In their “Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance” Kotzee, Carter and Siegel (2019) argue against what they call the intellectual virtues (IV) approach to the primary epistemic aim of education and in favor of what they call the critical thinking (CT) approach. The IV approach says that educating for intellectual virtue is the primary epistemic aim of education. The CT approach says that it is educating for critical thinking. They argue that the exemplarist/role-modeling pedagogy of the IV (...) approach is not sufficiently action-guiding, because it does not teach students the know-how needed to think well. This they call the pedagogical challenge to the IV approach. We argue that their criticism of the IV approach fails. In general, possessing an intellectual virtue requires having a corresponding critical-thinking skill set. Also, for one to exercise critical-thinking skills well it is necessary that they possess dispositional components of corresponding intellectual virtues. Accordingly, intellectual virtues can be groomed in non-exemplarist ways that seem sufficiently action-guiding. Furthermore, the pedagogical challenge for the IV approach is a challenge for the CT approach as teaching for critical-thinking dispositions seems heavily reliant on an exemplarist pedagogy and so to this extent is non-action-guiding. (shrink)

Identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth are fundamental philosophical concerns. Colin McGinn treats them both philosophically and logically, aiming for maximum clarity and minimum pointless formalism. He contends that there are real logical properties that challenge naturalistic metaphysical outlooks. These concepts are not definable, though we can say a good deal about how they work. The aim of Logical Properties is to bring philosophy back to philosophical logic.

Even with the lack of consensus on the nature of an argument, the thesis that explanations and arguments are distinct is near orthodoxy in well-known critical thinking texts and in the more advanced argumentation literature. In this paper, I reconstruct two rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations. According to one, arguments and explanations are essentially different things because they have different structures. According to the other, while some explanations and arguments may have the same structure, they are different things because (...) explanations are used for different purposes than arguments. I argue that both rationales fail to motivate a distinction between arguments and explanations. Since these are the only rationales for distinguishing arguments from explanations that I am prepared to take seriously, I don’t see why we should exclude explanations from being arguments. (shrink)

How is intellectual virtue related to critical thinking? Can one be a critical thinker without exercising intellectual virtue? Can one be intellectually virtuous without thereby being a critical thinker? How should our answers to these questions inform the instruction of critical thinking? These were the questions informing the 2023 Charles McCracken endowed lectureships given at Michigan State University by Professors Harvey Siegel and Jason Baehr. This brief commentary introduces their respective papers, which appear in the current issue of Informal Logic.

This paper distinguishes between two types of persuasive force arguments can have in terms of two different connections between arguments and inferences. First, borrowing from Pinto, an arguer's invitation to inference directly persuades an addressee if the addressee performs an inference that the arguer invites. This raises the question of how invited inferences are determined by an invitation to inference. Second, borrowing from Sorenson, an arguer's invitation to inference indirectly persuades an addressee if the addressee performs an inference guided by (...) the argument even though it is uninvited. This raises the question of how an invitation to inference can guide inferences that the arguer does not use the argument to invite. Focusing on belief-inducing inference, the primary aims here are to clarify what is necessary for an addressee's belief-inducing inference to be invited by an argument used as an instrument of persuasion; and to highlight the capacity of arguments to guide such inferences. The paper moves beyond Pinto's discussion by using Boghossian's Taking Condition in service of and in way that illustrates how epistemically bad arguments can rationally persuade addressees of their conclusions. (shrink)

Introduction -- The concept of logical consequence -- Tarski's characterization of the common concept of logical consequence -- The logical consequence relation has a modal element -- The logical consequence relation is formal -- The logical consequence relation is A priori -- Logical and non-logical terminology -- The meanings of logical terms explained in terms of their semantic properties -- The meanings of logical terms explained in terms of their inferential properties -- Model-theoretic and deductive-theoretic conceptions of logic -- Linguistic (...) preliminaries : the language M -- Syntax of M -- The definition of a well formed formula of M -- Semantics for M -- The sentential connectives are defined -- The notion of satisfaction is introduced and the quantifiers are defined -- Model-theoretic consequence -- Truth in a structure -- Satisfaction revisited -- Formalized definition of truth -- Model-theoretic consequence defined -- The model-theoretic definition and the concept of logical consequence -- Does the model theoretic consequence relation reflect the salient features of the common concept of logical consequence? -- What is a logical constant? -- Deductive consequence -- Deductive system n -- The deductive theoretic definition and the concept of logical consequence -- Tarski's criticism of the deductive theoretic definition -- Is N a correct deductive system? (shrink)

I consider the well-known criticism of Quine's characterization of first-order logical truth that it expands the class of logical truths beyond what is sanctioned by the model-theoretic account. Briefly, I argue that at best the criticism is shallow and can be answered with slight alterations in Quine's account. At worse the criticism is defective because, in part, it is based on a misrepresentation of Quine. This serves not only to clarify Quine's position, but also to crystallize what is and what (...) is not at issue in choosing the model-theoretic account of first-order logical truth over one in terms of substitutions. I conclude by highlighting the need for justifying the belief that the definition of first-order logical truth in terms of models is superior to its definition in terms of substitutions. (shrink)

Arguments figure prominently in our practices of reason-giving. For example, we use them to advance reasons for their conclusions in order to justify believing something, to explain why we believe something, and to persuade others to believe something. Intuitively, using arguments in these ways requires a certain degree of self-reflection. In this paper, I ask: what cognitive requirements are there for using an argument to advance reasons for its conclusion? Towards a partial response, the paper’s central thesis is that in (...) order to so use an argument one must believe the associated inference claim to the effect that the premises collectively are reasons that support the conclusion. I then argue against making it a further cognitive requirement that one be aware of one’s justification for believing such an inference claim. This thesis provides a rationale for the typical informal-logic textbook characterization of argument and motivates a constraint on adequate accounts of what are referred to as inference claims in the informal logic and argumentation literatures. (shrink)

This volume of essays is an important introduction to the thought of one of the twentieth century's most significant yet underappreciated philosophers, Richard McKeon. The originator of philosophical pluralism, McKeon made extraordinary contributions to philosophy, to international relations, and to theory-formation in the communication arts, aesthetics, the organization of knowledge, and the practical sciences. This collection, which includes a philosophical autobiography as well as the out-of-print title essay "Freedom and History" and a previously unpublished essay on "Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic (...) Inquiry," is a testimony to the range and systematic power of McKeon's thinking for the social sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

When a speaker states an argument in arguing—in its core sense—for the conclusion, the speaker asserts, as opposed to merely implies or implicates, the associated inference claim to the effect that the conclusion follows from the premises. In defense of this, I argue that how an inference claim is conveyed when stating an argument is constrained by constitutive and normative conditions for core cases of the speech of arguing for a conclusion. The speech act of assertion better reflects such conditions (...) than does implication, conversational implicature, or conventional implicature. (shrink)

Blair articulates a concept of argument that suggests, as he puts it, that argument is a normative concept (Blair, Informal Logic 24:137–151, 2004, p. 190). Put roughly, the idea is that a collection of propositions doesn’t constitute an argument unless some taken together constitute a reason for the remaining proposition and thereby support it enough to provide at least prima facie justification for it (Blair, in: Blair, Johnson, Hansen, Tindale (eds) Informal Logic at 25, Proceedings of the 25th anniversary conference, (...) Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, 2003, p.173). My primary task in this paper is to advance an understanding of the illative unit of argument and the reasons associated with it that provides an intuition pump for a normative concept of argument. My aim is to advance a positive consideration in favor of a normative concept of argument that motivates its further development. I take the normative concept of argument I defend here to be in the same ballpark as the one Blair characterizes. (shrink)

I advance a pragmatic account of begging the question according to which a use of an argument begs the question just in case it is used as a statement of inference and it fails to state an inference the arguer or an addressee can perform given what they explicitly believe. Accordingly, what begs questions are uses of arguments as statements of inference, and the root cause of begging the question is an argument’s failure to state an inference performable by the (...) reasoners the arguer targets. In these ways, my account is distinguished from other pragmatic accounts. By taking the defect of a question-begging use of an argument to be its failure to state its purported inference, my account highlights in a unique way why question-begging is not an epistemic defect, and why it is not a fallacy, understood as a mistake in reasoning. These points have been made elsewhere, but I believe that their plausibility is enhanced by considering begging the question as nullifying the role of an argument as a statement of inference. Since question-begging uses of arguments fail to state their purported inferences, using an argument in a question-begging-way is not a ratiocinative mistake. This undermines accounts of begging the question that adopt an epistemic approach. (shrink)

As a philosopher, Richard McKeon spent his career developing Pragmatism in a new key, specifically by tracing the ways in which philosophic problems arise in fields other than philosophy—across the natural and social sciences and aesthetics—and showed the ways in which any problem, pushed back to its beginning or taken to its end, is a philosophic problem. The roots of this book, On Knowing—The Social Sciences, are traced to McKeon’s classes where he blended philosophy with physics, ethics, politics, history, and (...) aesthetics. This volume—the second in a series—leaves behind natural science themes to embrace freedom, power, and history, which, McKeon argues, lay out the whole field of human action. The authors McKeon considers—Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Kant, and J. S. Mill—show brilliantly how philosophic methods work in action, via analyses that do not merely reduce or deconstruct meaning, but enhance those texts by reconnecting them to the active history of philosophy and to problems of ethics, politics, and history. The waves of modernism and post-modernism are receding. Philosophic pluralism is now available, fully formulated, in McKeon’s work, spreading from the humanities to the social sciences. (shrink)

This first volume of an ambitious three-volume work covers philosophic theory through McKeon's writings on first philosophy (metaphysics) and the methods and principles of the sciences.

This paper sharpens the distinction between inferential and logcon arguments. Inferential arguments represent possible inferences, logcon ones need not. This distinction clarifies the roles that arguments play in accounting for the normativity of validity for inferential reasoning and in establishing the theoretical connection between validity and logical consequence. There are two related takeaways. First, the normativity of validity for inferential reasoning is grounded on the notion of an inferential argument. This will account for the use of validity to judge inference (...) in the face of well-known skepticism that a theory of validity has any special relevance to inferential reasoning. Second, a valid logcon argument needn't be an inferential argument. Accordingly, the normativity of validity for inferential reasoning doesn't require that every valid logcon argument be an inferential argument. The takeaways harmonize the use of validity to evaluate inferential reasoning with the use of the concept of logical consequence to characterize validity. (shrink)

On the eve of Mexican independence one of the intellectual leaders of the movement, Dr. Servando Teresa José de Mier, whom the “new despotism” had incarcerated in the prison of San Juan de Ulúa, reflected on the Idea of the Constitution Conferred upon America by the Kings of Spain before the Invasion of the Old Despotism. He evoked with fervor the epoch—at the height of the reign of Charles V—when Fray Bartolome de Las Casas introduced the new laws protecting the (...) Indians in the Council of the Indies (1542-1543), when he imposed upon the conquest the ideal of pacific evangelization formulated in his De unico vocationis modo, and in a memorable controversy finally triumphed over the “notorious Sepúlveda, advocate of war and slavery” (1550). “It was,” Mier maintained, “the most significant epoch of American history, for it marked the termination of America's major misfortunes and laid the foundation of her fundamental laws or true constitution.”. (shrink)