Which properties are characteristic of the enthymeme in Aristotle's Rhetoric? There is no consensus on this point. The present discussion centres on three properties. 1. Is there always an implicit premise? (Answer: Above all, a pragmatic level and a logical level must be distinguished.) 2. Do the premises consist by definition of probabilities and signs? (Answer: No.). 3. Are all enthymemes reducible to a syllogistic form? (Answer: The literature pertaining to this question is dominated by a false dilemma: an enthymeme (...) does not have either a topical or a syllogistic structure). In general, Aristotle's approach to the enthymeme in the Rhetoric appears to shift from argumentation theory to logic. (shrink)

When we use a word, we face a crucial epistemic gap: we ground our move on the fact that our interlocutor knows the meaning of the word we used, and therefore he can interpret our dialogical intention. However, how is it possible to know the other’s mind? Hamblin explained this dialogical problem advancing the idea of dialectical meaning: on his view, the use of a word is based on a set of presumptions. Building on this approach, the use of a (...) word in a dialogue can be analyzed in terms of presumptive reasoning, while the manipulative strategies based on slanted or loaded terms or redefinitions can be conceived as forms of conflicts of presumptions. A presumptive approach to meaning can also ground different dialectical strategies to solve misunderstanding or definitional disagreements, or tactics to undermine the interlocutor’s arguments by advancing charges of equivocation. (shrink)

This paper shows how reasoning from best explanation combines with linguistic and factual presumptions during the process of retrieving a speaker’s intention. It is shown how differences between presumptions need to be used to pick the best explanation of a pragmatic manifestation of a dialogical intention. It is shown why we cannot simply jump to an interpretative conclusion based on what we presume to be the most common purpose of a speech act, and why, in cases of indirect speech acts, (...) we need to depend on an abductive process of interpretation. (shrink)

For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary.

Exponents and critics of semantic presupposition have almost invariably based their discussion on the ('Standard') definition of presupposition implied by Frege and Strawson. In this study Noel Burton-Roberts argues convincingly against this definition, that leads it to a three-valued semantics. He presents a very simple semantic definition which is weaker, more general and leads to a semantics more easily interpreted as two-valued with gaps. The author shows that a wide range of intuitive facts that eluded the Standard definition follow directly (...) from this ('Revised') definition itself: facts about the presuppositions of compound sentences and modal sentences, about presuppositional conflict and about differences in the logical status of simple sentences suffering from presupposition failure. The book includes a detailed argument that an ambiguity of natural language negation, generally assumed to be necessary to the defence of semantic presupposition, is neither possible nor necessary in a presuppositional semantics. Noel Burton-Roberts has made an authoritative contribution to a debate which has involved philosophers and linguists for many years. His command of the issues, his clarity of exposition and his theoretical insight may well serve to change the boundaries of that debate. (shrink)

In his paper “What is a Context of Utterance?”, Christopher Gauker argues that the phenomenon of informative presuppositions is incompatible with the “pragmatic” view of presuppositions as involving requirements on the common ground, the body of shared assumptions of the participants in a conversation. This is a surprising claim since most proponents of this view have in fact dealt with informative presuppositions by appealing to a process called presupposition accommodation. Gauker’s attack shows the need to clarify the nature of this (...) process. (shrink)

This paper evaluates four competing psychological explanations for why the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial reached the verdict they did: explanatory coherence, Bayesian probability theory, wishful thinking, and emotional coherence. It describes computational models that provide detailed simulations of juror reasoning for explanatory coherence, Bayesian networks, and emotional coherence, and argues that the latter account provides the most plausible explanation of the jury's decision.

tational background of dialectic: the structure of formal disputation. Formal disputation Perhaps the clearest, and surely historically the most prominent, ...

This paper presents a formal account of how to determine the discourse relations between propositions introduced in a text, and the relations between the events they describe. The distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax are explained in terms of defeasible rules. These characterise the effects of causal knowledge and knowledge of language use on interpretation. Patterns of defeasible entailment that are supported by the logic in which the theory is expressed are shown to underly temporal interpretation.

This paper revisits some foundational questions concerning the abstract representation of a discourse context. The context of a conversation is represented by a body of information that is presumed to be shared by the participants in the conversation – the information that the speaker presupposes a point at which a speech act is interpreted. This notion is designed to represent both the information on which context-dependent speech acts depend, and the situation that speech acts are designed to affect, and so (...) to be a representation of context that is appropriate for explaining the interaction of context and the contents expressed in them. After reviewing the motivating ideas and the outlines of the apparatus, the paper responds to a criticism of the framework, and considers the way it can help to clarify some phenomena concerning pronouns with indefinite antecedents. (shrink)

In this book, first published in 1975, Dr Kempson argues that previous work on presupposition - whether in philosophy or linguistics - has been mistakenly based on a conflation of two different disciplines: semantics, the study of the meanings assigned to the formal system which constitutes a language, and pragmatics, the study of the use of that system in communication. The first part of the book deals generally with the nature of semantics in linguistic theory and its formal representation within (...) a transformational grammar; Dr Kempson argues against incorporating the relation of presupposition within such a grammar. The second part provides a pragmatic account of the foundations of a theory of communication and its detailed application to the problems raised by presupposition. The book is intended for those studying both philosophy and linguistics and also for those sociolinguists and psychologists with a more general interest in the theory of communication. (shrink)

This paper joins the voices warning against hasty transference of legal concepts of presumption to other kinds of argumentation, especially to deliberation about future acts and policies. Comparison of the pragmatics which respectively constitute the illocutionary acts of accusing and proposing reveals important differences in the ways presumptions prompt accusers and proposers to undertake probative responsibilities and, also, points to corresponding differences in their probative duties. This comparison has theoretically important implication regarding the norms governing persuasive argumentation. The paper is (...) based on a broadly Gricean account of speech acts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.2 (2001) 93-112 [Access article in PDF] Enthymemes, Common Knowledge, and Plausible Inference Douglas Walton The study of enthymemes has always been regarded as important in logic, critical thinking, and rhetoric, but too often it is the formal or mechanistic aspect of it that has been in the forefront. This investigation will show that there is a kind of plausibilistic script-based reasoning, of a kind that (...) has mainly been studied in artificial intelligence, that should have a much more important role to play in the study of enthymemes. But then curiously, as will also be shown, this plausibilistic type of reasoning was familiar in the ancient world, to the Sophists, as well as to leading philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. By linking this ancient notion of plausibility to the modern notion used in computer science, this investigation reveals an important basis for the enthymeme that has a type of logical structure in its own right, but also has an informal aspect.An enthymeme, in current usage, is an argument that has one or more premises, or possibly a conclusion, not explicitly stated in the text, but that needs to have these propositions explicitly stated to extract the complete argument from the text. Sometimes enthymemes are described as arguments with "missing premises." That vocabulary is awkward, however, because the nonexplicit statement that needs to be added can be a conclusion, at least in a minority of cases. To make the exposition below smoother, the term nonexplicit assumption will be used to cover either the case of a nonexplicit premise or that of a nonexplicit conclusion. The problem with enthymemes is that if the nonexplicit assumptions in an argument are supposed to be propositions used by the arguer (as opposed to just the propositions needed to make the argument structurally correct, according to some standard), reasonable people can have differences of opinion on what the nonexplicit assumptions are supposed to be. The problem is that filling in the missing parts of enthymemes depends on interpreting the natural language [End Page 93] in which the argument was put forward to try to determine what the speaker meant to say.The solution to the problem comes through the recognition that enthymemes rest not only on formal (structural) criteria, but also on informal criteria. One of the most important of these informal criteria is something often called "common knowledge" (Govier 1992; Freeman 1995). But as shown below in a set of selected case studies of enthymemes, "common knowledge" is not really a kind of knowledge at all. It is really plausibility, or eikos, something well known in the ancient world and often misleadingly translated as "probability." Curiously, Aristotle's original doctrine of the enthymeme was based on this notion of plausibility. This historical fact has often been a source of puzzlement and confusion, and sometimes it has even been taken to indicate a defect or contradiction in Aristotle's treatment of the enthymeme. However, the goal of this investigation is not primarily historical. It is to work out one of the most important required steps toward a solution to the problem of enthymemes. But to do this, it is necessary to come back to the ancient notion of plausible inference. 1. The problem with enthymemes Once you have any formal theory of inference, like syllogistic, for example, you will be confronted by cases of arguments in everyday discourse that meet all the requirements for a structurally correct inference except that some part or parts, usually a premise or a conclusion, is missing. By "missing" is meant that the proposition in question has not been explicitly stated in the text of discourse, even though it may be clear enough that the speaker (writer) was relying on it, or including it, as part of the argument. The classic example is the following inference: All men are mortal; therefore, Socrates is mortal. To evaluate such an argument, surely some account of the "hidden" or "missing" assumption needs to be taken. The problem with enthymemes (Burke 1985; Gough and Tindale 1985; Hitchcock 1985) is that, if given carte... (shrink)

This investigation uses the technique of the profile of dialogue as a tool for the evaluation of arguments from ignorance (also called lack-of-evidence arguments, negative evidence, ad ignorantiam arguments and ex silentio arguments). Such arguments have traditionally been classified as fallacies by the logic textbooks, but recent research has shown that in many cases they can be used reasonably. A profile of dialogue is a connected sequence of moves and countermoves in a conversational exchange of a type that is goal-directed (...) and can be represented in a normative model of dialogue. Selected case studies are used to probe special features of using the profile technique as applied to arguments from ignorance of a kind that occur frequently in everyday conversational exchanges. One of these special features is the use of Gricean implicature. Another is the need to use negative profiles of argument. (shrink)

Presumption is a remarkably versatile and pervasively useful resource. Firmly grounded in the law of evidence from its origins in classical antiquity, it made its way in the days of medieval scholasticism into the theory and practice of disputation and debate. Subsequently, it extended its reach to play an increasingly significant role in the philosophical theory of knowledge. It has thus come to represent a region where lawyers, debaters, and philosophers can all find some common around. In Presumption and the (...) Practices of Tentative Cognition, Nicholas Rescher endeavors to show that the process of presumption plays a role of virtually indispensable utility in matters of rational inquiry and communication. The origins of presumption may lie in law, but its importance is reinforced by its service to the theory of information management and philosophy. (shrink)