There is a broad debate in contemporary philosophy of logic on the informativeness of proofs. In this context, informative proofs are demonstrations whose premises do not include the content of the conclusion. D’Agostino and Floridi (Synthese 167(2):271–315, 2009) claimed that proofs are informative if they use _virtual information_. In their terminology, this is the data carried by _dischargeable hypotheses_, assumptions entertained during proof and eliminated before concluding. Although these authors capture several cases of informative demonstrations, they do not explain the (...) nature of virtual information. Why does the use of dischargeable hypotheses increase the informativeness of a demonstration? Following a Kantian inspiration, D’Agostino and Floridi claim that virtual information adds a synthetic feature to our proofs. However, this appeal to Kantianism is misleading: for Kant, mathematics is synthetic because it requires the construction of concepts in pure intuition. On the other hand, the entertainment of provisional hypotheses does not seem to involve the construction of figures in (transcendental) imagination. Exploring a _dialogical_ characterization of logic, I suggest that virtual information results from the dynamics between a reasoner and her audience. When a reasoner provisionally assumes _P_, she enacts potential interlocutors who commit to _P_. Thus, “virtual information” denotes the content of some assumptions of the possible audience of a demonstration. This process of departing from one’s original premises to embrace the suppositions of other people is informative, but it is not synthetic: in this way, the reasoner does not entertain intuitions but only needs to reason through the conceptual content of other people’s premises. (shrink)

Questions, and more specifically authentic questions, are at the core of dialogue-based learning and teaching. However, what is a question, and how can it be authentic? This paper addresses this problem by analyzing the distinct dimensions of questions, showing how their pragmatic nature is interwoven with the syntactic and semantic one, and how it can be grasped only by considering their dialogical functions. Questions are maintained to be proposals of different dialogue games (or types), pursuing specific interactional purposes, and (...) potentially contributing to learning processes in different ways. By understanding how questions shape different dialogues it is possible to ask more suitable questions to the questioner’s goals. In this framework, the dichotomy between authentic and inauthentic questions becomes a strategic choice between different types of dialogical possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a method for the specification of computationalmodels of argument using dialogue games. The method, which consists ofsupplying a set of semantic definitions for the performatives making upthe game, together with a state transition diagram, is described in full.Its use is illustrated by some examples of varying complexity, includingtwo complete specifications of particular dialogue games, Mackenzie's DC,and the authors' own TDG. The latter is also illustrated by a fully workedexample illustrating all the features of (...) the game. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to work toward an explicit logic and semantics for a game theoretically inspired theory of action. The purpose of the logic is to explicate the conceptual machinery implicit in the dialogue-game model of rational discourse developed in Carlson (1983).A variety of ideas and techniques of modal and philosophical logic are used to define a model structure that generalizes the game theoretical notion of a game in extensive form (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944). Relative to (...) this model structure, semantic characterizations are given to the action-theoretic notions oftime, possibility, belief, preference, ability, intention, action, andrationality. The unification of these characterizations under the game-theoretical paradigm leads to insights about the logical interdependences between these concepts. (shrink)

This paper reports preliminary work into the exploitation of argumentation schemes within dialogue games. We identify a property of dialogue games that we call “scheme awareness” that captures the relationship between dialogue game systems and argumentation schemes. Scheme awareness is used to examine the ways in which existing dialogue games utilise argumentation schemes and consequently the degree with which a dialogue game can be used to construct argument structures. The aim is to develop a set of guidelines (...) for dialogue game design, which feed into a set of Dialogue Game Description Language (DGDL) extensions in turn enabling dialogue games to better exploit argumentation schemes. (shrink)

‘Philosophical dialogue’ indicates both a form of philosophical inquiry and its corresponding literary genre. In its written form, it typically features two or more characters who engage in a discussion concerning morals, knowledge, as well as a variety of topics that can be widely labelled as ‘philosophical’. Our philosophical dialogue takes place in Krakow, Poland. It is a rainy morning and two strangers are waiting at a tram stop. One of them is dressed neatly, and cannot stop fidgeting with his (...) closed umbrella. The other was caught unprepared by the morning downpour and water is dripping from his worn, soaked jacket. (shrink)

What is sport? Why does sport matter? How can we use philosophy to understand what sport means today? This engaging and highly original introduction to the philosophy of sport uses dialogue a form of philosophical investigation to address the fundamental questions in sport studies and to explore key contemporary issues such as fair play, gender, drug use, cheating, entertainment and identity. Providing a clear, informative and accessible introduction to the philosophy of sport, every chapter includes current sporting examples as well (...) as review questions and guides to further reading. The dialogue form enables students to engage in debate and raise questions, while encouraging them to think from the perspectives of athlete, coach, spectator and philosopher. The issues raised present real and complex ethical dilemmas that relate to a variety of sports from around the world such as soccer, athletics, baseball, basketball, hockey and tennis. No other book brings this rich subject to life through the use of dialogue, making this an indispensable companion to any course on the philosophy or ethics of sport. ". (shrink)

The research discussed in this paper concerns an investigation of logical dialogue games as a vehicle for enhanced human-computer communication. The need for a dialogue capability in computer systems is argued, and a prima facie case made for dialogue games, in particular Mackenzie's "DC", as a suitable dialogue model. Empirical work concerning DC is outlined, and strategies for adoption by the computer are presented. A user interface, software architecture and conceptualised example are discussed. The hope is that the (...) paper will help bring together two groups of workers-philosophers of dialogue and designers of computer systems-to the mutual benefit of each. (shrink)

In this article we present the bases for a computational theory of the cognitive processes underlying human communication. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the phases in which the process of comprehension of a communicative act can be logically divided: (1) literal meaning, where the reconstruction of the mental states literally expressed by the actor takes place: (2) speaker's meaning, where the partner reconstructs the communicative intentions of the actor; (3) communicative effect, where the partner (...) possibly modifies his own beliefs and intentions; (4) reaction, where the intentions for the generation of the response are produced; and (5) response, where an overt response is constructed. The model appears to be compatible with relevant facts about human behavior. Our hypothesis is that, through communication, an actor tries to exploit the motivational structures of a partner so that the desired goal is generated. A second point is that social behavior requires that cooperation be maintained at some level. In the case of communication, cooperation is, in general, pursued even when the partner does not adhere to the actor's goals, and therefore no cooperation occurs at the behavioral level. This important distinction is reflected in the two kinds of game we introduce to account for communication. The main concept implied in communication is that two agents overtly reach a situation of shared mental states. Our model deals with sharedness through two primitives: shared beliefs and communicative intentions. (shrink)

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech act perspective (...) can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for the generation of coherent elementary conversational sequences at the speech act level. We will embrace the notion of a cooperative dialogue game in which two players produce speech acts to transfer relevant information with respect to their commitments. Central to the approach is that participants try to achieve some sort of balanced cognitive state as a result of speech act generation and interpretation. Cognitive states of the participants change as a result of the interpretation (...) of speech acts and these changes provoke the production of a subsequent speech act. Describing the properties and the dynamics of the mental constructs that constitute the participants’ cognitive states, such as beliefs and commitments, in relation to the various dialogue contributions is an essential aspect of the game. Although simple in its basic form, the framework enables us to produce abstract conversations with some properties that agree strikingly with coherence structures found in, for instance, Conversation Analysis. (shrink)

No one is surprised anymore by the dialogue between Buddhism and Western science, which develops the foundations of cognitive and contemplative sciences. But there have been requests for reflection on the results achieved, or even for a strategy for analytical research of the Buddhist East, which brings this dialogue to the philosophical level. And this level of discussion is, in fact, the dialogue between Buddhism and Western philosophy, which requires a new discourse that should be built on their common ground. (...) And the first question that arises against this background is how to focus attention on the philosophical aspect of Buddhism, which orientalists usually call “Buddhist philosophy”. Thus, realizing the beginning of the dialogue between Buddhist and Western philosophies, we are faced with the need to take the next, but already conscious step in the direction of this discussion. In order to make this step confident, we need to know where and how to start, and what key subjects we can rely on. Therefore, in an effort to find possible warnings against gross mistakes in such discussions, we sought the help of Western experts in the field of Buddhist studies by reading their works and talking to them. One of the well-known scholars is Professor Jan Westerhoff, who kindly agreed to give me an interview and answer some questions: whether there is a Buddhist philosophy; what are the approaches and stages of its research; what are the peculiarities of using the terms of Western philosophy in these studies; what can be the criterion for the best reading of traditional Buddhist texts; what can such a discussion give to contemporary Western philosophy, etc. This interview was not intended to be a conceptual deepening of either Buddhist or Western philosophy; we only tried to identify key questions that could start a dialog between them in the right direction. (shrink)

Jan Łukasiewicz’s analysis of Aristotle’s syllogism drew attention to the nature of syllogisms as conditionals rather than premise-conclusion arguments. His further idea that syllogisms should be understood as theorems of an axiom system seems a step too far for many logicians. But there is evidence to suggest that Aristotle’s syllogism was to regularise some of the steps made in ‘dialogue games.’ This way of seeing the syllogism is explored in the framework of modern formal dialogue systems. A modern formal (...) syllogistic game, DLSyll, is set out and analysed in use. (shrink)

Advancements and deployments of AI-based systems, especially Deep Learning-driven generative language models, have accomplished impressive results over the past few years. Nevertheless, these remarkable achievements are intertwined with a related fear that such technologies might lead to a general relinquishing of our lives’s control to AIs. This concern, which also motivates the increasing interest in the eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) research field, is mostly caused by the opacity of the output of deep learning systems and the way that it is (...) generated, which is largely obscure to laypeople. A dialectical interaction with such systems may enhance the users’ understanding and build a more robust trust towards AI. Commonly employed as specific formalisms for modelling intra-agent communications, dialogue games prove to be useful tools to rely upon when dealing with user’s explanation needs. The literature already offers some dialectical protocols that expressly handle explanations and their delivery. This paper fully formalises the novel Explanation–Question–Response (EQR) dialogue and its properties, whose main purpose is to provide satisfactory information (i.e., justified according to argumentative semantics) whilst ensuring a simplified protocol, in comparison with other existing approaches, for humans and artificial agents. (shrink)

During the last forty or so years it has become popular to offer explanations of logical notions in terms of games. There is no doubt that many people find games helpful for understanding various logical phenomena. But we ask whether anything is really 'explained' by these accounts, and we analyse Paul Lorenzen's dialogue foundations for constructive logic as an example. The conclusion is that the value of games lies in their ability to provide helpful metaphors and representations, (...) rather than in any true conceptual analysis. In fact some of the standard explanations of logical notions in terms of competitive games simply don't work. /// [Erik C. W. Krabbe] In an attempt to redeem the Lorenzen-type dialogues from their detractors, it is perhaps best first to provide a survey of the various benefits these dialogues have been supposed to yield. This will be done in Section I. It will not be possible, within the confines of this paper, to scrutinize them all, but in Section II we shall delve deeper into the capacity of this type of dialogue to yield a model for the immanent criticism of philosophical positions. Section III will extend the concept of a dialogue in such a way as to conform better with our intuitive conceptions of what a rational discussion of a position should contain. This will be followed up by a concept of 'winning a dialogue' that takes position midway between the old conception of 'winning one play' and that of the full-fledged presentation of a winning strategy . Concepts of 'rational discussion' are thus shown to be, plausibly, more fundamental than those of proof. In Section IV, I shall discuss the specific problems about dialogical foundations put forward by Wilfrid Hodges. (shrink)

We describe PADUA, a protocol designed to support two agents debating a classification by offering arguments based on association rules mined from individual datasets. We motivate the style of argumentation supported by PADUA, and describe the protocol. We discuss the strategies and tactics that can be employed by agents participating in a PADUA dialogue. PADUA is applied to a typical problem in the classification of routine claims for a hypothetical welfare benefit. We particularly address the problems that arise from the (...) extensive number of misclassified examples typically found in such domains, where the high error rate is a widely recognised problem. We give examples of the use of PADUA in this domain, and explore in particular the effect of intermediate predicates. We have also done a large scale evaluation designed to test the effectiveness of using PADUA to detect misclassified examples, and to provide a comparison with other classification systems. (shrink)

This paper reports research concerning a suitable dialogue model for human computer debate. In particular, we consider the adoption of Moore's (1993) utilization of Mackenzie's (1979) game DC, means of using computational agents as the test-bed to facilitate evaluation of the proposed model, and means of using the evaluation results as motivation to further develop a dialogue model, which can prevent fallacious argument and common errors. It is anticipated that this work will contribute toward the development of human computer dialogue, (...) and help to illuminate research issues in the field of dialectics itself. (shrink)

In some cases of disagreement, particularly in ethics and law, it is impossible to provide any conclusive demonstration. The role of argument in such cases is to persuade rather than to prove. Drawing on ideas ofPerelrnan, we argue that persuasion in such cases relies on a recognition that the strength of such arguments will vary according to their audience, and depends on the comparative weight that the audiences gives to the social values that it advances. To model this, we introduce (...) the notion of Value-based Argumentation Frameworks (VAFs), an extension of Argumentation Frameworks as originally introduced by Dung. We then describe a dialogue game based on VAFs, designed to model persuasive argumentation, which we illustrate with a widely discussed ethical problem. (shrink)

We explore different ways to generalize Hintikka’s classic game theoretic semantics to a many-valued setting, where the unit interval is taken as the set of truth values. In this manner a plethora of characterizations of Łukasiewicz logic arise. Among the described semantic games is Giles’s dialogue and betting game, presented in a manner that makes the relation to Hintikka’s game more transparent. Moreover, we explain a so-called explicit evaluation game and a ‘bargaining game’ variant of it. We also describe (...) a recently introduced backtracking game as well as a game with random choices for Łukasiewicz logic. (shrink)

From Traditional Sports and Games (TSG) we have not only learned different ways of living time as well as inhabit space and a particular mode of practicing sports and games from distinct cultures, but also promoting universal dialog among people. TSG presents sustainable and ecological references for living needed even before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowadays, environmentally friendly policies and production methods must be taken more seriously. TSG may reveal a path to sustainable development, considering (...) our corporeality and cultural diversity. TSG are expressions of human groups that historically reproduce their way of life-based on modes of social cooperation and specific forms of relationship with nature, traditionally characterized by sustained environmental management. The purpose of this article is to discuss how TSG promotes intercultural dialog with a focus on sustainability, and how it empowers people and creates equality among its players. We understand that TSG can break socio-cultural barriers. For this study, we considered data from a Brazilian experience of TSG’s Festival held at a public school in the city of São Paulo (Brazil), organized in collaboration with our study group. Data consists of observations recorded in pictures and films during the processes of organization, preparation, implementation, and evaluation of a TSG Festival, held in a public school in São Paulo, Brazil from the years of 2017 and 2018, with the participation of 800 students from the first to the ninth grade of elementary school, aged between 7 and 17 years. The first step in our analysis is taken from a dynamic called “Talking Circles,” where researchers registered dialog about experiences and used specific literature about TSG, from a philosophical perspective. The team and students from our study group that organized these events were invited to participate in four different Talking Circles. Approximately 20 people participated in each one of these meetings. Recurrences that emerged from these Talking Circles are presented in the results and explored afterward. What does this experience–from bodies in movement, artistic or sporting, or both–teach about intercultural dialog and empowerment? Such gestures indicate a cultural heritage and corporeal wisdom that allows humans to face new encounters and understanding in peace, recognizing humanity common to all of us, regardless of our origins. Ethical and aesthetical results of such dialog reveal possibilities to be explored in our relationship with different cultures and the environment, providing points of sustainable development through TSG. (shrink)

In this paper, we study dialogue as a game, but not only in the sense in which there would exist winning strategies and a priori rules. Dialogue is not governed by game rules like for chess or other games, since even if we start from a priori rules, it is always possible to play with them, provided that some invariant properties are preserved. An important discovery of Ludics is that such properties may be expressed in geometrical terms. The main (...) feature of a dialogue is “convergence”. Intuitively, a dialogue “diverges” when it stops prematurely by some disruption, or a violation of the tacit agreed upon conditions of the discourse. It converges when the two speakers go together towards a situation where they agree at least on some points. As we shall see, convergence may be thought of through the geometrical concept of orthogonality . Utterances in a dialogue have as their content, not only the processes (similar to proofs) which lead to them from a monologic view, but also their interactions with other utterances. Finally, any utterance must be seen as co-constructed in an interaction between two processes. That is to say that it not only contains one speaker’s intentions but also his or her expectations from the other interlocutor. From our viewpoint, discursive strategies like narration , elaboration , topicalization may derive from such interactions, as well as speech acts like assertion, question and denegation. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that genuine dialogue is a refined human achievement and probably the most valid criterion on the basis of which we can evaluate educational or social policy and practice. The paper explores the prerequisites of dialogue in the language games, the common certainties, the rules of logic and the variety of common virtues; defends dialogue as a normative concept and interprets the principles of dialogue as extensions of its prerequisite virtues. Finally, it (...) examines the social conditions that are conducive to dialogue and those that frustrate it. (shrink)

[Wilfrid Hodges] During the last forty or so years it has become popular to offer explanations of logical notions in terms of games. There is no doubt that many people find games helpful for understanding various logical phenomena. But we ask whether anything is really 'explained' by these accounts, and we analyse Paul Lorenzen's dialogue foundations for constructive logic as an example. The conclusion is that the value of games lies in their ability to provide helpful metaphors (...) and representations, rather than in any true conceptual analysis. In fact some of the standard explanations of logical notions in terms of competitive games simply don't work. /// [ Erik C. W. Krabbe] In an attempt to redeem the Lorenzen-type dialogues from their detractors, it is perhaps best first to provide a survey of the various benefits these dialogues have been supposed to yield. This will be done in Section I. It will not be possible, within the confines of this paper, to scrutinize them all, but in Section II we shall delve deeper into the capacity of this type of dialogue to yield a model for the immanent criticism of philosophical positions. Section III will extend the concept of a dialogue in such a way as to conform better with our intuitive conceptions of what a rational discussion of a position should contain. This will be followed up by a concept of 'winning a dialogue' that takes position midway between the old conception of 'winning one play' and that of the full-fledged presentation of a winning strategy. Concepts of 'rational discussion' are thus shown to be, plausibly, more fundamental than those of proof. In Section IV, I shall discuss the specific problems about dialogical foundations put forward by Wilfrid Hodges. (shrink)

Early educators are in a bind. Teacher education programs are calling on them more and more to help students practice critical thinking and develop intellectual character ; yet school funding depends on meeting Common Core standards, which do not explicitly assess critical thinking until the high-school level. Add to that an over-engineered content curriculum, and thinking becomes a luxury that is quickly lost amid more immediate concerns. As a result, we are raising a generation of “excellent sheep” who flourish amid (...) standardized tests but are increasingly unable to think for themselves. The problem, we suggest, is that today’s teachers are in such a rush to give students the answers that they are not allowing them time to ask the questions. As a result, students cannot find the “deep structure” of issues. Bodies of knowledge thus strike them as disconnected facts, quickly forgotten. The solution, as suggested by recent work in cognitive science, is to teach critical thinking through teaching content. In what follows, we propose a way of organically integrating content and thinking through games, story books and art. With this, we put children into the driver’s seat, encouraging them to ask their own questions, to propose their own answers and to join their peers in joint inquiry through dialogue. In a word, we propose teaching children philosophy as early as possible. Tom Wartenberg has made considerable progress with his picture-book philosophy curriculum designed for elementary schools. But what of younger children? Combining the resources of Rollins College’s Philosophy Department and Child Development and Student Research Center, we set out to find “how low can we go?” Over four terms’ of trial and error, we have adapted and distilled Wartenberg’s methods into a model that works for the Center’s 4-year-olds, and we have tested this model on a larger scale through a one-term collaboration with the Winter Park Day Nursery. (shrink)

We consider motivations for acknowledging that people participate in multiple levels of economic agency. One of these levels is characterized in terms of subjective utility to the individual; another, frequently observed, level is characterized in terms of utility to social groups with which people identify. Following Bacharach, we describe such groups as ‘teams’. We review Bacharach’s theory of such identification in his account of ‘team reasoning’. While this conceptualization is useful, it applies only to processes supported by deliberation. As this (...) is only one of a range of causal mechanisms underlying behaviour by humans and other strategic agents, a more general account is desirable. We then argue that Stirling’s account of ‘conditional games’ achieves the desired generalization. (shrink)

In this paper I shall discuss the notion of argument, and the importanceof argument in AI and Law. I shall distinguish four areas where argument hasbeen applied: in modelling legal reasoning based on cases; in thepresentation and explanation of results from a rule based legal informationsystem; in the resolution of normative conflict and problems ofnon-monotonicity; and as a basis for dialogue games to support the modellingof the process of argument. The study of argument is held to offer prospectsof real (...) progress in the field of AI and law, and the purpose of this paperis to provide an overview of work, and the connection between the various strands. (shrink)

In previous essays (1973, 1975, 1977) I have praised Derrida's contributions to philosophical dialogue and also insisted on their limitations. The considerations raised in this present essay do not lead me to a position that is less ambivalent. Philosophy is a particular language-game. Like any other, it has its constitutive rules; or, perhaps better: its practice has certain distinctive features by means of which we recognize philosophizing and distinguish it from other linguistic activities. None of this can be set down (...) in the form of necessary and sufficient conditions, and there always will be large areas of controversy about the paradigms themselves. Nonetheless there are philosophers, and they generally acknowledge Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Hume, and even some of their colleagues as also being philosophers. This acknowledgement holds even where there is philosophical disagreement - as must inevitably be the case, in view of the dialogical character of philosophical discourse. Derrida occasionally enters into the dialogue, as do many others - poets, novelists, critics, diplomats, attorneys, cooks, barbers, and babysitters. These occasional contributions to philosophical dialogue differ in focus, in style, and in lack of self-referentiality from the works which constitute the main corpus of philosophy. Some might wish to say, as if the matter were paradoxical, that such contributions are both philosophical and not philosophical, or that they are neither philosophy nor not-philosophy. That might be as good a thing to say as anything. The practice of philosophy is complex and has many levels. Those who are acknowledged as its finest practitioners have a focus, a style, and a respect for where questions begin and end. Derrida does not share these qualities, and does not care to share them. That is no reason to ignore his work, but it is sufficient to explain why philosophers do not recognize it as a contribution to the central corpus of philosophy. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer, the major proponent of philosophical hermeneutics, reveals himself here as a highly sensitive reader and critic of the German literary tradition. This is not the work of a specialist as narrowly defined in the typical literary study. Although he is a master of the techniques of criticism, Gadamer always sees the study of literature as a fundamentally human activity where human beings, generation after generation, pose their questions to an encroaching darkness that threatens to rob them of their (...) confidence in the meaning of life and death. Never pedantic or antiquarian, these studies show such literary giants of the German past as Goethe and Hölderlin as our contemporaries. Gadamer demonstrates his ability to achieve the creative interplay of literature and philosophy which, in isolation, easily degenerate into sterile academic games. Typical of this dialogue are essays on Rainer Maria Rilke, including an examination of a problem of punctuation in one of his poems. What would be, in less capable hands, one more solution to a literary problem, turns out to be one of Gadamer’s creative approaches to the mystery of man’s relation to time and death. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Folly: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Language Games presents a dialogue between the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the author Françoise Davoine, and Davoine's patients with extreme lived experience. The book begins with Davoine's seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, which is attended by Wittgenstein. He then accompanies Davoine on visits to colleagues at the Austen Riggs Center in Massachusetts, in California, on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, and at Freud's house in Vienna. The dialogic (...) form of the book allows a performance centered on the psychotherapy of madness and trauma, in which Wittgenstein takes the floor. Davoine introduces us to a contemporary Feast of Fools and creates new language games with madness, enlarging the scope of psychoanalytic approaches to authors like Wittgenstein. The chapters of this book closely resemble short plays in which a conversation with living human beings or with characters from philosophy, literature, science, and the arts encounter one another and begin to open new ways of speaking that can render the "mad" more familiar and more manageable. Wittgenstein's Folly: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Language Games will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and to academics and students engaged in psychoanalytic studies, philosophy and trauma-related studies. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer, the major proponent of philosophical hermeneutics, reveals himself here as a highly sensitive reader and critic of the German literary tradition. This is not the work of a specialist as narrowly defined in the typical literary study. Although he is a master of the techniques of criticism, Gadamer always sees the study of literature as a fundamentally human activity where human beings, generation after generation, pose their questions to an encroaching darkness that threatens to rob them of their (...) confidence in the meaning of life and death. Never pedantic or antiquarian, these studies show such literary giants of the German past as Goethe and Hölderlin as our contemporaries. Gadamer demonstrates his ability to achieve the creative interplay of literature and philosophy which, in isolation, easily degenerate into sterile academic games. Typical of this dialogue are essays on Rainer Maria Rilke, including an examination of a problem of punctuation in one of his poems. What would be, in less capable hands, one more solution to a literary problem, turns out to be one of Gadamer's creative approaches to the mystery of man's relation to time and death. (shrink)

This article consists of three parts, two introductory, in which the limits and the methods of analysis of dialogues are expounded, and the major part, in which the main features of a philosophical theory of disputation are outlined.It was an essential aim of the philosophical analysis of argumentative dialogues to develop tools of substantiation for cases in which logic doesn't help any more. In the first part of this paper I show that such tools can and will be developed only (...) by analyzing argumentations (“argumentation” in the sense of a monologue in which arguments for a thesis are brought forward), and that the analysis of argumentative dialogues doesn't contribute anything to the development of such tools.The systematically first task of the philosophical analysis of dialogues consists in understanding the general practical aims of philosophically interesting types of dialogue. Only subsequently the rules of the dialogue can be reconstructed as good means for reaching these aims. Dialogical games constructed without referring to such a purpose are externally senseless and useless.The third part is an outline of a philosophical theory of disputation (“disputation” here will mean: (learned) dialogue in which the participants cooperatively though perhaps controversially attempt to find out by means of arguments and mutual criticism whether a thesis is true or false). Disputations contain argumentations, and many functions of a disputation can also be fulfilled by argumentations alone. Certifying the truth of convictions is the specific aim of disputation. This is accomplished by eliminating errors of substantiation and foundation as effectively as possible, in revising false convictions and their foundations, thereby making the remaining convictions more certain. Based on this analysis of the aim of disputation, the basic rules of disputations will be critically reconstructed: possible moves, rules of sequence, and the internal aim and ends of disputations. (shrink)

Inter-cultural dialog is frequently treated as either unnecessary or else impossible. It is said to be unnecessary, because we all are the same or share the same ‘human nature'; it is claimed to be impossible because cultures seen as language games or forms or life are so different as to be radically incommensurable. The paper steers a course between absolute universalism and particularism by following the path of dialog and interrogation - where dialog does not mean (...) empty chatter but the exploration of the ‘otherness’ of interlocutors on the far side of either assimilation or exclusion. Such dialog is the heart of hermeneutics as formulated by Hans-Georg Gadamer. The paper explores the question whether hermeneutical interpretation can be transferred from textual readings to the domain of cross-cultural encounters. After discussing both the historical development and the basic meaning of contemporary hermeneutics, the paper draws attention to the intimate linkage between interpretive understanding and ‘application’, or ‘practical philosophy.’ Drawing on the insights of Gadamer and some more overtly political thinkers, the paper then shows the relevance of hermeneutics for cross-cultural studies, as an antidote to the looming ‘clash of civilizations.’ It turns to some writings by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to emphasize the necessary linkage between interactive dialog and concrete embodied engagement. Undercutting purely mentalist or ‘idealist’ misconstruals of dialog, this linkage shows the mutual compatibility between Gadamerian hermeneutics and existential phenomenology. Keywords: hermeneutics; dialogue; praxis; cross-cultural understanding; Gadamer; Merleau-Ponty (Published: 10 March 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i1.1937. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and CommunicationRobert W. BurchAhti-Veikko Pietarinen Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006. xiv + 496 pp.This compendious volume of fourteen of Pietarinen's essays on Peirce, plus a three-page set of "Final Words" relating to the work of Robert Aumann, is a "must-have" for both (...) the Peirce scholar and any other philosopher who wishes to relate Peirce's thinking on language and logic to other major thinkers and logical themes of the twentieth century (and beyond). The essays extend or complement discussions of Peirce's logic and philosophy of language that have come to be expected from the "Finnish school" of philosophers, which includes Hintikka and Hilpinen, as well as Pietarinen.Nine of the essays (Chapters 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, and 14), comprising about two-thirds of the entire book, are revised and expanded versions of essays that Pietarinen has previously published. The remaining one-third (approximately) of the book is brand new. Chapters 1 and 2 serve as general introductions to the book's major interests. Chapter 6 is on evidence for constructivism in Peirce, as well as several other topics. Chapter 9 compares Peirce's ideas with Wilfred Hodges's "dialogue foundations" and contains a small philosophical dialogue, which has Peirce, Wittgenstein, and Hodges as its characters. Chapter 11 concerns evolutionary semantics and language [End Page 577] games. And the cursory Chapter 15 of "Final Words" predicts that the game-theoretical approach to semantics and Peirce scholarship has an exploding future, like an erupting volcano.From the foregoing one can gather, correctly, that each essay in the book is separately conceived and that the book is not a single continuous line of argumentative development of one or even of a few themes. Still, the essays are similar to one another in two ways, which ways are closely related to each other. First, they all concern the Peircean doctrine that semeiotic and semeiosis constitute the heartland of logic, and that this heartland is vastly richer than the sort of pure mathematical calculi that might mistakenly be taken for logic itself (and were in fact so taken for much of the twentieth century). Second, they all deal with the Peircean insistence that semeiosis is inherently a form of Praxis in which interchanges occur between or among various "agents" or "actors," one of which might be nature itself; so that at the very least logic is dialogic, and so that more generally one may justifiably speak of semeiosis as involving something like a "game." These lines of exploration will surprise no seasoned Peirce scholar, but the special genius of the Finnish "school" of Peirce interpretation from Hintikka forward is to have spotlighted in dramatic fashion the game-theoretical nature of many elements in Peirce's semeiotic.In these essays Pietarinen amply exhibits two attainments of mind that are indispensable for the serious Peirce scholar. One is the object of what we might call "The Eisele Imperative" after the vehement urgings of Carolyn Eisele: this is the possession of some significant degree of sophistication in mathematics. Pietarinen's mathematical skills are plainly sufficient for his discussions of logic and game theory. For example, his Chapter 5 is an excellent technical discussion of Peirce's existential graphs, and his Chapter 7 is an admirable technical discussion of certain aspects of game theory and generalized quantifiers. Another crucial skill needed by the serious Peirce scholar is the object of what we might call "The Pietarinen Corrective" after the practices exemplified in these essays: this is the possession of extremely broad knowledge of recent and contemporary philosophy, especially philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science.Indeed, the breadth of Pietarinen's acquaintance with twentieth century logic and philosophy of language, both "analytic" and "continental," is breathtaking. This allows him scope for comparisons of Peirce's views with an extraordinarily wide, and not always easily anticipated, range of philosophers and philosophic traditions. Pietarinen's range of reference is so extensive that it would be pointless to attempt to discuss in... (shrink)

In this paper I argue, controversially, that Plato's Meno anticipates Wittgenstein's critique of essentialism. Plato is usually read as an essentialist of the very kind that Wittgenstein was challenging, and the Meno in particular is usually taken as evidence that Plato thought that to know something you must be able to define it, and that if you can't define it you can't investigate any other questions on the topic. I suggest instead that Plato shows Socrates proposing such a position (much (...) as Wittgenstein's imaginary interlocutor might do), only to have it knocked down by what happens in the dialogue. Plato shows that one knows a concept when one can apply it in practice, or, for virtue, when one typically chooses to act in certain ways, passes certain judgements and so on. It turns out, then, that one who claims to "know what virtue is" need not give necessary and sufficient conditions for it. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to deal with the links between Schutz and Wittgenstein on the centrality of language and intersubjectivity in the structure of meanings. I believe there are similarities between Schutz’s proto-trust in the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s animal faith in the basic life form of language games. To this end, Cicourel’s analysis of the relationship between language, Verstehen and empirical research methods will be used. Cicourel renders Schutz and Wittgenstein contiguous, by interpreting the different techniques (...) of empirical research as languages that structure the understanding of meanings on the basis of the order of different realities and different language games. (shrink)

This contribution gives an outline of a game theoretic foundation of the logical structure inherent to the language of a science. Game theoretic approaches to a language were considered and developed by several authors. In this volume Saarinen examines the game theoretic semantics due to Hintikka and the dialog-game semantics due to Lorenzen. In the following I shall not re-examine the approaches by Hintikka and Lorenzen. However, some remarks about Lorenzen’s semantics are necessary since the game theoretic approach considered (...) here is essentially based on the idea of Lorenzen to use dialog-games for a foundation of logic.A systematic game theoretic presentation of the rules of a dialog game was given at first by Lorenz. Starting with certain structural rules which constitute the general scheme of a dialog, a further dialog rule is necessary in order to guarantee a finite game. (shrink)

Needed for such dialogue games as dialectic are appropriate standards of fairness and rationality. The rules of procedure of dialectic must describe a game playable by actual human participants. The present paper centers on certain idealizations of the dialectician that are not allowable.