Subordinating Truth – Is Acceptability Acceptable?

Abstract

Argumentation logicians have recognized a specter of relativism to haunt their philosophy of argument. However, their attempts to dispel pernicious relativism by invoking notions of a universal audience or a community of model interlocutors have not been entirely successful. In fact, their various discussions of a universal audience invoke the context-eschewing formalism of Kant's categorical imperative. Moreover, they embrace the Kantian method for resolving the antinomies that continually vacillates between opposing extremes -here between a transcendent universal audience and a context-embedded particular audience. This tack ironically restores the very external mediation they thought to obviate in their aim to 'dethrone' the absolutism and totalitarianism of formal logic with a democratic turn to audience adherence, the acceptability of premises and inferential links, and a contextual, or participant-relative, notion of cogency.

The psychological mechanism of the slippery slope argument

“…Conversely, classical logic simply has nothing to say about the majority of informal arguments, including the slippery slope. Because of this discrepancy between logical validity and informal acceptability (and a wide variety of other considerations), there has been a widespread philosophical rejection of formal logic as providing either necessary or sufficient criteria for evaluating informal argumentation (Boger, 2005;Hamblin, 1970;Heysse, 1997;Johnson, 2000). This has been buttressed by mounting psychological evidence that people do not naturally or consistently reason according to the rules of formal logic (Evans, 2002;Oaksford & Chater, 2001).…”

Is Practical Reasoning Presumptive?

“…The charge of relativism against other theories has been made repeatedly in writings by the Pragma-Dialectical school (most recently in van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, 130, with reference to Perelman & OlbrechtsTyteca, 1969). A similar criticism has recently been made, in very sweeping fashion, by Boger (2005).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue

“…If our collective filter bubbles are so big that within them arguments can be seen to have gained public merit, but between them opposition remains, we end up in a position where different conclusions, seemingly equally well supported and worthy of acceptance, exist simultaneously. If truth is not a criterion of good arguments, and oppositional arguments all gain legitimate acceptability, we find ourselves at a deep impasse, not just between political views, but in how we should conceptualize the normative dimensions of argument and its evaluation (see Boger 2005). Similar to Stevens's contention that "We will reject an argument that makes use of inferences not allowed in the frame we have adopted" (see this issue), we can expect that we will reject an argument that makes use of inferences not grounded on the basic assumptions colouring our bubbles.…”