Some arguments are good; others are not. How can we tell the difference? This article advances three proposals as a partial answer to this question. The proposals are keyed to arguments conditioned by different degrees of uncertainty: mild, where the argument’s premises are hedged with point-valued probabilities; moderate, where the premises are hedged with interval probabilities; and severe, where the premises are hedged with non-numeric plausibilities such as ‘very likely’ or ‘unconfirmed’. For mild uncertainty, the article proposes to apply a (...) principle referred to as ‘Jeffrey’s rule’, for the principle is a generalization of Jeffrey conditionalization. For moderate uncertainty, the proposal is to extend Jeffrey’s rule for use with probability intervals. For severe uncertainty, the article proposes that even when lack of probabilistic information prevents the application of Jeffrey’s rule, the rule can be adapted to these conditions with the aid of a suitable plausibility measure. Together, the three proposals introduce an approach to argument evaluation that complements established frameworks for evaluating arguments: deductive soundness, informal logic, argumentation schemes, pragma-dialectics, and Bayesian inference. Nevertheless, this approach can be looked at as a generalization of the truth and validity conditions of the classical criterion for sound argumentation. (shrink)

In Parts I, II, and III of the paper, the authors show that an argument essential to Alan White's defense of the Correspondence Theory of truth is unsuccessful. They argue that some of the premises of White's argument are false, and others incoherent. They show, further, that certain widely accepted assumptions in the philosophy of language, which underlie White's argument, must also be abandoned. In Part IV, they attempt to say something new about 'true', 'false', truth and falsity, and related (...) notions. They do not offer a competing theory to White's, but instead stress features of the use of these words and concepts which philosophers have either ignored or insufficiently emphasized. (shrink)