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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Conclusions As Hedged Hypotheses, John R. Welch
Conclusions As Hedged Hypotheses, John R. Welch
OSSA Conference Archive
How can the objectivity of an argument’s conclusion be determined? To propose an answer, this paper builds on Betz’s (2013) view of premises as hedged hypotheses. If an argument’s premises are hedged, its conclusion must be hedged as well. But how? The paper first introduces a two-dimensional critical grid. The grid’s vertical dimension is inductive, reflecting the argument’s downward flow from premises to conclusion. It specifies the inductive probability (or plausibility) of the conclusion given the premises. The grid’s horizontal dimension is epistemic, focusing on the premises without dropping down to the conclusion. It evaluates the epistemic probability (or plausibility) …
Emerging Truth And The Defeat Of Scientific Racism, Mark Weinstein
Emerging Truth And The Defeat Of Scientific Racism, Mark Weinstein
OSSA Conference Archive
This paper looks at the attack on scientific racism in the 20th century by a group of social and biological scientists. I will utilize the apparatus of my model of emerging truth to show how even in complex socially conditioned argumentation the ultimate virtue is seeking the truth through increasingly powerful logical connections and deeply embedded warrants.
A Very Different Kind Of Rule: Credal Rules, Argumentation And Community, James Bradley, Peter Loptson
A Very Different Kind Of Rule: Credal Rules, Argumentation And Community, James Bradley, Peter Loptson
OSSA Conference Archive
In mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, the relation between cognition and community has been defined primarily in terms of the generalization of the mathematical function (Frege, Russell), especially as a model for the nature of rules (Wittgenstein and followers), which thus come to be under-stood as algorithms. This leads to the elimination of both the reflexive, synthesizing subject (for it is unnec-essary to the algorithmic decision-making procedure installed in the rule), and the intrinsic communal-historical nature of argumentation and belief-formation. Against this approach, I follow R.G. Collingwood’s hitherto unrecognized strategy in his Essay on Metaphysics (1940) and argue that the relation of …