In The Uses of Argument, Toulmin proposed a distinction between fielddependent and field-invariant standards for argument appraisal that gave rise to a relativistic understanding of his theory. The main goal of this paper is to show that epistemological relativism is not a necessary consequence ofToulmin's model of argument. To this end, I will analyze the role that fields are to play within this model, given a certain conception of one of its key elements: the (...) warrant of an argument. (shrink)

Contemporary reasoning about health is infused with the work products of experts, and expert reasoning about health itself is an active site for invention and design. Building on Toulmin’s largely undeveloped ideas on field-dependence, we argue that expert fields can develop new inference rules that, together with the backing they require, become accepted ways of drawing and defending conclusions. The new inference rules themselves function as warrants, and we introduce the term “warranting device” to refer to an (...) assembly of the rule plus whatever material, procedural, and institutional resources are required to assure its dependability. We present a case study on the Cochrane Review, a new method for synthesizing evidence across large numbers of scientific studies. After reviewing the evolution and current structure of the device, we discuss the distinctive kinds of critical questions that may be raised around Cochrane Reviews, both within the expert field and beyond. Although Toulmin’s theory of field-dependence is often criticized for its relativism, we find that, as a matter of practical fact, field-specific warrants do not enjoy immunity from external critique. On the contrary, they can be opened to evaluation and critique from any interested perspective. (shrink)

Relevance of premises to conclusion can be explicated through Toulmin’s notion of warrant, understood as an inference rule, albeit not necessarily formal. A normative notion of relevance requires the warrant to be reliable. To determine reliability, we propose a fourfold classification of warrants into a priori, empirical, institutional, and evaluative, with further subdivisions possible. This classification has its ancestry in classical rhetoric and recent epistemology. Distinctive to each type of warrant is the mode by which such connections are (...) intuitively discovered and the grounds on which we ultimately justify them. The classification of warrants is thus epistemic. We illustrate the difference by contrasting empirical physical with institutional intuition, and argue for the advantages of this approach over Toulmin’s conception of field dependence. (shrink)

In The Uses of Argument, Stephen Toulmin proposed a model for the layout of arguments: claim, data, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, backing. Since then, Toulmin’s model has been appropriated, adapted and extended by researchers in speech communications, philosophy and artificial intelligence. This book assembles the best contemporary reflection in these fields, extending or challenging Toulmin’s ideas in ways that make fresh contributions to the theory of analysing and evaluating arguments.

In “The Uses of Argument” Toulmin introduces a number of concepts that have become popular in argumentation theory, such as data, claim, warrant, backing, force, field, and, most fundamentally, the concept of a “logical type”. Toulmin never defines the concept of a logical type or a field very clearly, and different interpretations can be found in the literature, either reconstructing what Toulmin has in mind, or revising his concepts to suit other concerns. A natural history of (...) these concepts is not my concern. I will analyse logical types according to what Toulmin uses this concept for, namely to raise a problem with deductive logic and motivate its replacement with the Toulmin model. I will argue that a logical type and the distinction he draws between different logical types resembles distinctions made in logical positivism between the directly and the indirectly verifiable, and the problem raised is, in essence, the positivist’s problem of how indirect propositions can be justified on the basis of direct propositions. I will show that Toulmin makes a straw man of the positivists’ own solution to the problem and hence does not prove there to be an adequate motivation for replacing deductive logic with the Toulmin model. (shrink)

Toulmin’s scheme for the layout of arguments (1958, The Uses of Argument, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) represents an influential tool for the analysis of arguments. The scheme enriches the traditional premises-conclusion model of arguments by distinguishing additional elements, like warrant, backing and rebuttal. The present paper contains a formal elaboration of Toulmin’s scheme, and extends it with a treatment of the formal evaluation of Toulmin-style arguments, which Toulmin did not discuss at all. Arguments are (...) evaluated in terms of a so-called dialectical interpretation of their assumptions. In such an interpretation, an argument’s assumptions can be evaluated as defeated, e.g., when there is a defeating reason against the assumption. The present work builds on recent research on defeasible argumentation (cf. e.g. the work of Pollock, Reiter, Loui, Vreeswijk, Prakken, Hage and Dung). More specifically, the author’s work on the dialectical logic DEFLOG and the argumentation tool ARGUMED serve as starting points. (shrink)

This paper argues that the choice of backing to certify the authority of a warrant requires a legitimation inference. When brought into question, such an inference becomes a claim defended by showing sound reasons for the selection of backing pertinent to a shared context. Legitimation controversies ensue when an attributed consensus meets objection. It is argued that attention to legitimation controversies renders the Toulmin model a more useful critical paradigm for investigating the development and risks of (...) communicative reasoning in a public forum. The nomination of John Tower as Secretary of Defense is employed to illustrate how critical analysis of legitimation controversies reflexively expands the domain of inquiry for informal reasoning. (shrink)

Lilian Bermejo-Luque has posed these questions:1.What is the relationship between presumption and presumptive inference? 2.What are the correctness conditions for presumptions and presumptive inferences? Cohen’s method of relevant variables, Toulmin’s model, and Rescher’s theory of plausibility suggest answers. An inference is presumptive just in case its warrant transfers presumption from its premises to its conclusion. A warrant licencing an inference from the claim that an empirical property φ holds to the claim that some other property (...) ψ holds is backed by observation of a constant conjunction of those properties. The stronger the backing, the stronger the warrant. Warrants may be defeated by instances of φ holding in conjunction with some property χ and ψ not holding. The method of relevant variables directs us to organize such defeating properties into relevant variables. We then test the strength of a warrant by seeing how many variables fail to have a value which defeats the warrant. The more variables with no defeater, the stronger the warrant. We may construct a canonical ordering of the relevant variables by ranking them according to the plausibility of their including defeating values. We may evaluate the strength not only of empirically backed warrants, but warrants backed by institutional rules, such as a branch of law, or by a priori intuited connections between properties. An inference rule will be presumptive just in case the plausibility of its warrant being defeated is below some specified level. (shrink)

The fundamental open questions of general relativity theory are the unification of the gravitational field with other fields, aiming at a unified geometrization of physics, as well as the renormalization of relativistic gravitational theory in order to obtain their self-consistent solutions. These solutions are to furnish field-theoretic particle models—a problem first discussed by Einstein. In addition, we are confronted with the issue of a coupling between gravitational and matter fields determined (not only) by Einstein's principle of equivalence, and also with (...) the question of the geometric meaning of a gravitational quantum theory. In our view, all these problems are so closely related that they warrant a general solution. We treat mainly the concepts suggested by Einstein and Weyl. (shrink)

We depend upon the community for justified belief in scientific theory. This dependence can suggest that our individual belief in scientific theory is justified because the community believes it to be justified. This idea is at the heart of an anti-realist epistemology according to which there are no facts about justification that transcend a community's judgement thereof. Ultimately, knowledge and justified belief are simply social statuses. When conjoined with the lemma that communities can differ in what they accept as justified, (...) epistemological anti-realism entails epistemological relativism. Further, this lemma can also be used to generate an argument for relativism and, thereby, for anti-realism. So if an epistemologically realist account of our justification for belief in scientific theory is to be given, then it must be possible, first, to defend a realist interpretation of the idea that individual belief can be community-justified and second, to defend it in a way that is compatible with the fact of possible community diversity. This paper tries to meet these challenges. (shrink)

We argue that Cohen’s concept of inductive or ampliative probability facilitates proper explication of sufficient strength for non-demonstrative arguments conforming to the Toulmin model. The data and claims of such arguments are singular statements. We may epistemically classify the warrants of such arguments as empirical (either physical or personal), institutional, or evaluative. Backing evidence and rebutting considerations vary with the epistemic type of warrant, but in each case the notion of ampliative probability for arguments with warrants of that (...) type can be characterized. We may then use ampliative probability to define sufficient strength and related notions for Toulmin arguments. (shrink)

We perceive relevance by virtue of inference habits, which may be expressed as Pierce's leading principles or as Toulmin's warrants. Hence relevance in a descriptive sense is a ternary relation between two statements and a set of inference rules. For a normative sense, the warrants must be properly backed. Different types of warrant to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A generalization (...) H is supported by evidence E to degree i/in iff E indicates that H passes canonical test i, where there are n canonical tests. In a canonical test, one or more relevant variables, factors which may falsify H, are varied. H passes a test if it is not falsified. The tests are cumulative. Degree of support is relative to the canonical test, and may be modeled as relative to a point in a dialectical situation. A value of a variable at which H is falsified is a rebutting value. A is normatively relevant to B with respect to W iff sup[associated generalization(W), E] = i/n and for j > i, there is a presumption that the values of j are non-rebuting. (shrink)

Pietraszewski's model – though promising in many respects – needs to be extended so that it can explain the multitude of rich inferences that people draw from group membership. In this commentary, we highlight some facets of group thinking, especially from the field of developmental psychology, that cannot be unambiguously accounted for by a model that is built solely on relational cues.

We advance an approach to logical contexts that grounds the claim that logic is a local matter: distinct contexts require distinct logics. The approach results from a concern about context individuation, and holds that a logic may be constitutive of a context or domain of application. We add a naturalistic component: distinct domains are more than mere technical curiosities; as intuitionistic mathematics testifies, some of the distinct forms of inference in different domains are actively pursued as legitimate fields of (...) research in current mathematics, so, unless one is willing to revise the current scientific practice, generalism must go. The approach is advanced by discussing some tenets of a similar argument advanced by Shapiro, in the context of logic as models approach. In order to make our view more appealing, we reformulate a version of logic as models approach following naturalistic lines, and bring logic closer to the use of models in science. (shrink)

In his Logic, Pierre Gassendi proposes that our inductive inferences lack the information we would need to be certain of the claims that they suggest. Not even deductivist inference can insure certainty about empirical claims because the experientially attained premises with which we adduce support for such claims are no greater than probable. While something is surely amiss in calling deductivist inference "probabilistic," it seems Gassendi has hit upon a now-familiar, sensible point—namely, the use of deductive reasoning in (...) empirical contexts, while providing certain formal guarantees, does not insulate empirical arguments from judgment by the measure of belief which we invest in their premises. The more general point, which distinguishes Gassendi among his contemporaries, is that the strength shared by all empirical claims consists in the warrant from experience for those claims we introduce in their support. (shrink)

The European debate around genetically modified foods was one of the most sustained and ardent public discussions in the late 1990s. Concerns about risks to human health and the environment were voiced alongside claims that healthier foods can be produced more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly manner using the new technology. The aims of this paper are to test the usefulness of Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model for the analysis of public debates almost 50 years after it (...) was first introduced, and to establish whether any of the parties in the genetically modified food debate used seriously flawed argumentation. The paper argues that Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model can be useful in three ways when analysing public debates. Firstly, incomplete or flawed claims can be defeated by exposing missing or mismatching argumentation elements; all examined arguments in the GM debate were well formulated. Secondly, weaknesses in argumentation can be identified by making explicit warrants and backing; in the GM case, this allowed the identification of points of attack for counter-argumentation. Thirdly, analysing the type of backing used, allows inferences about the persuasion approach taken. The industrialists employed ethical principles as their backing much more than the scientists and environmentalists, a surprising result. (shrink)

Philosophers of physics are split on whether foundational issues in relativistic quantum field theory should be framed within pragmatist approaches, which trade mathematical rigor for the ability to formulate non-trivial interacting models, or purist approaches, which trade the ability to formulate non-trivial interacting models for mathematical rigor. This essay addresses this debate by viewing it through the lens of the CPT theorem. I first consider two formulations of the CPT theorem, one purist and the other pragmatist, and extract from them (...) a set of problems that clarifies the distinction between pragmatism and purity. I then apply this distinction to Greenberg's influential claim that the violation of CPT invariance in an interacting RQFT entails the violation of Lorentz invariance. I show how this claim rests on an unsuccessful attempt to mediate between pragmatism and purity. I then evaluate another attempt at such mediation in the form of causal perturbation theory. This approach suggests that a focus on renormalized perturbation theory as a way of distinguishing pragmatists from purists may be misleading. (shrink)

A. Belden Fields invites people to think more deeply about human rights in this book in an attempt to overcome many of the traditional arguments in the human rights literature. He argues that human rights should be reconceptualized in a holistic way to combine philosophical, historical, and empirical-practical dimensions. Human rights are viewed not as a set of universal abstractions but rather as a set of past and ongoing social practices rooted in the claims and struggles of peoples against what (...) they consider to be political, economic, or social domination. By aptly showing how a people’s fight for recognition is often closely tied to rights claims, Fields argues that these connections to identity can help bridge the gulf between universalistic and cultural relativistic arguments in the human rights debate. (shrink)

According to the argument scheme approach, to evaluate a given scheme-saturating instance completely does entail asking all critical questions relevant to it. Although this is a central task for argumentation theorists, the field currently lacks a method for providing a complete argument evaluation. Approaching this task at the meta-level, we combine a logical with a substantive approach to the argument schemes by starting from Toulmin’s schema: ‘data, warrant, so claim’. For the yet more general schema: ‘premise; (...) if premise, then conclusion; so conclusion’, we forward a meta-level CQ-list that is arguably both complete and applicable. This list should inform ongoing theoretical efforts at generating appropriate object-level CQs for specific argument schemes. (shrink)

Primeiramente, oferecemos uma apresentação teórica da representação do pensamento prático, começando pela distinção entre silogismo dialético e silogismo demonstrativo. Fazemos referência à crítica de Toulmin contra o dedutivismo dominante de seu tempo. Em seguida, fornecemos argumentos para apoiar a relevância heurística do modelo de Toulmin para entender a discussão sobre a inclusão da lógica padrão na representação do pensamento comum. Afirmamos que o projeto analítico toulmaniano permite entender, com clareza metódica, a derrotabilidade dos argumentos do senso comum por (...) meio da investigação da noção modal de probabilidade na linguagem comum. First, we offer theoretical resemblance of the representation of practical reasoning, beginning with the distinction between demonstrative and dialectical syllogism. We make reference to the Toulmin’s critique against to the dominant deductivism in his time. Then we give arguments to sustain the heuristic relevance of Toulmin’s model to understand the discussion about the inclusion of default logics in the representation of ordinary reasoning. We assert that the Toulminian analytic design allows to understand, with methodical clarity, the defeasibility of common sense arguments by means of the investigation of the modal notion of probability in ordinary language. (shrink)

Argumentation mining is an application of natural language processing (NLP) that emerged a few years ago and has recently enjoyed considerable popularity, as demonstrated by a series of international workshops and by a rising number of publications at the major conferences and journals of the field. Its goals are to identify argumentation in text or dialogue; to construct representations of the constellation of claims, supporting and attacking moves (in different levels of detail); and to characterize the patterns of reasoning that (...) appear to license the argumentation. Furthermore, recent work also addresses the difficult tasks of evaluating the persuasiveness and quality of arguments. Some of the linguistic genres that are being studied include legal text, student essays, political discourse and debate, newspaper editorials, scientific writing, and others. The book starts with a discussion of the linguistic perspective, characteristics of argumentative language, and their relationship to certain other notions such as subjectivity. Besides the connection to linguistics, argumentation has for a long time been a topic in Artificial Intelligence, where the focus is on devising adequate representations and reasoning formalisms that capture the properties of argumentative exchange. It is generally very difficult to connect the two realms of reasoning and text analysis, but we are convinced that it should be attempted in the long term, and therefore we also touch upon some fundamentals of reasoning approaches. Then the book turns to its focus, the computational side of mining argumentation in text. We first introduce a number of annotated corpora that have been used in the research. From the NLP perspective, argumentation mining shares subtasks with research fields such as subjectivity and sentiment analysis, semantic relation extraction, and discourse parsing. Therefore, many technical approaches are being borrowed from those (and other) fields. We break argumentation mining into a series of subtasks, starting with the preparatory steps of classifying text as argumentative (or not) and segmenting it into elementary units. Then, central steps are the automatic identification of claims, and finding statements that support or oppose the claim. For certain applications, it is also of interest to compute a full structure of an argumentative constellation of statements. Next, we discuss a few steps that try to 'dig deeper': to infer the underlying reasoning pattern for a textual argument, to reconstruct unstated premises (so-called 'enthymemes'), and to evaluate the quality of the argumentation. We also take a brief look at 'the other side' of mining, i.e., the generation or synthesis of argumentative text. The book finishes with a summary of the argumentation mining tasks, a sketch of potential applications, and a—necessarily subjective—outlook for the field. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Argumentative Language / Modeling Arguments / Corpus Annotation / Finding Claims / Finding Supporting and Objecting Statements / Deriving the Structure of Argumentation / Assessing Argumentation / Generating Argumentative Text / Summary and Perspectives / Bibliography / Authors' Biographies / Index. (shrink)

In the cognitive, computational, and neuro-sciences, practitioners often reason about what computational models represent or learn, as well as what algorithm is instantiated. The putative goal of such reasoning is to generalize claims about the model in question, to claims about the mind and brain, and the neurocognitive capacities of those systems. Such inference is often based on a model’s performance on a task, and whether that performance approximates human behavior or brain activity. Here we demonstrate how (...) such argumentation problematizes the relationship between models and their targets; we place emphasis on artificial neural networks (ANNs), though any theory-brain relationship that falls into the same schema of reasoning is at risk. In this paper, we model inferences from ANNs to brains and back within a formal framework — metatheoretical calculus — in order to initiate a dialogue on both how models are broadly understood and used, and on how to best formally characterize them and their functions. To these ends, we express claims from the published record about models’ successes and failures in first-order logic. Our proposed formalization describes the decision-making processes enacted by scientists to adjudicate over theories. We demonstrate that formalizing the argumentation in the literature can uncover potential deep issues about how theory is related to phenomena. We discuss what this means broadly for research in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology; what it means for models when they lose the ability to mediate between theory and data in a meaningful way; and what this means for the metatheoretical calculus our fields deploy when performing high-level scientific inference. (shrink)

This paper surveys the issue of relativistic causality within the framework of algebraic quantum field theory . In doing so, we distinguish various notions of causality formulated in the literature and study their relationships, and thereby we offer what we hope to be a useful taxonomy. We propose that the most direct expression of relativistic causality in AQFT is captured not by the spectrum condition but rather by the axiom of local primitive causality, in that it entails a form of (...) local determinism for quantum fields which generalizes the constraint of no superluminal propagation of classical field theories to relativistic quantum field theory. We discuss the status of the axiom of micro-causality by locating its place within a large family of separability/independence/locality conditions developed for AQFT and also by relating it to so-called no-signalling theorems. And we also provide a critical survey of attempts to understand the implications for relativistic causality of the distant correlations endemic to the states in models of AQFT satisfying the standard axioms, and we provide an assessment of attempts to employ Reichenbach's common cause principle in AQFT to defuse worries that these distant correlations implicate direct causal connections between relatively spacelike events. (shrink)

After a brief review of the field formulations and the relativistic non-instantaneous action-at-a-distance formulations of some well known classical theories, we study Rivacoba’s generalization of a theory with a linearly rising potential as a relativistic non-instantaneous action-at-a-distance theory. For this case we construct the corresponding field theory, which turns out to coincide with a model proposed by Kiskis to describe strong interactions. We construct the action functional for this field theory. Although this model belongs to the class of (...) Lagrangian theories with higher derivatives, it is shown that its action-at-a-distance counterpart has a much simpler form. A proposal to construct an action-at-a-distance description of Yang-Mills interactions is also presented. (shrink)

In this dissertation I offer a theory of intrinsic value based on contextualist principles drawn from the value theories of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. The point of departure for the argument is the contextualist view that the qualitative patters representing in experience objects of states of affairs to which we attribute values provide necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to elicit particular valuations, and ground the evaluative judgments we make. The sufficient conditions for valuation include a broader context (...) of memories, beliefs, and peripheral qualia that combine in an integral experiential whole whose value is not reducible to that of its parts. It is first argued that value is, as G.E. Moore suggested, a simple, indefinable property. This property is emergent from experiential qualitative patterns in the sense that value is conditioned by the patterns, but is not itself a condition of them. An analysis of experiential qualitative pattern is then offered, which indicates how some parts of these patterns are focused on in evaluative judgment as crucial for the reproduction of particular values through practical action, whereas the influence of other parts is largely ignored, thus forming a relatively constant experiential context. Finally, a theory of evaluative judgment is offered based on contextualist principles. It is suggested that a contextualist theory can answer the challenge of value relativism by showing how evaluative judgment is 'position relative' rather than 'author relative'. That is, two subjects many come to different evaluative judgments on account of their differing positions or situations, while both may agree that the other's judgment is sound given his or her situation. (shrink)

This essay proposes and defends a general thesis concerning the nature of fallacies of reasoning. These in distinctive ways are all said to be deductively invalid. More importantly, the most accurate, complete and charitable reconstructions of these species and specimens of the informal fallacies are instructive with respect to the individual character of each distinct informal fallacy. Reconstructions of the fallacies as deductive invalidities are possible in every case, if deductivism is true, which means that in every case they (...) should be formalizable in an expressively comprehensive formal symbolic deductive logic. The general thesis is illustrated by a detailed examination of Walter Burleigh's paradox in his c. 1323 work, De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior (Longer Treatise on the Purity of Logic), as a challenge to the deductive validity of hypothetical syllogism. The paradox has the form, ‹If I call you a swine, then I call you an animal; if I call you an animal, then I speak truly; therefore, if I call you a swine, then I speak truly'. Several solutions to the problem are considered, and the inference is exposed as an instance of the common deductive fallacy of equivocation. (shrink)

The proposal that probabilistic inference and unconscious hypothesis testing are central to information processing in the brain has been steadily gaining ground in cognitive neuroscience and associated fields. One popular version of this proposal is the new theoretical framework of predictive processing or prediction error minimization, which couples unconscious hypothesis testing with the idea of ‘active inference’ and claims to offer a unified account of perception and action. Here we will consider one outstanding issue that still looms large (...) at the core of the PEM framework: the lack of a clear criterion for distinguishing conscious states from unconscious ones. In order to fulfill the promise of becoming a unifying framework for describing and modeling cognition, PEM needs to be able to differentiate between conscious and unconscious mental states or processes. We will argue that one currently popular view, that the contents of conscious experience are determined by the ‘winning hypothesis’, falls short of fully accounting for conscious experience. It ignores the possibility that some states of a system can control that system’s behavior even though they are apparently not conscious. What follows from this is that the ‘winning hypothesis’ view does not provide a complete account of the difference between conscious and unconscious states in the probabilistic brain. We show how this problem for the received view can be resolved by augmenting PEM with Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness. This move is warranted by the similar roles that attention and internal competition play in both the PEM framework and the multiple drafts model. (shrink)

Using print ads and recognizing the role of visual images in argument (Groarke) and the presence of arguments in ads (Slade), this paper argues that the work of argumentation theorists from Aristotle to van Eemeren and Grootendorst can be used to support the thesis that ads are arguments. I cite as evidence definitions, demarcations, delineations, and descriptions of argument put forth by leading scholars in the field of argumentation. This includes Aristotle, Informal Logic, Toulmin (Claim, Data, Warrant, (...) Backing, Qualifier, Rebuttal), Johnson and Blair (argument as “reasons or evidence as grounds or support for an opinion”), Gilbert (Multi-Modal Argumentation), and van Eemeren and Grootendorst (argumentation as a social activity and pragma-dialectics). I show how, although just fitting a particular advertisement to someone’s definition does not mean that all ads are arguments, nevertheless, the fact that we can find in an ad all these elements from this variety of scholars over time, leaves us reasonably secure in stating that an ad is indeed an argument. Since my argument would be the same for practically any ad, I am using only one ad. I do, however, use the kind of ad that is least likely to seem to be an argument: an ad with few words, an ad which is mostly visual. If I can show how even an almost entirely visual ad can be analyzed as an argument using the terms of all these scholars of argumentation, I will maintain that most ads could be analyzed in the same way. (shrink)

. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has long dealt with the issue of finding a suitable formalization for commonsense reasoning. Defeasible argumentation has proven to be a successful approach in many respects, proving to be a confluence point for many alternative logical frameworks. Different formalisms have been developed, most of them sharing the common notions of argument and warrant. In defeasible argumentation, an argument is a tentative (defeasible) proof for reaching a conclusion. An argument is warranted when it ultimately (...) prevails over other conflicting arguments. In this context, defeasible consequence relationships for modelling argument and warrant as well as their logical properties have gained particular attention. This article analyzes two non-monotonic inference operators Carg and Cwar intended for modelling argument construction and dialectical analysis (warrant), respectively. As a basis for such analysis we will use the LDSar framework, a unifying approach to computational models of argument using Labelled Deductive Systems (LDS). In the context of this logical framework, we show how labels can be used to represent arguments as well as argument trees, facilitating the definition and study of non-monotonic inference operators, whose associated logical properties are studied and contrasted. We contend that this analysis provides useful comparison criteria that can be extended and applied to other argumentation frameworks. (shrink)

In “Deductivism as an Interpretative Strategy: A Reply to Groarke’s Defense of Reconstructive Deductivism,” David Godden distinguished two notions of deductivism. On the one hand, as an interpretative thesis, deductivism is the view that all-natural language argumentation must be interpreted as being deductive. On the other hand, as an evaluative thesis, deductivism is the view that for a conclusion to follow, it has to follow of necessity from the premises—or, in other words, that being a (...) good inference implies being deductive. The main goal of this paper is to show that evaluative deductivism is wrong. (shrink)

Some solo verbal reasoning serves the function of arriving at a correct answer to a question from information at the reasoner’s disposal. Such reasoning is good if and only if its grounds are justified and adequate, its warrant is justified, and the reasoner is justified in assuming that no defeaters apply. I distinguish seven sources of justified grounds and state the conditions under which each source is trustworthy. Adequate grounds include all good relevant information practically obtainable by the reasoner. The (...) claim must follow from the grounds in accordance with a justified general warrant. If this warrant is not universal, the reasoner must be justified in assuming that no exception-making circumstances hold in the particular case to which it is applied. (shrink)

Toulmin’s formulation of “analytic arguments” in his 1958 book, The Uses of Argument, is opaque. Commentators have not adequately explicated this formulation, though Toulmin called it a “key” and “crucial” concept for his model of argument macrostructure. Toulmin’s principle “tests” for determining analytic arguments are problematic. Neither the “tautology test” nor the “verification test” straightforwardly indicates whether an argument is analytic or not. As such, Toulmin’s notion of analytic arguments might not represent (...) such a key feature of his model. Absent a clearer formulation of analytic arguments, readers of Toulmin should be hesitant to adopt this terminology. (shrink)

Contemporary debates concerning warrant transmission take for granted this thesis: when warrant transmission fails the argument fails. I challenge this thesis. An argument with conclusion C, addressed to subject S, can be cogent in the sense that recognition that the premises entail (or make highly likely) C can rationally foster in S the belief in C, without the warrant for C necessarily being gained (or reinforced) by such recognition. A key idea is to accept that some arguments should (...) be understood in a way that involves the abandonment of two characteristic idealizations imposed on rational thinkers by Bayesian modelling. (shrink)

The quantum mechanical description of the evolution of an unstable system defined initially as a state in a Hilbert space at a given time does not provide a semigroup (exponential) decay, law. The Wigner–Weisskopf survival amplitude, describing reversible quantum transitions, may be dominated by exponential type decay in pole approximation at times not too short or too long, but, in the two channel case, for example, the pole residues are not orthogonal, and the evolution does riot correspond to a semigroup (...) (experiments on the decay of the neutral K-meson system strongly support the semigroup evolution postulated, by Lee, Oehme and Yang, and Yang and Wu). The scattering theory of Lax and Phillips, originally developed for classical wave equations, has been recently extended to the description of the evolution of resonant states in the framework of quantum theory. The resulting evolution law of the unstable system is that of a semigroup, and the resonant state is a well-defined function in the Lax–Phillips Hilbert space. In this paper we apply this theory to a relativistically covariant quantum field theoretical form of the (soluble) Lee model. We construct the translation representations with the help of the wave operators, and show that the resulting Lax–Phillips S-matrix is an inner function (the Lax–Phillips theory is essentially a theory of translation invariant subspaces). In the special case that the S-matrix is a rational inner function, we obtain the resonant state explicitly and analyze its particle (V, N, θ) content. If there is an exponential bound, the general case differs only by a so-called trivial inner factor, which does not change the complex spectrum, but may affect the wave function of the resonant state. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism. It is argued that a fundamental argument for contemporary epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. Pyrrhonian scepticism is compared and contrasted with Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Humean scepticism about induction. Epistemic relativism is characterized as relativism due to the variation of epistemic norms, and is contrasted with other forms of cognitive relativism, such as truth relativism, conceptual relativism and ontological relativism. An (...) argument from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion to epistemic relativism is presented, and is contrasted with three other arguments for epistemic relativism. It is argued that the argument from the criterion is the most fundamental argument for epistemic relativism. Finally, it is noted how the argument of the present paper fits with the author’s previous suggestion that a particularist response to the Pyrrhonian sceptic may be combined with a naturalistic view of epistemic warrant to meet the challenge of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

It is argued that in his critique of standard nonrelativistic quantum mechanics Einstein formulated three requirements as necessary for a physical theory to be compatible with the field-theorectical paradigm, and it is shown that local, relativistic, algebraic quantum field theory typically satisfies those criteria-although, there are still open questions concerning the status of operational separability of quantum systems localized in space like separated space-time regions. It is concluded that local algebraic quantum field theory can be viewed as a research program (...) that Einstein suggested informally in 1948 and that was realized only later in mathematical physics. (shrink)

The Toulmin diagram layout is very familiar and widely used, particularly in the teaching of critical thinking skills. The conventional box-and-arrow diagram is equally familiar and widespread. Translation between the two throws up a number of interesting challenges. Some of these challenges (such as the relationship between Toulmin warrants and their counterparts in traditional diagrams) represent slightly different ways of looking at old and deep theoretical questions. Others (such as how to allow Toulmin diagrams to be recursive) (...) are diagrammatic versions of questions that have already been addressed in artificial intelligence models of argument. But there are further questions (such as the relationships between refutations, rebuttals and undercutters, and the roles of multiple warrants) that are posed as a specific result of examining the diagram inter-translation problem. These three classes of problems are discussed. To the first class are addressed solutions based on engineering pragmatism; to the second class, are addressed solutions drawn from the appropriate literature; and to the third class, fuller exploration is offered justifying the approaches taken in developing solutions that offer both pragmatic utility and theoretical interest. Finally, these solutions are explored briefly in the context of the Araucaria system, showing the ways in which analysts can tackle arguments either using one diagrammatic style or another, or even a combination of the two. (shrink)

In previous work, I have sought to show that the basic argument for epistemic relativism derives from the problem of the criterion that stems from ancient Pyrrhonian scepticism. Because epistemic relativism depends upon a sceptical strategy, it is possible to respond to relativism on the basis of an anti-sceptical strategy. I argue that the particularist response to scepticism proposed by Roderick Chisholm may be combined with a naturalistic and reliabilist conception of epistemic warrant as the basis for a satisfactory (...) response to epistemic relativism. In this paper, I outline this particularist response to relativism, and provide further commentary on the relationship between naturalism and particularism. In addition, I set the approach in contrast with reflective equilibrium approaches in epistemology. I also briefly explore the connection between the particularist response to relativism and G. E. Moore’s defense of an external world. (shrink)

Consider the argument: Circus-1 Men in clown suits are handing out tickets. So, probably: Circus-2 There’s a circus in town. So: Circus-3 There’s an entertainment venue in town. Presumably you’d be able to warrantedly believe Circus-2 on the basis of Circus-1. And we can suppose you’re reasonably certain that wherever there are circuses, there are entertainment venues. So you’d seem to be in a position to reasonably go on to infer Circus-3.

Wright's _Truth and Objectivity_ seeks to systematise a variety of anti-realist positions. I argue that many objections to the system are avoided by transposing its talk of truth into talk of warrant. However, a problem remains about debates involving 'direction-of-fit'. -/- Dummett introduced 'anti-realism' as a philosophical view informed by mathematical intuitionism. Subsequently, the term has been associated with many debates, ancient and modern. _Truth and Objectivity_ proposes that truth admits of different characteristics; these various debates then concern which characteristics (...) truth has, in a given area. This pluralism of truth is at odds with deflationism. I find fault with Wright's argument against deflationism. However, transmission of warrant across the Disquotational Schema suffices to ground Wright's proposal, which survives as a pluralism of classes of warrant. -/- The two main debates concern whether truths are always knowable (Epistemic Constraint) and whether disagreements in an area must be down to some fault of one of those involved (Cognitive Command). I introduce Assertoric Constraint, relating to Epistemic Constraint, where truths cannot outstrip the availability of warrant for their assertion. I solve a structural problem by a comparison with a constitutive analysis of Moore's Paradox. The relativism of blameless disagreement is problematic. Wright's response invokes a sort of ignorance which he calls `Quandary'. I criticise this before proposing an alternative. -/- I agree with Wright that Dummett's original anti-realism does not belong among the positions which Wright seeks to systematise. However, two candidates show that the proposal suffers a weakness. Wright thinks Expressivism misguided, and implicitly rules out his earlier non-cognitivism about necessity. I argue that Expressivism has promise, and I endorse Wright's Cautious Man argument for non-cognitivism about necessity; both involve play with `direction-of-fit'. I conclude that this sort of anti-realist debate needs to be accommodated by the proposal. (shrink)

This paper responds to criticism presented by Steven Bland of my naturalistic approach to epistemic relativism. In my view, the central argument for epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. This opens relativism to an anti-sceptical response. I combine Roderick Chisholm’s particularist response to the problem of the criterion with a reliabilist conception of epistemic warrant. A distinction is made between epistemic norms which provide genuine warrant and those which do not. On the basis of this (...) distinction, we may reject the relativist claim that all epistemic norms have equal standing. I consider three points made by Bland against my position. These relate to epistemic pluralism, the relevance of evolution to epistemic pluralism, and empirical evidence as a basic source of knowledge. (shrink)

The status of the vacuum in relativistic quantum field theory is examined. A sharp distinction arises between the global vacuum and the local vacuum. The concept of local number density is critically assessed. The global vacuum state implies fluctuations for all local observables. Correlations between such fluctuations in space-like separated regions of space-time are discussed and the existence of correlations which are maximal in a certain sense is remarked on, independently of how far apart those regions may be. The analogy (...) with the mirror-image correlations in the singlet state of two spin-1/2 particles is explained. The connection between these maximal correlations and the well-known violation of the Bell inequality in the vacuum state is discussed, together with the way in which the existence of these correlations might be exploited in developing a vacuum version of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument. The recent relativistic formulation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument by Ghirardi and Grassi is critically assessed with particular reference to the vacuum case. (shrink)

This essay explores the dialectics of theory and practice in terms of argumentation theory. Adapting Jonsen and Toulmin's (1988) notion of a Theory-Practice spectrum, it conceives Theory and Practice as extreme ends of a continuum and discourses as falling at various points along the continuum. Every theoritical discourse has essential practical aspects, and every practical discourse has essential theoretical aspects. Practices are theorized to varying degrees but every practice is thorized to some degree. Reflective discourse, which is discourse about (...) practice, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum. Reflective discourse involves argumentation. Practical argumentation connects theory to practice; it appeals to general warrants, which may be simple or may tap into elaborate conceptual structures, in order to establish grounds for practical judgments. A practical discipline is a relatively coherent intellectual-professional enterprise that cultivates a field of social practice by engaging within itself and with practitioners in a reflective discourse. The argumentation of a practical discipline, like ordinary practical reflection, moves to and fro along the Theory-Practice continuum but in more methodical steps informed by systematic methodological reflection on the reflective process itself. (shrink)

Relativism in psychology unravels the truth-claims and oppressive\npractices of the discipline, but simply relativizing psychological knowledge\nhas not been sufficient to comprehend and combat the discipline\nas part of the ‘psy-complex’. For that, a balanced review of the contribution\nand problems of relativism needs to work dialectically, and so\nthis article reviews four problematic rhetorical balancing strategies in\nrelativism before turning to the contribution of critical realism. Critical\nrealism exposes positivist psychology’s pretensions to model itself\non what it imagines the natural sciences to be, and it (...) grounds discursive\naccounts of mentation in social practices. The problem is that those\nsympathetic to mainstream psychology are also appealing to ‘realism’\nto warrant it as a science and to discredit critical research that situates\npsychological phenomena. Our use of critical realism calls for an\naccount of how psychological facts are socially constructed within\npresent social arrangements and for an analysis of the underlying historical\nconditions that gave rise to the ‘psy-complex’. Only by understanding\nhow the discipline of psychology reproduces notions of\nindividuality and human nature, a critical realist endeavour, will it be\npossible to transform it, and to socially construct it as something different. (shrink)

In her book Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology (2015), Annalisa Coliva puts forward an anti-sceptical proposal based on the idea that the notion of rationality extends to the unwarrantable presuppositions “that make the acquisition of perceptual warrants possible” (2015: 150). These presuppositions are commonly the target of sceptical arguments, and by showing that they are on the one hand unwarrantable, but on the other are constitutive components of rationality itself, she reveals that they are beyond rational doubt and thus avoids (...) scepticism. Part of Coliva’s defence of using extended rationality in this way involves distancing it from relativist interpretations, which she describes as “devastating” (2015: 120). She proposes two ways that someone might attempt to formulate epistemic relativism from her extended rationality view, and argues that both would be unsuccessful because they require describing alternative conceptions of rationality which are “unintelligible” (in the first case), or “inconceivable” (in the second). The superficial claim of this chapter is that Coliva’s arguments, as they stand, are insufficient to dismiss relativism. She fails to show that the conception of rationality needed for the first formulation of relativism is unintelligible, and overestimates the significance of the second formulation’s conception turning out to be inconceivable. But I also highlight a deeper problem: neither formulation follows a realistic blueprint for relativism, and so these were the wrong possibilities to consider in the first place. To address this issue, I propose a third, more plausible, way in which someone might attempt to formulate relativism on the basis of Coliva’s account. I leave open whether this strategy is successful, or whether a version of Coliva’s criticisms apply to it too. (shrink)

The Akaike Information Criterion can be a valuable tool of scientific inference. This statistic, or any other statistical method for that matter, cannot, however, be the whole of scientific methodology. In this paper some of the limitations of Akaikean statistical methods are discussed. It is argued that the full import of empirical evidence is realized only by adopting a richer ideal of empirical success than predictive accuracy, and that the ability of a theory to turn phenomena into accurate, agreeing (...) measurements of causally relevant parameters contributes to the evidential support of the theory. This is illustrated by Newton's argument from orbital phenomena to the inverse-square law of gravitation. (shrink)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is used to make inferences about relationships between brain areas and their functions because, in contrast to neuroimaging tools, it modulates neuronal activity. The central aim of this article is to critically evaluate to what extent it is possible to draw causal inferences from repetitive TMS data. To that end, we describe the logical limitations of inferences based on rTMS experiments. The presented analysis suggests that rTMS alone does not provide the sort of premises that are sufficient (...) to warrant strong inferences about the direct causal properties of targeted brain structures. Overcoming these limitations demands a close look at the designs of rTMS studies, especially the methodological and theoretical conditions which are necessary for the functional decomposition of the relations between brain areas and cognitive functions. The main points of this article are that TMS-based inferences are limited in that stimulation-related causal effects are not equivalent to structure-related causal effects due to TMS side effects, the electric field distribution, and the sensitivity of neuroimaging and behavioral methods in detecting structure-related effects and disentangling them from confounds. Moreover, the postulated causal effects can be based on indirect effects. A few suggestions on how to manage some of these limitations are presented. We discuss the benefits of combining rTMS with neuroimaging in experimental reasoning and we address the restrictions and requirements of rTMS control conditions. The use of neuroimaging and control conditions allows stronger inferences to be gained, but the strength of the inferences that can be drawn depends on the individual experiment’s designs. Moreover, in some cases, TMS might not be an appropriate method of answering causality-related questions or the hypotheses have to account for the limitations of this technique. We hope this summary and formalization of the reasoning behind rTMS research can be of use not only for scientists and clinicians who intend to interpret rTMS results causally but also for philosophers interested in causal inferences based on brain stimulation research. (shrink)