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Perelmanian Universal Audience and the
Epistemic Aspirations of Argument
Scott R Aikin
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perelmanian universal audience
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perelmanian universal audience
(no matter how large the audience is) but also whether it achieves these
goals under the right conditions (cf. Crosswhite 1989,161). That is, universal
appeal in the universal audience may define effective argumentation (a prag
matic aspiration), but it does not yet bear on the validity of the argument.
The UA is a relative criterion for assessing the quality of an argument, and
whether an argument in fact convinces all rational humans still leaves it an
open question as to whether or not it ought to convince all rational humans.2
The universal audience, then, cannot simply be a sociologicalposit of speakers
but, rather, a rationally regulative notion. This, again, is what I have termed
the epistemic role of universal audience.
Without a rational requirement for universality, the normative differ
ence between argument and flattery dissolves. Arguments with particular
audiences are panderings to parochial interests and views, and those with
universal audience are gratifications of cosmopolitan inclinations. Perel
man notes the difference between effective and valid argumentation with
his distinction between persuasive and convincing argumentation, and
UA defines the audience to whom arguments yielding conviction must be
addressed. We are duty bound to respect the difference between effective
and valid argumentation, and in The Realm of Rhetoric, Perelman qualifies
the UA in a fashion that is designed to address the question of the nor
mative purchase of universal appeal in convincing arguments: "Validity is
relative to a competent audience, most often to the universal audience" (140).
This property of competence, then, is the normatively significant difference.
Philosophy is Perelmans exemplar for a discipline devoted to addressing
the universal audience as competent assessors of arguments. The philoso
pher is not bound to address specific audiences but is devoted to address
those "capable of following his reasoning" (RR, 17). This, of course, is not
all of humanity but, in fact, a potentially vanishingly small group: "Instead,
he [the philosopher] searches for facts, truths, and universal values that
even if all the members of the universal audience do not explicitly adhere
to them?an impossibility?are nevertheless supposed to compel assent of
every sufficiently enlightened being" (RR, 17). Two important points hang
here. First note that though facts, truths, and universal values may be con
ceptually distinct from de facto universal adherence, Perelman denies the
possibility of them actually being different. This, I take it, is an expression of
the pragmatic element of universal audience, in that these facts are objects
of ultimate agreement. Second, note that these facts, truths, and univer
sal values, when appealed to in the right circumstances, are supposed to
yield adherence from the competent. They are supposed to compel universal
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SCOTT F. AI KIN
assent?as such, these have de jure force. This is the epistemic element of
UA. On this point, Alan Gross notes that the term fact, then, has a dis
tinctly epistemic force: "Facts are true assertions about the world, assertions
about which everyone must agree" (1999, 205).
The question now hangs: Are pragmatic and epistemic features of uni
versal audience really different functions of the same notion, or are they
completely different notions altogether? Lisa Ede (1981, 122) and Richard
Long (1983, 108) take it that they are separate notions. They then argue
that Perelmans universal audience is incoherent. This is a non sequitur,
for with the distinction, we have a clearer view. It seems UA cannot sin
gularly fulfill both roles, for there is a gulf between the pragmatic goal of
universal adherence and the epistemic goal of validity. Numbers constitute
the first, and competence constitutes the second. On the basis of these
constitutive elements, it seems clear that they are, in fact, two different
audiences: pragmatically universal and epistemically universal audiences.3
What is necessary now is an articulation of the two notions as independent
from each other. That is, as I take it, the two faces of UA represent the two
separable goals of argumentation?resolving disagreements and produc
ing knowledge. They often go hand in hand, but the two goals are not
internally related. One may resolve disagreements or increase commitment
with false or unjustified claims (which do not count as knowledge), and
one may give arguments that are conducive of knowledge but only deepen
disagreements.
The pragmatic universal audience is clear enough in its regulative con
tent, for it is a' direct consequence of the Perelmanian axiom of rhetoric
that arguments are addressed to audiences as gatherings of those whom
the speaker wants to influence by his or her arguments (RR, 14; TNR, 30).
However, the epistemic UA needs clarification?it serves the purpose of
defining validity, and in turn, it defines facts, truths, and universal values
that may obtain independent of universal adherence. Its purposes are clear
enough, but what is the content of epistemically universal audience?
Ill
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IV
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perelmanian universal audience
singular notion of UA. I will call them the regress/circularity problem and
the tautology/redundancy problem. I will address them in order.
The basic puzzle of regress/circularity is that if we are giving an argu
ment to a particular audience, some members of that audience must not
have a commitment to the conclusion C we are out to demonstrate. We are
out to elicit assent, so it seems they must not have assented or do not assent.
This is a case of disagreement. Given that there is disagreement about C, it
is not universally adhered to. On a nondisambiguated theory of universal
audience, it does not count as a fact for arguments. Consequently, if reasons
are given for C, those who reject it may instead take C's questionable posi
tion as evidence of the questionable status of the reasons proffered. The
arguments, from the listener's perspective, will beg the question or at least
be as controversial as the conclusion, and the arguer's task will be to give
further and further reasons. It is an old saw in philosophy that one think
er's modus ponens is another's modus fattens, and the implication is that for
every reason given to support an unpopular conclusion, either those reasons
may make the conclusion more acceptable or the conclusion may make
those reasons less popular. Henry Johnstone captures the regress/circular
ity problem for UA in the variety of views regarding almost every premise
for philosophical argument: "To address and argument to people unable
in principle to listen to it is not only frustrating but question-begging. If
the Cosmological Argument addresses the universal audience, it begs the
question ... for it assumes the existence of problems the existence of which
[some] people do not assume. For them, these alleged problems are not
problems at all. If the Cosmological Argument is to avoid bearing the taint
of petition, it must accordingly be addressed to a particular audience rather
than a universal one" (1991, 88). The sociological facts of cognitive diver
sity are against there being enough cognitive overlap for there to be much
constituting the commitments of a universal audience.9 But this problem
arises only for a singular nondisambiguated theory of UA. If we are careful
to distinguish epistemic and pragmatic universal audiences, the problem
may be dissolved. For one, if philosophical argument is addressed to an
epistemic UA, the fact that there may be thinkers who reject some premises
or hold the issue in contempt does not have to problematize the argument.
If the argument adds to our knowledge and addresses the concerns of a
wide enough particular audience, that should be enough. There are always
cognitive outliers and crackpots aplenty, and so long as one could fashion an
argument to address them, given sufficient time and resources, one does not
have to take the failure of universal assent as an indicator of an argument.
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perelmanian universal audience
(1972, 20). This, of course, makes the constraints of the universal audience
empty?for if the audience is defined in terms of the argument, they may
not lay antecedent claims on it.10
However, given that the UA is disambiguated and if we take it that
the normative constraint of epistemic universal audience is defined by the
correct principles of evidence and inference, the tautology disappears. One
addresses an audience of virtuous believers (the competent), namely, those
who operate on the correct epistemic norms. The notion of an epistemic UA
is analogous to what the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce calls the
attitudes of researchers at the end of inquiry: "The real and the unreal . . .
consist of those [cognitions] which, at a time sufficiently future, the com
munity will always continue to re-affirm; and those which, under the same
conditions, will ever after be denied" (1868,154). On the Peircian model, the
community of researchers at the end of inquiry stand in ideal epistemic
conditions?they have all the data, and they themselves are competent to
interpret it. Addressing an argument to such an audience is not designed
to win their adherence (they are smarter and have more data than we do)
but, rather, their approval The question we ask when we consider our argu
ments from such a perspective is whether a community that knows more
and reasons better than we do would nevertheless hold our present rea
soning as correct or appropriate under our conditions. If it turns out that
our argument is what they themselves would believe on the basis of, we
really have done something special. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca invoke
Plato's dream of producing arguments that would be "capable of convinc
ing the gods themselves" (TNR, 7). And such aspirations are not unusual,
though they are regularly put in theological language, instead of epistemic
terms. Mathematicians often use the phrase "proof in the mind of God" to
praise a proof s elegance and simplicity?as though to say that the proof
could not have been done better by an omniscient being.11 The theological
references are stand-ins for epistemic terms, however?namely, that if the
gods are omniscient, they know not only every fact but the best argument
for every proposition. Given the loftiness of this aspiration, we do also need
to bring our arguments down to earth. As such, we might say that we argue
with one eye to our pragmatic and particular audiences in order to gain
their adherence and with the other eye to the epistemic universal audience
in order to gain their approval. We may not give the arguments that would
move the gods or even arguments that they themselves would give, but we
are nevertheless bound to give ones that they would say are good enough
for humans. The point of putting this in terms of UA instead of theology
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validity for their arguments is conflated with the actual criteria for validity,
which yields "extremely relative" criteria (1995,124). Alternately, Platonism
renders the normative notion of UA independent of the speakers, but in
so doing it cannot explain the actions of speakers. This is probably the fate
of a good deal of the metaphysics of value to be caught between the Scylla
of tying values to functions of valuing subjects and thereby losing their
critical purchase and the Charybdis of tying the values to independent
objects and thereby losing their explanatory power. This dilemma, however,
is unnecessary.
A reasonable solution is to employ the distinction between concepts and
conceptions. The concept of epistemic UA is that audience that instantiates
all the epistemic virtues and which reflects the ideal position from which
to judge the quality of an argument. The criterion for validity is whether an
argument lives up to this standard. Each speaker has his or her own concep
tion of what constitutes such an audience both in its virtues and in its com
mitments, and these conceptions will direct the ways speakers formulate
their arguments with an eye to validity. As a consequence we can make good
sense of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas claim: "Each speakers universal
audience can from an external viewpoint be regarded as a particular one"
(TNR, 30). In one sense, universal audiences are purely constructions of
speakers, as conceptions of standards of argumentative validity each speaker
uses. But in another sense, epistemic standards are independent of and stand
as corrections to those conceptions as the concept of universal audience. So,
in order to understand some argument, we must also grasp the arguers con
ception of the UA. But in order to criticize the argument, we must do so in
terms of how well that conception lives up to the concept of the UA.
Metaphysics is hard business, and it is beyond the scope of this article
to settle the issue of the ontology of norms. However, there are a few things
to be said regarding what the universal audience, particularly in its epis
temic instantiation, is. It is, in broad outline, a deflationary story. There is
knowledge in the world. We humans are often good at not only attaining it
but transmitting it. Argumentation is our primary means of doing this, and
so arguments that achieve this end are epistemically successful. The epis
temic UA is simply the criterion for whether or not an argument actually
transmits knowledge or the justification that may constitute knowledge.
Additionally, as Crosswhite (1989, 164) has noted, what I call pragmatic
UA can give us meta-evidence about the quality of the evidence in these
arguments. We can test the quality of our reasons by submitting them to
criticism from those who disagree. We can note the significance of overlap
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is different from his solution to the first content problem, is not to take i
that this meta-audience is to be conceived as a further paragon audience
but, rather, as a native sense of correct reasoning that is made concrete as w
assess new arguments: "The preconceptual sense we have of the undefine
universal audience is determinate enough so that we know this audienc
when we encounter it; we know it when it does become determinate, whe
it does come to appearance" (1996,152). That is, Crosswhite holds that w
have a tacit familiarity with the undefined universal audience, one that i
activated as our dispositions to respond appropriately to its presentation
But the normativity question still is not answered?Why take it that thes
native dispositions are justificatory? What is the nature of this justification
beyond our natural inclination to assent? Unless we have an account as t
why these cognitive tendencies are reliable indicators of good argument
valid reasoning, or knowledge-conferring warrant, the undefined universal
audience not only will remain undefined but will be rendered impotent.
In stark contrast to Crosswhite's, Alan Gross's interpretation of the
grounding for universal audience is to grasp the other horn of Crosswhite s
dilemma for content, in that Gross's project is to rehabilitate the worrie
of particularized universal audiences. Gross notes that the main featur
of arguments addressed to the UA is their distinct content, in that the
"aim at the transformation or reinforcements in the areas of fact, truth
and presumption" (Gross and Dearin 2003, 36). The UA is still a construc
tion for Gross, as with Crosswhite, but this construction is not arrived a
by stripping and reforming existing audiences; it is, instead, "the imagined
community of all rational beings" (Gross and Dearin 2003,40). Then Gros
notes that all conceptions, as constructed from imagination, cannot achieve
their goal because they are always implicated in the values of the speaker
In the case of Lincoln's portions of his debate with Douglas, Gross argues
"As wide as this audience may have been in Lincoln's time, however, as wide
as it may be over time, nevertheless it does not represent every rationa
human being" (Gross and Dearin 2003,40). Lincoln, when addressing val
ues, addressed a particular audience. When any speaker addresses value, o
Gross's interpretation, that speaker addresses a particular audience (Gros
and Dearin 2003, 36). This interpretation seems contrary to Perelman's
expressed conception of universality in The Realm of Rhetoric: "Universa
values play an important role in argumentation because they allow us to
present specific values" (27). The point is that such presentations of univer
sal values would be for a particular audience, and though this is clear, th
presentation of a universal value is possible only insofar as the UA woul
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assent to the value. That one addresses values to particular audiences can be
conceded without conceding that ones case may not also be judged against
universal standards. Gross is certainly right that addresses, speeches, and
calls for change are addressed to, as in spoken to, a particular audience, but
that does not determine the standards implicated in those accounts?the
demands of some values are that they be judged by the universal audience.
Christopher Tindale's rhetorical model of argument is expressly Perel
manian in the sense of being a reconstructed version of Perelmans UA,
and Tindale takes it that the grounding of his notion of universal audience
arises from the norms of rhetoric. "I don't propose a thorough adoption of
his [Perelmans] ideas, but a development and adaptation of them within
a rhetorical model of argumentation" (1999,16). The question that divides
Tindale and me is whether epistemic norms are required for the UA to be
defensible or whether the notion may be exclusively rhetorical. My ear
lier argument in section III that epistemic concepts are ineliminable from
audience acceptance places a serious onus on the rhetorical program, but it
seems that Tindale's model may be able to accommodate a good deal of the
argument, in that Tindale notes that audiences are not passive but active
in weighing and responding to arguments. The standards I call epistemic
presumably Tindale would say are "contextually reasonable" (1999, 92). As
such, Tindale holds that the logical models confuse the aspirations of audi
ence response and the overall goal of argument: "The aim of argumentation
is not the uncovering of Truth ... but the eliciting or strengthening of an
audience's adherence" (1999, 96). The construction of a UA is a contextual
matter?one that appeals to the present standards of reasonableness for the
audience and situation in question. Universality is refigured, on Tindale's
(1999,119) model, as fitting properly with a context?universalizable prem
ises are ones that do not raise questions in the context they are proposed.
A worry with the rhetorical-contextual account here is that it destroys
the very purpose of universal audience?that of providing a criterion for
validity. If an argument is appropriate for a context and is successful in
eliciting agreement in its audience, it is nevertheless an open question as to
whether it is valid. The fact that Tindale additionally claims that arguments
are not after "Truth" causes further difficulties, for it is not clear why audi
ences' objections bear on what seem clearly to be cases of logical support
or soundness in arguments. The result, as I take it, is that purely rhetorical
conceptions of UA run headlong into the relativism charge earlier posed
by Rob Grootendorst and Frans van Eemeren (1995, 124) for Perelmans
universal audience?if the norms of argument become indexed exclusively
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SCOTT F. AI KIN
Vanderbilt University
Western Kentucky University
NOTES
1.1 thank the anonymous reviewer for this challenge. See Jorgensen forthcom
a contrasting interpretation of this passage.
2. For articulations of this concern, see the following: Boger 2005,189; Crossw
1989,161; Golden 1986, 300; Grootendorst and van Eemeren 1995,123; Tindale 1991
Richard Feldman (1999,95) notes that under such conditions, the function of assen
in normative contexts, universal or otherwise.
3. A version of this point has been made by Alan Gross (2005, 18), in that
is an equivocation about how The New Rhetoric is a treatise on argumentation?th
argumentation in the sense of the evaluation of arguments or argumentation as the s
people arguing.
4. Others who have endorsed this strategy or one of folding epistemic norms bac
the pragmatic elements of universal assent are Burke (1984, 22-23), Goodwin (199
256
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perelmanian universal audience
Gross (1999,206,2000,332), and one of the anonymous reviewers for this article, who sug
gested that this is right "by definition."
5. For further work on the epistemic constraints on listener acceptance, see Heysse 1998.
6. On this feature of belief assessment, see Adler 2002, 29; Aikin 2006,329.
7. See Freeman 2005,334, for an argument with regard to recognizing warrant.
8. Without detectable irony or awareness of the intellectual banana peel, Lisa Ede
positively takes on such a task in her criticism of Perelman s universal audience and con
cludes that Perelman was "unable entirely to free himself from the conventional rationalist
model of argumentation" (1981,118).
9. Similar skepticism about arguments addressed to a universal audience (or the pos
sibility of there being any commitments that could be shared by all in such an audience)
has been expressed by Ray (1978, 372), Crosswhite (1989, 165), Tindale (1991, 295), and
Goodwin (1995, 222).
10. Scult (1976,179), Gross (1999,208), and Crosswhite (1989,164) express similar con
cerns that such a definition of universal audience makes room for speakers to rationalize
their standards once they give their arguments.
11. The mathematician Paul Erd?s often used the phrase "the book" to invoke the
image of a book of God's own proofs for all mathematical and geometric truths. One does
not have to believe in God to do mathematics, Erd?s quipped, but one must believe in the
book (Devlin 2000,140-41).
12. Gross's emphasis is on the constructedness of all audiences, universal and par
ticular. As a consequence, I take him to have grasped the relativism horn of the dilemma
(see Gross 1999, 203, 2000, 332). Additionally, Ray (1978, 363) is careful to analogize the
universal audience with conceptualist metaphysics (as opposed to Platonism) in the likes
of Rousseau and Kant, but the question still dogs the conceptualist tradition as to whether
it amounts to psychologistic relativism.
13. See Crosswhite, Fox, Reed, Scaltsas, and Stumpf 2004,190, for an account of other
additive elements of universal audience, most importantly, memory, intelligence, and "due
consideration," all of which are normatively significant, I hold, because of their epistemic
roles. This discussion, however, would take us beyond the scope of this project.
14. Note, importantly, that Crosswhite's interpretation will also count more as
another species of Perelmanian universal audiences, for his reading is revisionary in the
same sense that mine (and Tindale's to come) is. Crosswhite interprets UA as really a
form of paragon audience; Tindale, as rhetorical success; and I, as an epistemically ideal
community.
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