What Is Good Argumentation Today?
Symposium
22 APRIL, 13:00-17:00
LUX:C214
How has the digital landscape transformed argumentation today in public debate? Is there anything good to say or do about it? And how can rhetorical theories on argumentation and controversies inform our understanding, and maybe even practices?
This symposium brings together leading rhetoric scholars to discuss the theories and practices of rhetorical argumentation and controversy in an era of polarisation and automated persuasion. Both classical and modern rhetorical argumentation is based on pluralism, emphasising audience, context and pragmatic reasoning, including graduated and partial agreement. However, rather than embracing an anything-goes relativism, rhetorical argumentation is grounded in normative principles and maintains an ethical orientation. This approach raises important questions about the conditions of rhetorical argumentation, its exclusionary mechanisms, and its capacity for meaningful engagement.
13:00-13:15 Welcome, Christina Matthiesen, Professor of Rhetoric, Lund University
13:15-14:00 Can you argue? Persuasive AI between tékhnē and ethics, Sine Just, Professor of Communication, Roskilde University
“Can you argue?” If you pose this question to a large language model (LLM), you will most likely receive an affirmative answer that also alerts you to the model’s lack of intentionality. That is, a variation of ‘yes, I can produce arguments, but I do not have opinions of my own.’ This installs a bifurcation in what may be understood as argumentation: does it refer to the tékhnē of providing support for claims and/or does it involve an ethical orientation? Beginning from an understanding of persuasion as ‘reasoning with motive’ (Just, 2024), this talk discusses what happens to rhetorical argumentation when it is automated.
14:00-14:05 Short break
14:05-14:50, Argument Pessimism after Perelman, Blake D. Scott, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, University of Tübingen
The increasing ubiquity of “artificial intelligence” in our everyday lives has led to widespread pessimism about the power of argument to bring about the good. While there are many reasons to fear the deepening technological colonization of our lifeworld, rhetoricians and argumentation theorists must nevertheless find ways to make the case for the centrality of argument in public life. In this talk I examine Chaïm Perelman’s writings on an analogous pessimism about argument during the interwar period and consider their contemporary implications. I conclude by proposing a model that disambiguates the different senses in which we can meaningfully speak about “good” arguments.
14:50-15:20 Fika
15:20-16:05 Argumentation Beyond Product and Process: Doxic Cartography, Mika Hietanen, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Lund University
Evaluating public argumentation remains a contentious challenge; there is no scholarly consensus on how to balance the ideals of product/process (O’Keefe, 1977) or correctness/participation (Zenker et al., 2024). These dualisms are insufficient for a modern rhetorical critique. I propose a third dimension: the eikotic level. In our polarised landscape, ‘good argumentation’ cannot be determined by internal validity or procedure alone. Instead, evaluation must account for an argument’s fit within the broader doxic context. By utilising doxic cartography to map underlying architectures of belief, I suggest a methodological framework for navigating competing plausibilities and restoring our capacity for shared communal judgment (krisis).
16:05-16:15 Short break
16:15-17:00 Roundtable discussion
Register for the symposium
Please register no later than 14 April (limited places).
