Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of arguers and arguments along with various theoretical perspectives. Less attention has been given to the third feature of any argumentative situation - the audience. This book fills that gap by studying audience reception to argumentation and the problems that come to light as a result of this shift in focus. Christopher W. Tindale advances the tacit theories of several earlier thinkers by addressing the central problems connected with audience considerations (...) in argumentation, problems that earlier philosophical theories overlook or inadequately accommodate. The main tools employed in exploring the central issues are drawn from contemporary philosophical research on meaning, testimony, emotion and agency. These are then combined with some of the major insights of recent rhetorical work in argumentation to advance our understanding of audiences and suggest avenues for further research. (shrink)

This important book is the first serious philosophical examination of the modern state. It inquires into the justification of this particular form of political society. It asks whether all states are 'nation-states', what are the alternative ways of organizing society, and which conditions make a state legitimate. The author concludes that, while states can be legitimate, they typically fail to have the powers that they claim. Many books analyze government and its functions but none focuses on the state as a (...) distinctive form of political organization or examines critically the claims states make for themselves. In filling this lacuna Christopher Morris has written a book that will command the attention of political philosophers, political scientists, legal theorists, and specialists in international relations. (shrink)

Fallacies and Argument Appraisal presents an introduction to the nature, identification, and causes of fallacious reasoning, along with key questions for evaluation. Drawing from the latest work on fallacies as well as some of the standard ideas that have remained relevant since Aristotle, Christopher Tindale investigates central cases of major fallacies in order to understand what has gone wrong and how this has occurred. Dispensing with the approach that simply assigns labels and brief descriptions of fallacies, Tindale provides fuller (...) treatments that recognize the dialectical and rhetorical contexts in which fallacies arise. This volume analyzes major fallacies through accessible, everyday examples. Critical questions are developed for each fallacy to help the student identify them and provide considered evaluations. (shrink)

This innovative text reinvigorates argumentation studies by exploring the experience of argument across cultures, introducing an anthropological perspective into the domains of rhetoric, communication, and philosophy. The Anthropology of Argument fills an important gap in contemporary argumentation theory by shifting the focus away from the purely propositional element of arguments and onto how they emerge from the experiences of peoples with diverse backgrounds, demonstrating how argumentation can be understood as a means of expression and a gathering place of ideas and (...) styles. Confronting the limitations of the Western tradition of logic and searching out the argumentative roles of place, orality, myth, narrative, and audience, it examines the nature of multi-modal argumentation. Tindale analyzes the impacts of colonialism on the field and addresses both optimistic and cynical assessments of contextual difference. The results have implications for our understanding of contemporary argumentative discourse in areas marked by deep disagreement, like politics, law and social policy. The book will interest scholars and upper-level students in communication, philosophy, argumentation theory, anthropology, rhetoric, linguistics, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Studies Plato's approach to argumentation, exploring his role as logician, rhetorician, and dialectician in a way that sees these three aspects working together.

We analyze the “Logical fallacies and reasonable debates in invasion biology: a response to Guiaşu and Tindale” article by Frank et al., and also discuss this work in the context of recent intense debates in invasion biology, and reactions by leading invasion biologists to critics of aspects of their field. While we acknowledge the attempt by Frank et al., at least in the second half of their paper, to take into account more diverse points of view about non-native species and (...) their complex roles in ecosystems, we also find the accusations of misrepresenting invasion biology, for instance by “cherry-picking” and “constructing ‘straw people’”, directed at the Guiaşu and Tindale study to be unwarranted. Despite the sometimes harsh responses by leading invasion biologists to critics of their field, we believe that persistent and fundamental problems remain in invasion biology, and we discuss some of these problems in this article. Failing to recognize these problems, and simply dismissing or minimizing legitimate criticisms, will not advance the cause, or enhance the general appeal, of invasion biology and will prevent meaningful progress in understanding the multiple contributions non-native species can bring to various ecosystems worldwide. We recommend taking a more open-minded and pragmatic approach towards non-native species and the novel ecosystems they are an integral part of. (shrink)

This is a series of short summaries and brief overviews of many main ideas within general semantics, all couched in the style of personal letters. It is designed to give people an intimate view into many insights offered with general semantics, and just as equally, it represents how principles of general semantics can be applied within everyday life.

In books making the argument for animal ethics, most works either do not address the religious tradition of ethics or use the religious tradition to argue against animal ethics. This book stands out by addressing the ethics of animals within the religious tradition of moral theology and engaging it to create a new ethics. Chris Steck's book seeks to present a comprehensive, Catholic theology of animals and an ethical response to them. His claim first is that animals are part of (...) the kingdom to come (and therefore part of the eschtological framework) therefore animals should be included within the same ethical framework as humans. And, second, he claims that eschatology is not just about the future (after death) but also about the present. Further, he includes any animal with "significant intellectual capacities" as part of the definition of "animal," demonstrating the need to develop traditional teaching in this area. Given what we now know about animals from contemporary scientific investigations and how interpretations of Genesis have evolved, it makes sense to revise our theological ethics. (shrink)

In any field, we might expect different features relevant to its understanding and development to receive attention at different times, depending on the stage of that field’s growth and the interests that occupy theorists and even the history of the theorists themselves. In the relatively young life of argumentation theory, at least as it has formed a body of issues with identified research questions, attention has almost naturally been focused on the central concern of the field—arguments. Focus is also given (...) to the nature of arguers and the position of the evaluator, who is often seen as possessing a “God’s-eye view” (Hamblin 1970). Less attention, however, has been paid in the philosophical literature to the .. (shrink)

In 1958, Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca published Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, the culmination of many years study. A seminal work in philosophy and rhetoric, it aimed to bring classical Aristotelian rhetoric into the modern era and present a model of argumentation that promoted action and reasonableness. One distinctive feature of the dense account found in this work is the claim that the success of argumentation can in part be measured by the responses of the audience for which (...) it is intended. By that standard, the project of the new rhetoric appears unsuccessful, because the audience for whom Perelman (and Olbrechts-Tyteca) expressly wrote was the audience least captivated by .. (shrink)

This paper discusses the fundamental sense in which the components of an argument should be relevant to the intended audience. In particular, the evidence advanced should be relevant to the facts and assumptions that are manifest in the cognitive environment of the audience. A version of Sperber and Wilson's concept of the cognitive environment is applied to argumentative concerns, and from this certain features of audience-relevance are explored: that the relevance of a premise can vary with the audience; that irrelevant (...) premises can be made relevant; that evidence can be relevant by degrees; and that this notion of relevance will assist the argumentation analyst in the identification and assessment of hidden premises. (shrink)

Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1998 'for his contributions in welfare economics'. Although his primary academic appointments have been mostly in economics, Sen is also an important and influential social theorist and philosopher. His work on social choice theory is seminal, and his writings on poverty, famine, and development, as well his contributions to moral and political philosophy, are important and influential. Sen's views about the nature and primacy of liberty also make him a (...) major contemporary liberal thinker. This volume of essays on aspects of Sen's work is aimed at a broad audience of readers interested in social theory, political philosophy, ethics, public policy, welfare economics, the theory of rational choice, poverty, and development. Written by a team of well-known experts, each chapter provides an overview of Sen's work in a particular area and a critical assessment of his contributions to the field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Discourses conceal as much as they reveal, but in their concealment they may invite an audience into the silences of the gaps and pauses they contain in order to reflect and find insight. The moments of opportunity provided by these gaps suggest two sides to the concept of kairos, capturing both the ability of the author/speaker to create the opportune moment in the discourse, and the ability of the reader/listener to see that moment and the experience it invites.

Our lives are such that moral wrongdoing is sometimes inescapable for us. We have moral responsibilities to persons which may conflict and which it is wrong to violate even when they do conflict. Christopher W. Gowans argues that we must accept this conclusion if we are to make sense of our moral experience and the way in which persons are valuable to us. In defending this position, he critically examines the recent moral dilemmas debate. He maintains that what is (...) important in this debate is not whether there are irresolvable moral conflicts, but whether there are moral conflicts in which wrongdoing is unavoidable. Though it would be incoherent to conclude moral deliberation by deciding to perform incompatible actions, he argues that there is nothing incoherent in supposing that we have conflicting moral responsibilities. In this way, he shows that it is possible to capture the intuitions of those who have defended the idea of moral dilemmas while meeting the objections of those who have rejected this idea. Gowans carefully evaluates utilitarian and Kantian analyses of moral dilemmas. He argues that these approaches eliminate genuine moral conflict only by displacing persons as direct objects of moral concern. As an alternative, he develops a more concrete account in which moral responsibilities to persons are central. The book also includes discussions of Melville's Billy Budd, methodology in moral philosophy, moral pluralism, moral tragedy, and "dirty hands" in politics. (shrink)

The paper examines Walton‘s concept of fallacy as it develops throughthree stages of his work: from the early series of papers co-authored withJohn Woods; through a second phase of involvement with thepragma-dialectical perspective; and on to the final phase in which heoffers a distinct pragmatic theory that reaches beyond the perceived limitsof the pragma-dialectical account while still exhibiting a debt to thatperspective and the early investigations with Woods. It is observed how Walton‘s model of fallacy is established in distinction to (...) its competitors,and its various problems and successes are discussed. (shrink)

The paper critically investigates the pragma-dialectics of van Eemeren and Grootendorst, particularly the treatment of fallacies. While the pragma-dialectieians claim that dialectics combines the logical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation, it is argued here that the perspective relies heavily on rhetorical features that have been suppressed in the account and that overlooking these features leads to significant problems in the pragma-dialectical perspective. In light of these problems, the author advocates turning attention to a rhetorical account which subsumes the logical and (...) dialectical. (shrink)

The human being is an imitative animal. This statement, or description, resonates across time and cultures. Its familiarity derives from its repetition. It has, in terms appropriate to this discussion, a memetic quality. What Aristotle says is that "imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns first by imitation". The proof for this, Aristotle goes on to explain, lies in (...) the pleasure derived from imitation. And if pleasurable, it is natural; we are naturally imitative creatures.Among our imitative practices is the social practice of argumentation with all its rhetorical... (shrink)

The essays in this volume illuminate a central topic in ethical theory: moral dilemmas. Some contemporary philosophers dispute the traditional view that a true moral dilemma -- a situation in which a person has two irreconcilable moral duties -- cannot exist. This collection provides the historical background to the ongoing debate with selections from Kant, Mill, Bradley, and Ross. The best recent work on the question is represented in essays by Donagan, Foot, Hare, Marcus, Nagel, van Fraassen, Williams, and others.

The paper investigates the `logical space of reasons' as a social space in which rational agents operate and persons in an important sense come to be. Building from an investigation of argumentative agents in Aristotle's Rhetoric, I discuss both interior and exterior criteria for personhood and propose that the latter shows how argumentation, as a principal activity of the space of reasons, results in the particular kinds of persons we recognize there as rational agents. The overall analysis is indebted to (...) Robert Brandom's centralizing of the practice of giving and receiving reasons and the suggestive ways this can be applied to the realm of argumentation. (shrink)

In a posthumous paper, Perelman discusses his decision to bring his theory of argumentation together with rhetoric rather than calling it an informal logic. This is due in part because of the centrality he gives to audience, and in part because of the negative attitude that informal logicians have to rhetoric. In this paper, I explore both of these concerns by way of considering what benefits Perelman’s work can have for informal logic, and what insights the work of informal logicians (...) might bring to the project of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. (shrink)

This rich collection will introduce students of philosophy and politics to the contemporary critical literature on the classical social contract political thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. A dozen essays and book excerpts have been selected to guide students through the texts and to introduce them to current scholarly controversies surrounding the contractarian political theories of these three thinkers.

In this paper, I investígate a question in the Rhetoric surrounding the metaphorical sense of Aristotle’s topos: one can look to a location for “available means of persuasion,” evoking an image of seeing ; or topoi are viewed as “general lines of argument.” Are they places we go for arguments, or actual lines of arguments? The difference matters, given a propensity to view topoi as forerunners of argument schemes.

I argue that the Buddha did not discuss the free will and determinism problem because he only considered issues relating to overcoming suffering and his teaching about this did not raise the problem. As represented in the Nikāyas, the heart of his teaching was an empirically based account of the causes of suffering and how to modify these to end suffering. It was primarily a practical teaching about how to achieve this goal, more a craft knowledge than a philosophical theory (...) of causality. Similarly, the no-self teaching was more about living selflessly than about developing a theoretical analysis of agency. (shrink)

What are preferences and are they reasons for action? Is it rational to cooperate with others even if that entails acting against one's preferences? The dominant position in philosophy on the topic of practical rationality is that one acts so as to maximize the satisfaction of one's preferences. This view is most closely associated with the work of David Gauthier, and in this collection of essays some of the most innovative philosophers working in this field explore the controversies surrounding Gauthier's (...) position. Several essays argue against influential conceptions of preference, while others suggest that received conceptions of rational action misidentify the normative significance of rules and practices. This collection will be of particular interest to philosophers of social theory and to reflective social scientists in such fields as economics, political science and psychology. (shrink)