A critic may attack an arguer personally by pointing out that the arguer’s position is pragmatically inconsistent: the arguer does not practice what he preaches. A number of authors hold that such attacks can be part of a good argumentative discussion. However, there is a difficulty in accepting this kind of contribution as potentially legitimate, for the reason that there is nothing wrong for a protagonist to have an inconsistent position, in the sense of committing himself to mutually inconsistent propositions. (...) If so, any such charge seems to be irrelevant. The questions to be answered in this essay are: what, if any, is the dialectical rationale for this type of criticism, and in what situations, if any, is this kind of charge dialectically legitimate? It will be shown that these attacks can be dialectically legitimate, in special circumstances, and that they can be seen as strategic␣manoeuvres where a party attempts to reconcile his dialectical and his rhetorical objectives. (shrink)

Many of us read Peter Singer ’ s work on our obligations to those in desperate need with our students. Famously, Singer argues that we have a moral obligation to give a significant portion of our assets to famine relief. If my own experience is not atypical, it is quite common for students, upon grasping the implications of Singer ’ s argument, to ask whether Singer gives to famine relief. In response it might be tempting to remind students of the (...) ad hominem fallacy of attacking the person advancing an argument rather than the argument itself. In this paper I argue that the “ ad hominem reply ” to students ’ request for information about Singer is misguided. First I show that biographical facts about the person advancing an argument can constitute indirect evidence for the soundness / unsoundness of the argument. Second, I argue that such facts are relevant because they may reveal that one can discard the argument without thereby incurring moral responsibility for failing to act on its conclusion even if the argument is sound. (shrink)

In Roman rhetoric, contrarium was variably considered either a figure of speech or an argument. The paper examines the logical pattern of this type of argument, which according to Cicero is based on a third Stoic indemonstrable syllogism: $$ \neg ({\hbox{p}} \wedge {\hbox{q}});<$> <$>{\hbox{p}} \to \neg {\hbox{q}}{\hbox{.}} $$ The persuasiveness of this type of argument, however, vitally depends on the validity of the alleged ‹incompatibility’ forming its major premiss. Yet this appears to be the argument’s weak point, as the ‹incompatibilities’ (...) employed generally hold for the most part only, and are reducible to topical argument schemes. This is why in practical usage such arguments are most often phrased as rhetorical questions, the persuasive force of which, enhanced by certain strategical maneuverings and fallacies, makes the audience swallow the argument. (shrink)

During the last forty or so years it has become popular to offer explanations of logical notions in terms of games. There is no doubt that many people find games helpful for understanding various logical phenomena. But we ask whether anything is really 'explained' by these accounts, and we analyse Paul Lorenzen's dialogue foundations for constructive logic as an example. The conclusion is that the value of games lies in their ability to provide helpful metaphors and representations, rather than in (...) any true conceptual analysis. In fact some of the standard explanations of logical notions in terms of competitive games simply don't work. /// [Erik C. W. Krabbe] In an attempt to redeem the Lorenzen-type dialogues from their detractors, it is perhaps best first to provide a survey of the various benefits these dialogues have been supposed to yield. This will be done in Section I. It will not be possible, within the confines of this paper, to scrutinize them all, but in Section II we shall delve deeper into the capacity of this type of dialogue to yield a model for the immanent criticism of philosophical positions. Section III will extend the concept of a dialogue in such a way as to conform better with our intuitive conceptions of what a rational discussion of a position should contain. This will be followed up by a concept of 'winning a dialogue' that takes position midway between the old conception of 'winning one play' and that of the full-fledged presentation of a winning strategy . Concepts of 'rational discussion' are thus shown to be, plausibly, more fundamental than those of proof. In Section IV, I shall discuss the specific problems about dialogical foundations put forward by Wilfrid Hodges. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the current thesis on the modern origin of the ad hominem-argument, by analysing the Aristotelian conception of it. In view of the recent accounts which consider it a relative argument, i.e., acceptable only by the particular respondent, I maintain that there are two Aristotelian versions of the ad hominem, that have identifiable characteristics, and both correspond to the standard variants distinguished in the contemporary treatments of the famous informal fallacy: the abusive and the circumstancial or (...) tu quoque types. I propose to reconstruct the two Aristotelian versions (see sections 1 and 2), which have been recognized again in the ninteenth century (sec. 3). Finally, I examine whether or not it was considered as a fallacious dialogue device by Aristotle and by A. Schopenhauer (sec. 4). (shrink)

The dialectical approach to teaching critical thinking is centred on a comparative evaluation of contending arguments, so that generally the strength of an argument for a position can only be assessed in the context of this dialectic. The identification of fallacies, though important, plays only a preliminary role in the evaluation to individual arguments. Our approach to fallacy identification and analysis sees fallacies as argument patterns whose persuasive power is disproportionate to their probative value.

In this paper we describe the impact that Walton’s conception of argumentation schemes had on AI and Law research. We will discuss developments in argumentation in AI and Law before Walton’s schemes became known in that community, and the issues that were current in that work. We will then show how Walton’s schemes provided a means of addressing all of those issues, and so supplied a unifying perspective from which to view argumentation in AI and Law.

Several authors have recently begun to apply virtue theory to argumentation. Critics of this programme have suggested that no such theory can avoid committing an ad hominem fallacy. This criticism is shown to trade unsuccessfully on an ambiguity in the definition of ad hominem. The ambiguity is resolved and a virtue-theoretic account of ad hominem reasoning is defended.

The quality of our public discourse – think of the climate change debate for instance – is never very high. A day spent observing it reveals a litany of misrepresentation and error, argumentative fallacy, and a general lack of good will. In this paper I focus on a microcosmic aspect of these practices: the use of two types of argument – the argumentum ad hominem and appeal to authority – and a way in which they are related. Public debate is (...) so contaminated by the misuse of the ad hominem tactic that it is important to have an understanding of one of the ways in which its use may be legitimate. So readers who might have expected an analysis of the ad hominem fallacy will, on the contrary, be presented with an account of one of the places for its potential success. In ad hominem, arguers are viewed as legitimate constitutive targets for their own argument; in authority arguments, arguers provide a legitimate constitutive warrant for an argument they deploy. These types of argument are connected in so far as the identities of persons deploying them carry the cognitive weight of the argument. If authority arguments sometimes deserve to succeed, ad hominem attacks on them are potentially legitimate. An important motivation for this analysis is that in identifying the success conditions for one of the ad hominem types we attain some clarity in the evaluation of their use. (shrink)

In order for confrontational strategic manoeuvring, aimed at defining in a reasonable way the difference of opinion to one’s own advantage, to be sound, arguers’ attempt to arrive at a particular definition must not prevent other definitions from coming about. This paper discusses the ad hominem fallacy as an obstruction of the procedure of critical testing as a result of failure to meet this particular soundness conditions.