Agnes Callard wrong on Arguing

 Agnes Callard writes

How does arguing work? 

Arguing is a type of behavior we observe. It is 'multiply realizable'- i.e. different initial conditions may give rise to it and it may have several purposes. Some arguments are protocol bound or juristic in such a manner that there is a dominant strategy. In this case we can specify rules according to which some arguments 'work' while others don't. 

Argumentation of any kind resembles fighting

No. Fighting involves the infliction of harm till the other desists. Arguments do not inflict harm. Nor do insults. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones &c'

—a zero sum game of dominance and submission.

This is nonsense. A decision process may involve listening to the arguments put forward by different parties and conceding something to each on that basis. In other words, this may be a positive- but also a negative- sum game. It is frequently the case that we get into an argument with someone else and the upshot is we both look stupid and are henceforth disregarded by everyone else.

 And yet disagreement, done right, is essential to intellectual life.

No. A thing is only essential if it must exist in all possible worlds. Intellectual life of various types may flourish in the absence of disagreement. Consider a case where 'Aumann agreement' obtains. It is not the case that 'intellectual life' will be absent. 

 You can set out to fill gaps in your knowledge, but being proven wrong is the only way to locate those gaps covered over by illusions of knowledge.

Nonsense! I set out to fill gaps in my knowledge about Nicaraguan politics by reading the Wikipedia article on it. I quickly find 'gaps in my knowledge'- e.g. my previous ignorance of who currently rules that country- but those gaps were not previously 'covered over by illusions of knowledge'. 

 When other people refute you, they teach you what you couldn’t have known you needed to learn.

No. When other people refute you they show you have poor reasoning power. I am refuting every sentence Callard writes. But, even if she read this, she wouldn't say 'I needed to learn x'. She must already know about things like Aumann agreement. All she would learn by reading me is that she writes like shit because she does not think before she writes. She is simply careless or stupid. Does she 'need to learn this'? No. It is better for her to remain ignorant of her own ignorance and stupidity so as to earn money by writing shite and getting paid for it. 

Arguments are only productive if

they concern 'open questions' the answers to which have utile applications. It does not matter what 'rules of engagement' are followed. Provided experiments or other types of research go forward- motivated by the passions generated by that argumentation- the thing may be productive or destructive. But this depends on who is doing the arguing. If I get into an argument with a kid as to whether Spiderman can beat up Dracula, the thing is destructive coz the kid ends up belaboring me with her fists and then her Mummy sends her to bed without her supper. For both of us it is a case of 'tears before bedtime'. We agree not to get into such arguments and just concentrate on making vroom vroom noises while playing with my matchbox cars. On the other hand if Joss Whedon gets into an argument with the same kid about whether Spiderman can beat up Dracula, the result may be a new addition to the Avengers franchise which grosses tens of billions of dollars world wide. 

 people follow certain basic rules of engagement, such as:
--Winning the argument is less important than finding the truth.

No. This is a case where Society requires individual rationality to diverge from collective rationality. We want the Defense attorney to do his damnedest to throw doubt on the Prosecution's case. At the same time, we want the Prosecution to go all out to convict the defendant of the crime which carries the highest tariff. Why? Both lawyers are 'agents' not 'principals'. Those paying them need to know that their incentives are properly adversarial. Otherwise, they could collude for an easy life.

 If Agnes is right, then the adversarial set up of our Courts is sub-optimal. But the alternative is a cozy arrangement between prosecutors and defense attorneys where neither exercises much vigilance and both excuse their laziness by saying 'well, we are not concerned with punishment so much as we are concerned with uncovering the Truth'. The reductio ad absurdum would be a 'Truth and Reconciliation' Commission to which anyone accused of anything simply pleads guilty to anything with which one might conceivably be charged because no punishment is entailed.

--Don’t use rhetorical tricks to achieve persuasion.

Rhetoric is about exposing the absurdity or mischievous consequences of the other's line of reasoning. It is perfectly proper to wax eloquent on the catastrophic consequences which would follow if everybody accepted the 'ratio' of the other's argument. 

Furthermore, persuasion involves presenting yourself in a good light and speaking in a winning fashion. One rhetorical trick is to appear modest. But to appear modest- rather than a faker of that virtue- it is advisable to actually cultivate humility and other good qualities in your private life. 

--It’s good to acknowledge what you don’t know.

No. It may be beneficial to do this, it may not. Speaking generally, I am ignorant of the color of the underpants worn by my interlocutor but if I open my remarks by acknowledging this ignorance of mine, people would think I am a pervert of some sort.

More generally, since most decisions must be made under conditions of epistemic scarcity and cognitive costliness, it is foolish to acknowledge what you don't know because this would tend to paralyze decision making in contexts where what matters more is that a decision is made quickly rather than that the decision is 'true' or 'optimal'. 

--You shouldn’t straw-man your opponent.

Why not? His argument may be sophisticated and hedged around with all sorts of caveats. Indeed it may be meaningless precisely for that reason. Straw-man the fuck out of him, if that serves your purpose. You can always hedge this straw-manning with caveats such that you can claim, if called on your straw-manning, that you are yourself being straw-manned.

--Acknowledge that your refuter does you a favor.

This is one claim of Callard's that I agree with. In a debate, it is always a good idea to begin by acknowledging that your refuter did you a favor by going down on his knees and sucking you off earlier in the day. 

Maxims of this kind are so familiar, so clichéd, that we are inclined to ignore the fact that they have a history.

A history of going doing on their knees and sucking off all and sundry.

 But they do.

In the same sense that they have a geography and a cosmology and a criminal record for lewd conduct.

 They did not appear out of nowhere, nor have they always been with us. Rather, they were explicitly introduced by one individual: Socrates. 

This is not just Eurocentric drivel, it is ignorant drivel. The fact is, all Civilizations- at least Iron Age civilizations with 'Tribal Republics'- developed the same logical, categorical, approach to evaluating arguments. Indeed the word kategoros initially meant an accusation (which is why in the Bible, the word is used in the sense of 'devil' because the devil accuses and punishes the sinner) which could not be of the form 'That dude is evil. I bet he killed and raped lots of kids. Let us put him to death.' Rather it had to take account of geographical, temporal, and other categories and be of the form 'The accused was in such and such place at such and such time. Moreover he had such and such motive to kill and rape  the deceased. This was the stick he used to bash in her brains. It was given to him by his Daddy on his birthday as many of us can testify. Furthermore, so and so, who happened to be relieving herself behind a bush was a witness to the foul deed'.

That, at any rate, is the story we find in Plato, in whose dialogues the character Socrates appears as stating, explaining and defending these norms.

Plato's Socrates admits that there were other similar thinkers before him- some of whom lived very long ago in Egypt or other places. 

 He introduces the practice of arguing for the sake of the truth, as opposed to for the sake of victory, or popularity, or audience-gratification. 

A disciple of his, states that the 'Truth Seeking Persians' were the first to formulate a system of Government based on reason. But this happened before Socrates was born.

Does Socrates really deserve this much credit? 

No. That is why no such credit is accorded to him save by the ignorant or those trying to shill some worthless book

Plato tries to make the case that he does, in a series of dialogues in which he considers and rebuts any claim that poets, or sophists, or political leaders, or orators, or ordinary citizens have on that title.

Either Socrates has a 'genius'- a tutelary spirit- which, being of divine origin, makes him superior to other men, or he is a 'gad-fly', gifted but not god like. 

The book the Guggenheim Award is being used to support, The World Socrates Made, 

Is a bunch of stupid lies. Callard is talking up some dead white male so as to boost the sales of a shite book.

will analyze contemporary intellectual culture—within philosophy; within academia more broadly; and extra academically, on social media—in the light of its Socratic origins. 

Coz White Males invented everything- right? Africans and Middle Eastern people and Indians and the Chinese and the indigenous people of the Americas were all utterly useless- little more than beasts. 

Our cultures of debate have a peculiarly Socratic structure—that of an adversarial division of epistemic labor—that we have come to take for granted.

But, we know, Indians had the same thing at an earlier period. 

 Both the idealistic heights we expect from argumentative engagement, as well as the depths (defensiveness, ad hominem argumentation, and mutual suspicion) to which it often, in reality, sinks bear the Socratic signature. Learning to read it is critical to creating the culture of refutation that we want and need.

To refute Callard is child's play. Logic and Category theory have moved on a great deal even over the last twenty years. Meanwhile Callard is helping to turn Philosophy into a sort of finger-painting therapy for mentally retarded victims of epistemic and other self-abuse. 

My first book, Aspiration: the Agency of Becoming (OUP, 2018)was about how we come to value new things. 

It was shit.

I argued that such fundamental personal transformations as becoming a parent, acquiring a passion for classical music, or becoming a patriot of one’s adopted homeland can be understood as governed by a rational process of self-creation.

but only because becoming a cat or a cloud or a canary could be understood in the same way. Indeed, by her own account, we could claim that Agnes Callard has turned into a duck named Magnus Mallard. Ex falso quodlibet. From what is false anything at all can be deduced.