Clarifying our Ideas in Persuasion Dialogue

Abstract

Persuasion dialogue sometimes helps us to clarify our ideas; this paper attempts to find out what clarification consists in. It criticizes Walton’s view, which explains clarification as making implicit commitments explicit and proposes a different approach according to which clarification consists in replacing narrowly individuated views with epistemically better ones which retain elements of the earlier views. It also argues that clarification so conceived is not one of the main goals of persuasion dialogue but rather an accidental even if welcome side effect.

Keywords

• changing views, clarification, critical discussion, maieutic function, persuasion dialogue, pragma-dialectics, Walton