Implicit connectives of algebraizable logics

An extensions by new axioms and rules of an algebraizable logic in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi is not necessarily algebraizable if it involves new connective symbols, or it may be algebraizable in an essentially different way than the original logic. However, extension whose axioms and rules define implicitly the new connectives are algebraizable, via the same equivalence formulas and defining equations of the original logic, by enriched algebras of its equivalente quasivariety semantics. For certain strongly algebraizable logics, all connectives defined implicitly by axiomatic extensions of the logic are explicitly definable.Special issue of Studia Logica: Algebraic Theory of Quasivarieties Presented by M. E. Adams, K. V. Adaricheva, W. Dziobiak, and A. V. Kravchenko     

La fonction argumentative des marques de la langue

The present paper reports a set of experimental studies concerning the comprehension of French argumentative operators and connectives. The first part is a presentation of the theoretical framework, the methodological problems and some of the most general results. Experiments were carried out in the perspective of the linguistic theory of argumentation developed by Anscombre and Ducrot. According to this theory, a number of devices in language are mainly defined by their argumentation function, i.e. by the types of discursive sequences and conclusions they involve. Three categories of such devices were examined: (1) operators like “presque” (almost), “à peine” (hardly), “au moins” (at least), etc. which give an argumentative orientation to the statement; (2) co-orientation connectives, like “même” (even), which relate two statements oriented towards the same conclusion; (3) counter-orientation connectives, like the concessive ones (“mais” (but), “quand même” (even so), etc.), which relate two statements oriented towards opposite conclusions. The data shed light on issues such as: What is the nature of the relationship between the informative and argumentative functions of different operators? Is there a hierarchical relation between the argumentative processes of “co-orientation” and “counter-orientation”? What is the role of negation in the processing of argumentative sequences? The second part of the paper focuses specifically on the study of how 8 and 10 year-old children process “counter-oriented” statements. Five concessive connectives were studied: “mais”, “pourtant”, “quand même”, “même si”, “bien que”. The test was composed of two successive completion tasks: in one task the children had to choose the relevant context of complex sentences involving concessive connectives; in the other task they had to choose their relevant conclusion. Main results show a clear evolution in the performance of children between 8 and 10, suggesting that concessive strategies are not completely mastered at the age of 8. Differences among the concessive connectives studied were brought out: the item “quand même” obtained much better results than the other items with 8-year-old subjects; statements with “mais” seemed to be better processed in the conclusion task than in the context task, especially by 10-year-old subjects. These results are compared with other data obtained in some of the numerous studies on the production and comprehension of concessive connectives in various languages, and discussed from the point of view of argumentative theory.     

Premissary relevance

Premissary relevance is a property of arguments understood as speech act complexes. It is explicable in terms of the idea of a premise's lending support to a conclusion. Premissary relevance is a function of premises belonging to a set which authoritatively warrants an inference to a conclusion. An authoritative inference warrant will have associated with it a conditional proposition which is true— that is to say, which can be justified. The study of the Aristotelian doctrine of topoi or argument schemes may contribute to the task of identifying authoritative warrants.     

Relevance and digressions in argumentative discussion: A pragmatic approach

Digressions in argumentative discussion are a kind of failure of relevance. Examination of what actual cases look like reveals several properties of argumentative relevance: (1) The informational relevance of propositions to the truth value of a conclusion should be distinguished from the pragmatic relevance of argumentative acts to the task of resolving a disagreement. (2) Pragmatic irrelevance is a collaborative phenomenon. It does not just short-circuit reasoning; it encourages a failure to take up the demands of an argumentative task. (3) Pragmatic irrelevance can occur not simply by the absence of a connection between what is said and some standpoint in dispute, but also by the presence of a connection between what is said and a competing use of the information. (4) Pragmatic relevance must be accomplished through communicative action.     

The Pragma-Dialectical Analysis and Evaluation of Teleological Argumentation in a Legal Context

In this article the author develops a framework for a pragma-dialectical reconstruction of teleological argumentation in a legal context. Ideas taken from legal theory are integrated in a pragma-dialectical model for analyzing and evaluating argumentation, thus providing a more systematic and elaborate framework for assessing the quality of teleological arguments in a legal context. Teleological argumentation in a legal context is approached as a specific form of pragmatic argumentation. The legal criteria that are relevant for the evaluation of teleological argumentation are discussed and translated in terms of critical questions that are relevant for the evaluation of the various forms of teleological argumentation.

Speech act conditions as tools for reconstructing argumentative discourse

According to the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, for analysing argumentative discourse, a normative reconstruction is required which encompasses four kinds of transformations. It is explained in this paper how speech act conditions can play a part in carrying out such a reconstruction. It is argued that integrating Searlean insights concerning speech acts with Gricean insights concerning conversational maxims can provide us with the necessary tools. For this, the standard theory of speech acts has to be amended in several respects and the conversational maxims have to be translated into speech act conditions. Making use of the rules for communication thus arrived at, and starting from the distribution of speech acts in a critical discussion as specified in the pragma-dialectical model, it is then demonstrated how indirect speech acts are to be transformed when reconstructing argumentative discourse.     

Apocalyptic relevance

In their book, Relevance, Sperber and Wilson make an important contribution towards constructing a credible theory of this unforthcoming notion. All is not clear sailing, however. If it is accepted as a condition on the adequacy of any account of relevance that it not be derivable either that nothing is relevant to anything or that everything is relevant to everything, it can be shown that Sperber and Wilson come close to violating the condition.     

The Construction of Issues: Pleading Theory and Practice, Relevance in Pragmatics, and the Confrontation Stage in the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of Argumentation

Legal theory and practice, particularly on the exchange of pleadings, are referred to as a means of examining current thinking in pragmatics on relevance. The rules of pleadings suggest that the concept of relevance as used in pragmatics is emptied of any meaning and that theories of argumentation have not sufficiently taken into account the preliminary construction which issues to be argued about require.     

A Pragma-Dialectical Approach of the Analysis and Evaluation of Pragmatic Argumentation in a Legal Context

This paper answers the question how pragmatic argumentation which occurs in a legal context, can be analyzed and evaluated adequately. First, the author surveys various ideas taken from argumentation theory and legal theory on the analysis and evaluation of pragmatic argumentation. Then, on the basis of these ideas, she develops a pragma-dialectical instrument for analyzing and evaluating pragmatic argumentation in a legal context. Finally she demonstrates how this instrument can be used by giving an exemplary analysis and evaluation of pragmatic argumentation in a decision of the Dutch Supreme Court.     

Conversation,relevance, and argumentation

This paper deals with the explanation the maxim of relevance provides for the way utterances in argumentative discourse follow each other in an orderly and coherent fashion. Several senses are distinguished in which utterances can be considered relevant. It is argued that an utterance can be considered relevant as an interactional act, as an illocutionary act, as a propositional act, and as an elocutionary act. These four kinds of relevance manifest the rational organization of discourse, which is aimed at bringing about mutual alignment between the participants, enabling them jointly to work out certain interactional outcomes that are acceptable to both of them.     

Audiences,relevance, and cognitive environments

This paper discusses the fundamental sense in which the components of an argument should be relevant to the intended audience. In particular, the evidence advanced should be relevant to the facts and assumptions that are manifest in the cognitive environment of the audience. A version of Sperber and Wilson's concept of the cognitive environment is applied to argumentative concerns, and from this certain features of audience-relevance are explored: that the relevance of a premise can vary with the audience; that irrelevant premises can be made relevant; that evidence can be relevant by degrees; and that this notion of relevance will assist the argumentation analyst in the identification and assessment of hidden premises.     

Educational Background,Modes of Discourse and Argumentation: Comparing Women and Men

This paper analyses the way in which discourse and argumentation may vary depending on participants educational level and gender. Men and women from three different educational levels (literacy, advanced level and university students) participated in discussion groups that debated about women and work, the sharing of housework and the way in which girls and boys are educated. The results showed important differences depending on participants educational level and gender. In general, the main differences were related to educational level, while gender tended to interact with educational level, as a moderating factor.     

Argument Structure and Disciplinary Perspective

Many in the informal logic tradition distinguish convergent from linked argument structure. The pragma-dialectical tradition distinguishes multiple from co-ordinatively compound argumentation. Although these two distinctions may appear to coincide, constituting only a terminological difference, we argue that they are distinct, indeed expressing different disciplinary perspectives on argumentation. From a logical point of view, where the primary evaluative issue concerns sufficient strength of support, the unit of analysis is the individual argument, the particular premises put forward to support a given conclusion. Structure is internal to this unit. From a dialectical point of view, where the focus concerns how well a critical discussion comes to a reasoned conclusion of some disputed question, the argumentation need not constitute a single unit of argument. The unit of dialectical analysis will be the entire argumentation made up of these several arguments. The multiple/co-ordinatively compound distinction is dialectical, while the linked/convergent distinction is logical. Keeping these two pairs of distinctions separate allows us to see certain attempts to characterize convergent versus linked arguments as rather characterizing multiple versus co-ordinatively compound arguments, in particular attempts of Thomas, Nolt, and Yanal, and to resolve straightforwardly conflicts, tensions, or anomalies in their accounts. Walton's preferred Suspension/Insufficient Proof test to identify linked argument structure correctly identifies co-ordinatively compound structure. His objection to using the concept of relevance to explicate the distinction between linked and convergent structure within co-ordinatively compound argumentation can be met through explicating relevance in terms of inference licenses. His counterexample to the Suspension/No Support test for identifying linked structure which this approach supports can itself be straightforwardly dealt with when the test is explicated through inference licenses.     

The Space of Argumentation: Urban Design, Civic Discourse, and the Dream of the Good City

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then propose a set of settlement issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the good city be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse.     

Fill the Gap! Combining Pragmatic and Prosodic Information to Make Gapping Easy

Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today. Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called ‘nongapping’ reading, where John greeted Ben, and the highly unpreferred ‘gapping’ reading, where Ben greeted Paul. In the first experiment, participants listened to dialogues and gave a speeded response as to which reading of an ambiguous target sentence first comes to mind. In the second experiment, they also responded to a visual probe that was presented during the presentation of the ambiguous target. The results show that context and prosody have independent and strong effects on both on-line processing and off-line interpretation of gapping; in the right combination they can make gapping as easy as the normally preferred nongapping reading.     

Rhetoric and Dialectic from the Standpoint of Normative Pragmatics

Normative pragmatics can bridge the differences between dialectical and rhetorical theories in a way that saves the central insights of both. Normative pragmatics calls attention to how the manifest strategic design of a message produces interpretive effects and interactional consequences. Argumentative analysis of messages should begin with the manifest persuasive rationale they communicate. But not all persuasive inducements should be treated as arguments. Arguments express with a special pragmatic force propositions where those propositions stand in particular inferential relations to one another. Normative pragmatics provides a framework within which varieties of propositional inference and pragmatic force may be kept straight. Normative pragmatics conceptualizes argumentative effectiveness in a way that integrates notions of rhetorical strategy and rhetorical situation with dialectical norms and procedures for reasonable deliberation. Strategic effectiveness should be seen in terms of maximizing the chances that claims and arguments will be reasonably evaluated, whether or not they are accepted. Procedural rationality should be seen in terms of adjustment to the demands of concrete circumstances. Two types of adjustment are illustrated: rhetorical strategies for framing the conditions for dialectical deliberation and rhetorical strategies for making do with limitations to dialectical deliberation.     

Independent effects of relevance and arousal on deductive reasoning

Emotional content can have either a deleterious or a beneficial impact on logicality. Using standard deductive-reasoning tasks, we tested the hypothesis that the interplay of two factors – personal relevance and arousal – determines the nature of the effect of emotional content on logicality. Arousal was assessed using measures of skin conductance. Personal relevance was manipulated by asking participants to reason about semantic contents linked to an emotional event that they had experienced or not. Findings showed that (1) personal relevance exerts a positive effect on logicality while arousal exerts a negative effect, and that (2) these effects are independent of each other.     

The pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation: Speech act,argumentation and pragmatic inference

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation within pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphonic theory), the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation, lowering and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of the relevance of negative utterance is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on the so-called invited inference) is proposed and tested for the main uses of negation discussed in the paper.Translated from French by Anne Reboul and Lyne DaSylva.