This article reaches out to the audience for controversial religious writing after the English Reformation, by examining the shared language of attainable truth, of clarity and certainty, to be found in Protestant and Catholic examples of the same. It argues that we must consider those aspects of religious controversy that lie simultaneously above and beneath its doctrinal content: the logical forms in which it was framed, and the assumptions writers made about their audiences’ needs and responses. Building on the work (...) of Susan Schreiner and others on the notion of certainty through the early Reformation, the article asks how English polemicists exalted and opened up that notion for their readers’ benefit, through proclamations of visibility, accessibility and honest dealing. Two case studies are chosen, in order to make a comparison across confessional lines: first, Protestant reactions against the Jesuit doctrine of equivocation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which emphasized honesty and encouraged fear of hidden meaning; and second, Catholic opposition to the notion of an invisible-or relatively invisible-church. It is argued that the language deployed in opposition to these ideas displays a shared emphasis on the clear, certain, and reliable, and that which might be attained by human means. Projecting the emphases and assertions of these writers onto their audience, and locating it within a contemporary climate, the article thus questions the emphasis historians of religion place on the intangible-on faith-in considering the production and the reception of Reformation controversy. (shrink)

The phrase _secundum quid et simpliciter_ is the Latin expression translating and labelling the sophism described by Aristotle as connected with the use of some particular expression “absolutely or in a certain respect and not in its proper sense.” This paper presents an overview of the analysis of this fallacy in the history of dialectics, reconstructing the different explanations provided in the Aristotelian texts, the Latin and medieval dialectical tradition, and the modern logical approaches. The _secundum quid_ emerges as a (...) strategy that is based on the pragmatic dimension of arguments, and in particular the complex passage from an utterance (what is said) to its logical form (a proposition in an argument). The medieval and modern logical theories attempted to explain from different philosophical perspectives how the pragmatically enriched semantic representation can be achieved, justified, and most importantly manipulated. The different analyses of this fallacy bring to light various dimensions of the pragmatics of arguments, and the complex interdependence between context, meaning, and inferences. (shrink)

Aristotle determines eristic argument as argument which either operates upon the basis of acceptable premisses and merely give the impression of being deductive, or argument which truly is deductive but operates upon the basis of premisses which seem to be acceptable, but are not. I attempt to understand what Aristotle has in mind when he says that someone is deceived into accepting premisses which seem to be acceptable but which are really not, and how this disqualifies such arguments from being (...) dialectical. In the first section of the paper I interpret Aristotle’s notion of ἔνδοξα in terms of a relational concept of acceptability. Real ἔνδοα are propositions which are accepted by a qualified group or individual. False ἔνδοα may also be accepted by someone or some group, and may even be true, but they are used to serve the purposes of eristical argumentation, which departs from certain standards of dialectical argumentation articulated in the notion of ἔνδοξα as a norm for premiss-acceptance. In particular, eristic arguments may even be valid in the sense of a συλλογισμός while still failing to be proper dialectical arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider how this can be, in examining certain types of fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the relationship between fallacious argumentation and false ἔνδοξα. (shrink)

This paper claims that there is a plausible sense in which validity is a matter of truth preservation relative to interpretations of the sentences that occur in an argument, although it is not the sense one might have in mind. §1 outlines three independent problems: the first is the paradox of the sorites, the second concerns the fallacy of equivocation, and the third arises in connection with the standard treatment of indexicals. §2 elucidates the claim about validity, while §§3-5 show (...) how the three problems outlined can be handled in accordance with it. §6 explains how the claim squares with the traditional idea that validity is related to formality, and in particular with a broadly accepted definition based on that idea, the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence. Unlike other works on the subject, this paper does not focus on necessity. It is not its intention to provide a characterization of necessity that conforms to some ideal of rigour or to some pre-theoretical understanding of validity. What follows can be taken as conditional on the assumption that such a characterization can be provided. (shrink)

From Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations the following classifications are put forward and defended through extensive excerpts from the text. (AR-PFC) All sophistical refutations are exclusively either ‘apparent refutations’ or ‘proofs of false conclusions’. (AR-F) ‘Apparent refutations’ and ‘fallacies’ name the same thing. (ID-ED) All fallacies are exclusively either fallacies in dictione or fallacies extra dictionem . (ID-nAMB) Not all fallacies in dictione are due to ambiguity. (AMB-nID) Not all fallacies due to ambiguity are fallacies in dictione . (AMB&ID-ME) The set of (...) fallacies due to ambiguity and fallacies in dictione together comprise the set of arguments said to be “dependent on mere expression”. Being “dependent on mere expression” and “dependent on language” are not the same (instances of the latter form a proper subset of instances of the former). (nME-FACT) All arguments that are not against the expression are “against the fact.” (FACT-ED) All fallacious arguments against the fact are fallacies extra dictionem (it is unclear whether the converse is true). (MAN-ARG) The solutions of fallacious arguments are exclusively either “against the man” or “against the argument.” (10) (F-ARG) Each (type of) fallacy has a unique solution (namely, the opposite of whatever causes the fallacy), but each fallacious argument does not. However, each fallacious argument does have a unique solution against the argument, called the ‘true solution’ (in other words, what fallacy a fallacious argument commits is determined by how it is solved. However, if the solution is ‘against the man’ then this is not, properly speaking, the fallacy committed in the argument. It is only the ‘true solution’—the solution against the argument, of which there is always only one—that determines the fallacy actually committed). (shrink)

In this paper I will consider several interpretations of the fallacy of secundum quid as it is given by Aristotle in the Sophistical Refutations and argue that they do not work, one reason for which is that they all imply that the fallacy depends on language and thus fail to explain why Aristotle lists this fallacy among the fallacies not depending on language, amounting often to a claim that Aristotle miscategorises this fallacy. I will argue for a reading that preserves (...) Aristotle’s categorization by a quite different account of how qualifications function. (shrink)

Aristotle determines eristic argument as argument which either operates upon the basis of acceptable premisses (endoxa) and merely give the impression of being deductive, or argument which truly is deductive but operates upon the basis of premisses which seem to be acceptable, but are not (or, again, argument which uses both of these mechanisms). I attempt to understand what Aristotle has in mind when he says that someone is deceived into accepting premisses which seem to be acceptable but which are (...) really not, and how this disqualifies such arguments from being dialectical. In the first section of the paper I interpret Aristotle’s notion of endoxa in terms of a relational concept of acceptability. Real Índoxa are propositions which are accepted by a qualified group or individual. False endoxa may also be accepted by someone or some group, and may even be true, but they are used to serve the purposes of eristical argumentation, which departs from certain standards of dialectical argumentation articulated in the notion of endoxa as a norm for premiss-acceptance. In particular, eristic arguments may even be valid in the sense of a syllogismos while still failing to be proper dialectical arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider how this can be, in examining certain types of fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the relationship between fallacious argumentation and false endoxa. (shrink)

The Holy Scriptures can be considered a specific kind of normative texts, whose use to assess practical moral cases requires interpretation. In the field of ethics, this interpretative problem results in the necessity of bridging the gap between the normative source – moral precepts – and the specific cases. In the history of the Church, this problem was the core of the so-called casuistry, namely the decision-making practice consisting in applying the Commandments and other principles of the Holy Scriptures to (...) specific cases or moral problems. By taking into account the sin of lying, this paper argues that casuistic texts reveal an extremely sophisticated interpretative method, grounded on “pragmatic” contextual and communicative considerations and argumentative structures that resemble the ones used in legal interpretation. These works show how the underspecified biblical text expressing an abstract norm was enriched pragmatically by completing it and modulating its meaning so that it could be used to draw a conclusion in a specific context on a specific case. The mutual interdependence between biblical interpretation, pragmatics, and argumentation sheds light on a much broader phenomenon, namely the pragmatic nature of argumentation. (shrink)