Expanded Notes on Context Evaluation
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What counts as context is a vexed philosophical question, and it
seems likely that there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for
delimiting it. The relevant frame for conducting this sort of argument
analysis will change given the subject matter, the participants, the
location of the argument, the surrounding political climate, etc. etc.
We are quite adept at recognizing what is relevant and what is not in
specific circumstances, and there are a couple common contextual
dimensions that recur regularly and warrant mention here. They
correspond to elements in a typical argument episode, and are listed
here in connection with those.
- Intentional Context: An argument is advanced by an arguer,
and the arguer usually does this with some goal in mind. However, it
isn’t always the case that the argument fits with the goal—the
arguer may be somewhat confused, or perhaps misled about what is
required to achieve that goal. In such a case, there is dissonance
or perhaps inconsistency between the argument taken individually and
the broader argumentative plan of which it is a part. As a result, a
perfectly good argument might fail in its context because it isn’t
relevant to the goals of arguer.
- Practical Context: Even if an argument fits into the plan
of the arguer responsible for it, that may not be enough if the plan
itself fails to fit the overall discourse in which the argument
fits. One very important practical context is the Discourse
Context. Arguments are typically supplied in a discourse, where
that could be a conversation or a temporally extended dialogue that
takes place in scholarly journals, among many other things. In fact,
a given argument might have a place in a number of overlapping
discourses, and it may be evaluated differentially according to its
different place and function in these discourses. The other
arguments that figure into these discourses will influence how one
regards the argument under scrutiny.
There are other dimensions, but these two stand out as more or less
general and, where they are found, critical. An argument that runs the
gauntlet of analysis, avoiding pitfalls of form, content, and context,
will stand out as compelling and will have a deserved claim on the
beliefs of those who value rational consistency.
For more on context, see Chapter
Six, Section V, of the UI
Critical Thinking Handbook.
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