Page 78 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 78
four critical essays on argumentation
Groarke’s argument goes as follows:
The black and white photograph [...] presents the university’s
three chief administrators in front of the official entrance to the
university. Especially in poster size, the photograph makes a stark
impression, placing all this confident maleness in front of (visual-
ly blocking) the university’s main entrance. According to the com-
mittee, which commissioned the poster, it is a ‘statement’ which
effectively makes the point that ‘we want more women at our uni-
versity’ and ‘still have a long way to go in this regard. (Groarke
1996 ibid.)
But, if we are not acquainted with the committee’s ‘statement’ that they
want more women at their university (as, I guess, an ‘average’ Amsterdamer
is not), and we just, walking the streets of Amsterdam, bump into this post-
er with three corpulent males, ‘stating’ ‘UvA for Women’, it is not at all clear
how the poster was intended to be framed (by its authors). Is it (simply) a
bad joke? Should it be taken ironically, maybe cynically, as a meta-state-
ment from somebody who knows and objects the fact that UvA is all male?
There is even a (at least implicitly) sexist interpretation that all these males
at UvA need more women.
In other words, because of the insufficiently unambiguous framing it
is not at all clear that we (the observers) can (and even should) reconstruct
the argument(ation) in question the way Groarke does:
The poster thus presents the argument:
P
↓
C
where the premise P is the (visual) statement that ‘The University
of Amsterdam’s three chief administrators are all men’ and C is
the conclusion that ‘The University needs more women’ (Groarke
1996: 111).
Even if we take P as rather unambiguous (which it is not; for one
thing, the fact that the University of Amsterdam’s three chief adminis-
trators are all men is not a matter of general knowledge), the arrow, lead-
ing to C, can in no way be so linear, unidirectional, or monotonic (if you
want) as to lead directly and exclusively to C, interpreted as ‘The University
78
Groarke’s argument goes as follows:
The black and white photograph [...] presents the university’s
three chief administrators in front of the official entrance to the
university. Especially in poster size, the photograph makes a stark
impression, placing all this confident maleness in front of (visual-
ly blocking) the university’s main entrance. According to the com-
mittee, which commissioned the poster, it is a ‘statement’ which
effectively makes the point that ‘we want more women at our uni-
versity’ and ‘still have a long way to go in this regard. (Groarke
1996 ibid.)
But, if we are not acquainted with the committee’s ‘statement’ that they
want more women at their university (as, I guess, an ‘average’ Amsterdamer
is not), and we just, walking the streets of Amsterdam, bump into this post-
er with three corpulent males, ‘stating’ ‘UvA for Women’, it is not at all clear
how the poster was intended to be framed (by its authors). Is it (simply) a
bad joke? Should it be taken ironically, maybe cynically, as a meta-state-
ment from somebody who knows and objects the fact that UvA is all male?
There is even a (at least implicitly) sexist interpretation that all these males
at UvA need more women.
In other words, because of the insufficiently unambiguous framing it
is not at all clear that we (the observers) can (and even should) reconstruct
the argument(ation) in question the way Groarke does:
The poster thus presents the argument:
P
↓
C
where the premise P is the (visual) statement that ‘The University
of Amsterdam’s three chief administrators are all men’ and C is
the conclusion that ‘The University needs more women’ (Groarke
1996: 111).
Even if we take P as rather unambiguous (which it is not; for one
thing, the fact that the University of Amsterdam’s three chief adminis-
trators are all men is not a matter of general knowledge), the arrow, lead-
ing to C, can in no way be so linear, unidirectional, or monotonic (if you
want) as to lead directly and exclusively to C, interpreted as ‘The University
78
