Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Economic Reasoning And Fallacy Of Composition: Pursuing A Woods-Walton Thesis, Maurice A. Finocchiaro

OSSA Conference Archive

Woods and Walton deserve credit for including (in all editions of their textbook Argument) a discussion of “economic reasoning” and its susceptibility to the “fallacy of composition.” Unfortunately, they did not sufficiently pursue the topic, and argumentation scholars have apparently ignored their pioneering effort. Yet, obviously, economic argumentation is extremely important, and economists constantly harp on this fallacy. This paper calls attention to this problem, elaborating my own approach, which is empirical, historical, and meta-argumentational.

The Stance Of Personal Public Apology, Martha S. Cheng

OSSA Conference Archive

Personal apology can be understood as self-defense—a response to an actual, implied, or anticipated accusation against one’s character. Within argumentation studies, scholars have investigated how public apologies are constructed to repair a speaker’s image and/or repair the speaker’s relationship with others through specific strategies. This paper broadens the study of apology by employing the sociolinguistic concept of stance, understood as the ways in which a speaker orients herself in relation to sociocultural values, other persons, actions, events, and, especially in the case of apology, another version of herself. In addition to explicit claims, stance can also be interpreted through …

Constructing A Periodic Table Of Arguments, Jean H.M. Wagemans

OSSA Conference Archive

The existing classifications of arguments are unsatisfying in a number of ways. This paper proposes an alternative in the form of a Periodic Table of Arguments. The newly developed table can be used as a systematic and comprehensive point of reference for the analysis, evaluation and production of argumentative discourse as well as for various kinds of empirical and computational research in the field of argumentation theory.

Don’T Worry, Be Gappy! On The Unproblematic Gappiness Of Alleged Fallacies, Fabio Paglieri

OSSA Conference Archive

The history of fallacy theory is long, distinguished and, admittedly, checkered. I offer a bird eye view on it, with the aim of contrasting the standard conception of fallacies as attractive and universal errors that are hard to eradicate (section 1) with the contemporary preoccupation with “non-fallacious fallacies”, that is, arguments that fit the bill of one of the traditional fallacies but are actually respectable enough to be used in appropriate contexts (section 2). Godden and Zenker have recently argued that reinterpreting alleged fallacies as non-fallacious arguments requires supplementing the textual material with something else, e.g. probability distributions, pragmatic considerations, …

On Being Objective: Hard Data, Soft Data And Baseball., Michael A. Gilbert

OSSA Conference Archive

“Objective” is a term that has a long and sometimes tumultuous history and a wide range of meanings. The sense in which I am interested here is the one that refers to ways of thinking, and especially the explicit criticism of an argument or judgment as not being “objective,” as exemplified in the following.

• You’re not being objective.
• You have to look at it objectively.
• Objectively, the best choice is…
• Being objective, I’d have to say…

Implicit in these statements is an ideology that denigrates emotion and other communicative aspects in favour of an idealized sense of fact, data and …

Pluralism As A Bias Mitigation Strategy, Paul L. Simard Smith

OSSA Conference Archive

An agnostic pluralist approaches inquiry with the assumption that it is possible for more than one account of the phenomenon in question to be correct. A monist approaches inquiry with the assumption that only one account of the phenomenon in question is correct. The purpose of my paper is to support the claim that agnostic pluralists are less susceptible to a sort of bias that I call dialectical bias than monists.

Evaluating Narrative Arguments, Khameiel Al Tamimi

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper addresses the question of how to evaluate narrative arguments. I will be discussing how to evaluate narrative arguments as process as opposed to arguments as product, as with dominant accounts of argument appraisal such as informal logic. The first part of this paper will show that dominant accounts of argument evaluation are not fit for narrative arguments because they focus on the product of argument. The second part of the paper will develop an account of argument evaluation for arguments as process, that is the virtuous audience, which will combine the rhetorical understanding of audience with virtue argumentation

Commentary On Patrick Bondy, “Bias In Legitimate Ad Hominem Arguments”, Andrew Aberdein

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Ami Mamolo On Argumentation And Infinity, Daniel H. Cohen

OSSA Conference Archive

There is more to mathematics than proofs; there are also arguments, which means that mathematicians are human arguers complete with their biases. Among those biases is a preference for beauty, It is a bias insofar as it is a deaprture from objectivity, but it is benign, accounting for the popularity of Cantor's "Paradise" of non-denumerable infinities as a travel destination for mathematicians and the relatively little interest in Robinson's infinitesimals.

Commentary On “On Appeals To (Visual) Models”: Appeals To Visual Models – An Epistemological Reconstruction Of An Argument Type, Christoph Lumer

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

On The Objectivity Of Norms Of Argumentation, Michael Hoppmann

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper addresses the relationship between norms of reasoning and norms of politeness: To what extend can one be polite and reasonable at the same time? For this purpose, a normative system of reasoning (i.e. the model of the pragma-dialectical critical discussion) is contrasted with a normative system of politeness (Leech’s Politeness Maxims). If and when they are in conflict: How can the communicator solve this tension?

Studying Rhetorical Audiences, Jens E. Kjeldsen

OSSA Conference Archive

In rhetoric and argumentation research studies of empirical audiences are rare. Most studies are speaker- or text focussed. However, new media and new forms of communication make it harder to distinguish between speaker and audience. The active involvement of users and audiences is more important than ever before. Therefore, this paper argues that rhetorical research should reconsider the understanding, conceptualization and examination of the rhetorical audience. From mostly understanding audiences as theoretical constructions that are examined textually and speculatively, we should give more attention to empirical explorations of actual audiences and users.

Enhancing Rationality: Heuristics, Biases, And The Critical Thinking Project, Mark Battersby

OSSA Conference Archive

Enhancing people’s reasoning abilities or rationality is a long and central tradition in philosophy and is the dominant concern of the critical movement. The research by cognitive psychologists has contributed considerably to our understanding of human irrationality and can enhance critical thinking instruction. The critical thinking/informal logic movement has not devoted sufficient attention to the decision making aspect of rationality. Unfortunately the norms used in the heuristics and bias literature to identify biases in decision making derive from the theory of rational choice used in neo-classical economic theory. These norms identify rational decision making with the efficient pursuit of individual …

Latin American Philosophers: Some Recent Challenges To Their Intellectual Character, Susana Nuccetelli

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Employing And Exploiting The Presumptions Of Communication In Argumentation: An Application Of Normative Pragmatics, Scott Jacobs

OSSA Conference Archive

Argumentation occurs through and as communicative activity. Communication (and therefore argumentation) is organized by pragmatic principles of expression and interpretation. Grice’s (1975) theory of conversational implicature provides a model for how people use rational principles to manage the ways in which they reason to representations of arguments, and not just reason from those representations. These principles are systematic biases that make possible reasonable decision-making and intersubjective understandings in the first place; but they also make possible all manner of errors and abuses. Much of what is problematic in argumentation involves the ways in which the pragmatic principles of communication are …

Commentary On: “Ad Stuprum: The Fallacy Of Appeal To Sex”, Maureen Linker

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Daniel Cohen And Katharina Stevens' "Virtuous Vices: On Objectivity And Bias In Argumentation", Tone Kvernbekk

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Emotional Legal Arguments And A Broken Leg, Linda Carozza

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On “The Use Of Arguments A Fortiori In Decision Making”, Takuzo Konishi

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Emotional Arguments: What Would Neuroscientists And Psychologists Say? By Linda Carozza, Ioana A. Cionea

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Andrew Aberdein’S “Virtue Argumentation And Bias”, John Anthony Blair

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On ‘Levels Of Depth In Deep Disagreement’, Tim Kenyon

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Michel Dufour's "On The Difference Between Fallacy And Sophism", Erik C. W. Krabbe

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Rania El Nakkouzi: “Legitimizing Past Actions Through Appeals To Moral Values”, Jeff Noonan

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Douglas N. Walton And Alice Toniolo’S “Deliberation, Practical Reasoning And Problem-Solving”, Hubert Marraud

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Tone Kvernbekk’S “Comparing Two Models Of Evidence”, David Hitchcock

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On Constructing A Periodic Table Of Arguments, Yun Xie

OSSA Conference Archive

This is the Commentary on Wagemans' paper "Constructing a Periodic Table of Arguments".

Commentary On "Mapping Objectivity And Bias In Relation To Argument", Justine M. Kingsbury

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On "Walton's Argumentation Schemes", Michael D. Kurak

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Commentary On “The Normative Significance Of Deep Disagreement”, Chris Campolo

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.