Our meta-argumentative vocabulary supplies the conceptual tools used to reflectively analyse, regulate, and evaluate our argumentative performances. Yet, this vocabulary is susceptible to misunderstanding and abuse in ways that make possible new discursive mistakes and pathologies. Thus, our efforts to self-regulate our reason-transacting practices by articulating their norms makes possible new ways to violate and flout those very norms. Scott Aikin identifies the structural possibility of this vicious feedback loop as the Owl of Minerva Problem. In the spirit of a (...) shared concern for the flourishing or our rational, argumentative practices, this paper approaches the Owl of Minerva Problem from a vantage point that, by comparison with Aikin’s, affords perspectives that are more pessimistic in some aspects and more optimistic in others. Pessimistically, the problem at the root of the weaponization of our meta-argumentative vocabulary is motivational, not structural. Its motivational nature explains its resistance to the normal repertoire of reparative argumentative maneuvers, as well as revealing a profound and deeply entrenched misunderstanding of the connection between our reasons-transacting practices and the goods achievable within them. Optimistically, in the absence of this motivational problem, the misunderstandings and errors made possible by our meta-argumentative vocabularies are amenable to remedy by familiar techniques of discursive instruction and repair. More optimistically, even though our meta-argumentative vocabularies are generated only retrospectively, they can be used prospectively, thereby making possible an aspirational motivation resulting in a virtuous cycle of increasingly autonomous normative self-regulation. Properly harnessed, the Owl of Minerva releases the Lark of Arete. (shrink)

This article argues that the theoretical concept of meta-argumentative fallacy is useful. The authors argue for this along two lines. The first is that with the concept, the authors may clarify the concept of meta-argumentation. That is, by theorizing where meta-argument goes wrong, the authors may capture the norms of this level of argumentation. The second is that the concept of meta-argumentative fallacies provides an explanatory model for a variety of errors in argument otherwise difficult to theorize. The authors take (...) three as exemplary: the straw man, both sides, and free speech fallacies. (shrink)

Free speech fallacies are errors of meta-argument. One commits a free speech fallacy when one argues that since there are apparent restrictions on one’s rights of free expression, procedural rules of critical exchange have been broken, and consequently, one’s preferred view is dialectically better off than it may otherwise seem. Free speech fallacies are meta-argumentative, since they occur at the level of assessing the dialectical situation in terms of norms of argument and in terms of meta-evidential principles of interpreting how (...) and why people follow (or fail to follow) argumentative rules. Our plan here is to begin with a brief explanation of meta-argument and meta-argumentative fallacy. We will then turn to the variety of forms of the free speech fallacy, which we will explain as meta-argumentatively erroneous. (shrink)

One of the central tasks of a theory of argumentation is to supply a theory of appraisal: a set of standards and norms according to which argumentation, and the reasoning involved in it, is properly evaluated. In their most general form, these can be understood as rational norms, where the core idea of rationality is that we rightly respond to reasons by according the credence we attach to our doxastic and conversational commitments with the probative strength of the reasons we (...) have for them. Certain kinds of rational failings are so because they are manifestly illogical – for example, maintaining overtly contradictory commitments, violating deductive closure by refusing to accept the logical consequences of one’s present commitments, or failing to track basing relations by not updating one’s commitments in view of new, defeating information. Yet, according to the internal and empirical critiques, logic and probability theory fail to supply a fit set of norms for human reasoning and argument. Particularly, theories of bounded rationality have put pressure on argumentation theory to lower the normative standards of rationality for reasoners and arguers on the grounds that we are bounded, finite, and fallible agents incapable of meeting idealized standards. This paper explores the idea that argumentation, as a set of practices, together with the procedures and technologies of argumentation theory, is able to extend cognition such that we are better able to meet these idealized logical standards, thereby extending our responsibilities to adhere to idealized rational norms. (shrink)