Meta-Argumentative Weighing as an Instrument For Evaluative Rationality. Another Lesson from Aristotle

Abstract

The problems of deep disagreements, incompatibility and incommensurability between political proposals in a society that favors value-diversity and value-plurality, have led some authors to assume that deliberative processes may only be conducted in terms of an instrumental, means-ends rationality. However M. Finocchiaro has recently suggested that meta-argumentation may be an efficient instrument "for rationally resolving deep disagreements and fierce standoffs". It is quite evident that we can consider as meta-argumentative some discursive models offering an evaluative weighing of different arguments. Precisely in the section of his Rhetoric specifically dedicated to the deliberative genre (genos symbouleutikon) Aristotle shows his full consciousness about the relevance of this type of discursive model. Book I, chapters 4-7 explain among other things how common it is to meta-argue in deliberations over proposals of collective action, weighing reasons in order to select eligible ends and taking part in decisions about them by offering different kinds of evaluative criteria.