•  7
    When the Dog Bites the Subaltern
    with Trujillo Jr
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2): 173-191. 2024.
    Many fans of Diogenes of Sinope laud his parrhesia, free speech used for critique. However, Diogenes abused not only the powerful but also the socially marginalized. We argue that interpreters of Diogenes cannot explain away the undeniably troublesome things that Diogenes said about those at the margins. But we also argue that Diogenes ought nonetheless to be preserved. Some of his chreiai can be reminders of how to be courageous and fight for the downtrodden, and others can serve as reminders o…Read more
  • Infinitism (3rd ed.)
    In Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & Kurt Sylvan (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley-blackwell,. forthcoming.
  •  8
    The Ambitious and the Modest Meta-Argumentation Theses
    with John Casey
    Res Philosophica 101 (1): 163-170. 2024.
    Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instanc…Read more
  •  11
    Knock Knock: Meta-Argumentative Humor, Who? in advance
    with John Casey
    Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines. forthcoming.
    In this essay, we give a theoretical overview of how humor can play a meta-argumentative role, particularly in making clear the norms and stakes of arguments. This, we think, has salutary consequences for teaching critical thinking and argument evaluation—humor is a useful tool for making those things clear. However, there are troubling features of humor’s functions that problematize its use in teaching settings. These are what we call the cruelty, audience, accessibility, and gender gap problem…Read more
  •  9
    Skepticism is regularly a target for the _apraxia_ challenge, namely, that skepticism robs us of the cognitive means for life (or at least the life well-lived). Skeptics have replied to the _apraxia_ challenge in various manners, and anti-skeptics have then answered with objections to these skeptical replies. St. Augustine’s crossroads case in _Contra Academicos_ is one such second-stage pragmatic anti-skepticism, one targeting Academic probabilism in particular. This dialectical assessment chal…Read more
  •  141
    For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they…Read more
  •  8
    Pragmatic Infallibilism, Skeptical Perseverance, and Bar Room Knowledge
    Southwest Philosophy Review 39 (2): 61-63. 2023.
  •  4
  •  3
    The Regress Argument for Skepticism
    In Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.
  •  4
    Free Speech
    with John Casey
    In Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018.
    This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: free speech fallacy (FS). The FS consists in thinking one's political right to freedom of expression includes protection from criticism. Those who commit this fallacy allege that critical scrutiny is either tantamount to censorship or equivalent to the imposition of one's views on others. The error in the fallacy is that the freedom of expression includes critical expressions. The trouble with the argument is that freedom…Read more
  •  2
    Straw Man
    with John Casey
    In Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018.
    This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called “Straw Man”. How one can straw man someone's view or argument happens in many ways. The chapter focuses on three ways. The first is the representational straw man fallacy. The second form of the straw man fallacy is that of the selectional straw man, or better the weak man. The third is what we will call the hollow man. The straw manning requires a form of misrepresentation of the overall intellectual situation in a…Read more
  •  82
    John Dewey's Quest for Unity By Richard Gale
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (2): 242. 2012.
  •  95
    Argumentative Ethics
    In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. 2022.
    Entry in International Encyclopedia of Ethics on Ethical considerations bearing on Argumentation.
  •  11
    Fallacies of Meta-argumentation
    with John Casey
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 55 (4): 360-385. 2022.
    This article argues that the theoretical concept of meta-argumentative fallacy is useful. The authors argue for this along two lines. The first is that with the concept, the authors may clarify the concept of meta-argumentation. That is, by theorizing where meta-argument goes wrong, the authors may capture the norms of this level of argumentation. The second is that the concept of meta-argumentative fallacies provides an explanatory model for a variety of errors in argument otherwise difficult t…Read more
  •  20
    On Halting Meta-argument with Para-Argument
    with John Casey
    Argumentation 37 (3): 323-340. 2023.
    Recourse to meta-argument is an important feature of successful argument exchanges; it is where norms are made explicit or clarified, corrections are offered, and inferences are evaluated, among much else. Sadly, it is often an avenue for abuse, as the very virtues of meta-argument are turned against it. The question as to how to manage such abuses is a vexing one. Erik Krabbe proposed that one be levied a fine in cases of inappropriate meta-argumentative bids (2003). In a recent publication (20…Read more
  •  31
    Free Speech Fallacies as Meta-Argumentative Errors
    with John Casey
    Argumentation 37 (2): 295-305. 2023.
    Free speech fallacies are errors of meta-argument. One commits a free speech fallacy when one argues that since there are apparent restrictions on one’s rights of free expression, procedural rules of critical exchange have been broken, and consequently, one’s preferred view is dialectically better off than it may otherwise seem. Free speech fallacies are meta-argumentative, since they occur at the level of assessing the dialectical situation in terms of norms of argument and in terms of meta-evi…Read more
  • Pragmatism and epistemology
    In Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2018.
  •  15
    The Routledge Companion to Pragmatism (edited book)
    Routledge. 2022.
    The Routledge Companion to Pragmatism offers 44 cutting-edge chapters--written specifically for this volume by an international team of distinguished researchers--that assess the past, present, and future of pragmatism. Going beyond the exposition of canonical texts and figures, the collection presents pragmatism as a living philosophical idiom that continues to devise promising theses in contemporary debates. The chapters are organized into four major parts: Pragmatism's History and Figures Pra…Read more
  •  10
    The Stoic Sage Does not Err: An Error?
    Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (1): 69-82. 2022.
    The Stoics held that the wise person does not err. This thesis was widely criticized in the ancient world and runs afoul of contemporary fallibilist views in epistemology. Was this view itself an error? On one line, the view can be modified to accommodate many of the critical lines against it. Some of these lines of modification are consistent with traditional Stoic value theory. However, others require larger modifications to Stoic axiology. A version of the no errors thesis emerges as defensib…Read more
  •  131
    Introduction
    Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (1): 7-10. 2022.
  •  8
    The Stoic Sage Does not Err: An Error?
    Symposion. Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences. forthcoming.
    Scott Aikin ABSTRACT: The Stoics held that the wise person does not err. This thesis was widely criticized in the ancient world and runs afoul of contemporary fallibilist views in epistemology. Was this view itself an error? On one line, the view can be modified to accommodate many of the critical lines against it. Some …
  •  29
    Epicureans on Death and Lucretius’ Squandering Argument
    Southwest Philosophy Review 38 (1): 41-49. 2022.
    Lucretius follows his symmetry argument that one should not fear death with a dialectical strategy, the squandering argument. The dialectical presumption behind the squandering argument is that its audience is not an Epicurean, so squanders their life. The question is whether the squandering argument works on lives that by Epicurean standards are not squandered.
  •  12
    On Diogenes and Olympic Victors
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Diogenes’s exchange with Cicermos the Olympic pankratist is unusual in that it is both a dialectical exchange and is successful in changing Cicermos’s mind. Most Cynic rhetoric is physical or gestural and more often alienates than convinces. The puzzling difference is explained by the rhetorical choices Diogenes makes with his uniquely receptive audience.
  •  13
    Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement in an Age of Unreason presents an accessible and engaging introduction to the theory of argument, with special emphasis on the way argument works in public political debate. The authors develop a view according to which proper argument is necessary for one's individual cognitive health; this insight is then expanded to the collective health of one's society. Proper argumentation, then, is seen to play a central role in a well-functioning democracy…Read more
  •  44
    Argumentation and the problem of agreement
    with John Casey
    Synthese 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
  •  66
    Reply to Joshua Anderson
    The Pluralist 10 (3): 335-343. 2015.
    We are pleased to find that our 2005 paper “Why Pragmatists Cannot Be Pluralists” continues to draw critical attention. It seems to us that despite the many responses to our paper, its central challenge has not been met. That challenge is for pragmatists to articulate a genuine pluralism that is consistent with their broader commitments. Unfortunately, much of the wrangling over our paper has aimed to capture the word “pluralism” for pragmatist deployment; little has been done to clarify what th…Read more
  •  39
    Straw Man Arguments
    with John Casey
    Bloomsbury. 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