The impracticality of intrinsic justification: response to Bahm.

• Author: Leeman, Richard W.
• Position: Response to Kenneth T. Bahm, Argumentation and Advocacy, vol. 27, p. 171, 1991

Kenneth Bahm (1991) suggests two standards by which we may judge the efficacy of intrinsic justification: "If the field of phenomenology provides us with a method of identifying intrinsic features of the resolution and if the identification of intrinsic features serves the debate process by localizing clash, then the application is productive" (p. 175, emphasis ours). In his latest argument, however, Bahm abandons phenomenology as the theoretical grounds for intrinsic justification and fails to come to grips with the practical problems we enumerated previously. We remain unconvinced that intrinsic justification is either a positive development in argumentation theory or that it will increase substantive clash. We suggest that the solution to decreased clash lies elsewhere.

IDENTIFYING INTRINSIC FEATURES

We began our original essay (Hill & Leeman, 1990) by arguing that intrinsic or essential properties, as phenomenologically constructed, make poor definitional guidelines for purposes of academic debate. Bahm's response validates our position by abandoning the theoretical moorings of phenomenology and by shifting the goal of intrinsic justification.

In his response, Bahm (1991) argues that "essential characteristics, stripped of the esoteric language of phenomenology, can be basically thought of as defining characteristics", but by abandoning the language of phenomenology Bahm also loses the phenomenological meaning of "essences." Phenomenological essences do not directly correlate with "defining characteristics;" they are instead, properties that bracket a category or group.

The difference between defining essential characteristics and bracketing a category is not simply a matter of semantics. For phenomenology, essence can only be discovered through an immediate comprehension of the phenomenon. Routinely, phenomenologists talk about the "experiencer," the "lived-experience," and the "sense-data." Bahm (1991) himself notes, "what is given or accepted as evidence must be actually experienceable within the limits of and related to the human experiencer". However, Bahm misunderstands the importance of this qualification. Immediacy is critical because essences cannot be explicitly defined in their entirety. A phenomenological approach would include each and every example within the looker's experience and would distill those structures that are essential to all. Listing several "delimiting" properties--as Bahm would have us do--is simply not the same as deriving essences from the method of variation. Although we may intersubjectively describe--and in that sense, reason--our way to the discovery of essential properties, in phenomenology one does not simply list properties. For that reason, as we noted in our original essay, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Merleau-Ponty, among others, have held that a complete reduction of the object to its phenomenological essence is impossible. Indeed neither Bahm's examples nor the eight phenomenological studies he cites use the method of variation to determine the defining characteristics of an object.(1)

Bahm (1991) himself provides the best evidence that a definition based on essential properties--as meant phenomenologically--is impossible, as he abandons the method of variation as a means of establishing essential properties. We had argued that in order to describe a category of objects, one must have an a priori definition of what belongs in the category and what does not. Although he calls the argument "not compelling," Bahm later admits that "the process of variation does presume some prior knowledge of what a member of a category might be" (1991, p. 173). Indeed, he argues that, in order to use intrinsic justification, debaters must first choose definitions using the current "standards for choosing between definitions" and that "those definitions establish essential qualities". Yet, correctly, Bahm (1988) noted in his first essay that the method of variation is the method that tests--that is, adduces--which qualities are essential and which are contingent. According to his latest formulation, however, a priori definitions are the ultimate arbiter of essential characteristics, not the method of variation.

Ironically, phenomenologists employ the method of variation for the precise purpose of avoiding presuppositions inherent in a priori definitions. Seamon (1979) writes, "phenomenology works to understand the phenomenon as it is in itself before some a priori system has identified, labelled, or explained it".

Bahm tries to escape the dilemma--that one cannot explicitly list essences without tautologically defining by essence--shifting his argument from one of topicality to one of justification. Now, intrinsic justification is a "justification standard and hence a post-topicality burden". Yet in his first article, Bahm (1988) claims that intrinsic justification will create "shared meaning which makes clash possible" and "relates to the validity of resolutional interpretation".

Indeed, although justification standards assure that the affirmative meets their burden of proof, topicality is the issue that ensures fair standards of clash. Bahm's original argument was, and continues to be, that the purpose of intrinsic justification is to improve clash. Intrinsic justification requires advocates to "base their description on that which is linked by definition to the language of the resolution," Bahm argues (1991, p. 178. See also pp. 171, 175). Such a claim only makes sense if the standard speaks to topicality, not justification, Bahm's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Unable to phenomenologically construct any defendable examples of essential properties, Bahm (1991) argues that, if essential properties cannot be determined, intrinsic justification can "still advance the argument that a given quality is not essential". In this new formulation, Bahm contends that "we must be able to identify what is contingent, not what is intrinsic". However, when a universe is divided strictly...