McKeon on Reasonableness

In which I find the source I lost that led to a lot of insight.

I mentioned in a couple places that my thoughts on “reasonableness” as a structure for understanding argument online had been influenced by M. W. McKeon, but I couldn’t find the reference.

Well, this morning I found it. It’s from 2012, a piece entitled “On the Rationale for Distinguishing Arguments from Explanations”. McKeon first lays out a position of Robert Pinto. Pinto had argued that explanations were different than arguments because arguments attempt to get the listener to adopt a position, and explanations merely elucidate a position. For instance, if I say I am taking off work today and going to Ann Arbor, and you say “Why?” and I say “My daughter is on spring break and I have to pick her up,” in Pinto’s world, according to McKeon, that would be an explanation because the reasons offered are “reasons for me” and not “reasons for you”:

[In Pinto’s account] explaining why I am going to Ann Arbor by saying that the University of Michigan is on spring break and that I am picking my daughter up, the reasons I offer are reasons for me and not the addressee to do something. By being reasons for me to go to Ann Arbor, they make my trip understandable to the addressee.

Pinto’s idea here is that argument is an attempt to use language to get the addressee to do something — at minimum, to adopt a position toward a proposition.

But according to McKeon — I think correctly — this boat won’t float (emphasis mine):

I offer reasons to explain why I am going to Ann Arbor in order for the addressee to understand why I am going there. Hence, the reasons I offer are reasons for the addressee to do something: to understand why I am going to Ann Arbor.

When I explain something to you, like why it makes sense for me to drive three hours to Ann Arbor, I do want you to do something. I want you to understand my trip. In this case, I want you to see my trip has reasons, and those reasons motivate my action or my belief. But it could be even simpler than that — we both may know that the Earth is a globe, but you may ask me how we know that, and I may share my reasons. I have no intent to change your mind. We agree after all! But it may be that you feel that your reasons for believing that could be more solid, and I may believe that understanding my reasons may be beneficial to you. Again, I do want you to do something, which is to understand (and ideally appreciate!) the reasons I provide.

To me, this understanding is one that unlocks a whole different way of looking at how we talk about online discourse. As I’ve talked about in previous posts, there is this endless debate in the field about intent. Is your aunt throwing up that to convince people or express what she believes? If it’s about expression, then do concepts of logic even matter?

The idea of “reasonableness” — my word for this broad goal of argument — puts a different lens on this. What if some of the same models of analysis apply whether it is expression, explanation, or persuasion? What if that line doesn’t really tell us as much as we think?