Michael A. Gilbert

Michael Alan Gilbert (born 1945 His most notable work is on models of argumentation that challenge logical, dialectical, and rhetorical traditions. He developed the theories of multi-modal argumentation and coalescent argumentation to showcase and address the mechanisms used by interlocutors to argue in the marketplace. He was awarded a PhD in philosophy in 1974.

In 1975, Gilbert was appointed as a professor of philosophy at York University and directed the Department of Philosophy's undergraduate program through the 1990s and 2000s.

Gilbert was known to deliver lectures as Miqqi Alicia once every semester. In doing so, he transformed into a "walking illustration" of the core tenets underpinning his scholarship – one that positioned gender as a social construct "propped up by deeply imbedded conditioning" and affirmed that "what is constructed can be deconstructed" insofar that the sex you're born with should not limit your freedom to cross over into another.

Research

Models of argumentation Gilbert's models of argumentation recognize that discourse cannot always be taken at face value. He discourages reviewing discourse from a strict logical lens and resorting to literal understandings i.e. emotions do not belong in arguments; innuendo or sarcasm do not belong, and so on. Instead, his emphasis is on observing what is happening and uncovering what lies at the heart of an argument i.e. the sociolinguistic and sociopsychological aspects.

According to Gilbert, his work on argumentation aligns more closely with the traditional rhetoric ("an argument is an attempt at persuasion to reach an agreement") as opposed to logic, which focuses on the product of the argument or dialectical concerns such as interaction between interlocutors. "In the logical view, we express everything in propositions while in the rhetorical we express ourselves in messages," he explained. He finds traditional rhetoric to be "more contextual" as it offers "a lot more information than the mysterious and highly metaphysical proposition." As a result, both multi-modal argumentation and coalescent argumentation are "less antagonistic to the rhetorical argumentative tradition than the logical one" with the former recognizing the "modes of persuasion utilized by arguers" and the latter theorizing that "arguments can function from agreement." That said, Gilbert's work parts with the rhetorical tradition by not relying on oral or written language as a means of persuasion. His work is influenced by contemporary rhetorical theorists Wayne Brockriede and Charles Arthur Willard.

Multi-model argumentation With a background in philosophical tradition and extensive training in logic, Gilbert's work challenges how logic conceives of arguments. In 1976, his first paper in the area of formal logic was published by Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. While teaching an introductory course on logic as a graduate student, he realized that his class, consisting predominantly of pupils from an arts background, struggled with formal logic. Pupils with an engineering background however found formal logic less challenging, but did not account for its philosophical aspects. "That class really caused me to pause and think, leading me to design a curriculum that taught non-standard logic," Gilbert said, "I started to become unhappy with formal logic and my redesigned curriculum was motivated by philosophical issues, such as truths and falsities." He also observed that people in the marketplace did not argue very logically most of the time. "It's not that they were being illogical; it was that they weren't using just logic when they argued. They demonstrated other ways of thinking," Gilbert explained. As a philosopher, he continued to become more and more dissatisfied with formal logic because he felt that it wasn't serving the public. "Teaching modal logic or working with logical axioms, did not truly impact how we reason in real argumentative settings," he said, "Formal logic, and even informal logic, focus on arguments as products or proof. When we evaluate an argument's premises and determine whether they support their conclusion – this has limited usefulness for solving disagreements between people." These "recollections of influences" prompted his development of the multi-modal argumentation model that respects the "rhetorical tradition" and is based on how people actually conduct themselves in an argument.

According to Gilbert: "An argument's persuasive force is based on the mode that is most prominent in each argument." He theorized that argumentative interactions rarely occur in a single mode and typically feature a combination of these modes, with one of them being the "more predominant mode of persuasion based on particular circumstances." In later publications, he acknowledged that these modes are not exhaustive. For example, people who yell in argumentative discussions are likely to be shunned and isolated for going against the universally-accepted rule of not being verbally abusive to others in a conversation.

Coalescent argumentation As a young scholar, Gilbert noticed that the biggest compliment that one could receive was "he is very bright," insofar to mean that "he was a good fighter." He was disturbed by this aspect of philosophy that focused on disagreement. Eventually, he came to understand that the lack of focus on agreement was a direct result of the importance designated to the concept of "truth". Early in his career, when he presented a paper at a Computer Science conference, he stated that 1 + 1 does not always equal 2 as a "sophism for philosophers." Later, he was approached by a mathematician who argued that the statement was not a sophism and referenced mathematical theories to validate his point. Through this interaction, Gilbert realized that people often mistake their goals during an argument, convinced that they want one thing when they want another. "For example, I ask to borrow your car today, but my real goal is to do my errands. And you tell me that no one can drive your car except you. Then, when you find out I need to run errands, you offer to drive me into town so that I can complete my errands, and my goal has been achieved," he clarified. He further positioned coalescent argumentation as a "normative ideal" that emphasizes the "willingness to explore what matters to all arguers" by uncovering their "values, attitudes, beliefs, or feelings" to reach a point of agreement. "What may seem like very diverse viewpoints are brought closer together (coalesced) in this way," he wrote in a paper presented at first International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation at Brock University, St. Catherines.

The coalescent argumentation model aligns with the Harvard Business School's principled negotiation model and cooperative arguing models similar to those proposed by Josina M. Makau and Debian L. Marty.

Applications in argumentation theory According to Gilbert, people feel inclined to use the four modes of argument to move the other party towards a logical understanding or conclusion. However, more often than not, the conclusion might not even be logical, due to the presence of logical components but not a completely logical discourse. He uses child custody arrangements and instances of shared childcare to further illustrate his theory. "How one feels about the children is very important. If I can understand as a co-parent that you feel strongly about little Johnny, as strongly as I do, that's really important," he explained. In this scenario, a more logical course of action is to come up with a solution that both parents agree to ("I will do this and you will do that"), but to get there they "must feel that it's right." The emotion, that the solution is "right," carries more weight than a "logical presentation of arguments." Out of the many groups and subgroups of transgender people, his work focuses on three: early-declared transsexuals (those who identified and came out as transsexual in their childhood), late-declared transsexuals (those who came out as transsexual in their adulthood), and cross-dressers.

His early research showed that "early-declared transsexuals do not have a strong sense of difference in personality or internal phenomenology before and after transition from one gender to another." However, due to the "public nature of socialization" that allows transgender individuals with the possibility of becoming a member of the "opposite" sex, an average cross dresser or a late-declared transsexual may not have a "strong and early enough identification to qualify on this ground." In 2008, he received a grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to conduct a "careful scholarly investigation on the philosophical basis of the distinction between early and late-declared transsexuals, and its implications for gender theory."

Gilbert considers feminism to be an "extremely important" part of being a committed cross dresser. According to him, his "woman-self" exists and is tutored by "paying careful attention to the habits, values and customs of the women around me." He believes that the insistence of trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) that "no one not born a woman can be a woman […] flies in the face of the difficulties of defining female and male, the reality of the social construction of gender and the reality of innumerable trans people." S/he is the book review editor and regular columnist for Transgender Tapestry, the magazine of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE). S/he received the IFGE Trinity Award in 2007. S/he is a founding member of the Toronto transgender group Xpressions, and was the director of Fantasia Fair (now known as TransWeek), an annual week-long conference that convenes cross-dressers, transgender and gender questioning people in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Activism In 1995, Gilbert attended the first International Congress on Gender, Crossdressing, and Sex, where he met and befriended Jake Hale, a transgender professor at California State University, Northridge. That same year, the president of York University assembled a taskforce on heterosexism and homosexuality to ensure that the institution was more open, more accessible and more welcoming for gender-diverse people. Gilbert, who was otherwise supportive of the taskforce, noticed that the mandate did not mention trans people at all. In response, he drafted a memo to the administration and was invited to voice his concerns in front of a committee. Speaking of the challenges trans people face in university settings, Gilbert underscored the need for gender-neutral spaces on campus: "A transitioning male to female [person] is at work all day, comes to campus, has to shave. Where do you go? Do you go to the men's room, wearing women's clothes, or the women's room and stand there shaving? It doesn't work, right?"

Gilbert has been married thrice. He was married to his first wife for fourteen years until their divorce, and his second wife for two years before being widowed. He has been married to his current wife for thirty years. He has one son and five grandchildren.

Publications Gilbert published the first edition of How to Win an Argument with McGraw-Hill in 1979, the second in 1996 with John Wiley and Sons, and the third in 2008 with University Press of America. In the 1980s published two novels, Office Party and Yellow Angel, with former being adapted into a screenplay for Hostile Takeover (1988) by Canadian director George Mihalka. He also authored Coalescent Argumentation (1997), first published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (acquired by Taylor & Francis), and Arguing with People (2014), published by Broadview Press.

Books

Arguing with People. 2014. Broadview Press. . Coalescent Argumentation. 1997. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Yellow Angel. 1985. New York: Simon & Schuster Pocketbooks. Office Party. 1981. New York: Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. How To Win An Argument .1979. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Journal articles

Gilbert, M. 2018. Multi-Modal 2020: Multi-Modal Argumentation 30 Years Later. Puppo, F. (eds.) Informal Logic 42(3):487-506. Gilbert, M. 2007. Natural normativity: Argumentation theory as an engaged discipline. Informal Logic 27(2): 149–161. Gilbert, M. 2011. The Kisceral: Reason and Intuition in Argumentation. Argumentation. 25: 163–170. . Gilbert, Miqqi Alicia (2009–07). "Defeating Bigenderism: Changing Gender Assumptions in the Twenty-first Century. Hypatia. 24 (3): 93–112. . ISBN 0887-5367.