Challenging Authority with Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Arguments from and to Authority
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Can a President Advise His Advisors?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light—and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDERSECRETARY BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds—it sounds interesting to me.
So we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s—that’s pretty powerful.2
Here, Trump abandons the reported speech format and directly presents his assessment of the situation (“it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs”), followed by an evaluative judgment that “it would be interesting to check that.” It is unclear, however, whether this in any way continues his report on the prior conversation with advisors or rather directly presents the president’s independent “talent” (see below).9 This strategic ambiguity at the illocutionary level (see Lewiński 2021a) is part of the potential manipulation and lets Trump plausibly deny any sincere commitment to either the assertoric (“it does”) or directive (“check that”) force of his words. Yet, these are precisely the commitments critical commentators took him to task for. Given the official capacity he is speaking in, he can be reasonably taken to be requesting, advising, or even commanding his administration’s officials that some potential treatments be “tested” or “checked.”10 Such an official request presupposes that such treatments are worthy of serious scientific testing, something Trump directly reinforces by labeling them “very interesting” and “pretty powerful.” Noticeably, then, in contrast to the earlier case of the antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, Trump didn’t openly advocate, let alone mandate, the use of bleach or UV light to cure the new coronavirus. All the same, he clearly suggested—in one of the possible illocutionary readings of the verb “to suggest”11—that using them is a potentially effective way of treating COVID-19.THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds—it sounds interesting to me.
Due to recent speculation and social media activity, RB (the makers of Lysol and Dettol) has been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information. (https://www.rb.com/media/news/2020/april/improper-use-of-disinfectants/ accessed on 8 Feburary 2022)
3. Paradoxes of Authority
4. Arguments from and to Authority
4.1. Arguments from Authority in Argumentation Theory
Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A.Minor Premise: E asserts that statement A is true (false).Conclusion: A is true (false).
Expertise Question: How credible is E as an expert source?Field Question: Is E an expert in the field F that A is in?Opinion Question: What did E assert that implies A?Trustworthiness Question: Is E personally reliable as a source?Consistency Question: Is A consistent with what other experts assert?Backup Evidence Question: Is E’s assertion based on evidence?
(A) Arguments presented by the contending experts to support their own views and critique their rivals’ views. (Cf. consistency and backup evidence question)(B) Agreement from additional putative experts on one side or the other of the subject in question. (Cf. consistency and expertise questions)(C) Appraisals by “meta-experts” of the experts’ expertise (including appraisals reflected in formal credentials earned by the experts). (Cf. field and expertise questions)(D) Evidence of the experts’ interests and biases vis-à-vis the question at issue. (Cf. trustworthiness question)21(E) Evidence of the experts’ past “track-records” (Cf. backup evidence and expertise question)
1 Opinion O (X) is true or acceptable (Y). [conclusion]1.1 Opinion O (X) is asserted by expert E (Z). [premise]1.1′ Being asserted by expert E (=Z) is an indication of being true or acceptable (=Y). [linking premise aka the inference rule]
4.2. Relation between Arguments from and to Authority
5. Authority Challenged with Arguments
6. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | I follow the original terminology introduced by Bocheński (1965; see Brożek 2013; Koszowy and Walton 2019), while acknowledging the theoretical-practical distinction as perhaps more standard (Raz 2006; see Langton 2015), although potentially confusing too (Langton 2018b). Here, I use the epistemic interchangeably with the theoretical, and deontic with practical, without any firm conceptual commitments. |
2 | Official transcript from: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-31/ (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). For a video recording of the fragment in question, see https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-s-irresponsible-it-s-dangerous-experts-rip-trump-s-n1191246 (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). |
3 | As quoted in The Washington Post report “Trump claims controversial comment about injecting disinfectants was ‘sarcastic’” available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/24/disinfectant-injection-coronavirus-trump/ (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). |
4 | In the words of the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb cited in The Washington Post report “Trump claims controversial comment about injecting disinfectants was ‘sarcastic’” available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/24/disinfectant-injection-coronavirus-trump/ (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). See also NBC News’ article “‘It’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous’: Experts rip Trump’s idea of injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19” available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-s-irresponsible-it-s-dangerous-experts-rip-trump-s-n1191246 (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022) and The Guardian’s piece “Coronavirus: medical experts denounce Trump’s theory of ‘disinfectant injection’” at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/trump-coronavirus-treatment-disinfectant (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). |
5 | As pointed out by an anonymous referee, it can also be an indirect way of challenging Trump’s presupposition of expertise. When commentators such as Dr. Grimes call out Trump’s falsehoods—“No, you cannot inject UV light into your body to cure #COVID19—neither biology or physics work that way”—they simultaneously suggest that Trump knows nothing about biology and physics. |
6 | As reported in: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavirus-trump.html (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). |
7 | See however Searle’s reservations on treating “suggestion” in terms of a separate illocutionary act to start with: “I can insist that we go to the movies or I can suggest that we go to the movies; but I can also insist that the answer is found on page 16 or I can suggest that it is found on page 16. The first pair are directives, the second, representatives. […] Both ‘insist’ and ‘suggest’ are used to mark the degree of intensity with which the illocutionary point is presented. They do not mark a separate illocutionary point at all. […] Paradoxical as it may sound, such verbs are illocutionary verbs, but not names of kinds of illocutionary acts” (Searle 1975a, p. 368). (Note that a similar illocutionary ambiguity between (weak) assertives and directives applies to “wondering.”) This point, while broadly correct, is inconsequential to the analysis in this paper; for consistency, I treat suggestion in its directive sense throughout. |
8 | Indeed, Trump clearly turns his gaze and attention to Bryan while also addressing him several times via “you”, as in “I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it.” See: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-s-irresponsible-it-s-dangerous-experts-rip-trump-s-n1191246 (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). |
9 | For a detailed analysis of the argumentative functions of reported speech see Gobbo et al. 2022). One such function is, quite expectedly, to construct an argument from authority (see Section 4 below), while an important challenge is to precisely dissect the various voices reported, thus pinning down the speaker’s own commitments. |
10 | Asking a question—itself a directive speech act—has long been recognized as a vehicle for a wide array of other, indirect speech acts, notably requesting (Searle 1975b). While “can you pass me the salt?” is the standard, idiomatic example of it, “is there a way we can do something like that[?]” would function analogously. But given the official authority of the president over his advisors, it can even be understood as a command, with “yes, sir!” being the most appropriate response here, as well shown in Bryan’s earlier “We’ll get to the right folks who could”. |
11 | See Note 7 above. |
12 | As reported in The Guardian’s piece “Coronavirus: medical experts denounce Trump’s theory of ‘disinfectant injection’” at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/trump-coronavirus-treatment-disinfectant (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). For a detailed case study exposing Trump’s skill of evading efforts to pin down his standpoint by inquisitive journalists during press conferences, see Jacobs et al. 2022). |
13 | See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavirus-trump.html (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022); https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-disinfectants-covid-19/ (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). In her study of figleaves—linguistic techniques meant to mask harmful content of a speaker’s message—in political discourse, Saul (2021, pp. 170–171) singles out the “I was only joking” or “I was being ironic” response as one common way of disingenuously denying the seriousness of some prior, harmful speech act. |
14 | Unsurprisingly, the critique of appeals to authority undergirds the secular Enlightenment mindset, as epitomized in Locke’s denouncement of the argumentum ad verecundiam in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) (see Bachman 1995; Goodwin 1998; Hamblin 1970). |
15 | Work on epistemic authority and epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007) has brough attention to the fact that also Austinian constatives—and not merely performatives—are in the end warranted by authority. See also Austin (1962, p. 137) on (not) having the right / (not) being in a position “to state” something as parallel to (not) having the right “to order”. |
16 | It is not hard to see that the possibility of non-expert assessment of experts solves a well-known version of the first paradox of authority that runs as follows. We need experts because we cannot have sufficient knowledge on all the things in the world; reliance on such experts is only reasonable if we appeal to the right experts; to select right experts, we need to evaluate their reasons on substantive grounds; but to do so, we should be experts ourselves. Yet this directly contradicts the first premise, that we need to resort to the judgement of experts precisely because we ourselves cannot be experts. Goldman’s (2001) argument removes the evaluation on substantive grounds premise, thus avoiding the paradox. See Fuhrer et al. (2021) and Moldovan (2022) for further discussion. |
17 | The desert island example with the “go and pick up wood” imperative is due to Austin (1962, p. 28) and has been recently discussed, among others, by Langton (2015, 2018b) and Witek (2013, 2021a) as an original example of accommodated authority, that is, authority tacitly provided by other parties to a conversational situation. See Lewis (1979) for an influential account of “the rule of accommodation”. |
18 | Already in his Elements of Logic (1826) and Elements of Rhetoric (1828), Richard Whately distinguished between the authority of an expert’s “example, testimony, or judgment” (auctoritas) and the authority of those in a position of power (potestas) (Hansen 2006). (Modern languages such as Polish similarly use autorytet for auctoritas but władza for potestas.) While the deference to the former might be presumptively reasonable, it might also be usurped by the latter, thus leading to the fallacy of authority (argumentum ad verecundiam), not unlike in our Trump’s case. |
19 | As reported by The Washington Post in “Trump claims controversial comment about injecting disinfectants was ‘sarcastic’”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/24/disinfectant-injection-coronavirus-trump/ (accessed on 8 Feburary 2022). For an analysis of the epistemic status of the authority of a “quack doctor”—whose gullible disciples can only present with credibility, but never the knowledge-based expertise—see Langton (2015). |
20 | This scheme directly concerns the epistemic authority of an expert. Parallel schemes for deontic authority can be found in Koszowy and Walton (2019). |
21 | Here is another well-known paradox of epistemic authority, which Guerrero (2021) has recently analyzed as the “Interested Expert Problem.” On a standard view, experts should possess impartial knowledge, free of contaminating vested interests and selective biases (hence conditions such as Goldman’s and Walton’s). Real experts are impartial experts. All the same, expertise is intricately intertwined with interests: particular interests can motivate knowledge, result from knowledge, or develop simultaneously with knowledge. A climate activist can become a maritime biologist, a maritime biologist can become a climate activist, or both activities can grow in parallel from experiencing the radically changing oceans (see Guerrero 2021, for illuminating examples and broader theoretical analysis). This might be a feature common enough to identify an “impartial” or “disinterested expert” as a contradiction in terms. For argumentation scholars, this paradox explains the perplexing features of the “circumstantial” ad hominem fallacy, a form of attack whereby an arguer’s interests and biases, rather than arguments, are challenged (e.g., van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992). Since via such attacks, given the bias identified, the attacker is effectively “claiming that the other party has no right to speak”, they amount to “offences against a fundamental norm for argumentative discourse”, the freedom rule (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992, p. 153). All the same, as identified by Walton and others, such attacks are reasonable challenges to authority-based arguments. See Zenker (2011) for further discussion. |
22 | I am aware that in the context of the lively debates in argumentation theory this representation seems, at best, careless. Freeman (2011, p. 88) argues that Toulmin’s warrants representing inference rules “are not parts of arguments” and, as such, “should not be included in diagrams of argument texts”. Similarly, Hitchcock chastises the practice of presenting warrants as premises as being “radically misconceived”: “The claim [conclusion] is not presented as following from the warrant; rather it is presented as following from the grounds [data] in accordance with the warrant. A warrant is an inference-licensing rule, not a premiss.” (Hitchcock 2017, pp. 83–84, italics in the original). While this dispute is not merely verbal, nothing I say here rests on any particular theoretical commitment in this respect. Premises or not, warrants contribute to any argument by licensing its inference. As such—precisely in the spirit of Toulmin’s (1958) original analysis—they should be “laid out” for our critical inspection. And this is my intention here. |
23 | As such, it excludes the “purely” deontic authority of non-experts, such as the authority of Bocheński’s (1965, p. 167) “rather unintelligent and uninstructed major” over “a lieutenant who is highly skilled in military science” (see p. 8 above). But the scheme can easily be tweaked to include this variety of authority too. Argument from authority: Premise 1: Deontic authority A says: Do X!; Premise 2: Deontic authorities should be followed; Conclusion: We should X. Argument to authority: Premise 1 − n: Person A has qualities (1, 2, …, n) (e.g., is a formal boss, a delegated superior, or an informally recognized leader); Premise n + 1: This is what being a deontic authority is; Conclusion: A is a deontic authority. Thus, a set of critical challenges to such a purely deontic authority is organized similarly to the scheme to and from expert authority in Figure 1. |
24 | For simplicity, I gloss over the question of whether the characteristics of expertise laid out by Goldman and Koszowy and Walton are ontological or epistemological, that is, whether they constitute expertise to start with or rather let us identify pre-existing experts (see Goldman 2001, 2018, and Lackey 2018, for discussion). My formulation might suggest the former—a kind of conceptual definition to be filled in—but it works equally well with the epistemic reading. See also Croce (2019) and Scholz (2018). |
25 | |
26 | The only straightforward exception being the “opinion question” targeting the empirical Premise 1 of argument from authority (as such, also not a proper inferential scheme question). The “consistency” and “backup evidence” questions are ambiguous between addressing Premise 1 of the argument from authority and one of the Premises 1-n of the argument to authority. Yet, the latter reading seems to take precedence: saying something consistent with other experts and properly backed up (e.g., by scientific results) is a general characteristic of an expert, rather than a contingent feature of one assertion. |
27 | |
28 | |
29 | And both indicated by anonymous reviewers as challenging problems. |
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Lewiński, M. Challenging Authority with Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Arguments from and to Authority. Languages 2022, 7, 207. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030207
Lewiński M. Challenging Authority with Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Arguments from and to Authority. Languages. 2022; 7(3):207. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030207
Chicago/Turabian StyleLewiński, Marcin. 2022. "Challenging Authority with Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Arguments from and to Authority" Languages 7, no. 3: 207. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030207
APA StyleLewiński, M. (2022). Challenging Authority with Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Arguments from and to Authority. Languages, 7(3), 207. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030207