In some previous work, I tried to give a concept-based account of the nature of our entitlement to certain very basic inferences (see the papers in Part III of Boghossian 2008b). In this previous work, I took it for granted, along with many other philosophers, that we understood well enough what it is for a person to infer. In this paper, I turn to thinking about the nature of inference itself. This topic is of great interest in its own right (...) and surprisingly understudied by philosophers. A correct understanding of inference promises to shed light on a number of important topics. In particular, it threatens to undermine the sort of concept-based story about entitlement to which I had previously been attracted. (shrink)

I have been supposing that for the theory of reasoning, explicit belief is an all-or-nothing matter, I have assumed that, as far as principles of reasoning are concerned, one either believes something explicitly or one does not; in other words an appropriate "representation" is either in one's "memory" or not. The principles of reasoning are principles for modifying such all-or-nothing representations. This is not to deny that in some ways belief is a matter of degree. For one thing implicit belief (...) is certainly a matter of degree, since it is a matter of how easily and automatically one can infer something from what one believes explicitly. Furthermore, explicit belief is a matter of degree in the sense that one believes some things more strongly than others. Sometimes one is only somewhat inclined to believe something, sometimes one is not sure what to believe, sometimes one is inclined to disbelieve something, sometimes one is quite confident something is not so, and so forth. (shrink)

This book brings together in one place David Hitchcock’s most significant published articles on reasoning and argument. In seven new chapters he updates his thinking in the light of subsequent scholarship. Collectively, the papers articulate a distinctive position in the philosophy of argumentation. Among other things, the author:• develops an account of “material consequence” that permits evaluation of inferences without problematic postulation of unstated premises.• updates his recursive definition of argument that accommodates chaining and embedding of arguments and allows any (...) type of illocutionary act to be a conclusion. • advances a general theory of relevance.• provides comprehensive frameworks for evaluating inferences in reasoning by analogy, means-end reasoning, and appeals to considerations or criteria.• argues that none of the forms of arguing ad hominem is a fallacy.• describes proven methods of teaching critical thinking effectively. (shrink)

The Aims of the Book -/- 1. To improve your skill in analyzing and evaluating arguments and presentations of the kind you find in everyday discourse (news media, discussions, advertisements), textbooks, and lectures. 2. To improve your skill in presenting arguments, reports and instructions clearly and persuasively. 3. To improve your critical instincts, that is, your immediate judgments of your attitudes toward the communications and behavior of others and yourself, so that you consistently approach them with the standards of reason (...) and the attitude of reasonableness. 4. To improve your knowledge about the facts and arguments relevant to a large number of important contemporary issues in politics, education, ethics, and several practical fields. -/- These are practical aims but not narrow practical aims: the third one, in particular, is very far-reaching and requires a whole shift of values for most of us. So this is intended to be a powerful, as well as practical, book using practical, everyday examples of the kind that a citizen, especially a citizen-student, runs into all the time. -/- The text starts with a short discussion of reasoning itself, then explores the details of this approach, and then gets down to practical procedures for improving one's reasoning skills. The discussions and examples always begin at a rather elementary level, but they get into harder material fairly quickly. If you are, or are hoping to be, a teacher or a lawyer, a scientist or an executive, what you learn here will be professional skills for you—vital professional skills. But for any citizen, they are also essential skills. (shrink)

In distinguishing justification from discovery, the logical empiricists hoped to avoid confusing causal matters with normative ones. Exaggerating the virtue of this distinction, however, has disguised from us important features of the concept of a reason as it functions in human practice. Surfacing those features gives some insight into reasoning and argument.

Toulmin’s scheme for the layout of arguments (1958, The Uses of Argument, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) represents an influential tool for the analysis of arguments. The scheme enriches the traditional premises-conclusion model of arguments by distinguishing additional elements, like warrant, backing and rebuttal. The present paper contains a formal elaboration of Toulmin’s scheme, and extends it with a treatment of the formal evaluation of Toulmin-style arguments, which Toulmin did not discuss at all. Arguments are evaluated in terms of a so-called (...) dialectical interpretation of their assumptions. In such an interpretation, an argument’s assumptions can be evaluated as defeated, e.g., when there is a defeating reason against the assumption. The present work builds on recent research on defeasible argumentation (cf. e.g. the work of Pollock, Reiter, Loui, Vreeswijk, Prakken, Hage and Dung). More specifically, the author’s work on the dialectical logic DEFLOG and the argumentation tool ARGUMED serve as starting points. (shrink)

Following David Hitchcock and Stephen Toulmin, this paper takes warrants to be material inference rules. It offers an account of the form such rules should take that is designed (a) to implement the idea that an argument/inference is valid only if it is entitlement preserving and (b) to support a qualitative version of evidence proportionalism. It attempts to capture what gives warrants their normative force by elaborating a concept of reliability tailored to its account of the form such rules should (...) take. (shrink)

Introduction -- Rational explanation of belief -- Rational explanation of action -- (Non-human) animals and their reasons -- Rational explanation and rational causation -- Events and states -- Physicalism.

A conclusion follows from given premisses if and only if an acceptable counterfactual-supporting covering generalization of the argument rules out, either definitively or with some modal qualification, simultaneous acceptability of the premisses and non-accepta-bility of the conclusion, even though it does not rule out acceptability of the premisses and does not require acceptability of the conclusion independently of the premisses. Hence the reiterative associated conditional of an argument is true if and only it has such a covering generalization, and a (...) supposed unexpressed premiss supplied to make an argument formally valid should be a covering generalization. (shrink)

We argue that Hilary Putnam's pragmatism provides an epistemological perspective which can help us understand--and can positively inform--the development of informal logic.

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. This immensely rich work, powerfully evocative of the mind of its author, will refresh and illuminate discussions in many areas of contemporary (...) philosophy. (shrink)

Grennan bases his evaluation of arguments on two criteria: logical adequacy and pragmatic adequacy. He asserts that the common formal logic systems, while logically sound, are not very useful for evaluating everyday inferences, which are almost all deductively invalid as stated. Turning to informal logic, he points out that while more recent informal logic and critical thinking texts are superior in that their authors recognize the need to evaluate everyday arguments inductively, they typically cover only inductive fallacies, ignoring the inductively (...) sound patterns frequently used in successful persuasion. To redress these problems, Grennan introduces a variety of additional inductive patterns. Concluding that informal logic texts do not encourage precision in evaluating arguments, Grennan proposes a new argument evaluation procedure that expresses judgments of inferential strength in terms of probabilities. Based on theories of Stephen Toulmin, Roderick Chisholm, and John Pollock, his proposed system allows for a more precise judgment of the persuasive force of arguments. (shrink)

Identifying the missing or unstated premisses of arguments is important, because their logical quality depends on them. Textbook authors regard enthymematic syllogisms (e.g., "Elvis is a man, so Elvis is mortal") as having an unstated premiss - the major premiss (e.g., "All men are mortal"). They are said to be such because these syllogisms become formally valid when the major premiss is added (i.e., it is a gap-filler). I argue that unstated major premises are not gap-fillers: they support a part (...) of the argument that is already given implicitly - the inference claim ("If the premisses are true then the conclusion is true"). As such, their logical status is the same as that of an unstated proposition that supports the minor premiss, which is not part of the argument. Therefore, the so-called "major premiss" is not an unstated premiss of the enthymeme. (shrink)

What is a good argument? That depends on what is meant by 'argument'. In formal logic, an argument is a set of sentences or propositions, one designated as conclusion and the remainder as premises. On this conception of argument, there are two kinds of goodness. An argument is good in a weak sense if the conclusion either follows deductively from the premises or receives strong evidential support from them. An argument is good in a strong sense if, in addition to (...) this, it has only true premises. Thus, in the strong sense, the paradigm of a good argument is a sound argument. (shrink)

Now in its Eighth Edition, UNDERSTANDING ARGUMENTS: AN INTRODUCTION TO INFORMAL LOGIC, 8th Edition. has proven itself to be an exceptional guide to understanding and constructing arguments in the context of students' academic studies as well as their subsequent professional careers. Its tried and true strengths include multiple approaches to the analysis of arguments; a thorough grounding on the uses of language in everyday discourse; and chapters in the latter half of the book that apply abstract concepts to concrete legal, (...) moral, and scientific issues. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

There are obvious benefits to be gained from the study of logic: heightened ability to express ideas clearly and concisely, increased skill in defining one's terms, enlarged capacity to formulate arguments rigorously and to analyze them critically. But the greatest benefit, in my judgment, is the recognition that reason can be applied in every aspect of human affairs.

Do not define argument by its use to persuade. for other uses of arguments exist. An argument is a proposition and a reason for it. and argumentation is an interchange involving two or more parties resulting in the assertion of one or more arguments coupled with anticipated or actual critical responses. A logically good argument has grounds adeq uate for the purposes at hand (true, probable, plausible, acceptable to the audience) and the grounds provide adequate support for the conclusion. The (...) norms for good logic in arguments are different from the norms for the good use of arguments. (shrink)

In this paper we defend a particular version of the epistemic approach to argumentation. We advance some general considerations in favor of the approach and then examine the ways in which different versions of it play out with respect to the theory of fallacies, which we see as central to an understanding of argumentation. Epistemic theories divide into objective and subjective versions. We argue in favor of the objective version, showing that it provides a better account than its subjectivist rival (...) of the central fallacy of begging the question. We suggest that the strengths of the objective epistemic theory of fallacies provide support for the epistemic approach to argumentation more generally. (shrink)

The book also comes with an exhaustive array of study aids that enable the reader to monitor and enhance the learning process.

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook intended for students in philosophy, communications studies and linguistics who have completed at least one course in argumentation theory, information logic, critical thinking or formal logic. Containing nearly 400 exercises, Mark Vorobej develops a novel approach to argument interpretation and evaluation. One of the key themes of the book is that we cannot succeed in distinguishing good argument from bad arguments until we learn to listen carefully to others. Part I develops a (...) relativistic account of argument cogency that allows for rational disagreement. Part II offers a comprehensive and rigorous account of argument diagramming. Hybrid arguments are contrasted with linked and convergent arguments, and a novel technique is introduced for graphically recording disagreements with authorial claims. (shrink)

A conclusion is a “material consequence” of reasons if it follows necessarily from them in accordance with a valid form of argument with content. The corresponding universal generalization of the argument’s associated conditional must be true, must be a covering generalization, and must be true of counter-factual instances. But it need not be law-like. Pearl’s structural model semantics is easier to apply to such counter-factual instances than Lewis’s closest-worlds semantics, and gives intuitively correct results.