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Subordinating Truth – Is Acceptability Acceptable?
Abstract
Argumentation logicians have recognized a specter of relativism to haunt their philosophy of argument. However, their attempts
to dispel pernicious relativism by invoking notions of a universal audience or a community of model interlocutors have not
been entirely successful. In fact, their various discussions of a universal audience invoke the context-eschewing formalism
of Kant’s categorical imperative. Moreover, they embrace the Kantian method for resolving the antinomies that continually
vacillates between opposing extremes – here between a transcendent universal audience and a context-embedded particular audience.
This tack ironically restores the very external mediation they thought to obviate in their aim to ‘dethrone’ the absolutism
and totalitarianism of formal logic with a democratic turn to audience adherence, the acceptability of premises and inferential
links, and a contextual, or participant-relative, notion of cogency.
... If our collective filter bubbles are so big that within them arguments can be seen to have gained public merit, but between them opposition remains, we end up in a position where different conclusions, seemingly equally well supported and worthy of acceptance, exist simultaneously. If truth is not a criterion of good arguments, and oppositional arguments all gain legitimate acceptability, we find ourselves at a deep impasse, not just between political views, but in how we should conceptualize the normative dimensions of argument and its evaluation (see Boger 2005). Similar to Stevens's contention that "We will reject an argument that makes use of inferences not allowed in the frame we have adopted" (see this issue), we can expect that we will reject an argument that makes use of inferences not grounded on the basic assumptions colouring our bubbles. ...
... The charge of relativism against other theories has been made repeatedly in writings by the Pragma-Dialectical school (most recently in van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, 130, with reference to Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). A similar criticism has recently been made, in very sweeping fashion, by Boger (2005). ...
Douglas Walton has done extensive and valuable work on the concepts of presumption and practical reasoning. However, Walton’s attempt to model practical reasoning as presumptive is misguided. The notions of “inference” and of the burden of proof shifting back and forth between proponent and respondent are misleading and lead to counterintuitive consequences. Because the issue in practical reasoning is a proposal, not a proposition, there are, in the standard case, several perfectly good reasons on both sides simultaneously, which implies that argument appraisal necessarily contains a subjective element—a fact argumentation theory needs to conceptualize.
... For millennia, logic provided the normative framework for the evaluation of inference and, with that, argument: Logic provides an epistemic standard, enforcing consistency, and where reasoning proceeds from true premises, guaranteeing the truth of the conclusions that can be reached (see Evans,Chapter 8;Chapter 9). However, logic is severely limited in its ability to deal with everyday informal argument (see also, e.g., Hamblin, 1970;Heysse, 1997;Johnson, 2000; as well as Boger, 2005 for further references). In particular, logic seems poorly equipped to deal with the uncertainty inherent in everyday reason. ...
Book synopsis:
Provides a comprehensive treatment of thinking and reasoning, authored by top researchers in each field
Includes in-depth analysis of inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning; variable aspects of thinking and reasoning across the human lifespan; and methods of teaching people to think more effectively
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning. Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading. Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
... For much of this time, logic (in one form or another) has been the putative standard against which arguments are evaluated. However, there has been an increasing perception, fuelled by a wide variety of considerations, that logic cannot provide an appropriate standard by which to judge argument strength (see, e.g., Boger 2005; Hamblin 1970; Heysse 1997; Johnson 2000; see also Oaksford and Chater 1991, 1998; Evans 2002 for critiques of logicism in the field of reasoning more generally). This has led on the one hand to a dialectical (or rhetorical) approach to understanding argumentation (Bailenson and Rips 1996; Brem and Rips 2000; Rips 1998 Rips , 2001; Toulmin 1958; van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004,; also Slob 2002 for discussion), based on the assumption that the problem with logic as a standard for argumentation is its inability to account for the myriad of practical influences on the acceptability of arguments in a dialectical context. ...
Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so.
Mass gun violence continues in America as do debates about what should be done about it. This recurring issue prompted Gloria Steinem to publish an article in 1999 on what she called "Supremacy Crimes." This article seems to have only increased in its relevance and visibility over time, but did Steinem make an effective argument at the time? Drawing upon Ralph H. Johnson's theory of manifest rationality, I attempt to analyze and evaluate how Steinem argues her case and how well she argues it.
This discussion reviews the thinking of some prominent philosophers of argument to extract principles common to their thinking. It shows that a growing concern with dialogical pragmatics is better appreciated as a part of applied ethics than of applied epistemology. The discussion concludes by indicating a possible consequence for philosophy of argument and invites further discussion by asking whether argumentation philosophy has an implicit, underlying moral, or even political, posture.
The purpose of this work is the demonstration of the relation between the names of the constellations and the basic cultural characteristics of each historical period. The presented historical periods are the Ancient Greek period, the Arab era and the Renaissance.
This collection contains studies on justice, juridical reasoning and argumenta tion which contributed to my ideas on the new rhetoric. My reflections on justice, from 1944 to the present day, have given rise to various studies. The ftrst of these was published in English as The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1963). The others, of which several are out of print or have never previously been published, are reunited in the present volume. As justice is, for me, the prime example of a "confused notion", of a notion which, like many philosophical concepts, cannot be reduced to clarity without being distorted, one cannot treat it without recourse to the methods of reasoning analyzed by the new rhetoric. In actuality, these methods have long been put into practice by jurists. Legal reasoning is fertile ground for the study of argumentation: it is to the new rhetoric what mathematics is to formal logic and to the theory of demonstrative proof. It is important, then, that philosophers should not limit their methodologi cal studies to mathematics and the natural sciences. They must not neglect law in the search for practical reason. I hope that these essays lead to be a better understanding of how law can enrich philosophical thought. CH. P.
My impulse when I decided to collect into a single volume the essays on topics in logical theory and related subjects that I have written in the last fifteen years was to borrow from the title of a work by Sextus Empiricus, and call my collection "Against the Logicians." Although the essays address a variety of problems that interest me, the thread that runs through them is a scepticism about how logicians see things. So, the title appealed to me. However, I had second thoughts and chose instead a title of one of my own essays, "In Defense of Informal Logic", which emphasizes my support for other approaches. Although my criticisms of logical theory are designed to cut deeply, I do not want to be unresponsive to the needs that it is supposed to satisfy. However, my position that we have adequate resources for critically analyzing a particular argument and 00 not need a theory of argumentation, will not completely satisfy those who think that there is a need for it. So, I want them to know that I am taking their concerns seriously.
The thesis of this book is that argument is not a kind of logic but a kind of communication-conversation based on disagreement. Claims about the epistemic and political effects of argument get their authority not from logic but from their “fit with the facts” about how communication works. A Theory of Communication thus offers a picture of communication-distilled from elements of symbolic interactionism, personal construct theory, constructivism, and Barbara O’Keefe’s provocative thinking about logics of message design. The picture of argument that emerges from this tapestry is startling, for it forces revisions in thinking about knowledge, rationality, freedom, fallacies, and the structure and content of the argumentation discipline. The burden of this book is to establish a theoretical context for, and to elaborate the implications of, the claim that argument is a form of interaction in which two or more people maintain what they construe to be incompatible positions.