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Articles 31 - 47 of 47
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Issues In Conductive Argument Weight, Thomas Fischer, Rongdong Jin
Issues In Conductive Argument Weight, Thomas Fischer, Rongdong Jin
OSSA Conference Archive
The concept of conductive argument weight was developed by Carl Wellman and later by Trudy Govier. This concept has received renewed attention recently from another informal logician, Robert C. Pinto. Argument weight has also been addressed in recent years by theorists in AI & Law. I argue from a non-technical perspective that some aspects of AI & Law’s approach to argument weight can be usefully applied to the issues addressed by Pinto. I also relate some of these issues to the work of argument theorist Harald Wohlrapp.
Academic Arguments, Daniel Cohen, George Thomas Goodnight
Academic Arguments, Daniel Cohen, George Thomas Goodnight
OSSA Conference Archive
Calling an argument “merely academic” impugns its seriousness, belittles its substance, dis-misses its importance, and deflates hope of resolution, while ruling out negotiation and compromise. How-ever, “purely academic” argumentation, as an idealized limit case, is a valuable analytical tool for argumen-tation theorists because while the telos of academic argumentation may be cognitive, it is cognitive in the service of a community, which, in turn, is a community in the service of the cognitive.
Defending Sole Singular Causal Claims, Robert Ennis, Maurice A. Finocchiaro
Defending Sole Singular Causal Claims, Robert Ennis, Maurice A. Finocchiaro
OSSA Conference Archive
Even given agreement on the totality of conditions that brought about an effect, there often is disagreement about the cause of the effect, for example, the disagreement about the cause of the Gulf oil spill. Different conditions’ being deemed responsible accounts for such disagreements. The defense of the act of deeming a condition responsible often depends on showing that the condition was the appropriate target of interference in order to have avoided the effect.
“Reasonable Hostility”: Its Usefulness And Limitation As A Norm For Public Hearings, Karen Tracy
“Reasonable Hostility”: Its Usefulness And Limitation As A Norm For Public Hearings, Karen Tracy
OSSA Conference Archive
“Reasonable hostility” is a norm of communicative conduct initially developed by studying public exchanges in education governance meetings in local U.S. communities. In this paper I consider the norm’s usefulness for and applicability to a U.S. state-level public hearing about a bill to legalize civil unions. Following an explication of reasonable hostility and grounded practical theory, the approach to inquiry that guides my work, I describe Hawaii’s 2009, 18-hour public hearing and analyze selected seg-ments of it. I show that this particular public hearing raised demands for testifiers on the anti-civil union side of the argument that reasonable hostility does …
Critical Thinking And Informal Logic: Neuropsychological Perspectives, Paul Thagard
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.
Androcentrism As A Fallacy Of Argumentation, Catherine Hundleby, Claudio Duran
Androcentrism As A Fallacy Of Argumentation, Catherine Hundleby, Claudio Duran
OSSA Conference Archive
The deep operation of androcentrism in scientific argumentation demands recognition as a form of fallacy. On Walton’s (1995) account, fallacies are serious mistakes in argumentation that employ presumptions acceptable in other circumstances. There are only isolated cases in which androcentric pre-sumptions are acceptable, and I argue that androcentrism affects an overarching theme of generalization in science rather than an isolated scheme. Androcentrism is related to other ways of treating privileged people as exemplary humans, whose negative impact on processes of argumentation can be described as the fallacy of “appeal to the standard.”
Cognition And Literary Ethical Criticism, Gilbert Plumer, Louis Groarke
Cognition And Literary Ethical Criticism, Gilbert Plumer, Louis Groarke
OSSA Conference Archive
“Ethical criticism” is an approach to literary studies that holds that reading certain carefully selected novels can make us ethically better people, e.g., by stimulating our sympathetic imagination (Nussbaum). I will try to show that this nonargumentative approach cheapens the persuasive force of novels and that its inherent bias and censorship undercuts what is perhaps the principal value and defense of the novel—that reading novels can be critical to one’s learning how to think.
How Many Premises Can An Argument Have?, G C. Goddu, David Hitchcock
How Many Premises Can An Argument Have?, G C. Goddu, David Hitchcock
OSSA Conference Archive
Is it possible for an argument to have either zero premises or an infinite number of premises? I shall argue that regardless of how you conceive of arguments you should accept that an argument could have an infinite number of premises. The zero case is more complicated since the matter seems to depend not only on the metaphysics of arguments, but also the nature and function of arguing. I shall argue that at least a plausible case can be made for the possibility of zero premise arguments.
Monologue, Dilogue Or Polylogue: Which Model For Public Deliberation?, Marcin Lewinski, J Anthony Blair
Monologue, Dilogue Or Polylogue: Which Model For Public Deliberation?, Marcin Lewinski, J Anthony Blair
OSSA Conference Archive
“Reasonable hostility” is a norm of communicative conduct initially developed by studying public exchanges in education governance meetings in local U.S. communities. In this paper I consider the norm’s usefulness for and applicability to a U.S. state-level public hearing about a bill to legalize civil unions. Following an explication of reasonable hostility and grounded practical theory, the approach to inquiry that guides my work, I describe Hawaii’s 2009, 18-hour public hearing and analyze selected seg-ments of it. I show that this particular public hearing raised demands for testifiers on the anti-civil union side of the argument that reasonable hostility does …
The Dialectical Tier Of Mathematical Proof, Andrew Aberdein, Anton Colijn
The Dialectical Tier Of Mathematical Proof, Andrew Aberdein, Anton Colijn
OSSA Conference Archive
Ralph Johnson argues that mathematical proofs lack a dialectical tier, and thereby do not qualify as arguments. This paper argues that, despite this disavowal, Johnson's account provides a compel-ling model of mathematical proof. The illative core of mathematical arguments is held to strict standards of rigour. However, compliance with these standards is itself a matter of argument, and susceptible to chal-lenge. Hence much actual mathematical practice takes place in the dialectical tier.
Is ‘Argument’ Subject To The Product/Process Ambiguity?, G. C. Goddu
Is ‘Argument’ Subject To The Product/Process Ambiguity?, G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The product/process distinction with regards to “argument” has a longstanding history and foundational role in argumentation theory. I shall argue that, regardless of one’s chosen ontology of arguments, arguments are not the product of some process of arguing. Hence, appeal to the distinction is distorting the very organizational foundations of argumentation theory and should be abandoned
What Is A “Real” Argument?, G. C. Goddu
What Is A “Real” Argument?, G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Numerous informal logicians and argumentation theorists restrict their theorizing to what they call “real” arguments. But is there a clear distinction to be made between “real” and “non-real” arguments? Here I explore four possible accounts of the alleged distinction and argue that none can serve the theoretical uses to which the distinction is most often put.
A Theory Of Argument (Book Review), G. C. Goddu
A Theory Of Argument (Book Review), G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook “written for upper-level undergraduate students who have completed at least one prior course in argumentation theory, critical thinking, informal logic, formal logic, or some other related discipline” (ix). This puts Vorobej’s book in a unique position since, to my knowledge, there are no other second course undergraduate textbooks with a nonsymbolic focus. (Second course symbolic logic textbooks written for undergraduates, rather than primarily for graduate students, were relatively rare until recently; the past decade has seen a proliferation in such texts.)
Walton On Argument Structure, G. C. Goddu
Walton On Argument Structure, G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In previous work I argued against (i) the likelihood of finding a theoretically sound foundation for the linked/convergent distinction and (ii) the utility of the distinction even if a sound theoretical basis could be found. Here I subject Douglas Walton’s comprehensive discussion of the linked/convergent distinction found in Argument Structure: A Pragmatic Theory to careful scrutiny and argue that at best Walton’s theory remains incomplete and that attempts to fill out the details will run afoul of at least one of the problems adduced above—i.e., result in either a theoretically unsound distinction or a theoretically sound, but unnecessary distinction.
In Defense Of The Objective Epistemic Approach To Argumentation, John Biro, Harvey Siegel
In Defense Of The Objective Epistemic Approach To Argumentation, John Biro, Harvey Siegel
Philosophy Articles and Papers
In this paper we defend a particular version of the epistemic approach to argumentation. We advance some general considerations in favor of the approach and then examine the ways in which different versions of it play out with respect to the theory of fallacies, which we see as central to an understanding of argumentation. Epistemic theories divide into objective and subjective versions. We argue in favor of the objective version, showing that it provides a better account than its subjectivist rival of the central fallacy of begging the question. We suggest that the strengths of the objective epistemic theory of …
The 'Most Important And Fundamental' Distinction In Logic, G. C. Goddu
The 'Most Important And Fundamental' Distinction In Logic, G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
In this paper I argue that the debate over the purported distinction between deductive and inductive arguments can be bypassed because making the distinction is unnecessary for successfully evaluating arguments. I provide a foundation for doing logic that makes no appeal to the distinction and still performs all the relevant tasks required of an analysis of arguments. I also reply to objections to the view that we can dispense with the distinction. Finally, I conclude that the distinction between inductive and deductive arguments is not one of the most important and fundamental ideas in logic, but rather is unnecessary.
Critical Thinking By Alec Fisher (Book Review), G. C. Goddu
Critical Thinking By Alec Fisher (Book Review), G. C. Goddu
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The aim of Critical Thinking is to explicitly and directly teach critical thinking skills and to facilitate the use of these skills to subjects and contexts beyond critical thinking (v, 1). Though the book is primarily intended as an introductory textbook for the teaching of critical thinking, Fisher maintains that the "material is presented in such a way that it can be worked through on a self-study basis"(vi).