Sequencing Critical Moves for Ethical Argumentation Practice: Munazara and the Interdependence of Procedure and Agent

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to high-light an interdependence between proce-dural and agential norms that undermines their neat separation when appraising ar-gumentation. Drawing on the munazara tradition, we carve a space for sequencing in argumentation scholarship. Focusing on the antagonist’s sequencing of critical moves, we identify each sequence’s corre-sponding values of argumentation: coales-cence, reliability, and efficacy. These val-ues arise through the mediation of virtues and simultaneously underpin procedural as well as agential norms. Consequently, an ambiguity between procedure and agent becomes apparent. This ambiguity hints at the potential for a virtue theory of argu-mentation that draws on procedural norms.