A question that recurs in critical thinking textbooks and in discussions of informal logic is whether there can be a visual argument — that is, whether one can give an argument only with images. Here's one way to think about visual arguments: they work like enthymemes, so the visual image has a preferred propositional interpretation and there is a suppressed second premise and conclusion.  So the pictures of hands getting crushed between gears on the side of the machine making donuts at Krispy Kreme works like a first premise, and the second premise (that you don't want that to happen to your hands) and conclusion (you shouldn't put your hands in the machine) are suppressed, but nevertheless communicated.  There are other ways to interpret warning signs that are silly, such as:

There's a preferred way to interpet that image and the reasons it gives you and then there's a silly way.   But that's a contentious way of interpreting it. 

Regardless, while at the OSSA conference, John and I were enjoying a hotdog, and we noticed something.  I took a picture.  It's below.  A question to the NS readership: is this picture a tu quoque argument?  Is it fallacious?

Frank Zenker, Lund University

M. Rescorla defends dialectical egalitarianism – reasoned discourse lacks a foundational structure – but he saves the foundationalist notion that some beliefs are basic.  How can that happen?

On this view, one may select the reasons forwarded in support of a claim according to their being accepted by particular communities.

Trouble is: epistemic risks of doing so.  You can have an argument that gets agreement,  but has no connection to truth.  Moreover, how do you know when you're in the right context?  And why are these commitments justified in this context, and not those? (They'd have to smuggle some epistemic justification in the back door!)

Q1: Isn't there a rhetorical strategy open here?  "P… and who would be the kind of bore to question this?"

Q2: Aren't the two objections inconsistent?  If the epistemic smuggling argument is right, then there's no risk of falsity.

Q3: Don't dialectical models also avail themselves of epistemic backing — e.g., Brandom's using reliablist accounts for many regress-enders?

Q4: Much of the discourse in MLK and Lincoln's arguments are not composed of premises that are mutually acceptable.  They were just out to get things right.  And when they do use mutually acceptable arguments, they are clearly being strategic.

Q5: Procedural rules for argument are for reasonable agreement.  Pragma-dialectics foregoes truth as an objective.  They won't recognize your objections as relevant.

Lots of folks have held that 'argument' is ambiguous between process and product.  Process=Speech Act.  Product=abstract object.

Surely the term 'argument' can be used to refer to speech acts. E.g., "The argument was inerrupted by the fire alarm." And it can be an abstract object. E.g., "They keep giving the same argument"

Cases of ambiguity, but not troublesome:

Test 1.  Equivocation

Arthur washed the car.  John lubricated the car.

Here the first is about the outside, the second is about the engine.

John went to the bank. 

To the bank with money or the bank on the side of a river?

Test 2:  Amphiboly. Can be truly denied and truly affirmed about a fact.

S hit a man with a stick.

A&B had an interesting argument.

Test 3: zeugma test – semantic oddness

The newspaper fell off the desk and fired the editor.  (Newspaper the paper object and the organization) — odd!  So ambiguous

Lunch was delicious but took forever (the eating and the food) — but not odd.  Not ambiguous.

His argument was valid but so loud it hurt my ears.  (Abstract object and speech act)  not odd, so not ambiguous.

Test 4: No clear literal meaning

The argument was difficult.  (the speech act … to read it, understand it? or the abstract object … to follow it?)

SO: 'argument' is not ambiguous.  It refers to an abstract objects.

What kind of abstract object?

Answer 1: Platonism about abstract objects, like numbers, the Pythagorean theorem, etc.  It exists independently of human minds, non-spatiotemporal objects.

2 problems. Prob 1: If arguments are independent of human minds, we don't construct them, but discover them.  That's weird.  Prob 2: How do we access them?  They can't cause us to believe things about them….

Answer 2: Minimal Platonism.  Realism about abstract objects.  Do abstract objects have to be atemporal?  Chess and English have histories, and they seem abstract objects.  Arguments are like that.  They have histories, developments, etc.

E.g., Anselm's Ontological argument.  It has a history, a beginning, but can be given again and again.  Identity conditions for arguments, though, need some refinements.

A and B are the same argument when:

1. A and B have same propositions

2. The liative relations in A are the same as those in B,

and 3. the ilative relations in A are on the same propositions as are in B.

Arguments become temporal objects when one's intention are to infer the conc from the premises.

Q1: What do you mean 'argument' is not ambiguous?  It certainly admits of activity-object ambiguity.  E.g., "He was right to resort to argument rather than intimidation."  OR "The argument was difficult to understand" (because his accent was so thick, or because the argument was esoteric?)

Q2: The case against ambiguity depends on failing these four tests.  But passing the test is sufficient for ambiguity, but failing it isn't sufficient for univocality.  Moreover, it seems the "His argument was valid but loud" counts in favor more of the activity,not product, interpretation.

Q3: This is a very demanding notion of ambiguity — polysemy.  Ambiguity is a wider notion, b/c some word tokenings are unclear about what types they are.  That's the issue with the process/product ambiguity.

Q4: What's a temporal abstract object?  They have ilative intentions?  Why not propositions and their support?  (Answer: arguments are products of intentions; tautologies are valid conclusions)

Q5: What's the trouble with thinking that we discover arguments?  We discover mathematical principles!  (Anselm himself thought his OA was a discovery)

Q6: Arguments are like objects in Popper's third world.  That's a model for the story of abstract objects.

Q7: This isn't even weak platonism.  You need an independent arrangement of those objects for platonism — participation is the role, and as a consequence arguments are really just temporal events now!

Q8: Hey, what's an abstract object?

Trudy Govier, University of Lethbridge

Arguments are often with sequential reasons, each not individually sufficient for the conclusion.  They often include counter-considerations.  These are balance of consideration arguments. 

The conclusion is supposed to be supported in an inductive form. The commitment is supposed to be that the supporting considerations outweigh the counter-considerations.  Counter-considerations are part of an arguer's case, but objections are not.  Often overtly considering the counter-considerations signals that the reasoner is not rigid or dogmatic.

Pro-con argumentaton is usually dialectical, the model is often a stand in for adversarial argumentation.

Some pragmatics of how counter-considerations are introduced and aknowledged:

"Even though" introduces a less emphasized clause.  E.g., He is a good teacher even though he has a speech impediment.  The first one gets the emphasis. Others: "although" "despite"

"But" introduces a more emphasized clause.  E.g., She is a good teacher but she has a speech impediment.  The second one gets the emphasis. Others: "However" "Nevertheless"

Model 1 (from Hansen):

P1, P2, P3…Pn.(with addition of on-balance-premise OBP)

K even though CC1, CC2. . . CCn

The trouble is that the OBP is effectively the model used as a premise
 

Model 3 (Hansen, breaking the stages)

P1, P2,….

Even though CC1, CC2, …. CCn, K

K

Figure 4 (From Govier's Practical Study of Argument)

P1      P2    P3   P4        CC1    CC2

supports (line)                does not support (squiggle line)

                          K

Figure 5 (with shunting form)

INSERT

Figure 6 (Govier's 2011 model)

INSERT

Q1: Do we need to revise our notion of arguments constituting the collection of two sets of claims – premises and conclusions?  Including counter-considerations seems to be a third set.  Perhaps one set can be put forward as the supporting set, but individual members of the set may themselves not be supporting the conclusion.

Q2: Do on-balance arguments need to use a suppressed on-balance premise?  Ceteris paribus arguments work like this.

Q3: How does one weigh these reasons?

Q4: Don't we often give reasons for why we don't get the counter-considerations to move us?

David Hitchcock, McMaster University

The organizing question: What does it mean for something to follow?

Tarski's answer- materially adequate notion of logical consequence has one condition such that X follows from some class K when it cannot be the case that all those in K are true and X false.

But what if the truth-preservation is trivial?  E.g.1, X being a necessary truth. E.g. 2, K being a contradiction.

Moreover what about arguments with non-formal support?

Another notion: truth-transmission.  The argument needs to have a form so that it satisfies Tarski's requirement, but also has it so that the premises can be false and the conclusion could be false.

But what about this case? Napoleon ruled France, Napoleon was exiled on Elba. Therefore, Napoleon was short.  The trouble is that it has counter-factual counter-examples (where N gets replaced by Jaques Chirac, who's tall).

Some others: Lincoln became US president in 1861, so he was at least 35 yrs old in 1861.

and

Lincoln became president in 1861, so he was a man in 1861.

There's a lawlike connection between the first, but not the second.

Ok, so we need to stipulate that there needs to be a lawlike/nomic relation there.  No contingent relation.  We need to revise the schematic articulation counterfactually (which may be indexed to whatever modality is appropriate to the argument — so it's legal possibility with the Lincoln case…)

In these cases, the issue is whether in Lincoln cases, we add the (suppressed) premises to K and test them, too, counterfactually.

But: Hitchcock argues that people don't actually argue that way.  People restrict the variables to some relevant domains. Acceptance is the issue, usually, not truth.  Conclusions aren't always declarative sentences, but other speech acts — so not always T or F.  Finally, people often reason according to rebuttable non-monotonic forms of inference.

The more effective account: an acceptable counter-factual supporting covering the generalization rules within the modally acceptable fields, if the premises are acceptable and the conclusion is acceptable, even though there can be cases where this is not definitive support.

What about gap-filling strategies?  We should supply the coordinate material conditional (again, remember the Lincoln cases).  The question is whether those conditionals are acceptable.  And so in these cases, we have a troubling case where we can't use the conclusion to show that the conditional is true, but it seems that when the conclusion is in question and the first premise is true, we aren't justified in believing the material conditional.  Presumably, this would only be provided by a background generalization, one that is pragmatically justified under the circumstances.

Another example:  AL: what time did we get back to the condo?  Betty: about 9:40.  AL: so it must be just about after 10, now.  (on any vacation day of this context where we arrive at our condo and take our time doing stuff, then it must be a little more than 20 min later….)

Q1: What about this?  Obama lives in the white house, so he lives in Washington DC.  But what about the counterfactual: If Vladimir Putin lived in the White House, he'd have moved it to Moscow?

Q2: Don't the counterfactual considerations make this too messy?  We'd do better to determine it as a feature of pragmatics.