APPLY TV Series 1 Episode 2
Criteria for epistemically rational public argumentation
APPLY TV is a new series of online talks organised by the COST Action project CA17132: European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (APPLY). Its main theme is public argumentation investigated from any of the theoretical perspectives present in the Action: philosophy, linguistics, communication, discourse analysis, computer science, psychology. Each speaker presents her or his most recent work on argumentation in compact episodes of 1hr, with 30 min dedicated to the presentation and 30 min to discussion.
Season 1
Episode 2
Wendesday 10/03/2021 16:00 CET
Criteria for epistemically rational public argumentation
The topic of the presentation is rules, criteria for good public political argumentation, by which political measures in the broad sense can be justified. 1. There are several layers of such rules, from linguistic to process rules; here we are concerned with epistemic rules, whose observance should guarantee that the thesis of an argument is acceptable and can also be recognised as acceptable by an addressee. 2. On the basis of a theory of deliberative democracy, it is argued that the justification of a political measure m consists of argumentatively justifying theses of the kind: ‘m is morally good / optimal’ or ‘m is morally required’. 3. A brief discussion of various approaches in argumentation theory (pragma-dialectics, Walton’s argument schemes, informal logic, epistemological argumentation theory …) filters out the approach that is most likely to provide criteria for epistemically good arguments by which such theses can be justified: it is the epistemological approach. 4. Epistemological criteria for good arguments are presented by which theses of the aforementioned kind can be justified. 5. An analysis of some selected factual political arguments shows to what extent such standards are also empirically followed and where there is a need for improvement.
Speaker: Christoph Lumer
Hosted by Sara Greco
Available on demand, below