At the present Van Laar is working on the issue of one-sidedness in argumentative discourse. The allegation of one-sidedness is a frequent phenomenon in public debate. One-sidedness occurs whenever an arguer fails to deal with crucial critical questions or objections that could be raised against her arguments, or when a critic disregards vital reasons that could be brought against him. It is not so much a matter of irrelevance or falseness, but of an incompleteness in reasoning. The overall aim of this study in argumentation theory is to develop a theory for analysing and evaluating one-sidedness from a dialectical perspective and to apply this theory to the Dutch debate on the integration of minorities.
In order to analyse and evaluate one-sidedness, a formal model for critical discussion will be developed. In line with the dialectical approach to argumentation, the rules that constitute the model provide the opponent and proponent with rights and obligations with respect to rather elementary discussion moves. However, rules for critical discussion do not suffice for dealing with one-sidedness. In addition, norms for presenting complex arguments and composite critiques are needed. These norms provide dialectical obligations, such as giving the other party a fair hearing when anticipating possible objections or arguments. In order to enable discussants to evaluate allegations of fallacious one-sidedness themselves, the model contains rules for performing metadiscussions about the correctness of such allegations.
Starting from the model, a qualitative empirical case-study is carried out on the Dutch debate about whether the integration of minorities has failed. This results in a theoretically informed assessment of the public reasoning in the debate, in particular of supposedly one-sided arguments and criticisms, and of reasoning about one-sidedness. The project includes a comparison of the dialectical standards studied by theorists of argumentation and the norms of public reasoning studied by political scientists, especially those related to 'deliberation'.