In the target article, Mercier & Sperber (M&S) make the strong claim that epistemic goals are not well served by argumentive reasoning because it does not enhance the accuracy or validity of one's claims. Evidence is too ample to deny that people commonly invoke argumentive reasoning to support their assertions in ways that are habitual, often mindless, and self-serving. Where I would fault M&S, rather, is in their focus on how argumentive reasoning most often does function, to the exclusion of how it can (and for some does) come to function, as a consequence of education, engagement, and a recognition of its epistemic value. Although people may use argument in self-serving ways that they are in limited command of, it doesn't follow that they cannot achieve greater conscious command and come to draw on it in a way that will enhance their cognitive power.
Moreover, as my own most recent research clearly shows (Goldstein et al. Reference Goldstein, Crowell and Kuhn2009; Kuhn & Crowell, in press; Kuhn et al. Reference Kuhn, Goh, Iordanou and Shaenfield2008), sustained engagement of young people in dialogic argumentation yields more than the temporary “contextual effect” of a social setting that M&S identify. In their review of our research, they focus on earlier work in which on a single occasion participants are asked to generate an argument to support their view regarding the cause of a particular social problem (Kuhn Reference Kuhn1991). The participants generally do poorly, with little sign of improvement from adolescence through old age, tending to describe a plausible scenario of how the problem could arise and failing to differentiate that scenario from actual or potential evidence that this is how it does in fact arise.
In more recent work, we have engaged young people in sustained dialogic argumentation about significant issues. We focus on middle school as an optimal period to undertake this effort, and we follow Billig (1987), Graff (Reference Graff2003), and, before him, the sociocultural tradition of Vygotsky (Reference Vygotsky1978) and others, in taking the everyday social practice of argumentation as a starting point and pathway for development of individual argumentive skill. The dialogic context provides the “missing interlocutor” (Graff Reference Graff2003) that gives expository argument its point. The medium of discourse is electronic, yielding the significant advantage of providing a transcript of the exchange that remains available throughout and following the discourse. Contributions to face-to-face discourse, in contrast, disappear as soon as they are spoken. In addition to serving as a reference point and framework during the dialogs, these transcripts become the object of various reflective activities participants engage in.
With sustained engagement over multiple months, dialogic argumentation progresses from what starts out as the norm among young adolescents – exposition of one's own views with scant attention to those of the opponent – to recognition of the need to attend to the opponent's claims and identify weaknesses, and from there to sustained sequences of counterargument and rebuttal. Perhaps most important, not immediately but with time, these newly developed skills transfer to the individual context that M&S focus on. Relative to a carefully matched comparison group at the same school, our participants wrote superior individual essays on a new topic, ones more often addressing strengths and weaknesses of both sides of an issue. Equally important is young people's progress in the epistemological domain of recognizing the centrality of counterargument and of evidence to sound argumentation. Again relative to the comparison group, participants showed greater recognition of the role of both, for example in seeking information to bring to bear on their arguments.
In a word, we need to examine how argument may come to be used under these favorable, supportive conditions, not only under more ordinary conditions. If broader engagement of this sort were to become the norm, who can say what the argumentive potential of future generations is? With education systems worldwide claiming commitment to the broad goal of students learning to use their minds well, so as to be able to apply them to new, unknown problems, we should at least seriously explore the question.
In the target article, Mercier & Sperber (M&S) make the strong claim that epistemic goals are not well served by argumentive reasoning because it does not enhance the accuracy or validity of one's claims. Evidence is too ample to deny that people commonly invoke argumentive reasoning to support their assertions in ways that are habitual, often mindless, and self-serving. Where I would fault M&S, rather, is in their focus on how argumentive reasoning most often does function, to the exclusion of how it can (and for some does) come to function, as a consequence of education, engagement, and a recognition of its epistemic value. Although people may use argument in self-serving ways that they are in limited command of, it doesn't follow that they cannot achieve greater conscious command and come to draw on it in a way that will enhance their cognitive power.
Moreover, as my own most recent research clearly shows (Goldstein et al. Reference Goldstein, Crowell and Kuhn2009; Kuhn & Crowell, in press; Kuhn et al. Reference Kuhn, Goh, Iordanou and Shaenfield2008), sustained engagement of young people in dialogic argumentation yields more than the temporary “contextual effect” of a social setting that M&S identify. In their review of our research, they focus on earlier work in which on a single occasion participants are asked to generate an argument to support their view regarding the cause of a particular social problem (Kuhn Reference Kuhn1991). The participants generally do poorly, with little sign of improvement from adolescence through old age, tending to describe a plausible scenario of how the problem could arise and failing to differentiate that scenario from actual or potential evidence that this is how it does in fact arise.
In more recent work, we have engaged young people in sustained dialogic argumentation about significant issues. We focus on middle school as an optimal period to undertake this effort, and we follow Billig (1987), Graff (Reference Graff2003), and, before him, the sociocultural tradition of Vygotsky (Reference Vygotsky1978) and others, in taking the everyday social practice of argumentation as a starting point and pathway for development of individual argumentive skill. The dialogic context provides the “missing interlocutor” (Graff Reference Graff2003) that gives expository argument its point. The medium of discourse is electronic, yielding the significant advantage of providing a transcript of the exchange that remains available throughout and following the discourse. Contributions to face-to-face discourse, in contrast, disappear as soon as they are spoken. In addition to serving as a reference point and framework during the dialogs, these transcripts become the object of various reflective activities participants engage in.
With sustained engagement over multiple months, dialogic argumentation progresses from what starts out as the norm among young adolescents – exposition of one's own views with scant attention to those of the opponent – to recognition of the need to attend to the opponent's claims and identify weaknesses, and from there to sustained sequences of counterargument and rebuttal. Perhaps most important, not immediately but with time, these newly developed skills transfer to the individual context that M&S focus on. Relative to a carefully matched comparison group at the same school, our participants wrote superior individual essays on a new topic, ones more often addressing strengths and weaknesses of both sides of an issue. Equally important is young people's progress in the epistemological domain of recognizing the centrality of counterargument and of evidence to sound argumentation. Again relative to the comparison group, participants showed greater recognition of the role of both, for example in seeking information to bring to bear on their arguments.
In a word, we need to examine how argument may come to be used under these favorable, supportive conditions, not only under more ordinary conditions. If broader engagement of this sort were to become the norm, who can say what the argumentive potential of future generations is? With education systems worldwide claiming commitment to the broad goal of students learning to use their minds well, so as to be able to apply them to new, unknown problems, we should at least seriously explore the question.