Persuasion is indifferent to whether the belief it produces is true

The argument

Proponents of this position begin from the different conditions under which the two practices count as having succeeded. An argument succeeds when its reasons support its conclusion; if the reasons are bad the argument has failed, whatever effect it had on anyone. Persuasion succeeds when the audience moves. Proponents argue that this difference in success conditions is the source of the extra ethical weight, because only one of the two practices is answerable to the truth of what it leaves behind. The mechanism is that an answerable practice carries its own correction. A person committed to argumentation must care whether their premises hold, because a false premise defeats them on their own terms; the standard they have accepted does the policing. A person committed to persuasion has accepted a standard that is satisfied by a change of mind however produced, so nothing internal to the activity requires the belief to be sound. Proponents argue the ethical questions then arrive from outside and have to be imposed, which is precisely what makes them dilemmas rather than settled matters. Proponents add that this is visible in the ordinary vocabulary of the two practices. Arguments are called valid or fallacious, sound or unsound, and these are words about whether the reasoning works. Persuasion is called effective or ineffective, and the assessment says nothing about whether what was instilled is true. On this account the person persuading is permanently in a position where the thing they are trying to achieve and the thing they ought to care about can come apart, and the person arguing is not.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue the contrast depends on comparing an idealised argumentation with a cynical persuasion. In practice arguers select which reasons to advance and which objections to leave out, which makes them answerable to the same questions about honest means. They add that persuasion is frequently employed to spread conclusions the persuader believes true and has good reasons for, so indifference to truth is a possible abuse rather than a defining feature. Others object that the account mistakes a difference in vocabulary for a difference in ethics, since a practice can be assessed by standards its own vocabulary does not contain.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics argue the premise describes a standard for assessing arguments rather than a standard arguers actually work under. People argue in order to be believed, and an argument that convinces nobody is counted a failure by the person who made it whatever its logical merits. [Rejecting P2] The characterisation of persuasion is disputed as a caricature. Most persuaders operate under constraints of reputation, reciprocity and future dealing, which make the durability and accuracy of the belief they instil part of what counts as success for them. [Rejecting P3] Critics deny that an internal standard amounts to self-policing. The standard has to be applied by the arguer, who selects the premises and decides which objections count, so the corrective depends on the same good faith whose absence is the worry.