The small improvement argument

It is commonly assumed that moral deliberation requires that the alternatives available in a choice situation are evaluatively comparable. This comparability assumption is threatened by claims of incomparability, which is often established by means of the small improvement argument (SIA). In this paper I argue that SIA does not establish incomparability in a stricter sense. The reason is that it fails to distinguish incomparability from a kind of evaluative indeterminacy which may arise due to the vagueness of the evaluative comparatives ‘better than,’ ‘worse than,’ and ‘equally as good as.’     

What Sort of Ethics Does Technology Require?

This essay critically examines thenon-essentialist and anti-deterministicphilosophy of technology developed in the workof Andrew Feenberg. As I interpret the work,Feenberg achieves an important``demystification' of technology. His analysispeels away the facade of ironclad efficiency,rationality, and necessity that permeates ourexperience of technology. Through theoreticalargument and rich examples, he illuminated thecontingent interests, values, meanings, andvoices that are built into specifictechnologies, often by experts. He shows howtechnology is transformed by lay actors whochallenge its design on behalf of a wideragenda of interests, values, meanings andvoices. My critique focuses on Feenberg'sattempt to argue from his demystification oftechnology to the full democratization of alltechnical design and decision-making. I arguethat Feenberg's framework lacks the ethicalresources required both to (1) justify thedemocratization of technical decisions, andmore basically, (2) to determine when laychallenges to technology do and when theydon't, advance democratic ideals, and why. Itrace these problems to ethical inadequacies inhis notions of interests, democratization, andan alternative modernity. A sub-theme of myargument is that our society's Lockeanmorality of property rights and market freedomsposes fundamental ethical objections to hisphilosophy of technology with which it isill-equipped to deal.     

State-of-the-Art: The Structure of Argumentation

In this paper, a survey is presented of the main approaches to the structure of argumentation. The paper starts with a historical overview of the distinctions between various types of argument structure. Next, the main definitions given in the various approaches are discussed as well as the methods that are proposed to deal with doubtful cases.     

Resisting Explanation

Although explanation is widely regarded as an important concept in the study of rational inquiry, it remains largely unexplored outside the philosophy of science. This, I believe, is not due to oversight as much as to institutional resistance. In analytic philosophy it is basic that epistemic rationality is a function of justification and that justification is a function of argument. Explanation, however, is not argument nor is belief justification its function. I argue here that the task of incorporating explanation into the theory of rational inquiry poses a serious challenge to our basic concept of epistemic rationality as well as the a priori method of inquiry that still lies at the heart of analytic philosophy. Specifically, it pushes us toward a much stronger form of naturalism than is generally thought necessary, one in which argument and explanation are recognized as distinct and equally fundamental cognitive processes whose dynamic relationship is one of the central issues in the theory of rationality.     

Slippery Slopes and Collapsing Taboos

A slippery slope argument is an argument to this twofold effect. First, that if a policy or practice P is permitted, then we lack the dialectical resources to demonstrate that a similar policy or practice P* is not permissible. Since P* is indeed not permissible, we should not endorse policy or practice P. At the heart of such arguments is the idea of dialectical impotence, the inability to stop the acceptance of apparently small deviations from a heretofore secure policy or practice from leading to apparently large and unacceptable deviations. Using examples of analogical arguments and sorites arguments I examine this phenomenon in the context of collapsing taboos.     

SOSA ON SKEPTICISM

Abstract: Ernest Sosa has recently articulated an insightful response to skepticism and, in particular, to the dream argument. The response relies on two independent moves. First, Sosa offers the imagination model of dreaming according to which no assertions are ever made in dreams and no beliefs are involved there. As a result, it is possible to distinguish dreaming from being awake, and the dream argument is blocked. Second, Sosa develops a virtue epistemology according to which in appropriately normal conditions our perceptual beliefs will be apt. Hence, in these conditions, we will have at least animal knowledge, and the conclusion of the dream argument is undermined. In this article, I examine various moves that the skeptic can make to resist Sosa's challenge, and I contrast the proposal to a neo-Pyrrhonian stance. In the end, there is surprisingly little disagreement about the status of ordinary perceptual beliefs in the two stances.     

Perelman, ad Hominem Argument, and Rhetorical Ethos

Perelman’s view of the role of persons in argument is one of the most distinctive features of his break with Cartesian assumptions about reasoning. Whereas the rationalist paradigm sought to minimize or eliminate personal considerations by dismissing them as distracting and irrelevant, Perelman insists that argumentation inevitably does and ought to place stress on the specific persons engaged in an argument and that the relationship between speaker and what is spoken is always relevant and important. In taking this position, Perelman implicitly revives the classical conception of proof by character (ethos or “ethotic” argument), but despite an extended discussion of act and person in argument, The New Rhetoric does not give much consideration to the classical concept and confuses differing approaches to it within the tradition. The result is that Perelman treats the role of the speaker in argument only by reference to abstract techniques and does not recognize the importance of examining particular cases in order to thicken understanding of how ethotic argument works in the complex, situated context of its actual use. Consequently, Perelman’s account of the role of persons in argument should be supplement by reference to case studies, and to that end, I consider ethotic argument in W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous essay “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”.

Strawson’s modest transcendental argument

Although Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was published over fifty years ago and has been widely discussed, its main argument is still notoriously difficult to pin down. The most common – but in my view, mistaken – interpretation of Strawson’s argument takes him to be providing a ‘relentlessly’ naturalistic framework for our responsibility practices. To rectify this mistake, I offer an alternative interpretation of Strawson’s argument. As I see it, rather than offering a relentlessly naturalistic framework for moral responsibility, Strawson actually develops a transcendental argument, which grounds our moral responsibility practices in the practical perspective of social agents. However, the aims of this essay are not purely interpretative. Strawson’s essay continues to have important implications for a number of issues that arise in the contemporary debates that concern free will and moral responsibility. In particular, it puts significant pressure on moral responsibility sceptics like Derk Pereboom [Living Without Free Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001] who think that the truth of moral responsibility scepticism has no worrisome implications for our lives with others.     

Evaluating arguments during instigations of defence motivation and accuracy motivation

When people evaluate the strength of an argument, their motivations are likely to influence the evaluation. However, few studies have specifically investigated the influences of motivational factors on argument evaluation. This study examined the effects of defence and accuracy motivations on argument evaluation. According to the compatibility between the advocated positions of arguments and participants' prior beliefs and the objective strength of arguments, participants evaluated four types of arguments: compatible‐strong, compatible‐weak, incompatible‐strong, and incompatible‐weak arguments. Experiment 1 revealed that participants possessing a high defence motivation rated compatible‐weak arguments as stronger and incompatible‐strong ones as weaker than participants possessing a low defence motivation. However, the strength ratings between the high and low defence groups regarding both compatible‐strong and incompatible‐weak arguments were similar. Experiment 2 revealed that when participants possessed a high accuracy motivation, they rated compatible‐weak arguments as weaker and incompatible‐strong ones as stronger than when they possessed a low accuracy motivation. However, participants' ratings on both compatible‐strong and incompatible‐weak arguments were similar when comparing high and low accuracy conditions. The results suggest that defence and accuracy motivations are two major motives influencing argument evaluation. However, they primarily influence the evaluation results for compatible‐weak and incompatible‐strong arguments, but not for compatible‐strong and incompatible‐weak arguments.     

The Relevance of Intention in Argument Evaluation

The paper discusses intention as a rhetorical key term and argues that a consideration of rhetor’s intent should be maintained as relevant to both the production and critique of rhetorical discourse. It is argued that the fact that the critic usually has little or no access to the rhetor’s mind does not render intention an irrelevant factor. Rather than allowing methodological difficulties to constrain critical inquiry, I suggest some ways in which the critic can incorporate the rhetor’s intention in evaluating argumentation. To this end, a standard of fairness is presented. The paper was presented at the 6th International Conference on Argumentation in Amsterdam, June 27–30, 2006.