Diego Castro

This paper aims at resolving the following question: how should a reasonable arguer respond to a fallacy? To answer it, I take a dialectical approach to fallacies and consider their dialectical and rhetorical effects. Then, I review the current literature on the proper answer to fallacies to conclude that, under certain circumstances, all the answers provided in the literature can be helpful for the parties. Later, I attempt at providing some heuristic guidance to understand which response to a fallacy is better under which circumstance. To do that, I introduce two criteria for evaluating dialogues: the level of adversariality and the relevance of the epistemic goal. I will conclude by saying that these criteria can help us understand which is the adequate response to fallacies and could also be important for addressing other problems in argumentation theory.

This paper defends negotiation as a way of rationally overcoming disagreements. Negotiation is a type of dialogue where the parties begin with a conflict and a need for cooperation, and their main goal is to make a deal as reported (Walton and Krabbe 1995, p 72). It has been discussed whether differences of opinion can be shifted from persuasion to negotiation dialogue. If two parties disagree, is it reasonable to overcome their disagreement by employing negotiation? Van Laar and Krabbe (2018a) argue that negotiation is the correct way to settle disagreements when the parties arrive at a stalemate. Godden and Casey (2020) deny this. They argue that the goal of persuasion dialogue (to resolve a conflict by verbal means) can never be replaced by a bargaining procedure. This paper claims that shifts to negotiation are reasonable, but only if the shift meets two conditions. The practical condition requires the disagreement to be practical rather than theoretical, and the sacrifice condition requires that the parties freely agree to shift the dialogue to negotiation. When the parties do not meet these conditions, they commit fallacies such as ad consequentiam, ad baculum or the fallacy of middle ground. Finally, I argue that negotiation arises in practical argumentation when the parties assign different relative values to their goals. When this process occurs, we see negotiation as a small step within the practical argumentation process. Persuasion, deliberation and negotiation dialogue are, then, deeply intertwined and are sometimes indistinguishable.

When parties attempt to persuade their opponents of the tenability of a certain standpoint using reasons, they will often find that the circumstances of the dialogue hinder their chances of resolution. Power imbalances, cognitive biases, lack of time or hidden interests are some of the circumstances they need to face. I will label these circumstances as _suboptimal settings for argumentation_. According to the pragma-dialectical tradition, higher-order conditions for critical discussion are unfulfilled in these cases (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jacobs, & Jackson, 1993). The main question of this paper is the following: what is the normative standard that parties in a discussion need to follow to arrive at a resolution within such circumstances? I will defend a middle-ground solution between two extreme ones. The first extreme position, the _anything-goes policy_, claims that, given that the conditions for a reasonable exchange of reasons are not satisfied, the dialogue stands outside the domain of reason, so anything goes for the parties. The second extreme position, the _business as usual policy_, claims that, since critical discussion is a normative model, the same rules should apply in suboptimal settings. Finally, the _supernormal policy_ that I defend claims that we need a more general and comprehensive norm that I refer to as a _supernorm_ to evaluate these cases. The supernormal policy divides argumentation into two stages: preparation and resolution. In the preparation stage, the parties attempt to restore or compensate for the suboptimality of the setting, while in the resolution stage, they attempt to resolve their disagreement. I contend that the moves of the preparation stage should be evaluated by using the supernorm instead of by the rules for critical discussion (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004 ). At this point, the paper considers theoretical insights from Gilbert ( 1995, 1997, 2002 ) and Jacobs ( 2000, 2006 ) to understand what this entails.

In this article I present an answer to the problem of deep disagreements posed by Robert Fogelin (1985). According to this author, there are disagreements that cannot be resolved rationally because they refer to “framework propositions”. I argue that, making certain distinctions, Fogelin’s conclusion is less serious than initially thought. The first distinction is between resolving and overcoming di-sagreements. From the fact that disagreements cannot be resolved, it does not follow that they cannot be overcome in other ways. Thus, together with resolu-tion, the parties can overcome disagreements through means such as negotia-tion, mediation, arbitration or suspension of judgment. The second distinction is between theoretical and practical disagreements. As I argue, while for theo-retical disagreements the fact that they cannot be resolved implies that the only way to overcome them is by suspending judgment, for practical disagreements it is not possible to suspend judgment, but there are other ways to “manage di-sagreements”. Having made these distinctions, I conclude by pointing out that the fact that certain disagreements are deep does not prevent them from being overcome, which reflects a pluralistic view of the argumentation that should be further explored.

Some disagreements seem to be persistent: they are, pretty much, immune to persuasive argumentation. If that is the case, how can they be overcome? Can argumentation help us? I propose that to overcome persistent disagreements through argumentation, we need a dynamic and pluralistic version of argumentation. Therefore, I propose that argumentation, more than a tool that uses persuasion to change the mind of the counterpart, is a toolbox that contains persuasion, deliberation, negotiation, and other dialogical strategies that can be used to reach an agreement.