Robert C. Pinto

Argument, Inference and Dialectic

Preface. Introduction H.V. Hansen. 1. Dialectic and the Structure of Argument. 2. Generalizing the Notion of Argument. 3. Logic, Epistemology and Argument Appraisal. 4. The Relation of Argument to Inference. 5. Inconsistency, Rationality and Relativism. 6. Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. 7. Logic, Coherence and Psychology. 8. Logic, Coherence and Psychology Revisited. 9. Logical Form and the Link Between Premisses and Conclusion. 10. Argument Schemes and the Evaluation of Presumptive Reasoning. 11. Presumption and Argument Schemes. 12. Cognitive Science and the Future of Rational Criticism. 13. Logic, Dialectic and the Practice of Rational Criticism. References. Index.

The Relation of Argument to Inference

I’m going to use the word inference for the mental act or event in which a person draws a conclusion from premisses, or arrives at a conclusion on the basis of the consideration of a body of evidence. I’m going to use the word argument for a set of statements or propositions that one person offers to another in the attempt to induce that other person to accept some conclusion. And I’m going to use the word argumentation for an interactive social process involving two or more people, in which the principal goal is to induce belief or agreement through the presentation of arguments.1

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

Since the publication of Hamblin’s Fallacies in 1970, a serious literature on fallacies has begun to emerge outside the textbooks—a literature sampled in Parts II and III Hansen and Pinto 1995. It is in the context of these developments that I propose to look at what has and can be said about the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Logic, Epistemology and Argument Appraisal

There is a more or less traditional approach to the assessment of arguments that attends to whether an argument is sound, defining a sound argument as one whose premisses are true and imply its conclusion.1

Generalizing the Notion of Argument

It is common to think of argument or argumentation as a set of reasons put forward for the purpose of persuading or convincing an audience or interlocutor that something is so. Govier, for example, offers a definition which is fairly typical: An argument is a set of claims that a person puts forward in any attempt to show that some further claim is rationally acceptable.1

Dialectic and the Structure of Argument

There is a passage early in the Gorgias in which Socrates points out one of the differences between rhetoric and dialectic. Polus has been scoffing at an unpopular view which Socrates holds, and Socrates says to him: ...you are trying to refute me orator-fashion like those who fancy they are refuting in the law courts. For there one group imagines it is refuting the other when it produces many reputable witnesses to support its statements whereas the opposing party produces but one or none. But this method of proof is worthless toward discovering the truth, for at times a man may be the victim of a false witness on the part of many people of repute. And now practically all men, Athenians and strangers alike, will support your statements, if you wish to produce them as witnesses that my view is false Yet I, who am but one, do not agree with you, for you cannot compel me to: you are merely producing many false witnesses against me in your endeavor to drive me out of my property, the truth. But if I cannot produce in you yourself a single witness in agreement with my views, I consider that I have accomplished nothing worth speaking of in the matter under debate; and the same, I think, is true for you also, if I, one solitary witness, do not testify for you and if you do not leave all these others out of account.1

Argument Schemes and the Evaluation of Presumptive Reasoning

In “Presumptive Reasoning/Argument: An Overlooked Class” (Blair 1999) J. A. Blair makes a largely convincing case that “presumptive reasoning/argument represents a sui generis class of reasoning/argument” (Blair 1999, p.15). The strength of Blair’s paper lies in the fact that a) he demonstrates through the use of examples that there is a large class of plausible arguments/inferences that don’t fit the usual models of good deductive or of good inductive reasoning b) he sets out a list of four properties of presumptive reasoning — properties whose joint presence might be taken to be criterial for the class in question.

Logic, Coherence and Psychology

Whether or not one abandons a foundationalist theory of epistemic justification in favor of a coherence theory of justification, it is still tempting to think that considerations of coherence do play, and ought to play, an important role in determining what it is reasonable for us to believe. Even as thoroughgoing a foundationalist as Roderick Chisholm explains how important kinds of statements about the external world come to be beyond a reasonable doubt by appealing to the fact that they fit together in sets of propositions that exhibit the property he calls “concurrence” (Chisholm 1977, pp. 82–84).1

Presumption and Argument Schemes

Presumptive reasoning,1 and arguments exemplifying such reasoning, have lately garnered increasing attention in informal logic and the study of argumentation. Two recent publications emphasizing their importance — Blair 1999 and Walton 1996 — have insisted on a crucial role for argument schemes in the evaluation of such reasoning. In this presentation, I want to clarify the role I think argument schemes play in the evaluation of presumptive reasoning — and to do so principally in contradistinction to the accounts that Blair and Walton have given of that role. But let me first explain the notions of presumptive reasoning and of argument scheme.

Cognitive Science and the Future of Rational Criticism

Throughout most of the Western intellectual tradition, the evaluation of reasoning has focused on the relations among statements or sentences. To oversimplify only slightly, the strand of the evaluative tradition associated with formal logic has focused on the syntactic relations between premisses and conclusion (and the semantic relation between premisses and the world) as the key to deciding whether a piece of reasoning is sound. Informal logic, as well, though not limiting its purview to the “logical form” exemplified in the relation of premisses to conclusion, has for the most part attended to reasoning insofar as it is linguistically encoded in arguments.1 Those who’ve adopted a dialectical approach (from Rescher to van Eemeren and Grootendorst) have remained within the mainstream tradition in this respect: their subject matter is a kind of argumentation that focuses on the standpoints taken toward the propositional content of claims put forward in natural languages.