For deliberative disagreement: its venues, varieties and values
Summary:
I outline a theory of deliberative debate, its distinctive features and the kind of normative criteria that may be posited for it in light of its distinctive features. Deliberative debate is a type of practical reasoning: ultimately it is not about what is true, but about what to do. From this follows several characteristics, primarily that there will normally be good reasons on both sides of an issue. I criticize prevalent conceptions of argumentation and outline an alternative, discussing contexts and varieties of deliberation and proposing normative criteria based on a citizen-centered view of the function of deliberation.
Keywords: practical reasoning, deliberation, rhetoric, disagreement, consensus, multidimensionality
Even in established democracies, an observer of political debates and political communication generally cannot help being struck by discouraging developments. The notion of “fake news” represents just one of the worrying factors. The purpose of this article is not to investigate causes, but to sketch a theory of political debate that can provide a reasoned foundation for normative monitoring debate and undergird proposals for improvement.
The essential nature of political debate
A basic insight for a theory of political debate is that at its core it is practical reasoning—i.e., is essentially and ultimately about what to do. Political debate and argumentation is discourse about what a polity, such as a nation, is to do.
Many argumentation scholars arguably fail to fully recognize what this insight entails. A philosophical axiom, an heirloom from Plato, prevents them from it: the idea that all argumentation is about the truth of some claim.
This goes even for much work within “Informal Logic,” a school in argumentation studies that arose from a need to adequately consider practical argument, in the belief that deductive logic could not do so. For example, Johnson & Blair in their classic textbook, Logical Self-Defense, posit as a shared feature of all arguments that “their motivation is doubt about the truth of the claim that occupies the position of conclusion” (2006 edition, p. 246). These scholars founded the most realistic philosophically based approach to real-life argumentation, and as will be clear I have learned much from them. I suggest, however, that they underestimate the distinctive differences between arguments about truth (often called “theoretical” reasoning) and arguments about what to do (practical reasoning). I hold that a fuller recognition of these differences is needed and will contribute to this below.
To be sure, truth is crucial in reasoning of any kind, and premises advanced in practical reasoning always include (and should include) claims that should be true. But what we ultimately argue about in practical reasoning, the issue at the top of the argumentative hierarchy, is not the truth of a claim, but a choice to do something (e.g., to build a wall).
A choice or decision is often put before us in the form of a proposal; but proposals are not propositions. Neither a choice, a decision, or a proposal can be true or false in the same sense that a proposition may be true or false.
Think about our most quotidian decisions and choices. At a restaurant with friends, we may want to choose between the lamb and the chicken. The chicken is cheaper, but the lamb is probably nicer. We may now reason, in discussion with our companions or inwardly, on what to choose; we may choose the same or differently, but whichever choice anyone makes cannot be said to be “true,” nor “false”; it would be a misuse of these concepts to predicate any of them of a choice made by any of us. A friend who has the lamb may afterwards say and feel that it was indeed the right choice, while another—perhaps out of a felt need to economize—chose the salad and felt, with equal justification, that this was the right choice for him. Using “truth” in a way that would accommodate both these choices would make the concept useless for most of the other uses we normally make of it.
Practical reasoning always involves value premises
A further mark of practical reasoning is that it invariably involves value concepts used (explicitly or implicitly) as premises. Someone who recommends a given action may either reason that this action has a value in itself—it is simply, he believes, something one should do. Such a concept is often referred to as a “deontic” norm or reason. Someone else might reason that the action he recommends will produce consequences he sees as valuable; this is “consequentialist” reasoning. The values invoked may be of many sorts: ethical, aesthetic, prudential, economic, altruistic, self-serving. But for deontic as well as consequentialist reasoning it holds that the value is inherent, either in the very action he recommends or in the foreseen consequences of it.
In contrast, a typical kind of reason in reasoning about truth occurs when some circumstance is cited as a “sign” or symptom that some proposition is true. For example, if a young woman presents at the doctor with nausea, the doctor will see this as a possible symptom of pregnancy. Aristotle calls this a sēmeion, i.e., a sign that something is the case with some likelihood; a decisive sign is a tekmērion (Rhetoric, 1357b). The nausea is a reason of some strength (or “weight”) to believe the woman is pregnant, but further examination will be in order. It may then be found that the nausea was caused by gastritis, not pregnancy. Its weight as a sign of pregnancy is then canceled.
Richard Whately formulated many insights relevant to deliberative rhetoric, such as the following (to insert his point into the present discussion, note that his “moral and probable reasoning” equals our notion of practical reasoning): “It is in strictly scientific reasoning alone that all the arguments which lead to a false conclusion must be fallacious. In what is called moral or probable reasoning, there may be sound arguments, and valid objections, on both sides” (1867 [1828], I, iii, 7).
When a value, V, that a certain action A is said to have or promote is cited as a reason for undertaking A, then, even if a decision to undertake A is overturned by other reasons, the value V is still inherent in A and is not canceled.
We may restate this as follows. Whereas a reason in theoretical reasoning invites us to infer a certain conclusion, a reason in practical reasoning invites us to prefer a certain action. Both kinds of reason may invite more or less strongly. Their respective conclusions may both be rejected. If we had inferred pregnancy from the nausea of the young woman with gastritis, we would have inferred falsely. But in practical reasoning, as for example in the choice between lamb and chicken in the restaurant, where the lower price of the chicken invites us to prefer it, this property remains an uncancelable (irrefutable) advantage. It is an inherent property. This is implied when we say that it is an advantage. Only there were other reasons speaking against it that we took to be weightier.
Irrefutable reasons on both sides
This is in the nature of practical reasoning (including political debate). It implies that deliberation, meaning a balancing of considerations, is called for: there will typically be good, irrefutable reasons speaking both for and against any given choice or proposal.
Furthermore, in deliberation it is not enough to have one goal or intention or value in mind and one action that is seen as a means to promote it. “Deliberation” is a cognate of libra, a pair of scales. Weighing something on a pair of scales implies that there is something on both dishes. Taking the weighing as a metaphor for deliberation, we see that deliberation is reasoning in which we consider not only one given action as a means to a goal; we need also consider other means that might serve the same goal, and/or how other goals (values) might be affected by the action.
For example, although buying a flashy sports car might bring me ease of transportation and aesthetic bliss, it might also exhaust my economic means. My use of the car might further result in increased CO2 emission that contradicts my view of proper climate-conscious behavior. More generally, whenever we consider a given action because we expect it to promote a desired goal, we have occasion to remember that we may have (in fact we inevitably have) other goals in life that might be thwarted if we choose to undertake the proposed action. Moreover, other actions may probably serve just as well or better as means to the goal; or the action might be only a partial or an uncertain means to the goal.
Further, different kinds of considerations that cannot in a simple way be said to pertain to “goals” or “intentions” might influence our reasoning. This is the case with deontic norms such as “What one has promised, one must do,” “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not eat pork.”
These examples also make it clear that often such norms are only recognized by a certain set of individuals; but for any deontic norm it holds that those who recognize it do not do so for the sake of any particular goal or intention that they believe will be promoted by the observation of it. Lukes (1992), among others, is very clear on this kind of heterogeneity among the considerations that may be pertinent in situations of moral and other kinds of practical conflict.
Multiple, multidimensional goals and values
Deliberation, then, is practical reasoning that involves a broader scope of considerations than just one single goal and one single means. Humans have multiple “goals,” “ends,” or “values”, or as political scientists often say, “preferences,” and in a given situation speak for opposite courses of action. Moreover, they may belong to different categories or “dimensions.” This is so not just between individuals, but also seen from a single individual’s point of view. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1998) has spelled this out clearly. Even if one goal is at times seen as trumping all others, we inevitably will find that several different actions might be undertaken to promote it, and it may be uncertain which will serve it best and with the least cost in regard to other goals. For example, the defeat of Hitler’s Germany was surely the one paramount goal considered by Churchill and the British government during World War II, but that only intensified their need to deliberate on which means might best serve that overriding goal.
Deliberation and attendant concepts are crucial in Aristotle’s thinking, notably in his ethics, rhetoric, and politics (on this see Kock 2014, reprinted in Kock 2017). He is mainly concerned with the ethical choices individuals make and the collective choices made by citizens in a polity. He also says that the function or duty of rhetoric “is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us” (Rhetoric, 1357a), that is to say, issues of common concern in a polity. For such matters, as for less substantial ones, Aristotle insists on some of the same points that were made above concerning practical reasoning in general. The kind of choice we make, he declares, is “not either true or false”: eti ouk esti proairesis alēthēs ē pseudēs (Eudemian Ethics, 1226a).
Aristotle’s term for choice or decision is proairesis, which literally means “taking one thing rather than another.” As individuals, we may deliberate on whether to take lamb, chicken or a salad, or whether to sell all our possessions and give the money to the poor; as citizens we may deliberate on whether our polity should build a wall. We should understand, with Aristotle, that what we may truly deliberate about, either in ethical reasoning, political debate, or other types of practical reasoning, is not whether something is the case or not, or even whether something ought to be the case or not; it is not even whether we ourselves ought to do some particular thing. Believing or knowing that one ought to do something is not, strictly speaking, the end point of deliberation. “Nor yet,” Aristotle continues in the passage just quoted, “is choice identical with our opinion about matters of practice which are in our own power, as when we think that we ought to do or not to do something”(Eudemian Ethics, 1226a). Even the opinion that one should do something is just one reason, of one particular kind, pertaining to a given choice (as we know, choices between duty and inclination are classic themes in narratives). It is a reason in practical reasoning, a consideration that should to be taken into account, and one that we may use as an argument in debate; sometimes this consideration is sensed to be so “strong” that we believe it decides the matter for us, determining our choice. It is this kind of choice or decision that is ultimately at issue in practical deliberation and defines it nature. Of this choice Aristotle says that it cannot be true or false—whereas the reasons or premises, i.e., the considerations or arguments that speak for or against the choice, obviously can. For example, the assertion that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s was used as a reason in the deliberation about whether to go to war against Iraq. Its truth or falsity was a crucial issue in itself, but not one that anyone could deliberate about.
Aristotle does not have a term that directly corresponds to “practical reasoning,” but he does have one, or rather two, for “deliberation,” namely boulē and bouleusis, as well as a corresponding verb: bouleuein. [1] Boulē is the Greek word for will or decision (they are etymologically related to the English word will); it may designate the processes and/or institutions through which we may come to shared decisions (the Greek Parliament in Athens is called the Boulē). Below I will define deliberation more fully as a certain subcategory of practical reasoning, but we may note here that something Aristotle says about deliberation also goes for practical reasoning in general: “We deliberate about things that are in our power and can be done” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1112a). As we shall consider in a moment, Aristotle also makes clear that we can deliberate about such things only. Following deliberation, we may then come to a choice, a proairesis.