The articles in this issue speak for themselves individually. A brief introduction can do no more than to suggest a reason for their appearance together.
The conclusions of any investigator are shaped by the questions he has undertaken to answer. In this issue of Argumentation, there are not many cases in which the questions addressed by one investigator overlap with those of another. Thus there are probably not many theses expressed here over which it would be relevant for one contributor to this issue to argue with another. Rather than attempting to display disagreements among contributors, I shall take what I think is the more fruitful course of developing, in brief span, the problematic of philosophical argumentation -a list of questions which our contributors have explicitly or implicitly answered in one way or another, or which their failure to answer betokens in itself a view of the nature of philosophical argumentation.
Arguments are used by at least some philosophers -it would be difficult to formulate a plausible objection to this proposition. But are there any philosophers who have not argued? And if not, must philosophers argue? If so, why? These are questions at least indirectly addressed by some of the contributors to this issue. John Woods, for example, declares that "Philosophy is essentially and inescapably agonic." Maurice Finocchiaro regards argumentation as one of "two basic ... features of Philosophy." (The other is dialectic, on which I will say more later.) George Yoos takes a somewhat more moderate view of the role of argumentation in philosophy, regarding it as interwoven with other strands. Alan Brinton focuses on the use of examples in moral philosophy, but is interested in these examples only insofar as they are the premises of arguments. The remaining contributors do not take explicit positions on the ubiquity of argumentation in philosophy (although Michel Meyer comes close to asserting this thesis), but it is noteworthy that no contributor either says or implies that there are any philosophers who have not argued. Yet this is a plausible position. Some of those concerned with this question are not easily able to detect arguments in the later Wittgenstein -or in the Tractatus either, for that matter.
If not all philosophers argue, then presumably some of them must do something else. Even if all philosophers do argue, they might also do something else. A further question, then, is "What, if any, are the ingredients of philosophical discourse over and above argumentation?" We should ask also at this point "Which, if any, of these ingredients are Argumentation 2 (1988) 153-155.