-
56Psychological and neuroscientific data suggest that a great deal, perhaps even most, of our reasoning turns out to be rationalizing. The reasons we give for our positions are seldom either the real reasons or the effective causes of why we have those positions. We are not as rational as we like to think. A second, no less disheartening observation is that while we may be very effective when it comes to giving reasons, we are not that good at getting reasons. We are not as reasons-responsive as w…Read more
-
18Schoolhouses, Jailhouses and the House of Being: The Tragedy of Philosophy’s MetaphorsMetaphilosophy 29 (1‐2): 6-19. 1998.As a rule, there is nothing in the words themselves to mark off metaphors from literal language. If a boundary could somehow be drawn, it would be in constant need of re‐adjustment as metaphors become entrenched, idiomatic, and finally literal, and literal phrases are put to figurative or hyperbolic, and then metaphorical uses. Further, there is no algorithmic recovery of the intended meaning of a metaphor from the meanings of its components, no function that takes literal meanings as its argume…Read more
-
159Argument is War... And War is Hell: Philosophy, Education, and Metaphors for ArgumentationInformal Logic 17 (2): 177-188. 1995.The claim that argumentation has no proper role in either philosophy or education, and especially not in philosophical education, flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and traditional pedagogy. There is, however, something to be said for it because it is really only provocative against a certain philosophical backdrop. Our understanding of the concept "argument" is both reflected by and molded by the specific metaphor that argument-is-war, something with winners and losers, offensive and…Read more
-
50Paul Boghossian - Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and ConstructivismInformal Logic 27 (2): 229-232. 2007.Paul Boghossian’s recent book, Fear of Knowledge offers an extended argument against some forms of contemporary anti-realism and, by implication, an argument for realism. The intended audience is philosophers with metaphysical and epistemological interests, argumentation theorists might be most engaged by it because while the book is flawed as an argument, it makes a positive contribution when read as a discourse about argument. The main flaw is the uncharitable readings of Kuhn, Rorty, and Lat…Read more
-
57Virtue Epistemology and Argumentation TheoryIn David Hitchcock (ed.), Dissensus and the search for common ground, Ossa. 2007.Virtue epistemology was modeled on virtue ethics theories to transfer their ethical insights to epistemology. VE has had great success: broadening our perspective, providing new answers to traditional questions, and raising exciting new questions. I offer a new argument for VE based on the concept of cognitive achievements, a broader notion than purely epistemic achievements. The argument is then extended to cognitive transformations, especially the cognitive transformations brought about by arg…Read more
-
21Review: Richard Routley, Val Plumwood, Robert K. Meyer, Ross T. Brady, Relevant Logics and their Rivals. Part I. The Basic Philosophical and Semantical Theory (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 54 (1): 293-296. 1989.
-
118The Virtuous Troll: Argumentative Virtues in the Age of (Technologically Enhanced) Argumentative PluralismPhilosophy and Technology 30 (2): 179-189. 2017.Technology has made argumentation rampant. We can argue whenever we want. With social media venues for every interest, we can also argue about whatever we want. To some extent, we can select our opponents and audiences to argue with whomever we want. And we can argue however we want, whether in carefully reasoned, article-length expositions, real-time exchanges, or 140-character polemics. The concepts of arguing, arguing well, and even being an arguer have evolved with this new multiplicity and …Read more
-
44Conditionals, quantification, and strong mathematical inductionJournal of Philosophical Logic 20 (3). 1991.
-
20A Reply to Steven M Cahn on DivestitureAnalysis 48 (2): 109-110. 1988.Steven m cahn, In the june 1987 issue of "analysis", Asks how a principled divesture of stocks is possible. Selling stock requires a buyer, So no net reduction of objectionable economic behavior results. Is divestiture merely self-Righteous cleansing of one's own hands? not necessarily. It is argued that divesture as a means to influence corporate behavior, And not just as a means to a clean portfolio, Can be justified
-
57Virtue, In ContextInformal Logic 33 (4): 471-485. 2013.Virtue argumentation theory provides the best framework for accommodating the notion of an argument that is “fully satisfying” in a robust and integrated sense. The process of explicating the notion of fully satisfying arguments requires expanding the concept of arguers to include all of an argument’s participants, including judges, juries, and interested spectators. And that, in turn, requires expanding the concept of an argument itself to include its entire context.
-
28Sincerity, Santa Claus Arguments and Dissensus in CoalitionsIn Juho Ritola (ed.), Argument Cultures: Proceedings of the 9yj Internaional Conferrence of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, Ossa. pp. 1-8. 2009.It is a virtue of virtue theory approaches to argumentation that they integrate many of the different factors that make arguments good arguments. The insights of virtue argumentation are brought to bear on a variety of versions of the requirement that good arguments must have good premises, concluding that a sincerity condition serves better than truth or assertability conditions, despite apparently counterintuitive consequences for arguments involving heterogeneous coalitions.
-
54Nonsensical representation and senseless interpretation: Wittgenstein on nonsense judgmentsPhilosophia 22 (3-4): 407-424. 1993.
Waterville, Maine, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy, Misc |