Conor here: In the following, Matt Bruenig dives into argumentation theory using his first argument at The Argument as a jumping off point.
By Matt Bruenig, who writes about politics, the economy, and political theory, with a focus on issues that affect poor and working people. He is currently the president of 3P, a think tank founded in 2017. The primary mission of 3P is to publish ideas and analysis that assist in the development of an economic system that serves the many, not the few and aims to fill the holes left by the current think tank landscape with a special focus on socialist and social democratic economic ideas. Bruenig previously worked as a lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board and as a policy analyst at the Demos Think Tank. Originally published at his website.
The discourse is full of argument but mostly devoid of argumentation theory. Most people read arguments impressionistically in much the same way that most people read novels, listen to music, or watch movies. There are people who have learned to technically dissect these forms and who, as a result, consume them much differently and can explain in great detail why a particular work is good or bad, but they are the distinct minority.
I’ve been thinking about this in the context of The Argument, a new publication that debuted last week that intends to, among other things, have real people argue real things directly against one another. How will people consume these arguments or make sense of them in a discursive environment devoid of generally-accepted notions of what makes an argument good or successful?
The overwhelming response to the first head-to-head clash — between myself and Kelsey Piper over the importance of cash welfare — provided a good opportunity to answer this question. This response proved the theory that this is a potentially very entertaining and engaging form of content. But it has also confirmed that there is no consensus at all on how to actually evaluate the argument that everyone just read.
Rich Yeselson read the exchange and concluded that it amounted to “Matt Bruenig eviscerat[ing] a hapless lib out of the gate” while Logan Bowers read it and found that he “agreed more and more with Piper after each successive [Bruenig] paragraph.” These are just two tweets, but based on my scan, they are reasonably representative of the thousands of other tweets reacting to the debate.
If you think there is something to evaluating argument itself, not just agreeing or disagreeing with conclusions or people, there is something really strange about the inability to reach some kind of consensus about the exchange. It should be possible to say this or that person got the best of it in a way that is mostly detached from your own views. But to do this well requires the ability and willingness to technically dissect an argument, not just impressionistically consume it.
When I looked at Kelsey’s first piece from a pure argumentation perspective, what I saw were two moves that go as follows:
- She contends that cash welfare does not really help much. She presents a few recent studies showing null results for cognitive and health outcomes. She doesn’t present an explicit framework for evaluating whether a particular welfare policy is good, but implicitly adopts an evaluative framework that says welfare programs can be deemed good or bad by looking at the extent to which they promote human capital and related indicators.
- She presents an error theory to explain why leftists, liberals, progressives and so on are not reacting much to these studies despite the fact that they are, based on her implicit evaluative framework (human capital promotion), devastating to the pro-cash-welfare argument. The error theory is essentially that they are dishonest actors who refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts.
My response was specifically designed to clash with Piper’s on every argumentative level:
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I make what debaters would call a kritik in which I challenge Piper’s implied framework for evaluating the success or failure of welfare programs. Rather than looking to see whether a welfare program promotes human capital (Piper’s preferred framework), I argue that we should look to the more traditional goals of the welfare state: eradicating class difference and social alienation, reducing inequality and leveling living standards, compressing and smoothing income and consumption, providing workers and individuals independence and refuge from coercion by reducing economic dependence on the labor market and the family, among other things. To make it clear that this is not some ad-hoc framework I am constructing to reach a preferred conclusion, I cite other authorities on the welfare state that also use it, including perhaps the most celebrated theoretical work on western welfare states,The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.
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I present an error theory to explain why Piper failed to account for these other goals in her argument. The error theory is that (a) she is unfamiliar with them, (b) she has unreflectively adopted recent ideas about the (mostly child-focused) welfare state that present it as an “investment” in human capital, (c) she is drawing upon an effective altruist idea to use direct cash transfers as an economic development strategy in the third world and mistakenly applying that logic to the developed-world welfare state in America.
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I directly respond to Piper’s empirical claims by pointing out that there are contrary studies that do find positive results on the outcomes she focuses on. I anticipate her argument that those are “lower quality” because they aren’t RCTs by pointing to an RCT that was even higher quality than the ones she relied on.
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I directly respond to Piper’s error theory by attacking the premise that nobody is acknowledging these studies by pointing out that the New York Times covered it. The kritik also functions as a response to the error theory: maybe it’s not that people dishonestly refuse to acknowledge the studies, but rather that the studies are just irrelevant to the main justifications for the welfare state.
In theory, if we care about evaluating arguments themselves, we could get some agreement that these were the moves and then from there get into the more contentious questions of how they were executed, who won the various clashes involved, etc. In practice, with a few exceptions, people don’t really digest arguments in this formalistic way.
One of the things I’ve found funny in the aftermath of the clash is watching people object to my argumentative style, which they describe as being mean or dismissive or personal or whatever. What these people are actually reacting to is my error theory about how Piper reached (what I regard as) an incorrect conclusion. My error theory is essentially that she is ignorant of the rationale for developed-world welfare states and has been led astray by recent liberal ideas about human capital and effective altruist ideas about third-world development policy.
The reason I find the reaction to that interesting is that Piper also spends a good deal of her piece on an error theory. This error theory is sprinkled throughout the piece but it essentially accuses others of dishonesty. Indeed, she concludes the piece by calling them liars:
We’re in a dangerous epistemic environment. One where widespread agreement on basic facts is scarce and noble lies have permeated the halls of truth-seeking organizations like the media. Those of us who care about ending poverty have to choose the integrity of our work over trying to play 5D chess and hoping no one else knows the rules.
As I said above, I designed my arguments to directly clash with Piper’s. She presented an error theory that her opponents are liars. I presented an error theory that she is ignorant. Why is my error theory offensive and hers isn’t?
There is no actual difference between the offensiveness of our error theories, but there is a psychological difference in how people process them. Piper called a general group of people liars who selectively disregard inconvenient facts while I called a specific person ignorant. Abstractly, it would seem Piper has actually done the more offensive thing because she’s said something sort of insulting about a lot of people while I have only said something sort of insulting about one person. But people don’t process it this way because they are more affected when they can personalize the insulted party than when they can’t.
I suspect that “how people respond to arguments” has a strong element of “does the point of view of the arguer serve my interests or not?” I suspect that this often works at a level deeper than conscious awareness, and that people confabulate self-perceived rational reasons for their responses to justify what are deeper-than-rational responses.
So, I suspect, it’s not just whether one has learned how to analyze arguments; it’s also what one wants. As IIRC Woody Allen remarked, “the heart wants what it wants”, and that shapes how people respond to arguments. If that’s right, I think that there is not an easy solution to the problem of forming a consensus evaluation of any debate involving divergent arguments.
People do not want to know, they just want to believe.
to both you and SC – people have to be ready to debate/argue to begin with – have had too many people say Putin is dictator, Ukraine SMO wrong, end of discussion – refusal to answer simple questions – some folks seem too trapped in their silos – and if you want to keep any friends it is sometimes better to respect their desire to stay uninformed – that’s not arrogance of thinking you’re correct but a stifled ability to provide other points and questions to bring to the discussion, like history – at least now folks seem to agree that Gaza is a horrible and despicable holocaust, but even in that there seems to be an overload for folks and a shrug of shoulders as to what can be done – have run out of tears but not supreme disappointment at the acceptable ignorance and apathy – waddayagon2do? – if there’s a local protest, i’ll join in, but contacting congress critters that supposedly represent us is almost pointless – i just try to enjoy what nature we have left as it vanishes –
The “effective altruism” movement to which Piper belongs is not very effective when it comes to altruism. It is effective in creating a world view where it is nothing wrong with income and wealth inequalities, and somewhat effective in spreading it among mostly young college students.
The way to make the most good is making a ton of money so that you donate a lot of money. It is remarkably uncurious when it comes to the effects of making this money, so going into an unethical career is actually the moral choice to make. You should build bombs and scamming tools, as long as it makes you a lot of money. That is in fact the moral choice.
Unsurprisingly they are mostly able to recruit tech students. They also get funding from tech billionaires, donating to “effective alruism” movements.
I think if one views it from the perspective that the purpose of the system is what it does, the purpose of “effective alruism” is to uphold a world view where tech billionaries are good, actually. So of course the purpose of welfare must be create human capital for the benefit of tech billionaires. If the poor didn’t want to be poor they too should run crypto scams or at least become useful cogs in surveilliance capitalism.
And the taxpayer-subsidized philanthropy” (perhaps better called “malanthropy”) of these people just happens to promote the interests – privatization, deregulation, militarization and the ideologies underpinning them – of those who made the ill-gotten fortunes to begin with. It’s a perpetual motion machine, undermining public interests with public dollars.
Conor and others,
You may be interested in an argument framework employed by Scott Alexander at Astralcodex.substack.com. His readers may have opposing viewpoints on topics, They work with each other to frame or restate arguments in a way where each may agree that their viewpoint is fairly and accurately presented. Then the combined product is presented to their audience.
Theories of argument can be traced back to the tradition of rhetoric. By the middle ages, it became part of the trivium, and was considered a very valuable part of higher education up until the XIXth century. As Bruenig says, in the present day only a small number of specialists really understand all the concepts, and most people evaluate arguments impressionistically.
The study of rhetoric does include a detailed consideration of fallacies, but my sense is that the tradition is not especially concerned with whether particular arguments are “good or bad”. The general question is more about what is persuasive. Aristotle, who wrote the first serious study of it, even says that rhetoric isn’t primarily concerned with persuasion; rather, he defines it as “the discovery [heuresis] of the means of persuasion”, i.e., it’s more of a meta-inquiry into discovering how meaning “happens”.
In the present day, finding consensus on any large scale seems quite difficult, and philosophers such as the late J.-F. Lyotard have given a fair bit of attention to exploring what it would mean if we no longer have any shared basis for consensus, e.g., the end of “grand narrative”, the problems of différend, and even a consideration of “language games” as a kind of neo-pagan world view.
Yes. “Everything’s an argument,” as they say in the Anglosphere. It’s an opinion in search of a point.
How are we to get from here to there and beyond in entertaining and examining ideas?
There’s this: “This response proved the theory that this is a potentially very entertaining and engaging form of content. But it has also confirmed that there is no consensus at all on how to actually evaluate the argument that everyone just read.”
Please, stop using the word “theory” for your opinions. It’s like the constant use of the word “kabuki,” by people who don’t know what kabuki is. Every time people opine about soft-side “theory,” I head “I don’t have a dog in that fight,” another world-champion tone-deaf cliché.
So there is no such thing as error theory. Come up with something else.
If there is no consensus as to how to read an argument, it means that the argument is seriously flawed. Two parties engaged in gobbledygook.
If there were minimal consensus, it would lead to such a thing as dialectic. I don’t see it here: What I see is the hundreds and hundreds of YTube channels with people interviewing each other and calling everyone names. In the future, everyone will be interviewed on YTube for fifteen minutes.
“Two parties engaged in gobbledygook.”
Thank you. I read the post as well as much of the original arguments provided in a link. I had a hard time determining what they were arguing about and felt like they were mostly just talking past each other, which is when I stopped reading.
That being said, those who espouse effective altruism (which one of the interlocutors does although it took a while to determine that) really haven’t thought things through all that well.
This is a good example of the disappearance what I like to call a “good faith” argument in our society. You have two sides that agree on a general principle, in this case welfare of the society, and you engage in argument on the merits of different approaches to achieving that goal.
Over the last 30 years this has morphed into a contraption where “winning” or appearance of winning in order to further your ideological agenda is the goal. You see increased use of creative “definitions” for common terms, an example given here of narrowly defining welfare in relation to human capital, rather as a broader welfare of the society. Oral debaters commonly use Gish Gallop and other techniques that sway the audience without arguing the merits.
Sadly, this is the state of our society, appearances are valued far more than facts and it’s reflecting on our society as a whole, from business to science to relationships.
Two legs (as paraphrased here – I don’t doubt he will in reality have been a bit more diplomatic) of Bruenig’s critique of Piper might be construed as personal remarks. She is ‘ignorant’ and has ‘unreflectively adopted’ some new ideas. Piper’s argument, meanwhile, is not couched in terms of a personal agent – ‘noble lies have permeated’. B might have said of P that other goals had not (yet) been considered and the reasons for adopting the new ideas were not (yet) apparent in her analysis.
My mother-in-law often said that people divide as between liking to discuss people, things and ideas. She would have liked Bruenig’s approach because by concerning himself with questions about the validity of arguments, he is working his way up the hierarchy. But one mustn’t forget that there is a human tendency to look at things through the prism of people and persons. Best not to give people the opportunity to duck your excellent argument by saying ‘How dare you call me ignorant, deplorable, etc.?, which they, of course, will.
Taking the question in the title seriously, I think theory of error is most useful in cases where we can’t directly communicate with or influence the parties in question. Why are they wrong, and what can we do about it?
The purpose of an argument is generally to influence people toward your point of view (this is slightly distinct from a debate, where the points of view are set by definition, and your job is to make the best possible argument in support). Social factors come into play as well as syllogistic ones. If my job is to convince you of my position, “here’s why I think you’ve formed this incorrect view” is not a particularly useful framing, especially if one of the possible answers is “you’re ignorant”. Presumably you think the other party is rational, since you’re bothering to argue in the first place, so how is meta-argument like this useful or constructive? Simply tell them why you disagree and go from there. If they accept all or part of your argument, there’s no question to be answered. If they don’t, then their response will tell you more about a possible theory of error than any speculation of yours, and suggest productive ways to continue the conversation.
In this case, I think ‘how welfare should be defined’ is a pretty fundamental question, and it would have been more productive to suggest moving the argument to focus on that first and foremost, in the hope of reaching agreement. If that could be accomplished, then a lot of the other differences might simply resolve themselves.
One might argue that this is just saying the same thing in a different way. That’s probably true, but when social factors come into play, the way you say something matters, often a great deal. “We seem to have fundamentally different assumptions about what welfare is, let me offer another definition for your consideration” is more constructive than “you’re working with the wrong definition of welfare because you’re ignorant” even though they say essentially the same thing.
Should argumentation/debate be a form of epistemology? As in, each debater presents an argument for or against something, each attempting to establish their conclusion as a justified true belief?
Piper asks, if they’re giving people free money and it’s not helping, then “where is the money going?” Her follow up has this: “an interesting question is whether cash is the best use of limited resources in the United States today.” So she is coming from a utilitarian framework, cash must have utility, its utility must be demonstrated, it’s utility is here (in the form of cash welfare for the poor) not demonstrated.
Bruenig, meanwhile, responds by focusing on the empirical, the studies, the data, presented and countered, trying to determine facts, attempting to sort through the variables, and it has the impression (to me) of getting a bit mired in the weeds.
Against Piper I would say, if we’re looking at it from a utilitarian framework then cash welfare demonstrably improves the situation of the corporation, proving the value of cash welfare. Cash welfare works.
Here is a class of citizens (the corporations) which live rent-free, thus creating the exploitative and parasitic conditions which the other kind of cash welfare, that for the poor, was intended to address, yet cannot so long as corporate welfare continues.
Thus, if we want to use Piper’s utilitarian framework to assess the merits/demerits of cash welfare for the poor, we need to control for this by eliminating this very cause of poverty. Yet, if we do that, now we no longer need cash welfare for the poor, or do we?
We have a race condition where, having given the corporations free cash and incentives, and rights no other citizen has, they are now self-sustaining exploiters, no longer need the corporate welfare (although they are still given it), so the conditions creating poverty continue.
Empirically, we cannot control for our utilitarian argument, cannot adjust the key variables to test for conditionals.
And society is still structured in a way which ensures unequal opportunity, there are those who cannot work, or cannot work as well as or to the same degree as others, through no fault of their own. Those with disabilities or health conditions, for example, or those who trained and educated for what turns out to be an eliminated line of work in a rapidly changing world. So a better solution is to restructure society so this is not a factor, create different conditionals.
This is where I’d argue for a more participatory and inclusive economics, a modified form of welfare – from each according to ability, to each according to need, eliminating the profit corporation, replacing it with non-profit social and cooperative enterprises to fulfil societal needs. That the current system isn’t participatory, equitable or inclusive, or that changing it would be very difficult, is no argument against this. Indeed, if our goal is utilitarian elimination of poverty, what might be an alternative when the corporation is demonstrably the very cause of poverty?
Get any finite number of people in a room to engage in some manner of political discourse and you will find people sorting themselves out across the multidimensional spectrum of human ambivalence. Most people, left to themselves, are both for and against, favorable toward and hostile with regard to most propositions. But, in groups, we humans align like magnets attracted or repulsed by opposing poles of a dichotomy.
Persuasive arguments do not generally resemble Euclidean proofs, where proper form literally creates validity. Academic modeling in formal models can be subject to meta-epistemological critique or pragmatic test.
In the wild though, persuasive argument assumes the form of hypnotic trance induction featuring the anchoring of suggestions to stimulated emotional responses — this normally means finding out what the audience already believes or is “sold on” and invested in believing, and associating new ideas with old. It is the principle behind “sex sells” and politicians wrapping themselves in flags as well as a great deal of journalistic scripting using cliched narrative tropes. Viewed realistically, effective argument is often ethically questionable manipulation.
Advocacy isn’t the same thing as judgment. Maybe, skillful advocacy within ethical bounds contributes to sound, balanced judgment — that is a premise sometimes imperfectly institutionalized in formal decision-making contexts, to mixed results.
Are you trying to nurture the capacity for judgment in the audience? Then, you should consider modeling not just debate, but judgment.
Appealing to the ‘reptilian’ part of the brain is not an argument, but it will get you lots of votes. Perhaps you could even become President of the US.
“She contends that cash welfare does not really help much.”
Neither does food welfare, as proven in Gaza.
/s
“Abstractly, it would seem Piper has actually done the more offensive thing because she’s said something sort of insulting about a lot of people while I have only said something sort of insulting about one person. But people don’t process it this way because they are more affected when they can personalize the insulted party than when they can’t.”
Stalin, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.”
He wasn’t wrong. Humans by nature are social creature. You make it personal and you’re talking about one dead person. How you frame that one dead person can be the difference between being loved and hated.
The problem with *logical* argument is that you can prove a given thing with your priors but other people will have different axioms and will not accept the conclusion. And to change their axioms, you have to change their *beliefs* and that is not amenable to argumentation.
They have to have a cold hard crisis of belief, an epistemic collapse, to let the light in and think about swapping out one belief for a more functional other. Or, as Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they punched in the face.”.
“eradicating class difference…, reducing inequality and leveling living standards…, reducing economic dependence on the labor market and the family”
Are these the highest welfare principles to be preoccupied with, the highest ethical and progressive goals? Today’s inequalities are gross surely, but optimization towards “leveling living standards” easily increases misery rather than well-being. Soviet Union is a case in point, where privileges of party officials were modest compared to that of modern brave capitalists. As someone born there, I can attest that people were annoyed by lack of opportunities to get ahead of others no less than by dacha envy. Besides, progressive advances (such as Enlightenment, communism, or the modern educated woke) always had the vanguard problem of being smarter, more responsible and even more moral than the others. Bright ideas and arguments, but that inequality has been very vexing to large masses.
Perhaps it is not ignorance, but manipulative lying? Pretending that it is about the well-being of people, but in reality having a hidden agenda: income re-distribution ?