Arguing with limited beings (us, that is)

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Arguing with limited beings (us, that is)

• Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, KLI UMCS

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Aims

• To consider the impact of bounded rationality
  upon our understanding of argumentation
• To argue the required response is to consider
  argumentation as part of a cooperative cognitive
  process

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Plan

• Standard objections
• Assumptions behind the objections
• Bounded rationality and arguments
• Reconsidering the objections
• The pessimistic view
• The optimistic view
• Cooperation and objective values

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Standard objections

• Arguments inadequate because of
• Informal fallacies
• Misrepresenting the facts
• Appeal to emotion

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Assumptions behind objections

• Human reasoning approximates an idealised
  rationality, but
• Swayed by emotions
• Misled by fallacious reasoning

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Bounded rationality

• Herbert Simon, Bill Wimsatt
• No idealised rationality to approximate
• Similarity to Harman and to Toulmin
• Rationality constituted by heuristics
• Limited use of resources
• Biased
• Context-dependent
• Open-ended
• Normally considered in context of decisions
• Can be applied in context of argumentation

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Three kinds of arguments

• Harmans distinction
• Arguments
• Inferences
• Inferences to be understood in terms of heuristics

• Arguments as
• Abstract objects
• (Rational) form of decision-making
• (Rational) form of communication

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Fallacies and enthymemes

• Biggles wears boots
• Nazis wear boots
• Biggles is a Nazi
• Hans wears boots, a hat with a skull
• Nazis wear boots, hats with skulls
• Hans is a Nazi

• Some cases of informal fallacies are rational
  arguments
• Inadequate arguments can be reinterpreted as
  enthymematic
• People can distinguish bad and good arguments of
  the same apparent form
• Arguments treated as heuristics

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Bias and argument

• Gigerenzer example
• City of 1 million
• 1000 infected
• 5 false positive
• How likely to be ill?
• 95?
• About 2!
• 50,000 false positive

• Both examples provide the same information
• Way information presented important
• Need to understand actual heuristics

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Emotion and cognition

• Over two million Burmese affected by cyclone
• Actual effect upon a single individual
• Engaging empathy
• Not clearly inappropriate
• Role of emotions in rapid response to stimuli

• Emotion plays a cognitive role
• Emotions as simple heuristics

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The pessimistic view

• Human reasoning deeply flawed
• Known biases can be consciously abused
• The notion of ideal rationality can be used to
  hide abuse
• No general strategy to avoid biases
• Emotions can not be excluded
• No way to generally distinguish appropriate
  arguments
• Argumentation is just another way of getting
  others to do what you want

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The optimistic view

• Can identify and avoid individual biases
• Use heuristics for this
• Can develop new heuristics to deal with
  problematic cases
• Can use arguments for cognitive cooperation given
  shared goals
• Heuristics a realistic way to move social
  epistemology beyond trust

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Cooperation and values

• Objective values
• Truth
• Can underpin a shared cognitive effort
• Such efforts self-defeating if no such values
• Rortys notion of solidarity probably not robust
  enough for this

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Thank you

• konrad_at_talmont.com