Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory brings together twenty exploratory studies on important subjects of research in contemporary argumentation theory. The essays are based on papers that were presented at the 7th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in Amsterdam in June 2010. They give an impression of the nature and the variety of the kind of research that has recently been carried out in the study of argumentation. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating (...) theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that God is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and in the Rabbinic literature—some of the very Hebrew texts that have influenced the three major world religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as One who can be argued with and even changes his mind. Contrary to fundamentalist positions, in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts God is omniscient but enjoys good, playful argumentation, broadening the possibilities for reasoning and reasonability. Arguing with God has also had a (...) profound influence upon Jewish humor, demonstrating that humans can joke with God. More specifically, we find in Jewish literature that humor’s capacity to bisociate between different domains of human experience can share a symbiotic relationship with argumentation’s emphasis on producing multiple, contested perspectives. Overall, once mortals realize that figures such as God can accept many perspectives through humor, teasing, arguing, criticism, and in at least one case, even lawsuits, a critical point emerges: citizens should learn to live, laugh, and reason with others with whom they disagree. (shrink)

Knowledge is an asset that can make or break organizations. Its importance has been duly asserted in the Western management thought as well as in the Indian classical philosophical thought. The present study takes a hermeneutical approach by reviewing the Western literature related to knowledge and then trying to find congruence with the Indian philosophy of Nyaya Sutras. Nyaya is a branch of Indian philosophical thought; these thoughts were written in the form of verses called the sutras. We draw from (...) the modern knowledge management literature and compare and contrast it with selected verses of Nyaya Sutras. We find a high level of similarity between the two and discuss offerings from Nyaya Sutras that can be adopted by the modern knowledge management domain. The key aspects of our work have been consolidated in a conceptual model for knowledge management which will provide useful insights to modern management practices. (shrink)

While many "benchtop-to-bedside" research pathways have been developed in "Type I" translational medicine, vehicles to facilitate "Type II" and "Type III" translation that convert scientific data into clinical and community interventions designed to improve the health of human populations remain elusive. Further, while a high percentage of physicians endorse the principle of citizen leadership, many have difficulty practicing it. This discrepancy has been attributed, in part, to lack of training and preparation for public advocacy, time limitation, and institutional resistance. As (...) translational medicine and physician-citizenship implicate social, political, economic and cultural factors, both enterprises require "integrative" research strategies that blend insights from multiple fields of study, as well as rhetorical acumen in adapting messages to reach multiple audiences. This article considers how argumentation theory's epistemological flexibility, audience attentiveness, and heuristic qualities, combined with concepts from classical rhetoric, such as rhetorical invention, the synecdoche, and ethos, yield tools to facilitate translational medicine and enable physician-citizenship. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo intentaremos poner en evidencia un singular enfoque sobre la pólis ateniense ofrecido por Protágoras en el diálogo platónico que lleva su nombre. Dicho enfoque, soslayado por los intérpretes, hace hincapié en la dimensión visual de la praxis política de los ciudadanos y es coherente con los posicionamientos ontológicos que emergen de los fragmentos del sofista.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Task of the Name: A Reply to Carol PosterJason HelmsIn the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. The text is the long roll of thunder that follows.—Walter Benjamin, Arcades N1, 1 (1999)Logos, in whose lighting they come and go, remains concealed from them, and forgotten.—Martin Heidegger, “Aletheia” (1975, 122)One of the first things learned in the most rudimentary attempt at stargazing is (...) that the utmost effort must be paid in neglecting to gaze at stars. Instead, one must gaze near them. Owing to the physiological organization of the eye, night vision is enhanced toward the periphery of vision rather than the center. Consequently, one can actually perceive one’s own lack of perception by staring at a star, finding it disappear, and then staring near the star only to see it reappear. What follows, in this light or darkness or tension of these two extremes, is not empirical in any sense of the word, which is given to its own extremes. Rather, I hope through various a/(i)llusions and sidelong tangents to glance offthe surface of my target. As you may guess, superficial puns—like star(e)—provide one of the most reflective surfaces offof which to bounce/riff. [End Page 278]Carol Poster’s recent article, “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” (2006), provides much fruitful ground for a rhetorical critique of Heraclitus and a Heraclitean critique of rhetoric—many surfaces offof which to glance. However, her analysis is often in a decidedly unharmonious tension with itself. Accordingly, this essay constitutes an attempt to tune by ear. In the course of this response I will outline at which points I diverge from her argument, offering my own listening relation to, and consequently my own reading of, Heraclitus, and propose alternative, but perhaps corrective, views of Heraclitus’s relation to the Logos and his practiced rhetorics. Let us first start at the end before proceeding through Poster’s argument.Poster’s ConclusionsAt the end of her article, Poster offers five conclusions that afford us now an ingress for her essay. For the sake of brevity (and, of course, clarity and sincerity) I have shortened them and added a sixth with which she concludes the article:1. Heraclitus focuses on the problem of correctness of names substantially before Prodicus and Protagoras.... Heraclitus thus prefigures two themes discussed more extensively by later writers. First, Heraclitus seems concerned with the art of what came to be called “orthoepeia” (the study of correctness of names) for which the sophists Prodicus and Protagoras later became famous. Second, he at least considers the possibility that one can learn something about the nature of things by examining the nonliteral senses of their names, a position that is articulated in its most extreme form by the Heraclitean Cratylus in Plato’s dialogue of that name.2. Heraclitus is an early example of logos philosopher, in the Gadamerian sense, in that he believes that investigation of language can provide information that is not exclusively or trivially linguistic. He is an early example of the “linguistic turn” in Greek thought.3. For Heraclitus, the instability of language is part of a radical instability of the world. Since things change too quickly to be examined, their stable names are all that is available for investigation. While surfaces change, hidden harmonies, which are both concealed and revealed in words, remain. And yet even names themselves, if temporally fixed, are still interpretively unstable. [End Page 279]4. Each positively attributed name or statement should be read two ways simultaneously in a sustained and irresolvable tension, literally and nonliterally, with the opposing figurative statement both contradicting and yet sustaining the literal one.5. These considerations lead Heraclitus, in his own prose, to a constant tension between rejection of epic vocabulary and ideas as inaccurate and frequent use of them; even when Homer and Hesiod are partially rejected, inquiry into them remains a valid means of investigation. Heraclitus does not simply suggest that epic should be entirely ignored in favor, for example, of direct examination of or experimentation on physical objects, nor purely internal (Cartesian... (shrink)

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then propose (...) a set of ‘settlement’ issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the ‘good city’ be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse. (shrink)

El presente artículo avanza sobre las relaciones existentes entre el pensamiento de Protágoras y del escepticismo representado por Pirrón de Elis. Analizando el concepto de antilogías y contextualizando la declaración de imposibilidad de contradecir que habría sostenido el sofista, puede verse hasta qué punto su concepción ontológica, basada en la fluctuación y la construcción constante de la realidad mundana por parte de cada hombre, conlleva la imposibilidad de llegar a contradicciones, incluso cuando dos proposiciones se niegan mutuamente. Sobre una ontología (...) muy cercana, Pirrón asume la imposibilidad de la predicación, como consecuencia, también, de la aprehensión de la realidad por parte del hombre. La suspensión del juicio, la indiferencia, la impasividad, la tranquilidad son, dentro del ámbito de la acción, lo que corresponde a la aphasía en el ámbito del discurso. El pensamiento de este escéptico antiguo recoge de este modo la línea de concepción ontológica relativista de Protágoras, profundizando incluso alguno de sus rasgos. (shrink)

This article considers an interpretative model for the study of Heraclitus, which was first put forward by Alexander Mourelatos in 1973, and draws upon a related model put forward by Julius Moravcsik beginning in 1983. I further develop this combined model and provide a motivation for an interpretation of Heraclitus. This is also of interest for modern metaphysics due to the recurrence of structurally similar problems, including the ‘colour exclusion’ problem that was faced by Wittgenstein. Further, I employ the model (...) to shed new light on Heraclitus’ image of the river, while relating potential readings to various contemporary metaphysical views. (shrink)

This paper offers some clarifications about the meaning of the formula “οὐ μᾶλλον” as it is presented in one of the most controversial passages of Aristocle’s On Philosophy, where he discusses with the Pyrrhonians. My thesis is that the formula “οὐ μᾶλλον” has practical and therapeutical functions insofar as it plays the role of a purgative drug against “predication” rather than being an epistemological or metaphysical claim. In this sense, it is a philosophical tool against the vanities of dogmatism. To (...) reach this conclusion, I will analyze the passage and the possible roots of this formula in the Socratic tradition. (shrink)

The paper aims at reconstructing the fundamentals of the sophistic anthropology. Contrary to the recognized view of the humanistic shift which took place in the sophistic thought, there is evidence that the sophists were continuously concerned with the problems of philosophy of nature. The difference between the sophists and their Presocratic predecessors was that their criticism of the philosophical tradition and the transformative answers given to the old questions were the basis and the starting point of the " ethical " (...) and " rhetorical " part of their intellectual activity. This natu-ralistic perspective is reflected in their research in the field of medicine and biology, in the discussion about " the human nature " , and in their interest in the individual physiological and mental conditions, which determine the state of the human body and the behaviour of a man. The sophists pioneered in linguistic, rhetorical, and philological studies. To enhance the power of persuasion, they investigated how various mental conditions influenced cognitive processes and physiological reactions. Thus they started a thorough examination of the human psyche, initiating the field of psychology. (shrink)

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge fromthe timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as thepotential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation?This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints becauseit has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print,the apparatus (...) of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating movement ortimeas it occurs in human-centered experience. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze on cinema,this article argues that the outside of a human sense of time is an untapped source of invention,already present yet dormant within kairos. (shrink)

Darbe analizuojama Protagoro filosofijos visuma, ypatingą dėmesį kreipiant į garsųjį homo mensura fragmentą. Pastarąjį nagrinėjant pasitelkiami svarbūs filologiniai patikslinimai, kuriais remiantis daroma išvada, jog iš homo mensura fragmento negalima išvesti etinio ar politinio reliatyvizmo: iš jo logiškai plaukia tik perceptyvinis reliatyvizmas. Taip pat parodoma, jog protagoriškąjį perceptyvinį reliatyvizmą galima suvokti tiek objektyvistiškai, tiek subjektyvistiškai. Darbe mėginama argumentuoti, jog Protagoro mąstymui didelę įtaką turėjo Hėrakleito ir Parmenido filosofijos. Nurodoma, kuriose vietose Platonas ir Aristotelis netiksliai suprato svarbiausią Protagoro ištarą, sykiu reabilituojant homo (...) mensura fragmentą nuo kaltinimų savęs paneigimu. Grindžiama mintis, jog Protagoras buvęs ne ateistas, o subjektyvus agnostikas. (shrink)

The text was originally a conference speech. In principle, it was prepared for teachers of philosophy and people interested in philosophy, therefore it has the character of an essay and only to a small extent refers to the literature of the subject. However, I am deeply convinced of the validity of the thesis that I propose in it, even if they may seem only to a small extent supported by references to the state of research. -/- Synthetical studies take a (...) special place in the research on the history of ancient philosophy. They demonstrate the existing perspective by performing a selection and arrangement of the material, presenting the periodisation, accentuating and determining what is “philosophically significant.” This article points out that despite the great progress made in detailed research that has taken place over the last few decades, the general framework of development of philosophy, derived from Hegel’s thought, has remained unchanged for two centuries. Hegel’s perspective has instilled a certain pattern that encompasses a whole series of debatable solutions. These include (1) development of a certain understanding of what “philosophy” is and thus separating it from a wide spectrum of literature, rhetoric, medicine, and religion; (2) introduction of a dubious periodisation (e.g. the distinction between the Presocratic period and Socrates’ breakthrough in the form of a departure from the philosophy of nature and return to ethical considerations; (3) adoption of philosophy of Plato and Aristotle as the apex of thought. The author highlights the need to change the approach to the history of ancient philosophy and modify the existing paradigm. He calls for paying greater attention to the intertextual element and to the fact that the assessment of originality and relevance of preserved works is falsified due to the disappearance of comparative material. The proposal to establish a new reconstructive paradigm is based on the belief that during further research on ancient philosophy it would be advisable (1) to expand the research perspective and enrich it with the fields of education, medicine, the great sphere of literature, the spheres of fine arts and music, (2) to focus more on the issue of transmission and reception of texts thanks to which it is possible to deepen and extend the reconstructed context of philosophical discussions, (3) to come to the realisation that the abstract character of description, connected with all the syntheses of the philosophical thought in antiquity lead to its oversimplification and impoverishment by presenting it out of the context and depriving of what is individual and specific for a particular thinker. (shrink)