Die Suche scheint zunächst der Philosophie als Objekt oder Wissenschaft zu gelten. Paradigmatisch läßt sich dies am Gang der neuzeitlichen Philosophie von Descartes bis Kant verfolgen. Gerade an ihren philosophischen Ansätzen zeigt sich aber zugleich, daß jene Suche nach einer Universalwissenschaft, sofern diese auf einem unbedingten Prinzip beruhen muß, in keinem Finden sich beruhigen kann. Dieses Dilemma drückt Friedrich von Hardenberg am Beginn seiner Vermischten Bemerkungen prägnant aus in der Sentenz: Wir suchen überall das Unbedingte und finden immer nur Dinge.

More than current scholarship in argumentation suggests, successful defense of standpoints depends on learning. As long as arguers comply with a minimum co-operativity, argumentation has genuinely an epistemic interest insofar as any position agreed upon becomes agreeable, i.e., intersubjectively shared because those who did not share it have learned why it is agreeable. Since the epistemic interest of argumentation is absent from most of current scholarship, `intersubjectification' is basically treated as being always possible. In this paper I argue that `intersubjectification' (...) – the `matching of the arguers' communicative backgrounds,' as I will term it – is not a given, but a communicative activity which may or may not succeed. Hence, different types of arguing come into being, depending on how and what arguers are prepared to learn. In the paper, examples are given for unproblematic `intersubjectification,' for `intersubjectification' that requires considerable argumentative co-operation, and for `intersubjectification' that fails utterly. From the analyses, a continuous scale of types of communicative processes of arguing is presented that ranges from one extreme case, termed `dogmatic arguing,' to another extreme case, termed `emergent arguing.'. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that much can be gained for the analysis and evaluation of arguing when fallacies are not, or not only, conceived of as flawed premise–conclusion complexes but rather as argumentative moves which distort harmfully an interaction aiming at resolving communication problems argumentatively. Starting from Normative Pragmatics and the pragma-dialectical concept of fallacy, a case study is presented to illustrate a fallacy which is termed the 'revelation argument' because it is characterized by an interactor's revealing her (...) thoughts and/or emotions to the addressees and claiming that these would have justificatory or refutatory potential with respect to the problem discussed. Although the revelation argument may not be a paradigm case of resolution- hindering moves, it is an extreme case of flawed reasoning that illustrates plainly the advantages of a communicational perspective on arguing and fallacies. (shrink)

The essay condenses experiences of my work in Spanish universities in a constellation of five topics: 1. The actual situation of philosophy in Spain, 2. Her historical dimension, 3. The corresponding style of philosophical writing by the example of Ortega y Gasset, 4. Beyond the tension of traditionalism and modernity: the underestimated philosophy of Javier Zubiri, 5. Perspectives.

Conditionals are central to inference. Before people can draw inferences about a natural language conditional, they must interpret its meaning. We investigated interpretation of uncertain conditionals using a probabilistic truth table task, focussing on (i) conditional event, (ii) material conditional, and (iii) conjunction interpretations. The order of object (shape) and feature (color) in each conditional's antecedent and consequent was varied between participants. The conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and took longer to process than conjunction (mean di (...) erence 500 ms). Material conditional responses were rare. The proportion of conditional event responses increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with 55% of participants showing a qualitative shift of interpretation. Shifts to the conditional event occurred later in the feature-object order than in the object-feature order. We discuss the results in terms of insight and suggest implications for theories of interpretation. (shrink)