Argumentation logicians have recognized a specter of relativism to haunt their philosophy of argument. However, their attempts to dispel pernicious relativism by invoking notions of a universal audience or a community of model interlocutors have not been entirely successful. In fact, their various discussions of a universal audience invoke the context-eschewing formalism of Kant’s categorical imperative. Moreover, they embrace the Kantian method for resolving the antinomies that continually vacillates between opposing extremes – here between a transcendent universal audience and a (...) context-embedded particular audience. This tack ironically restores the very external mediation they thought to obviate in their aim to ‘dethrone’ the absolutism and totalitarianism of formal logic with a democratic turn to audience adherence, the acceptability of premises and inferential links, and a contextual, or participant-relative, notion of cogency. (shrink)

Fugue and chaos are used in their contemporary meaning. Elements of the fugue, albeit a ‎small number of universals, will be demonstrated in the area of visual and verbal colors. ‎Chaos dominates the internet, fashion, and everyday life. The visual and verbal colors are ‎differentiated and their communicative potential is indicated alongside the diachronic changes. The prototypes of colors are the interface between visual and verbal colors.‎.

In this paper, I will try to answer the question: How are we supposed to assess the expert’s opinion in an argument from the position of an outsider to the specialized field? by placing it in the larger context of the political status of epistemic authority. In order to do this I will first sketch the actual debate around the problem of expertise in a democracy and relate this to the issue of the status of science in society. Secondly, I (...) will review how Douglas Walton’s pragma-dialectical approach offers a practical procedure to assess the expert bias from a nonprofessional’s perspective. Thirdly, I will introduce the problem of group bias using insights from Bohman and Fischer and show how Walton’s solution does not address this specific type of bias. Lastly, I will try proposing a revision of Walton’s solution in order to address this problem. In order to make the explanation more easy to follow I will use a case study concerning the medical expertise in the public debate on second-hand smoke. (shrink)