For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary.

First published in 1952, professor Strawson's highly influential Introductionto Logical Theoryprovides a detailed examination of the relationship between the behaviour of words in common language and the behaviour of symbols in a logical ...

First published in 1952, professor’s Strawson’s highly influential _Introduction_ _to Logical Theory_ provides a detailed examination of the relationship between the behaviour of words in common language and the behaviour of symbols in a logical system. He seeks to explain both the exact nature of the discipline known as Formal Logic, and also to reveal something of the intricate logical structure of ordinary unformalised discourse.

Herbert Clark argues that language use is more than the sum of a speaker speaking and a listener listening. It is the joint action that emerges when speakers and listeners, writers and readers perform their individual actions in coordination, as ensembles. In contrast to work within the cognitive sciences, which has seen language use as an individual process, and to work within the social sciences, which has seen it as a social process, the author argues strongly that language use embodies (...) both individual and social processes. (shrink)

This is an introductory guidebook to the basic principles of how to construct good arguments and how to criticeze bad ones. It is non-technical in its approach and is based on 150 key examples, each discussed and evaluated in clear, illustrative detail. Professor Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical (...) responses. Among the many subjects covered are: forms of valid argument, relevance, appeals to emotion, personal attack, uses and abuses of expert opinion, problems in deploying statistics, loading terms, equivocation, arguments from analogy, and techniques of posing, replying to, and criticizing questions. The book will be ideally suited to courses in informal logic and in the introduction to philosophy. It will also prove valuable to studetns of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication. (shrink)

The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

This book, which can be read independently, deals with more specifically linguistic problems in semantics and contains substantial original material.

This paper presents a speech act analysis of presumption, using the framework of a dialogue in which two parties reason together. In the speech act of presumption, as opposed to that of assertion, the burden of proof resides not on the proponent to prove, but on the respondent to rebut. Some connections of this account with nonmonotonic reasoning and informal fallacies in argumentation are explored.

This investigation uses the technique of the profile of dialogue as a tool for the evaluation of arguments from ignorance (also called lack-of-evidence arguments, negative evidence, ad ignorantiam arguments and ex silentio arguments). Such arguments have traditionally been classified as fallacies by the logic textbooks, but recent research has shown that in many cases they can be used reasonably. A profile of dialogue is a connected sequence of moves and countermoves in a conversational exchange of a type that is goal-directed (...) and can be represented in a normative model of dialogue. Selected case studies are used to probe special features of using the profile technique as applied to arguments from ignorance of a kind that occur frequently in everyday conversational exchanges. One of these special features is the use of Gricean implicature. Another is the need to use negative profiles of argument. (shrink)

In this paper, a solution to the problem of analyzing burden of proof in argumentation is developed by building on the pioneering work of Erik C. W. Krabbe on metadialogues. Three classic cases of burden of proof disputes are analyzed, showing how metadialogue theory can solve the problems they pose. The solution is based on five dialectical requirements: (1) global burden of proof needs to be set at the confrontation stage of a dialogue, (2) there need to be special mechanisms (...) for resolving disputes about burden of proof at all four stages of the dialogue, (3) they are especially significant during the argumentation stage, where burden of proof often shifts back and forth at each move, (4) such local shifts need to be partly regulated by the global burden of proof already set, and (5) the connection between burden of proof and the speech act of making a presumption in a dialogue needs to be clarified. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. The (...) book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. The (...) book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

tational background of dialectic: the structure of formal disputation. Formal disputation Perhaps the clearest, and surely historically the most prominent, ...

I argue that the medieval form of dialectical disputation known as obligationes can be viewed as a logical game of consistency maintenance. The game has two participants, Opponent and Respondent. Opponent puts forward a proposition P; Respondent must concede, deny or doubt, on the basis of inferential relations between P and previously accepted or denied propositions, or, in case there is none, on the basis of the common set of beliefs. Respondent loses the game if he concedes a contradictory set (...) of propositions. Opponent loses the game if Respondent is able to maintain consistency during the stipulated period of time. The obligational rules are here formalised by means of familiar notational devices, and the application of some game-theoretical concepts, such as (winning) strategy, moves, motivation, allows for an analysis of some crucial properties of the game. In particular, the primacy of inferential (syntactic) relations over semantic aspects and the dynamic character of obligations are outlined. (shrink)

Reasoning from negative evidence takes place where an expected outcome is tested for, and when it is not found, a conclusion is drawn based on the significance of the failure to find it. By using Gricean maxims and implicatures, we show how a set of alternatives, which we call a paradigm, provides the deep inferential structure on which reasoning from lack of evidence is based. We show that the strength of reasoning from negative evidence depends on how the arguer defines (...) his conclusion and what he considers to be in the paradigm of negated alternatives. If we negate only two of the several possible alternatives, even if they are the most probable, the conclusion will be weak. However, if we deny all possible alternatives, the reasoning will be strong, and even in some cases deductively valid. (shrink)

In this paper we use a series of examples to show how oppositions and dichotomies are fundamental in legal argumentation, and vitally important to be aware of, because of their twofold nature. On the one hand, they are argument structures underlying various kinds of rational argumentation commonly used in law as a means of getting to the truth in a conflict of opinion under critical discussion by two opposing sides before a tryer of fact. On the other hand, they are (...) argument structures underling moves made in strategic advocacy by both sides that function as platforms for different kinds of questionable argumentation tactics and moves that are in some instances tricky and deceptive. (shrink)

Previous plan‐based models of dialogue understanding have been unable to account for many types of subdialogues present in naturally occurring conversations. One reason for this is that the models have not clearly differentiated between the varoius ways that an utterance can relate to a plan structure representing a topic. In this paper we present a plan‐based theory that allows a wide variety of utterance‐plan relationships. We introduce a set of discourse plans, each one corresponding to a particular way that an (...) utterance can relate to a discourse topic, and distinguish such plans from the set of plans that are actually used to model the topics. By incorporating knowledge about discourse into a plan‐based framework, we can account for a wide variety of subdialogues while maintaining the computational advantages of the plan‐based approach. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a novel analysis of presuppositions, paying particular attention to the interaction between the knowledge resources that are required to The analysis has two main features. First, we capture an analogy between presuppositions, anaphora and scope ambiguity (cf. van der Sandt 1992), by utilizing semantic under-specification (c£ Reyle 1993). Second, resolving this underspecification requires reasoning about how the presupposition is rhetorically connected to the discourse context. This has several consequences. First, since pragmatic information plays a role (...) in computing the rhetorical relation, it also constrains the interpretation of presuppositions. Our account therefore provides a formal framework for analysing problematic data, which require pragmatic reasoning. Second, binding presuppositions to the context via rhetorical links replaces accommodating them, in the sense of adding them to the context (cf. Lewis 1979). The treatment of presupposition is thus generalized and integrated into the discourse update procedure. We formalize this approach in SDRT (Asher 1993; Lascarides & Asher 1993), and demonstrate that it provides a rich framework for interpreting presuppositions, where semantic and pragmatic constraints are integrated. (shrink)

This paper joins the voices warning against hasty transference of legal concepts of presumption to other kinds of argumentation, especially to deliberation about future acts and policies. Comparison of the pragmatics which respectively constitute the illocutionary acts of accusing and proposing reveals important differences in the ways presumptions prompt accusers and proposers to undertake probative responsibilities and, also, points to corresponding differences in their probative duties. This comparison has theoretically important implication regarding the norms governing persuasive argumentation. The paper is (...) based on a broadly Gricean account of speech acts. (shrink)

Coherence in conversations and in texts can be partially characterized by a set of coherence relations, motivated ultimately by the speaker's or writer's need to be understood. In this paper, formal definitions are given for several coherence relations, based on the operations of an inference system; that is, the relations between successive portions of a discourse are characterized in terms of the inferences that can be drawn from each. In analyzing a discourse, it is frequently the case that we would (...) recognize it as coherent, in that it would satisfy the formal definition of some coherence relation, if only we could assume certain noun phrases to be coreferential. In such cases, we will simply assume the identity of the entities referred to, in what might be called a “petty conversational implicature,” thereby solving the coherence and coreference problems simultaneously. Three examples of different kinds of reference problems are presented. In each, it is shown how the coherence of the discourse can be recognized, and how the reference problems are solved, almost as a by‐product, by means of these petty conversational implicatures. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Speech Acts, Acts of Speech, and Performatives Acts and Their Contents Speech Acts, What is Said, and Speaker Meaning Misfires, Abuses, and How Saying Makes It So Illocutions, Perlocutions, and Implicature Direct and Indirect Speech Acts References Further reading.

John Searle's Speech Acts made a highly original contribution to work in the philosophy of language. Expression and Meaning is a direct successor, concerned to develop and refine the account presented in Searle's earlier work, and to extend its application to other modes of discourse such as metaphor, fiction, reference, and indirect speech arts. Searle also presents a rational taxonomy of types of speech acts and explores the relation between the meanings of sentences and the contexts of their utterance. The (...) book points forward to a larger theme implicit in these problems - the basis certain features of speech have in the intentionality of mind, and even more generally, the relation of the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

À quelles conditions peut-on, dans un discours réel, utiliser un énoncé comme argument en faveur d’un autre? La réponse semble aller de soi, au moins si l’on assimile l’argumentation à une espèce de raisonnement - peut-être lâche et flou, mais analogue en son fond à la démonstration étudiée par les logiciens. Dans ce cas, l’enchaînement des énoncés se fonde sur les informations qu’ils véhiculent, sur ce qu’ils disent de la réalité. C’est justement l’inverse que veut montrer la théorie des échelles (...) argumentatives. Selon elle, la structure des énoncés, au sens le plus étroitement grammatical du terme, contient, indépendamment des informations qu’ils donnent, des indications sur le type de conclusions qu’ils peuvent servir. Le sens même de nos paroles doit alors être vu comme étant, de façon intrinsèque, un moyen pour orienter le discours de l’autre, l’intention de dire ne se distinguant pas de l’intention de faire dire. Ce qui fait triompher le structuralisme là où on l’attend le moins, en sémantique - la valeur sémantique d’un énoncé est constituée par allusion à la possibilité d’un autre énoncé - l’énoncé de l’autre. (shrink)

Exponents and critics of semantic presupposition have almost invariably based their discussion on the ('Standard') definition of presupposition implied by Frege and Strawson. In this study Noel Burton-Roberts argues convincingly against this definition, that leads it to a three-valued semantics. He presents a very simple semantic definition which is weaker, more general and leads to a semantics more easily interpreted as two-valued with gaps. The author shows that a wide range of intuitive facts that eluded the Standard definition follow directly (...) from this ('Revised') definition itself: facts about the presuppositions of compound sentences and modal sentences, about presuppositional conflict and about differences in the logical status of simple sentences suffering from presupposition failure. The book includes a detailed argument that an ambiguity of natural language negation, generally assumed to be necessary to the defence of semantic presupposition, is neither possible nor necessary in a presuppositional semantics. Noel Burton-Roberts has made an authoritative contribution to a debate which has involved philosophers and linguists for many years. His command of the issues, his clarity of exposition and his theoretical insight may well serve to change the boundaries of that debate. (shrink)

A leading expert in informal logic, Douglas Walton turns his attention in this new book to how reasoning operates in trials and other legal contexts, with special emphasis on the law of evidence. The new model he develops, drawing on methods of argumentation theory that are gaining wide acceptance in computing fields like artificial intelligence, can be used to identify, analyze, and evaluate specific types of legal argument. In contrast with approaches that rely on deductive and inductive logic and rule (...) out many common types of argument as fallacious, Walton’s aim is to provide a more expansive view of what can be considered "reasonable" in legal argument when it is construed as a dynamic, rule-governed, and goal-directed conversation. This dialogical model gives new meaning to the key notions of relevance and probative weight, with the latter analyzed in terms of pragmatic criteria for what constitutes plausible evidence rather than truth. (shrink)

Develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies.

When, if ever, is one justified in accepting the premises of an argument? What is the proper criterion of premise acceptability? Can the criterion be theoretically or philosophically justified? This is the first book to provide a comprehensive theory of premise acceptability and it answers the questions above from an epistemological approach that the author calls common sense foundationalism. It will be eagerly sought out not just by specialists in informal logic, critical thinking, and argumentation theory but also by a (...) broader range of philosophers and those teaching rhetoric. (shrink)

This is a formal and systematic study of the logical foundations of speech act theory. The study of speech acts has been a flourishing branch of the philosophy of language and linguistics over the last two decades, and John Searle has of course himself made some of the most notable contributions to that study in the sequence of books Speech Acts, Expression and Meaning and Intentionality. In collaboration with Daniel Vanderveken he now presents the first formalised logic of a general (...) theory of speech acts, dealing with such things as the nature of an illocutionary force, the logical form of its components, and the conditions of success of elementary illocutionary acts. The central chapters present a systematic exposition of the axioms and general laws of illocutionary logic. (shrink)

This revised edition includes a new Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986, discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, and ...

_Thoughts and Utterances_ is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated.

This is an introductory guide to the basic principles of constructing good arguments and criticizing bad ones. It is nontechnical in its approach, and is based on 150 key examples, each discussed and evaluated in clear, illustrative detail. The author explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound argument strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical questions for responding. Among the many subjects covered are: techniques of posing, (...) replying to, and criticizing questions, forms of valid argument, relevance, appeals to emotion, personal attack, uses and abuses of expert opinion, problems in deploying statistics, loaded terms, equivocation, and arguments from analogy. (shrink)

Presumption is a remarkably versatile and pervasively useful resource. Firmly grounded in the law of evidence from its origins in classical antiquity, it made its way in the days of medieval scholasticism into the theory and practice of disputation and debate. Subsequently, it extended its reach to play an increasingly significant role in the philosophical theory of knowledge. It has thus come to represent a region where lawyers, debaters, and philosophers can all find some common around. In Presumption and the (...) Practices of Tentative Cognition, Nicholas Rescher endeavors to show that the process of presumption plays a role of virtually indispensable utility in matters of rational inquiry and communication. The origins of presumption may lie in law, but its importance is reinforced by its service to the theory of information management and philosophy. (shrink)

When we speak, we mean more than we say. In this book Stephen C. Levinson explains some general processes that underlie presumptions in communication.

Speech acts are a staple of everyday communicative life, but only became a topic of sustained investigation, at least in the English-speaking world, in the middle of the Twentieth Century.[1] Since that time “speech act theory” has been influential not only within philosophy, but also in linguistics, psychology, legal theory, artificial intelligence, literary theory and many other scholarly disciplines.[2] Recognition of the importance of speech acts has illuminated the ability of language to do other things than describe reality. In the (...) process the boundaries among the philosophy of language, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind and even ethics have become less sharp. In addition, an appreciation of speech acts has helped lay bare an implicit normative structure within linguistic practice, including even that part of this practice concerned with describing reality. Much recent research aims at an accurate characterization of this normative structure underlying linguistic practice. (shrink)