The Disputation. A Special Type of Cooperative Argumentative Dialogue

This article consists of three parts, two introductory, in which the limits and the methods of analysis of dialogues are expounded, and the major part, in which the main features of a philosophical theory of disputation are outlined. 1. It was an essential aim of the philosophical analysis of argumentative dialogues to develop tools of substantiation for cases in which logic doesn't help any more. In the first part of this paper I show that such tools can and will be developed only by analyzing argumentations ("argumentation" in the sense of a monologue in which arguments for a thesis are brought forward), and that the analysis of argumentative dialogues doesn't contribute anything to the development of such tools. 2. The systematically first task of the philosophical analysis of dialogues consists in understanding the general practical aims of philosophically interesting types of dialogue. Only subsequently the rules of the dialogue can be reconstructed as good means for reaching these aims. Dialogical games constructed without referring to such a purpose are externally senseless and useless. 3. The third part is an outline of a philosophical theory of disputation ("disputation" here will mean: (learned) dialogue in which the participants cooperatively though perhaps controversially attempt to find out by means of arguments and mutual criticism whether a thesis is true or false). Disputations contain argumentations, and many functions of a disputation can also be fulfilled by argumentations alone. Certifying the truth of convictions is the specific aim of disputation. This is accomplished by eliminating errors of substantiation and foundation as effectively as possible, in revising false convictions and their foundations, thereby making the remaining convictions more certain. Based on this analysis of the aim of disputation, the basic rules of disputations will be critically reconstructed: possible moves, rules of sequence, and the internal aim and ends or disputations.