Good Arguments During the BSE Inquiry

Abstract

At this stage of discussion, we have all the raw materials in place to construct a model of scientific reasoning that is adapted to contexts of uncertainty. At the conceptual heart of this model is presumption. Through its unique features of defeasibility, context sensitivity and much else besides, presumption, it was argued, is equipped to handle the full range of demands that uncertainty imposes on investigators during scientific inquiry. But presumption could not act alone in this endeavour. Several argument forms that have traditionally been characterized as fallacies became the vehicle through which presumption was given effect in a model of reasoning. These argument forms, it was contended, served to facilitate scientific inquiry when widespread uncertainty threatened to halt inquiry in its tracks. The purpose of this chapter will be to demonstrate in quite specific ways how certain of the fallacies achieved this facilitation in the case of scientific inquiry into BSE. The presumptive analyses of fallacies that have been advanced to date have certainly served to reveal rational features of the fallacies. These features have been largely obscured from view under traditionally dominant deductive and inductive conceptions of argument. To this extent, these analyses have helped to move the fallacies a bit further along the road towards full integration within cognitive rationality. But there are lingering suspicions amongst theorists that these argument forms, despite their demonstrated practical and other benefits in inquiry, may still not somehow fully warrant the type of rational legitimacy that routinely attends deductive and inductive modes of reasoning. In this chapter, I aim to dispel those suspicions once and for all by arguing in support of a clear role for the fallacies within cognitive rationality.