Reconstruction Of Argument Research Articles

Kant's Refutation of Idealism: Once More Unto the Breach

AbstractIn ‘Kant's Refutation of Idealism’ (Noûs, 47), I defend a version of the Refutation, pioneered by Paul Guyer in Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, whose core idea is that the only way that one can know the order of one's own past experiences, except in certain rare cases, is by correlating them with the successive states of perceived external objects that caused the experiences. Andrew Chignell has offered a probing critique of my reconstruction of Kant's argument (Philosophical Quarterly, 60), and I have responded (Philosophical Quarterly, 61). In a rebuttal of my response, Chignell raises three new objections (Philosophical Quarterly, 61). My purpose in this paper is to reply to these.

Regress Argument Reconstruction

If an argument can be reconstructed in at least two different ways, then which reconstruction is to be preferred? In this paper I address this problem of argument reconstruction in terms of Ryle’s infinite regress argument against the view that knowledge-how requires knowledge-that. First, I demonstrate that Ryle’s initial statement of the argument does not fix its reconstruction as it admits two, structurally different reconstructions. On the basis of this case and infinite regress arguments generally, I defend a revisionary take on argument reconstruction: argument reconstruction is mainly to be ruled by charity (viz. by general criteria which arguments have to fulfil in order to be good arguments) rather than interpretation.

A Carneades reconstruction of Popov v Hayashi

Carneades is an open source argument mapping application and a programming library for building argumentation support tools. In this paper, Carneades' support for argument reconstruction, evaluation and visualization is illustrated by modeling most of the factual and legal arguments in Popov v Hayashi.

Desire, Practical Reason, and the Good * Edited by SERGIO TENENBAUM

The papers in this edited volume are all centred on the guise of the good thesis (GGT), which in its most general and unqualified form says that our practical attitudes aim at the good. To get a firmer grip on this thesis, we have three notions to make more precise: practical attitude, aiming at and the good. This book does a good job of making these notions more precise, so we can see more clearly what is at stake in the debate about GGT. The book also provides a good score table for the main versions of GGT by discussing the main arguments for and against each version. Another virtue of the book is that it is not just concerned with the contemporary debate about GGT. It also engages critically with GGT as it was understood and defended by Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. Socrates favours a version of GGT that states that we cannot act against our better judgement. More precisely, the idea is that an agent cannot perform an action that he knows to be worse than another action available to him. On the face of it, this is an astonishing thesis, since it seems to rule out weakness of will. Matthew Evans provides a thorough reconstruction of Socrates's argument for this controversial thesis. Even though he concedes that Socrates's argument, under the most charitable interpretation, is still far from watertight, he shows that it is worth taking seriously.

The Assessment of Argumentation from Expert Opinion

In this contribution, I will develop a comprehensive tool for the reconstruction and evaluation of argumentation from expert opinion. This is done by analyzing and then combining two dialectical accounts of this type of argumentation. Walton’s account of the ‘appeal to expert opinion’ provides a number of useful, but fairly unsystematic suggestions for critical questions pertaining to argumentation from expert opinion. The pragma-dialectical account of ‘argumentation from authority’ offers a clear and systematic, but fairly general framework for the reconstruction and evaluation of this type of argumentation. The tool is developed by incorporating Walton’s critical questions into a pragma-dialectical framework.

Between Chaos and Entropy: Community of Inquiry from a Systems Perspective

This paper considers the psychosocial and cognitive dynamics of an educational community of inquiry as an inquiring system. It identifies seven characteristics of social systems dedicated to inquiry that are open (as opposed to “control” systems)—autopoiesis, teleology, feedback, noise, redundancy, ambiguous control, and system “event”—and traces their function in the ongoing reconstruction of argument that collective, dialogical inquiry entails. The paper also analyzes the process of group inquiry from a dialectical perspective, interpreting conceptual and argumentation system development as a continuously emergent process of reorganization, which makes its way through the ongoing resolution of the oppositions and contradictions it encounters, resulting in greater organizational complexity and clarity. Rather than maintaining homeostatic stability by rejecting or resisting noise, it develops through accepting and incorporating it in the interest of dialectical emergence. The role of a facilitator in such a system is to provide both positive and negative feedback, navigating between system entropy and system chaos. Finally, the autopoietic inquiring system is offered as one exemplar of the “ideal speech situation,” which requires that all its members have equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to system emergence, free from internal constraints or external coercion. This implies the need for a pedagogy that not only develops communicative competence, but which models a form of argumentation that understands itself as a collective project of ongoing reconstruction—with the major goal of agreement arrived at through open, free communication.

Rhetoric as Argument: Social Justice and Affirmative Action in India, 1990

AbstractSocial justice is a key concept in the theory and practice of affirmative action. In India, social justice has come to serve as shorthand for affirmative action for disadvantaged groups, mainly lower castes. This paper provides a detailed analytical interpretation of social justice in a landmark legislative debate on quotas in India, namely the 1990 Mandal debate. It unpacks political rhetoric to reveal distinct conceptions of social justice, shows that claims for quotas for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the bureaucracy drew substantially on principles of social justice and democracy and argues that, despite appearances, several arguments for OBC representation in government jobs were compatible with the principle of merit. In doing so, the paper demonstrates that contrary to common opinion, political rhetoric deserves close attention. A reconstruction of political arguments over affirmative action advances understanding of some puzzling features of lower-caste politics in India. It also illuminates important questions in political theory debates on social justice.

Scruton on the Inscrutability of Photographs

A long-standing objection to the artistic pretensions of photography is that, because of the 'causal' nature of the process whereby a photographic image is produced, the formative intelligence of the photographer does not play a significant role in the generation of the image. Only where we can see such intelligence manifested in an image, it is claimed, can we legitimately take the representational content of the image to be a proper subject of artistic interest. I examine the most sophisticated modern version of this argument in Roger Scruton's paper, 'Photography and Representation'. I first critically examine Dominic Lopes's reconstruction of Scruton's argument and his proposed response to it. I then present an alternative analysis that brings out a central charge—what I term the 'inscrutability' argument that is obscured in Lopes's analysis. I then suggest how we can answer the inscrutability argument.

Inconsciente, cérebro e consciência: reflexão sobre os fundamentos da metapsicologia freudiana

No final do seculo XIX, quando Freud comecou a perceber que a identificacao entre o mental e a consciencia era insuficiente para dar conta de uma serie de fenomenos psiquicos, a psicologia era ainda, sobretudo, o projeto de uma ciencia da consciencia. As propostas de psicologia cientifica que surgem nesse periodo, como as de Brentano, Wundt e James, sustentavam a identidade entre o mental e a consciencia e consideravam a existencia de processos mentais inconscientes uma impossibilidade factual e teorica. Em primeiro lugar, este artigo se propoe a discutir a estrategia freudiana para introduzir a hipotese de um psiquico inconsciente em sua teoria metapsicologica. A seguir, analisa a justificativa dessa hipotese, tomando como base a reconstrucao sistematica da argumentacao freudiana proposta por Jerome Wakefield (1992). Por fim, comenta brevemente a relacao entre os processos psiquicos conscientes e inconscientes, tal como ela se apresenta na metapsicologia freudiana, enfatizando como se constitui em uma de suas grandes dificuldades teoricas.

Need there be a common currency for decision-making?

According to various theorists and empirical scholars of behavior and decision, including economists, utility theorists, behavioral ecologists, behavioral economists and researchers in the new field of neuroeconomics the value (typically understood as utility) of competing choices must be represented on a common scale in order for them to count as competing at all, and in order for orderly comparison to lead to actual choices. For some neuroeconomists this means that expected (cardinal) utilities are neurally represented by firing rates of cells in specific brain regions. In this paper some important statements of the ‘common currency’ argument are reviewed and critically examined. A rational reconstruction of the key argument is then subject to criticism informed by a variety of empirical and theoretical considerations. In a strong form it does not survive the criticism, and this fact points the way to a re-examination of the sense in which complex living systems, including people, are agents in any straightforward sense.

Umstrittener Paulus : die gegenwärtige Diskussion um die paulinische Theologie

The current research on Paul is characterized by a great variety of methods and subjects. An important strand of the discussion is determined by the so called New Perspective on Paul. Its achievements and its limits have to be perceived in a critical reconstruction of important arguments. In this way, a contribution will be made to the description of the tasks involved in the current research on Paul.

Visual Arguments in Film

Our aim is to point out some differences between verbal and visual arguments, promoting the rhetorical perspective of argumentation beyond the relevance of logic and pragmatics. In our view, if it is to be rational and successful, film as (visual) argumentation must be addressed to spectators who hold informed beliefs about the theme watched on the screen and the medium’s constraints and conventions. In our reflections to follow, we apply rhetorical analysis to film as a symbolic, human, and communicative act that may sometimes be understood as a visually laid out argument. As a mixture of visual, auditory, and verbal stimuli, film demands active and complex interpretation and (re)construction. Our suggestion is to focus on five different but interrelated elements. The reconstruction and evaluation of the visual argument will be based on those elements, and the whole process will be one of visual argumentation.

Critical Whiteness Theories and the Evangelical “Race Problem”: Extending Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith

In their 2000 book, Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith use the case of evangelical Christians to demonstrate how uncompromising individualist ideals get in the way of clear thinking and decisive action about racial inequalities in contemporary American society. We use insights developed from whiteness studies and critical race theory to sharpen and further extend this analysis. More specifically, we suggest: (1) that anti‐black stereotypes may be subtler, more pervasive, and more functionally necessary than Emerson and Smith assume; and (2) that the individualistic ideals Emerson and Smith focus on are not race neutral but, instead, are part of a taken‐for‐granted and vigorously defended majority white culture and identity. These points are developed through a theoretical reconstruction of Emerson and Smith's argument and a reevaluation of their methodological approach and data. Finally, we present data from a recent national survey of race and religion in American life that provide preliminary quantitative support for our revisionist claims.

Uma reconstituição da estratégia freudiana para a justificação do inconsciente

A justificativa freudiana para a hipótese da existência do inconsciente é freqüentemente reduzida aos seus elementos empíricos ou a um argumento meramente heurístico. Trata-se aqui, primeiramente, de discutir a estratégia que Freud utiliza para incorporar o conceito de inconsciente em sua teoria; a seguir, de recapitular os diversos argumentos elaborados para justificá-lo; e, por fim, de reconstruí-los sistematicamente, procurando evidenciar os aspectos semânticos e conceituais do quadro teórico no qual as provas empíricas se inserem, assim como sua convergência com estratégias argumentativas contemporâneas de programas de investigação psicológica (as ciências da cognição, por exemplo) que também operam com a hipótese do inconsciente.

Athens and Kydonia: Agora I 7602

A Hellenistic inscription from the Athenian Agora (Agora 17602) concerning syngeneia between Athens and Kydonia in western Crete is reedited here with full commentary. The history of Athenian relations with Kydonia is briefly reviewed. The authors propose a reconstruction of the Kydonians' arguments for mythological kinship between the two cities. Agora 17602 appears to be the earliest firm attestation of mutually accepted syngeneia between Athens and a non-Ionian city. Indeed, it is the first known inscription recording kinship between Athens and another city on grounds other than the latter's status as a colony, at least before the Roman period.

Advances in the Theory of Argumentation Schemes and Critical Questions

This paper begins a working through of Blair’s (2001) theoretical agenda concerning argumentation schemes and their attendant critical questions, in which we propose a number of solutions to some outstanding theoretical issues. We consider the classification of schemes, their ultimate nature, their role in argument reconstruction, their foundation as normative categories of argument, and the evaluative role of critical questions.We demonstrate the role of schemes in argument reconstruction, and defend a normative account of their nature against specific criticisms due to Pinto (2001). Concerning critical questions, we propose an account on which they are founded in the R.S.A. cogency standard, and develop an account of the relationship between critical questions and burden of proof. Our ultimate aim is to initiate a reconciliation between dialectical and informal logic approaches to the schemes.

The Pragma-Dialectical Analysis and Evaluation of Teleological Argumentation in a Legal Context

In this article the author develops a framework for a pragma-dialectical reconstruction of teleological argumentation in a legal context. Ideas taken from legal theory are integrated in a pragma-dialectical model for analyzing and evaluating argumentation, thus providing a more systematic and elaborate framework for assessing the quality of teleological arguments in a legal context. Teleological argumentation in a legal context is approached as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. The legal criteria that are relevant for the evaluation of teleological argumentation are discussed and translated in terms of critical questions that are relevant for the evaluation of the various forms of teleological argumentation.

Modality and its Conversational Backgrounds in the Reconstruction of Argumentation

The paper considers the role of modality in the rational reconstruction of standpoints and arguments. The paper examines in what conditions modal markers can act as argumentative indicators and what kind of cues they provide for the reconstruction of argument. The paper critically re-examines Toulmin’s hypothesis that the meaning of the modals can be analyzed in terms of a field-invariant argumentative force and field-dependent criteria in the light of the Theory of Relative Modality developed within linguistic semantics, showing how this theory can provide a more adequate model for exploiting the modals as indicators. The resulting picture confirms Toulmin’s intuition only in part: on the one hand the modals are always relational in nature and dependent on a contextual conversational background of propositions; on the other hand only epistemic-doxastic modals directly express a speech-act level inferential relation between a set of premises and a standpoint. Other modalities express relations (e.g. causal or final relations) better seen as part of the content of the argument whose argumentative relevance depends on the argumentation scheme employed. Thus non-epistemic modals function as argumentative indicators only indirectly.

Arguments, Meta-arguments, and Metadialogues: A Reconstruction of Krabbe, Govier, and Woods

Krabbe (2003, in F.H. van Eemeren, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Sic Sat, Amsterdam, pp. 641–644) defined a metadialogue as a dialogue about one or more dialogues, and a ground-level dialogue as a dialogue that is not a metadialogue. Similarly, I define a meta-argument as an argument about one or more arguments, and a ground-level argument as one which is not a meta-argument. Krabbe (1995, in F.H van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans (eds.), Proceedings of the Third ISSA Conference on Argumentation, Sic Sat, Amsterdam, pp. 333–344) showed that formal-fallacy criticism (and more generally, fallacy criticism) consists of metadialogues, and that such metadialogues can be profiled in ways that lead to their proper termination or resolution. I reconstruct Krabbe’s metadialogical account into monolectical, meta-argumentative terminology by describing three-types of meta-arguments corresponding to the three ways of proving formal invalidity he studied: the trivial logic-indifferent method; the method of counterexample situation; and the method of formal paraphrase. A fourth type of meta-argument corresponds to what Oliver (1967, Mind 76, 463–478), Govier (1985, Informal Logic 7, 27–33), and Copi (1986) call refutation by logical analogy. A fifth type of meta-argument represents my reconstruction of arguments by parity of reasoning studied by Woods and Hudak (1989, Informal Logic 11, 125–139). Other particular meta-arguments deserving future study are Hume’s critique of the argument from design in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and Mill’s initial argument in The Subjection of Women about the importance of established custom and general feeling vis-a-vis argumentation.

HOW IS DESCARTES' ARGUMENT AGAINST SCEPTICISM BETTER THAN PUTNAM'S?

‘If a person can think of an F, then that person has come into causal contact with an F in the right way’ is a premise in an obvious reconstruction of Putnam's argument that we are not brains in vats. ‘If a person can think of an F, then that person has come into causal contact with an F or with something at least as good as an F’ is the only controversial premise in Descartes' argument for the existence of God. Putnam's principle entails Descartes', which suggests that we should enquire after better versions of Putnam's proof. I present three variations and conclude that Putnam's semantic theory does not have anti‐sceptical consequences. In contrast, given Descartes' cognitive situation, he was perfectly justified in accepting the soundness of his argument for the existence of God.