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3On the Ethics of Real-Life Examples of ArgumentInformal Logic 44 (3): 323-338. 2024.Argumentation theorists know that their work has real-life application, and similarly, they draw inspiration for that work from real-life experiences. Sometimes, it comes from some public medium – the newspaper, a blog, a debate stage. But we also draw from more private reason-exchanges – a conversation with a neighbor, small-talk with a colleague, or a lovers’ spat. A few worries about publicly theorizing about those more private cases arise. We may be making public something that was unguarded…Read more
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8Pragma-dialectics and the problem of agreementTopoi 1-10. forthcoming.Pragma-Dialectics (PD) is an approach to argumentation that can be described as disagreement-centric. On PD, disagreement is the condition which defines argument, it is the practical problem to be solved by it, and disagreement’s management is the ultimate source of argument’s normativity. On PD, arguing in the context of agreement is taken to be “incorrect” and arguments where agreement already reigns are “pointless.” Even the PD account of fallacies is disagreement-centered: a fallacy is somet…Read more
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338Epictetus's Encheiridion: A new translation and guide to Stoic ethicsBloomsbury Publishing. 2023.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
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26What 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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22When the Dog Bites the SubalternEpoché: 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
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1Infinitism (3rd ed.)In Kurt Sylvan, Ernest Sosa, Jonathan Dancy & Matthias Steup (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, Wiley Blackwell. forthcoming.
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26The Ambitious and the Modest Meta-Argumentation ThesesRes 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
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27Knock Knock: Meta-Argumentative Humor, Who?Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 33 (2): 143-154. 2024.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
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22The academic at the crossroads: a dialectical assessment of Augustinian pragmatic anti-skepticismSynthese 202 (6): 1-16. 2023.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
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13Pragmatic Infallibilism, Skeptical Perseverance, and Bar Room KnowledgeSouthwest Philosophy Review 39 (2): 61-63. 2023.
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10Living Skepticism: Essays in Epistemology and Beyond, edited by Stephen Hetherington and David MacarthurInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-3. forthcoming.
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23Cicero’s Academici Libri and Lucullus: A Commentary with Introduction and Translations. By Tobias ReinhardtAncient Philosophy 43 (2): 570-574. 2023.
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10The Regress Argument for SkepticismIn Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.
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11Free SpeechIn Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018-05-09.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
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15Straw ManIn Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018-05-09.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
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23John Dewey's Quest for Unity By Richard GaleTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (2): 242. 2012.
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471Introduction: Epistemology’s Ancient Origins and New DevelopmentsLogos and Episteme 10 (1): 7-13. 2019.
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237Argumentative EthicsIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Wiley. 2021.Entry in International Encyclopedia of Ethics on Ethical considerations bearing on Argumentation.
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26Fallacies of Meta-argumentationPhilosophy 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
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38On Halting Meta-argument with Para-ArgumentArgumentation 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
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51Free Speech Fallacies as Meta-Argumentative ErrorsArgumentation 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
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Pragmatism and epistemologyIn Markos Valaris & Stephen Hetherington (eds.), Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2018.
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27Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology: Arcesilaus and the Destruction of Stoic Metaphysics. By Charles E. SnyderAncient Philosophy 42 (2): 585-588. 2022.
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21The 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
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16The 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
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235IntroductionSymposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (1): 7-10. 2022.
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17The 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 …
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |
Informal Logic |