This volume collects thirty years worth of articles on the emotions written by the distinguished philosopher Robert Solomon. Solomon's thesis is that we are significantly responsible for our emotions, which are evaluative judgments that in effect we choose. This is the first of several volumes that document work in the emotions.

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners. The book teaches by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed. Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton shows how arguments can be reasonable under the right dialogue conditions by (...) using critical questions to evaluate them. The book teaches by example, both in the text itself and in exercises, but it is based on methods that have been developed through the author's thirty years of research in argumentation studies. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

Charles Stevenson introduced the term 'persuasive definition’ to describe a suspect form of moral argument 'which gives a new conceptual meaning to a familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning’. However, as Stevenson acknowledges, such a move can be employed legitimately. If persuasive definition is to be a useful notion, we shall need a criterion for identifying specifically illegitimate usage. I criticize a recent proposed criterion from Keith Burgess-Jackson and offer an alternative.

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

The phrase ‘evaluative inference’ was used by Toulmin for ‘that form of inference by which we pass from factual reasons to an ethical conclusion’; and the phrase has been attacked by Hare in his review of Toulmin and in his book . I shall try to dig out some of the questions at issue in that discussion, but to do so without the help of this technical term, or of any other that I can avoid.

A book on the problems of ethics from the perspective of language and meaning.

Hare has written a clear, brief, and readable introduction to ethics which looks at all the fundamental problems of the subject.

Part I The Imperative Mood 'Virtue, then, is a disposition governing our choices '. ARISTOTLE, Eth. Nic. 36 Prescriptive Language. ...

Not Passion's Slave is a collection of Solomon's most significant essay-length publications on the nature of emotions over the past twenty-five years. He develops two essential themes throughout the volume: firstly, he presents a "cognitive" theory of emotions in which emotions are construed primarily as evaluative judgments; secondly, he proposes an "existentialist" perspective in which he defends the idea that we are responsible for our emotions and, in a limited sense, "choose" them. The final section presents his current philosophical position (...) on the seeming "passivity" of the passions. Ultimately, Solomon advocates the idea that we have control over, and are essentially responsible for, the emotional and existential quality of our lives. (shrink)

Introduction Since my work in medieval logic has concentrated on dialectic. I have tried to trace scholastic treatments of dialectic to discussions of it in ...

A central theme throughout the impressive series of philosophical books and articles Stephen Toulmin has published since 1948 is the way in which assertions and opinions concerning all sorts of topics, brought up in everyday life or in academic research, can be rationally justified. Is there one universal system of norms, by which all sorts of arguments in all sorts of fields must be judged, or must each sort of argument be judged according to its own norms? In The Uses (...) of Argument Toulmin sets out his views on these questions for the first time. In spite of initial criticisms from logicians and fellow philosophers, The Uses of Argument has been an enduring source of inspiration and discussion to students of argumentation from all kinds of disciplinary background for more than forty years. (shrink)

Using persuasive definitions and persuasive language generally to put a spin on an argument has often held to be suspicious, if not deceptive or even fallacious. However, if the purpose of a persuasive definition is to persuade, and if rational persuasion can be a legitimate goal, putting forward a persuasive definition can have a legitimate basis in some cases. To clarify this basis, the old subject of definitions is reconfigured into a new dialectical framework in which, it is argued, a (...) definition should be evaluated in light of its purpose as a speech act. But if persuasive definitions are so often thought to be suspect, misleading, or even fallacious, how can individual cases be judged on some objective basis? In this paper, a new dialectical method of evaluating such definitions on a case-by-case basis is proposed, showing how abusive as well as reasonable uses of persuasive language can properly be identified, analyzed and evaluated. (shrink)

If we [women] have not stopped rape, we have redefined it, we have faced it, and we have set up the structures to deal with it for ourselves.[T]he definition of rape, which has in the past always been understood to mean the use of violence or the threat of it to force sex upon an unwilling woman, is now being broadened to include a whole range of sexual relations that have never before in all of human experience been regarded as (...) rape.In 1989 the philosopher and self-described feminist Christina Sommers published a short essay — ‘an opinion piece,’ she called it — that was eventually developed into and published as a philosophical article. In this essay Sommers criticized ‘feminist philosophers’ for being ‘oddly unsympathetic to the women whom they claim to represent.’ Specifically, Sommers accused these philosophers of ignoring the ‘values of the average woman’ and of being caught up in an ‘ideological fervor.’ To emphasize her point that the so-called feminist philosophers have lost touch with ‘the average woman,’ Sommers wrote that ‘One must nevertheless expect that many women will continue to swoon at the sight of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett O'Hara up the stairs to a fate undreamt of in feminist philosophy.’. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between applied ethics and ethical theory, Ethical Argumentation draws on recent research in argumentation theory to develop a more realistic model of how ethical justification actually works.