for an action and invoked in epidictic discourse to praise a behavior

He dedicated his life to the common good
His sense of justice was deeply wounded
His testimony was a tribute to truth

Material values, as opposed to ascetic values, are firmly rooted in the human condition, as human material desires, namely:

power, fame, recognition, celebrity
sensual desires, lust and fast living;
money which can buy all the other kinds of pleasures.  

As the devil’s advocate, the accuser blames a behavior by substituting  glorious motives with more selfish, hidden and blameworthy motives. Contrast:

The pursuit of beauty is the meaning of my life
The pursuit of fame, power, lust, money, is the meaning of my live

Material values are used to counter the appeal to ascetic and disinterested values:

You did it to secure your nomination, you got a comfortable sinecure for it!
You were shocked because the facts resisted your ideology.
Your search for beauty brought you a very nice income.

Moral values are something positive, qualities that one must « have », and the official standard rules, guidelines, norms for practical action

I’m cooperative, patient, tolerant, honest as long as I have no good reasons not to be so
I agree, this is not a cooperative, patient, tolerant, honest move, but it is for the needs of the cause, for a good purpose.

3. Value judgment

A value judgment about a being, an event, a situation… B is a judgment that places B on the specific scale of evaluation attached to a value / anti-value system, such as:

Restricting circulation rights is oriented towards {+oppression, -freedom}
Extending circulation rights is oriented towards {+freedom, -oppression}

This scale functions as the cold / hot scale, see argument scale – law of discourse.

Value judgments assign a value to a particular being, as any predication assigns a property to a being, respecting the semantic and syntactic constraints of that composition.
Judgments assign predicates (a property) to objects, be they abstract (like judgment) or concrete (apple), non-existent (the blue unicorn) or existent (the actual PM) . In practice, this mean that these entities can be talked about, described and defined regardless of their ontological status.
The key point is that even the more evanescent values can be at least broadly defined, have an air de famille with other values, they have an origin and a history, prototypical occurrences  and preferred collocations. All of this is sufficient to apply to them the routine argumentative procedures see analogy; scale; definition; categorization, precedent, etc.

4. Justification of Value Judgments

Value judgments are accountable, as any other judgments

In virtue of their self-certifying power, an interjection or an exclamation can be a sufficient justification, for a value judgment, positive oh! wonderful! wuper! or negative ugh!or blegh! disgusting! [1]

The value judgment can be justified on a variety of good, –and sometimes strange – good reasons:

X is (+) because:
– there are many / few
– it is round/square it is heavy/light, it is blue/mustard colored,
– it has a nice shape/no shape
– I like it
– it is available right now, etc.

The story goes that a wealthy old widow was once asked to sell one of her rustic estates that had been uninhabited and abandoned for many generations. The discussion was long and arduous, and, when the buyer ran out of arguments, he pointed out that unless urgent repairs were made, the estate would fall into ruin. To which the widow would have soberly replied: « I like ruins« , an undeniable justification.

Things can be much more complicated. The political value of national sovereignty is part of the founding declaration of the Syldavian republic.  An evaluation question can arise, asking for example, that an international treaty be assessed in relation to that value. For this purpose, reference can be made to the axiomatic definition of sovereignty, as enshrined in its legal implementation; by experience drawn from analogous situations in the past; by a case by case argument showing that the treaty respects or not the specialized principles of the component of global sovereignty, military, financial, energy, etc.

Once attached to objects by a justified value judgment, values enter into routine argumentation exploiting oriented terms. The role of such valuations is clear in arguments through the absurd or through positive or negative consequences.

 

From a linguistic argumentative point of view, the structure of a deliberation about X or a justification of « X is (+) » is no different from « X is flammable« :

It’s flammable, because it’s very dry, and they put products in it.
He’s a reliable guy because he’s got an excellent education and he brought me back my wallet.

This position should be coherent  the positions expressed or exploited in the entries of the  value-1 and conductive reasoning.

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[]Christian Plantin, 2019 Informal Logic, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2019), pp. 347–371

[2] Guerrini Jean-Claude, 2019, Les Valeurs dans l’argumentation [Values in argumentation]. Paris, Classiques Garnier
– –,Conflits de valeurs et corrida. Étude argumentative de la controverse. L’Harmattan. 2022.

 

Argument of VERTIGO
Ad vertiginem

Argument ad vertiginem; LatIn vertigo, “motion of rotation, dizziness”.

The argument of vertigo is defined by Leibniz in his New Essays Concerning Human Understanding [1795], as a follow-up to his discussion of Locke’s four kinds of arguments, see collections-3: modernity and tradition.

We might bring yet other arguments which are used, for example the one we might call ad vertiginem, when we reason thus: if this proof is not received we have no means of attaining certainty on the point in question, which we take as an absurdity.

This argument is valid in certain cases, as if any one wished to deny primitive and immediate truths, for example, that nothing can be and not be at the same time, or that we ourselves exist, for if he were right there would be no means of knowing anything whatever. But when certain principles are produced and we wish to maintain them because otherwise the entire system of some received doctrine would fall, the argument is not decisive; for we must distinguish between what is necessary to maintain our knowledge and what serves as a foundation for our received doctrines or practices.

Use was sometimes made among jurisconsults of probable reasoning in order to justify the condemnation or torture of pretended sorcerers upon the deposition of others accused of the same crime, for it was said: if this argument falls, how shall we convict them? And sometimes in a criminal case certain authors maintain that in the facts where conviction is more difficult, more slender proofs may pass as sufficient. But this is not a reason. It proves only that we must employ more care, and not that we must believe more thoughtlessly, except in the case of extremely dangerous crimes, as, for example, in the matter of high treason, where this consideration has weight, not to condemn a man, but to prevent him from doing harm; so that there may be a mean, not between guilty and not guilty, but between condemnation and banishment in judgment, where law and custom allow it.
Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding [1765]. P. 437.

Essentially, the argument of giddiness urges us to accept certain kinds of evidence, because, if we don’t, we are left powerless. This is a subspecies of argument by unacceptable consequences, see pragmatic argument; absurd; pathetic; ignorance.

These consequences are “absurd” and dramatic, when dealing with the first principles of knowledge, such as the principle of non-contradiction, which everyone must admit on pain of not being able to say anything scientific. In contrast to the argument from ignorance, the argument ad vertiginem would therefore be valid in so far as the impossibility on which it is based is not a subjective impossibility, relating to such and such a person or group, but an objective, rational impossibility relating to humanity as such.

However, Leibniz makes a distinction between epistemic situations in which our power to know is at stake, “what is necessary to maintain our knowledge”, and social situations which deal with human affairs and ideology, which “[serve] as a foundation for our received doctrines or practices.”
Since demonstrative reasoning cannot be used in the latter case, “probable reasoning” must be rehabilitated in this area, for lack of better evidence. But making do with weaker evidence in the criminal domain implies that a person can be convicted on the basis of insufficient evidence, which Leibniz finds undesirable. So, in an interesting maneuver, he proposes to compensate for the weakness of the evidence that motivates conviction by softening the conviction itself.

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Argument from the TITLE OF THE LAW
A Rubrica

Latin a rubrica argument; the Latin name rubrica belongs to the semantic family of rubor “red”, and means “red earth; heading”. In the collections of laws, “the titles of the chapters were written in red color” (Gaffiot [1934], Rubrica).

Codes and regulations are divided into sections and subsections with titles and subtitles. These headings have no legal weight, but they are relevant for the interpretation of the law, insofar as they define the scope of the following articles.
The argument on the title legitimates or suspends the application of an article depending on whether the case under consideration falls within this scope or not, see legal arguments.

If the College Regulation contains a section entitled “Rules of Conduct in the Classroom”, Article 1 provides that:

The use of cell phones is prohibited,

this article cannot be used to prohibit cell phones on the playground. When the prohibition appears under the heading “General Rules”, it applies to behavior during class, etc.

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Argument from the SUBJECT MATTER OF THE LAW
Pro subjecta materia

Latin pro subjecta materia argument, Lat. subjectus, “adjacent, near”, materia, “subject”.

The argument from the subject matter of the law requires that the text of a law or of a regulation is not interpreted absolutely but depending on the matters concerned, i.e., the specific material subject and purpose of the law, see legal legal arguments.

In the following case, the interpretation derived from the purpose of the law leads to the redefinition of the expression completely snow-covered area as meaning “places where the snow cover is sufficient for tracking game”, since the purpose of the law is the protection of game. The same term would be defined quite differently if its purpose were to regulate off-piste skiing, for example.

What is meant by, “area completely covered with snow”? If this condition were interpreted literally, the prohibition of hunting in the snow would hardly ever produce a result. […] The purpose of the law is to prevent the destruction of game, but this destruction is not prevented if I hunt, outside the forest, on land where I can follow the tracks of the game, even though the neighboring land is snowless.
It is of little consequence therefore if the snow melts over an area of ​​one hundred acres of rocky or swampy ground, if I hunt on the nearby land which remains covered with snow. Is it true that, in our hypothesis, the object of the prohibition would be evaded, if we allowed a contrary interpretation? — Obviously yes. It is therefore necessary to agree with our opinion, since the word “entirely” used here cannot be applied literally. It is therefore necessary to give it only the meaning and the scope that it contains pro subjecta materia.
Thus I think that it is an offense if one is found hunting, outside the forest, on snow-covered ground, as long as one can track the game.
Renaissance Joseph Bonjean, [Code of Hunting], 1816.[1]

The subject matter corresponds to the intention of the law, which in turn is determined by reference to the intention of the legislator, here to protect the game.
When the subject matter is indicated by a title, the argument of the subject matter of the law and the argument of the title of the law (a rubrica) converge on the same conclusion.

The argument of the subject matter of the law is quite different from the argument to the matter. The former refers to the content of a particular law, the latter to the matter at issue in an argumentative situation.

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[1] Renaissance Joseph Bonjean, Code de la chasse, vol. 1, Liège: Félix Oudard, 1816, pp. 68-69.

STRUCTURE OF ARGUMENTATION

The term argument structure is used in three different ways:

— The theoretical structure of an argument corresponds to its internal organization, i.e. to say to the specific form of the relationship “argument(s) – conclusion”  in a given text or interaction, see layout; convergent, linked, serial.

— The empirical structure of an argumentative question is materialized in an argument map showing the second- or third-level subquestions derived from the main question, as expressed by the root question, see script.

— The structure of an argumentative text corresponds to what classical rhetoric calls its disposition, the step-by-step organization of co-oriented and counter-oriented information and argumentation, see rhetoric.
Ordinary interactions involve repetitions with variations of what was previously discussed. Argumentative texts and interactions routinely contain non-argumentative subsequences.

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STRICT MEANING

Latin a ratione legis stricta, or stricta lege, Lat. ratio, « reason »; lex, « law »; strictus, « strict, narrow ».
Latin stricto sensu: Lat. sensus, « thought, idea, meaning ».
Latin ad litteram, littera « letter”.

The argument based on the strict meaning of a normative text prohibits restricting or extending the provisions of the law or regulation beyond what it clearly states. This can be considered as a special case of the principle « do not interpret what is clear »,  see legal arguments.
According to this principle, laws and regulatory provisions must be followed to the letter (ad litteram), in their strict sense (stricto sensu).

If the legal voting age to vote is 18 years, then you cannot forbid young people to vote on the day of their birthday because they are “just” 18, nor can you allow them to vote the day before their birthday because they are “almost” 18.
But from a linguistic point of view,

“he is almost 18 years old” is co-oriented with (is the same as) “he is 18 years old”,
“he is barely 18 years old” is co-oriented with (is the same as) “he is not 18 years old”.

The principle of interpretation stricto sensu cancels these co-orientations. The law establishes thresholds, and allows for threshold effects while almost and barely blur the boundaries. see orientation; orienting words.

The argument of the law’s generality holds that laws and regulations must be applied to all the concrete cases they cover. The strict meaning principle holds that the law must be applied to all such cases according to its literal meaning.

The strict meaning principle usually applies when the law is clear. When it seems clear to one judge but not so clear to her colleague, a stasis (a deadlock) emerges on the necessity of interpretation (distinct from a stasis of interpretation, where two interpretations clash).

The letter vs. the spirit of the law
In a legal context, the label ad litteram label refers to an argument that strictly follows “the letter” of the law, as opposed to its spirit. Interpretations that appeal “to the spirit” of the law may appeal to the legislative intent.
In an argumentative context, an ad litteram response addresses the strict letter of the opponent’s discourse, as opposed to its meaning as intended by the opponent. Ad litteram is then equivalent of ad orationem, see matter.

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