Pascal’s wager is the name of an argument in favor of belief in God presented by Blaise Pascal in §233 of Thoughts. Ian Hacking (1972) pointed out that Pascal’s text involves three different versions of the argument. This paper proceeds from this identification, but it concerns an examination of the rhetorical strategy realized by Pascal’s argumentation. The final form of Pascal’s argument is considered as a product that could be established only through a specific process of persuasion led with respect (...) to an intended reader with a particular set of initial beliefs. The text uses insights from the pragma‐dialectical approach to argumentation, especially the concept of rhetorical effectiveness of particular choices from the topical potential. The argumentation structure of Pascal’s wager is considered to be a reflection of the anticipated course of dialogue with the reader critically testing the sustainability of Pascal’s standpoint “You should believe in God”. Based on the argumentation reconstruction of three versions of the argument, Pascal’s idea of opponent/audience is identified. A rhetorical analysis of the effects of his argumentative strategy is proposed. The analysis is based on two perspectives on Pascal’s argument: it examines the strategy implemented consistently by all arguments and the strategy of a formulation of different versions of the wager. (shrink)

Some current attempts to go beyond the narrow scope of rational choice theory (RCT) in the social sciences and the artificial reconstructions it sometimes provides focus on the arguments that people give to justify their beliefs and behaviors themselves. But the available argumentation theories are not constructed to fill this gap. This article argues that relevance theory, on the contrary, suggests interesting tracks. This provocative idea requires a rereading of Sperber and Wilson's theory. Actually, the authors do not explicitly support (...) RCT, and Sperber has even strongly criticized methodological individualism, which most of the time underlies RCT, in favor of infra-individualism. A key point of the argument presented here is to show that Sperber and Wilson do not firmly distinguish between infra-individualism and subintentionality. Only subintentionality is needed. Key Words: argumentation • rational choice • relevance theory • methodological individualism. (shrink)

Resumen A partir de la Ilustración, la ciencia y la fe ―otrora caminos comunes para alcanzar conocimiento―, se han visto divorciadas y constituidas como realidades divergentes que se oponen cada vez más. La modernidad trajo consigo la insistencia en estas ideas y el divorcio entre ciencia y fe parece no detenerse. El presente artículo propone en un dialogo con John Henry Newman reconocer el lugar propio de la ciencia positiva respecto de la fe religiosa, presentando la distinción epistemológica, o el (...) modo de comprender el conocimiento que hace de la fe un camino plausible y posible que tiene su propia estructura epistémica dirigida hacia la credibilidad de la fe religiosa.Since the Enlightenment, science and faith -once common ways to achieve knowledge- have been divorced and incorporated as divergent realities that increasingly oppose. Modernity brought with it the insistence on these ideas and the divorce of science and faith does not seem to stop. The present article proposes in a dialogue with John Henry Newman to recognize the proper place of positive science regarding religious faith, presenting the epistemological distinction, or the way of understanding the knowledge that makes of faith a plausible and possible path that has its Own epistemic structure directed towards the credibility of religious faith. (shrink)

Sometimes pernicious circularities appear in definitions of fundamental concepts of argumentation theory. For instance, in pragma-dialectical theory, the concept of a fallacy and that of a critical discussion aiming at resolving a difference of opinion mutually presuppose one another. A similar relationship obtains, in argumentation theory at large, between the concept of argumentation and that of rationality. Again, the concept of an argumentative dialogue presupposes a concept of statement. Yet, statementhood is sometimes claimed to be determined by a locution’s function (...) in dialogue. Similarly, for the concepts of proof and argument. Are these circularities really objectionable? Are they resolvable? If they are not, how can we live with them? It will be argued that some of these problems can be neglected some of the time, but not all of them all of the time. Though there may be no royal road towards resolution, several strategies can be applied. But sometimes patience is what is needed. (shrink)