Table Of ContentControversy and Confrontation
Controversies (CVS)
Controversies includes studies in the theory of controversy or any of its salient
aspects, studies of the history of controversy forms and their evolution,
case-studies of particular historical or current controversies in any field or
period, edited collections of documents of a given controversy or a family of
related controversies, and other controversy-focused books. The series will
also act as a forum for ‘agenda-setting’ debates, where prominent discussants
of current controversial issues will take part. Since controversy involves
necessarily dialogue, manuscripts focusing exclusively on one position will
not be considered.
Editor
Marcelo Dascal
Tel Aviv University
Advisory Board
Harry Collins Kuno Lorenz
University of Cardiff University of Saarbrücken
Frans H. van Eemeren Everett Mendelssohn
University of Amsterdam Harvard University
Gerd Fritz Quintín Racionero
University of Giessen UNED, Madrid
Fernando Gil † Yaron Senderowicz
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Tel Aviv University
Sociales, Paris
Stephen Toulmin
Thomas Gloning University of Southern California
University of Marburg
Ruth Wodak
Alan G. Gross University of Vienna
University of Minnesota
Geoffrey Lloyd
Cambridge University
Volume 6
Controversy and Confrontation. Relating controversy analysis
with argumentation theory
Edited by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen
Controversy and Confrontation
Relating controversy analysis with
argumentation theory
Edited by
Frans H. van Eemeren
Bart Garssen
University of Amsterdam
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Controversy and confrontation : relating controversy analysis with argumentation theory
/ edited by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen.
p. cm. (Controversies, issn 1574-1583 ; v. 6)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Persuasion (Rhetoric) 2. Debates and debatiing. 3. Pragmatics. 4. Logic. 5.
Reasoning. I. Eemeren, F. H. van. II. Garssen, Bart.
P301.5.P47C655 2008
808.53--dc22 2008035990
isbn 978 90 272 1886 5 (Hb; alk. paper)
© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Preface vii
List of contributors ix
Controversy and confrontation in argumentative discourse 1
Frans H. van Eemeren & Bart Garssen
Dichotomies and types of debate 27
Marcelo Dascal
Charles Darwin versus George Mivart: The role of polemics 51
in science
Anna Carolina Regner
Scientific demarcation and metascience: The national academy 77
of sciences on greenhouse warming and evolution
Thomas M. Lessl
Reforming the Jews, rejecting marginalization: The 1799 German 93
debate on Jewish emancipation in its controversy context
Mirela Saim
Communication principles for controversies: A historical perspective 109
Gerd Fritz
On the role of pragmatics, rhetoric and dialectic in scientific
controversies 125
Ademar Ferreira
A “dialectic ladder” of refutation and dissuasion 135
Cristina Marras & Enrico Euli
Responding to objections 149
Ralph H. Johnson
Pragmatic inconsistency and credibility 163
Jan Albert van Laar
vi Controversy and Confrontation
Reasonableness in confrontation: Empirical evidence 181
concerning the assessment of ad hominem fallacies
Frans van Eemeren, Bart Garssen & Bert Meuffels
Managing disagreement in multiparty deliberation 197
Mark Aakhus & Alena L. Vasilyeva
Predicaments of politicization in the debate over 215
abstinence-only sex education
Sally Jackson
Rhetoric of science, pragma-dialectics, and science studies 231
Gábor Kutrovátz
Scientific controversies and the pragma-dialectical model:
Analysing a case study from the 1670s, the published part of
the Newton-Lucas correspondence 249
Gábor A. Zemplén
Index 275
Preface
Controversy and Confrontation is a collection of papers on argumentative discourse
that centre round the notions of controversy and confrontation. Each paper illu-
minates certain theoretical or empirical aspects of argumentation in controversy
or confrontation in argumentation. When taken together, the papers provide a
closer insight into the relationship between controversy and confrontation that
deepens our understanding of the functioning of argumentative discourse in man-
aging differences of opinion. In our introductory chapter, ‘Controversy and Con-
frontation in Argumentative Discourse,’ we make use of theoretical concepts from
both the study of controversy and the study of argumentation to explain what this
relationship involves.
Basically, the contributors to this volume stem from two backgrounds, which
partially overlap (and should, in our view, overlap even more): the International
Association for the Study of Controversies (IASC) and the International Society
for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). On the one hand, Marcelo Dascal, Cristina
Marras, Enrico Euli, Anna Carolina Regner, Ademar Ferreira and Thomas M.
Lessl are involved in studying historical controversies, both from a theoretical
and an empirical perspective. In a similar vein, Mirela Saim concentrates on a
historical controversy concerning Jewish emancipation; Gerd Fritz provides a
historical perspective on controversies by analyzing communication principles.
On the other hand, Ralph Johnson, Jan Albert van Laar, Frans H. van Eemeren,
Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels address in their contributions in the first place
theoretical or empirical aspects of argumentative confrontation. Mark Aakhus and
Alena L. Vasilyeva too concentrate primarily on argumentative confrontation: they
examine argumentative discourse from the perspective of conversation analysis.
Sally Jackson analyzes argumentative confrontation in a recent debate between
scientists and politicians. Among the contributors who make an attempt to bridge
the study of historical controversy and the study of argumentation by utilizing
conceptual instruments of the latter to serve the former are Gábor Kutrovátz and
Gábor A. Zemplén.
In Controversy and Confrontation the contributing authors analyze a number of
important historical and modern argumentative exchanges. In some cases, such an
analysis is their main aim; in other cases, the analysis is instrumental in explaining
their approach. Among the cases that are discussed are the Newton – Lucas debate,
the debate between Darwin and Mivart on evolution in the late 19th century, the
philosophical confrontation on historicism between Strauss and Stern, the debate
viii Controversy and Confrontation
on Jewish emancipation between David Friedländer, Wilhelm Abraham Teller and
Friedrich Schleiermacher that took place in Germany in 1799, the controversy on
“action research” in the social sciences, Plato’s Euthydemus dialogue, the technical
controversy about the notion of “decoupling,” Putnam’s discussion of “inflated dis-
tinctions,” the American National Academy of sciences’ position on greenhouse
warming and evolution, but also a debate about abstinence-only sex education and
a discussion of leaders of a small community with representatives of a land devel-
opment firm about a plan for housing development. Enough variety, we hope, to
appeal to the interested reader.
Next to the anonymous reviewers, who scrutinized upon our request each
paper very carefully and made a great number of constructive comments, we would
like to thank Renske Wierda and Halvor Berggrav for their technical assistance.
Frans H. van Eemeren & Bart Garssen, Editors
List of contributors
Mark Aakhus
Mark Aakhus (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is Associate Professor in the Department
of Communication at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He investigates the
emergence and management of conflicts that arise as people attempt to make deci-
sions, solve problems, and learn. This research examines the practices and technologies
people implement to regulate and shape their communication and the consequences
for how people interact and reason with each other when facing complex situations.
He is co-editor, along with James Katz, of Perpetual contact: Mobile communication,
private talk, public performance (2002).
Marcelo Dascal
Marcelo Dascal is Professor of Philosophy and former Dean of Humanities at Tel Aviv
University. His main research areas are the philosophy of language, pragmatics, the
philosophy of mind, the history of modern philosophy, particularly Leibniz, and the
study of controversies. His recent authored and edited books include Negotiation and
Power in Dialogic Interaction (2001), Interpretation and Understanding (2003), The
Gust of the Wind: Humanities in a New-Old World (2004) (in Hebrew), Controversies
and Subjectivity (2005), G.W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies (2006), Leibniz: What
Kind of Rationalist? (2008), Leibniz the Polemicist: The Practice of Reason (to appear).
He is the editor of the journal Pragmatics & Cognition and of the book series Ma?
Da! (in Hebrew) and Controversies, and co-editor of the book series Human Cognitive
Processes. Dascal is the current president of the International Association for the Study
of Controversies (IASC). He has received many awards, including the Humboldt Prize
and the ISSA Argumentation Award.
Frans H. van Eemeren
Frans H. van Eemeren is Professor of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory
and Rhetoric and director of the Research Master’s programme Rhetoric, Argumen-
tation theory and Philosophy (RAP) and the research program Argumentation and
Discourse at the University of Amsterdam. Together with Rob Grootendorst, he devel-
oped the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which he extended with Peter
Houtlosser. He is editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary journal Argumentation and
the Library of Argumentation, chairman of the International Society for the Study of
Argumentation (ISSA) and Distinguished Scholar of the American National Commu-
nication Association. Among his key publications are: (with Grootendorst) Speech Acts
in Argumentative Discussions (1984), Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies
