Ethical Argumentation.

• Author: Arthos, John
• Position: Book Review

Ethical Argumentation. By Douglas Walton. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003; pp. xviii +311. $85.00.

In Ethical Argumentation, Douglas Walton claims to have "laid down the foundations for a new research program" by advancing a model of argument evaluation he calls the "new dialectic" (192). His model provides a method of ethical justification that resolves, on the one hand, the foundationalist problems that beset formal logic, and on the other hand, the relativism that he believes besets rhetoric. Walton's book is best appreciated as a corrective to the principles and practices of a specific discourse community, that is, English-speaking academic philosophers in the analytic tradition who still approach ethical questions with the tools of axiomatic logic. The book's strengths and weaknesses flow from its orientation to this audience. He argues for the legitimacy of emotion and character in argument, the situated and contingent nature of reasoned discourse, the relaxed standards of probability and reasonableness. These are all foreign to ethical argument in this tradition, and a reasonable remedy to its limitations. The book is an extended effort to pry an audience of philosophers loose from the assumption that such discursive strategies are out of bounds, and if he makes progress in this direction his efforts will be worthwhile.

The tools Walton imports for this task will be familiar to rhetoricians and students of prudential reasoning. As distinct from determinate movement from indubitable starting points to determinate conclusions, dialectic starts amidst the commitments and values of people actively involved in real-life decisions, and finds legitimacy in their presumptions, feelings and argument strategies in reaching a decision about what to do in a given case. Conventional views, popular opinion, community and cultural values form legitimate premises, the links between these premises and conclusions are probabilistic, and the principles of argument evaluation are fitted to these looser standards. Facts, definitions, evidence and reasons are defeasible, which is to say, subject to later correction, revision, emendation or rejection. Circular reasoning is no longer merely a fallacy of logic, but a structure that makes room for revision and correction. Presumptions are tentatively accepted at one stage, and then later modified based on new information. The problem of infinite regress is avoided by appeal to the practical grounding of...