Topoi
DOI 10.1007/s11245-015-9336-1
Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing
Lilian Bermejo-Luque1
 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Both because of the vagueness of the word
‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we
lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful
ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly,
straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons
giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of
argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream defi-
nition of reasons as ‘‘considerations that count in favour of
doing or believing something’’, then only good argumen-
tation would count as argumentation. In this paper, I defend
a qualified characterization of argumentation as reasons
giving that is shown to be fruitful for shedding light on the
practice of giving reasons, and an inferentialist conception
of reasons that makes room for speaking of ‘‘bad reasons’’
and, consequently, makes it possible to talk of argumen-
tation as reasons giving even if we are talking about bad
argumentation.
Keywords Argumentation  Reasons  Giving reasons 
LNMA  Inferring  Argumentative speech-acts
1 Introduction
The pragmatic perspective that characterizes Argumenta-
tion Theory underlines the interactional dimension of
argumentation and its significance for developing adequate
normative models for argumentation appraisal. In order to
accommodate this view, argumentation theorists have
& Lilian Bermejo-Luque
lilian.bermejoluque@gmail.com; lilianbl@ugr.es
1
Department of Philosophy I, University of Granada, Campus
de Cartuja, 18071 Granada, Spain
characterized argumentation as a practice of giving rea-
sons. This approach has widened the traditional concep-
tions of argumentation and argumentation goodness, which
has enabled, in turn, an account of non-verbal forms of
arguing and a non-semanticist conception of justification.
However, both because of the vagueness of the word
‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we
lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful
ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly,
straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons
giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of
argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream defi-
nition of reasons as ‘‘considerations that count in favour of
doing or believing something’’, then only good argumen-
tation would count as argumentation.1 Should we then give
up the characterization of argumentation as reasons giving?
In this paper, I defend a qualified characterization of
argumentation as reasons giving. This proposal is shown to
be fruitful for dealing with non-verbal argumentation, as it
provides a rationale for its interpretation, analysis and
evaluation while overcoming the problem of finding non-
verbal argumentation all over the place. In turn, I defend an
1
Actually, this is the standard definition for normative reasons—as
opposed to motivating reasons. In discussing how to understand
argumentation as a practice of giving reasons, I will be considering
only normative reasons, that is, reasons that justify an individual in
believing or acting as she does. Motivating reasons—that is, reasons
that explain why an individual believes, or acts, as she does—will be
kept out of our discussion. For, not in vain, argumentation is not an
explanatory but a justificatory device: the reasons that we give in
arguing are meant to justify that for which we offer such reasons.
They are not meant to explain it because, in the linguistic-pragmatic
context of arguing, that for which we offer reasons is not taken for
granted—which is a linguistic-pragmatic condition for explaining it—
but quite the opposite: it is precisely taken to be in need of
justification (see McKeon 2013, p. 300, for a defence of this view).
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inferentialist conception of reasons that makes room for
speaking of ‘‘bad reasons’’ and, consequently, makes it
possible to talk of argumentation as reasons giving even if
we are talking about bad argumentation.
In Sect. 3, I consider whether an account of argumen-
tative reasons giving as an ‘‘invitation to inference’’ (Pinto
1995) could do the work. I underline the rewards of this
account, but I explain that, despite the communicative
connotations of the idea of inviting inferences, it still does
not manage to exclude non-argumentative forms of reasons
giving that may count, nevertheless, as proper invitations to
inference. In Sect. 4, I explain that argumentation must be
characterized as a particular type of communicative rea-
sons giving, and I defend a conception of argumentation as
a second order speech-act complex. In this account, the
kind of reasons giving that counts as arguing can also be
seen as a certain communicative way of inviting infer-
ences. Following this view, in Sect. 5, I explain the rela-
tionship between argumentation—i.e., a communicative
process—and reasoning—i.e., a mental process—by con-
sidering that reasons as speech-acts have as their mental
counterpart the cognitive inputs that trigger acts of indi-
rectly judging. In this account, arguments are not seen as
the contents of reasonings or of acts of arguing, but rather
as representations of the semantic and syntactic properties
of both types of inferential processes.
2 The Pragmatic Hallmark of Argumentation
Theory
Argumentation is a tool for the interplay between indi-
viduals, a means to influence people. By arguing, we can
persuade others of what we say. In this respect, however,
arguing is not different from, for example, merely assert-
ing: by saying ‘‘my name is Alex’’ or ‘‘it’s going to rain’’ in
adequate circumstances, I can also manage to persuade my
addressees that this is my name or that it’s going to rain.
Communication, in general, enables individuals to induce
beliefs and attitudes in others. Actually, almost anything
we do can be pursued as a means for inducing beliefs and
attitudes. Is it because almost anything we do can be
argumentation?
Characteristically, argumentation is also a tool for jus-
tifying: by arguing, we may show that we are right, that it
is not up to our audience to accept what we say or not. The
fact that argumentation is a means to justify explains not
only its widespread use as a means to persuade—because,
fortunately, our rational fellows tend to be persuaded when
we offer good reasons for what we say, and we are
instrumentally rational in pursuing good means for our
ends—but also its legitimacy—because trying to persuade
of what we say by giving good reasons for it is trying to
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L. Bermejo-Luque
persuade in the name of what seems actually right to
believe or do.
Both the justificatory and the persuasive roles of arguing
are idiosyncratic of this type of communication, and a
suitable account of argumentation is prima facie committed
to dealing with them and to making sense of the way they
relate to each other. This was the ancient—mainly Aris-
totelian—conception of argumentative discourse as an art,
which deemed that speaking the truth is useless unless we
manage to make it evident to others.
Unfortunately, this conception of argumentation as both
a justificatory and a persuasive practice is something that
philosophers had renounced since Descartes’ epistemo-
logical turn until the second half of the last century. Under
the assumption that a man in his solitude could arrive at
justified beliefs just by the power of his reasonings, modern
philosophers, and a consistent tradition of logicians after
them, focused on argumentation as a justificatory device,
dismissing argumentation’s communicative and interactive
nature. They were interested in argumentation mostly as a
means to ‘‘test’’ our beliefs. This narrow interest resulted in
the abandonment of the inquiry on the conditions and
properties of argumentation as a particular form of com-
munication, and to a straightforward identification between
argumentation and reasoning. The focus now was argu-
ments, understood as abstract objects, i.e., sets of propo-
sition. And although such sets of propositions were taken to
be the contents of both reasonings (that is, certain type of
mental process) and pieces of argumentation (that is, cer-
tain type of communicative process), the main goal was not
to tell good reasonings or argumentations from bad ones,
but to determine support relations among propositions.
Actually, under the influence of Frege’s aversion to psy-
chologism, ‘reasonings’ became a synonym for ‘argu-
ments’ and arguments were seen as instances of formal
structures. This is how philosophy reduced argumentation
to its formal and semantic properties. The pragmatic con-
straints of arguing were banished from the mainstream
account of argumentation goodness: good argumentation
was conceived just as argumentation consisting of true
premises and (formally) valid inferences, as Black (1964)
made manifest by coining the expression ‘‘sound
argument’’.
The rise of Argumentation Theory can be seen as par-
tially stemming from the need to fight this semanticist
conception of argumentation and argumentation goodness.
As pointed out by many argumentation theorists, the
semanticist approach faced inescapable difficulties in
dealing not only with the analysis and interpretation of real
argumentation in natural language, but also with the nor-
mativity of argumentation as a communicative activity.
Thus, for example, authors like Hamblin (1970), Walton
(1989) or van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992) pointed
Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing
out that the pragmatic constraints of arguing were the key
for dealing with most informal fallacies.
In order to counterbalance the hegemony of the
semanticist approach, Argumentation Theory developed a
pragmatic perspective stressing the fact that argumentation
is, first and foremost, a particular sort of interaction. This
perspective promoted a new change in focus from argu-
ments as abstract objects (i.e., sets of propositions) to
arguments as pieces of argumentation, and a corresponding
conception of arguing as the activity of giving, or
exchanging, reasons. Most argumentation theorists
assumed that the only way to overcome the shortcomings
of the semanticist approach was to develop models able to
establish the conditions that arguers should meet in giving
or exchanging reasons.
Unfortunately, there was just a small step from this view
to the identification of argumentation goodness with some
kind of legitimate argumentative success.2 As a conse-
quence of thinking of argumentation as a communicative
process connected to and normatively determined by
speakers’ behaviour, main approaches within Argumenta-
tion Theory promoted a new conception of argumentative
value according to which argumentation goodness was a
matter of argumentation’s ability to achieve the ends that
would allegedly be characteristic of the practice of arguing.
This is how the pragmatic perspective gave rise to a new
account of the normativity underlying argumentation,
namely, a conception shifting from criteria to decide on the
semantic and formal properties of arguments to criteria to
decide on the value of acts of arguing as means to achieve
certain legitimate goals, like the persuasion of a universal
audience (the new rhetoric approach), the rational per-
suasion of an addressee (the informal logic approach), or
the resolution of a difference of opinion on the merits
(Pragma-dialectics).
Importantly, thinking of arguing as a practice of giving
reasons enabled the recognition of non-verbal forms of
argumentation. For example, Birdsell and Groarke (1996)
argued for the possibility of recognizing visual argumen-
tation, that is, argumentation put forward by means of
images instead of words. And, according to Gilbert’s
account of coalescent argumentation (Gilbert 1997), doing
things like looking approvingly, turning serious or giving a
nudge might also count as arguing, as they may be means
to overcome disagreement by fostering the ‘‘coalescence’’
of different points of view. Moreover, in Gilbert’s view,
some types of arguments, like emotional ones, would
require fundamentally different criteria of assessment than
arguments as traditionally conceived.
2 In ‘‘The relation of argument to inference’’, Pinto (1995)
In Bermejo-Luque (2011, chap. 2), I explain that one of the main
problems of this type of instrumentalism is that it is unable to provide
a rationale for normative models of argumentation.
Certainly, in order to accommodate these widening
conceptions of arguing, it seemed crucial to characterize
argumentation, in general, as a practice of giving reasons.
For, as we have pointed out, unless we were ready to deem
as argumentation almost anything we do (like, for example,
merely asserting), it is necessary to integrate the justifica-
tory dimension of argumentation with its bare ability to
induce beliefs. In thinking of argumentation as reasons
giving, the idea would be that this integration is a matter of
argumentation’s ability to make rational those beliefs and
attitudes that we are able to induce in others by giving
reasons for them.
3 Giving Reasons as Inviting Inferences
But, what is ‘‘giving reasons’’ for a belief or an attitude? In
‘‘You can leave your hat on’’, Joe Cocker said to his
addressee ‘‘you give me a reason to live’’. Because the song
is fresh and sexy rather than melancholic or ‘‘intellectual’’,
we assume that Cocker isn’t talking about a piece of
argumentation by his addressee for the view that Cocker’s
life is worthy to live, or anything in these lines… Instead,
we guess that he is talking about his lover’s ability to make
him happy. Cocker is celebrating that, by being thus and
so, his lover gives him a reason to live. Yet, being thus and
so is not arguing. Actually, Cocker might have also sung
‘‘it gives me a reason to live’’ in order to praise the virtues
of friendship, Scottish whisky, a cosy cottage or whatever
could make him think or feel that life is worthy to live. No
doubt, things can give us reasons for adopting all kind of
doxastic and non-doxastic attitudes; but we wouldn’t say
that things could argue.
So, giving reasons does not always amount to arguing.
Arguing, we have seen, is a communicative activity: the
type of reasons giving that amounts to arguing must
involve some kind of communicative interplay.
Yet, which type of communicative reasons giving is
arguing? Noteworthily, by saying that my name is Alex in
adequate circumstances, I can not only persuade my
addressees that this is my name, but also give them a
reason to believe so by communicative means. Moreover,
we may say both that persuading my addressees that my
name is Alex by saying so is a rational way of persuading
them, and that my addressees are rational in being so
persuaded when told, in normal circumstances, that my
name is Alex. Yet, if we don’t want to say that mere
assertions count as argumentation, it seems, again, that we
will need something else, a further feature to define argu-
mentation as reasons giving.
defended the view that arguing is, first and foremost, an
invitation to inference.3 I would like to explain the rewards
123

of this approach for our inquiry by recalling a distinction I
made in Bermejo-Luque (2011, pp. 72–80) between direct
and indirect judgments.
A direct judgment is a judgment that has not been
caused by any other judgment. Self-knowledge and many
kinds of empirical knowledge are usually the result of this
kind of judging: I come to believe that there is a book on
the table just by seeing it, or I come to believe that I have a
pain in my back just by feeling it.4 Similarly, I can directly
judge that it is raining, not only by looking through the
window and seeing drops of water falling down, but also by
hearing my son coming in and saying so. The falling of
drops of water and my son saying that it is raining can also
be reasons that would eventually justify my judgment that
it’s raining. But in my act of directly judging, they just
count as events that cause my judgment.5 Of course,
pointing at these events is also a means to justify the cor-
responding judgments; but we must distinguish between
the causes and the reasons for a judgment. For, we can
think of circumstances in which, as a cause, the event is
sufficient for generating a mental state that did not exist
previously (e.g., the judgment that it is raining), whereas,
as a reason, the same event may be insufficient to justify
the corresponding judgment (for example, if (I know that)
3
Actually, Pinto says that it is arguments, not argumentation, what
constitutes an invitation to inference. Yet, because he says that an
argument is ‘‘a set of statements or propositions that one person offers
to another in the attempt to induce that other person to accept some
conclusion’’ (Pinto 1995, p. 271), whereas argumentation is ‘‘an
interactive social process involving two or more people, in which the
principal goal is to induce belief or agreement through the presen-
tation of arguments’’ (1995, p. 271), I would rather say that it is
argumentation (as an activity), not arguments (as abstract entities),
what amounts to an invitation to inference.
4
In literature, this kind of judgment is usually called ‘‘non-
inferential.’’ However I would rather call it ‘‘direct’’ because I would
like to leave aside the question of whether, in the end, a judgment
must be inferentially articulated for it to have any content at all. In
fact, I am willing to say that direct judgments depend upon previous
inferences. For example, I usually directly judge that it’s time for a
coffee when I hear a familiar sound from a bell in a nearby church.
Such a judgment is caused by this sound having that impact on me:
when I hear it in normal circumstances, I come to believe that it’s
time for a coffee. Yet, the fact that the sound has this impact on me
depends on my having associated it, one way or another, with being
time for a coffee when it sounded in normal circumstances. This
association is something that certainly depends on many inferences
that I have made over time. Yet, despite its inferential articulation, my
judgment counts as a direct judgment because I didn’t make these
inferences in order to judge in this particular case that it’s time for a
coffee. Rather, I merely heard a sound that triggered the judgment
‘‘now it’s time for a coffee’’.
5
I leave aside the question of whether or not a judgment caused by
an event that could not justify it at all (like a drug, a mental disorder
or a blow to the head) is a real judgment after all. If we think that it is,
then judging that there is a pink elephant in front of you because of a
drug would also be a case of directly judging.
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L. Bermejo-Luque
my neighbour upstairs has plants on his balcony, which
may better explain these drops of water).
Directly judging does not necessarily involve judging
the plausibility, acceptability or truth of a given represen-
tation: after all, in order to judge that things are thus and so,
it is not necessary for a given representation of this state of
the world to pre-exist (either in our minds or put forward
by someone else). On the contrary, such a representation
can be brought about by the very act of judging: the world
may simultaneously cause our representation—for exam-
ple, the idea of the book on the table—and our judgment
that this representation holds—i.e., the judgment that the
book is on the table.
In turn, an indirect judgment would be a judgment
caused by other judgment(s) or belief(s) that are related to
this judgment in an inferential way.6 For example, I indi-
rectly judge that Elizabeth must have finished off the
Cheerios last night, when I consider that we are run out of
Cheerios this morning (Harman 1986, p. 1). When we
indirectly judge, we make a judgment prompted by a
cognitive input like a belief or judgment—e.g., my judg-
ment that we are run out of Cheerios this morning. This
cognitive input counts as a reason for our cognitive output
by virtue of its association with another conditional judg-
ment or belief whose meaning is that of a warrant for this
cognitive output, provided that the input is true—in our
example, the conditional judgment that if we are run out of
Cheerios this morning, then Elizabeth finished them off last
night. Let me call this conditional belief or judgment the
inference-motivation of the act of indirectly judging.
Despite their normative function, inference-motivations
also depend on our acquaintance with the world and how it
affects us in particular circumstances. After all, they are
supposed to in fact motivate the inferences that we make: it
is because my belief or judgment that ‘‘if ci then co’’ is
salient for me in this particular case that, in having the
cognitive input ci, I come to indirectly judge that co,
instead of indirectly judging that co’, co’’, etc. For exam-
ple, in facing that a fungus in the test-tube has killed the
bacteria culture, I may make the judgment, among many
others, that the experiment has gone bad, that the test-tube
was contaminated, that I need a new axenic culture, or, as
Fleming did, that there is a powerful antibiotic in it.
Importantly, however, inference-motivations do not
have to be pre-existing beliefs: sometimes, in drawing a
conclusion, we do not follow a belief that we already have,
but endorse the corresponding conditional in the very act of
6
Consequently, the distinction between direct and indirect judgments
is not meant to be exhaustive regarding the possible ways of coming
to believe new things. For there may be judgments prompted by other
judgments in a non-inferential way. This would be the case, for
example, of associations of ideas and processes like remembering
something by noticing something else, etc.
Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing
inferring; in these cases, the very act of inferring involves
the act of making the corresponding conditional judgment.7
The latter is what we do when we make novel inferences,
that is, when we do not follow a pattern of inference, but
come to infer in unexpected ways. The typical ‘‘eureka’’
moments of scientific discovery would be a good example
of this phenomenon of inferential but unexpected reason-
ing. At any rate, the inferences that we make from a given
piece of evidence depend not only on our beliefs and
judgments about the world—as they provide the condi-
tionals that we endorse in inferring, but also on our cog-
nitive styles, our interests, constrains, etc.
Now, one of the most salient features of argumentation,
in contrast with other kinds of communication, is that when
we argue we convey not only our beliefs, but also our
reasonings. But, what does this mean? I think we may
understand Pinto’s account of argumentation as an invita-
tion to inference in the following way: by arguing, we
invite our addresses to infer, in the sense of inviting them
to make indirect judgments. On this view, a mere assertion
of ‘‘my name is Alex’’ would not count as argumentation
because, normally, it would not involve any invitation to
make an indirect judgment, but only to make a direct
judgment, namely, that my name is Alex. Furthermore, if I
hit my head and cry in pain, I would give you a reason to
believe that I am in pain, but I would not be inviting you to
make that inference; rather, you would do it on your own.
This way, Pinto’s account of argumentation as an invitation
to inference incorporates not only the communicative ele-
ment of proper arguing, but also a straightforward expla-
nation of the twofold dimension of argumentation as a
persuasive and a justificatory practice: in this account,
argumentation has the power to induce beliefs and the
power to justify them, because a justified induced belief
can be characterized as a belief prompted by a reason that
is true and sanctioned by an inference-motivation that is
also true. Besides, this account can also explain the dif-
ference between a justified induced belief and a belief that
has been adopted rationally by the addressee: the latter
would be a belief prompted by a representation that the
subject takes to hold and sanctioned by an inference-mo-
tivation that she also takes to hold, whether or not they
actually hold—that is, whether or not the reason actually
justifies the belief.
Pinto’s conception of argumentation as an invitation to
inference may be seen as an attempt to preserve the dis-
tinction between argumentation and other ways of per-
suading by characterizing argumentation both as a
justificatory device and as a persuasive practice that
7
I think this distinction corresponds, in the realm of reasonings, to
the Toulmian distinction between warrant-using and warrant-estab-
lishing arguments.
conveys and triggers reasonings. Would then be ok to say
that argumentation is reasons giving that invite inferences
in this sense? Unfortunately, again, we need something
else. Because, for example, by replying that there is a gas
station around the corner at your observation that we’re out
of petrol, you’re invited to infer that it will be open, and my
saying so gives you a reason to believe it. But implicating,
despite being a means to invite inferences by giving rea-
sons, is not arguing either.
At this point, we could try to say, as Pinto himself points
out, that arguing is inviting inferences ‘‘through the pre-
sentation of arguments’’ (Pinto 1995, p. 271). But this
response only shows the real dimension of our problem, for
we do not have a suitable definition of ‘‘arguments’’. If
arguments are conceived either as pieces of argumentation
or as the product of argumentation, then appealing to
arguments cannot be of help for characterizing argumen-
tation in turn. Alternatively, if we think of arguments as
abstract entities, we still have to explain what their rela-
tionship to argumentation is. For Pinto himself, an argu-
ment is ‘‘a set of statements or propositions that one person
offers to another in the attempt to induce that other person
to accept some conclusion’’ (1995, p. 271), but, again, this
is not going to take us too far in our attempt at character-
izing argumentative reasons giving either.
Actually, there is a deeper concern with the very defi-
nition of arguments as abstract entities. According to Copi
and Cohen, ‘‘an argument, in the logician’s sense, is any
group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow
from the others, which are regarded as providing support
or grounds for the truth of that one (Copi and Cohen 1990,
p. 6, my italics). Notice that if we don’t want to identify
arguments with good arguments, we have to say that the
conclusion ‘‘is claimed to follow’’, not that if actually
follows. Of course, we could also say that an argument is
just a set of propositions; but, obviously, as a definition, it
is too vague, and it cannot be of help for defining argu-
mentation in turn. As Copi and Cohen’s definition suggests,
in order to give an account of arguments that makes room
for bad arguments and goes beyond the mere idea of an
unstructured sets of propositions, we need to characterize
them by reference to some communicative activity in
which some proposition ‘‘is claimed to follow’’ and others
‘‘are regarded as providing support or grounds’’.8 This is
precisely the main intuition behind the following proposed
account.
8
Simard Smith and Moldovan (2011, p. 256) also understand that the
illative relation between propositions that structures sets of proposi-
tions as arguments ‘‘is created by an agent when the agent intends that
a conclusion follows from a set of premises in a certain way.’’
123

4 Argumentation as a Speech-Act: Non-verbal
Argumentation
‘Persuading’ or ‘trying to persuade’ or ‘trying to rationally
persuade’, ‘giving reasons’, ‘inviting inferences’, ‘giving
reasons that invite inferences’… none of these expressions
seems to be a synonym for ‘arguing’. Argumentation the-
orists have provided a variety of characterizations of
arguing, but we still don’t know what does it mean to say
that arguing is ‘‘giving reasons’’. As we have seen,
appealing to arguments as sets of premises that constitute
the contents of those pieces of communication in which we
‘‘give reasons’’ does not seem to be of help either. So, how
should we think of arguing as reasons giving?
As most argumentation theorists, in Bermejo-Luque
(2011), I adopted a pragmatic approach to argumentation.
Yet, I did so by characterizing argumentation as a lin-
guistic-pragmatic practice. I defined argumentation as a
communicative activity involving acts of arguing, and I
proposed a linguistic normative model, LNMA, that fol-
lows Bach and Harnish’s (1979) Speech-Act Schema in
order to characterize acts of arguing as second order
speech-act complexes. Particularly, I provided an account
of acts of arguing as speech-acts consisting of a speech-act
of adducing and a speech-act of concluding.
In this account, acts of adducing and acts of concluding
are constatives—whether directly or indirectly performed,
literal or non-literal; but they are second order because they
can only be performed by means of first order speech-acts.
According to this view, a performance of, for example, ‘‘I
promise I’ll take care, don’t worry’’—which, in principle,
just involves two first order speech-acts, i.e., a promise and
a request—turns into a speech-act complex of arguing
because these first order speech-acts turn into the consta-
tive speech-act of adducing that the arguer commits herself
to take care and the constative speech-act of concluding
that the addressee should not worry, correspondingly.
Two speech-acts become an act of adducing R (for
reason) and an act of concluding C (for target-claim)
because of their relationship to an implicit inference-claim
whose propositional content is ‘‘if R, then C.’’ In a few
words, it is by attributing to the speaker the implicit
inference-claim ‘‘if (it is true that) I commit myself to take
care, then (it is plausible that) you should not worry’’ that
we interpret her utterances of ‘‘I promise I’ll take care’’ and
‘‘Don’t worry’’, as a single speech-act—namely, an act of
arguing. Normally, the fact that the speaker has used some
epistemic modal (like ‘‘probably,’’ ‘‘necessarily,’’ ‘‘pre-
sumably,’’ ‘‘plausibly,’’ etc.) or an illative expression like
‘‘so,’’ ‘‘therefore,’’ ‘‘since,’’ ‘‘consequently,’’ etc. is what
authorizes us to interpret the speaker’s performance as a
speech-act of arguing.
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L. Bermejo-Luque
In principle, we can make explicit the variety of ways in
which we can put forward a certain semantic content p in a
constative speech-act by saying things like ‘‘p is true,’’
‘‘p is (more or less) probable,’’ ‘‘p is (more or less)
acceptable,’’ ‘‘p is (more or less) plausible,’’ ‘‘p is neces-
sary,’’ ‘‘p is possible,’’ etc. I named ontological modals to
the modals by means of which we can make explicit the
type and degree of pragmatic force of any of the consta-
tives constituting the act of arguing (including the infer-
ence-claim): after all, constatives are speech-acts meant to
communicate how the world is. In making explicit the
pragmatic force of such constatives, we make plain asser-
tions in turn—such as the plain assertion that p is true, or
that it is (more or less) probable, or possible, or plausible,
or necessary, etc. When we put forward a propositional
content with the pragmatic force that such propositional
content actually deserves as a representation of the world,
we make first order constatives that are semantically cor-
rect. Contrastingly, the modal that expresses the pragmatic
force with which we draw our conclusion in the act of
arguing is an epistemic modal. This modal is meant to
communicate our credentials for concluding, i.e., the type
and degree of support that our reasons are supposed to
confer on our target-claims because of our inference-
claims. In concluding that a claim holds truly, necessarily,
possibly, plausibly, probably, presumably, etc. (i.e., that
likely p, that it might be the case that p, that certainly p,
that presumably p, etc.), we are saying something about the
status of this claim as knowledge, about the confidence that
we may put on it, or our epistemic entitlement to it. In this
account, epistemic modals are meant to express how good
our reasons for our claims are; and, as we are going to see,
they are a function of the ontological modals that corre-
spond to the implicit inference-claim and to the speech-act
of adducing.
Very roughly, the idea is that, illocutionarily, acts of
arguing, so characterized, count as attempts at showing a
target-claim to be correct. To the extent that they succeed
in this—which means that the target-claim has been cor-
rectly qualified by a certain epistemic modal (semantic
conditions) and that the act of arguing is a good means for
showing this (pragmatic conditions)—they will be deemed
good argumentation—that is, argumentation providing
justification.9
9
On this account, it is one thing to determine argumentation
goodness—that is, to determine whether or not a given speech-act of
arguing succeeds in showing its target claim to be correct—and
another thing to determine whether or not the addressee of that act of
arguing will take it to be a good one. In Bermejo-Luque (2011,
pp. 159–162), I contend that something like Grice’s Cooperative
Principle is a good starting point to settle the pragmatic conditions
that determine whether a speech-act is a good act of showing.
Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing
Like many other activities, the activity of arguing is
constrained both constitutively and regulatively. The reg-
ulative constraints of argumentation determine the
achievement of certain goals that we pursue when we
argue.10 Thus, they provide rules and criteria for evaluating
argumentation from one or another point of view. In turn,
the constitutive constraints of argumentation determine the
identification of certain objects of the world as argumen-
tation proper, whether good or bad. In LNMA, the con-
stitutive and regulative constraints of argumentation turn
out to be linked to each other in the following way: argu-
mentation is communication determined by those prag-
matic conditions that make a given piece of behavior count
as an attempt at showing a target-claim to be correct. In
turn, good argumentation is argumentation actually show-
ing its target-claim to be correct. Thus, to the extent that a
piece of non-linguistic communicative behavior may count
as an attempt at showing a target-claim to be correct,
LNMA finds no problem in acknowledging non-verbal
argumentation, which, in turn, will be good argumentation
if it succeeds in such attempt. Our extension of Bach and
Harnish’s speech-act schema will then be the ground for
interpreting and analyzing such non-verbal forms of
arguing.
On the other hand, as van Eemeren and Grootendorst
(1984) had already pointed out, characterizing argumenta-
tion as a speech-act enables us to make sense of argumen-
tation as an activity aimed at certain perlocutionary goals,
such as persuading an addressee or audience or resolving a
difference of opinion. This way, another advantage of our
approach is that it enables us to integrate the justificatory and
persuasive dimensions of argumentation as two sides of the
same coin: after all, the illocutionary and the perlocutionary
descriptions of a speech-act apply to the same communica-
tive event. Regarding acts of arguing, whereas justification
would be the constitutive goal of arguing—i.e., the goal that
conventionally renders any piece of communication argu-
mentation—persuading could be seen as the purpose we
normally use argumentation for. In fact, as an invitation to
inference, argumentation is a very special means to persuade,
as we are going to see.
5 Reasoning, Argumentation and Arguments
Within Argumentation Theory, it is commonplace to define
arguments as ‘‘the product of argumentation.’’ But, to be
true, this definition is too vague. If we agree that
10
Or, rather, the goal that we pursue in arguing: as I have explained
in Bermejo-Luque (2011, pp. 23–40), our normative models for
argumentation must focus on the constitutive goal of arguing, which
is justifying, if their normative status is to be justified in turn.
argumentation is a communicative activity, then we can
think of its ‘‘product’’ in many ways: it may be particular
speech-acts, or the meaning that is conveyed by them, or
even their effects on their addressees, etc.
For my part, I think of arguments as particular abstract
objects, namely, the representations of the inferences that
supervene on acts of arguing and acts of reasoning (i.e.,
particular indirect judgments, as characterized in Sect. 3).
And, in contrast with acts of arguing and acts of reason-
ing—which are, so to speak, ‘‘objects of the world’’—ar-
guments would be just theoretical constructions. We obtain
arguments by representing the semantic (and, eventually,
also the syntactic) properties of acts of arguing and acts of
reasoning, and this is something we can do by following a
variety of models, like those of the different formal sys-
tems, informal argumentative schemas or, for example, by
adopting Toulmin’s model of argument. Actually, in my
view, the latter is the most accurate representation of acts
of arguing as characterized in LNMA, because of its
underlying material conception of inferential
normativity.11
In adopting Toulmin’s model of argument for repre-
senting the inferences that supervene in acts of arguing and
acts of reasoning, we will take that the constitutive ele-
ments of arguments, so conceived, are: premises (corre-
sponding either to the speech-acts of adducing, R, or to the
cognitive input in the act of reasoning, CI), conclusion
(corresponding either to the speech-act of concluding, C, or
to the cognitive output in the act of reasoning, CO), war-
rant (corresponding either to the inference-claim in the act
of arguing or to the inference-motivation in the act of
reasoning) and the representation of the epistemic and
ontological modals, em and om, of the speech-acts con-
stituting the act of arguing (corresponding to the pragmatic
force with which each constative of the act of arguing has
been put forward, either implicitly or explicitly) or of the
judgments and beliefs constituting the act of reasoning
(corresponding to the type and degree of assent to each
propositional content constituting the act of reasoning).12
Thus, an ascription of both epistemic and ontological
modals (eventually, the ascription made by the arguer or
the reasoner herself) is part of the layout of arguments, and
the semantic evaluation of an act of arguing or reasoning
would be the process of determining the right ascription of
11
For Toulmin, argument goodness is a matter of the warrant that
sanctions the inference, not of accordance with formal rules of
inference. See Bermejo-Luque (2011, pp. 88–101) for a defence of
this conception of logical normativity.
12
Because Toulmin does not deal with argumentation from a
linguistic-pragmatic perspective, his account of qualifiers is quite
different from the one presented here. Particularly, Toulmin does not
distinguish between epistemic and ontological qualifiers, because he
is not concerned with the differences between the pragmatic force of
123

modals to each represented claim or judgment/belief (that
is, whether or not the ascription made by the arguer or the
reasoner is correct after all). This model of argument can
thus be outlined as follows:
(omr/ci)Premise _________therefore___ (emx)(omc/co) Conclusion
| sanctions the inferential step from it to that for which this
since
(omi)Warrant: “if R/CI, then C/CO”
(Noticeably, the content of the antecedent, R, and the
consequent, C, is the content of the corresponding first
order constatives, R and C, joint with their corresponding
pragmatic forces in the act of arguing or, alternatively, the
content of the corresponding cognitive input and output, CI
and CO, with their corresponding type and degree of assent
in the act of reasoning).
Let u represent the function that assigns, for each
ontological modal of a conditional, the epistemic modal
that must be used in drawing a conclusion having this
conditional as its warrant—or, in other words, the term that
must be used for expressing either the pragmatic force of
any speech-act of concluding having a conditional so
qualified as its inference-claim or the type and degree of
assent to the cognitive output having a conditional so
qualified as its inference-motivation.
uðomi Þ ¼ emi
In this account, an argument is valid if and only if
emi = emx and omi is correct—in the sense that it is the
ontological modal that actually corresponds to the infer-
ence-claim as a constative or to the inference-motivation as
a belief/judgment. That is, the argument will be valid if and
only if the epistemic modal that the speaker or reasoner has
used for concluding or coming to believe the cognitive
output is the epistemic modal that u assigns to the onto-
logical modal of her implicit inference-claim or inference-
motivation and this ontological modal is the one that this
inference-claim or inference-motivation actually deserves,
given the state of the world.
6 Argumentation as Reasons Giving
LNMA’s characterization of argumentation as a second
order speech-act complex provides a straightforward
account of argumentation as reasons giving: arguing is
performing speech-acts of adducing as a means to show a
target-claim to be correct. Such speech-acts of adducing
Footnote 12 continued
ordinary constatives and the characteristic pragmatic force of the
speech-act of concluding.
123
L. Bermejo-Luque
would be the reasons that we give in arguing. On this view,
argumentation is communicative reasons giving because
argumentative reasons amount to speech-acts of adducing.
As we have seen, in this account, what makes of a
cognitive input or of a speech-act a reason is its relation-
ship to an inference-claim or an inference-motivation that
cognitive input or speech-act is a reason indeed. In contrast
with the mainstream definition of reasons as ‘‘considera-
tions that count in favour of doing or believing something’’,
our conception of reasons as the sort of thing a premise can
represent enables us to talk about argumentation as reasons
giving even if we are not talking about good argumentation
at all. Let us then briefly consider the consequences of this
view with respect to our understanding of the practice of
giving reasons.
In our proposed model, the constitutive elements of
arguments correspond to the pragmatic elements of the
speech-act of arguing as an attempt at justifying and to the
cognitive elements that constitute an act of indirectly
judging. This way, we can also easily make sense of
argumentation as an invitation to inference by thinking of
its characteristic perlocutionary effect as that of triggering
certain acts of indirectly judging in the addressee: namely,
mental processes that have as their cognitive input the
reasons adduced by the speaker and as their cognitive
output the conclusions that she put forward. Arguing is a
way to achieve this because, as pointed out at the begin-
ning, mere assertions may have persuasive power: by
putting forward the constatives that constitute an act of
arguing, we can trigger the direct judgments that play as
cognitive inputs, cognitive outputs and inference-motiva-
tions, correspondingly. Yet, in indirectly judging as invi-
ted, the addressee takes the implicit inference-claim put
forward by the speaker as an inference-motivation for
himself. What does this mean?
As we have seen, the conditional judgment or belief that
lies behind any act of indirectly judging is the element that
makes a judgment or belief input a proper reason for a
cognitive output. If it didn’t make sense to attribute such
conditional judgment or belief to the subject, then it
wouldn’t make sense to think of the cognitive input as a
reason for her cognitive output. Instead, her input–output
cognitive process would count, at best, as an association of
ideas or something like that. Such is the sense in which
cognitive inputs as reasons are normative for the subject
who indirectly judges: for a mental process to count as an
act of indirectly judging, it has to be rational; that is to say,
we have to view the subject as taking the cognitive input to
be a good reason for the cognitive output, which is some-
thing that the subject does by taking the cognitive input ci
and the inference-motivation i to be true, which is, in turn,
Giving Reasons Does Not Always Amount to Arguing
what she does when she judges or believes that ci and that
i.13
In my view, this is what goes on when, as addressees, we
follow an argument. And it is also the sense in which the
reasons that we are given in argumentation are normative
over us: following an argument is counting as inferring
ourselves, i.e., as adopting the reasons adduced by the
speaker as reasons for us. In this respect, following an
argument—as opposed to merely agreeing with, or coming
to believe, the speaker’s conclusion—counts as being
rationally persuaded.
Importantly, following an argument is not evaluating the
act of arguing that the argument represents, but accepting
the invitation to inference that this act of arguing amounts
to. As we have seen, indirect judgments proceed by rea-
sons, but they are not the output of judging that a given
representation (a judgment, belief, or claim) is justified. In
other words, indirectly judging does not involve positively
evaluating a reason for a conclusion, but making an
inference prompted by a cognitive input that counts for us
as a reason because a suitable motivation to infer is at play.
Contrastingly, in order to judge that a given representation
is justified by such and such reason, we have to evaluate
the corresponding argument having the propositional con-
tent of this representation as its conclusion and the
propositional content of this reason as its premise. So doing
involves reconstructing the corresponding inference-moti-
vation as the argument’s warrant, and to take the correct-
ness of these representations as something in question. In a
few words, whereas indirectly judging involves endorsing
beliefs and judgments as reasons and inference-motiva-
tions, judging a representation to be justified involves
adopting a reflexive attitude, i.e., that of determining that
the representations corresponding to the premise, conclu-
sion and warrant of an argument are correct.
Thus, in our account, argumentative persuasion pro-
ceeds by reasons, but it is not necessarily the output of
judging that the speaker’s target-claim is justified. Most of
the times, being persuaded by the reasons adduced does not
involve positively evaluating the corresponding piece of
argumentation; it simply involves coming to believe a
target-claim—as qualified by the arguer in her argumen-
tation- because of our acceptance of the reason that she has
put forward—and consequently, of the corresponding
inference-claim, now playing the role of an inference-
motivation for ourselves.
In this account, argumentation’s persuasive power is not
a matter of merely ‘‘recalling’’ beliefs that the addressee
13
In my view, this is the sense in which motivating reasons, as
opposed to merely explanatory ones, do also have normative force
(see Álvarez 2010 for a defence of the view that normative reasons
are different from explanatory ones).
already had. After all, in putting forward the reason of our
act of arguing, we can make our addressee believe it just
because we say so, because, as pointed out before, mere
assertions do also have persuasive power: they are a means
to induce direct judgments. And more importantly, in
making the implicit inference-claim of our act of arguing,
we can make our addressee believe it thereof. This is what
happens, for example, if a chef says to the cook trainee
‘‘you have to whisk the mixture steadily; otherwise, it
won’t rise’’ and the trainee didn’t already know that the
mixture should rise: by following the chef’s argument, the
trainee will learn not only that he has to whisk the mixture
steadily (the chef’s target-claim), but also that if the mix-
ture won’t rise if not whisked steadily, he must whisk it
steadily (the chef’s inference-claim)—which, in fact, is
also a way of learning that the mixture should rise.
Argumentation’s ability to prompt indirect judgments
this way explains the worry that Campolo (2005) and
Turner and Wright (2005) express about giving reasons in
context of deep disagreement. For, in facing argumenta-
tion, addressees confront a difficult choice: either adopting
a non-natural attitude towards the reasons given—namely,
that of evaluating the corresponding argument—and being
accused of being uncooperative, or being cooperative and
follow the argument, which amounts to inferring as invited
by coming to believe both the claim adduced as a reason
and in the implicit inference-claim.
7 Conclusions
The pragmatic approach that currently characterizes the
field of Argumentation Theory focuses on the activity of
arguing in two respects. On the one hand, it takes into
account the constraints of communicative rationality
regarding argumentative exchanges in order to deal with
argumentation’s interpretation and analysis. On the other
hand, it aims at providing a normative framework for
argumentation based on the assumption that it is a practice
that characteristically aims at certain ends, such as the
rational persuasion of an addressee, the resolution of a
difference of opinion or the persuasion of a universal
audience.
I have tried to show, however, that this pragmatic per-
spective is bound to neglect the distinction between argu-
ing and other types of reasons giving and, therefore, to
inadequately distinguish between argumentation and other
types of communication. Of course, this does not mean that
argumentation theorists confuse reasons giving that is
argumentation with reasons giving that it isn’t. My only
claim is that, so far, we lack both a proper account of
argumentation as reasons giving and a characterization of
the sort of thing a reason, in the argumentative sense, is.
123

For my part, I have proposed a conception of argu-
mentation as communication aimed at showing a target-
claim to be correct—that is, aimed at justifying. Such
characterization of the speech-act of arguing would enable
us to distinguish between argumentation and other types of
communicative activities by stressing the fact that, when
we argue, we do not merely try to communicate our beliefs
or persuade others of them, but we also try to show them to
be correct. This is something that we do by giving reasons
for them, in the sense of ‘‘adducing’’, described above. And
it is precisely this appeal to reasons that confers on argu-
mentation a kind of legitimacy and force that makes it
different from other persuasive devices—like suggestions,
advices, threats, or mere assertions.
This account of argumentative reasons giving as a jus-
tificatory practice does not exclude the idea that, by argu-
ing, people may also aim at coordinating actions and
beliefs by persuading each other. Actually, my goal was to
provide a unitary account of argumentation as a justifica-
tory and as a persuasive device. Yet, I wanted to retain the
idea that the persuasive force of particular acts of arguing
need not be a consequence of their justificatory force—or,
in other words, that good argumentation can fail to per-
suade whereas bad argumentation can succeed. In my view,
the best way to deal with both intuitions, namely, that the
justificatory and the persuasive powers of argumentation
are deeply connected to each other and yet that neither of
them need involve the other, is by dealing with justification
and persuasion as different achievements of the same
activity, each of them having their own regulative condi-
tions. To this end, a characterization of argumentation as a
speech-act proves to be specially useful, since it enables us
to describe argumentation both as an illocutionary act that,
conventionally, counts as an attempt at showing a target-
claim to be correct and also as a perlocutionary act that,
instrumentally, may be seen as an attempt at rationally
persuading an addressee or audience or at resolving a dif-
ference of opinion, etc. by giving reasons for a target claim.
In my view, persuading an addressee or audience is the
most characteristic end that individuals pursue by giving
reasons for their claims. Of course, there are other means to
persuade. Actually, argumentation is not always the most
123
L. Bermejo-Luque
rational strategy for persuading. However, because argu-
mentation is an attempt to show that our claims are correct,
aiming at persuading by arguing is, in the end, aiming at
persuading in a legitimate way.
Acknowledgments I wish to thank Javier Rodrı́guez Alcázar and
the Topoi reviewers of this paper for their insightful comments and
criticisms. The work presented in this paper has been financed by a
Ramón y Cajal Research Fellowship and by the research Project
FFI2014-54681-P of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
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