Book Reviews

Alban Bouvier,

L’argumentation philosophique. Étude de sociologie cog-nitive. Paris: PUF, 1995, 248 pp.

In his book L’argumentation philosophique, Alban Bouvier presents ‘theelements of a conceptual model for the study of argumentation which is inprinciple valid for all argumentation’. This is a vast program, because, inits generality, it is supposed to be pertinent to any field of application:philosophical, scientific, religious, moral or political. The author specifi-cally uses the model presented in the book to determine the role of philo-sophical argumentation in modifications of scientific paradigms. In thisendeavour, he concentrates on the role of Descartes’ Meditations in thehistorical process of rationalisation. This explains why the first chapterof the book is essentially devoted to the sociology of knowledge. ThomasKuhn’s pioneering work is once more brought to the fore and intelligentlycommented upon. Starting from this work, the author redraws Pareto’scognitivist program – the theory of derivations – and in this perspectiveemphasizes the importance of more objectively rereading the works ofJohn Stuart Mill, whose pertinence to the psychology of reasoning hasbecome clearer now that Frege’s critique of that discipline has beenrelativized.

Starting from the consideration that establishing comprehension andestablishing adherence are the two aims that any theoretically interestingmodel of argumentation must account for, Alban Bouvier devotes chapters2 and 3 to cognitive comprehension and epistemic adhesion procedures. Ifit is assumed that any argumentation which is put forward for adherencemust first be understood, it is then fundamental that the locutor’s repre-sentations be at least recognizable for the auditor. Such an understandingmust be based on the shared representations from which the advocatedrepresentation is supposed to emerge. The representations that are to beconstrued before an audience are thus to be anchored in pre-construed andshared representations. Determining the nature and content of these pre-construed representations is the business of students of the sociology ofknowledge. This cognitive accessibility is intimately related to linguisticaccessibility, which in turn presupposes appropriate linguistic competence.From a sociological point of view, the search for accessibility calls ondiverse reasoning procedures. One candidate is the classical sociologicalmodel of propositional deduction, in which representations are establishedon the basis of first principles (Pareto). Another candidate is a model whichis less classical than the one just mentioned and in which argumentsare linked up by processes of composition or division. Incidentally, as theauthor shows, the transformations of representations also call on con-

Argumentation

12: 505–507, 1998.

struction procedures, notably those of exemplification and analogy. Eachof these models is presented and then carefully applied to the Cartesianexample.

To understand is not to adhere. This is why the author subsequentlyengages, from a sociological perspective, in a critical, historical and con-structive study of adhesion procedures. He develops a model which permitshim to distinguish between three levels on which the psychological phe-nomena of believing can be explained. The first level covers the epistemicor doxastic acceptability of believing. But a systematic model of epistemicprocedures should also be historical. Indeed, people’s apprehension of thevalidity of argumentative operations changes over time.

The object of analysis of the sociology of knowledge should [thus] also be the way inwhich a debate on these norms is rooted in the pre-construed epistemology of the com-munity in which the debate is conducted.

Thus, a meta-epistemological dimension is required. The second level isthe level of affective operations, which are not aimed at adhesion strictosensu, but at ‘attachment’ or ‘detachment’. The third and final level is thedeontic level. On this level, the question arises whether there can be anobligatory aspect to believing. The author carefully shows that his tripar-tite distinction is relevant to the case of Descartes’ Meditations.

Starting from his elementary model, the author continues his analysisof the problems posed by the Kuhnian and Paretian traditions in the soci-ology of knowledge. In this endeavour, he draws on contemporary linguisticresearch. In his analysis of linguistic indicators of the operations aimed atestablishing comprehension and adhesion, he discusses the problem ofthe extent to which such indicators are ‘visible’ and to which degree theyare perspicuous. In two chapters, Alban Bouvier engages his readers in arigorously documented discussion of argumentation. He focuses, on the onehand, on what is not expressed or what is scarcely expressed – the implicit– and, on the other hand, on the nature of linguistic signs, and on theirambiguity.

In the sequel of his exposition, Alban Bouvier describes the processesthat fall, both from an epistemological and a sociological point of view,outside the scope of the Kuhnian perspective and Pareto’s argumentationtheory. He therefore presents his own typology of modes of argumentativeprogression. Such a progression can be located in the development ofthe content of the notion itself, it can consist of a progression in the atti-tude of believing, and it can, notably, manifest itself as deontic, or evenaffective, progression. Following his approved method, the author againbrings each element of his model under the scope of the exposition in theMeditations. The complexity of his model is, incidentally, increased byintegrating an intrinsically sociological dimension, which accounts for thedifferent audiences to which an argumentation may be addressed. On thebasis of the concepts he has developed up to now, Alban Bouvier also dis-

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cusses the concepts of ‘poly-anchorage’ and ‘polyphony’, as well the rela-tions between these concepts.

Finally, in a very brief concluding chapter, the analyses are comple-mented with a Paretian theory of action. In this theory, argumentation isconsidered as an action type.

Alban Bouvier succeeds in convincing his readers of the interestof studying philosophical argumentation from a sociological point ofview. His investigations of the Meditations, including the Objections andResponses, bring out clearly the interest of such an endeavour. Here, wefollow the ways in which the author makes use of Pareto’s argumentativeprocedures, which he enriches with pertinent insights of, notably, Perelman,Toulmin, Ducrot and Grize. This work is, as the author announces, at thesame time an extraction, an adaptation and an extension of his thesisdefended at the University of Paris-Sorbonne entitled Essai d’anthroposo-ciologie de l’argumentation philosophique. Hétérogénéités et dissonancesdans les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes et dans le Contratsocial de Rousseau, 3 t., 1991. Such a revised version possesses both thequalities and the shortcomings of the initial project: richness in content,abundance of references, and, now and then, elliptical expositions. But thisis not detrimental to the fact that this is an indispensible book for all thosewho have an interest in the study of argumentation.

DENIS MIÉVILLECentre de Recherches Sémiologiques

NeuchâtelSwitzerland

Marianne Doury, Le débat immobile. L’argumentation dans le débat médiatique sur les parasciences. Paris: Kimé, 1997.

Astrology, parapsychology, dianetics, instinctotherapy et cetera are regu-larly evoked by television programs to oppose supporters and opponentsof these parasciences. As a linguist and a specialist in argumentation,Marianne Doury analyses the discourse strategies adopted in these con-troversies in a book the title of which translates as ‘The Immobile Debate’.Clear and well-written, this book makes its readers more familiar with theparasciences and their common logic.

The book is in the first place successful in practicing argumentativeanalysis on an extended corpus. Most argumentative analyses are eitherpurely theoretical or they are applied to a very small corpus. MarianneDoury succeeds in defining the chief argumentative techniques used in 23television programs. In a clear way, she demonstrates that supporters of theparasciences and their opponents discuss the framework of the debate (whois authorised to speak, what is the nature of the debate et cetera), rather

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Argumentation 12: 507–508, 1998.