Arguing to Defeat: Eristic Argumentation and Irrationality in Resolving Moral Concerns
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Arguing to Defeat: Eristic Argumentation and Irrationality in Resolving Moral Concerns Rasim Serdar Kurdoglu1 · Nüfer Yasin Ateş2 Received: 12 September 2019 / Accepted: 19 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract By synthesizing the argumentation theory of new rhetoric with research on heuristics and motivated reasoning, we develop a conceptual view of argumentation based on reasoning motivations that sheds new light on the morality of decision-making. Accordingly, we propose that reasoning in eristic argumentation is motivated by psychological (e.g., anxiety reduction) or material (e.g., vested interests) gains that do not depend on resolving the problem in question truthfully. Contrary to heuristic argumentation, in which disputants genuinely argue to reach a practically rational solution, eristic argumentation aims to defeat the counterparty rather than seeking a reasonable solution. Eristic argumentation is susceptible to arbitrariness and power abuses; therefore, it is inappropriate for making moral judgments with the exception of judgments concerning moral taboos, which are closed to argumentation by their nature. Eristic argumentation is also problematic for strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making because it impedes the search for the right heuristic under uncertainty as an ecologically rational choice. However, our theoretical view emphasizes that under extreme uncertainty, where heuristic solutions are as fallible as any guesses, pretense reasoning by eristic argumentation may be instrumental for its adaptive benefits. Expanding the concept of eristic argumentation based on reasoning motivations opens a new path for studying the psychology of reasoning in connection to morality and decision-making under uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our theoretical view to relevant research streams, including ethical, strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making. Keywords Heuristics · Eristic argumentation · Ethical decision-making · Rationality · Irrationality
Introduction In organizations, managers often use their discretion to resolve moral disputes (Hiekkataipale and Lämsä 2019, 2017). Organizational norms and codes (Coughlan 2005; Fotaki et al. 2019) in addition to institutional legitimacy standards (Kurdoglu 2019a) set some boundaries on managerial discretion. Nonetheless, the ethical quality of managerial moral judgments still largely depends on how managers reason when exercising their discretion to resolve moral disputes (Huhtala et al. 2020). * Rasim Serdar Kurdoglu [email protected] Nüfer Yasin Ateş [email protected] 1
Faculty of Business Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Sabancı Business School, Sabancı University, İstanbul, Turkey
2
When resolving moral disputes, a decision-making manager cannot resort to formal rationality (i.e., deductive logic) because formal rationality depends on logical or probabilistic rules that inherently exclude subjective preferences,1 which are pivotal to moral choices. However, moral
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