Neither Compelling Nor Arbitrary

Here is the last essay of my Ph.D. coursework, a take-home final exam. I chose the following question, which allowed me to build upon a shorter piece I wrote about compelling/arbitrary. I wrote it at breakneck speed, trying to get it in before going out of town, so it should have that entertaining frenzied quality. :lol:

The question:

In the conclusion to the New Rhetoric Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca write, "Only the existence of an argumentation that is neither compelling nor arbitrary can give meaning to human freedom, a state in which reasonable choice can be exercised" (NR, 514).

Explain what this means and evaluate their success in meeting this goal.

Or if you want the longer version of the question: Explain how within their system traditional concepts in theories of argumentation, e.g., validity, fallacy, etc. that formed the basis for distinguishing rationally compelling argument are transformed to admit a degree of choice; then explain how seemingly arbitrary means, such as emotional appeal and striking style, are transformed so that they are no longer arbitrary or subjective. Then select some of the techniques of argumentation they identify and show how they are not a miscellaneous collection but meet the test of neither compelling nor arbitrary. Have Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca created a rhetoric that has found a middle ground between the compelling and the arbitrary? Or have they amassed an incoherent collection of techniques that people sometimes use when they argue.

In The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca problematize a dilemma in contemporary thought. On the one hand is Cartesian logic: Every postulate can be classified as rational or irrational, and one cannot dispute this; premises are designated as rational, and alternative premises are by default false and irrational, even if they are plausible, because they cannot be proven through mathematical and scientific procedures. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca point out that this absolutist thinking dismisses any possibility of valid reasoning on “essential problems involving questions of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious order,” which “by their very nature elude the methods of the mathematical and natural sciences”; they reason that “it does not seem reasonable to scorn and reject all the techniques of reasoning characteristic of deliberation and discussion—in a word, of argumentation” (512). Moreover, Cartesian rationality allows no space for agency, choice, or freedom; in Cartesian thought, you would be compelled, inevitably, to think and do certain things and not others. The alternative, to follow momentarily the binary set up by the mathematical model, is total disorder; nothing is rational, and everything is arbitrary. This may allow for choice, but it drains all choices of any meaning or value. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca want to transcend this binary, to find another way to think about reason and truth. The result of their inquiry is their theory of argumentation, which can yield "the possibility of a human community in the sphere of action when this justification cannot be based on a reality of objective truth" (514). Theirs is a fluid system in which ambiguity is taken as a given, and meaning is not fixed or closed; instead, it is continually being negotiated and reinterpreted as new situations and contexts present themselves. In this essay, I will bring the basic organizing principle that argumentation must be neither compelling nor arbitrary to bear on the notions of validity, which is associated with rationality, and style, which is associated more with the arbitrary and subjective. Using validity in scientific arguments and examples of metaphor and synecdoche, I will show that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca find a viable alternative to the compelling/arbitrary binary.

As I have stated, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca reject Cartesian rationality, which strives for the accuracy of an exact science. Such a science “cannot indeed be content with more or less probable opinions; it must elaborate a system of necessary propositions which will impose itself on every rational being, concerning which agreement is inevitable” (2). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca point out that, in this model, “disagreement is a sign of error,” and they reject the postulate that everything either is or is not self-evident (2). They are instead interested in argumentation, which they define as “the study of the discursive techniques allowing us to induce or to increase the mind's adherence to the theses presented for its assent” (4). Such a theory of argumentation is based more on reason than rationality, and I would distinguish the two by reiterating that rationality is based on concepts which are considered self-evident and unarguable, for example, the statement that two plus two equals four. The idea is that everything is either true or false, and any statement not considered self-evident is relegated to the category of false. Reason takes into account morals, ethics, and values. Admittedly, not all arguments are explicitly related to morals, ethics, and values; in modernist philosophy with its logic of demonstration, to which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are responding, rationally compelling arguments are very much privileged, with their accompanying standards of validity. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca problematize the notion of compulsion in three significant ways; first, they introduce the crucial variable of the universal audience and particular audience distinction, second, they use the concept of presence to show that the rhetor has a choice in what to select as evidence to support a claim, and third, they emphasize adherence as the end of argumentation rather than compulsion. That the argument can be manipulated by the rhetor calls into question the idea that the conclusion of a rationally compelling argument is indeed compelling, and that any group of rational persons will automatically arrive at the same conclusion, given the same pool of evidence from which to choose.

The universal audience, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca claim, is a conception in the mind of the speaker; it is a theoretical group of “all normal, adult persons” (30). They add:

Everyone consitutes the universal audience from what he knows of his fellow men, in such a way as to transcend the few oppositions he is aware of. Each individual, each culture, has thus its own conception of the universal audience. The study of these variations would be very instructive, as we would learn from it what men, at different times in history, have regarded as real, true, and objectively valid” (33).

The power of the concept of the universal audience is that, in setting forth the concept, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have effectively historicized rationality and validity. They see that the terms “validity” and “rationality,” have been reified by modernists and, similar to the poststructuralists' call to use terms critically and in their appropriate historical context, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca situate validity and rationality as concepts that are not agreed upon by all people at any given time. Another significant thrust of the concept of universal audience is its overlap with particular audience (the group actually being addressed). In the above quotation, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca stress that not everyone's conception of the universal audience will be the same, and it follows that what one person's universal audience will consider valid will not necessarily be considered valid by another person's. The existing standard of validity was, then, merely what Western modernist audiences considered valid. The evidence that Western modernist rhetors do not consider valid, they might classify as irrelevant, not including it in the argument.

The question of inclusion or exclusion of evidence, or data, brings us to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's concept of presence, which includes the selection of and interpretation of the possible evidence for and against your argument. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca claim that "in the practice of argumentation, data constitute elements on which there seems to be an agreement that is, at least provisionally or conventionally, considered to be univocal and undisputed" (121). These "elements" can be, to use their terms, "signs" or "indices." With a sign comes the intention to communicate, and an index is an act that does not necessarily have an intention behind it. The foregrounding of some data and elision of others greatly influence the audience; for example, when I bring a statistical figure to your attention as something mathematically (objectively) derived, I am perhaps silencing significant outliers or exceptions to the statistic, and, as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca point out, "deliberate suppression of presence is an equally noteworthy phenomenon" (p 118). Giving a datum a presence in your audience's consciousness is a powerful act, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca claim. They add, "To these data we will consciously oppose their interpretation, when the latter appears as a choice between meanings which are not an integral part, so to speak, of that which they interpret" (121). Interpretation on the part of the rhetor, whose consciousness has been impressed with the arguments of others, comes to the fore as he or she selects data.

The question of interpretation in the concept of presence is another way that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca problematize a compelling theory of argumentation: "The infinite complexity of interpretations, coupled with their mobility and interaction, sufficiently explain the impossibility of reducing all statements to propositions with a numerical probability that can be evaluated" (122). Interpretation entails qualifying (hierarchizing) evidence and classifying it into categories, a two-pronged act the authors call comprehension/extension (130). Indeed, for Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, no argument is ever resolved because of the multiplicity of possible interpretations; "because the notions used in argumentation are not univocal and have no fixed meaning" (132). Interpretation, as an act, involves the participation of the universal audience, as the speaker understands it. Even in scientific arguments, for which the standards for rationality and validity are most rigorous, the speaker must choose which facts to bring into a discussion; the selection is governed by a number of variables which could potentially affect the validity: the sources of funding, motives of the scientist, and the “morality, ethics, and etiquette” of the scientific community (102). Again, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca remind us that standards for what constitutes validity change:

a scientist verifying the conclusions reached by another scientist, after certain experiments, will take into account all the facts that occur and that are relevant to the soundness of the proposed theory but does not feel he has the right, in the controversy, to introduce other facts that are not relevant within the set limits [...] the scientist, when acting as judge, is always also a party, and before long he will put forward new claims. (102)

At every turn, there is choice: For the rhetor, there is the choice of data on which to confer presence, and for the audience, there is the choice of whether to accept or reject the validity of the argument; in other words, the audience is very rarely compelled; they only adhere or do not adhere to the argument being made. For good measure, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca add that “choice is also a dominant factor in scientific debates: choice of the facts deemed relevant, choice of hypotheses, choice of the theories that should be confronted with facts, choice of the actual elements that constitute facts” (116). Adherence can depend on a number of variables, including those that according to a rationally-compelling standard are irrelevant: ethos, pathos, style, texts*, and shared values.

Values, in the framework of rationally compelling argumentation, are subjective and arbitrary. Whereas I might value sharing my wealth with my neighbor, someone else might place the acquisition of as much wealth as possible higher on his or her value hierarchy. Values can be conceived as individual and incoherent among groups, and indeed, notions such as "justice, liberty, and wisdom" (134) do have some meaning in the mind of each individual, but Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca show that values can be shared and collectively adhered to by groups. Agreement and dialogue are the terms the authors highlight here; for example, the law is a text that sets forth certain prescriptions based on societal values, such as freedom and inalienable rights, but as mitigating circumstances present themselves, the law is reinterpreted and precedents are established. That those in society take the trouble to deliberate on values, for example, the rights of a woman versus the rights of a fetus, strongly suggests the role of reasoning, albeit reasoning based on values rather than rationality. The daily practices of careful negotiation, interpretation, and reinterpretation are testaments to the claim that values are not arbitrary. For example, the use of the epithet “George W. Bush is a liar” is not compelling (one may choose to adhere to the argument that Bush has not lied), nor is it arbitrary (it is based on the commonly-held value of honesty, and data exist to support the epithet). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca argue that engaging the imagination and emotions is not an arbitrary, unreasonable rhetorical strategy; doing so through the use of figures can increase the audience's adherence to the argument. An excellent example of the use of a figure to achieve adherence is Adam Smith's
“invisible hand” metaphor. Smith infuses the invisible hand with a benevolence; the audience might have doubted the claim that self-interest and the interest of society would not come into conflict, but by making the invisible hand trustworthy, the audience “feels that the invisible hand is there to persuade him that the harmony between individual interest and social interest is not due to chance, that he is at liberty to explain it by a supernatural intervention, that the foresight denied to man may be that of a supreme being” (170). Perhaps a better example might be the synecdoche “no child left behind,” one of Bush's campaign promises. The expression is meant to represent the plight of public education, but as a figure, it helped many members of Bush's audience adhere to his argument by emphasizing the values of caring for children and education.

In sum, I would argue that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's entire treatise is a thoughtful dissociation; they effectively move rhetoric from the trap of compelling/arbitrary. The middle ground is well-expressed when they equate argumentation with “a critical rationalism that transcends the duality 'judgments of reality-value judgments'”; focus is placed on the rhetor and the audience, who have choices in which facts and values he or she chooses to endow with presence and which facts and values to espouse, respectively. As I have read The New Rhetoric, I have asked myself how their theory, based as it is on reason and commonly held facts and values, differs from Aristotle's notion of doxa. Certainly the concepts of presence and adherence break new intellectual ground for rhetoric, but I would also argue that, in the particular historical moment in which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca engage rhetoric and philosophy, there was a need to re-establish agreed-upon meaning, interpretation, flexibility, and a theory of argumentation which allows for meaning and degrees of validity without one compelling truth.