Summer is off to a great start as this over-served, beach tiki bar patron can tell you. This is supposedly a piña colada, but in actuality it is 6 shots of rum with some banana-flavored ice. We stan an innovative bartender.

It’s once again my birthday week and for the first time in a while (2018) I’m going to attend what we colloquially call the Dutch Argumentation Conference. The official name is ISSA – International Society for the Study of Argumentation.

I’m presenting a paper there co-authored with a friend and colleague (although I should really just be the adjacent author; he did most of the heavy lifting) and I hope to see some inspiring and educational papers. But I’m afraid it won’t be the return of the impressed, it might be the return of the depressed, or perhaps just repressed, as it seems at this point in my career we are looping back around to the same concerns that were at the first one of these conferences I attended years ago.

I hope this is not the case. I think that this conference errs on the side of argumentation study that is looking to perfect the idea of good argumentation by perfecting the description of argumentation as it occurs. What I mean by this is most of the research is aimed at a kind of criticism of argument that reveals the superiority of the ideal model of argument. Although this produces some thoughtful and very nuanced writing about arguments that don’t appear too intricate at first glance, it doesn’t address how to argue, or how to survive if you find yourself in a discourse that refuses any label except argument.

This approach we might say was initialized by Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca however they were also very interested in improvement of practices (rule of justice and dissociation are obvious moments here). But I can see how criticism of argument can be seen as the practice of good argumentation overall.

What I like to think about is how to teach people to argue given the surroundings, not idealize argument and try to reach it. Something much more attentive to resources of the moment rather than hope for better tools or supplies. I hope to hear some papers like this while at the conference.

If the GoPro works (big if) I’ll post some links here as I make videos.