The Book of All Arguments: An Infinite Prospectus

My stock in trade as an analytic philosopher is arguments. This refers to arguments in the sense of giving a reason for something (as opposed to, say, getting into a quarrel). The very fact that I need to explain how I am using the word “arguments” highlights what I mean to be writing about in this essay. All words are ambiguous (including the words that comprise this sentence and even this parenthesis), and hence also are the assertions in which they may figure. Therefore to aid comprehension and avoid misunderstanding it is often useful to make explicit which sense of a word or phrase one intends. But of course this clarification will itself be composed of words, so potentially the process might go on forever and not even a single statement ever get expressed completely unambiguously. Naturally, however, we rely on context most of the time to do the job of disambiguating. This often seems to do the trick, and anyway the alternative would be supremely impractical (to put it supremely mildly; actually it would be absurd).

            However, given the basic and omnipresent fact of potential ambiguity, it is frequently the case – or so my experience has convinced me – that human communication is rife with misunderstanding, which can lead to either faux agreement or faux disagreement (and hence too it is problematic even whether to call this communication). Furthermore, an additional factor in human disagreements of this sort is that ambiguity is often denied where it is present. What I mean specifically is that people commonly assume that the meaning they have in mind is the one and only true meaning of a word or term.

            Thus for example, pro- and anti-abortion proponents may fundamentally disagree about the meaning of the term “human life,” as in “A human fetus is a human life.” For the pro faction, a human life might have to involve, say, viability, whereas for the con faction a human life might have to involve only the potential to be a functioning individual. (The meaning of “viability” could also be contested; for example, need it exclude artificial support? And so on ad inf. Note also that a different kind of disagreement could obtain when meanings seem agreed on but the actual facts of the matter are contested, such as whether a given human fetus would in fact be viable even with artificial support.)

            Sometimes a word does get defined definitively in an effort to rule out ambiguity or disagreement. An example of this was the defining of “planet” by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, which resulted in the demotion of Pluto from planetary status. However, even in this case there have been holdouts, even in the professional community; and in any case the definition is always subject to further refinement or change.

            But for most words the authority is the dictionary, and any semi-comprehensive dictionary will contain multiple meanings for just about every word, and usually not merely homonyms but different “senses” of what is understood to be one and the same word. A technical term for this kind of multiple meaning is “polysemous.” (But as you would expect by now, “polysemous” is itself polysemous. Thus it can encompass homonymy, but I like to use it to distinguish a type of multiple meaning from homonymy. So for example, (river) “bank” and (savings) “bank” are homonyms. But only a single word would be polysemous; thus, one and the same term “human life” is polysemous because it means viable member of Homo sapiens for some people and potential human individual for others.)

            And yet in common parlance people ignore even the authority of the dictionary (How many people even use one?) and assume that any given word has one and only one meaning (at least in a given context), and furthermore that they themself are in possession of it. So people will come to literal or figurative fisticuffs over not only whether abortion should be legalized but also about what a human life is or what viability is or what a fetus is, and so on.

            This sad fact accounts for the phenomenon I really want to focus on here, which is that, as I have become convinced after a career in philosophy, a rational argument can be constructed for any position on any subject whatever.  Now, right off the bat you know that, if my thesis is correct, then there is the guarantee that it can be supported by rational argumentation. Alas, you also know that its denial can be as well. That’s fine with me. I am now very much at peace with this, admittedly odd, conclusion. In fact the conclusion is coincident with my nature, since I just happen (quirkily, perhaps) to derive intrinsic pleasure from encountering persuasive arguments, even for positions I oppose.

            On what basis could I oppose an argument that I myself would judge to be rational? you might ask. The obvious answer is that I thereby display my own irrationality. But that is not the answer I would give. For keep in mind that, of course, my thesis depends on, among other things, how one defines “rational.” Thus, for some people there simply could not be two opposed, which is to say contradictory, arguments that are rational (or equally rational if the property comes in degrees). But my conception of “rational” allows for this. The former, stricter sense of “rational” is synonymous with logically sound. So since an argument that is sound in the logical sense has a true conclusion, it is (presumably) out of the question that two arguments with contradictory conclusions could both be sound.

            But I take “rational” to imply only that there are good reasons to accept the premises of an argument and that the conclusion follows plausibly therefrom (where “plausibly” is understood to encompass not only logical validity but also various inductive principles, such as inference to the best explanation). This has the implication I just mentioned, of allowing for rational arguments having contradictory conclusions; but it is also important to note that it allows for critique of arguments. For it is still possible (and indeed quite common) for the opponent of a given position to fault an opponent’s argument for adducing implausible (or outright false) premises or for relying on a shaky (or outright fallacious) principle of inference. Clearly too there can be differences of preference involved, such as which of two rights that clash has priority, as in the abortion date, which seems to pit an adult woman’s right to control her own life against a fetus’s right to come to term. And the critique of an argument may certainly involve questioning the meaning of a term in the opponent’s argument.

            An example of that last point is the way most animal experimenters implicitly define “humane” when arguing that their experiments are humane. For them humane treatment means that they take as good care as they reasonably can for the animals who are used in their experiments, with the understanding that nevertheless anything whatever may be done to the animals – even including things that would be considered the height of cruelty in normal parlance, not to mention killing them in the end – provided this is required for an experiment that has intrinsic merit as either medical or pure research, and no alternative method presents itself.

            As far as I personally am concerned, that is an absurd – indeed, Orwellian -- use of the word “humane.” And yet I can also readily see how well-intentioned and intelligent individuals who are involved in such research would readily embrace such a definition, and believe they are doing so sincerely and ingenuously. And, to connect up with my previous remark, I even can derive great satisfaction and outright pleasure from hearing someone articulate such an argument convincingly. This would not dissuade me (or at least so far has not dissuaded me) from my conviction that animal experimentation is, as a rule, cruel and far from humane no matter what the intentions of the humans involved. But at the same time I also accept that the experimenter’s use of the term is on to something even I would recognize as a meaningful distinction, namely, between treating the animals with utter carelessness throughout their brief and awful or at least constrained lives, and treating them with all due care whenever the experimental conditions allowed.

            So in the end I have to accept that my opponents are arguing rationally, or as rationally as I am, and we just happen to disagree on the meaning of a word (or something else).(“Just happens” is not intended to imply that we are unable to explain how it came about. It can be quite obvious, for example, that the experimenters are immersed in research to help human beings who are ill, whereas I have been immersed in research on animal ethics. But the point is still that it is purely contingent – i.e., it “just happens” – that they became involved in medical research and I became involved in ethical research; although here again explanations could be readily forthcoming, having to do with our respective biographies, or the historical epoch, etc. ad inf.).

            Upshot: Even if my opponents and I agree on the meaning of “rational,” I (or all of us) could continue to disagree about some position or claim or hypothesis or belief or meaning or preference or policy or whatever and yet agree that we are all offering rational arguments. And again, with the proviso that rational arguments are subject to (rational) critique.

            And so I would like to propose a book of (rational) arguments for every position about everything. The Table of Contents being infinitely long, please see the attachment. Supplementary material could include the Monty Python video, “Argument.”

            Note: There are some positions that, some might argue, ought not even to be given the time of day, for example, that every hazel-eyed person should be drawn-and-quartered. Of course this meta-position could itself be debated rationally. I myself agree with the substantive proposition and so am prepared to put that constraint on issues to be included in the book. The book would still contain an infinite number of arguments, so no loss on that score. But if any of your reviewers holds on strong free speech grounds that absolutely every issue should be included, we can, ahem, debate this.

Thank you for your consideration.