OSSA Day One: Gordon and Walton

"Modeling Critical Questions as Additional Premises"

Gordon and Walton's paper had two objectives.  First, to show how the scheme model for argument forms provide a means to explain how critical questions function in argumentative dialogue.  Second, to show how the Carneades system of argument representation can make these critical exchanges explicit.  Arguments from authority were the test case. The critical questions for authority arguments are along the lines of whether the authority is motivated to lie, whether the authority's pronouncements are consistent with other authorities, whether the authority is reliable in this case, and so on.  The questions and answers add premises to the arguments.

A few questions about the paper were:

Q1: Is the dialogical model overplayed here, instead of adding premises, don't questions elicit the expression of suppressed premises?

Q2: How widely used is the Carneades system, and is it a representation of audience-acceptance or is it a representation of argument-assessment?

Q3: What are the consequences for legal reasoning for Carneades' use?