In this paper I focus on the fallacy known as Complex Question or Many Questions. After a brief introduction, in Sect. 2 I highlight its pragmatic dimension, and in Sect. 3 its dialectical dimension. In Sect. 4 I present two accounts of this fallacy developed in argumentation theory, Douglas Walton’s and the Pragma-Dialectics’, which have resources to capture both its pragmatic and its dialectical nature. However, these accounts are unsatisfactory for various reasons. In Sect. 5 I focus on the pragmatic (...) dimension of the fallacy and I suggest amendments to the accounts mentioned drawing on the study of the phenomenon of presupposition in theoretical pragmatics. I argue that the central notion in the definition of the fallacy is that of an informative presupposition. In Sect. 6 I focus on the dialectical dimension of the fallacy. This dimension needs to be explicitly acknowledged in the definition of the fallacy in order to distinguish it from a different, non-dialectical, fallacious argumentative move involving presuppositions. (shrink)

Following and extending Searle’s speech act theory, both Pragma-Dialectics and the Linguistic Normative Model of Argumentation characterize argumentation as an illocutionary act. In these models, the successful performance of an illocutionary act of arguing depends on the securing of uptake, an illocutionary effect that, according to the Searlean account, characterizes the successful performance of any illocutionary act. However, in my view, there is another kind of illocutionary effect involved in the successful performance of an illocutionary act of arguing, which affects (...) both the speaker’s and the hearer’s set of rights, obligations, and entitlements. In order to give an account of this second type of effect, I will argue that it is necessary to distinguish two levels in the analysis of the illocutionary act of arguing. The first one is related to the illocutionary effect of securing of uptake and thus to the speech act performed by the speaker, while the second one allows us to account for the changes produced by the performance of the illocutionary act of arguing in the deontic modal competence of both the speaker and the hearer. (shrink)

Many standard definitions of ‘argument’ that recognise an ambiguity between its active and objective senses seek to subsume these in various ways into a single, composite whole. This, it is argued, glosses over the distinction instead of exploiting its elucidatory potential. Whilst optimistic about the prospects of theory integration, the paper recommends a methodology of differentiation as a first necessary step towards any such goal. It starts by assuming that ‘argument’ refers —simultaneously and independently— to two different things, making space (...) between them for a theory of argument based on the then necessary externality of the relation between them. (shrink)

Within the epistemological approach to Argumentation Theory, there are two opposing views on what a theory of argumentation should look like. On the one hand, there are those interested in providing epistemological criteria for good argumentation. For these theorists, the main question is "should we accept this claim on the basis of those reasons?". On the other hand, there are those interested in “characterizing” what is good argumentation. For them, the main question is: "does this piece of argumentation count as (...) good argumentation, taking into account the conception of good argumentation that underlies the practice of arguing?". Both accounts assimilate the goals of a normative theory of argumentation to the goals of a theory of justification, but the former focuses on the conditions for considering that a target-claim is justified, whereas the latter tries to characterize the very concept of justification from the point of view of the practice of arguing. In this paper, I analyze the rewards and shortcomings of both epistemological conceptions of Argumentation Theory and their corresponding criteriological and transcendental accounts of the sort of objectivity that good argumentation is able to provide. (shrink)