Argumentative Norms: How Contextual Can They Be? A Cautionary Tale

It is true, as van Eemeren and Garssen say, that argumentation always occurs in context: to engage in argumentation, an arguer must be in some context or other. But are argument norms similarly contextual? That is, are the norms governing argument quality relative to or dependent upon the context in which the argument is either asserted or evaluated? Let contextualism be the view that criteria of argument quality vary by context: According to contextualists, whether an argument is good or not, and how good it is, depends upon the context in which it is either uttered or evaluated. In this paper I defend contextualism, but only within limits.