According to the extended knowledge account of assertion, we should only assert and act on what we know. Call this the ‘Knowledge Norm’. Because moral and prudential rules prohibit morally and prudentially unacceptable actions and assertions, they can, familiarly, override the Knowledge Norm. This, however, raises the question of whether other epistemic norms, too, can override the Knowledge Norm. The present chapter offers an affirmative answer to this question and then argues that the Knowledge Norm is derived from a more (...) fundamental norm that demands that we do not hinder intellectual flourishing. As the fundamental epistemic norm can come into conflict with the Knowledge Norm, it is sometimes permissible to assert and act on what we don’t know. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this insight for the extended knowledge account of assertion. (shrink)

Virtue theories have become influential in ethics and epistemology. This paper argues for a similar approach to argumentation. Several potential obstacles to virtue theories in general, and to this new application in particular, are considered and rejected. A first attempt is made at a survey of argumentational virtues, and finally it is argued that the dialectical nature of argumentation makes it particularly suited for virtue theoretic analysis.

In this paper I respond to a set of basic objections often raised against those virtue theories in ethics which maintain that moral properties such rightness and goodness (and their corresponding concepts) are to be explained and understood in terms of the virtues or the virtuous. The objections all rest on a strongly-held intuition that the virtues (and the virtuous) simply must be derivative in some way from either right actions or good states of affairs. My goal is to articulate (...) several distinct, though related, objections grounded in this intuition, and to argue that virtue ethicists have ample resources to respond to these worries. The explanatory primacy of the virtuous over the right or the good emerges as a distinct and viable position. (shrink)

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

Virtue theories have lately enjoyed a modest vogue in the study of argumentation, echoing the success of more far-reaching programmes in ethics and epistemology. Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) comprise several conceptually distinct projects, including the provision of normative foundations for argument evaluation and a renewed focus on the character of good arguers. Perhaps the boldest of these is the pursuit of the fully satisfying argument, the argument that contributes to human flourishing. This project has an independently developed epistemic analogue: (...) eudaimonistic virtue epistemology. Both projects stress the importance of widening the range of cognitive goals beyond, respectively, cogency and knowledge; both projects emphasize social factors, the right sort of community being indispensable for the cultivation of the intellectual virtues necessary to each project. This paper proposes a unification of the two projects by arguing that the intellectual good life sought by eudaimonistic virtue epistemologists is best realized through the articulation of an account of argumentation that contributes to human flourishing. (shrink)

The traditional view of evidence in mathematics is that evidence is just proof and proof is just derivation. There are good reasons for thinking that this view should be rejected: it misrepresents both historical and current mathematical practice. Nonetheless, evidence, proof, and derivation are closely intertwined. This paper seeks to tease these concepts apart. It emphasizes the role of argumentation as a context shared by evidence, proofs, and derivations. The utility of argumentation theory, in general, and argumentation schemes, in particular, (...) as a methodology for the study of mathematical practice is thereby demonstrated. Argumentation schemes represent an almost untapped resource for mathematics education. Notably, they provide a consistent treatment of rigorous and non-rigorous argumentation, thereby working to exhibit the continuity of reasoning in mathematics with reasoning in other areas. Moreover, since argumentation schemes are a comparatively mature methodology, there is a substantial body of existing work to draw upon, including some increasingly sophisticated software tools. Such tools have significant potential for the analysis and evaluation of mathematical argumentation. The first four sections of the paper address the relationships of evidence to proof, proof to derivation, argument to proof, and argument to evidence, respectively. The final section directly addresses some of the educational implications of an argumentation scheme account of mathematical reasoning. (shrink)

The paper argues that much of the difficulty with making progress on the issue of the normativity of logic for thought, as discussed in the literature, stems from a misapprehension of what logic is normative for. The claim is that, rather than mono-agent mental processes, logic in fact comprises norms for quite specific situations of multi-agent dialogical interactions, in particular special forms of debates. This reconceptualization is inspired by historical developments in logic and mathematics, in particular the pervasiveness of such (...) dialogical conceptions in the early days of logic in ancient Greece. The multi-agent, dialogical perspective then allows for the formulation of compelling 'bridge principles’ between the relation of logical consequence and dialogical normative principles, something that is notoriously difficult to achieve in a mono-agent setting pertaining exclusively to thought and belief. The upshot is also that the truth-preserving rules of logic generally do not have a primary normative bearing on mono-agent mental processes, and in this sense the paper sides with Harman's critique of the idea that logic has a normative import for thought and belief. (shrink)

This comprehensive account of the concept and practices of deduction is the first to bring together perspectives from philosophy, history, psychology and cognitive science, and mathematical practice. Catarina Dutilh Novaes draws on all of these perspectives to argue for an overarching conceptualization of deduction as a dialogical practice: deduction has dialogical roots, and these dialogical roots are still largely present both in theories and in practices of deduction. Dutilh Novaes' account also highlights the deeply human and in fact social nature (...) of deduction, as embedded in actual human practices; as such, it presents a highly innovative account of deduction. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from advanced students to senior scholars, and from philosophers to mathematicians and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

This paper argues against the priority of pure, virtue-based accounts of argumentative norms [VA]. Such accounts are agent-based and committed to the priority thesis: good arguments and arguing well are explained in terms of some prior notion of the virtuous arguer arguing virtuously. Two problems with the priority thesis are identified. First, the definitional problem: virtuous arguers arguing virtuously are neither sufficient nor necessary for good arguments. Second, the priority problem: the goodness of arguments is not explained virtuistically. Instead, being (...) excellences, virtues are instrumental in relation to other, non-aretaic goods—in this case, reason and rationality. Virtues neither constitute reasons nor explain their goodness. Two options remain for VA: either provide some account of reason and rationality in virtuistic terms, or accept them as given but non-aretaic goods. The latter option, though more viable, demands the concession that VA cannot provide the core norms of argumentation theory. (shrink)

There is a broad debate in contemporary philosophy of logic on the informativeness of proofs. In this context, informative proofs are demonstrations whose premises do not include the content of the conclusion. D’Agostino and Floridi (Synthese 167(2):271–315, 2009) claimed that proofs are informative if they use _virtual information_. In their terminology, this is the data carried by _dischargeable hypotheses_, assumptions entertained during proof and eliminated before concluding. Although these authors capture several cases of informative demonstrations, they do not explain the (...) nature of virtual information. Why does the use of dischargeable hypotheses increase the informativeness of a demonstration? Following a Kantian inspiration, D’Agostino and Floridi claim that virtual information adds a synthetic feature to our proofs. However, this appeal to Kantianism is misleading: for Kant, mathematics is synthetic because it requires the construction of concepts in pure intuition. On the other hand, the entertainment of provisional hypotheses does not seem to involve the construction of figures in (transcendental) imagination. Exploring a _dialogical_ characterization of logic, I suggest that virtual information results from the dynamics between a reasoner and her audience. When a reasoner provisionally assumes _P_, she enacts potential interlocutors who commit to _P_. Thus, “virtual information” denotes the content of some assumptions of the possible audience of a demonstration. This process of departing from one’s original premises to embrace the suppositions of other people is informative, but it is not synthetic: in this way, the reasoner does not entertain intuitions but only needs to reason through the conceptual content of other people’s premises. (shrink)

Virtuous arguers are expected to manifest virtues such as intellectual humility and open-mindedness, but from such traits the quality of arguments does not immediately follow. However, it also seems implausible that a virtuous arguer can systematically put forward bad arguments. How could virtue argumentation theory combine both insights? The solution, I argue, lies in an analogy with virtue epistemology: considering both responsibilist and reliabilist virtues gives us a fuller picture of the virtuous arguer.

In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument.

A virtue account is focused on the character of those who argue. It is frequently assumed, however, that virtues are not action guiding, since they describe how to be and so fail to give us specific actions to take in a sticky situation. In terms of argumentation, we might say that being a charitable arguer is virtuous, but knowing so provides no details about how to argue successfully. To close this gap, I develop a parallel with the thick-thin distinction from (...) ethics and use Hursthouse’s notion of “v-rules”. I also draw heavily from the work in argumentation by Daniel Cohen to develop Wayne Brockriede’s notion of arguing lovingly. But “argue lovingly” has a delicious ambiguity. For Brockriede it describes how we engage with others arguers. It can also mean, however, a loving attachment to knowledge, understanding, and truth. Applying the thick-thin distinction to argumentation in general and loving argumentation in particular shows that a virtue theoretic approach to argumentation is valuable for two reasons: it can provide one articulation of what it means to be a virtuous arguer and provide some insights into how to become one. (shrink)