According to Perelman (Rhétoriques, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1989: 80), a pseudo-argument is an argument that is supposed to be convincing from a given audience viewpoint, while it is not from another audience viewpoint. Such a claim raises the traditional problem of the boundaries between the well known “convince versus persuade” dichotomy. This paper aims at investigating it from a contemporary rhetorical and argumentative perspective which will take into account the fictional dimension of persuasion. In this perspective, (...) it will be claimed that the notion of an “as if” argument better fits to some rhetorical phenomena. (shrink)

If you want to challenge or at least weaken the adhesion to a system of values, you can basically adopt two radically opposed rhetorical strategies. Either you will attack the system in a frontal way: for instance, fundamentalists or fascists deny any validity to democratic values and human rights. Or you will pretend to argue from within the system (by saying that you accept some of its basic premises), while subtly distorting the process of reasoning in order to get to (...) your conclusions. If the audience is naïve or poorly informed, you will be able to defend positions that are fundamentally at odds with liberal-democratic values while seeming to argue from inside the system. I would like to show how such a process of “perverse” translation works in the context of the Darwinism/Creationism “controversy”. The attacks on the teaching of evolutionary biology began approximately one century ago. The way Creationists have argued and changed several times their rhetorical strategies seems very interesting to me, in that it exemplifies an important contemporary phenomenon, which I call “perverse translation” or “the wolf in the sheepfold”. (shrink)

The author distinguishes two concepts of practical reason: (a) practical reason as a source of practical principles, and (b) practical reason as the theory of thought operations connected with action. He proves that there is no practical recognition in the sense (a). We can deal with actions only on the basis of dichotomic semantics. Critical analyses of some theories of practical reason are presented (Kant, Lorenzen, Apel, Alexy). The critical part of the paper mainly concerns the discourse theory and its (...) implications for practical philosophy and jurisprudence. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of the fifth-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Denys) on the twentieth-century philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend. I argue that the later Feyerabend took from Denys a metaphysical claim—the ‘doctrine of ineffability’—intended to support epistemic pluralism. The paper has five parts. Part one introduces Denys and Feyerabend’s common epistemological concern to deny the possibility of human knowledge of ultimate reality. Part two examines Denys’ arguments for the ‘ineffability’ of God as presented in On the (...) Divine Names . Part three then explores how Feyerabend imported Denys’ account of divine ineffability into his own metaphysics to provide a novel argument for epistemic pluralism. Part four explains the significance of an appreciation of Dionyius’ influence for our understanding of Feyerabend. I conclude that Denys was a significant and neglected influence upon the later Feyerabend. (shrink)

In his recent "Thomas vs. Thomas: A New Approach to Nagel's Bat Argument", Yujin Nagasawa interprets Thomas Nagel as making a certain argument against physicalism and objects that this argument transgresses a principle, laid down by Thomas Aquinas, according to which inability to perform a pseudo-task does not count against an omnipotence claim. Taking Nagasawa's interpretation of Nagel for granted, I distinguish different kinds of omnipotence claims and different kinds of pseudo-tasks, and on that basis (...) show that Nagasawa's criticism of Nagel is unsuccessful. I also show how his reflections do nonetheless point to a limitation of the approach he means to criticize. (shrink)

Based on the argumentation theory of new rhetoric, this paper offers an analytical framework to facilitate empirical investigations on how managers in organizations handle unfairness claims. The proposed framework advocates a rhetorical approach that seeks to understand whether managers absolve themselves of unfairness accusations by pseudo-legitimations. Pseudo-legitimation is defined as an attempt to legitimate an action without any genuine reasoning. While the precision of formal deductive reasoning tends not to apply to moral disputes, rhetoric enables rational argumentation and (...) the use of practical reasoning to achieve resolution. Therefore, if managerial judgments are genuine products of reasoning, managers' use of rhetoric to legitimate their actions should be respected in acknowledging value plurality within their boundaries of authority. By contrast, managerial legitimations that are based on irrational grounds should be disrespected, as they can lead to arbitrariness and abuse of power. Institutional dynamics may either permit or inhibit such uses of irrationality. Thus, the proposed framework should be considered alongside the perspective of rhetorical institutionalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: God beyond being Creation as theophany Goodness, beauty, and love Evil Hierarchy Knowledge Symbolism Christological consummation.

This paper focuses on Pseudo Justin's objections to Aristotle's cosmological doctrines, and aims to show that, as a result of his criticisms to Aristotle's viewpoints, an entirely new view of the natural world bursts in. A few arguments by Pseudo Justin against the Aristotelian cosmology are analysed, and the author shows that Pseudo Justin makes use of conceptual tools and of some assumptions Aristotelian in character without resorting to the creationist argument. If what is suggested in (...) this paper is sound, Pseudo-Justin would have put forward and advanced for the first time some aspects of the physical model which turned out to be dominant from Modernity onwards several centuries before the new approach to nature starting in the XVII century. (shrink)

Even more precious perhaps is the tradition that works against Â… that misuse of language which consists in pseudo-arguments and propaganda. This is the tradition and discipline of clear speaking..

An argument is presented according to which exposing pseudo-scientific medical claims may be ethically wrong. It is then suggested that this argument gives an interesting explanation why the successful outing of pseudo-science may lead to an increase in medical pseudo-science overall.

Argumentation theorists often disagree about which scheme best represents a given type of argument. Unfortunately, authors sometimes become involved in fruitless pseudo-agreement because they fail to perceive that their supposedly competing schemes are means for achieving different practical or theoretical goals. This paper explains some of the different purposes that an argument scheme may serve, and it indicates how the relevant type of pseudo-disagreement may be avoided.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit by Andrew Alexander DavisPaul T. WilfordDAVIS, Andrew Alexander. Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy: Reading the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. ix + 214 pp. Cloth, $125In Hegel on Pseudo-Philosophy, Andrew Davis makes a convincing argument that just as the problem of how to distinguish sophistry from philosophy is a recurrent theme (...) of Plato's dialogues, so too is the problem of sophistry or "pseudo-philosophy" central to the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Indeed, the problem of how to recognize and guard against pseudo-philosophy is the common theme linking the prefaces to the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Science of Logic, the Encyclopedia, and the Philosophy of Right, each of which endeavors "to reveal something about the essence of philosophy... by highlighting the ways pseudo-philosophy fails to do justice to philosophical content." Such an undertaking is especially important to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, however, because the subject matter [End Page 543] of the work is nothing but the logos of the appearances of spirit. To arrive at knowledge of spirit requires attending to all the various ways in which spirit (or Geist) can appear, but, as Davis remarks, "like life, Geist may be thought as a source of appearances, but not as an appearance itself. It is always 'behind' what appears." As a result, the Phenomenology is an exercise in trying "to grasp what does not appear through appearances alone." Thus, just as the Phenomenology approaches the truth of spirit by considering spirit's partial, abstract, and one-sided modes of appearing, so too does the preface to the Phenomenology approach the truth of philosophy by investigating forms of pseudo-philosophy.As Hegel himself states, there are two principal tasks pursued in the preface: (1) to offer a preliminary sketch of what it would mean for "the cognition of absolute actuality to become perfectly lucid about its own nature;" and (2) to eliminate some "habitually accepted forms of thought" that prove obstacles to philosophic cognition. While most commentators take their bearings from the former, Davis's approach to the preface is unique (to my knowledge) in foregrounding the latter. Yet, as his book unfolds, it becomes clear that the latter is the route into the former. Indeed, one of the central lessons of the book is that, although the elimination of erroneous habits of thought may seem to be merely negative and therefore principally propaedeutic to the positive task of leading the reader toward "absolute knowing," the examination of error is an integral component of grasping the true. If the Phenomenology as a whole is a "highway of despair"—a comprehensive refutation of natural consciousness's pretensions to knowledge that is simultaneously a dialectical ascent to conceptually comprehending knowing (begreifende Wissen)—the preface initiates the reader into the via negativa that philosophic cognition must travel to attain self-knowledge.Davis's book is structured around seven forms of pseudo-philosophy, each of which is treated as a discrete, distinguishable problem in its own right and also as emblematic of the common failure to recognize that the form of philosophy is inseparable from the content of philosophy. As Davis argues, this failure lies at the root of the attempt (common to much of modern philosophy since Descartes) to establish a priori a universal method for thinking (what Leibniz called a mathesis universalis) that will secure certain and indubitable knowledge. But this effort proves self-undermining, always ultimately engendering the very skepticism it seeks to master. Through observing the aporiai generated by forms of pseudo-philosophy, we learn that "the method of philosophy is inseparable from the subject matter of philosophy. Method cannot be isolated and discussed on its own. Philosophy is thinking (form) about thinking (content)."Davis thus gradually discloses Hegel's positive answer to the question "what is philosophy?" through a series of determinate negations of philosophy's imitations. We learn that philosophy is the recollective, self-comprehending, self-moving thinking of thinking by attending to a set of tendencies that impede philosophy: "a tendency to explain rather than [End Page 544] present (chapter 1), a... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In order to explore what it means to pursue philosophical investigations for theological reasons, this paper argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein continues and corrects Pseudo-Denys’ project in The Divine Names. I first argue that The Divine Names should be interpreted as attempting to render human thought transparent to the divine by relativizing our concepts. The success of this project is compromised because the concept of ‘unity’ is not relativized. I then develop the claim that Wittgenstein does relativize unity in (...) a similar way and for similar religious reasons to Pseudo-Denys. As such, he can be read as continuing and correcting the Pseudo-Dionysian project. I conclude by reflecting on several of this argument’s implications for the relationship between philosophy and Christian systematic theology. (shrink)

An argument can be taken as an operation of justification or as the product of this operation. But what about a counter-argument? This article is based on the hypothesis that there exists an operation of argumentative negation, which is both the argumentative and the negative equivalent of the operation of justification. Justification and argumentative negation necessarily act on assertions, for they are active at the level of the epistemic modalities of statements. As an operation, a counter-argument can (...) thus be described, as the application of an argumentative negation; as a product, it can be described as an argument the conclusion of which shows traces of negative modality. Two uses of argumentative negation are distinguished here: counter-argumentation and calling into question. The former can lead only to assertive conclusive statements, but the latter can also lead to directives or commissives. This leads the authors to introduce the notion of pseudo-argument, besides those of argument and counter-argument. It is shown in particular that when a pseudo-argument is rejected, argumentative negation has the effect of making evident an underlying argument. With respect to the latterit functions as a counter-argumentation, whereas with respect to the illocutionary act accomplished by the conclusive statement, it functions as a calling into question of a condition of satisfaction for this act. This article also defines certain characteristics of argument, proposes criteria for identifying argumentative negation in polemical conversations, and distinguishes four modes of counter-argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge a familiar argument -- a composite of arguments in the literature -- for the view that “Why be moral?” is a pseudo-question. I do so by refuting a component of that argument, a component that is not only crucial to the argument but important in its own right. That component concerns the status of moral reasons in replies to “Why be moral?”; consequently, this paper concerns reasons and rationality no less than (...) it concerns morality. The work I devote to those topics shows not only that the argument I address is unsound, but that the conclusion of that argument is false. “Why be moral?” is no pseudo-question. (shrink)

Some 60 years separate us from Theodor W. Adorno’s “Theory of pseudo-culture.” Yet Adorno’s analysis might never have been as pertinent and as compelling as it is in the present moment. The dawn of the “post-truth” era, and the persistent impact of the culture industry on human sensibility and capacity for critical self-reflection, call for a return to Adorno’s critical theorisation of pseudo-culture. This paper revisits Adorno’s assessment of pseudo-culture and proposes a reconstruction of some of his (...) most compelling arguments on the subject in light of the present socio-historical circumstances. The paper starts with a concise discussion of the notions of Kultur, Bildung and Halbbildung in relation to Adorno’s thought. It then discusses the effects of pseudo-culture on human experience by looking into the role of opinions—in particular, what Adorno terms “delusional” opinions—in contemporary late capitalist reality. Finally, the paper ends with a juxtaposition of the barbarism of the banal and neoteric barbarism. I argue that, whereas the former stuns culture and impels it to regress to a state of pseudo-culture, the latter gives it new impetus by opening up new theoretical and practical paths. (shrink)

Many arguments have been advanced for the view that "Why be moral?" is a pseudo-question. In this paper I address one of the most widely known and influential of them, one that comes from John Hospers and J. C. Thornton. I do so partly because, strangely, an important phase of that argument has escaped close attention. It warrants such attention because, firstly, not only is it important to the argument in which it appears, it is important in (...) wider respects. For instance, if it is sound it has weighty consequences even if the argument in which it figures fails. Secondly, it is not sound; it succumbs to a simple objection. (shrink)

This article deals with the first Latin reception of Pseudo-Aristotle’s On Indivisible Lines and its impact on the medieval debate about the continuum. Robert Grosseteste’s and Albert the Great’s references to this pseudo-Aristotelian text show that it could be regarded as a source for where to find information about the indivisibilist tenet, as well as an expansion of Aristotle’s anti-atomistic critiques scattered throughout his authentic works. The use of On Indivisible Lines made by Henry of Harclay and Adam (...) of Wodeham confirms this trend: the reading of this text could be twofold according to the tenet defended. While Henry argues against Pseudo-Aristotle to defend indivisibilism, Adam expands on pseudo-Aristotelian arguments to show the incongruities implied by indivisibilism. (shrink)

In this chapter Neurath’s controversial contributions to the socialist calculation debate are confronted with the criticism of two well-known opponents, Ludwig von Mises and Max Weber. Each side’s arguments are considered at a certain level of abstraction so as to allow what are lasting points of significance in Neurath’s proposals to shine through more clearly. It is argued that while these points are closely interwoven in their presentation with his schemes for marketless socialism, they are conceptually independent of them. Suitably (...) so, they have proven influential in just this independent capacity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The logic of humor has been acknowledged as an essential dimension of every joke. However, what is the logic of jokes, exactly? The modern theories of humor maintain that jokes are characterized by their own logic, dubbed “pseudo,” “playful,” or “local,” which has been the object of frequent criticisms. This article intends to address the limitations of the current perspectives on the logic of jokes by proposing a rhetorical approach to humorous texts. Building on the traditional development of (...) Aristotle’s almost neglected view of jokes as surprising enthymemes, the former are analyzed as rhetorical arguments. Like enthymemes, jokes are characterized by natural inferences that can be represented as topics, and quasi-formalized in argumentation theory as argumentation schemes. Like rhetorical arguments, jokes express a reason in support of different types of conclusions and proceed from distinct kinds of reasoning and semantic relations. (shrink)

In my ‘Seven Sins of Pseudo-Science’ (Journal for General Philosophy of Science 1993) I argued against Grünbaum that Freud commits all Seven Sins of Pseudo-Science. Yet how does Freud manage to fool many people, including such a sophisticated person as Grünbaum? My answer is that Freud is a sophisticated pseudo-scientist, using all Seven Strategies of the Sophisticated Pseudo-Scientist to keep up appearances, to wit, (1) the Humble Empiricist, (2) the Severe Selfcriticism, (3) the Unbiased Me, (4) (...) the Striking but Irrelevant Example, (5) the Proof Given Elsewhere, (6) the Favorable Compromise, and (7) the Display of Methodological Sophistication. One should note that not all strategies are disreputable in themselves. But all are used very cunningly so as to hide weaknesses in Freud's arguments. To be fair, quite a few of his methodological remarks are sophisticated enough. As Freud combines these sophisticated remarks with an appalling methodology in practice, I call him a sophisticated pseudo-scientist. I do not claim that these rhetorical strategies are specific to him. (shrink)

In his latest book Kritik und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Criticism and the History of Science, 1988), Gunnar Andersson clarifies the logical aspects of falsification and metalogical relationships between falsification, prediction and explanation. By analyzing the case studies on which Kuhn and Feyerabend have based their arguments for the incommensurability thesis, he shows that thesis to be untenable. A decisive criticism of the "new philosophy of science" is given. In the process Popper's methodology is developed further. It is shown that the "Kuhn Revolution" (...) is indeed a pseudo-revolution. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness is explored in the article from conceptual and terminologi­cal perspective. The question of the origins of the ambiguity of the relevant philosophical terms is discussed and relevant examples are given. The basic premise of the study is the as­sertion that abstraction works as a differentiation of differences that characterize and sep­arate kinds of experience. A methodological distinction is made between abstraction and pseudo-abstraction, which can bear the same name, in this case “consciousness”. Termi­nology is interpreted (...) as naming of abstractions of different levels and of realizable expe­riences. The term “consciousness” denotes an element of the ultimate distinction “con­sciousness/objective world”, abstracted from a series of distinctions that characterize the types and levels of experience. Pseudo-abstraction is formed from a series of pre-ex­isting meanings of the word “consciousness” without regard to realizable types of experi­ence as types of distinctions. There are two main alternative trends in the formulation of the problem of consciousness – structural-genetic and phenomenological. The high­lighted tendencies have something in common: the vagueness of the meaning in the use of the word “consciousness” and its functioning as a pseudo-abstraction. The ideological aspect of the problem is also considered. The principle of empiricism is identified with the recognition of the primacy of the diversity of experience as the source of abstraction. An alternative is formulated concerning the problem of the unity of consciousness. Husserl’s argumentation, through which an attempt is made to single out the sphere of consciousness as independent of any type of objectivity and as self-sufficient is analyzed, as well as the way he introduces such terms as “consciousness”, “sensation”, “experi­ence”, “perception” “intentionality”. Husserl’s thought experiment, the purpose of which is to prove the identity of the sensation of color from a real and illusory object, is sub­jected to a detailed analysis. (shrink)

In several iterations of the Gnostic ontogenetic myth, we find variations on an intriguing notion: namely, that the first rupture in the otherwise eternal and continuous procession of ‘aeons’ in the divine ‘pleroma’ is caused by a cognitive overreach and failure (the “fall of Sophia”). As much as it might contain a distant echo of certain myths concerning hubris in the classical tradition or in biblical literature, this general schema of cognitive overreach—cognitive failure—fall has no obvious parallel in Greek philosophy (...) prior to Plotinus, in some of whose more pessimistic accounts of hypostatic procession we find a similar schema, in which the generation of each ontological stratum occurs as the result of a cognitive failure on the superjacent level. If Plotinus borrowed this schema from the Gnostics, one might ask how the latter came up with it in the first place. In response, this paper makes the following three points. [1] Gnostic thinkers ultimately derived this schema from a particular juxtaposition of two profoundly aporetic Platonic passages referring to the travails of the individual soul, one certainly genuine (the description of the unexplained but catastrophic fall of the soul that fails to follow the heavenly train of the gods through the intelligible realm at Phaedrus 248c2-d3), the other quite possibly spurious (the claim that the cause of all evils is the desire, and the failure, of the soul to understand the nature of the notoriously enigmatic ‘King,’ ‘Second,’ and ‘Third,’ at 2nd Letter 312e1-313a6). [2] The Platonizing Sethian Gnostics closest to Plotinus also employed this latter source text to justify their conception of the individual soul, whose vicissitudes were understood to parallel those of Sophia. [3] This hypothesis is confirmed by evidence of tacit anti-Gnostic argumentation alluding to the 2nd Letter throughout Plotinus’ oeuvre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lorenzo Valla’s Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance HumanismSalvatore I. CamporealeWhy did I write about the Donation of Constantine?... Bear one thing in mind. I was not moved by hatred of the Pope, but acted for the sake of the truth, of religion, and also of a certain renown—to show that I alone knew what no one else knew.Valla to Cardinal Trevisan, (...) 1443. 1Lorenzo Valla’s well known work, the Oration on the Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, was written by the humanist in the year 1440. It was occasioned by the strife between Pope Eugenius IV and Alfonso of Aragon over the Kingdom of Naples. Valla wrote in favor of the Ara-gonese claim, arguing against pretensions of the Papacy to determine who should rule Naples that were based on the pseudo-Constantinian Donation. 2 [End Page 9]The Donation of Constantine: History and ForgeryAs is now well known, the Constitutum Constantini was a forgery that probably originated in the papal Curia in the eighth century. Subsequently it was often contested by the anti-papal Germanic Imperial tradition. The Constitutum portrayed the popes as assuming the role of the Emperor in the western part of the Empire as a result of the “donation” made by Constantine to the “Roman Pontiff and his successors.” The Donation was said to have taken place at a time subsequent to Constantine’s seizure of the city of Rome with the victory at the Milvian Bridge in a.d. 312, and immediately after his “conversion” to the Christian faith and his “reception of baptism” by the bishop of Rome, Pope (“Saint”) Sylvester.The Constitutum presents itself as an imperial decree, drafted and signed by Constantine himself, dated in Rome with an ambiguous formulation which could indicate the year 315 or 317 or even 330. The most significant and comprehensive passage of the entire document reads as follows:In order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with glory and power even greater than the dignity of earthly rule, behold, we give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, our palace, as has been said, and also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the Holy Roman Church. 3The forgery was based an on older fictional source, the Legenda Sylvestri. It was later (at least as maintained first by Nicholas of Cusa, then by Valla) introduced by the canonist Paucapalea (Gratian’s disciple and collaborator) into the collection of canon law that had been made by Gratian, the Concordantia discordantium canonum, or Decretum (c. 1140). 4 Assertions that the Constitutum derived from the Legenda and that it was a later [End Page 10] insertion into the Concordantia represent discrete stages of Valla’s philological procedure. In fact Valla’s argumentation evolves in a kind of concentric movement. After discussing the hagiographic “fiction” of the Legenda, he treats the canonical “inauthenticity” of the Constitutum as a later insertion into the Concordantia. Then Valla returns to the notion that it was “made up” or “fictional” when he declares the Constitutum a juridical “forgery.” 5Valla’s Methodology and Argumentative ProcedureThe Oratio—this was how Valla titled his work—is a confutative discourse, rhetorically structured in the epideictic mode, although particular passages also assume forensic and deliberative modes. The oration was written in accordance with rhetorical norms for investigation and argumentation that Valla had learned from and elaborated on the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, the writer Valla considered preeminent in the rhetorical tradition. 6“This speech of mine,” Valla emphasizes, is a speech intended for and offered to the universal assembly of Christendom. Although directly addressing the Papacy and in particular the ruling pope, Eugenius IV, the “oration” is conceived as though delivered in the presence of both the ecclesiastical hierarchy and civil authorities (“quasi... (shrink)

Argumentation has been an important topic in knowledge representation, reasoning and multi-agent systems during the last twenty years. In this paper, we propose a new abstract framework where arguments are associated with a strength, namely a quantitative information which is used to determine whether an attack between arguments succeeds or not. Our Strength-based Argumentation Framework combines ideas of Preference-based and Weighted Argumentation Frameworks in an original way, which permits to define acceptability semantics sensitive to the existence of accruals between arguments. (...) The question of accruals arises in situations where several arguments defending the same position against another argument are unable to individually defeat this argument, but could do it collectively if they combine their strengths. We investigate some of the theoretical and computational properties of our new framework and semantics, and present a reasoning algorithm that is based on a translation of the problem into pseudo-boolean constraint satisfaction. This paper proposes an intuitive framework which allows strength compensations in an argumentation context where attacks may not succeed, completed by an approach which detects accruals throughout the reasoning process without requiring the elicitation of all compensatory combinations of arguments as an input. (shrink)

Arguing against the doctrine of double effect, Bennett claims that the terror bomber only intends to make his victims appear dead. An obvious reply is that he intends to make them appear dead by killing them. I argue that the alleged refutations of this reply rest on a mistaken test question to determine what an agent intends, as Bennett's own test question confirms, and that Bennett is misled by confusing metaphorical death and literal death. Moreover, Bennett's argument is half-hearted (...) anyway, and going the whole way would not only undermine the DDE but also Quinn's revision of it. (shrink)

Ever since it was discovered that hallucinations and illusions are not all that compatible with our natural view of the relation between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, according to which we always perceive the object itself (or, as most epistemologists prefer to say, we perceive it directly), the philosophical position of Direct (or Naïve) Realism which is meant to be the epistemological equivalent of this view, has begun to falter. To express these problems more explicitly, the argument (...) from hallucination and the argument from illusion were created and brought direct realists in dire need of explaining how phenomenons such as hallucinations and illusions could possibly go together with their position. One of the main direct (or naïve) realists’ responses to these arguments is Disjunctivism, a position that, while being able to efficiently deal with both arguments, is subject to quite a few problems in its postulations as well. The intuitive plausibility of both arguments seems to have led many a philosopher to take their validity for granted. Because of this, it will be attempted to give an accurate and adequate reformulation of both arguments in this paper to find out whether their impact on the philosophy of perception is justified in the first place. (shrink)

Those rights are human rights which, in Professor Gewirth's phrase, “all persons equally have simply insofar as they are human.” His task is to demonstrate that there are human rights, and to demonstrate that such demonstration is necessary to the very existence of these rights. “That human rights exist…is a proposition whose truth depends upon the possibility, in principle, of constructing a body of moral justificatory argument from which that proposition follows as a logical consequence.” As philosophers we should (...) no doubt like to be able to prove the existence of human rights – prove that there are such rights in the event that the fool shall have said in his heart that there are none, even using his folly against him by showing his denial to entail its denial – but it is a bold claim that rights are things whose esse est demonstrari. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionWilliam J. ConnellOne of the more unusual works in the corpus of the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla is the Oratio in principio sui studii, on the relation between Latin letters and the Christian faith. The speech was written and delivered in October 1455, toward the end of Valla’s life, as a lecture to inaugurate the academic year at the University of Rome where he had held the chair in (...) rhetoric since 1450. It was traditional at Rome to hold such an address each year not only to encourage the assembled students and faculty in their studies but also to thank the papacy for its support of the university, the Studium Urbis. For this reason Valla’s speech ends with customary words praising Pope Calixtus III for having increased the stipends of the lecturers in the university, even though, notwithstanding some remarkable kindnesses to Valla himself, Calixtus’s reputation was not that of a friend to scholarship. Valla’s Schoolyear Inaugural was not lengthy: it can only have lasted fifteen minutes. Nor is there indication that anyone was displeased with it. In fact, that is precisely what is oddest about the Inaugural, for throughout his career Valla had shown himself to be the sort of person who seized on such occasions to make polemical arguments. We read the speech—and it is possible that his audience also listened to it this way—expecting with each step that Valla will let fly a critical or unorthodox statement, but that never happens. 1Beginning with his earliest formal work, a comparison of Cicero and Quintilian written in 1428 and now lost, in which the humanist argued against Cicero on behalf of Quintilian, Valla seemed to delight in challenging established authorities. 2 His next important work, an attack on Bartolus of [End Page 1] Sassoferrato and the scholastic method of contemporary jurists, resulted in his forced departure from the University of Pavia. 3 A continuing combativeness is illustrated in subsequent writings, reaching an apogee in the work on the Donation. Even when Valla was developing another writer’s idea, he had a consistent way of pushing the argument to a daring extreme. This, as Riccardo Fubini argues below, is what Valla did in the De donatione, a work Fubini suggests relied more heavily on Nicholas of Cusa’s De concordantia catholica than hitherto realized, but written to promote an agenda far more radical than that of Cusanus. One of the surest indications of Valla’s brilliance as a polemicist is the fact that seventy years after his death humanists of the caliber of Agostino Steuco, the subject of Ronald K. Delph’s essay in this number, were still eager to take up cudgels against him.Valla paid a price for initiating so many disputes. In 1444, when he was called before the Inquisition in Naples after the attack on the Donation of Constantine, Valla was made to answer charges against not only that work, but also against the De vero bono for its Epicureanism, the De libero arbitrio for its determinism, the De professione religiosorum for its criticism of religious orders, and the Repastinatio totius dialectice et philosophie for various unorthodox statements, especially concerning the Trinity. This last work was the humanist’s most ambitious project, and he seems to have been aware of its explosive quality, since he alluded to a “peril to his life” should it be published. 4The 1455 Schoolyear Inaugural shows no trace of the risks that Valla took in his other writings, of his polemical temperament, or of his past disagreements with the Church. With style and vigor the speech argues that the Church deserves great thanks and praise for having ensured the survival [End Page 2] of Latin letters after the collapse of the Empire. This may seem a notable change of heart in the author who had written the oration On the Falsely Believed and Forged Donation of Constantin—a text which always seems to be lurking in the background of the Inaugural but which finds no explicit reference there. Given the proximity of Valla’s argument to the well-worn medieval theme of the translatio studii, his argument could hardly have been... (shrink)

The traditional ascription of the Neoplatonic commentary on the De Anima to Sim­plicius has prominently been disputed by Carlos Steel and Fernand Bossier, along with J.O. Urmson and Francesco Piccolomini, among others. Citing problems with terminology, diction, cross-references, doctrine, and other features, these authors have argued that the commentary cannot have been composed by Simplicius and that Priscian of Lydia is a favored alternative. In this paper, I present some new arguments for why the traditional attribution to Simplicius is, in (...) fact, the correct one. In particular, while addressing some of the terminological facts that have also been discussed by Christina Luna, Peter Lautner, Patricia Huby, and Philippe Vallat,1 among others, I offer a more secure basis for identifying the author of the De Anima commentary with Simplicius than has so far been proposed. In place of the disputes regarding terminology, which the debate has largely centered upon, I argue that certain unique and characteristic interpretive procedures, which one only finds in the undisputed Simplician works, allow us to identify the authorship of the De Anima commentary with Simplicius securely. Further, comparison of these methodological features with the extant works of Priscian rules out the possibility of his authorship of the commentary. I also provide some suggestions for resolving a few remaining issues of cross-reference between the De Anima commentary and the rest of Simplicius’s work. Finally, I conclude with some words on how that particular form of harmonization pursued by Simplicius’s contemporaries differs from both that of the De Anima commentary as well as his other works. (shrink)

The atomistic theory, in the argument against astrology in Book VIII of the Recognitiones, corresponds very little to the thought of Epicurus, even though the writer of the novel claims to refute him. Scholars explain this discrepancy as a misunderstanding of Greek philosophy by the author of the Recognitiones. However, the theory refuted in Book VIII shares many similarities with the cosmology of the Syrian philosopher Bardaisan. The latter gives an important place to atoms and it is possible that (...) the rejection of the Epicurean system is directed against astral determinism, accepted in part by Bardaisan. The discourse of Nicetas would attempt to overthrow the Bardaisanian idea that inequalities among men are the result of the power of the stars. While the Recognitiones are in agreement with the Syrian philosopher who thinks that the stars have no effect on the free will of man - reproducing his thought in Book IX - they are opposed to the idea that the inequalities among men are the result of astral fatalism. The synthesis of Epicurus and Bardaisan would aim at refuting all determinism, be it Epicurean or Bardaisanian. (shrink)

The New Rhetoric identifies the self-deliberator as one of three main types of audience. But such a turn toward the self is at odds with studies of contemporary argumentation, particularly social argumentation. Argumentation takes place “out there”, modifying the environments in which audiences operate. Equally interesting is the use of self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy. Arguing with oneself, especially when that self is distanced in some way from the individual involved, employs self-deliberation beyond the ends that Perelman assigned to it. (...) In this paper, my goal is to explore the nature of the self-deliberator as an audience and self-deliberation as a rhetorical strategy employed in argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper, we use a pseudo-algorithmic procedure for assessing an AI-generated text. We apply the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation (CAPNA) in evaluating the arguments produced by an Artificial Intelligence text generator, GPT-3, in an opinion piece written for the Guardian newspaper. The CAPNA examines instances of argumentation in three aspects: their Process, Reasoning and Expression. Initial Analysis is conducted using the Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP) to establish, firstly, that an argument is present and, (...) secondly, its specific type in terms of the argument classification framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA). Procedural Questions are then used to test the acceptability of the argument in each of the three aspects. The analysis shows that while the arguments put forward by the AI text generator are varied in terms of their type and follow familiar patterns of human reasoning, they contain obvious weaknesses. From this we can conclude that the automated generation of persuasive, well-reasoned argumentation is a far more difficult task than the generation of meaningful language, and that if AI systems producing arguments are to be persuasive, they require a method of checking the plausibility of their own output. (shrink)

ABSTRACT William Hurlbut, a Stanford University bioethicist and member of the President's Council on Bioethics, recently proposed a solution to the current impasse over human embryonic stem cell research in the United States. He suggested that researchers could use genetic engineering and somatic cell nuclear transfer (i.e. cloning) to develop human ‘pseudo‐embryos’ that have no potential to develop fully into human persons. According to Hurlbut, even thinkers who typically ascribe high moral status to human embryos could approve of destroying (...) these ‘pseudo‐embryos’ for the sake of harvesting human embryonic stem cells. This essay argues, first, that an argument based on the ‘paradox of the heap’ (an argument that many ‘pro‐life’ thinkers employ in order to defend the notion that human embryos have high moral value from the moment of conception) challenges the ethical legitimacy of Hurlbut's proposal. Second, the paper argues that this conflict may illustrate a reductio ad absurdum for this ‘pro‐life’ argument itself rather than being a problem for Hurlbut's proposal. As a result, the paper challenges the ‘pro‐life’ strategy of arguing that one should respond to uncertainty about the moral status of developing embryos by being morally ‘cautious’ and granting all human embryos full moral status from the moment of conception. It appears that one is faced with a complex series of choices (about where to draw the moral line between entities that are human persons and entities that are not), and a strict moral ‘cautiousness’ about this series of choices may ultimately lead to absurdity. (shrink)

In what is quite possibly the most famous passage of the De revolutionibus, Copernicus implies that nobody could ever place this supreme flaming torch that is the Sun in another or better place than that from which it can illuminate everything simultaneously, namely the centre of this extremely beautiful temple that is our world. Considering the fact that he leaves an interrogatory twist to this argument of convenience, and since he makes this statement without any justification as it seems (...) entirely evident to him, certain Copernicans choose to illustrate this by means of an analogy: if indeed the Sun must be positioned thus, it is because the most appropriate place for the torch intended to illuminate the room is at its centre, and not in one of its corners. Despite the heliosophy of the Renaissance having been shared by both geocentrists and Copernicans alike, this "torch" argument does not appear to have achieved much success: rarely adopted by the Copernican camp, it was even contested by some of them; as for the geocentrists, it held no appeal for them whatsoever. Did this argument of convenience therefore not benefit from the self-evidence attributed to it by Copernicus, and from, in his wake, it's continued support by a good many commentators? As is often the case when it comes to the history of thought, the pseudo-obviousness of this argument is merely the fruit of a blatant anachronism: presenting heliocentrism as the cosmological system that finally grants the Sun its worthy centrality by placing it in the centre of the room and not in a corner, is to ignore the fact that this star of the day already enjoyed, in geocentrism, a centrality esteemed to be perfectly in keeping with both its dignity and its inherent illuminative function. Having lost their grasp on this worldview that no longer belonged to them, the Copernicans thus put forward an argument which, for the geocentrists, is worthless. Yet they could have argued the objective superiority of their centrality over that accorded to the Sun by geocentrism: while the latter is only numerical, on a purely planetary scale, and frankly fictitious, the former is thoroughly spatial, of cosmic proportions and, at least on first approximation, very real. In order to produce arguments of convenience that could carry their own weight, the protagonists of the new cosmology would have benefited from getting to know the world vision of their adversaries a little better instead of addressing them from their own point of view; similarly, instead of treating as an obvious fact that which is only evident to one of the two parties present, historians of scientific thought would also be well advised to have a better understanding of the world vision of those who history now considers as the losers! (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to investigate Gorgias’ argument against motion, which is found in his Peri tou mē ontos and preserved only in MXG 980a1˗8. I tried to shed new light both on this specific reflection and on the reliability of Pseudo-Aristotle’s version. By exploring the so called “change argument” and the “argument from divisibility", I focused on the particular strategy used by the Sophist in his synthetikē apodeixis, which should be investigated in relation (...) to the dispute between monistic and pluralistic ontology. In this regard, the puzzle from “divisibility everywhere” and its connection with the void as not-being can provide new elements to grasp the philosophical background in which the Sophist moves. On the one hand, Gorgias’ argument against motion is part of a broader dispute on the divisibility/indivisibility of being; on the other, his original elaboration of this puzzle seems to be perfectly understandable within the controversy between Eleatics and Atomists, and coherent with the argumentative style of the Sophist. (shrink)

"The book's major parts, one on polarity and the other on analogy, introduce the reader to the patterns of thinking that are fundamental not only to Greek philosophy but also to classical civilization as a whole. As a leading classicist in his own right, Lloyd is an impeccable guide. His sophistication in adducing anthropological parallels to Greek models of polarity and analogy broadens his perspective, making him a forerunner in the study of what we are now used to calling semiotics. (...) A striking example of Lloyd's approach is his re-examination of the dichotomy of Olympian and chthonian gods in ancient Greek world view, which surpasses the reductionist and pseudo-historical models of sky-gods and earth-goddesses that are still commonly invoked to account for polarities in Greek pantheon. "In the second part, dealing with analogy, three crucial metaphorical models for the universe turn out to be basis for a dazzlingly wide variety of scientific and philosophical perspectives. Each model is tested in the whole spectrum of Greek artistic, philosophical and scientific thought. This work is a treasure-house of insights for experts and non experts alike." --Gregory Nagy, Harvard University. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on a question about one role: the explanatory role of normativism or normativity in relation to ordinary 'scientific', meaning social scientific, explanations of actions and beliefs, especially the empirical, observable, or empirically relevant aspects of human conduct. Call this the epistemic form of the naturalistic moment problem. It call this a 'naturalistic moment', a place where normativism makes factual assertions about real processes in the natural world. This pseudo argument boils down to a series of (...) equivocations. The normativist must claim that there is some super-added normative element that cannot be accounted for naturalistically or by social science. Transcendental arguments to the effect that they have to have such and such mental content are likely to fail the mosquito test. The default position of rationalistic normativists, well encapsulated by Korsgaard, who rejects it, is that normativity in particular, rightness is an objective property grasped by reason. (shrink)

Arguments that ordinary inanimate objects such as tables and chairs, sticks and stones, simply do not exist have become increasingly common and increasingly prominent. Some are based on demands for parsimony or for a non-arbitrary answer to the special composition question; others arise from prohibitions against causal redundancy, ontological vagueness, or co-location; and others still come from worries that a common sense ontology would be a rival to a scientific one. Until now, little has been done to address these arguments (...) in a unified and systematic way. Ordinary Objects is designed to fill this gap, demonstrating that the mistakes behind all of these superficially diverse eliminativist arguments may be traced to a common source. It aims to develop an ontology of ordinary objects subject to no such problems, providing perhaps the first sustained defense of a common sense ontology in two generations. The work done along the way addresses a number of major issues in philosophy of language and metaphysics, contributing to debates about analyticity, identity conditions, co-location and the grounding problem, vagueness, overdetermination, parsimony, and ontological commitment. In the end, the most important result of addressing these eliminativist arguments is not merely avoiding their conclusions; examining their failings also gives us reason to suspect that many apparent disputes in ontology are pseudo-debates. For it brings into question widely-held assumptions about which uses of metaphysical principles are appropriate, which metaphysical demands are answerable, and how we should go about addressing such fundamental questions as "What exists?". As a result, the work of Ordinary Objects promises to provide not only the route to a reflective understanding of our unreflective common-sense view, but also a better understanding of the proper methods and limits of metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Believing in God without Knowledge of God Believing in God without Concepts of God Belief, Faith, and Pseudo‐faith The Argument from Pseudo‐faith.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Existence of Nature Argument for God The Fine‐tuning Argument for God Why Would God Create? The Problem of Evil The Argument from Pseudo‐cosmology.

This chapter contains sections titled: Arguments from Ignorance Religious Epistemologies Knowledge, Justification, and Truth The Religious Community The Arguments from Pseudo‐theology.

Several writers have assumed that when in “Outline of a Theory of Truth” I wrote that “the orthodox approach” – that is, Tarski’s account of the truth definition – admits descending chains, I was relying on a simple compactness theorem argument, and that non-standard models must result. However, I was actually relying on a paper on ‘pseudo-well-orderings’ by Harrison. The descending hierarchy of languages I define is a standard model. Yablo’s Paradox later emerged as a key to interpreting (...) the result. (shrink)

Le voyage en boulet occupe une place importante dans _Durée et Simultanéité_. Les arguments avancés par Bergson – pour conclure à tort à la réciprocité des expériences des jumeaux – ne sont pas sans rappeler ceux de Herbert Dingle dans sa controverse avec McCrea. Les versions épurées du pseudo-paradoxe des jumeaux, avec accélération et sans différence d’âge et celles sans accélération et avec différence d’âge, montrent qu’il n’y a pas de sens à vouloir localiser en un point précis d’une (...) ligne d’univers – en l’occurrence au point de rebroussement – la discordance des âges. Si l’ouvrage de Bergson souffre indéniablement de maladresses et de contre-sens, parfois partagés par les physiciens de son époque, il n’en demeure pas moins notable que les tentatives contemporaines de construction d’une théorie quantique de la gravité sont traversées par d’inédits questionnements sur la nature du temps et résonnent tout particulièrement avec certaines intuitions bergsoniennes. (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root as the classical analytic paradigm declined and why this matters to the contemporary debate. Among other things, I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to promote uncontentiously invalid arguments, and to equivocate in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in pseudo-stalemates). I also suggest a new framework for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by quixotic attempts to redefine classical narratives and jargon so that they adequately describe the dialectical contours of the contemporary free-will debate. In addition, this new framework allows philosophers to start cross-pollinating work on free will and other problems, e.g. the paradox of moral luck. -/- A selection from the publication is available to download here. For full version, please gmail me, username: kristin.mickelson.42 -/- . (shrink)