VALUE (1) as the founding concept of THE NEW RHETORIC
1. Value as a Unified Field
According to the philosophical tradition, questions about
the good, the ends, the right, obligation, virtue, moral judgment, aesthetic judgment, the beautiful, truth, and validity (Frankena 1967, p. 229),
belong to different domains: morality, law, aesthetics, logic, economics, politics, epistemology.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, these questions have been taken up globally, within the framework of a general theory of values, of distant Platonic ancestry. This “wide-ranging discussion in terms of ‘value’, ‘values’, and ‘valuation’ [then] spread to psychology, the social sciences, the humanities and even to ordinary language” (ibid.).
The concept of value was introduced into the contemporary field of argumentation by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric [1958], in the philosophical line of Dupréel (1939) (Dominicy n. d.). It constitutes its permanent foundation, as the introductory chapter of Perelman’s « Legal Logic » [Logique juridique] (1979) entitled « The New Rhetoric and Values » shows.
Perelman’s research on value is a perfect example of what a « general theory of values » can be.
The status of value and the role of values in the New Rhetoric are extensively discussed and illustrated in detail Guerrini 2019, 2022. [1]
2. Perelman’s Research Program on the Logic of Values
1.1 Critique of Positivism
Perelman presents his discovery of argumentation theory as a step beyond a research program on the “logic of value judgments” (Perelman 1979, §50, p. 101; 1980, p. 457). This latter research led him to the following conclusions:
- « There is no logic of value judgments » (ibid.) that would allow their rational organization. This conclusion that is said to be « unexpected » (ibid.).
- Contrary to the project of classical philosophy, it is impossible to construct an ontology that would allow a “calculus of values” that would regulate their hierarchy.
- Logical positivism’s treatment of values leads to a dead end. It maintains a gap between the values and the facts from which they cannot be derived. The consequence of this separation is that any recourse to values is rejected as irrational.
Perelman argues that the view that value-based action is irrational is self-defeating, because it implies that practical reasoning and the entire field of law, both of which are based on values, should be considered irrational, which is absurd because unacceptable.
Perelman’s conclusion is that, because science and logic deal with judgments of truth, they cannot provide the rules for practical reason, which deals with judgments of value. This is the basis of Perelman’s claim, which reasserts the gap between the rational and the reasonable, between “the two cultures”, science and the humanities, see demonstration; proof.
Continuing his research program on values, Perelman, in search of other methods capable of accounting for the rational aspect of the use of values, sought other perspectives better suited to this particular subject. He found them in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Topics, which provide techniques for the empirical study of how individuals justify their reasonable choices. Perelman was then able to redefine his theoretical goal from logic to a New Rhetoric (ibid.). The argumentative-rhetorical method seems to be the solution to the failure of the logical and philosophical treatments of values. Perelman consistently rejects the project of classical philosophy to develop a calculus of values, since it is not possible to derive a hierarchy of values from an ontology of values. In particular, Perelman disagrees with Bentham on the possibility of a calculus of pleasures and pains.
1.2 The Fact/Value Opposition
The New Rhetoric is thus structured around two questions about values. The first one has a logical origin. It concerns value judgments, made about a being or a concrete situation. The second one has a philosophical origin. It concerns substantial values such as the true, the beautiful and the good, which are the most general of all values.
In the TA, values are defined by the following distinctions and operations, which actually retain much of their positivist origin.
– Facts are necessary and compel the mind, whereas values require a commitment [French adhérence of the mind), see argumentation 1.
– In practice, however, value judgments and reality judgments are difficult to distinguish. Contextual considerations may be necessary to characterize a judgment as a value judgment: « This is a car » may be a factual judgment or a value judgment; « This is a real car » is only a value judgment (see Dominicy, n. d., pp. 14-17).
– In science, if two truth judgments about a reality are contradictory, one of them is necessarily false (principle of the excluded middle), while two contradictory value judgments about the same object, “This is beautiful! vs. This is ugly!”, can both be justified by value-based arguments, developed independently of any appeal to reality.
– Values and facts exist in separate worlds. Value judgments cannot be derived from nor can they be opposed to factual judgments. Group values are acquired through education and language, and they are specifically reinforced in the epidictic genre.
See Perelman, value and the epidictic genre.
– Values are currently in conflict. Legitimate contradictions between value judgments cannot be resolved by eliminating one of the conflicting values, as one eliminates a false proposition. One can only rank the values (ibid., p. 107).
– Value in the epidictic genre,
1.3 Agreement: beyond the opposition Fact/Value
For Perelman, the functioning as arguments of value claims, and truth and reality claims presupposes the agreement of the participants. The totality of these « preliminary agreements » to the argumentation itself creates an atmosphere of « communion » (p. 74) that allows the harmonious development of the argumentative-rhetorical situation itself.
We will ask which objects of agreement play a different role in the argumentative process. We think it will be useful, from this point of view, to group these objects into two categories, one relative to the real, which would include facts, truths and presumptions, the other relative to the preferable, which would contain values, hierarchies and places of the preferable (Id., p. 88; emphasis in the text).
The Treatise goes on to say that
The notion of « fact » is characterized only by the idea that one has of a certain kind of agreement about certain data, those which refer to an objective reality. (Id. p. 89)
It seems that the opposition fact / value is now revived as an opposition between two kinds of agreement. That is, the argumentative process blurs the distinction between values and facts, i.e. it is possible to agree/disagree about facts as well as agree/disagree about values.
Indeed, both facts and values can be the focus of a stasis, and both facts and values can be as fixed as facts are supposed to be, and as questionable as values are supposed to be Values and facts are equivalent, when they are defined as unquestioned realities. From « truth is not questioned » we don’t move to « what is not questioned is true », but to « what is unquestioned has the same value as truth ».
In sum, « the opposition between value judgments and factual judgments can be maintained only as the result of « precarious agreements » (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca [1958], p. 513), and for special debates.
This is undoubtedly an accurate observation. « Precarious » suggests a deplorable condition attached to the agreement, which is not the case. Agreements on facts or on value, or on any other possible distinction of this kind can be revoked, depending on the conventions of the group and the justifications given. The occurrence of disagreement is not to be deplored in human groups.
Let’s note that the distinction between two objects of agreement, relating respectively to the real and the preferable, seems to reintroduce the distinction that has just been absorbed by the notion of agreement. The fact/value, real/preferable dichotomies are the source of the gap between two Perelmanian concepts, « the reasonable » which governs current mundane argumentative practices including law, and « the rational » governing logic and science, see demonstration; proof.
We won’t try to discuss further these issues, which seem to be more related to the ontology of our world, than to the concrete facts envisaged by argumentation studies.
The following section focuses on the « places of the preferable » and their relation to argumentation schemes.
3. Do Argument Schemes Apply Specifically to Facts, and Loci to Values?
According to the Treatise, the opposition of values and facts corresponds to the opposition of the argumentative principles that govern them. Values are governed by loci (places, topoi):
When it is a question of founding values or hierarchies or reinforcing the intensity of the adhesion they arouse, we can link them to other values or other hierarchies to consolidate them, but we can also have recourse to premises of a very general order, which we’ll call loci, the [tópoi] from which the Topics, or treatises devoted to dialectical reasoning, derive (p. 112)
The Treatise is formal on this point:
We will call places [Fr. lieux] only premises of a general order allowing to found values and hierarchies, and which Aristotle studies among the places of the accident (p. 113)
An Unnecessary Distinction
Given this definition, of the word « place », we understand that the principles that found, i.e. justify, the factual conclusions are not called places (loci, tópoi).
This is what we actually see in the 3rd part of the Treatise. This part, which is the main part of the work, is called « argumentative techniques« , and these techniques are also called « argumentative schemes« (p. 251).
But it is obvious that the schemes, the techniques of association, correspond closely to what the tradition calls « places »; and, incidentally the Treatise ratifies this label:
these schemes [can also be considered] as places of argumentation (p. 255).
We therefore give up reserving the name of “place” exclusively for the rules of values. It remains to be seen what the consequences of this terminological reorientation has for the conceptual opposition fact/value. In every day argument, just as agreement can be reached about facts and values, the same kind of argumentative rules apply to facts and values.
The following loci are considered to be the « most common » loci (ibid., p. 95):
- Quantity: « one thing is better than another for quantitative reasons” (id., 85/115): “the more, the better ».
- Quality is used to challenge quantity, that is « the strength of numbers » (id., p. 89/119): « the rarer it is, the more valuable it is ».
- Order: « The loci of order affirm the superiority of the earlier over the later » (id., p. 93/125).
- Existence: « The loci relating to the existent affirm the superiority of that which exists, of the real, over the possible, the contingent, or the impossible » (id., p. 94/126).
- Essence ascribes « a higher value to individuals to the extent that they embody [the] essence” (id., p. 95/126), which materializes as a topos “the closer it is to the origin, to life, to the prototype, the better it is ».
These so-called loci of value correspond to the topoi of the accident in Aristotle’s Topics (ibid., p. 113). Since the category of accident is not particularly value-bound, we can assume that the topoi of accident are value-bound either.
The places of the accident, by definition, operate on facts and objects as well as on the field of values. Thus, in keeping with tradition the terms, loci (topoi, place) and argument scheme can be safely interchanged.
The accident is a kind of predication about an object. Such gradual links can be represented on correlated argumentative scales, see scale; topos in semantics.