RAIL

We all know we’re not supposed to engage in fallacious argumentation.  We might disagree about what fallacies there are or how they work, but we all agree that there are certain moves in argumentation–at least in some contexts–that are just downright, well…dishonest. How do we keep students and others in our charge from wandering down that path? Most of the time the method is to teach and to reinforce practices of good argumentation, while at the same time teaching them how to recognize and nullify, with critique, the fallacious arguments of others. So far the story is not all that different from any other well-known model of moral education. Teach and promote the good, identify and punish the bad.  And that works most of the time in the hermetically sealed environment of the classroom.  Then our students go out into the world and encounter argumentation like this:

Or this…

I could go on but well…we all have YouTube don’t we.

Enter Dan Ariely on the subject of honesty:

So, if Ariely is right, then all the pragma-dialectic model needs for completion a step after the closing stage: the confession stage! Wherein one apologizes for all of one’s howlers, fallacies, evasions, eristic lapses, bad jokes, uncomfortable silences, unwelcome romantic overtures and, of course, puns. Grad students of UVA, we believe in you! Confession Stage debut at ISSA?

I’m kidding of course. The point is that the idea that practices of confession might make us more honest seems somewhat counter-intuitive. At least one missing ingredient in the analysis is trust in the confessor to maintain a non-judgmental stance to the person doing the confessing. Also absent (apparently) is the freedom from any externally imposed consequences upon confession. It is reflection on our own behavior that is supposed to move us to bring ourselves more into line with our opinion of ourselves as good people, according to Ariely. Be that as it may confession outside of psychology experiments very frequently brings with it sanctions innumerable, from the subtle to the blinding. In order to work, confession seems to need an institution to hold those consequences at bay. Though controversial and by no means consequence-free, perhaps the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa is a prominent non-religious example of what those institutions might be like.

Though I have to admit that I would probably sit happily for hours watching former presidential candidates confess their bad arguments on post-election television, it seems to me that the cultivation of honest argumentation practices probably has to be approached in other ways. Realistically speaking, even honest arguers can blunder their way into mistaken or misleading argumentative moves. It is not enough for good argumentation to have character traits like honesty. One also has to have the requisite skills and more than a passing familiarity with the facts that are material to the issue, for instance.

The character traits, like honesty and fairness, do matter though. They matter a lot. How, if it’s even possible, can we teach them?