Reconstruction Of Argument Research Articles

Aristotle’s Sea Battle, Excluded Middle and Bivalence

In this paper, I present a formal reconstruction of the classical argument for fatalism set forth by Aristotle in On Interpretation 9. From there, I expose two different formal solutions for avoiding the unwanted conclusion based on the traditional interpretation of Aristotle’s rejection of the Principle of Bivalence: On the one hand, Łukasiewicz's three-valued logic and, on the other hand, supervaluation semantics. I also address some criticisms made against these two proposals. To finish, I remark on some alternative interpretations of Aristotle’s intentions maintaining that the Stagirite philosopher rejected fatalism without abandoning the Principle of Bivalence.

Fresh perspectives on multimodal argument reconstruction

The present contribution exemplifies current models for argument reconstruction on an environmental protection print-ad, identifying deficits in the way the models account for multimodal argumentation. Based on this critical review, three general research perspectives are suggested for making argument reconstruction maximally multimodal: the reach and logic of semiotic modes, multimodal coherence, and genre-specific multimodal discourse structure.

Xenocrates on the Number of Syllables

Ancient critics reproached Xenocrates for beginning his work on the dialectic with a discussion of voice, and until now the question why he did so has never been systematically explored. Neither do we know why Xenocrates counted syllables, as Plutarch reports, and how he arrived at such an implausibly high number. In the first part of this paper, I show that Xenocrates’ interest in voice was suggested by Plato’s discussion of letters in his later dialogues, such as the Theatetus, the Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philebus. Second, a fragment from Sextus attributed to Xenocrates confirms that Xenocrates allowed for various ‘levels’ of elements, and that explains why Theuth’s method, recommended in the Philebus, is applied to syllables. Finally, I address the very possibility of knowing the actual number of syllables and words, and address some of the problems connected to the reconstruction of the mathematical argument.

Unleashing Argumentation in Netflix’s Docudramas: Illocutionary Pluralism and Multimodal Rhetoric in the Trailer for Queen Cleopatra (2023)

Trailers for movies are generally considered aesthetic independent multimodal fragmented discourse. Since one of the key features of trailers for docudramas is to promote arguments in order to propagate the importance and worthiness of documentaries to be watched, trailers rely heavily on limited fragmented compositions and implicitness to arouse the viewer’s curiosity. This study aims to provide an enthymematic interpretation of the trailer for Netflix’s brand-new docudrama Queen Cleopatra, which has resulted in immense controversy in Egypt since its release in April 2023. Thus, the study investigates how the enthymematic property of the selected trailer is constructed through the illocutionary pluralism in the characters’ argumentative polylogues and presented through the interplay of verbal-visual semiotic resources such as montage techniques, music, moving images, colors, etc. This study adopts Wildfeuer and Pollaroli’s (2017) theoretical framework of multimodal argumentation in movie trailers supported by Lewiński’s (2021) illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues. The framework foregrounds the importance of the surrounding context (Pragma-Dialectics) in multimodal rhetoric and dwells upon two levels: logic of film discourse interpretation and argumentative reconstruction of the movie trailer. Findings have revealed that the interplay of cross-modal devices and speech acts stimulates spectators to form hypotheses and draw inferences on the cinematic discourse they are subsequently invited to watch and thus to retrieve arguments in support of the claim that the advertised documentary is worth watching.

Presentations and evaluations: A new look at Husserl's distinction between objectifying and non‐objectifying acts

AbstractIn this paper, I take a fresh look at Husserl's key distinction between objectifying and non‐objectifying acts, which roughly amounts to a distinction between presentational and evaluative experiences. My goal is to provide a clear and unified reconstruction of Husserl's argument for the thesis that non‐objectifying acts are necessarily founded in objectifying acts, a thesis that is highly controversial in and beyond Husserlian scholarship. In the first section, I reconstruct Husserl's view in the Logical Investigations, according to which only objectifying acts establish an independent intentional relation to their objects, and argue that it is justified by the positing function of objectifying acts. In the second section, I address two problematic interpretations of this view and, after criticizing them, I present what I take to be Husserl's core argument for his position. In the third section, I turn to the revision of the view of the Logical Investigations that Husserl proposes in the wake of his transcendental turn, especially in Ideas I and II. On Husserl's revised view, all acts are objectifying, including emotional acts [Gemütsakte]. This revision has led scholars to consider Husserl's view aporetic. I propose an alternative interpretation that dispels the purported aporia. I conclude with some remarks on the costs and benefits of my reading, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of Husserl's view in general.

Scrutiny of the Two-Dimensional Argument against Physicalism

Chalmers’s two-dimensional argument against materialism (aka the zombie argument) is arguably the most ingenious attempt to ground a view about fundamental reality on epistemic considerations. From the conceivability of a being that is physically identical to a conscious being but that is deprived of phenomenal consciousness (a zombie), the argument draws on the interplay of the primary and the second intensions of the zombie hypothesis to infer the metaphysical possibility of a zombie world, and thus the falsity of physicalism about phenomenality. By means of a detailed reconstruction of the two-dimensional argument, the paper tries to isolate its most central assumption: that the role played by an epistemic scenario (an intentional object) in the verification of the zombie hypothesis is played by a nonintentionally individuated metaphysical world (the zombie world) considered as actual. The paper argues that no non-viciously circular case for this assumption has been made. Thus, the two-dimensional argument is at best inconclusive.

Argumentation in the Pandemic Media Discourse: Decoding Rhetoric Practice

Purpose. The paper examines argumentation in the pandemic media discourse. Within the concept of decoding rhetoric, argumentation is considered a procedure for effective text formation acting as an instrument of influence.Method. The research method used is argument reconstruction based on the following parameters: a thesis, types of arguments, and argumentation structures. The material has been selected according to the criterion of an addressee of the media discourse, where the addressee is a politician, a doctor, or a publicist.Results. Media texts about the pandemic demonstrate that politicians propose orthodox theses, whereas doctor (D. Protsenko) proposes prescriptive ones and publicist (D. Bykov) – paradoxical ones.Politicians use the universal system and rational arguments based on statistics. The influencing message of D. Protsenko’s media text is formed due to personal empirical argumentation. D. Bykov relies on collective empirical argumentation.Concerning the argumentation structures, coordinate argumentation dominates in the media texts of politicians, making it possible to defend their opinion in the most revealing way. D. Protsenko combines coordinate argumentation with the subordinate one, creating opportunities for interpretation. The text of D. Bykov does not show any steady tendencies for argumentative structuring, reflecting a creative approach to text formation.Conclusion. The argument reconstruction reveals mechanisms of text formation and decodes the pragmatic motives of the speakers in the pandemic media discourse.

Creative and research segments of European humanism: Development of a single cultural space

The relevance and theoretical weight of the mentioned topic of research consists in the definition of the phenomenon metamodernism, which, in modern humanitarian knowledge and in literary and artistic practice, determines the need to distinguish and analyse segments of European humanism as means of in-depth reproduction, nuance and personalisation of historical and cultural stages, in the context of the specified systematisation of the movement of segments from the middle of the 19th to the first two decades of the 21st century. The main goal of this study, considering the creative and research potential of segments that contributed to the gradual layering of specific features of European humanism, is the reconstruction of arguments for and against those processes that caused the development of a single cultural space. The basis of the methodological approach in this study is the principles of historicism with the assignment of analytical, comparative, and chronological approaches to the determination of a wide range of issues that are of significant importance in the context of the stated topic. In the course of carrying out this research, results were obtained that have significant theoretical and practical significance, because they contribute to the further scientific and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the European humanistic movement from the second half of the 19th to the first two decades of the 21st century, and can be used in lectures on aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, history and the theory of art for students of humanitarian and artistic creative universities. The results obtained during the implementation of this research, and the conclusions formulated on their basis, are of significant importance in the context of determining the key trends in the recognition of the creative and searching tendencies of European humanism, which play an important role in the process of forming a single cultural space.

LeMans and Proslogion 15

It is an exciting time for medieval philosophy. Recent archival research done by Stephen Kearns (2021) at the site of the Librarium Babelii (first discovered by J. L. Borges in 1941; for a detailed report see Borges 1984) has uncovered the long-lost autograph of Drosslogion, the important work by medieval philosopher LeMans which formed the basis for Anselm’s parody so-called ‘ontological argument’. Kearns’ reconstruction of the argument from the original Pig-Latin is meticulously done. In this paper, I hope to offer evidence that Anselm, in the same work that he offers his parody argument, gives a direct reply to LeMans’s. Rather than offering merely a parody, he additionally offers an argument which directly entails the unsoundness of LeMans’s. Kearns’ reconstruction of the original argument runs as follows: Some liberties have been taken with the original text. For instance, while classical Pig-Latin has no articles, definite or otherwise, medieval Pig-Latin does. That being said, the argument is, I believe, a faithful reconstruction of the original. Kearns notes, of LeMans’s argument, that ‘it is unclear how one might rationally support [Anselm’s] argument without also advocating [LeMans’s]’ (Kearns 2021: 452).

Legal Argumentation: Some General Theoretical Aspects

The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that the legal arguments used by judges in particular when making decisions are often criticised. The general theoretical understanding of legal argumentation, which is the purpose of this study, can help to solve the urgent problem of improving legal argumentation. The article substantiates the general theoretical model of legal argumentation, which is carried out in different types of legal activities – lawmaking, interpretation, law enforcement. For this purpose, such research methods as general theoretical, modelling, deduction, analysis and abstraction were used. It is proposed to distinguish between terminological legal argumentation as an activity and legal argumentation as a result of this activity, and the result of activities to reconstruct the legal argumentation of another entity, and provide a definition of each of these concepts. It is established that the general theoretical model of legal argumentation covers composition (corpus) of legal argumentation, tools of legal argumentation, reconstruction and evaluation of legal argumentation. It is identified that in the composition (corpus) of legal argumentation it is reasonable to include: argumentative situation; subjective composition; the purpose of the right argument; object of legal argumentation; the content of legal argumentation. The substantive and procedural aspects of the tools of legal argumentation are singled out. The practical value of the article is that the general theoretical model of legal argumentation creates grounds for improving argumentative practice in various types of legal activity

Computer verification for historians of philosophy

Interactive theorem provers might seem particularly impractical in the history of philosophy. Journal articles in this discipline are generally not formalized. Interactive theorem provers involve a learning curve for which the payoffs might seem minimal. In this article I argue that interactive theorem provers have already demonstrated their potential as a useful tool for historians of philosophy; I do this by highlighting examples of work where this has already been done. Further, I argue that interactive theorem provers can continue to be useful tools for historians of philosophy in the future; this claim is defended through a more conceptual analysis of what historians of philosophy do that identifies argument reconstruction as a core activity of such practitioners. It is then shown that interactive theorem provers can assist in this core practice by a description of what interactive theorem provers are and can do. If this is right, then computer verification for historians of philosophy is in the offing.

Dialectical Approach to Legal Arguing and Legal Argumentation

The article is devoted to legal argumentation, namely to its research by dialectical approach. The aim of the article is to determine characteristic features of dialectical approach to legal argumentation.
 Dialectical approach to the research of legal argumentation should include philosophical, theoretical, empirical components. Philosophical component of legal argumentation research consists in the critical conception of rationality i.e. the philosophical axiomatic idea about rationality of legal argumentation, which is systematically tested within discourse or critical discussion. Dialectical theoretical model of legal argumentation ensures mutual acceptability of legal argumentation by the parties. Dialectical approach deals with legal argumentation mainly in the “context of justification.” Dialectical approach to legal arguing implies specific standard of soundness of the argumentation – acceptability standard. Empirical component of legal argumentation includes reconstruction of argumentation and its weighting (analytic component) as well as analysis of particular legal reasoning (practical component). Dialectical approach highlights hermeneutical nature of legal reasoning.
 Dialectical approach to legal argumentation lets us assume some ontological issues concerning legal argumentation. Legal argumentation is considered as the form of rational communication of particular persons to reach mutual acceptability of legally important conclusions within the procedure of discussion. Legal argumentation is the result of such impact embodied in acceptability of legally binding issues within the procedure of rational discussion.

Demosthenes’ strategic maneuvering in theFirst Olynthiac

AbstractThe article focuses on the analysis of Demosthenes’ strategic maneuvering in theFirst Olynthiacdelivered in the Athenian Assembly of the People in 349 BC. It is a case study of the famous § 24 in which Demosthenes calls for the attack on Philip of Macedonia, based on a hypothetical reciprocal scenario: Philip would attack Athens in a similar situation. The first part of the paper offers an argumentative characterisation of the Assembly of the People. Subsequently, the historical and situational circumstances of the speech are described, and an argumentative reconstruction of Demosthenes’ speech is presented. The evaluation of the speech’s context serves as a reference point for the analysis of strategic maneuvering by putting forward the argument in § 24. The argument is analysed in terms of three strategic maneuvering aspects: choice of topical potential, adaptation to audience demands, and presentational devices.

Multimodal practical argumentation and behavioral change: an analysis of the “Remember, the Metro is for everyone” campaign

The aim of this paper is to discuss how the verbal and the pictorial modalities interact to construe argumentative meanings in a transport campaign promoted by Lisbon’s subway company in 2018. As an instance of multimodal practical argumentation aimed at behavioral change, the campaign constitutes a significant corpus for discussing a series of relevant issues in the field, such as the illative reconstruction of arguments, the affordances of each modality in schematization, and the operationalization of pictorial analysis in regard to its argumentative potential. By drawing on a dialogue between Social Semiotics and Argumentation Theory, we arrived at the following conclusions: (i) the campaign established verbal and pictorial subcanvases specialized in construing certain parts of the main practical argumentation schemes; (ii) images were inherently tied to the construction of Circumstantial premises, thus exerting a direct role in argumentation, and tended to portray complex representational meanings, with three combined process types; (iii) the most productive argumentation schemes utilized were the instrumental practical reasoning scheme, the argument from values and the argument from consequences; (iv) there were two targeted audiences – the readers/clients in general, usually identified with the affected depicted people, and the clients whose behavior was being targeted in the campaign, represented as transgressors in the pictorial subcanvas

НСТРУМЕНТИ ПРАВОВОГО АРГУМЕНТУВАННЯ Й ПРАВОВОЇ АРГУМЕНТАЦІЇ: ЗАГАЛЬНОТЕОРЕТИЧНА ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА

The article is dedicated to the general theoretic study of the instruments of legal arguing and legal argumentation. The author determines that the substantive instruments of legal arguing are the arguments, while the argument schemes and argumentation structures serve for the purpose of reconstruction and evaluation of legal argumentation. The lack of unified understanding of what is argument in foreign and national legal studies is stated, as well as the impossibility of exhaustive categorization of the arguments in law. The argument is the basic tool of legal arguing. According to C. Tindale, in European tradition the concept of argument encompasses both premises of the argument (argumentation) and its conclusion (standpoint, claim). The concept of argument is rather vague. The author highlights the correlation of the argument and explanation as well as the argument and proof. The reasons for the argument are rooted in the sources of law, that makes argumentation legal. In the argumentation theory, the notions of «argument scheme» and «argumentation structure» are used in addition to the concept of argument. Argument scheme is the internal argument structure. An argument scheme characterizes the type of justification or refutation provided for the standpoint in a single argument by the explicit premise for the standpoint. Argument structure is considered as an external structure of argumentation. It is defined as the way the reasons advanced hang together and jointly support the defended standpoint. There are singular and multiple argumentation structures. The singular argumentation consists of one argument for or against a standpoint. In case of multiple argumentation, few arguments are put forward for or against the same standpoint to predict and respond counterarguments of an opposite party of legal arguing. The procedural aspect of the instruments of legal arguing are the rules of legal arguing. The procedural means of legal arguing are its procedural rules which depend on an area of legal activity where the argumentation is provided as well as on the peculiarities of the argumentative situation. On the one hand, there are procedural rules of legal arguing in any legal system, for instance, legal rules governing the procedures of debates in a parliament, court system, hearing in the Constitutional Court. On the other hand, there are doctrinal rules of critical discussion, of general and legal discourses, elaborated within the argumentation theory and the legal argumentation theory.

Roe as Potemkin Village: Fallacies, Facades, and Stare Decisis

The abortion debate has escalated once again, taking on a new urgency in the wake of the Supreme Court’s granting certiorari in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and denying emergency relief in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. In Dobbs, the Court agreed to reconsider Roe’s “essential holding,” determining whether pre-viability bans on abortion remain unconstitutional. In Whole Woman’s Health, a majority of the Court declined the request to enjoin a Texas statute banning abortions at roughly six weeks, thereby permitting the law to go into effect. Supporters of abortion rights understandably worry that Whole Woman’s Health indicates that in Dobbs a majority of the Court will overturn or severely limit Roe. In defense of Roe and its progeny, these individuals frequently invoke Casey and stare decisis to justify retaining Roe’s viability standard, which has held sway for almost half a century. What these supporters do not do is adopt Roe’s constitutional analysis—and for good reason. As this article explains, Roe’s argument in support of viability rests on seven informal fallacies and at least one formal fallacy. While commentators on both sides of the abortion debate have highlighted problems with Roe’s reasoning, none has undertaken this type of detailed argument reconstruction. A careful review of Roe’s reasoning reveals that Casey’s use of stare decisis to preserve Roe is a Potemkin village—a tribute to a longstanding precedent that, when scrutinized, is seen to lack a constitutional foundation. That Roe’s constitutional argument is severely wanting bears directly on the stare decisis analysis in Dobbs in two important ways. First, a key factor for the Court when determining whether to overrule a prior decision is the quality of the reasoning in the earlier case. Regardless of one’s views on abortion, Roe was poorly reasoned. Its viability standard is not predicated on the Constitution’s text, original meaning, or general purposes. As this article explains, it is grounded in a series of fallacies that do not support its holding. Thus, if the Respondents in Dobbs parrot Roe’s argument, they are apt to lose before the current Court. Second, if those defending Roe advance new arguments to supplement its reasoning, they should worry that the Court may not apply stare decisis at all. As Chief Justice Roberts explained in Citizens United, stare decisis is “a doctrine of preservation, not transformation.” If those defending Roe present novel arguments, the Court need not (and perhaps should not) defer to those arguments because the Court would be considering them for the first time.

Logic and Exegesis: The Logical Reconstruction of Arguments in the Greek Commentary Tradition

Logic and Exegesis: The Logical Reconstruction of Arguments in the Greek Commentary Tradition

How (not) to understand weak measurements of velocities

To-date, the most elaborated attempt to complete quantum mechanics by the addition of hidden variables is the de Broglie–Bohm (pilot wave) theory (dBBT). It endows particles with definite positions at all times. Their evolution is governed by a deterministic dynamics. By construction, however, the individual particle trajectories generically defy detectability in principle. Of late, this lore might seem to have been called into question in light of so-called weak measurements. Due to their characteristic weak coupling between the measurement device and the system under study, they permit the experimental probing of quantum systems without essentially disturbing them. It is natural therefore to think that weak measurements of velocity in particular offer to actually observe the particle trajectories. If true, such a claim would not only experimentally demonstrate the incompleteness of quantum mechanics: it would provide support of dBBT in its standard form, singling it out from an infinitude of empirically equivalent alternative choices for the particle dynamics. Here we examine this possibility. Our result is deflationary: weak velocity measurements constitute no new arguments, let alone empirical evidence, in favour of standard dBBT; One must not naïvely identify weak and actual positions. Weak velocity measurements admit of a straightforward standard quantum mechanical interpretation, independent of any commitment to particle trajectories and velocities. This is revealed by a careful reconstruction of the physical arguments on which the description of weak velocity measurements rests. It turns out that for weak velocity measurements to be reliable, one must already presuppose dBBT in its standard form: in this sense, they can provide no new argument, empirical or otherwise, for dBBT and its standard guidance equation.

Reconstruction of argumentation about the possibility of natural theology in confessional polemics at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries

This article describes the problem of the possibility of natural theology, as it was understood in the discussion between Catholics and Protestants at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The topic is relevant because on the one hand, the category theologia naturalis by this time accumulated a lot of theological and philosophical values, and it is for some traditions a system-forming category that identifies the relation of certain concepts of early modern science. On the other hand, it formed a point around which arguments for and against fundamental decisions were built in the field of ontology, epistemology, anthropology, etc. Thus, the problem of natural theology, its possibilities, composition, and connection with the theology of Revelation (theologia revelata) is a fundamental factor in the development of confessional thought in the early modern period. In studying this problem, emphasis is placed on the ways to conceptualize the idea of natural theology, since this factor determined some strategy of argumentation, that a thinker chooses, justifying a positive or negative assessment of the significance of this problem. A special attribute of the approach is the consideration of how the problem of the possibility of natural theology was understood within the agenda of a specific strategy of theological and philosophical argumentation (in particular, in William Ames’ theological works). The approach allowed us to reveal an authentic understanding of the scope and structure of the problem of the possibility of natural theology, characteristic of authors at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as to describe ways to systematize various arguments into a single strategy for positive or negative evaluation of the phenomenon of natural theology.

Этика без теории? О преимуществах пирронического образа жизни перед догматическим

The paper discusses two interrelated problems pertaining to the Pyrrhonian way of life. We try to rise to the challenge and play devil’s advocate, arguing from the skeptical point of view. The first part portrays a reconstruction of central skeptical arguments against the dogmatic ethics that attack some epistemological, metaphysical and ethical issues of the central dogmatic concept “the good by nature”. The second part considers the arguments suggested by G. Striker and R. Bett who claim that the sceptic cannot have ethics nor be an ethical agent. Against it, we try to formulate minimal conditions for ethics without theory, namely, the conceptual ability to distinguish between “right” and “wrong” actions grounded upon the notion of “private good” and the skeptical criteria for actions. This is made possible by relativizing the criteria of the ethical and connecting it with the customs and traditions of a given community. Though Pyrrhonism is quite different from ethical relativism or ethical realism, a striking comparison to H. Putnam’s ethical approach is drawn at the end of the paper.