Elena Lisanyuk

In 2018, three journalists accused one of the Members of the Russian Parliament of harassment at workplace. Many influential persons of the Russian elite engaged themselves in the public discussion of the conflict. We studied that high-profiled discussion using a hybrid method merging human- and logic-oriented approaches in argumentation studies. The method develops ideas of the new dialectics, the argumentation logic and the logical-cognitive approach to argumentation, on which is based the algorithm for determining of dispute resolution by aggregating formal and informal tools of analysis. We have reconstructed the discussion as two disputes about questions A and B. A: Did the MP violate the code of conduct by making statements or actions against the journalists? B: Are actions like the behavior of the MP harassment? The opinions of the discussion participants were grouped into the four points of view: A1 – the MP did not violate the code of conduct, A2 – the MP violated the code of conduct, B3 – the actions are not harassment, B4 – the actions are harassment. We mapped arguments in support or against each of them using OVA software, evaluated the arguments with the help of the critical questions, a tool proposed in the new dialectics, and determined the ultimate A + B resolution by applying of the algorithm that combines elements of gradual and labelling semantics from the argumentation logic and the classification of disputes from the dialectical approaches. The resolution was a subset of four arguments that ensured the victory of A1+B4. However, the substantial incompatibility of those arguments highlighted a deep disagreement, an unresolvable difference of opinion, between the parties about the permissibility of courtship. The deep disagreement, a bonus result yielded by the application of the hybrid method, excluded the interpretation of the determined resolution as convincing for the parties, but pointed out a way to smooth the difference of opinions by elaborating of legal, social and moral aspects of the problem of harassment at workplace.

Introduction. In the article we defend a claim that criticisms and counterarguments play a more important role in modeling and evaluating arguments than defending and supporting the thesis. The novelty of this idea lies in that it shifts the main focus of the study of argumentation from the support and proof, with which it is traditionally associated, to criticism and refutation. Compared to the support and proof, criticism and refutation play more important role in the context of soft skills and communication in the practical activities, including obtaining and verifying information. The relevance of our study is dictated by the fact that argumentation is essential in both of the areas of activities, the importance of which is increasing at the present stage.Methodology and sources. We identify three ways to understanding criticism with respect to three approaches to understanding of arguments, – inferential, dialogical and abstract. The inferential view relies on verification and aims to justify a conclusion by deriving it from premises. The dialogical view sees in it the grounds offered by its author to its addressee. The author aims at achieving the latter's consent to its conclusion, and the acceptability of the arguments is verified by both justifying their conclusions and rejecting objections to them. The dialogical view relies on the principles of verification and falsification. The abstract view abstracts from the internal structure of arguments and evaluates their acceptability through the falsification, conveying the rejection of arguments in defense of the opposite conclusion.Results and discussion. The inferential view presupposes one-step criticism based on its analysis and final assessment, the dialogical one presupposes a multi-step revision of the assessment, and the abstract view implies arguments’ ability to reject counterarguments and demonstrates its role in defending the set of arguments to which it belongs protecting many arguments from criticism to which it belongs.Conclusion. In the dialogical and abstract approaches, objections and criticisms of arguments play a more important role in justifying and defending arguments than the defense and support defined by them, which play a leading role in the inferential approach to arguments.

Introduction. This article focuses on the specifics of the arguments from ignorance and arguments from silence. The relevance of the work is due to the growing interest of the scientific community in modeling of defeasible (presumptive) reasoning and verification of their validity.Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on the dialectical approach of D. Walton, who proposed a corpus of argumentation schemes for presumptive arguments and a methodology for testing their validity using critical questions. To test the validity of arguments from ignorance and silence, we propose the concept of epistemic burden, the proper fulfillment of which is a necessary condition for the validity of these arguments.Results and discussion. The result of the research is the development of corpuses of critical questions for two schemes of argumentation: the argument for ignorance and the argument from silence, which include questions to check the fulfillment of the epistemic burden by the proponent or information source. The methodology for verifying arguments using the proposed critical questions is analyzed using examples.Conclusion. The difference between the two types of reasoning is that in the argument from ignorance, the epistemic burden is placed on the discussion participants (panelists), and in the argument from silence it is placed on the source of the information.

We suggest a solution to the problem of peer disagreement based on the concept of divergence in opinions, imported from the theory of argumentation. We treat the problem of peer disagreement as a mental experiment, a duel between different concepts of truth, and show that there is no winner in it, whenever there is a deep disagreement between epistemic peers. Our approach amounts to two proposals, one formulates how to handle the truth and the other takes care of creating an agreement over it. We suggest that instead of employing a definite concept of truth taken as criterion for dispute resolution from outside of it, the agents construct the concept of truth as a joint design project from the inside of their dispute and create an agreement towards it with the help of a procedure based on the of divergence in opinions. The concept of divergence of opinions opens a perspective of analyzing complex conflicts such as the deep disagreements by treating them as molecular disputes consisting of atomic simple ones. It supports discriminating between solvable and unsolvable disputes and paves a way for the disputants to construe a truth concept in their complex dispute by choosing in which of the atomic disputes to participate for the sake of their molecular dispute resolution. We also demonstrate how the conceptions discussed in the issues of the peer disagreement such as conciliatory and steadfast ways, justificatory balance and equal weight view get shape in our approach based on the concept of divergence in opinions.

In this paper we discuss L. Petrażycki’s idea of norm as a normative relation and show its repercussions in two perspectives connected to each other, in the legal theory in the framework of which it was originally introduced and where its role was straightforward, and in logic where it played a shadowy role of a fresh idea which in his expectation would have been the core of the novel logical theories capable of modelling reasoning in law and morals. We pay attention to the scholarly environment in which Petrażycki has proposed those ideas and to the unlucky fate of his academic legacy which is now being rediscovered.

The famous dispute between Protagoras and Euathlus concerning Protagoras’s tuition fee reportedly owed to him by Euathlus is solved on the basis of practical argumentation concerning actions. The dispute is widely viewed as a kind of a logical paradox, and I show that such treating arises due to the double confusion in the dispute narrative. The linguistic expressions used to refer to Protagoras’s, Euathlus’s and the jurors’ actions are confused with these actions themselves. The other confusion is the collision between the pairs of incompatible actions ambiguously expressed by two different pairs of sentences, one of which is a propositionally consistent pair whereas the other is an inconsistent one. The actional paradox solution aims to clear up these confusions by means of two core borderlines, propositional and expressive, drawn between the actions and the propositions. The propositional distinction says that actions are empirical facts and they lack truth values unlike propositions, which are mental entities and are often employed for referring to the actions. This distinction helps to avoid the confusion between the empirical incompatibility of actions and the truth-functional inconsistency of propositions. The expressive distinction claims that although the same linguistic sentences can be used to refer both to actions and propositions, two empirically incompatible actions can be expressed both by a pair of inconsistent propositions as well as by a pair of consistent ones. Therefore, the action of Protagoras’s being paid may be linguistically symbolized in four different ways: Protagoras gets paid due to the verdict, Protagoras gets paid due to the contract that amount to Protagoras does not get paid by the contract and Protagoras does not get paid by the verdict respectively, and likewise for Euathlus’s actions. The two distinctions are used for classifying the two groups of paradox solutions, legal and logical, proposed so far depending on which of the two confusions they purport to escape from. The actional reconstruction of the paradox suggests that there is only one single agent in the dispute, Protagoras, while the other named Euathlus is a ‘phantom,’ which most probably was invented by Protagoras himself for the sake of creating this challenging sophism.

The ancient art of healing and practical argumentation are closely linked, and this link points to three substantial issues: that physicians enjoy certain social status, that medicine is recognized as a special area of knowledge and that the art of healing is a profession. We use the analogy between the medicine and the judiciary for demonstrating these issues. The analogy involves two groups of norms governing the activities of judges – the norms of competence and the norms of conduct which we interpret as the actional and the practical aspects of the ancient art of healing. The actional aspect is similar to the norms of competence of a judge and sets the goal for the art of healing – restoring patient’s health, and defines a physician as a person who is publicly allowed to pursue this goal in his professional activities. The practical aspect is reminiscent of the judges’ norms of conduct and it outlines the terms and techniques which lead to achieving this goal by those who are considered physicians, according to the norms of competence. In order to become a real tekhne, it is necessary and sufficient for the art of healing to secure its actional and practical aspects in the body of theoretical knowledge, on the one hand, and in the appropriate professional code, on the other. Practical argumentation serves as the tools of this implementation, for it allows to combine the norms and actions in a set of strategies of conduct, aimed at restoring patient’s health, of which the physisian is now free to chose the one that appear to be the most effective.

In the paper contemporary approaches to argumentation are compared with a number of ways of understanding sophistic including ancient, medieval and contemporary ‘faces’ of the latter. It is argued that the current stage is characterized by a negative evaluative understanding of sophistic which is taken mostly as sophistry. In the paper, I also show how these different approaches to sophistic such as illegitimate argumentation, particular illegitimate arguments and scholastic method of formulating and solving tasks grow out of its ancient and medieval historical forms, found in Aristotle, Plato, the Sophists and the Medieval thinkers. To illustrate this distinction I use a medieval sophism combined with a famous ancient anecdote. The distinction between three contemporary approaches which is set forward in the paper is based on semantic, procedural, pragmatic, communicative and speech-oriented criteria, and develops logical and cognitive approaches to argumentation.

Responsibility has entered the academic discourse of logicians hardly more than few decades ago. I suggest a logical concept of responsibility which employs ideas both from a number of theories belonging to different branches of logic as well from other academic areas. As a comment to this concept, I suggest five steps narrative scenario in order to show how the logical dimension of responsibility emerges from diverse tendencies in logic and other sciences. Here are the five steps briefly stated: Step 1. Developing modal formalisms capable of evaluative analysis of situations (deontic, epistemic and etc.). Step 2. Drawing a conceptual borderline between normal and non-normal (weak) logical systems. Step 3. Using different kinds of models. Step 4. Agent- and action- friendly turn in logic. Step 5. Creating formalisms for modeling different types of agency. An idea advocated here within 5-Steps route to responsibility is that this concept is a complex causal and evaluative (axiological) relation. A logical account may be given for causal and normative aspects of this relation. Unfolding the responsibility back and forth through 5 Steps will result in different concepts. The technicalities are minimized for the sake of keeping the philosophical scope of the paper. For the same reason I also refrain from discussing legal and juridical ramifications of the issue.

In this paper, I propose a logical-cognitive approach to argumentation and advocate an idea that argumentation presupposes that intelligent agents engaged in it are cognitively diverse. My approach to argumentation allows drawing distinctions between justification, conviction and persuasion as its different kinds. In justification agents seek to verify weak or strong coherency of an agent’s position in a dialogue. In conviction they argue to modify their partner’s position by means of demonstrating weak or strong cogency of their positions before a ‘rational judge’. My approach to argumentation employs a ‘light’ version of Dung’s abstract argumentative frameworks. It is based on Stich’s idea of agents’ cognitive diversity the epistemic aspect of which is argued to be close to Pavilionis’s conception of meaning continuum. To illustrate my contributions I use an example based on the Kitchen Debate (1959) between Khrushchev and Nixon

In 1926, Ernst Mally, an Austrian logician, has introduced a system of deontic logic in which he has proposed three fundamental distinctions which proved to be important in the context of the further development of the logic of norms. It is argued that in his philosophical considerations Mally has introduced a number of important distinctions concerning the very concept of norm, but by getting them confused in introducing the subsequent formalisms he failed to formally preserve them. In some of his philosophically made distinctions Mally apparently foresaw contemporary trends in logic of norms. To some extent this particular feature of Mally’s system open wide opportunities to reconstruct –– with the corresponding renovations — his illformed Deontik into many nowadays known systems of logic of norms and thus provides a fertile ground for this kind of research.