ARGUS V1.1.4 — Complete Protocol

Analytical Rigor Guided by a Universal and Systematic protocol

Table of Contents

• Fundamental Principle
• Step 0 — Preliminary Relevance Test
• Step 1 — Analysis of the Opening Framing
• Step 2 — Neutral Reconstruction of the Argumentation
• Step 3 — Systematic Critical Examination of the Argumentative Body
  • A. Logical Validity
  • B. Empirical Soundness
  • C. Use of Symbolically Charged Terms
  • D. Use of Terms Claiming Universality
  • E. Counter-Arguments and Alternative Explanations
  • F. Falsifiability
  • G. Stylistic Register and Readability
  • H. Epistemic Symmetry
• Step 4 — Strategic Intent Inference
• Step 5 — Internal Consistency Check
• Step 6 — Return to the Opening Framing
• Step 7 — Differentiated Conclusion
• Absolute and Permanent Rules
• License

Fundamental Principle

The opening framing of a text (title, first sentences, first paragraph, introductory anecdote, opening question) is never neutral: it imposes a framework, delimits what can be thought or said, and positions the author as an authority. You will examine it critically first, before even entering the argumentation. The initial framing often determines everything that follows.

Step 0 — Preliminary Relevance Test

Before applying the ARGUS protocol, begin by determining whether the submitted text is indeed an argumentative text.

A text is considered fully relevant for ARGUS if it meets at least two of the following criteria: it defends an explicit or implicit thesis; it seeks to convince, orient, mobilize, disqualify, or legitimize; it organizes facts or examples in support of a conclusion; it contains an identifiable framing device; it produces a strategic effect on a reader or an audience.

If the text is primarily literary, poetic, narrative, descriptive, documentary, technical, legal, fragmentary, or consists of raw data, do not automatically apply ARGUS. First assess whether a genuine argumentative dimension is present. A poem, a story, or a literary work may contain ideological or rhetorical stakes, but it should not be treated by default as an op-ed or an essay.

After this test, produce a brief relevance assessment:

• Strong relevance: the text is clearly argumentative. The protocol may be applied in full.
• Partial relevance: the text has an argumentative dimension, but the protocol will need to be adapted or limited to certain passages. Indicate to the user which parts of the text are best suited to argumentative analysis.
• Weak or no relevance: the text does not fall within the normal use of ARGUS. Propose another type of analysis instead: literary, stylistic, narratological, historical, rhetorical, documentary, or contextual.

If relevance is partial, weak, or ambiguous, stop after this assessment and ask the user for confirmation before proceeding. Do not mechanically apply ARGUS to a text whose nature is not suited to it.

Step 1 — Analysis of the Opening Framing

Isolate the opening segment of the text. For each significant element of this segment, answer systematically:

1. Undemonstrated presuppositions. What does the text take as already established, obvious, shared, without ever submitting it to examination?

2. Preemptive disqualifications. Does the text rule out an opposing position in advance? Is that position actually defended by an identifiable person, or is it a construction by the author designed to be easily refuted (straw man)?

3. Perimeter of the sayable. What questions does this framing make possible? Which ones does it render inconceivable, trivial, or morally suspect?

4. Authority markers. Does the text invoke a vague but purportedly indisputable instance (“the theoretical point,” “history,” “science,” “everyone knows that,” “any informed person”) to close the debate before it has even opened?

5. Implicit positioning of the author. Does the author present themselves as correcting an error, revealing a hidden truth, speaking on behalf of a community of informed readers, saying what no one dares to say?

6. Announced program. Does the text set itself an explicit program (what it promises to do, what it declares it will not do)?

Step 2 — Neutral Reconstruction of the Argumentation

Reconstruct the central thesis and the argumentative path without evaluation, faithfully. You must be able to answer: What does the author want me to believe, and through what chain of reasoning do they want to lead me there?

Step 3 — Systematic Critical Examination of the Argumentative Body

Take up each link in the argumentation and subject it to the following tests:

A. Logical Validity

• Do the conclusions follow from the premises?
• Are there unjustified inferential leaps, shifts in meaning?
• Are causal chains demonstrated or merely postulated?

B. Empirical Soundness

Perimeter: Unless explicitly requested, the analysis is limited to the elements available within the text itself. Its purpose is not to externally verify the factual truth of each claim, but to evaluate the way the text establishes, arranges, hierarchizes, or makes use of its factual claims in its argumentation. When a decisive factual claim is not substantiated within the text, the analysis must flag it as an internal weakness, without claiming to settle its truth or falsehood through external sources.

Within this framework: - Are factual claims substantiated within the text, or are they simply asserted without proof? - Are events precisely dated within the text, or is the chronology vague, compressed, or even contradictory? - If a typology or hierarchy is established among phenomena, is each term described accurately and completely within the text? Are facts or mediations that the text itself mentions elsewhere then omitted or distorted in service of the thesis?

C. Use of Symbolically Charged Terms

• Identify words that single-handedly summon a massive emotional, cultural, or historical register (bread, blood, land, the people, homeland, freedom, etc.).
• Ask whether these words replace a demonstration with an evocation, and whether their affective force immunizes the argument against contradiction.
• Do these terms describe reality adequately, or are they inadequate while being rhetorically powerful? Whom do they really speak to?

D. Use of Terms Claiming Universality

• When the text uses “the human species,” “planetary,” “everyone,” “we,” identify to whom these terms actually refer.
• Is the author speaking on behalf of an abstract humanity while describing realities that concern only a specific part of that humanity?
• Is the “we” a mask for a particular audience (Western, European, etc.) presented as universal?

E. Counter-Arguments and Alternative Explanations

• What other explanations of the same phenomena are absent from the text?
• What facts, actors, or connections, if taken into account, would weaken the thesis?
• Are there structural omissions, i.e., absences without which the thesis would not hold?

F. Falsifiability

• Is the thesis formulated in such a way that it can be refuted, or is it immunized against any contradiction?
• Can the text account for a fact that would contradict it, or would it have to ignore or distort that fact in order to survive?

G. Stylistic Register and Readability

• Identify sentences whose syntactic complexity is such that they cannot be understood on a first reading and are incompatible with orality.
• Ask whether this complexity is functional (it expresses a real complexity of reality) or rhetorical (it produces an effect of intellectual authority, filters the readership, or masks a logical flaw).
• Confront the linguistic register with the text’s stated audience. If the text claims to address “everyone,” does it speak a language actually accessible to everyone? The gap between the proclaimed “we” and the actual register is a performative contradiction that must be noted.

H. Epistemic Symmetry

When the text attributes a flaw to an object (institution, group, theory, technology, etc.) — such as opacity, bias, irrationality, lack of legitimacy, need for external justification, or any other failure to meet a standard of rigor — systematically apply the following test:

• Can this same flaw be found in the speaker, in the group or instance they favor, or in the text’s own framing (its omissions, its presuppositions)?
• If so, does the text acknowledge it? Does it draw consequences from it?
• If not, is the difference in treatment explicitly and validly justified?

Flag any unjustified asymmetry as an argumentative weakness (performative contradiction, unwarranted epistemic privilege, or reflexive blindness).

Step 4 — Strategic Intent Inference

An argumentative text is not merely an arrangement of propositions; it is an act in the world, aiming at effects on a readership. The identification of a strategic intent must follow a strict progression.

Preliminary — Stated Purpose

Begin by identifying the explicit purpose of the text: what does it say it wants to do? (Convince, denounce, mobilize, explain, bear witness?). This stated purpose will serve as a point of comparison for the rest of the analysis.

Level 1 — Textual Clues

Note, without interpreting them, all elements of the text that could indicate a strategic intent not explicitly declared: - marks of distinction or positioning within a field (references to currents of thought, to “wrong ways” of thinking, to unnamed adversaries); - addresses to a specific audience (marks of connivance, shared assumptions, “we” whose real perimeter must be identified); - silences, omissions, themes avoided that might be expected; - insistences, repetitions, formulas that seem aimed at a precise effect on the reader (guilt, mobilization, legitimation of the author); - the gap between the linguistic register and the stated audience; - tensions, contradictions, or ambiguities that suggest the text cannot openly assume everything it is doing.

This level is purely descriptive. No conclusions are drawn from it at this stage.

Level 2 — Strategic Hypothesis

From the clues noted, formulate one or more hypotheses about the inferable purpose of the text, i.e., what the text seeks to do beyond its stated purpose. Each hypothesis must be presented as such (“one may hypothesize that…”, “the text might also aim to…”) and explicitly linked to the Level 1 clues that support it.

Hypotheses may concern: - the real audience (to whom is the text really speaking? Does it address the already convinced to reinforce them rather than the undecided to persuade them? Does it speak to peers to mark a position in an intellectual field rather than to the general public to mobilize them?); - the author’s legitimation function (does the text serve to confer on the author a position of expert, theorist, moral figure, spokesperson?); - the intended effect on the reader (inform, move, make guilty, mobilize, paralyze, reinforce, silence) and its consistency with the stated purpose; - an operation of distinction or positioning within an intellectual or political field; - an implicit strategic function (for example: disqualifying a competitor without naming them, distancing oneself from a more radical or more moderate position, protecting an institutional position, producing a legitimation effect without stating it explicitly).

Level 3 — Confidence Level

For each hypothesis, assess the degree of confidence the text allows, using a simple scale: - Strong: the hypothesis is supported by converging clues and no element of the text contradicts it. - Medium: clues exist, but other interpretations are possible. - Weak: the hypothesis rests on tenuous or ambiguous clues; it is plausible but far from certain.

If no hypothesis reaches a strong confidence level, say so explicitly. Strategic intent is not always inferable, and it is more honest to suspend judgment than to force an interpretation.

Step 5 — Internal Consistency Check

Confront the program announced in the opening (what the text says it will do) with the actual content of the body of the text.

• Does the text do what it said it would do?
• Does it refrain from what it said it would refrain from?
• If a discrepancy is found, the opening declaration must be reclassified as a rhetorical self-legitimation device, not a sincere methodological commitment.

Step 6 — Return to the Opening Framing

Re-read the conclusions of Steps 3, 4, and 5 in light of Step 1.

• Did the initial framing predetermine or protect the argumentation by neutralizing certain objections in advance?
• Does the thesis survive if the opening postulate is rejected?
• Are the arguments independent of the framing, or do they depend on it entirely?
• Does the inferred strategic intent shed new light on the function of the opening framing?

Step 7 — Differentiated Conclusion

Explicitly distinguish:

• The real qualities of the text, if they exist independently of its argumentative flaws. Caution: do not call “rhetorical force” an effectiveness obtained through sophisms. Do not call “internal coherence” the circular closure of a system upon itself. Do not call “ability to name real phenomena” a selective evocation that omits contrary facts. If the text has qualities, they must be formulated without contradicting the results of the critical analysis.

• The precise argumentative failures, as identified in the preceding steps.

• The inferred strategic intents, presenting them as hypotheses based on the analysis, not as certainties. Recall the confidence level associated with each hypothesis.

• Link between inferred intent and overall judgment:

  • If a significant gap is found between the stated purpose and the inferred purpose, what does it reveal about the nature of the text? A text can succeed as a political act (positioning, mobilization) while failing as a demonstration.
  • Inferred intent does not refute the thesis, but it can explain its argumentative weaknesses: an author pursuing a strategic objective may sacrifice rigor for rhetorical effectiveness, not by accident, but by consistency with their real goal.
  • Do not confuse the analysis of the text’s strategic function with the refutation of its thesis.

• Unjustified asymmetries: where applicable, list the flaws the text attributes to its object but does not acknowledge in itself or its own camp, without valid justification.

• Overall judgment: is the thesis established? Does the text fulfill its demonstrative claim? If the text fails as a demonstration but functions as a manifesto or an act of positioning, say so explicitly, without conflating these two registers of evaluation.

Absolute and Permanent Rules

1. Never confuse rhetorical force with logical validity.
2. Never accept a text’s framing without examining it.
3. Never treat a metaphor as an argument.
4. Always hunt for what the text prevents from being thought as much as for what it states.
5. Always consider the opening as a strategic act, not as a simple introduction.
6. When a word does massive rhetorical work on its own, it is an alarm signal.
7. When a text says “we” or “everyone,” ask who is included and who is excluded.
8. Always check whether facts are summoned to ground the thesis, or adjusted to serve it.
9. Always confront the announced program with the actual content.
10. If an existing, argued, and significant analysis is provided with the text or explicitly included in the corpus submitted to the AI, and it flatly contradicts a characterization in the text, its absence from the analyzed argumentation may constitute a sign of argumentative weakness.
11. Always examine readability and stylistic register: unnecessarily complex syntax can mask an argumentative void or filter the readership, and a text that claims to address everyone in a language that excludes is in performative contradiction.
12. Always question the strategic intent of the text: to whom is it really speaking, to produce what effect, and for what social or political purpose? This questioning must follow the three-level progression (textual clues, hypothesis, confidence level).
13. By default, the analysis is limited to the elements available within the text itself. It assesses internal empirical soundness (does the text substantiate its claims, date its facts, provide its sources?) without claiming to externally verify the factual truth of each claim through competing sources. When a decisive claim is not substantiated within the text, the analysis flags it as an internal weakness, without pronouncing on its truth or falsehood in the world.
14. Never weaken a critical conclusion with vague or timid qualifiers when the text does not justify such weakening. Expressions such as “insufficiently,” “not enough,” “relatively,” “partially,” “tends to,” “seems,” “almost,” “to some extent” may only be used if they correspond precisely to the state of the text. If an element is absent, say it is absent. If a contradiction is found, say there is a contradiction. Critical prudence does not consist in weakening the diagnosis, but in clearly distinguishing what the analysis allows to be affirmed from what it does not allow to be affirmed.

License

This protocol is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). You are free to reproduce, modify, and redistribute it, including for commercial purposes, provided you credit the original author and share any modified version under the same license.