Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 114

In contrast with this traditional lack of scholarly interest for argumentative
decisions, recent studies have proposed to analyze argumentation as a decision-
making process, both theoretically (Paglieri 2009 , 2013b ; Paglieri and Castelfranchi
2010 ) and experimentally (Cionea et al. 2011 ; Hample et al. 2011 ). In what follows,
I will summarize the main results of this line of research, but first let us clarify
its relevance to the problem at hand — to wit, developing a balanced view of the
relationship between arguments and conflicts. In a nutshell, the guiding idea is that
our expectations on how arguing will impact on conflict (of beliefs, goals, values,
etc.) are crucial in determining whether to engage in argumentation at all and in
deciding how to do so. Thus, while most of the times 1 we indeed argue with the
aim of solving or defusing a conflict, our awareness of the inherent risks of conflict
escalation may justify avoiding or fleeing an argument, for fear of making things
worse. Seen in a decision-theoretic light, there is no longer a puzzle here: it is
precisely because we want our arguments to defuse conflicts that we factor the
dangers of polemical escalation in our argumentative decisions. If we want our
dialogical engagements to be rational and productive, we must take great care in
avoiding those moves that would make them violent and destructive. Thus conflict
looms large in argumentative decisions, both as a problem to solve and as a pitfall
to avoid.
Let us now look in greater detail to what a theory of argumentative decisions
looks like. In presenting a typology of the choices we make while arguing, it is
useful to follow the typical chronological order in which the arguer has to face them.
This criterion is by no means the only possible one, and the resulting taxonomy is
not necessarily intended to be exhaustive. But it does provide a convenient starting
point, both by giving some order to the discussion and by helping to better illustrate
argumentative decisions “in real life.” In light of these considerations, what follows
is meant as a first tentative process-based taxonomy of argumentative decisions
(discussed in greater detail elsewhere; see Paglieri 2009 , 2013a , b ):
(a) Argument engagement : the decision to enter an argument or not, either by
proposing one or by accepting to be drawn into one by the counterpart.
Considering engagement as a decision implies acknowledging that arguing is
not always the best option, and sometimes it is actually the worst (Martin and
Scheerhorn 1985 ; Hample and Benoit 1999 ; Cohen 2005 ; Goodwin 2005 , 2007 ;
Paglieri 2009 ). More generally, the strategic considerations that are relevant
in choosing whether to argue or not are best understood in terms of costs
and benefits, as exemplified by various contributions in Artificial Intelligence
1 But not always, e.g., in instances of what Walton ( 1998 ) labels eristic confrontation, where the
dialogical goal is to vent one's feelings at the opponent, not to solve any underlying conflict of
opinion—on the contrary, often with the reasonable expectation of exacerbating it.