The notions of types of dialogue and dialectical relevance are central themes in Walton’s work and the grounds for a dialectical approach to many fallacies. After outlining the dialogue models constituting the background of Walton’s account, this article presents the concepts of dialectical relevance and dialogue shifts in their application to biased argumentation, fallacious moves, and illicit argumentative strategies. Showing the different dialectical proposals Walton advanced in several studies on argumentation as a development of a dialogical system, it has proved (...) possible to highlight the fundamental aspects of his theory in a comprehensive model of communication and interaction. (shrink)

La meta del presente artículo es probar que existen contextos de acción en los que tiene lugar una escisión entre el conocimiento moral de los sujetos y la justificación, también moral, de sus acciones. Para que ello ocurra, según sostendremos, deben darse al menos dos condiciones: el costo de actuar sobre la base de creencias falsas debe ser muy elevado para el bienestar de los afectados y la probabilidad de que tal resultado se produzca efectivamente, aunque baja, debe ser significativa (...) o no trivial. Sostendremos que la escisión entre conocimiento y justificación de la acción referida tiene importantes consecuencias para la estructura de la deliberación moral. This paper is aimed at proving that in certain contexts of action there may be a cleavage between the moral knowledge of an agent and the moral justification of her actions. I will argue that this is so when two conditions obtain: first, acting on the basis of false beliefs may end-up being very costly in terms of the welfare of those affected; and second, even if low, the probability of such negative upshots are significant or not trivial. I shall claim that this cleavage between knowledge and justification of actions has important consequences for the structure of moral deliberation. (shrink)

That Jews are concerned about human rights is distinct from why Jews should be concerned about rights in the first place. This project analyzes the reasons Jews in the twentieth century put forward to convince co-religionists to take rights seriously. Focusing on the content of these arguments facilitates dividing the proffered rationales into three broad categories--the temporal, the innate, and the philosophical. Analysis of each category reveals subdivisions, reflecting the many ways Jews try to persuade each other to care about (...) human rights. This taxonomy, unlike others, highlights the different ways in which Jews conceptualize the burning ethical questions of our day: of how and why to be Jewish and modern. These rationales therefore are understood to function as moral reasons and, as such, can be assessed by their relative claims. (shrink)

Normative theories of argumentation tend to assume that logical and dialectical rules suffice to ensure the rationality of argumentative discourse. Yet, in everyday debates people use arguments that seem valid in light of such rules but nonetheless biased and tendentious. This article seeks to show that the rationality of argumentation can only be fully promoted if we take into account its ethical dimension. To substantiate this claim, I review some of the empirical evidence indicating that people’s inferential reasoning is systematically (...) affected by a variety of biases and heuristics. Insofar as these cognitive illusions are typically unintentional, it appears that arguers may be biased despite their well-intended efforts to follow the rules of critical argumentation. Nevertheless, I argue that people remain responsible for the rationality of their arguments, given that there are a number of measures that they can (and ought to) take to avoid such distortions. I highlight the importance of argumentational virtues and critical thinking to rational debates, and describe a set of indirect strategies of “argumentative self-control”. (shrink)

Douglas Walton’s multitudinous contributions to the study of argumentation seldom, if ever, directly engage with argumentation in mathematics. Nonetheless, several of the innovations with which he is most closely associated lend themselves to improving our understanding of mathematical arguments. I concentrate on two such innovations: dialogue types (§1) and argumentation schemes (§2). I argue that both devices are much more applicable to mathematical reasoning than may be commonly supposed.