Meta-arguments are arguments about one or more arguments, or argumentation in general. They contrast to ground-level arguments, which are about natural phenomena, historical events, human actions, abstract entities, etc. Although meta-arguments are common in all areas of human cognitive practice, and although implicit studies of them are found in many works, and although a few explicit scholarly contributions exist, meta-argumentation has never been examined explicitly, directly, and systematically in book-length treatment. This lacuna is especially unfortunate because such treatment can offer (...) not only an understanding of a special class of arguments, but also a promising way of doing logic and argumentation theory. This is the first book that attempts a systematic treatment of meta-arguments, providing both an illustration of the meta-argumentational approach to logical theory, and an analysis of an especially rich collection of meta-arguments. First, it elaborates an empirical methodology derived partly from a critical appreciation of Stephen Toulmin's applied-logic approach, and partly from a novel application of the author's historical-textual approach. Then it examines theoretical meta-arguments, by such scholars as Tony Blair, Robert Fogelin, Alvin Goldman, Trudy Govier, David Hitchcock, Ralph Johnson, Henry Johnstone, Erik Krabbe, Frans van Eemeren, Carl Wellman, and John Woods, on such topics as defining argument, methods of criticism, deep disagreements, and conductive or pro-and-con arguments. Thirdly, it studies famous meta-arguments by such classics as John Stuart Mill, David Hume, and Galileo Galilei, on such topics as freedom of discussion, women's liberation, the existence of God and intelligent design, and the motion of the earth. (shrink)

Following an approach that is empirical but not psychological, and dialectical but not dialogical, in this book Maurice Finocchiaro defines concepts such as reasoning, argument, argument analysis, critical reasoning, methodological reflection, judgment, critical thinking, and informal logic. Including extended critiques of the views of many contemporary scholars, he also integrates into the discussion Arnauld's Port-Royal Logic, Gramsci's theory of intellectuals, and case studies from the history of science, particularly the work of Galileo, Newton, Huygens, and Lavoisier.

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction. The Galileo Affair from Descartes to John Paul II: A Survey of Sources, Facts, and Issues 1. The Condemnation of Galileo 2. Promulgation and Diffusion of the News 3. Emblematic Reactions: Descartes, Peiresc, Galileo’s Daughter 4. Polarizations: Secularism, Liberalism, Fundamentalism 5. Compromises: Viviani, Auzout, Leibniz 6. Myth-making or Enlightenment? Pascal, Voltaire, the Encyclopedia 7. Incompetence or Enlightenment? Pope Benedict XIV 8. New Lies, Documents, Myths, Apologies 9. Napoleonic Wars and Trials 10. The Inquisition on Galileo’s Side? (...) The Settele Affair and Beyond 11. Varieties of Torture: Demythologizing Galileo’s Trial? 12. A Miscarriage of Justice? The Documentation of Impropriety 13. Galileo Right Again, Wrong Again: Hermeneutics, Epistemology, "Heresy" 14. A Catholic Hero: Tricentennial Rehabilitation 15. Secular Indictments: Brecht’s Atomic Bomb and Koestler’s Two Cultures 16. History on Trial: The Paschini Affair 17. More "Rehabilitation": Pope John Paul II Epilogue: Unfinished Business. (shrink)

This paper examines the views of Fogelin, Woods, Johnstone, etc., concerning deep disa-greements, force-five standoffs, philosophical controversies, etc. My approach is to reconstruct their views and critiques of them as meta-arguments, and to elaborate the meta-argumentative aspects of radical disa-greements. It turns out that deep disagreements are resolvable to a greater degree than usually thought, but only by using special principles and practices, such as meta-argumentation, ad hominem argumentation, Ramsey’s principle, etc.

This is a critical appreciation of Govier’s 2006 ISSA keynote address on the fallacy of composition, and of economists’ writings on this fallacy in economics. I argue that the “fallacy of composition” is a problematical concept, because it does not denote a distinctive kind of argument but rather a plurality, and does not constitute a distinctive kind of error, but rather reduces to oversimplification in arguing from micro to macro. Finally, I propose further testing of this claim based on examples (...) involving public vs. private debt in economics; oligarchic tendencies in politics, and the emergence of societal wholes in sociology. (shrink)

A critical examination of the dialectical approach, focusing on a comparison ofthe illative and the dialectical definitions of argument. I distinguish a moderate, a strong and a hyper dialectical conception of argument. I critique Goldman's argument for the moderate conception and Johnson's argument for the strong conception, and argue that the moderate conception is correct.

This is an interpretative and evaluative study of the thought of Antonio Gramsci, the founding father of the Italian Communist Party who died in 1937 after ten years of imprisonment in Fascist jails. It proceeds by a rigorous textual analysis of his Prison Notebooks, the scattered notes he wrote during his incarceration. Professor Finocchiaro explores the nature of Gramsci's dialectical thinking, in order to show in what ways Gramsci was and was not a Marxist, as well as to illustrate correspondences (...) with the work of Hegel, Croce, and Bukharin. The book provides a critical reappraisal of Gramsci as a thinker and of the dialectical approach as a mode of inquiry. (shrink)

This book collects a renowned scholar's essays from the past five decades and reflects two main concerns: an approach to logic that stresses argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking and that is informal, empirical, naturalistic, practical, applied, concrete, and historical; and an interest in Galileo’s life and thought—his scientific achievements, Inquisition trial, and methodological lessons in light of his iconic status as “father of modern science.” These republished essays include many hard to find articles, out of print works, and chapters which (...) are not available online. The collection provides an excellent resource of the author's lifelong dedication to the subject. Thus, the book contains critical analyses of some key Galilean arguments about the laws of falling bodies and the Copernican hypothesis of the earth’s motion. There is also a group of chapters in which Galileo’s argumentation is compared and contrasted with that of other figures such as Socrates, Karl Marx, Giordano Bruno, and his musicologist father Vincenzo Galilei. The chapters on Galileo’s trial illustrate an approach to the science-vs-religion issue which Finocchiaro labels “para-clerical” and conceptualizes in terms of a judicious consideration of arguments for and against Galileo and the Church. Other essays examine argumentation about Galileo’s life and thought by the major Galilean scholars of recent decades. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, history of science, history of religion, philosophy of religion, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication studies. (shrink)

David N. Perkins has studied everyday reasoning by an experimental-critical approach involving taped interviews during which subjects reflect on controversial issues and articulate their reasoning on both sides. The present author has studied scientific reasoning in natural language by an historical-textual approach involving the reconstruction and evaluation of the arguments in Galileo's Two Chief World Systems. They have, independently, reached the strikingly similar substantive conclusion that the most common flaw of informal reasoning is the failure to consider lines of argument (...) supporting conclusions contrary to the one in fact reached. This article describes, compares, and contrasts their respective approaches, results, and theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

Although the fallacy of composition is little studied and trivially illustrated, some view it as ubiquitous and paramount. Furthermore, although definitions regard the concept as unproblematic, it contains three distinct elements, often confused. And although some scholars apparently claim that fallacies are figments of a critic’s imagination, they are really proposing to study fallacies in the context of meta-argumentation. Guided by these ideas, I discuss the important historical example of Michels’s iron law of oligarchy.

For example, from the point of view of pure conceptual analysis, since the reduction of what is not understood to what is understood is new understanding, explanation seems to involve growth of understanding. But is it the only kind of growth of understanding? It seems that explanation is quantitative growth of understanding. Could there be a qualitative growth of understanding and if so what would it be? And how would qualitative growth of understanding relate to explanation?

Feyerabend's views are construed as formulating the problem of determining the role of rhetoric in scientific rationality and posing the solution-theory that scientific rationality is essentially rhetorical. He is taken to give three arguments against reason, of which the one from the insufficiency of reason and the one from incommensurability are shown to presuppose his historical argument; his historical argument is based on his account of Galileo, which hinges essentially on Feyerabend's analysis of the tower argument. This analysis is insightful (...) in certain important ways but misconceived in others. Feyerabend's main error is to see a conflict between reason and rhetoric, where none exists; it is argued that rhetorical devices have their own standards of propriety and impropriety, different from those of rational arguments, and that at the same time sound rhetorical analysis presupposes sound logical analysis. (shrink)

In the context of a study of meta-arguments in general, and famous meta-arguments in particular, I reconstruct chapter 1 of Mill’s Subjection of Women as the meta-argument: women’s liberation should be argued on its merits because the universality of subjection derives from the law of force and hence provides no presumption favoring its correctness. The raises the problem of the relationship among illative, dialectical, and meta-argumentative tiers.

Chapter 2 of Mill’s On Liberty is reconstructed as a complex argument for freedom of discussion; it consists of three subarguments, each possessing illative and dialectical components. The illative component is this: freedom of discussion is desirable because it enables us to determine whether an opinion is true, whereas its denial amounts to an assumption of infallibility; it improves our understanding and appreciation of the supporting reasons of true opinions, and our understanding and appreciation of their practical or emotional meaning; (...) it enables us to understand and appreciate every side of the truth, given that opinions tend to be partly true and partly false and people tend to be one-sided. The dialectical component consists of replies to ten objections, five in the first subargument, three in the second, one in the third, and one general. An analysis of Mill’s argument suggests that it is a contribution to argumentation theory; it advocates and practices a dialectical approach; its reconstruction and analysis are a contribution to argumentation theory; and it raises in a striking manner the issue of the relationship between epistemology and argumentation theory. (shrink)

Although Hume’s critique of the design argument is a powerful non-inductive meta-argument, the main line of critical reasoning is not analogical but rather a complex meta-argument. It consists of two parts, one interpretive, the other evaluative. The critical meta-argument advances twelve criticisms: that the design argument is weak because two of its three premises are justified by inadequate subarguments; because its main inference embodies four flaws; and because the conclusion is in itself problematic for four reasons. Such complexity is quite (...) manageable in a meta-argumentation approach. (shrink)

For 150 years after Galileo’s condemnation in 1633, there were many references to the trial, but no sustained, heated or polarized discussions. Then came the thesis that Galileo was condemned not for being a good astronomer but for being a bad theologian ; it began in 1784–1785 with an apology of the Inquisition by Mallet du Pan in the Mercure de France and the printing in Tiraboschi’s Storia della letteratura italiana of an apocryphal letter attributed to Galileo but forged by (...) Onorato Gaetani. This thesis is not only untenable and false but inverts and subverts the truth; it proved to be long-lasting and widely accepted; so it may be labeled a myth. It was held by such writers as Bergier; Bergier; B; Feller; Cooper; Purcell; Marini; Reumont; Madden and Duhem. Afterwards, it was generally abandoned, its death knell being pope John Paul II’s speeches in 1979–1992. The myth seems to have acted as a catalyst insofar as its creation encouraged the proliferation of pro-clerical accounts and the articulation of pro-Galilean ones, thus making the discussion of Galileo’s trial the cause célèbre it is today.Author Keywords: Galileo; Galileo affair; Science versus religion; Theology; Biblical exegesis; Myth. (shrink)

Methodological criticism may be defined as the critique of scientific practice in the light of methodological principles, and critical methodology as the study of proper methods of criticism; the problem is that of the interaction between the scientific methods which give methodological criticism its methodological character and the critical methods which give it its character of criticism. These ideas and this problem are illustrated by an examination of Karl Popper's critique of Marxian social science. It is argued that though Popper's (...) favorable articulations of Marx are valuable, his unfavorable criticism is invalid, the grounds of my argument being certain ideas in critical methodology relating to the distinctions between theory and practice, between inaccurate and invalid criticism, and between the justification of favorable criticism and the justification of unfavorable criticism. (shrink)

Galileo's Dialogue (1632) can be read from the viewpoints of methodological judgment and critical reasoning; methodological judgment means the avoidance of onesidedness and extremes; and critical reasoning means reasoning aimed at the analysis and evaluation of arguments. Classic sources for these readings are Thomas Salusbury (1661) and the Port-Royal logicians (1662). This focus does not deny the book's scientific, historical, rhetorical, and aesthetic dimensions; it is critical of excessively rhetorical readings; and it suggests solutions to the problems of hermeneutical pluralism, (...) interpretation versus evaluation, and theory versus practice. The book's methodological judgment and critical reasoning can be shown to correspond to Galileo's self-reflections. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Antoine Arnauld's Logic or the Art of Thinking (1662), commonly known as the Port-Royal Logic. Rather than reading this work from the viewpoint of post-Fregean formal logic or the viewpoint of seventeenth-century intellectual history, I approach it with the aim of exploring its relationship to that contemporary field which may be labeled informal logic and/or argumentation theory. It turns out that the Port-Royal Logic is a precursor of this current field, or conversely, that this (...) field may be said to be in the same tradition. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Johnstone's thesis that all valid philosophical arguments are ad hominem. I clarify his notions of valid, philosophical, and ad hominem. I illustrate the thesis with his refutation ofthe claim that only ordinary language is correct. r discuss his three supporting arguments (historical, theoretical, and intermediate). And r criticize the thesis with the objections that if an ad hominem argument is valid, it is really ad rem; that it's unclear how his own theoretical argument can (...) be ad hominem; that if an ad hominem argument is really valid, it would have to be based on the proponent's own assumptions; and that the thesis is not true of philosophical arguments that are constructive rather than critical. (shrink)