Can Cogency Vanish? ¿Puede desaparecer la cogencia? Gilbert Plumer Law School Admission Council, Pennsylvania, United States plumerge@gmail.com Received: 26-11-2015. Accepted: 12-06-2016. Abstract: This paper considers whether universally-for all (known) rational beings-an	argument	scheme	or	pattern	can	go from	being	cogent (well-reasoned) to fallacious. This question has previously received little attention, despite the centrality of the concepts of cogency, scheme, and fallaciousness. I argue that cogency has vanished in this way for the following scheme, a common type of impersonal means-end reasoning: X is needed as a basic necessity or protection of human lives, therefore, X ought to be secured if possible. As it stands (with no further elaboration), this scheme is committed to the assumption that the greater the number of human lives, the better. Although this assumption may have been indisputable previously, it is clearly disputable now. It is a fallacy or non sequitur to make a clearly disputable assumption	without	providing	any	justification.	Although	this	topic	raises	critical	issues	for practically every discipline, my primary focus is on logical (as opposed to empirical or ethical) aspects of the case, and on implications for practical and theoretical logic. I	conclude	that	the	profile	of	vanishing	cogency	of	the	scheme	may	be	unique	and	is determined by a peculiar combination of contingent universality and changing conditions. Keywords: Cogency, fallacy, argument scheme, context-dependency, population ethics. Resumen:	Este	trabajo	considera	si	universalmente	–para	todos	los	seres	racionales–	un	esquema	o	patrón	argumentativo	puede	cambiar	de	ser	cogente	(bien	razonado) a falaz. Esta pregunta ha recibido poca atención anteriormente, a pesar de la centralidad de los conceptos de fuerza lógica, esquema y falacia. Sostengo que la cogencia ha desaparecido de esta manera para el siguiente esquema, un tipo común de razonamiento	impersonal	de	medios-fines:	se	necesita	X	como	una	necesidad	básica	o	protección	de	la	vida	humana,	por	lo	tanto,	X	debe	ser	asegurado	si	es	posible.	Tal	como COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 90 COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 está (sin más elaboración), este esquema se compromete con la suposición de que cuanto mayor sea el número de vidas humanas, mejor es el caso. Aunque este supuesto puede haber sido indiscutible anteriormente, es claramente discutible ahora. Es un error o incongruencia hacer de una suposición algo que es claramente discutible, sin dar	ninguna	justificación.	A	pesar	de	que	este	tema	plantea	cuestiones	críticas	para prácticamente todas las disciplinas, mi objetivo principal radica en el problema lógico (en oposición a problemas empíricos o éticos), y en las implicaciones para la lógica práctica	y	teórica.	Llego	a	la	conclusión	de	que	el	perfil	de	la	desaparición	de	la	cogencia del esquema puede ser único y está determinado por una combinación peculiar de la contingente universalidad y las condiciones cambiantes. Palabras clave: Cogencia, falacia, esquema argumentativo, contexto-dependencia, ética de poblaciones. 1. Introduction My question is not whether the cogency of instances of an argument scheme or	pattern	may	vary	depending	on	the	specific	contexts	in	which	the	scheme appears, as is true of, for example, the argument from authority. Rather, I am	asking	whether	universally-for	all	(known)	rational	beings-a	scheme can go from being cogent (well-reasoned) to fallacious. So far as I can tell, the question has never been asked quite this way in relevant literature before, nor conversely has it been asked whether a scheme can universally go from being fallacious to cogent. This situation seems odd, given the centrality of the concepts of cogency, scheme, and fallaciousness. Yet the phenomenon does appear to be possible. A case can be made that cogency has vanished for the following scheme, a common type of impersonal means-end reasoning that I will call the "Humanization Argument": Humanization Argument X is needed as a basic necessity or protection of human lives. Therefore, X ought to be secured if possible. Instantiations abound, for example: The World Food Program appealed Friday for food aid for Cambodian 91 Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer flood	victims,	saying	that	with	the	price	of	rice	on	the	rise,	the	poorest households face the prospect of not having enough to eat. [https://www. wfp.org/content/wfp-appeals-food-aid-cambodian-flood-victims] The	Microsoft	founder	and	philanthropist	said	five	or	six	new	vaccines could be available by the end of the decade and urged pharmaceutical manufacturers	to	make	them	affordable	for	poor	countries. "If donors are generous, we will prevent 4 million deaths by 2015. By 2020, we can prevent 10	million deaths," Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/us-gates-idUSTRE74G2D520110517] This topic may be unpleasant or uncomfortable to discuss, but since it raises critical issues for practically every discipline, including informal logic, please bear with me. My primary focus will be on how good logically (as opposed to empirically or ethically) the case is that cogency has vanished for the Humanization Argument, and as I think the case is a reasonable one, what implications this has for practical and theoretical logic. Hence, this paper has a dual purpose: to evaluate the Humanization Argument and to consider consequences for logic. If cogency has vanished for the Humanization Argument scheme, then although historical instantiations were always or typically cogent, current instantiations	are	never	cogent-no	matter	what	the	instantiation,	that	is, no matter what the value of the variable X. As indicated, my contrasting example of how cogency normally varies with	context-selected	for	no	particular	reason	other	than	relative	clarity- is the argument from authority, or what Walton, Reed, & Macagno (2008, p. 310) call ARGUMENT	FROM	EXPERT	OPINION Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A. Minor Premise: E asserts that proposition A is true (false). Conclusion: A is true (false). Even given that the premises are true, how good such an inference is will vary considerably with the value of the variables from context to context, 92 COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 depending on how familiar E is with the particular content of proposition A and any issues surrounding that content, how honest or trustworthy E is, and so on. This applies equally to the past and to the present. There is no case to be made that although historical instantiations of this pattern were always or typically cogent, no current instantiation is cogent. 2. Some Remarks on Cogency and Fallaciousness Since these terms do not have universally accepted meanings in logic and informal logic, it is necessary to say what I mean by them, and doing this will be to some degree stipulative: I take a cogent argument to be any wellreasoned argument and a fallacious argument to be any poorly reasoned one. So I understand these terms to have opposite meanings. For me the concepts of cogency and fallaciousness pertain "only to an argument's reasoning or logic, not also to the truth value of its propositional elements (unlike	the	technical	concept	of	soundness),"	and	they	pertain	to	both	deductive and nondeductive arguments (Plumer, 1999, p. 43; see also my 2001, e.g., p. 174). On the other hand, a good argument is one that is cogent, and all of its propositional elements are true. In short, I take cogency to be the broader notion of proper reasoning as compared to the technical concept of validity. Since for nondeduction the strength of support that the premises provide the conclusion may vary from argument to argument, cogency comes in degrees ranging from (as we say) a 'perfectly cogent' argument to a 'barely cogent' argument, just as does the seriousness of informal fallaciousness (although generally there will be no need to make use of these degrees in this paper). The cogency-fallaciousness dichotomy can be regarded as exhaustive, since less cogency than 'barely cogent' seems to mean that the premises provide the conclusion no support, and hence the argument is fallacious. Perhaps more illuminating, though, is to notice that an argument may be cogent and fallacious (welland poorly reasoned) at the same	time in	different	respects, for	example,	a	question-begging,	deductively valid argument that has its conclusion also as a premise. Depending on how the constituent notions are explicated, we can agree with Johnson & Blair's (1977) "well-known and widely accepted RSA criteria	for	argument	cogency:	the	premises	are	to	be	relevant,	sufficient,	and 93 Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer acceptable"	(Paglieri,	2015,	p.	70),	if	acceptability	is	clearly	distinguished from truth (as in Govier, 2010, p. 108, in contrast to Adler, 2006, p. 225). An argument is fallacious if and only if it does not meet one or more of these criteria, which is not necessarily the same thing as saying that it commits	a	fallacy-as	that	term	is	often	used.	Unlike	fallaciousness,	fallacies	are quantified	over	and	some	even	have	particular	names	(e.g.,	'equivocation'). This	difference	appears	to	have	led	some	to	postulate	psychological	or	statistical	requirements-which	are	eschewed	in	this	paper-in	the	definition of	the	notion	of	fallacy.	These	tend	to	be	variations	on	the	"seem"	element in	Copi's	definition	of	"a	fallacy	as	a	type	of	argument	that	may	seem	to	be correct	but	which	proves,	upon	examination,	not to	be so" (1978,	p.	87) or Johnson's requirement that the type of incorrect reasoning occur "with sufficient	frequency	in	discourse	to	warrant	being	baptized"	(1987,	p.	246). While the cogency or fallaciousness of deductive reasoning is essentially a matter of its form, this is not the case for nondeduction. As Salmon indicates, nondeductive reasoning is (basically what I call) cogent if "the argument has a correct form, and ... the premises of the argument embody all available	relevant	evidence"	(1973,	p.	91).	This	difference	between	deduction and nondeduction means that the concepts of cogency and fallaciousness directly apply only to instantiations of a nondeductive form or scheme, and to the scheme itself only by extension if the instances are always or typically	cogent	or	fallacious-as	the	case	may	be.	As	Johnson	&	Blair	say, "with few exceptions [including formal fallacies], the patterns of argument that	are	liable	to	be	fallacious	need	not	always	be	so"	(2006,	p.	xv). It is important to emphasize that (Plumer, 1999, p. 43) in no case is cogency purely a matter of formal validity. For example, adding the stated conclusion or the contradictory of a stated premise to the stated premises would make any argument formally valid. But the argument would lack cogency insofar as it grossly begs the question or engages in self-contradiction. In order to be fully cogent, it seems an argument must not commit any informal fallacy... Given this, it is false that "valid arguments remain a subclass of cogent arguments	...	valid	arguments	are	always	cogent"	(Goddu,	2004,	p.	31),	although valid arguments that commit no informal fallacy are a subclass of cogent arguments. We will return to this point in section 4. 94 COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 3. The Case that Cogency has Vanished for the Humanization Argument My case that cogency has vanished for the Humanization Argument has three main steps, (A), (B), and (C), as follows: (A) As it stands (with no further elaboration), the Humanization Argument is committed to the assumption that the greater the number of human lives, the better. (B) Although this assumption may have been indisputable previously, it is clearly disputable now. (C) It is a fallacy or non sequitur to make a clearly disputable assumption without	providing	any	justification. Regarding step (A), surely the Humanization Argument's conclusion is not (and has never been) adequately supported by its stated premise alone. There is a huge gap, for example, between Gates' saying that millions of human deaths could be prevented by having certain new vaccines, and inferring that donors should be generous, including pharmaceutical manufacturers	making	them	affordable	for	"poor	countries."	Without	some assumption	addressing	the	gap,	the	Humanization	Argument	would	flatly exhibit the classic pattern of 'the naturalistic fallacy', wherein an 'ought' is attempted to be directly derived from an 'is', as in "all the vulgar systems of morality"	(David	Hume,	A Treatise of Human Nature, III, I, I). So, applying a principle of charity is in order, which means that the Humanization Argument is to be understood as an enthymematic argument making some implicit	assumption(s)	to	fill	the	gap. For all the world, the assumption looks to me like the greater the number of human lives, the better (or something equivalent). Certainly, this would	address (if	not	fill) the gap. If this	were	not	on the right track, it would not only be harsh, it would be irrelevant to object to Gate's argument by questioning whether the world needs 10 million more people. Yet it is not irrelevant. 95 Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer It is true that for the two instantiations cited in section 1, the stated premise is not cast in terms of increasing the number of human lives generally, but rather in terms of saving lives or preventing deaths in two particular sets of circumstances (the	Cambodian	flood	and	vaccine	unavailability	in	certain	"poor	countries").	But	there	are	two	critical	things	to	notice about this. First, in these two typical instantiations of the (unelaborated) Humanization Argument, there is not (even) an intimation of a reason specific to the Cambodian case or to the case of unvaccinated people as to why their lives should be saved or their deaths prevented. Nor is there any intimation of a reason why we might be broadly obligated to save human lives or prevent human deaths, let alone an intimation of any restriction on this obligation. Therefore, since there is nothing in these arguments that would justify attributing a narrower implicit assumption to them, so far as this goes we are left with the interpretation that these arguments take for granted the vague and general proposition that we are obligated to save human lives or prevent deaths (or something equivalent).1 Second, saving lives or preventing deaths in such circumstances has the direct	and	obvious	effect	of	increasing	the	overall	number	of	human	lives (on Earth) from the lower number that there otherwise would be if the value of the variable X is not provided or undertaken, other things being equal (ceteris paribus). This engenders commitment to the proposition that the greater the number of human lives, the better. It might be claimed instead that in using the Humanization Argument one	need	take	for	granted	only	that	human	suffering	ought	to	be	reduced or prevented. But even if true, this would imply the same commitment, although it is a small step removed. Reducing or preventing human suffering by providing or undertaking the value of the variable X-since	do1	The	interpretive	principle	at	work	here,	viz.,	that	given	specificity	determines	the	narrowness of the implicit assumption, is defended in some detail in my 1999, section III. In that paper I develop and defend general criteria for determining necessary assumptions of arguments,	which	would	take	us	too	far	afield	to	fully	reiterate	here.	Suffice	it	to	say	that I found	that in	determining	such	assumptions,	one	first	applies the	principle	of	charity, and only if this indicates that the argument is not irredeemably fallacious does one apply the other criteria, including that a necessary assumption must not be a presupposition of rationality generally or of a premise or the conclusion of the argument. 96 COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 ing	that	involves	saving	lives	or	preventing	deaths-will	have	the	obvious and	possibly	immediate	effect	of	increasing	the	number	of	human	lives	as compared to what there otherwise would be (ceteris paribus). Thus, it still seems that there is commitment to the proposition in question. There is no logical cover for such an obvious consequence since it is largely conceptual or analytic. There are both similarities and differences between the principle at work here and the idea that logical consequences are substitutable inside the scope of 'ought', that is, what is called "the deontic closure principle, according to which we ought to do something whenever our doing it logically follows	from	our	doing	something	else	we	ought	to	do."	Although	the	deontic closure principle has regularly been defended, it warrants inferences that many regard as paradoxical, such as from 'you ought to mail the letter' to 'you ought to mail the letter or burn it', and indeed to 'if you burn the letter, then you do something that you ought to do' (Kiesewetter, 2015, pp. 924-925; Hansen, 2006, pp. 221-222). However, the relation in the principle I am invoking is being a direct and obvious effect of, other things being equal, which is hardly logical entailment. The idea as applied here is that given that we are broadly obligated to save human lives or prevent deaths, we are obligated to increase the number of human lives generally (or: the greater the number of people, the better), since doing the latter will be a direct	and	obvious	effect	of	doing	the	former,	other	things	being	equal.	In theory, the extent to which this ceteris paribus clause obtains is dependent on any number of contingencies (so of course the relation cannot be that of logical consequence). But in fact, as almost everyone knows, the world's human population has been increasing dramatically (some details below), which is a plain indication that other things have been more or less equal. At this point, the deontologist or Kantian might object as follows: 'People	must	be	treated	as	ends-in-themselves,	so	when	I	see	human	suffering, I try to alleviate it; for me, the consequences are strictly irrelevant. Therefore, when I use the Humanization Argument, there is no commitment to any such proposition as the greater the number of human lives, the better'. This extreme deontological orientation could be argued to be ethically ir97 Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer responsible, but it can also be contended that it is argumentatively irresponsible if it is kept hidden. As Johnson & Blair indicate, when necessary, "an arguer ought to expand his or her case out of respect for ... the norms of	reasonable	belief"	(2006,	p.	xv;	cf.	Johnson	2000).	Thus,	unless	there is some sort of elaboration in the presentation of the Humanization Argument indicating that the assumption in question is being defeated or overridden (or narrowed), I conclude that the argument is committed to that assumption, whether or not the arguer fully intends it. Compare another 'salvation' argument scheme, viz., simply declaring 'Y is a land of purely indigenous culture. Therefore, Y ought to be Christianized if possible' (as one can imagine was the wont of Isabella or Ferdinand, e.g.). Willy nilly, there is commitment to the assumption that the greater the number of Christians, the better, or that Christianization is a good thing. Regarding step (B), the assumption-the greater the number of human	lives,	the	better-may	have	been	indisputable,	for	example,	in	1690, when John Locke indicated that "the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America"	should	be	populated	(Two Treatises of Government, II, 5, 37). But conditions have changed radically since Locke's time. For purposes of making the case that cogency has vanished for the (unelaborated) Humanization Argument, all that is needed is to show that the assumption in question is now clearly problematic or disputable, not that it is disproven. This is	directly	a	matter	of	its	epistemic	status	(or	if	you	like,	its	"acceptability"), not its truth value. It is hard to see how any aware person could deny that the assumption has this problematic character in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.	Very	briefly,	should	anyone	need	reminding,	this	evidence	consists of facts such as the following: There has been a ten-fold, exponential increase in the world's human population since Locke's time. Carbon dioxide	emissions	into	the	atmosphere	from	human	artifices	have	correspondingly but more dramatically increased, as exhibited in Figure 1. 98 Figure 1. Source: https://www.worldof7billion.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/generating-heat.pdf The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), one of many governmental agencies notoriously subject to political pressure to be conservative, says "for 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 has never been above"	300	parts	per	million	(ppm)-until	1950,	that	is;	and	"in	2013,	CO2 levels	surpassed	400	ppm."	In	addition,	NASA	says	"If	fossil-fuel	burning continues at a business-as-usual rate, such that humanity exhausts the reserves over the next few centuries, CO2 will continue to rise to levels of order of 1500 ppm. The atmosphere would then not return to pre-industrial levels	even	tens	of	thousands	of	years	into	the	future"	[http://climate.nasa. gov/climate_resources/24/]. Aside from being a greenhouse gas, there is even evidence that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are contributing to the obesity epidemic (Hersoug, Sjödin, & Astrup, 2012). From the 21 July 2015 US Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary Humanity from Space [http://www.pbs.org/program/humanityfrom-space//]: Currently, "to feed us takes almost half of the land on the planet,"	which	is	"pretty	much	all	of	the	arable	land	in	the	world	....	We're going to build more cities in the next 40 years than we built in all of human history	....	Our	energy	needs	are	predicted	to	double	by	2050."	Some	of	this energy is provided by (bird-slicing) wind-turbine farms, as well as by (birdincinerating) solar power stations, such as the world's largest at Ivanpah, COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 99 California, which radically altered 4,000 acres of natural landscape in order	to	provide	power	to	a	mere	"140,000	homes."	Of	the	world's	population of "7.3	billion	as	of	July	2015	...	worldwide	coastal	flooding threatens to invade	up	to	a	billion	people	by	2050." Madness? Perhaps. At this juncture it might be useful to recall Paul R. Ehrlich's notorious (1968) predictions that there would be mass human starvation in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, including 65 million in the United States, and that there was a good chance that "England will	not	exist	in	the	year	2000."	This	serves	to	underscore	the	earlier	point that	all	that	is	needed	is	to	show	that	the	assumption-the	greater	the	number	of	human	lives, the	better-is	now	clearly	problematic	or	disputable, not that it is disproven. What may be the most mature view on such matters is expressed by the distinguished anthropologist Joseph A. Tainter (2006, p. 72): Neoclassical economists assume that, with incentives and unfettered markets, there will always be new technologies and new resources. Humanity, in this view, need never face a crisis of overpopulation or overconsumption. The contrary view is well known: We must reduce our ecological footprint or eventually collapse. The neoclassical argument is based on faith that markets will always work and denial of diminishing returns to innovation... Should we base our future on faith and denial, or on rational planning? Of course from factual considerations alone, one cannot directly reason either for or against the value proposition/assumption that the greater the number of human lives, the better. One needs an ethical theory, at least operating in the background, or else the naturalistic fallacy is committed. So	let	us	briefly	consider	in	this	connection	what	is	perhaps	the	most	widely accepted ethical theory. It advocates 'the greatest good for the greatest number', i.e., that good should be maximized in the world and distributed as widely as possible (this is a utilitarian consequentialist theory mixed with a deontological principle-that of distributive justice). Typically, 'good'	here is	defined	as	pleasure	or	happiness,	and	the	claim	underpinning the assumption in question would be that the more people there are, the greater the net amount and distribution of pleasure or happiness there is in the world. The foregoing considerations do apply directly to this claim. Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer 100 The claim may have been indisputable in previous times, but not now, given facts on the order of those cited. A reasonable case (at least) could be made that currently and for the foreseeable future, the more people there are, the greater is the balance and distribution of human (not to mention, animal) suffering over pleasure or happiness. And a reasonable case is all that is needed to show that the assumption in question is clearly disputable now.	The	issue	here	of	course	revolves	around	what	Parfit	(1984)	famously called	"the	Repugnant	Conclusion"	of	utilitarianism,	i.e.,	that	we	are	morally	obliged	to	create	more	people-up	to	a	point. Another possible underpinning from ethics and value theory for the assumption would be something like the claim that human lives themselves have intrinsic value (instead of or in addition to pleasure or happiness), so the more people there are, the more intrinsic value there is in the world. The	difficulty	here is	finding	any support for the idea that sheer greater number is a good thing, without appeal to religious constructions such as souls-and	even	there,	it	is	unclear	why	many would be intrinsically better than some (especially	if	each	has	'infinite'	value).	The	same	applies	to minds, although of course and up to a point, harnessing more minds tends to be better than fewer in the instrumental achievement of many ends. Often,	knowledge-in the	Popperian sense	of	objective	knowledge that can reside	in	books,	computer	drives,	etc.	(Popper,	1972)-and	beauty	(natural and	artificial) are	plausibly said to	be intrinsic values.	With	more	or less the same resources distributed among fewer people, almost everyone might	have	a	chance	to	significantly	contribute	to	knowledge.	And	unquestionably, natural beauty has been under assault in proportion to human population	levels,	where	"pretty	much	all	of	the	arable	land	in	the	world" now being under cultivation is just one example. Diversity of life is another plausible candidate for being an intrinsic value, yet this is hardly the same thing as sheer amount of life (of a single species). Sometimes autonomy or freedom is held to be an intrinsic value, but this appears either to cut no (melting) ice one way or the other since the absolute amount of autonomy in the world is not relevant, or it is a confused expression of the Kantian point that rationality requires that any given person be treated with respect or as an end in himor herself (not that the greater the number of ends-inthemselves in the world, the better). The	view	most	strongly	suggested	by	this-admittedly	whirlwind-conCOGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 101 sideration of intrinsic value is one of balance, and abandonment of the selfserving notion that humanity is the source and locus of all such value. The last step in the case that cogency has vanished for the Humanization Argument is (C), viz., that it is a fallacy or non sequitur to make a clearly	disputable	assumption	without	providing	any	justification.	To	make	an implicit assumption in an argument is to take the proposition for granted. It might be a rare argument where this is not done. However, the negative sense of argumentative 'taking for granted' arises when, as in the Humanization Argument, the proposition is in fact not granted in that it is clearly problematic or disputable. Then making the assumption without providing any justification, as in the (unelaborated)	Humanization Argument, renders the argument fallacious. I do not think that this is controversial theory. As Hansen says, "we have been aware all along that an argument is a	weak	one	if	it	has	a	problematic	undefended	premise"	(2003,	p.	2;	cf.,	e.g., Finocchiaro's	1987	discussion	of	"presuppositional	fallaciousness,"	esp.	p. 269, and Macagno & Damele, 2013, p. 363: "Why is it not possible to take... an	unacceptable	premise	for	granted?").	On	the	USA-produced	Law	School Admission Test (LSAT), 'taking for granted' or 'presuming without providing	justification'	constitute	one	established	category	of	reasoning	flaw (identified	as	such	by	question	stems)	that	examinees	are	required	to	spot, and test preparation companies attempt to tutor this skill (e.g., Manhattan Prep: https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/blog/2012/05/09/the-morbid-flaws/). Again, this is a matter of the assumption's epistemic status, not its truth value; it concerns what authors mean or should mean by "acceptability"	of	premises	in	the	RSA	criteria	for	argument	cogency.	Having a false assumption makes for a bad argument; having an undefended assumption that is very possibly or probably false in view of the evidence at hand makes for a fallacious argument. Nevertheless, controversy has arisen when such points are cast as follows, for example: "there is actually in some sense a failure of argumentative responsibility ... if the arguer does not respond to objections that have been voiced, or even to objections that might reasonably be anticipated, given	the	expressed	alternative	views	on	the	issue	in	question"	(Johnson	& Blair, 2006, p. xv; cf. Johnson, 2000). For, where will this end? As Govier urges	(1999,	Ch.	13), this looks like	devolution	into	an	infinite	regress	of "dialectical tiers" of responses to objections, responses to objections to Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer 102 those	first responses, responses to	objections to those	second	responses, and so on. Yet we can't have a responsibility or be obligated to do what is impossible. As indicated, this problem arises partly because of an unnecessary (in this	context)	shift	in	perspective	from	the	more	objective	or	extensional- what	makes	for	a	"weak"	argument-to	the	more	subjective	or	intensional- "failure"	of	a	person's "argumentative responsibility."	But this is	not the whole story. It should come as no revelation that in the formulation of base arguments and equally in the formulation of responses to possible objections to those arguments, proof must stop somewhere, at least temporarily, relative to the purposes and circumstances at hand. These are propositions excepted from the burden of proof that allow proof to begin. As Wittgenstein says in On Certainty (343), "we just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door	to	turn,	the	hinges	must	stay	put."	The	idea	seems	to	be	practically	a truism, but in any case, all I am saying here in these terms with respect to the Humanization Argument is that it takes the assumption in question to be such a given, and it is no longer entitled to do that. 4. Implications So the case that cogency has vanished for the Humanization Argument appears to be a reasonable one. What are the implications of this for practical and theoretical logic? From the loss of cogency for the Humanization Argument, there are no such dramatic implications as that people should be allowed to starve. Such practices would violate ethical precepts, as can be inferred from preceding discussion, particularly the Kantian strain that people must be treated as ends-in-themselves. Rather, the main practical implication is that one cannot	any	longer	simply	offer	an	instantiation	of	the	Humanization	Argument as	if	it	were	good	reasoning	on	its	own;	it	needs	to	be	modified	with	at least a hint of how concomitantly human population growth and spread might be reduced, pollution controlled, or natural beauty and diversity of life preserved or restored. That is, there needs be at least a modicum or gesture in the	direction	of	what	we	saw	Tainter	call	"rational	planning."	To	be	sure, COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 103 often this requirement is met by virtue of notions present in the context in which the Humanization Argument appears, as for example when part of the purpose of providing necessity X is to help lift people out of poverty to the point where they no longer feel the need to have so many children as a safety net. Perhaps more often, however, the requirement is not met at all. In this regard, one cannot avoid thinking of charities recklessly acting in accordance with the personal whims of their billionaire founders. Let us consider the implications for theoretical (and mostly informal) logic in connection with two questions: What logically relevant factors have allowed cogency to vanish for the Humanization Argument? And, are there other argument schemes for which cogency has vanished (or materialized, for that matter)? I think the factor that both allowed cogency to vanish and that indicates there may be no other such argument schemes is the distinctive universality of the relevance of radically changed conditions for the Humanization Argument. These radically changed conditions pertain to all (known) rational beings. The argument scheme accommodates instantiation at any time by anyone, for any sensible value of X, and with respect to any general set of human lives (although there are extenuating circumstances wherein it would be counterproductive or even inconsistent to use it, e.g., in wartime with respect to an enemy). But conditions have changed so much on Earth that	current instantiations	of the	(unmodified)	scheme	are	never	cogent, even	if	they	are	offered	by,	say,	a	dwindling	Amazonian	tribe	with	respect	to themselves-although	an	addition	here	about	contribution	to	the	diversity of	life	and	a	zero-polluting	lifestyle	would	probably	be	more	than	sufficient. Conversely, if conditions radically reversed, as with a pandemic of deadly flu,	cogency	could	return	to	the	Humanization	Argument. Contrast the most similar scheme in Walton, et al's large compendium of schemes (2008, p. 334): ARGUMENT FROM DISTRESS Premise 1: Individual x	is	in	distress	(is	suffering). Premise 2: If y brings about A, it will relieve or help to relieve this distress. Conclusion: Therefore, y ought to bring about A. Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer 104 Unlike the Humanization Argument, the Argument from Distress concerns relations between individuals and appears to involve what are called special ethical obligations, as between individuals	who are "close" in some way (e.g., relatives or friends) or as might be entailed by one's job. No such implicit assumption or premise as that the greater the number of human lives, the better, is needed to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, etc. Thus, the radically	changed	circumstances	on	Earth	are	of	no	significant	import. As we saw earlier in section 2, the claim that "valid arguments are always cogent" is false. Indeed,	with the assumption in question, the	Humanization Argument is basically a deductively valid enthymeme. In this respect, then, it cannot be that non-monotonicity allowed its cogency to vanish-yet	would	it	not	be	this	very	property	that	means	the	reasoning	is 'defeasible' or 'fragile'? To sort out the answer to this question, consider the following	standard	definitions	(Sainsbury,	1991,	p.	369): Deductive validity is ... monotonic. That is, if you start with a deductively valid argument, then, no matter what you add to the premises, you will end up with a deductively valid argument. Inductive strength is not monotonic: adding premises to an inductively strong argument can turn it into an inductively weak one. Applying these	definitions, the	answer	or clarification is that cogency itself is non-monotonic because well-reasoned inductive arguments, in company with all other well-reasoned arguments of any kind (deductive or nondeductive), form proper subsets of cogent arguments. Cogency is non-monotonic in that if you start with a cogent argument, then if you add information to the premises (or add new premises), you may end up with a fallacious argument. The question of whether it is monotonic arises for any consequence relation, and being a consequence relation is a respect in which validity, inductive strength, and cogency are all on par. Under current conditions indicated above, together with presumed ethical theory, we have been treating the Humanization Argument's reasoning as having become fallacious or 'defeated' because the assumption in question has become clearly disputable. In this way, we have been treating its cogency as context-dependent. Alternatively, and more strictly in line with	the	preceding	clarification,	we	could	add	information	about	current COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 105 conditions and their ethical import to the Argument's premise set, in which case you get an argument that is fallacious because it is inconsistent. What appears to be special about the cogency of the Humanization Argument scheme is that its context-dependency is temporal only; its cogency or fallaciousness is spatially invariant over any place it is instantiated at a given time. Heretofore, I believe the only kind of argument context-dependency directly considered by logicians has been both temporal and spatial, or the absence of any such dependency (validity). Of course, however, philosophically speaking the spatial invariance for the Humanization Argument is a contingent	fact	reflecting	both	(a)	the	confinement	of	humans to Earth (should these bonds be broken, it might be that on other planets, the	greater	the	number	of	humans	lives,	the	better),	and	(b)	the	confinement of rational beings to humans, if we take the essence of a human to be a rational being (if other rational beings existed here or elsewhere, it might be that the greater the number of those beings, the better). Although these contingencies are of little or no consequence for practical logic, they do have	the	theoretical	significance	that	the	spatial	invariance	of	the	vanishing cogency of the Humanization Argument is a contingent fact. Yet it may seem that we can imagine other comparable arguments with a key premise (explicit or implicit) that became, over time, clearly disputable or even known to be false, and whose cogency or fallaciousness is spatially	invariant:	Shouldn't	any	scientific	revolution	or	mathematical	discovery provide the material? Well, not exactly, so far as I can determine. It appears	that	there	are	at	least	two	kinds	of	putative	cases	to	consider.	The	first one or two may be illustrated by the once-common argument that natural selection and evolution do not constitute a viable alternative to creationism because the Earth is only thousands of years old. Such a case in fact appears to be a single argument, historically often repeated, rather than a discernable argument scheme or form (with a variable(s) and instantiations) like the Humanization Argument. In further contrast to the Humanization Argument, in this argument spatial invariance is gained 'on the cheap' if you will; that is, spatial invariance is guaranteed by the appearance in the argument	of	an	essential	reference	that	fixes	applicability	to	a	specific	place (Earth). Compare this argument scheme: 'The Earth is not warming, so we need	not	be	concerned	about	probable	causal	effect	Z' (sea-level rise, glaCan Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer 106 ciers melting, changing ocean currents, stronger hurricanes and typhoons, etc.). In addition, the cogency or fallaciousness of this particular scheme may be parasitic upon that of the Humanization Argument (see below). The other kind of putatively comparable case is nicely illustrated by the Gambler's Fallacy. There is no question that this is a spatially-invariant argument scheme with unlimited possible instantiations, and it has not always been regarded as fallacious. Here is an established nineteenth-century logician endorsing the principle underlying the scheme in his logic textbook	(Coppee,	1874,	p.	162-cited	in	Siegel,	1992,	p.	33): Thus, in throwing dice, we cannot be sure that any single face or combination of faces will appear, but if, in very many throws, some particular face has not appeared, the chances of its coming up are stronger and stronger, until they approach very near to certainty. It must come; and as each throw is made and it fails to appear, the certainty of its coming draws nearer and nearer. The principle underlying the Gambler's Fallacy was once thought to be true, but is now known to be false. The situation is similar with any number of other schemes, for example, a scheme that licenses concluding of two spatially separated events that they are (absolutely) simultaneous. Such a scheme is based on a principle that generally has been abandoned by physicists in favor of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (so for purposes of this discussion, I shall assume that the principle of absolute simultaneity is false). Similar to the assumption in question made by the Humanization Argument, the epistemic status of the principle underlying the Gambler's Fallacy and of the principle of absolute simultaneity changed from being acceptable to being unacceptable, and these changes of epistemic status are all the result of various contingencies. Nevertheless, there is a critical difference,	which	is	that	these	two	principles	were	always	false,	including when they were acceptable; indeed, they are timelessly, if not necessarily, false. In contrast, the case can be made that the epistemic status of the assumption-the	greater	the	number	of	human	lives,	the	better-changed more or less in sync with its truth value: under previous conditions it was acceptable and true, yet under current conditions it is neither. (This is a façon de parler. Speaking more precisely, since we want to avoid the view COGENCY Vol. 8, N0. 1 (89-109), Winter 2016 ISSN 0718-8285 107 that the truth value of the same proposition can change over time, we may take an instantiation of the Humanization Argument indexically to refer to conditions at the time of the instantiation, so not only is the cogency of the Humanization Argument temporally context dependent, instantiations at different	times	make	differently	indexed	versions	of	the	assumption,	some true and the others false.) Compare Allen (1998, p. 4): "the general point here is that the case for the acceptability of a premise may at the same time be, at least in part, a case for its truth, despite the fact that acceptability is not	the	same	thing	as	truth." It should not be surprising that there would be synchronicity between epistemic status and truth value here; after all, the evidence for the truth or falsity of the assumption in question tends to be relatively straightforward and accessible: currently, almost everywhere we see expansion of industry and cities, pollution, loss of natural habitat and beauty, species extinction and loss of diversity of life, etc. Such evidence is perhaps orders of magnitude less obscure than the evidence for the relativity of simultaneity of spatially separated events, for example. The more obvious the evidence at hand against an undefended (implicit or explicit) premise, the greater the seriousness of the argument's fallaciousness. Thus,	the	profile	of	vanishing	cogency	of	the	Humanization	Argument scheme still looks unique; it is determined by a peculiar combination of contingent universality and changing conditions. It is worth mentioning, though, that doubtless there are other schemes whose cogency or fallaciousness is parasitic upon or a function of that of the Humanization Argument. For instance, imagine a scheme that relies on the assumption that the greater the number of fossil fuel power plants, the better. The cogency of	such	a	scheme	basically	stands	or	falls-or	rather	vanishes-with	that	of the Humanization Argument. 5. Conclusion This paper has tried to answer the question of whether universally, an argument scheme can go from being cogent to fallacious, and what that might mean. This question has previously received little attention, despite the centrality of the concepts of cogency, scheme, and fallaciousness. We Can Cogency Vanish? / g. pluMer 108 saw that the phenomenon does seem possible and real in the case of the Humanization Argument, an argument scheme that raises critical issues for practically every discipline.	We saw that the profile of vanishing cogency for this argument scheme may be unique. I am not certain that I fully understand why. For all of these reasons, I do hope that this paper will help to begin a broader discussion of the issues it raises. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was read on September 25, 2015 at El IV Congreso de Argumentación, Psicología del Razonamiento y Pensamiento Crítico. Audience comments and subsequent correspondence with Harvey Siegel were useful. Also, Daniel Cohen, Trudy Govier, Lyra Hostetter, Kenneth Olson, and especially Teresa Plumer provided helpful comments on earlier drafts. Works Cited Adler,	Jonathan.	"Confidence	in	argument."	Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 36 (2006), 225-258. Allen, Derek. 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