A solution idea for the use of civic credit points for the control of power

In the Fog Island Tavern:

Hey Vodçek — what’s all the excitement over there about?

Hi Bog-Hubert. Some good news from Rigatopia — why don’t you go over to find out? Here’s your coffee.

Thanks. You can’t provide a quick summary? I’ll have to catch the ferry in a few minutes…

Okay. It looks like they have developed a new solution for the problem of power and accountability. You remember Abbé Boulah’s campaign for argument evaluation in policy-making?

Applying the ideas of our architect friend — to evaluate design and planning arguments — to more general policy discussions and decisions? Isn’t he developing some kind of game to get people used to the concept?

Yes. The game is a good starting point. So you know how people get points for any contributions they make to the discussion — but they get modified by everybody’s assessment of the plausibility and importance of those contributions, and by the overall quality (plausibility) of the solution they collectively work out.

I remember. So how does this get used to control power in real life?

It’s actually quite simple. People who participate in public discussions build up a credit points account based on the quality of their contributions. The participation in public discourse is of course free and open to all: the possibility to earn credits is an incentive to participate.

Yes — we have talked about how that might be used to actually get decisions made. There were some questions about how the plausibility assessments could be used to guide decisions. And about some kinds of public decisions that have to be made quickly so there’s no time to have a long discussion about them…

Right. So some people have to be appointed to positions where they are responsible for making such decisions. One part of the idea — the solution they are trying out on Rigatopia — is that a person’s credit account will play a significant part in the appointment to such positions: you have to show a certain level of creditable participation in public discourse to qualify for positions where you have the power to make decisions.

So how does that solve the problems with power in those positions? We don’t have to go through the entire litany of power addiction, temptations for corruption, etc?

No. The solution is that each decision must be ‘paid for’ — up-front — with a credit point ‘ante’. Which is lost if the decision is no good; but can be seen as an ‘investment’ to earn new points if the decision is successful. But eventually, the points are ‘used up’.

Makes sense: we often talked about how power — as ‘empowerment’ to pursue your happiness — should be ‘paid for’ just like you have to pay for your food and clothes and car.

Yes — but not with the same currency. And here, the currency is credit points — something anybody can earn, but which must be earned, and which can be lost by making stupid decisions.

That finally gives some substance to the notion of ‘accountability’. I agree. What about public decisions for which there is — and should be — some thorough discussion before decisions are made?

You are asking about how we can realize the expectation that such decisions should be made on the basis of the merit of arguments, of the contributions people make to the discourse. And how to add this element of accountability to the basic idea of using some overall group measure of proposal plausibility as a guide to the collective decision.

Right. The argument evaluation approach has been worked out reasonably well to produce an individual judgment of overall proposal plausibility (as a function of argument plausibility and argument weight — that was described in the paper in the ‘Informal Logic’ journal). But we all had some reservations about how to fashion a group decision from those individual judgments, and whether traditional decision methods such as (majority) voting could easily be replaced.

Okay: here’s the answer to that. Whatever decision method is being used — say voting — will have to be assessed in relation to some such measure of collective proposal plausibility — the plausibility assessments of all the people who have contributed to the discourse and assessments. But somebody has to take some responsibility for the decision. And that must involve accountability — which brings us back to the civic credit accounts. If you wish to actually have some actual ‘say’ in such a decision, you have to commit some of your credit points — perhaps your traditional ‘vote’ or polling opinion is ‘weighted’ by the credit points you are willing to put up as ‘ante’ — and lose if your decision is flawed. Of course, if it’s a good decision, it will earn you point points back, with ‘interest’ depending on how good it is.

Makes sense. It sounds a bit complicated, but with all the new information technology we have, it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement. I assume that such decisions — if they are to apply (e.g. as ‘law’) to the entire community, city, state, or whatever entity — must be ‘announced’ in a format ‘validated’ by the credit points that are backing them up. I like the aspect that the currency for influencing decisions and making decision-makers ‘accountable’ has been shifted away from money to civic credits. But tell me: won’t there be decisions that are so important and consequential — and require vast resources such that no individual decision-maker alone can reasonably be accountable for them?

Sure. The provision for this is also quite simple: If there is such a momentous decision, requiring so much money or other resources that the responsibility for it must be shared by the community — or at least by the supporters in the community, — this can be achieved by people backing the decision transferring credit points from their own accounts to that of the ‘official’ in charge of actually ‘signing’ for the decision. If it’s a bad one, they all, including the official, will be ‘accountable’ by losing their points. If it’s successful and ‘earning’ new credits, the points will have to be paid back to the supporters — with ‘points interest’ according to the size of their respective investment.

Sounds interesting, even like a breakthrough, almost. Thanks for the summary; I guess they are still discussing quite a few of the details that must be worked out. Looking forward to hear more about it when I get back, gotta run.

Remember, you heard it here first, Bog-Hubert. Have a safe trip!

Some speculations regarding the possibility of a moral code without religion.

On a Linked-In forum, the question was raised whether a moral code without religion could be developed. My effort to look into ways to achieve better decisions for planning, design, policy-making issues suggests that it is indeed possible to develop at least a partial system of agreements — for which ‘moral code’ would be an unnecessarily pretentious term — but which has some of the same features. For problems, conflicts of interest or proposed actions or projects that require the consent and cooperation of more than one individual, (this does not cover all situations in which moral codes apply), as soon as parties realize that ‘resolutions’ based on coercion of any kind either will not really improve the situation or are fraught with unacceptable risks (the other guy might have a bigger club… or even one’s own nuclear weapon would be so damaging to even one’s own side that its use would be counterproductive) the basic situation becomes one of negotiation or, as I call it, ‘planning discourse’. Such situations can be sustained and brought to success only on the basis of the expectation that parties will accept and behave according to some agreements. The set of such agreements can be seen as (part of) an ethical or moral code. For the planning discourse, a rough sketch of first underlying ‘agreements’ or code elements are the following:

**1 Instead of attempting to resolve the problem by coercion — imposing one side’s preferred solution over those of other parties — let us talk, discuss the situation.

**2 The discussion will consist of each side describing that side’s preferred outcome, and attempting to convince the other side (other parties) of the advantages –or disadvantages — of the proposal.

**3 All sides will have the opportunity to do this, and all sides implicitly promise to listen to the other’s description and arguments before making a decision.

**4 The decision will (should) be based on the arguments brought forward in the discussion.

*4.1 The description of proposals should be truthful and avoid deception — all its relevant features should be described, none hidden; no pertinent aspects omitted.

*4.2 The arguments should equally truthful, avoiding deception and exaggeration, and be open to scrutiny and challenge, which means that participants should be willing to answer questions for further support of the claims made in the descriptions and arguments.

Simplified ‘planning arguments’ consist of three types of claims:
a) the factual-instrumental claim
‘proposal A will bring about Result B, given conditions C’
b) the factual claim ‘
‘Conditions C are (or will be) given’;
c) the ‘deontic’ or ‘ought-claim’
‘Consequence B of the proposal ought to be pursued’;
and also
d) the ‘pattern’ or inference rule of the argument (that is, the specific constellation of assertions, negation of claims and relations between A and B) is ‘plausible’.
While such arguments (just like the ‘inductive’ reasoning that plays such a significant role in science) are not ‘valid’ from a formal logic point of view, they are nevertheless used and considered all the time, their plausibility deranging from their particular constellation of claims, and the ‘fit’ to the specific situation.
The plan proposal A is itself a ‘deontic’ (ought-) claim.

*4.3 The support for claims of type (a) and (b) takes the form of ‘evidence’ provided and bolstered by what we might loosely call the ‘scientific’ perspective and method.

*4.4 Support for claims of type c) will take further arguments of the ‘planning argument’ kind and pattern, containing further factual and deontic claims in support of the desirability of B.
The deontic claims of such further support arguments can refer to previous agreements, accepted laws or treaties that imply acceptance of a disputed claim, claims of desirability or undesirability for any party affected by the proposed plan, even moral rules derived from religious domains.

**5 Individual participants’ (preliminary) decision should be based on that participant’s individual assessment of the plausibility of all the arguments pro and con that have been brought up in the discussion.
That assessment should not be superseded by considerations extraneous to the plan proposal discussion itself — such as party voting discipline — but be a function of the plausibility and weights assigned by the individual to the arguments and their supporting claims.

**6 A collective decision will be based on the overall ‘decisions’ or opinions of individual participants.
(The current predominant ‘majority voting’ methods for reaching decisions do not meet the expectation #4 above of guaranteeing that the decision be based on due consideration of all expressed concerns: here, a new method is sorely needed).

A decision to adopt a plan by the participants (parties affected by the proposed plan) in such a discussion should only be taken (agreed upon) if all participants’ assessment of the plan is positive or at least ‘not worse’ than the existing problem situation that precipitated the discussion.

**7    Discussion should be continued until all parties feel that all relevant concerns have been voiced. Ideally, the discussion would lead to consensus regarding acceptance or rejection of the proposed plan. If this is the case, a decision can be taken and the plan accepted for implementation.
Realistically, there may be differences of opinion: some parties will support, others oppose the plan. The options for this case are either to abandon the process (to do nothing), to attempt to modify the plan to remove specific features that cause opponents’ concerns; or to prepare a different proposal altogether and start a new discussion about it.

**8    Individual parties’ ‘decision’ (e.g. vote) contribution to the common decision should be matching the party’s expressed assessment of the arguments and argument premises.
For example: if a participant agrees with all the ‘pro’ arguments and disagrees with the ‘con’ arguments (or expressed lesser weigh of the ‘con’ arguments) the participant’s overall vote should be positive. Conversely, if the participant’s assessment of arguments is negative, the overall ‘vote’ should be negative. Participants should be expected to offer additional explanations of a discrepancy between argument assessment and overall decision.

**9 A common decision to accept a proposed plan implies obligations (specified in the plan) for all parties to contribute to implementation and adherence to the decision provisions.

**10 The plan may include provisions to ensure adherence and contributions by the parties. Such provisions may include ‘sanctions’, understood as (punitive) measures taken against parties guilty of violating plan agreements.
There undoubtedly might be more agreements needed for a viable planning ‘ethic’. It is clear that some of the above provisions are not easy to ‘live up to’ — but what moral system has ever been? And for some provisions, the necessary tools for their successful application are still not available. For many societal decisions, access to the discussion (to be able to voice concerns) is lacking even in so-called advanced democracies. Some expectations may sound like wishful thinking: The expectation of transparent linkage between argument assessment and overall (individual) decision and even more the linkage between arguments and collective decision are still not available. The approach for systematic and transparent argument assessment (My article in the Dec 2010 issue of “Informal Logic” on ‘The structure and Evaluation of Planning Arguments’) suggests that such a link would be feasible and practical, if somewhat more cumbersome that current voting and opinion polling practices. However, its application would require some changes in the organization of the planning discourse and support system, as well as decision-making methods.

These observations were mainly done in response to the question whether a ‘moral’ not based on religious tenets would be possible (and meaningful?). That question may ultimately be taken to hinge on item # 10 above — the sanction issue. The practical difficulties of specifying and imposing effective sanctions to ensure adherence to moral rules may lead many to the necessity of accepting or postulating sanctions and rewards to be administered by an entity in the hereafter. But it would seem reasonable to continue to explore such agreement systems including sanctions in the ‘here and now’ beyond current practices, since both non-religious and religion-based systems arguably have not been successful enough reducing the level of violations of their rules.

On the role of feelings in argumentative discourse

- Are you neglecting your civic duty to sustain the customary atmosphere of comfortable if meaningless small talk in the Fog Island Tavern, Bog-Hubert? Scribbling notes in your crumpled notebook like a real coffee house intellectual — or have you actually gotten over your writers’ block to get back into some serious writing?

- Sorry, nothing so encouraging. I’m just writing down come complaints of Abbé Boulah’s about people’s lack of comprehension of his and his buddy’s ideas glorious ideas about argumentative planning. We were walking along the beach, and he seemed quite disappointed by some reactions he got from some experiment. So I need to write some things down before I forget them.

- Reactions to what?

- It seems they were trying out some of those ideas about structured planning discourse including the argument assessment approach, in a distance learning project of some kind. And the participants on the other end either didn’t understand what they were trying to do at all, or else hadn’t even studied the background material they had prepared and sent over there. They totally screwed up the exercise, and finally blamed the disaster on his buddy, alleging that he didn’t allow for the role of emotions and feelings in the discourse, didn’t understand emotions at all; something like that.

- That’s a problem with those online and distance projects: you never know whether the folks at the other end really are doing their part of the deal. But I can see where they picked a plausible excuse, at least.

- Plausible, huh? In what way, Vodçek? How is ignorance and laziness ‘plausible’?

- Well, doesn’t the very word ‘argument’ invite a number of misunderstandings that then can be used as excuses? You can’t really blame misunderstanding only on the party that doesn’t understand, can you?

- What kinds of misunderstandings?

- Well, many people understand ‘argument’ as something disagreeable, adversarial, quarrelsome — that can easily end up into a more serious fight — not very nice nor cooperative.

- I can’t argue with that: we’ve had a lot of that kind of reaction.

- Right. And even for those who do understand ‘argument’ as a set of statements that aim to support some claim, that notion is flavored by the association with formal logic, rationality, scientific ‘objectivity’, in short, a kind of discourse in which the ‘truth’ of issues is to be established. Truth that is independent or overriding of how people feel about it. Scientific, ‘objective’ truth. That kind of inquiry that almost by definition excludes feelings. And of course that bothers people who are concerned with issues about which they do have strong feelings. Where the ‘truth’ about what IS the case is less the point of the discussion than what OUGHT to be, and theta patently isn’t true YET. So they understandably resent the impression that those feelings are slighted and ignored.

- But that’s precisely Abbé Boulah’s point — talking about ‘planning arguments’ or ‘design arguments’ — the ones in which one of the key premises, the ‘ought’-claim — is exactly the one that deals with feelings! The kinds of arguments that are not susceptible to formal logic analysis because they have to do with what people want, desire, in short, with how they feel about things.

- Sure, Bog-Hubert: you and I, and some of our friends know that. But for somebody who just hears ‘argument’ and does not examine the planning argument story carefully enough, the impression is still that those ‘feelings’ issues just don’t count in argumentation. So maybe the story needs to be told more clearly and understandably?

- I thought the difference between the ‘formal’ and ‘deductive’ kind of arguments and those planning arguments was clear enough. But you may be on to something there. What do you think are the key points that should be made more clear?

- Let’s see. A first problem might be the frequent impression that people who go on about argumentation appear to take a position of superiority: if they have an argument — one that’s sanctioned by ‘logic’ as ‘valid’ and that therefore has a true conclusion, they are seen as putting down other opinions as ill-informed or stupid. I know what you are going to say: the process we are proposing as ‘argumentative planning’ is explicitly inviting all kinds of concerns, arguments, as ‘legitimate’ and deserving of being given ‘due consideration’ — since all planning arguments after all are ‘inconclusive’ from a formal logic point of view. But I have a hunch that using the word ‘argument’ makes it difficult for people to see that difference. Is there a different way of talking about that?

- Coming to think about it, we did discuss that issue some time go. In such discussions, many issues are raised and expressed as questions, not arguments — whose answers or conclusions could become significant premises of arguments for or against planning proposals. And we saw the problem as one of getting people to put those claims together into complete arguments so that they can be evaluated properly, according the the approach our friend has developed. But maybe the invitation should be to just raise such questions, not stating them as explicit pro or con arguments?

- I can see why you kept going in that direction: how the argument evaluation process might become more difficult with an approach of inviting questions rather than arguments. You’d have to get somebody to put the arguments together in some way in the end. Perhaps you could get a program to do that, using the plausibility assessments of the answers (by the participants) as premises for pro and con arguments. We should look into that. But that very issue brings up a different problem: one that has caused some trouble in the past .

- I think I know what you are referring to; we touched upon that very briefly a moment ago but didn’t go into it? If you focus on raising questions whose answers may become argument premises, many people in the past — mainly technical-oriented folks — have often tended to focus on the factual and factual-instrumental premises of planning arguments. The deontic premises — the ‘ought’ -issues — were either taken for granted, assumed to be given by overriding social policies, even legal precedents or regulations, or simply swept under the rug because they couldn’t be settled by ‘scientific’, logical means. Often, technocrats acted as if, because they had the expertise regarding the technical fact and instrumental questions, they should also have the authority to determine the ‘ought’ questions. Maybe it never occurred to them that there might be people who did not share their vision of the ‘common good’, and that different visions could be legitimate. And such attitudes of course looked to many ordinary folks as arrogant usurpation of powers for which the political process had not provided legitimacy.

- Right. Thereby casting those legitimacy questions both onto the technical-scientific expertocracy and the political process, as well as the role of argument in the ‘planning and political process. But isn’t that inevitably leading to the opposite fallacy, if you will: that planning issues should be decided predominantly or only on the basis of the deontic premises? What ‘the people’ want or desire — blithely assuming that ‘the people’ are indeed of one mind about what they desire. And then the very discrediting of the argumentative process now precluded a meaningful discussion of the plausibility of either kind of premise: what ought to be, and what to do to achieve it.

- A veritable tragedy of argumentation; i agree. Especially for those of us who finally have tried to show a way for both kinds of premises to be discussed and evaluated with equal legitimacy. So how should that question be dealt with?

- I think one main task is to make it more clear that the call for decisions to be made on the basis of arguments does not mean that there is anybody ‘official’ or ‘running the process’ or even a ‘system’ or machine, who determines the ‘truth’ or plausibility and the weight of arguments. No ‘little man behind the curtain’ or on the big screen calling the shots. Make it more clear that the planning arguments are all NOT deductively and objectively ‘valid’ and their conclusions true or false regardless how people feel about them. But precisely that no ‘absolute’ knowledge about the truth of any claims is assumed, and that decisions are made on the basis of the assessments of the people participating in the process.

- If the argument assessment results are to be used in making decisions at all. That has been raised as a possibility, as a much needed alternative to the standard decision-making rule of majority voting which doesn’t really require that any of the concerns expressed in the discussion are given ‘due consideration’. But the details for alternative decision-making methods based more explicitly on argument evaluation results need more discussion and agreement. We may very well all be wrong in the end — but we are trying to pool or knowledge and beliefs about the information we collectively bring into the process to arrive at a decision we can all support, with what is just the best of currently available knowledge.

- So what about the role of feelings, specifically, in this process?

- Thanks for getting us back to that question, Vodçek. You are asking about how to deal with the problem of people insisting that because they have raised valid questions about the legitimacy of the expert, and the predominance of the technical-scientific ‘rationality’, public issues should therefore be decided o the basis of their feelings out the issues?

- I guess that’s one way to put it.

- Okay. Can we agree on the principle that whatever the basis of people’s individual position on issues: so-called scientific rationality and logic, or their feelings, their judgment is to be accepted as their rightful and legitimate stance?

- No argument there. But I sense a ‘but’ coming… and I don’t think it has to do with all the authors of learned books on logic and critical thinking that try to tel all of us how to think properly?

- Right. The ‘but’ arises when people start demanding that the judgment resulting from their ‘feeling’ or emotional assessment should be accepted by others as a legitimate basis for their decision as well — even if they are not able to provide any further support or explanation for their judgments. My ‘gut feeling’ telling me that plan A is a good idea (or a bad one) cannot possibly be a valid reason for me to expect that others should adopt the same judgment, if I can’t explain and get across w h y I feel this way. Just as someone else whose gut feeling tells him the opposite of mine can’t expect to sway me just on the basis of him having that gut feeling.

- You are talking about issues of shared or public interest of course, not issues that are our personal matter only and don’t affect anybody else.

- Right. For any common, cooperative decision, perhaps we can tentatively state two rules:
1) The method or rule for arriving at a final common decision should accept everybody’s individual judgment regardless of how the individual arrives at it. And
2) Whenever, and to the extent that an individual or party tries to persuade others to adopt an individual position on an issue (through argumentation), that party is responsible for supplying reasons, evidence, supporting arguments, for a l l premises of the arguments, the factual-instrumental premises, the factual premises, and the deontic (‘ought’) premises, upon request. No request for further support of a premise can be rejected on the grounds that it is a personal value judgment or feeling; such a rejection will be a valid reason for anyone else to reject the demand that the position be adopted by others. (However, of course the person will still be able to ‘cast his vote’ on the basis of his personal convictions even if he cannot supply reasons to sway others).

- Does that mean that we have to accept such votes even if they are based on obviously false information or flawed — fallacious — reasoning?

- No. But if you think that somebody is making such mistakes, it is your responsibility to offer your reasons to sway that person. Remember that your premises may be less supportable and certain than they appear to you. The fact that somebody’s argument appears to you as a fallacy does not entitle you to use your authority as a connoisseur of fallacies to reject the entire argument with all its premises, and this the right of the person to have a say in the decision.

- Isn’t that a main difference between this approach and, say, the logic rule books? It does not — as an approach — try to tell anybody how to think, but just encourages all participants to examine their reasons — yes, even challenge and test them — but then accepts whatever judgment people bring into the process as legitimate contributions, right or wrong, to the final decision.

- And I would insist on something else: the support for an ‘ought’-premise can take the form of a story laying out the vision a person considers desirable, not just another set of ‘formalized’ arguments. But parts of the story should again be open to questioning.

- Agreed, Vodçek. So how do we make this more clear and understandable? How do we avoid the potential misunderstanding arising out of the term ‘argument’?

- Would it be meaningful to avoid the word ‘argument’ altogether, and to just ask people to refrain from making arguments, but only to raise questions?

- What do you mean?

- Well, take the three types of premises of a planning argument about a proposal A:
“Yes, A should be adopted
because
A will lead to B given conditions C,
and
B ought to be pursued or aimed for,
and
conditions C are given.”

Instead of this whole (‘adversarial’) argument, can we instead just ask the questions
“Does A really lead to B?”
and “Should B be aimed for?”
and
“Are conditions C really present?”

And invite participants to discuss those? Perhaps not even in the same sequence, so as to further avoid the argumentative flavor? And avoid presenting the argument at the outset as a ‘pro’ or con’ argument?

- Why should we avoid that?

- Think about it: If the proposed action really leads to result B, and a person P1 considers B desirable, the resulting argument is a ‘pro’ argument for that person, right? But if another person P2 sees consequence B as undesirable, the same argument becomes a ‘con’ argument for that person, doesn’t it? Or if P2 feels that while the goal B is worthwhile, the proposal A is not an effective way to achieve it — or if P2 grants both of the above two premises, but has information that the conditions C aren’t present to make the proposed action effective: in all these cases the same set of claims become counterarguments for P2. So why should it be labeled as one or the other from the outset, if it really depends on people’s assessment of each of the premises?

- Now I realize why all those debate programs on the market always gave me a weird sense of ‘already taking sides’ in the debates they try to facilitate: By explicitly labeling and mapping any argument as a ‘pro’ or ‘con’ argument — the way it was intended by the person making the argument — it already slightly distorted the judgment process. I agree, the ‘system’ keeping track, displaying and mapping all the contributions in such discussions should refrain from that kind of labeling; just present the claims that make up the argument premises.

- Well, in order to evaluate how all those bits of information support or not support a decision, do they not have to be put together as complete arguments, in the end ?

- Yes, I think you are right — unless we can get people to assess the plausibility of all those claims separately, and have the ‘system’ put them together as arguments and then calculate their arguments weights etc. But then the system must also make such assessments as whether a specific argument pattern really ‘applies’ to the case at hand — which people might want to make themselves. And they can’t do that unless they see the complete argument, can they?

- You devious fellow. You are once again raising more questions than we started out with, my friend. But do you agree that we can see the task and direction more clearly now? I think we need to run some experiments with various ways to treat these issues, and then write a short, concise ‘game manual’ that makes it very clear what the approach is doing, including the legitimate role of feelings and emotions in the process. You’ll tell Abbé Boulah when he comes in, Vodçek?

- You really think he’ll be able to raise the funds for those experiments?

Gun Control by Abbé Boulah

Good evening, fellow Taverniers. What is the topic of your heated discussion tonight?

Oh. we were talking about this latest speech on gun control..

Good grief. I am getting so tired of this endless gun control discussion that doesn’t get anywhere. Didn’t Abbé Boulah come up with the solution to the gun control issue a while ago?

It must have been a very foggy night, Bog-Hubert. Do you remember what it was?

A foggy night it was indeed. But the solution was great, as well as impossible.

You speak in foggy riddles, my man. Try to explain, will you?

Okay. I’ll try. The solution was a bit technological. It involved fitting all the guns with a WIFI device that would make the gun usable only at a person’s home, where the WIFI router is located. Well, maybe at designated other places such as shooting ranges.

Now how in the world would that be a solution?

Don’t you see, Renfroe? It would allow people to have guns at their homes, for protection. That would take care of the argument that people must be able to protect themselves against criminals, that the NRA is using in its polemics against gun control — as well as the argument they can’t use but that is the big elephant in the room, that the gun industry wants to sell guns. They can even make more money by making and selling those WIFI devices, and pretend to go along with the gun control idea while protecting their interests… Why are you shaking your head, Vodçek?

I see. That seems to take care of one of the issues in the second amendment: protection against criminals — ‘if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns…’. So guns without such devices are automatically outlaw guns — but you can’t really prevent their existence with that policy, can you? So will it really help?

Damn, you are right. But at least the criminals can’t count on people having no protection in their homes. That ought to make a difference. And then deranged people can’t take their home protection guns down to the school cafeteria or their workplace and start shooting kids or coworkers. Or to serene places of civilized communication like this Tavern…

True. But you used the word that’s really the problem: Aren’t many if not most of those shootings done by people that are, as you said, ‘deranged’? If I remember correctly, many of those were using various kinds of medications — antidepressants, right? So how would you deal with that aspect? I know the buzzword is ‘background check’ — are you going to force doctors and psychiatrists to report patients to whom they are prescribing such drugs, so that they have to give up their guns? Good luck. You’d be fighting the medical professions as well as the gun lobby.

Hey, maybe the devices should be in the ammo; combined with the home or shooting range WIFI, or even just instead of those, they would detect if somebody is using such drugs, and simply not work for such people?

Good idea. That would take care of a lot of police and military types as well.

Wait. Those conditions are building up by people’s situations and jobs and relationships — perfectly sane people — until they snap. Even before they have been diagnosed with anything and prescribed medication?

Well, you can’t win them all, obviously. But if all the mass shooting incidents where such drugs were involved could have been avoided, it would make some difference. Do we have enough data on all that?

Not only that: what about the second amendment asserting the right of the people to bear arms to protect themselves against the government going berserk?

Aren’t you forgetting the missing part of that statement, the one that would make any resistance to out-of-bounds government meaningful and effective in the first place?

What’s that?

Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that part: ‘a well-regulated militia’. Renfroe?

Yeah, I keep yelling that to my neighbor who keeps shooting at my dog anytime that poor critter gets anywhere near the fence: “You ain’t a militia, and you ain’t well regulated!” And that goes for the entire NRA, if’n you ask me…

So Bog-Hubert: why were you saying that the solution Abbé Boulah was talking about is not feasible?

Well, isn’t it obvious: it’s too bipartisan, but not enough? Neither of the parties — I mean the gun control people, nor the gun lobby can claim the idea as theirs; it lets people keep their guns and the gun industry sell more, which is unacceptable to the gun control people, and it restricts the use of the guns with things that must get registered or added to guns or ammo, which is unacceptable to the NRA…

Rigatopian Governance

News from Rigatopia (offshore, way beyond the Fog Island with its mythical Tavern…)

The election of a Rigatopia president and parliament has been canceled. Mainstream media speculation about who the strongman new Un-nation might be, are wildly off the mark. Rigatopians have decided, after a long discussion, that with the introduction of the new AbbéBoulian governance system, these trappings of government are not needed. Instead, they are using the innovative community planning and argument evaluation process to effectively solve the problem of power in governance.

The starting point of the process was the introduction of the civic credit system that is part of their ‘passport’ — a revived version of the old ‘Nansen Passport’ for displaced persons after WWI. All new arrivals as well as children born in Rigatopia are issued such a passport, and it comes with a starting capital of civic credits for each new citizen. These credits are the currency and access keys to taking part in community life. People can ‘earn’ more civic credits in a variety of ways: civil service, demonstration of having acquired important skills, making contributions to community planning and decision-making discussions, in which the ‘constitutional’ provisions, citizens rights and responsibilities as well as other common rules and even short term decisions are agreed upon. The key concept for these arrangements is ‘agreement’. Elsewhere they might be called ‘laws’; a term avoided here because of its traditional connotations of having been imposed upon citizens by some ruling entity.

Of course, provisions must be agreed upon to ensure that the agreements are adhered to. This is done in the following manner. Instead of a ‘law enforcement’ agency charged with discovering and prosecuting agreement violations, a series of provisions are put in place that reward citizens with civic credits for useful, productive contributions but also subtracts credits as a consequence of agreement violations. At the extreme, people accumulating more violation points than they have credits are in fact, losing rights and freedoms, depending on the severity of their infractions. Due to these provisions, the need for ‘police’ or security agencies is kept to a minimum. Correspondingly, the tendency for such enforcement agencies — that must by definition be more powerful (forceful) that any potential violator, as long as ‘lawbreaking’ and transgressions of agreements are ‘enforced’ by sanctions consisting of threats or actual use of force — to become ‘corrupt’, is also kept to a minimum. The temptation to engage in corrupt behavior or abuse of power is recognized to be a ubiquitous feature of power itself: if the powerful agency has no ‘more powerful’ overseer, it will inevitably be tempted to persuade itself that the rules and agreements don’t apply to itself.

Rigatopians’ recognition of the nature of power — as both a necessary condition for a free human life in its form as ‘empowerment’ to pursue life, liberty and happiness AND as a potentially addictive force — led to the view that yes, people should have access to power (be empowered) — just as they should have access to food and other life necessities — but that people should ‘pay’ for power extending into realms affecting other people’s freedom and empowerment. The ‘currency’ for such payments is, plausibly enough, provided in the civic credit system. But the need for ‘powerful’ people to make decisions is also greatly reduced by that very civic credit system.

For many collective decisions, the participatory discussion forum (in which participation is encouraged by the face that all contributions, questions and answers, proposals, arguments both ‘pro’ and ‘con’ are rewarded with basic contribution credits which are increased or decreased by the collective plausibility evaluation process) will lead to decisions characterized by the need to modify proposals until a solution acceptable to all parties has been achieved. Some of these discussions will be about specialized matters for which there may be spokespersons of greater than average expertise.

But of course Rigatopians recognize that there are situations in which decisions must be made quickly, either as routine adjustments to regular service operations, or responses to emergencies, and that people should be assigned to such duties. The ‘qualifications’ for such ‘powerful’ decision-making positions are sufficiently high civic credit accounts, earned by previous quality service. This may not appear very different from the ‘political capital’ of elected officials usually manifested in votes. The difference here is that decision by such people must be ‘paid for’ — with credit points appropriate to the significance of the decision. The payment may be seen as an ‘investment’ in the decision — one that can ‘earn’ more credit points if successful and beneficial to the public, but one that will be ‘lost’ if the decision is unsuccessful. The credit account will eventually be depleted by poor decisions; — a phenomenon that finally gives some more concrete meaning to the idea of ‘accountability’.

Very important decisions may be so ‘expensive’ that they exceed the ability of individual persons to ‘pay’ for them. Citizens may then transfer some of their credits to potential decision-makers (of their choice); they thereby become ‘fellow investors’ in the decision, proportionately accountable for success or failure: they lose their transferred credits for unwise decisions, but proporionately gain new credits for success.

These arrangements were soon seen as decreasing the necessity for permanent and temporary (for ‘terms of office’) decision-makers. The transfer of decision-empowering credits could be made to any qualified citizen, different people for different issues: hence the decision to do without a parliamentary body of decision-makers as well as president. Many people qualified for such positions could be designated for various ‘figurehead’ functions: receiving visitors or ‘presiding’ at official events — all at civic credit expense to their accounts.

Of course these innovations do not cover all facets of the power issue. What about the power of knowledge and information, the role of ‘propaganda’ — the ‘free speech’-justified power to bombard citizens with incessant political advertising and the like? Some such objections may be covered by the provision to have people pay (with civic credits) for any such activities exceeding the simple one-time entering their information and argument onto the common ‘bulletin board’ that serves as the basis for the public plausibility and significance evaluation. (If there is a sufficient guarantee that enough people will participate in that process, there is no need for the repetition.) But of course many issues of this kind will have to be studied and discussed in more detail before being ready to be proposed for adoption as ‘Law-like’ – agreements. The experiment is seen as a long overdue start for developing new forms of governance instead of the constant bickering about this or that century-old model.

Some thoughts on the proposal to adopt the ‘Commons’ as the dominant economic paradigm

The following considerations are triggered by the following occurrences: A lengthy discussion took place on LinkedIn, (with more than 7700 comments over nearly two years) responding to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’ address at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, calling for ‘revolutionary thinking and action to ensure an economic model for survival’. In spite of several efforts to develop a summary of the many interesting and creative ideas that were discussed, let alone a decisive recommendation statement  that could be sent to the UN or other agencies, the discussion appear to have ended without any such result. However, key participants in that discussion decided – as a result of the insights or in recognition of the inadequacy of the outcome? – to develop a document endorsing the idea and adoption of the Commons as a guiding paradigm to replace the current economic system. The questions listed in the following are based on issues that have been raised during that huge LinkedIn discussion, but are not, to my mind, adequately reflected in the material promoting adoption of the Commons and inviting others to join this movement, in the hope that they can be clarified to better support a decision to endorse or not endorse the proposal to adopt the Commons concept.

The concept of the commons is appealing; especially so in view of the apparent crisis of currently predominant economic paradigms. The fact of traditional commons having yielded to the current paradigm – a process known as ‘the tragedy of the commons’ – suggests careful analysis of the concept, the circumstances in which it is successful and enduring, and the circumstances leading to the ‘tragedy’:  if it is to be adopted as a replacement of the current economic system, what are the reasons allowing us to assume that the tragedy will not be repeated?

The material I have been studying appear to be emphasizing the desirability of returning to a commons-based system for the global economy – often to the point of sounding a little like wishful thinking – and neglecting due examination of critical issues, even very trivial and practical ones that could help readers who are still unaware or unconvinced to endorse the concept.

I don’t know if the questions that bother me have been answered in material I have not yet read; but I suggest that any answers to these questions should be included in the material advocating adoption of the commons as an alternative to the current predominant system, such as the material I have seen. To entice proponents to address and articulate these questions, it may be useful to adopt the role of ‘devil’s advocate’: raising some critical issues that might constitute arguments against adoption of the commons, in the hope that they will be answered not only to my satisfaction but to the level of effectiveness that can cause people who are now beneficiaries of the current system (more than I am) and therefore likely to oppose adoption, to change their position. It is in this spirit that I try to articulate some possible questions and objections, not even trying to cover such objections exhaustively. While I may have some ideas that might possibly be helpful in this regard, they are likely to be controversial in their own right, and injecting these into the discussion is still premature as well as distracting from the principle that proponents of the concept are still carrying the ‘burden of proof’ of its viability.

1      A first question: what are the conditions – both features of commons, and conditions ‘outside’ those commons – that led to the ‘tragedy of the commons’?  And what is the evidence that those conditions either do not exist now, or that they will be able to be overcome, and how?

 

2      Can the rise of earlier commons arrangements be described (in part) as arising from the fact that resources, or the domains in which resources were located, were too large, and thus inconvenient or impossible to be claimed as private property (e.g. large forests in which people were hunting, or mountain areas for summertime grazing by domesticated livestock), so that those forests or mountain areas were initially not ‘owned’ and only in time became claimed as ‘common’ property of a defined community when the respective resources became scarce enough to necessitate some rules for their exploitation? (Subsequently turning into ‘private property’?)  If so, is that condition or sequence comparable to the current situation where the main critical resources for survival are privately owned? What implications does this difference have for the task of returning the resources to ‘common’ ownership?

 

3      Most critical resources supporting human life today are in private property hands. The question has been raised how those can be returned to ‘common’ ownership – commons — because of concerns regarding the status of private property: In many countries, it is constitutionally protected and regarded as a cornerstone of a free society and economy, and attempts to change this must be expected to encounter significant opposition. Claims have been made to the effect that there is no intent to change this. If so, this would leave some of the most critical resources in private property hands, and the movement for the Commons would focus on resources that are not yet ‘owned’. If the underlying factors of the current crisis are related to the fact of private ownership of crucial resources, how would these problems be solved or mitigated by adoption of the Commons as the guiding paradigm for the remaining resources?

 

4      The representation and recommendation of adopting the Commons as a ‘guiding paradigm’ appears to contradict the assurance that no (involuntary) conversion of privately owned resources is intended. The contradiction would disappear if

 

a)     the assurance of no intent to change private property into Commons is retracted, (that is, those resources must ultimately be converted, (presumably against the resistance of the owners) or

b)     the significance of resources currently in private hands is reduced, e.g. by other resources assuming their critical role for the survival of humanity; or

c)     the adoption of the Commons even for currently non-vital resources will change the attitude of the owners of critical resources to voluntarily agree to conversion.

I don’t see these questions clearly answered (in the material I have seen); they should be clarified both to make it easier for people to decide whether they want to endorse the Commons movement, and to counter potentially embarrassing questions – for example the following:

 

5      If the crisis cannot be solved with critical resources in private property, but (only) by adoption of the Commons as ‘guiding’ (i.e. predominant) paradigm, the assurance that critical resource now in private property will not have to be converted is not believable. This would expose Commons promoters to the suspicion of deceptively pursuing conversion: ‘starting with non-essential domains, but tomorrow the world…’  The etymological closeness of “Commons’ and ‘Communism’ raises the specter of unjustified (or ‘justified?) vicious attacks by opponents, describing supporters as crypto-communists deviously aiming at taking over…

6      Alternatively, if the assurance ‘no conversion of private resources) is believable, the campaign for the Commons will be restricted to non-essential resources. This will not really change the causes of the crisis (unless other remedies unrelated to the Commons are taken) — and can be seen as inadvertently or deliberately (deviously) carrying the water for the owners of those critical resources – is the Commons movement a distraction, a diversion from the real problems?

 

7      Assuming absence of such devious intentions, the possibility must be accepted that there will be opponents of conversion, or of the various rules that must be agreed upon and installed for each Commons resource – even if widespread voluntary adoption of the Commons paradigm can be achieved. This means that there will have to be arrangements to ensure that rules and agreements will be adhered to: a function usually seen as the government’s (state) responsibility, and usually labeled ‘enforcement’ because to overcome resistance and opposition, the ‘enforcer’ must have greater power and force than any would-be violator. It is well known that such power is addictive and can be corrupted; such corruption is widely seen as one of the causes or contributing factors of the crisis. What are the provisions in the Commons concept that might remedy, replace or effectively counteract the detrimental aspects of such enforcement power? Failing satisfactory assurances regarding this question, could the Commons movement be denigrated as a deliberate or inadvertent scheme to increase and secure the power of the State…?

 

8      If satisfactory arrangements can be found to reduce or eliminate the danger of corruption and abuse of power — of governments as well as private enterprise entities – would those arrangements necessarily be tied to a Commons system? If not, what would be the difference whether such arrangements are applied to a Commons – type economy, or any other economic system?

 

Some consideration on the role of systems modeling in planning discourse

 

Suggestions made by proponents of ‘systems thinking’ or systems analysis to discussions we might call ‘planning or policy discourse’ often take the form of recommendations to construct models of the ‘whole system’ in question, and to use these to guide policy decisions.

A crude explanation of what such system models are and how they are used might be the following: The ‘model’ is represented as a network of all the parts (variables, components; e.g. ‘stocks’) in the ‘whole’ system. What counts as the whole system is the number of such parts that have some significant relationship (for example, ‘flows’) to one another — such that changes in the state or properties of some part will produce changes in other parts. Of particular interest to system model builders are the ‘loops’ of positive or negative ‘feedback’ in the system — such that changes in part A will produce changes in part B, but those changes will, after a small or large circle of further changes, come back to influence A. Over time, these changes will produce behaviors of the system that would be impossible to track with simple assumptions e.g. about causal relationships between individual pairs of variables such as A and B.

The usefulness of such system models — which simply means the degree of reliability with which simulation runs of those changes over time will produce predictions that would come true if the ‘real system’ that is represented by the model could be made to run according to the same assumptions. The confidence in the trustworthiness of model predictions thus relies on a number of assumptions (equally simplistically described):

- the number of ‘parts’ (variables, components, forces, ‘(stocks’) included;
– the nature and strength of relationships between the system variables;
– the magnitudes (values) of the initial system variables, e.g. stocks.

System models are presented as ‘decision-making tools’ that allow the examination of the effects of various possible interventions in the system (that is, introduction of changes in systems variables that can be influenced by human decision-makers) given various combinations of conditions in variables that cannot be influenced but must be predicted, as well as assumptions about the strength of interactions. All in order to achieve certain desirable states or system behaviors (the ‘goals’ or objectives measures by performance criteria of the system). System modelers usually refrain from positing goals but either assume them as ‘given’ by assumed social consensus or directives by authorities who are funding the study (a habit having come in for considerable criticism) or leaving it up to decision-maker ‘users’ of the system to define the goals, and use the simulations to experiment with different action variables until the desired results are achieved.

Demonstrations of the usefulness or reliability of a model rest on simulation runs for past system states (for which the data about context and past action conditions can be determined): the model is deemed reliable and valid if it can produce results that match observable ‘current’ conditions. If the needed data for this can be produced and the relationships can be adjusted with sufficient accuracy to actually produce matching outcomes, the degree of confidence we are invited to invest in such models can be quite high: very close to 100% (with qualifications such as ‘a few percentage point plus or minus’.

The usual planning discourse — that is, discussion about what actions to take to deal with situations or developments deemed undesirable by some (‘problems’) or desirable improvements of current conditions (‘goals’) — unfortunately uses arguments that are far from acknowledging such ‘whole system’ complexity. Especially in the context of citizen or user participation currently called for, the arguments mostly take a form that can be represented (simplified) by the following pattern, say, about a proposal X put forward for discussion and decision:

(1) “Yes, proposal X ought to be implemented,
because
implementing X will produce effect (consequence) Y
and
Y ought to be aimed for.”

(This is of course a ‘pro’ argument; a counterargument might sound like:

(2) ” No, X should NOT be implemented
because
Implementing X will produce effect Z
and
Z ought to be avoided.”

Of course, there are other forms of ‘con’ arguments possible, targeting either the claim that X will produce Y granted that Y is desirable; or the claim that Y is desirable, granting that X will indeed produce Y…)

A more ‘sophisticated’ version of this typical (‘standard’) planning argument would perhaps include consideration of some conditions under which the relationship X — Y holds:

(3) “Yes, X ought to be implemented,
because
Implementing X will produce Y if conditions c are present;
and
Y ought to be aimed for;
and
conditions c are present.”

While ‘conditions C’ are mostly thought of as simple, one-variable phenomena, the systems thinker will recognize that ‘conditions C’ should include all the assumptions about the state of the whole system in which action X is one variable that can indeed be manipulated by decision-makers (while many others are context conditions that cannot be influenced). So from this point of view, the argument should be modified to include the entire set of assumptions of the whole system. The question of how a meaningful discourse should be organized to take this expectation into account while still accommodating participation by citizens — non-experts — is a challenge that has yet to be recognized and taken on.

Meanwhile, however, the efforts to improve the planning discourse consisting of the simpler pro and con arguments might shed some interesting lights on the issue of the reliability of system models for predicting outcomes of proposed plans over time.

The improvements of the planning discourse in question have to do with the proposals I have made for a more systematic and transparent assessment of the planning argument — in response to the common claim of having public interest decisions made ‘on the merit of arguments’. The approach I developed implies that the plausibility of a planning argument of the types 1,2,3 above (in the mind of an individual evaluator) will be a function of the plausibility of all the premises. I am using the term ‘plausibility’ to apply both to the ‘factual’ premises claiming the relationship X –>Y and the presence of conditions C (which traditionally are represented as ‘probability’ or degree of confidence) as well as the to the deontic premise ‘Y ought to be aimed for’ that is not adequately characterized by ‘probability’ much less ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ that is the stuff of traditional argument assessment. The scale on which such plausibility assessment is expressed must be one ranging from an agreed-upon value such as -1 (meaning ‘totally implausible) to +1 (meaning totally plausible, entirely certain) with a midpoint of zero (meaning ‘don’t know’; ‘can’t tell’ or even ‘don’t care’).

The plausibility of such an argument, I suggest, will be some function of the plausibilities assigned to each of the premises, arguably also to the implied claim that the argument pattern itself (the inference rule

“D(X)
because
FI(X –> Y) | C
and
D(Y)
and
F (C )”

applies meaningfully to the situation at hand. (D prefixes denote deontic claims, FI factual-instrumental claims, F factual claims)

(The weight of each argument among the many pro and con arguments is one step later: it will be a function of its plausibility and weight of relative importance of the goals, concerns, objectives referred to in the deontic premise.)

This means that the argument plausibility will decrease quite rapidly as the plausibilities for each of these premises deviate from 100% certainty. Experiments with a plausibility function that consists of the simple product of those plausibilities have shown that the resulting overall argument plausibility often shrinks to a value much closer to zero that to +1; and the overall proposal plausibility (e.g. a sum of all the weighted argument plausibilities) will also be far away from the comfortable certainty (decisively ‘pro’ or decisively ‘con’) hoped for by many decision-makers.

These points will require some further study and discussion in the proposed approach to systematic argument assessment. For the moment, the implication of this effect of argument plausibility tending towards zero on the issue of enhancing arguments with the proper recognition of ‘all’ the system condition assumptions of the ‘whole’ system deserve some comment.

For even when a model can be claimed to represent past system behavior with reasonable degree of certainty plausibility close to 1, the projection of those assumptions into the future must always be done with a prudent dose of qualification: all predictions are only more or less probable (plausible), none are 100% certain. The deontic premises as well are less than totally plausible — indeed usually express legitimate opposing claims by people affected in different ways by a proposed plan, differences we are asked to acknowledge and consider instead of insisting that ‘our’ interests are to be pursued with total certainty. We might even be quite mistaken about what we ask for… So when the argument plausibility function must include the uncertainty-laden plausibility assessments of all the assumptions about relationships and variable values over time in the future, the results (with the functions used thus far, for which there are plausible justification but which are admittedly still up for discussion) must be expected to decline towards zero even faster than for the simple arguments examined in previous studies.

So as the systems views of the problem situation becomes more detailed, holistic, and sophisticated, the degree of confidence in our plan proposals that we can derive from arguments including those whole system insights is likely getting lower, not higher. This nudge towards humility even about the degree of confidence we might derive from honest, careful and systematic argument assessment may be a disappointment to leaders whose success in leading depends to some extent on such degree of confidence. Then again, this may not be a bad thing.

A curious discussion about legalizing illicit drugs

(Overheard in the (mythical) Fog Island Tavern… My apologies for the incomplete account of the statements, which is not doing them justice; I simply try to focus on the aspects that raised the concerns.)
===

Hey Abbé Boulah, I’m glad to see you here — I have  a question for you.

And a good evening to you too, Bog-Hubert. What’s such an urgent question that won’t even let you order a drink to start with?

Ah, Vodçek knows what I need.  Well, I ran into that candidate for the Senate I told you about,  who is thinking about running on a platform of legalizing illicit drugs, so we had a little exchange about that over at the dock.  And then I remembered you’d talked about this group in Australia that held a big discussion on the internet about that same question –  whether the country should legalize drugs. Asked people on the internet to vote on it, based on the arguments they posted. So what’s you opinion about that issue?

Ahh — which issue — legalizing drugs  or that discussion? 



That sly question itself tells me you don’t want to come clean on the legalizing problem. Is that because you don’t agree with the other policies of this Senate candidate? Okay, So what’s your take on that Aussie discussion?

You know me too well, Bogmeister. But the drug problem is really an issue I haven’t made up my mind about. I haven’t really thought about it that much lately — and that discussion didn’t do much to sway my opinion either way.

Why is that? You seemed quite excited about the piece the other day?



Yes, but that was because of the curious way they stated their arguments, not so much about the content.  Let me explain.  This is a group that  puts up some interesting controversial issues for online discussion, presents  a ‘pro’ and a ‘con’ statement — a video with transcription — invites followers to join the discussion and to vote on it.  So far, I’ve only read the transcript; you know I get impatient with all those videos. And it gave me some interesting insight into how many people argue such cases, especially in view of our old problem of how one should go about carefully and systematically evaluating such arguments before deciding. And mapping the discussion to give people a better overview.

Cripes, now it’s getting theoretical.

Can’t be helped.  Cheers. Well, the first guy, the proponent of legalization begins  by stating that drugs should be legalized because the ‘war on drugs’ has been a failure. And he cites the opinion of community leaders who acknowledge this. 



Okay. Does he mention specifics of that failure?

Oh yes;  he lists a whole lot of them:  Aims of the ‘war on drugs’ that have not been achieved.

And does he provide any good evidence for that?



That’s the interesting part. No, he just states the claims. He even started out by saying those failures are ‘self-evident’ . Which means: no evidence needed?



But  wait:  those aren’t really arguments for legalization, but against — what — the war on drugs,  continued prohibition?



Good point:  you are making progress in this business. They are all arguments against the alternative proposal, the status quo — that hasn’t been stated.  But of course it’s there, implicitly, as the current ‘solution’  that should be replaced. And the interesting part is that  listing those failures of the status quo they are making some implicit claims.  Claims that maybe should have been made explicit. 



What claims? Other than that the war on drugs is a flop?

One implied claim is that there is a drug problem that should be tackled somehow; — that probably isn’t controversial, so it doesn’t have to be mentioned because  it’s assumed everybody agrees on it. But  he characterizes that problem differently:  he says it’s a health and social problem, not a criminal one. Which therefore calls for a different approach to deal with it. And even more interestingly:  doesn’t he make the implied claim that there are only two possible solutions to it –  prohibition and legalization? There’s no mention of any other possibility. And if so, the arguments against the war on drugs do become arguments for legalization (in a listener’s mind) — even though he doesn’t explicitly state those arguments. What he says, without saying it, is that legalization would in fact achieve all those aims of the war on drugs.

So what you are saying is that in order to make a thorough evaluation of all the pros and cons, these arguments should be made explicit, and listed in the evaluation worksheet  for that purpose — where you list all the premises and give them scores for plausibility and weight etc.

Right.  That bothers me. The arguments have been slipped into the audience’s mind. But they haven’t been stated openly.



Why does that bother you? If they aren’t stated, they can’t be evaluated.

True. But they are sticking in the mind. So they will subtly or not so subtly influence any vote, won’t they? They also can’t easily be shown on a map of the discourse, at least if we stick to the rule that the maps shows issues that have been raised. And if they aren’t stated and shown, they can’t be questioned and scrutinized, as some of them should be. 



Why?

Well, look at some of the so-called ‘aims’ of the war on drugs:  while some are easy to agree on, others are puzzling: for example, the ‘aim’ that drug quality — purity — should be reduced.  This helps to make drugs less appealing because more dangerous –  but is this also an aim of  a n y  overall effort to deal with the drug problem?  One that legalization would achieve more successfully? I don’t know, it looks like one that should at least be discussed, no?  But since it’s not stated,  it’s just part of a long list of arguments against the alternative of prohibition that now works just because of its length. Interesting, huh? 



Well, I’m sure that doesn’t make too much of a difference among all the other arguments for and against.  What were the other pro-legalization arguments?

There weren’t any in the proponent’s statement. Or only very few, really. 



You’re kidding me. Even I can come up with some good arguments about that.  So what was he talking about, then?

He was providing information about a very plausible question — one that any undecided person would be likely, even prudent to ask: the details of the legalization proposal. He talked about — as I mentioned — treating the problem as a health and social issue calling for health and social intervention measures, about shifting funding from law enforcement to such programs, about moving slowly and incrementally,  about taxing cannabis, about  licenses for production, sale, distribution of drugs, about establishing supervised needle  and injection centers as well as other treatment facilities. 

Sounds reasonable.  People should know enough about the details of such projects before voting on them.

I can’t argue with that. The problem is: how should such descriptions be dealt with in the argument evaluation?



Why would they? They are just descriptions of the proposal — he didn’t make them out to be ‘pro’ arguments, did he?

Not explicitly, no. But devoting a considerable part of the presentation on these details, aren’t they meant to be part of the ‘pro’ case?  So the description of all these niceties stick in the mind as favorable features — but since they are not stated as arguments, they also will not be examined, questioned for their validity, plausibility, importance in view of the  yes/no decision. For the usual practice of asking people to make a decision — vote yes or no — on the basis of such a rhetorical presentation, they will do the intended job, quite nicely. But for a systematic evaluation, prompting questions for supporting evidence or other supporting arguments,  this practice poses some tough questions.  Should such points be included as explicit arguments?  And whose responsibility is it to do that? 



Whose responsibility? You mean the proponent or the opponent?  Or some other person or component of the system?  By the way, talking about the opponent, wouldn’t he bring these issues up if he thought they would make a difference? What did he say?

Glad you remind me. The opponent’s statement was just as interesting in its own way.  He started out by flatly characterizing legalization as ‘not a viable solution’  that would not solve but rather exacerbate the drug problem. Again, no real argument for that claim was offered, but some ‘authority’ support referring to UN Drug Conventions recognizing that “drugs are an enormous social and health problem and that the trade adversely affects the global economy.”

Hey, wasn’t that just what the legalization proponent said?  That it’s a health and social problem, not a criminal one? And he used that as an argument for continued prohibition, that is, criminalization?



Curiously, yes.  But the case is made mainly by straight-out negation of the claims of ‘war on drugs’  failure (but he does not use the term ‘war on drugs’ ). He contradicts the proponent’s claims — the UN controls  a r e  working, the problem would have been much worse without them, and so on. Most of the claims of ‘failed aims’  are denied — but just like those, without offering additional evidence or support.  There are some statistics thrown in, but they are not compared with any corresponding data for the proposed legalization, so they just give more of an impression of evidence than constituting a real substantial data-based argument.  The remainder of the case is based on a number of claims of aims that legalization will not achieve, only some of which match the items in the proponent’s list of aims not achieved by the war on drugs. And most if not all of those statements are aimed at claims  and arguments the proponent did not state:  they are ‘presumed’ claims of the pro-legalization side.

They could have been claims that had been made in other documents and media statements:  things the opponent had heard before, that are common knowledge?

True. But some of them could also fall into the class of ‘straw man’ arguments — strange arguments attributed to the other side that are easy  to demolish, and thereby giving the impression that the entire case of the other side is as shaky.  But there wasn’t even much demolishing — with additional evidence — just denying those presumed claims.



So you are saying that those denied claims should be added to the proponent’s arguments before doing a detailed evaluation, is that it? All that would add some considerable complications to our evaluation process, wouldn’t it?

Very true. And to the mapping task. 



Why the mapping?

Because the picture of each sides’ issues and arguments now looks very different from the proponent’s and the opponent’s side.  Should the map show only the issues and arguments each side has actually stated?  Or the implied ones the other side is attacking? Maybe it will be necessary to make up different maps for each side.



Yeah, that will cause some additional quarreling:  which map is the ‘real’ one? Wasn’t the idea that such maps would show a kind of ‘objective’ picture of what’s being discussed?  And now you are suggesting that the maps too become partisan?  I say, that item did raise some troublesome issues about such discussions and how the framework should support them.

Indeed they did. More than it helped me make up my mind about the drug legalization issue.  Based on the arguments proposed in that experiment, I am not  ready to cast a meaningful vote on whether drugs should be legalized. But wouldn’t you also say that those very problems make more systematic evaluation that much more important? While that was probably not their intention, we should be grateful for such groups to raise the issue of how such decisions should be made and argued.  And the example might help us design a better argument evaluation  approach.

I can’t argue with that. Get to work. Cheers.
===

A dirty dozen world-wide wicked problems related to the global sustainability crisis – and some solutions?

O V E R V I E W

1 The global sustainability crisis

2 The dreaded big brother top-down imposed solution problem

3 The fox in the henhouse problem

4 The babylonic confusion problem

5 The problem of information overload in the unfinished global forum

6 The perplexing participation paradox

7 The problem of the missing link between discussion and decision

8 The neglected planning argument (‘weighing the pros & cons’) problem

9 The virtues to vices problem (the vicious cycle of virtue to vice)

10 The problem of the control of power

11 The problem of ensuring adherence to agreed-upon solutions: sanctions

12 The problem of nonperforming measures of performance

P R O B L E M   D E T A I L S

1 The global sustainability crisis

This is the problem that led UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to issue his call for ‘revolutionary thinking and action to ensure an economic model for survival’ at the 2011 Wold Economic Forum in Davos: itself a nest of related problems:
- dwindling resources, food, water, energy
for a growing world population;
- climate change, environmental degradation
- hunger, poverty, inequality; human rights
- disasters
- corruption, government mismanagement
etc.

The following problems are a subset of problem facets related to the global sustainability crisis. The list is not an exhaustive account of all problems that make up the global crisis; they are selected because they are seen as key interconnected factors, and to show how some solution ideas can address this network of problems.

2   The dreaded ‘big brother’ top-down imposed solution problem

The intent or mere perception that such a ‘model for survival’ might be a one-size-fits all overall solution imposed top-down by some global authority, ignoring local, regional, cultural conditions — and therefore causing new problems, conflicts, and resistance. There are both social and logical reasons for the position that global solutions must instead emerge from a global discourse with wide and easily accessible participation. This is also true with respite to the next issue:

3    The ‘fox in the henhouse’ problem

The problem (reinforced by the very nature of the audience to which the Secretary General addressed his call) that the entities called upon and commanding the resources for developing and implementing any global solutions might be the very ones responsible
for generating many of the problems — and therefore being justly or unjustly suspected of pursuing their agenda more than the common good.

4    The babylonic confusion problem

There are already many impressive efforts underway to address these problems — mostly at the small and local level. But coordination and communication between these efforts is severely hampered by the differences not only between natural languages, but also between different cultural mindsets, ‘ways of talking’ about problems, approaches and solutions, between the specialized vocabulary of different disciplines (even between different schools of thought within the same fields) and their arcane acronyms.

5    The problem of information overload in the unfinished global forum

While it might seem that new information technology is in the process of vastly improving global communication, it can be argued that it has led to an almost insurmountable overload of disorganized information. This is making it difficult to keep adequate overview of developments even about very specific issues, establish and maintain a constructive discourse leading to meaningful agreements and decisions: The development of an adequate forum and platform for the global participatory discourse is still a very much unfinished project.

6   The perplexing participation paradox

In the face of the call for more participation in planning, policy-making, and political decisions is the evidence that public participation even in the form of voting in elections, let alone true constructive discourse and dialog, deplored as lacking: ‘voter apathy’. This is true even in societies where technological infrastructure, education and information would seem sufficiently advanced. Already Bertrand Russell (in his 1938 book on Power) observed that participation decreases as the social unit increases in size because in larger units, the impact of individual votes and contributions is perceived as so negligible as to render the individual vote or participation utterly insignificant and not worth the effort: participation is related to perceived possibility of ‘making a difference’.

7    The problem of the missing link between discussion and decision

Part of the participation problem is the fact that the decision-making method even in advanced ‘democratic’ systems, majority voting, has little or no perceptible (‘transparent’) connection between the value and merit of discussion contributions and the decision outcome. Phenomena such as ‘party discipline’ or the fact that filibusters can delay decisions but not influence them (because nobody is listening) are proof of this missing link: votes can entirely disregard or even go against the result of deliberative discourse.

8    The neglected planning argument (‘weighing the pros & cons’) problem

In spite of the tremendous amount of work done in logic and, increasingly, in ‘critical thinking’, the kinds of arguments we use in design, planning, policy-making — the ‘pros and cons’ for or against proposals — have not been given enough attention; coherent approaches for their systematic and transparent evaluation have not been developed.

9    The virtues to vices problem (the vicious cycle of virtue to vice)

Discussions about how to overcome the problems and crises are full of recriminations about human vices that are held to be responsible for the problems: greed, pursuit of power, the ‘win-lose’ attitudes in economic and political matters, the lack of empathy with ‘losing’ groups, the preoccupation with profit and growth. The result is an increasing polarization between groups that have achieved success with such attitudes, and their critics. The latter tend to forget or downplay the fact that these attitudes have often been taught to children as virtues. Now demonizing the people and groups who have learned these lessons well — as compliant learners, following societal concepts of virtue — can hardly be a successful strategy for a more cooperative, win-win- oriented, compassionate form of socio-economic society.

10    The problem of the control of power

Significant efforts have been made to establish reliable arrangements for the control of power in government. It is not clear whether these controls are inherently sufficient, and just have not been applied properly in the many instances in past and recent history where government powers have turned abusive and destructive. But it is evident that similar controls have not been developed and applied in the private sector. As a result, certain forces in the private sector have become so powerful that they have significant — and largely uncontrolled — influence over governments. This problem calls for increased attention, study and creative solutions.

The problem of control of power becomes critical at the level of global relationships: the issue of ‘world government’. The concern of a global, more powerful that any other entity is a serious concern if its power cannot be effectively controlled. This problem is related to the following ‘sanctions’ problem:

11    The problem of ensuring adherence to agreed-upon solutions: sanctions

Even if governance systems could be developed in which societal arrangements, laws, treaties etc. were negotiated and refined until they become acceptable to all affected parties (ideally: by consensus); the question remains of how to ensure adherence to the agreement s and laws: how to deal with instances of noncompliance or violation. Traditionally, compliance has been ‘enforced’ through the threat of imposing sanctions, penalties, by an enforcement agency that necessarily must be stronger, more powerful, than any potential violator. Inevitably, this raises the question of how to control such power: how to prevent that enforcement agency from violating the very laws it is supposed to enforce? The means of enforcement through sanctions of the same kind is logically impossible, if there is no ‘bigger’, more powerful agency. Again, this problem becomes critical at the global level: how can a ‘world enforcement agency’ more powerful than any other entity be effectively kept from abusing its power?

12     The problem of nonperforming measures of performance

Control and effective management of any complex process requires adequate measures of performance. Many social and economic problems are blamed on the use of measures of performance that are counterproductive to sustainability, social equity, fairness, and responsive stewardship of the environment; such as gross domestic product, profit, or growth. While this problem has been widely recognized and has led to calls for alternative measures, no convincing solutions have been proposed that are both widely acceptable and also can be smoothly introduced into economic systems operating on traditional principles: the transition problem to a system operating on different assumptions has not been adequately discussed nor solved.

Wicked problems of the global sustainability crisis

S O M E   P R O P O S A L S    T O   A D D R E S S   T H E S E  P RO B L E M S

These ideas are selected not because they solve all problem areas of the global sustainability crisis, but to highlight how solutions can aim at several issues.

OVERVIEW:

a. A global framework for coordination of projects,  participatory discourse and negotiation,  research support,  education and information

b. The discourse framework based on the argumentative model of planning

c. Evaluation of planning arguments and discussion contributions

d. Rewards for discourse participation

e. The argumentative planning game

f. ‘Civic credit points’

g. Automatically triggered sanctions

h. Innovation zones in areas damaged by disasters

i. Quality of life measures based on the value of occasions (experiences) and image

SOLUTION DETAILS:

a. A global framework for  coordination of projects,  participatory discourse and negotiation,  research support,  education and information

A global communication framework is needed for the coordination of many diverse, small local action projects and initiatives that should be encouraged and supported both as innovation laboratories for experiments with new approaches in all areas of societal organization and opportunities for people to pursue their visions, within a global framework of agreements for cooperation and conflict resolution. Its main components, besides the various action projects, are the coordination component, the discourse component, the research support component, and the education / information component.

b.    The discourse framework based on the argumentative model of planning

A key innovative feature of the proposal is the structure of the discourse component, which is based on the argumentative model of planning and policy-making (spearheaded by H. Rittel). The elements of the information support system for the discourse are issues (controversial questions) and the answers and argument to those issues.

c. Evaluation of planning arguments and discussion contributions

The argumentative model of the discourse component is enhanced by the provisions for systematic evaluation of the planning arguments (and other discussion contributions). The aim of this feature is to develop a measure of support for plan or policy proposals based on the merit of arguments: a measure of the merit of the discourse. The resulting measures can then provide the missing link between discourse merit and to decisions to be made — a link not adequately ensured by the current majority voting method.

d.    Rewards for discourse participation

The measures of merit of discourse contributions can be used to provide meaningful ‘rewards’ for participation, countering the problem of voter apathy even for large projects and constituencies.

e.   The argumentative planning game

To familiarize citizens with the tools of the argumentative discourse — faster than would be possible through the current system of public education — it is proposed to develop an ‘argumentative planning game (including the evaluation component discussed in items c and d above). The game aims at promoting (and rewarding) cooperation (rewarding win-win outcomes), critical thinking and evaluation; and should be developed both for ‘live’ applications and for wide participation in large planning discussions via videogame, cellphone and internet technology.

f.    ‘Civic credit points’

The measures of discussion contribution merit creates the possibility of establishing ‘civic credit point’ accounts for citizens, which provide legitimation / authorization for public decision-making (i.e. power) positions. Decisions require a ‘performance bond’ or ‘investment’ of credit points, used up with each decision, but with the possibility of earning further credit with successful decisions. This can provide a form of control of power: Power decisions can only be activated with adequate credit.

g.    Automatically triggered sanctions

Instead of traditional sanctions to ensure adherence to agreements and laws that have to be enforced by ‘enforcement’ agencies with greater power than any potential violator, forms of sanctions should be developed that are automatically triggered by the attempt at violation. Such provisions — perhaps involving the ‘civic credit points’ idea outlined in item f — would help solve the problem of controlling / constraining the power of global ‘enforcement’ entities.

h.    Innovation zones in areas damaged by disasters

Innovation efforts (and funding for these) are often resisted by existing structures that see these as competition and unwarranted ‘unfair’ expenditures. The proposal to encourage the establishment of ‘innovation zones’ for experiments with alternative organization of social and economic practices in areas damaged or destroyed by disasters sidesteps this problem. Emergency aid that will be spent in such areas might be devoted to innovative infrastructure and organization instead of mere re-construction of traditional structures. Successful experiments will encourage adjacent areas to adopt new practices and solutions; less successful efforts will gradually be replaced by improved traditional solutions — but will have produced valuable information about what works and what does not work.

i.    Quality of life measures based on value of occasions (human experiences) and image

While governments everywhere are beginning to follow the initiative of the kingdom of Bhutan in introducing quality of life or citizen happiness measures, to complement and perhaps eventually replace traditional economic measures such as growth or Gross Domestic Product, the indices adopted are usually quite general and therefore not very helpful in developing policies for improvement. An approach growing out of work to develop better measures of the value of built environment suggests an alternative set of measures of the quality of human experiences (‘occasions’) and the imagery evoked by the settings for these experiences. The resulting measures would be much more detailed, allow pinpointing the specific features of the environment or life conditions influencing citizens’ value assessments, and would therefore be more helpful in suggesting projects and policies for improvement.

Some solutions for the global sustainability problems

—-

Some rules for effective evaluation and mapping of planning arguments.

The various crises facing humanity will require significant changes in current practice, habits, behaviors. Such changes cannot be imposed by governments or other authorities without running the risk of creating resentment, resistance and possible violent confrontation, adding to the dangers. The decisions to be taken must arise from a participatory discourse that is accessible to all parties potentially affected by a plan or decisions, in which all contributions, questions, suggestions and arguments are heard, and in which the merit of such contributions will have a visible impact on the decisions taken. Current governance practice does not provide this. The missing elements are first, a platform or framework for such a discourse, and second, a way of measuring the merit of contributions, the merit of arguments. Without such a measure, decisions can all too easily ignore or even go against the result of discussion; the perception that this is the case even in current ‘democratic’ regimes explains the voter ‘apathy’ — the declining participation in elections: the sense that one’s vote does not really make a difference in the decisions made by the people elected.

There are various commendable efforts and programs on the market that aim at improving planning and policy-making, political discourse. A common concern is ‘argument mapping’, ‘debate mapping’ — the effort to provide a convenient overview of the discussion through graphic representations of the relationships between the discussion elements: issues, claims, proposals, arguments. The tools currently on the market do not yet meet the requirements for a systematic and transparent evaluation. To encourage the further development of these tools, it may be helpful to summarize these requirements: the following is a first attempt to do so.

The arguments we use in such planning discussions have not received the attention of logic, even informal logic, or rhetoric, that one would expect given their ubiquity: humanity quarrels about ‘what we ought to do’ as much if not more that about the ‘facts’ of the world. The arguments used in such discussions are of a type I have called ‘design arguments’ or ‘planning arguments’. Even in informal logic textbooks, where they are discussed, for example, as ‘proposal arguments’ , their structure is not analyzed sufficiently well to permit a systematic evaluation. An approach for such evaluation of planning arguments has been presented e.g. in the article ‘The structure and evaluation of planning arguments’ in Informal Logic December 2010. Elaborating on that discussion is the following brief exploration of how planning arguments should be represented, and presented in argument maps, for example, so as to facilitate evaluation.

Recapping: The typical planning argument can be described as follows:

The proposed plan or decision — denoted here as ‘x’
is supported (or attacked) by the argument:

‘X ought to be adopted (implemented) (the ‘conclusion’)
because
x is related to effect y (the ‘factual-instrumental premise)
and
y ought to be pursued. (the deontic premise)

A more elaborate version might include some qualifications , say, of conditions c under which the relationship between x and y holds, and an assertion that those conditions are indeed (or are not ) present, now condensed in a form that uses the symbol ‘F’ for a factual premises, ‘and ‘D; for the deontic (ought) premise:

D(x)
because
F(x REL y | c)
and (D( y )
and
F ( c )

The relation REL is a common label for any of the usual links between x and y: a ‘categorical’ link or claim (e.g.: ‘x IS y’); a causal claim (‘x CAUSES y’) or a ‘resemblance claim’ (‘x is LIKE y’); according to each case at hand, there may be variations or other connections invoked.

In textbooks discussion of ‘proposal arguments’, this structure is usually not presented completely. Thus, an argument maybe rendered as ‘x should be adopted because it causes y’; or ‘x ought to be because its effect y is desirable’. In both cases, only one premise is explicitly stated. The practice of omitting premises that ‘can be taken for granted’, (resulting in an ‘enthymeme’ — an incomplete argument) is common, as already Aristotle made clear. But such an argument can be opposed on very different grounds: An opponent of ‘x’ may not be convinced that x will indeed result in y. Another opponent may agree that x does cause y but does not consider y desirable. A third participant may feel that yes, y might be a good thing, and even agree that x may be helpful in getting y, but only if certain conditions are present, and since they are not, hold that implementing x is not warranted. Yet another observer may simply feel that x is not the best way to get y: a different plan should be considered. These objections are aimed at different premises, some of which are not explicitly stated.

This means that if the argument is to be evaluated in any meaningful way, the elements at which these opinions are directed must all be stated explicitly, visibly. This is the first of several ‘rules’ needed to ensure meaningful evaluation:

The Premise Completeness Rule:

All premises of a planning argument
– the factual-instrumental premise, including qualifying conditions as applicable;
– the deontic premise;
– the factual premise regarding qualifying conditions
must be stated explicitly.

It is necessary to clarify that some claims of arguments — that are often part of argument pattern representations in popular textbooks — should NOT be included in the display of a single planning argument because they are really arguments about ‘successor issues’: issues arising from challenges to main argument premises. Even the widely accepted representation of arguments by Toulmin (The Uses of Argument, 1958) makes this mistake: his argument diagram

D (Datum) ————————–> Q (qualification) —–> C (conclusion)
|
since
|
W (warrant)
|
because
|
B (Backing)

though not a planning argument, is an example of selective inclusion of premises that really are parts of successor issue arguments. Here, the Warrant (W) is the premise making the connection between D and C; the backing B is the arguer’s preventive move in anticipation of a challenge to that premise. But any premise can usually be challenged on several kinds of grounds, not only one. So either the backing should properly include all those grounds (which of course would make the argument unwieldy and complicated), or the inclusion of one such ground to bolster the warrant is a selective complication of the main argument with one partial argument for the successor issue: Is the warrant W true? (or plausible?– the preferred term for argument evaluation). For that matter, isn’t it possible to also challenge the Data (D)? So could the argument not contain another claim supporting the veracity or validity of the data claim? The upshot of this is that for a useful representation of the arguments in a map, or a tool for evaluation, the argument itself should be reduced to its basic structure. For the planning argument, a resulting ‘map’ would look like this:

Issue / argument map, generic

The Overall Argument Completeness Rule

The generic map above shows only three arguments, which may be all that have actually been entered in a discussion. In argumentation textbooks, the emphasis is usually on the analysis of individual arguments — just as in formal logic, or even scientific method, the truth or falsity of a claim is taken to be adequately established by means of one single valid argument with true premises. It is curious that the familiarity of the ‘careful weighing of pros and cons’ often heard in official speeches is not reflected in the academic analysis of the arguments that constitute such pros and cons, specifically in the examination of the question of how such weighing might actually be done. The practice of argumentation in the political arena looks even less reassuring: political advertising tends to focus only on a few ‘key’ issues and arguments, and the relentless repetition of those points in TV and radio spots.

A modest amount of reflection should show that for some thorough deliberative effort of evaluation of the merit of pro and con arguments to reach a meaningful decision, all pro and con arguments should be included in the evaluation. That is, all potential effects of a proposed plan should be looked at and evaluated. The rationale for greater citizen participation in public planning and policy-making is in part the fact that the information of all such effects is distributed in the citizenry — the people who are affected have that knowledge, so they must be called upon to bring it into the discussion. Reliance on experts (who are usually not or very differently affected by government plans) cannot guarantee that all such pertinent knowledge is brought to bear on the decision. The only area where a thorough examination of all aspects is attempted is the practice of ‘benefit / cost analysis’ applied to big government or business planning. But this technique is invariably carried out by experts, public participation is mostly prohibited by the specialized terminology and technique.

The implication of this issue is that the discourse about public plans must be carefully orchestrated to ensure that all ‘pros and cons’ are actually raised and identified so that they can be included in the evaluation. On the one hand, people must be encouraged to contribute that information; on the other hand, the ‘overview’ representation of the set of aspects should not be obscured by repetition and rhetorical embroidery. Both requirements are difficult to satisfy.Some participants may not wish to reveal advantages a plan would bestow upon them — that other might consider unfair; or identify disadvantages to other parties (that these are not aware of) if this would require remedies reducing their own benefits. This has led me to suspect that the discourse must be considered systemically incomplete (and therefore, evaluation results should not be used directly as decision criteria). Nevertheless, the aim must be for all pros and cons to be brought out to be considered.

For the map representation of a discussion, this raises the question whether maps should ‘suggest’ issues that might be important to examine — even if they haven’t been raised by actual human participants but by some enhanced search engine, for example. Maps might show ‘potential issues’ in shades of grey as compared to highlighted issues that have actually been raised. The systematic generation of issues, even the construction of potential arguments by artificial intelligence programs based on information stored in data banks are both within reach of technological feasibility, and should be discussed carefully. This is a topic for a different investigation, however.

Besides other criticisms of the methodology — for example, the difficulty of assigning monetary costs or benefits to ‘intangible’ aspects — a key problem inherent in cost-benefit is that the effects of a plan must be declared as costs or benefits (by the experts) as perceived by some entity (e.g. the government funding the analysis) — an entity that is just one party, one side in the controversy. This is the subject of the next point:

The Pro / Con Identification Rule

In cost-benefit studies as well as in most if not all argument mapping programs, aspects and arguments are identified as ‘pro’ or ‘con’ (‘costs’ and ‘benefits’) — a practice that on the surface seems crucial for anyone trying to carefully review all the pros and cons in order to reach a deliberated decision. And in discussions, arguments are certainly entered by participants as supporting or opposing a proposed plan. So it seems eminently plausible that the maps should reflect this.

However, this practice hides the fact that effects of plans may not be beneficial for all people affected; indeed, one person’s ‘benefit’ (and thus ‘pro’ argument) may be another person’s ‘cost’ -(and thus a ‘con’ argument). In addition, once beginning the evaluation process, people will assign different weights and expressions of agreement / disagreement to different premises. these can have the effect of turning an an argument intended as a ‘pro’ argument and even initially accepted as such by the evaluator into a ‘con’ argument for that person: I may look at an argument meant to support plan x by pointing out that it will cause effect y given conditions c, and find that while I indeed believe that x will produce y, upon reflection y does not seem such a good idea. Or that I believe both that x will cause y under conditions c, and y is a worthy goal, but that conditions c are not present, which makes the effort to implement x a futile one. But seeing the argument identified in a map as a ‘pro’ argument may make it look like an established point, and that I have made a mistake: the map is ‘taking sides’ in the evaluation, as it were: the side of the agency funding the analysis, or simply the side of the participant entering that particular argument.

For that reason, it is better to refrain from accepting the intended ‘pro’ and ‘con’ label of arguments in the map. Whether an argument is a pro or con reason for a specific person is a result of that person’s assessment, not the proponent’s intention. Therefore, both in the list or collection of arguments, in evaluation forms and in argument maps, the labeling of arguments as supporting or opposing should be avoided. (This is a main reason for my rejection of most ‘debate-mapping’ and ‘argument mapping’ programs and techniques on the market today.)

The Rule of Rejecting some Arguments
(e.g. characterization, ad hominem, authority arguments, ‘meta-arguments’)

The previous ‘completeness’ rule may be misunderstood as advocating the admission of all kinds of arguments into maps and in the evaluation process. There are some important exceptions: for instance, arguments or premises that merely characterize a plan or claim, but don’t offer a reason for such characterization. The remark “This is a crazy idea” is indeed a forceful opposition statement against a proposal. But it is not really an argument — and therefore should not be entered into either formal evaluation forms nor argument maps. The same is true for positive (‘like’ or “wow, what a beautiful, creative proposal) expressions of support. They have the same status as ad hominem arguments (‘the author of the plan is a crook’) or arguments from authority (the principle goes back to Aristotle!’) — they suggest that the number of supporters, or the character of proponents, the fame of a philosopher who endorsed a concept, are adequate reasons to accept a claim. Once stated fully as such, the fallacy usually becomes obvious. Now sure, we agree that denigrating the messenger because of his flawed character is not by itself a good indication of the quality of the message — but is the citing of authorities not a common practice, even a condition for respectability in scientific work? How can it be wrong or inadmissible?

To the extent such expressions do have a legitimate place in the discourse and evaluation process, they are recommendations of how we should evaluate the plausibility of individual claims of an argument, they are not arguments about the plan x themselves. We accept an argument from a scientific authority because we assume that such a famous scientist would have very good reasons, evidence, data, valid calculations, measurements to back up his claim. Even so, such arguments often deteriorate into silly discussions not about that evidence for a claim, but about the reliability of the authority’s judgment, hurling stories about many other silly, untrue things that person also believed against the authority’s unchallenged record — all having nothing to do with the merit of the claim itself. So the venerable academic practice of citing sources belongs in the body of arguments and evidence of successor issues, not in the main argument about a plan nor in the maps showing the relationships between the issues and claims:

The first-level arguments about a plan should not contain
- arguments of characterization;
- ad hominem arguments (positive or negative);
- arguments from authority;

The same reservations hold for ‘meta’-arguments that make claims about the set of arguments in the discussion, or even in principle: “There is no reason to support this proposal”; “All the arguments of the opponent are fallacious”; “We haven’t heard any quantitative evidence questioning the validity of the proposal…” and the like. This is not to say that such observations do not have a place in discussions. They can serve an important purpose — such as to remind participants to provide substantial evidence, data, and support for their arguments. But these meta-arguments talk about the state of the discourse, not about the proposed plan — and therefore should likewise be omitted from representations of the discussion, argument maps, or evaluation tools of that plan itself. Perhaps there should be a separate ‘commentator’ rubric for such observations about the state and quality of the discussion itself.

The Rule of Rewarding Participation

The last observation above raises another important issue: that of the degree and sincerity of participation in the discussion. Just like the phenomenon of ‘voter apathy’ held responsible for low voter turnout in elections, the experience with efforts to engage participants in online discussion to ratchet up their contributions from just exchanging comments to the more demanding task of collaborative writing more comprehensive summaries or reports on the results of their discourse has been disappointing. Even the extra effort to switch to a different platform without the normal length limits of online discussion posts, and permitting the inclusion of visual material (maps, pictures) has been ‘too much’ for discussion participants normally quite eager to exchange arguments and share material researched on the web.

It is misplaced to accuse such people of ‘apathy’ or merely being motivated by the excitement of the online discussion (the nature of this motivation may not be very well understood yet). The reason for voter apathy and this reluctance of discussion participants might be more properly seen in the lack of meaningful rewards for such engagement. Voters who perceive — with or without justification — that their votes do not have a significant impact on government decisions, will be less eager to vote; discussion participants who don’t see what difference a summary of their contributions would make in the larger scheme of things will not be eager to go beyond the venting of their frustrations and exchange of opinions. Most online discussions ‘die down’ after some time without having reached any meaningful resolution of the subject debated.

Online social networks have tried to respond to this phenomenon with features such as the count of ‘friends’ or ‘network connections’ — or simple evaluation devices in the form of ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ (thumbs up or down) buttons. These efforts turn into quite meaningless competitive numbers efforts, which suggests nothing more that how meaningless they are (how many ‘friends’ do we have on Facebook that we wouldn’t even know if we met them in the street?) — but are encouraged by the networks because they help the advertising part of their enterprise.

It turns out that the suggested tool of argument evaluation for the discourse framework might offer a better approach to the problem of rewarding participants for their contribution. Going beyond the mere count of posts in a discussion, the evaluation of argument plausibility and argument weight (the argument’s plausibility modified by the weight of relative importance of its deontic premise) of planning arguments, as evaluated by the entire group of participants in the evaluation exercise, can be directly used as a measure for the value of a participant’s contributions. (The details of scoring are developed in more detail in a paper on a proposed argumentative planning and argument evaluation game; draft available on request.)

This feature leads to the possibility of building up a reputation record of different types of contributors: for example, a participant’s contribution to the development (through modification) of the plan eventually adopted or recommended; the ‘creative’ contributor supplying innovative solution ideas; the solid ‘researcher’ finding information pertinent to the discussion on the net, the ‘influential’ participant whose arguments lead other participants to change their minds; the ‘thorough / in-depth deliberating participant’ who is delving more deeply into the evidence and support for argument premises in successor issues; the person with the most reliable offhand judgment whose initial assessment turns out to be closest to the final deliberated result by the entire group, and so on).

The possibility of building up such cooperative contribution records — that might be included in a person’s resume for job applications or profile for public office positions — could provide the needed reward mechanism for constructive participation in discussions about significant public issues.

The Rule of Improving Proposed Plans rather than forcing a decision

One aspect of the purpose of public discourse deserves some special consideration. There are various reasons for the widespread perception of argumentation as an adversarial, divisive activity. For example: the spectacle of many ‘debates’ of candidates for public office, where the aim of each debater is to make the opponent look less fit for the job by refuting the opponents arguments, or goading the opponent into making foolish assertions (that can then be used in ‘attack ads’). Even more so, the decision mechanism applied both in elections and decisions in ‘decision-making bodies’ in government and private enterprise: majority voting. It will provide a decision, which may be convenient or even critical in some cases — but at the expense of ignoring the arguments, the concerns of a significant minority of participants. The practice of enforcing ‘party discipline’ in voting in parliamentary bodies is entirely obviating discussion — if the majority party has the votes, no debate is necessary. The victory celebrations of the winners of such votes overshadow the fact that the quality of the plans or policies voted upon has totally disappeared from the process.

The introduction of merit of discourse measures into such discussions could help reverse this problem: the contribution rewards to individual participants could — and should — be structured to favor the development of ‘better’ proposals. By this is meant, here, plans modified step by step from the initial proposal by amendments or changes, in response to concerns expressed by participants, and with the aim of achieving a greater degree of approval from a larger group of participants, and at least acceptance as ‘not making things worse than before’ by the adversely affected minorities. The goal of ‘complete consensus’ is an ideal that may be too difficult to achieve in many cases, and tempt lone dissenting holdouts to adopt a position of de facto ‘dictating’ no action. But a discourse participation reward structured to encourage the improvement of plan proposals rather than mere majority vote decisions may help improve not only the discourse about public issues but the resulting decisions as well.

===