Norms and Functions in Public Sphere 
Argumentation 

J. ANTHONY BLAIR University a/Windsor 

Abstract: This paper is a commentary on 
the articles by William Rehg and RobertAsen 
in this issue of Informal Logic. It compares 
the subject matter of the two papers, offers 
an interpretation of and commentary on each 
paper separately, then discusses their 
overlapping problematic: the importance of 
public sphere argumentation. 

Resume: On compare Ie contenu des 
articles de William Rehg et de Robert Asen 
publies dans ce numero de Informal Logic; 
on interprete et commente sur ces deux 
articles separement, et on discute de leur 
chevauchement sur la problematique des 
spheres d'argumentation publique. 

Keywords: Rehg, Asen, public sphere, argumentation, argumentation norms, functions 
of argument, Habermas, Pragma-Dialectics 

In this commentary on William Rehg's "Assessing the Cogency of Arguments: 
Three Kinds of Merits" (2005, see supra, pp. 95-115) and on Robert Asen's 
"Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the Public Sphere" (2005, 
see supra, pp. 117-137), I first address the question of how these two articles 
relate to each other. Following that discussion, I comment in tum on Rehg's and 
Asen's articles, and then venture some concluding remarks. 

1. Connections 

How are these two articles related? Rehg proposes "a normative model of argument 
cogency that acknowledges the difference in levels of analysis and shows how 
they interrelate" (supra, p. 96). Asen proposes an expansion beyond the justificatory 
function of argument to others that illustrate the importance of argument in a 
mUltiple public sphere conceived as a network. For Rehg, the motivating problems 
are the lack of congruence between the theories of argument of democratic theorists 
like Habermas and of transactional theorists like van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 
and the problems each orientation has in applying to public-sphere argumentation. 
For Asen, the motivating problem is how public sphere argumentation, which 
seems to require shared starting points and norms, can playa role in public 
deliberation in the face of the value pluralism and fundamental disagreement 
characterizing the (American) public sphere-given the plurality of publics, each 
with historical participatory norms, and given the differences in the speakers' 
positions in social hierarchies and networks, both of which can result in unequal 

© Informal Logic Vol. 25, No.2 (2005): pp. 139-150. 



140 J Anthony Blair 

advantages in interactions and in the undeserved prominence or marginalization of 
various arguments. Rehg wants to have workable norms for public sphere 
argumentation that also relate it to the norms of transactional argumentation and 
the norms of their component arguments. Asen wants argumentation to have a 
role to play in public sphere deliberations, in the face of realities that seem to 
mitigate against its doing so. Rehg and Asen agree about the nature of the public 
sphere as an argument-space occupied by multiple, overlapping publics. Both regard 
well-functioning public sphere argumentation as important. IfRehg's model works, 
then we have norms that apply at all levels to what Asen call's "externally justifying" 
arguments. Rehg's norms provide grounds for the kinds of critique that Asen and 
others he cites make ofthe current space for persuasive argumentation ("external" 
justification) in the public sphere. If Asen is right, then there are non-justificatory 
functions of argument that empower those in disadvantaged positions, providing 
them with new routes of access to participation in public sphere deliberations. So 
the two articles under consideration connect without competing; their goals and 
their proposals are compatible, but different. Rehg asks, "How do we assess 
argumentation at alI levels?"; Asen, having assessed public sphere argumentation 
and found the conditions for it wanting, asks, "How do we find a role for 
argumentation in the public sphere?" 

For purposes of commentary, I have chosen to focus on each article more or 
less independently of the other, and I will return to a discussion of them jointly in 
the concluding remarks. 

2. Rebg's model of argument cogency 

William Rehg is proposing, in a densely-suggestive sketch, nothing less than a 
model that accounts for how all argumentation norms fit together. He motivates 
the model he proposes as a rapprochement between the norms oflocal argumentation 
that involves more or less interpersonal transactions (exemplified by the Pragma-
Dialectical rules) and the norms of public sphere argumentation as these might, as 
claimed by Habermas, provide legitimacy for legislative actions produced by 
decisions arrived at using practices and procedures that embody them. 

In their present forms, Rehg argues, neither of these two types of argumentation 
theory can by itself account for the full range of argumentation practice. On the 
one hand, the counterfactual idealizations of Haber mas's communication theory of 
democratic legitimacy, for instance, need to be applied to particular situations that 
cannot meet them fully, yet they fail to specify how close the approximations must 
be to yield legitimacy to the outcomes ofthe public sphere deliberations. Moreover 
these ideals (such as openness and freedom from coercion) can conflict in particular 
situations, yet the ideals fail to specify how such conflicts are to be resolved. 
Habermasian ideals need to be scaled down. On the other hand, although the 
procedural rules of the Pragma-Dialectical theory, especially when amplified by 
use of the felicity conditions specified in speech act theory, apply well to the 



Norms and Functions in Public Sphere Argumentation 141 

analysis and evaluation of two-party and other similar conversational argumentative 
exchanges, nevertheless in public sphere argumentation the Pragma-Dialectical 
rules can no longer apply. For example, they rely on being able to identify 
interlocutors' commitment stores and agreed-upon starting points, yet multiple 
arguers simultaneously addressing the same topic intend and understand one another 
differently. The Pragma-Dialectical rules need to be scaled up. 

According to Rehg, Habermas and Pragma-Dialectics share a perspectivist 
framework towards argumentation as their point of departure. These are 
perspectives of logic on the product, of dialectic on the procedure or method, and 
of rhetoric on the process. Arguing is the social process, argumentation is the 
cooperative procedure, and argument is the product. Habermas's discourse theory 
of law and democracy, Rehg thinks, points to a fourth, social-institutional level of 
presuppositions, since Habermas also lists social-institutional constraints, such as 
those on reaching closure in political deliberation and constraints entailed by systemic 
imperatives, as well as the influence of historical peculiarities on such things as 
variations in the ways the rights necessary for public deliberation are specified. 
These social-institutional presuppositions of argumentation have a normative 
function by specifying features of the social-institutional environment that sustain 
or subvert argumentation. Habermas's four-level perspectivism is an ideal model 
for the social argument-making practices required to permit the members of a 
society to reach un coerced mutual understanding, just as the Pragma-Dialectic 
theory offers an ideal model for argumentative exchanges as two-party transactions 
to permit interlocutors to resolve disagreements. 

Rehg himselffavonrs a perspectivist framework, but not without modifications, 
for he sees two problems with perspectivism. First, the two triads (product/ 
procedure/process and logic/dialectic/rhetoric) don't align neatly as product-logic, 
procedure-<iialectic, process-rhetoric. Arguments as products can be and have 
been assessed from all three perspectives-logical, dialectical and rhetorical-and 
the same can be expected for argumentation procedures and processes. Rehg's 
solution is to treat the product/procedure/process trio as three distinct focuses for 
describing argument-making practices, and to treat the logic/dialectic/rhetoric/ 
social critique quartet as four sources of norms for analyzing and assessing 
arguments and argumentation. 

Second, in characterizing the process norms as rhetorical, Habermas uses an 
overly-narrow (and out of date) concept of rhetoric, focussing merely on the 
process standards necessary for the robust testing of claims, and leaving out 
contextualized dynamics and presentational moves. Rehg's solution is to think of 
substantive rhetorical moves such as ethos and pathos, when used appropriately in 
context, as putting interlocutors in the right frame of mind to best assess argument 
cogency. 

These are interesting repairs to the slippage, which Rehg is right to notice, 
between these two sets of concepts brought together by perspectivism. The first 
repair neatly finesses a potential conflation of descriptive and normative perspectives. 



142 J Anthony Blair 

Focus your description on argument as product, on the procedures in play in 
argumentative interactions, or on the processes at work in arguings. Then each of 
these can be analyzed and assessed using the norms of logic, dialectic, rhetoric or 
social critique, either separately or together. 

Two wrinkles that this solution doesn't address are that these four loci of 
norms seem to overlap, and that the norms themselves can conflict. Thus, for 
example, Johnson (2000) argues that an argument (as product) fails to be logically 
cogent if it lacks dialectical closure. You haven't given a logically adequate 
justification of a proposition if you fail to answer well-known objections to it. 
Conversely, according to the Pragma-Dialectical theory it is a violation of dialectical 
rules to argue logically invalidly (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). And 
Tindale (2004) contends that logical assessment presupposes rhetorical analysis. 
As for conflicts, Gilbert (1997), as I understand him, holds that there can be cases 
in which rhetorical norms trump logical ones. The point is not that Rehg is mistaken, 
or that he oversells his solutions to the slippage problem; it is, rather, a reminder 
that his solutions don't solve all of the problems connected with perspectivism 
(not that Rehg claims they do). 

Rehg's model envisages three sets of norms. (1) One consists of norms 
specifying the "content-merits" of the argument textual product. These will be not 
only logical properties (in a broad sense of logic, for instance permitting domain-
specific logical norms) but also dialectical and rhetorical properties, since the textual 
product assessed by observers or interlocutors in a local transaction will always 
be an interpretation from a context. From the point of view of the person 
constructing an argument, in many cases there will be salient characteristics of a 
special field to which the argument belongs that will have to be honoured, and to 
the extent that the arguer wishes to address a wider audience, he or she will have 
to satisfy the standards of cogency that the wider audience can be expected to 
impose. 

A second set of norms specifies "transactional merits." If! correctly understand 
Rehg, a particular argument in a local transaction has transactional merits only if 
two conditions are met. (a) The local particular transaction must have identifiable 
and describable features that place the interlocutors in a position to make responsible 
judgements of the cogency of the argument (for example, that it satisfies standards 
and ideals-exemplifies the rules--of appropriate models of good argumentative 
transactions). I take it that a type of violation would be restrictions on a party's 
freedom to challenge and respond, or restricted access to relevant information. I 

(b) The participants in the transaction must appropriately contextualize these 
general norms and the texts to which they are applied in their local contexts. That 
is, they must take into account the social-psychological and institutional conditions 
under which the texts develop, as well as the rhetorical and dialectical features of 
the exchange. If I understand this point, there are some nice examples in van 
Eemeren et al. (1994), Chapter 5, where either the texts cannot be understood as 
argumentative, or the arguments cannot be correctly interpreted, without 



Norms and Functions in Public Sphere Argumentation 143 

understanding the situations in which the discourse occurs, and any analysis that 
was not informed by that contextual information would be almost certain to miss 
the point. 2 

A third set of norms specify "public merits." I see Rehg again setting forth two 
conditions that a particular argument used in macro social discourse must meet to 
have public merits. (a) People in different locales and domains must be able to 
engage the argument and accept it. This condition seems clear enough: people 
would have to be able to understand one another-for instance, to use terminology 
in the same way; and people would have to be able to appeal to the same criteria of 
evaluation and the same factual presuppositions. The other condition is (b) that the 
social network through which the argument travels must be·well structured-that 
is, the networks and aggregates of dialogue contexts through which the argument 
travels must have a composition and structure that sustains collective 
reasonableness. 

Rehg adds that the social network is well-structured---<:ollective reasonableness 
can be expected--only ifthere are social-institutional grounds for considering the 
argument to be cogent. These social-institutional grounds must consist, not of 
abstract or a priori appeals to process idealizations (such as equal voice, or non-
coercion), but of the substantive cases made in particular circumstances with 
respect to particular questions at issue, establishing that those values are in specific 
ways upheld and specific challenges are refuted. Unless the parties attacking or 
defending the structure of a social network are required to get down to specifics, 
the process ideals are simply placeholders-merely possible sites of particular 
challenges or responses to challenges. 

If! understand this last point, an example would be when you and I, as members 
of the public, appropriately accept medical claims about the effects or safety of 
drugs on the basis of the testimony of medical researchers. We cannot know all the 
details of the research, nor understand them. We rely on a system in which medical 
researchers are well-trained and use appropriate research methodology, are not 
under pressure to rush to judgement or to ignore worrisome anomalies in 
experimental outcomes, their publications are carefully and objectively peer-
reviewed, and so on. A reliable social-institutional network is necessary for us to 
regard its arguments as sound and to make personal and policy decisions based on 
them. 

We can use the well-structured social network condition, then, as a basis for 
wariness about the influence of drug manufacturing companies on university medical 
research, and for condemning that influence in cases like that of Dr. Nancy Oliveri, 
in which a drug company sought to override a researcher's evidence-based worries 
about a drug, and also in which her medical school (the University of Toronto), 
which benefited from the company's research funding, initially supported the drug 
company. The point is that violations of this condition are extremely threatening to 
the credibility of public argumentation about public policy in relation to scientific 
findings. 



144 J. Anthony Blair 

An example of a condition that I would think undermines the public merits of 
political argumentation on American television is the tendency to use oversimplifying 
and polarizing labels, such as "liberal," "fundamentalist," "right wing," and "left 
wing." For instance, in the summer of2005 when a mother who had lost her son 
in Iraq was making a protest against the U.S.'s war against Iraq near President 
Bush's ranch in Texas, she was asked by a CNN correspondent if she considered 
herself to be a "qldical" for making this protest-as if her accepting or rejecting 
that label would convey useful information about her ethos to the television audience,) 
ignoring or overlooking the fact that such facile, uninformative labelling is almost 
certain to reinforce stereotypes and harden prejudices. 

My initial questions for Rehg's model relate to the issue of for what use or 
whose use these norms are intended. Is the model proposed for taking an overview 
perspective, from which we as observers look from outside upon the operations 
of local argument transactions or of systems of social argumentation practices 
and procedures and declare them meritorious or flawed? And if so, what is the 
upshot of these judgements? To what end are we to condemn or congratulate? 

These are not rhetorical questions. One possible answer is that we are to use 
these norms in our roles as policy-makers or critics of policy to guide us in 
introducing new policies or practices or in identifying flawed ones. For example, if 
an area of scientific practice is beholden to the interests of a particular company or 
industry, or to a particular political party or government, or to religious doctrine or 
some ideology, then the arguments of those practitioners might be open to suspicion 
about the scientific integrity of the evidence they gather or the use to which they 
put evidence or theories, or about whether disagreements about scientific theory 
or its implications are appropriately motivated. Rehg's norms tell us to back up our 
critique with arguments about the specific ways in which these links have threatened 
or might threaten objectivity and to provide arguments for specific ways of repairing 
the situation. Another example: if the manner of news-gathering or reporting in the 
mass media incorporates distorting and avoidable bias that taints the information 
conveyed and renders suspect any inferences based on it, then one must show 
specifically how this happens, and recommend specific reforms, showing in 
concrete and practical terms how they will ameliorate the situation. In general, 
using the idea of content, transactional, and public-sphere norms as tools for the 
observer gives them a role in the critique, reform or creation of argumentative 
practices or structures that affect those practices. 

As my several attempts to think of examples that illustrate the cash value of 
Rehg's model suggest, in future adumbrations of the theory, perhaps in a book-
length treatment where space is available, it would help readers like me if Rehg 
were to spell out, with reference to specific case studies or examples, just what 
the model entails concretely. The account in this article is highly general and abstract. 
In my view the truth of an abstract theory can be ascertained only if it is clear how 
it cashes out in concrete particular instantiations. 



Norms and Functions in Public Sphere Argumentation 145 

3. Asen's multi-functional theory of argumentation 

Robert Asen's motivating problem is how public sphere argumentation, which 
seems to require shared starting points and shared norms, can playa role in public 
deliberation in the face of the value pluralism and fundamental disagreement 
characterizing the American public sphere (and those of other nations)-given the 
plurality of publics, each with historical participatory norms, and given the 
differences in the speakers' positions in social hierarchies and networks, both of 
which can result in unequal advantages in interactions, and in the undeserved 
prominence or marginalization of various arguments. Asen's solution is not to 
despair, but to enrich deliberation with other functions besides "external 
justification"(that is, besides persuasion). He argues that argument can function to 
reshape the social context within which deliberation (and so justificatory, or 
persuasive, argumentation) normally occurs, thereby opening the way to resolution 
and decision-making. 

Asen distinguishes between the function of argument for external justification, 
which is the use of argument to impress one's viewpoint upon another and which 
has received the lion's share of scholarly attention, and its function for other 
purposes, among which he identifies three: agenda expansion, responsibility 
attribution and identity formation. Agenda expansion is the use of argument to 
widen the public sphere agenda to include the interests and perspectives of 
marginalized individuals, groups and issues. Responsibility attribution is its use to 
compel the acceptance of public responsibility for the decisions made in restricted 
deliberative situations. Identity formation is the use of argument as a means of 
shaping individual and collective identity. 

The internal-justification vs. external-justification distinction is extremely 
important. Asen points out that Toulmin conflates the two, and I think that much 
theorizing about argument in philosophical circles (if not also elsewhere) has done 
so too (Blair 2004). I would suggest a slight revision of Asen's conceptualization. 
"Internal justification" is itself open to two possible interpretations. Where c stands 
for a position or opinion someone takes or holds, "c is internally justified" might 
mean that: 

or 

(1) c is justified (that is, c is strongly supported) by some reason, r 
(which consists of a set of propositions, p I' P2' ... Pn); that is, anyone 
who accepts PI' P2, ... Pn is justified in accepting c (with appropriate 
qualifications and reservations). In other words, there is at least one 
compelling argument (reason) for c; 

(2) someone, A, has (or believes he or she has) a justification in sense 
(1) for c; that is, A has (or believes he or she has) decisive reasons for 
his or her position, c. A's acceptance of c is not arbitrary, or unprincipled, 
or unreflectively held, or a "mere" opinion, and so on---or so A believes-



146 J Anthony Blair 

for A has, or believes he/she has, one or more compelling arguments 
(reasons) for hislher position, c. (A might or might not inform someone 
else, B, of this fact.) 

The difference between (1) and (2) is that (1) describes a property of c, whereas 
(2) describes a property of someone's attitude towards c. 

"External justification," as Asen means it, is different from (1) or (2). "c is 
externally justified': means: 

(3) someone, A, tries to get another or others, B, to accept c, by trying 
to show that there are reasons for c that A thinks B should accept and A 
thinks that B should accept that those reasons do indeed compellingly 
support c. In other words, A uses an argument to try to convince B to 
accept c. 

A significant difference between (1) and (2), on the one hand, and (3), on the 
other, is that only the latter describes a communicative act. (Also, someone can 
externally justify a proposition to another without believing that it is internally 
justified.) F ollowingAsen 's account of their views, and using this tri-fold distinction, 
Beardsley is talking about (1) and (2), Toulmin conflates (1) and (3), Baird conflates 
(2) and (3), and Asen wants to contrast (3) with other uses of argument in the 
public sphere, for he thinks that the model of public sphere argument as exclusively 
the situation in which one interlocutor tries to persuade another is seriously defective. 

In turning to the three other functions of argument that Asen introduces, we 
must keep in mind that the concept of function is potentially ambiguous. Depending 
on the context, it can mean inherent purpose (as in: the function ofa bread-knife is 
to cut bread; the function of a screw-driver is to tighten or loosen screws) or it 
can mean an incidental use to which something is put (as in: bread knives function 
well for slicing tomatoes; screw-drivers can function well as pries). Do agenda 
expansion, responsibility attribution and identity formation function as inherent 
purposes of argument or are they incidental uses to which it can be put? As Asen 
describes them, they seem to be the latter. I need to document this interpretation 
by discussing the examples of these other functions that Asen provides, because I 
want to argue that if it turns out that Asen's examples of functions of arguments 
describe functions in the sense of incidental uses, and not functions in the sense of 
inherent purposes, then there is a problem for his argument. 

Begin with the WiIson-Rumsfeld example of agenda-formation. It is not clear 
to me what point exactly Specialist Wilson was trying to make in his question for 
U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and perhaps it wasn't clear in his own mind. 
On the face of it he was asking Rumsfeld to explain (and justify?) why U.S. troops 
in Iraq were, after three years, still not supplied with well-armored vehicles. Perhaps 
he meant to imply the conclusion that better-armored vehicles ought to be provided 
immediately. Perhaps he meant to imply the conclusion that someone ought to be 
held accountable for the lack of essential armor. Perhaps he meant to imply the 
conclusion that the U.S. should not have invaded Iraq without properly armored 



Norms and Functions in Public Sphere Argumentation 147 

vehicles. What I doubt is that it was his aim, which as Asen notes was the actual 
consequence of his making the argument, to add the issue of the state of American 
planning and preparedness for its war against Iraq to the agenda of the public 
discussion about the war in the United States. 

The Wilson-Rumsfeld example shows that although an arguer's intention can 
be the goal of persuading or justifying, the actual consequence of the argument 
can be something different, such as adding an issue to the agenda of public sphere 
discussion. It is also possible for the arguer to use arguments on the face of it to 
persuade, but deliberately to intend thereby to achieve some other outcome. A case 
in point is the argumentation Asen reports against the repeal of the AFDC program 
at a congressional hearing that everyone knew would not persuade the U.S. House 
of Representatives committee to withdraw the repeal. In that case, the arguers had 
as their main objective a by-product of the ostensible persuasive function of arguing. 
Those testifying went through the motions of making their case against the repeal 
of the AFDC as if to try to persuade the legislators to change their minds, but with 
the principal intention of putting their case on record so that those voting for the 
repeal could be held responsible for explicitly ignoring or overriding those 
arguments, if and when an opportunity to call them to account were to occur in 
the future. So here too, although in this case done with full awareness, the use to 
which the arguments were put is parasitic on their inherent persuasive purpose. 

The AFDC example brings to light a new distinction. In addition to the distinction 
between internal and external justification, we need also to distinguish between the 
primary and secondary goals of arguers, on the one hand, and the inherent and 
derivative roles of argument, on the other. My contention is that it is the inherent 
role of argument to be a justification in anyone of the three ways I distinguished 
above: arguing is, inherently, justifying. For an argument to exist, there must be 
justification in one of these respects. But to be sure, in doing one thing, one can 
thereby also (derivatively) do something else. By raising one's hand in certain 
circumstances, one votes "Aye"; in saying "I will" in other circumstances, one 
gets married; and so on. Analogously, in arguing, that is, in justifying, one can at 
the same time also do other things. Moreover, it can be one's primary intention to 
perform the derivative act. It can be an arguer's primary goal to achieve some 
other objective by means of externally justifying. 

Putting these distinctions to use, we can say that the primary aim of those 
testifying against the repeal of the AFDC, if Asen 's description is correct, was the 
derivative goal of responsibility attribution. In order to achieve that outcome, they 
had to go through the motions of putting argument to its inherent use-that is, 
they had at least to appear to be trying to persuade the House committee not to 
repeal the AFDC. The situation is similar in Asen 's example of the identity-formation 
function of argumentation. The argument, that the media ought to portray the 
people in South Central Los Angeles who are talented and hard-working because 
otherwise it was spreading a distorted image of the community, that was made at 
a televised event featuring a senior federal official (CIA Director John Deutch), 



148 J Anthony Blair 

was almost certain to have had the effect of strengthening pride in the South 
Central community and reinforcing the determination of its talented and hard-
working people to overcome its prevalent negative image. The identity-formation 
consequence was a derivative result of the inherent use of argument to persuade, 
although that result could well have been the arguer's primary objective. 

To contend that the agenda-expansion, responsibility-attribution and identity-
formation functions are derivative functions of argument is not to deny that they 
are functions of argument and it is not to deny their importance. However, it does 
raise a question about Asen's enterprise. One of his aims in this article is to rescue 
public-sphere argumentation from the charge of irrelevance-from Matt Miller's 
lament that persuasion is dead. Asen asks: Where is the space for argument in the 
face of value pluralism and fundamental disagreement? His answer is that while 
the persuasive function of public-sphere argument might be on shaky ground, its 
agenda-expansion, responsibility-attribution and identity-formation functions can 
remain healthy even with contemporary value pluralism, deep disagreement, and 
inequalities of power in the public sphere. However, if I am right that these latter 
functions are derivative, and dependent upon the inherent function of persuasion 
or justification, then unless the inherent uses of argument in the public sphere are 
somehow motivated-unless people have some reason for at the very least going 
through the motions of making arguments to persuade or justify-there will be no 
activity on which the functions Asen identifies can piggy-back. So Asen is brought 
back to face Miller's question: is there a point in trying to persuade anyone or to 
justify yourself in public-sphere argumentation? 

4. Concluding remarks 

The upshot of what I am suggesting is that if there is no longer any possibility for 
persuasion in any public sphere, that implies that there are no longer any public 
spheres. A public sphere is, among other things, a forum in which the members of 
its public seek to persuade one another of the plausibility of beliefs and the desirability 
of actions. As Taylor argues (1995, Ch. 13), a public sphere, as an ideal type, is 
open to everyone equally and exists outside the political domain. As such, members 
of its public enter it as equals. The Private and the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the 
community activist and the Director of the Central IntelJigence Agency, the ordinary 
citizen and the American House of Representatives sub-committee chair, have as 
participants in the public sphere only whatever personal ethos they can muster to 
lend weight to the force of their arguments. There will always be differences in 
power among members of any public and so among participants in public sphere 
deliberations. But these power differences are to be left at the door ofthe deliberative 
forum. The major danger to public sphere deliberations occurs when the public 
sphere becomes politicized. The public sphere is politicized, in the sense I have in 
mind, when the participants tend to be assumed to be already parti pris--committed 
beyond the reach of rational argumentation to a position or point of view. The only 



Norms and Functions in Public Sphere Argumentation 149 

motive such a person can reasonably have to engage in an argumentative discussion 
is to try to win over the few remaining uncommitted parties. In such circumstances, 
the idea of being moved by the strength of the better argument, by the preponderance 
of the evidence, by the more comprehensive and internaIIy consistent theory, gets 
no traction. The ideal of listening to what others have to say, of weighing as many 
and as varied views as possible, before making up one's mind, has no place. Thus 
if the public sphere becomes completely politicized, it ceases to exist. There is no 
longer the possibility of persuasion. 

What has happened, in that case, is that Rehg's norms for public sphere 
argumentation are completely violated. There is no reason to engage in 
argumentation or to accept it, and there is no longer any coIIective reasonableness. 
Thus these norms are not just guidelines; they specify the very conditions of the 
possibility of public sphere argumentation. 

To the extent that participants in public deliberation weigh in with the power of 
their office rather than with the force of their arguments, they operate as 
destructively towards the public sphere as do ideologues. Thus, measures that 
bring issues that the powerful want suppressed onto the agenda for public 
deliberation, that hold the powerful to account in the forum of public deliberation, 
and that give the powerless the sense of identity to participate in public spheres, aII 
serve to reinvigorate the public sphere. So the functions of argument that Asen 
draws our attention to are particularly salient when the powerful threaten the integrity 
of the public sphere. And if, as I have argued, such measures rely on the possibility 
of persuasive argument in the public sphere, there is a sense in which the public 
sphere can, and must, reinvigorate itself. If persuasion becomes impossible, then 
the other functions of argument that supervene on its persuasive function, such as 
agenda setting, responsibility attribution or identity formation, also cease to be 
possible. 

Notes 

I In the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, in the "Letter from Washington" column, there is a 
story by David Rose, "An Inconvenient Patriot," about the U.S. Federal Bureau ofinvestigation's 
response to an allegation by one of its contract employees that another employee was engaged in 
suspicious activity, possibly espionage. According to Rose's story, the F.B.I. not only refused to 
investigate the allegation, but it threatened the person who made it and shortly thereafter terminated 
her contract. If this is true, then the F.B.I. refused to respond to the allegation in a way that would 
permit responsible judgements of the cogency of the accuser's evidence. Its response failed to 
have any transactional merit. 
2 For instance, example 5.2 (p. 97): 

A: We have eight ounces left. That should last us for a couple of days at least. 
B: Heh yeah, I guess so. 
A: Twenty-four days I would estimate. 
B: Eight ounces?! 
A: Sure. We smoke a lid in two or three days. 
B: That's like- that's like drinking eight or nine kegs every week. 



150 J Anthony Blair 

c: Or smoking two packs of cigarettes every day. 
D. EHHH-heh-he-heh-heh 
B: Yeah. Only I don't smoke two packs of cigarettes every-
C: Three? Four? 
B: No. Not nearly that many 

Here the significance ofB's keg analogy is completely lost without the background information 
that A, B, C and D view themselves as superior to beer-drinking "fraternity boys," 
Or example 5.4 (p.1 03): 

A: I'm getting fat again. 
B: You are not. 
A: Yes I am. 
B: You've got no buns. 
A: I've got the puffY stomach though. 
B: Don't worry about it. No one but you can even notice it. 

Here B's final comment will wrongly be considered irrelevant if the issue is take to be whether A 
is getting fat; what is really going on is that A is seeking reassurance that she is attractive. 
3 In the event, her answer to the stupid question turned out to strengthen her ethos: she said she 
didn't think she was a radical, but she guessed she was radical in her opposition to the U.S. 
military involvement in Iraq-an answer that neatly avoided the labelling trap while leaving the 
impression of a thoughtful and honest person. 

References 

Asen, Robert. (2005). "Pluralism, Disagreement, and the Status of Argument in the 
Public Sphere." Informal Logic 25: 117-137. 

Blair, J. Anthony. (2004). "Argument and Its Uses." Informal Logic, 24.2:137-151. 

Johnson, Ralph H. (2000). Manifest Rationality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 

Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendorst. (2004). A Systematic Theory of 
Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Eemeren, Frans H. van, Rob Grootendorst, Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs. (1994) 
Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa/London: University of 
Alabama Press. 

Gilbert, Michael. (1997). Coalescent Argument. Laurence Erlbaum Associates. 

Rehg, William. (2005). "Assessing the Cogency of Arguments: Three Kinds of Merits." 
Informal Logic, 25: 95-115. 

Taylor, Charles. (1995). Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 
Press. 

Tindale, Christopher W. (2004). Rhetorical Argumentation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 
Publications. 

1. Anthony Blair 
Department of Philosophy 

University of Windsor 
Windsor, Ontario. N9B 3P4 

Canada 

tblair@uwindsor.ca