My dissertation is devoted to an examination of the resolution of fallacy in Plato's Euthydemus. It is a familiar claim that the Euthydemus champions Socratic argumentation over sophistical or eristic reasoning. No consensus however exists regarding either the nature or philosophical significance of Socrates’ treatment of the fallacies he confronts. I argue that a careful reading of the dialogue reveals that the Socratic response to fallacious reasoning is conducted at two different levels of philosophical sophistication. Socrates relies upon the resources (...) of Socratic dialectic in responding to sophisms due to ignorance of refutation. Insofar as Socratic dialectic is grounded in a grasp of the nature of genuine refutation, the objections it raises to false refutation are fully explanatory. On the other hand, Socrates employs various self-refutation arguments against theses which depend on false assumptions regarding the nature of predication---for example, the thesis that false speaking is impossible. It is however characteristic of Socratic dialectic that this method of examination cannot explain why the sophists’ theses are false. The Socratic response to fallacy in these cases is non-explanatory in this sense. On the other hand, these limitations on Socratic expertise are overcome in other passages in the dialogue which are replete with clues to the reader that point to a genuine explanation and resolution of the sophists’ arguments for their various theses. In particular, the reader is invited at every turn to modify, clarify, or reject various assumptions made by the brothers regarding the nature of predication. Here Plato implicitly relies on the results of what I call higher dialectic. This theory, which receives explicit formulation in the Sophist, is conceptually rich enough to expose and dispose of the various false assumptions upon which the sophists’ theses rest. I conclude that the Euthydemus is concerned to identify Socratic dialectic as only a part of philosophy, and to locate and strictly delimit its epistemological status as lying above eristic and the rhetorical arts, but below that of dialectic as that is conceived in the Republic and even later dialogues---thus anticipating the Sophist’s conception of Socrates as the practitioner of a ‘noble sophistry’, and the elenchus as a propaedeutic to philosophy, which purges the soul of false beliefs. (shrink)

This article is the result of research on the occurrences of the terms suppositio, supponere and their linguistic derivations in the literature on fallacies of the second half of the thirteenth century. The authors analysed are Albert the Great, Giles of Rome, Simon of Faversham, the so-called Incerti Auctores, the Anonymous of Prague and John Duns Scotus. The central elements that emerge are the role played by the notion of suppositum and by the linguistic context to determine the denotation of (...) an expression, and the importance of the metaphysical problem of the unity and identity of suppositum in both the theory of predication and the theory of inference. Both subjects, obviously, are closely connected. (shrink)

The presence of premises expressing comparison is a problem for the Aristotelian theory of the dialectical method, first because there is no general theory of comparison in the Organon and secondly because along with propositions on the opposition and inflexion of the terms, comparative statements seem to fall outside the explicit description which Aristotle gives of possible premises. The purpose of this paper is to offer a synthetic theory of comparisons according to Aristotle’s Topics , in an attempt both to (...) supply the aforementioned absence and to highlight the importance of the second problem. There are three main types of premises on the more, the less and the similar : some comparing the degree of possession of a predicate, others comparing the plausibility of a predication and finally, others expressing an analogy. Once expounded the very marked differences that occur between these three classes of propositions, the paper analyses the various kinds of argumentation based on comparative premises and offers a formalization of its logical laws. The complexity of this theory and the volume of topoi involved in the comparisons show the magnitude of a problem that has not been sufficiently studied. (shrink)

A través del reconocimiento del principio de la distinción y su implicación ante-predicativa, las falacias extra-lingüísticas del secundum quid y del accidente propuestas por Aristóteles en los Sophistici Elenchi serán explicadas, probadas, analizadas y resueltas. De esta manera, se postula que las falacias que Aristóteles presenta en dicho libro tienen su raíz en una consideración falaz antepredicativa y no en el paralogismo, lo que abre una nueva forma de analizar las falacias aristotélicas. Con esto, se probará que el análisis de (...) las falacias como paralogismos es posterior, pues se mantendrá la tesis de que la falacia se genera en el nivel de distinción ontológica ante-predicativa y no en el nivel lingüístico del razonamiento. Se propondrá un modelo divisivo que aporta información al modelo inclusivo de la lógica tradicional, esto porque él nos permitirá dar cuenta del principio de la distinción. (shrink)

The presence of premises expressing comparison is a problem for the Aristotelian theory of the dialectical method, first because there is no general theory of comparison in the Organon and secondly because along with propositions on the opposition and inflexion of the terms, comparative statements seem to fall outside the explicit description which Aristotle gives of possible premises. The purpose of this paper is to offer a synthetic theory of comparisons according to Aristotle’s Topics, in an attempt both to supply (...) the aforementioned absence and to highlight the importance of the second problem. There are three main types of premises on the more, the less and the similar: some comparing the degree of possession of a predicate, others comparing the plausibility of a predication and finally, others expressing an analogy. Once expounded the very marked differences that occur between these three classes of propositions, the paper analyses the various kinds of argumentation based on comparative premises and offers a formalization of its logical laws. The complexity of this theory and the volume of topoi involved in the comparisons show the magnitude of a problem that has not been sufficiently studied. (shrink)

In Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness, Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels report on their systematic empirical research of the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical discussion rules. The experimental studies they carried out during more than ten years start from the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation developed at the University of Amsterdam, their home university. In these studies they test methodically the intersubjective acceptability of the rules for critical discussion proposed in this theory by confronting ordinary arguers who (...) have not received any special education in argumentation and fallacies with discussion fragments containing both fallacious and non-fallacious argumentative moves. The research covers a wide range of informal fallacies. In this way, the authors create a basis for comparing the theoretical reasonableness conception of pragma-dialectics with the norms for judging argumentative moves prevailing in argumentative practice. Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness provides a unique insight into the relationship between theoretical and practical conceptions of reasonableness, supported by extensive empirical material gained by means of sophisticated experimental research. (shrink)