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4What about Whataboutism?Social Epistemology. forthcoming.In some recent literature, ‘whataboutism’ is analysed as a sometimes-reasonable argument or claim about inconsistency on an issue of dispute, akin to the ad hominem tu quoque. We argue that this doesn’t capture the peculiarly meta-argumentative failure (or success) of ‘what-about’ appeals. Whataboutist moves are appeals to evidence about whether one has assessed the total evidence or has made the right contrasting consideration and so need not be failures of consistency on the first order. Conse…Read more
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34Asking before Arguing? Consent in ArgumentationEthical Theory and Moral Practice 1-14. forthcoming.Arguments involve, at minimum, attempts at presenting something that an audience will take to be a reason. Reasons, once understood, affect an addressee’s beliefs in ways that are in some significant sense outside of their direct voluntary control. Since such changes may impact the well-being, life projects, or sense of self of the addressee, they risk infringing upon their autonomy. We call this the “autonomy worry” of argumentation. In light of this worry, this paper asks whether one ought to …Read more
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65Argumentation and the problem of agreementSynthese 200 (2): 1-23. 2022.A broad assumption in argumentation theory is that argumentation primarily regards resolving, confronting, or managing disagreement. This assumption is so fundamental that even when there does not appear to be any real disagreement, the disagreement is suggested to be present at some other level. Some have questioned this assumption (most prominently, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and Doury), but most are reluctant to give up on the key idea that persuasion, the core of argumentation theory, ca…Read more
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138Straw Men, Weak Men, and Hollow MenArgumentation 25 (1): 87-105. 2011.Three forms of the straw man fallacy are posed: the straw, weak, and hollow man. Additionally, there can be non-fallacious cases of any of these species of straw man arguments
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51The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition's arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition's arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies.
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61Straw Men, Iron Men, and Argumentative VirtueTopoi 35 (2): 431-440. 2016.The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition’s arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition’s arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies. The difference between appropriate and inappropriate iron manning clarifies the limits of the …Read more
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47Straw Man ArgumentsBloomsbury. 2022.This book analyses the straw man fallacy and its deployment in philosophical reasoning. While commonly invoked in both academic dialogue and public discourse, it has not until now received the attention it deserves as a rhetorical device. Scott Aikin and John Casey propose that straw manning essentially consists in expressing distorted representations of one's critical interlocutor. To this end, the straw man comprises three dialectical forms, and not only the one that is usually suggested: the…Read more
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52You Would Sing Another TuneInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 27 (1): 39-46. 2012.A special version of arguments from hypocrisy, those known as tu quoque arguments, is introduced and developed. These are arguments from what one’s opponent would do, were conditions different, so they are what we call subjunctive tu quoque arguments. Arguments of this form are regularly taken to be fallacious, but the authors discuss conditions for determining when hypothetical inconsistency is genuinely relevant to criticizing a speaker’s assertion or proposed action and when it is not relevan…Read more
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47Adversariality and ArgumentationInformal Logic 40 (1): 77-108. 2020.The concept of adversariality, like that of argument, admits of significant variation. As a consequence, I argue, the question of adversarial argument has not been well understood. After defining adversariality, I argue that if we take argument to be about beliefs, rather than commitments, then two considerations show that adversariality is an essential part of it. First, beliefs are not under our direct voluntary control. Second, beliefs are costly both for the psychological states they provoke…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
History of Western Philosophy |