Since at least the 1938 publication of Hans Reichenbach’s Experience and Predication , there has been widespread agreement that, when discussing the beliefs that people have, it is important to distinguish contexts of discovery and contexts of justification. Traditionally, when one conflates the two contexts, the result is a “genetic fallacy”. This paper examines genealogical critiques and addresses the question of whether such critiques are fallacious and, if so, whether this vitiates their usefulness. The paper concludes that while there may (...) be one or more senses in which genealogical critiques are fallacious, this does not vitiate their value. (shrink)

In philosophical contexts, logical formalisms are often resorted to as a means to render the validity and invalidity of informal arguments formally transparent. Since Oliver and Massey , however, it has been recognized in the literature that identifying valid arguments is easier than identifying invalid ones. Still, any viable theory of adequate logical formalization should at least reliably identify valid arguments. This paper argues that accounts of logical formalization as developed by Blau and Brun do not meet that benchmark. The (...) paper ends by suggesting different strategies to remedy the problem. (shrink)

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

Krabbe (2003, in F.H. van Eemeren, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Sic Sat, Amsterdam, pp. 641–644) defined a metadialogue as a dialogue about one or more dialogues, and a ground-level dialogue as a dialogue that is not a metadialogue. Similarly, I define a meta-argument as an argument about one or more arguments, and a ground-level argument as one which is not a meta-argument. (...) Krabbe (1995, in F.H van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans (eds.), Proceedings of the Third ISSA Conference on Argumentation, Sic Sat, Amsterdam, pp. 333–344) showed that formal-fallacy criticism (and more generally, fallacy criticism) consists of metadialogues, and that such metadialogues can be profiled in ways that lead to their proper termination or resolution. I reconstruct Krabbe’s metadialogical account into monolectical, meta-argumentative terminology by describing three-types of meta-arguments corresponding to the three ways of proving formal invalidity he studied: the trivial logic-indifferent method; the method of counterexample situation; and the method of formal paraphrase. A fourth type of meta-argument corresponds to what Oliver (1967, Mind 76, 463–478), Govier (1985, Informal Logic 7, 27–33), and Copi (1986) call refutation by logical analogy. A fifth type of meta-argument represents my reconstruction of arguments by parity of reasoning studied by Woods and Hudak (1989, Informal Logic 11, 125–139). Other particular meta-arguments deserving future study are Hume’s critique of the argument from design in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and Mill’s initial argument in The Subjection of Women about the importance of established custom and general feeling vis-à-vis argumentation. (shrink)

Our examination of the controversy surrounding the intentionalist conception of textual interpretation shows that the critics of this approach to questions of meaning and interpretation have so far failed to prove their case. The standard objections to intentionalism, on grounds of logical or empirical fallacy, cannot be maintained. We reconstruct the objections which have been raised in the literature against the intentional conception and discuss them as criticism of a conception hold to be inadequate with respect to the problem of (...) literary interpretation. In our evaluation of the intentional conception we conclude that it represents a perfectly ‘normal’ conception of meaning and interpretation, of a kind by no means inferior to other approaches adopted by the various disciplines concerned with interpreting texts. (shrink)

This paper is about the situation in which an author (writer or speaker) presents a deductively invalid argument, but the addressee aims at a charitable interpretation and has reason to assume that the author intends to present a valid argument. How can he go about interpreting the author’s reasoning as enthymematically valid? We suggest replacing the usual find-the-missing-premise approaches by an approach based on systematic efforts to ascribe a belief state to the author against the background of which the argument (...) has to be evaluated. The suggested procedure includes rules for recording whether the author in fact accepts or denies the premises and the conclusion, as well as tests for enthymematic validity and strategies for revising belief state ascriptions. Different degrees of interpretive charity can be exercised. This is one reason why the interpretation or reconstruction of an enthymematic argument typically does not result in a unique outcome. (shrink)

According to the Asymmetry Thesis, whereas there are many kinds of argument-forms that make at least some of their instances valid, there is none that makes any of its instances invalid. To refute this thesis, a counterexample has been produced in the form of an argument-form whose premise-form's instances are all logically true and whose conclusion form's instances are all logically false. The purpose of this paper is to show that there are many more kinds of argument-forms that make some (...) of their instances invalid and that, hence, are counterexamples refuting the Asymmetry Thesis. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that an argument's possessing the form of affirming the consequent does not suffice to make its premises at all favorably relevant to its conclusion. In support of this thesis I assume two premises and argue for a third. My two assumptions are these: (1) that an argument's possessing the form of affirming the consequent does not suffice to make its conclusion certain relative to its premises (this is widely, if not universally, acknowledged by writers (...) on logic), and (2) premises are favorably relevant to a conclusion only if it is certain or probable relative to them (I argued for this in an earlier paper). The premise I argue for in this paper is that an argument's possessing the form of affirming the consequent does not suffice to make its conclusion probable relative to its premises. To establish this third premise, I first refute a defense of the contrary position (namely, that an argument's possessing the form of affirming the consequent suffices to make its conclusion probable relative to its premises), then offer counterexamples to that position, and finally demonstrate the failure of several attempts to save it. (shrink)

According to the standard opinions in the literature, blocking the unacceptable consequences of the notorious slingshot argument requires imposing constraints on the metaphysics of facts or on theories of definite descriptions (or class abstracts). This paper argues that both of these well-known strategies to rebut the slingshot overshoot the mark. The slingshot, first and foremost, raises the question as to the adequate logical formalization of statements about facts, i.e. of factual contexts. It will be shown that a rigorous application of (...) Quine’s maxim of shallow analysis to formalizations of factual contexts paves the way for an account of formalizing such contexts which blocks the slingshot without ramifications for theories of facts or definite descriptions. (shrink)