Here are some of my thoughts after day 1:

Frans van Eemeren presented the first of three keynotes, where he divided argument studies into three sections  in order to take stock of argument studies – empericism, context, and formality. Empiricism is necessary for the development of argumentation theory, however we cannot merely rely on it alone. To do so is to only further understanding of the particulars of a case. It must be appropriate to the issue and to the advancement of argumentation studies.

Context is the study of more than just the case or the issue or theory in front of us. But it must be more than just audience, as Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca offer. There are a robust number of contexts that can be appreciated in argument work.

Finally formality – creating formal systems of argument based on our theory – this is most applicable to artificial intelligence and such, but I thought it had many applications to the big, undercovered aspect of argumentation theory, that of how to teach invention from an argument theory point of view.

I saw a few papers after that, some of which were about the theory of analogies, some others about religion. The most interesting exchanges were on papers about Paul’s argumentation in Corinthians, a topic that rhetoricians have covered quite a bit, but it was pretty interesting to see some people who were not rhetoricians engage with that text and account for Paul’s argumentation.

More to come!