December 6, 2025Journal of Argumentation in Context1 citationsOpen Access

Shared decision-making and argumentation

Key Points

Shared decision-making addresses barriers through a pragma-dialectical lens, improving patient involvement in healthcare decisions.
Key findings underline the importance of argumentation, suggesting that violating discussion rules hinders effective decision-making.
The analysis focuses on integrating argumentation theory into complex medical decision-making scenarios, enhancing clarity in dialogue with patient companions.
The exploration of medical misinformation highlights the need for structured argumentation approaches, pointing toward solutions in the evolving AI landscape.

Abstract

Abstract Shared decision-making has become the ideal for medical decision-making. Given the pivotal role of argumentation within this process, shared decision-making has increasingly been examined through the lens of argumentation theory, particularly pragma-dialectics. This perspective paper outlines the pragma-dialectical contributions to the analysis of shared decision-making and explores the potential of this theory for addressing current and future challenges in medical decision-making. It aims to show that normative argumentation approaches, particularly the pragma-dialectical approach, are crucial for understanding and possibly improving shared decision-making. First, the paper discusses the alignment between shared decision-making and the ideal of a critical discussion, barriers to shared decision-making as violations of discussion rules and higher-order conditions, and the application of the pragma-dialectical approach to complex decision-making scenarios involving patient companions. Second, it considers how the pragma-dialectical approach may be used to confront the emerging issues of medical misinformation and artificial intelligence in medical decision-making.

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