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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Arguments By Analogy, Matt Donner
Arguments By Analogy, Matt Donner
Philosophy
This paper is an inquiry into the largely unexamined analysis of arguments by analogy (ABA). By exposing the degree of philosophical complexity, which ultimately renders evaluation of ABA subjective, we shall see that the most appropriate doxastic attitude to adopt, with respect to the conclusions drawn from these arguments, is often suspension of judgment. A critical examination of Copi’s criteria for evaluating ABA shows that while these criteria work well for simple arguments, they fail when considering more philosophically profound ABA. This paper supports these claims by using Cleanthes’ teleological argument for the existence of God from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning …
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.
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.
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.
Arguments As Abstract Objects, Paul Simard Smith, Andrei Moldovan, G C. Goddu
Arguments As Abstract Objects, Paul Simard Smith, Andrei Moldovan, G C. Goddu
OSSA Conference Archive
In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or (as in Goddu forthcoming) an act/object ambi-guity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argument’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?
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.
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 …
“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 …
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.
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.
A Name On The Tree, Laura J. Davies
A Name On The Tree, Laura J. Davies
Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion
What's in a name? For some, family history, arguments, and identity.
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