Argumentation from consequences in Chilean lawmaking debates: critical questions for evaluating its sufficiency

Abstract

Argumentation from consequences plays a central role in the justification and critical scru-tiny of legislative proposals. With a view to contributing to the ex ante evaluation of legisla-tion in Chile, this paper proposes instruments for analysing and evaluating argumentation from consequences in the general discussion of a bill. The theoretical starting points are the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and informal logic. The analytic instrument is an argument scheme to identify arguments from consequences in legislative discourse and reconstruct implicit premises. The evaluative instrument is a set of critical questions to de-termine the quality—specifically, the sufficiency—of an argument from consequences put forward in the general discussion of a bill.