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OSSA Conference Archive

Inference

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Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Commentary On Mckeon On Argument, Inference, And Persuasion, Daniel H. Cohen Jun 2020

Commentary On Mckeon On Argument, Inference, And Persuasion, Daniel H. Cohen

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.


Persuading Annoying Turtles: Blocking Conspiracies From Taking Our Rationality, Sheldon Wein Jun 2020

Persuading Annoying Turtles: Blocking Conspiracies From Taking Our Rationality, Sheldon Wein

OSSA Conference Archive

Recent work on Lewis Carroll’s “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” sheds light not just on cases where one fails to be persuaded when one should be but also on cases where people are persuaded when they should not be. The recognition of impossibility that Carroll’s paper illuminates can help to show what goes wrong with some of those addicted to conspiracy theories.


Argument, Inference, And Persuasion, Matthew W. Mckeon Jun 2020

Argument, Inference, And Persuasion, Matthew W. Mckeon

OSSA Conference Archive

I move beyond Pinto’s (2001) discussion of arguments as invitations to inference by highlighting how arguments can guide the performance of inferences that they do not express. This motivates a distinction between two types of persuasive force arguments can have in terms of two different connections between arguments and inferences. I use this distinction to explain how an epistemically bad argument can rationally persuade addressees of its conclusion.


Multimodal Arguments In The Mainstream Press: Illustrating Portrayals Of Migration, Dimitris Serafis, Sara Greco, Chiara Pollaroli, Chiara Jermini-Martinez Soria Jun 2020

Multimodal Arguments In The Mainstream Press: Illustrating Portrayals Of Migration, Dimitris Serafis, Sara Greco, Chiara Pollaroli, Chiara Jermini-Martinez Soria

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper sketches a methodological integration of tools from multimodal discourse analysis and argumentation in order to unveil opaque argumentative inferences emerging in multimodal configurations (i.e., headlines and press photos) of seemingly non-argumentative genres such as news articles. We offer illustrative examples from the Italian mainstream press in the context of the so-called European ‘refugee crisis.’ Overall, our methodologically oriented proposal aims to deepen the debate in the area of multimodal argumentation. To that end, we sketch a dialogue with other perspectives that specifically study argumentative inference in multimodal configurations. We contend that this approach enables a better examination of …


Acquisition Of Knowledge Through Narrative In Argumentative Processes, Guillermo Sierra-Catalán Jun 2020

Acquisition Of Knowledge Through Narrative In Argumentative Processes, Guillermo Sierra-Catalán

OSSA Conference Archive

The objective of this investigation is to study the role that the narrative speech act plays in relation to the acquisition of certain types of knowledge within the frame of argumentative processes. An inferential scheme that regulates the acquisition of knowledge is exposed, as well as an analysis of the reasons adduced. This is used to develop an evaluative method for the argumentative “goodness” of narrative texts. Finally, the particular case of literary narratives is analysed.


Commentary On 'Acts Of Ostension', Paul L. Simard Smith May 2016

Commentary On 'Acts Of Ostension', Paul L. Simard Smith

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.


Mark Twain, Argumentation Theorist, Chris Campolo May 2016

Mark Twain, Argumentation Theorist, Chris Campolo

OSSA Conference Archive

Commentators have read Twain’s Is Shakespeare Dead? as the strained work of a man worried about his own literary legacy. But it is actually an essay about argumentation. Twain writes about the burden of argument, premise relevance, understanding and inference, and norms and practices of argumentation. I will argue that what is taken to be a thoroughgoing cynicism on Twain’s part is best understood as a thoughtful scepticism about the scope of reasoning.


Acts Of Ostension, Hubert Marraud May 2016

Acts Of Ostension, Hubert Marraud

OSSA Conference Archive

I will analyze the role of ostension in argumentation. Ostension involves gestures, bearing, postures, facial expressions, etc.; thus it can be argued that ostension can introduce non-verbal modes of argument, giving rise to multimodal arguments (Groarke 2014). Acts of ostension can be considered as a kind of speech acts according to the account in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations §27. As such they can provide the premises of a certain sort of arguments (which I term arguments by ostension). We have to distinguish the proper act of ostension from both its content and the object of ostension. While the latter can …


Critical Thinking And Informal Logic: Neuropsychological Perspectives, Paul Thagard May 2011

Critical Thinking And Informal Logic: Neuropsychological Perspectives, Paul Thagard

OSSA Conference Archive

This article challenges the common view that improvements in critical thinking are best pursued by investigations in informal logic. From the perspective of research in psychology and neuroscience, human inference is a process that is multimodal, parallel, and often emotional, which makes it unlike the linguistic, serial, and narrowly cognitive structure of arguments. Attempts to improve inferential practice need to consider psychological error tendencies, which are patterns of thinking that are natural for people but frequently lead to mistakes in judgment. This article discusses two important but neglected error tendencies: motivated inference and fear-driven inference.


Inference As Growth: Peirce’S Ecstatic Logic Of Illation, Philip Rose, John Woods May 2011

Inference As Growth: Peirce’S Ecstatic Logic Of Illation, Philip Rose, John Woods

OSSA Conference Archive

For Peirce, logic is essentially illative, a relation of inferential growth. It follows that inference and argumentation are essentially ecstatic, an asymmetrical, ampliative movement from antecedent to consequent. It also follows that logic is inherently inductive. While deduction remains an essential and irreplaceable aspect of logic, it should be seen as a more abstract expression of the illative, semiological essence of inference as such.