Two types of debunking arguments

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological theories as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion.     

Expressivism,question substitution and evolutionary debunking

Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on what Carter and Chrisman call “the core expressivist maneuver.” That is, instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value, we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical, and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental work in cognitive psychology can shed light on how the core expressivist maneuver operates at the cognitive level and that this: (a) raises worries about the aptness of the expressivist question substitution and (b) supports an evolutionary debunking argument against expressivism. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are usually run in favor of expressivism, this creates an obvious puzzle for expressivists. I wrap up by briefly responding to the objection that the debunking argument against expressivism overgeneralizes and, therefore, should be rejected.     

HOW TO CONFUSE ORGANISMS WITH MOUSETRAPS: MACHINE METAPHORS AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Why do design arguments—particularly those emphasizing machine metaphors such as “Organisms and/or their parts are machines”—continue to be so convincing to so many people after they have been repeatedly refuted? In this essay I review various interpretations and refutations of design arguments and make a distinction between rationally refuting such arguments (Refuting_R) and rendering them psychologically unconvincing (Refuting_P). Expanding on this distinction, I provide support from recent work on the cognitive power of metaphors and developmental psychological work indicating a basic human propensity toward attributing agency to natural events, to show that design arguments “make sense”unless one is cued to look more closely. As with visual illusions, such as the Müller‐Lyer arrow illusion, there is nothing wrong with a believer's cognitive apparatus any more than with their visual apparatus when they judge the lines in the illusion to be of unequal length. It takes training or a dissonance between design beliefs and other beliefs or experiences to play the role that a ruler does in the visual case. Unless people are cued to “look again” at what initially makes perfect sense, they are not inclined to apply more sophisticated evaluative procedures.     

How to avoid begging the question against evolutionary debunking arguments

Evolutionary debunking arguments aim to undercut the epistemological status of our evaluative beliefs on the basis of the genesis of our belief‐forming tendencies. This paper addresses the issue whether responses to these arguments must be question‐begging. It argues for a pragmatic understanding of question‐beggingness, according to which whether an argument is question‐begging depends on the argumentative context. After laying out the debunking argument, the paper considers a variety of responses. It asks whether metaethical responses, such as Sharon Street’s response that relies on a version of antirealism, can avoid begging the question. It argues that so‐called ‘third‐factor’ responses, which rely on substantive evaluative views, are not question‐begging in all contexts. Similarly, it argues, my own ‘quasi‐tracking’ response is not question‐begging in all contexts. Finally, the paper asks whether responses to the debunking argument can avoid begging the question against someone who is convinced at the outset that the argument is sound.     

Practical Arguments for Theoretical Theses

Pascals wager is expounded as a paradigm case of a practical,decision-theoretical argument for acting as if a proposition is true when wehave no theoretical reasons to accept or reject it (1.1.–1.2.). Thoughthe paradigm is fallacious in various respects there are valid and adequatearguments for acting as if certain propositions are true: that theoreticalentities exist, that there are material perceptual objects, that the worldis uniform across time (1.3). After this analysis of examples the authorsgeneral approach for developing criteria for the validity and adequacy oftypes of argument (2.1.) is applied: Having discussed some problems(2.2.–2.3.), a general epistemic principle for such pascal argumentsis developed, which characterizes their premisses and, if introduced as anadditional premiss, can make them deductively valid (2.4).     

Relevance

Relevance is a triadic relation between an item, an outcome or goal, and a situation. Causal relevance consists in an item's ability to help produce an outcome in a situation. Epistemic relevance, a distinct concept, consists in the ability of a piece of information (or a speech act communicating or requesting a piece of information) to help achieve an epistemic goal in a situation. It has this ability when it can be ineliminably combined with other at least potentially accurate information to achieve the goal. The relevance of a conversational contribution, premiss relevance and conclusion relevance are species of epistemic relevance thus defined. The conception of premiss relevance which results provides a basis for determining when the various arguments ad called fallacies of relevance are indeed irrelevant. In particular, an ad verecundiam appeal is irrelevant if the authority cited lacks expertise in a cognitive domain to which the conclusion belongs, the authority does not exercise its expertise in coming to endorse the conclusion, or the conclusion does not belong to a cognitive domain; otherwise the ad verecundiam is relevant.     

Linked arguments and the validity requirement

In this paper I demonstrate that most textbook accounts of the linked/convergent distinction fail to conform to the widespread intuition that all valid arguments ought to be classified as linked arguments. I also show that standard textbook accounts of linkage and convergence cannot provide a satisfactory treatment of fallacies of irrelevance and, due to their general insensitivity to the epistemic context in which arguments are offered, must be supplemented by subjective accounts of linkage and convergence which appeal exclusively to authorial beliefs and intentions.Drafts of this paper were read at the Ontario Philosophical Society meeting held at Trent University in October 1990 and the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association held in Chicago in April 1991. I thank Trudy Govier, Hans Hansen and an anonymous referee for helpful and encouraging comments on various drafts.     

Validation of a category system for arguments in conflict discourse

Theories of individuation predict systematic differences in argumentative behavior between adolescent girls and their mothers. In order to reveal the nature and functions of this kind of discourse, two studies were carried out on 110 mother-daughter pairs. The second study (n=80) replicated and extended the first study (n=30) on an independent sample. The mother-daughter pairs were asked to discuss a subject that had recently been at issue between them. To assess the argumentative behavior, a category system was developed that reflects the functional character of utterances in discourse. The aim of the research was to test the reliability and validity of the category system. Daughters are assumed to verbalize their own needs and preferences to increase the differences to the mother, and to weaken or reject the mother's arguments in an effort to resist control. Mothers, on the other hand, are supposed to exert control over the behavior of their daughters but do so within bounds of mutuality. This should lead to verbal initiatives and attempts to explain, support and modify their positions and arguments. The data showed high reliability of the categorization of arguments. The categories also differentiated between mothers and daughters. Daughters were more likely to try to weaken and reject (and accept) the mother's arguments and to state preferences while mothers tried to support and explain their positions and to retain control by initiating questions and arguments to which the daughters responded.