ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Formal Logic’s Contribution To The Study Of Fallacies

• by: George Boger - Canisius College. Buffalo

Abstract
Some logicians cite the context-relativity of cogency and maintain that formal logic cannot develop a theory of fallacies. Doing so blurs the distinction between ontic and epistemic matters and engenders a subjectivism that frustrates the project of logic to establish objective knowledge. This paper reaffirms the distinction between ontic and epistemic matters by establishing objective criteria for truth, validity, and cogency. It emphasizes the importance of the ontic notion of logical consequence underlying intelligible discourse. By clarifying a notion of fallacy it shows how formal logic contributes to fallacy theory.

1. The project of informal logic
The desire of critical thinking theorists, pragma-dialecticians, and informal logicians to dethrone formal logic has animated and defined their movement since its inception in the 1970s. In general, three matters mark their dissatisfaction with formal logic.
1. They believe that the mathematical development of formal logic has led to its becoming irrelevant to the needs of everyday discourse whose medium is natural language.
2. They maintain that it focuses too narrowly on the implicational relationships among propositions and relegates to the extralogical ‘everything else’ important to the evaluation of arguments.
3. They criticize its being asymmetrical in respect of its inability to formalize fallacious reasoning and even invalidity as it has been able to develop decision procedures for valid arguments.

Wanting to analyze informal fallacies and to develop a typology to categorize them impelled informalists to develop alternative theories of argumentation. These matters have remained core concerns for them. Two essential features of arguments underpin their complaint about the posture and project of traditional logic.
1. They take an argument to consist in considerably more than a set of propositions, where one is thought to follow logically from others. Rather, an argument consists in a set of premises that allegedly support a conclusion with an intention to change someone’s belief. An argument is a dynamic social activity. Thus, argument analysis requires recognizing the question-answer, or the challenge-response, nature of interactive dialogue.
2. They insist on the contextuality of an argument. A good or bad argument consists in its success or failure to persuade a participant of a belief or to act in a certain way. An argument is evaluated in terms of premise acceptability, premise weight and relevance, and in terms of the suitability of the inferential link between premises and conclusion, all of which are relative to persons at times. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – On The Pragmatics Of Argumentative Discourse

• by: Lilit Brutian - Yerevan State University

The aim of the paper is to analyse a specific kind of argumentative discourse – conditionals – from the point of view of revealing pragmatic meanings. Conditionals (Brutian 1991, 1992) express reasoning, inference, implication, therefore they, alongside with causal utterences, are one of the main and important types of argumentation. It should be also noted that by conditionals I understand not only traditionally accepted constructions of the “If P, then Q” type but also those which can be transformed into the mentioned type. The semantic meanings of argumentative conditional utterances, including various subtle shades of meanings, have been thoroughly described, while the pragmatic aspect until quite recently has received little attention, whereas only the simultaneous consideration of both levels of meanings will lead to the adequate interpretation of such utterances. Thus, it is obvious why the pragmatic meanings of argumentative conditional discourse should be revealed and analysed.

There can be no doubt that to interprete any text (utterance, discourse) adequately, not only explicit, but also implicit, deep, non-explicit meanings must be taken into consideration. Within the last few decades many scholars have come to understand this fact. Paducheva (1985), for example, states that every text contains not only explicit, but also implicit information – meanings generated by the speaker and understood by the listener. T. van Dijk (van Dijk 1978: 331) speaks about the “deep orientation of the speaker”. Hintikka (1979: 119-150) speaks about the “hidden meaning” in a language. Many texts have been written from this perspective – highlighting the concept of “hidden grammar” by the use of terms such as “additional hidden meaning”, “shady utterance” and “additional semantic lines” (Nikolaeva 1985: 80), “substantial – subtextual information” (Galperin 1981: 40), “double-text” (Viezbicka 1978: 404), “additional implied meaning” (Arnold 1982: 34), etc. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Religious Argument As Enthymeme: Aristotle, Paul, And Anselm

• by: Andrew J. Burgess - University of New Mexico, USA

This essay explores some distinctive features of religious argumentation, particularly as it is carried on in a classic philosophical text. The term “enthymeme” in the title carries Aristotle’s broad sense, designating rhetorical argumentation, rather than that of later rhetoricians, who stress an enthymeme’s tendency to omit a premise or conclusion.
For a paradigm case of religious argumentation in philosophy an obvious choice within the Christian tradition is Anselm’s reasoning in his Proslogion, the book containing the so-called “ontological proof of the existence of God.” The list of philosophers who have struggled with Anselm’s line of argument reads like a “who’s who” in the field, and the book continues to attract attention up to the present day. Any anthology of classic proofs in philosophy of religion would have to include Anselm’s or else give a reason for leaving it out.
Selecting Anselm requires looking back to Aristotle, along with the classical tradition generally, as the source for an appropriate rhetorical theory and thereby defines the task of this essay in the following way: first, to explore Aristotle’s broad definition of enthymeme to find out how far it may serve, not only for the purposes for which Aristotle uses it, but also for ethical-political and religious argumentation; next, to look at some distinctive features of religious argumentation, first in Paul’s epistles and then in Anselm’s Proslogion proof; and finally, to study Anselm’s Proslogion in its full rhetorical context, and to ask how it fits in with classical canons of argumentation. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Making The Case For War: Bush’s Rhetorical Validation Of America’s Action

• by: Ann E. Burnette & Wayne L. Kraemer - Southwest Texas State University

Wars are waged through words as well as weapons. This is not to say that military or security realities do not exist apart from rhetorical descriptions of them. Rather, the rhetoric that defines a nation’s interests, describes aggressive actions, and exhorts a people to support their leaders as they commit to military operations is a crucial component in any country’s war effort. No American president could mount a war without public discourse to explain and justify the war. Even in a situation when a country has been attacked on its home soil – as the United States was on September 11, 2001 – rhetoric is necessary to contextualize the attack, give it meaning, and justify the appropriate response to it. This paper will examine the rhetoric of U.S. President George W. Bush following the September 11 airline hijackings that resulted in attacks on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, and in a downed plane in Pennsylvania. We will review three theoretical constructs that can illuminate President Bush’s discourse: presidential crisis rhetoric, war rhetoric, and the rhetoric of militant decency. We will then use these theories to explain how Bush discursively developed five themes: the nature of the crisis situation, the power of the United States, the character of the United States, the character of the enemies of the United States, and the social responsibility of America. Finally, we will explore implications of Bush’s rhetorical choices, the theoretical frameworks that we have used, and some broader international issues.

This paper will analyze six statements the president made in the wake of the hijackings: Bush’s three public appearances throughout the day on September 11, his address to the Joint Session of Congress on September 20, his announcement on October 7 that the U.S. had begun military strikes in Afghanistan, and his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002. The six speeches express an evolution of discourse as the narrative of the events evolved from a crisis to war.

In his examination of presidential crisis rhetoric, Windt (1992) argues that situations do not constitute crises until they are labeled as such by a president. While Windt (1992) excludes external military attacks on the United States from the category of rhetorically created crises, he also discusses Franklin Roosevelt’s message of December 8, 1941, asking Congress to declare war on Japan as an example of crisis rhetoric. This illustrates that even if a president faces a situation where the facts appear incontrovertible, the president’s interpretation of these facts and events defines the nature of the crisis and strongly influences the response of the citizens. In creating or defining these crises, Windt (1992) argues that presidents use three strategies. First, the president establishes that the country faces a new situation that demands a response. Here the president offers a narration of salient facts and a characterization of the motives of the agents involved. Second, the president places this new situation within an ongoing conflict between antagonistic forces. Finally, the president calls for public support of new policies. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – School Experience, Modes Of Discourse And Argumentation: A Comparative Study Of Women And Men

• by: Mª Jesús Cala Carrillo & Manuel L. de la Mata Benítez - Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)

In this paper, we intend to stress the argumentative or rhetorical dimension of human thinking.
Traditionally, studies about thinking have analysed problems that are fairly similar to those employed in the field of logic. In these problems, people must arrive at the only possible solution by applying a set of rules. However, we assume that this approach to thinking ignores a series of problems and situations that cannot be solved by one single solution as, for example, when we hold an opinion (Billig, 1987).
One of the main objectives of this study is to analyse some of the argumentative mechanisms that we use to defend our ideas. By using these mechanisms people criticise positions that are different from their own and justify them when these positions are criticised or when people suggest criticisms. In contrast, the most strongly held beliefs are usually presented without justification (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1994).

Toulmin (1958) and Jonsen and Toulmin (1988) differentiate between two kinds of arguments: substantial or practical arguments and theoretical or analytical arguments. The first form includes the cases in which a conclusion that is not necessary deduced from the premises is inferred from them. In the analytical argument, on the other hand, a general conclusion is necessary deduced from the premises. So, while analytical arguments are based upon universal asserts and principles that makes us arrive at universal truths, practical arguments work with probabilities and depend on context. These two forms of arguments correspond to formal logic, on the one hand, and to everyday reasoning, on the other. Validity is approached by different ways. While in the first type it is reached through the deductive form of the argument, practical arguments are validated on the basis of their content. According to Toulmin, Rieke and Janik (1979), in deductive arguments conclusion adds no new information to premises. Conversely, the persuasive strength of everyday arguments rests upon the new information provided by the conclusion. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Some Remarks On Wittgenstein’s Ideas About Ethics

• by: Ines Calvo De Miguel - Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) The University of the Basque Country

Introduction
The subject of this paper [i] is the delimitation of Ethics in Wittgenstein´s work. For that, I take into account his view on ethics in the Tractatus[ii]  (1921) and in the Lecture on ethics  (1930), in connection with the intuitionism of Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903) and the last utilitarianism of Henry Sidgwick (The Methods of Ethics, 1874).

First I want to expound the main Wittgenstenian ideas about ethics: the relation between his ideas on ethics and language and his view on the essence of ethical language. I will propose an interpretation of the writings of Wittgenstein taking into account  the distinction between what is shown and what is said. After that, my intention is to comment on the posible connections between Wittgenstein´s view on ethics and one of the more decisive work on ethics for the ethical thought in the XX century, The Methods of Ethics  of Sidgwick, through its influence on one of the main founders of analytic philosophy, namely G. E. Moore.

The thesis I claim is the following one: There is a line of continuity between those three philosophers, a line that represents the western philosophical tradition and that leads  ethics to a problematic point. It is interesting to draw a line from Sidgwick´s and Moore’s recognition of ethical intuitions and of the idea that “good” is a simple notion and therefore that cannot be defined, until Wittgenstein´s statement that ethics taken as theory is imposible. Sidgwick, Moore and Wittgenstein are three examples of what I call “the maximum purification of Ethics”: the task of stripping ethics of its several contingent dimensions. Those three philosophers are worried about the grounds of ethics and in their task they tried to distinguish it from natural science and methaphysics. Then, ethics remains free from natural and methaphysical dimensions, its object of study has been limited. But the problem that I can see is the following one: in these ethical views the object of study cannot be defined and, therefore, this object has become more and more diffuse, abstract and indeterminate. In my opinion, Wittgenstein carries out until the last consequences this metaethical task, when he confines the ethical field on the one hand to what is shown, i.e. to what cannot be expressed by propositions, and on the other hand to private experiences. Read more