1

PHILOSOPHER’S THINKING

LOGIC & ARGUMENTATION (VOLUME 5)

ULRICH DE BALBIAN

Meta-Philosophy Research Center

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CONTENTS

Preface 3

On Doing Philosophy and Different Approaches 4

Questioning Western Institutionalized Philosophy 84

Logic 131

Truth 172

Meaning 179

Argument/ation 206

Logic again 255

Reasoning 264

Appendix 303

Meta-Philosophy: The Subject-matter and methods of Philosophy

Argument Mapping 479

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PREFACE

The first section deals with different ways, approaches or methods of the doing
of philosophy or the methodology of philosophizing or the discourse and socio-
cultural practice of the Western tradition of philosophy.

I then insert a number of articles and post concerning the fact that Philosophy in
the Western World concentrates on the History of the Western Tradition of
philosophical ideas, complaints that it is white, male and Euro-centered and that
it has become too academic, professional and institutionalized.

The subsequent sections deal with the topics of Logic and a number of notions
related to ‘logic’. The logic referred to are those that are relevant to philosophy
or the doing of philosophizing. Truth, meaning, arguments and argumentation
are then dealt with. This leads to another section on logic and finally reasoning
is mentioned as the coming together of most of the previous sections.

If you wish to think and write about multi-dimensional things like the ‘world’,
embodied persons, consciousness, human thinking etc, you should at least think
multi-dimensional and many levelled. Attempting to investigate, reflect on and
describe the nature and functioning of these multi-dimensional, many-levelled
entities in a one-dimensional, verbal, linear manner surely is irrational and do
not make sense? Visual Argument Mapping is one of these multi-dimensional,
many-levelled tools. (See Appendix)
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On doing philosophy and different approaches

1 I hope to write ABOUT philosophizing, doing philosophy and possible

different approaches to and of doing it, decisions that are made during this
process and underlying (explicit and implicit) assumptions that are made along
the way and the (often mistakenly) selected (side tracks of the) path (method)
chosen at different stages.

2
By expressing the above I have already made many implicit decisions and
assumptions, some of which I am sort of aware but others I have not yet
realized. The consequences of ‘having’ those assumptions and of having made
those decisions will determine many things that I will do, taking me to places
where I am compelled to make decisions - that I am fairly and some totally,
unaware of at this stage of writing down these (the fairly vague at this point)
ideas.
I mention a number of different approaches to and ways of doing philosophy,
this is to illustrate different philosophical methods and methodologies. I discuss
certain aspects of them in between quoting them at length. I also give the entire
contents of a certain approach, book or article so that the reader can see if s/he
is interested in that approach to the socio-cultural practice of philosophy or not
as different people are only interested in certain schools or types of doing
philosophy.
See for instance Formal Methods in Philosophy Lecture Notes — 2013 Dr.
Anders J. Schoubye.
At the end I again work through an approach that treats different methods and
methodology of philosophy as if it is a process with different steps in it. The
previously mentioned approaches, lectures, articles and Contents pages of
books/articles etc can be seen to fit in somewhere in this final overview. This
illustrates the restrictions of 1
all these approaches.
Broad concentrates on or reduces philosophizing to three things or activities
namely : analysis, synopsis and synthesis. I give some background details
concerning Broad so to assist in the understanding of these notions of his, for
example that he really was trained in science, mathematics and logic. He
considered himself not to be outstanding in those ‘difficult’ disciplines so he
moved to philosophy (becoming a professor at several universities in the UK).
But his former training is shown in his ‘reductionist’ view and treatment of
philosophy and philosophizing. He shows that certain philosophers reduce all
philosophy, philosophizing and reality by means of these approaches (skills or
tricks) to execute their speculative system of philosophy, like Hegel, or analytic,
5

like Hume. His science background is obvious from his examples and dealing in
depth with issues from science.
Broad, on his own admission, did not have “a philosophy”—if by that phrase is
meant highly original philosophical theories, and a highly original way of
approaching philosophical problems. He writes: “I have nothing worth calling a
system of philosophy of my own, and there is no philosopher of whom I should
be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower.
Another, very different view on and interpretation of philosophy is that by
Buddy Seed, et al in their lengthy (15 pages) presentation of what the life of the
philosopher and the need for doing and living philosophy by everyone are. That
article seems to be inspired by religion, more specifically Christianity (and
Roman Catholicism?). I does mention a number of important notions
concerning the true philosopher, real philosophy and authentic philosophizing.
But eventually it appears, to me at least, as if it goes off into a flight or flights of
fantasy or phantasy.
It will be noted that I try to write in United Kingdom English, but that other
spelling than UK English appears in for instance US sources – I am aware of
that by decided to leave it like that.

3**
I can mention a few things that should serve as a warning to what I think, what I
exclude from considering at this stage and what I imagine to be meaningful and
relevant enough to write down now.
Three of these things are, being aware of the fact that it is said that -
a)
Philosophy, especially at this stage, involves doubt and the sense of wonder -
(This astonishment and wonder could mislead one, being over-enthusiastic, into
following misleading notions and practices.
Plato said that "philosophy begins in wonder",[Plato, Theaetetus 155 d (tr.
Benjamin Jowett)] a view which is echoed by Aristotle: "It was their wonder,
astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them."
[Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b12] Philosophizing may begin with some simple
doubts about accepted beliefs. The initial impulse to philosophize may arise
from suspicion, for example that we do not fully understand, and have not fully
justified, even our most basic beliefs about the world.
Note that in what I expressed above these things are revealed, namely that I
wonder about and am filled with wonder as well as being astonished about
certain things. But, at the same time I am, wise enough by now after years of
becoming involved in such ‘philosophically’ relevant things and being trapped
by them, suspicious of what I started to do here, again. I feel suspicious of what
I do because I now know that I do not really know, that I do not fully
understand what I am involved with by writing this. Why am I writing this,
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what are my reasons, what are my motives, what motivates me and what are the
rationale for executing this.
First of all philosophizing to me always was a very personal and passionate
affair - really one of the basic reasons to be alive, giving meaning to me life.
This is why I emphasize the wonder of this activity, the euphoria of having
insights - and that arrives non-stop as I am a highly creative- and original
thinking individual, apart from having an exceptional IQ, EQ etc.
Both the acts or experience of having or undergoing insights as well as the
objects the insights are about fill me with endless wonder, delight and
astonishment. Much of this concerns not yet conceptualized or pre-conceptual
notions. As this occurs to me endlessly my life and experiences are very subtle,
profound and vast. Because my life consisted out of such insights, sets of them
lead to me insights and so on.
b)
I reflect on these things, the process of insights, the things they are about etc,
thus I grasped what is
According to Aristotle three levels of abstraction:
- First Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as dogs, cats, car, wood, etc.
(Natural Sciences)
- Second Degree of Abstraction: we consider things in terms of number
(Mathematics)
- Third Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as Being (Metaphysics).
Having different types of insights and from or in different discourse by means
of different socio-cultural practices required me to reflect on them and
distinguish them - meta-reflection, if not always meta- philosophically relevant
reflections.

So what did I do with those insights, apart from the fact that they created in my
mind, or as if my mind and ways of thinking, having experience, perception and
being conscious in general occurs in a very insightful, greatly differentiated and
subtle frame/s of reference.
So what did I do with such insights.
After having an insight, we can do something about it, i.e. we can articulate,
clarify and deepen our understanding of our insight.
- Fr. Ferriols mentions 3 techniques in doing something with the insight:
metaphor, analysis, and other techniques.
He says about this -
Metaphor
- use of something familiar, ordinary to articulate, clarify, and deepen what is
not
familiar and ordinary.
Metaphor is very important because:
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1. it fixes the insight in the mind

2. it sharpens the insight in the sense that:
- it clarifies the insight
- it makes us understand the insight more deeply
3. it enables us to understand the ordinary and familiar more deeply.
Analysis
- We use analysis also to articulate, clarify and deepen our understanding of the
insight
- analysis:
- breaking down into parts
- breaking down the insight into the different elements or dimensions which
constitute it.
Other Techniques
- according to Paul Ricoeur:
- Symbol
- Myth
- Speculation
We are given certain cautions for dealing with insights - Analysis could
desiccate an insight
- analysis could dry up, fossilize the insight
- in other words, insight could cease to be alive, to be meaningful and relevant
as
one subjects it to analysis.
ii. It is important to return to the concrete fullness of the original insight and
insight should
permeate the whole process of doing with an insight. Why?
- to vitalize the insight
- to keep it alive, meaningful and relevant
- to prevent it from being fossilized, from being dried up.
- To check whether the analysis, metaphor or other technique of doing with
insight really leads to a clarification, articulation and deeper understanding of
the insight
iii. Insight is inexhaustible
- one can explore and do something with the insight in variety of ways in order
to
clarify, articulate and understand it
- but the insight itself is rich, superabundant such that it could never be
exhausted
by any techniques; none of the them could fully and completely clarify,
articulate, and
understand the insight.
- In every doing with an insight, there is a tension between: sense of
knowledge/light and sense of ignorance/darkness
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iv. The richness of insight is the richness of reality itself

- insight brings us to the very heart of reality, to the deeper aspect of reality
- reality itself is superabundantly rich, inexhaustible
- thus, the richness of insight points to, indicated the richness of reality itself
- reality as mystery
- there is a tension between light and darkness in our knowledge, understanding,
appropriation of reality.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/56238200/Lecture-1-The-Act-of-Philosophizing
page 4
In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a Post-Modern
World by Jerome A. Miller
“Insight” by Bernard Lonergan

This is the appropriate context to introduce false and misleading notions about
philosophy, doing philosophy and philosophers.
"The Philosophical Enterprise" by John Kavanaugh
a. Introduction: False Notions of a Philosopher and Doing Philosophy
i. False Images/Caricature of a Philosopher
1. Isolated Thinker
- one who is confined, isolated within the walls of his rooms or sitting on a
ivory
tower
- one who tries to make sense of the world which he is isolated from and which
he alone understands.
2. Great System Builder
- one who has built a great system of thought but now is relegated to obscure
footnotes and erudite commentaries
- one has to cite him in one's footnote in order to be considered learned,
scholarly
but in fact he is difficult to understand.
3. Academician
4
- one who teaches courses in philosophy which seem to be not in touch with
present pressing realities and to be irrelevant to the demands of the day to day
life.
ii. False notions in how a person conducts the discipline of philosophy
1. memorizing answers to questions which he himself never has asked or has
ceased to ask
or which should have never been asked or never cares to ask
- trying to remember what the philosopher said rather than trying to understand
what drove the philosopher to say those things in the first place
- consequently, philosophy courses will turn out being a big mistake on all
levels:
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experientially, pedagogically, and humanistically

2. isolated from other disciplines and sometimes reduced to the same level as
other
disciplines
- study of philosophy in general, and of philosophy of man in particular is
conducted in isolation from social/behavioral and natural sciences, and other
disciplines
- thus, there is little connection between philosophy and history, myth, literature
or arts
- Why? some want philosophy to be "science", a respectable discipline with
subject and credential of its own. But as a consequence, it reduces philosophy
on the
same level as other disciplines.
3. Being concerned with the problems of "the one and many", the development
of logical
atomism, and linguistic or metaphysical analyses than with the fundamental
questions of
meaning and the horizon of his possibilities as a man.
- to correct these false notions of a philosopher and of how philosophizing is to
be
conducted, let us try to see philosophy as a Discipline of Questioning,
Discipline of
Liberation, and Discipline of Personhood.
ibid. pages 4-5
More details, analysis and points of the wonder and astonishment mentioned by
Plato and Aristotle, especially in so far as the formulation of questions goes.
How and why someone will ask questions and the wonder associated with this
activity and developing the ability of this attitude towards all experiences,
people, the world, situations, one self and others.
Philosophizing as the Discipline of Questioning
- to understand the act of philosophizing, we must find out and understand first
what drives, moves, leads one to philosophize as sheer human exigency, i.e.
very
necessary to human existence.
- What drives a person to philosophize is the inescapable dynamism and
capacity
of the human person himself to question and to seek answers to questions he
himself
raises.
- In short, at the root of all philosophizing is the pre-eminent personal affair of
question-asking.
i. Queston-Asking
1. Question-asking is very common, at the heart of our day to day experience
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- we could not escape, pass the day without asking question, without being
confronted by a question
- we could not start nor finish the day without some questions
- Why? Because of our desire, our dynamism to:
- To be confronted by things outside of us (Experience)
- Know, understand the things we experience (Understanding): What is
it?
- Find out the truth of what we come to understand (Judgment): Is it?
- Make decisions for what we do/act (Decision/Action): What should I
do?
2. Different Levels 2.1 Horizontal/Superficial Questions
- questions of survival
- Where will I find money to pay my rent?
- What will I do to save myself from trouble?
- practical questions
- What will I do tomorrow?
- How do I use the computer?
- What shirt, shoes, pant will I wear?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of VFA?
- scientific questions: Questions of facts and making sense of certain,
particular empirical reality
- How does the sun produce its heat and light?
- How does a computer work?
- Are there intelligent life-forms outside of our planet?
- Why is there a rainbow?
2.2 Vertical/Depth Questions
- questions of ultimate purpose and meaning
- questions of significance and meaning that enables us to perceive order
and harmony in the world as a whole, our place in the universe.
- E.g.:
5
- Where does the world as a whole come from?
- Why is there existence rather than non-existence?
- Why am I here? What is my place in the universe?
- Where am I going?
- question of truth/reality
- Is what I perceive, understand true? What makes it true?
- question of value
- Is it good? What makes it good? What makes us truly happy?
- These are ultimate, fundamental questions in life:
- deeper questions, questions we ask even if our superficial questions are
answered; questions to which the superficial questions bring us ultimately if
we pursue the inner dynamics of questioning
11

- questions whose answers have bearing on our superficial questions,

questions which are the bases/foundations of our horizontal questions.
ii. Personal Affair of Asking Depth-Question
1. I myself have come to these depth-questions
- I myself see them as questions, as problems
- They are really questions/issues for me.
2. The depth-questions are really of personal value to me
- the answer to these questions are of great value to me: significant, important,
would make a difference in my life
- such that these questions:
- consume my entire person: my intellect, my will, my effort, my time,
my body
- no let up till I find the answers
3. Starting point of all the depth-questions is my own person.
- behind, at the center and the beginning of all depth questions: questions about
MYSELF, AS A HUMAN PERSON
- Question of Meaning and Purpose: Why am I here? What can I hope for?
- Question of Truth: Who am I really? What are my potentialities? My
uniqueness?
- Question of Value: What is my good, my happiness? What should I do? What
is
the criterion in deciding what is good or not, my happiness or not?
iii. Conclusion: Greatness of philosophy lies in perpetual questioning
- philosophy does not begin with an answer/insight but a question
- it continues because we still continue to ask questions, particularly depth
questions
- and the answers to our questions do not stop the question-asking but spur one
to
further search for a better answer, to ask for further, deeper or different
questions.
- Thus, philosophy is music of the fugue: incessant counterpoint of questioning
and answering them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------

The notions in this last paragraph (I refer to point 3 from the beginning here **)
should be conceptualized more clearly and then analysed in much greater detail
and depth. So on to certain warnings contained in
c)
Jonathan Ichikawa, Arché Philosophical Research Centre, University of St
Andrews reviewed Chris Daly’s
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An Introduction to Philosophical Methods, Broadview Press, 2010, 257pp.,

$29.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551119342 here
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24675-an-introduction-to-philosophical-methods.
By the way see sentences 2 and 3 in the first paragraph that stun me with their
beauty: “Even setting aside their notorious epistemological challenges, attempts
to understand philosophical investigation” and " And more inclusive discussions
of the methodology of philosophy run the risk of generating lists of tautologies -
...etc. - rather than informative treatments of how philosophy ought to
proceed.” This OUGHT surely is another problem and a very large one?
Daly does not attempt a :unifying statement of the nature or methodology of
philosophy. “..... instead electing for what he calls (p. 11) a 'twin track'
approach, considering particular methods and kinds of data that philosophers
sometimes appear to use, and pairing descriptions of such methods with various
case studies intended to illustrate them”.
I quote these reviewing statements as they express what I wrote above
concerning my present writing’s ‘cause’, my astonishment and wonder, and that
Daly wisely steered clear from that. What he does attempt, according to
Ichikawa is employ a “restricted strategy does seem advisable; the nature of
philosophy is best understood through methodologically reflective first-order
philosophical practice.” Here follows Ichikawa’s warning and criticism of the
shortcomings of Daly’s approach/book: “However, its proponent does run the
risk of having little of interest, and little distinctive of philosophy, to say, thus
succumbing to the latter horn of the dilemma set out above. Daly's book does, to
some extent, so succumb.” Ichikawa refers to his 3 rd sentence in the first
paragraph: “And more inclusive discussions of the methodology of philosophy
run the risk of generating lists of tautologies -- believe according to the
evidence, make good inferences, do not beg questions against dialectical
opponents, etc.”

Ichikawa then criticizes Daly for NOT having done the following: "Daly does
little in the book to characterize how he thinks philosophy might differ from
other kinds of engagement. The extended discussion of science in Chapter Six
considers how science may bear on philosophy but does not engage with how it
is and is not similar. He does point out (p. 1) that philosophers are unlike
scientists in that they do not use laboratory tools to run experiments, but this
does little to distinguish philosophy in particular.” He then states what Daly said
he IS going to do: " Since the central puzzle motivating the book, as given in the
introductory pages, involves the juxtaposition of, first, the propensity of
philosophers to, to use Daly's term, 'make various claims' with, second, their
neglect of laboratory experiments.” He suggests that: "a more forceful
introduction to the present book might include a discussion of to what extent, if
any, the questions raised are particularly pressing for philosophy.” Well Daly
did NOT do that.
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On page 11 Daly mentioned his approach: " he calls (p. 11) a 'twin track'
approach, considering particular methods and kinds of data that
philosophers sometimes appear to use, and pairing descriptions of such
methods with various case studies intended to illustrate them. This restricted
strategy does seem advisable; the nature of philosophy is best understood
through methodologically reflective first-order philosophical practice.”
“The book comprises six chapters, plus a brief introduction and conclusion.
Each chapter involves an initial set of methodological questions and
consideration of one or more case studies designed to illustrate how the
questions bear on philosophical methodology. For example, the first chapter,
'Common Sense', opens with questions about the nature and significance of
common sense claims, then focuses primarily on G. E. Moore's application of
common sense arguments to philosophical questions, with particular
emphasis on his infamously straightforward attempted proof of the external
world.”
"it was not clear to me why Daly chose the topics he did” one question
“and what unifies the work as a whole.” another separate question.
“The longest chapter of the book, the 62-page Chapter Two, 'Analysis',
considers several attempts to analyze the notion of philosophical analysis
and finds them inadequate in various respects before finally concluding very
briefly (on p. 100) that the notion of analysis is not after all an interesting one
for the purpose of understanding the methodology of philosophy. Although
I agree with Daly's conclusion here, students engaging with the book will
wonder, as I did, why we spent so much time on a question that was ultimately
to be dismissed? “ another (type) question
"The third chapter is devoted to 'Thought Experiment'. It begins with general
questions about the nature and value of thought experiments before giving brief
introductions to seventeen well-known examples of thought experiments, plus a
more extended case study of thought experiments involving personal identity. “
Daly concludes: "chapter (pp. 127-8) with what he calls the 'tentative and
speculative sceptical proposal' that use of intuition and consideration of
hypothetical cases are ir""relevant to philosophical questions”. At least we can
now exclude them as relevant and necessary to philosophizing and
philosophical methodology!
" Daly suggests that we dispense with thought experiments and intuitions and
observe only that knowledge and reliably produced true belief are in fact
coextensive. Then we may infer to the best explanation that they are identical.
This very radical suggestion raises many serious questions which go
unaddressed.....”
Ichikawa questions Daly on the following: " can one correlate actual cases of
knowledge to reliably produced true belief without making use of the sorts of
intuitions Daly wants to set aside?” Ichikawa gives a suggestion by means of a
question that, he thinks, refutes what Daly states. This is not very important to
14

me. The following is his judgement on Daly’s hypothesis of/for setting

intuitions aside. “The two paragraphs Daly devotes to his 'sceptical proposal' --
.... -- are not adequate to the extreme view articulated,”
"Next is Chapter Four, 'Simplicity', which examines how considerations of
simplicity and complexity bear on appropriate selection of hypotheses; the
main focus is on various interpretations of Occam's Razor. Daly's conclusion
here (p. 152) is that given the various notions of simplicity available, and given
the availability of reasons to tolerate complex hypotheses, considerations of
simplicity are 'quite restricted' in their applicability to philosophical
methodology.” I personally cannot see the point and relevance of this?
"In Chapter Five ('Explanation'), Daly considers the extent to which
philosophical theories do and should explain. In particular, he considers the
suggestion that, when choosing between hypotheses, we should select that
which offers the best explanation of the relevant phenomena. Of course, there
are difficult and interesting questions about just what explanation consists in,
how to distinguish cases of explanation from non-explanation, and how to
determine which of various competing explanations is in the relevant sense
'better'. Daly says little about these questions, noting (p. 180) that 'the strategy
of inference to the best explanation needs to be supplemented not only by
detailed accounts of each of the theoretical virtues, but also by a detailed
account of how to make a rational theory choice in [various cases].' This is
surely right; but absent any such detailed account -- or even a vague,
impressionistic account -- the suggestion threatens to be all but empty.” Again
I fail to see any significant point in this for philosophical methodology.
"Chapter Six, 'Science', is not about science per se, but instead considers the
bearing of science on philosophy. The bulk of the chapter consists in putting
forward and criticizing arguments for naturalism, which Daly officially
characterizes as 'The view that scientific methods and results are valuable, or
even indispensable, to philosophy.' I would like to know more about the
reasons for this claim and in which ways such things are indispensable,
functional, useful to philosophy? Do they keep philosophers informed in
general and/or about the approaches of sciences, or about particular results,
facts from, science?

“However, he also cautions the reader that 'no single view can be identified
with naturalism.' (p. 188) Unfortunately, in much of the ensuing discussion,
Daly does not keep various naturalist theses distinct, in several dimensions. For
instance, Daly argues against naturalizing epistemology in part by claiming (p.
199) that the psychological claims that might be of relevance to epistemology --
our susceptibility to various errors in perception, reasoning, etc. -- consist
largely in 'something we already knew, at least in broad outline'. While this
may provide some insulation against the methodological suggestion that
one must formally study psychology in order to do epistemology
15

responsibly, it does not show, as Daly suggests it does, that scientific

information is not relevant to epistemology. This point is particularly clear if
one considers how, by parity of reasoning, one could argue from the fact cited
above -- common sense already told us that we perform less well epistemically
in certain kinds of environments -- that the data provided by science is not
relevant to cognitive psychology. In both cases, philosophy and cognitive
psychology, that common sense already delivered the broad outlines of the
relevant information is a non sequitur with respect to the general bearing of
scientific evidence. Daly also seems at times to conflate the suggestion that
scientific work bears on philosophical questions ('it is perfectly appropriate to
draw on the resources (e.g.) of science', p. 200, quoting Hilary Kornblith) with
the suggestion that scientific evidence and methodology are sufficient for
resolving the relevant philosophical questions (a 'discipline or theory can
generate a problem but it does not follow that its resources are sufficient to
solve that problem', p. 202).” This seems a bit confusing to me. To me the more
serious question is - which aspects of science, science’s methods,
methodologies are relevant to philosophy/izing and why is it the case, how does
it work?
"After these six chapters, Daly gives a three-and-a-half page conclusion that
puts forward two more general ideas about philosophy. The first is that
although there is philosophical debate about what data and methods are
appropriate to the practice of philosophy, it is permissible when engaging in
first-order philosophy to proceed from contentious or debatable
assumptions” I cannot accept the latter as one would have to look at particular
cases of such debatable assumptions.

."This claim does sit in some obvious prima facie tension with various
accusations throughout the book -- for instance, on pp. 27, 33, 115, and 177 --
that certain arguments beg questions in pernicious ways, and with the statement
on p. 115 that 'begging the question is a defect in any piece of reasoning'.
This tension is not explored.[1] The second idea of the conclusion is that often a
method of cost-benefit analysis is appropriate to choosing between
philosophical theories. This idea, while plausible and useful, is not obviously
connected to or developed from the discussion of the main text.” Ichikawa
questions Daly’s suggestion or statement on other grounds, namely that Daly
itself contradicted it earlier in his book. I cannot see the point of Daly’s second
idea, while Ichikawa is concerned about the fact that it is/was not developed in
the main text. The latter to me is irrelevant as the whole second idea is
irrelevant to philosophizing.

In general, Daly's writing style is reasonably clear, although he does tend to

transition rather suddenly from general conversational tones to more technical
ones that might confuse or intimidate students. This happens most often when
16

he draws on work from other academics that speaks to the issues he has
introduced.” This point I have often seen in philosophical writing - employing
the work of other academics, so as not to have to argue for a certain ‘idea’. But
is IS a (useful? meaningful?) “philosophical” (writing) tool (I suppose?).
“this often includes the incorporation of direct quotation, which is not always
clearly extracted or explained”
Ichikawa then writes more on this criticism and contin ues with it below:

“Although Daly notes that this cannot constitute a criterion for common sense,
since some Moorean certainties are not directly observational (the earth has
existed for centuries, etc.), he suggests -- citing, but not explaining, Campbell
-- that the empirical questions might nevertheless help. Few students at an
introductory level could, I suspect, engage this passage with anything like full
clarity without quite a lot of guidance. This is a representative pattern that
occurs many times in the book. (E.g., a detour from common sense into a
discussion of Michael Dummett and a distinction between belief and acceptance
on p. 19; a presentation of Steven Rieber's application of a technical notion of
semantic structure to bear on questions of analysis on p. 66; the consideration of
a dialectic between Kathleen Wilkes and James Robert Brown on personal
identity on p. 118.)

More advanced students or researchers will have an easier time following these
parts of the book, but they, I think, will be frustrated by the superficial
treatments of the interesting issues raised in the case studies. And in some
instances, these latter seem also to involve philosophical errors and
confusions (for example, in the discussions of the Euthyphro’s famous
argument about piety and god-lovedness and of David Lewis’s modal realism).

The book would also have benefitted from more careful editing; there are a
surprising number of typos -- including one on the first page of the introduction
-- and grammatical/structural errors. These are not serious philosophical
matters, of course, and would easily be fixed; I mention them because an
introductory text read by philosophy students will provide a model for their own
writing, and it is best to expose them to writing of the highest technical quality.

An Introduction to Philosophical Methods does touch upon many issues worthy

of engagement, and Daly does seem to have done well in selecting the relevant
literature to consider with respect to each of his chosen topics. As a result, the
references and bibliography in this book will be useful for philosophers looking
for guidance in their early research efforts. But with respect to its central aim as
an introduction to philosophical methodology, the book falls short.
17

[1] Daly suggests (p. 158) that 'tension' in contexts like this is 'a weasel word'
that should be avoided because it is unclear what exactly it is meant to convey. I
do not agree that this sort of language is in general inappropriately vague. At
any rate, in this instance, when I say that these elements of Daly's view are 'in
tension,' I mean that there is sufficient prima facie conflict such that someone
averring both views ought to recognize that they constitute a surprising
conjunction and remark on how, contrary to appearance, they may be consistent
and mutually well-motivated. I suspect this is approximately what most
philosophers mean when they say that various claims are 'in tension' with
one another.” So clarify what they DO mean.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------

d
I quote, with my highlights, what I consider to be distracting in philosophizing.
This person refers to these things that I object to as philosophical methods. I
object to them when you see the contexts he employs them in and the topics he
applies them to. Philosophical methods? Strategies? Technique for/of
Reasoning and explanation?
http://simsphilosophy.blogspot.co.za/2007/05/reflection-essay-on-
philosophical.html
Reflection on Philosophical Methodologies

I think I have applied most of these philosophical methodologies in

philosophy classes. First off, the logical analysis is a method we employed in
various exercises for my reasoning class. The conceptual analysis is
something I am doing quite a bit of right now in my European
Contemporary Though class through examining such terms as “democracy”,
“freedom” and “sovereignty”. I also experience this methodology through some
of the Save Our Constitution panel discussions. I took a whole course
basically just about the method of deconstruction in the Sociology of
Knowledge class I took last semester. Phenomenology and one that is not on
here but seems quite similar to phenomenology, “introspection”, is something
I have been doing on my own since I was seventeen. It is, in many respects, my
self-therapy as I struggle to reflect on my life experiences and the meanings or
lack thereof that they so entail. Also, in a class I am taking now, Feminist
Philosophies, we were just reading an essay by Iris Marion Young titled
Menstrual Meditations, where young talks a lot about where young talks a lot
about Heidegger’s methodology of exploring oneself by going into and
through and reflecting upon one’s moods. The Philosopher as Public
Intellectual is a method that I would like to utilize more often, especially once
I am out of school. The example I have given through my article about
18

democracy matters I actually got published a few weeks ago in the hill news. In
all, I think I have applied most, if not all, of these methods whether in courses
or just in my everyday life.

A couple methods that I would like to explore in more depth in my own

philosophical activities are the philosophy as conversation method and the
two respective comparative methods. I believe these two methods could be
synthesized in a way as to facilitate a true dialectic between a diversity of
philosophical positions. All too often philosophy is only talking to itself. While
the comparative methods might still be subject to this problematic I believe the
philosophy as conversation method could really serve as useful tool to bridge
the gap between the formally philosophical and everyday experiences. The
comparative method is one that I in fact employed in my first philosophy class
called Humanities which I had in my senior year in high school. I believe this
method is most necessary in terms of its political implications. I say this
because the current methods of “Identity Politics” have fragmentized and
specialized the Left in comparison to the what I would consider the over-
specialization of academia. While particular groups on the left such as women’s
liberation, civil rights, socialists, gay rights and environmental organizations
fight for there own particular ends, they all too often fail to form coalitions as
they instead fight (both internally within organization and externally between
different movements) for the same resources and media attention. I firmly
believe that the Left needs to bridge this gap if it ever hopes to achieve any of
its particular goals in a sustainable way. Thus, if I choose to return to academia
my work will most surely focus on making these connections and explicit
comparisons between different social movements and between different
philosophies.

I think if there is one method here that most reflects my own philosophical
work it would be either phenomenology or deconstruction. As I already
mentioned I think I’ve been doing phenomenology for some time now, and I
believe in the necessity of looking critically and reflectively first and foremost
at one’s own experiences. I believe that the deconstruction and
phenomenological method are implicit within one another. If there was anything
I learned in Sociology of knowledge it is the reciprocity by which our
epistemology is created and legitimized by particular subjectivities with
particular intentions (usually power). Only by understanding how one’s own
sincere intentions figure into this power struggle can one begin to determine
how to change the system. One cannot do this by simple abstraction for there is
no view from nowhere. The key is to be honest with oneself and one’s
intentionality, for it is my contention that only from within the system may the
system ever be altered.”
-------------------------------------------
19

e
http://mcps.umn.edu/philosophy/14_15Boyd.pdf
I do not find this article of much interest to philosophical methodology and
consider it to be distracting from the real issues and nature of this methodology.

f
The writer makes statements and do not present any grounds or arguments for
them
http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/WDGroupsubpages/stories/four_appr
oaches_to_philosophy.htm
This article presents us with what the author claims are Four Approaches to
Philosophy.
His summary:
Summary:

Few people care to study or understand logic due to everyone believing that
they are skilled enough in the art of reasoning. Logicality is one of our most
useful qualities. There are four main approaches to philosophy.

1. If you can not prove something is real, then it does not lead to a contrary
conclusion, but it is still seen as being harmonious in the aspects of method and
conception.

2. There is one thing in which a proposition should and will in most cases
confirm. This means that no one can doubt realities because it would not be a
source of dissatisfaction. The hypothesis is then something that everyone must
agree on and admit.

3. Everyone uses the scientific method for many things and only not use it when
one does not know how to apply it to the situation.

4. Using or gaining experience of the method does not make us want to use it
but helps us settle our opinions. Because of its many splendid triumphs, it has
become a permanent part of our lives.

The fourth method is the only one that displays the distinction of right and
wrong. By adopting the method of tenacity, you are taking away any doubt in
which you might come upon. We adopt whatever belief that we are most
accustomed to until we are awakened by the harsh realities which cause us to
down spiral into the so called 'real world'. Authority is the method in which
mankind will always be ruled. The other methods do have their importance
and truths, but this method is the one that will never change.
He then continues to provide us with an ‘analysis” -
20

Tenacity
The first method Pierce names is tenacity, which is characterized by clinging to
a particular belief with complete disregard to all evidence or reason that
may imply that it is incorrect. While this is an effective method in that it
allows for action and decision without hesitation, it is limited by the fact that
other people will inevitably tenaciously cling to different beliefs, casting doubt
and disunity. After all, it is hard to believe absolutely in one thing and deny all
other reason when you are surrounded by people who hold different beliefs to
be just as true.

To resolve this problem, the second method of authority is formed. it

ensures that everyone tenaciously holds to the same belief..
people will inevitably see that other authorities practice different doctrines, and
will therefore question their own authority. A third method, a priori, accounts
for this. It is the method of choosing whatever opinion or truth is most
pleasing at the time. This allows for quick and easy satisfaction to the problem
of "who is right?"
All of these methods are flawed, however, for several reasons. They do not
distinguish between a right and wrong method. The a priori method, which
derives from the first two, will eventually leave doubt in regard to the validity
of the opinion ("sure, it feels good, but is it truly correct?"). For these reasons it
becomes necessary to develop a method that removes the "human" factor
from the equation and leaves only the raw facts. This is the scientific method,
which operates off of the belief that regular laws affect the world and are
completely independent of our opinions about them. By observing these
laws and their interactions with the world, it is possible to come to a valid
conclusion.
These methods are interlinked. We always allow our opinions to be
determined by something; be it a particular belief, an authority, what strikes us
at the moment, or science. Peirce argues that humans need a scientific
authority because we are self centered and view the world in a biased way.
...Science itself is influenced by our flawed nature....Thus, Peirce's argument
deserves a qualification: with the scientific method, we move constantly
towards a greater knowledge and more "valid" opinions based on our ever more
accurate (and yet never perfect) perspective of the world.
------------------------------
g
http://schoubye.org/teaching/Formal-Methods/FormalMethodsNotes2013.pdf

Formal Methods in Philosophy

Lecture Notes — 2013
Dr. Anders J. Schoubye
⋅
21

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

University of Edinburgh
[email protected]
⋅
See the Contents of this lecture and judge for yourself the assumption
underlying this piece.
Contents
Preface
i
1 Summary: First Order Logic
1
1.1
First Order Logic (FOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
1.1.1
Primitive Vocabulary of
L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
1.1.2
Syntax of
L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
1
1.1.3
Variable Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
2
1.1.4
Semantics and Models for
L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
1.1.5
Variables in
L
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
3
1.1.6
22

Valuations and Truth-in-a-Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .
3
1.1.7
Validity and Logical Consequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
4
2 Set Theory
5
2.1
Na
̈
ıve Set Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
2.1.1
Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
2.1.2
Basic Axioms of Na
̈
ıve Set Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5
2.1.3
Empty Set, Singleton Sets, and Pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
8
2.1.4
Subsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8
2.1.5
Intersection and Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
9
2.1.6
Ordered Pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
10
2.1.7
Cartesian Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
23

10
2.1.8
Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
2.2
Russell’s Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
3 Zermelo–Fraenkel Set Theory
17
3.1
Cumulative Set Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
3.1.1
The Intuitive Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
17
3.1.2
The Axioms of ZFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
18
3.1.3
Sizes of Infinite Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
23
3.1.4
Cardinality and One-to-One Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . .
23
4 Modal Logic
25
4.1
Modal Logic: Necessity and Possibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
25
4.1.1
Modals in Natural Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
26
4.2
24

Grammar of Modal Propositional Logic (MPL) . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .
26
4.2.1
Primitive Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
27
4.2.2
Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
4.2.3
Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
27
4.2.4
The Problem with a Truth Functional Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . .
28
4.3
Modal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30
4.3.1
Validity and Consequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
31
4.4
Establishing Validities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
32
4.5
Invalidity and Countermodels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
34
4.5.1
Graphical Procedure for Demonstrating Invalidity . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
35
4.6
Axiomatic Proof Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
25

4.6.1
System K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
4.6.2
System D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
44
4.6.3
System T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
44
4.6.4
System B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
45
4.6.5
System S4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
45
4.6.6
System S5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
4.7
Soundness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
5 Counterfactuals
49
5.1
Counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
49
5.2
The Behavior of Natural Language Counterfactuals . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
49
5.3
The Lewis-Stalnaker Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
52
5.4
26

Stalnaker’s System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
5.4.1
Primitive Vocabulary of SC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
53
5.4.2
Syntax of SC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
53
5.4.3
Semantics and Models for SC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
53
5.4.4
Semantic Validity Proofs in
SC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
56
5.4.5
Semantic Invalidity in
SC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
57
5.4.6
Logical Features of
SC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
57
5.5
Lewis Criticism of Stalnaker’s System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
60
5.5.1
Lewis’ System (LC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
62
5.6
Disjunctive Antecedents: Problems for Stalnaker and Lewis . . . . . . .
. . . . . .
63
27

6 Decision Theory
65
6.1
Decision and Game Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
65
6.1.1
Some (famous) Decision Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
66
6.2
Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
68
6.3
States, Choices, and Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
68
6.4
Maximax and Maximin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
69
6.5
Ordinal vs. Cardinal Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
70
6.6
Do What Is Likely To Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
72
7 Probability Theory
75
7.1
Probability and Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
7.2
Propositions and Probabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
78
7.3
Axioms of Probability Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
28

79
7.4
Conditional Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
80
7.5
Conditionalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
83
7.6
Probabilities: Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
84
7.7
Correlation vs. Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
8 Utility and Probability
91
8.1
Utilities and Expected Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
8.2
Maximise Expected Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
92
8.3
Properties of the Maximise Expected Utility Rule . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
93
8.4
A More General Version of Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
94
8.5
The Sure Thing Principle and the Allais Paradox . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
95
8.6
Interpretations of Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
97
29

8.6.1
Probabilities as Frequencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
97
8.6.2
Degrees of Beliefs — Bayesianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
98
8.6.3
Evidential Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 100
8.6.4
Objective Chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 101
9 More on Utility
103
9.1
Declining Marginal Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.1.1
Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
9.2
Utility and Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
9.2.1
Experience Based Theories of Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 105
9.2.2
Objective List Theories of Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 105
9.2.3
Preference Theories of Welfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 106
10 Newcomb’s Problem
109
10.1 Solutions to Newcomb’s Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
10.2 Two (potentially) Conflicting Decision Principles . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 110
10.2.1 Arguments for 2-Boxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
30

10.3 Causal vs. Evidential Decision Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
10.3.1 Arguments for Evidential Decision Theory . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . 116
11 Framing Effects
119
11.1 Risk Aversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
11.1.1 Gains vs. Losses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
11.2 Outcome Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
11.2.1 The Psychophysics of Chances . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . 123
11.2.2 Normative vs. Descriptive Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 125
-----------------------------
h
https://onemorebrown.com/2008/08/15/the-philosophical-method/
It seems to me that philosophy is distinguished from other endeavors by the
method that it adopts. This is not unusual, as science is usually identified by the
scientific method. But what is the philosophical method? This question is
obviously controversial but I think a good case can be made that the
philosophical method involves a commitment to reason and argument as a
source of knowledge.

Well there you have it!

---------------------------
i
https://explicitblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/the-method-of-philosophy-is-
the-method-of-inquiry/

The Method of Philosophy Is the Method of Inquiry

Posted on 7 November, 2013

In my earlier post on the method of philosophy I made several negative claims:

the method of philosophy is not based on intuitions or reflective equilibrium,
it’s not random speculating, and it’s also not just about arguments. Today I’m
going to motivate a little maxim that I’ve been mumbling to myself for a few
years: that the method of philosophy is the method of inquiry.

What do I mean by ‘inquiry’? By ‘inquiry,’ I mean something like the deliberate

project of understanding the world (including ourselves) better. Sometimes this
31

is done in order to accomplish a specific goal, like curing polio or building

bridges, and sometimes it’s not. I take it that building the Large Hadron Collider
and looking for the Higgs boson is an example of the latter kind, although there
have been highly practical discoveries along the way and this was always a part
of the plan. At its best moments, the academy (I don’t mean the Academy, but
academia, the worldwide system of universities and other institutions of higher
learning) is an institution dedicated to furthering inquiry and disseminating the
resulting understanding to students and others. I am tempted to think of inquiry
as a distinctively human project (as far as we know).
Nothing needs to be said about this?
--------------------------------
j
The Method of Philosophy: Making Distinctions. - School of Philosophy
philosophy.cua.edu/.../The Method of Philosophy_Making Distinctions...
lies in its method The method of philosophical thinking is not obvious; we think
we have ... I wish to help clarify what philosophy is by discussing its method.
-----------------------------------------
k
http://johnpollock.us/ftp/PAPERS/Pollock_Technical_Methods_In_Philosophy.
pdf
CONTENTS
PREFACE
IX
CHAPTER ONE:
SET
THEORY
1.
The
Logical
Framework
1
2.
The
Basic
Concepts
of
Set
Theory
2
2.1
Class
Membership
2
32

2.2
Definition
by
Abstraction
3
2.3
Some
Simple
Sets
5
2.4
Subsets
6
2.5
Unions and Intersections
8
2.6
Relative Complements
11
2.7
Power
Sets
12
2.8
Generalized
Union
and Intersection
13
3.
Relations
15
3.1
Ordered
Pairs
15
3.2
Ordered
n-tuples
18
3.3
The
Extensions
of
33

Properties and Relations

19
3.4
Operations
on
Relations
21
3.5
Properties
of
Relations
23
3.6
Equivalence Relations
25
3.7
Ordering Relations
27
4.
Functions
30
4.1
Mappings Into and
Onto
32
4.2
Operations on
Functions
33
4.3
The
Restriction
of
a Function
34
4.4
One-One
Functions
34
4.5
Ordered
n-tuples
35
34

4.6
Relational Structures and
Isomorphisms
35
5.
Recursive
Definitions
37
6.
Arithmetic
44
6.1
Peano's
Axioms
44
6.2
Inductive Definitions
5
1
6.3
The
Categoricity
of
Peano's
Axioms
54
TENTS
6.4
Set-Theoretic
Surrogates
56
6.5
Arithmetic
59
CHAPTER
TWO:
LOGIC
1.
The
Predicate
Calculus
62
1.1
35

Syntax
62
1.2
Formal
Semantics
66
1.3
Derivations
72
1.4
Definite Descriptions
84
1.5
First-Order Logic
with
Functions
87
2.
First-Order
Theories
87
2.1
Axiomatic
Theories
87
2.2
Semantic
Closure
89
2.3
Godel's
Theorem
96
3.
Higher-Order
Logic
106
SOLUTIONS
TO
EXERCISES
Chapter
One
Ill
36

Chapter
Two
117
LIST
OF SYMBOLS
121
--------------------------
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http://www.csudh.edu/phenom_studies/methods_phil/lect_2.htm
2. Methods in Philosophy

As long as we understand philosophy is "questioning search," and thus "pursuit

of knowledge," this search is not the end product of such a search as a bulk of
knowledge or information (but arriving at the development of insights and
understanding). On the contrary, any pursuit of knowledge, as long as we are
finite, mortal human-beings and it searches for knowledge, this pursuit is a
rather "endless" process. It is the process starting from "here," from this starting
point of the self awareness of one's own ignorance.
§ 2-1-1. Method in General
In general, therefore, the decision to choose a certain way or road or approach
is extremely crucial, also needless to say, to the pursuit of knowledge. It may be
so due to the lack of knowledge of the so-called "controlled procedure," or it
may be the lack of knowledge about the preparations (e.g. including the strong
enough approach) or the confusion of the knowledge of the end of such a
search. It may very well be that we have a totally wrong "direction" and
"anticipation" of such an investigation.

§ 2-1-2. Method and Tool

On the other hand, method may find its way in other activities than in the
pursuit of knowledge (of course, of which we are most interested in). Take for
example, to work on making something by dealing with what Aristotle called
productive knowledge. I would like to cut this pine tree in the garden. In order
to do this, I have to have an axe, a hand saw or an electric chain saw. Not only
the knowledge of the tools in relation to the object to which the tool is going to
be applied here is necessary, but also the knowledge of which direction the tree
should fall down in as well as the knowledge of how to axe or saw the tree in
order to have it happen. The order of the steps necessary for cutting the tree
should be considered ahead before we start cutting it. The similar will be
applied to any kind of "productive" activity (including making a clay pot,
curving a stone into something, etc.). Thus controlled procedure means those
different kinds of knowledge in order to act or achieve some particular goal as
37

well as the order of the knowledge and steps. A biological or a pharmacological

experiment perhaps requires more elaborate conditions in which an experiment
is going to be conducted. Needless to say, so are doubtlessly with the
engineering.

Within the complexity which can be specified those order of steps and
knowledge of the tool by means of the linear, mechanical causality, how
complicated the procedure might be can be solved by the causal connections
step by step.

However, when the procedure to be controlled becomes so complex that the

linear, mechanical causation (logical inference on the basis of that causality) can
no longer handle it. Take for example, to send a moon we are no longer able to
linearly follow the procedure step by step, but rather mutual influences and
simultaneous processes are to be "controlled" in order to achieve such a goal
with the complex means. In this case, we are now developing a controlling
procedure called "simulation." This is certainly one of the first steps to
overcome the limits of the linear, mechanical causality. Such a thinking is
sometimes called a "system" or a "complex system." (to continue)
2-1-3. The Etymological Search for "Method"

On the one hand, however, the word "me¡odos" or "methodus" in Latin,

"method" in English translation, existed in the Classical Greek, which was made
as a composite word from two words, the one is "meta" (meta)‹‹"in pursuit of
(something) along side with"‹‹, the other, "¢odos" (hodos)‹‹"the way." What do
these words, "meta" and "hodos," mean in the Ancient Greek?

Thus, "methodos" as a composite word from "meta" and "hodos" signified and
understood as "in pursuit of (a certain end) along side with the (specified and
controlled) way." This concept of "method" in the philosophical significance
may be traced back to Hesiod and some Pre-Socratic philosophers via Plato.
According to this understanding of the method in philosophy as the Way, the
method meant "the Way" ('odos, keleuqos, patos, each one of which means the
way, the road, the path, etc.) in the doubled significance 1) as the Way of one's
devotion of life to the true and the right and 2) as the Way of the questioning
search with such a devotion.

Hesiod distinguished the narrow, sterile way of the virtue (in the sense of
"success") from the wider path of wickedness.

Heraclitus was supposed to warn the person who should be mindful when one
forgets where the way would lead.
38

In case of Parmenides, the Way to Truth and Just is shown as the way of the
person with the rational understanding that Being is, and is distinguished from
the way, which the people of habitual mundaneity and in mortal conceptions
follow and are never in touch with Truth. Thus, in the pursuit of Truth lead by
Reason shows the Way of Truth with confidence.

In Plato, it appears, this Way ended with the explicit notion of "Method." First
of all, in Plato's philosophy, the method signified the inquiry or search, that is,
to "scientifically" ask a question or the questioning as such. As we shall see it
later in more details, his famous doctrine of method as the dialectic to search the
ultimate reality. Then, of course, in distinction from the art of persuasion or
sophistic art and skill (h sofistikh teÿnh‹hé sophistiké techné‹) of persuading the
other regardless of its truth, the correct way and manner of investigation or of
the questioning search for reality.

Among the earlier and later sophists, naturally the method signified the way of
winning the discussion or the art of persuasion itself ('h sofistikh teÿnh‹hé
sophistiké techné‹) or rhetoric.

According to Hippocrates, the method may find its master example of the art
and manner of inquiry in the correct medical diagnosis.

As we shall also discuss later more in detail, Aristotle stipulated the method as
the procedure directed to the good with deliberation ('h proairesis‹hé proairesis‹)
which is controlled on the basis of insight and can be obtained by study. It is
also considered belonging in general to techné ('h tchnh).

The above mentioned characteristics of "method" are to be more precisely

articulated and defined in terms of a specific end. Thus, we may generally state
the nature of method as follows:

The activity to pursue a certain plan or goal in accordance with the

controlled procedure.

This etymological explication of the meaning of "method" may apply to

philosophy as questioning search as well as any search for knowledge as a
scientific pursuit including mathematics.

Before we shall get into the explication of the historical development of the
philosophical method or the methods in philosophy, we would like to discuss
Aristotle and his method as logic first. For logic was considered for a long time
39

as the philosophical method even until Immanuel Kant. It is necessary to pay a

special attention to logic as the philosophical methods.

§ 2-1-4. Methods in Philosophy and the Objective of Philosophical Inquiry

‹an Overview of the Problem Domains Anticipating our Inquiry‹

§ 2-1-4. Methods in Philosophy and the Objective of Philosophical Inquiry

‹an Overview of the Problem Domains Anticipating our Inquiry‹

According to the preceding etymological investigation of the nature of method,

the method is "the activity to pursue a certain plan or goal in accordance with
the controlled procedure.

We also understand that philosophy is questioning search, the pursuit of

knowledge, for its own sake
Philosophical inquiry is not useful, nor practical, even not meaningful to our
living at all. In this sense, the philosopher in the genuine sense is non
professional, because of the following two senses: 1) it is because the
philosopher and the philosophical knowledge are absolutely no use for our
practical, pragmatic life: 2) the philosopher and the philosophical knowledge
cannot have any professional training (in order to earn one's living by doing so).

However, this does not mean that the philosophical inquiry has no end or goal,
nor even a plan. To be sure that the research and its consequence are neither
useful anything else or practical at all.

Neither the knowledge which is to be pursued should be "objective!" It is

beyond such a distinction between the objective and the subjective, as
Kierkegaard correctly pointed out about the question of our own existence as
the reality.

And yet, as long as the method in philosophy is a "activities" to attain a certain

knowledge as its objective via certain "procedure," we must be rather explicitly
aware not only of the "controlled procedure," but also of the "plan," "objective,"
or "end." This "objective" or "goal" is, as pointed out before, should be known
to us even if it is obscure in terms of our cognition of the thing experience.

As we saw earlier, thus, often lead by the value which such an end or a plan
possesses, we are only aware of the general direction.
Due to this beginning of philosophical inquiry, the phenomenological epoché
(the bracketing the preconceived ideas, bias, assumptions, presuppositions)
neutralizes our dogmatic beliefs, as Husserl said. This may be characterized as a
40

return to Pythagoras' "audience" as the philosophical attitude during the

Olympic Games. In this sense, the philosopher is not in the stream, not in the
flow of consciousness, but an observer standing outside of such a stream. This
unconcerned, uninterested observer's attitude seems to work as long as our
endeavouring to see, experience and know reality as it discloses itself as it
actually is static in two senses: In the sense a) reality itself is unchanging, static.
In the other sense, not reality, but our attitude itself is static in tune with the way
in which reality reveals itself as it actually is.
Besides, reality in which we live is no longer static, but in dynamic change and
metamorphosis. We are no longer stand outside of reality and remain as the
unconcerned, uninterested observer.

In approaching to reality as it reveals itself as it actually is, the philosopher

today is no longer an uninterested audience to the static reality, but h/she is
expected and does commit himself/herself to the search for reality itself as it
reveals itself. Kierkegaard was right, when he said, the objective truth loses its
total significance, but the problem is our urgent, subjective truth of our own
existence.

§ 2-2. The Methods in the Classic Philosophy in the Far East

-----------------------------------

http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/phil/phil_03.html
The methods employed in philosophical reasonings and enquiries include the
basic presuppositions of scientific approach in general; but over and above these
methods, philosophical processes endeavour to discover ways of considering
and knowing the facts implied in the phenomena of experience.
The true philosophic method should not be lopsided, should not be biased to any
particular or special dogma, but comprehend within itself the processes of
reflection and speculation and at the same time be able to reconcile the
deductive and the inductive methods of reasoning. The philosophy of the
Absolute rises above particulars to greater and greater universals, basing itself
on facts of observation and experience by the method of induction and gradual
generalisation of truths, without missing even a single link in the chain of logic
and argumentation, reflection and contemplation, until it reaches the highest
generalisation of the Absolute Truth; and then by the deductive method comes
down to interpret and explain the facts of experience in the light of the nature of
this Truth. This is a great example of the most satisfactory method of
philosophical enquiry.

Philosophy being the way of the knowledge of Truth, its method must be in
agreement with the nature of Truth. In philosophy and religion the end always
determines the nature of the means.
41

-------------------------

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_method
The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used
by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as
possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. It is the methods that
systemically advance the teaching, research, and practice of a given scholarly or
academic field of study through rigorous inquiry. Scholarship is noted by its
significance to its particular profession, and is creative, can be documented, can
be replicated or elaborated, and can be and is peer-reviewed through various
methods
Originally started to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical
philosophers with medieval Christian theology, scholasticism is not a
philosophy or theology in itself but a tool and method for learning which places
emphasis on dialectical reasoning. The primary purpose of scholasticism is to
find the answer to a question or to resolve a contradiction. It was once well
known for its application in medieval theology, but was eventually applied to
classical philosophy and many other fields of study.

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which

historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write
history. The question of the nature, and indeed the possibility, of sound
historical method is raised in the philosophy of history, as a question of
epistemology. History guidelines commonly used by historians in their work
require external criticism, internal criticism, and synthesis.

The empirical method is generally taken to mean the collection of data on which
to base a hypothesis or derive a conclusion in science. It is part of the scientific
method, but is often mistakenly assumed to be synonymous with other methods.
The empirical method is not sharply defined and is often contrasted with the
precision of experiments, where data is derived from the systematic
manipulation of variables. The experimental method investigates causal
relationships among variables. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical
approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences
and social sciences. An experiment can be used to help solve practical problems
and to support or negate theoretical assumptions.

The scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating

phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous
knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on
gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific
principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data
42

through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of

hypotheses
------------------------

SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY

By Professor C. D. Broad.

Published in Aristotelian Society Supplement 21 (1947): 1-32.

Examples of Synopsis
Problem of sense-perception
Mind-body problem
Free-will problem
Paranormal phenomena
Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis and Synthesis
Some further Remarks on Synopsis and Synthesis
How are Principles of Synthesis Discovered?
How are Proposed Principles of Synthesis Recommended?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.scribd.com/user/76974855/Buddy-Seed
https://www.scribd.com/doc/56238200/Lecture-1-The-Act-of-Philosophizing

On page 6 we are informed about

Philosophizing as the Discipline of Liberation -

especially by ,means of questioning ourselves, our species, our history/ies, our

society, community, culture,

socio-cultural practices such as philosophy/izing, etc.

Below we are shown how this questioning operates and how it assists in
liberation one from historical, sociological, psychological encapsulation,
determination or conditioning.

- philosophizing as a discipline of questioning is a discipline of liberation, i.e. in

asking questions, philosophy leads to liberation:
- liberation from encapsulation, conditioning, determination
- liberation to the horizon of possibilities
- liberation to affirm one's possibilities and one's determination
43

i. Questioning liberates one from historical, sociological, psychological

encapsulation,
determination or conditioning
1. Historical, Sociological and Psychological encapsulation, determination,
conditioning
Historical
- what am I know, what can I do, what I am doing, how I value things,
4. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Personhood
- philosophizing becomes an authentic discipline of questioning and of
liberation
when it is discipline of personhood, i.e.:
- personal task
- at the root of one's being a person
- important in my growth as a person
i. Philosophizing as a Personal Task
1. Personal Affair of Asking-Question
- I must myself personally ask the depth-question
- The personal questions and their answers are of great value to me
- The questions have to do with my person, my identity
2. Personal Search for the answer, for the truth to these depth-questions
- I myself will look/find for the answers to these depth-questions
- I could not delegate this to other, nor just be a spectator to the searching-
activity
- In my personal search, I must not be content:
- with sheer conjecture,
- with sentimentalism: feeling good and nice
- with philosophical warm blanket
- just with pursuing relevance
- utmost aim: pursuing truth:
- be it palatable or not
- be it a comfort or threat/discomfort
- my personal search for the answer involves:
a. exacting, careful, disciplined reflection of my own experience and thoughts
b. philosophical dialogue:
- I will be open to other philosophers' experiences and insights
- Study works of others
c. study also of other disciplines
- open to other things which might be vehicle for finding answers to my
depth-questions about myself: myth, history, literature, natural sciences,
behavioral sciences.
3. Seeing the answers to these questions or the truth myself
- in finding some answers to my depth-questions, I myself see, realize
- the truth of these answers
44

- that they are really true to me

- they really answer my personal depth-questions
ii. Philosophizing is at the root of one's being a person
- the human person is driven by his personhood to philosophize:
7
- to ask depth-questions
- to seek/find answers for them
- to see himself the truth of the answers he has found
- Why? because of the nature of his person as homo viator (man on the way)
- His present situation - the situation he finds himself at the moment:
- not yet complete, not yet finished-product
- not yet sufficient with himself
- contingent
- finite truth, happiness, justice (Pascal)
- yet not content, satisfied with what he is: restless, insatiable
- he is not happy, at rest, content with he is and has at the moment
- he desires, longs from something more than what he is and has at the
moment
- Quixotic man: dreaming the impossible
- Alexandrian man: crying because there is no more to conquer
- Augustinian man: ever restless until my heart rests in Thee.
- Pascalian man: great abyss within that cannot be filled by anything
finite.
- Dostoyevski's moral hero
- Thus, he asks more questions, he searches, demands for more answers about
himself, about his world.
iii. In philosophizing, one's personhood, one's growth as a person is at stake
- when I stop philosophizing (to ask depth-questions, to seek/find answers for
them and to see himself the truth of the answers he has found),
- I become determined, conditioned, encapsulized by my history, society, and
psychological make-up
- I refuse to be open to my own possibilities, and take responsibility of them and
myself as creative self-project
- Remain satisfied with the present and stagnate, arresting my growth as a
person.
Conclusion/Summary:
- questioning, then, is the starting point and the continuing force of all
philosophy
- questioning leads one to find answers, and finding the answers he himself
must see the
truth of those answers
- but in finding answers to the depth-questions primarily about himself: his
identity and
45

action, he will not reach a point of no return; rather leads him back to new
questions, leading
to a new search, new answers, so on and so forth.
- In so doing, he is liberated from those which enslave, he becomes open
how I see things could be determined or conditioned in large extent by the past
events, by what happened in the past
- past events: personal, family, society.
- Sociological encapsulation, determination, conditioning
- the kind of society that I live in, the culture, the social structures I find
myself in affect in significant degree to the point even of conditioning,
determining and encapsulizing my seeing, doing and valuing.
- Psychological encapsulation, determination, conditioning
- refers to how my genes, experiences of pain and pleasure, neurons,
among others affect my seeing, doing and valuing.
2. By questioning, I am liberated from these conditioning, encapsulation and
determination
- Why? By questioning, I am able to place myself at a distance from these types
of conditioning, determination or encapsulation, such that they no longer
determine
at least in the same degree as before I have begun to question -
By questioning, I could say, "wait a minute", to the present situation: the
present
conditioning, determination
- In this way, I could resist the conditioning, the currents, the pull; in effect, I
revolt against the historical, sociological and psychological conditioning.
ii. Questioning opens me to the horizon of possibilities
1. What was seen before as a pure necessity (that which could not be otherwise,
in which I
have no choice) is now seen upon questioning as a possibility which I could
choose to
reject or accept.
2. Other possibilities, possible patterns, options which I never have thought
before open
before me.
iii. Questioning leads one to Affirmation
1. Affirmation of the Future as Creative Self-Project
- the possibilities that are opened before him/her in questioning, he must affirm,
he must choose, must take responsibility of as his/her project, through which he
shapes, determines himself/herself.
- Only in this way, he takes responsibility to determine/shape himself/herself,
what kind of self/person he will be in the future (future self-project), rather than
being determined by one's history, society and psychological make-up.
2. Affirmation of the Past, of my determinations
46

- Questioning leads one to confront the past and embrace/accept/own/possess

the
past as his/her past
- Why is this very important?
- The past is part of one's identity though I do not have to be determined
by it
- The possibilities of the present that are opened to me and among which
I must choose to determine my self-project are the results of the past.
- Thus, to embrace the past is also to embrace my present identity and
my future self-project.

This exploration of questioning is then from page 7 onwards related to

philosophy, or placed in the context of the discourse of philosophy. First as
philosophy for all people or in everyday context and then gradually as a
disciplined practice.

4. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Personhood

- philosophizing becomes an authentic discipline of questioning and of
liberation
when it is discipline of personhood, i.e.:
- personal task
- at the root of one's being a person
- important in my growth as a person
i. Philosophizing as a Personal Task
1. Personal Affair of Asking-Question
- I must myself personally ask the depth-question
- The personal questions and their answers are of great value to me
- The questions have to do with my person, my identity
2. Personal Search for the answer, for the truth to these depth-questions
- I myself will look/find for the answers to these depth-questions
- I could not delegate this to other, nor just be a spectator to the searching-
activity
- In my personal search, I must not be content:
- with sheer conjecture,
- with sentimentalism: feeling good and nice
- with philosophical warm blanket
- just with pursuing relevance
- utmost aim: pursuing truth:
- be it palatable or not
- be it a comfort or threat/discomfort
- my personal search for the answer involves:
a. exacting, careful, disciplined reflection of my own experience and thoughts
47

b. philosophical dialogue:
- I will be open to other philosophers' experiences and insights
- Study works of others
c. study also of other disciplines
- open to other things which might be vehicle for finding answers to my
depth-questions about myself: myth, history, literature, natural sciences,
behavioral sciences.
3. Seeing the answers to these questions or the truth myself
- in finding some answers to my depth-questions, I myself see, realize
- the truth of these answers
- that they are really true to me
- they really answer my personal depth-questions
ii. Philosophizing is at the root of one's being a person
- the human person is driven by his personhood to philosophize:
7
- to ask depth-questions
- to seek/find answers for them
- to see himself the truth of the answers he has found
- Why? because of the nature of his person as homo viator (man on the way)
- His present situation - the situation he finds himself at the moment:
- not yet complete, not yet finished-product
- not yet sufficient with himself
- contingent
- finite truth, happiness, justice (Pascal)
- yet not content, satisfied with what he is: restless, insatiable
- he is not happy, at rest, content with he is and has at the moment
- he desires, longs from something more than what he is and has at the
moment
- Quixotic man: dreaming the impossible
- Alexandrian man: crying because there is no more to conquer
- Augustinian man: ever restless until my heart rests in Thee.
- Pascalian man: great abyss within that cannot be filled by anything
finite.
- Dostoyevski's moral hero
- Thus, he asks more questions, he searches, demands for more answers about
himself, about his world.
iii. In philosophizing, one's personhood, one's growth as a person is at stake
- when I stop philosophizing (to ask depth-questions, to seek/find answers for
them and to see himself the truth of the answers he has found),
- I become determined, conditioned, encapsulized by my history, society, and
psychological make-up
- I refuse to be open to my own possibilities, and take responsibility of them and
myself as creative self-project
48

- Remain satisfied with the present and stagnate, arresting my growth as a

person.
Conclusion/Summary:
- questioning, then, is the starting point and the continuing force of all
philosophy
- questioning leads one to find answers, and finding the answers he himself
must see the
truth of those answers
- but in finding answers to the depth-questions primarily about himself: his
identity and
action, he will not reach a point of no return; rather leads him back to new
questions, leading
to a new search, new answers, so on and so forth.
- In so doing, he is liberated from those which enslave, he becomes open he
becomes open to his own
possibilities, and takes responsibility of himself as a creative self-project.

--------------------------------------
We are then presented with William Luijpen’s Authenticity of philosophy.
As we can see this section deals with the following:
The authenticity of philosophy and the contradiction of or rather in(side)
philosophy. Misleading or mistaken reactions lead to , what Luijpen’s consider
to be, inauthentic philosophy. Symptoms of inauthentic philosophy are:
scient-ism, (as absolute, final, all-encompassing, revealing and dealing with the
one and only true reality, perfect methods, etc)

scepticism (rejection of all knowledge, truths, philosophies, etc) is also a

philosophy (philosophical approach or attitude);

and dogmatism (of the one, absolute philosophy or the final philosophical
system and method, eg Marxism, Critical Theory, Phenomenology, Kantiasm,
Analytic philosophy, Deconstructionism, etc).

Luijpen then sets out the characteristics of authentic philosophy from page 9
onwards.
It is-
a personal affair
of asking questions
looking for answers
seeing the truth (and meaningfulness?) of some of the answers
and philosophy/izing is authentic when -
Philosophizing is authentic when it is one's own life that raises the philosophical
questions
49

- man has to live his own life, determine his own action
- he is responsible for his own life and his actions
- he is only human, a person only when he himself lives his own life and
determines his own actions
- others could not live my life for me nor I could simply live the life of others
- I could not let others determine my life and actions, nor determine others' lives
and actions
- To live my own life, to determine my own action is to live according to my
own
basic convictions about:
- Life/Realtiy
- Myself
- Values
- To come to my own basic convictions, I myself have to discover them:
- I myself ask the questions about them
- I myself seek the answers
- I myself have to see the truth of the answers
- Thus, I myself can discover my own basic convictions from within.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
He then deals with existing philosophies and the relation of my own personal
philosophy or authentic philosophical living to them. Page 10

What is the role of constituted philosophies in the philosophizing as a personal

task/affair? This we will answer:
- First, by clarifying the nature of these constituted philosophies. This we will
do
in this section.
- Then, by clarifying the proper relationship between my philosophizing as a
personal affair with these constituted philosophies. This we will do in the next
section.
i. Philosophy as Personal
Philosophy as Personal Expression of Particular Experience of Reality

Here he introduces a new notion , almost a standard of authentic

philosophy/izing as
a SPEAKING WORD. Not merely a talking word, but a speaking word.
AND not all speaking word is philosophy/ical.

Then describes to us what a philosopher is *

(someone:

- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth

- who experiences reality in a particular way
50

- who is present to reality in a particular way

- to whom reality is present in a distinct way
- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression
of
this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.)

He describes the correct philosophical training and his conclusion informs us

the purpose and necessity of studying already constituted (or already existing)
philosophy/ies.

Conclusion:
- If constituted philosophy is a speaking word (i.e., an articulation/expression of
a
particular experience of reality), then the study of the works of the different
philosophers
leads us to:
- Experience the philosophers' particular experiences of reality
(APPROPRIATION)
- Experience new and deeper aspect of reality other than what they have
experienced (EXPANSION)
- And one does not simply accumulate knowledge but listens to reality no
matter
where it speaks to him.
------------------------------------------

1. Philosophy as Speaking Word, not Talking Words

- talking:
- ideas are just set of ideas
- which we must relate with one another
- which we understand in themselves as ideas/ statements/words
- speaking:
- ideas are expressions of the philosopher's personal experience of reality
- experience:
- subject presence to reality: personal presence of who I am to reality, my
opening up to reality
- reality presence to the subject: presence of reality to the person;
unfolding, manifestation, unveiling of reality to the person.
- Ideas try to express, articulate what the person sees himself deeply in
reality, what he himself experiences, his particular insight of the wealth of
reality
2. Not All Speaking Word is Philosophy
51

- there are different ways of experiencing reality, i.e.

- of being present to reality
- of reality being present to me
- not all of these are philosophy, or philosophical experience. E.g.:
- Rose, a beautiful beach:
- Economist
- Lover
- Theologian
- Scientist
- Philosopher
- School
10
- Student
- Teacher
- Administrator
- Janitor

- *A philosopher is someone:

- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth

- who experiences reality in a particular way
- who is present to reality in a particular way
- to whom reality is present in a distinct way
- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression
of
this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.
- E.g.: Plato's Philosophy: Theory of Forms
- As solidified thought it may sound abstract
- But it is really an expression of Plato's particular experience, insight of

3. The Authenticity of Philosophy (William Luijpen)

a. Introduction
i. The Innumerable Contradictions of Philosophy
- for 2,500 years, man has been philosophizing and the result is innumerable
and
contradictory claims and systems of philosophy.
- much older than Modern Science, yet unable to formulate even a few theses
(statements) which are unanimously accepted by all philosophers as observed
by the
52

philosophers themselves like the Sceptics, Rene Descartes, Hume, Kant

- not a single thesis is not denied by another philosopher in the past, present,
or/and future.
ii. Reactions Leading to Inauthentic Philosophy
1. Scientism: Rejecting Philosophy and Absolutizing Physical/Empirical
Sciences
- Unlike philosophy, Physical/Empirical Sciences:
- Very successful discipline
- Better knowledge of the physical world
- Fruitful knowledge: leads to mastery/control of the physical world
- Greatly contributed in making life better
- Highly Verifiable/Intersubjective Knowledge
- Because of these characteristics of Physical Sciences, some are led to reject
philosophy and to absolutize Science (Scientism). How? By claiming/believing
that:
1. Science alone is the only genuine and reliable source of knowledge, not
philosophy or any other means.
- what can be known and is known by Science constitutes alone as the
true knowledge
- knowledge, pure and simple, is the knowledge offered by Science
8
- here, Science, already claims and decrees, not about the physical world
but claims and decrees on Theory of Knowledge: the possibility, extent and
validity of knowledge
2. Science alone discloses reality such that whatever cannot be disclosed or are
not
disclosed by Science is not real.
- here, reality is equated or reduced with the reality accessible to Science
- from its epistemological claim, Science is led to an ontological claim:
A Theory of Reality: The Structure and Constitution of Reality.
- Scientism (absolutizing Science) is not a science, not scientific
- It already claims about things beyond the competence/realm of physical
sciences
- It deals with or addresses some things beyond its tasks, namely: Theory
of Knowledge, Theory of Reality
- This is already the work of philosophy.
- Thus, in rejecting philosophy, it philosophizes although in a
contradictory way, an inauthentic philosophy
- Scientific yet unscientific
- Verifiable yet unverifiable
- Rejects philosophy but already takes a philosophical position on the
issues of Knowledge and Reality
2. Scepticism
53

- rejection of all claims of knowledge of reality, all claims as doubtful, not only
philosophical claims, but all claims
- this is itself is a philosophy, a philosophical position/view about knowledge
and
reality
- yet a self-contradictory philosophy; thus, an inauthentic philosophy
- claim: all knowledge is doubtful
- yet this claim is also a form of knowledge
- therefore, this claim (that all knowledge is doubtful) is also doubtful
- this shows that the conclusion falsifies the first premise; thus the
argument contradicts itself.
- Any rejection of philosophy (Scientism, Scepticism and others) is itself a
philosophy though a bad one
- To ridicule philosophy, to laugh at philosophy is itself a philosophy
3. Dogmatism
- claims that of the different philosophical systems, one can be the philosophy,
is
the philosophy
- thus, one looks for THE philosophy:
- in the past: turns to different philosophies or philosophers in the past
- in the present: turns to every new philosophy or system to whether at
last it present THE philosophy
- in the future: expects that THE philosophy will be formulated in the
future.
- This expectation, of course, meets with disappointments, frustrations, and
disillusions. Why?
- Because there was, is and will be never such thing as THE philosophy
2. Authentic Philosophy as a Personal Task
i. Philosophizing: not an attempt to learn a philosophical system
- few geniuses in history laid down their thoughts in grandiose masterpieces and
systems like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant,
Whitehead
- to philosophize authentically is not simply to learn one of these philosophical
systems
- not just to talk about, study/learn with or without proof:
- the questions they asked
- the answers the found and proposed
- and these questions and answers are in the first place not my own personal
questions nor could their answers mean anything to me nor make a difference in
my
life, nor make me more human, more of a person I am meant to be.
- In short, learning their truth, but not my truth.
ii. Philosophizing is authentic only when it is a personal affair
54

1. Personal Affair of Question-Asking

- I myself personally raise the depth questions
- I myself see the importance of these questions and their answers to me
- It is myself that I question
2. Personal Affair of Searching the Answer to these questions
9
- I myself look diligently for the answers, overcoming any obstacles, subjecting
myself to certain disciplines
3. Personal Affair of Seeing the Truth of the answers
- I myself see the truth of the answers I found.
- Only in this way can philosophizing be authentic philosophizing, i.e.:
- Philosophize in an original and personal way
- My own philosophy, not just any other philosophy
iii. Philosophizing is authentic when it one's own life that raises the
philosophical questions
- man has to live his own life, determine his own action
- he is responsible for his own life and his actions
- he is only human, a person only when he himself lives his own life and
determines his own actions
- others could not live my life for me nor I could simply live the life of others
- I could not let others determine my life and actions, nor determine others' lives
and actions
- To live my own life, to determine my own action is to live according to my
own
basic convictions about:
- Life/Reality
- Myself
- Values
- To come to my own basic convictions, I myself have to discover them:
- I myself ask the questions about them
- I myself seek the answers
- I myself have to see the truth of the answers
- Thus, I myself can discover my own basic convictions from within.
3. Authentic Philosophy as a Speaking Word
- though authentic philosophy is a deeply personal affair, there are already
concluded philosophies, i.e. thoughts laid down in a system by great genius of
the past,
like Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas among others.
- What is the role of constituted philosophies in the philosophizing as a personal
task/affair? This we will answer:
- First, by clarifying the nature of these constituted philosophies. This we will
do
in this section.
55

- Then, by clarifying the proper relationship between my philosophizing as a

personal affair with these constituted philosophies. This we will do in the next
section.
i. Philosophy as Personal Expression of Particular Experience of Reality
1. Philosophy as Speaking Word, not Talking Words
- talking:
- ideas are just set of ideas
- which we must relate with one another
- which we understand in themselves as ideas/ statements/words
- speaking:
- ideas are expressions of the philosopher's personal experience of reality
- experience:
- subject presence to reality: personal presence of who I am to reality, my
opening up to reality
- reality presence to the subject: presence of reality to the person;
unfolding, manifestation, unveiling of reality to the person.
- Ideas try to express, articulate what the person sees himself deeply in
reality, what he himself experiences, his particular insight of the wealth of
reality
2. Not All Speaking Word is Philosophy
- there are different ways of experiencing reality, i.e.
- of being present to reality
- of reality being present to me
- not all of these are philosophy, or philosophical experience. E.g.:
- Rose, a beautiful beach:
- Economist
- Lover
- Theologian
- Scientist
- Philosopher
- School
10
- Student
- Teacher
- Administrator
- Janitor
- A philosopher is someone:
- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth
- who experiences reality in a particular way
- who is present to reality in a particular way
- to whom reality is present in a distinct way
- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression of
this particular way of experiencing the world/reality.
56

- E.g.: Plato's Philosophy: Theory of Forms

- As solidified thought it may sound abstract
- But it is really an expression of Plato's particular experience, insight of
reality.
ii. End of Philosophical Formation and Training
- not just:
- drilling the aspirant into different philosophical theses or ideas
- memorizing the different philosophical theses and understanding them in
themselves
- but the ideas/theses/solidified thoughts are just means:
- to make us personally see/experience what the philosopher has seen, has
experienced of reality
- to make us enter into a whole new world we have never seen or even
suspected
before
- analogy of index finger as a sign
4. Authentic Philosophy as a Common Task
i. Authentic Philosophy as both a personal task and a common task
- Philosophizing to be authentic should both:
- A personal task/affair
- A personal affair of asking questions, seeking answers, and seeing the
truth of the answers I have found.
- Philosophizing about my person, philosophizing arising from my own
personal situation
- A common task
- Demands the study of the works, thoughts of the philosophers
- Why?
- I am inserted in a history of thought, which is not purely personal,
which I have not made myself.
- I do not start from zero, from scratch in my own philosophizing for
other have thought before me.
- I am carried by their thought; I am in the stream of thought established
by tradition
- at least because of the language I speak
- and because of the ideas in this language which permeate me
- Thus, impossible for me to think without tradition
- Problem:
- How do I philosophize in such a way that we do not compromise either:
- The act of philosophizing as a personal task
- The act of philosophizing as a common task
ii. Constituted Philosophy makes us sensitive and gives us access to the wealth
of reality
57

which they great philosophers have perceived and which otherwise we could
not have
perceived.
- philosophers have long been dead and their own particular experiences of
reality
have long passed.
- Yet these experiences found expression, are embodied, contained in their
philosophy which is a speaking word.
- Through their works, we have access to their unique experience of reality and
through them, their own experiences of reality could also be ours.
- Without their experiences, it would be difficult for us to come to those
experiences. E.g.:
- without Plato,
- our experience and conception of reality would be trivial and
materialistic
- the totality of being could not be experienced and understood in its
great variety and levels, at least when we reflect philosophically upon reality
11
- without Augustine, we would not have been sensitive and understood the
meaning of our restlessness of being-in-the-world.
- Without Marx, Darwin, Freud, we could not have been corrected of our
exaggerated spiritualism.
- Therefore, they make it possible for us to have personal experience of reality,
to
make us sensitive to the superabundance/wealth contained in the totality of all
that is.
iii. What the great philosophers saw/experienced remains fruitful and source of
inspiration
- works of great philosophers are considered classical not only because they
make
us see/experience what they saw/experience which otherwise we could have
been blind
of.
- But at the same time they inspire us to see/experience over and beyond what
they saw
- They further inspire us to ask questions, further beyond, deeper than they have
asked
- To find/seek answers beyond what they found
- To see ourselves the truth of the answers beyond what they themselves saw.
- Yet as every philosopher was struck/awed by a particular aspect of reality, and
every system constructed by a great philosopher is an expression/articulation of
some
aspect of reality, there is a danger:
58

- that a particular aspect of reality might be elevated by him to the rank of

reality,
pure and simple, or THE REALITY
- that a particular experience of reality may be proclaimed as the only
REALITY
and its articulation and systematization as the SYSTEM, THE PHILOSOPHY.
- When this happens, it becomes antiquated.
Conclusion:
- If constituted philosophy is a speaking word (i.e., an articulation/expression of
a
particular experience of reality), then the study of the works of the different
philosophers
leads us to:
- Experience the philosophers' particular experiences of reality
(APPROPRIATION)
- Experience new and deeper aspect of reality other than what they have
experienced (EXPANSION)
- And one does not simply accumulate knowledge but listens to reality no
matter
where it speaks to him.

--------------------------------------------------------------
From page 12 onwards we are informed that philosophy is intersubjective. in
other it is note merely subjective, invented and practised by a single, isolated
individual but in terms of inter-subjective (socio-cultural) standards, norms or
rules of the philosophical discourse and socio-cultural practice.
According to him philosophical truths (insights? knowledge) are intersubjective
because -
Philosophical Truth is intersubjective simply because any truth is
intersubjective.
- In principle,
- Truth is not true to me alone but to true to all; otherwise is not true at all.
- Though in fact (de facto)
- A particular philosophical truth is not yet recognized by all
- Yet, it can be recognized by all as true, as valid.
---------------------
Philosophical truths differ from scientific (also intersubjective) truth -
difference is not that scientific truth is intersubjective while philosophical truth
is not
- but that the intersubjectivity of scientific truth is easier to achieve than the
59

intersubjective examination of philosophical question and discovery.

- In principle, both are intersubjective.
He then concludes that philosophy is not useful in the world/reality of work, but
it is useful and meaningful(?) in the context of the reality/world of philosophy.
-------------------------
5. The Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth
i. Denial of Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth
- Subjective View of Philosophical Truth: Philosophical Truth has to be
subjective in order to be authentic. Why?
- Philosophy is a personal task/affair:
- Asking one's own depth-questions
- Seeking find by himself answers for them
- Seeing himself the truth of the answers
- As a personal task, it involves study of other philosophers in order to see the
truth they discovered as true to me, to be inspired to see myself more than what
they
have seen.
- Subjectivistic View of Philosophical Truth
- Philosophical truth (that which I see, discover, know in my philosophical
enterprise, that which is unfolded before me in philosophical pursuit) is
true/valid to
me alone but not true/valid for all.
- Philosophical Truth is per se not truth for all (not intersubjective)
- Intersubjective View of Scientific Truth
- Scientific truth is the only intersubjective truth, i.e. the only truth which could
be
accepted/validated by all as true.
- Intersubjectivity as the exclusive characteristic of Science
ii. Subjectivistic View of Philosophy is Self-Contradictory View
- those who claim that philosophical truth is true to me alone but not true to all
contradict themselves; in other words, their claim contradicts/falsifies their
claim
- How?
- For them to claim this subjectivistic view of philosophical truth, they
presuppose
that this view as true is valid to all and not just to a particular person.
- To claim otherwise, they would not make sense at all as they would not make
any statement or any claim on this view. Why?
- For to make a claim of anything before anyone, I presuppose that no
one can rightly deny this truth. Thus, this implies that he can also see the truth
of
what I claim.
12
60

- But they claim that no philosophical truth is true to all

- Thus, they contradict themselves.
iii. Difference between Philosophical Truth and Scientific Truth
- difference is not that scientific truth is intersubjective while philosophical truth
is not
- but that the intersubjectivity of scientific truth is easier to achieve than the
intersubjective examination of philosophical question and discovery.
- In principle, both are intersubjective.
iv. Philosophical Truth is intersubjective simply because any truth is
intersubjective.
- In principle,
- Truth is not true to me alone but to true to all; otherwise is not true at all.
- Though in fact (de facto)
- A particular philosophical truth is not yet recognized by all
- Yet, it can be recognized by all as true, as valid.
6. The Usefulness of Philosophy
1. Philosophy is not useful in the "World of Work"
- "World of Work":
- technocratic world, functional world
- control/manipulation of nature to serve/meet one's particular needs
- dealing with practical living
- life on the horizontal dimension
- Science is very useful in this kind world
- E.g. Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economic, Psychology
- But philosophy is not useful, and even wholly useless in this kind world, the
world of work
- Thus, when a person concerns himself with the practical living and as society
tends to become a technocratic organization of work, philosophy is seen as
useless
- Ironically, it is to this person, and to this society that philosophy becomes not
only useful but even necessary.
2. Philosophy is useful in the "World of Philosophy"
- unless one enters into a particular presence to reality (world) achieved by
philosophers, unless one enters into the level, dimension, realm, aspect of
reality which
the philosophers have entered, one cannot be convinced of the usefulness of
philosophy.
- Thus, the usefulness of philosophy can only be appreciated by those who have
left behind or go beyond or deeper than the world of work, and have
experienced,
perceived or entered into this realm, dimension of reality - world of philosophy
- For those who have already entered, they do not need to be convinced of the
usefulness of philosophy for the value of philosophy clearly reveals itself.
61

- For those who have not yet entered into the world of philosophy, they can at
least accept the usefulness of philosophy in good faith, and start philosophizing.
---------------------------

I find many of his ideas very attractive because I have since my youth identified
written about then when I found their relevance for philosophy and their
meaningfulness, for example intersubjectivity, authentic philosophy/izing and
philosophers and those who live for philosophy (and not merely living off it as
academic “philosophers”). Original, creative thinking philosophers versus
academic, derivative philosophers, comparable to academic art and the art by
original-, creative-thinking artists.
However, much of what he suggests are not hard philosophy(ical facts), but the
idealization of and hope for what philosophy might be like - almost in the vein
of Plato. These are often mere speculations when he makes statements or
speculates and do not provide us with arguments and reasons for these
statements he makes.

----------------------------

I include this article by C D Broad from 1947 among methods of philosophy as

I find it interesting for several reasons.

He was professor of philosophy at a number of universities, mostly in the UK.

(Broad was openly homosexual at a time when homosexual acts were illegal. In
March 1958, Broad along with fellow philosophers A.J. Ayer and Bertrand
Russell, writer J.B. Priestley, and 27 others, sent a letter to The Times which
urged the acceptance of the Wolfenden Report's recommendation that
homosexual acts should 'no longer be a criminal offence'.). He was also
President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1935 and 1958. Broad argued
that if research showed that psychic events occur, this would challenge
philosophical theories of "basic limiting principles" in at least five ways:
1. Backward causation, the future affecting the past, is rejected by many
philosophers, but would be shown to occur if, for example, people could
predict the future.
2. One common argument against dualism, that is the belief that minds are
non-physical, and bodies physical, is that physical and non-physical
things cannot interact. However, this would be shown to be possible if
people can move physical objects by thought (telekinesis).
62

3. Similarly, philosophers tend to be skeptical about claims that non-

physical 'stuff' could interact with anything. This would also be
challenged if minds are shown to be able to communicate with each
other, as would be the case if mind-reading is possible.
4. Philosophers generally accept that we can only learn about the world
through reason and perception. This belief would be challenged if people
were able to psychically perceive events in other places.
5. Physicalist philosophers believe that there cannot be persons without
bodies. If ghosts were shown to exist, this view would be challenged.
6. Broad argued for "non-occurrent causation" as "literally determined by
the agent or self." The agent could be considered as a substance or
continuant, and not by a total cause which contains as factors events in
and dispositions of the agent. Thus our efforts would be completely
determined, but their causes would not be prior events.
7. New series of events would then originate which he called "continuants."
These are essentially causa sui.
8. Peter van Inwagen says that Broad formulated an excellent version of
what van Inwagen has called the "Consequence Argument" in defense of
incompatibilism.

Broad's early interests were in science and mathematics. Despite being

successful in these he came to believe that he would never be a first-rate
scientist, and turned to philosophy. Broad's interests were exceptionally wide-
ranging. He devoted his philosophical acuity to the mind-body problem, the
nature of perception, memory, introspection, and the unconscious, to the nature
of space, time and causation. He also wrote extensively on the philosophy of
probability and induction, ethics, the history of philosophy and the philosophy
of religion. The ample scope and scale of Broad's work is impressive In addition
he nourished an interest in parapsychology—a subject he approached with the
disinterested curiosity and scrupulous care that is characteristic of his
philosophical work.

Broad did not have “a philosophy”—if by that phrase is meant highly original
philosophical theories, and a highly original way of approaching philosophical
problems. He writes: “I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of
my own, and there is no philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon
myself a faithful follower” (1λ24, p. ιι “Critical and Speculative Philosophy,”
in Contemporary British Philosophy (First Series), ed. by J.H. Muirhead,
London: Allen and Unwin).
63

It is one thing to delineate the contours of the notion of emergence, another to

argue that emergent phenomena actually exist. A wide variety of phenomena
have been held to be emergent. Apart from consciousness, various chemical and
biological phenomena have been held to be emergent. Broad is not willing to
rule out a physicalistic reduction of chemistry and biology to physics: chemical
and biological phenomena might, he believes, very well be reducible to
complex microphysical processes. In his opinion, however, consciousness is a
different matter. We will turn to consciousness in a moment. When it comes to
biology and chemistry he declares that he does not see any “a priori
impossibility in a mechanistic biology or chemistry” (1λ25, p. ι2). He stresses
that it is in practice enormously difficult to know whether, say, a certain
biological feature such as nutrition is emergent or not. It is evident from what
Broad says that he recognises that the Emergentist stance has its dangers in that
it tends to encourage acceptance of laws and properties as ultimate and
irreducible. There is a danger in this because, as he notes, reductive
explanations have proved remarkably successful in the past, and there is the
possibility that what we take to be an emergent phenomenon is in fact reducible.
In the last chapter of his book Broad presents a taxonomy of no less than
seventeen different theories which are “possible theoretically on the relation
between Mind and Matter” (1λ25, p. 60ι). By a process of elimination Broad
arrives at a more wieldy number of theories. Two of the remaining rivalling
theories are Physicalism—in Broad's terminology, “Mechanism”—and
Emergentism. Let us now take a closer look at his case for Emergentism.
Broad adduces a version of what has come to be known as The Knowledge
Argument in favour of an Emergentist position with respect to the place of
consciousness in nature. He asks us to assume that there is a mathematical
archangel.

Metaphilosophy
Broad distinguishes two chief aspects of philosophical thinking. He labels
these critical philosophy and speculative philosophy. Critical philosophy has
two chief tasks, one of which is to analyse “certain very general concepts such
as number, thing, quality, change, cause, etc.” (1λ24, p. κ2). We make use of
these and a whole host of other concepts in science and ordinary life. Although
we are typically able to apply them fairly consistently, we are not able to
analyse them. Nor are we able to state their precise relations to each other. One
task of critical philosophy is to provide analyses of such concepts. It
becomes evident that this is an important task as soon as it is realized that when
we seek to apply these concepts to odd or exceptional cases we are often
uncertain whether they are applicable. For example, it might be unclear whether
64

a certain individual with a multiple personality disorder is a person or not.Such

difficulties arise because “we are not clear as to what we mean by ‘being a
person’” (1λ24, p. κ3). There is, therefore, a need for an intellectual discipline
that seeks to analyse and define this and many other concepts.
In science and in daily life we do not merely use unanalysed concepts. “We also
assume uncritically a number of very fundamental propositions. In all our
arguments we assume the truth of certain principles of reasoning. Again, we
always assume that every change has a cause. And in induction we certainly
assume something—it is hard to say what—about the fundamental ‘make-up’ of
the existent world” (1λ24, p. κ4).
The second task of critical philosophy is to examine these and other
fundamental assumptions; it is “to take these propositions which we
uncritically assume in science and daily life and to subject them to criticism”
(ibid.).
In order to analyse a proposition we must seek to attain a clearer grasp of the
concepts featured in the proposition. Thus the analysis and criticism of a
proposition depends on the analysis of concepts. And vice versa: by
reflecting on the propositions in which a certain concept occurs we clear up the
meaning of it.
Now, critical philosophy is one part or aspect of philosophical thinking. But
critical philosophy “does not include all that is understood by philosophy. It is
certainly held to be the function of a philosopher to discuss the nature of
Reality as a whole, and to consider the position and prospects of men in it”
(1924, p. 96). This aspect of philosophical thinking is speculative philosophy.
Speculative philosophy seeks to work out a view of reality as a whole by taking
into account the whole range of human experience—scientific, social, ethical,
æsthetic, and religious: “Its business is to take over all aspects of human
experience, to reflect upon them, and to try to think out a view of Reality as a
whole which shall do justice to all of them” (1λ24, p. λ6).
Broad's idea is that the various aspects of human experience and (putative) facts
linked to these provide a point of departure for philosophical reflection—an
exceedingly important sort of reflection aiming at a reasoned view of Reality as
a whole.
As can be gathered from the above, philosophical thinking features, according
to Broad, a distinctive type of birds-eye view. He calls it synopsis. Let us take a
somewhat closer look at this. The plain man as well as the professional scientist
or scholar…
65

I understand by synopsis the necessary preliminary towards trying to satisfy this

desire, viz. the deliberate viewing together of aspects of human experience
which are generally viewed apart, and the endeavour to see how they are inter-
related. (1947a, p. 4)
On reflection it is clear that the synoptic stance is necessary for the discovery of
various inadequacies in our picture of reality, inadequacies resulting from a far
too insular perspective on reality. The synoptic stance will, in effect, lead to the
discovery of latent philosophical problems: “It is synopsis, revealing prima
facie incoherence, which is the main motive to philosophical activity” (1λ5κ, p.
121; cf. 1947a, p. 16). And it is clearly only after we have discovered and
successfully addressed these problems that we may lay claim to a satisfactory
picture of reality as a whole.
Broad gives several examples of how synopsis is featured in philosophical
thinking. One of these is taken from the free will problem. he main facts
germane to the problem are these: (i) When we consider a situation in which we
did a certain action, we are quite convinced that we could have done otherwise:
we could have performed an alternative action. On reflection it seems clear that
‘could’ is used in some sense that is not analysable in terms of ‘would have, if’.
(ii) Our moral judgments seem to presuppose that a person who in fact willed to
do a certain action could have willed otherwise. (iii) Given the past, the actual
situation and the laws of nature it seems impossible that anything other should
have happened than what in fact did happen. If so, how can our volitions be
other than completely determined? (iv) It is difficult, then, to reconcile the
notions of moral responsibility with the view that our volitions are completely
determined.
The problem of free will is discovered when we look at (i) and (ii) in the light of
(iii) In other words, the very problem is discerned only because we have
envisaged these facts together, i.e. because we have taken a synoptic view of the
facts.
Above are a few of the reasons why I find Broad, his work, ideas and
suggestions of interest. It is against the above background as context that the
article below should be res.
I find Broad’s notions and depictions of method of (analytic and) speculative
philosophy both very general, but also in another sense very limited. Those are
obviously not the only reasons for philosophy or the only methods employed by
philosophers. In spite of this I find his view of methods of philosophy of
interest.

SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY

66

By Professor C. D. Broad.

Published in Aristotelian Society Supplement 21 (1947): 1-32.

Examples of Synopsis
-it might be said, there is no single non-disjunctive characteristic, and no
conjunction of such characteristics, common and peculiar to what Hume was
doing and what Hegel was doing. To philosophize, on this view, is to perform
one or another or a mixture of at least two fundamentally different kinds of
activity, one of which is exemplified by Hume's attempt to analyze causal
propositions and the other by Hegel's attempt to establish the formal structure of
the universe by dialectical reasoning.
I think it is quite clear that the word "philosophy" has always been used to
cover the kind of thing that Hegel did and that McTaggart did in addition to the
kind of thing which Hume did and which Moore does, whether or not these be
two radically disparate kinds of activity. Anyone who proposes that the name
"philosophy" shall be confined to the latter kind of activity is proposing that it
shall henceforth be used in a new and much narrower sense, and he should be
expected to give reasons for this linguistic innovation. He might, e.g., give as
his reason that philosophizing, in the sense of doing the kind of thing that Hume
did, is a practicable and useful activity; whilst philosophizing, in the sense of
doing the kind of thing which Hegel did, is not only impracticable and therefore
useless, but is also a deceptive activity, based on certain fundamental illusions
which have now been detected and explained but are still dangerously insidious.
This brings me to my main point. I am inclined to think that there are two
features which are together characteristic of all work that would generally be
regarded as philosophical, and a third which is often present in a high degree
but may be evanescent. The two which I think are always present may be called
"analysis" and "synopsis"; the one which may be present in a vanishingly small
degree can be called "synthesis." Analysis and synopsis themselves may he
present in very different degrees and proportions. Hume's work, e.g., is so
predominantly analytic that it might be denied to be synoptic, and Hegel's is so
predominantly synoptic that it might be denied to be analytic. But I believe that
both are always present, and that each involves some degree of the other. Lastly,
there is a very high positive correlation between synopsis and synthesis.
Synthesis presupposes synopsis, and extensive synopsis is generally made by
persons whose main interest is in synthesis.
. Let it suffice to say crudely that it (analysis) consists in clearing up the
meanings of all the fundamental kinds of sentence which we habitually use, e.g.,
causal sentences, material-thing sentences, sentences with the word "I" as
grammatical subject, sentences with temporal copulas, ethical sentences,
religious sentences, and so on.
67

Synopsis and synthesis are specially characteristic of what may be called

"speculative philosophy," and that is why the latter phrase occurs in the title of
my paper. I will begin with the notion of synopsis.
Examples of Synopsis.

(1) As our first example we will take the problem of sense-perception. Why
is there a problem?

(i) In the first place, because, if we attend carefully, we note such facts as
these.

Two observers, who are said to be seeing the same part of the same thing at
the same time, are often not being presented with precisely similar visual
appearances of that object.
One and the same observer, who is said to be seeing the same unchanged
part of the same thing at different times and from different positions, is often
not presented with precisely similar visual appearances of that object on both
occasions.
(ii) Secondly, because there are visual experiences which are abnormal in
various ways and degrees, but are similar to and continuous with those which
are normal. They range, e.g., from mirror-images and straight sticks that look
bent when half immersed in water,

(iii) Thirdly, because of facts which are still quite unknown except to a
minority of grown-up educated persons, and which must have been completely
hidden from everyone at the time when the language in which we express our
sense-experiences was first formed and for thousands of years afterwards. One
of these is the physical fact that light takes time to travel; and that the visual
appearance which a remote object presents at any time to an observer depends,
not on the shape, size, position, etc., of the object at that moment, but on what
they were at the moment when the light now striking the observer's eye left the
object. Another of them is the physiological fact that visual appearances vary
with certain changes in the observers eye, optic nerve, and brain
There is a problem of sense-perception, in the philosophical sense, for those
and only those who try to envisage all these fact together and to interpret sense-
perception and its implications in relation to all of them. Since it is plain that
they are all relevant to it, it is desirable that someone should take this synoptic
view. Since the language in which we express our visual sense-perceptions was
formed unwittingly in prehistoric times to deal in a practical way with a kind of
normalized extract from our visual experiences, and in complete ignorance of a
whole department of relevant physical, physiological, and psychological facts, it
would be a miracle if it were theoretically adequate and if it were not positively
misleading in some of its implications.
68

(i) It is plain to common sense that many of a person's sensations and feelings
follow immediately upon and vary concomitantly with certain events in his
eyes, ears, joints, etc. On the other hand, many experiences, e.g., processes of
day-dreaming, deliberating, reasoning, etc., do not seem prima facie to be
covariant with events in the body.
(ii) The sciences of physiology and anatomy make it almost certain that the
immediate bodily antecedents and correlates of sensations and feelings are not
events in one's eyes, ears, joints, etc., but are slightly later imperceptible
chemical or electrical changes in certain parts of one's brain.
(iii) It is further alleged, on the authority of these sciences, that there are
immediate bodily antecedents and correlates of the same general nature, viz.,
chemical or electrical events in certain parts of the brain, even to those mental
processes, such as deliberating, comparing, abstracting, reasoning, etc., which
do not seem prima facie to be covariant with bodily events.
(iv) The physical sciences have developed a concept of causation in terms of
regular sequence and concomitant variation, in which the notions of agent and
instrument, activity and passivity, etc., play little if any explicit part.
Now these various mutually relevant facts are hardly ever viewed
synoptically except by philosophers. Common sense is quite ignorant of many
of them and common language had grown up and crystallized ages before they
were known or suspected. On the other hand, scientists who are familiar with all
of them tend to concentrate on one at a time and temporarily to ignore the rest.
When they confine their attention to the physical and physiological and
anatomical facts they are inclined to take the view that men are "conscious
automata," i.e., that all our mental states, including processes of reasoning,
willing, etc., are mere by-products of states of brain which are determined by
purely physical and physiological antecedents. But their daily lives and all their
professional activities presuppose a view which is shared by plain men and
which seems prima facie to be incompatible with the conscious automaton
theory.
Scientists all assume in practice that when they design and carry out an
experiment, they are initiating certain changes in the material world which
would never have taken place unless they had been thought out beforehand,
desired, and deliberately led up to. They assume that their assent to or dissent
from the various alternative interpretations which might be put on the results of
an experiment is determined by processes of reasoning, demonstrative or
probable, in which belief is given or withheld in accordance with evidence,
which may be favourable or unfavourable, weak or strong or coercive. Now all
this involves concepts, and seems prima facie to involve modes of causation,
completely different from those in terms of which the conscious automaton
theory is formulated.
To sum this up briefly. The scientist who investigates and theorizes about man
and his powers and activities is himself a man exercizing certain
69

characteristically human powers and activities. But the account which he is apt
to give of man, when he treats him as an object of scientific investigation, seems
prima facie difficult to reconcile with the occurrence and the validity of his own
most characteristic activities as investigator, experimenter, theorist, and
reasoner. The need for synopsis by someone who is aware of all the main facts
and can hold them steadily together in one view is here particularly obvious.

(3) As a third example of synopsis I will take what may roughly be called
the "free-will" problem. The main facts are these.
Here again the need for synopsis is evident. It seems prima facie that each
of us conducts one part of his life on the assumption of complete determinism
and another part on the assumption of incomplete determinism plus something
else more positive which it is very hard to formulate clearly. And these two
parts are not sharply separated; they overlap and interpenetrate each other. Most
of us generally manage to ignore one aspect at a time and concentrate on the
other; but, however convenient this may be in practice,

Problem of sense-perception
Mind-body problem
Free-will problem
Paranormal phenomena
Synopsis and Analysis
I think that there is a very close connexion between synopsis and the process
of analysis which everyone admits to be a characteristically philosophical
activity. It is generally synopsis which gives the stimulus to analysis. As I have
shown in my examples, it often happens that each of several regions of fact,
which we generally contemplate or react to separately, gives rise to its own set
of concepts and principles; that each such set seems satisfactory and internally
coherent; but that, when we contemplate these various departments together, we
find that the corresponding sets of concepts and principles seem to conflict with
each other. The intellectual discomfort thus produced in a person of
philosophical disposition is perhaps the most usual motive for trying to analyze
those concepts and to formulate those principles clearly. Such a process is an
indispensable step towards deciding whether the inconsistency is real or only
apparent and towards formulating it precisely if it is real ; and this is a
precondition of any efficient attempt to resolve it.
Synopsis and Synthesis
Synopsis is not an end in itself. It not only provides the stimulus for
analysis, but it also furnishes the basis for something else, which may be called
"Synthesis." The purpose of synthesis is to supply a set of concepts and
principles which shall cover satisfactorily all the various regions of fact which
are being viewed synoptically.
70

The apparent conflict between the concepts and principles characteristic of

different regions of fact must be shown to arise from the valid application of
these common concepts and principles in different contexts and under different
special limitations.

Some further Remarks on Synopsis and Synthesis

Intellectual activities which are genuinely philosophical, in that they involve
deep analysis, wide synopsis, and illuminating synthesis, occur from time to
time within some special science. This is particularly obvious when the science
is concerned, as physics is, with very fundamental and pervasive features of
reality. I could certainly count as philosophical the work done by Galileo on the
analysis of kinematic and dynamical phenomena, and the correlated work of
synthesis in which the formulation of the three laws of motion and the law of
gravitation by Newton is an outstanding phase and the unification of these laws
by Lagrange, Hamilton, and finally Einstein is a further development.

Again, the situations which led respectively to the formulation of the Principle
of Relativity and the Uncertainty Principle are typical of what I have
exemplified under the head of synopsis, and the principles themselves are
typical of what I have described as synthesis. In the case of relativity there were
many different kinds of possible experiments which, in accordance with well-
tried and generally accepted principles, might have been expected to provide
perceptible evidence for the motion of a body relative to the surrounding ether.
The results of all these experiments were completely negative
The Principle of Relativity and the Uncertainty Principle are clear instances of
synthesis, based on synopsis, and preceded and made possible by a more
profound analysis of generally accepted concepts and principles.
The results of such synthesis in physics have the advantage that either they
themselves can be stated mathematically or that they impose certain conditions
on the form of equations which express possible physical laws. Hence their
consequences can be rigidly deduced. This is seldom, if ever, true of syntheses
which cover several widely different fields of fact, e.g., man considered as
reasoner, experimenter, and morally responsible agent, and man considered as
an object of physiological and psychological experiment
In the Second Book of his Ethics Spinoza tries to formulate a theory of bodies
consistent with his general principle that there are no finite continuants, that the
only genuine continuant is God, and that God is a substance which is at once
material and mental
Synopsis and synthesis both take place at various levels. I have just given
examples of them within a single region of fact, viz., that of physics. At a higher
level one would try to get a synoptic view, e.g., of the phenomena of organic
and inorganic material things and processes, and try to synthesize them into a
71

single coherent scheme. At a still higher level one would take into one's view
the facts of mental life at the animal level, and then at the level of rational
cognition, deliberate action, specifically moral emotion and motivation, and so
on. Finally, if no account had so far been taken of paranormal phenomena, these
would have to be brought into the picture, and an attempt made to synthesize
them with the normal facts. As each new department was considered it would be
necessary to review the syntheses which had seemed fairly satisfactory at the
previous level. Some of them might not need to be rejected or even seriously
modified, but others might have to be completely abandoned or considerably
altered when a new department of fa or analyticcts was brought into the picture.

How are Principles of Synthesis Discovered?

I am sure that it is impossible to give rules for the discovery of principles of
synthesis in philosophy
just as it is impossible to give rules for suggesting fruitful hypotheses and
colligating a mass of observations in science
Now the speculative philosopher naturally wants to unify and synthesize such
a hierarchy, and he is often tempted to do it in one or other of two opposite
ways. These might be called respectively Reduction and Sublimation. The
reductive type of unification tries to show that the features which are
characteristic of the higher levels are analyzable without remainder into those
which belong to the lower levels. Just the same laws hold throughout, but we
have different and more special collocations of the same elements at the higher
levels; and the occurrence of those special collocations is itself explicable from
the laws and collocations characteristic of the lowest level. The sublimative type
of unification tries to show that the features which seem to be peculiar to the
higher levels are really present in a latent or a specially simplified or a
degenerate form at the lower levels. It may even try to show that features which
seem to be typical of the lowest levels are partially misleading appearances of
features which are typical of the highest levels. Materialism, in its non-emergent
forms, and Leibniz's form of mentalism, are extreme cases respectively of the
reductive and the sublimative types of unification.

How are Proposed Principles of Synthesis Recommended?

How does a philosopher persuade himself and try to persuade others to accept
the kind of synthesis which he proposes?
In former times the method was often, ostensibly at any rate, deductive.
Certain very general premises were accepted by a philosopher as self-evident
synthetic propositions. He either assumed that other persons would find them
self-evident at once, or, if not, he tried to remove confusions and
misunderstandings and to place his readers in a position in which they could
contemplate these premises for themselves. He hoped and expected that they too
would find them self-evident.
72

In recent times speculative philosophers have more and more tended to

abandon this method.
Certain very general premises were accepted by a philosopher as self-evident
synthetic propositions. He either assumed that other persons would find them
self-evident at once, or, if not, he tried to remove confusions and
misunderstandings and to place his readers in a position in which they could
contemplate these premises for themselves. He hoped and expected that they too
would find them self-evident.
In recent times speculative philosophers have more and more tended to
abandon this method.
-----------------------------------

R
I offer as a conclusion to the different notions expressed concerning the
method/s and the methodology of philosophy the following suggestions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_methodology
I make comments on this statement of philosophy and its methods and
methodologies in the text.

Philosophical method (or philosophical methodology) is the (intersubjective,

socio-cultural practice , discipline or discourse employing and based on
agreements or norms accepted by and institutionalized in the particular schools
of or moments in philosophy of the philosophical discourse, if not accepted by
the entire discourse, that is all the schools and movements that constitute it)
study of how to do philosophy. A common view among philosophers is that
philosophy is distinguished by the ways that philosophers follow in addressing
philosophical questions. There is not just one method that philosophers use to
answer philosophical questions.

Systematic philosophy is a generic term that applies to philosophical methods

and approaches that attempt to provide a framework in reason that can explain
all questions and problems related to human life.(is it not ALL life or rather
existence? Ontology and metaphysics) Examples of systematic philosophers
include Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel. In many ways, any
attempts to formulate a philosophical method that provides the ultimate
constituents of reality, a metaphysics, can be considered systematic philosophy.
In modern philosophy the reaction to systematic philosophy began with
Kierkegaard and continued in various forms through analytic philosophy,
existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstructionism.
Some common features of the methods that philosophers follow (and discuss
when discussing philosophical method) include:
73

 Methodic doubt - a systematic process of being skeptical about (or

doubting) the truth of one's beliefs. (and all underlying assumptions and
implicit pre-suppositions or transcendentals as in the case of Kant).
 Argument - provide an argument or several arguments supporting the
solution.(by means of coherent, logical reasoning and sound arguments0
 Dialectic - present the solution and arguments for criticism by other
philosophers, and help them judge their own.

Doubt and the sense of wonder

Plato said that "philosophy begins in wonder", a view which is echoed by
Aristotle: "It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize
and still leads them." Philosophizing may begin with some simple doubts about
accepted beliefs. The initial impulse to philosophize may arise from suspicion,
for example that we do not fully understand, and have not fully justified, even
our most basic beliefs about the world. (doubt as a way, a method to question
and problematize things)

Formulate questions and problems

Another element of philosophical method is to formulate questions to be
answered or problems to be solved. The working assumption is that the more
clearly the question or problem (the process of problematization) is stated,
the easier it is to identify critical issues.
A relatively small number of major philosophers prefer not to be quick, but to
spend more time trying to get extremely clear on what the problem is all about.

Enunciate a solution
Another approach is to(1) enunciate a theory , or (2) to offer a definition or
analysis, which constitutes an attempt to solve a philosophical problem.
Sometimes a philosophical theory by itself can be stated quite briefly. All the
supporting philosophical text is offered by way of hedging, (Broad illustrates
how this works in detail, attempts to provide solutions from particular cases,
generalize mistakenly to all cases, false hypotheses and proposals)
explanation, and argument. (see Broad who from his scientific background, has
a number of things to say about developing and using theories in science and
reductionism, sublimation and deductionism in philosophy. How are Principles
of Synthesis Discovered? gives details of how philosophers do this. “remarks
on the general procedure of speculative philosophers….What often happens is
74

this. A philosopher is strongly impressed by some feature which is highly

characteristic of a certain important region of fact, and which within that region
is felt to be completely intelligible and a source of satisfactory
explanations…..Finally, he tries to show that this principle is, in fact, operative
in those regions in which it seemed at first sight not to be so. In this way, he
feels that he has discovered order and unity pervading the collection of various
regions of fact which he is surveying synoptically.” “Now the speculative
philosopher naturally wants to unify and synthesize such a hierarchy, and he is
often tempted to do it in one or other of two opposite ways. These might be
called respectively Reduction and Sublimation. The reductive type of unification
tries to show that the features which are characteristic of the higher levels are
analyzable without remainder into those which belong to the lower levels. Just
the same laws hold throughout, but we have different and more special
collocations of the same elements at the higher levels; and the occurrence of
those special collocations is itself explicable from the laws and collocations
characteristic of the lowest level. The sublimative type of unification tries to
show that the features which seem to be peculiar to the higher levels are really
present in a latent or a specially simplified or a degenerate form at the lower
levels. It may even try to show that features which seem to be typical of the
lowest levels are partially misleading appearances of features which are typical
of the highest levels.”)
Not all proposed solutions to philosophical problems consist of definitions or
generalizations. Sometimes what is called for is a certain sort of explanation
— not a causal explanation, but an explanation for example of how two
different views, which seem to be contrary to one another, can be held at the
same time, consistently. One can call this a philosophical explanation. (See
the above comments and ‘philosophical explanation’ of how this is done by
Broad. Broad himself uses this technique in the whole of his article).

Justify the solution

A argument is a set of statements, one of which (the conclusion), it is said or
implied, follows from the others (the premises). One might think of arguments
as bundles of reasons — often not just a list, but logically interconnected
statements — followed by the claim they are reasons for. The reasons are the
premises, the claim they support is the conclusion; together they make an
argument. (See Formal methods in Philosophy by Schoubye for details on the
formal aspects of arguments and reasoning, very detailed and complex). (also
see Thouless: Straight and Crooked thinking for correct arguments and different
fallacies. Available as free PDF download here:
http://neglectedbooks.com/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking.pdf Straight
and Crooked Thinking, first published in 1930 and revised in 1953, is a book by
75

Robert H. Thouless which describes, assesses and critically analyses flaws in

reasoning and argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_and_Crooked_Thinking Synopsis of
Thirty-eight fallacies discussed in the book. (Brtoad selects a few of these that
according to him are frequently , illegally not validly, employed by
philosophers. He uses his own terms to refer to them). Among them are:
 No. 3. proof by example, biased sample, cherry picking
 No. 6. ignoratio elenchi: "red herring"
 No. 9. false compromise/middle ground
 No. 12. argument in a circle
 No. 13. begging the question
 No. 17. equivocation
 No. 18. false dilemma: black and white thinking
 No. 19. continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard)
 No. 21. ad nauseam: "argumentum ad nauseam" or "argument from
repetition" or "argumentum ad infinitum"
 No. 25. style over substance fallacy
 No. 28. appeal to authority
 No. 31. thought-terminating cliché
 No. 36. special pleading
 No. 37. appeal to consequences
 No. 38. appeal to motive

See also

 Thinking portal
 List of cognitive biases
 List of common misconceptions
 List of fallacies
 List of memory biases
76

 List of topics related to public relations and propaganda )

Philosophical arguments and justifications are another important part of

philosophical method. It is rare to find a philosopher, particularly in the
Western philosophical tradition, who lacks many arguments. Philosophers are,
or at least are expected to be, very good at giving arguments. They constantly
demand and offer arguments for different claims they make. ( To make and
argument is to provide a bundle of reasons that are logicalyl interconnected or
coherent so as to be able to arrive at and make a or draw a certain conclusion.
Thestatements are followed by a claim for something to be the case or not. The
argument/s support the claim, the conclusion that is arrived at or made). (As we
shall see in the quotes below a good argument is clear, well organized and a
sound statement of a number of interconnected or coherent reasons for why one
is able and it is legitimate to say something or to make a certain claim or draw a
certain conclusion.)
This therefore indicates that philosophy is a quest for arguments.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument n philosophy and logic, an argument
is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to
present reasons for accepting a conclusion.[1][2] The general form of an argument
in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions,
statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion.[3][4][5] The
structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and
formally defined "arguments" can be made independently of natural language
arguments, as in math, logic, and computer science.
In a typical deductive argument, the premises guarantee the truth of the
conclusion, while in an inductive argument, they are thought to provide reasons
supporting the conclusion's probable truth.[6] The standards for evaluating non-
deductive arguments may rest on different or additional criteria than truth, for
example, the persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability claims" in
transcendental arguments,[7] the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even
the disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.[8]
The standards and criteria used in evaluating arguments and their forms of
reasoning are studied in logic.[9] Ways of formulating arguments effectively are
studied in rhetoric (see also: argumentation theory). An argument in a formal
language shows the logical form of the symbolically represented or natural
language arguments obtained by its interpretations.)
Argument at PhilPapers
Argument at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
77

"Argument". Internet Encyclopedia of

Philosophy.http://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/ The focus of this article is on
understanding an argument as a collection of truth-bearers (that is, the things
that bear truth and falsity, or are true and false) some of which are offered as
reasons for one of them, the conclusion. This article takes propositions rather
than sentences or statements or utterances to be the primary truth bearers. The
reasons offered within the argument are called “premises”, and the proposition
that the premises are offered for is called the “conclusion”.
1. The Structural Approach to Characterizing Arguments
2. The Pragmatic Approach to Characterizing Arguments
3. Deductive, Inductive, and Conductive Arguments
4. Conclusion
5. References and Further Reading )

A good argument — a clear, organized, and sound statement of reasons —

may ultimately cure the original doubts that motivated us to take up philosophy.
If one is willing to be satisfied without any good supporting reasons, then a
Western philosophical approach may not be what one actually requires.(
https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-9/10100-
spring/_LECTURES/2%20-%20arguments.pdf
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/goodarg.php Argument analysis
 A01. What is an argument?
 A02. The standard format
 A03. Validity
 A04. Soundness
 A05. Valid patterns
 A06. Validity and relevance
 A07. Hidden Assumptions
 A08. Inductive Reasoning
 A09. Good Arguments
78

 A10. Argument mapping

 A11. Analogical Arguments
 A12. More valid patterns
 A13. Arguing with other people
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/logical-and-critical-thinking/0/steps/9153

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/logical-and-critical-thinking/0/steps/9152
So far we have talked about the kind of support that can be given for
conclusions: deductive and non-deductive. But we haven’t said anything yet
about whether the premises are true or not. This is what we do when we
evaluate whether arguments are sound or cogent.
Validity and strength of arguments do not on their own tell us whether
arguments are good or bad. We’ve actually seen rubbish arguments that were
valid. That’s why we need to introduce two further concepts for arguments:
being sound and being cogent.

Sound Arguments
 Definition: A sound argument is a valid argument that has true premises.
Firstly, a sound argument is a deductive argument. It’s trying to establish
conclusive support for its conclusion. Secondly, the argument is valid: the
premises, if true, would guarantee that the conclusion is also true. And on top of
79

all that, the premises are actually true. Therefore, a sound argument guarantees
that its conclusion is true.
We say that a sound argument is a good argument. It is a good argument
because it guarantees that the conclusion is true. It would be irrational for you
not to believe the conclusion of a sound argument.
Of course, sound arguments are very rare, because they’re very hard to
establish. But, some arguments are sound.
For example:
The province of Québec is part of Canada. Patrick was born in Québec.
Therefore, Patrick was born in Canada.
This is a valid argument. Can you see why?
Furthermore, the premises are true: Québec is indeed part of Canada, and
Patrick was indeed born in Québec. Hence, you can be absolutely certain that
Patrick was born in Canada, and you ought to believe that Patrick was born in
Canada. There’s no way around it.
Here are some more examples of sound arguments:
I drank coffee this morning; therefore, I drank something this morning.
Patrick got married on January 4, 2014. Patrick has not been divorced, and
Patrick is not a widower. Therefore, Patrick is not a bachelor.
It is true that Patrick got married on January 4, 2014, that he has not divorced
and that he is not a widower. So Patrick is not a bachelor because a bachelor is
an unmarried male, by definition.

Cogent Arguments
Now, what about non-deductive arguments? For non-deductive arguments, we
introduce the notion of a cogent argument.
 Definition: A cogent argument is a strong non-deductive argument that
has true premises.
And again, we say that cogent arguments are good. A cogent argument is by
definition non-deductive, which means that the premises are intended to
establish probable (but not conclusive) support for the conclusion.
Furthermore, a cogent argument is strong, so the premises, if they were true,
would succeed in providing probable support for the conclusion. And finally,
80

the premises are actually true. So the conclusion indeed receives probable
support.
Here’s an example:
Patrick was born in North America and Patrick wasn’t born in Mexico. It’s thus
quite probable that Patrick was born in the USA.
That is a cogent argument. If all you know about Patrick is what’s contained in
the premises, and those premises are true (they are!), then that’s a fairly strong
argument, because the population of the USA is over 300 000 000, whereas that
of Canada is under 40 000 000. This means that the odds that Patrick was born
in the USA are roughly 88%, which makes the support for the conclusion quite
strong. Furthermore, the premises are true. Therefore, the argument is cogent,
and so it is a good argument.
This means that we can have good arguments that have false conclusions!
Here’s another example:
I had coffee this morning. Therefore, it’s quite likely that I drank something this
morning.
This is a strong argument with true premises, so it is cogent and therefore, good.
But the conclusion is not guaranteed. It may be that I had coffee this morning by
eating it, or by some other means. But of course, this is very unlikely, so the
argument is strong, though it’s still possible that the conclusion is false. Still,
this is cogent and therefore, a good argument.
© Patrick Girard, University of Auckland

Philosophical criticism (by and among colleagues and other philosophers that
form part of the intersubjective discourse of philosophy or a particular school of
or movement in it, usually from a specialized field).
In philosophy, which concerns the most fundamental aspects of the universe,
the experts all disagree. (First of all they dis/agree about what philosophy is and
is not, what it must be and what it may be; then they disagree with those from
other schools and movements of philosophy and finally with those from the
same school or movement as their own. All this occurs on agreed
intersubjective, institutionalized and internalized socio-cultural norms,
practices, rules and standards that constitute the current or contemporary
philosophical discourse in general and their own school or moment in particular.
) It follows that another element of philosophical method, common (socio-
81

culturally institutionalize in their particular school or movement of philosophy

and internalized and adhered to be individuals constituting that school,
movement or approach) in the work of nearly all philosophers, is philosophical
criticism. It is this that makes much philosophizing a(n institutionalized) social
(a socio-cultural practice and intersubjective discourse) endeavour.
Philosophers offer definitions and explanations in (to try and obtain a)
solution to problems (or to attempt and dissolve those problems) ; they argue
for those solutions; and then other philosophers provide counter arguments,
expecting to eventually come up with better solutions. This exchange and
resulting revision of views is called dialectic. Dialectic (in one sense of this
history-laden word) is simply philosophical conversation amongst people who
do not always agree with each other about everything.
One can do this sort of harsh criticism on one's own, but others can help greatly,
if important assumptions are shared with the person offering the criticisms.
Others are able to think of criticisms from another perspective.
Some philosophers and ordinary people dive right in and start trying to solve the
problem. They immediately start giving arguments, pro and con, on different
sides of the issue. Doing philosophy is different from this. It is about
questioning assumptions, digging for deeper understanding. Doing
philosophy is about the journey, the process, as much as it is about the
destination, the conclusion. Its method differs from other disciplines, in which
the experts can agree about most of the fundamentals.

Motivation
Method in philosophy is in some sense rooted in motivation (it is a passion for
a need of certain individuals, the wonder and astonishment of Plato and
Aristtotle), only by understanding why people take up philosophy can one
properly understand what philosophy is. (The article of Buddy Seed deals at
length with details of the – why do philosophy, the reasons, the passion for it,
the authentic philosopher, the authentic and inauthentic philosophical life and
philosophy and ways of doing philosophy and reasons for doing philosophy).
People often find themselves believing things that they do not understand. For
example, about God, themselves, the natural world, human society, morality
and human productions. Often, people fail to understand what it is they
believe (and how this what of their believes are determined by implicit
underlying transcendentals such assumptions and pre-suppositions. These
assumptions concern many things, for example the philosopher’s acceptance of
the principles of a certain school or movement, certain methods and norms
concerning other aspects of philosophical practice that frequently remains
82

implicit and that people are unaware of) and fail to understand the reasons they
believe in what they do. Some people have questions about the meaning of their
beliefs and questions about the justification (or rationality) of their beliefs. A
lack of these things shows a lack of understanding, and some dislike not having
this understanding.
These questions about are only the tip of the philosophical iceberg. There are
many other things about this universe about which people are also
fundamentally ignorant. Philosophers are in the business of investigating all
sorts of those areas of ignorance.
A bewilderingly huge number of basic concepts are poorly understood. For
example:
 What does it mean to say that one thing causes another?
 What is rationality? What are space and time?
 What is beauty, and if it is in the eye of the beholder, then what is it that
is being said to be in the eye of the beholder?
One might also consider some of the many questions about justification. Human
lives are deeply informed with many basic assumptions. Different assumptions,
would lead to different ways of living.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Theories to consider if you wish to be involved in metaphysics, ontology and

epistemology –
 The notion of inflation. Definition: A sound argument is a valid argument
that has true premises.
David Marsh, of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge
University, is not giving up on inflation yet. “The predictions of inflation
developed by Stephen Hawking and others more than 30 years ago have been
tested by cosmological observations and faced those tests remarkably well.
Many scientists regard inflation as a simple and elegant explanation of the
origin of galaxies in the universe,” he said.
Or, Scientists could soon find out whether light really did outpace gravity in the
early universe. The theory predicts a clear pattern in the density variations of the
early universe, a feature measured by what is called the “spectral index”.
Writing in the journal Physical Review, the scientists predict a very precise
spectral index of 0.96478, which is close to the latest, though somewhat rough,
measurement of 0.968.
83

Science can never prove the theory right. But Afshordi said that if
measurements over the next five years shifted the spectral index away from
their prediction, it would rule out their own theory. “If we are right then
inflation is wrong. But the problem with inflation is that you can always fine
tune it to fit anything you want,” he said.

And Magueijo and Afshordi’s theory does away with inflation and replaces it
with a variable speed of light. According to their calculations, the heat of
universe in its first moments was so intense that light and other particles moved
at infinite speed. Under these conditions, light reached the most distant pockets
of the universe and made it look as uniform as we see it today. “In our theory, if
you go back to the early universe, there’s a temperature when everything
becomes faster. The speed of light goes to infinity and propagates much faster
than gravity,” Afshordi said. “It’s a phase transition in the same way that water
turns into steam.”
Magueijo and Afshordi came up with their theory to explain why the cosmos
looks much the same over vast distances. To be so uniform, light rays must have
reached every corner of the cosmos, otherwise some regions would be cooler
and more dense than others. But even moving at 1bn km/h (The speed of light in
a vacuum is considered to be one of the fundamental constants of nature.
Thanks to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, it was stamped in the annals of
physics more than a century ago at about 1bn km/h. But while general relativity
is one of the cornerstones of modern physics, scientists know that the rules of
today did not hold at the birth of the universe.), light was not travelling fast
enough to spread so far and even out the universe’s temperature differences.

The multiverse (other universes or alternative universes) -

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of possible universes,

including the universe in which we live. Together, these universes comprise
everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the
physical laws and constants that describe them.
The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes",
"other universes" or "alternative universes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Astronomy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Cosmology
INTERLUDE
Questioning Western Institutionalized Philosophy
84

http://hipporeads.com/why-i-left-academia-philosophys-homogeneity-needs-
rethinking/
 @davidraether Hi David! Loved your longform piece. I'm interested in interviewing
you for an article—possible to email you? about 8 hours ago
 A look into today's "Age of Entanglement," by @dannyhillis via @pubpub:
hipporeads.com/the-enlightenm… 8 Apr
 RT @hereforthedata: Really sharp piece by @_mkalin on Sufis, Salafis, and the
Religious Pacification of the African Sahel
politicalviolenceataglance.org/201ι/04/04/suf… @PVGlance 4 Apr
 RT @DaveSMorton: Striking images of Newcastle's West End and life in the late
1970s chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/s… #Newcastle @tishmurtha…
twitter.com/i/web/status/κ… 6 Apr
 "In the black community, a plethora of unregulated products are proving to be toxic."
@BW4WLA + @UCLA_CSW: hipporeads.com/communities-fi… 31 Mar

Why I Left Academia: Philosophy’s Homogeneity Needs Rethinking

Eugene Sun Park
Philosophy
Philosophy is predominantly white and predominantly male. This homogeneity
exists in almost all aspects and at all levels of the discipline. The philosophical
canon, especially in so-called “analytic” departments, consists almost exclusively
of dead, white men. The majority of living philosophers—i.e., professors,
graduate students, and undergraduate majors—are also white men. And the topics
deemed important by the discipline almost always ignore race, ethnicity, and
gender. Philosophy, it is often claimed, deals with universal truths and timeless
questions. It follows, allegedly, that these matters by their very nature do not
include the unique and idiosyncratic perspectives of women, minorities, or
“people of culture.”
Astoundingly, many professional philosophers are perplexed as to why there
aren’t more women and minorities in philosophy. While there may be no single
reason why philosophy is so lacking in diversity, the fact that it is lacking is
blatantly clear when we compare philosophy to other humanistic disciplines (and
even to many STEM fields). One important step towards solving philosophy’s
diversity problem is to figure out why so few women and minorities stick with
philosophy for the long haul. My own experiences as a graduate student, while
not necessarily representative, may shed some light on the matter. (Further
discussion on this topic by professional philosophers can be found here and here.)
I used to be a philosophy PhD student at a well-respected department in the
Midwest. After six and a half years of graduate study, I withdrew from my
85

program and left academia altogether. Why? The dismal academic job market
certainly had something to do with my decision. But, more importantly, as a
person of color, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable in my department and
within the discipline at large. Granted, a PhD program in any discipline will
involve a certain amount of indoctrination, but the particular demands of
philosophy were, in my view, beyond unreasonable.
As I discovered over the course of my graduate career, in order to be taken
seriously in the discipline, and to have any hope of landing a tenure-track job, one
must write a dissertation in one of the “core areas” of philosophy. What are these
core areas? Philosophers quibble about how exactly to slice up the philosophical
pie, but generally the divisions look something like this:
 Metaphysics & Epistemology
 Logic & Philosophy of Language
 Philosophy of Mind
 Value Theory
 History
Such is the menu of choices available to the philosopher-in-training today. (See,
for example, the PhD requirements at these prominent philosophy departments:
Penn, Berkeley, and Duke.) On the surface, this might look like a wide range of
options. But appearances are deceiving. For instance, the subfield of philosophy
of mind does not typically engage at all with Indian, East Asian, African, or
Native American ideas about the nature of mind. It’s as if non-Western thinkers
had nothing to say about the matter. Similarly, those who work in the history of
philosophy work almost exclusively on the history of Western philosophy—e.g.,
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Russell, Wittgenstein, etc.
Why don’t Anglo-American philosophers engage with non-Western
philosophical traditions? In my experience, professional philosophers today often
perceive non-Western thinkers as inferior. Of course, few would say this
explicitly. Rather, philosophers often point to non-Western philosophy’s unusual
and unfamiliar methodology as the primary reason for the disconnect. Or, as a
prominent member of my department once explained to me, philosophers literally
can’t understand non-Western philosophy because they can’t read it:
“Philosophers trained in English-speaking countries can’t read ancient Chinese
or Hindi or some obscure African language, and given the existing demands on
our time, it’s unreasonable for us to have to learn those languages.” (Somehow,
though, it is perfectly reasonable for philosophers to spend years studying ancient
Greek, or German, or French.)
86

The excuses for excluding non-Western thinkers from the philosophical canon
are sometimes more obviously derogatory. For instance, philosophers often claim
that non-Western thought lacks “rigor” and “precision,” essential characteristics
of serious philosophy. As a result, many philosophers simply dismiss non-
Western intellectual culture as (mere) religion, speculative thought, or literature.
As an Asian American, and as someone who grew up under the partial influence
of Buddhist and Confucian culture/thought, I find this dismissive attitude towards
“the East” to be personally and deeply offensive. At best, Anglo-American
philosophers seem to regard most non-Western philosophy as a cute side hobby,
but certainly not something deserving of serious attention. As one of my
dissertation advisors told me, “Asian philosophy can be one of your several Areas
of Competence (AOC), but not your Area of Specialization (AOS).” To be fair,
this advice was given in response to the existing realities of the discipline and the
prospects for an academic job. Considered in that light, this was not bad advice,
but is problematic nonetheless because it simply accepts and even perpetuates the
status quo. And what is the status quo? A quick glance at the course offerings of
any top philosophy department (examples here, here, and here) reveals
unambiguously where their priorities lie—most departments provide nothing by
way of non-Western philosophy, and the ones that do will usually offer one or
two introductory classes taught by visiting lecturers or affiliated faculty in other
departments. The record of recent tenure-track hires by philosophy departments
also confirms this overwhelming bias towards philosophers who specialize in the
“core areas” of the Western philosophical tradition.
So, fairly early in my career as a PhD student I learned that certain ways of doing
philosophy are acceptable, while others are not. Likewise, certain topics count as
legitimate philosophy, and others do not. These disciplinary boundaries, by and
large, are not up for debate. Any graduate student who ignores these basic facts
about the discipline runs the risk of professional ostracism and, ultimately,
failure. (Kristie Dotson’s paper on philosophy’s “culture of justification,”
published in Comparative Philosophy, provides an excellent analysis of how the
profession privileges certain approaches to philosophy over others. A similar
analysis is offered by Yoko Arisaka, an assistant professor at the University of
San Francisco, who writes about the lack of Asians and Asian women in academic
philosophy.)
The current state of affairs in academic philosophy is, from an historical
perspective, extremely curious. Most humanistic disciplines have gone through
(a sometimes painful) process of self-evaluation and reconstruction. History and
literature departments, for instance, were once primarily focused on the work,
thought, and writings of white, Western European men. But throughout the latter
half of the twentieth century, women, minorities, and other traditionally
marginalized people have been increasingly incorporated into these fields, both
87

as subjects and as practitioners, as explored in David Hollinger’s book The

Humanities and the Dynamics of Inclusion since World War II.
Somehow philosophy got left behind. Walk around most philosophy departments
today, and you’ll likely see just a sprinkling of women and minorities, with the
vast majority of students and faculty being white men. This imbalance is also
painfully evident in philosophical publications, citations, and overall disciplinary
influence. Among the 266 most cited contemporary philosophers in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 10% are women and 3% are minorities. In order for
things to change, philosophers need to see that there is a need for change. I worry
that this is not happening.
In my own department, I tried to stimulate discussion about what could be done
to increase diversity. The faculty and my fellow graduate students were, to their
credit, perfectly happy to have more women and minorities in the department. In
fact, many spoke openly about their desire to see a more diverse department. This
desire, however, seemed to be a desire mostly for a cosmetic change in the look
of the department. When it came to making changes that might bring about a
much deeper sense of diversity—i.e., changes in the culture and intellectual
environment—there was less accommodation. In attempts to open up a discussion
about diversity, I found myself repeatedly confounded by ignorance and, at times,
thinly veiled racism. To various faculty, I suggested the possibility of hiring
someone who, say, specializes in Chinese philosophy or feminist philosophy or
the philosophy of race. I complained about the Eurocentric nature of
undergraduate and graduate curricula. Without exception, my comments and
suggestions were met with the same rationalizations for why philosophy is the
way it is and why it should remain that way. To paraphrase one member of my
department, “This is the intellectual tradition we work in. Take it or leave it.”
The pressure to accept and conform to a narrow conception of philosophy was
pervasive. When I tried to introduce non-Western and other non-canonical
philosophy into my dissertation, a professor in my department suggested that I
transfer to the Religious Studies Department or some other department where
“ethnic studies” would be more welcome. When I considered exploring issues of
race in my dissertation, my advisor remarked that she had always thought of
Asian Americans as “basically white,” so she was genuinely surprised that I
would have any desire to pursue such topics.
Underlying these remarks are highly problematic assumptions about who “we”
are and what historical figures and texts comprise “our” intellectual heritage. This
is certainly a complicated and contested set of issues. For the purposes of this
discussion, I’ve vastly oversimplified matters with my naïve talk of West vs. East,
and my use of broad categories like Asian philosophy and analytic philosophy.
But one thing is absolutely clear and indisputable: “We” are no longer mostly
88

white men of European descent. (In fact, it’s doubtful “we” were ever this.) At
colleges and universities across the country, women and minorities are now
frequently in the majority. While much of the rest of the academy has evolved to
reflect these demographic changes, philosophy remains mired in a narrow
conception of the discipline that threatens to marginalize philosophy even further.
So why did I choose to leave philosophy, instead of staying and advocating for
change from within? It was certainly not an easy decision, but, by the end, my
departure felt like an inevitability. I loved studying philosophy, and truly have no
regrets about devoting nearly a decade of my life to it. But I also grew tired and
frustrated with the profession’s unwillingness to interrogate itself. Eventually, I
gave up hope that the discipline would ever change, or that it would change
substantially within a timeframe that was useful to me professionally and
personally. (Since I left graduate school, at least two philosophy departments—
Rutgers and Georgia State—have implemented policies to improve the academic
climate for women and minorities. Whether these policies will be effective, and
whether similar policies will be adopted more broadly, remains to be seen.)
The lack of women and minorities in philosophy may be an anomaly in the
academy, especially among the humanities, but it is not an accident. Philosophers
have made, and continue to make, decisions that impact the demographics of the
discipline. Until they acknowledge their own complicity in the problem,
philosophers will continue to scratch their heads about the lack of diversity in
their field. It’s not that women and minorities are (inexplicably) less interested in
the “problems of philosophy”—it’s that women and minorities have not had their
fair say in defining what the problems of philosophy are, or what counts as
philosophy in the first place.

Further Reading:
 “How is This Paper Philosophy?” in Comparative Philosophy by Kristie
Dotson
 David Hollinger’s The Humanities and the Dynamics of Inclusion since
World War II
 “What Could Leave Philosophy?” in Thoughts Arguments and Rants
 “Different Voices or Perfect Storm: Why Are There So Few Women in
Philosophy?” by Louise Antony in the Journal of Social Philosophy
 “Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason
(Alone)” by Sally Haslanger in Hypatia (Spring 2008)
89

 “Asian Women: Invisibility, Locations, and Claims to Philosophy,” in

Women of Color in Philosophy, by Yoko Arisaka
 “Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the
Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy,” by Molly Paxton, Carrie
Figdor, and Valerie Tiberius (as part of the Society for Philosophy and
Psychology’s Diversity initiatives)
 Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
 Eric Schwitzgebel, Professor of Philosophy at University of California at
Riverside, “Citation of Women and Ethnic Minorities in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” in his blog, The Splintered Mind.
 “Missing Men: Addressing the College Gender Gap” in HigherEd Live
 “California Latinos Surpass Whites in Freshman UC Admission Offers,”
in Los Angeles Times
 The NY Times’ Opinionator: Women in Philosophy section

Image credit: Sigfrid Lundberg via flickr

Asian philosophyCarrie Figdorculture of justificationDavid HollingerEric
Schwitzgebeleugene sun parkKristie Dotsonlouise antonyminorities in
philosophyMolly Paxtonphd program diversityphilosophySally
HaslangerStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyValerie Tiberiuswomen in
philosophyYoko Arisaka

http://hipporeads.com/saving-sophia-why-philosophy-needs-a-revolution/

Saving Sophia: Why Philosophy Needs A Revolution

John Altmann
Academia, Arts & Culture, Philosophy
I have been an independent scholar in Philosophy for around 6-7 years. Coming
from a poorer background and being disabled, I found the prospect of attaining
a formal education in philosophy within the hollowed halls of academia to be
rather daunting. There have been a few times when I have wondered if I was
missing out, or if I was going to hit the ceiling of my potential in philosophy
sooner as an independent scholar than I would if I took the time and the
significant capital to commit to a PhD program. But on the whole, I quite love
working outside of academia in a field I love and getting to do things I wouldn’t
get to do if my energies were expended towards slogging towards university. I
90

am a regular contributor to the Popular Culture and Philosophy book series,

which intersects popular media with philosophical learning—i.e. why Spock is a
paragon of utilitarianism. I was able to discuss my disability and disability on a
more philosophic level with the New York Times. And I’ll also be attending my
first conference this summer discussing the fascistic nature of the relationship
between the disabled subject and the able-bodied world.
I don’t bring this up as an ego boost, I bring this up as an assurance, before the
ensuing storm, that the landscape in the aftermath does not have to be one of
bedlam and devastation but rather of an open terrain of possibilities whose
variance is breathtaking to ponder. Now, you might be wondering what storm I
am speaking of? The storm that will happen when the humanities formally loses
the war against STEM fields and their politicization. In the last several years,
multiple philosophy programs have been axed from universities. Now make no
mistake, plenty of universities still host philosophy programs, but these are far
from perfect, a point I will return to later. Because the fact is, no matter their
imperfections, the existing philosophy programs as well as philosophy’s
presence in society more generally may be taking a massive and potentially fatal
hit. It has been reported that the Trump administration is looking to eliminate
both the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH).
When one researches the NEH, they immediately recognize that this
organization has a vital role in maintaining philosophy’s pulse in the country,
however faint it has become. This reality might instill in those affected a sense
of anxiety and dread, and rightfully so. Some may be tempted to fight these
measures with their every breath, a reaction I both commend and encourage.
However, I want to play devil’s advocate here. Not in that I think these
measures should succeed or that they’re sound measures to undertake, but I
disagree that these measures would spell the end for philosophy and the
humanities as a whole. In fact, not only do I think philosophers and
philosophical education would survive, but I believe we could thrive.
If institutionalized philosophy falls, then by extension all of its ills would fall
with it. For one thing, institutionalized philosophy has a poor track record as it
relates to representation in terms of gender, race, disability, etc. Another ill that
befell institutionalized philosophy is the Euro-centric nature of the syllabi in
philosophy programs. This is an issue that philosophers and student activists
have at different points in time criticized and fought against. Finally, the biggest
ill that institutionalized philosophy suffers from is the Ivory Tower stereotype
that the scholarship produced doesn’t engage the public enough. While this
illness has had people actively try to inoculate it, the fact is that the gap between
institutionalized philosophy and public philosophy is incredibly wide and as a
91

consequence, detrimental to the discipline as a whole. For philosophy to survive

and thrive, I believe it must become fully immersed in public life.
We must remember philosophers of the public such as Socrates and
Confucius. Socrates gave his life because he believed in the value of philosophy
to make people think critically and as a consequence, become a watchdog of the
transgressions of the Athenian government. Confucius had a similar affect on
the people of China; Confucianism became a widespread doctrine that affected
the nation at every level of social life, and at one time in the last few years there
was serious discussion that it might be making a comeback. We are not only
capable of emulating the spirit of these philosophers, but surpassing them as
well. We live in a digital age, where philosophy podcasts, instructional series,
and literature abound. Creating public spheres for philosophical discourse
would promote greater inclusion and accessibility in philosophy and of
philosophical learning not just to people of varying genders, races, health, etc.
but to people of differing economic classes who, judging by the exorbitant fees
of certain academic publishers, are shown no regard. We can do better and,
given the current social, economic, and political trends, we may have to.
The developments happening in public philosophy right now are breathtaking.
There are philosophers talking about disability, philosophers talking about race,
and plenty of philosophers talking about Trump. But I don’t just desire for
public philosophy to have riveting developments, I want public philosophy to
become the norm. In essence, I want an age to dawn where the word “public” in
public philosophy is received as a redundancy. Because in the age of Trump,
where anti-intellectualism looms over every building of ivory and every grassy
plain, philosophers must become a band of guerrilla fighters and take this battle
to the open streets and make visible our scholarship and its revolutionary
potential. In the end, our revolution must carry the fire of Deleuze’s words in its
heart:
Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It
serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy
that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is useful for
harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful.
Philosophy needs to return to these very roots, if the normalization of Trump is
to be effectively combated. But we must seek outside the refuges of learned
minds. Sophia need not perish with the crumbling towers. Because if she did,
her silence would only serve the state, and stupidity would know its greatest
triumph.
https://twitter.com/bryanvannorden/status/690924088391507968
92

http://www.readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore.com/2014/12/philosophy-
2014-year-in-review-m-report.html

Philosophy 2014 Year in Review: The M&M Report

Each December since 2010, I've dedicated a few posts to subject-specific "Year in Review"
lists. (You can view my previous years' lists here.) In the past, these lists have customarily
appraised the highs and lows of politics, music, film, literature or pop culture for whatever
year was drawing to its end. That is to say, I've tended in the past to cover ALL of the main
topics regularly treated on this blog except "philosophy." I think we'd all concede that it's a
rare year when Philosophy's truly, incredibly, even microscopically small corner of the
Universe manages to generate enough news to warrant its own year-end list.

Not so for 2014. We made the news. Would that it weren't so.

As a consequence, I've chosen to begin (what may be this year's only) 2014 Year in Review
list with a look back at the discipline of Philosophy, something perhaps best described as the
Academy's version of Jersey Shore. Or maybe Black Mirror. (Fair warning, don't click on
either of those links if you are faint of heart.) I'm titling this post an "M&M Report" in
reference to "Morbidity and Mortality" conferences held at academic medical centers across
the nation, at which doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners undertake a review
of mistakes made in the execution of their duties. The objectives of a well-run M&M
conference is "to learn from complications and errors, to modify behavior and judgment
based on previous experiences, and to prevent repetition of errors leading to complications."
We don't yet have anything like those in professional Philosophy, unfortunately. (And with
that, I just inaugurated the #MMXVPhilosophyResolutions hashtag on Twitter. Feel free to
contribute.)

In the interest of not confusing the dying with the dead, I've separated the following into
"Morbidity Reports" and "Mortality Reports." Because I can anticipate the nearly-dead
scurrying to hide and objecting in a Monty-Python-esque manner that they're "getting better!"
or that my announcement of their demise is "not regulation," I'll just concede that some of the
following mortality reports may be premature or, a la Mark Twain, exaggerated. Six one
way, half-dozen the other, really.

Morbidity Reports
Case One: Philosophy's Gender and Racial Homogeneity
Philosophy remains one of the Whitest and most male-dominated disciplines in academia, an
embarrassingly chronic condition that received more than its fair share of news coverage this
year. (Finally!) Eugene Sun Park's "Why I Left Academia: Philosophy's Homogeneity
Needs Rethinking" showed the devastating consequences of this sickness. We're literally
hemorrhaging smart, insightful and talented young thinkers, who would prefer to leave the
discipline altogether than endure its indignities. And, alas, there's been no slowdown of
contributions to the soul-crushingly honest What It's Like To Be A Woman in Philosophy
93

website, which records all-too-common anecdotal stories of sexism in the

profession. Despite the overwhelming evidence of our morbid, truly dis-eased state, there
remains nonetheless a dedicated (if delusional) corps of philosophers committed to denying
and justifying it. (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, META-META-PHILOSOBROS. Srsly, come
at me, bros. You'll have to forego the protection of anonymity to post here, however, which
leaves me assured that I will hear nary a peep from any of you.) If we don't treat this malady
post haste, we will surely die.

Case Two: Philosophy's Sexual Harassment AND Assault

AND Intimidation AND CoverUp Problem(s)
It's been a while since I first started reporting on this blog about Philosophy's morbidly gross
sexism. Remember Vincent Hendricks, who used that image pictured left as an, ahem,
"promo" for his logic course/? (ARE YOU FEELING LIKE OMG WTF SHOCKED?! Might
as well buckle up now, grasshoppers.) I wrote about him here in a post titled "If P then
WTF?" in March 2012. Yeah, well, it appears now that good ol' Dr. Hendricks was just
playing triple-A ball. At the beginning of 2014, I had to generate an entirely new subject-tag
on this blog, Women and Gender Issues, in order to keep pace with the rapid-fire onslaught of
men-behaving-badly stories coming out of Philosophy's ranks. This year kicked off with a
(well-publicized and) damning 15-page report from the APA's Committee on the Status of
Women detailing "an environment with unacceptable sexual harassment, inappropriate
sexualized unprofessional behavior, and divisive uncivil behavior" in the University of
Colorado-Boulder's Philosophy Department. Nipping at the tail of that report was the even
more salacious, even more extended (and even more well-publicized) exposè of Prof. Peter
Ludlow's (Northwestern) alleged exploits, and the very real ongoing litigations with respect
to Ludlow's unprofessional (and possibly criminal) sexual involvements with a female grad
student there. Alas, there were other, too many other, instances of sexual harassment and
assault among our ranks this year. In September, the implicit sexism of Philosophy was given
voice by one of its most prominent figures in the surprising-to-noone reveal of several of
Brian Leiter's hostile, demeaning and threatening emails to his female faculty via the
September Statement. (More on that below.)

[EDITORIAL NOTE: I want to go on the record here as endorsing, verified in and by my

own experience, the reality of the implicit and explicit, deeply embedded and far too often
perfunctorily-excused, perniciously morbid epidemic of sexism in professional
Philosophy. Having spent my last 7yrs in an all-male Philosophy department, during which I
suspect many of my well-intentioned colleagues would have genuinely (but erroneously)
considered themselves "friendly" to women philosophers and feminist philosophy, even and
despite cultivating what was in reality an environment utterly hostile to such, I can attest to
professional Philosophy's covert, insidious and damaging sexism.]

Case Three: Philosophy's "Civility"

Let me be the first, though of course not at all the first, to concede that professional
Philosophy cultivates... I don't know, what exactly is the right descriptor?

Oh yes, A-holes.
94

I also want to say again and once more, as I have said repeatedly on this blog: I am no fan of
so-called "civility codes." That said, I am and remain, for the record, an advocate of (non-
coerced) civility in our profession.

Way back in March of this year, before things started to get really ugly in the
Philososphere, before I wrote about the Steven Salaita case, before I wrote about
Ferguson, before I wrote about the #BlackLivesMatter or #ICantBreathe campaigns,
even before I began maintaining an Archive of the most uncivil behavior in professional
Philosophy I've ever seen (my attempt at a triage of such here)... BEFORE ALL OF THAT,
there was this:

That's an essay Ed Kazarian and I wrote (posted originally at NewAPPS Blog) in which we
argued that the best-- and the worst-- among us are better off NOT devising codes intended
to police tone, collegiality or civility. (Or, at least, not devising codes that, lacking any legal
force, can only be enforced "socially" and, as a consequence, are likely to be perverted in
their enforcement.) My colleagues in other disciplines are often quite literally shocked to
read/hear about how grossly incivil and uncollegial Philosophy is (especially to women and
racial minorities), but that culture is so old, so sedimented and so familiar to those of us on
the inside that it's often difficult to recognize it as the sickness it is anymore. It is an
infirmity, though. It debilitates and deforms both thinkers and thinking.

Case Four: Philosophy's "Public" and "Digital" Problems

Philosophy, bless its heart. It tries, it really does try, to do right. Unfortunately, we just can't
seem to get all our ducks in a row when it comes to doing the two things that would aid
most in ameliorating many of our perpetual ills, namely, (1) figuring out how to make what
those of us who do philosophy inside the Academy do available and accessible to the
broader public and (2) figuring out how to make the largely-digital productions of those of us
who have figured out (1) recognizably valuable to those handing out jobs, promotions and
pay-raises inside of the Academy. The Public Philosophy Journal, along with the APA's
Committee on Public Philosophy both made valiant efforts this year, but it still seems (to me,
at least) that they're not really capitalizing on some of most valuable resources at their
disposable, i.e., the growing number of digitally-literate and social-media-savvy philosophers
who regularly think, speak and write in the public sphere. We've got ideas, LOTS of ideas,
about how to do better and more effectively what PPJ and the APA-CPP are doing. Just take
the time to ask. I know this is true because I've heard it from (or said it myself as a member
of) a generation of public/digital philosophers that could make a real and positive change in
our discipline if the old farts would just make a minimal effort at standardizing, distributing
and validating in some more-or-less recognizable "assessment" language the value of what
we do. (Shoutsout to Adriel Trott, Robin James, John Protevi, Bob Vallier, James Stanescu,
Cori Wong, John Drabinski, and all the folks at Feminist Philosophers and xcphilosophy
blogs, all of whom continue to forge on into thankless territories.) We're here, we're public,
we're digital and we aren't going anywhere. Also, hey there Philosophy, hit us up
sometime. We've got the cure for what ails ya.

Mortality Reports
95

Case One: The Isolated Thinker

The notion that the primary work of Philosophy is pure, conceptual analysis-- unencumbered
by the messiness of the actual world or influenced by the reflections of other disciplines-- is
dead. That's not to say that there aren't still philosophers out there hanging around at Isolated
Thinker's wake, hoping beyond hope for a miraculous resurrection, but they're looking more
like sad, pathetic friends trapped in a kind of pathological denial, seemingly more
anachronistic and more delusional as their numbers diminish. Philosophy has always
needed to tear down its walls, of course, but in the last several years a number of factors-- the
corporatization of higher education, the so-called "crisis" in the humanities, the blurring of
disciplinary lines across academia-- has in effect sounded the death knell of our poor, beloved
Isolated Thinker. R.I.P., dear Thinker. You had an impressive run, you fought like a
champ at the end, you did not go softly--in fact, you raged, RAGED against the dying of your
light. But like all mortal things, your time expired. Say goodnight, Gracie.

Case Two: The 800lb Gorilla

It may still be too early-- only just barely-- to officially pronounce the death of the PGR, but
after a year of behavior that was at times bizarre, at times offensive, at times pathetic and at
other times completely delusional, we can now at least announce the end of Brian Leiter's
almost three decades-long reign and, in so doing, at long last call the death of Philosophy's
800lb Gorilla. Leiter created one of the first Philosophy blogs many years ago, the first and
last thing with which I will pay him credit. That blog (#sorrynotsorry for neglecting to link)
remains one of the most widely-visited Philosophy blogs and has, as a result, enabled him to
speak and act with almost unchallenged impunity for far too long. Leiter's prize "possession"
(the appropriately-named Philosophical "Gourmet" Report, to which he owns the copyright,
an investment that will be valuable for posterity and nothing else) quite literally helped to
transform and shape the contours of our discipline over the last 20 years, but its influence
suffered a number of near-fatal blows this year. Most serious among those was a serious gut-
shot from increasingly suspicious (and embarrassed) members of his PGR Advisory Board,
who asked Leiter to step away from the project in order to preserve what was left of its
rapidly waning integrity. At year-end, Leiter nevertheless remains at the unofficial helm of
the PGR and continues to defend its honor, despite having been at the epicenter of a
historically embarrassing meltdown in professional Philosophy. You can read more in
the Archive of the Meltdown that I kept here on this blog, or view the Interactive Timelime of
its early events that I created in October. I discontinued my Archive a couple of months ago,
but since then Prof. Mitchell Aboulafia has undertaken a more extended, careful
and devastating critique of the PGR here, which I encourage everyone to read. The latest
development in #Leitergate involves his threat to sue in Canadian court (for "upwards of 6
figures") eminently admirable and fearlessly public philosophers Carrie Jenkins and Jonathan
Ichikawa. Shame on Brian Leiter, a bully and a blowhard, a molder of minions, the smallest
and most proudly small of small minds, a pox on the profession, even if also a man with an
incredible foresight and a (significantly less incredible) talent wasted. I'm glad to celebrate
the death of your influence, Prof. Leiter. You've done us all a disservice.

Case Three: Philosophy's Luddism

Pace "Morbidity Case Four" above, I do think we have at last laid to rest the Philosophy
Luddite. It seems that Philosophy is always the last to the party, but this may very well have
96

been the year that philosophers finally overcame their congenitally anti-social inclinations,
dragged themselves into the 21st C, joined the digital humanities party and found a way to
quit their tragic love affair with Luddism. Philosophers live-tweeted #SPEP14, #Leitergate
and even, just this last week, the notoriously stodgy #APAeastern. There's an impressive and
growing list of Philosophers on Twitter (each of whom have at least 1000
followers). Philosophy Matters (administrated by Bob Vallier, Ammon Allred and myself) is
followed by almost 15K people on Facebook. The Leiter/PGR debacle, which may very
well be, when all is said and done, the most important transformation in professional
Philosophy since the Vienna Circle happened almost entirely online this year. In sum,
Philosophy's Luddites have breathed their last. They may continue to rattle and moan like
spectres in the attic are wont to do, but they are without substance or form, and they frighten
noone any longer.

===============

What a year it's been for Philosophy! Here's to never, ever again seeing another like it. I'm
a far better diagnostician than a prognostician, but for whatever it's worth, if I were
Philosophy's doctor (or therapist), here's what my advice would be as s/he left my office
today and embarked upon the new year:

1. You're sick. You've been sick for a long time, so don't overdo it. The worst possible
thing you can do in 2015 is to think you can continue on as you did 2014 (or 1914, or 1814,
or 1714... oh hell, whatevs, as you have since you've been born.) If you can't treat the causes
of your disease, at least make an effort to treat the symptoms.

2. Let the people who care about your health, care for your health. It's time to change
your environment, breathe in fresh air, get some new friends, look after your own well-
being. If you sleep too close to the edge of the bed, you're going to fall off. There's never a
good time for something to go wrong, but you've left yourself no latitude here. Tread
carefully.

3. Break up with your boyfriend. Your relationship with Brian Leiter is a pathological,
abusive and pathetic relationship. It's killing you. Kick him to the curb. Post haste.

4. Don't forget that people are desperate for what (the healthiest version of) you have to
offer, even and especially those who think they aren't, . Stop being such a snob. Stop
despising the hoi polloi so. The citizens and moral agents around you can think seriously,
they want to think seriously, about the world they live in, the people with whom they inhabit
that world, the ideologies and institutions that structure both that world and the people who
share it. They cannot do so without you. Hey, Philosophy, IT'S YOUR
SANDBOX. Everyone else is just playing in it. You've got at least two millennia of human
wisdom to share, more than half of which you've not yet fully mined, and now you've got a
venue to distribute it that makes the printing press look practically Neanderthal. Quit your
bitching and get back to work. Nobody's going to call the whaaambulance for you just
because you had a rough year.

Here's to 2015, Philosophy! Let's make this year better than the last.
Posted 31st December 2014 by Leigh M. Johnson
Labels: 2014 Year in Review Philosophy Year in Review Lists
97

http://philosophymetametablog.blogspot.co.za/
https://web.facebook.com/PhilosophyMttrs?_rdc=1&_rdr
https://upnight.com/tag/philosophical-gourmet-report/
https://upnight.com/a-users-guide-to-philosophy-without-rankings/
A User’s Guide To Philosophy Without Rankings, can be found here,
philosophyrankings.com
The User’s Guide addresses problems with rankings, in particular the “Philosophical
Gourmet Report,” and provides resources for prospective graduate students in philosophy,
including links to the new PhilWikis.
Comments and suggestions are welcome. You may leave comments on UP@NIGHT or
write to me at [email protected]

Introduction
This site is intended for the use of prospective graduate students in philosophy, faculty
(including chairs or heads) in philosophy, and deans, provosts, and other administrators, all of
whom need resources for the decisions they make about philosophy programs.
This site will be updated regularly. Readers are encouraged to submit resources for inclusion
in the guide via comments or by contacting the author.

Table of Contents
Active Links to Sections:
1. The Present State of Rankings in Philosophy
2. The Philosophical Gourmet Report
3. Information on Graduate Programs in a World without Rankings
4. What’s New in the “User’s Guide”
← The Present State of Rankings in Philosophy

http://www.mit.edu/%7Eshaslang/papers/HaslangerCICP.pdf
98

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2016/05/anglophone-departments-arent-
departments-of-european-and-american-philosophy.html
« Rutgers faculty in revolt over use of "Academic Analytics" bullshit data | Main | Data on
the "gender situation" in philosophy... »

Anglophone departments aren't "Departments of European and American

Philosophy"...
...and I'm sure at least Professor Van Norden knows that all too well. Huge stretches of
European philosophy--from Hegel to the present, say, or in the 12th through 14th-centuries--
are also neglected in many of the top 50 PhD programs. Most of the top 50 PhD programs
do not have any faculty teaching American philosophy of the 19th-century. What unites the
curricula at these programs is not a commitment to "European and American philosophy" but
a commitment to a style of doing philosophy, that derives from some British philosophers,
some Continental European ones, and some American ones (it's also a style that is
increasingly popular in parts of Asia, by the way)--and it's a style whose leading practitioners
now include Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and African-Americans. I empathize with the
desires of Professors Garfield and van Norden to see their fields less neglected--I'd like to see
my own fields less neglected too! But playing the "diversity card" in this context is a
dangerous game to play, that will lead to changes in the field that I'm quite sure Prof. Van
Norden won't welcome (I know Prof. Garfield less well, so can offer no opinion about how
he might view the ramifications).

Daniel said...
I think you're right to emphasize that what unifies most top PhD programs is practicing a
certain style of philosophy. The study of figures like Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant belongs to such
departments in part because scholars have spent decades, and sometimes centuries rendering
their philosophy partly continuous with that methodology.
There is then, I think, an open question whether similar reconstructive work on non-canon
European figures, like Cudworth, or figures from further outside the canon could produce
interesting new additions to our philosophical understanding. I think we should encourage
such work, and I think we often do. (Historians are always looking for fresh ground to till.)
But we also should be willing to accept that some philosophers really do belong to the B
team.
I also worry that prior to the development of such scholarship, we should be careful about
how we try to diversify the canon in teaching. When we teach the average early modern
survey course, we often present Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, etc. as if they were analytic
philosophers, carefully presenting their arguments with numbered premises. The vast
majority of teachers don't have the time or skill to do the same with the non-canon figures
they try to toss into their classes. The effect is that it really looks like tokenism - like you're
throwing in a class or two on these crazy ladies who don't seem to make as good arguments
as the traditional white men. The same holds, in spades, for people further beyond the canon.

LK McPherson said...
99

What Garfield and Van Norden wrote is: "We therefore suggest that any department that
regularly offers courses only on Western philosophy should rename itself 'Department of
European and American Philosophy.' This simple change would make the domain and
mission of these departments clear, and would signal their true intellectual commitments to
students and colleagues."
This proposal appears to have nothing to do with playing any "diversity card" (whatever
might be meant by that). But perhaps a simpler renaming to "Department of Western
Philosophy" would do.
One could maintain that "what unites the curricula" at "most of the top 50 PhD programs" is
not a commitment to Western philosophy but "a style of doing philosophy." In the present
context, at least, this would be a distinction without much of a difference and somewhat
misleading.
The headline for this "Department of Philosophy" homepage tells an honest story, for
example: "The Philosophy Department at the University of Chicago offers exceptionally
broad and deep programs in western philosophy at the doctoral and baccalaureate levels...."
The story goes on to affirm Chicago's status as a "department in the western philosophical
tradition, with its center of gravity in the analytic tradition of philosophy."
In such spirit, most departments could and probably should, for the sake of perspicuity, add
"Western" to their name.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-
lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It

Really Is

The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on
philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. For example, of the 118
doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a
specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty. Most philosophy departments
also offer no courses on Africana, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, Native American
or other non-European traditions. Indeed, of the top 50 philosophy doctoral programs in the
English-speaking world, only 15 percent have any regular faculty members who teach any
non-Western philosophy.
Given the importance of non-European traditions in both the history of world philosophy and
in the contemporary world, and given the increasing numbers of students in our colleges and
universities from non-European backgrounds, this is astonishing. No other humanities
discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain. The
present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as good educational
and research training practice.
100

We each — alongside many colleagues and students — have worked for decades to persuade
American philosophy departments to broaden the canon of works they teach; we have urged
our colleagues to look beyond the European canon in their own research and teaching. While
a few philosophy departments have made their curriculums more diverse, and while the
American Philosophical Association has slowly broadened the representation of the world’s
philosophical traditions on its programs, progress has been minimal.
The profession as a whole remains resolutely Eurocentric. It therefore seems futile to rehearse
arguments for greater diversity one more time.
Many philosophers and many departments simply ignore arguments for greater diversity;
others respond with arguments for Eurocentrism that we and many others have refuted
elsewhere. The profession as a whole remains resolutely Eurocentric. It therefore seems futile
to rehearse arguments for greater diversity one more time, however compelling we find them.

A forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both

timely and timeless. The series moderator is Simon Critchley, who teaches
philosophy at The New School for Social Research.

Mark
May 12, 2016
Should a handful of non-Western thinkers take up 50% of our time or 15%? 15% seems quite
fair.

Steve Misuta
May 12, 2016
The western philosophical canon formed the foundation of our concepts of human rights,
civil liberties, and government. As such, it deserves...

Tesla
May 12, 2016
Since philosophers have no economic or political power, the rest of the world couldn't care
less. Teach what you want in your universities...
 See All Comments
Instead, we ask those who sincerely believe that it does make sense to organize our discipline
entirely around European and American figures and texts to pursue this agenda with honesty
and openness. We therefore suggest that any department that regularly offers courses only on
Western philosophy should rename itself “Department of European and American
Philosophy.” This simple change would make the domain and mission of these departments
clear, and would signal their true intellectual commitments to students and colleagues. We
see no justification for resisting this minor rebranding (though we welcome opposing views
101

in the comments section to this article), particularly for those who endorse, implicitly or
explicitly, this Eurocentric orientation.
Some of our colleagues defend this orientation on the grounds that non-European philosophy
belongs only in “area studies” departments, like Asian Studies, African Studies or Latin
American Studies. We ask that those who hold this view be consistent, and locate their own
departments in “area studies” as well, in this case, Anglo-European Philosophical Studies.

Opinion Today
Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy:
We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but
shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to
problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not
addressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply
philosophical problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy. There are no
comparable differences in how mathematics or physics are practiced in other contemporary
cultures.
Of course, we believe that renaming departments would not be nearly as valuable as actually
broadening the philosophical curriculum and retaining the name “philosophy.” Philosophy as
a discipline has a serious diversity problem, with women and minorities underrepresented at
all levels among students and faculty, even while the percentage of these groups increases
among college students. Part of the problem is the perception that philosophy departments are
nothing but temples to the achievement of males of European descent. Our recommendation
is straightforward: Those who are comfortable with that perception should confirm it in good
faith and defend it honestly; if they cannot do so, we urge them to diversify their faculty and
their curriculum.
This is not to disparage the value of the works in the contemporary philosophical canon:
Clearly, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with philosophy written by males of European
descent; but philosophy has always become richer as it becomes increasingly diverse and
pluralistic. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) recognized this when he followed his Muslim
colleagues in reading the work of the pagan philosopher Aristotle, thereby broadening the
philosophical curriculum of universities in his own era. We hope that American philosophy
departments will someday teach Confucius as routinely as they now teach Kant, that
philosophy students will eventually have as many opportunities to study the “Bhagavad Gita”
as they do the “Republic,” that the Flying Man thought experiment of the Persian philosopher
Avicenna (980-1037) will be as well-known as the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment of the
American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), that the ancient Indian scholar
Candrakirti’s critical examination of the concept of the self will be as well-studied as David
Hume’s, that Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Kwazi Wiredu (1931- ), Lame Deer (1903-1976)
and Maria Lugones will be as familiar to our students as their equally profound colleagues in
the contemporary philosophical canon. But, until then, let’s be honest, face reality and call
departments of European-American Philosophy what they really are.
We offer one last piece of advice to philosophy departments that have not already embraced
curricular diversity. For demographic, political and historical reasons, the change to a more
multicultural conception of philosophy in the United States seems inevitable. Heed the Stoic
adage: “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.”
102

Jay L. Garfield is a professor of humanities, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and the author
of “Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.”

Bryan W. Van Norden is a professor of philosophy at Vassar College, and the author of
“Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy.”
Now in print: “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” An anthology of
essays from The Times’s philosophy series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley,
published by Liveright Books.
http://www.thestonereader.com/

The Stone Reader

Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments

What is a philosopher? If peas can talk, should we eat them? Should this be the last
generation? Can science explain consciousness? Is philosophy literature? Is the dumb
jock really a nerd? Can we have morals without God? Who needs a gun? A timeless
volume to be read and treasured, The Stone Reader provides an unparalleled overview
of contemporary Philosophy.
Once solely the province of ivory-tower professors and college classrooms,
contemporary philosophy was finally emancipated from its academic closet in
2010, when The Stone was launched in the New York Times. First appearing as an
online series, the column has since attracted millions of readers through the
accessible examination of universal topics like the nature of science,
consciousness, and morality, while also probing more contemporary issues such as
the morality of drones, gun control, and the gender divide. Now collected for the
first time in this beautifully designed volume, The Stone Reader presents 133
deeply influential pieces, placing nearly the whole of modern philosophical
discourse at a readers grasp. With an introduction that promises to detail the
column’s founding and distinct editorial process, this collection promises to
become an intellectual landmark and the centerpiece of discussions for years to
come.
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/when-philosophy-lost-its-way/

The history of Western philosophy can be presented in a number of ways. It can be told in
terms of periods — ancient, medieval and modern. We can divide it into rival traditions
(empiricism versus rationalism, analytic versus Continental), or into various core areas
(metaphysics, epistemology, ethics). It can also, of course, be viewed through the critical lens
of gender or racial exclusion, as a discipline almost entirely fashioned for and by white
European men.
The philosopher’s hands were never clean and were never meant to be.
Yet despite the richness and variety of these accounts, all of them pass over a momentous
turning point: the locating of philosophy within a modern institution (the research university)
in the late 19th century. This institutionalization of philosophy made it into a discipline that
103

could be seriously pursued only in an academic setting. This fact represents one of the
enduring failures of contemporary philosophy.
Take this simple detail: Before its migration to the university, philosophy had never had
a central home. Philosophers could be found anywhere — serving as diplomats, living off
pensions, grinding lenses, as well as within a university. Afterward, if they were “serious”
thinkers, the expectation was that philosophers would inhabit the research
university. Against the inclinations of Socrates, philosophers became experts like other
disciplinary specialists. This occurred even as they taught their students the virtues of
Socratic wisdom, which highlights the role of the philosopher as the non-expert, the
questioner, the gadfly.
Philosophy, then, as the French thinker Bruno Latour would have it, was “purified” —
separated from society in the process of modernization. This purification occurred in
response to at least two events. The first was the development of the natural sciences, as a
field of study clearly distinct from philosophy, circa 1870, and the appearance of the social
sciences in the decade thereafter. Before then, scientists were comfortable thinking of
themselves as “natural philosophers” — philosophers who studied nature; and the
predecessors of social scientists had thought of themselves as “moral philosophers.”
The second event was the placing of philosophy as one more discipline alongside these
sciences within the modern research university. A result was that philosophy, previously the
queen of the disciplines, was displaced, as the natural and social sciences divided the world
between them.
This is not to claim that philosophy had reigned unchallenged before the 19th century. The
role of philosophy had shifted across the centuries and in different countries. But philosophy
in the sense of a concern about who we are and how we should live had formed the core of
the university since the church schools of the 11th century. Before the development of a
scientific research culture, conflicts among philosophy, medicine, theology and law consisted
of internecine battles rather than clashes across yawning cultural divides. Indeed, these older
fields were widely believed to hang together in a grand unity of knowledge — a unity
directed toward the goal of the good life. But this unity shattered under the weight of
increasing specialization by the turn of the 20th century.
Early 20th-century philosophers thus faced an existential quandary: With the natural and
social sciences mapping out the entirety of both theoretical as well as institutional space,
what role was there for philosophy? A number of possibilities were available: Philosophers
could serve as 1) synthesizers of academic knowledge production; 2) formalists who provided
the logical undergirding for research across the academy; 3) translators who brought the
insights of the academy to the world at large; 4) disciplinary specialists who focused on
distinctively philosophical problems in ethics, epistemology, aesthetics and the like; or 5) as
some combination of some or all of these.
If philosophy was going to have a secure place in the academy, it needed its own discrete
domain, its own arcane language, its own standards of success and its own specialized
concerns.
There might have been room for all of these roles. But in terms of institutional realities, there
seems to have been no real choice. Philosophers needed to embrace the structure of the
modern research university, which consists of various specialties demarcated from one
another. That was the only way to secure the survival of their newly demarcated, newly
purified discipline. “Real” or “serious” philosophers had to be identified, trained and
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credentialed. Disciplinary philosophy became the reigning standard for what would count as
proper philosophy.
This was the act of purification that gave birth to the concept of philosophy most of us know
today. As a result, and to a degree rarely acknowledged, the institutional imperative of the
university has come to drive the theoretical agenda. If philosophy was going to have a secure
place in the academy, it needed its own discrete domain, its own arcane language, its own
standards of success and its own specialized concerns.
Having adopted the same structural form as the sciences, it’s no wonder philosophy fell prey
to physics envy and feelings of inadequacy. Philosophy adopted the scientific modus
operandi of knowledge production, but failed to match the sciences in terms of making
progress in describing the world. Much has been made of this inability of philosophy to
match the cognitive success of the sciences. (SO NOW IT DOES FAKE XPHI – COPYING
sciences) But what has passed unnoticed is philosophy’s all-too-successful aping of the
institutional form of the sciences. We, too, produce research articles. We, too, are judged by
the same coin of the realm: peer-reviewed products. We, too, develop sub-specializations far
from the comprehension of the person on the street. In all of these ways we are so very
(FAKE) “scientific.”
Our claim, then, can be put simply: Philosophy should never have been purified. Rather than
being seen as a problem, “dirty hands” should have been understood as the native condition
of philosophic thought — present everywhere, often interstitial, essentially interdisciplinary
and transdisciplinary in nature. Philosophy is a mangle. The philosopher’s hands were never
clean and were never meant to be.
There is another layer to this story. The act of purification accompanying the creation of the
modern research university was not just about differentiating realms of knowledge. It was
also about divorcing knowledge from virtue. Though it seems foreign to us now, before
purification the philosopher (and natural philosopher) was assumed to be morally superior to
other sorts of people. The 18th-century thinker Joseph Priestley wrote “a Philosopher ought
to be something greater and better than another man.” Philosophy, understood as the love
of wisdom, was seen as a vocation, like the priesthood. It required significant moral
virtues (foremost among these were integrity and selflessness), and the pursuit of
wisdom in turn further inculcated those virtues. The study of philosophy elevated those
who pursued it. Knowing and being good were intimately linked. It was widely understood
that the point of philosophy was to become good rather than simply to collect or produce
knowledge.

As the historian Steven Shapin has noted, the rise of disciplines in the 19th century changed
all this. The implicit democracy of the disciplines ushered in an age of “the moral
equivalence of the scientist” to everyone else. The scientist’s privileged role was to provide
the morally neutral knowledge needed to achieve our goals, whether good or evil. This put an
end to any notion that there was something uplifting about knowledge. The purification made
it no longer sensible to speak of nature, including human nature, in terms of purposes and
functions. By the late 19th century, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche had proved the failure of
philosophy to establish any shared standard for choosing one way of life over another. This is
how Alasdair MacIntyre explained philosophy’s contemporary position of insignificance
in society and marginality in the academy. There was a brief window when philosophy
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could have replaced religion as the glue of society; but the moment passed. People stopped
listening as philosophers focused on debates among themselves.
Once knowledge and goodness were divorced, scientists could be regarded as experts, but
there are no morals or lessons to be drawn from their work. Science derives its authority from
impersonal structures and methods, not the superior character of the scientist. The individual
scientist is no different from the average Joe; he or she has, as Shapin has written, “no special
authority to pronounce on what ought to be done.” For many, science became a paycheck,
and the scientist became a “de-moralized” tool enlisted in the service of power, bureaucracy
and commerce.
Here, too, philosophy has aped the sciences by fostering a culture that might be called “the
genius contest.” Philosophic activity devolved into a contest to prove just how clever one
can be in creating or destroying arguments. Today, a hyperactive productivist churn of
scholarship keeps philosophers chained to their computers. Like the sciences, philosophy has
largely become a technical enterprise, the only difference being that we manipulate words
rather than genes or chemicals. Lost is the once common-sense notion that philosophers are
seeking the good life — that we ought to be (in spite of our failings) model citizens and
human beings. Having become specialists, we have lost sight of the whole. The point of
philosophy now is to be smart, not good. It has been the heart of our undoing.

Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle teach in the department of philosophy and religion and
the University of North Texas. They are co-authors of the forthcoming “Socrates Tenured:
The Institutions of 21st-Century Philosophy.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html

Apology

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Socrates' Defense

How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell;
but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was - such was the effect
of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth. But many as their falsehoods were,
there was one of them which quite amazed me; - I mean when they told you to be upon your
guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to
have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened
my lips and displayed my deficiency; they certainly did appear to be most shameless in
saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for then I do indeed
admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs! Well, as I was saying, they
have hardly uttered a word, or not more than a word, of truth; but you shall hear from me the
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whole truth: not, however, delivered after their manner, in a set oration duly ornamented with
words and phrases. No indeed! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at
the moment; for I am certain that this is right, and that at my time of life I ought not to be
appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile orator - let no one
expect this of me. And I must beg of you to grant me one favor, which is this - If you hear me
using the same words in my defence which I have been in the habit of using, and which most
of you may have heard in the agora, and at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere
else, I would ask you not to be surprised at this, and not to interrupt me. For I am more than
seventy years of age, and this is the first time that I have ever appeared in a court of law, and
I am quite a stranger to the ways of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if
I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after
the fashion of his country; - that I think is not an unfair request. Never mind the manner,
which may or may not be good; but think only of the justice of my cause, and give heed to
that: let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly.

And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go to
the later ones. For I have had many accusers, who accused me of old, and their false charges
have continued during many years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his
associates, who are dangerous, too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are these, who
began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods,
telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched
into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. These are the accusers
whom I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy
that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods. And they are many, and their charges
against me are of ancient date, and they made them in days when you were impressible - in
childhood, or perhaps in youth - and the cause when heard went by default, for there was
none to answer. And, hardest of all, their names I do not know and cannot tell; unless in the
chance of a comic poet. But the main body of these slanderers who from envy and malice
have wrought upon you - and there are some of them who are convinced themselves, and
impart their convictions to others - all these, I say, are most difficult to deal with; for I cannot
have them up here, and examine them, and therefore I must simply fight with shadows in my
own defence, and examine when there is no one who answers. I will ask you then to assume
with me, as I was saying, that my opponents are of two kinds - one recent, the other ancient;
and I hope that you will see the propriety of my answering the latter first, for these
accusations you heard long before the others, and much oftener.

Well, then, I will make my defence, and I will endeavor in the short time which is allowed to
do away with this evil opinion of me which you have held for such a long time; and I hope I
may succeed, if this be well for you and me, and that my words may find favor with you. But
I know that to accomplish this is not easy - I quite see the nature of the task. Let the event be
as God wills: in obedience to the law I make my defence.

I will begin at the beginning, and ask what the accusation is which has given rise to this
slander of me, and which has encouraged Meletus to proceed against me. What do the
slanderers say? They shall be my prosecutors, and I will sum up their words in an affidavit.
"Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under the earth and
in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid
doctrines to others." That is the nature of the accusation, and that is what you have seen
yourselves in the comedy of Aristophanes; who has introduced a man whom he calls
Socrates, going about and saying that he can walk in the air, and talking a deal of nonsense
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concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or little - not that I mean to
say anything disparaging of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. I should be very
sorry if Meletus could lay that to my charge. But the simple truth is, O Athenians, that I have
nothing to do with these studies. Very many of those here present are witnesses to the truth of
this, and to them I appeal. Speak then, you who have heard me, and tell your neighbors
whether any of you have ever known me hold forth in few words or in many upon matters of
this sort. ... You hear their answer. And from what they say of this you will be able to judge
of the truth of the rest.

As little foundation is there for the report that I am a teacher, and take money; that is no more
true than the other. Although, if a man is able to teach, I honor him for being paid. There is
Gorgias of Leontium, and Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis, who go the round of the
cities, and are able to persuade the young men to leave their own citizens, by whom they
might be taught for nothing, and come to them, whom they not only pay, but are thankful if
they may be allowed to pay them. There is actually a Parian philosopher residing in Athens,
of whom I have heard; and I came to hear of him in this way: - I met a man who has spent a
world of money on the Sophists, Callias the son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had
sons, I asked him: "Callias," I said, "if your two sons were foals or calves, there would be no
difficulty in finding someone to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses or a farmer
probably who would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but
as they are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them? Is there anyone who
understands human and political virtue? You must have thought about this as you have sons;
is there anyone?" "There is," he said. "Who is he?" said I, "and of what country? and what
does he charge?" "Evenus the Parian," he replied; "he is the man, and his charge is five
minae." Happy is Evenus, I said to myself, if he really has this wisdom, and teaches at such a
modest charge. Had I the same, I should have been very proud and conceited; but the truth is
that I have no knowledge of the kind.

I dare say, Athenians, that someone among you will reply, "Why is this, Socrates, and what is
the origin of these accusations of you: for there must have been something strange which you
have been doing? All this great fame and talk about you would never have arisen if you had
been like other men: tell us, then, why this is, as we should be sorry to judge hastily of you."
Now I regard this as a fair challenge, and I will endeavor to explain to you the origin of this
name of "wise," and of this evil fame. Please to attend then. And although some of you may
think I am joking, I declare that I will tell you the entire truth. Men of Athens, this reputation
of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of
wisdom, I reply, such wisdom as is attainable by man, for to that extent I am inclined to
believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman
wisdom, which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself; and he who says that I
have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. And here, O men of Athens, I must
beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word which
I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit, and will tell you
about my wisdom - whether I have any, and of what sort - and that witness shall be the god of
Delphi. You must have known Chaerephon; he was early a friend of mine, and also a friend
of yours, for he shared in the exile of the people, and returned with you. Well, Chaerephon, as
you know, was very impetuous in all his doings, and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the
oracle to tell him whether - as I was saying, I must beg you not to interrupt - he asked the
oracle to tell him whether there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess
answered that there was no man wiser. Chaerephon is dead himself, but his brother, who is in
court, will confirm the truth of this story.
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Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil name.
When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the
interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he
mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that
would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying
the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to
the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, "Here is a man who is wiser than I
am; but you said that I was the wisest." Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of
wisdom, and observed to him - his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I
selected for examination - and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I
could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many,
and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise,
but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was
shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went
away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and
good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither
know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the
advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and
my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others
besides him.

After this I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I
provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me - the word of God, I
thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to
know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I
swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the
men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really
wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the "Herculean" labors, as I
may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. When I left the
politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself,
you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are.
Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and
asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will
you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly
a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did
themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a
sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine
things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me to be much
in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed
themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed,
conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the
politicians.

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and
I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know
many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I
observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were
good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in
them overshadowed their wisdom - therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I
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would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in
both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was.

This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind,
and has given occasion also to many calumnies, and I am called wise, for my hearers always
imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O
men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of
men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an
illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom
is in truth worth nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into
the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not
wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation
quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any
concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god.

There is another thing: - young men of the richer classes, who have not much to do, come
about me of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often
imitate me, and examine others themselves; there are plenty of persons, as they soon enough
discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing: and then
those who are examined by them instead of being angry with themselves are angry with me:
This confounded Socrates, they say; this villainous misleader of youth! - and then if
somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he practise or teach? they do not know, and cannot
tell; but in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges
which are used against all philosophers about teaching things up in the clouds and under the
earth, and having no gods, and making the worse appear the better cause; for they do not like
to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been detected - which is the truth: and as they
are numerous and ambitious and energetic, and are all in battle array and have persuasive
tongues, they have filled your ears with their loud and inveterate calumnies. And this is the
reason why my three accusers, Meletus and Anytus and Lycon, have set upon me; Meletus,
who has a quarrel with me on behalf of the poets; Anytus, on behalf of the craftsmen; Lycon,
on behalf of the rhetoricians: and as I said at the beginning, I cannot expect to get rid of this
mass of calumny all in a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the truth and the whole
truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing. And yet I know that this
plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am
speaking the truth? - this is the occasion and reason of their slander of me, as you will find
out either in this or in any future inquiry.

I have said enough in my defence against the first class of my accusers; I turn to the second
class, who are headed by Meletus, that good and patriotic man, as he calls himself. And now I
will try to defend myself against them: these new accusers must also have their affidavit read.
What do they say? Something of this sort: - That Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter of
the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and has other new divinities of his
own. That is the sort of charge; and now let us examine the particular counts. He says that I
am a doer of evil, who corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer
of evil, and the evil is that he makes a joke of a serious matter, and is too ready at bringing
other men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he really never
had the smallest interest. And the truth of this I will endeavor to prove.

Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you. You think a great deal about the
improvement of youth?
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Yes, I do.

Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must know, as you have taken the pains
to discover their corrupter, and are citing and accusing me before them. Speak, then, and tell
the judges who their improver is. Observe, Meletus, that you are silent, and have nothing to
say. But is not this rather disgraceful, and a very considerable proof of what I was saying, that
you have no interest in the matter? Speak up, friend, and tell us who their improver is.

The laws.

But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to know who the person is, who, in the first
place, knows the laws.

The judges, Socrates, who are present in court.

What do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able to instruct and improve youth?

Certainly they are.

What, all of them, or some only and not others?

All of them.

By the goddess Here, that is good news! There are plenty of improvers, then. And what do
you say of the audience, - do they improve them?

Yes, they do.

And the senators?

Yes, the senators improve them.

But perhaps the members of the citizen assembly corrupt them? - or do they too improve
them?

They improve them.

Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with the exception of myself; and I
alone am their corrupter? Is that what you affirm?

That is what I stoutly affirm.

I am very unfortunate if that is true. But suppose I ask you a question: Would you say that
this also holds true in the case of horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world
good? Is not the exact opposite of this true? One man is able to do them good, or at least not
many; - the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them good, and others who have to do with
them rather injure them? Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or any other animals? Yes,
certainly. Whether you and Anytus say yes or no, that is no matter. Happy indeed would be
the condition of youth if they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of the world were their
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improvers. And you, Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the
young: your carelessness is seen in your not caring about matters spoken of in this very
indictment.

And now, Meletus, I must ask you another question: Which is better, to live among bad
citizens, or among good ones? Answer, friend, I say; for that is a question which may be
easily answered. Do not the good do their neighbors good, and the bad do them evil?

Certainly.

And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefited by those who live with him?
Answer, my good friend; the law requires you to answer - does anyone like to be injured?

Certainly not.

And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I
corrupt them intentionally or unintentionally?

Intentionally, I say.

But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbors good, and the evil do them evil.
Now is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at
my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live
is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him, and yet I corrupt him, and
intentionally, too; - that is what you are saying, and of that you will never persuade me or any
other human being. But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that
on either view of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance
of unintentional offences: you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished
me; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did
unintentionally - no doubt I should; whereas you hated to converse with me or teach me, but
you indicted me in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment.

I have shown, Athenians, as I was saying, that Meletus has no care at all, great or small,
about the matter. But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what I am affirmed to corrupt the
young. I suppose you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that I teach them not to
acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some other new divinities or
spiritual agencies in their stead. These are the lessons which corrupt the youth, as you say.

Yes, that I say emphatically.

Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat
plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach
others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore do believe in gods and am not an entire
atheist - this you do not lay to my charge; but only that they are not the same gods which the
city recognizes - the charge is that they are different gods. Or, do you mean to say that I am
an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?

I mean the latter - that you are a complete atheist.

That is an extraordinary statement, Meletus. Why do you say that? Do you mean that I do not
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believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men?

I assure you, judges, that he does not believe in them; for he says that the sun is stone, and the
moon earth.

Friend Meletus, you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras; and you have but a bad opinion
of the judges, if you fancy them ignorant to such a degree as not to know that those doctrines
are found in the books of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, who is full of them. And these are
the doctrines which the youth are said to learn of Socrates, when there are not unfrequently
exhibitions of them at the theatre (price of admission one drachma at the most); and they
might cheaply purchase them, and laugh at Socrates if he pretends to father such
eccentricities. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do not believe in any god?

I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all.

You are a liar, Meletus, not believed even by yourself. For I cannot help thinking, O men of
Athens, that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and that he has written this indictment in a
spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado. Has he not compounded a riddle, thinking to
try me? He said to himself: - I shall see whether this wise Socrates will discover my
ingenious contradiction, or whether I shall be able to deceive him and the rest of them. For he
certainly does appear to me to contradict himself in the indictment as much as if he said that
Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, and yet of believing in them - but this surely is
a piece of fun.

I should like you, O men of Athens, to join me in examining what I conceive to be his
inconsistency; and do you, Meletus, answer. And I must remind you that you are not to
interrupt me if I speak in my accustomed manner.

Did ever man, Meletus, believe in the existence of human things, and not of human beings? ...
I wish, men of Athens, that he would answer, and not be always trying to get up an
interruption. Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-
playing, and not in flute-players? No, my friend; I will answer to you and to the court, as you
refuse to answer for yourself. There is no man who ever did. But now please to answer the
next question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or
demigods?

He cannot.

I am glad that I have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the court; nevertheless you
swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no
matter for that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies, as you say and swear in the
affidavit; but if I believe in divine beings, I must believe in spirits or demigods; - is not that
true? Yes, that is true, for I may assume that your silence gives assent to that. Now what are
spirits or demigods? are they not either gods or the sons of gods? Is that true?

Yes, that is true.

But this is just the ingenious riddle of which I was speaking: the demigods or spirits are gods,
and you say first that I don't believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is,
if I believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods, whether by the
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Nymphs or by any other mothers, as is thought, that, as all men will allow, necessarily
implies the existence of their parents. You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and
deny that of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you
as a trial of me. You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real of which
to accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you
that the same man can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe that there
are gods and demigods and heroes.

I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary;
but as I was saying before, I certainly have many enemies, and this is what will be my
destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; - not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy
and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will probably
be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them.

Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to
bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man
who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only
to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good
man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good
for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with
disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he
avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself - "Fate," as she
said, "waits upon you next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death,
and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not to avenge his friend.
"Let me die next," he replies, "and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the
beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death and
danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in
which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he
should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true
saying.

Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the
generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained
where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive
and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and
other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would
indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the
gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I should be fancying that I
was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and
not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether
death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.
Is there not here conceit of knowledge, which is a disgraceful sort of ignorance? And this is
the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps
fancy myself wiser than other men, - that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do
not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether
God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather
than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and reject the counsels of Anytus,
who said that if I were not put to death I ought not to have been prosecuted, and that if I
escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my words - if you say to me,
Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and will let you off, but upon one condition, that
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are to inquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing this again
you shall die; - if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of
Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and
strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone
whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who
are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up
the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth
and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not
ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not
depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think
that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater,
and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old,
citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is
the command of God, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater
good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about
persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your
properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you
that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of
man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts
the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he
is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as
Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter
my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an agreement between us that you
should hear me out. And I think that what I am going to say will do you good: for I have
something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I beg that you will not
do this. I would have you know that, if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves
more than you will injure me. Meletus and Anytus will not injure me: they cannot; for it is
not in the nature of things that a bad man should injure a better than himself. I do not deny
that he may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he
may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is doing him a great injury: but in that I do not
agree with him; for the evil of doing as Anytus is doing - of unjustly taking away another
man's life - is greater far. And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as
you may think, but for yours, that you may not sin against the God, or lightly reject his boon
by condemning me. For if you kill me you will not easily find another like me, who, if I may
use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by the God; and
the state is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and
requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the state and all day long
and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching
you. And as you will not easily find another like me, I would advise you to spare me. I dare
say that you may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and
you may think that if you were to strike me dead, as Anytus advises, which you easily might,
then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives
you another gadfly. And that I am given to you by God is proved by this: - that if I had been
like other men, I should not have neglected all my own concerns, or patiently seen the neglect
of them during all these years, and have been doing yours, coming to you individually, like a
father or elder brother, exhorting you to regard virtue; this I say, would not be like human
nature. And had I gained anything, or if my exhortations had been paid, there would have
been some sense in that: but now, as you will perceive, not even the impudence of my
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accusers dares to say that I have ever exacted or sought pay of anyone; they have no witness
of that. And I have a witness of the truth of what I say; my poverty is a sufficient witness.

Someone may wonder why I go about in private, giving advice and busying myself with the
concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the state. I will
tell you the reason of this. You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes
to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have had ever
since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do
something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what
stands in the way of my being a politician. And rightly, as I think. For I am certain, O men of
Athens, that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good
either to you or to myself. And don't be offended at my telling you the truth: for the truth is
that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the
commission of unrighteousness and wrong in the state, will save his life; he who will really
fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not
a public one.

I can give you as proofs of this, not words only, but deeds, which you value more than words.
Let me tell you a passage of my own life, which will prove to you that I should never have
yielded to injustice from any fear of death, and that if I had not yielded I should have died at
once. I will tell you a story - tasteless, perhaps, and commonplace, but nevertheless true. The
only office of state which I ever held, O men of Athens, was that of senator; the tribe
Antiochis, which is my tribe, had the presidency at the trial of the generals who had not taken
up the bodies of the slain after the battle of Arginusae; and you proposed to try them all
together, which was illegal, as you all thought afterwards; but at the time I was the only one
of the Prytanes who was opposed to the illegality, and I gave my vote against you; and when
the orators threatened to impeach and arrest me, and have me taken away, and you called and
shouted, I made up my mind that I would run the risk, having law and justice with me, rather
than take part in your injustice because I feared imprisonment and death. This happened in
the days of the democracy. But when the oligarchy of the Thirty was in power, they sent for
me and four others into the rotunda, and bade us bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, as
they wanted to execute him. This was a specimen of the sort of commands which they were
always giving with the view of implicating as many as possible in their crimes; and then I
showed, not in words only, but in deed, that, if I may be allowed to use such an expression, I
cared not a straw for death, and that my only fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous or
unholy thing. For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing
wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis and fetched
Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might have lost my life, had not the power of the
Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end. And to this many will witness.

Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I had led a public
life, supposing that like a good man I had always supported the right and had made justice, as
I ought, the first thing? No, indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other. But I have been
always the same in all my actions, public as well as private, and never have I yielded any
base compliance to those who are slanderously termed my disciples or to any other. For the
truth is that I have no regular disciples: but if anyone likes to come and hear me while I am
pursuing my mission, whether he be young or old, he may freely come. Nor do I converse
with those who pay only, and not with those who do not pay; but anyone, whether he be rich
or poor, may ask and answer me and listen to my words; and whether he turns out to be a bad
man or a good one, that cannot be justly laid to my charge, as I never taught him anything.
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And if anyone says that he has ever learned or heard anything from me in private which all
the world has not heard, I should like you to know that he is speaking an untruth.

But I shall be asked, Why do people delight in continually conversing with you? I have told
you already, Athenians, the whole truth about this: they like to hear the cross-examination of
the pretenders to wisdom; there is amusement in this. And this is a duty which the God has
imposed upon me, as I am assured by oracles, visions, and in every sort of way in which the
will of divine power was ever signified to anyone. This is true, O Athenians; or, if not true,
would be soon refuted. For if I am really corrupting the youth, and have corrupted some of
them already, those of them who have grown up and have become sensible that I gave them
bad advice in the days of their youth should come forward as accusers and take their revenge;
and if they do not like to come themselves, some of their relatives, fathers, brothers, or other
kinsmen, should say what evil their families suffered at my hands. Now is their time. Many
of them I see in the court. There is Crito, who is of the same age and of the same deme with
myself; and there is Critobulus his son, whom I also see. Then again there is Lysanias of
Sphettus, who is the father of Aeschines - he is present; and also there is Antiphon of
Cephisus, who is the father of Epignes; and there are the brothers of several who have
associated with me. There is Nicostratus the son of Theosdotides, and the brother of
Theodotus (now Theodotus himself is dead, and therefore he, at any rate, will not seek to stop
him); and there is Paralus the son of Demodocus, who had a brother Theages; and
Adeimantus the son of Ariston, whose brother Plato is present; and Aeantodorus, who is the
brother of Apollodorus, whom I also see. I might mention a great many others, any of whom
Meletus should have produced as witnesses in the course of his speech; and let him still
produce them, if he has forgotten - I will make way for him. And let him say, if he has any
testimony of the sort which he can produce. Nay, Athenians, the very opposite is the truth.
For all these are ready to witness on behalf of the corrupter, of the destroyer of their kindred,
as Meletus and Anytus call me; not the corrupted youth only - there might have been a
motive for that - but their uncorrupted elder relatives. Why should they too support me with
their testimony? Why, indeed, except for the sake of truth and justice, and because they know
that I am speaking the truth, and that Meletus is lying.

Well, Athenians, this and the like of this is nearly all the defence which I have to offer. Yet a
word more. Perhaps there may be someone who is offended at me, when he calls to mind
how he himself, on a similar or even a less serious occasion, had recourse to prayers and
supplications with many tears, and how he produced his children in court, which was a
moving spectacle, together with a posse of his relations and friends; whereas I, who am
probably in danger of my life, will do none of these things. Perhaps this may come into his
mind, and he may be set against me, and vote in anger because he is displeased at this. Now if
there be such a person among you, which I am far from affirming, I may fairly reply to him:
My friend, I am a man, and like other men, a creature of flesh and blood, and not of wood or
stone, as Homer says; and I have a family, yes, and sons. O Athenians, three in number, one
of whom is growing up, and the two others are still young; and yet I will not bring any of
them hither in order to petition you for an acquittal. And why not? Not from any self-will or
disregard of you. Whether I am or am not afraid of death is another question, of which I will
not now speak. But my reason simply is that I feel such conduct to be discreditable to myself,
and you, and the whole state. One who has reached my years, and who has a name for
wisdom, whether deserved or not, ought not to debase himself. At any rate, the world has
decided that Socrates is in some way superior to other men. And if those among you who are
said to be superior in wisdom and courage, and any other virtue, demean themselves in this
way, how shameful is their conduct! I have seen men of reputation, when they have been
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condemned, behaving in the strangest manner: they seemed to fancy that they were going to
suffer something dreadful if they died, and that they could be immortal if you only allowed
them to live; and I think that they were a dishonor to the state, and that any stranger coming
in would say of them that the most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians
themselves give honor and command, are no better than women. And I say that these things
ought not to be done by those of us who are of reputation; and if they are done, you ought not
to permit them; you ought rather to show that you are more inclined to condemn, not the man
who is quiet, but the man who gets up a doleful scene, and makes the city ridiculous.

But, setting aside the question of dishonor, there seems to be something wrong in petitioning
a judge, and thus procuring an acquittal instead of informing and convincing him. For his
duty is, not to make a present of justice, but to give judgment; and he has sworn that he will
judge according to the laws, and not according to his own good pleasure; and neither he nor
we should get into the habit of perjuring ourselves - there can be no piety in that. Do not then
require me to do what I consider dishonorable and impious and wrong, especially now, when
I am being tried for impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of Athens, by force
of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to
believe that there are no gods, and convict myself, in my own defence, of not believing in
them. But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense
than that in which any of my accusers believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my
cause, to be determined by you as is best for you and me.

The jury finds Socrates guilty.

Socrates' Proposal for his Sentence

There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of condemnation.
I expected it, and am only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal; for I had thought that
the majority against me would have been far larger; but now, had thirty votes gone over to the
other side, I should have been acquitted. And I may say that I have escaped Meletus. And I
may say more; for without the assistance of Anytus and Lycon, he would not have had a fifth
part of the votes, as the law requires, in which case he would have incurred a fine of a
thousand drachmae, as is evident.

And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of
Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is that which I ought to pay or to receive?
What shall be done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life; but
has been careless of what the many care about - wealth, and family interests, and military
offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that
I was really too honest a man to follow in this way and live, I did not go where I could do no
good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest good privately to everyone of you,
thither I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself,
and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state
before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the order which he
observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one? Doubtless some good thing, O
men of Athens, if he has his reward; and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. What
would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he
may instruct you? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O
men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize
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at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by
many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of
happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that
maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.

Perhaps you may think that I am braving you in saying this, as in what I said before about the
tears and prayers. But that is not the case. I speak rather because I am convinced that I never
intentionally wronged anyone, although I cannot convince you of that - for we have had a
short conversation only; but if there were a law at Athens, such as there is in other cities, that
a capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced
you; but now the time is too short. I cannot in a moment refute great slanders; and, as I am
convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I will not say of
myself that I deserve any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I? Because I am afraid of
the penalty of death which Meletus proposes? When I do not know whether death is a good
or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil? Shall I say
imprisonment? And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the
year - of the Eleven? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid?
There is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none, and I
cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I
must indeed be blinded by the love of life if I were to consider that when you, who are my
own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have found them so grievous and
odious that you would fain have done with them, others are likely to endure me. No, indeed,
men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age, wandering
from city to city, living in ever-changing exile, and always being driven out! For I am quite
sure that into whatever place I go, as here so also there, the young men will come to me; and
if I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at their desire: and if I let them come, their
fathers and friends will drive me out for their sakes.

Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into
a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you
understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine
command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious;
and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that
concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is
unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to believe. And yet what I say is
true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you. Moreover, I am not
accustomed to think that I deserve any punishment. Had I money I might have proposed to
give you what I had, and have been none the worse. But you see that I have none, and can
only ask you to proportion the fine to my means. However, I think that I could afford a
minae, and therefore I propose that penalty; Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my
friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Well then, say thirty
minae, let that be the penalty; for that they will be ample security to you.

The jury condemns Socrates to death.

Socrates' Comments on his Sentence

Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get
from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they
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will call me wise even although I am not wise when they want to reproach you. If you had
waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature. For I am
far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now only
to those of you who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them:
You think that I was convicted through deficiency of words - I mean, that if I had thought fit
to leave nothing undone, nothing unsaid, I might have gained an acquittal. Not so; the
deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words - certainly not. But I had not the
boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address
you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have
been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought
that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger: nor do I now repent of
the manner of my defence, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak
in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of
escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms,
and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are
other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my
friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than
death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers
are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And
now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they, too, go their
ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by
my award - let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, -
and I think that they are well.

And now, O men who have condemned me, I would fain prophesy to you; for I am about to
die, and that is the hour in which men are gifted with prophetic power. And I prophesy to you
who are my murderers, that immediately after my death punishment far heavier than you
have inflicted on me will surely await you. Me you have killed because you wanted to escape
the accuser, and not to give an account of your lives. But that will not be as you suppose: far
otherwise. For I say that there will be more accusers of you than there are now; accusers
whom hitherto I have restrained: and as they are younger they will be more severe with you,
and you will be more offended at them. For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the
accuser censuring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either
possible or honorable; the easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be
improving yourselves. This is the prophecy which I utter before my departure, to the judges
who have condemned me.

Friends, who would have acquitted me, I would like also to talk with you about this thing
which has happened, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at which I
must die. Stay then awhile, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You
are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened
to me. O my judges - for you I may truly call judges - I should like to tell you of a wonderful
circumstance. Hitherto the familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the habit of
opposing me even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything; and
now as you see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed
to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was
leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or
while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped
in the middle of a speech; but now in nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the
oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this? I will tell you. I regard this
120

as a proof that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is
an evil are in error. This is a great proof to me of what I am saying, for the customary sign
would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a
good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness,
or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if
you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is
undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person
were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to
compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many
days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this
one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find
many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that
to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another
place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be
greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from
the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment
there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who
were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man
give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be
true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can
converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have
suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in
comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search
into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise,
and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to
examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless
others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them
and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly
not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said
is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth - that no evil can
happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods;
nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and
be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason also, I
am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although
neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my
friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they
seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be
something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not
caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when
they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your
hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is
better God only knows.
121

THE END

http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/category/podcast-episodes/?order=ASC

Philosophy
 CrashCourse
 46 videos
 6,451,054 views
 Last updated on 13 Feb 2017
Play all



What is Philosophy?: Crash Course Philosophy #1
10:35
by CrashCourse

How to Argue - Philosophical Reasoning: Crash Course Philosophy #2

9:43
by CrashCourse

How to Argue - Induction & Abduction: Crash Course Philosophy #3

10:18
by CrashCourse

Leonardo DiCaprio & The Nature of Reality: Crash Course Philosophy #4

9:03
by CrashCourse

Cartesian Skepticism - Neo, Meet Rene: Crash Course Philosophy #5

10:01
by CrashCourse

Locke, Berkeley, & Empiricism: Crash Course Philosophy #6 9:52

122

by CrashCourse

The Meaning of Knowledge: Crash Course Philosophy #7

10:12
by CrashCourse

Karl Popper, Science, and Pseudoscience: Crash Course Philosophy #8

8:57
by CrashCourse

Anselm and the Argument for God: Crash Course Philosophy #9

9:13
by CrashCourse

Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments: Crash Course Philosophy

#10 10:26
by CrashCourse

Intelligent Design: Crash Course Philosophy #11

9:34
by CrashCourse

What is God Like?: Crash Course Philosophy #12

10:32
by CrashCourse

The Problem of Evil: Crash Course Philosophy #13

10:04
by CrashCourse

Anti-Vaxxers, Conspiracy Theories & Epistemic Responsibility: Crash

Course Philosophy #14 9:47
by CrashCourse

Indiana Jones & Pascal's Wager: Crash Course Philosophy #15

9:13
by CrashCourse

Existentialism: Crash Course Philosophy #16

8:54
by CrashCourse
123

Perspectives on Death: Crash Course Philosophy #17

9:01
by CrashCourse

Batman & Identity: Crash Course Philosophy #18

9:09
by CrashCourse

Personal Identity: Crash Course Philosophy #19

8:33
by CrashCourse

Arguments Against Personal Identity: Crash Course Philosophy #20

9:44
by CrashCourse

Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #21

9:14
by CrashCourse

Where Does Your Mind Reside?: Crash Course Philosophy #22

9:07
by CrashCourse

Artificial Intelligence & Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #23

9:26
by CrashCourse

Determinism vs Free Will: Crash Course Philosophy #24

10:26
by CrashCourse

Compatibilism: Crash Course Philosophy #25

8:55
by CrashCourse

Language & Meaning: Crash Course Philosophy #26

9:32
by CrashCourse
124

Netflix & Chill: Crash Course Philosophy #27

9:11
by CrashCourse

How Words Can Harm: Crash Course Philosophy #28

10:46
by CrashCourse

Nonexistent Objects & Imaginary Worlds: Crash Course Philosophy #29

9:21
by CrashCourse

Aesthetic Appreciation: Crash Course Philosophy #30

9:26
by CrashCourse

Aesthetics: Crash Course Philosophy #31

10:38
by CrashCourse

Metaethics: Crash Course Philosophy #32

9:34
by CrashCourse

Divine Command Theory: Crash Course Philosophy #33

9:02
by CrashCourse

Natural Law Theory: Crash Course Philosophy #34

9:39
by CrashCourse

Kant & Categorical Imperatives: Crash Course Philosophy #35

10:27
by CrashCourse

Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36

10:01
by CrashCourse

Contractarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #37

9:32
by CrashCourse
125

Aristotle & Virtue Theory: Crash Course Philosophy #38

9:22
by CrashCourse

Moral Luck: Crash Course Philosophy #39

9:46
by CrashCourse

What Is Justice?: Crash Course Philosophy #40

10:15
by CrashCourse

Discrimination: Crash Course Philosophy #41

9:07
by CrashCourse

Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy #42

9:47
by CrashCourse

Family Obligations: Crash Course Philosophy #43

9:23
by CrashCourse

Poverty & Our Response To It: Crash Course Philosophy #44

8:54
by CrashCourse

Assisted Death & The Value of Life: Crash Course Philosophy #45
9:54
by CrashCourse

What Is A Good Life?: Crash Course Philosophy #46

by CrashCourse
https://youtu.be/NKEhdsnKKHs?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR
Published on 16 Feb 2016
Before we dive into the big questions of philosophy, you need to know how to argue
properly. We’ll start with an overview of philosophical reasoning and breakdown of how
deductive arguments work (and sometimes don’t work).
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How to Argue - Induction & Abduction: Crash Course

Philosophy #3

CrashCourse
5,794,135
859,398 views
Published on 22 Feb 2016
We continue our look at philosophical reasoning by introducing two more types: induction
and abduction. Hank explains their strengths and weaknesses, as well as counterarguments
and the Socratic method.

Published on 1 Aug 2016

Today we continue our unit on identity by asking where the mind resides. Hank explains the
mind body problem and several approaches to the question of where our minds reside,
including reductive physicalism, substance dualism, and mysterianism.

https://youtu.be/3SJROTXnmus?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR
http://www.oajse.com/subjects/philosophy.html

http://www.oajse.com/subjects/philosophy.html

Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?

December 6, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 36 Comments
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Discussing the "Chuang Tzu," Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19.
It's the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people
singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. What could it possibly
mean to "make all things equal?" and how is the Taoist sage different from our other favorite
paragons of virtue (hint: magical powers)?
Featuring special guest panelist Erik Douglas, another U. Texas philosophy grad school
dropout calling in from England and knowing more about Eastern philosophy than we do.
Buy the book or read it online.
The end song requires explanation: I had a "New Age" period where I investigated Eastern
philosophy, tried to be cheerful all the time, and was generally insufferable. This song, "Pass
Time Incorporeal," is an artifact of that time, with lyrics from early fall 1989; the recording is
127

from 1993. It finally slipped out on a 1996 album of similar goofiness rejected from my
"real" albums called "Black Jelly Beans & Smokes."

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LOGIC
Logic (from the Greek "logos", which has a variety of meanings including word, thought,
idea, argument, account, reason or principle) is the study of reasoning, or the study of the
principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. It attempts to distinguish good
reasoning from bad reasoning.

Logic - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

www.philosophybasics.com/branch_logic.html
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131

Back to Top
Introduction
Logic (from the Greek "logos", which has a variety of meanings including word, thought, idea,
argument, account, reason or principle) is the study of reasoning, or the study of the principles and
criteria of valid inference and demonstration. It attempts to distinguish good reasoning from bad
reasoning.

Aristotle defined logic as "new and necessary reasoning", "new" because it allows us to learn what
we do not know, and "necessary" because its conclusions are inescapable. It asks questions like
"What is correct reasoning?", "What distinguishes a good argument from a bad one?", "How can we
detect a fallacy in reasoning?"

Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the
study of formal systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural language. It
deals only with propositions (declarative sentences, used to make an assertion, as opposed to
questions, commands or sentences expressing wishes) that are capable of being true and false. It is
not concerned with the psychological processes connected with thought, or with emotions, images
and the like. It covers core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, as well as
specialized analysis of reasoning using probability and arguments involving causality and
argumentation theory.

Logical systems should have three things: consistency (which means that none of the theorems of
the system contradict one another); soundness (which means that the system's rules of proof will
never allow a false inference from a true premise); and completeness (which means that there are
no true sentences in the system that cannot, at least in principle, be proved in the system).
Back to Top
History of Logic
In Ancient India, the "Nasadiya Sukta" of the Rig Veda contains various logical divisions that were
later recast formally as the four circles of catuskoti: "A", "not A", "A and not A" and "not A and not not
A". The Nyaya school of Indian philosophical speculation is based on texts known as the "Nyaya
Sutras" of Aksapada Gautama from around the 2nd Century B.C., and its methodology of inference
is based on a system of logic (involving a combination of induction and deduction by moving from
particular to particular via generality) that subsequently has been adopted by the majority of the other
Indian schools.

But modern logic descends mainly from the Ancient Greek tradition. Both Plato and Aristotle
conceived of logic as the study of argument and from a concern with correctness of argumentation.
Aristotle produced six works on logic, known collectively as the "Organon", the first of these, the
"Prior Analytics", being the first explicit work in formal logic.

Aristotle espoused two principles of great importance in logic, the Law of Excluded Middle (that
every statement is either true or false) and the Law of Non-Contradiction (confusingly, also known
as the Law of Contradiction, that no statement is both true and false). He is perhaps most famous
for introducing the syllogism (or term logic) (see the section on Deductive Logic below). His
followers, known as the Peripatetics, further refined his work on logic.

In medieval times, Aristotelian logic (or dialectics) was studied, along with grammar and rhetoric,
as one of the three main strands of the trivium, the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education.

Logic in Islamic philosophy also contributed to the development of modern logic, especially the
development of Avicennian logic (which was responsible for the introduction of the hypothetical
syllogism, temporal logic, modal logic and inductive logic) as an alternative to Aristotelian logic.

In the 18th Century, Immanuel Kant argued that logic should be conceived as the science of
judgment, so that the valid inferences of logic follow from the structural features of judgments,
although he still maintained that Aristotle had essentially said everything there was to say about logic
as a discipline.

In the 20th Century, however, the work of Gottlob Frege, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell on Symbolic Logic, turned Kant's assertion on its head. This new logic, expounded in their
joint work "Principia Mathematica", is much broader in scope than Aristotelian logic, and even
132

contains classical logic within it, albeit as a minor part. It resembles a mathematical calculus and
deals with the relations of symbols to each other.
Back to Top
Types of Logic
Logic in general can be divided into Formal Logic, Informal Logic and Symbolic Logic and
Mathematical Logic:

 Formal Logic:
Formal Logic is what we think of as traditional logic or philosophical logic, namely the
study of inference with purely formal and explicit content (i.e. it can be expressed as a
particular application of a wholly abstract rule), such as the rules of formal logic that have
come down to us from Aristotle. (See the section on Deductive Logic below).
A formal system (also called a logical calculus) is used to derive one expression
(conclusion) from one or more other expressions (premises). These premises may be
axioms (a self-evident proposition, taken for granted) or theorems (derived using a fixed set
of inference rules and axioms, without any additional assumptions).
Formalism is the philosophical theory that formal statements (logical or mathematical) have
no intrinsic meaning but that its symbols (which are regarded as physical entities) exhibit a
form that has useful applications.

 Informal Logic:
Informal Logic is a recent discipline which studies natural language arguments, and
attempts to develop a logic to assess, analyse and improve ordinary language (or
"everyday") reasoning. Natural language here means a language that is spoken, written or
signed by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal
languages (such as computer-programming languages) or constructed languages (such
as Esperanto).
It focuses on the reasoning and argument one finds in personal exchange, advertising,
political debate, legal argument, and the social commentary that characterizes newspapers,
television, the Internet and other forms of mass media.

 Symbolic Logic:
Symbolic Logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features of
logical inference. It deals with the relations of symbols to each other, often using complex
mathematical calculus, in an attempt to solve intractable problems traditional formal logic
is not able to address.
It is often divided into two sub-branches:

o Predicate Logic: a system in which formulae contain quantifiable variables. (See

the section on Predicate Logic below).

o Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic): a system in which formulae representing

propositions can be formed by combining atomic propositions using logical
connectives, and a system of formal proof rules allows certain formulae to be
established as theorems. (See the section on Propositional Logic below).

 Mathematical Logic:
Both the application of the techniques of formal logic to mathematics and mathematical
reasoning, and, conversely, the application of mathematical techniques to the
representation and analysis of formal logic.
The earliest use of mathematics and geometry in relation to logic and philosophy goes back
to the Ancient Greeks such as Euclid, Plato and Aristotle.
Computer science emerged as a discipline in the 1940's with the work of Alan Turing (1912
- 1954) on the Entscheidungsproblem, which followed from the theories of Kurt Gödel
(1906 - 1978), particularly his incompleteness theorems. In the 1950s and 1960s,
researchers predicted that when human knowledge could be expressed using logic with
mathematical notation, it would be possible to create a machine that reasons (or artificial
intelligence), although this turned out to be more difficult than expected because of the
complexity of human reasoning. Mathematics-related doctrines include:
133

o Logicism: perhaps the boldest attempt to apply logic to mathematics, pioneered by

philosopher-logicians such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, especially the
application of mathematics to logic in the form of proof theory, model theory, set
theory and recursion theory.

o Intuitionism: the doctrine which holds that logic and mathematics does not consist of
analytic activities wherein deep properties of existence are revealed and applied,
but merely the application of internally consistent methods to realize more
complex mental constructs.
Back to Top
Deductive Logic
Deductive reasoning concerns what follows necessarily from given premises (i.e. from a general
premise to a particular one). An inference is deductively valid if (and only if) there is no possible
situation in which all the premises are true and the conclusion false. However, it should be
remembered that a false premise can possibly lead to a false conclusion.

Deductive reasoning was developed by Aristotle, Thales, Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers of
the Classical Period. At the core of deductive reasoning is the syllogism (also known as term
logic),usually attributed to Aristotle), where one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two
others (the premises), each of which has one term in common with the conclusion. For example:
Major premise: All humans are mortal.
Minor premise: Socrates is human.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
An example of deduction is:
All apples are fruit.
All fruits grow on trees.
Therefore all apples grow on trees.
One might deny the initial premises, and therefore deny the conclusion. But anyone who accepts the
premises must accept the conclusion. Today, some academics claim that Aristotle's system has little
more than historical value, being made obsolete by the advent of Predicate Logic and Propositional
Logic (see the sections below).
Back to Top
Inductive Logic
Inductive reasoning is the process of deriving a reliable generalization from observations (i.e. from
the particular to the general), so that the premises of an argument are believed to support the
conclusion, but do not necessarily ensure it. Inductive logic is not concerned with validity or
conclusiveness, but with the soundness of those inferences for which the evidence is not
conclusive.

Many philosophers, including David Hume, Karl Popper and David Miller, have disputed or denied
the logical admissibility of inductive reasoning. In particular, Hume argued that it requires inductive
reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the
justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument.

An example of strong induction (an argument in which the truth of the premise would make the truth
of the conclusion probable but not definite) is:
All observed crows are black.
Therefore:
All crows are black.
An example of weak induction (an argument in which the link between the premise and the
conclusion is weak, and the conclusion is not even necessarily probable) is:
I always hang pictures on nails.
Therefore:
All pictures hang from nails.
Back to Top
Modal Logic
134

Modal Logic is any system of formal logic that attempts to deal with modalities (expressions
associated with notions of possibility, probability and necessity). Modal Logic, therefore, deals with
terms such as "eventually", "formerly", "possibly", "can", "could", "might", "may", "must", etc.

Modalities are ways in which propositions can be true or false. Types of modality include:

 Alethic Modalities: Includes possibility and necessity, as well as impossibility and

contingency. Some propositions are impossible (necessarily false), whereas others are
contingent (both possibly true and possibly false).

 Temporal Modalities: Historical and future truth or falsity. Some propositions were true/false
in the past and others will be true/false in the future.

 Deontic Modalities: Obligation and permissibility. Some propositions ought to be true/false,

while others are permissible.

 Epistemic Modalities: Knowledge and belief. Some propositions are known to be true/false,
and others are believed to be true/false.

Although Aristotle's logic is almost entirely concerned with categorical syllogisms, he did anticipate
modal logic to some extent, and its connection with potentiality and time. Modern modal logic was
founded by Gottlob Frege, although he initially doubted its viability, and it was only later developed by
Rudolph Carnap (1891 - 1970), Kurt Gödel (1906 - 1978), C.I. Lewis (1883 - 1964) and then Saul
Kripke (1940 - ) who established System K, the form of Modal Logic that most scholars use today).
Back to Top
Propositional Logic
Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic) is concerned only with sentential connectives and
logical operators (such as "and", "or", "not", "if ... then ...", "because" and "necessarily"), as opposed
to Predicate Logic (see below), which also concerns itself with the internal structure of atomic
propositions.

Propositional Logic, then, studies ways of joining and/or modifying entire propositions, statements
or sentences to form more complex propositions, statements or sentences, as well as the logical
relationships and properties that are derived from these methods of combining or altering
statements. In propositional logic, the simplest statements are considered as indivisible units.

The Stoic philosophers in the late 3rd century B.C. attempted to study such statement operators as
"and", "or" and "if ... then ...", and Chrysippus (c. 280-205 B.C.) advanced a kind of propositional logic,
by marking out a number of different ways of forming complex premises for arguments. This system
was also studied by Medieval logicians, although propositional logic did not really come to fruition until
the mid-19th Century, with the advent of Symbolic Logic in the work of logicians such as Augustus
DeMorgan (1806-1871), George Boole (1815-1864) and Gottlob Frege.
Back to Top
Predicate Logic
Predicate Logic allows sentences to be analysed into subject and argument in several different
ways, unlike Aristotelian syllogistic logic, where the forms that the relevant part of the involved
judgments took must be specified and limited (see the section on Deductive Logic above). Predicate
Logic is also able to give an account of quantifiers general enough to express all arguments
occurring in natural language, thus allowing the solution of the problem of multiple generality that
had perplexed medieval logicians.

For instance, it is intuitively clear that if:

Some cat is feared by every mouse
then it follows logically that:
All mice are afraid of at least one cat
but because the sentences above each contain two quantifiers ('some' and 'every' in the first
sentence and 'all' and 'at least one' in the second sentence), they cannot be adequately represented
in traditional logic.
Predicate logic was designed as a form of mathematics, and as such is capable of all sorts of
mathematical reasoning beyond the powers of term or syllogistic logic. In first-order logic (also
135

known as first-order predicate calculus), a predicate can only refer to a single subject, but predicate
logic can also deal with second-order logic, higher-order logic, many-sorted logic or infinitary
logic. It is also capable of many commonsense inferences that elude term logic, and (along with
Propositional Logic - see below) has all but supplanted traditional term logic in most philosophical
circles.

Predicate Logic was initially developed by Gottlob Frege and Charles Peirce in the late 19th Century,
but it reached full fruition in the Logical Atomism of Whitehead and Russell in the 20th Century
(developed out of earlier work by Ludwig Wittgenstein).
Back to Top
Fallacies
A logical fallacy is any sort of mistake in reasoning or inference, or, essentially, anything that
causes an argument to go wrong. There are two main categories of fallacy, Fallacies of Ambiguity
and Contextual Fallacies:

 Fallacies of Ambiguity: a term is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. There are
two main types:

o equivocation: where a single word can be used in two different senses.

o amphiboly: where the ambiguity arises due to sentence structure (often due to
dangling participles or the inexact use of negatives), rather than the meaning of
individual words.

 Contextual Fallacies: which depend on the context or circumstances in which sentences

are used. There are many different types, among the more common of which are:

o Fallacies of Significance: where it is unclear whether an assertion is significant or

not.

o Fallacies of Emphasis: the incorrect emphasis of words in a sentence.

o Fallacies of Quoting Out of Context: the manipulation of the context of a quotation.

o Fallacies of Argumentum ad Hominem: a statement cannot be shown to be false

merely because the individual who makes it can be shown to be of defective
character.

o Fallacies of Arguing from Authority: truth or falsity cannot be proven merely

because the person saying it is considered an "authority" on the subject.

o Fallacies of Arguments which Appeal to Sentiments: reporting how people feel

about something in order to persuade rather than prove.

o Fallacies of Argument from Ignorance: a statement cannot be proved true just

because there is no evidence to disprove it.

o Fallacies of Begging the Question: a circular argument, where effectively the same
statement is used both as a premise and as a conclusion.

o Fallacies of Composition: the assumption that what is true of a part is also true of
the whole.

o Fallacies of Division: the converse assumption that what is true of a whole must be
also true of all of its parts.

o Fallacies of Irrelevant Conclusion: where the conclusion concerns something other

than what the argument was initially trying to prove.

o Fallacies of Non-Sequitur: an argumentative leap, where the conclusion does not

necessarily follow from the premises.
136

o Fallacies of Statistics: statistics can be manipulated and biased to "prove" many

different hypotheses.

These are just some of the most commonly encountered types, the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy page on Fallacies lists 176!
Back to Top
Paradoxes
A paradox is a statement or sentiment that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common
sense and yet is perhaps true in fact. Conversely, a paradox may be a statement that is actually
self-contradictory (and therefore false) even though it appears true. Typically, either the statements
in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction,
or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together.

The recognition of ambiguities, equivocations and unstated assumptions underlying known

paradoxes has led to significant advances in science, philosophy and mathematics. But many
paradoxes (e.g. Curry's Paradox) do not yet have universally accepted resolutions.

It can be argued that there are four classes of paradoxes:

 Veridical Paradoxes: which produce a result that appears absurd but can be demonstrated
to be nevertheless true.

 Falsidical Paradoxes: which produce a result that not only appears false but actually is
false.

 Antinomies: which are neither veridical nor falsidical, but produce a self-contradictory result
by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning.

 Dialetheias: which produce a result which is both true and false at the same time and in the
same sense.

Paradoxes often result from self-reference (where a sentence or formula refers to itself directly),
infinity (an argument which generates an infinite regress, or infinite series of supporting references),
circular definitions (in which a proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of
the premises), vagueness (where there is no clear fact of the matter whether a concept applies or
not), false or misleading statements (assertions that are either willfully or unknowingly untrue or
misleading), and half-truths (deceptive statements that include some element of truth).

Some famous paradoxes include:

 Epimenides' Liar Paradox: Epimenides was a Cretan who said "All Cretans are liars."
Should we believe him?

 Liar Paradox (2): "This sentence is false."

 Liar Paradox (3): "The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true."

 Curry's Paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."

 Quine's Paradox: "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when
preceded by its quotation.

 Russell's Barber Paradox: If a barber shaves all and only those men in the village who do
not shave themselves, does he shave himself?

 Grandfather Paradox: Suppose a time traveller goes back in time and kills his grandfather
when the latter was only a child. If his grandfather dies in childhood, then the time traveller
cannot be born. But if the time traveller is never born, how can he have travelled back in time
in the first place?
137

 Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox: Before a moving object can travel a certain distance (e.g. a
person crossing a room), it must get halfway there. Before it can get halfway there, it must get
a quarter of the way there. Before travelling a quarter, it must travel one-eighth; before an
eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. As this sequence goes on forever, an infinite number of
points must be crossed, which is logically impossible in a finite period of time, so the distance
will never be covered (the room crossed, etc).

 Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: If Achilles allows the tortoise a head start in a
race, then by the time Achilles has arrived at the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has
already run on a shorter distance. By the time Achilles reaches that second point, the tortoise
has moved on again, etc, etc. So Achilles can never catch the tortoise.

 Zeno's Arrow Paradox: If an arrow is fired from a bow, then at any moment in time, the
arrow either is where it is, or it is where it is not. If it moves where it is, then it must be
standing still, and if it moves where it is not, then it can't be there. Thus, it cannot move at all.

 Theseus' Ship Paradox: After Theseus died, his ship was put up for public display. Over
time, all of the planks had rotted at one time or another, and had been replaced with new
matching planks. If nothing remained of the actual "original" ship, was this still Theseus' ship?

 Sorites (Heap of Sand) Paradox: If you take away one grain of sand from a heap, it is still a
heap. If grains are individually removed, is it still a heap when only one grain remains? If not,
when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?

 Hempel's Raven Paradox: If all ravens are black, then in strict terms of logical equivalence,
everything that is not black is not a raven. So every sighting of a blue sweater or a red cup
confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black.

 Petronius' Paradox" "Moderation in all things, including moderation."

 Paradoxical Notice: "Please ignore this notice."

 Dull Numbers Paradox: If there is such a thing as an dull number, then we can divide all
numbers into two sets - interesting and dull. In the set of dull numbers there will be only one
number that is the smallest. Since it is the smallest dull number it becomes, ipso facto, an
interesting number. We must therefore remove it from the dull set and place it in the other.
But now there will be another smallest uninteresting number. Repeating this process will
make any dull number interesting.

 Protagoras' Pupil Paradox: A lawyer made an arrangement with one of his pupils whereby
the pupil was to pay for his instruction after he had won his first case. After a while, the lawyer
grew impatient with the pupil's lack of clients, and decided to sue him for the amount owed.
The lawyer's logic was that if he, the lawyer, won, the pupil would pay him according to the
judgment of the court; if the pupil won, then he would have to honour the agreement and pay
anyway. The pupil, however, argued that if he, the pupil, won, then by the judgment of the
court he need not pay the lawyer; and if the lawyer won, then the agreement did not come
into force and the pupil need not pay the lawyer.

 Moore's paradox: "It will rain but I don't believe that it will."

 Schrödinger's Cat: There is a cat in a sealed box, and the cat's life or death is dependent on
the state of a particular subatomic particle. According to quantum mechanics, the particle only
has a definite state at the exact moment of quantum measurement, so that the cat remains
both alive and dead until the moment the box is opened.

 "Turtles all the way down": A story about an infinite regress, often attributed to Bertrand
Russell but probably dating from centuries earlier, based on an old (possibly Indian)
cosmological myth that the earth is a flat disk supported by a giant elephant that is in turn
supported by a giant turtle. In the story, when asked what then supported the turtle, the
response was "it's turtles all the way down".
138

Back to Top
Major Doctrines
Three doctrines which may be considered under the heading of Logic are:
Intuitionism Logicism Logical Positivism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
Logic (from the Ancient Greek: ογ ή, logikḗ[1]), originally meaning "the word" or "what is
spoken" (but coming to mean "thought" or "reason"), is generally held to consist of the
systematic study of the form of arguments. A valid argument is one where there is a specific
relation of logical support between the assumptions of the argument and its conclusion. (In
ordinary discourse, the conclusion of such an argument may be signified by words like
therefore, hence, ergo and so on.)
There is no universal agreement as to the exact scope and subject matter of logic (see § Rival
conceptions, below), but it has traditionally included the classification of arguments, the
systematic exposition of the 'logical form' common to all valid arguments, the study of
inference, including fallacies, and the study of semantics, including paradoxes. Historically,
logic has been studied in philosophy (since ancient times) and mathematics (since the mid-
1800s), and recently logic has been studied in computer science, linguistics, psychology, and
other fields.

Contents
 1 Concepts
o 1.1 Logical form
o 1.2 Semantics
o 1.3 Inference
o 1.4 Logical systems
o 1.5 Logic and rationality
o 1.6 Rival conceptions
 2 History
 3 Types
o 3.1 Syllogistic logic
o 3.2 Propositional logic
o 3.3 Predicate logic
o 3.4 Modal logic
o 3.5 Informal reasoning and dialectic
o 3.6 Mathematical logic
139

o 3.7 Philosophical logic

o 3.8 Computational logic
o 3.9 Non-classical logic
 4 Controversies
o 4.1 "Is Logic Empirical?"
o 4.2 Implication: Strict or material
o 4.3 Tolerating the impossible
o 4.4 Rejection of logical truth
 5 See also
 6 Notes and references
 7 Bibliography
 8 External links

Concepts

“
Upon this first,
and in one sense
this sole, rule of
reason, that in
order to learn you
must desire to
learn, and in so
desiring not be
satisfied with
what you already
incline to think,
there follows one
corollary which
itself deserves to
be inscribed upon
every wall of the
city of

”
philosophy: Do
not block the way
of inquiry.

— Charles Sanders Peirce, "First

Rule of Logic"
140

The concept of logical form is central to logic. The validity of an argument is determined by
its logical form, not by its content. Traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern
symbolic logic are examples of formal logic.
 Informal logic is the study of natural language arguments. The study of fallacies is an
important branch of informal logic. Since much informal argument is not strictly
speaking deductive, on some conceptions of logic, informal logic is not logic at all.
See 'Rival conceptions', below.
 Formal logic is the study of inference with purely formal content. An inference
possesses a purely formal content if it can be expressed as a particular application of a
wholly abstract rule, that is, a rule that is not about any particular thing or property.
The works of Aristotle contain the earliest known formal study of logic. Modern
formal logic follows and expands on Aristotle.[2] In many definitions of logic, logical
inference and inference with purely formal content are the same. This does not render
the notion of informal logic vacuous, because no formal logic captures all of the
nuances of natural language.
 Symbolic logic is the study of symbolic abstractions that capture the formal features
of logical inference.[3][4] Symbolic logic is often divided into two main branches:
propositional logic and predicate logic.
 Mathematical logic is an extension of symbolic logic into other areas, in particular to
the study of model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory.
However, agreement on what logic is has remained elusive, and although the field of
universal logic has studied the common structure of logics, in 2007 Mossakowski et al.
commented that "it is embarrassing that there is no widely acceptable formal definition of 'a
logic'".[5]

Logical form
Main article: Logical form
Logic is generally considered formal when it analyzes and represents the form of any valid
argument type. The form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the
formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal
inference. Simply put, formalising simply means translating English sentences into the
language of logic.
This is called showing the logical form of the argument. It is necessary because indicative
sentences of ordinary language show a considerable variety of form and complexity that
makes their use in inference impractical. It requires, first, ignoring those grammatical features
irrelevant to logic (such as gender and declension, if the argument is in Latin), replacing
conjunctions irrelevant to logic (such as "but") with logical conjunctions like "and" and
replacing ambiguous, or alternative logical expressions ("any", "every", etc.) with
expressions of a standard type (such as "all", or the universal quantifier ∀).
Second, certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters. Thus, for
example, the expression "all Ps are Qs" shows the logical form common to the sentences "all
men are mortals", "all cats are carnivores", "all Greeks are philosophers", and so on. The
141

schema can further be condensed into the formula A(P,Q), where the letter A indicates the
judgement 'all - are -'.
The importance of form was recognised from ancient times. Aristotle uses variable letters to
represent valid inferences in Prior Analytics, leading Jan Łukasiewicz to say that the
introduction of variables was "one of Aristotle's greatest inventions".[6] According to the
followers of Aristotle (such as Ammonius), only the logical principles stated in schematic
terms belong to logic, not those given in concrete terms. The concrete terms "man", "mortal",
etc., are analogous to the substitution values of the schematic placeholders P, Q, R, which
were called the "matter" (Greek hyle) of the inference.
There is a big difference between the kinds of formulas seen in traditional term logic and the
predicate calculus that is the fundamental advance of modern logic. The formula A(P,Q) (all

Ps are Qs) of traditional logic corresponds to the more complex formula in predicate
logic, involving the logical connectives for universal quantification and implication rather

than just the predicate letter A and using variable arguments where traditional logic uses
just the term letter P. With the complexity comes power, and the advent of the predicate
calculus inaugurated revolutionary growth of the subject.

Semantics
Main article: Semantics of logic
The validity of an argument depends upon the meaning or semantics of the sentences that
make it up.
Aristotle's Organon, especially On Interpretation, gives a cursory outline of semantics which
the scholastic logicians, particularly in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, developed into a
complex and sophisticated theory, called Supposition Theory. This showed how the truth of
simple sentences, expressed schematically, depend on how the terms 'supposit' or stand for
certain extra-linguistic items. For example, in part II of his Summa Logicae, William of
Ockham presents a comprehensive account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
truth of simple sentences, in order to show which arguments are valid and which are not.
Thus "every A is B' is true if and only if there is something for which 'A' stands, and there is
nothing for which 'A' stands, for which 'B' does not also stand." [7]
Early modern logic defined semantics purely as a relation between ideas. Antoine Arnauld in
the Port Royal Logic, says that 'after conceiving things by our ideas, we compare these ideas,
and, finding that some belong together and some do not, we unite or separate them. This is
called affirming or denying, and in general judging'.[8] Thus truth and falsity are no more than
the agreement or disagreement of ideas. This suggests obvious difficulties, leading Locke to
distinguish between 'real' truth, when our ideas have 'real existence' and 'imaginary' or 'verbal'
truth, where ideas like harpies or centaurs exist only in the mind.[9] This view (psychologism)
was taken to the extreme in the nineteenth century, and is generally held by modern logicians
to signify a low point in the decline of logic before the twentieth century.
Modern semantics is in some ways closer to the medieval view, in rejecting such
psychological truth-conditions. However, the introduction of quantification, needed to solve
the problem of multiple generality, rendered impossible the kind of subject-predicate analysis
that underlies medieval semantics. The main modern approach is model-theoretic semantics,
142

based on Alfred Tarski's semantic theory of truth. The approach assumes that the meaning of
the various parts of the propositions are given by the possible ways we can give a recursively
specified group of interpretation functions from them to some predefined domain of
discourse: an interpretation of first-order predicate logic is given by a mapping from terms to
a universe of individuals, and a mapping from propositions to the truth values "true" and
"false". Model-theoretic semantics is one of the fundamental concepts of model theory.
Modern semantics also admits rival approaches, such as the proof-theoretic semantics that
associates the meaning of propositions with the roles that they can play in inferences, an
approach that ultimately derives from the work of Gerhard Gentzen on structural proof theory
and is heavily influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy, especially his aphorism
"meaning is use".

Inference
Inference is not to be confused with implication. An implication is a sentence of the form 'If p
then q', and can be true or false. The Stoic logician Philo of Megara was the first to define the
truth conditions of such an implication: false only when the antecedent p is true and the
consequent q is false, in all other cases true. An inference, on the other hand, consists of two
separately asserted propositions of the form 'p therefore q'. An inference is not true or false,
but valid or invalid. However, there is a connection between implication and inference, as
follows: if the implication 'if p then q' is true, the inference 'p therefore q' is valid. This was
given an apparently paradoxical formulation by Philo, who said that the implication 'if it is
day, it is night' is true only at night, so the inference 'it is day, therefore it is night' is valid in
the night, but not in the day.
The theory of inference (or 'consequences') was systematically developed in medieval times
by logicians such as William of Ockham and Walter Burley. It is uniquely medieval, though
it has its origins in Aristotle's Topics and Boethius' De Syllogismis hypotheticis. This is why
many terms in logic are Latin. For example, the rule that licenses the move from the
implication 'if p then q' plus the assertion of its antecedent p, to the assertion of the
consequent q is known as modus ponens (or 'mode of positing'). Its Latin formulation is
'Posito antecedente ponitur consequens'. The Latin formulations of many other rules such as
'ex falso quodlibet' (anything follows from a falsehood), 'reductio ad absurdum' (disproof by
showing the consequence is absurd) also date from this period.
However, the theory of consequences, or of the so-called 'hypothetical syllogism' was never
fully integrated into the theory of the 'categorical syllogism'. This was partly because of the
resistance to reducing the categorical judgment 'Every S is P' to the so-called hypothetical
judgment 'if anything is S, it is P'. The first was thought to imply 'some S is P', the second
was not, and as late as 1911 in the Encyclopædia Britannica article on Logic, we find the
Oxford logician T.H. Case arguing against Sigwart's and Brentano's modern analysis of the
universal proposition. Cf. problem of existential import

Logical systems
Main article: Formal system
A formal system is an organisation of terms used for the analysis of deduction. It consists of
an alphabet, a language over the alphabet to construct sentences, and a rule for deriving
sentences. Among the important properties that logical systems can have are:
143

 Consistency, which means that no theorem of the system contradicts another.[10]

 Validity, which means that the system's rules of proof never allow a false inference
from true premises.
 Completeness, which means that if a formula is true, it can be proven, i.e. is a
theorem of the system.
 Soundness, meaning that if any formula is a theorem of the system, it is true. This is
the converse of completeness. (Note that in a distinct philosophical use of the term, an
argument is sound when it is both valid and its premises are true).[11]
Some logical systems do not have all four properties. As an example, Kurt Gödel's
incompleteness theorems show that sufficiently complex formal systems of arithmetic cannot
be consistent and complete;[4] however, first-order predicate logics not extended by specific
axioms to be arithmetic formal systems with equality can be complete and consistent.[12]

Logic and rationality

Main article: Logic and rationality
This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. (May 2016)
As the study of argument is of clear importance to the reasons that we hold things to be true,
logic is of essential importance to rationality. Here we have defined logic to be "the
systematic study of the form of arguments"; the reasoning behind argument is of several
sorts, but only some of these arguments fall under the aegis of logic proper.
Deductive reasoning concerns the logical consequence of given premises and is the form of
reasoning most closely connected to logic. On a narrow conception of logic (see below) logic
concerns just deductive reasoning, although such a narrow conception controversially
excludes most of what is called informal logic from the discipline.
There are other forms of reasoning that are rational but that are generally not taken to be part
of logic. These include inductive reasoning, which covers forms of inference that move from
collections of particular judgements to universal judgements, and abductive reasoning,[13]
which is a form of inference that goes from observation to a hypothesis that accounts for the
reliable data (observation) and seeks to explain relevant evidence. The American philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) first introduced the term as "guessing".[14] Peirce said

that to abduce a hypothetical explanation from an observed surprising circumstance

is to surmise that may be true because then would be a matter of course.[15]

Thus, to abduce from involves determining that is sufficient (or nearly

sufficient), but not necessary, for .

While inductive and abductive inference are not part of logic proper, the methodology of
logic has been applied to them with some degree of success. For example, the notion of
deductive validity (where an inference is deductively valid if and only if there is no possible
situation in which all the premises are true but the conclusion false) exists in an analogy to
the notion of inductive validity, or "strength", where an inference is inductively strong if and
144

only if its premises give some degree of probability to its conclusion. Whereas the notion of
deductive validity can be rigorously stated for systems of formal logic in terms of the well-
understood notions of semantics, inductive validity requires us to define a reliable
generalization of some set of observations. The task of providing this definition may be
approached in various ways, some less formal than others; some of these definitions may use
logical association rule induction, while others may use mathematical models of probability
such as decision trees.

Rival conceptions
Main article: Rival conceptions of logic
Logic arose (see below) from a concern with correctness of argumentation. Modern logicians
usually wish to ensure that logic studies just those arguments that arise from appropriately
general forms of inference. For example, Thomas Hofweber writes in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy that logic "does not, however, cover good reasoning as a whole.
That is the job of the theory of rationality. Rather it deals with inferences whose validity can
be traced back to the formal features of the representations that are involved in that inference,
be they linguistic, mental, or other representations."[16]
By contrast, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued for seeing logic as the science of
judgement,[citation needed] an idea taken up in the logical and philosophical work of Gottlob
Frege (1848–1925). But Frege's work is ambiguous in the sense that it is both concerned with
the "laws of thought" as well as with the "laws of truth", i.e. it both treats logic in the context
of a theory of the mind, and treats logic as the study of abstract formal structures.[citation needed]
Logic has been defined[by whom?] as "the study of arguments correct in virtue of their form".
This has not been the definition taken in this article, but the idea that logic treats special
forms of argument, deductive argument, rather than argument in general, has a history in
logic that dates back at least to logicism in mathematics (19th and 20th centuries) and the
advent of the influence of mathematical logic on philosophy. A consequence of taking logic
to treat special kinds of argument is that it leads to identification of special kinds of truth, the
logical truths (with logic equivalently being the study of logical truth), and excludes many of
the original objects of study of logic that are treated as informal logic. Robert Brandom has
argued against the idea that logic is the study of a special kind of logical truth, arguing that
instead one can talk of the logic of material inference (in the terminology of Wilfred Sellars),
with logic making explicit the commitments that were originally implicit in informal
inference.[17][page needed]

History Main article: History of logic

Aristotle, 384–322 BCE.

In Europe, logic was first developed by Aristotle.[18] Aristotelian logic became widely
accepted in science and mathematics and remained in wide use in the West until the early
19th century.[19] Aristotle's system of logic was responsible for the introduction of
hypothetical syllogism,[20] temporal modal logic,[21][22] and inductive logic,[23] as well as
influential terms such as terms, predicables, syllogisms and propositions. In Europe during
the later medieval period, major efforts were made to show that Aristotle's ideas were
compatible with Christian faith. During the High Middle Ages, logic became a main focus of
145

philosophers, who would engage in critical logical analyses of philosophical arguments, often
using variations of the methodology of scholasticism. In 1323, William of Ockham's
influential Summa Logicae was released. By the 18th century, the structured approach to
arguments had degenerated and fallen out of favour, as depicted in Holberg's satirical play
Erasmus Montanus.
The Chinese logical philosopher Gongsun Long (c. 325–250 BCE) proposed the paradox
"One and one cannot become two, since neither becomes two."[24] In China, the tradition of
scholarly investigation into logic, however, was repressed by the Qin dynasty following the
legalist philosophy of Han Feizi.
In India, innovations in the scholastic school, called Nyaya, continued from ancient times into
the early 18th century with the Navya-Nyaya school. By the 16th century, it developed
theories resembling modern logic, such as Gottlob Frege's "distinction between sense and
reference of proper names" and his "definition of number", as well as the theory of
"restrictive conditions for universals" anticipating some of the developments in modern set
theory.[25] Since 1824, Indian logic attracted the attention of many Western scholars, and has
had an influence on important 19th-century logicians such as Charles Babbage, Augustus De
Morgan, and George Boole.[26] In the 20th century, Western philosophers like Stanislaw
Schayer and Klaus Glashoff have explored Indian logic more extensively.
The syllogistic logic developed by Aristotle predominated in the West until the mid-
19th century, when interest in the foundations of mathematics stimulated the development of
symbolic logic (now called mathematical logic). In 1854, George Boole published An
Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of
Logic and Probabilities, introducing symbolic logic and the principles of what is now known
as Boolean logic. In 1879, Gottlob Frege published Begriffsschrift, which inaugurated
modern logic with the invention of quantifier notation. From 1910 to 1913, Alfred North
Whitehead and Bertrand Russell published Principia Mathematica[3] on the foundations of
mathematics, attempting to derive mathematical truths from axioms and inference rules in
symbolic logic. In 1931, Gödel raised serious problems with the foundationalist program and
logic ceased to focus on such issues.
The development of logic since Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein had a profound influence on
the practice of philosophy and the perceived nature of philosophical problems (see Analytic
philosophy), and Philosophy of mathematics. Logic, especially sentential logic, is
implemented in computer logic circuits and is fundamental to computer science. Logic is
commonly taught by university philosophy departments, often as a compulsory discipline.

Types

Syllogistic logic
146

A depiction from the 15th century of the square of opposition, which expresses the
fundamental dualities of syllogistic.
Main article: Aristotelian logic
The Organon was Aristotle's body of work on logic, with the Prior Analytics constituting the
first explicit work in formal logic, introducing the syllogistic.[27] The parts of syllogistic
logic, also known by the name term logic, are the analysis of the judgements into
propositions consisting of two terms that are related by one of a fixed number of relations,
and the expression of inferences by means of syllogisms that consist of two propositions
sharing a common term as premise, and a conclusion that is a proposition involving the two
unrelated terms from the premises.
Aristotle's work was regarded in classical times and from medieval times in Europe and the
Middle East as the very picture of a fully worked out system. However, it was not alone: the
Stoics proposed a system of propositional logic that was studied by medieval logicians. Also,
the problem of multiple generality was recognized in medieval times. Nonetheless, problems
with syllogistic logic were not seen as being in need of revolutionary solutions.
Today, some academics claim that Aristotle's system is generally seen as having little more
than historical value (though there is some current interest in extending term logics), regarded
as made obsolete by the advent of propositional logic and the predicate calculus. Others use
Aristotle in argumentation theory to help develop and critically question argumentation
schemes that are used in artificial intelligence and legal arguments.

Propositional logic
Main article: Propositional calculus
A propositional calculus or logic (also a sentential calculus) is a formal system in which
formulae representing propositions can be formed by combining atomic propositions using
logical connectives, and in which a system of formal proof rules establishes certain formulae

as "theorems". An example of a theorem of propositional logic is , which says that if A

holds, then B implies A.

Predicate logic
147

Gottlob Frege's Begriffschrift introduced the notion of quantifier in a graphical notation,

which here represents the judgement that is true.

Main article: Predicate logic
Predicate logic is the generic term for symbolic formal systems such as first-order logic,
second-order logic, many-sorted logic, and infinitary logic. It provides an account of
quantifiers general enough to express a wide set of arguments occurring in natural language.
For example, Bertrand Russell's famous barber paradox, "there is a man who shaves all and

only men who do not shave themselves" can be formalised by the sentence , using the

non-logical predicate to indicate that x is a man, and the non-logical relation to

indicate that x shaves y; all other symbols of the formulae are logical, expressing the
universal and existential quantifiers, conjunction, implication, negation and biconditional.
Whilst Aristotelian syllogistic logic specifies a small number of forms that the relevant part
of the involved judgements may take, predicate logic allows sentences to be analysed into
subject and argument in several additional ways—allowing predicate logic to solve the
problem of multiple generality that had perplexed medieval logicians.
The development of predicate logic is usually attributed to Gottlob Frege, who is also
credited as one of the founders of analytical philosophy, but the formulation of predicate
logic most often used today is the first-order logic presented in Principles of Mathematical
Logic by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. The analytical generality of
predicate logic allowed the formalization of mathematics, drove the investigation of set
theory, and allowed the development of Alfred Tarski's approach to model theory. It provides
the foundation of modern mathematical logic.
Frege's original system of predicate logic was second-order, rather than first-order. Second-
order logic is most prominently defended (against the criticism of Willard Van Orman Quine
and others) by George Boolos and Stewart Shapiro.[citation needed]

Modal logic
Main article: Modal logic
In languages, modality deals with the phenomenon that sub-parts of a sentence may have
their semantics modified by special verbs or modal particles. For example, "We go to the
games" can be modified to give "We should go to the games", and "We can go to the games"
and perhaps "We will go to the games". More abstractly, we might say that modality affects
the circumstances in which we take an assertion to be satisfied.
Aristotle's logic is in large parts concerned with the theory of non-modalized logic. Although,
there are passages in his work, such as the famous sea-battle argument in De Interpretatione
§ 9, that are now seen as anticipations of modal logic and its connection with potentiality and
time, the earliest formal system of modal logic was developed by Avicenna, whom ultimately
developed a theory of "temporally modalized" syllogistic.[28]
148

While the study of necessity and possibility remained important to philosophers, little logical
innovation happened until the landmark investigations of Clarence Irving Lewis in 1918, who
formulated a family of rival axiomatizations of the alethic modalities. His work unleashed a
torrent of new work on the topic, expanding the kinds of modality treated to include deontic
logic and epistemic logic. The seminal work of Arthur Prior applied the same formal
language to treat temporal logic and paved the way for the marriage of the two subjects. Saul
Kripke discovered (contemporaneously with rivals) his theory of frame semantics, which
revolutionized the formal technology available to modal logicians and gave a new graph-
theoretic way of looking at modality that has driven many applications in computational
linguistics and computer science, such as dynamic logic.

Informal reasoning and dialectic

Main articles: Informal logic and Logic and dialectic
The motivation for the study of logic in ancient times was clear: it is so that one may learn to
distinguish good arguments from bad arguments, and so become more effective in argument
and oratory, and perhaps also to become a better person. Half of the works of Aristotle's
Organon treat inference as it occurs in an informal setting, side by side with the development
of the syllogistic, and in the Aristotelian school, these informal works on logic were seen as
complementary to Aristotle's treatment of rhetoric.
This ancient motivation is still alive, although it no longer takes centre stage in the picture of
logic; typically dialectical logic forms the heart of a course in critical thinking, a compulsory
course at many universities. Dialectic has been linked to logic since ancient times, but it has
not been until recent decades that European and American logicians have attempted to
provide mathematical foundations for logic and dialectic by formalising dialectical logic.
Dialectical logic is also the name given to the special treatment of dialectic in Hegelian and
Marxist thought. There have been pre-formal treatises on argument and dialectic, from
authors such as Stephen Toulmin (The Uses of Argument), Nicholas Rescher
(Dialectics),[29][30][31] and van Eemeren and Grootendorst (Pragma-dialectics). Theories of
defeasible reasoning can provide a foundation for the formalisation of dialectical logic and
dialectic itself can be formalised as moves in a game, where an advocate for the truth of a
proposition and an opponent argue. Such games can provide a formal game semantics for
many logics.
Argumentation theory is the study and research of informal logic, fallacies, and critical
questions as they relate to every day and practical situations. Specific types of dialogue can
be analyzed and questioned to reveal premises, conclusions, and fallacies. Argumentation
theory is now applied in artificial intelligence and law.

Mathematical logic
Main article: Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic comprises two distinct areas of research: the first is the application of the
techniques of formal logic to mathematics and mathematical reasoning, and the second, in the
other direction, the application of mathematical techniques to the representation and analysis
of formal logic.[32]
The earliest use of mathematics and geometry in relation to logic and philosophy goes back
to the ancient Greeks such as Euclid, Plato, and Aristotle.[33] Many other ancient and
149

medieval philosophers applied mathematical ideas and methods to their philosophical

claims.[34]
One of the boldest attempts to apply logic to mathematics was the logicism pioneered by
philosopher-logicians such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Mathematical theories
were supposed to be logical tautologies, and the programme was to show this by means of a
reduction of mathematics to logic.[3] The various attempts to carry this out met with failure,
from the crippling of Frege's project in his Grundgesetze by Russell's paradox, to the defeat
of Hilbert's program by Gödel's incompleteness theorems.
Both the statement of Hilbert's program and its refutation by Gödel depended upon their work
establishing the second area of mathematical logic, the application of mathematics to logic in
the form of proof theory.[35] Despite the negative nature of the incompleteness theorems,
Gödel's completeness theorem, a result in model theory and another application of
mathematics to logic, can be understood as showing how close logicism came to being true:
every rigorously defined mathematical theory can be exactly captured by a first-order logical
theory; Frege's proof calculus is enough to describe the whole of mathematics, though not
equivalent to it.
If proof theory and model theory have been the foundation of mathematical logic, they have
been but two of the four pillars of the subject.[36] Set theory originated in the study of the
infinite by Georg Cantor, and it has been the source of many of the most challenging and
important issues in mathematical logic, from Cantor's theorem, through the status of the
Axiom of Choice and the question of the independence of the continuum hypothesis, to the
modern debate on large cardinal axioms.
Recursion theory captures the idea of computation in logical and arithmetic terms; its most
classical achievements are the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem by Alan Turing,
and his presentation of the Church–Turing thesis.[37] Today recursion theory is mostly
concerned with the more refined problem of complexity classes—when is a problem
efficiently solvable?—and the classification of degrees of unsolvability.[38]

Philosophical logic
Main article: Philosophical logic
Philosophical logic deals with formal descriptions of ordinary, non-specialist ("natural")
language, that is strictly only about the arguments within philosophy's other branches. Most
philosophers assume that the bulk of everyday reasoning can be captured in logic if a method
or methods to translate ordinary language into that logic can be found. Philosophical logic is
essentially a continuation of the traditional discipline called "logic" before the invention of
mathematical logic. Philosophical logic has a much greater concern with the connection
between natural language and logic. As a result, philosophical logicians have contributed a
great deal to the development of non-standard logics (e.g. free logics, tense logics) as well as
various extensions of classical logic (e.g. modal logics) and non-standard semantics for such
logics (e.g. Kripke's supervaluationism in the semantics of logic).
Logic and the philosophy of language are closely related. Philosophy of language has to do
with the study of how our language engages and interacts with our thinking. Logic has an
immediate impact on other areas of study. Studying logic and the relationship between logic
and ordinary speech can help a person better structure his own arguments and critique the
150

arguments of others. Many popular arguments are filled with errors because so many people
are untrained in logic and unaware of how to formulate an argument correctly.[39][40]

Computational logic
Main article: Logic in computer science

A simple toggling circuit is expressed using a logic gate and a synchronous register.
Logic cut to the heart of computer science as it emerged as a discipline: Alan Turing's work
on the Entscheidungsproblem followed from Kurt Gödel's work on the incompleteness
theorems. The notion of the general purpose computer that came from this work was of
fundamental importance to the designers of the computer machinery in the 1940s.
In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers predicted that when human knowledge could be
expressed using logic with mathematical notation, it would be possible to create a machine
that reasons, or artificial intelligence. This was more difficult than expected because of the
complexity of human reasoning. In logic programming, a program consists of a set of axioms
and rules. Logic programming systems such as Prolog compute the consequences of the
axioms and rules in order to answer a query.
Today, logic is extensively applied in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Computer
Science, and these fields provide a rich source of problems in formal and informal logic.
Argumentation theory is one good example of how logic is being applied to artificial
intelligence. The ACM Computing Classification System in particular regards:
 Section F.3 on Logics and meanings of programs and F.4 on Mathematical logic and
formal languages as part of the theory of computer science: this work covers formal
semantics of programming languages, as well as work of formal methods such as
Hoare logic;
 Boolean logic as fundamental to computer hardware: particularly, the system's section
B.2 on Arithmetic and logic structures, relating to operatives AND, NOT, and OR;
 Many fundamental logical formalisms are essential to section I.2 on artificial
intelligence, for example modal logic and default logic in Knowledge representation
formalisms and methods, Horn clauses in logic programming, and description logic.
Furthermore, computers can be used as tools for logicians. For example, in symbolic logic
and mathematical logic, proofs by humans can be computer-assisted. Using automated
theorem proving, the machines can find and check proofs, as well as work with proofs too
lengthy to write out by hand.
151

Non-classical logic
Main article: Non-classical logic
The logics discussed above are all "bivalent" or "two-valued"; that is, they are most naturally
understood as dividing propositions into true and false propositions. Non-classical logics are
those systems that reject various rules of Classical logic.
Hegel developed his own dialectic logic that extended Kant's transcendental logic but also
brought it back to ground by assuring us that "neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the
world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either–or' as the
understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in
itself".[41]
In 1910, Nicolai A. Vasiliev extended the law of excluded middle and the law of
contradiction and proposed the law of excluded fourth and logic tolerant to contradiction.[42]
In the early 20th century Jan Łukasiewicz investigated the extension of the traditional
true/false values to include a third value, "possible", so inventing ternary logic, the first
multi-valued logic in the Western tradition.[43]
Logics such as fuzzy logic have since been devised with an infinite number of "degrees of
truth", represented by a real number between 0 and 1.[44]
Intuitionistic logic was proposed by L.E.J. Brouwer as the correct logic for reasoning about
mathematics, based upon his rejection of the law of the excluded middle as part of his
intuitionism. Brouwer rejected formalization in mathematics, but his student Arend Heyting
studied intuitionistic logic formally, as did Gerhard Gentzen. Intuitionistic logic is of great
interest to computer scientists, as it is a constructive logic and can be applied for extracting
verified programs from proofs.
Modal logic is not truth conditional, and so it has often been proposed as a non-classical
logic. However, modal logic is normally formalized with the principle of the excluded
middle, and its relational semantics is bivalent, so this inclusion is disputable.

Controversies

"Is Logic Empirical?"

Main article: Is Logic Empirical?
What is the epistemological status of the laws of logic? What sort of argument is appropriate
for criticizing purported principles of logic? In an influential paper entitled "Is Logic
Empirical?"[45] Hilary Putnam, building on a suggestion of W. V. Quine, argued that in
general the facts of propositional logic have a similar epistemological status as facts about the
physical universe, for example as the laws of mechanics or of general relativity, and in
particular that what physicists have learned about quantum mechanics provides a compelling
case for abandoning certain familiar principles of classical logic: if we want to be realists
about the physical phenomena described by quantum theory, then we should abandon the
principle of distributivity, substituting for classical logic the quantum logic proposed by
Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann.[46]
Another paper of the same name by Michael Dummett argues that Putnam's desire for realism
mandates the law of distributivity.[47] Distributivity of logic is essential for the realist's
152

understanding of how propositions are true of the world in just the same way as he has argued
the principle of bivalence is. In this way, the question, "Is Logic Empirical?" can be seen to
lead naturally into the fundamental controversy in metaphysics on realism versus anti-
realism.

Implication: Strict or material

Main article: Paradoxes of material implication
The notion of implication formalized in classical logic does not comfortably translate into
natural language by means of "if ... then ...", due to a number of problems called the
paradoxes of material implication.
The first class of paradoxes involves counterfactuals, such as If the moon is made of green
cheese, then 2+2=5, which are puzzling because natural language does not support the
principle of explosion. Eliminating this class of paradoxes was the reason for C. I. Lewis's
formulation of strict implication, which eventually led to more radically revisionist logics
such as relevance logic.
The second class of paradoxes involves redundant premises, falsely suggesting that we know
the succedent because of the antecedent: thus "if that man gets elected, granny will die" is
materially true since granny is mortal, regardless of the man's election prospects. Such
sentences violate the Gricean maxim of relevance, and can be modelled by logics that reject
the principle of monotonicity of entailment, such as relevance logic.

Tolerating the impossible

Main article: Paraconsistent logic
Hegel was deeply critical of any simplified notion of the Law of Non-Contradiction. It was
based on Leibniz's idea that this law of logic also requires a sufficient ground to specify from
what point of view (or time) one says that something cannot contradict itself. A building, for
example, both moves and does not move; the ground for the first is our solar system and for
the second the earth. In Hegelian dialectic, the law of non-contradiction, of identity, itself
relies upon difference and so is not independently assertable.
Closely related to questions arising from the paradoxes of implication comes the suggestion
that logic ought to tolerate inconsistency. Relevance logic and paraconsistent logic are the
most important approaches here, though the concerns are different: a key consequence of
classical logic and some of its rivals, such as intuitionistic logic, is that they respect the
principle of explosion, which means that the logic collapses if it is capable of deriving a
contradiction. Graham Priest, the main proponent of dialetheism, has argued for
paraconsistency on the grounds that there are in fact, true contradictions.[48][clarification needed]

Rejection of logical truth

The philosophical vein of various kinds of skepticism contains many kinds of doubt and
rejection of the various bases on which logic rests, such as the idea of logical form, correct
inference, or meaning, typically leading to the conclusion that there are no logical truths.
Observe that this is opposite to the usual views in philosophical skepticism, where logic
directs skeptical enquiry to doubt received wisdoms, as in the work of Sextus Empiricus.
153

Friedrich Nietzsche provides a strong example of the rejection of the usual basis of logic: his
radical rejection of idealization led him to reject truth as a "... mobile army of metaphors,
metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short ... metaphors which are worn out and without
sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer
as coins."[49] His rejection of truth did not lead him to reject the idea of either inference or
logic completely, but rather suggested that "logic [came] into existence in man's head [out] of
illogic, whose realm originally must have been immense. Innumerable beings who made
inferences in a way different from ours perished".[50] Thus there is the idea that logical
inference has a use as a tool for human survival, but that its existence does not support the
existence of truth, nor does it have a reality beyond the instrumental: "Logic, too, also rests
on assumptions that do not correspond to anything in the real world".[51]
This position held by Nietzsche however, has come under extreme scrutiny for several
reasons. Some philosophers, such as Jürgen Habermas, claim his position is self-refuting—
and accuse Nietzsche of not even having a coherent perspective, let alone a theory of
knowledge.[52] Georg Lukács, in his book The Destruction of Reason, asserts that, "Were we
to study Nietzsche's statements in this area from a logico-philosophical angle, we would be
confronted by a dizzy chaos of the most lurid assertions, arbitrary and violently
incompatible."[53] Bertrand Russell described Nietzsche's irrational claims with "He is fond of
expressing himself paradoxically and with a view to shocking conventional readers" in his
book A History of Western Philosophy.[54]

See also
 Book: Logic

 Digital electronics (also known as digital logic or logic gates)

 Fallacies
 List of logicians
 List of logic journals
 List of logic symbols
 Logic puzzle
 Mathematics
o List of mathematics articles
o Outline of mathematics
 Metalogic
 Outline of logic
 Philosophy
o List of philosophy topics
o Outline of philosophy
154

 Reason
 Truth
 Vector logic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_(disambiguation)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logic

Contents
[hide]
 1 Formal logic
 2 The constitution of logic
 3 Reason and rhetoric
 4 Using what logic teaches
 5 See also
 6 External links
 7 References

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/logic

http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/phil_log.html

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-log/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/category/s-l-m/logic/
 Argument
 Aristotle: Logic
 Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Logic
 Bolzano, Bernard: Mathematical Knowledge
 Bradley, F. H.: Logic
 Carnap: Modal Logic
 Classification
155

 Deductive and Inductive Arguments

 Dialogical Logic
 Duality in Logic and Language
 Dynamic Epistemic Logic
 Epsilon Calculi
 Fallacies
 Frege, Gottlob
 Infinite
 Institution Theory
 Lambda Calculi
 Leibniz: Logic
 Liar Paradox
 Lindenbaum, Adolf
 Logical Consequence
 Logical Consequence, Deductive-Theoretic Conceptions of
 Logical Consequence, Model-Theoretic Conceptions
 Logical Paradoxes
 Modal Logic: Contemporary View
 Natural Deduction
 Paraconsistent Logic
 Peirce’s Logic
 Propositional Logic
 Quantum Logic
 Reductio ad Absurdum
 Russell-Myhill Paradox
 Russell's Paradox
 Square of Opposition
 Validity and Soundness
 Whitehead, Alfred North
156

 Yablo Paradox

http://cas2.umkc.edu/philosophy/vade-mecum/whylogic.htm

What is logic and why do philosophers study it?

Much of the time philosophers study what other people take for granted. They ask "Why?"
and "How?" when others are content to accept what seems obvious and in need of no
justification. Philosophy thus involves explanations, arguments, and their critical evaluation.
Here argument is meant not in the sense of dispute or controversy but in the sense of "arguing
(for or against)", or "making a case (for or against)".
In evaluating arguments and explanations two features are significant: whether the premises,
the "starting points", are jointly plausible; and whether what is said to follow from them does
so. When we reflect on these features we arrive at logic: the systematic study of what follows
from, and of the relations that hold within and between, bodies of belief, loosely speaking.
(Loosely speaking, for in logic we are not so much concerned with what we do accept or
believe rationally and what inferences we in fact make but with rather what one could so
accept or believe and what inferences one would be warranted in making whether or not one
actually does so.)
As an attempt at a systematic theory logic has to start somewhere. Its "raw data" are our
intuitions, our inferential practice, and our reflective judgments. Now, we have no guarantee
that these cohere well: in fact there are tensions. At the very least, we may find it difficult to
construct a systematic account that accommodates all, or even most, of the raw data. A
systematic theory may therefore lead us to refine (i.e. revise) our intuitions and change our
practice. Logic is a much less cut-and-dried affair than many text-books suggest.
Formal logic constitutes a "body of knowledge", not in the sense that all its findings are
incontrovertible facts but somewhat in the same way as moral philosophy does: in each case
there is a standard set of concepts, theories involving those concepts, forms of argument and
a ragbag of tricky cases that is played off against intuitions, and perhaps used to subject those
intuitions to critical scrutiny and to refinement. Formal logic is also more like the sciences
than is any other part of philosophy: it aims at a systematic account of a body of
"phenomena" on which there is fairly widespread agreement and in order to do so it uses
formal methods of representation (a feature of logic that goes back to the ancient Greeks) and
formal techniques. Formal logic is formal in that it seeks to give a systematic account of the
validity of individual arguments only insofar as they exemplify certain "patterns of
argument". Patterns, or forms, of argument are the main object of study. It is this feature of
logic that allows us to establish some results in and about logic with the same exactness as
one encounters in mathematics (but at least when logic is studied as part of philosophy one
should not lose sight of the wider goal).
Two further considerations are often given as reasons for studying logic:
1. Logic is "therapeutic": one learns logic in order to become better able to recognize
and to construct good arguments (in philosophy or any other discipline).
2. Formal logic is an indispensable item in the contemporary philosopher's toolkit.
157

Learning about any systematic discipline improves one's own abilities in thinking
systematically. And certainly, the methods and techniques of formal logic are used by some
philosophers, mostly those working in philosophy of language and philosophy of science.
Two text-books that integrate formal logic into a range of topics in philosophy are Brenner's
Logic and Philosophy and Bradley and Swartz's Possible Worlds.

Further reading:
 The two "Introductions", by Quine and Strawson, reprinted as Chapters 1 and 2 of R.
I. G. Hughes, ed., A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1993.
 Mark Sainsbury, Logical Forms, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, Chapter 1, Section 1.
 William Brenner, Logic and Philosophy: An Integrated Introduction, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1993.
 Raymond Bradley and Norman Swartz, Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic
and Its Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_logic
Philosophical logic refers to those areas of philosophy in which recognized methods of logic
have traditionally been used to solve or advance the discussion of philosophical problems.[1]
Among these, Sybil Wolfram highlights the study of argument, meaning, and truth,[2] while
Colin McGinn presents identity, existence, predication, necessity and truth as the main topics
of his book on the subject.[3]
Philosophical logic also addresses extensions and alternatives to traditional, "classical" logic
known as "non-classical" logics. These receive more attention in texts such as John P.
Burgess's Philosophical Logic,[4] the Blackwell Companion to Philosophical Logic,[5] or the
multi-volume Handbook of Philosophical Logic[6] edited by Dov M. Gabbay and Franz
Guenthner.

See also

 Logic portal

 Philosophy of logic
 Philosophy of mind
 Journal of Philosophical Logic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_logic
Following the developments in formal logic with symbolic logic in the late nineteenth
century and mathematical logic in the twentieth, topics traditionally treated by logic not being
part of formal logic have tended to be termed either philosophy of logic or philosophical logic
if no longer simply logic.
158

Compared to the history of logic the demarcation between philosophy of logic and
philosophical logic is of recent coinage and not always entirely clear. Characterisations
include
 Philosophy of logic is the area of philosophy devoted to examining the scope and
nature of logic.[1]
 Philosophy of logic is the investigation, critical analysis and intellectual reflection on
issues arising in logic. The field is considered to be distinct from philosophical logic.
 Philosophical logic is the branch of study that concerns questions about reference,
predication, identity, truth, quantification, existence, entailment, modality, and
necessity.[2]
 Philosophical logic is the application of formal logical techniques to philosophical
problems.[3]
This article outlines issues in philosophy of logic or provides links to relevant articles or
both.

Contents
 1 Introduction
 2 Truth
o 2.1 Truthbearers
o 2.2 Tarski's definition of truth
o 2.3 Analytic truths, logical truth, validity, logical consequence and entailment
o 2.4 Paradox
 3 Meaning and reference
 4 Names and descriptions
o 4.1 Formal and material consequence
 5 Logical constants and connectives
 6 Quantifiers and quantificational theory
 7 Modal logic
 8 Deviant logics
o 8.1 Classical v. non-classical logics
 9 Philosophical theories of logic
 10 Other topics
 11 See also
159

o 11.1 Important figures

o 11.2 Philosophers of logic
 12 References
 13 Sources
 14 Further reading
 15 External links

Introduction
This article makes use of the following terms and concepts:
 Type–token distinction
 Use–mention distinction

Truth
Parmenides said To say that that which is, is not or that which is not is, is a falsehood; and to
say that which is, is and that which is not is not, is true[4]
This apparent truism has not proved unproblematic.

Truthbearers
Logic uses such terms as true, false, inconsistent, valid, and self-contradictory. Questions
arise as Strawson (1952) writes[5]
(a) when we use these words of logical appraisal, what is it exactly that we are
appraising? and (b) how does logical appraisal become possible?
Main article: Truthbearer
See also: Sentence, Statement, Proposition.

Tarski's definition of truth

See:
 Semantic theory of truth § Tarski's Theory
 T-schema
 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Tarski's Truth Definitions
 Self-reference:2.1 Consequences of the Semantic Paradoxes in Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy
160

Analytic truths, logical truth, validity, logical consequence and entailment

Since the use, meaning, if not the meaningfulness, of the terms is part of the debate, it is
possible only to give the following working definitions for the purposes of the discussion:
 A necessary truth is one that is true no matter what the state of the world or, as it is
sometimes put, in all possible worlds.[6]
 Logical truths are those necessary truths that are necessarily true owing to the
meaning of their logical constants only.[7]
 In formal logic a logical truth is just a "statement" (string of symbols in which no
variable occurs free) which is true under all possible interpretations.
 An analytic truth is one whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept.
The concept of logical truth is intimately linked with those of validity, logical consequence
and entailment (as well as self-contradiction, necessarily false etc.).
 If q is a logical truth, then p therefore q will be a valid argument.
 If p1, p2, p3 ... pn therefore q is a valid argument then its corresponding conditional
will be a logical truth.
 If p1 & p2 & p3 ... pn entails q then If (p1 & p2 & p3 ... pn) then q is a logical truth.
 If q is a logical consequence of p1 & p2 & p3 ... pn if and only if p1 & p2 & p3 ... pn
entails q and if and only if If (p1 & p2 & p3..pn) then q is a logical truth
Issues that arise include:
 If there are truths that must be true, what makes them so?
 Are there analytic truths that are not logical truths?
 Are there necessary truths that are not analytic truths?
 Are there necessary truths that are not logical truths?
 Is the distinction between analytic truth and synthetic truth spurious?
Main articles: necessary truth, logical truth, validity (logic), Corresponding conditional
(logic), logical consequence, entailment, and Analytic-synthetic distinction
See also [1]

Paradox
Main article: Paradox

Meaning and reference

See
 Sense and reference
161

 Theory of reference
 Mediated reference theory
 Direct reference theory
 Causal theory of reference (section References)
 Descriptivist theory of names (section References)
 Saul Kripke (section References)
 Frege's Puzzle (section New Theories of Reference and the Return of Frege's Puzzle)
 Gottlob Frege (section References)
 Failure of reference (section References)
 Rigid designator (section Causal-Historical Theory of Reference)
 Philosophy of language (section References)
 Index of philosophy of language articles
 Supposition theory (section References)
 Referring expression
 Meaning (philosophy of language)
 Denotation and Connotation
 Extension and Intension
 Extensional definition
 Intensional definition
 Metacommunicative competence
 Absent referent

Names and descriptions

 Failure to refer
 Proper name (philosophy)
 Definite description
 Descriptivist theory of names
 Theory of descriptions
 Singular term
 Term logic § Singular terms
162

 Empty name
 Bas van Fraassen § Singular Terms, Truth-value Gaps, and Free Logic
 The Foundations of Arithmetic § Development of Frege's own view of a number
 Philosophy of language § references
 Direct reference
 Mediated reference theory

Formal and material consequence

 The problem of the material conditional: see Material conditional

Logical constants and connectives

Main articles: Logical constant and Logical connective

Quantifiers and quantificational theory

Main article: Quantifier (logic)

Modal logic
Main article: Modal logic

Deviant logics
Main article: Deviant logic

Classical v. non-classical logics

Main article: Classical logic

Philosophical theories of logic

 Conceptualism
 Constructivism
 Dialetheism
 Fictionalism
 Finitism
 Formalism
 Intuitionism
163

 Logical atomism
 Logicism
 Nominalism
 Realism
 Platonic realism
 Structuralism

Other topics
 Leibniz's Law: see Identity of indiscernibles
 Vacuous names
 Do predicates have properties?: See Second-order logic
 Sense, Reference, Connotation, Denotation, Extension, Intension
 The status of the Laws of Logic
 Classical Logic
 Intuitionism
 Realism: see Platonic realism, Philosophical realism
 The Law of Excluded Middle: see Law of excluded middle
 Modality, Intensionality and Propositional Attitude
 Counter-factuals
 Psychologism

See also
 "Is Logic Empirical?"
 Type-token distinction
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type%E2%80%93token_distinction
 The type–token distinction is used in disciplines such as logic, linguistics, metalogic,
typography, and computer programming to clarify what words mean.
 The sentence "they drive the same car" is ambiguous. Do they drive the same type of
car (the same model) or the same instance of a car type (a single vehicle)? Clarity
requires us to distinguish words that represent abstract types from words that
represent objects that embody or exemplify types. The type–token distinction
164

separates types (representing abstract descriptive concepts) from tokens (representing

objects that instantiate concepts).
 For example: "bicycle" is a type that represents the concept of a bicycle; whereas "my
bicycle" is a token that represents an object that instantiates that type. In the sentence
"the bicycle is becoming more popular" the word "bicycle" is a type representing a
concept; whereas in the sentence "the bicycle is in the garage" the word "bicycle" is a
token representing a particular object.
 (The distinction in computer programming between classes and objects is related,
though in this context, "class" sometimes refers to a set of objects (with class-level
attribute or operations) rather than a description of an object in the set.)
Although this flock is made of the same type of bird, each individual bird is a
different token. (50 MB video of a flock of birds in Rome)

 Use–mention distinction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use–mention_distinction
The use–mention distinction is a foundational concept of analytic philosophy,[1] according
to which it is necessary to make a distinction between using a word (or phrase) and
mentioning it,[2][3] and many philosophical works have been "vitiated by a failure to
distinguish use and mention".[2] The distinction is disputed by non-analytic philosophers.[4]
The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated for the word cheese:[2][3]
 Use: cheese is derived from milk.
 Mention: 'cheese' is derived from the Old English word ċēse.
The first sentence is a statement about the substance called "cheese"; it uses the word 'cheese'
to refer to that substance. The second is a statement about the word 'cheese' as a signifier; it
mentions the word without using it to refer to anything other than itself.

Contents
 1 Grammar
165

In written language, mentioned words or phrases often appear between quotation marks (as
in "'Chicago' contains three vowels") or in italics (as in "When I say honey, I mean the sweet
stuff that bees make"), and style authorities such as Strunk and White insist that mentioned
words or phrases must always be made visually distinct in this manner. Used words or
phrases (much more common than mentioned ones) do not bear any typographic distinction.
In spoken language, or in absence of the use of stylistic cues such as quotation marks or
italics in written language, the audience must identify mentioned words or phrases through
semantic and pragmatic cues.[5]
If quotation marks are used, it is sometimes the practice to distinguish between the quotation
marks used for speech and those used for mentioned words, with double quotes in one place
and single in the other:
 When Larry said, "That has three letters," he was referring to the word 'bee'.
 With reference to 'bumbershoot' , Peter explained that "The term refers to an
umbrella."
Many authorities recommend against such a distinction, and prefer one style of quotation
mark to be used for both purposes,[6] which is a much more common practice.

In philosophy
The general phenomenon of a term's having different references in different contexts was
called suppositio (substitution) by medieval logicians.[7] It describes how one has to substitute
a term in a sentence based on its meaning—that is, based on the term's referent. In general, a
term can be used in several ways. For nouns, they are:
 Properly with a concrete and real referent: "That is my cow" (assuming it exists).
(personal supposition)
 Properly with a concrete but unreal referent: "Santa Claus's cow is very big." (also
personal supposition)
 Properly with a generic referent: "Any cow gives milk." (simple supposition)
 Improperly by way of metaphor: "Your sister is a cow". (improper supposition)
 As a pure term: "Cow has only three letters". (material supposition)
The last sentence contains a mention example.
The use–mention distinction is especially important in analytic philosophy.[8] Failure to
properly distinguish use from mention can produce false, misleading, or meaningless
statements or category errors. For example, the following correctly distinguish between use
and mention:
 "Copper" contains six letters, and is not a metal.
 Copper is a metal, and contains no letters.
The first sentence, a mention example, is a statement about the word "copper" and not the
chemical element. Notably, the word is composed of six letters, but not any kind of metal or
166

other tangible thing. The second sentence, a use example, is a statement about the chemical
element copper and not the word itself. Notably, the element is composed of 29 electrons and
protons and 35 neutrons, but not any letters.
Stanisław Leśniewski was perhaps the first to make widespread use of this distinction and the
fallacy that arises from overlooking it, seeing it all around in analytic philosophy of the time,
for example in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.[9] At the logical level, a use–
mention mistake occurs when two heterogeneous levels of meaning or context are confused
inadvertently.[citation needed]
Donald Davidson told that in his student years, "quotation was usually introduced as a
somewhat shady device, and the introduction was accompanied by a stern sermon on the sin
of confusing the use and mention of expressions". He presented a class of sentences like
Quine said that "quotation has a certain anomalous feature."
which both use the meaning of the quoted words to complete the sentence, and mention them
as they are attributed to W. V. Quine, to argue against his teachers' hard distinction. His claim
was that quotations could not be analyzed as simple expressions that mention their content by
means of naming it or describing its parts, as sentences like the above would lose their exact,
twofold meaning.[10]
Self-referential statements mention themselves or their components, often producing logical
paradoxes, such as Quine's paradox. A mathematical analogy of self-referential statements
lies at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.[citation needed] There are many examples of
self-reference and use–mention distinction in the works of Douglas Hofstadter, who makes
the distinction thus:
When a word is used to refer to something, it is said to be being used. When a word is
quoted, though, so that someone is examining it for its surface aspects (typographical,
phonetic, etc.), it is said to be being mentioned.[11]
Although the standard notation for mentioning a term in philosophy and logic is to put the
term in quotation marks, issues arise when the mention is itself of a mention. Notating using
italics might require a potentially infinite number of typefaces, while putting quotation marks
within quotation marks may lead to ambiguity.[12]
Some analytic philosophers have said the distinction "may seem rather pedantic".[2]
In a 1977 response to analytic philosopher John Searle, Jacques Derrida mentioned the
distinction as "rather laborious and problematical".[4]

See also
 Haddocks' Eyes
 James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the
teacher
 Map–territory relation
 Metalanguage
167

 Pointer (computer programming)

 Quasi-quotation
 Scare quotes
 Sense and reference
 White Horse Dialogue


 2 In philosophy
 3 See also
 4 Notes
 5 References
 6 Further reading
 7 External links

 Pierce's type-token distinction

 Concatenation theory
There is a related distinction very closely connected with the type-token distinction.
This distinction is the distinction between an object, or type of object, and an
occurrence of it. In this sense, an occurrence is not necessarily a token. Considering
the sentence: "A rose is a rose is a rose". We may equally correctly state that there are
eight or three words in the sentence. There are, in fact, three word types in the
sentence: "rose", "is" and "a". There are eight word tokens in a token copy of the line.
The line itself is a type. There are not eight word types in the line. It contains (as
stated) only the three word types, 'a', 'is' and 'rose', each of which is unique. So what
do we call what there are eight of? They are occurrences of words. There are three
occurrences of the word type 'a', two of 'is' and three of 'rose'.
 The need to distinguish tokens of types from occurrences of types arises, not just in
linguistics, but whenever types of things have other types of things occurring in
them.[1] Reflection on the simple case of occurrences of numerals is often helpful


Important figures
Important figures in the philosophy of logic include (but are not limited to):
 Aristotle  Gottlob Frege  Charles Sanders Peirce
168

 George Boole  Kurt Gödel  Alvin Plantinga

 George Boolos  Georg Hegel  Arthur Prior
 Rudolf Carnap  Immanuel Kant  Willard Van Orman Quine
 Gordon Clark  Gottfried Leibniz  Bertrand Russell
 Alonzo Church  David Lewis  Alfred Tarski
 Augustus De Morgan  John Stuart Mill  Ludwig Wittgenstein
 Michael Dummett

Philosophers of logic
 W.V.O. Quine  Michael  Charles Sanders  Augustus De

Dummett Peirce Morgan
Bertrand Russell
  

Hilary Alfred Tarski Gordon Clark
Ludwig
 
Putnam
Wittgenstein Donald Aristot
 Saul Kripke Davidson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics exploring the applications of formal logic to

mathematics. It bears close connections to metamathematics, the foundations of mathematics,
and theoretical computer science.[1] The unifying themes in mathematical logic include the
study of the expressive power of formal systems and the deductive power of formal proof
systems.
Mathematical logic is often divided into the fields of set theory, model theory, recursion
theory, and proof theory. These areas share basic results on logic, particularly first-order
logic, and definability. In computer science (particularly in the ACM Classification)
mathematical logic encompasses additional topics not detailed in this article; see Logic in
computer science for those.
Since its inception, mathematical logic has both contributed to, and has been motivated by,
the study of foundations of mathematics. This study began in the late 19th century with the
development of axiomatic frameworks for geometry, arithmetic, and analysis. In the early
20th century it was shaped by David Hilbert's program to prove the consistency of
foundational theories. Results of Kurt Gödel, Gerhard Gentzen, and others provided partial
resolution to the program, and clarified the issues involved in proving consistency. Work in
set theory showed that almost all ordinary mathematics can be formalized in terms of sets,
although there are some theorems that cannot be proven in common axiom systems for set
theory. Contemporary work in the foundations of mathematics often focuses on establishing
which parts of mathematics can be formalized in particular formal systems (as in reverse
169

mathematics) rather than trying to find theories in which all of mathematics can be
developed.

Contents
 1 Subfields and scope
 2 History
o 2.1 Early history
o 2.2 19th century
 2.2.1 Foundational theories
o 2.3 20th century
 2.3.1 Set theory and paradoxes
 2.3.2 Symbolic logic
 2.3.3 Beginnings of the other branches
 3 Formal logical systems
o 3.1 First-order logic
o 3.2 Other classical logics
o 3.3 Nonclassical and modal logic
o 3.4 Algebraic logic
 4 Set theory
 5 Model theory
 6 Recursion theory
o 6.1 Algorithmically unsolvable problems
 7 Proof theory and constructive mathematics
 8 Connections with computer science
 9 Foundations of mathematics
 10 See also
 11 Notes
 12 References
o 12.1 Undergraduate texts
o 12.2 Graduate texts
170

o 12.3 Research papers, monographs, texts, and surveys

o 12.4 Classical papers, texts, and collections
 13 External links

Subfields and scope

The Handbook of Mathematical Logic (Barwise 1989) makes a rough division of
contemporary mathematical logic into four areas:
1. set theory
2. model theory
3. recursion theory, and
4. proof theory and constructive mathematics (considered as parts of a single area).
5. Each area has a distinct focus, although many techniques and results are shared
among multiple areas. The borderlines amongst these fields, and the lines separating
mathematical logic and other fields of mathematics, are not always sharp. Gödel's
incompleteness theorem marks not only a milestone in recursion theory and proof
theory, but has also led to Löb's theorem in modal logic. The method of forcing is
employed in set theory, model theory, and recursion theory, as well as in the study of
intuitionistic mathematics.
6. The mathematical field of category theory uses many formal axiomatic methods, and
includes the study of categorical logic, but category theory is not ordinarily
considered a subfield of mathematical logic. Because of its applicability in diverse
fields of mathematics, mathematicians including Saunders Mac Lane have proposed
category theory as a foundational system for mathematics, independent of set theory.
These foundations use toposes, which resemble generalized models of set theory that
may employ classical or nonclassical logic.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/
Typically, a logic consists of a formal or informal language together with a deductive system
and/or a model-theoretic semantics. The language has components that correspond to a part
of a natural language like English or Greek. The deductive system is to capture, codify, or
simply record arguments that are valid for the given language, and the semantics is to
capture, codify, or record the meanings, or truth-conditions for at least part of the language.
The following sections provide the basics of a typical logic, sometimes called “classical
elementary logic” or “classical first-order logic”. Section 2 develops a formal language, with
a rigorous syntax and grammar. The formal language is a recursively defined collection of
strings on a fixed alphabet. As such, it has no meaning, or perhaps better, the meaning of its
formulas is given by the deductive system and the semantics. Some of the symbols have
counterparts in ordinary language. We define an argument to be a non-empty collection of
formulas in the formal language, one of which is designated to be the conclusion. The other
formulas (if any) in an argument are its premises. Section 3 sets up a deductive system for the
language, in the spirit of natural deduction. An argument is derivable if there is a deduction
171

from some or all of its premises to its conclusion. Section 4 provides a model-theoretic
semantics. An argument is valid if there is no interpretation (in the semantics) in which its
premises are all true and its conclusion false. This reflects the longstanding view that a valid
argument is truth-preserving.
In Section 5, we turn to relationships between the deductive system and the semantics, and in
particular, the relationship between derivability and validity. We show that an argument is
derivable only if it is valid. This pleasant feature, called soundness, entails that no deduction
takes one from true premises to a false conclusion. Thus, deductions preserve truth, and there
aren't too many deductions. Then we establish a converse, called completeness, that an
argument is valid only if it is derivable. This establishes that the deductive system is rich
enough to provide a deduction for every valid argument. So there are enough deductions: all
and only valid arguments are derivable. We briefly indicate other features of the logic, some
of which are corollaries to soundness and completeness.
 1. Introduction
 2. Language
 3. Deduction
 4. Semantics
 5. Meta-theory
 Bibliography
172

TRUTH

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality,[1] or fidelity to an
original or standard.[1] Truth may also often be used in modern contexts to refer to an idea of
"truth to self," or authenticity.
The commonly understood opposite of truth is falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also
take on a logical, factual, or ethical meaning. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in
several contexts, including philosophy, art, and religion. Many human activities depend upon
the concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of
discussion; these include most (but not all) of the sciences, law, journalism, and everyday
life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any
terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Commonly, truth is
viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to an independent reality, in what is
sometimes called the correspondence theory of truth.
Other philosophers take this common meaning to be secondary and derivative. According to
Martin Heidegger, the original meaning and essence of "Truth" in Ancient Greece was
unconcealment, or the revealing or bringing of what was previously hidden into the open, as
indicated by the original Greek term for truth, "Aletheia."[2][3] On this view, the conception of
truth as correctness is a later derivation from the concept's original essence, a development
Heidegger traces to the Latin term "Veritas."
Pragmatists like C.S. Peirce take Truth to have some manner of essential relation to human
practices for inquiring into and discovering Truth, with Peirce himself holding that Truth is
what human inquiry would find out on a matter, if our practice of inquiry were taken as far as
it could profitably go: "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who
investigate, is what we mean by the truth..."[4]
Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars, philosophers, and
theologians.[5] Language and words are a means by which humans convey information to one
another and the method used to determine what is a "truth" is termed a criterion of truth.
There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth: what things are
truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that
faith-based and empirically based knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective or
objective, relative or absolute.
Friedrich Nietzsche famously suggested that an ancient, metaphysical belief in the divinity of
Truth lies at the heart of and has served as the foundation for the entire subsequent Western
intellectual tradition: "But you will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still
a metaphysical faith on which our faith in science rests--that even we knowers of today, we
godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year old
faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is Truth; that Truth is
'Divine'..."[6][7]

Contents
173

 1 Definition and etymology

 2 Major theories
o 2.1 Substantive theories
 2.1.1 Correspondence theory
 2.1.2 Coherence theory
 2.1.3 Constructivist theory
 2.1.4 Consensus theory
 2.1.5 Pragmatic theory
o 2.2 Minimalist (deflationary) theories
 2.2.1 Performative theory of truth
 2.2.2 Redundancy and related theories
o 2.3 Pluralist theories
o 2.4 Most believed theories
 3 Formal theories
o 3.1 Truth in logic
o 3.2 Truth in mathematics
o 3.3 Semantic theory of truth
o 3.4 Kripke's theory of truth
o 3.5 Revision theory of truth
 4 Notable views
o 4.1 Ancient history
o 4.2 Middle Ages
 4.2.1 Avicenna
 4.2.2 Aquinas
 4.2.3 Changing concepts of truth in the Middle Ages

Changing concepts of truth in the Middle Ages

Richard Firth Green examined the concept of truth in the later Middle Ages in his A Crisis of
Truth, and concludes that roughly during the reign of Richard II of England the very meaning
of the concept changes. The idea of the oath, which was so much part and parcel of for
instance Romance literature,[67] changes from a subjective concept to a more objective one
174

(in Derek Pearsall's summary).[68] Whereas truth (the "trouthe" of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight) was first "an ethical truth in which truth is understood to reside in persons", in
Ricardian England it "transforms...into a political truth in which truth is understood to reside
in documents".[69]


o 4.3 Modern age

 4.3.1 Kant
 Immanuel Kant endorses a definition of truth along the lines of the
correspondence theory of truth.[60] Kant writes in the Critique of Pure
Reason: "The nominal definition of truth, namely that it is the
agreement of cognition with its object, is here granted and
presupposed".[70] However, Kant denies that this correspondence
definition of truth provides us with a test or criterion to establish which
judgements are true.
 4.3.2 Hegel
 Georg Hegel distanced his philosophy from psychology by presenting
truth as being an external self-moving object instead of being related to
inner, subjective thoughts. Hegel's truth is analogous to the mechanics
of a material body in motion under the influence of its own inner force.
"Truth is its own self-movement within itself."[73] Teleological truth
moves itself in the three-step form of dialectical triplicity toward the
final goal of perfect, final, absolute truth. According to Hegel, the
progression of philosophical truth is a resolution of past oppositions
into increasingly more accurate approximations of absolute truth.
Chalybäus used the terms "thesis", "antithesis", and "synthesis" to
describe Hegel's dialectical triplicity.
 4.3.3 Schopenhauer
 For Arthur Schopenhauer,[74] a judgment is a combination or separation
of two or more concepts. If a judgment is to be an expression of
knowledge, it must have a sufficient reason or ground by which the
judgment could be called true. Truth is the reference of a judgment to
something different from itself which is its sufficient reason (ground).
Judgments can have material, formal, transcendental, or metalogical
truth. A judgment has material truth if its concepts are based on
intuitive perceptions that are generated from sensations. If a judgment
has its reason (ground) in another judgment, its truth is called logical
or formal. If a judgment, of, for example, pure mathematics or pure
science, is based on the forms (space, time, causality) of intuitive,
empirical knowledge, then the judgment has transcendental truth.
 4.3.4 Kierkegaard
 While objective truths are final and static, subjective truths are
continuing and dynamic. The truth of one's existence is a living,
inward, and subjective experience that is always in the process of
175

becoming. The values, morals, and spiritual approaches a person

adopts, while not denying the existence of objective truths of those
beliefs, can only become truly known when they have been inwardly
appropriated through subjective experience
 4.3.5 Nietzsche
 Friedrich Nietzsche believed the search for truth, or 'the will to truth',
was a consequence of the will to power of philosophers. He thought
that truth should be used as long as it promoted life and the will to
power, and he thought untruth was better than truth if it had this life
enhancement as a consequence. As he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil,
"The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a
judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-
preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding..."
(aphorism 4). He proposed the will to power as a truth only because,
according to him, it was the most life-affirming and sincere perspective
one could have.
 4.3.6 Whitehead
 here are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole
truths that plays the devil".[78]
 The logical progression or connection of this line of thought is to conclude that truth
can lie, since half-truths are deceptive and may lead to a false conclusion.


 4.3.7 Nishida
 According to Kitaro Nishida, "knowledge of things in the world begins
with the differentiation of unitary consciousness into knower and
known and ends with self and things becoming one again. Such
unification takes form not only in knowing but in the valuing (of truth)
that directs knowing, the willing that directs action, and the feeling or
emotive reach that directs sensing."[79]
 4.3.8 Fromm
 4.3.9 Foucault
 Truth, says Michel Foucault, is problematic when any attempt is made
to see truth as an "objective" quality. He prefers not to use the term
truth itself but "Regimes of Truth". In his historical investigations he
found truth to be something that was itself a part of, or embedded
within, a given power structure. Thus Foucault's view shares much in
common with the concepts of Nietzsche. Truth for Foucault is also
something that shifts through various episteme throughout history.[80]
 4.3.10 Baudrillard
 Jean Baudrillard considered truth to be largely simulated, that is
pretending to have something, as opposed to dissimulation, pretending
176

to not have something. He took his cue from iconoclasts who he claims
knew that images of God demonstrated that God did not exist.[81]
Baudrillard wrote in "Precession of the Simulacra":
 5 In medicine and psychiatry
 6 In religion: omniscience
 7 See also
o 7.1 Major theorists
 Theory of justification
 Aletheia
 Asha
 Belief
 Confirmation holism
 Contextualism
 Contradiction
 Degrees of truth
 Disposition
 Eclecticism
 Imagination
 Independence
 Interpretation
 Invariance
 Lie
 McNamara fallacy
 Normative science
 On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense
 Perjury
 Perspectivism
 Physical symbol system
 Post-truth politics
 Proof
177

 Public opinion
 Revision theory
 Relativism
 Religious views on truth
 Satya
 Slingshot argument
 Statistical independence
 Tautology (logic)
 Tautology (rhetoric)
 Truth prevails
 Truthiness
 Truthlikeness
 Two truths doctrine
 Unity of the proposition
 Verisimilitude
 Veritas
 What is truth (disambiguation)

Major theorists
 Thomas Aquinas
 Aristotle
 J.L. Austin
 Brand Blanshard
 John Dewey
 Hartry Field
 Gottlob Frege
 Jürgen Habermas
 G. W. F. Hegel
 Martin Heidegger
 Augustine of Hippo
178

 Paul Horwich
 William James
 Harold Joachim
 Saul Kripke
 Friedrich Nietzsche
 Charles Sanders Peirce
 Plato
 Karl Popper
 W.V. Quine
 Frank P. Ramsey
 Bertrand Russell
 Arthur Schopenhauer
 Socrates
 P.F. Strawson
 Alfred Tarski
 Ludwig Wittgenstein
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MEANING

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(philosophy_of_language)

The nature of meaning, its definition, elements, and types, was discussed by philosophers
Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. According to them "meaning is a relationship between
two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they mean (intend, express or signify)". One
term in the relationship of meaning necessarily causes something else to come to the mind. In
other words: "a sign is defined as an entity that indicates another entity to some agent for
some purpose". As Augustine states, a sign is “something that shows itself to the senses and
something other than itself to the mind” (Signum est quod se ipsum sensui et praeter se
aliquid animo ostendit; De dial., 1975, 86).
The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is being represented.
Namely:
1. There are the things in the world, which might have meaning;
2. There are things in the world that are also signs of other things in the world, and so,
are always meaningful (i.e., natural signs of the physical world and ideas within the
mind);
3. There are things that are always necessarily meaningful, such as words, and other
nonverbal symbols.
All subsequent inquiries emphasize some particular perspectives within the general AAA
framework.
The major contemporary positions of meaning come under the following partial definitions of
meaning:
 Psychological theories, exhausted by notions of thought, intention, or understanding;
 Logical theories, involving notions such as intension, cognitive content, or sense,
along with extension, reference, or denotation;
 Message, content, information, or communication;
 Truth conditions;
 Usage, and the instructions for usage; and
 Measurement, computation, or operation.

Contents
 1 Truth and meaning
o 1.1 Substantive theories of meaning
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 1.1.1 Correspondence theory of meaning

 1.1.2 Coherence theory
 1.1.3 Constructivist theory of meaning
 1.1.4 Consensus theory
 1.1.5 Pragmatic theory
o 1.2 Associated theories and commentaries
 1.2.1 Logic and language
 1.2.2 Gottlob Frege
 1.2.3 Bertrand Russell
 1.2.4 Other truth theories
 1.2.5 Saul Kripke
 1.2.6 Critiques of truth-theories of meaning
 2 Usage and meaning
o 2.1 Ludwig Wittgenstein
o 2.2 J. L. Austin
o 2.3 Peter Strawson
o 2.4 Paul Grice
o 2.5 Inferential role semantics
o 2.6 Critiques of use theories of meaning
 3 Idea theories of meaning
o 3.1 Stronger idea theories
o 3.2 Weaker idea theories
 4 See also
 5 References
 6 Further reading

Truth and meaning

Main article: truth
The evaluation of meaning according to each one of the five major substantive theories of
meaning and truth is presented below. The question of what is a proper basis for deciding
how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered to truthfully denote
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meaning, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five most
prevalent substantive theories listed below. Each theory of meaning as evaluated by these
respective theories of truth are each further researched by the individual scholars supporting
each one of the respective theories of truth and meaning.[1][2][3]
Both hybrid theories of meaning and alternative theories of meaning and truth have also been
researched, and are subject to further assessment according to their respective and relative
merits.[1][4][5]

Substantive theories of meaning

Correspondence theory of meaning

Correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements of meaning
correspond to the actual state of affairs and that associated meanings must be in agreement
with these beliefs and statements.[6] This type of theory stresses a relationship between
thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional
model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle.[7] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is
determined in principle entirely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately
describes those "things." An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the
Thirteenth Century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: Veritas est adaequatio rei et
intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of things and intellect"), a statement which
Aquinas attributed to the Ninth Century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli.[8][9][10] Aquinas also
restated the theory as: "A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external
reality"[11]
Correspondence theory centres heavily around the assumption that truth and meaning are a
matter of accurately copying what is known as "objective reality" and then representing it in
thoughts, words and other symbols.[12] Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal
cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors.[1][13] For example, language plays a
role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in
other languages. The German word Zeitgeist is one such example: one who speaks or
understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word
apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract
words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, some words add an
additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the
philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is
summarized further below in this article.[14]

Coherence theory
For coherence theories in general, the assessment of meaning and truth requires a proper fit of
elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something
more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a
coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the
completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in
judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.[15] A pervasive tenet of coherence
theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and
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can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole.
Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists
differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or
only a single absolute system.
Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe the essential and intrinsic
properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics.[16] However, formal reasoners are
content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory
systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole,
coherence theories have been rejected for lacking justification in their application to other
areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in
general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used
without support from the other major theories of truth.[17]
Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of
Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.[18]
Other alternatives may be found among several proponents of logical positivism, notably
Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.

Constructivist theory of meaning

Main article: Constructivist epistemology
Social constructivism holds that meaning and truth are constructed by social processes, is
historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles
within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it
does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might
hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human
perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of
physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender, are socially constructed.
Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture along with their
meaning were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays
and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – "truth itself is constructed". Hegel and
Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially
constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of
objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been
distorted through power or ideology. For Marx, scientific and true knowledge is "in
accordance with the dialectical understanding of history" and ideological knowledge is "an
epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic
arrangement".[19]

Consensus theory
Main article: Consensus theory of truth
Consensus theory holds that meaning and truth are whatever is agreed upon, or in some
versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might
include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.
Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of
"truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.[20] Habermas maintains that truth is what would
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be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.[21] Among the current strong critics of
consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.[22]

Pragmatic theory
Main article: Pragmatic theory of truth
The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth and meaning were
introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and
John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other
proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that meaning and truth are verified and
confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.[23]
Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the
ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which
concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy
and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth."[24] This statement
stresses Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he
describes elsewhere as fallibilism and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper
conception of meaning and truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and
correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit
in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal
definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions.
William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his
statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only
the expedient in our way of behaving."[25] By this, James meant that truth is a quality, the
value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to practice (thus,
"pragmatic").
John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry,
whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over
time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify,
refine and/or refute proposed meanings and truths.[26]
Though not widely known, a new variation of the pragmatic theory was defined and wielded
successfully from the 20th century forward. Defined and named by William Ernest Hocking,
this variation is known as "negative pragmatism". Essentially, what works may or may not be
true, but what fails cannot be true because the truth and its meaning always works.[27] James
and Dewey's ideas also ascribe meaning and truth to repeated testing which is "self-
corrective" over time.
Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of
truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all
human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing
should acknowledge and account for its diversity. As Feynman said, "... if it disagrees with
experiment, it is wrong."[28]

Associated theories and commentaries

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Some have asserted that meaning is nothing substantially more or less than the truth
conditions they involve. For such theories, an emphasis is placed upon reference to actual
things in the world to account for meaning, with the caveat that reference more or less
explains the greater part (or all) of meaning itself.

Logic and language

The logical positivists argued that the meaning of a statement arose from how it is verified.

Gottlob Frege
In his paper Über Sinn und Bedeutung (now usually translated as On Sense and Reference),
Gottlob Frege argued that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.
1. Suppose the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Sam, then, means a person in
the world who is named Sam. But if the object referred to by the name did not exist—
i.e., Pegasus—then, according to that theory, it would be meaningless.
2. Suppose two different names refer to the same object. Hesperus and Phosphorus were
the names given to what were considered distinct celestial bodies. It was later shown
that they were the same thing (the planet Venus). If the words meant the same thing,
then substituting one for the other in a sentence would not result in a sentence that
differs in meaning from the original. But in that case, "Hesperus is Phosphorus"
would mean the same thing as "Hesperus is Hesperus". This is clearly absurd, since
we learn something new and unobvious by the former statement, but not by the latter.
Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning
of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else—the "sense"
of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings):
one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a
mediated reference theory. Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning
must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like
"All boats float". Ironically enough, it is now accepted by many philosophers[who?] as
applying to all expressions but proper names .[citation needed]

Bertrand Russell
Logical analysis was further advanced by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in
their groundbreaking Principia Mathematica, which attempted to produce a formal language
with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first
principles.
Russell differed from Frege greatly on many points, however. He rejected Frege's sense-
reference distinction. He also disagreed that language was of fundamental significance to
philosophy, and saw the project of developing formal logic as a way of eliminating all of the
confusions caused by ordinary language, and hence at creating a perfectly transparent
medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He hoped, ultimately, to
extend the proofs of the Principia to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical
atomism. For a while it appeared that his pupil Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with
his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus".
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Russell's work, and that of his colleague G. E. Moore, developed in response to what they
perceived as the nonsense dominating British philosophy departments at the turn of the 20th
century, which was a kind of British Idealism most of which was derived (albeit very
distantly) from the work of Hegel. In response Moore developed an approach ("Common
Sense Philosophy"[29]) which sought to examine philosophical difficulties by a close analysis
of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore sought to expunge
philosophical absurdities such as "time is unreal". Moore's work would have significant, if
oblique, influence (largely mediated by Wittgenstein) on Ordinary language philosophy.

Other truth theories

The Vienna Circle, a famous group of logical positivists from the early 20th century (closely
allied with Russell and Frege), adopted the verificationist theory of meaning. The
verificationist theory of meaning (in at least one of its forms) states that to say that an
expression is meaningful is to say that there are some conditions of experience that could
exist to show that the expression is true. As noted, Frege and Russell were two proponents of
this way of thinking.
A semantic theory of truth was produced by Alfred Tarski for formal semantics. According to
Tarski's account, meaning consists of a recursive set of rules that end up yielding an infinite
set of sentences, "'p' is true if and only if p", covering the whole language. His innovation
produced the notion of propositional functions discussed on the section on universals (which
he called "sentential functions"), and a model-theoretic approach to semantics (as opposed to
a proof-theoretic one). Finally, some links were forged to the correspondence theory of truth
(Tarski, 1944).
Perhaps the most influential current approach in the contemporary theory of meaning is that
sketched by Donald Davidson in his introduction to the collection of essays Truth and
Meaning in 1967. There he argued for the following two theses:
 Any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a
theoretically infinite number of expressions—as we may assume that natural human
languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could
not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their
languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any
natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on
the basis of a finite system of axioms.
 Giving the meaning of a sentence, he further argued, was equivalent to stating its truth
conditions. He proposed that it must be possible to account for language as a set of
distinct grammatical features together with a lexicon, and for each of them explain its
workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the
truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences built up from these.
The result is a theory of meaning that rather resembles, by no accident, Tarski's account.
Davidson's account, though brief, constitutes the first systematic presentation of truth-
conditional semantics. He proposed simply translating natural languages into first-order
predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth.
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Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke examined the relation between sense and reference in dealing with possible and
actual situations. He showed that one consequence of his interpretation of certain systems of
modal logic was that the reference of a proper name is necessarily linked to its referent, but
that the sense is not. So for instance "Hesperus" necessarily refers to Hesperus, even in those
imaginary cases and worlds in which perhaps Hesperus is not the evening star. That is,
Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, but only contingently the morning star.
This results in the curious situation that part of the meaning of a name — that it refers to
some particular thing — is a necessary fact about that name, but another part — that it is used
in some particular way or situation — is not.
Kripke also drew the distinction between speaker's meaning and semantic meaning,
elaborating on the work of ordinary language philosophers Paul Grice and Keith Donnellan.
The speaker's meaning is what the speaker intends to refer to by saying something; the
semantic meaning is what the words uttered by the speaker mean according to the language.
In some cases, people do not say what they mean; in other cases, they say something that is in
error. In both these cases, the speaker's meaning and the semantic meaning seem to be
different. Sometimes words do not actually express what the speaker wants them to express;
so words will mean one thing, and what people intend to convey by them might mean
another. The meaning of the expression, in such cases, is ambiguous.

Critiques of truth-theories of meaning

W.V. Quine attacked both verificationism and the very notion of meaning in his famous
essay, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". In it, he suggested that meaning was nothing more than
a vague and dispensable notion. Instead, he asserted, what was more interesting to study was
the synonymy between signs. He also pointed out that verificationism was tied to the
distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and asserted that such a divide was
defended ambiguously. He also suggested that the unit of analysis for any potential
investigation into the world (and, perhaps, meaning) would be the entire body of statements
taken as a collective, not just individual statements on their own.
Other criticisms can be raised on the basis of the limitations that truth-conditional theorists
themselves admit to. Tarski, for instance, recognized that truth-conditional theories of
meaning only make sense of statements, but fail to explain the meanings of the lexical parts
that make up statements. Rather, the meaning of the parts of statements is presupposed by an
understanding of the truth-conditions of a whole statement, and explained in terms of what he
called "satisfaction conditions".
Still another objection (noted by Frege and others) was that some kinds of statements don't
seem to have any truth-conditions at all. For instance, "Hello!" has no truth-conditions,
because it doesn't even attempt to tell the listener anything about the state of affairs in the
world. In other words, different propositions have different grammatical moods.
Deflationist accounts of truth, sometimes called 'irrealist' accounts, are the staunchest source
of criticism of truth-conditional theories of meaning. According to them, "truth" is a word
with no serious meaning or function in discourse. For instance, for the deflationist, the
sentences "It's true that Tiny Tim is trouble" and "Tiny Tim is trouble" are equivalent. In
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consequence, for the deflationist, any appeal to truth as an account of meaning has little
explanatory power.
The sort of truth-theories presented here can also be attacked for their formalism both in
practice and principle. The principle of formalism is challenged by the informalists, who
suggest that language is largely a construction of the speaker, and so, not compatible with
formalization. The practice of formalism is challenged by those who observe that formal
languages (such as present-day quantificational logic) fail to capture the expressive power of
natural languages (as is arguably demonstrated in the awkward character of the
quantificational explanation of definite description statements, as laid out by Bertrand
Russell).
Finally, over the past century, forms of logic have been developed that are not dependent
exclusively on the notions of truth and falsity. Some of these types of logic have been called
modal logics. They explain how certain logical connectives such as "if-then" work in terms of
necessity and possibility. Indeed, modal logic was the basis of one of the most popular and
rigorous formulations in modern semantics called the Montague grammar. The successes of
such systems naturally give rise to the argument that these systems have captured the natural
meaning of connectives like if-then far better than an ordinary, truth-functional logic ever
could.

Usage and meaning

Throughout the 20th century, English philosophy focused closely on analysis of language.
This style of analytic philosophy became very influential and led to the development of a
wide range of philosophical tools.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was originally an artificial language philosopher,
following the influence of Russell and Frege. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he had
supported the idea of an ideal language built up from atomic statements using logical
connectives. However, as he matured, he came to appreciate more and more the phenomenon
of natural language. Philosophical Investigations, published after his death, signalled a sharp
departure from his earlier work with its focus upon ordinary language use. His approach is
often summarised by the aphorism "the meaning of a word is its use in a language". However,
following in Frege's footsteps, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein declares: "... Only in the context
of a proposition has a name meaning."[30]
His work would come to inspire future generations and spur forward a whole new discipline,
which explained meaning in a new way. Meaning in a natural language was seen as primarily
a question of how the speaker uses words within the language to express intention.
This close examination of natural language proved to be a powerful philosophical technique.
Practitioners who were influenced by Wittgenstein's approach have included an entire
tradition of thinkers, featuring P. F. Strawson, Paul Grice, R. M. Hare, R. S. Peters, and
Jürgen Habermas.

J. L. Austin
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At around the same time Ludwig Wittgenstein was re-thinking his approach to language,
reflections on the complexity of language led to a more expansive approach to meaning.
Following the lead of George Edward Moore, J. L. Austin examined the use of words in great
detail. He argued against fixating on the meaning of words. He showed that dictionary
definitions are of limited philosophical use, since there is no simple "appendage" to a word
that can be called its meaning. Instead, he showed how to focus on the way in which words
are used in order to do things. He analysed the structure of utterances into three distinct parts:
locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. His pupil John Searle developed the idea under the
label "speech acts". Their work greatly influenced pragmatics.

Peter Strawson
Past philosophers had understood reference to be tied to words themselves. However, Sir
Peter Strawson disagreed in his seminal essay, "On Referring", where he argued that there is
nothing true about statements on their own; rather, only the uses of statements could be
considered to be true or false.
Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the ordinary use perspective is its insistence upon the
distinctions between meaning and use. "Meanings", for ordinary language philosophers, are
the instructions for usage of words — the common and conventional definitions of words.
Usage, on the other hand, is the actual meanings that individual speakers have — the things
that an individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word "dog" is an
example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting "This dog smells foul!" is
an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide
between the fields of Pragmatics and Semantics.
Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: "mentioning". Mention is
when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation
marks. For instance, in the expression "'Opopanax' is hard to spell", what is referred to is the
word itself ("opopanax") and not what it means (an obscure gum resin). Frege had referred to
instances of mentioning as "opaque contexts".
In his essay, "Reference and Definite Descriptions", Keith Donnellan sought to improve upon
Strawson's distinction. He pointed out that there are two uses of definite descriptions:
attributive and referential. Attributive uses provide a description of whoever is being referred
to, while referential uses point out the actual referent. Attributive uses are like mediated
references, while referential uses are more directly referential.

Paul Grice
The philosopher Paul Grice, working within the ordinary language tradition, understood
"meaning" — in his 1957 article — to have two kinds: natural and non-natural. Natural
meaning had to do with cause and effect, for example with the expression "these spots mean
measles". Non-natural meaning, on the other hand, had to do with the intentions of the
speaker in communicating something to the listener.
In his essay, Logic and Conversation, Grice went on to explain and defend an explanation of
how conversations work. His guiding maxim was called the cooperative principle, which
claimed that the speaker and the listener will have mutual expectations of the kind of
information that will be shared. The principle is broken down into four maxims: Quality
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(which demands truthfulness and honesty), Quantity (demand for just enough information as
is required), Relation (relevance of things brought up), and Manner (lucidity). This principle,
if and when followed, lets the speaker and listener figure out the meaning of certain
implications by way of inference.
The works of Grice led to an avalanche of research and interest in the field, both supportive
and critical. One spinoff was called Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre
Wilson during the mid-1980s, whose goal was to make the notion of relevance more clear.
Similarly, in his work, "Universal pragmatics", Jürgen Habermas began a program that
sought to improve upon the work of the ordinary language tradition. In it, he laid out the goal
of a valid conversation as a pursuit of mutual understanding.

Inferential role semantics

Main article: Inferential role semantics
Michael Dummett argued against the kind of truth-conditional semantics presented by
Davidson. Instead, he argued that basing semantics on assertion conditions avoids a number
of difficulties with truth-conditional semantics, such as the transcendental nature of certain
kinds of truth condition. He leverages work done in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a
kind of inferential role semantics, where:
 The meaning of sentences and grammatical constructs is given by their assertion
conditions; and
 Such a semantics is only guaranteed to be coherent if the inferences associated with
the parts of language are in logical harmony.
A semantics based upon assertion conditions is called a verificationist semantics: cf. the
verificationism of the Vienna Circle.
This work is closely related, though not identical, to one-factor theories of conceptual role
semantics.

Critiques of use theories of meaning

Sometimes between the 1950-1990s, cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor said that use theories (of
the Wittgensteinian kind) seem to assume that language is solely a public phenomenon, that
there is no such thing as a "private language". Fodor thinks it is necessary to create or
describe the language of thought, which would seemingly require the existence of a "private
language".
In the 1960s, David Kellogg Lewis described meaning as use, a feature of a social convention
and conventions as regularities of a specific sort. Lewis' work was an application of game
theory in philosophical topics.[31] Conventions, he argued, are a species of coordination
equilibria.

Idea theories of meaning

Some have argued that meanings are ideas, where the term "ideas" is used to refer to either
mental representations, or to mental activity in general. Those who seek an explanation for
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meaning in the former sort of account endorse a stronger sort of idea theory of mind than the
latter.
Each idea is understood to be necessarily about something external and/or internal, real or
imaginary. For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal "dog", the
referent "this dog" may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about
something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the
latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.

Stronger idea theories

John Locke, considered all ideas to be both imaginable objects of sensation and the very
unimaginable objects of reflection. Locke said in his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, that words are used both as signs for ideas—but also to signify the lack of
certain ideas. David Hume held that thoughts were kinds of imaginable entities. (See Hume's
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 2). Hume argued that any words that
could not call upon any past experience were without meaning.
Nonetheless, George Berkeley and Ludwig Wittgenstein held, in contrast to Locke and
Hume, that ideas alone are unable to account for the different variations within a general
meaning. For example, any hypothetical image of the meaning of "dog" has to include such
varied images as a chihuahua, a pug, and a Black Lab; and this seems impossible to imagine,
all of those particular breeds looking very different from one another. Another way to see this
point is to question why it is that, if we have an image of a specific type of dog (say of a
chihuahua), it should be entitled to represent the entire concept.

Another criticism is that some meaningful words, known as non-lexical items, don't
have any meaningfully associated image. For example, the word "the" has a meaning, but
one would be hard-pressed to find a mental representation that fits it. Still another objection
lies in the observation that certain linguistic items name something in the real world, and are
meaningful, yet which we have no mental representations to deal with. For instance, it is not
known what Newton's father looked like, yet the phrase "Newton's father" still has meaning.
Another problem is that of composition — that it is difficult to explain how words and
phrases combine into sentences if only ideas were involved in meaning.

Weaker idea theories

Memberships of a graded class

Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff advanced the theory of prototypes, which suggests that
many lexical categories, at least on the face of things, have "radial structures". That is to say,
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there are some ideal member(s) in the category that seem to represent the category better than
other members. For example, the category of "birds" may feature the robin as the prototype,
or the ideal kind of bird. With experience, subjects might come to evaluate membership in the
category of "bird" by comparing candidate members to the prototype and evaluating for
similarities. So, for example, a penguin or an ostrich would sit at the fringe of the meaning of
"bird", because a penguin is unlike a robin.
Intimately related to these researches is the notion of a psychologically basic level, which is
both the first level named and understood by children, and "the highest level at which a single
mental image can reflect the entire category". (Lakoff 1987:46) The "basic level" of cognition
is understood by Lakoff as crucially drawing upon "image-schemas" along with various other
cognitive processes.
The philosophers (Ned Block, Gilbert Harman, H. Field) and the cognitive scientists (G.
Miller and P. Johnson-Laird) say that the meaning of a term can be found by investigating its
role in relation to other concepts and mental states. They endorse a view called "conceptual
role semantics". Those proponents of this view who understand meanings to be exhausted by
the content of mental states can be said to endorse "one-factor" accounts of conceptual role
semantics. and thus fit within the tradition of idea theories.

See also
 Semiotics
 Semeiotic
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/meaning/
Being able to think clearly is the central component of critical thinking. In order to answer a
question or evaluate a claim, we have to know what the question or the claim means. In order
to communicate precisely and to avoid misunderstanding, we need to watch out for vagueness
or ambiguity. Of course, there are plenty of contexts where clarity and precision are
unnecessary, or even undesirable. Many jokes and poems, for example, exploit the ambiguity
of language. Sometimes we might also offer vague promises in order to give ourselves
flexibility. But there are many situations where it is particularly important to be able to think
clearly and to analyse meaning :
 In dealing with many abstract issues, often the first task is to clarify the relevant key
terms or concepts. For example, to find out whether Asian values are incompatible
with human rights, we have to explain what exactly is meant by "Asian values" and
"human rights".
 The development of science involves the introduction of new scientific theories and
concepts. We need to give these concepts adequate definitions in order to know how
they can be used in scientific explanations and predictions.
 Society requires rules and regulations for the coordination of behavior. A good set of
rules should be formulated clearly to avoid and resolve disputes, and so that people
know what is expected of them.
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 Good communication skills involve being able to convey messages with the right
meaning, and being able to understand the meaning of what has been said, or left
unsaid

 [M01] Literal meaning

 [M02] Definitions
Lack of clarity in meaning can hinder good reasoning and obstruct effective communication.
One way to make meaning clearer is to use definitions. A definition is made up of two parts -
a definiendum and a definien. The definiendum is the term that is to be defined, whereas the
definien is the group of words or concepts used in the definition that is supposed to have the
same meaning as the definiendum. For example, in defining "bachelor" to mean "an
unmarried man", the word "bachelor" is the definiendum, and "an unmarried man" is the
definien.
We might divide definitions into four kinds. Let us look at them one by one.

§1. Reportive definition

A reportive definition is sometimes also known as a lexical definition. It reports the existing
meaning of a term. This includes the "bachelor" example above, or the definition of "prime
number" as referring to any integer divisible only by 1 and itself. A reportive definition
should capture the correct usage of the term that is defined.
But how do we know what the correct meaning of a term is? Many people think that a
dictionary is an authoritative guide to reportive definitions. This is actually a misconception,
for various reasons.
First, many words in the language are difficult, if not impossible to define. This includes for
example color words which we learn from examples. A dictionary might explain "red" as the
color of ripe tomatoes, but obviously this is not what "red" means. "Red" does not mean blue
even if all tomatoes suddenly were to become blue when they ripe. Explaining 'red' as 'a
certain shade of colour' is of course not enough to distinguish the colour red from other
different colours.
Also, the main aim of a general dictionary is often to give enough indication of the main
usage of a word so that a speaker can use the word adequately in everyday life. Because of
the limitation of space the definitions might not capture adequately the exact meanings of
words. For example, the Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines "religion" as
"belief in a superhuman controlling power." Suppose a scientist discovers that there are evil
but superhuman aliens on Mars who created us and control our destiny. The scientist would
then believe in the existence of a superhuman controlling power. But if this scientist does not
worship or submit to these beings, surely this does not mean she has a religion in the usual
sense of the term.
Finally, many technical words, such as "microwave", "hyper-inflation", and "a priori" are
used in rather specialized ways. The entries in a general language dictionary might not be
accurate enough when it comes to such terms. In such cases you should consult a special
dictionary for the particular discipline in question.
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As an exercise, evaluate the following entries from The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current
English as reportive definitions.
 Cat : Small soft-furred four-legged domesticated animal.
 Magazine : Illustrated periodical publication containing articles, stories, etc.
 Impress : Affect or influence deeply.
 Cloud : Visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating high above the ground.
 Swim : Propel the body through water with limbs, fins, or tail.
What about this entry from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary?
 SUGAR : A sweet crystallizable material that consists wholly or essentially of
sucrose, is colorless or white when pure tending to brown when less refined, is
obtained commercially from sugarcane or sugar beet and less extensively from
sorghum, maples, and palms, and is important as a source of dietary carbohydrate and
as a sweetener and preservative of other foods.

§2. Stipulative definition

A stipulative definition is not used to explain the existing meaning of a term. It is used to
assign a new meaning to a term, whether or not the term has already got a meaning. If the
stipulative definition is accepted, then the term is used in the new way that is prescribed. For
example, suppose a stipulative definition is proposed to define "MBA" to mean married but
available. Accepting such a definition, we can then go about describing other people as
MBAs.

§3. Precising definition

A precising definition might be regarded as a combination of reportive and stipulative
definition. The aim of a precising definition is to make the meaning of a term more precise
for some purpose. (Clarification) For example, a bus company might want to give discounts
to old people. But simply declaring that old people can get discounts will lead to many
disputes since it is not clear how old should one be in order to be an old person. So one might
define "old person" to mean any person of age 65 or above. This is of course one among
many possible definitions of "old".
Or consider a situation where two people are arguing whether animals such as birds or apes
possess language. To resolve this dispute, we need to be more precise as to what is meant by
"language". If by "language" we refer to any system of communication, then obviously birds
and other animals do make use of languages. On the other hand, "language" might be used in
a different sense, requiring a combinatorial syntax and semantics, allowing a user of the
language to communicate information about non-existent objects or situations remote in time
and space from the location of discourse. Used in such a way, the communication system of
some animals might not qualify as a language. This example illustrates the use of precising
definitions to resolve disputes that involve some key concepts whose meanings might not be
clear enough.

§4. Persuasive definition

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A persuasive definition is any definition that attaches an emotive, positive or derogatory

meaning to a term where it has none. For example, someone against abortion might offer the
definition of "abortion" as the murder of an innocent person during pregnancy. This
definition carries a negative connotation, as the term "murder" suggests that abortion is
wrongful killing, and it also assumes that the aborted fetus is already a person. Such a
definition is surely not appropriate in a fair debate on the moral legitimacy of abortion, even
though it might be useful as a rhetorical tool.

Exercise #1
Evaluate these reportive definitions.
1. A square is a closed region with four straight sides of equal length.
2. To tell a lie is to say something that is false.
3. A gun is any device that shoots a projectile.


 [M03] Evaluating definitions

The criteria for evaluating definitions depends on the kind of definition we are considering.
With reportive definition, it is important that the definition provided correctly captures the
usage of the term that is defined. In particular, this means that the definition should be neither
too wide (or too broad) nor too narrow.
 A definition is too wide if the definiens applies to things that the definiendum does
not apply to. In other words, the definition includes things that it should not. For
example, defining a chair as a piece of furniture for sitting is too wide because a
bench is not a chair but it satisfies the definition.
 A definition is too narrow if the definiens fails to include things to which the
definiendum applies. In other words, the definition fails to include things that it
should. Consider the definition of religion as any belief system that includes
worshiping a god who created the universe. This definition is too narrow since it
excludes religions that do not postulate a creator, such as Jainism and certain versions
of Buddhism and Daoism.
 it is important to note that a definition can be both too wide and too narrow, e.g. chair
= a piece of furniture for sitting which has four legs.
In giving a stipulative definition, since we are introducing a new meaning, the question of
whether the definition is too broad or too narrow does not arise. But it is important that the
definien should avoid circularity, inconsistency and obscurity.
 An example of a circular definition: temperature is the physical quantitiy that is
measured by a thermometer. This definition might help someone understand what the
word "temperature" means in English, but it is circular as a definition. This is because
there is no way to explain what a thermometer is without using the concept of
temperature.

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 [M04] Examples
 [M05] Verbal disputes
 Consider the following dialogue:
 Teacher A: Cindy is the best student in class.
Teacher B: No, she is not. Betty is better because Betty has more A grades.
Teacher A: No. Cindy is the best because her average grade is higher than Betty's.
Teacher B: You are wrong. Betty is the best!
Teacher A: YOU are wrong! Cindy is the best!
 So who is right and who is wrong? In a way, both teachers are correct because they
seem to be operating with two different definitions of 'the best students'. For teacher
A, the best student is the one with the highest average grade. For teacher B, the best
student is someone who has the highest number of A grades. Obviously, the student
who satisfies the first definition need not be the same as the student who satisfies the
second definition. This is an example of what we might call a purely verbal dispute,
where the apparent disagreement is not due to disagreement with regard to the facts,
but it has to do with the different understanding of the meaning of a key term or
concept.
 Verbal disputes are often contrasted with factual disputes, where disagreements have
to do with different opinions about facts and not meaning. If someone thinks Sydney
is the capital of Australia and others disagree, then the disagreement is a factual one.
 There are two main ways to resolve a purely verbal dispute once the different
meanings of a key term is pointed out. First, the different parties might agree to
disagree with regard to the usage of the term. Thus, teachers A and B might agree that
they have provided two different precising definitions of 'the best student', and that
both are legitimate, and they can agree that Cindy is the best student under one
interpretation, and that Betty is the best student under a different interpretation.


 [M06] Necessity and sufficiency

The concepts of necessary and sufficient conditions relate to the concept of possibility. To
say that X is necessary for Y is to say that it is not possible for Y to occur without X. To say
that X is sufficient for Y is to say that it is not possible for X to occur without Y. There are,
however, different senses of "possibility", and corresponding to these different meanings
there are different kinds of necessary and sufficient conditions.
Consider these statements :
 It is impossible to be a tall man without being tall.
 It is impossible to dissolve gold in pure water.
 It is impossible to travel from Hong Kong to New York in less than ten minutes.
 It is impossible to visit the army barracks without a permit.
The word "impossible" has different meanings in each of these statements. In the first
statement, what is being referred to is logical impossibility. Something is logically impossible
if it is contradictory, or against the laws of logic. Thus a round square is a logical
impossibility, and it is logically impossible to be a tall man without being tall.
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But it is not logically impossible to dissolve gold in water. The laws of logic do not tell us
that this cannot happen. Rather, the impossibility is due to the laws of physics and chemistry
which happen to hold in our universe. If our universe had contained different laws, then
perhaps it is possible to dissolve gold in water. Dissolving gold in water is not logically
impossible but empirically impossible. Sometimes this is also known as causal or
nomologically impossibility.
The sense in which the third statement is true is again different. The laws of physics probably
do not prohibit us from travelling from Hong Kong to New York under ten minutes. What is
true is that we have no means to achieve this using current technology. Such a trip is
therefore technologically impossible, even though it is both logically and empirically
possible. Of course, if the technological obstacles can be overcome then such a trip will then
become possible.
Finally, visiting the army barracks without a permit is logically, empirically and
technologically possible. After all, one might be able to dig a tunnel to enter the barracks
without permission. The sense in which entering without a permit is impossible is in the legal
sense. What is meant is that it is illegal or against the relevant regulations to enter the
barracks without a permit. Here we are talking about legal impossibility.

§1. Different types of necessity and sufficiency

Corresponding to these different notions of possiblity we have different concepts of necessary
and sufficient conditions. For example :
 Having four sides is logically necessary for being a square.
 Being a father is logically sufficient for being a parent.
 The presence of oxygen is causally necessary for the proper functioning of the brain.
 Passing current through a resistor is causally sufficient for the generation of heat.
 Being an adult of over 18 years old is legally sufficient for having the right to vote.
 The presence of a witness is legally necessary for a valid marriage.
Note that there might be other types of necessity and possibility as well. For example, a father
might advise his son that he must treat his sister well. The sense of "must" here is not legal
necessity, as the law does not require us to treat our siblings well. Rather, the sense of
necessity might have to do with moral conduct. On the other hand, if the son is told that he
must treat his boss well, what is meant might be that being nice to one's boss is required not
so much by morality but by rules of prudence.


 [M07] Types of possibility

 [M08] Obscurity
 [M09] Distortion
 [M10] Empty content
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http://changingminds.org/explanations/meaning/meaning.htm
hat is the meaning of meaning? We can view meaning at two levels. First, it is a cognitive
process whereby we make sense of the stream of information that assails us in each moment.
At a higher level, deep meaning is what we seek in life and looks for answers to such
spiritual questions such as 'Why are we here?'
Pages on meaning include:
 Inferring Meaning: A simple model of how we create meaning.
 Four Components of Success: which is a key meaning construct, of course.
 Semantic Space: three dimension along which meaning is created.
 Construction of Time: Time is an internal construction.
 Frankl's Three Sources of Meaning: Love, work and suffering (and Frankl knows).
 Ten Risk-perception Factors: Actual risk is different to perceived risk.
 Threat Assessment: Monitoring the world for danger.
 Three Levels of Interpretation: Accepted, rational and personal.
 The Need for Meaning: A basic driver.
 Chewing Helps Thinking: In particular circumstances.
 What is Luck?: Luck is an attribution.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15073a.htm
http://www.iep.utm.edu/truth/
Philosophers are interested in a constellation of issues involving the concept of truth. A
preliminary issue, although somewhat subsidiary, is to decide what sorts of things can be
true. Is truth a property of sentences (which are linguistic entities in some language or other),
or is truth a property of propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? The
principal issue is: What is truth? It is the problem of being clear about what you are saying
when you say some claim or other is true. The most important theories of truth are the
Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary Theory, the Coherence
Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. They are explained and compared here. Whichever
theory of truth is advanced to settle the principal issue, there are a number of additional issues
to be addressed:
1. Can claims about the future be true now?
2. Can there be some algorithm for finding truth – some recipe or procedure for
deciding, for any claim in the system of, say, arithmetic, whether the claim is true?
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3. Can the predicate "is true" be completely defined in other terms so that it can be
eliminated, without loss of meaning, from any context in which it occurs?
4. To what extent do theories of truth avoid paradox?
5. Is the goal of scientific research to achieve truth?

Table of Contents
1. The Principal Problem
2. The principal problem is to offer a viable theory as to what truth itself consists in, or,
to put it another way, "What is the nature of truth?" To illustrate with an example –
the problem is not: Is it true that there is extraterrestrial life? The problem is: What
does it mean to say that it is true that there is extraterrestrial life? Astrobiologists
study the former problem; philosophers, the latter.
3. This philosophical problem of truth has been with us for a long time. In the first
century AD, Pontius Pilate (John 18:38) asked "What is truth?" but no answer was
forthcoming. The problem has been studied more since the turn of the twentieth
century than at any other previous time. In the last one hundred or so years,
considerable progress has been made in solving the problem.
4. The three most widely accepted contemporary theories of truth are [i] the
Correspondence Theory ; [ii] the Semantic Theory of Tarski and Davidson; and [iii]
the Deflationary Theory of Frege and Ramsey. The competing theories are [iv] the
Coherence Theory , and [v] the Pragmatic Theory . These five theories will be
examined after addressing the following question.
5.
6. What Sorts of Things are True (or False)?
There are many candidates for the sorts of things that can bear truth-values:

 statements  assertions
 sentence-tokens  utterances
 sentence-types  beliefs
 propositions  opinions
 theories  doctrines
 facts  etc.

7.
1. Ontological Issues
8. What sorts of things are these candidates? In particular, should the bearers of truth-
values be regarded as being linguistic items (and, as a consequence, items within
specific languages), or are they non-linguistic items, or are they both? In addition,
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should they be regarded as being concrete entities, i.e., things which have a
determinate position in space and time, or should they be regarded as abstract entities,
i.e., as being neither temporal nor spatial entities?
9. Sentences are linguistic items: they exist in some language or other, either in a natural
language such as English or in an artificial language such as a computer language.
However, the term "sentence" has two senses: sentence-token and sentence-type.
These three English sentence-tokens are all of the same sentence-type:
1.
2. Constraints on Truth and Falsehood
10. There are two commonly accepted constraints on truth and falsehood:
Every proposition is true or false. [Law of the Excluded Middle.]
No proposition is both true and false. [Law of Non-contradiction.]
1.
2. Which Sentences Express Propositions?
3. Not all sentences express propositions. The interrogative sentence "Who won
the World Series in 1951?" does not; neither does the imperative sentence
"Please close the window." Declarative (that is, indicative) sentences – rather
than interrogative or imperative sentences – typically are used to express
propositions.
4. Problem Cases
11. Correspondence Theory
12. Tarski's Semantic Theory
1. Extending the Semantic Theory Beyond "Simple" Propositions
2. Can the Semantic Theory Account for Necessary Truth?
3. The Linguistic Theory of Necessary Truth
13. Coherence Theories
1. Postmodernism: The Most Recent Coherence Theory
14. In recent years, one particular Coherence Theory has attracted a lot of attention and
some considerable heat and fury. Postmodernist philosophers ask us to carefully
consider how the statements of the most persuasive or politically influential people
become accepted as the "common truths". Although everyone would agree that
influential people – the movers and shakers – have profound effects upon the beliefs
of other persons, the controversy revolves around whether the acceptance by others of
their beliefs is wholly a matter of their personal or institutional prominence. The most
radical postmodernists do not distinguish acceptance as true from being true; they
claim that the social negotiations among influential people "construct" the truth. The
truth, they argue, is not something lying outside of human collective decisions; it is
not, in particular, a "reflection" of an objective reality. Or, to put it another way, to the
extent that there is an objective reality it is nothing more nor less than what we say it
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is. We human beings are, then, the ultimate arbiters of what is true. Consensus is
truth. The "subjective" and the "objective" are rolled into one inseparable compound.
15. These postmodernist views have received a more sympathetic reception among social
scientists than among physical scientists. Social scientists will more easily agree, for
example, that the proposition that human beings have a superego is a "construction"
of (certain) politically influential psychologists, and that as a result, it is (to be
regarded as) true. In contrast, physical scientists are – for the most part – rather
unwilling to regard propositions in their own field as somehow merely the product of
consensus among eminent physical scientists. They are inclined to believe that the
proposition that protons are composed of three quarks is true (or false) depending on
whether (or not) it accurately describes an objective reality. They are disinclined to
believe that the truth of such a proposition arises out of the pronouncements of
eminent physical scientists. In short, physical scientists do not believe that prestige
and social influence trump reality.

16. Pragmatic Theories

17. Deflationary Theories
18. What all the theories of truth discussed so far have in common is the assumption that
a proposition is true just in case the proposition has some property or other –
correspondence with the facts, satisfaction, coherence, utility, etc. Deflationary
theories deny this assumption.

a. Redundancy Theory
The principal deflationary theory is the Redundancy Theory advocated by Frege, Ramsey,
and Horwich. Frege expressed the idea this way:
It is worthy of notice that the sentence "I smell the scent of violets" has the same content as
the sentence "It is true that I smell the scent of violets." So it seems, then, that nothing is
added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege, 1918)
When we assert a proposition explicitly, such as when we say "I smell the scent of violets",
then saying "It's true that I smell the scent of violets" would be redundant; it would add
nothing because the two have the same meaning. Today's more minimalist advocates of the
Redundancy Theory retreat from this remark about meaning and say merely that the two are
necessarily equivalent.
Where the concept of truth really pays off is when we do not, or can not, assert a proposition
explicitly, but have to deal with an indirect reference to it. For instance, if we wish to say,
"What he will say tomorrow is true", we need the truth predicate "is true". Admittedly the
proposition is an indirect way of saying, "If he says tomorrow that it will snow, then it will
snow; if he says tomorrow that it will rain, then it will rain; if he says tomorrow that 7 + 5 =
12, then 7 + 5 = 12; and so forth." But the phrase "is true" cannot be eliminated from "What
he will say tomorrow is true" without producing an unacceptable infinite conjunction. The
truth predicate "is true" allows us to generalize and say things more succinctly (indeed to
make those claims with only a finite number of utterances). In short, the Redundancy Theory
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may work for certain cases, say its critics, but it is not generalizable to all; there remain
recalcitrant cases where "is true" is not redundant.
Advocates of the Redundancy Theory respond that their theory recognizes the essential point
about needing the concept of truth for indirect reference. The theory says that this is all that
the concept of truth is needed for, and that otherwise its use is redundant.

b. Performative Theory
The Performative Theory is a deflationary theory that is not a redundancy theory. It was
advocated by Strawson who believed Tarski's Semantic Theory of Truth was basically
mistaken.
The Performative Theory of Truth argues that ascribing truth to a proposition is not really
characterizing the proposition itself, nor is it saying something redundant. Rather, it is telling
us something about the speaker's intentions. The speaker – through his or her agreeing with
it, endorsing it, praising it, accepting it, or perhaps conceding it – is licensing our adoption of
(the belief in) the proposition. Instead of saying, "It is true that snow is white", one could
substitute "I embrace the claim that snow is white." The key idea is that saying of some
proposition, P, that it is true is to say in a disguised fashion "I commend P to you", or "I
endorse P", or something of the sort.
The case may be likened somewhat to that of promising. When you promise to pay your
sister five dollars, you are not making a claim about the proposition expressed by "I will pay
you five dollars"; rather you are performing the action of promising her something. Similarly,
according to the Performative Theory of Truth, when you say "It is true that Vancouver is
north of Sacramento", you are performing the act of giving your listener license to believe
(and to act upon the belief) that Vancouver is north of Sacramento.
Critics of the Performative Theory charge that it requires too radical a revision in our logic.
Arguments have premises that are true or false, but we don't consider premises to be actions,
says Geach. Other critics complain that, if all the ascription of "is true" is doing is gesturing
consent, as Strawson believes, then, when we say
"Please shut the door" is true,
we would be consenting to the door's being shut. Because that is absurd, says Huw Price,
something is wrong with Strawson's Performative Theory.

c. Prosentential Theory
The Prosentential Theory of Truth suggests that the grammatical predicate "is true" does not
function semantically or logically as a predicate. All uses of "is true" are prosentential uses.
When someone asserts "It's true that it is snowing", the person is asking the hearer to consider
the sentence "It is snowing" and is saying "That is true" where the remark "That is true" is
taken holistically as a prosentence, in analogy to a pronoun. A pronoun such as "she" is a
substitute for the name of the person being referred to. Similarly, "That is true" is a substitute
for the proposition being considered. Likewise, for the expression "It is true." According to
the Prosentential Theory, all uses of "true" can be reduced to uses either of "That is true" or
"It is true" or variants of these with other tenses. Because these latter prosentential uses of the
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word "true" cannot be eliminated from our language during analysis, the Prosentential Theory
is not a redundancy theory.
Critics of the theory remark that it can give no account of what is common to all our uses of
the word "true," such as those in the unanalyzed operators "it-will-be-true-that" and "it-is-
true-that" and "it-was-true-that".
19.
1. Redundancy Theory
2. Performative Theory
3. Prosentential Theory
20. Related Issues
1. Beyond Truth to Knowledge
21. For generations, discussions of truth have been bedeviled by the question, "How
could a proposition be true unless we know it to be true?" Aristotle's famous worry
was that contingent propositions about the future, such as "There will be a sea battle
tomorrow", couldn't be true now, for fear that this would deny free will to the sailors
involved. Advocates of the Correspondence Theory and the Semantic Theory have
argued that a proposition need not be known in order to be true. Truth, they say, arises
out of a relationship between a proposition and the way the world is. No one need
know that that relationship holds, nor – for that matter – need there even be any
conscious or language-using creatures for that relationship to obtain. In short, truth is
an objective feature of a proposition, not a subjective one.
22. For a true proposition to be known, it must (at the very least) be a justified belief.
Justification, unlike truth itself, requires a special relationship among propositions.
For a proposition to be justified it must, at the very least, cohere with other
propositions that one has adopted. On this account, coherence among propositions
plays a critical role in the theory of knowledge. Nevertheless it plays no role in a
theory of truth, according to advocates of the Correspondence and Semantic Theories
of Truth.
23. Finally, should coherence – which plays such a central role in theories of knowledge
– be regarded as an objective relationship or as a subjective one? Not surprisingly,
theorists have answered this latter question in divergent ways. But the pursuit of that
issue takes one beyond the theories of truth.
1.
2. Algorithms for Truth
3. Can "is true" be Eliminated?
24. Can "is true" be defined so that it can be replaced by its definition? Unfortunately for
the clarity of this question, there is no one concept of "definition". A very great many
linguistic devices count as definitions. These devices include providing a synonym,
offering examples, pointing at objects that satisfy the term being defined, using the
term in sentences, contrasting it with opposites, and contrasting it with terms with
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which it is often confused. (For further reading, see Definitions, Dictionaries, and
Meanings.)
25. However, modern theories about definition have not been especially recognized, let
alone adopted, outside of certain academic and specialist circles. Many persons persist
with the earlier, naive, view that the role of a definition is only to offer a synonym for
the term to be defined. These persons have in mind such examples as: " 'hypostatize'
means (or, is a synonym for) 'reify' ".
26. If one were to adopt this older view of definition, one might be inclined to demand of
a theory of truth that it provide a definition of "is true" which permitted its elimination
in all contexts in the language. Tarski was the first person to show clearly that there
could never be such a strict definition for "is true" in its own language. The definition
would allow for a line of reasoning that produced the Liar Paradox (recall above) and
thus would lead us into self contradiction. (See the discussion, in the article The Liar
Paradox, of Tarski's Udefinability Theorem of 1936.)
27. Kripke has attempted to avoid this theorem by using only a "partial" truth-predicate so
that not every sentence has a truth-value. In effect, Kripke's "repair" permits a
definition of the truth-predicate within its own language but at the expense of
allowing certain violations of the law of excluded middle.
1.
2. Can a Theory of Truth Avoid Paradox?
3. Is The Goal of Scientific Research to Achieve Truth?
28. Except in special cases, most scientific researchers would agree that their results are
only approximately true. Nevertheless, to make sense of this, philosophers need adopt
no special concept such as "approximate truth." Instead, it suffices to say that the
researchers' goal is to achieve truth, but they achieve this goal only approximately, or
only to some approximation.
29. Other philosophers believe it's a mistake to say the researchers' goal is to achieve
truth. These "scientific anti-realists" recommend saying that research in, for example,
physics, economics, and meteorology, aims only for usefulness. When they aren't
overtly identifying truth with usefulness, the instrumentalists Peirce, James and
Schlick take this anti-realist route, as does Kuhn. They would say atomic theory isn't
true or false but rather is useful for predicting outcomes of experiments and for
explaining current data. Giere recommends saying science aims for the best available
"representation", in the same sense that maps are representations of the landscape.
Maps aren't true; rather, they fit to a better or worse degree. Similarly, scientific
theories are designed to fit the world. Scientists should not aim to create true theories;
they should aim to construct theories whose models are representations of the world.
1.
References and Further Reading
http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/contents.htm
http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm
204

Contents
1 INTRODUCTION
2 USE AND MENTION
2.1 Iconographic and Non-iconographic Names
2.2 Corner-quotes (Advanced material)
3 MOTIVATION FOR DEFINING OUR TERMS
3.1 Exercise
4 SYMBOLIZATION
5 SEVEN KINDS OF DEFINITIONS
5.1 Stipulative Definitions
5.2 Lexical Definitions
5.3 Precising Definitions
5.4 Theoretical Definitions
5.5 Operational Definitions
5.6 Recursive Definitions (Advanced material)
5.7 Persuasive Definitions
6 MODES OF MEANING
6.1 Extension
6.2 Intension
6.2.1 Logically Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
6.2.2 "Intension" explicated in terms of Necessary and
Sufficient Conditions
6.3 'Reciprocity' of Intension and Extension
7 PRAGMATICS OF DEFINING
7.1 Contextual Definition (or Paraphrase)
7.2 Defining by Intension
7.3 Defining by Extension
7.3.1 Ostension
7.3.2 Extensional Definition by Naming
7.3.3 Extensional Definition by Unique Description
7.4 Two Case Studies in the Application of the
Intension/Extension Distinction
7.4.1 "God exists, by definition"
7.4.2 The 'Width' of an Intensional Definition
8 THEORIES OF DEFINITION
8.1 Theory of 'real' definition
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8.2 The Classical Theory of Definition

8.3 The Logic of Criteria and the 'Cluster-Concept'
8.4 The Possibility of an Overabundance of Necessary and
Sufficient Conditions
9 DOES "MEANING" MEAN "INTENSION" OR
"EXTENSION"?
10 EXPLICATION (/CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS)
11 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
NOTES
206

ARGUMENT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument
n philosophy and logic, an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade
someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion.[1][2] The general form
of an argument in a natural language is that of premises (typically in the form of propositions,
statements or sentences) in support of a claim: the conclusion.[3][4][5] The structure of some
arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally defined "arguments" can be
made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic, and computer science.
In a typical deductive argument, the premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion, while in
an inductive argument, they are thought to provide reasons supporting the conclusion's
probable truth.[6] The standards for evaluating non-deductive arguments may rest on different
or additional criteria than truth, for example, the persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability
claims" in transcendental arguments,[7] the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even the
disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.[8]
The standards and criteria used in evaluating arguments and their forms of reasoning are
studied in logic.[9] Ways of formulating arguments effectively are studied in rhetoric (see
also: argumentation theory). An argument in a formal language shows the logical form of the
symbolically represented or natural language arguments obtained by its interpretations.

Contents
 1 Formal and informal
 2 Standard types
o 2.1 Deductive arguments
o 2.2 Inductive arguments
 3 Deductive
o 3.1 Validity
o 3.2 Soundness
 4 Inductive
 5 Defeasible arguments and argumentation schemes
 6 By analogy
 7 Other kinds
o 7.1 In informal logic
 7.1.1 Logical status
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o 7.2 World-disclosing
 8 Explanations
 9 Fallacies and nonarguments
 10 See also
 11 Notes
 12 References
 13 Further reading
 14 External links

Formal and informal

Further information: Informal logic and Formal logic
Informal arguments as studied in informal logic, are presented in ordinary language and are
intended for everyday discourse. Conversely, formal arguments are studied in formal logic
(historically called symbolic logic, more commonly referred to as mathematical logic today)
and are expressed in a formal language. Informal logic may be said to emphasize the study of
argumentation, whereas formal logic emphasizes implication and inference. Informal
arguments are sometimes implicit. That is, the rational structure – the relationship of claims,
premises, warrants, relations of implication, and conclusion – is not always spelled out and
immediately visible and must sometimes be made explicit by analysis.

Standard types

Argument terminology
There are several kinds of arguments in logic, the best-known of which are "deductive" and
"inductive." An argument has one or more premises but only one conclusion. Each premise
and the conclusion are truth bearers or "truth-candidates", each capable of being either true or
false (but not both). These truth values bear on the terminology used with arguments.

Deductive arguments
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 A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence
of the premises. Based on the premises, the conclusion follows necessarily (with
certainty). For example, given premises that A=B and B=C, then the conclusion
follows necessarily that A=C. Deductive arguments are sometimes referred to as
"truth-preserving" arguments.
 A deductive argument is said to be valid or invalid. If one assumes the premises to be
true (ignoring their actual truth values), would the conclusion follow with certainty? If
yes, the argument is valid. Otherwise, it is invalid. In determining validity, the
structure of the argument is essential to the determination, not the actual truth values.
For example, consider the argument that because bats can fly (premise=true), and all
flying creatures are birds (premise=false), therefore bats are birds (conclusion=false).
If we assume the premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily, and thus it is a
valid argument.
 If a deductive argument is valid and its premises are all true, then it is also referred to
as sound. Otherwise, it is unsound, as in the "bats are birds" example.

Inductive arguments
 An inductive argument, on the other hand, asserts that the truth of the conclusion is
supported to some degree of probability by the premises. For example, given that the
U.S. military budget is the largest in the world (premise=true), then it is probable that
it will remain so for the next 10 years (conclusion=true). Arguments that involve
predictions are inductive, as the future is uncertain.
 An inductive argument is said to be strong or weak. If the premises of an inductive
argument are assumed true, is it probable the conclusion is also true? If so, the
argument is strong. Otherwise, it is weak.
 A strong argument is said to be cogent if it has all true premises. Otherwise, the
argument is uncogent. The military budget argument example above is a strong,
cogent argument.

Deductive
Main article: Deductive argument
A deductive argument is one that, if valid, has a conclusion that is entailed by its premises. In
other words, the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises—if the
premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. It would be self-contradictory to assert
the premises and deny the conclusion, because the negation of the conclusion is contradictory
to the truth of the premises.

Validity
Main article: Validity
Deductive arguments may be either valid or invalid. If an argument is valid, it is a valid
deduction, and if its premises are true, the conclusion must be true: a valid argument cannot
have true premises and a false conclusion.
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An argument is formally valid if and only if the denial of the conclusion is incompatible with
accepting all the premises.
The validity of an argument depends, however, not on the actual truth or falsity of its
premises and conclusion, but solely on whether or not the argument has a valid logical form.
The validity of an argument is not a guarantee of the truth of its conclusion. Under a given
interpretation, a valid argument may have false premises that render it inconclusive: the
conclusion of a valid argument with one or more false premises may be either true or false.
Logic seeks to discover the valid forms, the forms that make arguments valid. A form of
argument is valid if and only if the conclusion is true under all interpretations of that
argument in which the premises are true. Since the validity of an argument depends solely on
its form, an argument can be shown to be invalid by showing that its form is invalid. This can
be done by giving a counter example of the same form of argument with premises that are
true under a given interpretation, but a conclusion that is false under that interpretation. In
informal logic this is called a counter argument.
The form of argument can be shown by the use of symbols. For each argument form, there is
a corresponding statement form, called a corresponding conditional, and an argument form is
valid if and only if its corresponding conditional is a logical truth. A statement form which is
logically true is also said to be a valid statement form. A statement form is a logical truth if it
is true under all interpretations. A statement form can be shown to be a logical truth by either
(a) showing that it is a tautology or (b) by means of a proof procedure.
The corresponding conditional of a valid argument is a necessary truth (true in all possible
worlds) and so the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, or follows of logical
necessity. The conclusion of a valid argument is not necessarily true, it depends on whether
the premises are true. If the conclusion, itself, just so happens to be a necessary truth, it is so
without regard to the premises.
Some examples:
 All Greeks are human and all humans are mortal; therefore, all Greeks are mortal. :
Valid argument; if the premises are true the conclusion must be true.
 Some Greeks are logicians and some logicians are tiresome; therefore, some Greeks
are tiresome. Invalid argument: the tiresome logicians might all be Romans (for
example).
 Either we are all doomed or we are all saved; we are not all saved; therefore, we are
all doomed. Valid argument; the premises entail the conclusion. (Remember that this
does not mean the conclusion has to be true; it is only true if the premises are true,
which they may not be!)
 Some men are hawkers. Some hawkers are rich. Therefore, some men are rich.
Invalid argument. This can be easier seen by giving a counter-example with the same
argument form:
o Some people are herbivores. Some herbivores are zebras. Therefore, some
people are zebras. Invalid argument, as it is possible that the premises be true
and the conclusion false.
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In the above second to last case (Some men are hawkers...), the counter-example follows the
same logical form as the previous argument, (Premise 1: "Some X are Y." Premise 2: "Some Y
are Z." Conclusion: "Some X are Z.") in order to demonstrate that whatever hawkers may be,
they may or may not be rich, in consideration of the premises as such. (See also, existential
import).
The forms of argument that render deductions valid are well-established, however some
invalid arguments can also be persuasive depending on their construction (inductive
arguments, for example). (See also, formal fallacy and informal fallacy).

Soundness
Main article: Soundness
A sound argument is a valid argument whose conclusion follows from its premise(s), and the
premise(s) of which is/are true.

Inductive
Main article: Inductive argument
Non-deductive logic is reasoning using arguments in which the premises support the
conclusion but do not entail it. Forms of non-deductive logic include the statistical syllogism,
which argues from generalizations true for the most part, and induction, a form of reasoning
that makes generalizations based on individual instances. An inductive argument is said to be
cogent if and only if the truth of the argument's premises would render the truth of the
conclusion probable (i.e., the argument is strong), and the argument's premises are, in fact,
true. Cogency can be considered inductive logic's analogue to deductive logic's "soundness."
Despite its name, mathematical induction is not a form of inductive reasoning. The lack of
deductive validity is known as the problem of induction.

Defeasible arguments and argumentation schemes

In modern argumentation theories, arguments are regarded as defeasible passages from
premises to a conclusion. Defeasibility means that when additional information (new
evidence or contrary arguments) is provided, the premises may be no longer lead to the
conclusion (non-monotonic reasoning). This type of reasoning is referred to as defeasible
reasoning. For instance we consider the famous Tweedy example:
Tweedy is a bird.
Birds generally fly.
Therefore, Tweedy (probably) flies.
This argument is reasonable and the premises support the conclusion unless additional
information indicating that the case is an exception comes in. If Tweedy is a penguin, the
inference is no longer justified by the premise. Defeasible arguments are based on
generalizations that hold only in the majority of cases, but are subject to exceptions and
defaults. In order to represent and assess defeasible reasoning, it is necessary to combine the
logical rules (governing the acceptance of a conclusion based on the acceptance of its
premises) with rules of material inference, governing how a premise can support a given
conclusion (whether it is reasonable or not to draw a specific conclusion from a specific
description of a state of affairs). Argumentation schemes have been developed to describe
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and assess the acceptability or the fallaciousness of defeasible arguments. Argumentation

schemes are stereotypical patterns of inference, combining semantic-ontological relations
with types of reasoning and logical axioms and representing the abstract structure of the most
common types of natural arguments.[10] The argumentation schemes provided in (Walton,
Reed & Macagno, 2008) describe tentatively the patterns of the most typical arguments.
However, the two levels of abstraction are not distinguished. For this reason, under the label
of “argumentation schemes” fall indistinctly patterns of reasoning such as the abductive,
analogical, or inductive ones, and types of argument such as the ones from classification or
cause to effect. A typical example is the argument from expert opinion, which has two
premises and a conclusion.[11]
Major Premise: Source E is an expert in subject domain S containing proposition A.
Minor Premise: E asserts that proposition A is true (false).
Conclusion: A is true (false).
Each scheme is associated to a set of critical questions, namely criteria for assessing
dialectically the reasonableness and acceptability of an argument. The matching critical
questions are the standard ways of casting the argument into doubt.
CQ1: Expertise Question. How credible is E as an expert source?
CQ2: Field Question. Is E an expert in the field that A is in?
CQ3: Opinion Question. What did E assert that implies A?
CQ4: Trustworthiness Question. Is E personally reliable as a source?
CQ5: Consistency Question. Is A consistent with what other experts assert?
CQ6: Backup Evidence Question. Is E's assertion based on evidence?
If an expert says that a proposition is true, this provides a reason for tentatively accepting it,
in the absence of stronger reasons to doubt it. But suppose that evidence of financial gain
suggests that the expert is biased, for example by evidence showing that he will gain
financially from his claim.

By analogy
Argument by analogy may be thought of as argument from the particular to particular. An
argument by analogy may use a particular truth in a premise to argue towards a similar
particular truth in the conclusion. For example, if A. Plato was mortal, and B. Socrates was
like Plato in other respects, then asserting that C. Socrates was mortal is an example of
argument by analogy because the reasoning employed in it proceeds from a particular truth in
a premise (Plato was mortal) to a similar particular truth in the conclusion, namely that
Socrates was mortal.[12]

Other kinds
Other kinds of arguments may have different or additional standards of validity or
justification. For example, Charles Taylor writes that so-called transcendental arguments are
made up of a "chain of indispensability claims" that attempt to show why something is
necessarily true based on its connection to our experience,[13] while Nikolas Kompridis has
suggested that there are two types of "fallible" arguments: one based on truth claims, and the
other based on the time-responsive disclosure of possibility (see world disclosure).[14] The
212

late French philosopher Michel Foucault is said to have been a prominent advocate of this
latter form of philosophical argument.[15]

In informal logic
Argument is an informal calculus, relating an effort to be performed or sum to be spent, to
possible future gain, either economic or moral. In informal logic, an argument is a connection
between
a. an individual action
b. through which a generally accepted good is obtained.
Ex :
1.
a. You should marry Jane (individual action, individual decision)
b. because she has the same temper as you. (generally accepted wisdom that
marriage is good in itself, and it is generally accepted that people with the
same character get along well).
2.
a. You should not smoke (individual action, individual decision)
b. because smoking is harmful (generally accepted wisdom that health is good).
The argument is neither a) advice nor b) moral or economical judgement, but the connection
between the two. An argument always uses the connective because. An argument is not an
explanation. It does not connect two events, cause and effect, which already took place, but a
possible individual action and its beneficial outcome. An argument is not a proof. A proof is
a logical and cognitive concept; an argument is a praxeologic concept. A proof changes our
knowledge; an argument compels us to act.[citation needed]

Logical status
Argument does not belong to logic, because it is connected to a real person, a real event, and
a real effort to be made.
1. If you, John, will buy this stock, it will become twice as valuable in a year.
2. If you, Mary, study dance, you will become a famous ballet dancer.
The value of the argument is connected to the immediate circumstances of the person spoken
to. If, in the first case,(1) John has no money, or knows he has only one year to live, he will
not be interested in buying the stock. If, in the second case (2) she is too heavy, or too old,
she will not be interested in studying and becoming a dancer. The argument is not logical, but
profitable.

World-disclosing
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Main article: World disclosure

World-disclosing arguments are a group of philosophical arguments that are said to employ a
disclosive approach, to reveal features of a wider ontological or cultural-linguistic
understanding – a "world," in a specifically ontological sense – in order to clarify or
transform the background of meaning and "logical space" on which an argument implicitly
depends.[16]

Explanations
Main article: Explanation
While arguments attempt to show that something was, is, will be, or should be the case,
explanations try to show why or how something is or will be. If Fred and Joe address the issue
of whether or not Fred's cat has fleas, Joe may state: "Fred, your cat has fleas. Observe, the
cat is scratching right now." Joe has made an argument that the cat has fleas. However, if Joe
asks Fred, "Why is your cat scratching itself?" the explanation, "...because it has fleas."
provides understanding.
Both the above argument and explanation require knowing the generalities that a) fleas often
cause itching, and b) that one often scratches to relieve itching. The difference is in the intent:
an argument attempts to settle whether or not some claim is true, and an explanation attempts
to provide understanding of the event. Note, that by subsuming the specific event (of Fred's
cat scratching) as an instance of the general rule that "animals scratch themselves when they
have fleas", Joe will no longer wonder why Fred's cat is scratching itself. Arguments address
problems of belief, explanations address problems of understanding. Also note that in the
argument above, the statement, "Fred's cat has fleas" is up for debate (i.e. is a claim), but in
the explanation, the statement, "Fred's cat has fleas" is assumed to be true (unquestioned at
this time) and just needs explaining.[17]
Arguments and explanations largely resemble each other in rhetorical use. This is the cause
of much difficulty in thinking critically about claims. There are several reasons for this
difficulty.
 People often are not themselves clear on whether they are arguing for or explaining
something.
 The same types of words and phrases are used in presenting explanations and
arguments.
 The terms 'explain' or 'explanation,' et cetera are frequently used in arguments.
 Explanations are often used within arguments and presented so as to serve as
arguments.[18]
 Likewise, "...arguments are essential to the process of justifying the validity of any
explanation as there are often multiple explanations for any given phenomenon."[17]
Explanations and arguments are often studied in the field of Information Systems to help
explain user acceptance of knowledge-based systems. Certain argument types may fit better
with personality traits to enhance acceptance by individuals.[19]
214

Fallacies and nonarguments

Main article: Formal fallacy
Fallacies are types of argument or expressions which are held to be of an invalid form or
contain errors in reasoning. There is not as yet any general theory of fallacy or strong
agreement among researchers of their definition or potential for application but the term is
broadly applicable as a label to certain examples of error, and also variously applied to
ambiguous candidates.[20]
In Logic types of fallacy are firmly described thus: First the premises and the conclusion
must be statements, capable of being true or false. Secondly it must be asserted that the
conclusion follows from the premises. In English the words therefore, so, because and hence
typically separate the premises from the conclusion of an argument, but this is not necessarily
so. Thus: Socrates is a man, all men are mortal therefore Socrates is mortal is clearly an
argument (a valid one at that), because it is clear it is asserted that Socrates is mortal follows
from the preceding statements. However I was thirsty and therefore I drank is NOT an
argument, despite its appearance. It is not being claimed that I drank is logically entailed by I
was thirsty. The therefore in this sentence indicates for that reason not it follows that.
Elliptical arguments
Often an argument is invalid because there is a missing premise—the supply of which would
render it valid. Speakers and writers will often leave out a strictly necessary premise in their
reasonings if it is widely accepted and the writer does not wish to state the blindingly
obvious. Example: All metals expand when heated, therefore iron will expand when heated.
(Missing premise: iron is a metal). On the other hand, a seemingly valid argument may be
found to lack a premise – a 'hidden assumption' – which if highlighted can show a fault in
reasoning. Example: A witness reasoned: Nobody came out the front door except the
milkman; therefore the murderer must have left by the back door. (Hidden assumptions- the
milkman was not the murderer, and the murderer has left by the front or back door).

See also

 Logic portal

 Thinking portal

 Abductive reasoning
 Argument map
 Argumentation theory
 Argumentative dialogue
 Belief bias
 Boolean logic
 Deductive reasoning
 Defeasible reasoning
215

 Evidence
 Evidence-based policy
 Fallacy
 Dialectic
 Formal fallacy
 Inductive reasoning
 Informal fallacy
 Inquiry
 Practical arguments
 Soundness theorem
 Soundness
 Truth
 Validity

http://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/
The word “argument” can be used to designate a dispute or a fight, or it can be used more
technically. The focus of this article is on understanding an argument as a collection of truth-
bearers (that is, the things that bear truth and falsity, or are true and false) some of which are
offered as reasons for one of them, the conclusion. This article takes propositions rather than
sentences or statements or utterances to be the primary truth bearers. The reasons offered
within the argument are called “premises”, and the proposition that the premises are offered
for is called the “conclusion”. This sense of “argument” diverges not only from the above
sense of a dispute or fight but also from the formal logician’s sense according to which an
argument is merely a list of statements, one of which is designated as the conclusion and the
rest of which are designated as premises regardless of whether the premises are offered as
reasons for believing the conclusion. Arguments, as understood in this article, are the subject
of study in critical thinking and informal logic courses in which students usually learn,
among other things, how to identify, reconstruct, and evaluate arguments given outside the
classroom.
Arguments, in this sense, are typically distinguished from both implications and inferences.
In asserting that a proposition P implies proposition Q, one does not thereby offer P as a
reason for Q. The proposition frogs are mammals implies that frogs are not reptiles, but it is
problematic to offer the former as a reason for believing the latter. If an arguer offers an
argument in order to persuade an audience that the conclusion is true, then it is plausible to
think that the arguer is inviting the audience to make an inference from the argument’s
premises to its conclusion. However, an inference is a form of reasoning, and as such it is
distinct from an argument in the sense of a collection of propositions (some of which are
offered as reasons for the conclusion). One might plausibly think that a person S infers Q
from P just in case S comes to believe Q because S believes that P is true and because S
216

believes that the truth of P justifies belief that Q. But this movement of mind from P to Q is
something different from the argument composed of just P and Q.
The characterization of argument in the first paragraph requires development since there are
forms of reasoning such as explanations which are not typically regarded as arguments even
though (explanatory) reasons are offered for a proposition. Two principal approaches to fine-
tuning this first-step characterization of arguments are what may be called the structural and
pragmatic approaches. The pragmatic approach is motivated by the view that the nature of an
argument cannot be completely captured in terms of its structure. In what follows, each
approach is described, and criticism is briefly entertained. Along the way, distinctive
features of arguments are highlighted that seemingly must be accounted for by any plausible
characterization. The classification of arguments as deductive, inductive, and conductive is
discussed in section 3.

Table of Contents
1. The Structural Approach to Characterizing Arguments
2. Not any group of propositions qualifies as an argument. The starting point for
structural approaches is the thesis that the premises of an argument are reasons
offered in support of its conclusion (for example, Govier 2010, p.1, Bassham, G., W.
Irwin, H. Nardone, J. Wallace 2005, p.30, Copi and Cohen 2005, p.7; for discussion,
see Johnson 2000, p.146ff ). Accordingly, a collection of propositions lacks the
structure of an argument unless there is a reasoner who puts forward some as reasons
in support of one of them. Letting P1, P2, P3, …, and C range over propositions and R
over reasoners, a structural characterization of argument takes the following form.
3. The Pragmatic Approach to Characterizing Arguments
4. The pragmatic approach is motivated by the view that the nature of an argument
cannot be completely captured in terms of its structure. In contrast to structural
definitions of arguments, pragmatic definitions appeal to the function of arguments.
Different accounts of the purposes arguments serve generate different pragmatic
definitions of arguments. The following pragmatic definition appeals to the use of
arguments as tools of rational persuasion (for definitions of argument that make such
an appeal, see Johnson 2000, p. 168; Walton 1996, p. 18ff; Hitchcock 2007, p.105ff)
5. A collection of propositions is an argument if and only if there is a reasoner R who
puts forward some of them (the premises) as reasons in support of one of them (the
conclusion) in order to rationally persuade an audience of the truth of the conclusion.
6.
7. Deductive, Inductive, and Conductive Arguments
8. Arguments are commonly classified as deductive or inductive (for example, Copi, I.
and C. Cohen 2005, Sinnott-Armstrong and Fogelin 2010). A deductive argument is
an argument that an arguer puts forward as valid. For a valid argument, it is not
possible for the premises to be true with the conclusion false. That is, necessarily if
the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. Thus we may say that the truth of
the premises in a valid argument guarantees that the conclusion is also true. The
217

following is an example of a valid argument: Tom is happy only if the Tigers win, the
Tigers lost; therefore, Tom is definitely not happy.
9. A step-by-step derivation of the conclusion of a valid argument from its premises is
called a proof. In the context of a proof, the given premises of an argument may be
viewed as initial premises. The propositions produced at the steps leading to the
conclusion are called derived premises. Each step in the derivation is justified by a
principle of inference. Whether the derived premises are components of a valid
argument is a difficult question that is beyond the scope of this article.

10. Conclusion

11. A group of propositions constitutes an argument only if some are offered as reasons
for one of them. Two approaches to identifying the definitive characteristics of
arguments are the structural and pragmatic approaches. On both approaches, whether
an act of offering reasons for a proposition P yields an argument depends on what the
reasoner believes regarding both the truth of the reasons and the relationship between
the reasons and P. A typical use of an argument is to rationally persuade its audience
of the truth of the conclusion. To be effective in realizing this aim, the reasoner must
think that there is real potential in the relevant context for her audience to be
rationally persuaded of the conclusion by means of the offered premises. What,
exactly, this presupposes about the audience depends on what the argument is and the
context in which it is given. An argument may be classified as deductive, inductive, or
conductive. Its classification into one of these categories is a prerequisite for its
proper evaluation.
12. References and Further Reading
13. https://philpapers.org/browse/argument
14. 
15. 
Critical Thinking (114)

16. 
Deductive Reasoning (149)

17. 
Fallacies (108)

18. 
Induction (1,685 | 422)

19. 
Inference (106)

20. 
Inference to the Best Explanation (146 | 71)

21. 
The Nature of Reasoning (63)
Reasoning, Misc (4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentation_theory
rgumentation theory, or argumentation, is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions
can be reached through logical reasoning; that is, claims based, soundly or not, on premises.
It includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It
studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real world
settings.[1]
218

Argumentation includes debate and negotiation which are concerned with reaching mutually
acceptable conclusions. It also encompasses eristic dialog, the branch of social debate in
which victory over an opponent is the primary goal. This art and science is often the means
by which people protect their beliefs or self-interests in rational dialogue, in common
parlance, and during the process of arguing.
Argumentation is used in law, for example in trials, in preparing an argument to be presented
to a court, and in testing the validity of certain kinds of evidence. Also, argumentation
scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify
decisions they have made irrationally.

Contents
 1 Key components of argumentation
 2 Internal structure of arguments
 3 Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge
 4 Approaches to argumentation in communication and informal logic
 5 Kinds of argumentation
o 5.1 Conversational argumentation
o 5.2 Mathematical argumentation
o 5.3 Scientific argumentation
o 5.4 Interpretive argumentation
o 5.5 Legal argumentation
o 5.6 Political argumentation
 6 Psychological aspects
 7 Theories
o 7.1 Argument fields
o 7.2 Stephen E. Toulmin's contributions
 7.2.1 An alternative to absolutism and relativism
 7.2.2 Components of argument
 7.2.3 The evolution of knowledge
 7.2.4 Rejection of certainty
o 7.3 Pragma-dialectics
o 7.4 Walton's logical argumentation method
219

 8 Artificial intelligence
 9 See also
 10 Notes
 11 Sources
 12 Further reading
 13 External links

Key components of argumentation

 Understanding and identifying arguments, either explicit or implied, and the goals of
the participants in the different types of dialogue.
 Identifying the premises from which conclusions are derived
 Establishing the "burden of proof" – determining who made the initial claim and is
thus responsible for providing evidence why his/her position merits acceptance.
 For the one carrying the "burden of proof", the advocate, to marshal evidence for
his/her position in order to convince or force the opponent's acceptance. The method
by which this is accomplished is producing valid, sound, and cogent arguments,
devoid of weaknesses, and not easily attacked.
 In a debate, fulfillment of the burden of proof creates a burden of rejoinder. One must
try to identify faulty reasoning in the opponent's argument, to attack the
reasons/premises of the argument, to provide counterexamples if possible, to identify
any fallacies, and to show why a valid conclusion cannot be derived from the reasons
provided for his/her argument.

Internal structure of arguments

Typically an argument has an internal structure, comprising the following
1. a set of assumptions or premises
2. a method of reasoning or deduction and
3. a conclusion or point.
An argument has one or more premises and one conclusion.
Often classical logic is used as the method of reasoning so that the conclusion follows
logically from the assumptions or support. One challenge is that if the set of assumptions is
inconsistent then anything can follow logically from inconsistency. Therefore, it is common
to insist that the set of assumptions be consistent. It is also good practice to require the set of
assumptions to be the minimal set, with respect to set inclusion, necessary to infer the
consequent. Such arguments are called MINCON arguments, short for minimal consistent.
Such argumentation has been applied to the fields of law and medicine. A second school of
220

argumentation investigates abstract arguments, where 'argument' is considered a primitive

term, so no internal structure of arguments is taken on account.
In its most common form, argumentation involves an individual and an interlocutor/or
opponent engaged in dialogue, each contending differing positions and trying to persuade
each other. Other types of dialogue in addition to persuasion are eristic, information seeking,
inquiry, negotiation, deliberation, and the dialectical method (Douglas Walton). The
dialectical method was made famous by Plato and his use of Socrates critically questioning
various characters and historical figures.

Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge

Argumentation theory had its origins in foundationalism, a theory of knowledge
(epistemology) in the field of philosophy. It sought to find the grounds for claims in the
forms (logic) and materials (factual laws) of a universal system of knowledge. But argument
scholars gradually rejected Aristotle's systematic philosophy and the idealism in Plato and
Kant. They questioned and ultimately discarded the idea that argument premises take their
soundness from formal philosophical systems. The field thus broadened.[2]
Karl R. Wallace's seminal essay, "The Substance of Rhetoric: Good Reasons" in the
Quarterly Journal of Speech (1963) 44, led many scholars to study "marketplace
argumentation" – the ordinary arguments of ordinary people. The seminal essay on
marketplace argumentation is Ray Lynn Anderson and C. David Mortensen's "Logic and
Marketplace Argumentation" Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 (1967): 143–150.[3][4] This line
of thinking led to a natural alliance with late developments in the sociology of knowledge.[5]
Some scholars drew connections with recent developments in philosophy, namely the
pragmatism of John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Rorty has called this shift in emphasis "the
linguistic turn".
In this new hybrid approach argumentation is used with or without empirical evidence to
establish convincing conclusions about issues which are moral, scientific, epistemic, or of a
nature in which science alone cannot answer. Out of pragmatism and many intellectual
developments in the humanities and social sciences, "non-philosophical" argumentation
theories grew which located the formal and material grounds of arguments in particular
intellectual fields. These theories include informal logic, social epistemology,
ethnomethodology, speech acts, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of science, and
social psychology. These new theories are not non-logical or anti-logical. They find logical
coherence in most communities of discourse. These theories are thus often labeled
"sociological" in that they focus on the social grounds of knowledge.

Approaches to argumentation in communication and informal logic

In general, the label "argumentation" is used by communication scholars such as (to name
only a few) Wayne E. Brockriede, Douglas Ehninger, Joseph W. Wenzel, Richard Rieke,
Gordon Mitchell, Carol Winkler, Eric Gander, Dennis S. Gouran, Daniel J. O'Keefe, Mark
Aakhus, Bruce Gronbeck, James Klumpp, G. Thomas Goodnight, Robin Rowland, Dale
Hample, C. Scott Jacobs, Sally Jackson, David Zarefsky, and Charles Arthur Willard, while
the term "informal logic" is preferred by philosophers, stemming from University of Windsor
221

philosophers Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair. Harald Wohlrapp developed a criterion
for validness (Geltung, Gültigkeit) as freedom of objections.
Trudy Govier, Douglas Walton, Michael Gilbert, Harvey Seigal, Michael Scriven, and John
Woods (to name only a few) are other prominent authors in this tradition. Over the past thirty
years, however, scholars from several disciplines have co-mingled at international
conferences such as that hosted by the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and the
International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Other international conferences
are the biannual conference held at Alta, Utah sponsored by the (US) National
Communication Association and American Forensics Association and conferences sponsored
by the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA).
Some scholars (such as Ralph H. Johnson) construe the term "argument" narrowly, as
exclusively written discourse or even discourse in which all premises are explicit. Others
(such as Michael Gilbert) construe the term "argument" broadly, to include spoken and even
nonverbal discourse, for instance the degree to which a war memorial or propaganda poster
can be said to argue or "make arguments". The philosopher Stephen E. Toulmin has said that
an argument is a claim on our attention and belief, a view that would seem to authorize
treating, say, propaganda posters as arguments. The dispute between broad and narrow
theorists is of long standing and is unlikely to be settled. The views of the majority of
argumentation theorists and analysts fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Kinds of argumentation

Conversational argumentation
Main articles: Conversation analysis and Discourse analysis
The study of naturally occurring conversation arose from the field of sociolinguistics. It is
usually called conversation analysis. Inspired by ethnomethodology, it was developed in the
late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and, among others, his
close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Sacks died early in his career, but his
work was championed by others in his field, and CA has now become an established force in
sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology.[6] It is
particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive
psychology, as well as being a coherent discipline in its own right. Recently CA techniques
of sequential analysis have been employed by phoneticians to explore the fine phonetic
details of speech.
Empirical studies and theoretical formulations by Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs, and several
generations of their students, have described argumentation as a form of managing
conversational disagreement within communication contexts and systems that naturally prefer
agreement.

Mathematical argumentation
Main article: Philosophy of mathematics
The basis of mathematical truth has been the subject of long debate. Frege in particular
sought to demonstrate (see Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, 1884, and
Logicism in Philosophy of mathematics[citation needed]) that arithmetical truths can be derived
222

from purely logical axioms and therefore are, in the end, logical truths. The project was
developed by Russell and Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica. If an argument can be
cast in the form of sentences in Symbolic Logic, then it can be tested by the application of
accepted proof procedures. This has been carried out for Arithmetic using Peano axioms. Be
that as it may, an argument in Mathematics, as in any other discipline, can be considered
valid only if it can be shown that it cannot have true premises and a false conclusion.

Scientific argumentation
Main article: Philosophy of Science
Perhaps the most radical statement of the social grounds of scientific knowledge appears in
Alan G.Gross's The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Gross
holds that science is rhetorical "without remainder",[7] meaning that scientific knowledge
itself cannot be seen as an idealized ground of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is produced
rhetorically, meaning that it has special epistemic authority only insofar as its communal
methods of verification are trustworthy. This thinking represents an almost complete rejection
of the foundationalism on which argumentation was first based.

Interpretive argumentation
Main article: Interpretive discussion
Interpretive argumentation is a dialogical process in which participants explore and/or resolve
interpretations often of a text of any medium containing significant ambiguity in meaning.
Interpretive argumentation is pertinent to the humanities, hermeneutics, literary theory,
linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, semiotics, analytic philosophy and aesthetics. Topics in
conceptual interpretation include aesthetic, judicial, logical and religious interpretation.
Topics in scientific interpretation include scientific modeling.

Legal argumentation
Main articles: Oral argument and Closing argument
Legal arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer, or parties
when representing themselves of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at
the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also advance the argument of each party
in the legal dispute. A closing argument, or summation, is the concluding statement of each
party's counsel reiterating the important arguments for the trier of fact, often the jury, in a
court case. A closing argument occurs after the presentation of evidence.

Political argumentation
Main articles: Political argument and Criticism of democracy
Political arguments are used by academics, media pundits, candidates for political office and
government officials. Political arguments are also used by citizens in ordinary interactions to
comment about and understand political events.[8] The rationality of the public is a major
question in this line of research. Political scientist Samuel L. Popkin coined the expression
"low information voters" to describe most voters who know very little about politics or the
world in general.
223

In practice, a "low information voter" may not be aware of legislation that their representative
has sponsored in Congress. A low-information voter may base their ballot box decision on a
media sound-bite, or a flier received in the mail. It is possible for a media sound-bite or
campaign flier to present a political position for the incumbent candidate that completely
contradicts the legislative action taken in the Capitol on behalf of the constituents. It may
only take a small percentage of the overall voting group who base their decision on the
inaccurate information, a voter block of 10 to 12%, to swing an overall election result. When
this happens, the constituency at large may have been duped or fooled. Nevertheless, the
election result is legal and confirmed. Savvy Political consultants will take advantage of low-
information voters and sway their votes with disinformation because it can be easier and
sufficiently effective. Fact checkers have come about in recent years to help counter the
effects of such campaign tactics.

Psychological aspects
Psychology has long studied the non-logical aspects of argumentation. For example, studies
have shown that simple repetition of an idea is often a more effective method of
argumentation than appeals to reason. Propaganda often utilizes repetition.[9] Nazi rhetoric
has been studied extensively as, inter alia, a repetition campaign.
Empirical studies of communicator credibility and attractiveness, sometimes labeled
charisma, have also been tied closely to empirically-occurring arguments. Such studies bring
argumentation within the ambit of persuasion theory and practice.
Some psychologists such as William J. McGuire believe that the syllogism is the basic unit of
human reasoning. They have produced a large body of empirical work around McGuire's
famous title "A Syllogistic Analysis of Cognitive Relationships". A central line of this way of
thinking is that logic is contaminated by psychological variables such as "wishful thinking",
in which subjects confound the likelihood of predictions with the desirability of the
predictions. People hear what they want to hear and see what they expect to see. If planners
want something to happen they see it as likely to happen. If they hope something will not
happen, they see it as unlikely to happen. Thus smokers think that they personally will avoid
cancer, promiscuous people practice unsafe sex, and teenagers drive recklessly.

Theories

Argument fields
Stephen E. Toulmin and Charles Arthur Willard have championed the idea of argument
fields, the former drawing upon Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language games,
(Sprachspiel) the latter drawing from communication and argumentation theory, sociology,
political science, and social epistemology. For Toulmin, the term "field" designates
discourses within which arguments and factual claims are grounded.[10] For Willard, the term
"field" is interchangeable with "community", "audience", or "readership".[11] Along similar
lines, G. Thomas Goodnight has studied "spheres" of argument and sparked a large literature
created by younger scholars responding to or using his ideas.[12] The general tenor of these
field theories is that the premises of arguments take their meaning from social
communities.[13]
224

Field studies might focus on social movements, issue-centered publics (for instance, pro-life
versus pro-choice in the abortion dispute), small activist groups, corporate public relations
campaigns and issue management, scientific communities and disputes, political campaigns,
and intellectual traditions.[14] In the manner of a sociologist, ethnographer, anthropologist,
participant-observer, and journalist, the field theorist gathers and reports on real-world human
discourses, gathering case studies that might eventually be combined to produce high-order
explanations of argumentation processes. This is not a quest for some master language or
master theory covering all specifics of human activity. Field theorists are agnostic about the
possibility of a single grand theory and skeptical about the usefulness of such a theory. Theirs
is a more modest quest for "mid-range" theories that might permit generalizations about
families of discourses.

Stephen E. Toulmin's contributions

By far, the most influential theorist has been Stephen Toulmin, the Cambridge educated
philosopher and student of Wittgenstein.[15] What follows below is a sketch of his ideas.

An alternative to absolutism and relativism

Toulmin has argued that absolutism (represented by theoretical or analytic arguments) has
limited practical value. Absolutism is derived from Plato's idealized formal logic, which
advocates universal truth; thus absolutists believe that moral issues can be resolved by
adhering to a standard set of moral principles, regardless of context. By contrast, Toulmin
asserts that many of these so-called standard principles are irrelevant to real situations
encountered by human beings in daily life.
To describe his vision of daily life, Toulmin introduced the concept of argument fields; in
The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin states that some aspects of arguments vary from field
to field, and are hence called "field-dependent", while other aspects of argument are the same
throughout all fields, and are hence called "field-invariant". The flaw of absolutism, Toulmin
believes, lies in its unawareness of the field-dependent aspect of argument; absolutism
assumes that all aspects of argument are field invariant.
Toulmin's theories resolve to avoid the defects of absolutism without resorting to relativism:
relativism, Toulmin asserted, provides no basis for distinguishing between a moral or
immoral argument. In Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin suggests that anthropologists
have been tempted to side with relativists because they have noticed the influence of cultural
variations on rational arguments; in other words, the anthropologist or relativist
overemphasizes the importance of the "field-dependent" aspect of arguments, and becomes
unaware of the "field-invariant" elements. In an attempt to provide solutions to the problems
of absolutism and relativism, Toulmin attempts throughout his work to develop standards that
are neither absolutist nor relativist for assessing the worth of ideas.
Toulmin believes that a good argument can succeed in providing good justification to a
claim, which will stand up to criticism and earn a favourable verdict.

Components of argument
225

In The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin proposed a layout containing six interrelated
components for analyzing arguments:
1. Claim: Conclusions whose merit must be established. For example, if a person tries to
convince a listener that he is a British citizen, the claim would be "I am a British
citizen." (1)
2. Data: The facts we appeal to as a foundation for the claim. For example, the person
introduced in 1 can support his claim with the supporting data "I was born in
Bermuda." (2)
3. Warrant: The statement authorizing our movement from the data to the claim. In order
to move from the data established in 2, "I was born in Bermuda," to the claim in 1, "I
am a British citizen," the person must supply a warrant to bridge the gap between 1 &
2 with the statement "A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen." (3)
4. Backing: Credentials designed to certify the statement expressed in the warrant;
backing must be introduced when the warrant itself is not convincing enough to the
readers or the listeners. For example, if the listener does not deem the warrant in 3 as
credible, the speaker will supply the legal provisions as backing statement to show
that it is true that "A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British Citizen."
5. Rebuttal: Statements recognizing the restrictions to which the claim may legitimately
be applied. The rebuttal is exemplified as follows, "A man born in Bermuda will
legally be a British citizen, unless he has betrayed Britain and has become a spy of
another country."
6. Qualifier: Words or phrases expressing the speaker's degree of force or certainty
concerning the claim. Such words or phrases include "possible," "probably,"
"impossible," "certainly," "presumably," "as far as the evidence goes," or
"necessarily." The claim "I am definitely a British citizen" has a greater degree of
force than the claim "I am a British citizen, presumably."
The first three elements "claim", "data", and "warrant" are considered as the essential
components of practical arguments, while the second triad "qualifier", "backing", and
"rebuttal" may not be needed in some arguments.
When first proposed, this layout of argumentation is based on legal arguments and intended
to be used to analyze the rationality of arguments typically found in the courtroom; in fact,
Toulmin did not realize that this layout would be applicable to the field of rhetoric and
communication until his works were introduced to rhetoricians by Wayne Brockriede and
Douglas Ehninger. Only after he published Introduction to Reasoning (1979) were the
rhetorical applications of this layout mentioned in his works.

The evolution of knowledge

Toulmin's Human Understanding (1972) asserts that conceptual change is evolutionary. This
book attacks Thomas Kuhn's explanation of conceptual change in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Kuhn held that conceptual change is a revolutionary (as opposed to an
evolutionary) process in which mutually exclusive paradigms compete to replace one another.
Toulmin criticizes the relativist elements in Kuhn's thesis, as he points out that the mutually
exclusive paradigms provide no ground for comparison; in other words, Kuhn's thesis has
226

made the relativists' error of overemphasizing the "field variant" while ignoring the "field
invariant", or commonality shared by all argumentation or scientific paradigms.
Toulmin proposes an evolutionary model of conceptual change comparable to Darwin's
model of biological evolution. On this reasoning, conceptual change involves innovation and
selection. Innovation accounts for the appearance of conceptual variations, while selection
accounts for the survival and perpetuation of the soundest conceptions. Innovation occurs
when the professionals of a particular discipline come to view things differently from their
predecessors; selection subjects the innovative concepts to a process of debate and inquiry in
what Toulmin considers as a "forum of competitions". The soundest concepts will survive the
forum of competition as replacements or revisions of the traditional conceptions.
From the absolutists' point of view, concepts are either valid or invalid regardless of contexts;
from a relativists' perspective, one concept is neither better nor worse than a rival concept
from a different cultural context. From Toulmin's perspective, the evaluation depends on a
process of comparison, which determines whether or not one concept will provide
improvement to our explanatory power more so than its rival concepts.

Rejection of certainty
In Cosmopolis (1990), Toulmin traces the quest for certainty back to Descartes and Hobbes,
and lauds Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Rorty for abandoning that tradition.

Pragma-dialectics
Main article: Pragma-dialectics
Scholars at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands have pioneered a rigorous
modern version of dialectic under the name pragma-dialectics. The intuitive idea is to
formulate clearcut rules that, if followed, will yield rational discussion and sound
conclusions. Frans H. van Eemeren, the late Rob Grootendorst, and many of their students
have produced a large body of work expounding this idea.
The dialectical conception of reasonableness is given by ten rules for critical discussion, all
being instrumental for achieving a resolution of the difference of opinion (from Van
Eemeren, Grootendorst, & Snoeck Henkemans, 2002, p. 182-183). The theory postulates this
as an ideal model, and not something one expects to find as an empirical fact. The model can
however serve as an important heuristic and critical tool for testing how reality approximates
this ideal and point to where discourse goes wrong, that is, when the rules are violated. Any
such violation will constitute a fallacy. Albeit not primarily focused on fallacies, pragma-
dialectics provides a systematic approach to deal with them in a coherent way.

Walton's logical argumentation method

Doug Walton developed a distinctive philosophical theory of logical argumentation built
around a set of practical methods to help a user identify, analyze and evaluate arguments in
everyday conversational discourse and in more structured areas such as debate, law and
scientific fields.[16] There are four main components: argumentation schemes,[17] dialogue
structures, argument mapping tools, and formal argumentation systems. The method uses the
notion of commitment in dialogue as the fundamental tool for the analysis and evaluation of
227

argumentation rather than the notion of belief.[18] Commitments are statements that the agent
has expressed or formulated, and has pledged to carry out, or has publicly asserted.
According to the commitment model, agents interact with each other in a dialogue in which
each takes its turn to contribute speech acts. The dialogue framework uses critical questioning
as a way of testing plausible explanations and finding weak points in an argument that raise
doubt concerning the acceptability of the argument.
Walton's logical argumentation model takes a different view of proof and justification from
that taken in the dominant epistemology in analytical philosophy, which is based on a true
belief framework.[citation needed] On the logical argumentation approach, knowledge is seen as
form of belief commitment firmly fixed by an argumentation procedure that tests the
evidence on both sides, and use standards of proof to determine whether a proposition
qualifies as knowledge. On this evidence-based approach, scientific knowledge must be seen
as defeasible.

Artificial intelligence
See also: Argument mapping and Argumentation framework
Efforts have been made within the field of artificial intelligence to perform and analyze the
act of argumentation with computers. Argumentation has been used to provide a proof-
theoretic semantics for non-monotonic logic, starting with the influential work of Dung
(1995). Computational argumentation systems have found particular application in domains
where formal logic and classical decision theory are unable to capture the richness of
reasoning, domains such as law and medicine. In Elements of Argumentation, Philippe
Besnard and Anthony Hunter introduce techniques for formalizing deductive argumentation
in artificial intelligence, emphasizing emerging formalizations for practical argumentation.[19]
Within Computer Science, the ArgMAS workshop series (Argumentation in Multi-Agent
Systems), the CMNA workshop series,[20] and now the COMMA Conference,[21] are regular
annual events attracting participants from every continent. The journal Argument &
Computation[22] is dedicated to exploring the intersection between argumentation and
computer science.

See also

 Psychology portal

 A fortiori argument
 Argument (logic)
 Argumentation ethics
 Critical thinking
 Criticism
 Defeasible reasoning
 Dialectic
228

 Discourse ethics
 Essentially contested concepts
 Forensics
 Legal theory
 Logical argument
 Logic of Argumentation
 Negotiation theory
 Pars destruens/pars construens
 Public Sphere
 Rationality
 Rhetoric
 Social engineering (political science)
 Social psychology (psychology)
 Sophistry
 Source criticism
 Straight and Crooked Thinking (book)

http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~prakk101/research/argtheory.html
Argumentation theory is an interdiscipliniray field which attracts attention from e.g.
philosophers, logicians, computer scientists, linguists, legal scholars and speech
communication theorists. Most of the research in this field is informal. It is one of the sources
of inspiration for my own work and occasionally I publish in this field. I wrote a paper for
ISSA-02 on deductivism and a paper for the Argumentation journal on the relevance of
Toulmin's The Uses of Argument for AI & Law, titled AI & Law, logic and argument
schemes. I also published a chapter on argument schemes in the Festschrift for Douglas
Walton. At ISSA-2010 I gave a talk with the best title I ever used: argumentation without
arguments :-) (later published in the Argumentation Journal). In a paper for Studies in Logic I
sketch my general view on the relation between formal and informal approaches to
argumentation.

Organisations, Resources
 Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking
 International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA)
 Criticial Thinking on the Web (maintained by Tim van Gelder's Austhink company)
 Steven Patterson's ArgEvents Calendar
229

 Kevin Korb's Bayesian Watch argumentation blog.

http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/IS/archive/henry/schemes10.pdf
On the nature of argument schemes
Henry Prakken
Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University
&
Faculty of Law, University of Groningen
July 3, 2010
1 Introduction
Since the 1980s, computer science, especially artificial intelligence (AI) has developed
formal models of many aspects of argumentation that since the work of Toulmin and
Perelman were thought of as belonging to informal logic. Doug Walton is one of the
argumentation theorists who has recognised the relevance of this body of work for argu-
mentation theory. One of the concepts on which recent work in AI has shed more light
is that of argument schemes (sometimes also called ‘argumentation schemes’),
which
features prominently in Walton’s work. A study of argument schemes from the perspec-
tive of AI is therefore very appropriate for this volume in honour of his work. More
precisely, the aim of this paper is to use insights from AI to propose an understanding
of the nature of argument schemes as a means to evaluate arguments, and to compare
this understanding with Walton’s own account of argument schemes.
Walton regards argument schemes as essentially dialogical devices, determining di-
alectical obligations and burdens of proof. Using this account, a procedure for evaluating
arguments should take the form of a set of dialogue rules. I shall instead argue that
argument schemes are essentially logical constructs, so that a procedure for evaluating
arguments primarily takes the form of a logic. More specifically, I shall argue that most
argument schemes are defeasible inference rules and that their critical questions
are
pointers to counterarguments, so that the logic governing the use of argument schemes
should be a logic for nonmonotonic, or defeasible reasoning. The dialogical role of argu-
ment schemes can then be modelled by embedding such a logic in a system for dialogue,
so that in the end argument evaluation with argument schemes is a
combination…
http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/IS/archive/henry/china11.pdf
An overview of formal models of argumentation
and their application in philosophy
Henry Prakken
Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht U
niversity
&
Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
April 4, 2011
Abstract
Argumentation is the process of supporting claims with grounds and defen
ding
them against attack. In the last decades argumentation has become an imp
ortant
230

topic in philosophy and artificial intelligence. In philosophy, the criticisms of T

oul-
min and Perelman of formal logic in the 1950s and 1960s gave rise to the fie
ld of
informal logic, which studies informal models of reasoning and argume
ntation.
In artificial intelligence, formal models of argumentation have been prop
osed as
models of commonsense reasoning and multi-agent conflict resolution.
This paper
discusses how the formal models resulting from this research can clarif
y philo-
sophical problems and issues, including those raised in the field of inform
al logic.
An important point will be that while formal logic in the days of Toulmin and
Perelman only focused on mathematical reasoning, non-mathematical f
orms of
reasoning can still be formalised.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050517075615/http://www.tcw.utwente.nl:80/theorieenoverzi
cht/Levels%20of%20theories/micro/Argumentation%20Theory.doc/
History and Orientation
Argumentation exists from way before the 19th century, where the Aristotle’s logical theory is
found first. This indicates that argumentation was an important factor already in society.
Until the 1950s, the approach of argumentation was based on rhetoric and logic. In the United
States debating and argumentation became an important subject on universities and colleges.
Textbooks appeared on ‘Principles of Argumentation’ (Pierce, 1κλ5). In the 1λ60s and 1970s
Perelman and Toulmin were the most influential writers on argumentation. Perelman tried to
find a description of techniques of argumentation used by people to obtain the approval of
others for their opinions. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca called this ‘new rhetoric’. Toulmin,
the other influential writer developed his theory (starting in 1λ50’s) in order to explain how
argumentation occurs in the natural process of an everyday argument. He called his theory
‘the uses of argument’.
Argumentation theory cannot be seen as the theory for argumentation. Various authors have
used the argumentation theory all in a slightly different way; it is not to say which version is
the most developed.

Core Assumptions and Statements

‘Argumentation is a verbal and social activity of reason aimed at increasing (or decreasing)
the acceptability of a controversial standpoint for the listener or reader, by putting forward a
constellation of propositions intended to justify (or refute) the standpoint before a rational
judge’ (Van Eemeren et al, 1996). Argumentation is a verbal activity, most often in an
ordinary language. In argumentation people use words and sentences to argue, to state or to
deny etc. Nonverbal communication is accompanied with verbal communication in
argumentation and can play an important role. Furthermore, argumentation is a social
activity, which in principle is directed to other people. Argumentation is also an activity of
reason, when people put forward their arguments in argumentation they place their
considerations within the realm of reason. Argumentation is always related to a standpoint.
231

An opinion itself is not enough; arguments are needed when people differ on a standpoint.
Finally, the goal of argumentation is to justify one’s standpoint or to refute someone else’s.
The version of Van Eemeren and Grootendorst of the argumentation theory, the pragma-
dialectical theory, is currently most popular. They began to study argumentation as a means
of resolving differences of opinion. Argumentation starts with four principles. 1)
Externalization: Argumentation needs a standpoint and an opposition to the standpoint.
Therefore, argumentation research concentrates on the externalizable commitments rather
than the psychological elements of people. 2) Socialization: arguments are seen as an
expression of people’s processes. Crucial is to validate the arguer’s position by arguments in
a certain way. Two people try to obtain an agreement in argumentation; therefore
argumentation is part of a social context rather than an individual context. 3)
Functionalization: Argumentation has the general function of managing the resolution of
disagreement. Studying of argumentation should concentrate on the function of
argumentation in the verbal management of disagreement. 4) Dialectification: Argumentation
is appropriate only when you are able to use arguments that are able to help you arguing
against another person. For resolving differences a theory on argumentation should have a set
of standards. The term dialectical procedure is mentioned as a depending element on efficient
arguing on solving differences.
Van Eemeren and Grootendorst identify various stages of argumentative dialogue. 1)
Confrontation: Presentation of the problem, such as a debate question or a political
disagreement. 2) Opening: Agreement on rules, such as for example, how evidence is to be
presented, which sources of facts are to be used, how to handle divergent interpretations,
determination of closing conditions. 3) Argumentation: Application of logical principles
according to the agreed-upon rules. 4) Concluding: When closing conditions are met. These
could be for example, a time limitation or the determination of an arbiter. Note that these
stages are indispensable.

Argumentation analysis of persuasive messages

Schellens uses a typology which differentiates between restricted and unrestricted
argumentation schemes. Restricted schemes are limited to a certain conclusion. The group
restricted argumentation schemes can be divided into three different parts 1) Regularity-based
argumentation (Schellens, 1985: 77-102): used in support of a descriptive statement about the
present, the past or the future. Argumentation is given for a proposition of a factual or
descriptive nature on the basis of a regularly recurring empirical link. 2) Rule-based
argumentation (Schellens, 1985: 115-151; see also Gottlieb 1968 on rule-guided reasoning:
used in support of a normative statement about the value of a situation or process. Arguments
are given for a statement of a normative nature 3) Pragmatic argumentation: leading to a
statement about the desirability of intended behavior. A position on the desirability of a given
action, behavior or measure is advocated on the basis of its advantages and/or disadvantages.
(Schellens, 1985: 153-178; see also Walton 1996: 75-77).
In addition to these restricted argumentation schemes, Schellens also distinguishes three
unrestricted forms; argumentation from authority, argumentation from example and
argumentation from analogy. These schemas are not limited to a conclusion of a type, but
have a wider application.

Conceptual Model
232

Toulmin uses a model of argumentation for his ‘uses for argument’. See: Toulmin, S. The
Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

Favorite Methods
Observation, content/argument analysis.

Scope and Application

Argumentation theory is an interdisciplinary field which attracts attention from philosophers,
logicians, linguists, legal scholars, speech communication theorists, etc. The theory is
grounded in conversational, interpersonal communication, but also applies to group
communication and written communication. De Jong & Schellens (2004) illustrate the
possibilities of argumentation analysis in the context of public information.

Example
To be added.

References
Key publications
Toulmin, S. (1959). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Eemeren & Grootendorst (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. The pragma-
dialected approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eemeren, F.H. van, Grootendorst, R. & Snoeck Henkemans, F. et al (1996). Fundamentels of
Argumentation Theory. A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary
Developments. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Eemeren, F.H. van, R.Grootendorst, S.Jackson, & S.Jacobs. 1993. Reconstructing
Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P.
Gross, Alan G. 1990. The Rhetoric of Science. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy.
Vol.1. Boston: Beacon.
Williams, David Cratis, and Michael David Hazen, eds. 1990. Argumentation Theory and the
Rhetoric of Assent. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P.
Alexy, R. (1989). A theory of legal argumentation: The theory of rational discourse as theory
of legal justification (R. Adler & N. MacCormick, Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
(Original German edition copyright 1978)
Aarnio, A., Alexy, R. & Peczenik, A. (1981). The foundation of legal reasoning.
Rechtstheorie 21,, 133-158, 257-279, 423-448.
Eemeren, F.H. van, R. Grootendorst (1992). Argumentation, communication, and fallacies. A
pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.
233

Feteris, E.T. (1990). 'Conditions and rules for rational discussion in a legal process: A
pragma-dialectical perspective'. Argumentation and Advocacy. Journal of the American
Forensic Association. Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 108-117.
Feteris, E.T. (1993). 'Rationality in legal discussions: A pragma-dialectical perspective'.
Informal Logic, Vol. XV, No. 3, p. 179-188.
Kloosterhuis, H. (1994). 'Analysing analogy argumentation in judicial decisions'. In: F.H. van
Eemeren and R. Grootendorst (eds.), Studies in pragma-dialectics. Amsterdam: Sic Sat, p.
238-246.
Peczenik, A. (1983). The basis of legal justification. Lund.
Schellens, P.J. (1985). Redelijke argumenten. Een onderzoek naar normen voor kritische
lezers. (Reasonable arguments. A study in criteria for critical reading.) Ph.D. Dissertation.
Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht. Dordrecht: Foris.
Gottlieb, G. (1968). The logic of choice. An investigation of the concepts of rule and
rationality. London: Allen und Unwin.
Perelman, Ch & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric. A treatise on argumentation.
Notre Dame/ London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Hastings, A.C. (1962). A reformulation of the modes of reasoning in argumentation. Ph.D.
Dissertation. Northwestern University, Evanston, III.
Freeley, A.J. (1976). Argumentation and debate. Rational decision making. (4th edition)
Belmont, Calif.:Wadsworth.
Eemeren, F.H. & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, communication, and fallacies. A
pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garssen, B. (2001). Argument Schemes. In F.H. van Eemeren (Ed.) Crucial concepts in
argumentation theory. (pp. 81-99). Amsterdam University Press.
See also Language Theories and Linguistics

http://www.wheaton.edu/Academics/Services/Writing-Center/Writing-Resources/Logic-and-
Argumentation
his page explores the basics of logic and argumentation. Please also view the page on the
different types of evidence used in arguments.
Argumentation is the staple of most, if not all, academic writing as well as everyday
discussions, debates, and RDTs.* Given the importance of argumentation, a writer should test
and make certain that the point being argued is solid and well-founded rather than an
unsupported statement, easily torn to shreds by a professor or colleague.
Ideally, a decent argument will be both valid and sound.
A valid argument is one where if all the premises are true, so that the conclusion necessarily
follows. A non-valid argument is one where even if the premises are true, the conclusion does
234

not necessarily follow. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises, whereas an
unsound argument has at least one false premise.

Example of a valid, sound argument:

All fish have gills. All goldfish are fish. All goldfish have gills.

Example of a valid, unsound argument:

All Facebook users receive lower than average grades in their classes. All single students are
Facebook users. All single students get lower than average grades.

Example of a non-valid argument:

If Dr. Litfin were Catholic, he would pray in chapel. Dr. Litfin does pray in chapel.
Therefore, Dr. Litfin is Catholic.
The second argument is clearly not the case even though the line of argument makes logical
sense. As for the third, the President of Wheaton College could have a great number of
motivations for praying in chapel, including the one put forth in the non-valid argument, but
this does not make him Catholic. Invalidity and unsoundness are often difficult to spot at first
glance.

Logical Fallacies
Logical fallacies are logical mistakes made frequently and systematically enough to be
formalized and given an official name. In order to make a sound, coherent argument, avoid
them. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of commonly occurring fallacies:
Begging the Question: the conclusion assumes or restates what is explicitly stated in the
premise.
We know God exists because the Bible says he does, and we know the Bible is true because
God wrote it.
Appeal to Authority: citing the opinion of a person, usually a celebrity, who has no special
expertise on the subject as a way of proving a point.
Billy Graham likes to use Macs more than PCs, so Macs must be the better choice.
Appeal to the Populace: mentioning popular opinion as a way of convincing a reader instead
of actually arguing.
Billions of people over the last two thousand years have believed in Christ. This shows us the
power and truth of the Gospel.
Vagueness: using terms unclearly in a sentence or argument.
“The OSU research failed to find any significant difference between people who survive a
heart attack and those who die from one” (Columbus Dispatch).
Equivocation: using a term in multiple ways in the same context.
I have faith that your faith can withstand questioning.
235

Appeal to Ignorance: argues that, since a certain statement or point has not been shown to
be false, it must be true—or vice versa.
No one has proven God does not exist; therefore, he does.” or “no one has proved God does
exist; therefore, he does not.
Composition and Division: assuming that either the characteristics of one part define the
whole or that a characteristic of the whole defines each individual part.
A candle isn’t very bright, so a trillion candles wouldn’t be very bright.
Our football team is the best in Illinois, so our quarterback must also be the best in Illinois.
False Dilemma: reducing the options to two extremes.
Either you’ll willingly go to evening worship on Sunday or you aren’t a Christian.
Suppressed Evidence: making a conclusion without being aware of important background
information.
You were gone all Friday night and came back in the morning with a headache. You must
have been out drinking.
Slippery Slope: claiming that one event will inevitably lead to a disastrous chain of
consequences.
If you skip class today, you’ll get used to skipping, and then never go to class, and then flunk
out of school, fail to get a job, live on the street, and get killed by a hobo in downtown
Chicago.
Conjunction: assuming that, since events A and B frequently occur together, they are the
cause of one another.
Every time I eat chicken for lunch I do really well in English class.
Straw Man: intentional or unintentional misrepresentation of an opponent’s argument to
make it an easier target to defeat.
All evolutionists believe that ooze popped up out of the ground somewhere, got zapped by
something and turned into a fish, then it stepped on land, grew legs and became a person.
Red Herring: diverting attention from the real point of an argument to something unrelated.
It’s true that the volcano would kill us all if it erupted, but it would also increase property
value for the surviving island estates.
his page explores the types of evidence used in argumentation. See also the page on logic and
argumentation.
In most papers, the writer’s aim is to find a topic and make a claim about it. This claim is
better known as the writer's argument. With it, the writer attempts to win the reader over to
his/her view of the topic, or, at the very least, to show the reader a new perspective about the
subject discussed. If the writer is going to make some headway with an argument, however,
he/she must be able to give evidence to support the claims the paper will make. There are
236

three main categories of evidence that are essential to gain the audience's confidence in the
writer's assertions. These categories are Fact, Judgment, and Testimony.

Facts
Facts are among the best tools to involve the reader in the argument. Since facts are
indisputable, the writer automatically wins the reader’s mutual agreement by utilizing them.
A statement declaring, "On January 28, 1986, the shuttle Challenger exploded upon lift-off,"
must be accepted by the reader, since it is a historical certainty. Facts are used primarily to
get the reader to stand on the writer's plane of reasoning. For instance, if a writer wanted to
argue that smoking is a detriment to your health, he/she would begin by citing factual
information about the large number of people who die every year from smoke-related
diseases. This would then force the reader to agree with the writer on at least one point.

Judgement
Facts, however, cannot carry the entire argument. It is necessary for the writer to utilize
Judgments as well. These are assumptions that the writer makes about his/her subject after
carefully considering the facts. For example, a writer could start by presenting certain facts
about the knowledge that scientists had regarding the condition of the Challenger prior to
takeoff. From these facts, the writer concludes that the disaster could have been avoided if a
few scientists been willing to speak up about some unsettling findings. This would be a
judgment on the writer's part. There is nothing in the history books or newspapers that can
prove this assumption to be true. The success or failure of the entire argument rests on
whether or not the writer can utilize adequate reasoning in coming to the right judgments.

Testimony
The final type of evidence used in writing a convincing argument is Testimony. There are
two types of testimony: 1) the account of an eyewitness, and 2) the judgment of an expert
who has had the chance to examine and interpret the facts. Both of these lend validity to an
argument. The eyewitness can supply important facts for the writer to use, and the expert can
provide valuable judgments in order to give strength to the argument. For instance, in the
case of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the writer might use the testimony of one of the
personnel who was present at NASA meetings before the launch. The writer might also use
an astrophysicist’s opinion about whether or not evidence existed before takeoff that the
Shuttle was not safe to launch.
However, the writer must exercise caution when employing these two types of testimony in
his or her paper. Eyewitness accounts cannot always be reliable; no one person has an
objective view of an event. Also, an expert’s opinion is not beyond dispute; another expert in
the same field of study may find faulty reasoning in the first expert’s judgment. Also, the
writer must be careful not to use an expert in one field to make a judgment about a subject in
another. Imagine the absurdity of computer genius Bill Gates making an official statement on
archeology.

Internet Resources
>> Dartmouth Logic and Argumentation Guide

Exercises
237

Identify each of the following passages as Fact, Judgment, Eyewitness Testimony, or Expert
Testimony.
1. "At the time I didn't know that Harvey was epileptic. His seizure came as a complete shock
to me, as it did to the other guests at the house. When he fell on the ground, frothing at the
mouth, we kind of panicked, I guess. We should have immediately called 911 and have
gotten the medics over here right away, but instead we tried to handle the problem on our
own. Larry got behind his head and tried to hold it steady, since it was violently thrashing
from side to side. I, meanwhile, got close to Harvey's legs in order to stop them from kicking
all around. Little did we know that our efforts would not only make matters worse, they
would also lead to Harvey's untimely death."
David Stemple, personal interview, 12 March 1947.
________________________________
2. "Harold McConnel, who has been working with and designing railroad tracks for the past
three decades, after examining the scene of the accident at Geneva train station, came to the
conclusion that someone had tampered with the track and had bent it out of shape. This, in
turn, led to the collision of the two passenger trains on Wednesday."
Staton, Greg H. "Tragedy at the Train Station." Chicago Tribune, 22 April 1989: A5.
________________________________
3. "Howard's Department Stores declared bankruptcy yesterday after assessing the loss they
made last year. The company had just opened five new outlets in the San Diego area, when it
learned that its customer turnout in the Los Angeles and San Francisco area dropped to a
record low. In its vain attempt to support the new outlets in the south while increasing its
advertisement in the north, the company floundered."
Hodges, Carol S. "Ho-boy, Howard!" Los Angeles Times, 4 July 1973: B7.
________________________________
4. "I think that from the evidence presented to us—the results of the doctor's tests, the
testimony of people who have used the drug, and the opinion of expert pharmacists—we can
carefully conclude that the affects of marijuana smoking are much more negative than
positive. This will come as a shock to thousands of groups who hold to the contrary."
James, Fred T. "The Myth About Marijuana." Time Magazine, 12 October 1976: 53.
________________________________
5. "The scene was entirely out of control. I was standing only ten feet away from the
President, who was walking through the crowds on the sidewalk of Jefferson Ave., when the
incident occurred. Before I knew what was happening, a tall man, wearing a ski mask and a
dark leather jacket, ran up beside the President, took out what seemed to be an Uzi, and fired
three rounds into his skull. Immediately all hell broke loose; people were scurrying
everywhere, looking for shelter. The President's bodyguards took off after the assassin, and,
since he would not stop at their orders, killed him as well."
Broberg, Greg. Interview with Tom Yarrow, head of the FBI. New York Times, 14 March
2005: A2.
238

Copyright © 2009 Wheaton College Writing Center

http://www.argumentum.ch/

Argumentum is a project on Argumentation Theory, which provides customized

autonomous blended eLearning Courses for different educational purposes and targets (Swiss
universities, postgraduate education and continuing education).

Each Course within the project is focused on an application of Argumentation Theory in a

specific context: financial communication, pedagogical interaction, intercultural
communication, business contexts, institutional communication, and others.

The pedagogical objectives of the project concern mainly students' acquisition of skills of
analysis and evaluation – on the one hand – and of production – on the other hand –
argumentative interventions.
http://ebooks.unibuc.ro/lls/MarianaTutescu-Argumentation/sommaire.htm

Préliminaires

I.L’argumentation entre rhétorique, philosophie, logique naturelle, pragmatique et théorie du

discours

1. Bref historique

2. L’argumentation au XXe siècle

A. Le moment Ch. PERELMAN et L. OLBRECHTS-TYTECA

B. Le modèle des logiciens: L. APOSTEL, G.H. von WRIGHT, J.-Bl. GRIZE, G. VIGNAUX

C. La rhétorique argumentative américaine. St. E. TOULMIN et le modèle réductionniste de

l’enthymème

D. Le modèle de l’argumentativité radicale de la langue: O. DUCROT et J.-Cl.

ANSCOMBRE.
Informativité et argumentativité, les deux composants du sens de l’énoncé

E. L’École d’Amsterdam: Frans H. van EEMEREN et Rob GROOTENDORST

II. L’argumentation, noyau dur de la structure et du fonctionnement du discours. L’objet du

présent livre

Première partie
L’argumentème, trait inhérent du discours

Chapitre Premier. Le concept de DISCOURS

Chapitre II. Les opérations discursives

239

1. La schématisation

2. La justification

3. L’organisation et la cohérence

Chapitre III. Le concept de POLYPHONIE

Chapitre IV. Argumentation et démonstration

1. Les cinq traits de l’argumentation selon O. REBOUL

2. Argumentation, raisonnement non-contraignant, subjectivité et interaction

3. Argumentation, thèse et situation

4. Argumentation, vraisemblance et opinions

5. Argumentation et contradiction

6. Argumentation, implicite et implications

7. Argumentation et langue naturelle

Chapitre V. Argument / Non argument / Contre-argument. La relation argumentative

Chapitre VI.
Force et orientation argumentatives.L’acte d’argumenter.
Classe argumentative, gradualité et l’échelle argumentative. Principes discursif

Chapitre VII. Les deux principes argumentatifs fondamentaux: le principe de force

argumentative (réalisé par MÊME) et le principe de contradiction argumentative (réalisé par
MAIS)

Chapitre VIII. Les trois composants du dispositif argumentatif: le TOPIQUE, le LOGIQUE,

l’ENCYCLOPÉDIQUE

Chapitre IX. Pour une taxinomie des arguments

I. Types d’arguments compte tenu des paralogismes ou sophismes traditionnels

(Approche pragma-dialectique)

II. La taxinomie de Ch. PERELMAN et de L. OLBRECHTS-TYT ECA

III. Vers d’autres classifications ?

Chapitre X. Stratégies argumentatives

I. La Coopération
240

II. L’Interrogation

III. La Négation Polémique

IV. La Réfutation

V. La Métaphore

VI. Le Paradoxe

Chapitre XI. Opérateurs et connecteurs argumentatifs

1. Mais

2. Même

3. D’ailleurs

4. Or

5. Sinon

6. Au moins

7. Tu sais

8. Tu vois, vois-tu, voyez-vous

λ. Attendez ! (Et) ce n’est pas tout !

Deuxième partie
Le discours argumentatif, type spécial de discours

Chapitre Premier.Types de discours

1. Le récit

2. La description

3. L’explication

4. L’argumentation

5. L’injonction

6. La prédiction

7. La conversation et le dialogue
241

8. Le discours figuratif

9. Y a-t-il de texte informatif?

Chapitre II.L’argumentatif, discours prototypique ou « vivier » de tous les tyes textuels

Chapitre III. Les traits caractéristiques du discours argumentatif

Chapitre IV. La structure du discours argumentatif: la composante explicative et la
composante séductrice

Chapitre V. Le discours polémique, aspect outrancier de l’argumentation

Chapitre VI. La non-contradiction argumentative, loi fondamentale du discours

Conclusions

Bibliographie
https://www.mesacc.edu/~paoih30491/ArgumentDefine.html
Creating an Argument Outline
Although there is no set model of organization for argumentative essays, there are some
common patterns that writers might use or that writers might want to combine/customize in
an effective way.
For more information on how to create an outline, click here to read Developing an Outline
from the Purdue University On-line Writing Lab.
Below are 3 different patterns that you can consider. Also, beneath these are 3 additional
outlines that you can print and fill in.

Outline II Outline III

Outline I Introduction/Thesis- Introduction/Thesis-
Introduction/Thesis- Claim Claim
Claim Body Paragraph 1: Body Paragraph 1:
Body Paragraph 1: Refute your opposition's Present your first point and
Present your 1st point and first point. it's supporting evidence,
supporting evidence. which also refutes one of
Body Paragraph 2: your opposition's claims.
Body Paragraph 2: Refute your opposition's
Present your 2nd point second point. Body Paragraph 2:
and it's supporting Present your second point
Body Paragraph 3: and it's supporting
evidence. Present your first point and evidence, which also
Body Paragraph 3: supporting evidence. refutes a second opposition
Refute your opposition's Body Paragraph 4: claim.
first point. Present your second point Body Paragraph 3:
and supporting evidence. Present your third point
242

Body Paragraph 4: Conclusion/Restate and it's supporting

Refute your opposition's Thesis evidence, which also
second point. refutes a third opposition
claim.
Conclusion/Restate
Thesis Conclusion/Restate
Thesis

3 Additional Outlines that You Can Print:

Basic 5-Paragraph (Argument) Essay Outline: This outline also serves for other
essays such as research papers, or the basic 5-paragraph essay. Highlight-and-print
outline to fill in.
Another Argument Essay Outline: This outline asks questions that help you
critically think about your topic. Highlight-and-print outline to fill in.
Argument/Research Paper Outline Guide: This outline can help guide you through
a series of questions. You can highlight-and-print this outline, but it's not a fill-in-
the-blank outline; use it as a guide. Many of my students like to use this outline for
both research papers and argumentative papers.
http://www.csun.edu/~hcpas003/argument.html

The Principles of Argumentation

by Johnie H. Scott, Assistant Professor
Pan African Studies Department - California State University, Northridge

One of the major modes of discourse, argumentation can be applied to virtually all
assignments involving critical reasoning no matter the subject or discipline. As it involves a
higher level of reasoning than associated with descriptive writing, or narrative writing, or
expository writing per se, it is crucial for the successful university-level student to understand
and master the principles, indeed the concepts that drive the critical thinking skills associated
with argumentative writing.
The argumentative essay shares many characteristics with the expository essay. The argument
also consists of an introduction, body and conclusion. It also is built around a major premise
(in this instance, called the Proposition rather than the Thesis Statement). Additionally, there
is a definite pattern of organization used in developing the argument. But before delving
more deeply into this, let us go to the fundamentals.

What Is An "Argument?"
First, one must be familiar with the terminology. In this instance, the term argument refers to
"a reasoned attempt to convince the audience to accept a particular point of view about a
debatable topic." Looking more closely at this definition, we observe that the argument is not
irrational; it does not depend strictly on passion or emotion. Rather, argumentation represents
a "reasoned attempt," that is, an effort based on careful thinking and planning where the
243

appeal is to the mind, the intellect of the audience at hand. Why? The answer to this is that
one wants to "convince the audience to accept a particular point of view."
The key concept here is "to convince the audience," that is, you must make them believe your
position, accept your logic and evidence. Not only do you want them to accept the evidence,
but you want that audience to accept "a particular point of view" -- that point of view, or
perspective, is yours. It is your position, your proposition. Understand that all too often the
audience may be intrigued by the evidence presented, but that intrigue alone is not enough to
convince them of the validity or authority of your position in the matter.
You want the audience to accept your point of view about the topic whether it is gun control,
safe sex, or stiffer prison sentences for criminal offenders no matter what age. Finally, there
must be "a debatable topic" present for a true argument to develop.
What is debatable? One cannot, for example, debate whether or not the Los Angeles Dodgers
won the 1988 World Series or that Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser won the Most Valuable
Player Award for that particular World Series. One cannot debate the fact that the Chicago
Bulls won three consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) championships from
1991-1993 or that Evander Holyfield, while losing his heavyweight champion of the world
title to Riddick Bowe in 1992 was able to regain the title 11 months later in 1993 at Caesar's
Palace in Las Vegas.
Those are indisputable facts. One cannot debate the fact that Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson lost
the 1988 bid for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination to Michael Dukakis. That
also is fact.
One can debate, however, what the concept of "Freedom" means to those Black South
Africans living under apartheid. One can certainly debate whether or not high school
administrators should ban the wearing of baseball caps by students to school as was the case
in the San Fernando Valley during the 1988 school year in an effort to nip gang violence in
the bud as being effective or over-reaching boundaries. Again, the key principle here is that
the topic must be one which has at least two sides -- Pro (those in favor of the proposition
under discussion) and Con (those who are against the Proposition as stated).

The Proposition
Now that we understand what the term argument refers to, we move to the fact that every
argument must have a Proposition -- this is the major premise of the argument and classically
will have at least three (3) major claims on which it is to be built.

Example
The negative image of the African American male can be directly traced to the historic
stereotyping of a racist white mentality evidenced in motion pictures, in literature and in
popular American folklore.
Note here that the major premise is that the negative image of the African American male can
be directly traced to the historic stereotyping of a racist white mentality. But to develop this
proposition, the person must show through evidence (1) negative images in motion pictures,
(2) negative images in American literature, and (3) negative images of African American
males in popular American folklore. What you want to keep in mind, irrespective of the
position you might be advancing, is to formulate a clearly stated proposition. There must be
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no ambiguity about your proposition. You also want to indicate within that proposition how
you intend to support or develop it. And finally, you want to do so within one complete
sentence that carries a subject and a verb.

Evidence in Argumentation
To support your proposition, one must present evidence. There are two (2) types of evidence
used in argumentation : fact(s) and opinion(s). Facts consist of items that can be verified or
proven. There are at least four (4) categories of facts:
1. By Scientific Measurement -- one measures the extent of an earthquake not by how "it
felt," but rather how it measured on the Richter Scale. In track and field, one
commonly finds the Accutron used to time running events in thousandths of a second
and the more accurate metric system used in field events such as the long jump or
javelin throw;
2. By the Way Nature Works -- we know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the
west; that water flows downhill, not uphill; that cloud formations indicate specific
weather patterns;
3. By Observation -- in courts of law, this would consist of eyewitness testimony. In
research, this might consist of a longitudinal study of a phenomenom carried out over
a period of 3-5 years involving several hundreds or thousands of cases looking for and
recording similarities and differences; and
4. By Statistics -- to note that for the year 1988, crimes of violence in the United States
increased 9.2 percent from 1987 -- from 112,598 reported cases to 122,957 (a gain of
10,359 crimes). While this is a hypothetical example, one sees the approach used.
The second type of evidence that can be utilized in an argument is opinion. In this instance,
we are not talking about your personal opinion (the audience already knows your position in
the matter!). Nor are we talking about the way you friend might feel about the issue. That
would surely be inadmissable in a court of law. Rather, the type of opinion we deal with here
is expert opinion -- the opinions expressed by an established authority in the field. If the topic
is child abuse patterns, then one may wish to cite a child psychologist who has published on
the subject or the head of a group like Parents Anonymous that has dedicated itself to
reducing and/or eliminating child abuse. The opinion(s) cited must be credible.
It is in presenting your evidence that you are, in fact, developing the Body of your argument.
Keep in mind that in putting forth your Proposition, you do so in your introductory
paragraphs. In developing that Introduction, you want to get the attention of the audience --
so again, make effective use of the various opening strategies. That evidence, be it fact or
opinion, must be present in each of the three planks you put forth to develop and support your
proposition. You want to make ample use of examples and illustrations along the way,
bringing your proposition to life before the audience, painting word-pictures so that they can
see, hear and feel what you are advancing to them. You want to convince, not merely inform!

Fallacious Reasoning
One area often overlooked by those engaged in argumentation, even the more practised,
consists of fallacies. A fallacy is best described as illogical reasoning. There are many
reasons why this can occur, but in this section we will single out some of the more important
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fallacies in hopes that you will memorize what they are, avoid them in your arguments, and
be able to spot them in the arguments presented by others.
Hasty generalization occurs when you come to a conclusion based on too few examples or
insufficient data. You might call this "jumping to conclusions." By the same token, when
taken to the extreme we find that the hasty generalization becomes stereotyping when the
actions or traits of a few are generalized to take in an entire group. Stereotyping can be mean,
even vicious. Think of various ethnic stereotypes associated with African Americans, Asians,
Hispanics and Jews.
Begging the Question takes place when you assume as a basic premise something that needs
to be proven, for example:
1. Inner city schools are inferior to suburban schools.
2. Black colleges are inferior to major state-run universities.
3. The Black Athlete is naturally superior to others.
Evading the Question happens when you move from the real issue and begin discussing
something else. Imagine that the District Attorney in a streetgang homicide case implicates
the single parent mother as a defendant as well for failing to know the whereabouts of her
son. Or, asserting that racism in America is no longer a problem with the gains made by
African Americans in electoral politics when the issue is the chronic, longtime double-digit
unemployment of adult African American males. This type of fallacy will also involve name
calling as when you accuse your opponent of being a wife beater or alcoholic rather than
sticking with the issues. Avoid this. It distracts from your argument and is dishonest.
Finally, there is argumentum ad hominem. This occurs when you direct your argument to the
prejudices and instincts of the crowd, of the mob, rather than dealing with the real issue(s).
For example, in speaking to a group of welfare recipients about their tenant rights, you base
your argument on the indignities they may have suffered rather than educating them to the
problem(s) at hand and what they can do about these.
As you can see, to properly develop an argument calls for time, it calls for research, it calls
for careful thinking and planning. It also makes certain demands on you relative to ethics --
that is, you want to always be truthful when addressing the issues, you want to avoid deceit or
the appearance of deception, yours is the burden of maintaining credibility at all times. This
is not easy but as you go along, one gains experience and confidence.

Anticipating Objections
All too often do we fall in love with our point of view to the extent that we forget our own
humanity -- that is, all humans will err. No one can make a claim to absolute truth on an
issue. One must always contend with the shadow of a doubt. So long as this is true, then you
must be conscious of the fact that your opponent may have very valid objections to your
proposition. You should try to anticipate, to think of the possible objections that can be made
against your argument. Not only that, but those good practicioners of the art will incorporate
those objections into their argument and answer them along the way. This is very impressive.
Not only have you, so to speak, stolen some of your opponent's thunder, but you have also
made a very positive impression on your audience/your reader. For that audience is now
saying to itself, "Wow, this person has really done his/her homework!"
246

The incorporation of these possible objections can occur all along the de- velopment of your
argument. They can appear in each and every one of your support planks to your proposition
and can then be reiterated at the summary. And it is in the Summary, which is the term used
to refer to the conclusion of the argumentative essay, that one wraps everything up in
convincing the reader(s) of your point of view.

The Closing Strategies

Nowhere is it more true than with the argumentative essay that you want to close strongly!
The fact is that you not only want the audience to hear you; you also want them to believe
you and, where needed, take action on what they have heard. To that end, the argumentative
essay will certainly draw from the eight different strategies that exist to conclude. You may
wish to use a combination of these strategies as you make your presentation of proof. With
the thought in mind that this paper carries ample evidence, make certain to observe the
guidelines for documentation. For those in the social sciences, there are both APA and ASA
guidelines that do exist and can be studied. The same applies for those in the humanities with
the Modern Language Association.

Discussion
In this presentation, we have examined some of the basic principles that surround the
argumentative mode of discourse. For those concerned with arguing as a social process, then
concern must certainly be paid to certain communication rules as you are not verbally
assaulting someone but rather, as noted earlier, making a rational appeal to the audience to
accept a particular point of view based upon a claim supported by evidence. Those Speech
Communication scholars will point out that there are four social conventions which govern
any argument. As Douglas Ehninger points out, "That is, when you decide to argue with
another person, you are making, generally, commitments to four standards of judgment:"
1. Convention of Bilaterality: Argument is explicitly bilateral: it requires at least two
people or two competing messages. The arguer, implicitly or explicitly, is saying that
he or she is presenting a message that can be examined by others. A spokesperson for
the National Urban League, for example, assumes that designation and puts forth that
organization's proposed solution(s) to certain social problems that America is faced
with in oppostion to solutions offered by others. In doing so, the National Urban
League specifically calls for counterargument so that a middle ground may be
reached.
2. Convention of Self-Risk: In argument, there is always the risk of being proven wrong.
For example, when you argue that a federal public school system is preferable to a
state- or local-based public school system, you invite the possibility that your
opponent will convince you that local or neighborhood-controlled schools present
fewer bureaucratic problems and more benefits than does federal control. Keep in
mind that the public has been invited to carefully evaluate both arguments, that the
public eye can and will expose your weakenesses as well as those of your opponent.
3. The Fairness Doctrine: Our system of government, from the community level up to
the Congress itself, is based upon the "fairness doctrine." This, in itself, presents the
following concept: the idea that debate (argument) ought to be as extended and as
complete as possible in order to guaranteee that all viewpoints are aired, considered,
and defended. In my classroom when students debate, equal time is given to both
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sides even if one side chooses not to use all the time allotted, or fails to use all the
available time. This is different, however, from how that time is used -- that is, the
effectiveness with which a party is able to utilize the time it is given.
4. Commitment to Rationality: When you argue or debate, a commitment is made to
proceed with logic. When you make an assertion, you are saying, "This is what I
believe and these are my reasons for that belief." As a debater, your commitment is to
giving evidence, examples, data in support of your assertion -- reasons that you
believe fully support your claim and should be accepted by the audience or the
doubtful. For example, when you argue that handguns should be banned by law,
someone else has the right to say "No" (the convention of bilaterality) and the right to
put forth a contrary (i.e., "Con") proposition (the fairness doctrine). Furthermore, all
parties to the argument -- the doubtful, the audience, the person or parties you are
debating with -- have the right to ask, "Why do you believe that?" (the convention of
rationality). Argument, accordingly, is a rational form of communication in the sense
that all debaters believe they have good reasons for the acceptance of their assertions.
They are, in fact, obligated to provide those reasons; they cannot get away with
saying,"Oh, I don't know -- I just feel that it's true. That's the way it is. You know
what I mean." If the evidence presented is relevant to the assertion being made and if
they are acceptable to the audience hearing the assertion put forth, then the debater
will have met that commitment to rationality.
With this in mind, the person about to engage in debate will always take care to assess not
only the assertion being made, but the audience to whom that claim is being presented. You
may have done exhaustive research on a proposition. You may have thought your argument
out, have written a good opening and closed with a logical conclusion. But if you have failed
to take into account the nature of the audience listening to your assertion, then there is a great
likelihood that your argument will fall upon deaf ears.
Take, for instance, the person whose argument is that predominantly black inner-city schools
are inferior to predominantly white suburban schools. That individual has built this argument
by pointing out the problems of high absenteeism rates, high drop-out rates, problems with
drug trafficking on and near the campus, little or no parental involvement in the parent-
teacher associations, lax discipline in the classrooms, and poor student performance on
standardized tests. At the same time, this arguer has failed to take into account that those
listening to this argument live in the inner city, have brothers and sisters, perhaps older
relatives who attended the very schools being disparaged or, in their eyes, "put down" yet one
more time. It is on factors such as this that arguments are won and lost, where the arguer has
failed to take into account the human dimension of the problem -- the people you are
addressing without taking into account their own emotions about the issue under discussion.
The same holds true for writing an argumentative essay. One becomes impressed not only by
the breadth of the research or the writer's command of the facts involved, but even moreso by
the logic combined with compassion and insight that the arguer demonstrates. Those who
would frame an argument without taking into account the human element, who would plunge
headlong into the debate without taking time to stop and ask the question, "Who is my
audience and how do they feel about this? How have or will they be affected by what I have
to say?" run the great risk not only of falling short in their argument, but alienating the
audience at the same time. Where there is alienation, communication cannot take place.
Always keep this in mind as you develop assertions and present reasons for your beliefs: that
people and not walls are taking in your message.
248

Summary
There are four modes of discourse: narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. Of
the four, argumentation is unquestionably the primal form of communication as it involves
the fine art of persuasion as well. The argumentative essay may also be referred to as the
Assertion-with- Evidence essay. The person is making an assertion, a statement that says,
"This is so," which he or she then begins to prove through evidence. That assertion is also
known as the proposition (i.e., the main idea of an argu- mentative essay). This proposition
should have at least three patterns evident within it by which the arguer will develop the
argument. Argument itself may be simply defined as "a reasoned attempt to convince the
audience to accept a particular point of view about a debateable subject or topic."
The evidence one uses in any argument may be divided into fact and expert opinion. The
evidence can and should take the forms of examples, details, illustrations, statistics. When
developing an argumentative essay, one has to always beware of fallacies or "illogical
reasoning." While there are many types of fallacies that can and do exist in rhetoric, six (6)
basic ones have been presented here for your review and thinking -- hasty generalizations,
stereotyping, begging the question, name calling, evading the question, and argumentum ad
hominem. In addition, the good argumentative essay will always try to take into account what
the opposition or contrary position might have to say and include or address that within the
paper.
Equally important to remember is that argument is a social process and for those who engage
in it, there is a commitment ot specific communica- tion rules: (1) convention of bilaterality;
(2) convention of self-risk; (3) the fairness doctrine; and (4) the commitment to rationality. In
realizing that argumentation is a social process, the arguer is reminded to never forget the
human factor -- that the audience listening does have an emotional stake in the subject under
debate or dispute. Those who fail to take this into account, who treat the audience (i.e., the
reader or readers, listeners) like walls rather than human beings will fail in the effort to
convince that group to accept your assertion no matter how ell-organized, no matter how
well-developed or articulated.

Discussion Questions
1. Before reading this presentation, how would you have defined an argument?
Differentiate between your earlier definition of an argument and the one that emerges
from this article.
2. Develop an argumentative paragraph (either pro or con) on the subject, "Should
Students Be Responsible for Their Learning?" In a separate paragraph, explain why
you chose the particular evidence you did. What would be the primary objection that
someone taking an oppostion position to you might make, and why? Be specific.
3. In identifying the six types of fallacies that most often occur in argumentative writing,
provide your own definition and example or illustration for each.
4. With respect to the social conventions implicit to argumentation -- bilaterality, self-
risk, fairness, and rationality -- apply these to yourself in a self-examination of the
way you have attempted argumentation and argumentative writing prior to now. What
do you learn from this self- assessment?
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Key Concepts
1. Proposition
2. Fact(s)
3. Opinion
4. Fallacy
5. Argument
6. Rationality
7. Social Convention(s)
8. Premise
9. Breadth
10. Credible
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-argumentation-1689133
by Richard Nordquist
Updated April 04, 2017
Argumentation is the process of forming reasons, justifying beliefs, and drawing conclusions
with the aim of influencing the thoughts and/or actions of others.

Argumentation (or argumentation theory) also refers to the study of that process.
Argumentation is an interdisciplinary field of study and a central concern of researchers in
the disciplines of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric.
See the observations below.
Also see:
 Argument
 Claim
 Debate
 Dissoi Logoi
 Expeditio
 Logic
 Persuasion
 Preparing an Argument
 Rhetoric
 Rogerian Argument
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 Socratic Dialogue
 Toulmin Model

Observations
 "The three goals of critical argumentation are to identify, analyze, and evaluate
arguments. The term 'argument' is used in a special sense, referring to the giving of
reasons to support or criticize a claim that is questionable, or open to doubt. To say
something is a successful argument in this sense means that it gives a good reason, or
several reasons, to support or criticize a claim."

 The Argumentative Situation

"An argumentative situation . . . is a site in which the activity of arguing takes place,
where views are exchanged and changed, meanings explored, concepts developed,
and understandings achieved. It may also be a site in which people are persuaded and
disagreements resolved, but these popular goals are not the only ones, and too narrow
a focus on them threatens to overlook much for which argumentation is a central and
important tool
 Argumentative Theory of Reasoning"Now some researchers are suggesting that
reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by
this yardstick . . . is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion
to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other
supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that
enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply
it may depart from the truth.
 The Hitchhiker's Guide to Argumentation"The argument runs something like this.
'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith and without faith I am
nothing.'
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/argumentation-the-study-of-effective-reasoning-
2nd-edition.html
What is effective argumentation? How does it work? Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and other great figures were masters of the craft. So how can you reason through
your position and make the best possible case for it with the same skill and ease as the
experts? Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition is a rigorous
introduction to the formal study of argumentation—communication that seeks to persuade
others through reasoned judgment.
n 24 lectures you learn the building blocks of an argument, the different categories of
argument and the issues that are at stake in each, the kinds of evidence that serve as proof in
an argument, and many other aspects of argumentation and reasoning, illustrated with
examples from some of the most famous speeches, debates, and controversies in American
history.

What You Learn

Award-winning Professor David Zarefsky of Northwestern University has five goals for this
course:
251

 You will learn how to recognize arguments; how to find them in conversations,
newspaper editorials, speeches, in controversies of any kind; and how to know them
when you encounter them.
 You will become aware of how arguing reflects choice, broadening your
understanding of the choices that arguers can make and that you can make when you
build and construct an argument.
 You will learn how to evaluate various types of arguments. In the process, you'll learn
the standards that should govern your assessment of these qualities.
 In attempting all of these tasks you will examine examples of a variety of historical
and contemporary arguments, shedding light on some significant controversies by
looking at them from the perspective of argument.
 Having become familiar with argumentation theories, you should be able to improve
your ability both as an analyst and as a maker of arguments.
Argumentation starts with four lectures that review the intellectual and historical
backgrounds of argumentation. Then in Lectures 5 through 11 you explore the strategies and
tactics of argument construction, attack, and defense. Lectures 12 through 18 consider the
components of argument in greater detail and examine how they work. Next, Lectures 19 and
20 focus on the appraisal of arguments. Finally, in Lectures 21 through 24, you investigate
how argumentation functions in society, covering such topics as argumentation in specialized
fields and the different ways that arguments can end.

Argumentation in Action
Professor Zarefsky infuses Argumentation with rich historical examples to illustrate the
principles of argumentation in action. For example, in 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell gave a dramatic speech before the U.N. Security Council, seeking approval for the use
of military force against Iraq. Dr. Zarefsky uses this speech to explore how arguments
employ complex structures. Secretary Powell's address used a combination of parallel and
convergent structures. Through careful analysis, you'll learn how these structures work
logically and why supporters of President Bush's Iraq policy treated the arguments as purely
parallel, while opponents treated them as convergent.
Why should you practice this kind of argument analysis? "It enables you to understand what's
going on in the argument," says Professor Zarefsky. "Few of us are ever going to have the
opportunity to address the U.N. Security Council, but if you do this with a letter to the editor,
or an editorial in the local newspaper, or in a conversation that you have in your family, the
same process works just as well, and you can get some real insight into the nature of the
arguments."

Principles behind Historic Speeches

More examples of important principles at work in historic speeches include
 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858: The dueling speeches of U.S. Senate
candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas illustrate the principle that
argumentation takes place with a particular audience in mind—in this case, the swing
voters of central Illinois. You also learn that all argument involves risk, and that
Lincoln and Douglas each sacrificed strategic advantages in meeting to debate.
252

 Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Voting Rights Message: President Johnson's historic

address to a joint session of Congress was a policy-oriented speech that focused
masterfully on the relevant topoi—the traditional categories of issues that arise in
dealing with a controversy. You learn why it was named one of the top 10 American
speeches of the 20th century by a national survey of communications scholars.
 The Kennedy-Nixon Debates of 1960: John F. Kennedy's reply to a journalist's
question during the third presidential debate with Richard Nixon illustrates the
application of the "mini-max" principle—the minimum effort and risk yielding the
maximum gain. You see why Nixon's rebuttal does not reflect the best strategic
choices in meeting Kennedy's arguments.
 Abraham Lincoln's House-Divided Speech: Lincoln's speech accepting nomination
to run for the U.S. Senate against Stephen Douglas demonstrates a classic use of
figures of speech. Lincoln employs the analogy of workmen building a frame house to
connect prominent politicians of the day with a plot to legalize slavery throughout the
United States. He can't prove it directly, but by using a clever figurative analogy he
makes a convincing case that the plot is inexorably unfolding.
 Franklin D. Roosevelt's December 8, 1941, War Message: Roosevelt's speech to
Congress on the day after the Pearl Harbor attack is a vivid model of a type of
argument called the warrant from example. A warrant is an authorization to make an
inference from evidence to claim, and Roosevelt cites a litany of examples of
Japanese aggression to establish their intent for general war.
 Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" Speech: You learn how this
celebrated speech illustrates a sign argument, in which Dr. King juxtaposes
intolerable conditions for African Americans with a Scriptural allusion to the
onrushing "mighty stream" of justice. He infers that one phenomenon predicts, or is a
sign for, the other.

A Teacher with Passion, Insight, and Humor

These are just some of the creative ways that Professor Zarefsky explains a subject that is
inherently fascinating, though often technical and demanding. Rarely has it been taught with
the passion, insight, and humor that Professor Zarefsky displays.
For instance, in discussing the concept of "stasis," he shows how a simple accusation of theft
offers a variety of responses that will determine exactly what is at issue and therefore what
needs to be settled. That point of dispute is called the stasis. The claim, "You stole my car,"
could be countered with, "No, I never had your car," asserting that the act never took place.
This is called "stasis of conjecture". By contrast, the reply, "I only borrowed your car,"
signals an argument over how to characterize the act and is called "stasis of definition." "I
needed your car for an emergency" cites urgent circumstances and is called "stasis of
quality." And a refusal to discuss the matter at this particular time and place with the
response, "If you've got a case, then take me to court," indicates that another forum is more
appropriate and is called "stasis of place." Determining stasis is crucial to understanding the
issues at play in any argument.
Additional technical aspects of argumentation that you study include the basic structure of
arguments (claim, evidence, inference, and warrant); the patterns of complex arguments
(multiple, coordinative, and subordinative); the six types of inductive inference (example,
253

analogy, sign, cause, commonplaces, and form); and such strategic issues as patterns of attack
and defense, choices of language and style, and fallacies to avoid, including the surprising
insight that the exact same pattern of inference can sometimes be fallacious and sometimes
valid, depending on circumstances.

Sound Argumentation: Antidote to Destructive Behaviors

Throughout Argumentation, Professor Zarefsky never loses sight of the purpose of sound
argumentation. "Argumentation legitimizes freedom of speech and makes it work to a
constructive purpose," thereby preventing a debasing trend in which bad arguments drive out
good.
Professor Zarefsky notes that a June 2005 op-ed piece in The New York Times suggested that
argumentation may be a lost art. The article pointed out that people increasingly interact only
with those who already agree with them; that differences of opinion are treated as
unbridgeable; and that attempts to persuade are cloaked in deception. The result is fewer
opportunities for compromise, deliberation, and mutual understanding. "Understanding and
practicing argumentation is the antidote to these destructive behaviors," says Professor
Zarefsky. The crucial difference that makes arguments productive, instead of futile, is an
appreciation for the principles that underlie this common, vital human activity.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument
In logic, an argument (Latin argumentum: "proof, evidence, token, subject, contents") is a
connected series of statements or propositions, called premises, that are intended to provide
support, justification or evidence for the truth of another statement, the conclusion.

Contents

 1 Deductive arguments
 2 In debate or discourse
 3 See also
 4 References

Deductive arguments
A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the
premises; an inductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is supported by the
premises. Deductive arguments are judged by the properties of validity and soundness. An
argument is valid if and only if the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises. A
sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.
For example, the following is a valid argument (because the conclusion follows from the
premises) and also sound (because additionally the premises are true):
 Premise 1. All Greeks are human.
 Premise 2. All humans are mortal.
254

 Conclusion. Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.

Invalid arguments involve several fallacies that do not satisfy the idea that an argument must
deduce a conclusion that is logically coherent. A common example is the non sequitur, where
the conclusion is completely disconnected from the premises.
Not all fallacious arguments are invalid. In a circular argument, the conclusion actually is a
premise, so the argument is trivially valid. It is completely uninformative, however, and
doesn't really prove anything.

In debate or discourse
In everyday practice an argument may be structured into talking points, issues that are
supposed to help support said argument. Talking points based on distorted or false reality are
often used in propaganda venues and political debates in tandem with loaded language to
sway the course of a debate towards a predetermined conclusion. Such tactics turn an
argument into emotional manipulation (having an argument) as opposed to logical exercise
(making an argument).[1]

See also
 Logical fallacy
 Validity
 edit]
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http://www.ncddr.org/products/researchexchange/v09n02/5_logictypes.h
tml

Types of Logic Models

Logic models not only come in different sizes and shapes, but also they may reflect the
different approaches and emphases a project may have. Following are examples of some
different types of logic models that may be useful to NIDRR grantees. These are not intended
to suggest a comprehensive description of all available types of logic models.

Theory-Approach Logic Model

A logic model can be constructed to reflect a project's theory of how it is going to produce
change within a specific target system. This is sometimes called a Theory-Approach Logic
Model (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 2001). This model is based on the theoretical premises
upon which a project was designed and provides a theory-based rationale for the exploration,
problems, issues, needs to be pursued by the project, and how the project intends to produce
"solutions" connecting project results with proven strategies. The rationale should explain
why a project design is likely to be successful.
Theory-approach logic models are often found in grant proposals because they make a case
for how the elements of the project design fit together to produce desired outcomes. These
logic models emphasize the problem or concern addressed by the project design and the
theory-based principles upon which activities are developed and results are expected.
Emphasis in a theory-approach logic model is often placed on the following elements:
 Problem(s), concern(s), and issue(s) the project is targeting for solution
 Unique assets the project or organization brings to the project design to address the
problem
 Assumptions made from theory underpinning the project strategies
 Environmental, social, or contextual conditions that will influence the outcomes
expected through project activities
 Project activities that are based on identified, proven interventions addressing similar
problems or issues
 Outcomes, results, or changes expected due to the project's activities

Outcomes-Approach Logic Model

This model emphasizes the rationale between the project's activities and the expected or
targeted outcomes. An outcomes-approach logic model describes the linkage between
planned activities and their expected outcomes. An activity or set of related activities is
projected to cause an outcome or set of outcomes to occur in this type of modeling.
Outcomes-approach logic models are highly descriptive of specific activities and expected
outcomes and tend to emphasize the following elements:
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 Outputs, deliverables, products, or events your project will produce

 Short- and mid-term outcomes expected over time the project actions will produce
 Long-term benefits or impact your project work is expected to produce
 Specific activities that will produce specific outcomes or impacts
 Factors that may positively or negatively influence the outcomes predicted (W. K.
Kellogg Foundation, 2001)

Activities-Approach Logic Model

This model emphasizes how the project's activities stem from the available resources and are
linked to the expected outcomes. Emphasis in this type of model is placed on the activities,
which are usually described in fine detail. Activities describe the scope-of-work of the project
and are often placed in time to indicate when certain activities will begin and end. This type
of model can be used as a management tool to assess activity initiation, culmination, and
demonstration of expected results.
Activities-approach logic models often emphasize the following elements:
 Situation or purpose of your project that focuses activities
 Target systems that will be influenced by your project activities
 Specific activities that will be implemented and the specific outputs and outcomes that
will result from that work
 Measurements and data sources that will be used to determine the project's
effectiveness in reaching targeted outcomes (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 2001)

Research-Performance Logic Model

Logic models are not always linear in construction, with one element leading directly to the
next. They are flexible enough not to require such a relationship among their elements. For
example, research-oriented projects often are best described in terms of a recurring loop
between the project's input and activities, its research design and implementation, and its
results or output. Related research is often required to produce sufficient confidence or rigor
to be used by others key audiences or systems to produce change or other effects. This
suggests that the output of one research activity constitutes the input for another research
activity and so on—until reliable results are produced. In a logic model, this could look like:
Generally speaking, no
single research activity
and accompanying result
is sufficient to expect
widespread
implementation, short- and mid-term outcomes, and long-range impact. Rather, research is
characterized as an iterative process where the results of research are subject to review,
analysis, and replication before being accepted by the scientific community as sufficient to
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base decisions upon in the real world. To be most useful, logic models need to reflect this
reality in the production of research-based findings that can be widely used (RUSH, 2004).

Summary
There is no magic formula when it comes to identifying and constructing a logic model. Each
project and its staff will come to the logic model development process with different aims
and approaches. The flexibility of the logic modeling process allows for a variety of
perspectives and approaches to be described within a project's context. In fact, logic models
often incorporate elements of several of the models discussed here. Logic models should
assist staff in describing, planning, implementing, monitoring, and appraising a project in the
most practical way for that particular project.
Adapted from: RUSH Project. (2004). Anatomy of a Logic Model.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

Logical Fallacies

An Encyclopedia of Errors of Reasoning

The ability to identify logical fallacies in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in one’s
own arguments, is both valuable and increasingly rare. Fallacious reasoning keeps us from
knowing the truth, and the inability to think critically makes us vulnerable to manipulation by
those skilled in the art of rhetoric.

What is a Logical Fallacy?

A logical fallacy is, roughly speaking, an error of reasoning. When someone adopts a
position, or tries to persuade someone else to adopt a position, based on a bad piece of
reasoning, they commit a fallacy. I say “roughly speaking” because this definition has a few
problems, the most important of which are outlined below. Some logical fallacies are more
common than others, and so have been named and defined. When people speak of logical
fallacies they often mean to refer to this collection of well-known errors of reasoning, rather
than to fallacies in the broader, more technical sense given above.

Formal and Informal Fallacies

There are several different ways in which fallacies may be categorised. It’s possible, for
instance, to distinguish between formal fallacies and informal fallacies.

Formal Fallacies (Deductive Fallacies)

Philosophers distinguish between two types of argument: deductive and inductive. For each
type of argument, there is a different understanding of what counts as a fallacy.
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Deductive arguments are supposed to be water-tight. For a deductive argument to be a good

one (to be “valid”) it must be absolutely impossible for both its premises to be true and its
conclusion to be false. With a good deductive argument, that simply cannot happen; the truth
of the premises entails the truth of the conclusion.
The classic example of a deductively valid argument is:
(1) All men are mortal.
(2) Socrates is a man.
Therefore:
(3) Socrates is mortal.
It is simply not possible that both (1) and (2) are true and (3) is false, so this argument is
deductively valid.
Any deductive argument that fails to meet this (very high) standard commits a logical error,
and so, technically, is fallacious. This includes many arguments that we would usually accept
as good arguments, arguments that make their conclusions highly probable, but not certain.
Arguments of this kind, arguments that aren’t deductively valid, are said to commit a “formal
fallacy”.

Informal Fallacies
Inductive arguments needn’t be as rigorous as deductive arguments in order to be good
arguments. Good inductive arguments lend support to their conclusions, but even if their
premises are true then that doesn’t establish with 100% certainty that their conclusions are
true. Even a good inductive argument with true premises might have a false conclusion; that
the argument is a good one and that its premises are true only establishes that its conclusion is
probably true.
All inductive arguments, even good ones, are therefore deductively invalid, and so
“fallacious” in the strictest sense. The premises of an inductive argument do not, and are not
intended to, entail the truth of the argument’s conclusion, and so even the best inductive
argument falls short of deductive validity.
Because all inductive arguments are technically invalid, different terminology is needed to
distinguish good and bad inductive arguments than is used to distinguish good and bad
deductive arguments (else every inductive argument would be given the bad label: “invalid”).
The terms most often used to distinguish good and bad inductive arguments are “strong” and
“weak”.
An example of a strong inductive argument would be:
(1) Every day to date the law of gravity has held.
Therefore:
(2) The law of gravity will hold tomorrow.
Arguments that fail to meet the standards required of inductive arguments commit fallacies in
addition to formal fallacies. It is these “informal fallacies” that are most often described by
guides to good thinking, and that are the primary concern of most critical thinking courses
and of this site.
259

Logical and Factual Errors

Arguments consist of premises, inferences, and conclusions. Arguments containing bad
inferences, i.e. inferences where the premises don’t give adequate support for the conclusion
drawn, can certainly be called fallacious. What is less clear is whether arguments containing
false premises but which are otherwise fine should be called fallacious.
If a fallacy is an error of reasoning, then strictly speaking such arguments are not fallacious;
their reasoning, their logic, is sound. However, many of the traditional fallacies are of just
this kind. It’s therefore best to define fallacy in a way that includes them; this site will
therefore use the word fallacy in a broad sense, including both formal and informal fallacies,
and both logical and factual errors.

Taxonomy of Fallacies
Once it has been decided what is to count as a logical fallacy, the question remains as to how
the various fallacies are to be categorised. The most common classification of fallacies
groups fallacies of relevance, of ambiguity, and of presumption.
Arguments that commit fallacies of relevance rely on premises that aren’t relevant to the truth
of the conclusion. The various irrelevant appeals are all fallacies of relevance, as are ad
hominems.
Arguments that commit fallacies of ambiguity, such as equivocation or the straw man fallacy,
manipulate language in misleading ways.
Arguments that commit fallacies of presumption contain false premises, and so fail to
establish their conclusion. For example, arguments based on a false dilemma or circular
arguments both commit fallacies of presumption.
These categories have to be treated quite loosely. Some fallacies are difficult to place in any
category; others belong in two or three. The ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy, for example, could
be classified either as a fallacy of ambiguity (an attempt to switch definitions of “Scotsman”)
or as a fallacy of presumption (it begs the question, reinterpreting the evidence to fit its
conclusion rather than forming its conclusion on the basis of the evidence).

Fallacies of Relevance
 Ad Hominem (Personal Attack)
 Bandwagon Fallacy
 Fallacist’s Fallacy
 Fallacy of Composition
 Fallacy of Division
 Gambler’s Fallacy
 Genetic Fallacy
260

 Irrelevant Appeals
o Appeal to Antiquity / Tradition
o Appeal to Authority
o Appeal to Consequences
o Appeal to Force
o Appeal to Novelty
o Appeal to Pity
o Appeal to Popularity
o Appeal to Poverty
o Appeal to Wealth
 Moralistic Fallacy
 Naturalistic Fallacy
 Red Herring
 Weak Analogy

Fallacies of Ambiguity
 Accent Fallacies
 Equivocation Fallacy
 Straw Man Fallacy

Fallacies of Presumption
 Affirming the Consequent
 Arguing from Ignorance
 Begging the Question / Circular Reasoning
 Complex Question Fallacy
 Cum Hoc Fallacy
 False Dilemma / Bifurcation Fallacy
 Hasty Generalisation Fallacy
 ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy
 Post Hoc Fallacy
261

 Slippery Slope Fallacy

 Sweeping Generalisation Fallacy
 Subjectivist Fallacy
 Tu Quoque Fallacy
 http://metameso.org/nri/library/...
Logic and Metalogic: Logic, Metalogic, Fuzzy and Quantum Logics
provides a great perspective on the variety. As topics for the discussion it lists:
→ Propositional calculus → Predicate logic → Modal logic → Informal logic →
Mathematical logic → Philosophical logic → Logic in computer science

In my own trajectory I first learned that beyond Boolean logic, which collects most of
the familiar variations, there was Fuzzy Logic. Next came Quantum Logic. The
most eye opening came recently when reading a paper that depended on Deontic
Logic. Deontic Logic (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
 Deontic logic[1] is that branch of symbolic logic that has been the most
concerned with the contribution that the following notions make to what
follows from what:
 permissible (permitted)
 must
 impermissible (forbidden, prohibited)
 supererogatory (beyond the call of duty)
 obligatory (duty, required)
 indifferent / significant
 omissible (non-obligatory)
 the least one can do
 optional
 better than / best / good / badought
 claim / liberty / power / immunity
 If this sounds too ethereal for the real world, a Xerox spinoff offered a system based
on deontic logic for law firms which was intended to enable an enormous staff of
researchers to collect and build the argumentation case in really large and very
complicated lawsuits.

Netting all this out, logic in the every day common sense, all logic comes back to
Aristotle. When examined carefully as to how its rules can be applied rigorously to
uncommon situations, an enormous variety of methods and principles emerge. There
appears to be an underlying interpretation of reality which all lead in a common
direction. Like all of mathematics, I prefer to believe the platonic ideal has invariant
reality.
There are many different dimensions that define "a logic". Some key ones:
 Propositional vs predicate. Propositions are bare logical terms: in "if P then Q", P
and Q are propositions. Predicates are more general, e.g. in "if father(X,Y) then
parent(X,Y)", "father" and "parent" are predicates, and X and Y are variables.
 Order. In first-order logic, the variables can't denote predicates. In second-order
logic, the variables can denote predicates, so the logic can talk about itself more
easily. There are higher orders beyond that.
262

 Modes. Ordinary predicate and propositional logic cover "existence" and

"universality" (really, flip sides of the same coin), but other modes can cover things
like "Jo believes that..." or "It is possible [or necessary] that..." or other variants.
 Time: temporal logics are another kind of modal logic
 Probability
 Ternary and other multi-valued logics
 Negation. There are many different interpretations of the proposition "not x": first
order, negation-as-failure, paraconsistency, well-founded semantics, etc.

None of these logics are inherently better or worse than the others. You pick the one
that matches your requirements for the model you need to create. What's important is
whether the model and semantics accurately match the situation being modele
http://metameso.org/nri/library/free-books/LogicMetaQL2p125.pdf

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-deontic/

https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=LOGIC

 AGORA-net: Argument mapping

 Arg-tech: Centre for Argument Technology
 Argument and Computation
 The listserv ARGTHRY provides a forum for announcements, queries, and discussion
within the academic disciplines of Informal Logic and Argumentation Theory. To
subscribe, send the message: “Subscribe ARGTHRY Yourfirstname Yourlastname”
to [email protected], using your first and last name.
 The Arguer’s Lexicon. A lexicon of the names of informal logicians and other
argumentation theorists..
 Argumentation: An International Journal on Reasoning.
 Argumentation: Critical Thinking, Dialogue, Persuasion (ArgDiaP).
 Argumentation et Analyse du Discours.
 Argument and Computation.
 Automated Argument Assistance.
 Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT).
 Argumentation and Advocacy.
 Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation & Rhetoric.
263

 Cogency.
 COMMA: Computational Models of Argument.
 Critical Thinking on the Web.
 Dowden, Bradley, 2016. “Fallacies,”, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, J.
Fieser (ed.).
 Electronic Journal of Integrated Studies in Discourse and Argumentation.
 Fallacies: The Nizkor Project.
 Foundation for Critical Thinking.
 Informal Logic.
 Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines.
 International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA).
 Logical Fallacies.
 Logical Fallacies (Stephen’s Guide).
 Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA).
 Philosophy & Rhetoric.
 RAIL (Reasoning, Argumentation and Informal Logic).
 Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric.
 Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric.
 Virtues and Arguments: A Bibliography.
 Windsor Studies in Argumentation.

http://agora.gatech.edu/

http://cf.hum.uva.nl/issa/
264

REASON

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing
and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on
new or existing information.[1] It is closely associated with such characteristically human
activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art and is normally considered
to be a definitive characteristic of human nature.[2] Reason, or an aspect of it, is sometimes
referred to as rationality.
Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect. Reasoning may be subdivided
into forms of logical reasoning (forms associated with the strict sense): deductive reasoning,
inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning; and other modes of reasoning considered more
informal, such as intuitive reasoning and verbal reasoning. Along these lines, a distinction is
often drawn between discursive reason, reason proper, and intuitive reason,[3] in which the
reasoning process—however valid—tends toward the personal and the opaque. Although in
many social and political settings logical and intuitive modes of reason may clash, in others
contexts, intuition and formal reason are seen as complementary, rather than adversarial as,
for example, in mathematics, where intuition is often a necessary building block in the
creative process of achieving the hardest form of reason, a formal proof.
Reason, like habit or intuition, is one of the ways by which thinking comes from one idea to a
related idea. For example, it is the means by which rational beings understand themselves to
think about cause and effect, truth and falsehood, and what is good or bad. It is also closely
identified with the ability to self-consciously change beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and
institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination.[4]
In contrast to reason as an abstract noun, a reason is a consideration which explains or
justifies some event, phenomenon, or behavior.[5] The field of logic studies ways in which
human beings reason formally through argument.[6]
Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people
reason, e.g. which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors
affect the inferences that people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how
reasoning may or may not be modeled computationally. Animal psychology considers the
question of whether animals other than humans can reason.

Contents
 1 Etymology and related words
 2 Philosophical history
o 2.1 Classical philosophy
o 2.2 Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy
o 2.3 Substantive and formal reason
265

o 2.4 The critique of reason

 3 Reason compared to related concepts
o 3.1 Compared to logic
o 3.2 Reason compared to cause-and-effect thinking, and symbolic thinking
o 3.3 Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory
o 3.4 Logical reasoning methods and argumentation
 3.4.1 Deductive reasoning
 3.4.2 Inductive reasoning
 3.4.3 Abductive reasoning
 3.4.4 Analogical reasoning
 3.4.5 Fallacious reasoning
 4 Traditional problems raised concerning reason
o 4.1 Reason versus truth, and "first principles"
o 4.2 Reason versus emotion or passion
o 4.3 Reason versus faith or tradition
 5 Reason in particular fields of study
o 5.1 Reason in political philosophy and ethics
o 5.2 Psychology
 5.2.1 Behavioral experiments on human reasoning
 5.2.2 Developmental studies of children's reasoning
 5.2.3 Neuroscience of reasoning
o 5.3 Computer science
 5.3.1 Automated reasoning
 5.3.2 Meta-reasoning
o 5.4 Evolution of reason
 6 See also
 7 References
 8 Further reading
266

Etymology and related words

In the English language and other modern European languages, "reason", and related words,
represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms in
the sense of their philosophical usage.
 The original Greek term was " όγος" logos, the root of the modern English word
"logic" but also a word which could mean for example "speech" or "explanation" or
an "account" (of money handled).[7]
 As a philosophical term logos was translated in its non-linguistic senses in Latin as
ratio. This was originally not just a translation used for philosophy, but was also
commonly a translation for logos in the sense of an account of money.[8]
 French raison is derived directly from Latin, and this is the direct source of the
English word "reason".[5]
The earliest major philosophers to publish in English, such as Francis Bacon, Thomas
Hobbes, and John Locke also routinely wrote in Latin and French, and compared their terms
to Greek, treating the words "logos", "ratio", "raison" and "reason" as inter-changeable. The
meaning of the word "reason" in senses such as "human reason" also overlaps to a large
extent with "rationality" and the adjective of "reason" in philosophical contexts is normally
"rational", rather than "reasoned" or "reasonable".[9] Some philosophers, Thomas Hobbes for
example, also used the word ratiocination as a synonym for "reasoning".

Philosophical history

The proposal that reason gives humanity a special position in nature has been argued to be a
defining characteristic of western philosophy and later western modern science, starting with
classical Greece. Philosophy can be described as a way of life based upon reason, and in
the other direction reason has been one of the major subjects of philosophical discussion
since ancient times. Reason is often said to be reflexive, or "self-correcting," and the critique
of reason has been a persistent theme in philosophy.[10] It has been defined in different ways,
at different times, by different thinkers about human nature.

Classical philosophy
For many classical philosophers, nature was understood teleologically, meaning that every
type of thing had a definitive purpose which fit within a natural order that was itself
understood to have aims. Perhaps starting with Pythagoras or Heraclitus, the cosmos is even
said to have reason.[11] Reason, by this account, is not just one characteristic that humans
happen to have, and that influences happiness amongst other characteristics. Reason was
considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature, such as sociability,
because it is something humans share with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part
of the human mind with the divine order of the cosmos itself. Within the human mind or soul
(psyche), reason was described by Plato as being the natural monarch which should rule over
the other parts, such as spiritedness (thumos) and the passions. Aristotle, Plato's student,
defined human beings as rational animals, emphasizing reason as a characteristic of human
267

nature. He defined the highest human happiness or well being (eudaimonia) as a life which is
lived consistently, excellently and completely in accordance with reason.[12]
The conclusions to be drawn from the discussions of Aristotle and Plato on this matter are
amongst the most debated in the history of philosophy.[13] But teleological accounts such as
Aristotle's were highly influential for those who attempt to explain reason in a way which is
consistent with monotheism and the immortality and divinity of the human soul. For
example, in the neo-platonist account of Plotinus, the cosmos has one soul, which is the seat
of all reason, and the souls of all individual humans are part of this soul. Reason is for
Plotinus both the provider of form to material things, and the light which brings individuals
souls back into line with their source.[14] Such neo-Platonist accounts of the rational part of
the human soul were standard amongst medieval Islamic philosophers, and under this
influence, mainly via Averroes, came to be debated seriously in Europe until well into the
renaissance, and they remain important in Iranian philosophy.[13]

Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy

The early modern era was marked by a number of significant changes in the understanding of
reason, starting in Europe. One of the most important of these changes involved a change in
the metaphysical understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to
question the teleological understanding of the world.[15] Nature was no longer assumed to be
human-like, with its own aims or reason, and human nature was no longer assumed to work
according to anything other than the same "laws of nature" which affect inanimate things.
This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a
spiritual understanding of the universe
Accordingly, in the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of
humans as "rational animals," suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking
things" along the lines of other "things" in nature. Any grounds of knowledge outside that
understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt.
In his search for a foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes deliberately decided to
throw into doubt all knowledge – except that of the mind itself in the process of thinking:
At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a
thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason – words of whose
meanings I was previously ignorant.[16]
This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it is
based on the knowing subject, who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects
to be studied, and successfully mastered by applying the knowledge accumulated through
such study. Breaking with tradition and many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not
divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them as one
indivisible incorporeal entity.
A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes described reason as a broader version of
"addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers.[17] This understanding of reason is
sometimes termed "calculative" reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No
discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come" but that
"sense and memory" is absolute knowledge.[18]
268

In the late 17th century, through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed
Descartes' line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction,
proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and
therefore no knowledge is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise.[19][20]
Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of
the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."[21] Hume
also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing, unlike his predecessors,
that human reason is not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual
ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas,[22] and that "reason is nothing but a
wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of
ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and
relations."[23] It followed from this that animals have reason, only much less complex than
human reason.
In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that Hume was wrong by
demonstrating that a "transcendental" self, or "I", was a necessary condition of all experience.
Therefore, suggested Kant, on the basis of such a self, it is in fact possible to reason both
about the conditions and limits of human knowledge. And so long as these limits are
respected, reason can be the vehicle of morality, justice and understanding.

Substantive and formal reason

In the formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the
subject, the great achievement of reason (German: Vernunft) is that it is able to exercise a
kind of universal law-making. Kant was able therefore to re-formulate the basis of moral-
practical, theoretical and aesthetic reasoning, on "universal" laws.
Here practical reasoning is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal
norms, and theoretical reasoning the way humans posit universal laws of nature.[24]
Under practical reason, the moral autonomy or freedom of human beings depends on their
ability to behave according to laws that are given to them by the proper exercise of that
reason. This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on religious
understanding and interpretation, or nature for their substance.[25]
According to Kant, in a free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals
however they see fit, so long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He
formulated such a principle, called the "categorical imperative", which would justify an
action only if it could be universalized:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should
become a universal law.[26]
In contrast to Hume then, Kant insists that reason itself (German Vernunft) has natural ends
itself, the solution to the metaphysical problems, especially the discovery of the foundations
of morality. Kant claimed that this problem could be solved with his "transcendental logic"
which unlike normal logic is not just an instrument, which can be used indifferently, as it was
for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others.[27]
269

According to Jürgen Habermas, the "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern
times, such that it can no longer answer the question "How should I live?" Instead, the unity
of reason has to be strictly formal, or "procedural." He thus described reason as a group of
three autonomous spheres (on the model of Kant's three critiques): (This is obvious,many
more domains)
1. Cognitive-instrumental reason is the kind of reason employed by the sciences. It is
used to observe events, to predict and control outcomes, and to intervene in the world
on the basis of its hypotheses;
2. Moral-practical reason is what we use to deliberate and discuss issues in the moral
and political realm, according to universalizable procedures (similar to Kant's
categorical imperative); and
3. Aesthetic reason is typically found in works of art and literature, and encompasses
the novel ways of seeing the world and interpreting things that those practices
embody.
For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be
mediated with the "lifeworld" by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason,
Habermas hoped to demonstrate that the substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern
societies had been able to answer questions about the good life, could be made up for by the
unity of reason's formalizable procedures.[28]

The critique of reason

Hamann, Herder, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Rorty, and
many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to
mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred,
universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole. Others,
including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of intersubjectivity, or "spirit" in
human life, and attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be.
Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other forms of reason, neglected but essential
to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason.[10]
In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique
of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason:
For example, in opposition to (inter) subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed a model
of communicative (NO) reason that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the
fact of linguistic intersubjectivity.[29](This, language, provides and intersubjectivity/shared,
by cultures, subcultures, disciplines etc – specialized intersubjectivities)
Nikolas Kompridis has proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of
practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a
focus on reason's possibilities for social change.[30]
The philosopher Charles Taylor, influenced by the 20th century German philosopher Martin
Heidegger, has proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of disclosure, which is tied
to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason.[31]
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In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a concept of critique based
on Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason. This distinction, as
suggested, has two dimensions:
 Private reason is the reason that is used when an individual is "a cog in a machine"
or when one "has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be a soldier, to have taxes
to pay, to be in charge of a parish, to be a civil servant."
 Public reason is the reason used "when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and
not as a cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable
humanity." In these circumstances, "the use of reason must be free and public."[32]

Reason compared to related concepts

Compared to logic
Main article: Logic
The terms "logic" or "logical" are sometimes used as if they were identical with the term
"reason" or with the concept of being "rational", or sometimes logic is seen as the most pure
or the defining form of reason. For example in modern economics, rational choice is assumed
to equate to logically consistent choice.
Reason and logic can however be thought of as distinct, although logic is one important
aspect of reason. Author Douglas Hofstadter, in Gödel, Escher, Bach, characterizes the
distinction in this way. Logic is done inside a system while reason is done outside the system
by such methods as skipping steps, working backward, drawing diagrams, looking at
examples, or seeing what happens if you change the rules of the system.[33]
Reason is a type of thought, and the word "logic" involves the attempt to describe rules or
norms by which reasoning operates, so that orderly reasoning can be taught. The oldest
surviving writing to explicitly consider the rules by which reason operates are the works of
the Greek philosopher Aristotle, especially Prior Analysis and Posterior Analysis.[34]
Although the Ancient Greeks had no separate word for logic as distinct from language and
reason, Aristotle's newly coined word "syllogism" (syllogismos) identified logic clearly for
the first time as a distinct field of study. When Aristotle referred to "the logical" (hē logikē),
he was referring more broadly to rational thought.[35]

Reason compared to cause-and-effect thinking, and symbolic thinking

Main articles: Causality and Symbols
As pointed out by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Hume, some animals are also
clearly capable of a type of "associative thinking", even to the extent of associating causes
and effects. A dog once kicked, can learn how to recognize the warning signs and avoid being
kicked in the future, but this does not mean the dog has reason in any strict sense of the word.
It also does not mean that humans acting on the basis of experience or habit are using their
reason.[36]
Human reason requires more than being able to associate two ideas, even if those two ideas
might be described by a reasoning human as a cause and an effect, perceptions of smoke, for
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example, and memories of fire. For reason to be involved, the association of smoke and the
fire would have to be thought through in a way which can be explained, for example as cause
and effect. In the explanation of Locke, for example, reason requires the mental use of a third
idea in order to make this comparison by use of syllogism.[37]
More generally, reason in the strict sense requires the ability to create and manipulate a
system of symbols, as well as indices and icons, according to Charles Sanders Peirce, the
symbols having only a nominal, though habitual, connection to either smoke or fire.[38] One
example of such a system of artificial symbols and signs is language.
The connection of reason to symbolic thinking has been expressed in different ways by
philosophers. Thomas Hobbes described the creation of "Markes, or Notes of remembrance"
(Leviathan Ch.4) as speech. He used the word speech as an English version of the Greek
word logos so that speech did not need to be communicated.[39] When communicated, such
speech becomes language, and the marks or notes or remembrance are called "Signes" by
Hobbes. Going further back, although Aristotle is a source of the idea that only humans have
reason (logos), he does mention that animals with imagination, for whom sense perceptions
can persist, come closest to having something like reasoning and nous, and even uses the
word "logos" in one place to describe the distinctions which animals can perceive in such
cases.[40]

Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory

Main articles: Imagination, Mimesis, Memory, and Recollection
Reason and imagination rely on similar mental processes.[41] Imagination is not only found in
humans. Aristotle, for example, stated that phantasia (imagination: that which can hold
images or phantasmata) and phronein (a type of thinking that can judge and understand in
some sense) also exist in some animals.[42] According to him, both are related to the primary
perceptive ability of animals, which gathers the perceptions of different senses and defines
the order of the things that are perceived without distinguishing universals, and without
deliberation or logos. But this is not yet reason, because human imagination is different.
The recent modern writings of Terrence Deacon and Merlin Donald, writing about the origin
of language, also connect reason connected to not only language, but also mimesis,[43] More
specifically they describe the ability to create language as part of an internal modeling of
reality specific to humankind. Other results are consciousness, and imagination or fantasy. In
contrast, modern proponents of a genetic pre-disposition to language itself include Noam
Chomsky and Steven Pinker, to whom Donald and Deacon can be contrasted.
As reason is symbolic thinking, and peculiarly human, then this implies that humans have a
special ability to maintain a clear consciousness of the distinctness of "icons" or images and
the real things they represent. Starting with a modern author, Merlin Donald writes[44]
A dog might perceive the "meaning" of a fight that was realistically play-acted by humans,
but it could not reconstruct the message or distinguish the representation from its referent (a
real fight). [...] Trained apes are able to make this distinction; young children make this
distinction early – hence, their effortless distinction between play-acting an event and the
event itself
In classical descriptions, an equivalent description of this mental faculty is eikasia, in the
philosophy of Plato.[45] This is the ability to perceive whether a perception is an image of
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something else, related somehow but not the same, and therefore allows humans to perceive
that a dream or memory or a reflection in a mirror is not reality as such. What Klein refers to
as dianoetic eikasia is the eikasia concerned specifically with thinking and mental images,
such as those mental symbols, icons, signes, and marks discussed above as definitive of
reason. Explaining reason from this direction: human thinking is special in the way that we
often understand visible things as if they were themselves images of our intelligible "objects
of thought" as "foundations" (hypothēses in Ancient Greek). This thinking (dianoia) is "...an
activity which consists in making the vast and diffuse jungle of the visible world depend on a
plurality of more 'precise' noēta."[46]
Both Merlin Donald and the Socratic authors such Plato and Aristotle emphasize the
importance of mimesis, often translated as imitation or representation. Donald writes[47]
Imitation is found especially in monkeys and apes [... but ...] Mimesis is fundamentally
different from imitation and mimicry in that it involves the invention of intentional
representations. [...] Mimesis is not absolutely tied to external communication.
Mimēsis is a concept, now popular again in academic discussion, that was particularly
prevalent in Plato's works, and within Aristotle, it is discussed mainly in the Poetics. In
Michael Davis's account of the theory of man in this work.[48]
It is the distinctive feature of human action, that whenever we choose what we do, we
imagine an action for ourselves as though we were inspecting it from the outside. Intentions
are nothing more than imagined actions, internalizings of the external. All action is therefore
imitation of action; it is poetic...[49]
Donald like Plato (and Aristotle, especially in On Memory and Recollection), emphasizes the
peculiarity in humans of voluntary initiation of a search through one's mental world. The
ancient Greek anamnēsis, normally translated as "recollection" was opposed to mneme or
memory. Memory, shared with some animals,[50] requires a consciousness not only of what
happened in the past, but also that something happened in the past, which is in other words a
kind of eikasia[51] "...but nothing except man is able to recollect."[52] Recollection is a
deliberate effort to search for and recapture something once known. Klein writes that, "To
become aware of our having forgotten something means to begin recollecting."[53] Donald
calls the same thing autocueing, which he explains as follows:[54] "Mimetic acts are
reproducible on the basis of internal, self-generated cues. This permits voluntary recall of
mimetic representations, without the aid of external cues – probably the earliest form of
representational thinking."
In a celebrated paper in modern times, the fantasy author and philologist J.R.R. Tolkien wrote
in his essay "On Fairy Stories" that the terms "fantasy" and "enchantment" are connected to
not only "....the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires...." but also "...the origin of
language and of the mind."

Logical reasoning methods and argumentation

Looking at logical categorizations of different types of reasoning the traditional main division
made in philosophy is between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Formal logic
has been described as the science of deduction.[55] The study of inductive reasoning is
generally carried out within the field known as informal logic or critical thinking.
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Deductive reasoning
Main article: Deductive reasoning
A subdivision of Philosophy is Logic. Logic is the study of reasoning. Deduction is a form of
reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises. A deduction is
also the conclusion reached by a deductive reasoning process. One classic example of
deductive reasoning is that found in syllogisms like the following:
 Premise 1: All humans are mortal.
 Premise 2: Socrates is a human.
 Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
The reasoning in this argument is valid, because there is no way in which the premises, 1 and
2, could be true and the conclusion, 3, be false.

Inductive reasoning
Main article: Inductive reasoning
Induction is a form of inference producing propositions about unobserved objects or types,
either specifically or generally, based on previous observation. It is used to ascribe properties
or relations to objects or types based on previous observations or experiences, or to formulate
general statements or laws based on limited observations of recurring phenomenal patterns.
Inductive reasoning contrasts strongly with deductive reasoning in that, even in the best, or
strongest, cases of inductive reasoning, the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth
of the conclusion. Instead, the conclusion of an inductive argument follows with some degree
of probability. Relatedly, the conclusion of an inductive argument contains more information
than is already contained in the premises. Thus, this method of reasoning is ampliative.
A classic example of inductive reasoning comes from the empiricist David Hume:
 Premise: The sun has risen in the east every morning up until now.
 Conclusion: The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.

Abductive reasoning
Main article: Abductive reasoning
Abductive reasoning, or argument to the best explanation, is a form of inductive reasoning,
since the conclusion in an abductive argument does not follow with certainty from its
premises and concerns something unobserved. What distinguishes abduction from the other
forms of reasoning is an attempt to favour one conclusion above others, by attempting to
falsify alternative explanations or by demonstrating the likelihood of the favoured conclusion,
given a set of more or less disputable assumptions. For example, when a patient displays
certain symptoms, there might be various possible causes, but one of these is preferred above
others as being more probable.

Analogical reasoning
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Main article: Analogical reasoning

Analogical reasoning is reasoning from the particular to the particular. It is often used in
case-based reasoning, especially legal reasoning.[56] An example follows:
 Premise 1: Socrates is human and mortal.
 Premise 2: Plato is human.
 Conclusion: Plato is mortal.
Analogical reasoning can be viewed as a form of inductive reasoning from a single example,
but if it is intended as inductive reasoning it is a bad example, because inductive reasoning
typically uses a large number of examples to reason from the particular to the general.[57]
Analogical reasoning often leads to wrong conclusions. For example:
 Premise 1: Socrates is human and male.
 Premise 2: Beyoncé is human.
 Conclusion: Therefore Beyoncé is male.

Fallacious reasoning
Main articles: Fallacy, Formal fallacy, and Informal fallacy
Flawed reasoning in arguments is known as fallacious reasoning. Bad reasoning within
arguments can be because it commits either a formal fallacy or an informal fallacy.
Formal fallacies occur when there is a problem with the form, or structure, of the argument.
The word "formal" refers to this link to the form of the argument. An argument that contains
a formal fallacy will always be invalid.
An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs due to a problem with the content,
rather than mere structure, of the argument.

Traditional problems raised concerning reason

Philosophy is sometimes described as a life of reason, with normal human reason pursued in
a more consistent and dedicated way than usual. Two categories of problem concerning
reason have long been discussed by philosophers concerning reason, essentially being
reasonings about reasoning itself as a human aim, or philosophizing about philosophizing.
The first question is concerning whether we can be confident that reason can achieve
knowledge of truth better than other ways of trying to achieve such knowledge. The other
question is whether a life of reason, a life that aims to be guided by reason, can be expected
to achieve a happy life more so than other ways of life (whether such a life of reason results
in knowledge or not).

Reason versus truth, and "first principles"

See also: Truth, First principle, and Nous
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Since classical times a question has remained constant in philosophical debate (which is
sometimes seen as a conflict between movements called Platonism and Aristotelianism)
concerning the role of reason in confirming truth. People use logic, deduction, and induction,
to reach conclusions they think are true. Conclusions reached in this way are considered more
certain than sense perceptions on their own.[58] On the other hand, if such reasoned
conclusions are only built originally upon a foundation of sense perceptions, then, our most
logical conclusions can never be said to be certain because they are built upon the very same
fallible perceptions they seek to better.[59]
This leads to the question of what types of first principles, or starting points of reasoning, are
available for someone seeking to come to true conclusions. In Greek, "first principles" are
archai, "starting points",[60] and the faculty used to perceive them is sometimes referred to in
Aristotle[61] and Plato[62] as nous which was close in meaning to awareness or
consciousness.[63]
Empiricism (sometimes associated with Aristotle[64] but more correctly associated with
British philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as their ancient
equivalents such as Democritus) asserts that sensory impressions are the only available
starting points for reasoning and attempting to attain truth. This approach always leads to the
controversial conclusion that absolute knowledge is not attainable. Idealism, (associated with
Plato and his school), claims that there is a "higher" reality, from which certain people can
directly arrive at truth without needing to rely only upon the senses, and that this higher
reality is therefore the primary source of truth.
Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas
and Hegel are sometimes said to have argued that reason must be fixed and discoverable—
perhaps by dialectic, analysis, or study. In the vision of these thinkers, reason is divine or at
least has divine attributes. Such an approach allowed religious philosophers such as Thomas
Aquinas and Étienne Gilson to try to show that reason and revelation are compatible.
According to Hegel, "...the only thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation
of History, is the simple conception of reason; that reason is the Sovereign of the World; that
the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process."[65]
Since the 17th century rationalists, reason has often been taken to be a subjective faculty, or
rather the unaided ability (pure reason) to form concepts. For Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz,
this was associated with mathematics. Kant attempted to show that pure reason could form
concepts (time and space) that are the conditions of experience. Kant made his argument in
opposition to Hume, who denied that reason had any role to play in experience.

Reason versus emotion or passion

See also: Emotion and Passion (emotion)
After Plato and Aristotle, western literature often treated reason as being the faculty that
trained the passions and appetites.[citation needed] Stoic philosophy by contrast considered all
passions bad.[citation needed] After the critiques of reason in the early Enlightenment the appetites
were rarely discussed or conflated with the passions.[citation needed] Some Enlightenment camps
took after the Stoics to say Reason should oppose Passion rather than order it, while others
like the Romantics considered Passion the ruler over Reason or to the exclusion of Reason,
thus the Modern colloquy of "follow your heart".[citation needed]
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Reason has been seen as a slave, or judge, of the passions, notably in the work of David
Hume, and more recently of Freud.[citation needed] Reasoning which claims that the object of a
desire is demanded by logic alone is called rationalization.[citation needed]
Rousseau first proposed, in his second Discourse, that reason and political life is not natural
and possibly harmful to mankind.[66] He asked what really can be said about what is natural to
mankind. What, other than reason and civil society, "best suits his constitution"? Rousseau
saw "two principles prior to reason" in human nature. First we hold an intense interest in our
own well-being. Secondly we object to the suffering or death of any sentient being, especially
one like ourselves.[67] These two passions lead us to desire more than we could achieve. We
become dependent upon each other, and on relationships of authority and obedience. This
effectively puts the human race into slavery. Rousseau says that he almost dares to assert that
nature does not destine men to be healthy. According to Velkley, "Rousseau outlines certain
programs of rational self-correction, most notably the political legislation of the Contrat
Social and the moral education in Émile. All the same, Rousseau understands such
corrections to be only ameliorations of an essentially unsatisfactory condition, that of socially
and intellectually corrupted humanity."
This quandary presented by Rousseau led to Kant's new way of justifying reason as freedom
to create good and evil. These therefore are not to be blamed on nature or God. In various
ways, German Idealism after Kant, and major later figures such Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl,
Scheler, and Heidegger, remain pre-occupied with problems coming from the metaphysical
demands or urges of reason.[68] The influence of Rousseau and these later writers is also large
upon art and politics. Many writers (such as Nikos Kazantzakis) extol passion and disparage
reason. In politics modern nationalism comes from Rousseau's argument that rationalist
cosmopolitanism brings man ever further from his natural state.[69]
Another view on reason and emotion was proposed in the 1994 book titled Descartes' Error
by Antonio Damasio. In it, Damasio presents the "Somatic Marker Hypothesis" which states
that emotions guide behavior and decision-making. Damasio argues that these somatic
markers (known collectively as "gut feelings") are "intuitive signals" that direct our decision
making processes in a certain way that cannot be solved with rationality alone. Damasio
further argues that rationality requires emotional input in order to function.

Reason versus faith or tradition

Main articles: Faith, Religion, and Tradition
There are many religious traditions, some of which are explicitly fideist and others of which
claim varying degrees of rationalism. Secular critics sometimes accuse all religious adherents
of irrationality, since they claim such adherents are guilty of ignoring, suppressing, or
forbidding some kinds of reasoning concerning some subjects (such as religious dogmas,
moral taboos, etc.).[70] Though the theologies and religions such as classical monotheism
typically do not claim to be irrational, there is often a perceived conflict or tension between
faith and tradition on the one hand, and reason on the other, as potentially competing sources
of wisdom, law and truth.[71][72]
Religious adherents sometimes respond by arguing that faith and reason can be reconciled, or
have different non-overlapping domains, or that critics engage in a similar kind of
irrationalism:
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 Reconciliation: Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that there is no real conflict

between reason and classical theism because classical theism explains (among other
things) why the universe is intelligible and why reason can successfully grasp it.[73][74]
 Non-overlapping magisteria: Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argues that
there need not be conflict between reason and religious belief because they are each
authoritative in their own domain (or "magisterium").[75][76] For example, perhaps
reason alone is not enough to explain such big questions as the origins of the universe,
the origin of life, the origin of consciousness,[77] the foundation of morality, or the
destiny of the human race. If so, reason can work on those problems over which it has
authority while other sources of knowledge or opinion can have authority on the big
questions.[78]
 Tu quoque: Philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor argue that those
critics of traditional religion who are adherents of secular liberalism are also
sometimes guilty of ignoring, suppressing, and forbidding some kinds of reasoning
about subjects.[79][80] Similarly, philosophers of science such as Paul Feyaraband argue
that scientists sometimes ignore or suppress evidence contrary to the dominant
paradigm.
Some commentators have claimed that Western civilization can be almost defined by its
serious testing of the limits of tension between "unaided" reason and faith in "revealed"
truths—figuratively summarized as Athens and Jerusalem, respectively.[81][82] Leo Strauss
spoke of a "Greater West" that included all areas under the influence of the tension between
Greek rationalism and Abrahamic revelation, including the Muslim lands. He was
particularly influenced by the great Muslim philosopher Al-Farabi. To consider to what
extent Eastern philosophy might have partaken of these important tensions, Strauss thought it
best to consider whether dharma or tao may be equivalent to Nature (by which we mean
physis in Greek). According to Strauss the beginning of philosophy involved the "discovery
or invention of nature" and the "pre-philosophical equivalent of nature" was supplied by
"such notions as 'custom' or 'ways'", which appear to be really universal in all times and
places. The philosophical concept of nature or natures as a way of understanding archai (first
principles of knowledge) brought about a peculiar tension between reasoning on the one
hand, and tradition or faith on the other.[83]
Although there is this special history of debate concerning reason and faith in the Islamic,
Christian and Jewish traditions, the pursuit of reason is sometimes argued to be compatible
with the other practice of other religions of a different nature, such as Hinduism, because they
do not define their tenets in such an absolute way.[84]

Reason in particular fields of study

Reason in political philosophy and ethics

Main articles: Political Philosophy, Ethics, and The Good
Aristotle famously described reason (with language) as a part of human nature, which means
that it is best for humans to live "politically" meaning in communities of about the size and
type of a small city state (polis in Greek). For example...
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It is clear, then, that a human being is more of a political [politikon = of the polis] animal
[zōion] than is any bee or than any of those animals that live in herds. For nature, as we say,
makes nothing in vain, and humans are the only animals who possess reasoned speech
[logos]. Voice, of course, serves to indicate what is painful and pleasant; that is why it is also
found in other animals, because their nature has reached the point where they can perceive
what is painful and pleasant and express these to each other. But speech [logos] serves to
make plain what is advantageous and harmful and so also what is just and unjust. For it is a
peculiarity of humans, in contrast to the other animals, to have perception of good and bad,
just and unjust, and the like; and the community in these things makes a household or city
[polis]. [...] By nature, then, the drive for such a community exists in everyone, but the first to
set one up is responsible for things of very great goodness. For as humans are the best of all
animals when perfected, so they are the worst when divorced from law and right. The reason
is that injustice is most difficult to deal with when furnished with weapons, and the weapons
a human being has are meant by nature to go along with prudence and virtue, but it is only
too possible to turn them to contrary uses. Consequently, if a human being lacks virtue, he is
the most unholy and savage thing, and when it comes to sex and food, the worst. But justice
is something political [to do with the polis], for right is the arrangement of the political
community, and right is discrimination of what is just. (Aristotle's Politics 1253a 1.2. Peter
Simpson's translation, with Greek terms inserted in square brackets.)
The concept of human nature being fixed in this way, implied, in other words, that we can
define what type of community is always best for people. This argument has remained a
central argument in all political, ethical and moral thinking since then, and has become
especially controversial since firstly Rousseau's Second Discourse, and secondly, the Theory
of Evolution. Already in Aristotle there was an awareness that the polis had not always
existed and had needed to be invented or developed by humans themselves. The household
came first, and the first villages and cities were just extensions of that, with the first cities
being run as if they were still families with Kings acting like fathers.[85]
Friendship [philia] seems to prevail [in] man and woman according to nature [kata phusin];
for people are by nature [tēi phusei] pairing [sunduastikon] more than political [politikon = of
the polis], inasmuch as the household [oikos] is prior [proteron = earlier] and more necessary
than the polis and making children is more common [koinoteron] with the animals. In the
other animals, community [koinōnia] goes no further than this, but people live together
[sumoikousin] not only for the sake of making children, but also for the things for life; for
from the start the functions [erga] are divided, and are different [for] man and woman. Thus
they supply each other, putting their own into the common [eis to koinon]. It is for these
[reasons] that both utility [chrēsimon] and pleasure [hēdu] seem to be found in this kind of
friendship. (Nicomachean Ethics, VIII.12.1162a. Rough literal translation with Greek terms
shown in square brackets.)
Rousseau in his Second Discourse finally took the shocking step of claiming that this
traditional account has things in reverse: with reason, language and rationally organized
communities all having developed over a long period of time merely as a result of the fact
that some habits of cooperation were found to solve certain types of problems, and that once
such cooperation became more important, it forced people to develop increasingly complex
cooperation—often only to defend themselves from each other.
In other words, according to Rousseau, reason, language and rational community did not arise
because of any conscious decision or plan by humans or gods, nor because of any pre-
existing human nature. As a result, he claimed, living together in rationally organized
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communities like modern humans is a development with many negative aspects compared to
the original state of man as an ape. If anything is specifically human in this theory, it is the
flexibility and adaptability of humans. This view of the animal origins of distinctive human
characteristics later received support from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
The two competing theories concerning the origins of reason are relevant to political and
ethical thought because, according to the Aristotelian theory, a best way of living together
exists independently of historical circumstances. According to Rousseau, we should even
doubt that reason, language and politics are a good thing, as opposed to being simply the best
option given the particular course of events that lead to today. Rousseau's theory, that human
nature is malleable rather than fixed, is often taken to imply, for example by Karl Marx, a
wider range of possible ways of living together than traditionally known.
However, while Rousseau's initial impact encouraged bloody revolutions against traditional
politics, including both the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, his own
conclusions about the best forms of community seem to have been remarkably classical, in
favor of city-states such as Geneva, and rural living.

Psychology
Main article: Psychology of reasoning
Scientific research into reasoning is carried out within the fields of psychology and cognitive
science. Psychologists attempt to determine whether or not people are capable of rational
thought in a number of different circumstances.
Assessing how well someone engages in reasoning is the project of determining the extent to
which the person is rational or acts rationally. It is a key research question in the psychology
of reasoning. Rationality is often divided into its respective theoretical and practical
counterparts.

Behavioral experiments on human reasoning

Experimental cognitive psychologists carry out research on reasoning behaviour. Such
research may focus, for example, on how people perform on tests of reasoning such as
intelligence or IQ tests, or on how well people's reasoning matches ideals set by logic (see,
for example, the Wason test).[86] Experiments examine how people make inferences from
conditionals e.g., If A then B and how they make inferences about alternatives, e.g., A or else
B.[87] They test whether people can make valid deductions about spatial and temporal
relations, e.g., A is to the left of B, or A happens after B, and about quantified assertions, e.g.,
All the A are B.[88] Experiments investigate how people make inferences about factual
situations, hypothetical possibilities, probabilities, and counterfactual situations.[89]

Developmental studies of children's reasoning

Developmental psychologists investigate the development of reasoning from birth to
adulthood. Piaget's theory of cognitive development was the first complete theory of
reasoning development. Subsequently, several alternative theories were proposed, including
the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development.[90]
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Neuroscience of reasoning
The biological functioning of the brain is studied by neurophysiologists and
neuropsychologists. Research in this area includes research into the structure and function of
normally functioning brains, and of damaged or otherwise unusual brains. In addition to
carrying out research into reasoning, some psychologists, for example, clinical psychologists
and psychotherapists work to alter people's reasoning habits when they are unhelpful.

Computer science

Automated reasoning
Main articles: Automated reasoning and Computational logic
In artificial intelligence and computer science, scientists study and use automated reasoning
for diverse applications including automated theorem proving the formal semantics of
programming languages, and formal specification in software engineering.

Meta-reasoning
Main article: Metacognition
Meta-reasoning is reasoning about reasoning. In computer science, a system performs meta-
reasoning when it is reasoning about its own operation.[91] This requires a programming
language capable of reflection, the ability to observe and modify its own structure and
behaviour.

Evolution of reason

Dan Sperber believes that reasoning in groups is more effective and promotes their
evolutionary fitness.
A species could benefit greatly from better abilities to reason about, predict and understand
the world. French social and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber, with his colleague Hugo
Mercier, describes the idea that there could have been other forces driving the evolution of
reason. Sperber points out that reasoning is very difficult for humans to do effectively, and
that it is hard for individuals to doubt their own beliefs. Reasoning is most effective when it
is done as a collective - as demonstrated by the success of projects like science. Sperber says
this could suggest that there are not just individual, but group selection pressures at play. Any
group that managed to find ways of reasoning effectively would reap benefits for all its
members, increasing their fitness. This could also help explain why humans, according to
Sperber, are not optimized to reason effectively alone.[92]

See also

 Thinking portal

 Logic portal
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 Logic and rationality

 Outline of thought - topic tree that identifies many types of thoughts/thinking, types
of reasoning, aspects of thought, related fields, and more.
 Outline of human intelligence - topic tree presenting the traits, capacities, models, and
research fields of human intelligence,
http://www.en.mcls.lmu.de/study_programs/reason/
https://www.edge.org/conversation/dan_sperber-the-function-of-reason
ontrary to the standard view of reason as a capacity that enhances the individual in his or
her cognitive capacities—the standard image is of Rodin’s "Thinker," thinking on his own
and discovering new ideas—what we say now is that the basic functions of reason are social.
They have to do with the fact that we interact with each other’s bodies and with each other’s
minds. And to interact with other’s minds is to be able to represent a representation that
others have, and to have them represent our representations, and also to act on the
representation of others and, in some cases, let others act on our own representations.
The kind of achievements that are often cited as the proof that reason is so superior, like
scientific achievements, are not achievements of individual minds, not achievements of
individual reason, they are collective achievements—typically a product of social interaction
over generations. They are social, cultural products, where many minds had to interact in
complex ways and progressively explore a lot of directions on which they hit, not because
some were more reasonable than others, but because some were luckier than others in what
they hit. And then they used their reason to defend what they hit by luck. Reason is a
remarkable cognitive capacity, as are so many cognitive capacities in human and animals,
but it’s not a superpower.
DAN SPERBER is a Paris-based social and cognitive scientist. He holds an emeritus research
professorship at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, and
he is currently at Central European University, Budapest. He is the creator (with Deirdre
Wilson) of "Relevance Theory," and coauthor (with Hugo Mercier) of The Enigma of
Reason. Dan Sperber's Edge Bio Page
Dan Sperber (born June 20, 1942, Cagnes-sur-Mer) is a French social and cognitive
scientist. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology
(Nowadays, Cultural Evolution is the basis for a great deal of psychological and scientific
research. Previously believed that social change resulted from biological adaptations,
nowadays anthropologists commonly accept that social changes arise in consequence of a
combination of social, evolutionary and biological influences[2][1].
Historically, there have been a number of different approaches to the study of cultural
evolution, including dual inheritance theory, (Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as
gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution,[1] was developed in the 1960s through
early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting
evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture
continually interact in a feedback loop[2], changes in genes can lead to changes in culture
which can then influence genetic selection, and vise versa. One of the theory's central claims
is that culture evolves partly through a Darwinian selection process, which dual inheritance
theorists often describe by analogy to genetic evolution.[3])
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sociocultural evolution,
(Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or cultural evolution are theories of
cultural and social evolution that describe how cultures and societies change over time.
Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a
society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in
complexity (degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any
seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis).[1] Sociocultural evolution is "the
process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a
form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form".)
memetics,
(Memetics is the theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution,
originating from the popularisation of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene.[1]
Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information
transfer.
The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern
of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can
reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be
regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-replicator
reproducing itself in a new host. As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian
interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host)
cultural evolutionism
(Cultural evolutionism or cultural evolution attempts to describe and explain long-
term[clarification needed] change in human sociology, insofar as those ways are socially rather than
biologically acquired. As the development of a culture, it may be viewed as a uni-linear or
multi-linear phenomenon. Uni-linear describes the change in human behaviour whereas
multi-linear describes the change in separate cultures and societies.[1]
Culture as applied to evolution involves the transmission of information (particularly from
generation to generation) by all non-genomic means - through the senses by example, or by
instructions involving language. "Cultural evolution" therefore encompasses the generation
and selection of new 'learning' by all means other than encoding in the genome. Although
cultural evolution is not entirely peculiar to man (see for example: John Tyler Bonner, The
Evolution of Culture in Animals (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980)) it is in a
highly developed form restricted to man and much tied up with the development of language
and writing.)
and other variants on Cultural selection theory. (Cultural selection theory is a general term
used to refer to studies of cultural change modelled on theories of evolutionary biology.[1]
p. 2. Cultural selection theory has so far never been a separate discipline[2] However it has
been proposed[3] that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and ..
the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the
structure of the science of biological evolution. - Alex Mesoudi[3] In addition to Darwin's
work the term historically covers a diverse range of theories[2] from both the sciences and the
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humanities including those of Lamark, politics and economics e.g. Bagehot, anthropology
e.g. Edward B. Tylor, literature e.g. Ferdinand Brunetière, evolutionary ethics e.g. Leslie
Stephen, sociology e.g. Albert Keller, anthropology e.g. Bronislaw Malinowski, Biosciences
e.g. Alex Mesoudi,[3] geography e.g. Richard Ormrod,[4] sociobiology and biodiversity e.g.
E.O. Wilson, computer programming e.g. Richard Brodie,[5] and other fields e.g.
Neoevolutionism, and Evolutionary archaeology.[6])
These approaches differ not just in the history of their development and discipline of origin,
but in how they conceptualise the process of cultural evolution and the assumptions, theories
and methods they apply to its study. In recent years there has been a movement convergence
of this cluster of related theories, towards seeing cultural evolution as a unified discipline
in its own right.[3][4])
and linguistic pragmatics: developing, with British psychologist Deirdre Wilson, relevance
theory in the latter; and an approach to cultural evolution known as the 'epidemiology of
representations' in the former. Sperber currently holds the positions of Directeur de
Recherche émérite at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Director of the
International Cognition and Culture Institute.

Contents
 1 Background
 2 Career
 3 Bibliography
 4 See also
 5 References
 6 External links

Background
Sperber is the son of Austrian-French novelist Manès Sperber. He was born in France and
raised an atheist but his parents, both non-religious Ashkenazi Jews, imparted to the young
Sperber a "respect for my Rabbinic ancestors and for religious thinkers of any persuasion
more generally".[1] He became interested in anthropology as a means of explaining how
rational people come to hold mistaken religious beliefs about the supernatural.[2]

Career
Sperber was trained in anthropology at the Sorbonne and the University of Oxford. In 1965
he joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as a researcher, initially
in the Laboratoire d'Études Africaines (French: African studies laboratory). Later he moved
to the Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative (Ethnology and Comparative
Sociology), the Centre de Recherche en Epistémelogie Appliquée and finally, from 2001, the
Institut Jean Nicod.[3] Sperber's early work was on the anthropology of religion,[2] and he
conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Dorze people of Ethiopia.[4]
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Relevance theory is a proposal by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson that seeks to explain the
second method of communication: one that takes into account implicit inferences.It argues
that the "hearer/reader/audience will search for meaning in any given communication
situation and having found meaning that fits their expectation of relevance, will stop
processing"
There are two ways (no many others) to conceive of how thoughts are communicated from
one person to another. The first way is through the use of strict coding and decoding (such as
is used with Morse code). In this approach the speaker/author encodes their thoughts and
transmits them to their audience. The audience receives the encoded message and decodes it
to arrive at the meaning the speaker/author intended. This can be visualized as follows:
Speaker's thought/intention ⇒ encoded ⇒ transmitted ⇒ decoded
⇒ intention/thought understood.
This is usually referred to as the code model[1] or the conduit metaphor[2] of communication.
Human communication however, is almost never this simple. Context almost always plays a
part in communication as do other factors such as the author's intentions, the relationship
between the sender and receiver and so forth.
The second way of conceiving how thoughts are communicated is by the author/speaker only
conveying as much information as is needed in any given context, so that the audience can
recover their intended meaning from what was said/written as well as from the context and
implications. In this conceptual model, the author takes into account the context of the
communication and the mutual cognitive environment between the author and the audience.
(That is what the author/speaker thinks that audience already knows). They then say just
enough to communicate what they intend – relying on the audience to fill in the details that
they did not explicitly communicate. This can be visualized as follows:
Speaker's thought/intention ± context-mediated information ⇒ encoded
⇒ transmitted ⇒
decoded ± context-mediated information ⇒ thought/intention understood
by hearer
(an interpretive resemblance to the speaker's intention).
Relevance theory's central insights are formalized in the following two-part principle, the
Presumption of Optimal Relevance (see Postface to Sperber and Wilson 1995, p. 270):
 The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough for it to be worth the addressee's effort to
process it.
 The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator's
abilities and preferences.
Sperber and Wilson's theory begins with some watershed assumptions that are typical of
pragmatic theories.
(Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context
contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational
implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy,
sociology, linguistics and anthropology.[1]( (Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that
is conventional or "coded" in a given language,) pragmatics studies how the transmission of
meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon,
etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing
knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors.[2] In this
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respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity,
since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.[1]
The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic
competence.[3][4][5])
Namely, it argues that all utterances are encountered in some context and that utterances
convey a number of implicatures. In addition, they posit the notion of manifestness, which is
when something is grasped either consciously or unconsciously by a person.
They further note that it will be manifest to people who are engaged in inferential
communication that each other have the notion of relevance in their minds. This will cause
each person engaged in the interaction to arrive at the presumption of relevance, which is the
notion that (a) implicit messages are relevant enough to be worth bothering to process, and
(b) the speaker will be as economical as they possibly can be in communicating it.
The core of the theory is the "communicative principle of relevance", which states that by the
act of making an utterance the speaker is conveying that what they have said is worth
listening to, i.e. it will provide "cognitive effects" worthy of the processing effort required to
find the meaning. In this way, every ostensive act of communication (that is the lexical
"clues" that are explicitly conveyed when we speak/write) will look something like this:
1. The speaker purposefully gives a clue to the hearer, ("ostensifies"), as to what she
wishes to communicate – that is a clue to her intention.
2. The hearer infers the intention from the clue and the context-mediated information.
The hearer must interpret the clue, taking into account the context, and surmise what
the speaker intended to communicate.
For Sperber and Wilson, relevance is conceived as relative or subjective, as it depends upon
the state of knowledge of a hearer when they encounter an utterance. However, they are quick
to note that their theory does not attempt to exhaustively define the concept of "relevance" in
everyday use, but tries to show an interesting and important part of human communication, in
particular ostensive-inferential communication.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The general question I've been living with is how do we go about getting a better scientific
grip on everything social? The social sciences have developed away from the natural
sciences, even with some bit of hostility toward natural sciences, and that, I believe, is a
source of poverty. If we want to have a more ambitious understanding of how social life
functions, of the mechanisms involved, the challenge is to achieve continuity with
neighboring natural sciences. The obvious neighbors to begin with are cognitive
neuroscience, ecology, biology, and others.
I started as a social scientist. I started as an anthropologist doing fieldwork in a small group
of people in the south of Ethiopia, asking myself fairly standard anthropological questions.
I was in this tribe in the south of Ethiopia, studying rituals—sacrifices and divinations. They
had a fairly rich ritual life with lots of symbols and so on, and I would keep asking them,
“What is the meaning of the symbols you’re using? What are the reasons for why you do this
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ritual the way you do?” And I never got a satisfactory answer, or so I thought. When asked
about the meaning they said, “We do it because that’s what our fathers did, and our
forefathers.” That was always the answer: “We do it because that’s the way we’ve always
done it.” I was very frustrated by this and went looking for possibly better informants—an
older member of the society, a “wise man,” or whatever—who would know more, but I never
found them.
One morning I woke up after having dreamt about all that fairly intensely, and in the dream I
was telling myself, “You’re not paying attention. Listen to what they’re saying. Maybe what
they’re saying is exactly right. Maybe these symbols don’t have meaning. Maybe their job is
not to convey meaning. Maybe the reason why the people do these things is because of the
force of precedent, because indeed they’ve done it all the time.”
I’d been there quite a few months, but I was so agitated by this that I flew back to Paris and
started working on a book, which came out some years later, in 1975, called Rethinking
Symbolism. In it, I argued that cultural symbolism is not in the job of conveying meanings. If
you want to convey meanings, there are much better means to do that—as we're doing now,
for instance, speaking. There's a high investment that’s involved in ritual symbols, the
interpretation of which is always uncertain or vague. There are people in some societies who
tell you “this means that,” but their answers themselves are mysterious and call for further
interpretation. That can’t be the reason why they do it. That can’t be the function of these
symbols and rituals.
My argument was that cultural symbolism has more of a cognitive function. What these
cultural symbols do achieve is focus attention in certain directions. Rather than "mean"
something, they evoke many things. They create a certain commonality of orientation,
interests, and values among people without having any signification, properly speaking. That
got me into cognitive science, which was very much at the beginning. The official beginning
was in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, but at that time there was little cognitive science, especially
compared to what came out after, and practically none of it was about higher cognitive
processes. Issues concerning the meaning of symbols were nowhere near the questions that
people doing cognitive psychology at the time had in mind.
I got involved in cognitive science fairly intensely. I’ve been involved also in the study of
human communication, particularly language. Part of the reason is that I developed my ideas
in France, where Levi-Strauss was such a big influence. I was never a Levi-Straussian, but he
was still the most interesting anthropologist around. He was always insisting that language,
linguistics, provided the model for the study of culture, for the study of social science. It was
the heyday of semiology or semiotics, the notion that a conceptual framework would unify all
these human sciences and possibly even go beyond that.
I studied linguistics quite a bit, and I came across Chomsky when I was a student at Oxford in
the mid-‘60s. For me, that broke down the Levi-Straussian view because, on the one hand,
Chomsky’s work on language was much more impressive than Saussure or even Jakobson—
the classical structuralist work. On the other hand, the kind of model that Chomsky was
proposing, generative grammar or transformational grammar as it was called at the time, was
quite specific to language. The notion that you find in Saussure that the model of language
can be exported to talk about culture, about music, about art, about anything, didn’t make
sense anymore in the case of language because the Chomskyan approach was clearly focused
on the peculiarities of human language.
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The whole idea that if you wanted to have a unified understanding of human communication,
human culture, human language, all you needed was a framework provided by structural
linguistics, that was out. Then either you could decide to become a student of syntax, or,
say, do ethnography in South Ethiopia, or else, if you had the wide ambition that I had, then
you had to go back to the drawing board and rethink very basic issues.
Also, I got involved in linguistics. The doubts I had about using a simple semiotic model of
cultural symbolism—which, in my work, extended to a study of metaphors and symbolism in
language—caused me to interact with people in linguistics and philosophy of language who
were interested in forms of comprehension that went beyond semantics, beyond just getting
the meaning of words as they may be described in a formal system, to understand how words
are being used in a given context. This field developed under the name of pragmatics, and
was very much influenced by the English philosopher Paul Grice.
I worked on this new approach to not just linguistic communication, but communication in
general with an English friend and colleague Deirdre Wilson, who was a linguist who had
studied at MIT with Chomsky and others. We developed a new approach to pragmatics,
which was squarely grounded in cognitive science, in cognitive psychology.
A major challenge for human cognition is this: Humans have the ability to process a very
wide range of information through their senses and through the conceptual framework they
can bring to bear on monitoring their environment. Plus, they get all this information from
communication with others. Plus, they have all this information in memory. Now what you
have is a glut. You have too much information. This happens way before the Internet and too
much soliciting of your attention. That’s true for prehistorical man in a traditional
environment. We have a capacity to monitor many more things than we can process in an
intensive manner, than we can attend to.
A crucial issue for cognitive efficiency for humans then is to decide which of all the
information that is competing for your attentional resources, both from the environment and
from your memory, should be prioritized. Which background information should be brought
to bear on which new information in order to get the most efficient processing for
information?
We developed what we called relevance theory, arguing that human cognition is geared
towards the maximizing of relevance of the input that it processes. This, we argued, has a
consequence for communication. When we communicate intentionally—I’m talking to you,
requesting your attention—your attention spontaneously goes to what’s relevant to you, more
relevant than the competition at this moment. When I try to get your attention through
communication, I’m conveying that I assume that what I’m trying to communicate is worth
your attention and is more relevant than anything else you could attend to at this very minute.
And this, we argued, determines how you interpret in context what is meant by the words that
are being used. So the right interpretation is the interpretation that will tend to confirm this
expectation of relevance that every utterance raises about itself.
On this basis, we developed a view that it’s not that your linguistic utterances have a literal
meaning, and that when you use them you use them to convey this literal meaning and then
you can depart it for a rhetorical purpose with metaphor, irony, or implicit content from this
literal meaning. No. Quite generally, whether you speak literally, or metaphorically, or
ironically, or whatever, your words are not an encoding of your meaning; they are a piece of
evidence from which your meaning has to be inferred. That meaning and these inferences are
guided by this expectation of relevance, as I was mentioning before. That meaning can go
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from very specific—for instance, you ask me what the time is and I look at my watch tell you
it’s 6:15—to very vague meanings. And this can also be expressed by behavior, by gesture,
and indeed by cultural symbols, where you convey that relevance will be achieved by
orienting in a certain direction, by looking at certain things rather than others, by approaching
them with a certain kind of expectation. There’s a continuum of cases between precise
meanings that you can paraphrase and much vaguer effects, which boil down to a mix of
focalization and evocation.
Anthropological fieldwork is a nice job, a nice métier; I liked doing it. I like the company of
fellow anthropologists; they are people who have an extraordinary curiosity and are willing to
talk about lots of subjects. They are willing to spend hours listening to people who work in
some small group in the Amazon or in Polynesia, who have studied some weird local
practices. I like this kind of curiosity.
On the other hand, anthropologists each specialize in their own fieldwork. They’ve invested
years in something that they cannot properly share. I might talk for two hours about my
fieldwork; I spent years there. In a way, it’s quite solitary work. When you’re in the field
you’re with people all the time, but it’s solitary in terms of sharing what you’ve learned.
I was working in a small group of farmers and weavers in the south of Ethiopia—typical
anthropological fieldwork up in the mountains. Anthropologists nowadays work in all kinds
of society, but the traditional fieldwork of anthropologists was in a small group with a very
traditional culture, often with very simple technology, often without writing. These are all
very interesting groups to study, and they all have a share of human experience that is rapidly
vanishing. If only because of that it’s worth trying to document and to understand.
I was, however, more interested in theoretical issues. Most anthropologists have very little
interest or even patience for theory. I was also more personally attracted to cooperative
work—discussing with others, doing joint work. The work I have been talking about, on
linguistic communication with Deirdre Wilson, involved working with somebody else. We
discussed endlessly and that was great. You don’t get that when you do anthropological
fieldwork. Then I got involved in experimental and cognitive psychology. Again, doing
experimental work has a great quality in that you work with collaborators, you jointly do
experiments, you get results as evidence, which may go in favor or against the kind of
hypothesis you had.
A number of issues regarding what’s common to all systems of all communication had
occupied many people in the early and mid-20th century, from the linguistics of Saussure to
the cybernetics of Wiener. All this was before the cognitive revolution. If any psychology
was involved at all it was shallow. We, on the other hand, came after the cognitive revolution.
We could take advantage of this much richer understanding of human psychology and of the
mechanisms involved.
Part of the origin of cognitive psychology, of course, was the same as programs for the
development of intelligent machines, the discovery of the Turing-Church Thesis, and the idea
that you could have precise mechanisms and machines that processed information. This led to
a much richer way of asking questions that had been asked before. We could start thinking
about communication, linguistic communication, or cultural communication, or rituals, (if
rituals are in the business of communication, which they are only to a certain degree) within a
richer framework and asking more precise questions about the mental cognitive mechanisms
that are at work. That was at the scientific basis of our work.
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I worked on and off in Ethiopia between ’6λ and ’ι5. I did a regular stint of a field
anthropologist. I spent a bit less than two years in the field, in the tribe altogether. But then I
just got completely involved in more theoretical issues. I stayed with one foot in the
anthropological community, but I was really interested in the more dynamic discussions
about language, communication, the naturalistic approach, the evolutionary approach to
culture and to cognition. All that was, to me, so much more intellectually
exciting.
For a long time I did follow very closely work in linguistics. I was very influenced by
Chomsky. I’ve been, however, doing so many other things that I stopped following central
issues in linguistics a long time ago. So, if you ask me today whether I agree or disagree with
Chomsky’s current view of syntax, I don’t even have the competence to answer that, but I’m
very impressed by what he has done. Of course, he’s not an anthropologist and he didn’t do
fieldwork. He did study more than one language, but that was not his point. He’s been
incredibly important. He’s changed the field completely. Even people who are extremely
hostile to him in the field have been at least indirectly massively influenced by his
work.
Part of the intellectual excitement of Chomsky is that he was asking pretty fundamental
questions. He related issues about certain constructions in the syntax of English to issues of
what made human beings capable of acquiring language. He made the technical issues in
linguistics relevant to general theoretical issues, and general theoretical issues relevant to the
study of particular cases. It was intellectually extremely stimulating. For me, the most
important intellectual encounter has been the one with Chomsky.
Initially, I started with this interest in society and culture, in collective things. The classical
view of what culture is, very simply, that which is transmitted in a population by non-genetic
means: by communication, imitation, and all forms of interaction. In the human case,
imitation is an important factor which has been overplayed. Humans imitate better than any
other animal, (except maybe parrots, but parrots have a narrow range of things that they
imitate).
We humans are good imitators, but, more importantly, we’re great communicators. We
transmit much more via communication than we do by imitation. Communication is the
vector through which culture develops, is transmitted, builds, and evolves, more than
anything else. The reason why I studied communication with Deirdre Wilson and did all this
work on relevance theory is because I saw communication as a building block, as a crucial
ingredient for understanding society and culture—which was also the idea of Levi-Strauss
and others. But they thought they understood what communication was; communication was
what Saussure’s structuralist model said it was. I thought that was wrong. We really had to
rethink communication quite radically. But my goal in doing that was to understand society
and culture, not to understand language per se, (though I'm interested in that,
too).
How do you move, first, from individual cognition to the interaction between typically two
individuals who might be involved in communication? And then how do you scale up to what
happens at the scale of populations, of human groups? In those days the social sciences were
completely divorced from the cognitive sciences (which were not even called cognitive
sciences). It is still true to a large extent, but much less than it was then. I thought that a
bridge could be built between the social sciences and the emerging cognitive sciences. This
would give us greater insights and greater tools for understanding the social, and to establish
290

this continuity between the natural and the social sciences, which I thought was essential to
improving the social sciences themselves and better understanding the world in which we
live. In this work, a better understanding of communication played a fairly central
role.
How you move from communication in the ordinary sense to cultural transmission? This is a
challenging question. And, on this, my mind was going at the time—we’re talking about the
‘ι0s—in the same direction in which Richard Dawkins was going when he started talking
about memetics. One day an English friend of mine brought me an issue of the New
Scientist where there was a long essay by Richard Dawkins, which was, in fact, the last
chapter of The Selfish Gene. The book hadn’t been published yet, so he was selling memetics
before selling The Selfish Gene. I found it illuminating in many ways. I’d been arguing, in a
much more modest and vague manner, for similar ideas. Nevertheless, I had some
reservations about Dawkins’s approach.
What I found really exciting there was an idea I was also arguing for at the time. Namely, to
explain the success of bits of culture, of practices, of rituals, of techniques, of ideologies, and
so on, the question was not how do they benefit the population in which they evolve; the
question was how do they benefit their own propagation? Dawkins was saying that much
better than I could have done at the time. This was exactly right, I thought. You don’t need to
explain the success of social, cultural practices by assuming that they owe this success to the
benefit that they bring to the population in which they evolve. It’s only marginally that
cultural practices benefit themselves by benefitting the population in which they evolve.
Helping their carriers is one way in which bits of culture can benefit themselves. But there
are lots of other ways.
It was because I was involved in a fairly detailed study of how human communication works
that I was struck by the fact that communication is not a replication system. When I
communicate to you, you don’t get in your mind a copy of my meaning. You’ll transform it
into something else. You extract from it what’s relevant to you. It involves both
understanding and misunderstanding. But even if you’re understanding me perfectly, your
goal will not be to have a copy of what was in my mind, it will be to extract from it some
thoughts of yours which will have been usefully informed by mine, but which will be relevant
to you.
In Dawkins’s memetics, replication was a crucial element. The idea was that you could
generalize the Darwinian model of selection to all kinds of replicators. Memes were cultural
replicators competing with one another for space in our minds and in our social interactions,
and therefore, the object of process of selection. What seemed wrong to me was the idea that
information in human transmission replicates. It doesn’t. You get this paradox of
evolutionary approaches to culture, which takes its extreme form in Dawkins’s memetics.
Dawkins has a kind of clarity of extremist views; I admire that.
Dawkins’s memetics is such a simple and clear idea, so what I think to be a problem with it is
also more apparent. The same problem arises with most evolutionary approaches to culture.
The problem, or the paradox, is that if you look at cultures, what you see is quite a bit of
stability: The same words are being used more or less in the same sense for generations; the
evolution of word meanings or word phonology is very slow; the same tales are being told to
children one generation after the other; the same recipes are being cooked; the same laws are
being followed, interpreted, and employed. So many aspects of culture seem to involve
repetition again and again. How can things stay so stable? It has to be that they are being
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reproduced quite faithfully. You need high fidelity replication or reproduction to explain the
stability of culture. Or so it seems.
Suppose that instead of looking at cultural phenomena generally you look at the micro
mechanism of transmission: communication, imitation, and so on. What happens when you
teach something to somebody? What you see is that, yes, humans are good at imitation.
They’re good at communication. They’re better than any other animal species we know, but
this however hardly ever results in replication.
When you communicate orally, people don’t copy in their mind what you have told them,
they extract something from it. If you see a friend who has a great recipe for apple pie and
you “imitate it,” you don’t really copy it. You look at it and you extract from it a way to do it
your own way. There's a loss of information at every step, which is quite significant. But
even to talk about a “loss of information” assumes that the goal was to replicate. Once you
understand that the goal is to extract something that’s useful to the learner, to the imitator, to
the addressee of communication, then it’s not loss of information; it’s a constructive use. You
construct with what others provide you something that you want. And so, in fact, you rarely
replicate.
So how can you have this macro stability of cultural things with this micro failure to
replicate? There's got to be fidelity in copying, hasn't there? You look closely and, no! I only
know two very clear cases of people who would copy faithfully. One is forging money,
where the forger tries to copy the dollar bill exactly. And the other is a chorus line on
42nd Street. The rest of human interaction involves a lot of coordination, but very little
copying, strictly speaking.
At that point there’s got to be something wrong with the idea, which is still very widespread,
that what makes culture possible is high fidelity copying. And again, this is an idea that is at
the center, in particular, of Dawkins’s memetics. I’ve been arguing for a long time not just
what I think to be plain observation that, in fact, high fidelity is not common at all—and a lot
of things are culturally transmitted without being copied in a faithful manner—but also to
give a positive account of what’s happening.
Fidelity is not the only way to ensure stability. You can have stability in a population not just
by faithfully copying, but also if the transformations that everybody produces at each step—
again, each person is looking for what’s relevant to them—if these transformations converge,
if you have what I can call a “cultural attractor” … let me give you an example. Think of the
word “love.” Love is a very successful word in the English language used every day millions
of times, billions of times. Each time the meaning is a bit different. The lover says, “I love
you.” What does she mean exactly? Does she mean what you mean by it? Does she mean the
same thing she meant yesterday? There are a whole variety of uses. You can copy the sound
of the word “love,” but you cannot copy the meaning. Meaning, anyhow, is not something
that you could observe and then copy. All you can do is infer—not observe—what the person
means when she uses the word. If, however, our transformations converge towards attractors,
towards ways of thinking that are of relevance to all of us, then you may get stability without
fidelity. You get it because of a convergence of transformations rather than because of the
absence of transformation (which is what fidelity would be). You can also model
mathematically such converging transformations and their cultural effects.
I’m asking a big question, which is then divided into many sub-questions. The big question
is, again, how do we get a naturalistic understanding of culture in society? For this we have to
understand the micro mechanisms of communication. And for this we have to understand
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some basic aspects of cognition. And for this we have to understand something about the
evolution of cognition in humans. The evolutionary psychology program has an important
role in all that.
Then we have to put all these things together (including demographic and ecological factors)
and see to what extent we can understand, and possibly even model, population-scale
dynamics where these mechanisms interact and help explain how the cultural items
transform, emerge, and vanish. That’s a large part of the program in which I’ve been
involved.
I first mentioned that I like doing experiments because I like the cooperative work that’s
involved in this work. It’s a fun activity. It’s intellectually very stimulating. And also it does
sometimes provide important evidence.
I started doing experiments a long time ago. When I was still mostly an anthropologist, I’d
been invited by Clifford Geertz at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He hoped he
would correct my mistaken ideas and turn me into a proper anthropologist in his style, but I
was too stubborn and too attracted by more naturalistic approaches. But I enjoyed the time
spent there.
I met George Miller at Princeton University, and I found him a wonderful person. He asked
me the same things you’re asking me—what was I working on, what questions I had in mind.
That day I had been working with Deirdre Wilson on irony, and he asked me, “Are the ideas
you have experimentally testable?” I started thinking, and I went back the next day and said,
“We could do these experiments which, if our account is right, should produce these results,
and if a more classical view of irony is right, should produce these other results.” We did the
experiments and published them, and then this started a new cottage industry of experimental
study of irony. This was my first experimental work in psychology. Starting with George
Miller was not a bad start. It was fairly inspiring, so I continued. The experiments I did later
were on reasoning, which I also found to be an exciting topic.
Few, if any, scientific ideas come bottom up. It’s never the case for me, and rarely the case
for anybody, that you gather so much evidence and data that somehow an idea emerges.
There’s a bottom up aspect, but more important is the top down, where you have hunches.
You may call it intuition. I think it’s mostly luck, when you hit on a good idea. Other people,
just as bright and smart as you, have the bad luck of hitting on a bad idea. They invest a lot
on the bad idea and they don’t get anywhere. If you have been lucky enough to hit on a good
idea then, indeed, you’ll find confirming evidence, good evidence that will start explaining
lots of things. But initially I think we’re groping in the dark.
As I said, I started doing experimental work on relevance, on communication, irony, and so
on. Then I became a mentor, for the Fyssen Foundation, of an Italian psychologist, Vittorio
Girotto, who’d been working on reasoning and had been awarded a grant. I would argue with
him that a lot of findings in psychology or reasoning had to do with relevance. People seemed
to be making logical mistakes in reasoning, but what they were really doing was transforming
the input they were presented with in a way that would make it more relevant to them.
Vittorio and I did a lot of experiments going in that direction.
This is how I got involved in experimental work on reasoning. Besides the fun of doing this
work, part of the reason why it mattered to me was because if you want to explain social
interaction and cultural contents, reason and reasoning play a very important role. I was
talking before about converging transformations in cultural transmission. One way we
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converge is by reasoning together or by exchanging reasons and coming to see things in the
same way. It doesn’t always work, but it’s still a strong factor of convergence.
I'd been thinking that standard approaches to reason and reasoning were mistaken because
they were seeing it as an individual adaptation, as a way to enhance your own individual
cognition. That didn’t make much sense in these exchanges of reasons. Using your reason to
produce an argument to convince others and establish a convergence of goals or ideas made
more sense. True, sometimes you can convince others just because you have authority and
they trust you. But when they don’t, or they don’t on the topics on which you would like to
convince them, does it mean that there’s nothing you can do? No. You can still overcome the
limits of trust by producing arguments that they can evaluate on their own merits, and if they
find that these arguments are good enough, then they will possibly be convinced by what
you’re saying.
Hugo Mercier came to work with me as a student. He decided he liked the idea of the social
function of reasoning and proposed to do his PhD by developing this theme, which he did
splendidly by going way beyond what I had envisaged, both in deepening the ideas and
gathering so much good evidence for it. We were producing ideas and papers, which got
picked up in the New York Times through the Edge meeting that you were alluding to, but
also with a big misunderstanding.
The success of the “argumentative theory of reasoning” was in good part based on a
misunderstanding. The misunderstanding being that we were taken to be saying, “Haha, you
think reason is to get more clever, more intelligent, or discover the truth, but that’s not what
it's for; it’s to persuade others who wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. It’s a way to manipulate
other people.” It was taken to be a cynical view of what reason and reasoning is about; it was
taken to imply that people are naïve if they think reason is in the pursuit of truth. People who
take this cynical view do not apply it to themselves and think that they reason
objectively.
This cynical view doesn’t make any evolutionary sense. Why would something evolve to
manipulate others and then nothing evolve in others so as not to be manipulated? It doesn’t
work like that. If one can benefit by causing harm to others, then in others some counter
measure is likely evolve, and you’ll have an arms race. So our argument was that reasoning
evolved to produce arguments in order to convince others. This works, however, because
reasoning also evolved to produce in each one of us a means to evaluate arguments so as to
gain from the ideas of others when they're able to present good reasons for why we should
accept them and to reject them otherwise. From an evolutionary point of view, reasoning has
got to be beneficial on both sides otherwise people will stop listening to arguments and then
producing them would be useless.
Our work, then, had a success partly based on misunderstanding. In general my work has had
some impact, but it was very much within the scholarly community. This was the first time I
had an article on my work in the general press, in the New York Times, the Guardian,
the Corriere della Sera. The argumentative theory, which Jon Haidt liked and which had both
been successful and misunderstood, was only part of our overall project. The argumentative
theory develops an answer to the question, what is the function of reasoning? But it says
nothing about the mechanisms. Hugo and I had made some allusions about mechanisms. Now
we started working on this second aspect and developing it more thoroughly. What was
initially a theory of reasoning and argumentation has now become a theory of reason, not just
reasoning, and not just of its function, but also of its mechanism.
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There’s something very weird about standard approaches to reason. On the one hand, from
Aristotle onwards, reason is seen as what makes humans superior to all other animals, and
this has been repeated ad nauseam. Before Darwin, humans were not only disposed to think
that they were superior to all animals, but the more differences you could show between
humans and other animals, the better. We have this capacity to reason that other animals
don’t have, and that sets us completely apart from them? Very good!
After Darwin, the animality of humans became quite evident and apparently radical
discontinuities became very puzzling. Do humans really have this kind of superpower, which
doesn’t seem to fit anywhere in our natural traits, not even among our other cognitive
capacities—from perception to unconscious inference, motor control—the kind of things we
share with so many other animals. It’s a bit like we’re Superman or Spiderman with this
fantastic capacity that only we have. This cannot be right.
Dawkins once had a nice article about why animals don't have wheels. You might think
wheels would be a nice adaptation, so why didn’t it evolve? Well, it probably wouldn’t be
such a good adaptation because it would be useful on only very specific terrains. On most
terrains it wouldn’t help you. But even so, there might be animals living on a terrain where
wheels would be very handy, so why didn’t they evolve? It’s not that it’s inconceivable; it’s
that the design problems are very specific, and there are no in-between steps in the evolution
of wheels that would each be adaptive. So how do you go from a non-wheeled animal to a
wheeled animal? It can only be through a series of improbable steps, so improbable that it
never happened on Earth.
In the case of reason being seen as this improbable superpower that exists only in one
species—humans—you have moreover an extra problem, because reason, which is described
as a way to enhance cognition in all domains, might be useful not just to humans, but to many
other species. Investing massively in cognition the way humans have could be advantageous
to other species. That’s one enigma proposed by this view of reason.
The second enigma is well known to psychologists. Kahneman and Tversky, Peter Wason,
and others have described reason as being flawed, as making egregious mistakes all the time.
On the one hand it's a superpower, but it’s a superpower that doesn’t work properly; this
makes even less sense. You have this double paradox of having a superpower that doesn’t fit
in an evolutionary perspective in any clear way and that, moreover, doesn’t even deliver what
it’s supposed to deliver.
Hugo and I set out to resolve the double enigma; first, by showing that human reason fits
perfectly well among other cognitive capacities. Reasoning is only one form of inference
among others. Inference, the capacity to use some input information to derive further
consequences that are not given but that you can draw on the basis of, is something that all
animals do. They guide their action on that basis. Cognition, in general, is inferential.
Perception is inferential. The way we use the activation of our retina to infer properties of the
objects that have caused this activation by reflecting light is inferential. The way we guide
our body movements is inferential. We draw inference all the time. Insects, slugs, birds, any
organism that locomotes, that moves around, couldn’t do that without doing inferences.
Plants stay put, so they don’t need cognition. They stay in the same place. They don't take the
risk of moving. Moving provides new opportunities, but also huge risks. To benefit from the
opportunity and avoid the risks, you need cognition and you need to infer precisely what’s
beyond your skin’s surface. Inference is ubiquitous in animal life.
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In which way is reason different from other forms of inference? In the literature you get some
people who don’t even see the difference and assume that animals reason too, and the
capacity to do logical inference must be present in lowly animals as it is in us. Then you get
others who assume animal inference and human reason are completely separate capacities.
We disagree with both approaches. We also disagree with an approach that is dominant
today, the dual system approach, defended in particular by Daniel Kahneman and others like
Stanovich or Evans, and according to which the enigma of reason can be solved by assuming
that two kinds of processes are involved in inference. One kind, we share with other animals,
and the other is more specifically human.
According to the dual system approach, first, there is a more basic System 1, which in
humans is just what we might call intuition. It's an automatic system that operates
spontaneously. It uses heuristics that generally work but are not fully warranted from a
logical or epistemological point of view. Other animals use similar heuristics. We rely on
them most of the time because doing so takes less time, less energy, less investment. It's a
good way of approaching everyday tasks of inference, which go from not banging into
furniture when you walk around to knowing how to talk to one another. When this doesn’t
fully work or when we meet a problem that we cannot solve in this way, then we resort to
reasoning, or System 2, which involves applying rules, proceeding in a more self-conscious
manner, in a way that is more linked to a proper justification of an epistemological or logical
nature.
If you assume that there is such a partition between two systems of inference—intuition and
reasoning—then you can explain the apparent flaws of reason, the fact that in so many
experiments people make these egregious mistakes, by assuming that they are guided by
System 1, by the more intuitive kind of inference. Intuition is not geared toward handling
atypical problems. It can be tricked in so many different ways. And so all the failures that you
find in the literature of reasoning, all the cognitive illusions that you find are due to the fact
that what you get is the output of System 1, of intuition.
The other system—reasoning proper—is a costlier and more painstakingly acquired system.
We’re capable of deploying it when the investment is worth it, and that gives us this
relatively superior power, which may not be as superior as classical philosophers like
Aristotle assumed, but the possession of which is very much linked to the possession of
language and to the possibility of entertaining higher order thoughts. Dual system approaches
tend to be rather sketchy. There are many versions and it’s being readjusted all the time. For
instance, more and more it’s being recognized that reasoning, the higher system, makes
mistakes, too. So it’s not that good. Intuition often is even better than reasoning. The notion
that you can explain the mistakes or successes of human inference through dual system
theory isn’t that convincing. The actual workings of reason proper are still vastly
mysterious.
We took an alternative route. We don’t think that there are two systems. Intuition, anyhow, is
not based on one system. We don’t have a faculty of intuition; it is instead based on a great
variety of cognitive mechanisms, some of which have a strong innate basis while others have
to do more with the acquisition of competences in the course of cognitive development.
There are many autonomous systems involved.
Some of these mechanisms of intuition are not just intuitions about the facts in the world,
about space, about time, about solid objects, about living creatures; they are also about
representations or even meta-representations. So we have intuition about, for instance, the
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meaning of words, the truth or falsity of ideas, about what other people may think. We have
intuition about not just objects in the world, but how they are represented in the minds of
others, in our own minds, in abstract ideas, and so on.
This is still the domain of intuitions. Like other systems, it’s a system that’s highly
specialized. It works on a very special kind of object, namely representations. Most things in
the world are not representations. Representations occur inside and in the vicinity of animals
that have a cognitive system. Most of the world is representation free, so to speak. We have a
specialized system to have a variety of mechanisms to develop intuitions about
representations. Among the intuition we may have about representations are reasons, intuition
about reasons for beliefs or decisions.
Why are reasons of any relevance to us? In our own individual thinking, reasons don’t matter
very much. We trust ourselves. In any case, you have to rely on your own cognition. You
don’t need to look for a reason for what you intuitively believe. If you intuitively believe
something, most of the time, that’s it. But if we want to communicate to others what we
believe and they don’t have the same intuitions, we may still share intuitions about reasons
for our belief, and then we may end up converging.
We also have other uses of reason that don’t have to do with argumentation or convincing
others. We have reasons that are of more retrospective character. We use reason to justify
ourselves. When we interact with one another, we depend on our good reputation, on the
willingness of others to interact and cooperate with us in a variety of ways, and for that they
have to think that the way we think and behave makes us reliable partners. The evidence they
have is from what we do, which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. What we can do is
provide reasons for our actions and our thoughts, not to convince others to adopt the same
thoughts or behave in the same way, but to show that we had good reasons and can be trusted
to have similarly good reasons in the future.
Reasons have two functions. One is to justify ourselves and the other is to convince others.
Reason is one intuitive mechanism among others; it produces intuitions about reasons.
Reason serves two main functions. One function is the argumentative function (which we had
discussed in our earlier work about the argumentative theory of reasoning), and the other is
the justificatory function.
What we are arguing, then, is there is no division between intuition and reasoning. Reasoning
is just a certain use of intuitions about reasons. Reason is just as intuitive as all the rest. It
doesn’t stand in contrast with another kind of system. It’s one particular kind of intuition,
which plays a very important role. It’s just as if you took another kind of intuition, say, about
emotions or aesthetic emotion, and said, “Oh, that’s completely different from other
intuitions in all the world.” Yes, it has a certain particular role, as do any specialized
intuitions, but it’s not a second system. It’s one mechanism of intuition among many others,
which, in the case of intuitions about reason, plays an important role in human
interaction.
The enigma of reason, we argue, gets resolved in the following manner. To begin with,
reason is no superpower. Human beings, like other animals, have lots of mechanisms of
intuitive inference. We have, in particular, the ability to represent the representation, to think
about them, to have intuitions about them, but it’s still an intuitive capacity. It’s not a new
type of capacity, but a new kind of object that we’re capable of having intuitions about.
Having objects of thought that are specific to one species to think about or to use in cognition
is not only for humans. Animals that have echolocation can exploit ultrasound to perceive
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their environment in detail and to navigate it, and we cannot. We, on the other hand, exploit
reasons in our cognitive work. This is not a second system; it’s just an ordinary cognitive
capacity among others, which has important implications for interaction because that’s what
drove its very evolution. It’s an ability to understand others, to justify ourselves in the eyes of
others, to convince them of our ideas, to accept and to evaluate the justifications and
arguments that others give and be convinced by them or not.
Contrary to the standard view of reason as a capacity that enhances the individual in his or
her cognitive capacities—the standard image is of Rodin’s "Thinker," thinking on his own
and discovering new ideas—what we say now is that the basic functions of reason are social.
They have to do with the fact that we interact with each other’s bodies and with each other’s
minds. And to interact with other’s minds is to be able to represent a representation that
others have, and to have them represent our representations, and also to act on the
representation of others and, in some cases, to let others act on our own
representations.
We arrive at an integrated view of reason that doesn’t assign it a fantastic goal of unique
access to knowledge at the individual level. We think reason evolved in humans and not in
other species because there is a specific ecological niche that humans inhabit, which is the
sociality that they themselves created. It’s a niche that’s created by a social relationship and
culture. In that niche, reason is adaptive and that’s why it evolved
The kind of achievements that are often cited as the proof that reason is so superior, like
scientific achievements, are not achievements of individual minds, not achievements of
individual reason, they are collective achievements—typically a product of social interaction
over generations. They are social, cultural products, where many minds had to interact in
complex ways and progressively explore a lot of directions on which they hit, not because
some were more reasonable than others, but because some were luckier than others in what
they hit. And then they used their reason to defend what they hit by luck. Reason is a
remarkable cognitive capacity, as are so many cognitive capacities in human and animals, but
it’s not a superpower. It’s well integrated in the minds of one animal and it’s well adapted to
a special niche in which this particular animal, humans, live.
The dual system approach is trying to salvage something on the ruins of areas of psychology
of reasoning as it had developed in the past fifty years. It has hit on a number of
difficulties. It showed that the number of directions that had seemed obvious were, in fact,
blind alleys, dead-ends. It ended up having problems and no solution. Sorting the evidence
with the idea of two systems—System 1 and System 2—at least seemed to be a step in the
right direction. But while it seemed to provide the way to explain why such a capacity as
reason might malfunction, as experimental psychology has shown it does, it didn’t solve the
other aspect of the enigma of where this unique superpower come from. Instead of having
reason in a wider sense as a superpower, now we have just System 2, and that's still highly
mysterious.
There are a number of nice gestures, hand-waving in a plausible direction, but what we’re
suggesting is at least more precise. Still hand-waving maybe, but more precise hand-waving,
leading to unexpected predictions that are experimentally testable and which make more
sense, both of the psychological evidence and of the everyday and historical evidence
regarding the role of reason in human affairs, in interaction, in the development of science, in
the development of negotiation, in politics, and so on. Rather than seeing as a paradox the
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fact that people can use reason to defend absurd ideas, as we see happen all the time, this is
exactly part of what we assume is going to happen.
There’s nothing particularly mysterious about reason as we describe it. The devil is in the
details, of course, which we are not going to explore now. Right or wrong, ours is a novel
approach to human reason. (This, actually, should make me guess that we must be wrong,
because, if you have a deeply novel approach it’s probably a wrong idea.) Our approach
really is at odds both with classical views of reason and reasoning and, indeed, with more
recent developments like dual system theory.
The overall view I would defend is that we each have a great many mental devices that
contribute to our cognition. There are many subsystems. Not two, but dozens or hundreds or
thousands of little mechanisms that are highly specialized and interact in our brain. Nobody
doubts that something like this is the case with visual perception. I want to argue that it’s also
the case for the so-called central systems, for reasoning, for inference in general.

REASONING

https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/critical-analysis-and-
reasoning-skills-practice-questions

https://www.reasoningmind.org/
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reasoning

http://www.indiabix.com/logical-reasoning/questions-and-answers/
https://reasoning.wifistudy.com/
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/types_reasoning/types_rea
soning.htm
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/types_reasoning/types_rea
soning.htm
Reasoning within an argument gives the rationale behind why one choice, for example should
be selected over another. Types of reasoning include:
 Abduction: the process of creating explanatory hypotheses.
 Backwards Reasoning: Start from what you want and work back.
 Butterfly Logic: How people often argue.
 Analogical Reasoning: relating things to novel other situations.
 Cause-and-Effect Reasoning: showing causes and resulting effect.
o Cause-to-Effects Reasoning: starting from the cause and going forward.
o Effects-to-Cause Reasoning: starting from the effect and working backward.
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o The Bradford Hill Criteria: for cause and effect in medical diagnosis.
 Comparative Reasoning: comparing one thing against another.
 Conditional Reasoning: using if...then...
 Criteria Reasoning: comparing against established criteria.
 Decompositional Reasoning: understand the parts to understand the whole.
 Deductive Reasoning: starting from the general rule and moving to specifics.
 Exemplar Reasoning: using an example.
 Inductive Reasoning: starting from specifics and deriving a general rule.
 Modal Logic: arguing about necessity and possibility.
 Pros-vs-cons Reasoning: using arguments both for and against a case.
 Residue Reasoning: Removing first what is not logical.
 Set-based Reasoning: based on categories and membership relationships.
 Systemic Reasoning: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
 Syllogistic Reasoning: drawing conclusions from premises.
 Traditional Logic: assuming premises are correct.
Note that these are not all mutually exclusive methods and several give different lenses onto
overlapping areas. In classical argument, for example, all arguments are framed as either
inductive or deductive.

http://library.royalroads.ca/writing-
centre/writing/argumentation/building-argument/types-reasoning-
deductive-vs-inductive

Types of Reasoning (Deductive vs. Inductive)

When you start building an argument, you need to decide whether you're going to use
deductive or inductive reasoning to prove your point.

Deductive Reasoning
Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is
informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about
our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can
test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses.
This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation
(or not) of our original theories. (Source: Web Centre for Social Research Methods: Research
Methods Knowledge Base: Deductive and Inductive Thinking)
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Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader
generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach
(please note that it's "bottom up" and not "bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the
bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!). In inductive reasoning,
we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities,
formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some
general conclusions or theories.(Source: Web Centre for Social Research Methods: Research
Methods Knowledge Base: Deductive and Inductive Thinking)

What's the Difference?

 "Inductive reasoning...is more open-ended and exploratory, especially at the
beginning."
 "Deductive reasoning is more narrow in nature and is concerned with testing or
confirming hypotheses."
(Source: Web Centre for Social Research Methods: Research Methods Knowledge Base:
Deductive and Inductive Thinking)

http://occonline.occ.cccd.edu/online/gmonahan/types%20of%20reasonin
g.pdf
http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/334/forms.html

FORMS O
F REASONI
NG
Quasi-logical
arguments
Quasi-logical
arguments
place two or
three elements
in a relation to
one another so
as to make the
connections
between them
similar to the
connections in
formal logic.
Analogy arguments
Analogy
arguments
reason that
301

because two
objects
resemble each
other in certain
known
respects, they
will also
resemble each
other in
respects that
are unknown.
Generalization
In a
generalization
one reasons
that what is
true of certain
members of a
class will also
be true of other
members of
the same class
or of the class
as a whole.
Argument from
example
Argument
from example
seeks
acceptance for
some general
rule or
principle by
offering a
concrete,
particular case.
Causal arguments
Arguments
from cause
claim that one
condition or
event
contributes to
or brings about
another
condition or
event.
Coexistential
arguments
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An argument
from
coexistence
reasons from
something that
can be
observed (a
sign) to a
condition or
feature that
cannot be
observed.
Dissociation
arguments
Dissociation
arguments
disengage one
idea from
another and
seek a new
evaluation of
both ideas.

courses.washington.edu/spcmu/334/fallacies.html

Cite this page as: Dunn, Michael. What other types of reasoning are there? (10th
May 2013). theoryofknowledge.net. http://www.theoryofknowledge.net/ways-of-
knowing/reason/what-other-types-of-reasoning-are-there/ Last accessed: 12th April
2017
303

APPENDIX

What are the subject-matter and the methods of Philosophy?

If you wish to think/write about multi-dimensional things like the ‘world’,

persons, consciousness, human thinking etc, you should at least think multi-
dimensional and many levelled.

Introduction

Questioning the purpose, the subject-matter and the methodology, methods of

the discipline. I have already dealt in detail about the disappearance of different
subject from the philosophical discourse with the differentiation of other
disciplines, as well as the involvement in philosophy in inter-disciplinary areas
such as cognitive sciences, the creation of experimental philosophy and the
philosophies of other discourses, eg art, religion, science, mathematics, sport
and every subject possible.
What remains as philosophy appears to subscribe to some –ism, which really is
some kind of dogma and even an ideology. One further notices the employment
of terms that traditionally form part of the discourse of philosophy in other
disciplines, for example in social theory or sociology and the fact that almost
everything, such as essays and theses, have an ontology, epistemology and
methodology.
Philosophy has/is often interpreted as consisting of logic, that has its own
discourse, while other aspects or forms of logic really form part of mathematics.
The doing of philosophy as the doing of (usually informal) logic is in some way
related to this belief. As far as the method of philosophy goes, it is always seen
as employing arguments, argumentation and reasoning. But all kinds of writing
and talking employ arguments, argumentation, reasoning and informal logic –
not just philosophy.
These ‘characteristics’ of philosophy of the doing of philosophy is merely one
of many kinds of thought, thinking, cognition and consciousness. Take as an
example critical thinking – this is a ‘discipline’ or area of study of its own, like
the other cognitive approaches, tools, techniques, models, theories, frameworks
and practices I describe and/or list.
I conclude with a discussion from theoretical physics (in the past associated
with the philosophical discourse) that provides us with ontologies as philosophy
used to do. Against that background I present articles on the multiverse, more
conventional articles on our universe, our world, our physical reality and the
origins of life.
I think these are some of the many things that it is necessary that philosophy
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should take note of and consequently question itself, its aims, objectives,
subject-matter and methodologies. We might then have something different than
one-levelled and one-dimensional thinking and more many layered and levelled
and multi-dimensional thinking. Is this not how our consciousness functions?
On many levels, layers and dimensions simultaneously? So should this not be
the manner in which we conceive of ‘it’, its nature and functioning?
We, philosophy, should at least be thinking (instead of individual concepts, or
statements, linear thinking - we should simultaneously think in many layers,
on many levels and in several dimensions) in terms of 3D, for example 3D
scatter plots. By this I mean the many different aspects of the person (mentally
and physically, socially, culturally, as well as our environment, planetary and
universe context should be included in every concept we employ; each concept
should therefore be at least like a 3D scatter plot image, including all these
levels and information)

(This is the type of presentation that every word, each concept, used in a
philosophical sentence or statements should look like. It should present all
implicit assumptions explicitly, for example those of the thinking person,
mentally, physically, socially, culturally, biologically, etc, as well as those of
the medium, language, he employs, etc as well as those dimensions of the
subject or object he expresses his statements about.) In other words in the form
of 3D scatter plots, at a minimum! More on this in the last section.

http://www.jmp.com/support/help/Scatterplot_3D.shtml
Scatterplot 3D
Create a Rotating Three-Dimensional View of Data
The Scatterplot 3D platform shows the values of numeric columns in the associated data table
in a rotatable, three-dimensional view. Up to three columns that you select from the
associated data table are displayed at one time. See Example of a 3D Scatterplot.
To help visualize variation in higher dimensions, the 3D scatterplot can show a biplot
representation of the points and variables when you request principal components. The most
305

prominent directions of data are displayed on the 3D scatterplot report.

Example of a 3D Scatterplot
306

Alexander Kremling has compiled a vast argument map of Descartes Meditations, which he
presented at the 9th conference of the German Association of Analytic Philosophy.

We post Alexander’s report below:

At the GAP.9 in Osnabrück (conference of the Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophy) I
presented a big argument map using Gregors arguments in his commentary on Decartes
Meditationes. It was called “DenkWelt Descartes” and was handmade with YEd to show all
arguments unfolded with all premises at once and graphs pointing not at whole arguments but
307

at the premises or conclusions itself. The resulting map (2,5x4m) was added to the poster
session of the conference. Some looked at it from distance – taking it more as a piece of art
and a representation of philosophical complexities. Some tried to figure out parts of the
Meditiationes they knew (especially the cogito-argument and the arguments for the existence
of God), asked for a brief introduction into the idea of argument maps or simply wondered if
they were meant to read it all.
Both was fine for me, since it was originally made as an exhibit for DenkWelten
(www.denkwelten.net), an association of several young German philosophers to found the
first museum of philosophical ideas, trying to combine exactly visual work with
philosophical ideas. In any case a little help and commentary was needed to get into the map.
Finding a good layout was hard, since automatic layouting couldn’t cope with the text or
made the many inferential connections hard to track. So I stuck to the idea to make the graphs
as easy to follow as possible. This way “God exists and he is perfect” ended up right in the
middle connecting many arguments, what made the argumentative goal of Descartes harder
to detect – which might not be what Mr. R.D. (and even Mr. G.B.) originally intended… but
what can at least now be discussed fully stretched out on PVC.
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309

Argument Mapping and Discourse Analysis

by Gregor Betz, Friday, February 6th, 2015
Can we use argument mapping techniques to enhance empirical discourse analysis? In a
recent talk at KIT’s Science – Media – Communicaton Lab, I presented our experience in
merging argumentation-theoretic and empirical discourse analysis so far
https://youtu.be/jkY5ijuCI4Q

Going live: Using argument maps for debate

moderation
by Christian Voigt, Thursday, August 21st, 2014
How can argument maps be used for debate moderation? In this post three short “live
reconstruction” case studies from 2007, 2011 and 2014 are presented. These cases show
that the challenges of the approach are not so much of a technical but of a
methodological nature. Even if the technology works perfectly it is difficult to get the
conditions right so that the “live reconstruction” is more than just a nice gimmick.
310

A live reconstruction at the future conference of the German green part

Three Online Tutorials on Argument Analysis

by Gregor Betz, Monday, July 22nd, 2013
Do you ponder using argumentation software such as Argunet, but have not taken a course in
argumentation theory or logic yet? Or do you just want to refresh you argument analysis
311

skills? There’s plenty of learning material on the web that helps you to improve you critical
thinking skills. This post features and comments on three free online courses.

http://www.argunet.org/2013/10/13/engaging-the-audience-climate-engineering-talks-and-
videos/#more-173

How To Reconstruct Linked, Convergent and Serial

Arguments with Argunet
by Gregor Betz, Wednesday, June 12th, 2013
Linked, convergent and serial argumentation are basic notions of argument structure in
Critical Thinking and Informal Logic. This post describes how these argument patterns
translate into Argunet argument maps.
312

Continue reading…

Mapping the Climate Engineering Controversy: A Case

of Argument-Analysis Driven Policy Advice
by Gregor Betz, Monday, May 13th, 2013
Argument mapping represents a powerful framework for providing policy advice. This post
describes how Argunet has been used in a recent project on so-called climate engineering
methods.
313

Climate engineering (CE) refers to large-scale technical interventions into the earth system
that seek to offset the effects of anthropogenic GHG emissions. CE includes methods which
shield the earth from incoming solar radiation (solar radiation management) and methods
which take carbon out of the atmosphere (carbon dioxide removal).
In 2010, the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) commissioned six
individual scoping studies on different aspects of CE. Eventually, these individual studies
were to be integrated into a single, interdisciplinary assessment. Sebastian Cacean and myself
have been charged with compiling a report on ethical aspects.
Our overall aim in writing the study was to provide value-free, neutral policy advice on
ethical issues of CE. To achieve this goal, we’ve decided to carry out an analysis of the
various (moral) arguments pro and con climate engineering methods. More specifically, we
314

 compiled a comprehensive commented bibliography of the CE discourse with a focus

on ethical arguments (including scientific articles, policy statements, media reports,
popular science books, etc.);
 we sketched the overall dialectical structure and the individual arguments with
Argunet, which gave us a first argument map;
 we presented the preliminary argument map at project workshops to get feedback;
 and, finally, we revised our interpretation and reconstructed the arguments in detail
(with Argunet).
An immediate result of this procedure was a comprehensive argument map, visualized in the
following poster high-resolution poster. (Technically, we’ve exported the Argunet map as a
graphml file, post-edited the map with yEd, and exported it as a PDF, which was finally
included in a Powerpoint poster.)
315

We’ve then used the CE argument map in the BMBF project

1. to compile the report “Ethical Aspects” (download);
2. to assist policy makers in acquiring a coherent position (by evaluating alternative core
positions proponents and policy makers may adopt);
3. to merge the various disciplinary studies in a final assessment report (download).
Ad 1.): The scoping study on ethical aspects of climate engineering contains a macro map of
the debate that structures the entire report. Each chapter is devoted to a sub-debate of the
controversy. The chapters in turn feature micro maps that display the internal structure of the
sub-debates and visualize the individual arguments plus their dialectic relations. The
arguments are then discussed in detail in the chapter texts. Central arguments are
reconstructed as premiss-conclusion structures.
Ad 2.) We’ve also used the argument map to assist stakeholders in acquiring a coherent
position.
316

Thus, we’ve identified alternative core positions the ministry, or another stakeholder, may
adopt. Such a core position might, e.g., consist in saying that CE should be researched into so
as to have these methods ready for deployment in time. We’ve than visualized the core
position in the argument map and calculated the logico-argumentative implications of the
317

corresponding stance. The map shows, accordingly, which arguments one is required to
refute and which theses one is compelled to accept if one adopts the corresponding core
position. By spelling out such implications we tried to enable stakeholders to take all
arguments into account and to develop a well-considered position.
Ad 3.) The argument map proved also helpful in integrating the various discipline-specific
studies into a single, interdisciplinary assessment report. So, the assessment report, too, starts
with a macro map, which depicts the overall structure of the discourse, and lists the pivotal
arguments. Most interestingly, though, all the empirical chapters of the assessment report (on
physical and technical aspects, on sociological aspects, on governance aspects, etc.)
consistently refer to the argument map and make explicit to which arguments the empirical
discussion unfolded in the chapter is related. This allows one to trace back sophisticated
empirical considerations to the general debate and hence to the key questions of the
controversy.
In sum, we found that argument mapping techniques are very helpful in compiling
assessment reports. Accordingly employed, the impact of argument mapping on societal
discourse and policy deliberation clearly depends on whether the reports are actually read.
So, one requirement that has been highlighted by this project is to develop ways for engaging
recipients more actively with an argument analysis, e.g. through talks, videos or an
interactive website. Other posts summarize our experience with such active involvement.
Tags: argunet deployment, evaluation, project, publication, reconstruction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization#Other_perspectives
Data presentation architecture (DPA) is a skill-set that seeks to identify, locate,
manipulate, format and present data in such a way as to optimally communicate meaning and
proper knowledge. DPA has two main objectives:
 To use data to provide knowledge in the most efficient manner possible (minimize
noise, complexity, and unnecessary data or detail given each audience's needs and
roles)
 To use data to provide knowledge in the most effective manner possible (provide
relevant, timely and complete data to each audience member in a clear and
understandable manner that conveys important meaning, is actionable and can affect
understanding, behavior and decisions)

Scope
With the above objectives in mind, the actual work of data presentation architecture consists
of:
 Creating effective delivery mechanisms for each audience member depending on their
role, tasks, locations and access to technology
 Defining important meaning (relevant knowledge) that is needed by each audience
member in each context
 Determining the required periodicity of data updates (the currency of the data)
318

 Determining the right timing for data presentation (when and how often the user
needs to see the data)
 Finding the right data (subject area, historical reach, breadth, level of detail, etc.)
 Utilizing appropriate analysis, grouping, visualization, and other presentation formats

Related fields
DPA work shares commonalities with several other fields, including:
 Business analysis in determining business goals, collecting requirements, mapping
processes.
 Business process improvement in that its goal is to improve and streamline actions
and decisions in furtherance of business goals
 Data visualization in that it uses well-established theories of visualization to add or
highlight meaning or importance in data presentation.
 Graphic or user design: As the term DPA is used, it falls just short of design in that it
does not consider such detail as colour palates, styling, branding and other aesthetic
concerns, unless these design elements are specifically required or beneficial for
communication of meaning, impact, severity or other information of business value.
For example:
o choosing locations for various data presentation elements on a presentation
page (such as in a company portal, in a report or on a web page) in order to
convey hierarchy, priority, importance or a rational progression for the user is
part of the DPA skill-set.
o choosing to provide a specific colour in graphical elements that represent data
of specific meaning or concern is part of the DPA skill-set
 Information architecture, but information architecture's focus is on unstructured data
and therefore excludes both analysis (in the statistical/data sense) and direct
transformation of the actual content (data, for DPA) into new entities and
combinations.
 Solution architecture in determining the optimal detailed solution, including the scope
of data to include, given the business goals
 Statistical analysis or data analysis in that it creates information and knowledge out of
data

1
Among the bewildering array of –isms in philosophy where does one begin?

2
Should one read through the tradition of the history of Ideas of Western
319

Philosophy? And then select those that seem to appear to one as meaningful?
Chalmers, by the way, suggests that it is in the careful reading ‘with’ what and
how the philosopher thinks and expresses himself in writing, that some of the
value and pleasure of philosophy lies (my words), but this is similar to the
reading of a novel and all sorts of other disciplines. For example Edward Pillar
here http://www.edwardpillar.com/?p=420 writes that that is also the case with the
reading of theology. “When we study theology, that is: when we engage in the learning
process, acquiring knowledge about the writing of a particular theologian, ‘theology’ is no
longer simply an objective reality. To some degree at least we are engaging with the
‘theology’ of someone. We are thinking about the reflections of theologians. How can we
best describe this process? Certainly we are learning. We are learning about theology. We
may think that we are doing theology – that is we are actively engaged in thinking deeply and
richly about God, but I doubt it. Most often we are thinking about thinking about God. Now,
without a doubt this is important. To draw on the insight of those on whose shoulders we

stand. But, this – often regarded as academic theology – is not authentic active theology.
It seems to me that theology comes into its own when it is incarnated. This is when it become
real, and purposeful. When it is engaged. When it is responding. This is theology as a verb.
This is theology as an active, engaged process…”

3
Or, should one scan the field of the Contemporary Philosophy of one’s own
time and commit oneself to the –isms that appear to one as meaningful and for
which there exist excellent reasoned arguments and few criticisms?
4
Or, should one explore one’s own thoughts and try to identify the –isms into
which one’s own attitudes and beliefs fit?
5
How about following this –ism explained in the "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA:
Naturalism". 21 November 2009. Retrieved 6 March 2012. Naturalism is not so much a
special system as a point of view or tendency common to a number of philosophical and
religious systems; not so much a well-defined set of positive and negative doctrines as an
attitude or spirit pervading and influencing many doctrines. As the name implies, this
tendency consists essentially in looking upon nature as the one original and fundamental
source of all that exists, and in attempting to explain everything in terms of nature. Either the
limits of nature are also the limits of existing reality, or at least the first cause, if its existence
is found necessary, has nothing to do with the working of natural agencies. All events,
therefore, find their adequate explanation within nature itself. But, as the terms nature and
natural are themselves used in more than one sense, the term naturalism is also far from
having one fixed meaning.
If one were to find this appealing one will subscribe to the "idea or belief that only natural (as
opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world." That is, according
to The Oxford English Dictionary Online; definition of naturalism
One will then, with fellow adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws
are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing
320

universe at every stage is a product of these laws. "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA:

Naturalism". 21 November 2009. Retrieved 6 March 2012.
But, according to the distinction made by Papineau, David (22 February 2007).
"Naturalism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy one can commit oneself to an ontological
and/or a methodological naturalism.
If one were to accept the former one is well on the way to subscribe to materialism. The
philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature is best accounted for by reference to material
principles. These principles include mass, energy, and other physical and chemical properties
accepted by the scientific community. Further, this sense of naturalism holds that spirits,
deities, and ghosts are not real and that there is no "purpose" in nature. Such an absolute
belief in naturalism is commonly referred to as metaphysical naturalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism (philosophy); Kurtz, Paul (Spring 1998). "Darwin
Re-Crucified: Why Are So Many Afraid of Naturalism?". Free Inquiry. 18 (2).
But of course nothing is ever that simple in philosophy as Schafersman, Steven D. (1996).
"Naturalism is Today An Essential Part of Science" states: Methodological naturalism is the
adoption or assumption of naturalism in scientific belief and practice without really believing
in naturalism. Assuming naturalism in working methods is the current paradigm, without the
unfounded consideration of naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailment,
called methodological naturalism. The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring
knowledge based on an assumed paradigm, without committing oneself to ontological
naturalism.
Some philosophers were so impressed that they got carried away with the notion of
naturalism, as a methodology, so that, Willard Van Orman Quine, George Santayana, and
other philosophers argued that the success of naturalism in science meant that scientific
methods should also be used in philosophy. Of course others found this unacceptable, so
either one stops short of committing one self to a belief in this specification of naturalism, or
one attempts to defend one’s dogma.

Methodological naturalism
Methodological naturalism is concerned not with claims about what exists but with methods
of learning what nature is. It is the idea that all scientific endeavors, hypotheses, and events
are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. This second sense of
naturalism seeks to provide a framework within which to conduct the scientific study of the
laws of nature. Methodological naturalism is a way of acquiring knowledge. It is a distinct
system of thought concerned with a cognitive approach to reality, and is thus a philosophy of
knowledge. Studies by sociologist Elaine Ecklund suggest that religious scientists in practice
apply methodological naturalism. They report that their religious beliefs affect the way they

science.  Belief Net, "What do scientists say" Elaine Ecklund's book "Science versus
think about the implications - often moral - of their work, but not the way they practice

Religion: What do scientists really think" and Wikipedia.

In a series of articles and books from 1996 onward, Robert T. Pennock wrote using the term
"methodological naturalism" to clarify that the scientific method confines itself to natural
explanations without assuming the existence or non-existence of the supernatural, and is not
based on dogmatic metaphysical naturalism (as claimed by creationists and proponents of
intelligent design, in particular Phillip E. Johnson). was cited by the Judge in his
Memorandum Opinion concluding that "Methodological naturalism is a 'ground rule' of
science today"Kitzmiller v. Dover: Whether ID is Science.
321

Wikipedia presents us with a few views on natural

Alvin Plantinga, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Notre Dame,[24] and a Christian, has
become a well-known critic of naturalism.[25] He suggests, in his evolutionary argument
against naturalism, that the probability that evolution has produced humans with reliable true
beliefs, is low or inscrutable, unless their evolution was guided (for example, by God).
Plantinga argues that together, naturalism and evolution provide an insurmountable "defeater
for the belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable", i.e., a skeptical argument along the
lines of Descartes' Evil demon or Brain in a vat.[29]
Take philosophical naturalism to be the belief that there aren't any supernatural entities - no
such person as God, for example, but also no other supernatural entities, and nothing at all
like God. My claim was that naturalism and contemporary evolutionary theory are at serious
odds with one another - and this despite the fact that the latter is ordinarily thought to be one
of the main pillars supporting the edifice of the former. (Of course I am not attacking the
theory of evolution, or anything in that neighborhood; I am instead attacking the conjunction
of naturalism with the view that human beings have evolved in that way. I see no similar
problems with the conjunction of theism and the idea that human beings have evolved in the
way contemporary evolutionary science suggests.) More particularly, I argued that the
conjunction of naturalism with the belief that we human beings have evolved in conformity
with current evolutionary doctrine... is in a certain interesting way self-defeating or self-
referentially incoherent.
— Alvin Plantinga, Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument
Against Naturalism, "Introduction
Robert T. Pennock contends that as supernatural agents and powers "are above and beyond
the natural world and its agents and powers" and "are not constrained by natural laws", only
logical impossibilities constrain what a supernatural agent could not do. He states: "If we
could apply natural knowledge to understand supernatural powers, then, by definition, they
would not be supernatural". As the supernatural is necessarily a mystery to us, it can provide
no grounds on which to judge scientific models. "Experimentation requires observation and
control of the variables.... But by definition we have no control over supernatural entities or
forces." Science does not deal with meanings; the closed system of scientific reasoning
cannot be used to define itself. Allowing science to appeal to untestable supernatural powers
would make the scientist's task meaningless, undermine the discipline that allows science to
make progress, and "would be as profoundly unsatisfying as the ancient Greek playwright's
reliance upon the deus ex machina to extract his hero from a difficult predicament." Robert T.
Pennock, Supernaturalist Explanations and the Prospects for a Theistic Science or "How do
you know it was the lettuce?"
Naturalism of this sort says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural,
which by this definition is beyond natural testing. As a practical consideration, the rejection
of supernatural explanations would merely be pragmatic, thus it would nonetheless be
possible, for an ontological supernaturalist to espouse and practice methodological
naturalism. For example, scientists may believe in God while practicing methodological
naturalism in their scientific work. This position does not preclude knowledge that is
somehow connected to the supernatural. Generally however, anything that can be
scientifically examined and explained would not be supernatural, simply by definition.
: Naturalized epistemology
W. V. O. Quine describes naturalism as the position that there is no higher tribunal for truth
322

than natural science itself. In his view, there is no better method than the scientific method for
judging the claims of science, and there is neither any need nor any place for a "first
philosophy", such as (abstract) metaphysics or epistemology, that could stand behind and
justify science or the scientific method.
Therefore, philosophy should feel free to make use of the findings of scientists in its own
pursuit, while also feeling free to offer criticism when those claims are ungrounded,
confused, or inconsistent. In Quine's view, philosophy is "continuous with" science and both
are empirical. Lynne Rudder (2013). Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective. Oxford
University Press. p. 5. ISBN 0199914745. Naturalism is not a dogmatic belief that the modern
view of science is entirely correct. Instead, it simply holds that science is the best way to
explore the processes of the universe and that those processes are what modern science is

supporters among philosophers.  Feldman, Richard (2012). "Naturalized Epistemology". In

striving to understand. However, this Quinean Replacement Naturalism finds relatively few

Zalta, Edward N. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 ed.). Retrieved

  "The Humanist Hour #101: Exploring Naturalism with Tom Clark". The Humanist. 4
2014-06-04. Quinean Replacement Naturalism finds relatively few supporters.

  Meissner, Ted (25 February 2011). "Episode 53 :: Tom Clark :: Encountering

June 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2016.

  "Perspectives on Naturalism". The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. Retrieved

Naturalism". Secular Buddhist Association. Retrieved 20 October 2016.

20 October 2016.
 Drobny, Sheldon (25 May 2011). "Free Will and Naturalism". Huffington Post. Retrieved
20 October 2016.
Karl Popper equated naturalism with inductive theory of science. He rejected it based on his
general critique of induction (problem of induction), yet acknowledged its utility as means for
inventing conjectures.
A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value,
no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that
whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention.
Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view
applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to
its idea of empirical method.— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery,
(Routledge, 2002), pp. 52–53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9.
Popper instead proposed that science should adopt a methodology based on falsifiability for
demarcation, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single
experiment can contradict one. Popper holds that scientific theories are characterized by
falsifiability.
Thomas W. (Tom) Clark created the website naturalism.org naturalism.org in 1998 "to raise
awareness of worldview naturalism and its positive implications, and to develop and promote
policies consistent with a naturalistic understanding of ourselves."Clark, a research associate
at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, argues that for atheists,
"understanding our full causal connection to the world engenders compassion and gives us
greater practical control. The naturalistic view of ourselves thus has progressive, humanistic
implications for interpersonal attitudes and social policy.

So it is clear that if and when we commit ourselves to some idea, that idea has been
differentiated into many others, and one would have to select from the seemingly endless
323

offspring of that idea between ever more specific ideas. And the above views on naturalism
are not exhaustive and they also lead to many other networks of ideas.
One of these ideas are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism.
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental
substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness,
are results of material interactions.
Materialism is closely related to physicalism, the view that all that exists is ultimately
physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the discoveries of the
physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary
matter, such as: spacetime, physical energies and forces, dark matter, and so on. Thus the
term "physicalism" is preferred over "materialism" by some, while others use the terms as if
they are synonymous.
When exploring the idea of materialism we can pursue it in a number of directions for
example – new materialism,
“New materialism” has now become its own specialized subfield of knowledge, with courses
being offered on the topic at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited
collections, and monographs devoted to it. Jane Bennett’s book Vibrant Matter (Duke UP,
2010) has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology and vitalism
back into a critical theoretical fold dominated by poststructuralist theories of language and
discourse.[11] Scholars such as Mel Y. Chen and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, however, have
critiqued this body of new materialist literature for its neglect in considering the materiality
of race and gender in particular.[12][13] Other scholars such as Hélene Vosters have questioned
whether there is anything particularly “new” about this so-called “new materialism,” as
Indigenous and other animist ontologies have attested to what might be called the “vibrancy
of matter” for centuries.[
or,

Many current and recent philosophers—e.g., Daniel Dennett, Willard Van Orman Quine,
Donald Davidson, and Jerry Fodor—operate within a broadly physicalist or materialist
framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate mind, including
functionalism, anomalous monism, identity theory, and so on.[15]
Scientific "Materialism" is often synonymous with, and has so far been described, as being a
reductive materialism. In recent years, Paul and Patricia Churchland have advocated a
radically contrasting position (at least, in regards to certain hypotheses); eliminativist
materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of
those mental phenomena reflects a totally spurious "folk psychology" and introspection
illusion. That is, an eliminative materialist might believe that a concept like "belief" simply
has no basis in fact - the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses would be just
one obvious example. Reductive materialism being at one end of a continuum (our theories
will reduce to facts) and eliminative materialism on the other (certain theories will need to be
eliminated in light of new facts), Revisionary materialism is somewhere in the middle.[15]
Some scientific materialists have been criticized, for example by Noam Chomsky, for failing
to provide clear definitions for what constitutes matter, leaving the term "materialism"
without any definite meaning. Chomsky also states that since the concept of matter may be
324

affected by new scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific materialists are
being dogmatic in assuming the opposite –
So in response to that the nature and definition of matter were investigated –
The nature and definition of matter - like other key concepts in science and philosophy - have
occasioned much debate.[17] Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) which everything is made
of, or multiple kinds? Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms
(hylomorphism),[18] or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)?[19] Does it
have intrinsic properties (substance theory),[20][21] or is it lacking them (prima materia)?
One challenge to the traditional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of
field physics in the 19th century. Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the
spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view
that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. On the other hand, the Standard
Model of Particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view
it could be said that fields are prima materia and the energy is a property of the field.
According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, less than 5% of
the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" described by the Standard Model of
Particle Physics, and the majority of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy
- with little agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of.[22]
With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had
merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be
maintained. For instance Werner Heisenberg said "The ontology of materialism rested upon
the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be
extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... atoms are not
things." Likewise, some philosophers[which?] feel that these dichotomies necessitate a switch
from materialism to physicalism. Others use the terms "materialism" and "physicalism"
interchangeably.[23]
The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus
materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it
is based. According to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one
defines matter such that it has that property
The exploration of physicalism lead among other ideas to physicalism
George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:
In the twentieth century, physicalism has emerged out of positivism. Physicalism restricts
meaningful statements to physical bodies or processes that are verifiable or in principle
verifiable. It is an empirical hypothesis that is subject to revision and, hence, lacks the
dogmatic stance of classical materialism. Herbert Feigl defended physicalism in the United
States and consistently held that mental states are brain states and that mental terms have the
same referent as physical terms. The twentieth century has witnessed many materialist
theories of the mental, and much debate surrounding them
Some modern day physicists and science writers—such as Paul Davies and John Gribbin—
have argued that materialism has been disproven by certain scientific findings in physics,
such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In 1991, Gribbin and Davies released their
book The Matter Myth, the first chapter of which, "The Death of Materialism",
325

Davies' and Gribbin's objections are shared by proponents of digital physics who view
information rather than matter to be fundamental. Their objections were also shared by some
founders of quantum theory, such as Max Planck, w

Materialism as methodology
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist
approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance.
Particle physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls
promissory materialism — claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in
explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain.[42] Polkinghorne prefers "dual-
aspect monism" to faith in materialism.
And then explorations of these ideas
Sociological naturalism is a theory that states that the natural world and social world are
roughly identical and governed by similar principles. Sociological naturalism, in sociological
texts simply referred to as naturalism, can be traced back to the philosophical thinking of
Auguste Comte in the 19th century, closely connected to positivism, which advocates use of
the scientific method of the natural sciences in studying social sciences
 Antimaterialism - beliefs that are opposed to materialism
 Cārvāka
 Christian materialism
 Critical realism
 Cultural materialism
 Dialectical materialism
 Economic materialism
 Eliminative materialism
 Existence
 French materialism
 Grotesque body
 Historical materialism
 Hyle
 Immaterialism
 Madhyamaka - a philosophy of middle way
 Material feminism
 Marxist philosophy of nature
326

 Metaphysical naturalism
 Model-dependent realism
 Naturalism (philosophy)
 Postmaterialism
In sociology, post-materialism is the transformation of individual values from
materialist, physical, and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-
expression. This idea again leads to the exploration of many other ideas –
 Antonio Gramsci
 Postmodernity
 Reflexive modernization
 Self-expression Values
 Consumerism
 Affluenza
 To Have or to Be?
 Gross National Happiness
 Abraham Harold Maslow
 John Kenneth Galbraith
 Anthony Giddens
 World Values Survey
 Material feminism
 Neo-Marxism
 Historical revisionism
 Integral Theory
 Generational Replacement
 Physical ontology
 In philosophy, physicalism is the ontological thesis that "everything is physical", that
there is "nothing over and above" the physical,[1] or that everything supervenes on the
physical.[2] Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance" view of
the nature of reality as opposed to a "two-substance" (dualism) or "many-substance"
(pluralism) view. Both the definition of "physical" and the meaning of physicalism
have been debated.
 Physicalism is closely related to materialism. Physicalism grew out of materialism
with the success of the physical sciences in explaining observed phenomena. The
327

terms are often used interchangeably, although they are sometimes distinguished, for
example on the basis of physics describing more than just matter (including energy
and physical law). Common arguments against physicalism include both the
philosophical zombie argument[3] and the multiple observers argument,[4] that the
existence of a physical being may imply zero or more distinct conscious entities.
Definition of physical

The use of "physical" in physicalism is a philosophical concept and can be

distinguished from alternative definitions found in the literature (e.g. Popper defined
a physical proposition to be one which can at least in theory be denied by
observation[5]). A "physical property", in this context, may be a metaphysical or
logical combination of properties which are physical in the ordinary sense. It is
common to express the notion of "metaphysical or logical combination of properties"
using the notion of supervenience: A property A is said to supervene on a property B
if any change in A necessarily implies a change in B.[6] Since any change in a
combination of properties must consist of a change in at least one component
property, we see that the combination does indeed supervene on the individual
properties. The point of this extension is that physicalists usually suppose the
existence of various abstract concepts which are non-physical in the ordinary sense
of the word; so physicalism cannot be defined in way that denies the existence of
these abstractions. Also, physicalism defined in terms of supervenience does not
entail that all properties in the actual world are type identical to physical properties. It
is, therefore, compatible with multiple realizability.[7]
From the notion of supervenience, we see that, assuming that mental, social, and biological
properties supervene on physical properties, it follows that two hypothetical worlds cannot be
identical in their physical properties but differ in their mental, social or biological
properties.[2]
Two common approaches to defining "physicalism" are the theory-based and object-based
approaches. The theory-based conception of physicalism proposes that "a property is physical
if and only if it either is the sort of property that physical theory tells us about or else is a
property which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property that physical
theory tells us about".[2] Likewise, the object-based conception claims that "a property is
physical if and only if: it either is the sort of property required by a complete account of the
intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents or else is a property
which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property required by a complete
account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents".
Physicalists have traditionally opted for a "theory-based" characterization of the physical
either in terms of current physics,[8] or a future (ideal) physics.[9] These two theory-based
conceptions of the physical represent both horns of Hempel's dilemma[10] (named after the
late philosopher of science and logical empiricist Carl Gustav Hempel): an argument against
theory-based understandings of the physical. Very roughly, Hempel's dilemma is that if we
define the physical by reference to current physics, then physicalism is very likely to be false,
as it is very likely (by pessimistic meta-induction[11]) that much of current physics is false.
But if we instead define the physical in terms of a future (ideal) or completed physics, then
physicalism is hopelessly vague or indeterminate.[12]
328

While the force of Hempel's dilemma against theory-based conceptions of the physical
remains contested,[13] alternative "non-theory-based" conceptions of the physical have also
been proposed. Frank Jackson (1998) for example, has argued in favour of the
aforementioned "object-based" conception of the physical.[14] An objection to this proposal,
which Jackson himself noted in 1998, is that if it turns out that panpsychism or
panprotopsychism is true, then such a non-materialist understanding of the physical gives the
counterintuitive result that physicalism is, nevertheless, also true since such properties will
figure in a complete account of paradigmatic examples of the physical.
David Papineau[15] and Barbara Montero[16] have advanced and subsequently defended[17] a
"via negativa" characterization of the physical. The gist of the via negativa strategy is to
understand the physical in terms of what it is not: the mental. In other words, the via negativa
strategy understands the physical as "the non-mental". An objection to the via negativa
conception of the physical is that (like the object-based conception) it doesn't have the
resources to distinguish neutral monism (or panprotopsychism) from physicalism.[18]

Supervenience-based definitions of physicalism

Adopting a supervenience-based account of the physical, the definition of physicalism as "all
properties are physical" can be unravelled to:
1) Physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a physical
duplicate of w is also a duplicate of w simpliciter.[19]
2) Physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a minimal
physical duplicate of w is a duplicate of w simpliciter
3) Physicalism is true at a possible world w if and only if any world that is a physical
duplicate of w is a positive duplicate of w.[28
Additional objections have been raised to the above definitions provided for
supervenience physicalism
Closely related to supervenience physicalism, is realisation physicalism, the thesis
that every instantiated property is either physical or is realised by a physical property
Token physicalism is the proposition that "for every actual particular (object, event or
process) x, there is some physical particular y such that x = y". It is intended to
capture the idea of "physical mechanisms".[2] Token physicalism is compatible with
property dualism, in which all substances are "physical", but physical objects may
have mental properties as well as physical properties. Token physicalism is not
however equivalent to supervenience physicalism. Firstly, token physicalism does not
imply supervenience physicalism because the former does not rule out the possibility
of non-supervenient properties (provided that they are associated only with physical
particulars). Secondarily, supervenience physicalism does not imply token
physicalism, for the former allows supervenient objects (such as a "nation", or "soul")
that are not equal to any physical object.
There are multiple versions of reductionism.[2] In the context of physicalism, the reductions
referred to are of a "linguistic" nature, allowing discussions of, say, mental phenomena to be
translated into discussions of physics. In one formulation, every concept is analysed in terms
of a physical concept. One counter-argument to this supposes there may be an additional
329

class of expressions which is non-physical but which increases the expressive power of a
theory.[33] Another version of reductionism is based on the requirement that one theory
(mental or physical) be logically derivable from a second.[34]
The combination of reductionism and physicalism is usually called reductive physicalism in
the philosophy of mind.
There are two versions of emergentism, the strong version and the weak version.
Supervenience physicalism has been seen as a strong version of emergentism, in
which the subject's psychological experience is considered genuinely novel.[2] Non-
reductive physicalism, on the other side, is a weak version of emergentism because it
does not need that the subject's psychological experience be novel. The strong version
of emergentism is incompatible with physicalism. Since there are novel mental states,
mental states are not nothing over and above physical states. However, the weak
version of emergentism is compatible with physicalism.
Physicalists hold that physicalism is true. A natural question for physicalists, then, is
whether the truth of physicalism is deducible a priori from the nature of the physical
world (i.e., the inference is justified independently of experience, even though the
nature of the physical world can itself only be determined through experience) or can
only be deduced a posteriori (i.e., the justification of the inference itself is dependent
upon experience). So-called "a priori physicalists" hold that from knowledge of the
conjunction of all physical truths, a totality or that's-all truth (to rule out non-physical
epiphenomena, and enforce the closure of the physical world), and some primitive
indexical truths such as "I am A" and "now is B", the truth of physicalism is knowable
a prior..
Galen Strawson's realistic physicalism (or "realistic monism") entails panpsychism –
or at least micropsychism.[47][48][49] Strawson argues that "many—perhaps most—of
those who call themselves physicalists or materialists [are mistakenly] committed to
the thesis that physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly
and utterly non-experiential... even when they are prepared to admit with Eddington
that physical stuff has, in itself, ‘a nature capable of manifesting itself as mental
activity’, i.e. as experience or consciousness".[47] Because experiential phenomena
allegedly cannot be emergent from wholly non-experiential phenomena, philosophers
are driven to substance dualism, property dualism, eliminative materialism and "all
other crazy attempts at wholesale mental-to-non-mental reduction"

 Philosophy of mind
 Quantum energy
 Rational egoism
 Reality in Buddhism
 Substance theory
 Transcendence (religion)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism
330

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Scientism is a belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and
the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most
valuable part of human learning—to the exclusion of other viewpoints. Accordingly,
philosopher Tom Sorell provides this definition of scientism: "Scientism is a matter of putting
too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or
culture."[1] It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the
natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they
alone can yield true knowledge about man and society".[2] The term "scientism" frequently
implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism[3][4] and has been
used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,[5] philosophers of science such as Karl
Popper,[6] and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam[7] and Tzvetan Todorov[8] to describe (for
example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all
knowledge to only that which is measurable.[9] Philosophers such as Alexander Rosenberg
have also appropriated "scientism" as a name for the view that science is the only reliable
source of knowledge.[10]
Scientism may refer to science applied "in excess". The term scientism can apply in either of
two senses:
1. To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims.[11] This usage applies
equally in contexts where science might not apply,[12] such as when the topic is
perceived as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is
insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an
excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept
any result described as scientific. This can be a counterargument to appeals to
scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science"
methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek
described in The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952) as being impossible, because
that methodology involves attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social
sciences (including his own field of economics) center almost purely on human
action.
2. To refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things
recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or
other inquiry",[13] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in
itself, independent of perspective"[7] with a concomitant "elimination of the
psychological dimensions of experience".[14][15]
The term "scientism" is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight
the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human
knowledge.[16][17][18][19][20]
For social theorists in the tradition of Max Weber, such as Jürgen Habermas and Max
Horkheimer, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism, but
also to the cultural rationalization of the modern West.[9][21] British writer and feminist
thinker Sara Maitland has called scientism a "myth as pernicious as any sort of
fundamentalism."
331

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylomorphism#Modern_physics
Hylomorphism (or hylemorphism) is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which
conceives being (ousia) as a compound of matter and form.
According to Nick Herbert, the idea of hylomorphism can be said to have been reintroduced
to the world when Werner Heisenberg invented his duplex world of quantum mechanics.[70]
In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena
that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But atoms and the elementary particles
themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one
of things or facts ... The probability wave ... mean[s] tendency for something. It's a
quantitative version of the old concept of potentia from Aristotle's philosophy. It introduces
something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange
kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality
Exploring hylomorphisms will lead to an investigation of ideas such as these –
 Endurantism
 Hyle
 Hylozoism
 Identity and change
 Inherence
 Materialism
 Substance theory
 Substantial form
 Vitalism
 Moderate realism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise
in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the
production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and
semiotic role.

Similar as in cultural studies, science studies are defined by the subject of their research
and encompass a large range of different theoretical and methodological perspectives
and practices. The interdisciplinary approach may include and borrow methods from the
humanities, natural and formal sciences, from scientometrics to ethnomethodology or
cognitive science. Science studies have a certain importance for evaluation and science
policy. The field added technology in the last decade, and using science, technology and
society, started to involve the interaction of expert and lay knowledge in the public realm
http://www.stswiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
332

January 21, 2017 Science and technology studies (STS) examines the influence of society on
science and technology, and the influence of science and technology on society. STS Wiki is
an experiment in the public production of free, open-source knowledge concerning STS. Our
mission is simple: To make STS knowledge, perspectives, and resources available for free,
worldwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_technology
Social construction of technology (also referred to as SCOT) is a theory within the field of
Science and Technology Studies. Advocates of SCOT—that is, social constructivists—argue
that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes
technology. They also argue that the ways a technology is used cannot be understood without
understanding how that technology is embedded in its social context. SCOT is a response to
technological determinism and is sometimes known as technological constructivism.
SCOT draws on work done in the constructivist school of the sociology of scientific
knowledge, and its subtopics include actor-network theory (a branch of the sociology of
science and technology) and historical analysis of sociotechnical systems, such as the work of
historian Thomas P. Hughes. Its empirical methods are an adaptation of the Empirical
Programme of Relativism (EPOR), which outlines a method of analysis to demonstrate the
ways in which scientific findings are socially constructed (see strong program). Leading
adherents of SCOT include Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch.
 Legacy of the Strong Programme in the sociology of science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_programme
The strong programme or strong sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific
knowledge (SSK) particularly associated with David Bloor,[1] Barry Barnes, Harry Collins,
Donald A. MacKenzie,[2] and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on Science and
Technology Studies is credited as being unparalleled (Latour 1999). The largely Edinburgh-
based school of thought has illustrated how the existence of a scientific community, bound
together by allegiance to a shared paradigm, is a prerequisite for normal scientific activity.
The strong programme is a reaction against "weak" sociologies of science, which restricted
the application of sociology to "failed" or "false" theories, such as phrenology. Failed theories
would be explained by citing the researchers' biases, such as covert political or economic
interests. Sociology would be only marginally relevant to successful theories, which
succeeded because they had revealed a true fact of nature. The strong programme proposed
that both "true" and "false" scientific theories should be treated the same way. Both are
caused by social factors or conditions, such as cultural context and self-interest. All human
knowledge, as something that exists in the human cognition, must contain some social
components in its formation process.
In order to study scientific knowledge from a sociological point of view, the strong
programme has adhered to a form of radical relativism. In other words, it argues that – in the
social study of institutionalised beliefs about "truth" – it would be unwise to use "truth" as an
explanatory resource. That would be to include the answer as part of the question (Barnes
1992), not to mention a thoroughly "whiggish" approach towards the study of history – that is
an approach seeing human history as an inevitable march towards truth and enlightenment.
Alan Sokal has criticised radical relativism as part of the science wars, on the basis that such
an understanding will lead inevitably towards solipsism and postmodernism. Markus Seidel
attacks the main arguments – underdetermination and norm-circularity – provided by Strong
333

Programme proponents for their relativism.[6] Strong programme scholars insist that their
approach has been misunderstood by such a criticism and that its adherence to radical
relativism is strictly methodological.
 1.1 Symmetry
 2 Core concepts
 2.1 Interpretative flexibility
o 2.1.1 Relevant social groups
o 2.1.2 Design flexibility
o 2.1.3 Problems and conflicts
 2.2 Closure
 2.3 Relating the content of the technological artifact to the wider sociopolitical milieu

 3 Criticism
In 1993, Langdon Winner published an influential critique of SCOT entitled "Upon Opening
the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of
Technology."[5] In it, he argues that social constructivism is an overly narrow research
program. He identifies the following specific limitations in social constructivism:
1. It explains how technologies arise, but ignores the consequences of the technologies
after the fact. This results in a sociology that says nothing about how such
technologies matter in the broader context.
2. It examines social groups and interests that contribute to the construction of
technology, but ignores those who have no voice in the process, yet are affected by it.
Likewise, when documenting technological contingencies and choices, it fails to
account for those options that never made it to the table. According to Winner, this
results in conservative and elitist sociology.
3. It is superficial in that it focuses on how the immediate needs, interests, problems and
solutions of chosen social groups influence technological choice, but disregards any
possible deeper cultural, intellectual or economic origins of social choices concerning
technology.
4. It actively avoids taking any kind of moral stance or passing judgment on the relative
merits of the alternative interpretations of a technology. This indifference makes it
unhelpful in addressing important debates about the place of technology in human
affairs.
Other critics include Stewart Russell with his letter in the journal "Social Studies of Science"
titled "The Social Construction of Artifacts: A Response to Pinch and Bijker".

http://www.stswiki.org/index.php?title=Core_literature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapping_controversies
334

Mapping controversies (MC) is an academic course taught in science studies,[1] stemming

from the writings of the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour.[2] MC focuses
exclusively on the controversies surrounding scientific knowledge rather than the established
scientific facts or outcomes. Thus, it helps sociologists, anthropologists and other social
scientists get insights not into scientific knowledge per se, but rather into the process of
gaining knowledge. Thus, MC sheds light on those intermediate stages corresponding to the
actual research process and pinpoints the connections between scientific work and other types
of activities.
The term "mapping controversies" was first suggested in relation to analysis of scientific and
technological controversies,[3] and then lately re-affirmed as a widely applicable
methodological approach going beyond the boundaries of Science Studies.[4] It is usually
used for the methodology that identifies and tracks down the polemics or debate surrounding
a scientific fact, and utilises various visualisation tools to present the problem in its
complexity.
Recently Latour initiated the project "Mapping Controversies on Science for Politics
(MACOSPOL)".[5] The showcase website is mappingcontroversies.net [6]
In 2008-2009 several universities in Europe and USA started teaching "Mapping
Controversies" courses for students in political sciences,[7] engineering,[8][9] and
architecture.[10]
An earlier attempt to stage controversies in museum settings took place at the Gallery of
Research in Vienna in 2005.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_dynamics
Technology dynamics is broad and relatively new scientific field that has been developed in
the framework of the postwar science and technology studies field. It studies the process of
technological change. Under the field of Technology Dynamics the process of technological
change is explained by taking into account influences from "internal factors" as well as from
"external factors". Internal factors relate technological change to unsolved technical problems
and the established modes of solving technological problems and external factors relate it to
various (changing) characteristics of the social environment, in which a particular technology
is embedde
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory

Actor–network theory (ANT) is an approach to social theory and research, originating in

the field of science studies, which treats objects as part of social networks. Although it is best
known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in
systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional
and critical sociology. Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel
Callon and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John Law, and others, it can more technically be
described as a "material-semiotic" method. This means that it maps relations that are
335

simultaneously material (between things) and semiotic (between concepts). It assumes that
many relations are both material and semiotic.
Broadly speaking, ANT is a constructivist approach in that it avoids essentialist explanations
of events or innovations (i. e. ANT explains a successful theory by understanding the
combinations and interactions of elements that make it successful, rather than saying it is
“true” and the others are “false”). However, it is distinguished from many other STS and
sociological network theories for its distinct material-semiotic approach.
 1 Background and context
 2 A material-semiotic method
 Although it is called a “theory”, ANT does not usually explain “why” or "how" a
network takes the form that it does.[3] Rather, ANT is a way of thoroughly exploring
the relational ties within a network (which can be a multitude of different things). As
Latour notes,[4] "explanation does not follow from description; it is description taken
that much further." It is not, in other words, a theory "of" anything, but rather a
method, or a "how-to book" as Latour [3] puts it.
 The approach is related to other versions of material-semiotics (notably the work of
philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and feminist scholar Donna Haraway).
It can also be seen as a way of being faithful to the insights of ethnomethodology and
its detailed descriptions of how common activities, habits and procedures sustain
themselves. Similarities between ANT and symbolic interactionist approaches such as
the newer forms of grounded theory like situational analysis, exist,[5] although
Latour[6] objects to such a comparison.
 Although ANT is mostly associated with studies of science and technology and with
the sociology of science, it has been making steady progress in other fields of
sociology as well. ANT is adamantly empirical, and as such yields useful insights and
tools for sociological inquiry in general. ANT has been deployed in studies of identity
and subjectivity, urban transportation systems, and passion and addiction.[7] It also
makes steady progress in political and historical sociology


 3 The actor-network
 As the term implies, the actor-network is the central concept in ANT. The term
"network" is somewhat problematic in that it, as Latour [3][4][9] notes, has a number of
unwanted connotations. Firstly, it implies that what is described takes the shape of a
network, which is not necessarily the case. Secondly, it implies "transportation
without deformation," which, in ANT, is not possible since any actor-network
involves a vast number of translations. Latour,[9] however, still contends that network
is a fitting term to use, because "it has no a priori order relation; it is not tied to the
axiological myth of a top and of a bottom of society; it makes absolutely no
assumption whether a specific locus is macro- or micro- and does not modify the tools
to study the element 'a' or the element 'b'." This use of the term "network" is very
similar to Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomes; Latour [4] even remarks tongue in cheek
that he would have no objection to renaming ANT "actant-rhizome ontology" if it
only had sounded better, which hints at Latour's uneasiness with the word "theory".
336

 Actor–network theory tries to explain how material–semiotic networks come together

to act as a whole; the clusters of actors involved in creating meaning are both material
and semiotic. As a part of this it may look at explicit strategies for relating different
elements together into a network so that they form an apparently coherent whole.
These networks are potentially transient, existing in a constant making and re-
making.[3] This means that relations need to be repeatedly “performed” or the network
will dissolve. They also assume that networks of relations are not intrinsically
coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts. Social relations, in other words, are only
ever in process, and must be performed continuously.
 Actants denote human and non-human actors, and in a network take the shape that
they do by virtue of their relations with one another. It assumes that nothing lies
outside the network of relations, and as noted above, suggests that there is no
difference in the ability of technology, humans, animals, or other non-humans to act
(and that there are only enacted alliances). As soon as an actor engages with an actor-
network it too is caught up in the web of relations, and becomes part of the entelechy.
 If taken to its logical conclusion, then, nearly any actor can be considered merely a
sum of other, smaller actors. A car is an example of a complex system. It contains
many electronic and mechanical components, all of which are essentially hidden from
view to the driver, who simply deals with the car as a single object. This effect is
known as punctualisation, and is similar to the idea of encapsulation in object-
oriented programming.
 When an actor network breaks down, the punctualisation effect tends to cease as well.
In the automobile example above, a non-working engine would cause the driver to
become aware of the car as a collection of parts rather than just a vehicle capable of
transporting him or her from place to place. This can also occur when elements of a
network act contrarily to the network as a whole. In his book Pandora’s Hope, Latour
likens depunctualization to the opening of a black box. When closed, the box is
perceived simply as a box, although when it is opened all elements inside it becomes
visible.


 4 Human and non-human actors

 ANT is often associated with the equal treatment of human and non-human actors.
ANT assumes that all entities in a network can and should be described in the same
terms. This is called the principle of generalized symmetry. The rationale for this is
that differences between them are generated in the network of relations, and should
not be presupposed.

 Intermediaries and mediators

 The distinction between intermediaries and mediators is key to ANT sociology.
Intermediaries are entities which make no difference (to some interesting state of
affairs which we are studying) and so can be ignored. They transport the force of
some other entity more or less without transformation and so are fairly uninteresting.
Mediators are entities which multiply difference and so should be the object of study.
Their outputs cannot be predicted by their inputs. From an ANT point of view
sociology has tended to treat too much of the world as intermediaries.
337

 For instance, a sociologist might take silk and nylon as intermediaries, holding that
the former “means”, “reflects”, or “symbolises” the upper classes and the latter the
lower classes. In such a view the real world silk–nylon difference is irrelevant —
presumably many other material differences could also, and do also, transport this
class distinction. But taken as mediators these fabrics would have to be engaged with
by the analyst in their specificity: the internal real-world complexities of silk and
nylon suddenly appear relevant, and are seen as actively constructing the ideological
class distinction which they once merely reflected.
 For the committed ANT analyst, social things—like class distinctions in taste in the
silk and nylon example, but also groups and power—must constantly be constructed
or performed anew through complex engagements with complex mediators. There is
no stand-alone social repertoire lying in the background to be reflected off, expressed
through, or substantiated in, interactions (as in an intermediary conception).


o 4.1 Intermediaries and mediators

 5 Other central concepts
o 5.1 Translation
o 5.2 Tokens, or quasi-objects
 6 Actor network theory and specific disciplines
o 6.1 ANT and international relations
o 6.2 ANT and design
 7 Criticism
Actor–network theory insists on the capacity of nonhumans to be actors or participants in
networks and systems. Critics including figures such as Langdon Winner maintain that such
properties as intentionality fundamentally distinguish humans from animals or from “things”
(see Activity Theory).[21] ANT scholars[who?] respond with the following arguments:
 They do not attribute intentionality and similar properties to nonhumans.
 Their conception of agency does not presuppose intentionality.
 They locate agency neither in human “subjects” nor in non-human “objects”, but in
heterogeneous associations of humans and nonhumans


 8 See also
 9 References
 10 External links
o 10.1 Bibliographies and resources
o 10.2 Further reading
338

o http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/centres/css/ant/ant.htm
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/centres/css/ant/ant.htm
www.normalizationprocess.org/
This site - normalizationprocess.org - was created by Carl May, Elizabeth Murray, Tracy
Finch, Frances Mair, Shaun Treweek, Luciana Ballini, Anne Macfarlane, Melissa Girling and
Tim Rapley - with help from growcreate.
Like all theories, NPT is a work in progress, it has grown and developed as people have used
and criticized it, and its scope has expanded as it has been applied to different problems. That
process continues.
http://www.normalizationprocess.org/theory-behind-npt/what-is-a-theory/

What is a theory?
There's nothing so practical as a good theory. A theory is a set of conceptual tools that enable
us to describe, explain, and make claims about aspects of the world we live in. Theories
enable us to do three kinds of conceptual work:

1. Accurate description. A theory must provide a taxonomy or set of definitions that

enable the identification, differentiation, and codification of the qualities and properties of
cases and classes of phenomena.
NPT systematically establishes and differentiates the phenomena with which it is concerned
by defining actors, objects and contexts, and the processes that govern them. It therefore
permits a rational foundation for explanations of observed events and processes pertaining to
the implementation of new technologies and complex interventions in health care systems.
2. Systematic explanation. A theory must provide an explanation of the form and
significance of the causal and relational mechanisms at work in cases or classes of the
phenomena defined by the theory, and should propose their relation to other phenomena.
NPT offers a systematic explanation of the operation of those processes and conditions by
referring to patterns of action that can be empirically shown to affect their outcomes, and by
defining the causal mechanisms and relations that underpin these. It may thus be reasonably
employed to make predictions about the normalization potential of proposed technologies or
interventions, and about the possible outcomes of other implementation processes.
3. Knowledge claims. A theory must lead to knowledge claims. These may take the form
of abstract explanations, analytic propositions, or experimental hypotheses. They may also
map relations with other phenomena that are believed to possess similar qualities and
properties.
NPT permits verifiable knowledge claims about process and action, and proposes a set of
analytic propositions that can inform empirical investigation. This means that it not only
accounts for outcomes of implementation processes, but can also account for differences
between expected and observed outcomes of new technologies or complex interventions in
real health care settings.
339

A fourth, but not mandatory, component of a theory is that it proposes a means of testing its
knowledge claims. A theory must be testable. Such tests may be abstract (i.e. formal logical
representations, simulations, or thought experiments); or concrete (empirical investigations).

Core Propositions of NPT

NPT is a formal theory - there's a logic to what a theory is and does - we now want to provide
some information about the three formal propositions behind NPT.
We have already described the constructs that go together to make up NPT. We've explained
how NPT provides a set of tools that help us to understand and explain what goes on when
we work to implement a new technology or other complex intervention. Because NPT is a
formal theory - there's a logic to what a theory is and does - we want to provide some
information about this too. NPT starts with the formal proposition that:
(a) Complex interventions become routinely embedded (implemented and integrated) in their
organizational and professional contexts as the result of people working, individually and
collectively, to implement them.
On the face of it, this doesn't seem remarkable. But it's important because it says that the
routine embedding of a complex intervention is the product of action (the things that people
do), not necessarily people's attitudes (how they feel about what they do), or
their intentions (what they say they are going to do). Explaining implementation (process)
and integration (structure) is about explaining action. So, to understand the embedding of a
complex intervention we must look at what people actually do and how they work. In this
context, the NPT proposes that:
(b) The work of implementation is operationalized through four generative mechanisms
(coherence; cognitive participation; collective action;reflexive monitoring).
Here, NPT is concerned with identifying and understanding the ways that people make sense
of the work of implementing and integrating a complex intervention (coherence); how they
engage with it (cognitive participation); enact it (collective action); and appraise its effects
(reflexive monitoring). These are expressed through organized and organizing agency, and
the theory therefore proposes that:
(c) The work of integration of a complex intervention requires continuous investment by
people in ensembles of action that carry forward in time and space.
It is not enough to adopt and diffuse a complex intervention, people need to keep investing in
it or it will atrophy. Continually investing in sense-making, commitment, effort, and appraisal
is part of the routinization of a complex intervention. A complex intervention that is routinely
embedded in practices ceases to be a 'complex intervention' at all, and instead disappears into
the everyday world of normal activities, the things that people just get on and do.
Normalization Process Theory focuses our attention down on how the work gets done - the
everyday business of getting on with the job in hand - and the often very creative work that
managers, professionals, patients and their families, do to normalize a set of tasks in a health
care setting.
NPT is a sociological toolkit that we can use to understand the dynamics of implementing,
embedding, and integrating some new technology or complex intervention.
340

Everyone is interested in innovation in healthcare. Innovation promises better ways of

organizing and delivering treatment, improvements in the clinical and cost-effectiveness of
services, and reductions in the burdens of illness - especially chronic illness.
Most research on healthcare innovation focuses on the outcomes of innovations - measuring
their impact and exploring their effects - but this doesn't always tell us the things that we need
to know. Researchers try to help healthcare providers by quantifying outcomes and
comparing the effects of these innovations. But it is also understood that outcomes
evaluations are not enough, and that we need to perform process evaluations that help us to
understand how these effects come about. Identifying and adopting an innovative health
technology, or a new way of organizing professional work, is the beginning of the story, not
the end. Down the line, policy-makers, managers, professionals, and patients all face two
important problems as they try to get innovations into practice.
 Process problems: about the implementation of new ways of thinking, acting and
organizing in health care
 Structural problems: about the integration of new systems of practice into existing
organizational and professional settings.
These are important problems for researchers and evaluators too. To
understand implementation and integration, we need focus on the dynamic processes that lead
to innovations becoming embedded in everyday work. Normalization Process Theory is an
explanatory model that helps managers, clinicians, and researchers understand
these processes.
There's nothing so practical as a good theory, and this website will guide you through the
uses of NPT, and some of the theory's basic concepts. Not only that, but we also provide a
simple toolkit to enable you to think through implementation and integration problems using
NPT.
NPT helps us disassemble the human processes that are at work when we encounter a new set
of practices - whether they're bundled around a large randomized controlled trial across many
sites, or in a falls prevention program on a single hospital ward. NPT has a robust theoretical
basis - but we don't discuss that in detail on this website (although we do discuss what a
theory is and does, and the formal propositions that are the basis of NPT). That's because this
website is intended to translate the formal theory into something you can use, in practice,
right now.
Like all theories NPT is build up around a set of constructs - organizing ideas that represent
human processes that really happen in the world. But it also presents these in an idealized and
abstract form. That's so they can be transported from one problem to another in a stable way.
Let's look at the core constructs of NPT, and their specific components. Details about the
underlying theory and its development have been published in open access papers.
 NPT Core Constructs
 Coherence
 Cognitive Participation
 Collective Action
341

 Reflexive Monitoring

6
We saw one example where an explicit or implicit assumption to a certain –ism can
lead one. Of course I did not include, or rather excluded, the endless other side tracks
one could have been led to. This example shows us what philosophy has come to or
arrived at or being realized as – a seemingly endless differentiation of ideas, notions
and concepts. We sometimes read or see the question asked: does and did philosophy
progress? To me that question appears so, far too, general to be answered, unless one
specifies what one means by ‘progress’ in this sentence. If one were to look at the
beginnings of Western philosophy and its unfolding, for example as it lost many of its
original subject-matter to other disciplines, went through one –ism after another,
many methods, ontological; ideas and epistemological positions, one wonders what to
make of, or how to understand what philosophy has come to, what its self-perception
and –definition are this moment in time? Where does it see itself heading to?
Continuations of so-called Continental and Analytic ways of doing philosophy? The
development of a philosophy of everything and all possible disciplines, eg art,
sciences, history, politics, everyday life, etc? Part of inter-disciplinary sciences and
projects such as cognitive sciences? Attempting to become a science by the
development of Experimental philosophy? Some kind of literature or poetic form
following some of the ‘Continental’ ideas, movements or schools? The handmaiden of
social theory (as Habermas and the other generations of his ‘schule’ use, misuse and
abuse what they call ‘philosophy’, when they use certain philosophical terms such as
ontology, epistemology, first philosophy, etc) and other theories and discourses?
Identifying questions, problems, issues and notions in the sciences so as to be
provided with ‘philosophical’ subject-matter, projects and problems?
7
Numerous things, or activities, that are viewed as typically philosophical are in fact
found in all sorts of domains, talking, thinking, reflecting, discussion, etc. These
things are frequently employed as norms for the doing of philosophy and/or standards
to assess philosophizing, philosophical talking, writing, discussions, expression, etc –
although they are not exclusive to the discourse or discipline of philosophy. One of
these things are logic, especially informal logic. Others are, taking the question and
finding what’s essential about the problem and working it into an argument with
explanations and reasons, use knowledge and apply thinking to new problems in
alternative ways, very different nature of types of evidence, which sometimes gives a
complementary picture, while in others it may be contradictory, rhetorical and
intellectual skills, extent of intellectual curiosity, capacities for critical engagement by
broadening questioning out to be more conceptually orientated, make comparisons
between things, ability to engage and develop ideas, recognise when changing a
viewpoint, such awareness could indicate aptitude for sustained, careful reflection
rather than a 'scattergun' effect of lots of different points that aren't developed or
considered in a probing way, (http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-10-11-why-do-older-
siblings-do-better-iq-tests-their-younger-counterparts-oxford-interview) , ask useful
clarifying questions, probes selection criteria including problem-solving, critical
thinking, intellectual curiosity, communication skills, ability to listen and take note of
342

the idea of others and compatibility, draw out ability to think carefully and precisely
about a familiar concept, evaluating proposals, coming up with counter-examples,
disentangling considerations, and being creative in proposing alternative approaches.
be creative in coming up with examples and suggestions, and can think critically and
carefully through their implications, ideas that involve other ideas and implications,
test out more sophisticated proposals, test by looking for counter-examples, generate
all kinds of interesting and revealing discussions that show a ability for analytical
thought, abstract away all the unimportant information, try to model the situation,
think about lots of different aspects, gradually add more information, arrive at a
conclusion, new explanations, the kinds of reasoning, etc.
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://health.nmmu.ac.za/health/media/Store/documen
ts/EthicsandResearchCapacityDevelopment/RCD-Workshops-
2008.doc&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjlndvDuN_RAhVFJcAKHewUDOcQFggQMAU&c
lient=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHlDWoCaUeKMse1uCBUfpeQFxAinA
Critical Thinking for Research Purposes
Workshop hosted by Department of Research Capacity Development, NMMU
8 May 2008

Presenter: Andrea Hurst, Philosophy, NMMU. E-mail: [email protected]

This workshop takes a critical, philosophical look at both the research process in general,
and the specific interests and passions that motivate researchers. Critical thinking for
research purposes must entail reflection upon precisely what it might mean to say that
critical thinking itself is quintessentially re-search; that is, an endless repetition of the search
for wisdom. In this workshop we will first work towards gaining theoretical insight into the
nature of research with the aid of Plato's cave-myth a d Heidegger’s otio of are. We
ill also i estigate the o ple ature of the o je t of resear h, a el isdo . It
should become clear from this that research is never essentially dis-interested or value
neutral. Not only philosophical presuppositions, but specific cognitive interests and personal
passions lie behind every research project. We will therefore turn our attention towards
developing and applying a complex critical framework of cognitive interests and personal
passions in order to understand what motivates specific researchers. All of this is intended
to sharpen our critical faculties so that we no longer approach research, including our own,
in a naïve or innocent way.
https://question-skills.wikispaces.com/Questioning+Links
https://question-skills.wikispaces.com/home
http://malayresearchfoundation.blogspot.co.za/2008/08/research-proposal.html
A research proposal usually consists of the following elements:

 A title

 A problem statement/question

 A subproblem statement

 Hypotheses statement
343

 Demarcation of the terrain of study (assumptions, limitations and delimitations)

 Definition of terminology

 Indication of the importance/significance of the study

 Review of related literature

 A careful and detailed analysis of the proposed research procedures

 A time schedule

 A budget (where applicable)

 Researcher's qualifications

 A resource list

Are there skills, practices, techniques, tools, approaches, ways of thinking, arguing, critical
thinking, etc that are typically philosophical and not employed in other discourses?
J W Gray writes as Conclusion at the end of his eBook – How to become a philosopher.
https://jwgray.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/i-updated-my-ebook-how-to-become-a-
philosopher/
Philosophical thought starts out small and simple, but it builds based on the various questions
and answers we find relevant. Arguments have assumptions, logical implications,
terminology, justifications, and strategies that should be discussed in detail. Finally, we must
be careful how we use language and what we claim to prove with our arguments.
Here he asks if Philosophy is Important? https://jwgray.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/is-
philosophy-important-2012/ He obviously does think it is as he suggests that it should be
taught and be a requirement at both college and at school.
ttps://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/the-philosophy-campaign/philosophy-should-be-an-
educational-requirement-in-high-school-college/ He also suggest that High schools need
more critical thinking, here - https://jwgray.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/high-schools-need-
more-critical-thinking/ https://jwgray.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/colleges-need-more-
critical-thinking/
An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of
college found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and
written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.

Richard Arum, whose book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses"
(University of Chicago Press).
Gray asks - What is philosophy? It is the attempt to reason well about certain traditional
domains of study: logic (the study of good reasoning), epistemology (the study of
knowledge), metaphysics (the study of reality), and ethics (the study of morality).
https://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/the-philosophy-campaign/why-philosophy-is-important/
He gave 11 reasons why it is important here -
https://ethicalrealism.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/11-reasons-philosophy-is-important.pdf
On page 7 he writes: There is some scientific evidence that philosophy can benefit people
(mainly in the form of statistical information). Statistics have shown philosophy majors to do
well in a variety of standardized test scores, and even children around the age of ?, often
were found to have benefited from philosophy education…
Recently an applied logic class was found to significantly help high school
students. The study was conducted by Dan Bouhnik and Yahel Giat from the
344

Jerusalem College of Technology (in Jerusalem, Israel) and information about the
study was published online in a PDF file entitled, “Teaching High School
Students Applied Logical Reasoning.” (You can download it for free
here.
4) I discussed the study in more detail in “A Study Finds That Formal Logic Can Help High
School Students”. http://jite.org/documents/Vol8/JITEv8IIP001-016Bouhnik681.pdf
Historical Evidence
Perhaps the strongest evidence that philosophy helps people is found in the real-
life impact it has had throughout history. It lead to formal logic, improvements in
mathematics, computers, and natural science. The fact that philosophy was
involved in the progress of these fields is a matter of historical fact.
Aristotle and the Stoics developed formal logic.
Formal logic is used by mathematicians and computers. Natural science is the most reliable
method of discovery other than logic and mathematics and it was originally a branch of
philosophy called “natural philosophy”.
There are various objections people give against philosophy. In particular, (a)
people argue that philosophy doesn't lead to knowledge because even
philosophers disagree and (b) people confuse argumentation with unproductive
hostile human interaction.
You don't have to agree with the philosopher's conclusions, but the arguments philosophers
give are relevant to what we should believe.
Second, I think philosophy can lead to knowledge. I have discussed philosophical
knowledge concerning reasonableness and morality
Third, “knowledge” might be more than we need..
One philosophical domain in particular that I think we should all agree has practical
importance for everyday life is critical thinking (and logic by extension). For example,
consider the research that shows that people tend to lack in critical thinking skills, and the
link between logic-oriented critical thinking education and critical thinking skills.
Finally, the reasons that logic education is important can also be refined based on all the
specific things it can teach us, such as logical form, logical validity, and informal fallacies.
Each of these things have unique lessons to teach us, as was discussed in Why Logic is
Important.
https://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/the-philosophy-campaign/why-philosophy-is-important/

Gray feels that we can know about - https://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/can-

we-know-anything-about-philosophical-issues/
Here is his argument
Consider the following beliefs:
1. Philosophers aren’t experts. (Philosophers don’t know more than the rest of us
concerning philosophical domains.)
2. Everyone’s opinion is equal concerning philosophical issues. (No philosophical
belief is more justified than another.)
3. We can’t know anything about philosophical issues. (We can’t know if one
philosophical statement is better than another.)
None of these beliefs are scientific and they aren’t self-evident. They are beliefs that fall
within the philosophical domain. Again, the main philosophical domain at interest here
concerns the nature of knowledge. The first belief listed is not plausible if it’s possible for
345

some people to know more about philosophical issues than other people. The second and
third beliefs about philosophy are self-defeating because they are such strong statements
against philosophy, but they are philosophical beliefs.
If we can know philosophers aren’t experts, then how can we know that “we can know
philosophers aren’t experts”? Perhaps everyone is an equally good philosopher, but that
seems unlikely.

Logic
We think we know that a belief can’t be factually true and false at the same time. If I say,
“It’s raining” and you are in another place and say, “It’s not raining,” we are not actually
contradicting one another because we are merely saying “it’s raining where I am.” However,
to say that “there is life on another planet in the universe” and that “there isn’t life on another
planet in the universe” would be to give contradictory statements. When two factual
statements contradict one another, at least one of the statements must be false.
I think this belief is plausible. If I am right that this belief is plausible, then we can know
something about a philosophical issue (that at least one philosophical belief is plausible).
However, anyone who thinks we can’t know anything about philosophical issues can’t
consistently believe it to be plausible.

Epistemology
We think that we can know something about the future by knowing about the past. For
example, you can know that rocks that are dropped two seconds from now (on our planet)
will fall to the ground based on the fact that all similar objects that were dropped in the past
also fell to the ground.
I find this belief to be plausible. If I am right that it’s plausible, then we can know something
about philosophy (because we can know that a philosophical belief is plausible). However,
anyone who rejects philosophy will not be able to consistently believe it to be plausible .
An argument using this belief as a premise is the following:
1. All cats observed by scientists throughout history were mammals.
2. We can know something about the future by knowing about the past.
3. If we can know something about the future by knowing about the past and all cats
observed by scientists throughout history were mammals, then all cats are probably
mammals.
4. Therefore, all cats are probably mammals.
This argument could very well be one given by a scientist, but notice that one of the premises
is a philosophical one. Sometimes scientists rely on philosophical premises. There is no
absolute boundary between science and philosophy.
It is inconsistent for scientists to assume any philosophical belief is justified while
simultaneously claiming that we can’t know anything about philosophical facts.
The way he responds to criticism of philosophy, logic and epistemology is interesting
because that is the technique he employs through the whole of his book -
346

https://jwgray.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/i-updated-my-ebook-how-to-become-
a-philosopher/
He assumes and explicitly states that the domain of logic form part of
philosophy, partly because philosophy employs logic and logic is taught in
departments of philosophy. I object to this as I consider logic and mathematics
to be separate disciplines from philosophy. Logic does not need to be taught in
departments of philosophy and the informal logic, premises that are true,
conclusions that are true and valid, sound argumentation, etc are employed in
many discourses and all types of serious writing and discussions, not just
philosophy. Such things alone can therefore not be employed as standards to
decide what is philosophy or that what is written is philosophical.

Table of Contents
Part I:
Introduction..............................................................................
.......................................................7
Chapter 1: Philosophy &
Sophistry.................................................................................
......................7
What is
sophistry?................................................................................
.............................................7
What is
philosophy?...............................................................................
..........................................8
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................10
Chapter 2: Philosophy is
Important.................................................................................
....................11
1. Philosophy can help improve critical thinking
skills..................................................................11
2. Philosophy is a good way to know certain
things.......................................................................12
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................15
Chapter 3: Can We Know Anything About Facts of Philosophical
Issues?........................................16
Introduction..............................................................................
......................................................16
More examples of philosophical beliefs and
arguments.................................................................18
What is philosophical knowledge
like?.....................................................................................
.....21
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................22
Chapter 4: Intellectual Virtues, Dogmatism, Fanaticism, &
Terrorism...............................................23
Good
347

Reasoning.................................................................................
.............................................23
Intellectual
Virtues...................................................................................
.......................................24
Intellectual
Vices.....................................................................................
.......................................24
Dogmatism.................................................................................
.....................................................25
Fanaticism................................................................................
.......................................................26
Terrorism.................................................................................
........................................................26
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................26
Part II: Argument
Mapping...................................................................................
...................................27
Chapter 5: Introduction to Argument
Mapping...................................................................................
27
Chapter 6: The distinction between premises and
conclusions...........................................................28
Chapter 7: The distinction between arguments with one and multiple
premises................................29
Chapter 8: The distinction between multiple arguments and multiple
premises.................................30
Chapter 9: The distinction between simple and extended
arguments.................................................31
Chapter 10: The distinction between supporting arguments and
objections.......................................33
Chapter 11: The distinction between objections to conclusions, premises, and forms of
reasoning. .35
Part III: Formal
Logic.....................................................................................
.........................................39
Chapter 12: What is
Logic?....................................................................................
.............................39
Formal
logic.....................................................................................
...............................................39
Informal
logic.....................................................................................
............................................40
What's the difference between logic and
epistemology?................................................................42
What is the essence of
logic?....................................................................................
......................43
Chapter 13: Why Logic is
Important.................................................................................
348

..................44
What is a good
argument?.................................................................................
.............................44
What characteristics do good arguments
have?..............................................................................44
Why is good argumentation
important?................................................................................
.........46
Chapter 14: Valid Argument
Forms.....................................................................................
................47
What are valid
arguments?................................................................................
.............................47
Why deductive arguments need to be
valid....................................................................................4
8
Examples of valid argument
forms.....................................................................................
............49
How to improve our
arguments.................................................................................
.....................50
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................51
Chapter 15: Validity &
Counterexamples...........................................................................
.................52
What are formal
counterexamples?..........................................................................
......................52
How do we create formal
counterexamples?..........................................................................
........53
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................53
Chapter 16: Unstated
Premises..................................................................................
..........................54
What are unstated
premises?.................................................................................
.........................54
Identifying unstated
premises..................................................................................
.......................54
How to determine unstated
premises..................................................................................
............56
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................58
Part IV: Informal
Logic.....................................................................................
349

.......................................59
Chapter 17: The Critical Thinking
Attitude..................................................................................
.......59
Chapter 18: Why Arguments Are
Important.................................................................................
......61
Chapter 19: What are Good
Arguments?................................................................................
.............63
What are good
arguments?................................................................................
.............................63
Why good arguments are
important.................................................................................
..............65
Criteria of good
arguments.................................................................................
............................65
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................68
Chapter 20: Not All Good Arguments are Logically
Sound................................................................69
What are good
arguments?................................................................................
.............................69
What does it mean for an argument to be logically
sound?............................................................69
What's the difference between inductive and deductive
arguments?.............................................71
Proof that not all arguments are logically
sound............................................................................72
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................72
Chapter 21: Not All Good Arguments Are Logically Sound Part
2....................................................73
Chapter 22: How To Have a Rational
Debate....................................................................................
.75
Initial
arguments.................................................................................
............................................76
Objections................................................................................
.......................................................76
Defenses..................................................................................
........................................................77
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................78
Chapter 23: Advice for Better
Debates...................................................................................
.............79
1.
Charity...................................................................................
350

.....................................................79
2.
Relevance.................................................................................
...................................................80
3.
Clarity...................................................................................
......................................................80
4.
Modesty...................................................................................
...................................................81
5.
Justification.............................................................................
....................................................81
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................82
Chapter 24: Nonrational Forms of
Persuasion................................................................................
....83
Nonrational forms of
persuasion................................................................................
....................
Forms of Cognitive
Bias......................................................................................
...........................85
Manifestations of unreasonable
thought...................................................................................
......86
Why does it
matter?...................................................................................
.....................................87
What we should
do........................................................................................
.................................88
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................88
Chapter 25: Manipulative
Tactics...................................................................................
.....................90
Types of manipulative
tactics...................................................................................
......................90
There's no major difference between manipulative tactics and
fallacies........................................93
Accusing people of using
manipulation..............................................................................
...........94
Chapter 26: Cognitive
Biases....................................................................................
..........................95
What are cognitive
biases?...................................................................................
..........................95
Examples of biases and
351

fallacies.................................................................................
...................96
Conclusion................................................................................
......................................................99
Chapter 27: Extraordinary
Claims....................................................................................
.................100
Extreme...................................................................................
......................................................100
Potentially
impossible................................................................................
...................................100
What about ordinary
claims?...................................................................................
.....................101
There a burden of proof against extraordinary
claims..................................................................102
Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence?............................................................103
Chapter 28: Four Requirements for Good
Arguments......................................................................104
1. Supporting
evidence..................................................................................
...............................104
2. Relevant
evidence..................................................................................
...................................106
3. Consider all viable
options...................................................................................
....................107
4.
Charity...................................................................................
...................................................108
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................108
Chapter 29: Four Types of
Justifications............................................................................
...............109
1. Appeal to
Authority.................................................................................
.................................109
2. Argument from
Analogy...................................................................................
........................110
3.
Generalization............................................................................
...............................................110
4. Personal
Experience................................................................................
..................................111
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................111
Chapter 30: Four Terrible Ways to
352

Argue.....................................................................................
.....112
1. Appeal to
Ignorance.................................................................................
.................................112
2.
Equivocation..............................................................................
...............................................112
3. Begging the
Question..................................................................................
..............................113
4. Reversal of Burden of
Proof.....................................................................................
................114
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................114
Chapter 31: Four Argument
Strategies................................................................................
..............115
1. Argument from
analogy...................................................................................
.........................115
2. Thought
experiment................................................................................
..................................116
3. Argument from
absurdity.................................................................................
.........................117
4. Inference to the best
explanation...............................................................................
...............120
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................121
Part V: Philosophy of
Knowledge.................................................................................
.........................122
Chapter 32: Is Knowledge
Impossible?...............................................................................
..............122
1. What is
knowledge?................................................................................
..................................122
2. What if knowledge is
impossible?...............................................................................
.............124
3. The Munchhausen
Trilemma..................................................................................
..................125
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................126
Chapter 33: Three Types of
Evidence..................................................................................
.............128
353

Observation...............................................................................
....................................................128
Introspective
experience................................................................................
...............................129
Intuition.................................................................................
.......................................................129
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................131
5
Chapter 34: Arguments for
Intuition.................................................................................
................132
1. What is
intuition?................................................................................
......................................132
2. Arguments to prefer intuition to
revisionism............................................................................134
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................137
Chapter 35: Three Types of Intuitive
Arguments..............................................................................138
1. Intuitive Arguments that conclude beliefs to be sufficiently
rational.......................................138
2. Intuitive arguments that conclude that a belief is better than the
alternatives..........................139
3. Intuitive arguments that conclude that a belief is rationally
required......................................140
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................141
Part VI: How to Create Philosophical
Arguments.................................................................................
142
Chapter 36: Writing Philosophical
Arguments.................................................................................
.142
1. Make your argument
explicit..................................................................................
..................142
2. Consider the evidence for your
argument.................................................................................1
45
3. Consider relevant objections and
counterarguments..........................................................................
149
Conclusion................................................................................
.............................................................150
Chapter 37: An Example of a Philosophical
Objection.....................................................................151
Step 1: What's Tina's
argument?.................................................................................
..................151
Step 2: Why disagree with the
354

premises?.................................................................................
....152
Step 3: Presentation of the
objection.................................................................................
...........153
Step 4: Consider
counterarguments..........................................................................
....................155
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................157
Chapter 38: Example of a Philosophical Supporting
Argument.......................................................158
What's a supporting
argument?.................................................................................
....................158
Step 1: Initial
thoughts..................................................................................
................................158
Step 2: Find your
assumptions...............................................................................
.......................159
Step 3: Why agree with the
premises?.................................................................................
.........159
Step 4: Presentation of the
argument..................................................................................
..........160
Step 5: Consider
counterarguments..........................................................................
....................162
Conclusion................................................................................
....................................................163

He wrote an ebook on logic - What You Need From Propositional Logic

(March 20, 2013) The focus of this book is propositional logic. “I discuss
the meaning of “logic,” the importance of logic, logical connectives, truth
tables, natural deduction, and rules of inference.”
https://ethicalrealism.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/what-you-need-from-
propositional-logic-03202013.pdf

In his Ebook “How to Become a Philosopher”

https://ethicalrealism.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/how-to-become-a-
philosopher-james-gray-11252013.pdf he employs logic, premises,
conclusions as illustrated above, to show and prove that ‘philosophy’
does exist, is meaningful and possible. He assumes that employing
those tools he is making out a case for the fact that philosophy is
possible, valid, exists and can be done. What he does is reducing
philosophy to logic or identifying logic, the doing of logic, with philosophy
and the doing of philosophy – its subject-matter and its methods.
355

To these assumptions I object as Logic is a separate discipline from

philosophy and it does not require or depend on philosophy. Logic is not
a necessary or essential domain of philosophy. The logical tools, forms,
arguments, argumentation, reasoning and reasons employed by
philosophy are similar to those employed by many other discourse and
disciplines and any serious discourse, writing and discussion – not
necessarily philosophical.

He states this concerning critical thinking - Some people have thought

that philosophy automatically helps improve critical thinking skills as a by
product, and no special attention is required for it to do so. There might
be some truth to this, but non-critical-thinking-oriented philosophy
classes don’t seem to be so much better than various other classes in
the humanities. Perhaps writing argumentative essays in any field of
study can help improve critical thinking skills. According to a meta-
analysis by Claudia María Álvarez Ortiz, Does Philosophy Improve
Critical Thinking Skills? (PDF), the most effective classes at improving
critical thinking skills are those devoted to critical thinking, and the
analytic philosophy tradition in particular is effective at teaching these
classes.

2 Ortiz, Claudia María Álvarez. Does Philosophy Improve Critical

Thinking Skills? (Aushink. Originally Published in 2007). 86.

Gray states that Alvarez found that critical thinking is best taught in the
context of philosophy, or by philosophy departments. She tells us what
she thinks what it is to study philosophy on pages 9-10.
2.1.1.2 Studying Philosophy at University
What is it to study philosophy, in the sense relevant for investigating the assumption? Since
the assumption most commonly surfaces as part of an attempt to convince undergraduates that
they should enrol as philosophy students, the notion of studying philosophy must be something
close to what these people would actually do if they did enrol. Thus we can say that to study
philosophy is to do pretty much what a standard undergraduate would do in the context of a
philosophy subject at a typical US, English or Australian university.
We limit ourselves here to US, English or Australian university courses in philosophy,
because we shall be concerned to examine the effects of Anglo-American analytic philosophy,
rather than philosophy more broadly considered, on the improvement of critical thinking skills.
This said, the study of philosophy is taken to mean the usual methods of study for virtually any

฀Attending lectures
academic discipline:

฀Reading primary and secondary texts

฀Writing essays
฀Attending tutorials and participating in discussions
These activities would be undertaken at approximately the level of intensity that would be typical
of a reasonably conscientious student. And, in the case of philosophy, they would be concerned to
inculcate in the students the three things which, as we have said, set philosophy apart as a
discipline: reflection on fundamental problems, the use of arguments as the main
methodological tool and the disposition to engage in critical reflection.
356

Importantly, this means that studying philosophy should not be understood as some kind of
quite exceptional activity, whether at a very high level, or a high degree of intensity, or in some
quite special educational context. It may be true that studying in Oxford’s small tutorial system,
or studying as a PhD student in some first-rate US program, improves critical thinking skills, but
these types of study are far more intensive than what people generally have in mind when they
say or assume that studying philosophy improves critical thinking. If it turned out that studying
philosophy only improved critical thinking skills if you study at Oxford, or as a postgraduate
student at Princeton or Pittsburgh, then the assumption as it is generally made would be false

Then she tells us what Critical Thinking is –

2.1.2 “Critical Thinking”
A common expression to be found in the body of literature about critical thinking (CT) is that
there is no established consensus over its definition. However, we can refer to those general
approaches that have generated relevant paradigms, in order to delimit the conceptual
framework that will be used in applying the term CT within the present project. Two approaches
have attempted to delimit the conceptual framework of critical thinking: the traditional approach
of logical analysis of information and a new approach called the second wave of critical thinking.
This ‘second wave’ approach adds to the idea of a critical thinker as one who applies
methods of logical analysis, the use of imagination, intuition and the active participation of
emotions and values (Thayer-Bacon, 2000; Walters, 1994). In doing this, it attempts to bring into
consideration what are undoubtedly interesting elements of human cognition. However, its
proponents have yet to provide both the pedagogical methods for teaching CT in this manner
and, even more crucially, clear empirical evidence that it is a better way to do CT.
Conversely, there are four strong reasons for sticking with the traditional approach. First, this
approach reflects the most common practice of CT in schools and universities. Second, the
characteristics that identify this approach are closer with those used in the standard tests used
to measure CT. Third; it has the consistent methodological principles needed to build a theory in
any discipline. Fourth, it provides the basis for being able to transfer the skills in question into
other domains. Indeed, it has provided core tools and resources for good thinking in existing
successful disciplines of inquiry (Ennis, 1991).
Even within the traditional approach to critical thinking, i.e. logical analysis of information,
there are a variety of definitions of what actually constitutes critical thinking (see Table 1).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keller_Plan
http://teorije-ucenja.zesoi.fer.hr/doku.php?id=learning_theories:the_keller_plan
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs4624/s95/cs4984Format/subsection3_2_1.html

Keller Plan
In the 1960's, Fred S. Keller, J. Gilmour Sherman, and others developed a synthesis of
educational methods and practices that has often been called the Keller Plan or the
Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) [3][2]. Key aspects of this teaching method include
[1]:
go-at-your-own-pace
so students can proceed according to their abilities, interests, and personal schedules;
unit-perfection requirement
which means students must demonstrate mastery of a unit before proceeding to other
units;
lectures and demonstrations for motivation
instead of for communication of critical information;
stress on the written word for teacher-student communication
which helps develop comprehension and expression skills; and
tutoring/proctoring
which allows repeats on exams, enhanced personal-social interaction, and
personalized instruction.
357

Research studies have shown PSI to have a number of advantages over conventional
educational methods, and few disadvantages. Students, especially those who would normally
perform at the lower or middle levels, learn significantly more, as measured by final
examinations and by tests of long-term retention (given years later). They like the classes and
tutoring, and develop good habits that carry over to other courses and learning activities.
Disadvantages are mostly concerning extra effort being required by the instructor, a higher
drop rate in some courses (especially by students who cannot break their habits of
procrastination), and extra room requirements.

[email protected]
Mon Jan 16 04:19:35 EST 1995
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Keller-plan.html
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=physicspsikeller

2.1.2.1 The Prevailing View of Critical Thinking

The predominant view, then, is that critical thinking has become almost synonymous with the
methods of informal logic (Kurfiss, 1988). Informal logic is defined as the study of arguments as
presented in ordinary language, as contrasted with the presentations of arguments in an
artificial, formal, or technical language. Reasoning and logical analysis in general have, of
course, played a central role in the critical thinking tradition (Norris & Ennis, 1990), Walters,
1994,(A. Fisher, 2001). CT, in this sense, is analytical, abstract, universal and objective
(Walters, 1994). Thus, many CT definitions focus on how to review and carefully evaluate
judgments (Dewey, 1910; Harris, Hodges, 1981; B. N. Moore & Parker, 1991) and on the
analysis and evaluation of arguments (Kurfiss, 1988, A. Fisher & Scriven, 1997). All this clearly
sets this general approach apart from the inclinations of ‘second wave’ theorists.
The use of reasoning as the core of CT entails three constituents: knowledge, attitudes and
skills (Watson & Glaser, 1980). The critical thinker requires not only knowledge of the methods
of logical analysis, but also of the domain (for example, History, Medicine) in which the critical
thinking is being done. A long and often polemical debate is still developing around whether
good CT requires only the knowledge of methods of logical analysis, or also demands domain
specific knowledge (McMillan, 1987; McPeck, 1981; Norris, 1992b; Pascarella, 1989; Siegel,
1988). There appears to be somewhat less controversy among the experts regarding the
requisite skills and attitudes.
Various attempts have been made to operationalize CT, making it a set of well-defined and
testable skills, rather than simply a somewhat vague set of dispositions and attitudes. Notably,
in 1988-89, 46 experts articulated a definition of CT skills in what is known as the Delphi Report
(see Table 1). This has become widely known and used for research purposes. It has promoted
the design of tests to guide, foster and evaluate CT skills. For instance, it became the template
for the design of two commercial tests to evaluate CT skills and dispositions: the California
Critical Thinking Skills Test, and the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory.
Other such attempts to design good tests of CT skills have also been made. In general,
those tests have focused on the evaluation of CT skills, rather than the attitudes or dispositions
underlying them. They seem to agree in identifying the critical thinker as a person able to
interpret the meaning and analysis of inferences, observations, judgments and arguments;
undertake deductive and inductive reasoning; and evaluate the validity of claims and arguments
(Ennis, Millman, & Tomko, 1985; Facione, 2006; A. Fisher, 2001; Paul & Scriven, 2004; Watson
& Glaser, 1980). Paul has included the idea that the critical thinker has also the ability to
evaluate his or her own thoughts (Paul, Binker, & Willsen, 1994).
These are the results of her study - The results of our review of the
standard arguments, informal review of the literature, and
meta-analysis, suggest four basic conclusions. First, there is insufficient
evidence to be confident that studying philosophy improves critical thinking
skills any more than studying other academic disciplines. Second, the results
indicate that studying philosophy appears to be less
effective than studying critical thinking in its own right. Third, there appear to
358

be techniques which, if introduced into philosophy teaching, could improve the

extent to which studying
philosophy improves critical thinking. Fourth, further research is desirable to
gather better evidence in a number of areas. In the light of these findings,
though it may sound bold to suggest it, perhaps philosophers themselves more
fully live up to their own ideals, by leading the search for more and better
evidence regarding the impact of their discipline on the development of critical
thinking skills.(page iii)
The argument mapping approach has distinctive features that are necessary to mention:
students practice argumentation skills, involving the use of a software programe (Rationale)
that
permits the visual representation of arguments. Such representation is encouraged on the
basis
that the brain can economize on cognitive effort where much of what it seeks to comprehend
is
visually cued. Use of a good deal of practice in argument mapping is based on the hypothesis
that reasoning is a skill and that, as with any skills, ‘deliberate practice’ (Van Gelder, Bissett,
& Cumming, 2004) is crucial to the development of the skill. The effect size of the Group
‘Lots of Argument Mapping’ (LAMP) is greater (0.ικ of an SD) than for the Group ‘Some
Argument Mapping’ (0.6κ of an SD), suggesting that the more practice the better. This,
however, requires further investigation, since the confidence intervals for the two Groups
overlap greatly.
The difference is significant not only between Groups 3 and 4 (argument mapping within
philosophy) and Group 1 (philosophy without CT), but between Groups 3 and 4, on the one
hand, and Groups 2, 5, 6 and 7 on the other. This is the single most striking finding of the
metaanalysis.
Prima facie, it suggests that argument mapping within philosophy is the best way to
improve CT. It is not clear, though, that it needs to be within philosophy – any more than
Logic does, or any more than the Keller Plan need be a teaching method confined to
philosophy departments. What remains to be explored is how great an improvement in CT
would be generated by teaching CT using argument mapping outside the context of
philosophy.
It is, of course, just these results, in Groups 3 and 4, which actually explain the finding that,
over all, philosophy departments appear to be better at teaching CT skills than Non-
philosophy
Departments. What follows from this is that it is argument mapping that is the key variable. It
makes no discernible difference whether you teach traditional CT in or outside of a
philosophy Department; the results are much the same. Yet when you teach CT within a
philosophy Department using argument mapping, the results seem to be strikingly better.
Plainly, this compels the question, is it the context of a philosophy department or the use of
argument mapping (or perhaps the combination) that is decisive? The context, clearly, is
insufficient on its own; but is argument mapping sufficient on its own? We cannot yet say
with confidence. Further research is needed to pin this down.
To summarize all that can be concluded from the data with respect to our third
question:
Anglo-American analytic philosophy, in itself, is not a particularly effective
way to improve CT skills, when it is compared to other subjects, or to CT
courses. Equally, traditional CT makes no real difference, compared with
359

Anglo-American analytic philosophy, to the improvement of CT

skills. Philosophy departments are more effective than otherwise at teaching CT
skills when it is done using argument mapping. Argument Mapping courses are
by far the most effective way to improve CT skills. But there are a number of
loose ends to tie up here.
Additional considerations emerge from our interpretation of the data, in this
regard. CT courses taught using lots of argument mapping (LAMP) with the
support of software tools, and concentrating on exercises that call only on
general knowledge, seem to be the most effective of
all current methods for improving CTS. Conversely, and perhaps surprisingly,
traditional CT courses, whether or not these are offered by Philosophy
departments, prove to be more
effective than other courses at improving CTS, but only marginally and not to
anything like the
extent seen with LAMP. These basic findings, important in themselves, serve as
the point of
departure for the final conclusions and implications for future research, which
are set out in the following section of the thesis.

We set out to test whether philosophy, specifically, improved CT skills and to

establish if it
was the most effective way to improve them – a widely held assumption, among
philosophers.
We have found that although it marginally improves CT skills, it is not the most
effective way to
do it. Two reasons support this claim. First, there is, simply, insufficient
evidence to support the
claim that it is any more effective than other standard methods or other subjects.
Second, the
study of philosophy appears to be less effective than the study of critical
thinking skills in their own right, although the evidence is not altogether
conclusive. Third, the available evidence
strongly suggests that philosophy as such is strikingly less effective than LAMP
(Lots of Argument Mapping Practice) – an innovative approach to teaching CT;
with the caveat that no one has yet tested LAMP outside the context of
philosophy
.

There are also some indications in the findings of the thesis that both
specifically what is taught (Logic, for instance, as compared with philosophy
subjects less directly concerned with reasoning skills in themselves) and how it
is taught (Keller Plan or LAMP) are the crucial considerations
360

Given the striking evidence that LAMP delivers dramatically better results than
philosophy, CT courses or other subjects, but that it has, thus far, only been
taught within the context of
philosophy courses and only to first year under-graduates over a single
semester, further studies are called for. Such studies should include further
examination of the impact of LAMP in
philosophy courses; but they should broaden to include experimental use of
LAMP in a range of other disciplines and on its own.
We need studies of the impact of LAMP on various groups of philosophy
students, testing
different variables. We also need studies of students over more than a single
semester; and on
students beyond first year university. We need similar differentiation in the
studies of students in
contexts other than philosophy courses. Finally, all further studies badly need to
use a
consistent and rigorous research and reporting methodology, if they are to be
reliable and
useful. There has been an immense wastage in studies conducted to date, owing
to the deficiencies in their design and reporting procedures.

. http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-brief-history-of-the-idea-of-critical-thinking/408

The Common Denominators of Critical Thinking Are the Most Important By-
products of the History of Critical Thinking
We now recognize that critical thinking, by its very nature, requires, for example, the
systematic monitoring of thought; that thinking, to be critical, must not be accepted at
face value but must be analyzed and assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance,
depth, breadth, and logicalness. We now recognize that critical thinking, by its very
nature, requires, for example, the recognition that all reasoning occurs within points
of view and frames of reference; that all reasoning proceeds from some goals and
objectives, has an informational base; that all data when used in reasoning must be
interpreted, that interpretation involves concepts; that concepts entail assumptions,
and that all basic inferences in thought have implications. We now recognize that
each of these dimensions of thinking need to be monitored and that problems of
thinking can occur in any of them.

The result of the collective contribution of the history of critical thought is that the
basic questions of Socrates can now be much more powerfully and focally framed
and used. In every domain of human thought, and within every use of reasoning
within any domain, it is now possible to question:
361

 ends and objectives,

 the status and wording of questions,
 the sources of information and fact,
 the method and quality of information collection,
 the mode of judgment and reasoning used,
 the concepts that make that reasoning possible,
 the assumptions that underlie concepts in use,
 the implications that follow from their use, and
 the point of view or frame of reference within which reasoning takes place.
In other words, questioning that focuses on these fundamentals of thought and
reasoning are now baseline in critical thinking. It is beyond question that intellectual
errors or mistakes can occur in any of these dimensions, and that students need to
be fluent in talking about these structures and standards.
Independent of the subject studied, students need to be able to articulate thinking
about thinking that reflects basic command of the intellectual dimensions of
thought: "Let’s see, what is the most fundamental issue here? From what point of
view should I approach this problem? Does it make sense for me to assume this?
From these data may I infer this? What is implied in this graph? What is the
fundamental concept here? Is this consistent with that? What makes this question
complex? How could I check the accuracy of these data? If this is so, what else is
implied? Is this a credible source of information? Etc." (For more information on the
basic elements of thought and basic intellectual criteria and standards, see
Appendices C and D).
With intellectual language such as this in the foreground, students can now be taught
at least minimal critical thinking moves within any subject field. What is more, there is
no reason in principle that students cannot take the basic tools of critical thought
which they learn in one domain of study and extend it (with appropriate adjustments)
to all the other domains and subjects which they study. For example, having
questioned the wording of a problem in math, I am more likely to question the
wording of a problem in the other subjects I study.
As a result of the fact that students can learn these generalizable critical thinking
moves, they need not be taught history simply as a body of facts to memorize; they
can now be taught history as historical reasoning. Classes can be designed so that
students learn to think historically and develop skills and abilities essential to
historical thought. Math can be taught so that the emphasis is on mathematical
reasoning. Students can learn to think geographically, economically, biologically,
chemically, in courses within these disciplines. In principle, then, all students can be
taught so that they learn how to bring the basic tools of disciplined reasoning into
every subject they study. Unfortunately, it is apparent, given the results of this study,
that we are very far from this ideal state of affairs. We now turn to the fundamental
concepts and principles tested in standardized critical thinking tests
362

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully

conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information
gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on
universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy,
precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth,
and fairness.
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all
reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical
grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences;
objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking — in
being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes — is incorporated
in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking,
mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic
thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking.
Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and
belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual
commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior. It is thus to be contrasted with:
1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a
particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of
a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of
those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.
A Definition

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem —
in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing,
assessing, and reconstructing it. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined,
self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous
standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective
communication and problem-solving abilities, as well as a commitment to overcome
our native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

To Analyze Thinking

Identify its purpose, and question at issue, as well as its information, inferences(s),
assumptions, implications, main concept(s), and point of view.

To Assess Thinking

Check it for clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, logic, and
fairness.
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/research-in-critical-thinking/577
363

LOGIC AS THEORY OF VALIDATION: AN ESSAY IN PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC

by Dr. Richard Paul

Dissertation submitted to the University of California at Santa Barbara in partial fulfillment

for the degree of Ph.D. in Philosophy

View Abstract - View Full Dissertation (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

CRITICAL THINKING IN THE OXFORD TUTORIAL
Critical thinking is widely lauded as one of the most vital educational goals today. Oxford’s
tutorial system, in turn, is a historically celebrated and influential approach to teaching. Yet,
to date, little is known with regards to which critical thinking skills and traits, if any, are
being systematically fostered by teachers and learned or developed by students in the tutorial.
The primary purpose of this study is to break ground in this important and under-researched
area. It is a small scale exploratory study based on qualitative interviews with three tutors and
seven students, including four tutorial observations within the Department of Politics.

The tentative results show that, with regards to critical thinking, tutors are primarily
concerned with students’ ability to clarify central questions, define key terms, and question
important assumptions within the writing of their tutorial essays. Participating tutors seem
less focused on students’ approach to evaluating important intellectual treatises or
constructs, with the manner in which they understand and learn new ideas, or with their
development of intellectual traits of mind, all of which tutors seemed to believe would
develop naturally.

Students, for their part, articulated their approach to writing essays, including clarifying
central questions, defining key terms, and questioning important assumptions. They
expressed no clear approach to intellectual evaluation or the understanding of new ideas, nor
did they appear to have deeply considered the intellectual traits they considered most
important. The main provisional hypothesis is that students appear to internalize that which is
explicit and required, and to largely miss those aspects which are more implicit and optional.
This suggestion, if justified, has implications for tutorial pedagogy.
Thus, in keeping with this literature, we can divide critical thinking into the
following broad dimensions:
●
Skilled intellectual analysis: the ability to divide important intellectual
constructs into constituent parts so as to internalise and evaluate them.
●
Skilled intellectual evaluation: the ability to determine the quality of intellectual
constructs and their parts.
●
Intellectual improvement: the ability to creatively devise strategies aimed at
correcting weaknesses and improving strengths (which have been identified
through analysis and evaluation).
●
Intellectual traits: characteristics of mind necessary for developing fair-minded
critical thinkers, such as: intellectual perseverance, intellectual integrity, intel-
364

lectual courage, intellectual empathy, intellectual autonomy. It is argued that

such traits guard against the development of sophistic or self-deceptive thinking.
●
Knowledge of the problematics of thinking: including intrinsic tendencies such
as egocentrism and sociocentrism, which trap the mind in oversimplified and
prejudiced mental states. (BIASED)
Furthermore, these dimensions need be applied to various contexts:
●
To thinking generally (one’s own thinking, the thinking of a professor,
colleague, friend, parent, lover ...);
●
To subject disciplines (each of which have specific and sometimes unique forms
of analysis and evaluation);
●
To personal life, both with regard to significant decisions (buying a car or house,
making career decisions ...) as well as day-to-day activities (such as health, diet
and exercise, parenting, voting and politics, managing finances ...).

by Rush Cosgrove
Thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in partial fulfillment for the degree of M.Sc. in
Higher Education

View Abstract - View Full Dissertation (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

CRITICAL THINKING IN THE OXFORD TUTORIAL: A CALL FOR AN EXPLICIT

AND SYSTEMATIC APPROACH
This paper summarises a study focusing on the extent to which the Oxford tutorial fosters
critical thinking in students. In doing so, it aims to contribute to a largely ignored area of
research regarding teaching pedagogy and classroom practice. The results of this study
successfully reveal that participating tutors were primarily concerned with fostering students’
abilities to clarify central questions, define key terms and question important assumptions
(principally within the writing of essays). Participating tutors were less focused on fostering
other essential critical thinking skills and dispositions including: (1) intellectual analysis and
the internalisation of new ideas, (2) intellectual evaluation and (3) intellectual traits of mind.
The primary hypothesis suggested by this study is that students are more likely to internalise
those intellectual skills and dispositions that are explicitly and systematically discussed and
required than those that remain implicit (and seem optional).

To get the article, go to Higher Education Research & Development, the Journal of Higher
Education Research and Development Society of Australasia.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2010.487259

by Rush Cosgrove
A research study focused on the extent to which the Oxford Tutorial promotes critical
thinking

View Abstract - View Full Article

365

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RICHARD PAUL'S SUBSTANTIVE TRANS-

DISCIPLINARY CONCEPTION OF CRITICAL THINKING
by Enoch Hale, Ph.D.
Union Institute & University - Cincinnati, Ohio - October 2008
View Abstract Dissertation Table of Contents

https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/critical-thinking--reasoning-and-
communicating-with-rationale

Critical Thinking: Reasoning and Communicating with Rationale

ter Berg, T., van Gelder, T., Patterson, F., & Teppema, S. (2009) Critical Thinking:
Reasoning and Communicating with Rationale™. Amsterdam: Pearson Education Benelux.

This book is a compilation, by Timo ter Berg and Sytske Teppema, of some of the core
teaching materials developed for use in teaching critical thinking using Rationale at the
University of Melbourne, plus additional material by Timo and Sytske. The bulk of this slim
volume consists of 26 "Topics," 1-2 page treatments of key concepts in critical thinking,
reasoning and argumentation, such as Knowledge, Proposition, Reason, etc..

Publisher's description: "Critical Thinking is not an innate skill. However, it is a skill you
can nurture.
The unique Critical Thinking with Rationale™ method can help you with that. Rationale™
is the name of the software programme that helps you organize information, visualize
argumentation, and subsequently build a strong and well-founded argument. You will also
learn how to identify, analyze and evaluate argumentation presented by others. This book
focuses on the basic concepts of critical thinking, and provides insight into the theory behind
the method. Software and book are therefore inseparable. This method is suitable for students
in higher education who want to develop a critical, inquisitive attitude. And it is also an
ideal tool for professionals who are looking to improve their reasoning and arguing
skills. The Critical Thinking with Rationale™ method, developed at the University of
Melbourne through years of research, was introduced in the Netherlands in 2007, and was
awarded the Zilveren Innovatieprijs by the HBO-raad in 2008."
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/teaching-critical-thinking

Teaching Critical Thinking - Some Lessons from Cognitive Science

van Gelder, T. J. (2005). Teaching critical thinking: some lessons from cognitive science.
College Teaching, 53, 41-6.

Abstract This article draws six key lessons from cognitive science for teachers of critical
thinking. The lessons are: acquiring expertise in critical thinking is hard; practice in critical
thinking skills themselves enhances skills; the transfer of skills must be practiced; some
theoretical knowledge is required; diagramming arguments ("argument mapping") promotes
skill; and students are prone to belief preservation. The article provides some guidelines for
teaching practice in light of these lessons.
Comment
366

This paper has been surprisingly popular; I have been contacted about it by numerous
college teachers, particularly in the US. It was originally commissioned by Dr. Joe Lau at
Hong Kong University as part of a major critical thinking project he directed there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
Critical thinking is described by Richard Paul as a movement in two waves (1994).[1] The
"first wave" of critical thinking is often referred to as a 'critical analysis' that is clear,
rational thinking involving critique. Its details vary amongst those who define it. According
to Barry K. Beyer (1995), critical thinking means making clear, reasoned judgments.
During the process of critical thinking, ideas should be reasoned, well thought out, and
judged.[2] The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking[3] defines critical
thinking as the "intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing,
applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or
generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide
to belief and action."[4]
 1 Etymology
 2 Definitions
Traditionally, critical thinking has been variously defined as:
 "the process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,
synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion"[6]
 "disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by
evidence"[6]
 "reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do"[7]
 "purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis,
evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual,
methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that
judgment is based"[8]
 "includes a commitment to using reason in the formulation of our beliefs"[9]
 the skill and propensity to engage in an activity with reflective scepticism (McPeck,
1981)
 disciplined, self-directed thinking which exemplifies the perfection of thinking
appropriate to a particular mode or domain of thinking (Paul, 1989, p. 214)
 thinking about one's thinking in a manner designed to organize and clarify, raise the
efficiency of, and recognize errors and biases in one's own thinking. Critical
thinking is not 'hard' thinking nor is it directed at solving problems (other than
'improving' one's own thinking). Critical thinking is inward-directed with the intent
of maximizing the rationality of the thinker. One does not use critical thinking to
solve problems—one uses critical thinking to improve one's process of thinking.[10]
 "an appraisal based on careful analytical evaluation"[11]
367

Contemporary critical thinking scholars have expanded these traditional definitions to

include qualities, concepts, and processes such as creativity, imagination, discovery,
reflection, empathy, connecting knowing, feminist theory, subjectivity, ambiguity, and
inconclusiveness. Some definitions of critical thinking exclude these subjective
practices.[12]


 3 Logic and rationality

The ability to reason logically is a fundamental skill of rational agents, hence the study of
the form of correct argumentation is relevant to the study of critical thinking.
“First wave” logical thinking consisted of understanding the connections between two
concepts or points in thought. It followed a philosophy where the thinker was removed
from the train of thought and the connections and the analysis of the connect was devoid of
any bias of the thinker. Kerry Walter’s describes this ideology in her essay Beyond
Logicism in Critical Thinking, “A logistic approach to critical thinking conveys the
message to students that thinking is legitimate only when it conforms to the procedures of
informal (and, to a lesser extent,, formal) logic and that the good thinker necessarily aims
for styles of examination and appraisal that are analytical, abstract, universal, and objective.
This model of thinking has become so entrenched in conventional academic wisdom that
many educators accept it as canon” (Walters, 1λλ4, p. 1). The adoption of these principals
parallel themselves with the increasing reliance on quantitative understanding of the world.
In the ‘second wave’ of critical thinking, as defined by Kerry S. Walters (Re-thinking
Reason, 1994, p. 1 ), many authors moved away from the logocentric mode of critical
thinking that the ‘first wave’ privileged, especially in institutions of higher learning.
Walters summarizes logicism as “the unwarranted assumption that good thinking is
reducible to logical thinking” (1λλ4, p. 1).
“A logistic approach to critical thinking conveys the message to students that thinking is
legitimate only when it conforms to the procedures of informal (and, to a lesser extent,,
formal) logic and that the good thinker necessarily aims for styles of examination and
appraisal that are analytical, abstract, universal, and objective.” (Walters, 1λλ4, p. 1) As the
‘second wave’ took hold, scholars began to take a more inclusive view of what constituted
as critical thinking. Rationality and logic are still widely accepted in many circles as the
primary examples of critical thinking.


o 3.1 Inductive versus deductive thinking

o 3.2 Critical thinking and rationality
Kerry S. Walters (Re-thinking Reason, 1994) argues that rationality demands more than just
logical or traditional methods of problem solving and analysis or what he calls the “calculus
of justification” but also considers “cognitive acts such as imagination, conceptual
creativity, intuition and insight” (p. 63). These “functions” are focused on discovery, on
more abstract processes instead of linear, rules-based approaches to problem solving. The
linear and non-sequential mind must both be engaged in the rational mind.
The ability to critically analyze an argument – to dissect structure and components, thesis
368

and reasons – is important. But so is the ability to be flexible and consider non-traditional
alternatives and perspectives. These complementary functions are what allow for critical
thinking; a practice encompassing imagination and intuition in cooperation with traditional
modes of deductive inquiry.
o

 4 Functions
The list of core critical thinking skills includes observation, interpretation, analysis,
inference, evaluation, explanation, and metacognition. According to Reynolds (2011), an
individual or group engaged in a strong way of critical thinking gives due consideration to
establish for instance:[13]
 Evidence through reality
 Context skills to isolate the problem from context[clarification needed]
 Relevant criteria for making the judgment well
 Applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment
 Applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at
hand
In addition to possessing strong critical-thinking skills, one must be disposed to engage
problems and decisions using those skills. Critical thinking employs not only logic but
broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth,
breadth, significance, and fairness.[14]


 5 Procedure
Critical thinking calls for the ability to:
 Recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems
 Understand the importance of prioritization and order of precedence in problem
solving
 Gather and marshal pertinent (relevant) information
 Recognize unstated assumptions and values
 Comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discernment
 Interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments
 Recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between
propositions
 Draw warranted conclusions and generalizations
 Put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives
369

 Reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience

 Render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life
In sum:
"A persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the
evidence that supports or refutes it and the further conclusions to which it tends."[15]


 6 Habits or traits of mind

The habits of mind that characterize a person strongly disposed toward critical thinking
include a desire to follow reason and evidence wherever they may lead, a systematic
approach to problem solving, inquisitiveness, even-handedness, and confidence in
reasoning.[16]
According to a definition analysis by Kompf & Bond (2001), critical thinking involves
problem solving, decision making, metacognition (Metacognition is "cognition about
cognition", "thinking about thinking", or "knowing about knowing" and higher order
thinking skills. It comes from the root word 'meta', meaning beyond.[1] It can take many
forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning
or for problem solving.[1] There are generally two components of metacognition: knowledge
about cognition, and regulation of cognition),*
*Metacognition is classified into three components:[10]
 Metacognitive knowledge (also called metacognitive awareness) is what individuals
know about themselves and others as cognitive processors.
 Metacognitive regulation is the regulation of cognition and learning experiences
through a set of activities that help people control their learning.
 Metacognitive experiences are those experiences that have something to do with the
current, on-going cognitive endeavor.
Metacognition refers to a level of thinking that involves active control over the process of
thinking that is used in learning situations. Planning the way to approach a learning task,
monitoring comprehension, and evaluating the progress towards the completion of a task:
these are skills that are metacognitive in their nature.
Metacognition includes at least three different types of metacognitive awareness when
considering metacognitive knowledge:[11]
 Declarative knowledge: refers to knowledge about oneself as a learner and about
what factors can influence one's performance.[2] Declarative knowledge can also be
referred to as "world knowledge".[12]
 Procedural knowledge: refers to knowledge about doing things. This type of
knowledge is displayed as heuristics and strategies.[2] A high degree of procedural
knowledge can allow individuals to perform tasks more automatically. This is
370

achieved through a large variety of strategies that can be accessed more

efficiently.[13]
 Conditional knowledge: refers to knowing when and why to use declarative and
procedural knowledge.[14] It allows students to allocate their resources when using
strategies. This in turn allows the strategies to become more effective.[15]
Similar to metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation or "regulation of cognition"
contains three skills that are essential.[2][16]
 Planning: refers to the appropriate selection of strategies and the correct allocation
of resources that affect task performance.
 Monitoring: refers to one's awareness of comprehension and task performance
 Evaluating: refers to appraising the final product of a task and the efficiency at
which the task was performed. This can include re-evaluating strategies that were
used.
Similarly, maintaining motivation to see a task to completion is also a metacognitive skill.
The ability to become aware of distracting stimuli – both internal and external – and sustain
effort over time also involves metacognitive or executive functions. The theory that
metacognition has a critical role to play in successful learning means it is important that it
be demonstrated by both students and teachers.
Metacognologists are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, the nature of the task at
hand, and available "tools" or skills. A broader repertoire of "tools" also assists in goal
attainment. When "tools" are general, generic, and context independent, they are more
likely to be useful in different types of learning situations.
Another distinction in metacognition is executive management and strategic knowledge.
Executive management processes involve planning, monitoring, evaluating and revising
one's own thinking processes and products. Strategic knowledge involves knowing what
(factual or declarative knowledge), knowing when and why (conditional or contextual
knowledge) and knowing how (procedural or methodological knowledge). Both executive
management and strategic knowledge metacognition are needed to self-regulate one's own
thinking and learning.[19]
Finally, there is no distinction between domain-general and domain-specific metacognitive
skills. This means that metacognitive skills are domain-general in nature and there are no
specific skills for certain subject areas. The metacognitive skills that are used to review an
essay are the same as those that are used to verify an answer to a math question.[20]
Metacognitive experience is responsible for creating an identity that matters to an
individual. The creation of the identity with metacognitive experience is linked to the
identity-based motivation (IBM) model. The identity-based motivation model implies that
"identities matter because they provide a basis for meaning making and for action."[21] A
person decides also if the identity matters in two ways with metacognitive experience. First,
a current or possible identity is either "part of the self and so worth pursuing"[22] or the
individual thinks that the identity is part of their self, yet it is conflicting with more
important identities and the individual will decide if the identity is or is not worth pursuing.
Second, it also helps an individual decide if an identity should be pursued or abandoned.
371

Usually, abandoning identity has been linked to metacognitive difficulty. Based on the
identity-based motivation model there are naive theories describing difficulty as a way to
continue to pursue an identity. The incremental theory of ability states that if "effort matters
then difficulty is likely to be interpreted as meaning that more effort is needed."[23] Here is
an example: a woman who loves to play clarinet has come upon a hard piece of music. She
knows that how much effort she puts into learning this piece is beneficial. The piece had
difficulty so she knew the effort was needed. The identity the woman wants to pursue is to
be a good clarinet player; having a metacognitive experience difficulty pushed her to learn
the difficult piece to continue to identify with her identity. The entity theory of ability
represents the opposite. This theory states that if "effort does not matter then difficulty is
likely to be interpreted as meaning that ability is lacking so effort should be suspended."[23]
Based on the example of the woman playing the clarinet, if she did not want to identify
herself as a good clarinet player, she would not have put in any effort to learn the difficult
piece which is an example of using metacognitive experience difficulty to abandon an
identity.[24]

Relation to sapience
Metacognologists believe that the ability to consciously think about thinking is unique to
sapient species and indeed is one of the definitions of sapience.[citation needed] There is
evidence that rhesus monkeys, apes, and dolphins can make accurate judgments about the
strengths of their memories of fact and monitor their own uncertainty,[25] while attempts to
demonstrate metacognition in birds have been inconclusive.[26] A 2007 study has provided
some evidence for metacognition in rats,[27][28][29] but further analysis suggested that they
may have been following simple operant conditioning principles,[30] or a behavioral
economic model.[31]

Strategies
Metacognitive-like processes are especially ubiquitous when it comes to the discussion of
self-regulated learning. Being engaged in metacognition is a salient feature of good self-
regulated learners.[citation needed] Reinforcing collective discussion of metacognition is a
salient feature of self-critical and self-regulating social groups.[citation needed] The activities of
strategy selection and application include those concerned with an ongoing attempt to plan,
check, monitor, select, revise, evaluate, etc.
Metacognition is 'stable' in that learners' initial decisions derive from the pertinent facts
about their cognition through years of learning experience. Simultaneously, it is also
'situated' in the sense that it depends on learners' familiarity with the task, motivation,
emotion, and so forth. Individuals need to regulate their thoughts about the strategy they are
using and adjust it based on the situation to which the strategy is being applied. At a
professional level, this has led to emphasis on the development of reflective practice,
particularly in the education and health-care professions.
Recently, the notion has been applied to the study of second language learners in the field
of TESOL and applied linguistics in general (e.g., Wenden, 1987; Zhang, 2001, 2010). This
new development has been much related to Flavell (1979), where the notion of
metacognition is elaborated within a tripartite theoretical framework. Learner
372

metacognition is defined and investigated by examining their person knowledge, task

knowledge and strategy knowledge.
Wenden (1991) has proposed and used this framework and Zhang (2001) has adopted this
approach and investigated second language learners' metacognition or metacognitive
knowledge. In addition to exploring the relationships between learner metacognition and
performance, researchers are also interested in the effects of metacognitively-oriented
strategic instruction on reading comprehension (e.g., Garner, 1994, in first language
contexts, and Chamot, 2005; Zhang, 2010). The efforts are aimed at developing learner
autonomy, interdependence and self-regulation.
Metacognition helps people to perform many cognitive tasks more effectively.[1] Strategies
for promoting metacognition include self-questioning (e.g. "What do I already know about
this topic? How have I solved problems like this before?"), thinking aloud while performing
a task, and making graphic representations (e.g. concept maps, flow charts, semantic webs)
of one's thoughts and knowledge. Carr, 2002, argues that the physical act of writing plays a
large part in the development of metacognitive skills.[32]
Strategy Evaluation matrices (SEM) can help to improve the knowledge of cognition
component of metacognition. The SEM works by identifying the declarative (Column 1),
procedural (Column 2) and conditional (Column 3 and 4) knowledge about specific
strategies. The SEM can help individuals identify the strength and weaknesses about certain
strategies as well as introduce them to new strategies that they can add to their repertoire.[33]
A regulation checklist (RC) is a useful strategy for improving the regulation of cognition
aspect of one's metacognition. RCs help individuals to implement a sequence of thoughts
that allow them to go over their own metacognition.[33] King (1991) found that fifth-grade
students who used a regulation checklist outperformed control students when looking at a
variety of questions including written problem solving, asking strategic questions, and
elaborating information.[34]
Metacognitive strategies training can consist of coaching the students in thinking skills that
will allow them to monitor their own learning.[35] Examples of strategies that can be taught
to students are word analysis skills, active reading strategies, listening skills, organizational
skills and creating mnemonic devices.[36]
Walker and Walker have developed a model of metacognition in school learning termed
Steering Cognition. Steering Cognition describes the capacity of the mind to exert
conscious control over its reasoning and processing strategies in relation to the external
learning task. Studies have shown that pupils with an ability to exert metacognitive
regulation over their attentional and reasoning strategies used when engaged in maths, and
then shift those strategies when engaged in science or then English literature learning,
associate with higher academic outcomes at secondary school.

Metastrategic knowledge
"Metastrategic knowledge" (MSK) is a sub-component of metacognition that is defined as
general knowledge about higher order thinking strategies. MSK had been defined as
"general knowledge about the cognitive procedures that are being manipulated". The
knowledge involved in MSK consists of "making generalizations and drawing rules
regarding a thinking strategy" and of "naming" the thinking strategy.[37]
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The important conscious act of a metastrategic strategy is the "conscious" awareness that
one is performing a form of higher order thinking. MSK is an awareness of the type of
thinking strategies being used in specific instances and it consists of the following abilities:
making generalizations and drawing rules regarding a thinking strategy, naming the
thinking strategy, explaining when, why and how such a thinking strategy should be used,
when it should not be used, what are the disadvantages of not using appropriate strategies,
and what task characteristics call for the use of the strategy.[38]
MSK deals with the broader picture of the conceptual problem. It creates rules to describe
and understand the physical world around the people who utilize these processes called
higher-order thinking. This is the capability of the individual to take apart complex
problems in order to understand the components in problem. These are the building blocks
to understanding the "big picture" (of the main problem) through reflection and problem
solving.[39]
Characteristics of theory of mind: Understanding the mind and the "mental world":
 False beliefs: understanding that a belief is only one of many and can be false.
 Appearance–reality distinctions: something may look one way but may be
something else.
 Visual perspective taking: the views of physical objects differ based on perspective.
 Introspection: children's awareness and understanding of their own thoughts.

Action
Both social and cognitive dimensions of sporting expertise can be adequately explained
from a metacognitive perspective according to recent research. The potential of
metacognitive inferences and domain-general skills including psychological skills training
are integral to the genesis of expert performance. Moreover, the contribution of both mental
imagery (e.g., mental practice) and attentional strategies (e.g., routines) to our
understanding of expertise and metacognition is noteworthy.[40] The potential of
metacognition to illuminate our understanding of action was first highlighted by Aidan
Moran who discussed the role of meta-attention in 1996.[41] A recent research initiative, a
research seminar series called META funded by the BPS, is exploring the role of the related
constructs of meta-motivation, meta-emotion, and thinking and action (metacognition).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
….rationality, rational thinking, reasoning, knowledge, intelligence and also a moral
component such as reflective thinking. Critical thinkers therefore need to have reached a
level of maturity in their development, possess a certain attitude as well as a set of taught
skill

7 Research
Edward M. Glaser proposed that the ability to think critically involves three elements:[15]
374

 An attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and

subjects that come within the range of one's experiences
 Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning
 Some skill in applying those methods.
Educational programs aimed at developing critical thinking in children and adult learners,
individually or in group problem solving and decision making contexts, continue to address
these same three central elements.
Contemporary cognitive psychology regards human reasoning as a complex process that is
both reactive and reflective.[17]
The relationship between critical thinking skills and critical thinking dispositions is an
empirical question. Some people have both in abundance, some have skills but not the
disposition to use them, some are disposed but lack strong skills, and some have neither. A
measure of critical thinking dispositions is the California Measure of Mental Motivation.[18]
 8 Education
John Dewey is one of many educational leaders who recognized that a curriculum aimed at
building thinking skills would benefit the individual learner, the community, and the entire
democracy.[19]
Critical thinking is significant in academics due to being significant in learning. Critical
thinking is significant in the learning process of internalization, in the construction of basic
ideas, principles, and theories inherent in content. And critical thinking is significant in the
learning process of application, whereby those ideas, principles, and theories are
implemented effectively as they become relevant in learners' lives.
Each discipline adapts its use of critical thinking concepts and principles. The core concepts
are always there, but they are embedded in subject-specific content. For students to learn
content, intellectual engagement is crucial. All students must do their own thinking, their
own construction of knowledge. Good teachers recognize this and therefore focus on the
questions, readings, activities that stimulate the mind to take ownership of key concepts and
principles underlying the subject.
Historically, teaching of critical thinking focused only on logical procedures such as formal
and informal logic. This emphasized to students that good thinking is equivalent to logical
thinking. However, a second wave of critical thinking, urges educators to value
conventional techniques, meanwhile expanding what it means to be a critical thinker. In
1994, Kerry Walters[20] compiled a conglomeration of sources surpassing this logical
restriction to include many different authors’ research regarding connected knowing,
empathy, gender-sensitive ideals, collaboration, world views, intellectual autonomy,
morality and enlightenment. These concepts invite students to incorporate their own
perspectives and experiences into their thinking.
In the English and Welsh school system, Critical Thinking is offered as a subject that 16- to
18-year-olds can take as an A-Level. Under the OCR exam board, students can sit two
exam papers for the AS: "Credibility of Evidence" and "Assessing and Developing
Argument". The full Advanced GCE is now available: in addition to the two AS units,
candidates sit the two papers "Resolution of Dilemmas" and "Critical Reasoning". The A-
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level tests candidates on their ability to think critically about, and analyze, arguments on
their deductive or inductive validity, as well as producing their own arguments. It also tests
their ability to analyze certain related topics such as credibility and ethical decision-making.
However, due to its comparative lack of subject content, many universities do not accept it
as a main A-level for admissions.[21] Nevertheless, the AS is often useful in developing
reasoning skills, and the full Advanced GCE is useful for degree courses in politics,
philosophy, history or theology, providing the skills required for critical analysis that are
useful, for example, in biblical study.
There used to also be an Advanced Extension Award offered in Critical Thinking in the
UK, open to any A-level student regardless of whether they have the Critical Thinking A-
level. Cambridge International Examinations have an A-level in Thinking Skills.[22]
From 2008, Assessment and Qualifications Alliance has also been offering an A-level
Critical Thinking specification.[23]
OCR exam board have also modified theirs for 2008. Many examinations for university
entrance set by universities, on top of A-level examinations, also include a critical thinking
component, such as the LNAT, the UKCAT, the BioMedical Admissions Test and the
Thinking Skills Assessment.
In Qatar, critical thinking was offered by AL-Bairaq which is an outreach, non-traditional
educational program that targets high school students and focuses on a curriculum based on
STEM fields. The idea behind AL-Bairaq is to offer high school students the opportunity to
connect with the research environment in the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM) at
Qatar University. Faculty members train and mentor the students and help develop and
enhance their critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork skills.[


o 8.1 Efficacy
In 1995, a meta-analysis of the literature on teaching effectiveness in higher education was
undertaken.[25] The study noted concerns from higher education, politicians and business
that higher education was failing to meet society's requirements for well-educated citizens.
It concluded that although faculty may aspire to develop students' thinking skills, in
practice they have tended to aim at facts and concepts utilizing lowest levels of cognition,
rather than developing intellect or values.
In a more recent meta-analysis, researchers reviewed 341 quasi- or true-experimental
studies, all of which used some form of standardized critical thinking measure to assess the
outcome variable.[26] The authors describe the various methodological approaches and
attempt to categorize the differing assessment tools, which include standardized tests (and
second-source measures), tests developed by teachers, tests developed by researchers, and
tests developed by teachers who also serve the role as the researcher. The results
emphasized the need for exposing students to real-world problems and the importance in
encouraging open dialogue within a supportive environment. Effective strategies for
teaching critical thinking are thought to be possible in a wide variety of educational
settings.[26]
o
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 9 Importance in academia
Critical thinking is an important element of all professional fields and academic disciplines
(by referencing their respective sets of permissible questions, evidence sources, criteria,
etc.). Within the framework of scientific skepticism, the process of critical thinking
involves the careful acquisition and interpretation of information and use of it to reach a
well-justified conclusion. The concepts and principles of critical thinking can be applied to
any context or case but only by reflecting upon the nature of that application. Critical
thinking forms, therefore, a system of related, and overlapping, modes of thought such as
anthropological thinking, sociological thinking, historical thinking, political thinking,
psychological thinking, philosophical thinking, mathematical thinking, chemical thinking,
biological thinking, ecological thinking, legal thinking, ethical thinking, musical thinking,
thinking like a painter, sculptor, engineer, business person, etc. In other words, though
critical thinking principles are universal, their application to disciplines requires a process
of reflective contextualization.
Critical thinking is considered important in the academic fields (NOT just the discipline of
philosophy) because it enables one to analyze, evaluate, explain, and restructure their
thinking, thereby decreasing the risk of adopting, acting on, or thinking with, a false belief.
However, even with knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, mistakes
can happen due to a thinker's inability to apply the methods or because of character traits
such as egocentrism. Critical thinking includes identification of prejudice, bias, propaganda,
self-deception, distortion, misinformation, etc.[27] Given research in cognitive psychology,
some educators believe that schools should focus on teaching their students critical thinking
skills and cultivation of intellectual traits.[28]
Critical thinking skills can be used to help nurses during the assessment process. Through
the use of critical thinking, nurses can question, evaluate, and reconstruct the nursing care
process by challenging the established theory and practice. Critical thinking skills can help
nurses problem solve, reflect, and make a conclusive decision about the current situation
they face. Critical thinking creates "new possibilities for the development of the nursing
knowledge."[29] Due to the sociocultural, environmental, and political issues that are
affecting healthcare delivery, it would be helpful to embody new techniques in nursing.
Nurses can also engage their critical thinking skills through the Socratic method of dialogue
and reflection. This practice standard is even part of some regulatory organizations such as
the College of Nurses of Ontario - Professional Standards for Continuing Competencies
(2006).[30] It requires nurses to engage in Reflective Practice and keep records of this
continued professional development for possible review by the College.
Critical thinking is also considered important for human rights education for toleration. The
Declaration of Principles on Tolerance adopted by UNESCO in 1995 affirms that
"education for tolerance could aim at countering factors that lead to fear and exclusion of
others, and could help young people to develop capacities for independent judgement,
critical thinking and ethical reasoning."[31]
Critical thinking is used as a way of deciding whether a claim is true, partially true, or false.
It is a tool by which one can come about reasoned conclusions based on a reasoned process(
(This was/is often mistaken as the essence of philosophizing, alone)..

377

 10 See also
 Cognitive bias mitigation
 Critical theory
 Dialectic
 Discourse analysis
 Freedom of thought
 Freethought
 Outline of human intelligence – topic tree presenting the traits, capacities, models,
and research fields of human intelligence
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_human_intelligence
 1 Traits and aspects
 2 Emergence and evolution
 3 Augmented with technology
 4 Capacities
 5 Types of people, by intelligence
 6 Models and theories
 7 Related factors
 8 Fields that study human intelligence
 9 History
 10 Organizations
 11 Publications
 12 Scholars and researchers
 13 See also
 14 Further reading
 15 External links


 Outline of thought – topic tree that identifies many types of thoughts, types of
thinking, aspects of thought, related fields. Thought (also called thinking) – the
mental process in which beings form psychological associations and models of the
world. Thinking is manipulating information, as when we form concepts, engage in
problem solving, reason and make decisions. Thought, the act of thinking, produces
378

thoughts. A thought may be an idea, an image, a sound or even an emotional feeling

that arises from the brain.
 1 Nature of thought
 2 Types of thoughts
 3 Types of thought (thinking)

Human thought
Main article: Human thought
 Analysis
 Awareness
 Calculation
o Estimation
 Categorization
 Causal thinking
 Cognitive restructuring
 Computational thinking
 Convergent thinking
 Counterfactual thinking
 Critical thinking
 Divergent thinking
 Evaluation
 Integrative thinking
 Internal monologue (surface thoughts)
 Introspection
 Learning and memory
 Parallel thinking
 Prediction
 Recollection
 Stochastic thinking
 Strategic thinking
379

 Visual thinking

Classifications of thought
 Bloom's taxonomy
 Dual process theory
 Fluid and crystallized intelligence
 Higher-order thinking
 Theory of multiple intelligences
 Three-stratum theory
 Williams' taxonomy

Creative processes
 Brainstorming
 Cognitive module
 Creativity
 Creative problem solving
 Creative writing
 Creativity techniques
 Design thinking
 Imagination
 Lateral thinking
 Noogenesis
 Six Thinking Hats
 Speech act
 Stream of consciousness
 Thinking outside the box

Erroneous thinking
See also: Error and Human error
 Black and white thinking
380

 Catastrophization
 Cognitive bias
 Cognitive distortions
 Dysrationalia
 Emotional reasoning
 Exaggeration
 Foolishness
 Fallacies (see also List of fallacies)
o Fallacies of definition
o Logical fallacy
 Groupthink
 Irrationality
 Linguistic errors
 Magical thinking
 Minimisation (psychology)
 Motivated reasoning
 Rationalization (psychology)
 Rhetoric
 Straight and Crooked Thinking (book)
 Target fixation
 Wishful thinking

Problem solving
Main article: Problem solving
 Problem solving steps
o Problem finding
o Problem shaping
 Process of elimination
 Systems thinking
o Critical systems thinking
381

 Problem-solving strategy – steps one would use to find the problem(s) that are in the
way to getting to one’s own goal. Some would refer to this as the ‘problem-solving
cycle’ (Bransford & Stein, 1λλ3). In this cycle one will recognize the problem,
define the problem, develop a strategy to fix the problem, organize the knowledge
of the problem cycle, figure-out the resources at the user's disposal, monitor one's
progress, and evaluate the solution for accuracy.
o Abstraction – solving the problem in a model of the system before applying
it to the real system
o Analogy – using a solution that solves an analogous problem
o Brainstorming – (especially among groups of people) suggesting a large
number of solutions or ideas and combining and developing them until an
optimum solution is found
o Divide and conquer – breaking down a large, complex problem into smaller,
solvable problems
o Hypothesis testing – assuming a possible explanation to the problem and
trying to prove (or, in some contexts, disprove) the assumption
o Lateral thinking – approaching solutions indirectly and creatively
o Means-ends analysis – choosing an action at each step to move closer to the
goal
o Method of focal objects – synthesizing seemingly non-matching
characteristics of different objects into something new
o Morphological analysis – assessing the output and interactions of an entire
system
o Proof – try to prove that the problem cannot be solved. The point where the
proof fails will be the starting point for solving it
o Reduction – transforming the problem into another problem for which
solutions exist
o Research – employing existing ideas or adapting existing solutions to similar
problems
o Root cause analysis – identifying the cause of a problem
o Trial-and-error – testing possible solutions until the right one is found
o Troubleshooting –
 Problem-solving methodology
o 5 Whys
o Decision cycle
382

o Eight Disciplines Problem Solving

o GROW model
o How to Solve It
o Learning cycle
o OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, and act)
o PDCA (plan–do–check–act)
o Problem structuring methods
o RPR Problem Diagnosis (rapid problem resolution)
o TRIZ (in Russian: Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch, "theory of
solving inventor's problems")

Reasoning
Main article: Reasoning
 Abstract thinking
 Adaptive reasoning
 Analogical reasoning
 Analytic reasoning
 Case-based reasoning
 Critical thinking
 Defeasible reasoning – from authority: if p then (defeasibly) q
 Diagrammatic reasoning – reasoning by means of visual representations.
Visualizing concepts and ideas with of diagrams and imagery instead of by
linguistic or algebraic means
 Emotional reasoning (erroneous) – a cognitive distortion in which emotion
overpowers reason, to the point the subject is unwilling or unable to accept the
reality of a situation because of it.
 Fallacious reasoning (erroneous) – logical errors
 Heuristics
 Historical thinking
 Intuitive reasoning
 Lateral thinking
 Logic / Logical reasoning
383

o Abductive reasoning – from data and theory: p and q are correlated, and q is
sufficient for p; hence, if p then (abducibly) q as cause
o Deductive reasoning – from meaning postulate, axiom, or contingent
assertion: if p then q (i.e., q or not-p)
o Inductive reasoning – theory formation; from data, coherence, simplicity,
and confirmation: (inducibly) "if p then q"; hence, if p then (deducibly-but-
revisably) q
o Inference
 Moral reasoning – process in which an individual tries to determine the difference
between what is right and what is wrong in a personal situation by using logic.[4] This is an
important and often daily process that people use in an attempt to do the right thing. Every
day for instance, people are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to lie in a given
situation. People make this decision by reasoning the morality of the action and weighing

 Probabilistic reasoning – from combinatorics and indifference: if p then (probably) q

that against its consequences.

 Proportional reasoning – using "the concept of proportions when analyzing and solving a
mathematical situation."[5]
 Rational thinking
 Semiosis
 Statistical reasoning – from data and presumption: the frequency of qs among ps is high

 Synthetic reasoning
(or inference from a model fit to data); hence, (in the right context) if p then (probably) q

 Verbal reasoning – understanding and reasoning using concepts framed in words

 Visual reasoning – process of manipulating one's mental image of an
object in order to reach a certain conclusion – for example, mentally
constructing a piece of machinery to experiment with different mechanisms


 4 Aspects of the thinker

Aspects of the thinker which may affect (help or hamper) his or her thinking:
 Attitude
 Cognitive style
 Common sense
 Experience
 Instinct
 Intelligence
 Metacognition
 Mind's eye
384

 Mindset
 Rationality
 Wisdom
o Sapience


 5 Properties of thought
 Accuracy
 Cogency
 Dogma
 Effectiveness
 Efficacy
 Efficiency
 Freethought
 Frugality
 Meaning
 Prudence
 Rights
 Skepticism
 Soundness
 Validity
 Value theory
 Wrong


 6 Fields that study thought

 Linguistics
 Philosophy
o Logic
o Philosophy of mind
 Neuroscience
385

o Cognitive science
o Psychology
 Cognitive psychology
 Social psychology
o Psychiatry
 Mathematics
 Operations research


 7 Thought tools and thought research

 Cognitive model
 Design tool
 Diagram
o Argument map
o Concept map
o Mind map
 DSRP
 Intelligence amplification
 Language
 Meditation
 Six Thinking Hats
 Synectics


 Cognitive model
 Design tool
 Diagram
o Argument map
o Concept map
o Mind map
 DSRP
386

 Intelligence amplification
 Language
 Meditation
 Six Thinking Hats
 Synectics


 8 History of thinking
Main article: History of reasoning
 History of artificial intelligence
 History of cognitive science
 History of creativity
 History of ideas
 History of logic
 History of psychometrics


 9 Nootropics (cognitive enhancers and smart drugs)

 10 Teaching methods and skills
 Active learning
 Classical conditioning
 Directed listening and thinking activity
 Discipline
 Learning theory (education)
 Mentoring
 Operant conditioning
 Problem-based learning
 Punishment
 Reinforcement

Awareness and perception

Main articles: Awareness and Perception
387

 Attention
 Cognition
 Cognitive dissonance
 Cognitive map
 Concept
 Concept map
 Conceptual framework
 Conceptual model
 Consciousness
 Domain knowledge
 Heuristics in judgment and decision making
 Information
 Intelligence
 Intuition
 Knowledge
 Memory suppression
 Mental model
 Metaknowledge (knowledge about knowledge)
 Mind map
 Mindfulness (psychology)
 Model (abstract)
 Percept
 Perception
 Self-awareness
 Self-concept
 Self-consciousness
 Self-knowledge
 Self-realization
 Sentience
388

 Situational awareness
 Understanding

Learning and memory

Main articles: Education, Learning, and Memory
 Autodidacticism
 Biofeedback
 Cognitive dissonance
 Dual-coding theory
 Eidetic memory (total recall)
 Emotion and memory
 Empiricism
 Feedback
 Feedback loop
 Free association
 Heuristics
 Hyperthymesia
 Hypnosis
 Hypothesis
 Imitation
 Inquiry
 Knowledge management
 Language acquisition
 Memorization
 Memory and aging
 Memory inhibition
 Memory-prediction framework
 Method of loci
 Mnemonics
 Neurofeedback
389

 Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)

 Observation
 Pattern recognition
 Question
 Reading
 Recall
 Recognition
 Recollection (recall)
 Scientific method
 Self-perception theory
 Speed reading
 Study Skills
 Subvocalization
 Transfer of learning
 Transfer of training
 Visual learning
Miscellaneous
 Adaptation
 Association of Ideas
 Attacking Faulty Reasoning
 Autistic thinking (see Glossary of psychiatry)
 Backcasting
 Causality
 Chunking (psychology)
 Cognition
 Cognitive biology
 Cognitive computing
 Cognitive deficit
 Cognitive dissonance
390

 Cognitive linguistics
 Cognitive module
 Cognitive psychology
 Cognitive science
 Cognitive space
 Cognitive style
 Communicating
 Comparative cognition
 Concept-formation
 Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the
understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is
the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the price of peace is rising").
A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience. The regularity
with which different languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be
perceptually based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains
corresponds to neural mappings in the brain.[1][2] This theory has gained wide attention,
although some researchers question its empirical accuracy.[3]
This idea, and a detailed examination of the underlying processes, was first extensively
explored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work Metaphors We Live By. Other
cognitive scientists, for example Gilles Fauconnier, study subjects similar to conceptual
metaphor under the labels "analogy", "conceptual blending" and "ideasthesia".
 1 Mappings
There are two main roles for the conceptual domains posited in conceptual metaphors:
 Source domain: the conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical
expressions (e.g., love is a journey).
 Target domain: the conceptual domain that we try to understand (e.g., love is a
journey).
A mapping is the systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent elements
of the source and the target domain. Many elements of target concepts come from source
domains and are not preexisting. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set of
mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing. The same idea of mapping between
source and target is used to describe analogical reasoning and inferences.[5]
A primary tenet of this theory is that metaphors are matter of thought and not merely of
language: hence, the term conceptual metaphor. The metaphor may seem to consist of
words or other linguistic expressions that come from the terminology of the more concrete
conceptual domain, but conceptual metaphors underlie a system of related metaphorical
391

expressions that appear on the linguistic surface. Similarly, the mappings of a conceptual
metaphor are themselves motivated by image schemas which are pre-linguistic schemas
concerning space, time, moving, controlling, and other core elements of embodied human
experience.
Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more
concrete or physical concept as their source. For instance, metaphors such as 'the days [the
more abstract or target concept] ahead' or 'giving my time' rely on more concrete concepts,
thus expressing time as a path into physical space, or as a substance that can be handled and
offered as a gift. Different conceptual metaphors tend to be invoked when the speaker is
trying to make a case for a certain point of view or course of action. For instance, one might
associate "the days ahead" with leadership, whereas the phrase "giving my time" carries
stronger connotations of bargaining. Selection of such metaphors tends to be directed by a
subconscious or implicit habit in the mind of the person employing them.
The principle of unidirectionality states that the metaphorical process typically goes from
the more concrete to the more abstract, and not the other way around. Accordingly, abstract
concepts are understood in terms of prototype concrete processes. The term "concrete," in
this theory, has been further specified by Lakoff and Johnson as more closely related to the
developmental, physical neural, and interactive body (see embodied philosophy).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of human, or other types of, cognition
are shaped by aspects of the body beyond the brain. The features of cognition include high
level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and human performance on
various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgment). The aspects of the body include
the motor system, the perceptual system, the body's interactions with the environment
(situatedness) and the assumptions about the world that are built into the body and the
brain.
The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as cognitivism,
computationalism, and Cartesian dualism.[1][2] It is closely related to the extended mind
thesis, situated cognition and enactivism. The modern version depends on insights drawn
from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems,
artificial intelligence, robotics, plant cognition and neurobiology.
 1 Embodiment thesis

Embodiment thesis
In philosophy, embodied cognition holds that an agent's cognition is strongly influenced by
aspects of an agent's body beyond the brain itself.[1] In their proposal for an enactive
approach to cognition Varela et al. defined "embodied":[3]
"By using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first that cognition
depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various
sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities
are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and
cultural context."
392

— Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela: The Embodied Mind:

Cognitive Science and Human Experience pages 172–173
The Varela enactive definition is broad enough to overlap the views of extended cognition
and situated cognition, and indeed, these ideas are not always carefully separated.[4] For
example, according to Michael Dawson, the relationship is tangled:[5]
"In viewing cognition as embedded or situated, embodied cognitive science
emphasizes feedback between an agent and the world. We have seen that this
feedback is structured by the nature of an agent's body...This in turn suggests that
agents with different kinds of bodies can be differentiated in terms of degrees of
embodiment...Embodiment can be defined as the extent to which an agent can alter
its environment." [Citations have been omitted]
— Michael Dawson: Degrees of embodiment; The Routledge Handbook of
Embodied Cognition, page 62
Some authors explain the dependence of cognition upon the body and its environmental
interactions by saying cognition in real biological systems is not an end in itself but is
constrained by the system's goals and capacities. However, they argue, such constraints do
not mean cognition is set by adaptive behavior (or autopoiesis) alone, but cognition requires
“some kind of information processing...the transformation or communication of incoming
information”, the acquiring of which involves "exploration and modification of the
environment".[6]
"It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that cognition consists simply of
building maximally accurate representations of input information...the gaining of
knowledge is a stepping stone to achieving the more immediate goal of guiding
behavior in response to the system's changing surroundings."
— Marcin Miłkowski: Explaining the Computational Mind, p. 4
The separation of embodied cognition from extended cognition and situated cognition can
be based upon the embodiment thesis, a narrower view of embodiment than that of Varela et
al. or that of Dawson:[1]
Embodiment thesis: Many features of cognition are embodied in that they are
deeply dependent upon characteristics of the physical body of an agent, such that the
agent's beyond-the-brain body plays a significant causal role, or a physically
constitutive role, in that agent's cognitive processing.
—RA Wilson and L Foglia, Embodied Cognition in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
This thesis omits direct mention of some aspects of the "more encompassing biological,
psychological and cultural context" included by Varella et al. The Extended mind thesis, in
contrast with the Embodiment thesis, limits cognitive processing neither to the brain nor
even to the body, but extends it outward into the agent's world.[1][7] Situated cognition
emphasizes that this extension is not just a matter of including resources outside the head,
but stresses the role of probing and modifying interaction with the agent's world.[8]


 2 Philosophical background
In his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (1755).[9] philosopher Immanuel
Kant advocated a view of the mind–body problem and the subject–object problem with
parallels to the embodied view.[10] Some difficulties with this interpretation of Kant include
393

(i) the view that Kant holds the empirical, and specifically knowledge of the body, cannot
support a priori transcendental claims,[11] and (ii) the view that Kant holds that
transcendental philosophy, although charged with the responsibility of explaining how we
can have empirical knowledge, is not itself empirical.[12]
José Ortega y Gasset, George Santayana, Miguel de Unamuno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Martin Heidegger and others in the broadly existential tradition have proposed philosophies
of mind influencing the development of the modern 'embodiment' thesis.[13]
The embodiment movement in artificial intelligence has fueled the embodiment argument
in philosophy and a revised view of ethology:[14]
"Species-typical activity patterns must be thought of as emergent phenomena in
three different senses of the word. They have emerged...through natural selection,
....by a process of maturation and/or learning, ...and from interactions between the
creature's low-level activities and its species-typical environment."
—Horst Hendriks-Jansen Catching Ourselves in the Act, p. 10
These developments have also given emotions a new status in philosophy of mind as an
indispensable constituent, rather than a non-essential addition to rational intellectual
thought. In philosophy of mind, the idea that cognition is embodied is sympathetic with
other views of cognition such as situated cognition or externalism. This is a radical move
towards a total re-localization of mental processes out of the neural domain.[15]


 3 Connections with the sciences

Embodied cognition is a topic of research in social and cognitive psychology, covering
issues such as social interaction and decision-making.[16] Embodied cognition reflects the
argument that the motor system influences our cognition, just as the mind influences bodily
actions. For example, when participants hold a pencil in their teeth engaging the muscles of
a smile, they comprehend pleasant sentences faster than unpleasant ones, while holding a
pencil between their nose and upper lip to engage the muscles of a frown has the reverse
effect.[17]
George Lakoff (a cognitive scientist and linguist) and his collaborators (including Mark
Johnson, Mark Turner, and Rafael E. Núñez) have written a series of books promoting and
expanding the thesis based on discoveries in cognitive science, such as conceptual
metaphor and image schema.[18]
Robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Rolf Pfeifer have argued
that true artificial intelligence can only be achieved by machines that have sensory and
motor skills and are connected to the world through a body.[19] The insights of these
robotics researchers have in turn inspired philosophers like Andy Clark and Horst
Hendriks-Jansen.[20]

Neuroscientists Gerald Edelman, António Damásio and others have outlined the
connection between the body, individual structures in the brain and aspects of the
mind such as consciousness, emotion, self-awareness and will.[21] Biology has also inspired
Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Eleanor Rosch and Evan
Thompson to develop a closely related version of the idea, which they call enactivism.[22]
The motor theory of speech perception proposed by Alvin Liberman and colleagues at the
394

Haskins Laboratories argues that the identification of words is embodied in perception of

the bodily movements by which spoken words are made.[23][24][25][26][27]
More detail is provided in the sections that follow.


 4 Psychology
o 4.1 Visual search
o 4.2 Distance perception
o 4.3 Perspective
o 4.4 Language comprehension
o 4.5 Memory
 5 Reasoning
 A series of experiments demonstrated the interrelation between motor experience
and high-level reasoning. For example, although most individuals recruit visual
processes when presented with spatial problems such as mental rotation tasks[37]
motor experts favor motor processes to perform the same tasks, with higher overall
performance.[38] A related study showed that motor experts use similar processes for
the mental rotation of body parts and polygons, whereas non-experts treated these
stimuli differently.[39] These results were not due to underlying confounds, as
demonstrated by a training study which showed mental rotation improvements after
a one-year motor training, compared with controls.[40] Similar patterns were also
found in working memory tasks, with the ability to remember movements being
greatly disrupted by a secondary verbal task in controls and by a motor task in
motor experts, suggesting the involvement of different processes to store
movements depending on motor experience, namely verbal for controls and motor
for experts.[41]
o 5.1 Approach and avoidance
o 5.2 Self-regulation
As part of a larger study, one experiment randomly assigned college undergraduates to 2
groups.[44] In the "muscle-firming" condition participants grasped a pen in their hand, while
in the "control" condition participants held the pen in their fingers. The participants were
then asked to fill out donations to Haiti for the Red Cross in sealed envelopes. They were
told to return the envelope regardless of whether they donated. They also filled out
questionnaires about their feelings about the Red Cross, their tendency to donate, their
feelings about Haiti, what they thought the purpose of the study was, etc.[44]
Significantly more participants in the "muscle-firming" condition than in the "control"
condition donated money.[44] Condition did not affect the actual amount donated when
participants chose to donate. As the researchers predicted, the "muscle-firming" condition
helped participants get over their physical aversion to viewing the devastation in Haiti and
395

spend money. Muscle-firming in this experiment may also be related to an increase in self-
control, suggesting embodied cognition can play a role in self-regulation.[44]
Another set of studies was conducted by Shalev (2014), indicating that exposure to physical
or conceptual thirst or dryness-related cues influence perceived energy and reduce self-
regulation. In Study 1, participants primed with dryness-related concepts reported greater
physical thirst and tiredness and lower subjective vitality. In Study 2, participants who were
physically thirstywere less persistent in investing effort in an unsolvable anagram task. In
Study 3, images of arid land influenced time preference regarding when to begin
preparation to make a monetary investment. Finally, in Studies 4a and 4b, exposure to the
names of dryness-related products influenced impressions of the vitality of a target
person.[45]
Some suggest that the embodied mind serves self-regulatory processes by combining
movement and cognition to reach a goal.[46] Thus, the embodied mind has a facilitative
effect. Some judgments, such as the emotion of a face, are detected more quickly when a
participant mimics the facial expression that is being evaluated.[29] Individuals holding a
pen in their mouths to freeze their facial muscles and make them unable to mimic the
expression were less able to judge emotions. Goal-relevant actions may be encouraged by
embodied cognition, as evidenced by the automated approach and avoidance of certain
environmental cues.[29] Embodied cognition is also influenced by the situation. If one
moves in a way previously associated with danger, the body may require a greater level of
information processing than if the body moves in a way associated with a benign
situation.[46]
o

o 5.3 Social psychology

Some social psychologists examined embodied cognition and hypothesized that embodied
cognition would be supported by embodied rapport.[47] Embodied rapport would be
demonstrated by pairs of same-sex strangers using Aron’s paradigm, which instructs
participants to alternate asking certain questions and to progressively self-disclose. The
researchers predicted that participants would mimic each other’s movements, reflecting
embodied cognition. Half the participants completed a control task of reading and editing a
scientific article, while half the participants completed a shortened version of Aron’s self-
disclosure paradigm.[47]
There is a significant correlation between self-disclosure and positive emotions towards the
other participant.[47] Participants randomly assigned to the self-disclosure task displayed
more behavioral synchrony (rated by independent judges watching the tapes of each
condition on mute) and reported more positive emotions than the control group.[47] Since
bodily movements influence the psychological experience of the task, the relationship
between self-disclosure and positive feelings towards one's partner may be an example of
embodied cognition.[47]
o

o 5.4 Evolutionary view

o Embodied cognition may also be defined from the perspective of
evolutionary psychologists.[48] Evolutionary psychologists view emotion as
396

an important self-regulatory aspect of embodied cognition, and emotion as a

motivator towards goal-relevant action.[48] Emotion helps drive adaptive
behavior. The evolutionary perspective cites language, both spoken and
written, as types of embodied cognition.[48] Pacing and non-verbal
communication reflect embodied cognition in spoken language. Technical
aspects of written language, such as italics, all caps, and emoticons promote
an inner voice and thereby a sense of feeling rather than thinking about a
written message.[48]
 6 Cognitive science and linguistics
 George Lakoff and his collaborators have developed several lines of evidence that
suggest that people use their understanding of familiar physical objects, actions and
situations (such as containers, spaces, trajectories) to understand other more
complex domains (such as mathematics, relationships or death). Lakoff argues that
all cognition is based on knowledge that comes from the body and that other
domains are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of
conceptual metaphor, image schema and prototypes.
o 6.1 Conceptual metaphor
o 6.2 Image schema
o 6.3 Prototypes
 7 Artificial intelligence and robotics
o 7.1 History of artificial intelligence
o 7.2 Moravec's paradox
o 7.3 Approach to artificial intelligence
 7.3.1 Solving problems of perception and locomotion directly
 8 Neuroscience
One source of inspiration for embodiment theory has been research in cognitive
neuroscience, such as the proposals of Gerald Edelman concerning how mathematical and
computational models such as neuronal group selection and neural degeneracy result in
emergent categorization.
Rohrer (2005) discusses how both our neural and developmental embodiment shape both
our mental and linguistic categorizations. The degree of thought abstraction has been found
to be associated with physical distance which then affects associated ideas and perception
of risk.[64]
The embodied mind thesis is compatible with some views of cognition promoted in
neuropsychology, such as the theories of consciousness of Vilayanur S. Ramachandran,
Gerald Edelman, and Antonio Damasio.
The modeling work of cognitive neuroscientists such as Francisco Varela and Walter
Freeman seeks to explain embodied and situated cognition in terms of dynamical systems
397

theory and neurophenomenology, but rejects the idea that the brain uses representations to
do so (a position also espoused by Gerhard Werner)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychology#Approaches

 9 Criticisms
 George Lakoff and his collaborators have developed several lines of evidence that
suggest that people use their understanding of familiar physical objects, actions and
situations (such as containers, spaces, trajectories) to understand other more
complex domains (such as mathematics, relationships or death). Lakoff argues that
all cognition is based on knowledge that comes from the body and that other
domains are mapped onto our embodied knowledge using a combination of
conceptual metaphor, image schema and prototypes.
o 9.1 Infants as examples
o 9.2 Overinterpretation?
 10 Six views of embodied cognition
o 10.1 Criticism of the six claims
 11 See also
 12 References
 13 External links

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One manifestation of this view is found in the cognitive science of mathematics, where it is
proposed that mathematics itself, the most widely accepted means of abstraction in the
human community, is largely metaphorically constructed, and thereby reflects a cognitive
bias unique to humans that uses embodied prototypical processes (e.g. counting, moving
along a path) that are understood by all human beings through their experiences.


 2 Language and culture as mappings

 3 Family roles and ethics
 4 Linguistics and politics
 5 Literature
 6 Education
398

 7 Language learning
 8 Conceptual metaphorical mapping in animals
 9 See also
 10 Notes
 11 References
 12 Further reading
 13 External links

 Conceptual thinking
 Conscience
 Consciousness
 Constructive criticism
 Conversation
 Criticism
 Dereistic thinking (see Glossary of psychiatry)
 Design (and re-design)
 Dialectic
 Discovery (observation)
 Distinction (philosophy)
 Distributed cognition
 Distributed multi-agent reasoning system
 Educational assessment
 Emotion
 Empirical knowledge
 Empiricism
 Epistemology
 Evidential reasoning (disambiguation)
 Evidential reasoning approach
 Expectation (epistemic)
399

 Experimentation
 Explanation
 Extension (semantics)
 Facilitation (business)
 Fantasy
 Fideism
 Figure Reasoning Test
 Fuzzy logic
 Fuzzy-trace theory
 Generalizing
 Gestalt psychology
 Group cognition
 Heuristics in judgment and decision making
 Holism
 Human multitasking
 Human self-reflection
 Hypervigilance
 Identification (information)
 Inductive reasoning aptitude
 Intellect
 Intelligence (trait)
 Intentionality
 Inventing
 Judging
 Kinesthetic learning
 Knowledge management
 Knowledge representation and reasoning
 Language
 Linguistics
400

 List of cognitive scientists

 List of creative thought processes
 List of emotional intelligence topics
 List of emotions
 List of organizational thought processes
 List of perception-related topics
 Mathematics Mechanization and Automated Reasoning Platform
 Mental function
 Mental model theory of reasoning
 Meta-analytic thinking
 Meta-ethical
 Methodic doubt
 Mimesis
 Mind
 Models of scientific inquiry
 Morphological analysis (problem-solving)
 Natural language processing
 Nonduality
 Nous
 Object pairing
 Pattern matching
 Personal experience
 Personality psychology
 Persuasion
 Philomath
 Philosophical analysis
 Philosophical method
 Planning
 Po (term)
401

 Practical reason
 Preconscious
 Prediction
 Procedural reasoning system
 Pseudoscience
 Pseudoskepticism
 Psychological projection
 Psychology of reasoning
 Qualitative Reasoning Group
 Rationality and Power
 Reasoning Mind
 Reasoning system
 Recognition primed decision
 Reflective disclosure
 Scientific method
 SEE-I
 Self-deception
 Semantic network
 Semantics
 Semiotics
 Sensemaking
 Situated cognition
 Situational awareness
 Skepticism
 Source criticism
 Spatial Cognition
 Speculative reason
 Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning
 Storytelling
402

 Stream of consciousness (psychology)

 Subconscious
 Substitution (logic)
 Suspicion (emotion)
 Theories
 Thinking processes (theory of constraints)
 Thought disorder
 Thought sonorization (see Glossary of psychiatry)
 Translation
 Truth
 Unconscious mind
 Understanding
 VPEC-T
 wikt:entrained thinking
 wikt:synthesis
 Working memory
 World disclosure

 11 Awards related to thinking

 12 Organizations
 13 Media
 14 Persons associated with thinking
 15 Related concepts
 16 See also
 17 References
 18 External links


 Sapere Aude

403

 11 References
 12 Further reading
 13 External links

https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/dynamic-approaches-to-cognition
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/mapping-an-argument
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/using-argument-mapping-to-
improve-critical-thinking
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/argument-mapping
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/enhancing-our-grasp-of-complex-
arguments
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/learning-to-reason
How are general informal reasoning skills acquired? Little research has been done on this
topic. Two hypotheses dominate. According to the strong situated learning hypothesis, there
are no general informal reasoning skills (only context- or domain specific skills) and so
nothing can be done to improve them. According to the practice hypothesis, general informal
reasoning can be improved through intensive quality practice. These hypotheses were
evaluated in the context of a one-semester undergraduate reasoning course based on Reason!,
a software environment for quality practice. Results provide tentative support the practice
hypothesis.
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/reason---improving-informal-
reasoning-skills
https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/does-philosophy-improve-
reasoning-skills
I was not an author of this thesis (Claudia Alvarez was the sole author). I am nevertheless
including it on this site because
1. The thesis draws heavily on research in which I was involved.
2. The thesis is I believe very important for higher education and should be made widely
avaiable.
The thesis presents an extensive meta-analysis of critical thinking skill gains over one
semester among undergraduate students. It provides what is to my knowledge the first
rigorous estimate of the extent to which undergraduates' critical thinking skills actually
improve in the course of undergraduate education - about 0.1 of a standard deviation over a
semester.

This constitutes a baseline against which to compare other approaches to inculcating critical
thinking skills. Of crucial importance for the Reason Project, the meta-analysis indicates that
the Reason Method, properly deployed, can produce gains of around 0.8 SD.

https://sites.google.com/site/timvangelder/publications-1/the-roles-of-philosophy-in-
cognitive-science
What does philosophy contribute to cognitive science? This question is addressed indirectly,
by describing some of the many roles philosophers play. These include pioneer, building
inspector, Zen monk, cartographer, archivist, cheerleader and gadfly. As a preparatory
exercise, philosophers are characterized in terms of their primary methods: argument,
404

conceptual analysis and historical perspective. The various roles philosophers in fact play are
seen to follow naturally from this way of characterizing the philosopher.
Roles of Philosophy in Cognitive Science - Philosophical Psychology 1998.pdf
(1456k)
Tim van Gelder,
Roles of Philosophy in Cognitive Science updated 2009.pdf
(156k)
Tim van Gelder,
Jul 20, 2015, 1:27 PM
http://www.argunet.org/2013/04/03/so-what-exactly-is-an-argument-map/

So, what exactly is an argument map?

by Christian Voigt, Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013
This is a quick introduction into argument maps: How to create them, how to read them
and what you can expect to get out of it.
An Argunet argument map visualises the structure of complex argumentations and debates as
a graphical network. In this network all nodes are either sentences or arguments and all
relations between them are either attack or support relations.
The reconstruction and visualisation with argument maps can be useful in many ways:
 Argument maps can give you a fast overview over the state of a debate
 Argument maps help you to remember complex argumentation structures
 The logical reconstruction allows a detailed analysis and evaluation of arguments and
dialectic strategies
 Argument maps help to keep focused on relevant parts of the debate by filtering out
irrelevant or redundant information
 Argument maps help concentrate on a rational, fair debate
 Argument maps can guide and structure live discussions. Misunderstandings,
repitition and unfair persuasion techniques can be avoided.
 Argument mapping can be used for presentations or whole seminars

How do I read an argument map?

Argument Maps contain two elements: Sentences and Arguments.

Sentences
405

Sentences are visualised as small framed white boxes.

Arguments

Arguments are visualised as small colored boxes

Reconstructed Arguments

If an argument has been logically reconstructed, the argument is visualised as a small framed
colored box. You can open the logical reconstruction by clicking on it.
Logically an argument consists of nothing else but sentences. But these sentences play
different roles in an argument. Every argument has one inferred sentence (the conclusion) and
at least one sentence from which the conclusion is inferred (a premiss). This premiss-
conclusion structure is visualised as a sentence list: First all premisses of the argument are
listed. Each horizontal line symbolizes an inference. Under the line the conclusion is listed
(sometimes there are preliminary conclusions). Under the last line stands the main conclusion
of the argument.

Support relations
If an argument supports a sentence of another argument, a green arrow is drawn from the
former to the latter.
406

If the arrow is drawn-through, the support relation has been logically reconstructed.
Logically, an argument supports another argument, if the conclusion of the supporting
argument is equivalent to a premiss of the supported argument (”Socrates is mortal”,
“Socrates will die”).

If you click on the arrow, you can see which sentences are defined as equivalent.
If the arrow is dashed, the support relation is only sketched and not logically reconstructed.

Attack relations

If an argument attacks a sentence of another argument, a red arrow is drawn from the former
to the latter.
407

If the arrow is drawn-through, the attack relation has been logically reconstructed. Logically,
an argument attacks another argument, if the conclusion of the supporting argument is
contrary to a premiss of the supported argument (”Socrates is mortal”, “Socrates will never
die”).
If you click on the arrow, you can see which sentences are defined as contrary.

If the arrow is dashed, the support relation is only sketched and not logically reconstructed.

Reading tips
 Start from the center of the debate. Look for the central thesis (sometimes there are
more than one). Open and read all reconstructed arguments that support or attack the
central thesis. Proceed by going from the center to the periphery.
 An attack does not necessarily mean, that the attacked argument is a bad argument. A
support does not necessarily mean the argument is good. It all depends on your
evaluation: How plausible do you find the premisses of the attacking/supporting
argument? Where are the weak points of the argumentation?
 Are the reconstructed arguments really valid? Does the conclusion follow from the
premisses? If the argument is valid and the premisses are true, the conclusion has to
be true, too. Is there a counter-example?
 Naturally, no argument map can contain every argument. The authors have always
made a selection. Are there important arguments missing?
Please read the introduction of the Argunet Editor Help for further information.

Do argument maps tell me, what I should believe?

No, they don’t. Argument maps are just a tool you can use for making up your mind. The
better an argument map is, the more unbiased and neutral it is.
Every argument presupposes premisses. How good the arguments in the argument map are
depends on how plausible their premisses are. The attack and support relations of the
argument map do not determine the plausibility of the premisses, they only limit the
possibilities by relating the plausibilities of different sentences to one another.
408

So, it is really up to you. Argument maps can show you, which questions you have to answer
to make up your mind. They can not answer these questions for you.
Just download Argunet Editor for free. Start Argunet and click on “Create a new debate”.
You can create local debates on your computer or start an online debate to collaborate with
others.

How can I create an argument map?

Follow the instructions in our first Tutorial (All tutorials come with your Argunet installation,
so you do not have to read them online). It won’t take long and will teach you the Argunet
basics.

Is there any difference to mind-mapping?

Yes, there are many differences. Argument maps may remind you of mind maps, because
they look similar. But that’s about it. Mind maps have a different methodology, serve
different purposes and are used by different people. Here are just some important differences:
 Mind maps are used for brainstorming, i.e. the collection of subjective associations,
opinions, ideas of all sorts. Argument maps are used for the logical reconstruction and
analysis of controverse debates. In most cases these debates will take place between
different people with different perspective and not in your mind alone.
 In mind maps the visualisation means to you, what you want it to mean. That may be
great for you, but it is not so great if you want to share the products of your mind with
others. In every Argunet argument map the meaning of all elements always stays the
same and is well defined by logic or argumentation theory. This precision is not only
necessary if you want to assess complex arguments and argumentations. It gives you
also the opportunity to share your insights with others in a common visual language.
 There are no real rules in mind-mapping. You can do what you want. Nobody can say
what is right and what is wrong. In contrast, giving and taking reasons is a rule guided
practice. There are rules about good and bad reasoning. Argument maps can not
guarantee good reasoning. But they can restrict the users options in a way that makes
it more probable. This rule-guided reconstruction makes it possible to collaborate on
argument maps even if the participants have opposing views in the reconstructed
debate.

https://philpapers.org/rec/BETAAV

Argunet. A virtual argumentation platform for rule-

guided reasoning
http://www.reasoninglab.com/
http://www.jostwald.com/ArgumentMapping/ARGUMENT%20MAPPING.pdf
https://www.rairarubiabooks.com/related-pdf-argument-mapping.html
http://www.austhink.com/critical/
409

1. Argument Mapping Tutorials. Six online tutorials in argument mapping, a core

requirement for advanced critical thinking.
2. The Skeptic's Dictionary - over 400 definitions and essays.
3. The Fallacy Files by Gary Curtis. Best website on fallacies.
4. Butterflies and Wheels. Excellent reading - news, articles, and much more.
5. Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts by Peter Facione. Good overview of
the nature of critical thinking. (pdf file)
6. Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion by John Stuart Mill. Classic chapter,
densely packed with wisdom about thinking.
7. Chance - best resource for helping students think critically about issues involving
probability and statistics
8. Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, by Richards Heuer. A good overview of how to
improve thinking in the light of insights from cognitive psychology.
9. A Handbook on Writing Argumentative and Interpretative Essays by Ian Johnston
10. Baloney Detection Part 1 and Part 2 - by Michael Shermer. 10 step guide.
Argument Mapping
Art
Assessing
Bibliographies
Blogs
Cognitive Biases and Blindspots
Critical Reading and Writing
Definitions
Email Lists and Newsletters
The Enlightenment
Experts and Expertise
Fallacies
General Resources
Great Critical Thinkers
Group Thinking
Guides
Health & Medicine
Hoaxes, Scams and Urban Legends
Institutes, Centers and Societies
Intelligence (military, etc.)
Language and Thought
Logic
Magazines & Journals
The Media
Miscellaneous & Fun
Numeracy
Nursing
Podcasts
410

Postmodernism and all that

Political Correctness
Skepticism
Software
Specialists
Statistics & Probability
Teaching
Terrorism
Textbooks
Theory & Research
Tutorials
Vendors
Web Page Evaluation

What is critical thinking?

Nobody said it better than Francis Bacon, back in 1605:
For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a
mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same
time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature
with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to
consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects
what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.
A shorter version is the art of being right.
Or, more prosaically: critical thinking is the skillful application of a repertoire of validated
general techniques for deciding the level of confidence you should have in a proposition in
the light of the available evidence.
More definitions...
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Argument_map
n informal logic and philosophy, an argument map is a visual representation of the structure
of an argument. It includes the components of an argument such as a main contention,
premises, co-premises, objections, rebuttals, and lemmas. Typically an argument map is a
"box and arrow" diagram with boxes corresponding to propositions and arrows corresponding
to relationships such as evidential support.
Argument maps are commonly used in the context of teaching and applying critical
thinking.[1] The purpose of mapping is to uncover the logical structure of arguments, identify
unstated assumptions, evaluate the support an argument offers for a conclusion, and aid
understanding of debates. Argument maps are often designed to support deliberation of
issues, ideas and arguments in wicked problems.
An argument map is not to be confused with a concept map or a mind map, which are less
strict in relating claims.
http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Concept_map
411

A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships

between concepts.[1] It is a graphical tool that designers, engineers, technical writers, and
others use to organize and structure knowledge.
A concept map typically represents ideas and information as boxes or circles, which it
connects with labeled arrows in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The
relationship between concepts can be articulated in linking phrases such as causes, requires,
or contributes to.[2]
The technique for visualizing these relationships among different concepts is called concept
mapping. Concept maps define the ontology of computer systems, for example with the
object-role modeling or Unified Modeling Language

Information mapping

Topics & fields

 Business decision mapping

 Cognitive map

 Conceptual graph

 Data visualization

 Decision tree

 Educational psychology

 Educational technology

 Graphic communication

 Information design

 Information graphics

 Interactive visualization

 Knowledge visualization

 Mental model

 Morphological analysis

 Visual analytics

 Visual language

Tree-like approaches
412

 Cladistics

 Argument map

 Cognitive map

 Concept mapping

 Conceptual graphs

 Dendrogram

 Graph drawing

 Hyperbolic tree

 Layered graph drawing

 Mental model

 Mind mapping

 Object-role modeling

 Organizational chart

 Radial tree

 Refined concept map

 Semantic network

 Sociogram

 Timeline

 Topic Maps

 Tree structure

See also

 Diagrammatic reasoning

 Entity-relationship model

 Geovisualization

 List of concept- and mind-mapping software

413

 Olog

 Semantic web

 Treemapping

 Wicked problem

http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Mind_map
A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is often created
around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which
associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added.
Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from
those.
Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting or
planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available.
Mind maps are considered to be a type of spider diagram.[1] A similar concept in the 1970s
was "idea sun bursting"

http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Spider_diagram
In mathematics, a unitary spider diagram adds existential points to an Euler or a Venn
diagram. The points indicate the existence of an attribute described by the intersection of
contours in the Euler diagram. These points may be joined together forming a shape like a
spider. Joined points represent an "or" condition, also known as a logical disjunction.
A spider diagram is a boolean expression involving unitary spider diagrams and the logical
symbols <math>\land,\lor,\lnot</math>. For example, it may consist of the conjunction of
two spider diagrams, the disjunction of two spider diagrams, or the negation of a spider
diagram.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map
In informal logic and philosophy, an argument map or argument diagram is a visual
representation of the structure of an argument. An argument map typically includes the key
components of the argument, traditionally called the conclusion and the premises, also called
contention and reasons.[1] Argument maps can also show co-premises, objections,
counterarguments, rebuttals, and lemmas. There are different styles of argument map but they
are often functionally equivalent and represent an argument's individual claims and the
relationships between them.
Argument maps are commonly used in the context of teaching and applying critical
thinking.[2] The purpose of mapping is to uncover the logical structure of arguments, identify
unstated assumptions, evaluate the support an argument offers for a conclusion, and aid
understanding of debates. Argument maps are often designed to support deliberation of
issues, ideas and arguments in wicked problems.[3]
An argument map is not to be confused with a concept map or a mind map, which are less
strict in relating claims.
414

 1 Key features of an argument map

 2 Representing an argument as an argument map
 3 History
o 3.1 The philosophical origins and tradition of argument mapping
o 3.2 Anglophone argument diagramming in the 20th century
 4 Applications
o 4.1 Difficulties with the philosophical tradition
o It has traditionally been hard to separate teaching critical thinking from the
philosophical tradition of teaching logic and method, and most critical
thinking textbooks have been written by philosophers. Informal logic
textbooks are replete with philosophical examples, but it is unclear whether
the approach in such textbooks transfers to non-philosophy students.[18] There
appears to be little statistical effect after such classes. Argument mapping,
however, has a measurable effect according to many studies.[37] For example,
instruction in argument mapping has been shown to improve the critical
thinking skills of business students.[38]
o 4.2 Evidence that argument mapping improves critical thinking ability
o There is empirical evidence that the skills developed in argument-mapping-
based critical thinking courses substantially transfer to critical thinking done
without argument maps. Alvarez's meta-analysis found that such critical
thinking courses produced gains of around 0.70 SD, about twice as much as
standard critical-thinking courses.[39] The tests used in the reviewed studies
were standard critical-thinking tests.
o 4.3 How argument mapping helps with critical thinking
 The use of argument mapping has occurred within a number of disciplines, such as
philosophy, management reporting, military and intelligence analysis, and public
debates.[33]
 Logical structure: Argument maps display an argument's logical structure more
clearly than does the standard linear way of presenting arguments.
 Critical thinking concepts: In learning to argument map, students master such key
critical thinking concepts as "reason", "objection", "premise", "conclusion",
"inference", "rebuttal", "unstated assumption", "co-premise", "strength of evidence",
"logical structure", "independent evidence", etc. Mastering such concepts is not just a
matter of memorizing their definitions or even being able to apply them correctly; it is
also understanding why the distinctions these words mark are important and using
that understanding to guide one's reasoning.
 Visualization: Humans are highly visual and argument mapping may provide students
with a basic set of visual schemas with which to understand argument structures.
415

 More careful reading and listening: Learning to argument map teaches people to read
and listen more carefully, and highlights for them the key questions "What is the
logical structure of this argument?" and "How does this sentence fit into the larger
structure?" In-depth cognitive processing is thus more likely.
 More careful writing and speaking: Argument mapping helps people to state their
reasoning and evidence more precisely, because the reasoning and evidence must fit
explicitly into the map's logical structure.
 Literal and intended meaning: Often, many statements in an argument do not
precisely assert what the author meant. Learning to argument map enhances the
complex skill of distinguishing literal from intended meaning.
 Externalization: Writing something down and reviewing what one has written often
helps reveal gaps and clarify one's thinking. Because the logical structure of argument
maps is clearer than that of linear prose, the benefits of mapping will exceed those of
ordinary writing.
 Anticipating replies: Important to critical thinking is anticipating objections and
considering the plausibility of different rebuttals. Mapping develops this anticipation
skill, and so improves analysis.
o

 5 Standards
o 5.1 Argument Interchange Format
o 5.2 Legal Knowledge Interchange Format
 6 See also
 7 Notes
 8 References
 9 Further reading
 10 External links
o 10.1 Argument mapping software
o 10.2 Online, collaborative software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiry
An inquiry is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or
solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a

 Inquiry Theories
treatment of the ways that each type of inquiry achieves its aim.

 1.1 Induction
 1.2 Abduction
416

The locus classicus for the study of abductive reasoning is found in Aristotle's Prior
Analytics, Book 2, Chapt. 25. It begins this way:
We have Reduction (απαγωγη, abduction):
1. When it is obvious that the first term applies to the middle, but that the middle
applies to the last term is not obvious, yet is nevertheless more probable or not
less probable than the conclusion;
2. Or if there are not many intermediate terms between the last and the middle;
For in all such cases the effect is to bring us nearer to knowledge.
By way of explanation, Aristotle supplies two very instructive examples, one for each of the
two varieties of abductive inference steps that he has just described in the abstract:
1. For example, let A stand for "that which can be taught", B for "knowledge",
and C for "morality". Then that knowledge can be taught is evident; but
whether virtue is knowledge is not clear. Then if BC is not less probable or is
more probable than AC, we have reduction; for we are nearer to knowledge for
having introduced an additional term, whereas before we had no knowledge
that AC is true.
2. Or again we have reduction if there are not many intermediate terms between
B and C; for in this case too we are brought nearer to knowledge. For example,
suppose that D is "to square", E "rectilinear figure", and F "circle". Assuming
that between E and F there is only one intermediate term — that the circle
becomes equal to a rectilinear figure by means of lunules — we should
approximate to knowledge. (Aristotle, "Prior Analytics", 2.25, with minor
alterations)
Aristotle's latter variety of abductive reasoning, though it will take some explaining in the
sequel, is well worth our contemplation, since it hints already at streams of inquiry that
course well beyond the syllogistic source from which they spring, and into regions that Peirce
will explore more broadly and deeply.

 2 Inquiry in the pragmatic paradigm
In the pragmatic philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and
others, inquiry is closely associated with the normative science of logic. In its inception, the
pragmatic model or theory of inquiry was extracted by Peirce from its raw materials in
classical logic, with a little bit of help from Kant, and refined in parallel with the early
development of symbolic logic by Boole, De Morgan, and Peirce himself to address problems
about the nature and conduct of scientific reasoning. Borrowing a brace of concepts from
Aristotle, Peirce examined three fundamental modes of reasoning that play a role in inquiry,
commonly known as abductive, deductive, and inductive inference

n rough terms, abduction is what we use to generate a likely hypothesis or an initial diagnosis
in response to a phenomenon of interest or a problem of concern, while deduction is used to
clarify, to derive, and to explicate the relevant consequences of the selected hypothesis, and
induction is used to test the sum of the predictions against the sum of the data. It needs to be
observed that the classical and pragmatic treatments of the types of reasoning, dividing the
417

generic territory of inference as they do into three special parts, arrive at a different
characterization of the environs of reason than do those accounts that count only two.
These three processes typically operate in a cyclic fashion, systematically operating to reduce
the uncertainties and the difficulties that initiated the inquiry in question, and in this way, to
the extent that inquiry is successful, leading to an increase in knowledge or in skills.
In the pragmatic way of thinking everything has a purpose, and the purpose of each thing is
the first thing we should try to note about it.[1] The purpose of inquiry is to reduce doubt and
lead to a state of belief, which a person in that state will usually call knowledge or certainty.

 2.1 Art and science of inquiry

 the first feature to note in distinguishing the three principal modes of reasoning from
each other is whether each of them is exact or approximate in character. In this light,
deduction is the only one of the three types of reasoning that can be made exact, in
essence, always deriving true conclusions from true premises, while abduction and
induction are unavoidably approximate in their modes of operation, involving
elements of fallible judgment in practice and inescapable error in their application
 2.2 Zeroth order inquiry
 3 Example of inquiry
 3.1 Once over quickly
 3.2 Looking more closely
 4 Citations
 5 Bibliography
 6 See also
https://question-skills.wikispaces.com/
We have known for years that questioning is an important life skill and a major learning and
thinking skill.
Many schools are now becoming convinced that facilitating students' questioning skills is a
major aspect that their classroom programmes should be addressing. It also follows that if
this is a major goal then we need to have some form of suitable assessment tools that allow us
to determine if the learning experiences and teaching practices we put in place are having a
positive impact on student skills. There seem to be a number of questions we need to answer
and some resources we need to develop if we are serious about impacting on our students'
questioning skills
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-
religion-obsolete/256203/

We tend to think of our time as one uniquely shaped by the advance of technology, but more
and more I suspect that this will be remembered as an age of cosmology-—as the moment
when the human mind first internalized the cosmos that gave rise to it….
science has quietly begun to sketch the structure of the entire cosmos, extending its
explanatory powers across a hundred billion galaxies, to the dawn of space and time itself. It
is breath taking to consider how quickly we have come to understand the basics of everything
from star formation to galaxy formation to universe formation. And now, equipped with the
predictive power of quantum physics, theoretical physicists are beginning to push even
418

further, into new universes and new physics, into controversies once thought to be squarely
within the domain of theology or philosophy…..
In January, Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and Director of the Origins Institute at
Arizona State University, published A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something
Rather Than Nothing, a book that, as its title suggests, purports to explain how something—
and not just any something, but the entire universe—could have emerged from nothing,

Andersen: I want to start with a general question about the relationship between philosophy
and physics. There has been a fair amount of sniping between these two disciplines over the
past few years. Why the sudden, public antagonism between philosophy and physics?
Krauss: That's a good question. I expect it's because physics has encroached on philosophy.
Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then "natural philosophy" became physics,
and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it
encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves,
and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers. This sense that
somehow physicists, because they can't spell the word "philosophy," aren't justified in talking
about these things, or haven't thought deeply about them—
Andersen: Is that really a claim that you see often?
Krauss: It is. Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen
joke, "those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym." And the worst part of
philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read work by
philosophers of science are other philosophers of science. It has no impact on physics what so
ever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it's fairly technical. And so it's really
hard to understand what justifies it. And so I'd say that this tension occurs because people in
philosophy feel threatened, and they have every right to feel threatened, because science
progresses and philosophy doesn't.
Andersen: On that note, you were recently quoted as saying that philosophy "hasn't
progressed in two thousand years." But computer science, particularly research into artificial
intelligence was to a large degree built on foundational work done by philosophers in logic
and other formal languages. And certainly philosophers like John Rawls have been
immensely influential in fields like political science and public policy. Do you view those as
legitimate achievements?
Krauss: Well, yeah, I mean, look I was being provocative, as I tend to do every now and then
in order to get people's attention. There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think
of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy you have
literature or logic, which in my view is really mathematics. Formal logic is mathematics, and
there are philosophers like Wittgenstein that are very mathematical, but what they're really
doing is mathematics—it's not talking about things that have affected computer science, it's
mathematical logic. And again, I think of the interesting work in philosophy as being
subsumed by other disciplines like history, literature, and to some extent political science
insofar as ethics can be said to fall under that heading. To me what philosophy does best is
reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.
Andersen: I'm not sure that's right. I think that in some cases philosophy actually generates
new fields. Computer science is a perfect example. Certainly philosophical work in logic can
be said to have been subsumed by computer science, but subsumed might be the wrong
word—
419

Krauss: Well, you name me the philosophers that did key work for computer science; I think
of John Von Neumann and other mathematicians, and—
Andersen: But Bertrand Russell paved the way for Von Neumann.
Krauss: But Bertrand Russell was a mathematician. I mean, he was a philosopher too and he
was interested in the philosophical foundations of mathematics, but by the way, when he
wrote about the philosophical foundations of mathematics, what did he do? He got it wrong.
Andersen: But Einstein got it wrong, too—
Krauss: Sure, but the difference is that scientists are really happy when they get it wrong,
because it means that there's more to learn. And look, one can play semantic games, but I
think that if you look at the people whose work really pushed the computer revolution from
Turing to Von Neumann and, you're right, Bertrand Russell in some general way, I think
you'll find it's the mathematicians who had the big impact. And logic can certainly be claimed
to be a part of philosophy, but to me the content of logic is mathematical.
Andersen: Do you find this same tension between theoretical and empirical physics?
Krauss: Sometimes, but it shouldn't be there. Physics is an empirical science. As a
theoretical physicist I can tell you that I recognize that it's the experiment that drives the field,
and it's very rare to have it go the other way; Einstein is of course the obvious exception, but
even he was guided by observation. It's usually the universe that's surprising us, not the other
way around.
Andersen: Moving on to your book A Universe From Nothing, what did you hope to
accomplish when you set out to write it?
Krauss: Every time I write a book, I try and think of a hook. People are interested in science,
but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them
interested. Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are
and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them
that they should be interested in what you have to say.
The religious question "why is there something rather than nothing," has been around since
people have been around, and now we're actually reaching a point where science is beginning
to address that question. And so I figured I could use that question as a way to celebrate the
revolutionary changes that we've achieved in refining our picture of the universe. I didn't
write the book to attack religion, per se. The purpose of the book is to point out all of these
amazing things that we now know about the universe. Reading some of the reactions to the
book, it seems like you automatically become strident the minute you try to explain
something naturally.
Richard Dawkins wrote the afterword for the book—and I thought it was pretentious at the
time, but I just decided to go with it—where he compares the book to The Origin of Species.
And of course as a scientific work it doesn't some close to The Origin of Species, which is
one of the greatest scientific works ever produced. And I say that as a physicist; I've often
argued that Darwin was a greater scientist than Einstein. But there is one similarity between
my book and Darwin's—before Darwin life was a miracle; every aspect of life was a miracle,
every species was designed, etc. And then what Darwin showed was that simple laws could,
in principle, plausibly explain the incredible diversity of life. And while we don't yet know
the ultimate origin of life, for most people it's plausible that at some point chemistry became
biology. What's amazing to me is that we're now at a point where we can plausibly argue that
a universe full of stuff came from a very simple beginning, the simplest of all beginnings:
nothing. That's been driven by profound revolutions in our understanding of the universe, and
that seemed to me to be something worth celebrating, and so what I wanted to do was use this
question to get people to face this remarkable universe that we live in.
420

"Philosophy hasn't progressed in two thousand years."

Andersen: Your book argues that physics has definitively demonstrated how something can
come from nothing. Do you mean that physics has explained how particles can emerge from
so-called empty space, or are you making a deeper claim?
Krauss: I'm making a deeper claim, but at the same time I think you're overstating what I
argued. I don't think I argued that physics has definitively shown how something could come
from nothing; physics has shown how plausible physical mechanisms might cause this to
happen. I try to be intellectually honest in everything that I write, especially about what we
know and what we don't know. If you're writing for the public, the one thing you can't do is
overstate your claim, because people are going to believe you. They see I'm a physicist and
so if I say that protons are little pink elephants, people might believe me. And so I try to be
very careful and responsible. We don't know how something can come from nothing, but we
do know some plausible ways that it might.
But I am certainly claiming a lot more than just that. That it's possible to create particles from
no particles is remarkable—that you can do that with impunity, without violating the
conservation of energy and all that, is a remarkable thing. The fact that "nothing," namely
empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I'll be the first to say that empty space as I'm
describing it isn't necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough
for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them an eternal empty void was the
definition of nothing, and certainly I show that that kind of nothing ain't nothing anymore.
Andersen: But debating physics with Augustine might not be an interesting thing to do in
2012.
Krauss: It might be more interesting than debating some of the moronic philosophers that
have written about my book. Given what we know about quantum gravity, or what we
presume about quantum gravity, we know you can create space from where there was no
space. And so you've got a situation where there were no particles in space, but also there
was no space. That's a lot closer to "nothing."
But of course then people say that's not "nothing," because you can create something from it.
They ask, justifiably, where the laws come from. And the last part of the book argues that
we've been driven to this notion---a notion that I don't like---that the laws of physics
themselves could be an environmental accident. On that theory, physics itself becomes an
environmental science, and the laws of physics come into being when the universe comes
into being. And to me that's the last nail in the coffin for "nothingness."
Andersen: It sounds like you're arguing that 'nothing' is really a quantum vacuum, and that a
quantum vacuum is unstable in such a way as to make the production of matter and space
inevitable. But a quantum vacuum has properties. For one, it is subject to the equations of
quantum field theory. Why should we think of it as nothing?
Krauss: That would be a legitimate argument if that were all I was arguing. By the way it's a
nebulous term to say that something is a quantum vacuum in this way. That's another term
that these theologians and philosophers have started using because they don't know what the
hell it is, but it makes them sound like they know what they're talking about. When I talk
about empty space, I am talking about a quantum vacuum, but when I'm talking about no
space whatsoever, I don't see how you can call it a quantum vacuum. It's true that I'm
applying the laws of quantum mechanics to it, but I'm applying it to nothing, to literally
nothing. No space, no time, nothing. There may have been meta-laws that created it, but how
you can call that universe that didn't exist "something" is beyond me. When you go to the
level of creating space, you have to argue that if there was no space and no time, there
wasn't any pre-existing quantum vacuum. That's a later stage.
Even if you accept this argument that nothing is not nothing, you have to acknowledge that
nothing is being used in a philosophical sense. But I don't really give a damn about what
421

"nothing" means to philosophers; I care about the "nothing" of reality. And if the "nothing" of
reality is full of stuff, then I'll go with that.
"But I don't really give a damn what "nothing" means to philosophers; I care about the
"nothing" of reality."
But I don't have to accept that argument, because space didn't exist in the state I'm talking
about, and of course then you'll say that the laws of quantum mechanics existed, and that
those are something. But I don't know what laws existed then. In fact, most of the laws of
nature didn't exist before the universe was created; they were created along with the universe,
at least in the multiverse picture. The forces of nature, the definition of particles—all these
things come into existence with the universe, and in a different universe, different forces
and different particles might exist. We don't yet have the mathematics to describe a
multiverse, and so I don't know what laws are fixed. I also don't have a quantum theory of
gravity, so I can't tell you for certain how space comes into existence, but to make the
argument that a quantum vacuum that has particles is the same as one that doesn't have
particles is to not understand field theory.
Andersen: I'm not sure that anyone is arguing that they're the same thing—
Krauss: Well, I read a moronic philosopher who did a review of my book in the New York
Times who somehow said that having particles and no particles is the same thing, and it's not.
The quantum state of the universe can change and it's dynamical. He didn't understand that
when you apply quantum field theory to a dynamic universe, things change and you can
go from one kind of vacuum to another. When you go from no particles to particles, it
means something.
Andersen: I think the problem for me, coming at this as a layperson, is that when you're
talking about the explanatory power of science, for every stage where you have a
"something,"—even if it's just a wisp of something, or even just a set of laws—there has to be
a further question about the origins of that "something." And so when I read the title of your
book, I read it as "questions about origins are over."
Krauss: Well, if that hook gets you into the book that's great. But in all seriousness, I never
make that claim. In fact, in the preface I tried to be really clear that you can keep asking
"Why?" forever. At some level there might be ultimate questions that we can't answer, but if
we can answer the "How?" questions, we should, because those are the questions that matter.
And it may just be an infinite set of questions, but what I point out at the end of the book is
that the multiverse may resolve all of those questions. From Aristotle's prime mover to the
Catholic Church's first cause, we're always driven to the idea of something eternal. If the
multiverse really exists, then you could have an infinite object—infinite in time and space as
opposed to our universe, which is finite. That may beg the question as to where the
multiverse came from, but if it's infinite, it's infinite. You might not be able to answer that
final question, and I try to be honest about that in the book. But if you can show how a set of
physical mechanisms can bring about our universe, that itself is an amazing thing and it's
worth celebrating. I don't ever claim to resolve that infinite regress of why-why-why-why-
why; as far as I'm concerned it's turtles all the way down. The multiverse could explain it by
being eternal, in the same way that God explains it by being eternal, but there's a huge
difference: the multiverse is well motivated and God is just an invention of lazy minds.
Andersen: In the past you've spoken quite eloquently about the Multiverse, this idea that our
universe might be one of many universes, perhaps an infinite number. In your view does
theoretical physics give a convincing account of how such a structure could come to exist?
Krauss: In certain ways, yes—in other ways, no. (BECAUSE YOU WOULD REQUIRE AN
OTHER TYPE OF PHYSICS. “OUR” physics deals with our universe only it arosed from
our universe, context).There are a variety of multiverses that people in physics talk
about. The most convincing one derives from something called inflation, which we're pretty
422

certain happened because it produces effects that agree with almost everything we can
observe. From what we know about particle physics, it seems quite likely that the universe
underwent a period of exponential expansion early on. But inflation, insofar as we understand
it, never ends—it only ends in certain regions and then those regions become a universe like
ours. You can show that in an inflationary universe, you produce a multiverse, you produce
an infinite number of causally separated universes over time, and the laws of physics are
different in each one. There's a real mechanism where you can calculate it.
And all of that comes, theoretically, from a very small region of space that becomes infinitely
large over time. There's a calculable multiverse; it's almost required for inflation---it's very
hard to get around it. All the evidence suggests that our universe resulted from a period of
inflation, and it's strongly suggestive that well beyond our horizon there are other universes
that are being created out of inflation, and that most of the multiverse is still expanding
exponentially.

An artist's rendering of the multiverse.

Andersen: Is there an empirical frontier for this? How do we observe a multiverse?
Krauss: Right. How do you tell that there's a multiverse if the rest of the universes are
outside your causal horizon? It sounds like philosophy. At best. But imagine that we had a
fundamental particle theory that explained why there are three generations of fundamental
particles, and why the proton is two thousand times heavier than the electron, and why there
are four forces of nature, etc. And it also predicted a period of inflation in the early universe,
and it predicts everything that we see and you can follow it through the entire evolution of the
early universe to see how we got here. Such a theory might, in addition to predicting
everything we see, also predict a host of universes that we don't see. If we had such a theory,
the accurate predictions it makes about what we can see would also make its predictions
about what we can't see extremely likely. And so I could see empirical evidence internal to
this universe validating the existence of a multiverse, even if we could never see it directly.
Andersen: You have said that your book is meant to describe "the remarkable revolutions
that have taken place in our understanding of the universe over the past 50 years—revolutions
that should be celebrated as the pinnacle of our intellectual experience." I think that's a
worthy project and, like you, I find it lamentable that some of physics' most extraordinary
discoveries have yet to fully penetrate our culture. But might it be possible to communicate
the beauty of those discoveries without tacking on an assault on previous belief systems,
especially when those belief systems aren't necessarily scientific?
Krauss: Well, yes. I'm sympathetic to your point in one sense, and I've had this debate with
Richard Dawkins; I've often said to him that if you want people to listen to you, the best way
is not to go up to them and say, "You're stupid." Somehow it doesn't get through.
It's a fine line and it's hard to tell where to fall on this one. What drove me to write this book
was this discovery that the nature of "nothing" had changed, that we've discovered that
"nothing" is almost everything and that it has properties. That to me is an amazing discovery.
So how do I frame that? I frame it in terms of this question about something coming from
nothing. And part of that is a reaction to these really pompous theologians who say, "out of
nothing, nothing comes," because those are just empty words. I think at some point you need
to provoke people. Science is meant to make people uncomfortable. And whether I went too
far on one side or another of that line is an interesting question, but I suspect that if I can get
people to be upset about that issue, then on some level I've raised awareness of it.
The unfortunate aspect of it is, and I've come to realize this recently, is that some people feel
they don't even need to read the book, because they think I've missed the point of the
fundamental theological question. But I suspect that those people weren't open to it anyway. I
423

think Steven Weinberg said it best when he said that science doesn't make it impossible to
believe in God, it just makes it possible to not believe in God. That's a profoundly important
point, and to the extent that cosmology is bringing us to a place where we can address those
very questions, it's undoubtedly going to make people uncomfortable. It was a judgment call
on my part and I can't go back on it, so it's hard to know.
Andersen: You've developed this wonderful ability to translate difficult scientific concepts
into language that can enlighten, and even inspire a layperson. There are people in faith
communities who are genuinely curious about physics and cosmology, and your book might
be just the thing to quench and multiply that curiosity. But I worry that by framing these
discoveries in language that is in some sense borrowed from the culture war, that you run the
risk of shrinking the potential audience for them—and that could ultimately be a disservice to
the ideas.
Krauss: Ultimately, it might be. I've gone to these fundamentalist colleges and I've gone to
Fox News and it's interesting, the biggest impact I've ever had is when I said, "you don't have
to be an atheist to believe in evolution." I've had young kids come up to me and say that
affected them deeply. So yes it's nice to point that out, but I actually think that if you read my
book I never say that we know all the answers, I say that it's pompous to say that we can't
know the answers. And so yeah I think that maybe there will be some people who are craving
this stuff and who won't pick up my book because of the way I've framed it, but at the same
time I do think that people need to be aware that they can be brave enough to ask the question
"Is it possible to understand the universe without God?" And so you're right that I'm going to
lose some people, but I'm hoping that at the same time I'll gain some people who are going to
be brave enough to come out of the closet and ask that question. And that's what amazes me,
that nowadays when you simply ask the question you're told that you're offending people.
Andersen: But let me bring that back full circle. You opened this conversation talking about
seduction. You're not giving an account of seduction right now.
Krauss: That's true, but let me take it back full circle to Hitchens. What Christopher had was
charm, humor, wit and culture as weapons against nonsense, and in my own small way what I
try and do in my books is exactly that. I try and infuse them with humor and culture and that's
the seduction part. And in this case the seduction might be causing people to ask, "How can
he say that? How can he have the temerity to suggest that it's possible to get something from
nothing? Let me see what's wrong with these arguments." If I'd just titled the book "A
Marvelous Universe," not as many people would have been attracted to it. But it's hard to
know. I'm acutely aware of this seduction problem, and my hope is that what I can do is get
people to listen long enough to where I can show some of what's going on, and at the same
time make them laugh.

“WHERE DID THE UNIVERSE COME FROM? WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE IT?
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BRING? AND FINALLY, WHY IS THERE
SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?”

Lawrence Krauss’s provocative answers to these and other timeless questions in a wildly
popular lecture now on YouTube have attracted almost a million viewers. The last of these
questions in particular has been at the center of religious and philosophical debates about the
existence of God, and it’s the supposed counterargument to anyone who questions the need
for God. As Krauss argues, scientists have, however, historically focused on other, more
pressing issues—such as figuring out how the universe actually functions, which can
ultimately help us to improve the quality of our lives.

Now, in a cosmological story that rivets as it enlightens, pioneering theoretical physicist

424

Lawrence Krauss explains the groundbreaking new scientific advances that turn the most
basic philosophical questions on their heads. One of the few prominent scientists today to
have actively crossed the chasm between science and popular culture, Krauss reveals that
modern science is addressing the question of why there is something rather than nothing, with
surprising and fascinating results. The staggeringly beautiful experimental observations and
mind-bending new theories are all described accessibly in A Universe from Nothing, and they
suggest that not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from
nothing.

With his characteristic wry humor and wonderfully clear explanations, Krauss takes us back
to the beginning of the beginning, presenting the most recent evidence for how our universe
evolved—and the implications for how it’s going to end. It will provoke, challenge, and
delight readers as it looks at the most basic underpinnings of existence in a whole new way.
And this knowledge that our universe will be quite different in the future from today has
profound implications and directly affects how we live in the present. As Richard Dawkins
has described it: This could potentially be the most important scientific book with
implications for supernaturalism since Darwin.

A fascinating antidote to outmoded philosophical and religious thinking, A Universe from

Nothing is a provocative, game-changing entry into the debate about the existence of Go
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-
krauss.html

On the Origin of Everything

‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss

By DAVID ALBERT MARCH 23, 2012
David Albert is a professor of philosophy at Columbia and the author of “Quantum
Mechanics and Experience.”

Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer,

apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum
mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular
explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story.
I kid you not. Look at the subtitle. Look at how Richard Dawkins sums it up in his afterword:
“Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than
nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’
was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From
Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it
says is devastating.”
Well, let’s see. There are lots of different sorts of conversations one might want to have about
a claim like that: conversations, say, about what it is to explain something, and about what it
is to be a law of nature, and about what it is to be a physical thing. But since the space I have
is limited, let me put those niceties aside and try to be quick, and crude, and concrete.
425

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come
from? (The developed with and apply to our one known universes. But there might well be a
multiverse, with other universes having other types of laws of physics.) Krauss is more or
less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a
parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that everything he has been
talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted. “I have no
idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with,” he writes, “or at least I don’t know of any
productive work in this regard.” And what if he did know of some productive work in that
regard? What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the quantum-
mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world (this one world or universe
that we are sort of familiar with, not all universes, worlds of the multiverse.) has some other,
deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X rather than Y? And is
there a last such question? Is there some point at which the possibility of asking any further
such questions somehow definitively comes to an end? How would that work? What would
that be like?
Never mind. Forget where the laws came from. Have a look instead at what they say. It
happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given
us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply
taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary,
eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff
to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that
elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electromagnetic fields. And so on.
And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature
are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics
has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental
laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff
are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that
elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But
the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from,
or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as
opposed to something else, or to nothing at all
The fundamental physical laws that Krauss is talking about in “A Universe From Nothing” —
the laws of relativistic quantum field theories — are no exception to this. The particular,
eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard
presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic
quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning
which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules
connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier
times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those
fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields
it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a
world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.
What on earth, then, can Krauss have been thinking? Well, there is, as it happens, an
interesting difference between relativistic quantum field theories and every previous serious
candidate for a fundamental physical theory of the world. Every previous such theory
counted material particles among the concrete, fundamental, eternally persisting
elementary physical stuff of the world — and relativistic quantum field theories,
interestingly and emphatically and unprecedentedly, do not. According to relativistic
426

quantum field theories, particles are to be understood, rather, as specific arrangements of the
fields. Certain arrangements of the fields, for instance, correspond to there being 14 particles
in the universe, and certain other arrangements correspond to there being 276 particles, and
certain other arrangements correspond to there being an infinite number of particles, and
certain other arrangements correspond to there being no particles at all. And those last
arrangements are referred to, in the jargon of quantum field theories, for obvious reasons, as
“vacuum” states. Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the
relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. And
he has an argument — or thinks he does — that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories
entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of
why there should be something rather than nothing.
But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than
giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary
physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any
physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is
(obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact
that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some
don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of
my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that
particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is
not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time,
as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright
— amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.
Krauss, mind you, has heard this kind of talk before, and it makes him crazy. A century ago,
it seems to him, nobody would have made so much as a peep about referring to a stretch of
space without any material particles in it as “nothing.” And now that he and his colleagues
think they have a way of showing how everything there is could imaginably have emerged
from a stretch of space like that, the nut cases are moving the goal posts. He complains that
“some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of
the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe,” and that “now, I am told by
religious critics that I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather as a ‘quantum
vacuum,’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing,’ ” and he
does a good deal of railing about “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some
of modern philosophy.” But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is
dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right. Who cares what
we would or would not have made a peep about a hundred years ago? We were wrong a
hundred years ago. We know more now. And if what we formerly took for nothing turns out,
on closer examination, to have the makings of protons and neutrons and tables and chairs and
planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes in it, then it wasn’t nothing, and it
couldn’t have been nothing, in the first place. And the history of science — if we understand
it correctly — gives us no hint of how it might be possible to imagine otherwise.
And I guess it ought to be mentioned, quite apart from the question of whether anything
Krauss says turns out to be true or false, that the whole business of approaching the struggle
with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just
feels all wrong — or it does, at any rate, to me. When I was growing up, where I was growing
up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a
mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything
essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important
427

things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better
world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in
the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in
books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.

A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING

Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

By Lawrence M. Krauss
Illustrated. 202 pp. Free Press. $24.99.
David Albert is a professor of philosophy at Columbia and the author of “Quantum
Mechanics and Experience.”
A version of this review appears in print on March 25, 2012, on Page BR20 of the Sunday
Book Review with the headline: On the Origin of Everything. Today's Paper|Subscribe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including
the universe in which we live. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the
entirety of space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws and constants that describe
them.
The various universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes"
or "alternative universes."
 1 Origin of the concept
 2 Explanation
 3 Search for evidence
 4 Proponents and skeptics
 5 Arguments against multiverse theories
 6 Classification schemes
o 6.1 Max Tegmark's four levels
 6.1.1 Level I: An extension of our Universe
 6.1.2 Level II: Universes with different physical constants
 6.1.3 Level III: Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
428

 6.1.4 Level IV: Ultimate ensemble

o 6.2 Brian Greene's nine types
o 6.3 Cyclic theories
 7 M-theory
 8 Black-hole cosmology
 9 Anthropic principle
 10 Occam's Razor
 11 Modal realism
 12 Trans-world identity
 13 See also
 14 References
 15 Bibliography
 16 External links
http://www.space.com/18811-multiple-universes-5-theories.html

http://www.space.com/31465-is-our-universe-just-one-of-many-in-a-multiverse.html

http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/

http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics.html

 The Big Bang and the Big Crunch

 Special and General Relativity

 Black Holes and Wormholes

 Quantum Theory and the Uncertainty Principle

 The Beginnings of Life

Main Topics
 - The Big Bang and the Big Crunch

 Most scientists now believe that we live in a finite expanding universe which has not existed
forever, and that all the matter, energy and space in the universe was once squeezed into an
infinitesimally small volume, which erupted in a cataclysmic "explosion" which has become
known as the Big Bang.

 Thus, space, time, energy and matter all came into being at an infinitely dense, infinitely hot
gravitational singularity, and began expanding everywhere at once. Current best estimates
are that this occurred some 13.7 billion years ago, although you may sometimes see
estimates of anywhere between 11 and 18 billion years.

 The Big Bang is usually considered to be a theory of the birth of the universe, although
technically it does not exactly describe the origin of the universe, but rather attempts to
explain how the universe developed from a very tiny, dense state into what it is today. It is just
429

a model to convey what happened and not a description of an actual explosion, and the Big
Bang was neither Big (in the beginning the universe was incomparably smaller than the size
of a single proton), nor a Bang (it was more of a snap or a sudden inflation).

 In fact, “explosion” is really just an often-used analogy

and is slightly misleading in that it conveys the image
that the Big Bang was triggered in some way at some
particular centre. In reality, however, the same pattern
of expansion would be observed from anywhere in the
universe, so there is no particular location in our
present universe which could claim to be the origin.

 It really describes a very rapid expansion or stretching

of space itself rather than an explosion in pre-existing
(Click for a larger version)
space. Perhaps a better analogy sometimes used to
The Big Bang and the expansion
describe the even expansion of galaxies throughout the
of the universe
universe is that of raisins baked in a cake becoming (Source: HETDEX:
more distant from each other as the cake rises and http://hetdex.org/dark_energy/index.php)
expands, or alternatively of a balloon inflating.

 Neither does it attempt to explain what initiated the creation of the universe, or what came
before the Big Bang, or even what lies outside the universe. All of this is generally considered
to be outside the remit of physics, and more the concern of philosophy. Given that time and
space as we understand it began with the Big Bang, the phase “before the Big Bang” is as
meaningless as “north of the North Pole”.

 Therefore, to those who claim that the very idea of a Big Bang violates the First Law of
Thermodynamics (also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy) that matter and energy
cannot be created or destroyed, proponents respond that the Big Bang does not address the
creation of the universe, only its evolution, and that, as the laws of science break down
anyway as we approach the creation of the universe, there is no reason to believe that the
First Law of Thermodynamics would apply.

 The Second Law of Thermodynamics, on the other

hand, lends theoretical (albeit inconclusive) support to
the idea of a finite universe originating in a Big Bang
type event. If disorder and entropy in the universe as a
whole is constantly increasing until it reaches
thermodynamic equilibrium, as the Law suggests, then
it follows that the universe cannot have existed forever,
otherwise it would have reached its equilibrium end
state an infinite time ago, our Sun would have
exhausted its fuel reserves and died long ago, and the
constant cycle of death and rebirth of stars would have
ground to a halt after an eternity of dissipation of
energy, losses of material to black holes, etc.


(Click for larger version)
The Big Bang model rests on two main theoretical The cosmological principle is
pillars: the General Theory of Relativity (Albert supported by pictures of different
Einstein’s generalization of Sir Isaac Newton’s original parts of the universe by the
theory of gravity) and the Cosmological Principle (the Hubble Space Telescope
assumption that the matter in the universe is uniformly (Source: Hubble Site:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/
distributed on the large scales, that the universe is archive/releases/1996/01/)
homogeneous and isotropic).

 The Big Bang (a phrase coined, incidentally, by the English astronomer Fred Hoyle during a
1949 radio broadcast as a derisive description of a theory he disagreed with) is currently
considered by most scientists as by far the most likely scenario for the birth of universe.
However, this has not always been the case, as the following discussion illustrates.
430

Next Page: The Expanding Universe and Hubble’s Law >>

THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE AND HUBBLE'S LAW

When Albert Einstein was formulating his ground-breaking theory of Topic Index:

really knew of the existence of our own galaxy, he necessarily used 

gravity in the early 20th Century, at a time when astronomers only
- Introduction


the simplifying assumption that the universe has the same gross
properties in all parts, and that it looks roughly the same in every - The Expanding Universe
direction wherever in the universe an observer happens to be located. and Hubble’s Law


Like Sir Isaac Newton two hundred years before him, he assumed an
infinite, static or “steady state” universe, with its stars suspended - Cosmic Background
essentially motionless in a vast void. Radiation

However, when Einstein tried to apply his General Theory of Relativity - Dark Matter


to the universe as a whole, he realized that space-time as whole must
be warped and curved back on itself, which in itself would cause - Cosmic Inflation


matter to move, shrinking uncontrollably under its own gravity. Thus,
- Timeline of the Big Bang
as early as 1917, Einstein and others realized that the equations of

general relativity did not describe a static universe. However, he never
- Accelerating Universe
quite came to terms with the idea of a dynamic, finite universe, and so
and Dark Energy
he posited a mysterious counteracting force of cosmic repulsion
(which he called the “cosmological constant”) in order to maintain a  - Antimatter
stable, static universe. Adding additional and arbitrary terms to a
theory is not something that scientists do lightly, and many people  - The Big Crunch, the Big
argued that it was an artificial and arbitrary construct and at best a Freeze and the Big Rip
stop-gap solution.
 - Superstrings and
As we have noted, up until that time, the assumption of a static Quantum Gravity
universe had always been taken for granted. To put things into
perspective, for most of history (see the section on  - Conclusion
Cosmological Theories Through History), it had been taken for
granted that the static earth was the centre of the entire
universe, as Aristotle and Ptolemy had described. It was only in
the mid-16th Century that Nicolaus Copernicus showed that we
were not the centre of the universe at all (or even of the Solar
System for that matter!). It was as late as the beginning of the
20th Century that Jacobus Kapteyn’s observations first
suggested that the Sun was at the centre of a spinning galaxy
of stars making up the Milky Way. Then, in 1917, humanity
suffered a further blow to its pride when Curtis Shapely
revealed that we were not even the centre of the galaxy, merely (Click for a larger version)
part of some unremarkable suburb of the Milky Way (although it Geocentric universe of Aristotle
was still assumed that the Milky Way was all there was). and Ptolemy
(Source: Cartage.org:
Some years later, in 1925, the American astronomer Edwin http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/
themes/sciences/mainpage.htm)
Hubble stunned the scientific community by demonstrating that
there was more to the universe than just our Milky Way galaxy
and that there were in fact many separate islands of stars - thousands, perhaps millions of them, and
many of them huge distances away from our own.

Then, in 1929, Hubble announced a further dramatic discovery which completely turned astronomy on
its ear. With the benefit of improved telescopes, Hubble started to notice that the light coming from
these galaxies was shifted a little towards the red end of the spectrum due to the Doppler effect
(known as “redshift”), which indicated that the galaxies were moving away from us. After a detailed
analysis of the redshifts of a special class of stars called Cepheids (which have specific properties
making them useful as “standard candles” or distance markers), Hubble concluded that the galaxies
and clusters of galaxies were in fact flying apart from each other at great speed, and that the universe
was therefore definitively growing in size. In effect, all the galaxies we see are slighly red in colour
due to redshift.
431

Hubble showed that, in our expanding universe, every galaxy is rushing away from us with a speed
which is in direct proportion to its distance, known as Hubble’s Law, so that a galaxy that is twice as
far away as another is receding twice as fast, one ten times as far away if receding ten times as fast,
etc. The law is usually stated as v = H0D, where v is the velocity of recession, D is the distance of the
galaxy from the observer and H0 is the Hubble constant which links them. The exact value of the
Hubble constant itself has long been the subject of much controversy: Hubble's initial estimates were
of the order of approximately 500 kilometres per second per megaparsec (equivalent to about 160
km/sec/million light years); the most recent best estimates, with the benefit of the Hubble Telescope
and the WMAP probe, is around 72 kilometres per second per megaparsec. (It should perhaps be
pointed out that the Hubble constant is technically a parameter, not a constant, because it will actually
change over long periods of time.)

This expansion, usually referred to as the "metric expansion" of

space, is a “broad-brush effect” in that individual galaxies
themselves are not expanding, but the clusters of galaxies into
which the matter of the universe has become divided are
becoming more widely separated and more thinly spread
throughout space. Thus, the universe is not expanding
"outwards" into pre-existing space; space itself is expanding,
defined by the relative separation of parts of the universe.
Returning to the image of the expanding universe as a balloon
inflating, if tiny dots are painted on the ballon to represent
galaxies, then as the balloon expands so the distance between
the dots increases, and the further apart the dots the faster
(Click for a larger version)
they move apart.
Artist's impression of the "metric
In such an expansion, then, the universe continues to look expansion" of the universe
(Source: Wikipedia:
more or less the same from every galaxy, so the fact that we http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang)
see all the galaxies receding from us does not necessarily
mean that we are at the very centre of the universe: observers in all other galaxies would also see all
the other galaxies flying away according to the same law, and the pattern of galactic dispersal would
appear very much the same from anywhere in the cosmos.

The old model of a static universe, which had served since Sir Isaac Newton, was thus proved to be
incontrovertibly false, but Hubble’s discovery did more than just show that the universe was changing
over time. If the galaxies were flying apart, then clearly, at some earlier time, the universe was smaller
than at present. Following back logically, like a movie played in reverse, it must ultimately have had
some beginning when it was very tiny indeed, an idea which gave rise to the theory of the Big Bang.
Although now almost universally accepted, this theory of the beginnings of the universe was not
immediately welcomed by everyone, and several strands of corroborating evidence were needed, as
we will see in the following sections.

In the face of Hubble’s evidence, Einstein was also forced to abandon his idea of a force of cosmic
repulsion, calling it the “biggest blunder” he had ever made. But others, notably the Russian physicist
Alexander Friedmann and the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître, had already used
Einstein’s own theory of prove that the universe was in fact in motion, either contracting or expanding.
It is now recognized that Einstein’s description of gravity as the curvature of space-time in his General
Theory of Relativity was actually one of the first indications of a universe which had grown out of
much humbler beginnings.

And, as we will see later, Einstein’s “biggest blunder” may actually turn out to have been one of his
most prescient predictions.

ACCELERATING UNIVERSE AND DARK ENERGY

432

Like dark matter, cosmic inflation (even if it is not actually proven

beyond all doubt) is now usually seen as part of the standard Big Bang Topic Index:
theory, and to some extent the two additional concepts rescue the Big - Introduction


Bang theory from being completely untenable. However, other
potential problems still remain. - The Expanding Universe
and Hubble’s Law
The universe has continued to expand since the Big Bang, albeit at a
slower rate since the period of inflation, while at the same time the  - Cosmic Background
gravity of all the matter in the universe is working to slow down and Radiation


eventually reverse the expansion. Two main possibilities therefore
present themselves: either the universe contains sufficient matter - Dark Matter

causing the universe to collapse back to what has become known as 

(known as the "critical mass") for its gravity to reverse the expansion,
- Cosmic Inflation
the “Big Crunch”, a kind of mirror image of the initial Big Bang; or it
contains insufficient matter and it will go on expanding forever.  - Timeline of the Big Bang

According to General Relativity, the density parameter, Omega, which - Accelerating Universe
is defined as the average density of the universe divided by the critical and Dark Energy


density (i.e. that required for the universe to have zero curvature) is
related to the curvature of space. If Omega equals 1, then the - Antimatter


curvature is zero and the universe is flat; if Omega is greater than 1,
then there is positive curvature, indicating a closed or spherical - The Big Crunch, the Big
universe; if Omega is less than 1, then there is negative curvature, Freeze and the Big Rip


suggesting an open or saddle-shaped universe.
- Superstrings and
The cosmic inflation model hypothesizes an Omega of exactly 1, so Quantum Gravity


that the universe is in fact balanced on a knife’s edge between the two
extreme possibilities. In that case, it will continue expanding, but - Conclusion
gradually slowing down all the time, finally running out of steam only in
the infinite future. For this to occur, though, the universe must contain
exactly the critical mass of matter, which current calculations suggest should be about five atoms per
cubic metre (equivalent to about 5 x 10-30 g/cm3).

This perhaps sounds like a tiny amount (indeed it is much

closer to a perfect vacuum than has even been achieved by
scientists on Earth), but the actual universe is, on average,
much emptier still, with around 0.2 atoms per cubic metre,
taking into account visible stars and diffuse gas between
galaxies. Even including dark matter in the calculations, all the
matter in the universe, both visible and dark, only amounts to
about a quarter of the required critical mass, suggesting a
continuously expanding universe.

However, in 1998, two separate teams of astronomers

observing distant type 1a supernovas (one led by the American (Click for a larger version)
Saul Perlmutter and the other by the Australians Nick Suntzeff Graph of how critical density
and Brian Schmidt) made parallel discoveries which threw the affect the expansion of the
scientific community into disarray, and which also has universe
(Source: Northern Arizona University
important implications for the expanding universe and its critical Lectures: http://www4.nau.edu/meteorite/
mass. The faintness of the supernova explosions seemed to Meteorite/Book-GlossaryD.html)
indicate that they were actually further away from the Earth
than had been expected, suggesting that the universe’s expansion had actually speeded up (not
slowed) since the stars exploded. Contrary to all expectations, therefore, the expansion of the
universe actually seems to be significantly speeding up - we live in an accelerating universe!

The only thing that could be accelerating the expansion (i.e. more than countering the braking force of
the mutual gravitational pull of the galaxies) is space itself, suggesting that perhaps it is not empty
after all but contains some strange “dark energy” or “antigravity” currently unknown to science. Thus,
even what appears to be a complete vacuum actually contains energy in some currently unknown
way. In fact, initial calculations (backed up by more recent research such as that on the growth of
galaxy clusters by NASA's Chandra x-ray space telescope and that on binary galaxies by Christian
433

Marinoni and Adeline Buzzi of the University of Provence) suggest that fully 73 - 74% of the universe
consists of this dark energy.

If 74% of the total mass of the universe consists of dark energy,

and about 85% of the remaining actual matter (representing
about 22% of the total) is dark matter (see the section on Dark
Matter for more discussion of this), then this suggests that only
around 4% of the universe consists of what we think of as
"normal", everyday, atom-based matter such as stars,
intergalactic gas, etc. As of 2013, based on cosmic microwave (Click for a larger version)
background radiation data from the Planck satellite, the latest Estimated distribution of dark
figures are closer to 68%, 27% and 5% respectively. energy, dark matter and normal
Nowadays, this is generally accepted as the "standard model" matter in the universe
of the make-up of the universe. So, for all our advances in (Source: Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy)
physics and astronomy, it appears that we can still only see,
account for and explain a small proportion of the totality of the
universe, a sobering thought indeed.

Incorporating dark energy into our model of the universe would neatly account for the "missing" three-
quarters of the universe required to cause the observed acceleration in the revised Big Bang theory. It
also makes the map of the early universe produced by the WMAP probe fit well with the currently
observed universe. Carlos Frenk's beautiful 3D computer models of the universe resemble
remarkably closely the actual observed forms in the real universe (taking dark matter and dark energy
into account), even if not all scientists are convinced by them. Alternative theories, such as Mordehai
Milgrom's idea of "variable gravity", are as yet poorly developed and would have the effect of radically
modifying all of physics from Newton onwards. So dark energy remains the most widely accepted
option.

Further corroboration of some kind of energy operating in the apparent vacuum of space comes from
the Casimir effect, named after the 1948 experiments of Dutch physicists Hendrik Casimir and Dirk
Polder. This shows how smooth uncharged metallic plates can move due to energy fluctuations in the
vacuum of empty space, and it is hypothesized that dark energy, generated somehow by space itself,
may be a similar kind of vacuum fluctuation.

Unfortunately, like dark matter, we still do not know exactly what this dark energy is, how it is
generated or how it operates. It appears to produce some kind of a negative pressure which is
distributed relatively homogeneously in space, and thereby exerts a kind of cosmic repulsion on the
universe, driving the galaxies ever further apart. As the space between the galaxies inexorably
widens, the effects of dark energy appears to increase, suggesting that the universe is likely to
continue expanding forever, although it seems to have little or no influence within the galaxies and
clusters of galaxies themselves, where gravity is the dominant force.

Although no-one has any idea of what dark energy may actually be, it appears to be unsettlingly
similar to the force of cosmic repulsion or “cosmological constant” discarded by Einstein back in 1929
(as mentioned in the section on The Expanding Universe and Hubble’s Law), and this remains the
most likely contender, even if its specific properties and effects are still under intense discussion. The
size of the cosmological constant needed to describe the accelerating expansion of our current
universe is very small indeed, around 10-122 in Planck units. Indeed, the very closeness of this to zero
(without it actually being zero) has worried many scientists. But even a tiny change to this value would
result in a very different universe indeed, and one in which life, and even the stars and galaxies we
take for granted, could not have existed.

Perhaps equally worrying is the colossal mismatch between the infinitesimally small magnitude of
dark energy, and the value predicted by quantum theory, our best theory of the the very small, as to
the energy present in apparently empty space. The theoretical value of dark energy is over 10120
times smaller than this, what some scientists have called the worst failure of a prediction in the history
of science! Some scientists have taken some comfort about the unexpectedly small size of dark
energy in the idea that ours is just one universe in an unimaginably huge multiverse. Out of a
potentially infinite number of parallel universes, each with slightly different properties and dark energy
profiles, it is not so unlikely that ours just happens to be one with a dark energy that allows for the
development of stars and even life, an example of the anthropic principle.
434

There has been some speculation that dark energy may be

connected to the still little understood Higgs field. According to
the theoretical work of the English physicist Peter Higgs and
others in the 1960s, the vacuum of space is actually permeated
by what has become known as a Higgs field. It is the
interactions with this field that gives the other elementary
particles their mass, as it stops them from flying off at the
speed of light by clustering around them and impeding their
progress.

Excitations of the Higgs field form particles known as Higgs

bosons, an essential component of the current Standard Model
of particle physics. Up until 2012, though, such a particle
remained entirely theoretical and unproven. But experiments in
2012, at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, were finally able
to create and isolate a particle which gives every indication of
being the elusive Higgs boson, although more detailed tests
are still ongoing.

Another possible candidate for dark energy arises from the

theoretical work on supersymmetry, which effectively doubles
the number of elementary particles in the current Standard
Model with the postulation of massive unknown “super- (Click for a larger version)
partners” for each particle, whose spin differs by ½. Yet other Representation of the Higgs
candidates are so-called “quintessence” and so-called mechanism and particle
(Source: ThinkQuest:
“phantom energy”, although these ideas are essentially still at http://library.thinkquest.org/C004707/
the hypothesis stage. wmhm.php3)

Neither is it clear whether the effects of dark energy are

constant or changing over time, although research using data from the Hubble Space Telescope
suggests that it was already at work boosting the expansion of the universe as much as nine billion
years ago.
<< Previous Page: Timeline of the Big Bang Next Page: Antimatter >>

 - Special and General Relativity

 - Black Holes and Wormholes

 - Quantum Theory and the Uncertainty Principle

 - The Beginnings of Life

 What are the origins of life on Earth? How did things go from non-living to living, from
something that could not reproduce to something that could? How can a collection of
inanimate atoms become animate? How did organic molecules achieve a high enough level
of complexity to be considered as “living”? The short answer is: we do not really know how life
originated on this planet. The longer answer, however, is much more interesting.

 The study of the origin of life on Earth or, more specifically, how life on Earth began from
inanimate matter, is technically known as abiogenesis (as opposed to biogenesis, which is the
process of lifeforms producing other lifeforms, and as opposed to evolution, which is the study
of how living things have changed over time since life first arose).
435

 The modern definition of abiogenesis, however, is

concerned with the formation of the simplest forms of
life from primordial chemicals, rather than the old
Aristotelian concept of abiogenesis, which postulated
the formation of fully-formed complex organisms by
spontaneous generation. It becomes, then, the search
for some kind of molecule (along the lines of RNA or
DNA) that is simple enough that it can be made by
physical processes on the young Earth, yet
complicated enough that it can take charge of making
more of itself, which is probably what most people
would recognize as constituting “life”.

 The first living things on Earth, single-celled micro-

organisms or microbes lacking a cell nucleus or cell (Click for a larger version)
membrane known as prokaryotes, seem to have first Illustration and comparison of of
appeared on Earth almost four billion years ago, just a RNA and DNA molecules
(Source: National Human Genome Research
few hundred million years after the formation of the Institute:
Earth itself. By far the longest portion of the history of http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Hyperion/
life on Earth, therefore, has involved the biochemical DIR/VIP/Glossary/Illustration/rna.cfm)
evolution of these single-celled micro-organisms,
bacteria and archaea: we can find individual fossilized microbes in rocks 3.4 billion years old,
yet we can only conclusively identify multi-celled fossils in rocks younger than 1 billion years.

 It is presumed that, over a few hundred million years of evolution, pre-biotic molecules
evolved into self-replicating molecules by natural selelction. While some aspects of the
subject are well understood, others remain clouded in mystery and are the source of much
contention among scientists. Although much progress has been made, there is still no single
definitive theory.

 Life, for all its complexity, is woven out of just 30 or so different molecules, constructed from
some of the most abundant elements in the universe: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen,
sulphur and phosphorus. However, no one has yet succeeded in synthesizing a “protocell”
using basic components which would have the necessary properties of life (something which
has been made much of by religious creationists and anti-evolutionists), although recent work
work, such as that of Jack Szostak at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, may be about to change that.

 The beginnings of life is, strictly speaking, a matter of biology not physics, and essentially
unrelated to most of the rest of the content of this website. I have included a brief discussion
of it here, however, partly because it is another aspect of modern science which many people
find confusing and puzzling, partly just because I find it really interesting (for which I made no
apologies!), and partly because we are, after all, made of “stardust”.

THE EARLY EARTH AND THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE

436

The Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago from the swirling
dust and gas remnants of an old star’s supernova explosion. As the Topic Index:
molten mass settled and cooled, a solid crust soon formed, probably  - Introduction

atmosphere composed largely of carbon dioxide, water vapour and 

within as little as about 150 million years, along with a rudimentary
- The Early Earth and the
nitrogen. Building Blocks of Life

After a near-catastrophic collision with another planet soon after the  - Early Theories

that warm oceans gradually formed, from steam escaping from the 
Earth's formation (which created the Moon in the process), it is thought
- The Primeval Soup
crust and from volcanic activity and icy meteorites, relatively soon after Theory
the Earth’s formation, perhaps within 750 million years of Earth's
formation (about 3.8 billion years ago).  - Other Terrestrial
Theories


Although the environment at that time (including the constant
bombardment by asteroids and prodigious volcanic activity) - Exogenesis


would have been highly hazardous to life, the necessary
ingredients were all present in some form or another: liquid - Conclusion
water, chemical building blocks (usually taken to be the six
elements: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and
phosphorus) and some kind of energy source.

Liquid water is considered essential to the initial development

of life because many chemicals dissolve easily in water
allowing them to mix together and react, because liquid water is
(Click for a larger version)
the right temperature for chemical reactions to happen, and
Artist's impression the Earth's
also because many chemicals have parts which are attracted to
early atmosphere and oceans
water and parts which are repelled by it (which also helps (Source: Lunar and Planetary Institute:
reactions happen). Carbon is important because of its ability to http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education
form long chain-like molecules (carbon chains form the /timeline/gallery/slide_17.html)
backbone of organic molecules). Hydrogen and oxygen (the
two elements that make up water molecules) as well as nitrogen can all bond with carbon in many
different ways, and large molecules made from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen also tend to
be very stable. All chemical reactions need an energy source to drive them, whether it be ultraviolet
light from the Sun or electrical energy from lightning or chemical energy from deep-sea vents, all of
which would have been available on the early Earth.

Cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae), one of the earliest types of prokaryotic bacteria,
formed into colonies or mats called stromatolites, and fossilized remains of these have been found in
Australia dating back to between 3.4 and 2.8 billion years ago. Ancient as their origins are, these
bacteria (which are still around today) were already biologically complex, with cell walls protecting
their protein-producing DNA, so scientists think it likely that life actually began much earlier, perhaps
as early as 3.8 billion years ago.

These early cyanobacteria were the first oxygen-producing, evolving, phototropic organisms, and they
were responsible for the initial oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere, as they produced oxygen while
sequestering carbon dioxide in organic molecules during the period from 2.7 to 2.2 billion years ago.
Photosynthesizing plants evolved later and continued this process, leading to the build up of
increasing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, as well as the release of nitrogen into the atmosphere
as the oxygen reacted with ammonia. Eventually, a layer of ozone (an allotrope of oxygen) formed in
the atmosphere, which better protected early lifeforms from ultraviolet radiation. While oxygen was
apparently not needed for the origination of life on Earth (indeed it is thought by many that the
absence of oxygen was a necessary condition), the rapid explosion of life began only after oxygen
became abundant.
437

The first eukaryotic cells (organisms with one or more complex

cells, each of which contains a nucleus and is surrounded by a
membrane that holds the cell’s genetic material) evolved
sometime between 2.5 and 1.7 billion years ago, perhaps
coincident with the rise in atmospheric oxygen to a level able to
support this more complex life. The nucleus in these cells was
able to hold and protect complex molecules such as RNA and
DNA.

Throughout the Proterozoic era, from about 2.3 billion years

ago until around 600 million years ago, life on Earth was mostly
single-celled and small, consisting of bacteria, archaea and
eukaryotic algae. The first multi-cellular life probably arose
around 1.2 billion years ago, in geological terms almost
overnight, while the landmass of the Earth was still a single
continent called Rodinia. It presumably started out as a sort of
symbiosis, a loose cooperation between single cells that
gradually became more and more complex. Recent research
on single-celled organisms called choanoflagellates has yielded (Click for a larger version)
the rather surprising fact that single-celled organisms began Diagrams of a eukaryotic and a
communicating with each other (and effectively working prokaryotic cell
together as a single unit) due to a random mutation in a single (Source: Windows to the Universe:
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/
gene, a fascinating illustration of how a tiny genetic change can Life/cell_organelles.html)
have huge repercussions. Evolution appeared to speed up
again about 550 million years ago with the sudden appearance
of the first hard-bodied animals in the fossil record.

As recently as the 1970s, a whole new group of single-celled organisms known as archaea was
discovered, which is now recognized as a third domain of life, completely separate from both
prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Many scientists believe archaea to be the common ancestor of both
prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and as such may represent the oldest form of life on earth.

Important Dates and Discoveries

Important Scientists

Cosmological Theories Through History

The Universe By Numbers

Glossary of Terms

A Few Random Facts

Sources

http://www.lukemastin.com/history/

http://philosophyideas.com/search/themes_alpha.asp

http://philosophyideas.com/search/philosophers.asp?order=alpha

http://philosophyideas.com/search/Texts.asp?order=author

http://philosophyideas.com/select/index.asp

http://www.philosophybasics.com/

http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch.html
438

http://www.philosophybasics.com/historical.html

http://www.philosophybasics.com/movements.html

http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers.html

http://www.lukemastin.com/

10

http://philosophyideas.com/search/response_idea_theme.asp?find=theme&visit=1&ThemeNumber=125&return=
yes&area=Philosophy&area_no=1

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined

[attempts to define the whole subject of philosophy]

25 ideas
Philosophy has different powers from dialectic, and a different life from sophistry
572
[Aristotle]
609 Philosophy is a kind of science that deals with principles [Aristotle]
624 Absolute thinking is the thinking of thinking [Aristotle]
Carneades' pinnacles of philosophy are the basis of knowledge (the criterion of truth)
2666
and the end of appetite (good) [Cicero on Carneades]
What fills me with awe are the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me
6207
[Kant]
4171 Philosophy considers only the universal, in nature as everywhere else [Schopenhauer]
Everyone is conscious of all philosophical truths, but philosophers bring them to
4186
conceptual awareness [Schopenhauer]
Philosophy is distinguished from other sciences by its complete lack of
19456
presuppositions [Feuerbach]
Philosophy is no more than abstractions concerning observations of human historical
5278
development [Marx/Engels]
6118 Philosophy is logical analysis, followed by synthesis [Russell]
Philosophy verifies that our hierarchy of instinctive beliefs is harmonious and
5368
consistent [Russell]
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of
2512
language [Wittgenstein]
The main problem of philosophy is what can and cannot be thought and expressed
7085
[Wittgenstein]
I say (contrary to Wittgenstein) that philosophy expresses what we thought we must be
6870
silent about [Ansell Pearson on Wittgenstein]
5196 Philosophy is a department of logic [Ayer]
Suicide - whether life is worth living - is the one serious philosophical problem
6707
[Camus]
439

7421 A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Foucault]
7426 Critical philosophy is what questions domination at every level [Foucault]
2510 Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz]
2516 Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz]
Who cares what 'philosophy' is? Most pre-1950 thought doesn't now count as
12644
philosophy [Fodor]
8217 Philosophy is a concept-creating discipline [Deleuze/Guattari]
9778 There is no dialogue in philosophy [Zizek]
Maybe what distinguishes philosophy from science is its pursuit of necessary truths
9218
[Sider]
15357 Philosophy is the most general intellectual discipline [Horsten]

http://philosophyideas.com/search/response_idea_theme.asp?find=theme&visit=1&ThemeNumber=1184&return
=yes&area=Philosophy&area_no=1

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Against Analysis

[analysis is the wrong way to do philosophy]

23 ideas
1645 The desire to split everything into its parts is unpleasant and unphilosophical [Plato]
13313 Even philosophers have got bogged down in analysing tiny bits of language [Seneca]
You cannot divide anything into many parts, because after the first division you are no
1887
longer dividing the original [Sext.Empiricus]
Analysis falsifies, if when the parts are broken down they are not equivalent to their
14165
sum [Russell]
Critics say analysis can only show the parts, and not their distinctive configuration
5195
[Ayer]
If you know what it is, investigation is pointless. If you don't, investigation is
17663
impossible [Armstrong]
5486 Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis]
Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a
2557
bad one [Rorty]
17034 Analyses of concepts using entirely different terms are very inclined to fail [Kripke]
It seems likely that analysis of concepts is impossible, but justification can survive
2474
without it [Fodor]
Despite all the efforts of philosophers, nothing can ever be reduced to anything
2481
[Fodor]
Paradox: why do you analyse if you know it, and how do you analyse if you don't?
17082
[Ruben]
No one has ever succeeded in producing an acceptable non-trivial analysis of anything
2958
[Lockwood]
440

Analytical philosophy analyses separate concepts successfully, but lacks a synoptic

3352
vision of the results [Benardete,JA]
Analytic philosophy focuses too much on forms of expression, instead of what is
9978
actually said [Tait]
Analytic philosophy studies the unimportant, and sharpens tools instead of using them
6881
[Mautner]
10571 Concern for rigour can get in the way of understanding phenomena [Fine,K]
9297 You can't understand love in terms of 'if and only if...' [Svendsen]
9184 We can't presume that all interesting concepts can be analysed [Williamson]
6855 Interesting philosophers hardly every give you explicitly valid arguments [Martin,M]
The paradox of analysis says that any conceptual analysis must be either trivial or false
9136
[Sorensen]
Why think that conceptual analysis reveals reality, rather than just how people think?
14899
[Ladyman/Ross]
Naturalistic philosophers oppose analysis, preferring explanation to a priori intuition
11147
[Margolis/Laurence]

http://philosophyideas.com/search/response_idea_theme.asp?find=theme&visit=1&ThemeNumber=1661&return
=yes&area=Philosophy&area_no=1

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 5. Metaphysics as Conceptual

[metaphysics as study of our conceptual schemes]

18 ideas
Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena
12112
[Comte]
19219 Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce]
Syntactic category which is primary and ontological category derivative. [Wright,C
13876
on Frege]
We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it
11103
[Quine]
6310 Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine]
15801 Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm]
Descriptive metaphysics concerns unchanging core concepts and categories
7922
[Strawson,P]
6979 Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson]
Metaphysics is the clarification of the ontological relationships between different areas
2319
of thought [Kim]
Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews
15215
[Harré/Madden]
441

Maybe such concepts as causation, identity and existence are primitive and irreducible
4214
[Lowe]
Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of
13919
things [Lowe]
15003 It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider]
Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it)
15169
[Sidelle]
Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or
9217
on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman]
Kant survives in metaphysics as analysing our conceptual system, which is a priori
16257
[Maudlin]
Modern metaphysics pursues aesthetic criteria like story-writing, and abandons
14898
scientific truth [Ladyman/Ross]
Logic doesn't have a metaphysical basis, but nor can logic give rise to the
18835
metaphysics [Rumfitt]

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1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Against Metaphysics

[rejections of metaphysics as a worthwhile activity]

14 ideas
Kant exposed the illusions of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic [Fraassen on
12767
Kant]
On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel
3301
[Benardete,JA on Hegel]
14767 The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce]
6947 Metaphysics does not rest on facts, but on what we are inclined to believe [Peirce]
14860 Kant has undermined our belief in metaphysics [Nietzsche]
6864 Metaphysics is having to find bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct [Bradley]
13737 The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick]
16252 Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap]
Humeans rejected the a priori synthetic, and so rejected even Kantian metaphysics
7919
[Macdonald on Ayer]
Philosophy has been relieved of physics, cosmology, politics, and now must give up
12325
ontology [Badiou]
'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's
15054
noumenon) [Fine,K]
17713 After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares]
16276 Wide metaphysical possibility may reduce metaphysics to analysis of fantasies
442

[Maudlin]
Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs
16413
metaphysics? [Hofweber]

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1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Hopes for Philosophy

[optimistic views of what philosophy can achieve]

12 ideas
Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite
1649
[Vlastos on Socrates]
If all laws were abolished, philosophers would still live as they do now [Aristippus
1749
elder]
Guardians are philosopher-rulers who understand the Forms, especially the Good [PG
1176
on Plato]
Even people who go astray in their opinions have contributed something useful
559
[Aristotle]
15624 Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel]
19227 Philosophy is a search for real truth [Peirce]
14862 Philosophy is more valuable than much of science, because of its beauty [Nietzsche]
8226 A well-posed problem is a problem solved [Deleuze/Guattari on Bergson]
2944 If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it [Wittgenstein]
For a good theory of the world, we must focus on our flabby foundational vocabulary
9763
[Quine]
It is no longer possible to be a sage, but we can practice the exercise of wisdom
9198
[Hadot]
9408 Science studies phenomena, but only metaphysics tells us what exists [Mumford]

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1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 6. Despair over Philosophy

[view of the whole enterprise as hopeless]

40 ideas
6321 Vulgar people are alert; I alone am muddled [Lao Tzu]
5863 Reason is eternal, but men are foolish [Heraclitus]
443

9283 Our ancient beliefs can never be overthrown by subtle arguments [Euripides]
125 Is a gifted philosopher unmanly if he avoids the strife of the communal world? [Plato]
The philosopher is the 'true navigator' who is neglected by stupid captains and crew
1181
[PG on Plato]
2056 Philosophers are always switching direction to something more interesting [Plato]
112 Most people are readier to submit to compulsion than to argument [Aristotle]
7281 Don't even start, let's just stay put [Chuang Tzu]
8138 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy [Paul]
Instead of prayer and charity, sinners pursue vain disputes and want their own personal
6814
scripture [Mohammed]
For there was never yet philosopher/ That could endure the toothache patiently
8658
[Shakespeare]
6602 Philosophy is like a statue which is worshipped but never advances [Bacon]
3601 Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes]
3602 Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes]
The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy
2196
[Hume]
5635 In ordinary life the highest philosophy is no better than common understanding [Kant]
14854 Deep thinkers know that they are always wrong [Nietzsche]
7196 Pessimism is laughable, because the world cannot be evaluated [Nietzsche]
Is a 'philosopher' now impossible, because knowledge is too vast for an overview?
7137
[Nietzsche]
Philosophy is always secondary, because it cannot support a popular culture
14876
[Nietzsche]
14878 It would better if there was no thought [Nietzsche]
14881 Why do people want philosophers? [Nietzsche]
18710 Philosophers express puzzlement, but don't clearly state the puzzle [Wittgenstein]
What is your aim in philosophy? - To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle
4148
[Wittgenstein]
9810 The 'Tractatus' is a masterpiece of anti-philosophy [Badiou on Wittgenstein]
19620 Great systems of philosophy are just brilliant tautologies [Cioran]
I abandoned philosophy because it didn't acknowledge melancholy and human
19618
weakness [Cioran]
19621 Originality in philosophy is just the invention of terms [Cioran]
The mind is superficial, only concerned with the arrangement of events, not their
19607
significance [Cioran]
9245 To an absurd mind reason is useless, and there is nothing beyond reason [Camus]
People generalise because it is easier to understand, and that is mistaken for deep
15970
philosophy [Feynman]
19090 If we can't check our language against experience, philosophy is just comparing
444

beliefs and words [Rorty]

Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace
8047
religion [MacIntyre]
12772 Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen]
2956 There is nothing so obvious that a philosopher cannot be found to deny it [Lockwood]
9208 Philosophers with a new concept are like children with a new toy [Fine,K]
Using a technical vocabulary actually prevents discussion of the presuppositions
18494
[Heil]
16227 Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley]
Human knowledge may not produce well-being; the examined life may not be worth
9271
living [Gray]
Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process
6575
[Fogelin]

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1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 4. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy

as reason

[philosophy explores where reason take us]

12 ideas
15447 We shouldn't always follow where the argument leads! [Lewis on Plato]
5891 Philosophy is the collection of rational arguments [Cicero]
17240 Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes]
5631 Reason is only interested in knowledge, actions and hopes [Kant]
6184 Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher [Kant]
19241 An idea on its own isn't an idea, because they are continuous systems [Peirce]
Discoveries in mathematics can challenge philosophy, and offer it a new foundation
17641
[Russell]

5189 Philosophers should abandon speculation, as philosophy is wholly critical [Ayer]

Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck
15209
intellectual life [Harré/Madden]
9808 Philosophy aims to reveal the grandeur of mathematics [Badiou]
We overvalue whether arguments are valid, and undervalue whether they are
6851
interesting [Monk]
Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama
9593
[Williamson]
445

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1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 5. Metaphysics as Conceptual

[metaphysics as study of our conceptual schemes]

18 ideas
Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena
12112
[Comte]
19219 Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce]
Syntactic category which is primary and ontological category derivative. [Wright,C
13876
on Frege]
We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it
11103
[Quine]
6310 Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine]
15801 Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm]
Descriptive metaphysics concerns unchanging core concepts and categories
7922
[Strawson,P]
6979 Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson]
Metaphysics is the clarification of the ontological relationships between different areas
2319
of thought [Kim]
Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews
15215
[Harré/Madden]
Maybe such concepts as causation, identity and existence are primitive and irreducible
4214
[Lowe]
Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of
13919
things [Lowe]
15003 It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider]
Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it)
15169
[Sidelle]
Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or
9217
on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman]
Kant survives in metaphysics as analysing our conceptual system, which is a priori
16257
[Maudlin]
Modern metaphysics pursues aesthetic criteria like story-writing, and abandons
14898
scientific truth [Ladyman/Ross]
Logic doesn't have a metaphysical basis, but nor can logic give rise to the
18835
metaphysics [Rumfitt]
446

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yes&area=Philosophy&area_no=1

Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy

[general remarks about philosophy]

26 ideas
162 Can we understand an individual soul without knowing the soul in general? [Plato]
326 For relaxation one can consider the world of change, instead of eternal things [Plato]
549 All philosophy begins from wonder, either at the physical world, or at ideas [Aristotle]
He studied philosophy by suspending his judgement on everything [Diog. Laertius on
1798
Pyrrho]
When shown seven versions of the mowing argument, he paid twice the asking price
1771
for them [Diog. Laertius on Zeno of Citium]
3600 Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes]
17016 Philosophy must abstract from the senses [Newton]
8095 We must think with our entire body and soul [Joubert]
19583 Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis]
8927 Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel]
Great philosophies are confessions by the author, growing out of moral intentions
7834
[Nietzsche]
4424 A warlike philosopher challenges problems to single combat [Nietzsche]
Philosophy begins in the horror and absurdity of existence [Ansell Pearson on
7848
Nietzsche]
2909 Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned [Nietzsche]
I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants
4520
[Nietzsche]
Nietzsche thinks philosophy makes us more profound, but not better [Ansell Pearson
7846
on Nietzsche]
5361 Philosophers must get used to absurdities [Russell]
2937 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence [Wittgenstein]
2626 A philosopher is outside any community of ideas [Wittgenstein]
If your life is to be meaningful as part of some large thing, the large thing must be
3269
meaningful [Nagel]
3242 Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture can't skip it [Nagel]
7973 There is no longer anything on which there is nothing to say [Baudrillard]
Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard
9786
[Cartwright,R]
3695 Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour]
447

8220 Philosophy is in a perpetual state of digression [Deleuze/Guattari]

You have to be a Platonist to debate about reality, so every philosopher is a Platonist
1606
[Roochnik]

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1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

[key shared characteristics of continental modern philosophy]

14 ideas
Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter
6904
[Feuerbach]
Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects
6931
[Feuerbach]
7423 Philosophy and politics are fundamentally linked [Foucault]
Some continental philosophers are relativists - Baudrillard, for example [Critchley on
6841
Baudrillard]
The plague of philosophy is those who criticise without creating, and defend dead
8223
concepts [Deleuze/Guattari]
Two marxist ideas have dominated in France: base and superstructure, and ideology
8988
[Scruton]
To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis,
7075
Unconscious, or Being [Critchley]
7069 The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley]
German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms
6835
[Critchley]
Since Hegel, contintental philosophy has been linked with social and historical
6837
enquiry. [Critchley]
Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason
6836
[Critchley]
6838 Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley]
Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain
6845
everything [Critchley]
Analytic philosophy has much higher standards of thinking than continental
6859
philosophy [Williamson

1 1 Continental Philosophy
448

4 .
2
7 Phenomenology
.
3
5 Hermeneutics
.
4
2 Linguistic Structuralism
.
5
3 Critical Theory
.

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction

[wisdom can only draw attention to human presuppositions]

6 ideas
Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions
8210
behind them [Derrida]
The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our
8211
language [Derrida]
Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be
6840
relativised [Critchley on Derrida]
8216 Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida]
On the surface of deconstructive writing, technicalities float and then drift away
8987
[Scruton]
Deconstruction is the last spasm of romanticism, now become hopeless and
8992
destructive [Scruton
6
6
.
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A. Nature of Reason
28 1. On Reason
15 2. Logos
11 3. Pure Reason
23 4. Aims of Reason
13 5. Objectivity
24 6. Coherence
15 7. Status of Reason
6 8. Naturalising Reason
22 9. Limits of Reason
B. Laws of Thought
9 1. Laws of Thought
19 2. Sufficient Reason
18 3. Non-Contradiction
449

8 4. Contraries
6 5. Opposites
23 6. Ockham's Razor
C. Styles of Reason
28 1. Dialectic
6 2. Elenchus
6 3. Eristic
D. Definition
17 1. Definitions
18 2. Aims of Definition
11 3. Types of Definition
25 4. Real Definition
23 5. Genus and Differentia
14 6. Definition by Essence
13 7. Contextual Definition
7 8. Impredicative Definition
1 9. Recursive Definition
4 10. Stipulative Definition
5 11. Ostensive Definition
9 12. Against Definition
E. Argument
7 1. Argument
Transcendental
2 2.
Argument
8 3. Analogy
1 4. Open Question
1 5. Reductio ad Absurdum
2 6. Thought Experiments
F. Fallacies
7 1. Fallacy
3 2. Infinite Regress
2 3. Question Begging
8 4. Circularity
4 5. Fallacy of Composition
1 6. Fallacy of Division
4 7. Ad Hominem
10 8. Category Mistake a. Category mistakes
5 b. Category mistake as syntactic
11 c. Category mistake as semantic
5 d. Category mistake as pragmatic
1 e. Category mistake as ontological
450

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A. Truth Problems
27 1. Truth
25 2. Defining Truth
13 3. Value of Truth
6 4. Uses of Truth
23 5. Truth Bearers
7 6. Verisimilitude
5 7. Falsehood
12 8. Subjective Truth
9 9. Rejecting Truth
B. Truthmakers
8 1. For Truthmakers
11 2. Truthmaker Relation
9 3. Truthmaker Maximalism
11 4. Truthmaker Necessitarianism
21 5. What Makes Truths a. What makes truths
8 b. Objects make truths
4 c. States of affairs make truths
7 d. Being makes truths
9 6. Making Negative Truths
10 7. Making Modal Truths
3 8. Making General Truths
6 9. Making Past Truths
2 10. Making Future Truths
11 11. Truthmaking and Correspondence
16 12. Rejecting Truthmakers
C. Correspondence Truth
32 1. Correspondence Truth
11 2. Correspondence to Facts
25 3. Correspondence Truth critique
D. Coherence Truth
22 1. Coherence Truth
8 2. Coherence Truth Critique
E. Pragmatic Truth
21 1. Pragmatic Truth
F. Semantic Truth
26 1. Tarski's Truth a. Tarski's truth definition
18 b. Satisfaction and truth
451

7 c. Meta-language for truth

35 2. Semantic Truth
G. Axiomatic Truth
34 1. Axiomatic Truth
3 2. FS Truth Axioms
6 3. KF Truth Axioms
H. Deflationary Truth
12 1. Redundant Truth
31 2. Deflationary Truth
7 3. Minimalist Truth

http://philosophyideas.com/search/themes_1.asp?area_no=18&area=Thought#Thought

A. Modes of Thought
27 1. Thought
7 2. Propositional Attitudes
19 3. Emotions
11 4. Imagination
20 5. Folk Psychology
30 6. Rationality
2 7. Intelligence
6 8. Human Thought
15 9. Indexical Thought
6 10. Rule Following
B. Mechanics of Thought
3 1. Psychology
19 2. Mentalese
14 3. Modularity of Mind
16 4. Mental Files
Categories of
4 5.
Understanding
C. Content
27 1. Content
15 2. Ideas
20 5. Twin Earth
40 6. Broad Content
9 7. Narrow Content
5 8. Intension
D. Concepts
25 1. Concepts a. Concepts
5 b. Concepts in philosophy
452

5 c. Concepts in psychology
9 2. Ontology of Concepts a. Concepts as representations
18 b. Concepts as abilities
21 c. Fregean concepts
9 3. Structure of Concepts a. Conceptual structure
10 b. Analysis of concepts
14 c. Classical concepts
22 d. Concepts as prototypes
10 e. Concepts from exemplars
16 f. Theory theory of concepts
4 g. Conceptual atomism
4 h. Conceptual priority
3 4. Concepts and Language a. Concepts and Language
5 b. Concepts are linguistic
4 c. Concepts without language
10 5. Origin of Concepts a. Origin of concepts
6 b. Empirical concepts
3 c. Nativist concepts
21 6. Abstract Concepts a. Abstract concepts
42 b. Psychological abstraction
37 c. Abstraction by ignoring
35 d. Abstractionism critique
40 e. Abstraction by equivalence
2 f. Way of example
7 g. Way of negation
5 h. Way of conflation
22 i. Generalisation
4 j. Idealisation
E. Artificial Intelligence
9 1. Artificial Intelligence
5 2. Turing Machines
6 3. Turing Test
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ge

A. Language
23 1. Language
4 2. Syntax
18 3. Rhetoric
1 4. Ambiguity
14 5. Metaphor
453

23 6. Predicates
18 7. Private Language
B. Meaning
26 1. Meaning
9 2. Meaning as Mental
38 3. Meaning as Verification
25 4. Meaning as Use
Meaning as Speaker's
8 5.
Intention
29 6. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
10 7. Meaning by Role
10 8. Meaning through Sentences
15 9. Meaning Holism
7 11. Synonymy
12 12. Denial of Meanings
C. Semantics
28 1. Semantics
16 2. Fregean Semantics
7 3. Extensional Semantics
16 4. Truth-Conditions Semantics
17 5. Possible Worlds Semantics
11 6. Indexical Semantics
20 7. Two-Dimensional Semantics
8 8. Compositionality
D. Theories of Reference
24 1. Reference theories
4 2. Denoting
11 3. Direct Reference a. Direct reference
22 b. Causal reference
13 c. Social reference
21 4. Descriptive Reference a. Sense and reference
26 b. Reference by description
9 5. Speaker's Reference
E. Propositions
20 1. Propositions
42 2. Nature of Propositions
7 3. Types of Proposition
16 4. Support for Propositions
15 5. Propositions Critique
F. Analytic/Synthetic
7 1. Analytic and Synthetic
454

12 2. Analytic Propositions
10 3. Analytic Truths
15 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
G. Interpretation
4 1. Translation
19 2. Indeterminacy
21 3. Charity
H. Pragmatics
3 1. Assertion
10 2. Denial
5 3. Presupposition
9 4. Implicature
8 5. Contextual Meaning

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ms#Knowledge%20Aims
Knowledge
378 11.
Aims
A. Knowledge
36 1. Knowledge
37 2. Understanding
26 3. Belief a. Beliefs
10 b. Elements of beliefs
26 c. Aim of beliefs
13 d. Cause of beliefs
8 e. Belief holism
4 f. Animal beliefs
4 4. Aiming at Truth
7 5. Knowing How
8 6. Knowledge First
B. Certain Knowledge
27 1. Certainty
6 2. Error
11 3. Fallibilism
25 4. The Cogito
32 5. Cogito Critique
C. Knowing Reality
4 1. Perceptual Realism a. Naïve realism
11 b. Direct realism
7 c. Representative realism
30 2. Phenomenalism
455

41 3. Idealism
5 4. Solipsism

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urces#Knowledge%20Sources
Knowledge
629 12.
Sources
A. A Priori Knowledge
19 1. Nature of the A Priori
15 2. Self-Evidence
32 3. Innate Ideas a. Innate Ideas
6 b. Recollection
18 4. A Priori as Necessities
22 5. A Priori Synthetic
7 6. A Priori from Reason
7 7. A Priori from Convention
19 8. A Priori as Analytic
14 9. A Priori from Concepts
7 10. A Priori as Subjective
8 11. Denying the A Priori
B. Perception
30 1. Perception
8 2. Qualities in Perception a. Qualities in perception
10 b. Primary/Secondary
17 c. Primary qualities
26 d. Secondary qualities
17 e. Primary/secondary critique
24 3. Sense Data a. Sense-data theory
17 b. Nature of sense-data
3 c. Unperceived sense-data
16 d. Sense-data problems
21 4. Representation
12 5. Adverbial Theory
20 6. Interpretation
10 7. Causal Perception
17 8. Inference in Perception
C. Rationalism
36 1. Rationalism
4 2. Proof
D. Empiricism
38 1. Empiricism a. Empiricism
456

18 b. pro-Empiricism
35 c. Empiricism critique
13 2. Associationism a. Associationism
10 b. Resemblance
2 c. Contiguity
1 d. Association by cause
8 3. Pragmatism
E. Direct Knowledge
20 1. Intuition
3 2. Inspiration
19 3. Memory

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iteria#Knowledge%20Criteria
Knowledge
561 13.
Criteria
A. Justification
29 1. Justification a. Justification
9 b. Agrippa's trilemma
10 c. Gettier problem
28 d. Internal justification
17 e. Evidence
7 f. Evidentialism
2 g. Disjunctivism
13 h. Testimony
7 i. Pragmatic justification
25 j. Contextual justification
4 k. Epistemic virtues
13 l. Knowledge closure
21 2. Foundationalism a. Foundationalism
22 b. Basic beliefs
5 c. Pro-foundations
25 d. Foundationalism critique
22 3. Coherentism a. Coherence as justification
9 b. Pro-coherentism
19 c. Coherentism critique
24 4. External Justification a. External justification
15 b. Causal justification
24 c. Reliabilism
11 d. Social justification
6 e. Naturalised epistemology
457

8 f. Anti external justification

B. Scepticism
34 1. Scepticism
7 2. Types of Scepticism
13 3. Illusion Scepticism
2 4. Demon Scepticism
6 5. Dream Scepticism
30 6. Scepticism Critique
C. Relativism
31 1. Relativism
4 2. Knowledge as Convention
22 3. Subjectivism
12 4. Culture
7 5. Language Relativism
18 6. Relativism Critique

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A. Persons
11 1. Existence of Persons
5 2. Persons as Responsible
4 3. Persons as Reasoners
B. Character of the Self
11 1. Essential Self
7 2. Inner Properties
9 3. External Properties
3 4. Ethical Self
14 5. Persistence of Self
24 6. Denial of the Self
C. Self-Awareness
26 1. Introspection
19 2. Self-Knowledge
15 3. Undetectable Self
D. Self as Non-Physical
4 1. Spiritual Self
9 2. Cartesian Ego
E. Self as Mind
17 1. Self and Memory
17 2. Psychological Continuity
Psychological Self
12 3.
critique
458

17 4. Associated Self
4 5. Split Consciousness
8 6. Self as Meta-awareness
F. Self as Transcendent
4 1. A priori Self
8 2. Kantian Ego
G. Self as Body
12 1. Role of the Body
2 2. Brain as the Self
3 3. Animalism
H. Free Will
32 1. Free Will a. Nature of free will
14 b. Pro-free will
27 c. Free will critique
8 2. Free Will Theories a. Fate
27 b. Determinism
8 c. Compatibilism

http://philosophyideas.com/search/themes_1.asp?area_no=17&area=Mind%20and%20
Body#Mind%20and%20Body
Mind and
466 17.
Body
A. Mind-Body Dualism
17 1. Dualism
14 2. Interactionism
9 3. Panpsychism
4 4. Occasionalism
7 5. Parallelism
12 6. Epiphenomenalism
11 7. Zombies
30 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
B. Behaviourism
6 1. Behaviourism
12 2. Behavioural Dispositions
4 3. Instrumentalism
28 4. Behaviourism Critique
C. Functionalism
22 1. Functionalism
8 2. Machine Functionalism
2 3. Psycho-Functionalism
7 4. Causal Functionalism
459

Teleological
7 5.
Functionalism
Homuncular
4 6.
Functionalism
11 7. Chinese Room
18 8. Functionalism critique
D. Property Dualism
10 1. Reductionism critique
13 2. Anomalous Monism
17 3. Property Dualism
7 4. Emergentism
19 5. Supervenience of mind
13 6. Mysterianism
E. Physicalism
31 1. Physicalism
21 2. Reduction of Mind
19 3. Eliminativism
14 4. Connectionism
11 5. Causal Argument
4 6. Conceptual Dualism
14 7. Anti-Physicalism a. Physicalism critique
24 b. Multiple realisability
7 c. Knowledge argument
4 d. Explanatory gap
5 e. Modal argument

http://philosophyideas.com/search/themes_1.asp?area_no=25&area=Society#Society

Principles of
A.
Society
24 1. Social Principles
31 2. Social Equality
41 3. Social Freedom
23 4. Natural Rights
3 5. Legal Rights
8 6. General Will
Social
5 7.
Utilitarianism
B. Structure of Society
12 1. Social Structure
7 2. Anarchism
8 3. Leaders
460

3 4. Guardians
12 5. Tyranny
20 6. Democracy
2 7. Conservatism
14 8. Liberalism
10 9. Marxism
2 10. Alienation
18 11. Communitarianism
C. Elements of Society
6 1. Elements of Society
16 2. Law a. Law
9 b. Natural law
3 c. Legal positivism
5 3. Culture
1 5. Ideology
47 6. Education
10 7. History
9 8. War
5 9. Population
5 10. Slavery

http://philosophyideas.com/search/themes_1.asp?area_no=15&area=Nature%20of%20
Minds#Nature%20of%20Minds
Nature of
346 15.
Minds
A. Nature of Mind
7 1. Mind a. Mind
6 b. Purpose of mind
11 c. Features of mind
8 d. Location of mind
10 e. Questions about mind
22 2. Psuché
12 3. Mental Causation
2 4. Other Minds a. Other minds
6 b. Scepticism of other minds
17 c. Knowing other minds
12 d. Other minds by analogy
6 5. Anti-Individualism
10 6. Animal Minds
7 7. Brain
B. Features of Minds
461

18 1. Consciousness a. Consciousness
8 b. Essence of consciousness
6 c. Parts of consciousness
10 d. Purpose of consciousness
15 e. Cause of consciousness
15 f. Higher-order thought
11 2. Unconscious Mind
8 3. Privacy
21 4. Unity of Mind
20 5. Intentionality a. Character of intentionality
27 b. Intentionality theories
37 6. Qualia
8 7. Inverted Qualia
6 8. Blindsight
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-11

In section 10 I posted a number of concepts that are or were used in philosophy. I would prefer that they are
presented in another visual form – for example as a mind map and by means of other tools for example argument
visualization tools –

We, philosophy, should at least be thinking ( instead of individuals concepts, or statements, linear thinking - we
should simultaneously think on many layers, on many levels and in several dimensions) in terms of 3D, for
example scatter plots -=By this I mean the many different aspects of the person (mentally and physically, socially,
culturally, as well as our environment, planetary and universe context should be included in every concept we
employ; each concept should therefore be at least like a 3D scatter plot image, including all these levels and
information)

(This is the type of presentation that every word, each concept, used in a philosophical
sentence or statements should look like. It should present all implicit assumptions explicitly,
for example those of the thinking person, mentally, physically,socially, culturally,
biologically, etc, as well as those of the medium, language, he employs, etc as well as those
dimensions of the subject or object he expresses his statements about.)
462

http://www.jmp.com/support/help/Scatterplot_3D.shtml
Scatterplot 3D
Create a Rotating Three-Dimensional View of Data
The Scatterplot 3D platform shows the values of numeric columns in the associated data table
in a rotatable, three-dimensional view. Up to three columns that you select from the
associated data table are displayed at one time. See Example of a 3D Scatterplot.
To help visualize variation in higher dimensions, the 3D scatterplot can show a biplot
representation of the points and variables when you request principal components. The most
prominent directions of data are displayed on the 3D scatterplot report.
Example of a 3D Scatterplot

Contents
Example of a 3D Scatterplot
Launch the Scatterplot 3D Platform
The Scatterplot 3D Report
463

Spin the 3D Scatterplot

Change Variables on the Axes
Adjust the Axes
Assign Colors and Markers to Data Points
Assign Colors and Markers in the Data Table
Scatterplot 3D Platform Options
Normal Contour Ellipsoids
Nonparametric Density Contours
Context Menu
Additional Examples of the Scatterplot 3D Platform
Example of an Ungrouped Normal Contour Ellipsoid
Example of Grouped Normal Contour Ellipsoids
Example of a Grouped Nonparametric Density Contour
https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/scatter3.html?requestedDomain=www.mathworks.com

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/scatterplot3d/index.html

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/scatterplot3d/scatterplot3d.pdf

http://www.cs.uu.nl/docs/vakken/ivls/literatuur_files/ECAI06_Long_Paper_BraakEtAl.pdf

http://www.arg-tech.org/index.php/projects/online-argument-visualisation/

http://www.argunet.org/working-with-argunet/ch04.html

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-89639-5_13#page-1

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7510/full/511408a.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization

The term visualization may refer to:

 Mental image
 Creative visualization (sports visualization)
o Motor imagery
 Flow visualization
 Geovisualization
 Illustration
 Information graphics, visual representations of information, data, or knowledge
 Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of
information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and
clearly.[1][2] They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human
visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.[3][4] Similar pursuits are information
visualization, data visualization, statistical graphics, information design, or
information architecture.[2] Infographics have evolved in recent years to be for mass
464

communication, and thus are designed with fewer assumptions about the readers'
knowledge base than other types of visualizations. Isotypes are an early example of
infographics conveying information quickly and easily to the masses.

Contents
 1 Overview
 2 History
o 2.1 Early
o 2.2 20th century
o 2.3 21st century
 3 Analysis
 4 Data visualization
o 4.1 Time-series
o 4.2 Statistical
o 4.3 Maps
o 4.4 Hierarchies
o 4.5 Networks
 5 Tools
 6 See also
 7 References
 8 Further reading
 9 External links

 Information visualization
 Interactive visualization
 Music visualization, a feature found in some media player software applications
 Scientific visualization
 Security visualisation
 Software visualization
 Visualization (computer graphics)
465

 Visulation
 Guided imagery
See also
 All pages with titles containing Visualization
 List of graphical methods
 Image
 Mental image, as with imagination
 Previsualization
 Spatial visualization ability, the ability to mentally manipulate 2-dimensional and 3-
dimensional figures
 Visual communication
 Visual perception

Visual perception and data visualization

A human can distinguish differences in line length, shape orientation, and color (hue) readily
without significant processing effort; these are referred to as "pre-attentive attributes." For
example, it may require significant time and effort ("attentive processing") to identify the
number of times the digit "5" appears in a series of numbers; but if that digit is different in
size, orientation, or color, instances of the digit can be noted quickly through pre-attentive
processing.[13]
Effective graphics take advantage of pre-attentive processing and attributes and the relative
strength of these attributes. For example, since humans can more easily process differences in
line length than surface area, it may be more effective to use a bar chart (which takes
advantage of line length to show comparison) rather than pie charts (which use surface area
to show comparison).[13]

Human perception/cognition and data visualization

 There is a human side to data visualization. With the "studying [of] human perception
and cognition ..." we are better able to understand the target of the data which we
display.[14] Cognition refers to processes in human beings like perception, attention,
learning, memory, thought, concept formation, reading, and problem solving.[15] The
basis of data visualization evolved because as a picture is worth a thousand words,
data displayed graphically allows for an easier comprehension of the information.
Proper visualization provides a different approach to show potential connections,
relationships, etc. which are not as obvious in non-visualized quantitative data.
Visualization becomes a means of data exploration. Human brain neurons involve
multiple functions but 2/3 of the brain's neurons are dedicated to vision.[16] With a
well-developed sense of sight, analysis of data can be made on data, whether that data
is quantitative or qualitative. Effective visualization follows from understanding the
processes of human perception and being able to apply this to intuitive visualizations
466

is important. Understanding how humans see and organize the world is critical to
effectively communicating data to the reader. This leads to more intuitive designs.
 Visual system
 Visual thinking

Visualization of technical information

 Biological data visualization
 Chemical imaging
 Crime mapping
 Data visualization
 Educational visualization
 Flow visualization
 Geovisualization
 Information visualization
 Mathematical visualization

Fields
Medical imaging
 Molecular graphics
 Product visualization
 Scientific visualization
 Software visualization
 Technical drawing
 User interface design
 Visual culture
 Volume visualization

 Chart
 Diagram

Image
Engineering drawing
types
 Graph of a function
 Ideogram
467

 Map
 Photograph
 Pictogram
 Plot
 Schematic
 Statistical graphics
 Table
 Technical drawings
 Technical illustration
 User interface

 Jacques Bertin
 Stuart Card
 Thomas A. DeFanti
 Michael Friendly
 George Furnas
 Nigel Holmes
 Alan MacEachren
 Jock D. Mackinlay

People  Michael Maltz

 Bruce H. McCormick
 Charles Joseph Minard
 Gaspard Monge
 Otto Neurath
 Florence Nightingale
 Clifford A. Pickover
 William Playfair
 Adolphe Quetelet
468

 George G. Robertson
 Arthur H. Robinson
 Lawrence J. Rosenblum
 Ben Shneiderman
 Edward Tufte
 Fernanda Viégas
 Howard Wainer

 Cartography
 Chartjunk
 Computer graphics
o in computer science
 Graph drawing
 Graphic design
 Graphic organizer
 Imaging science
 Information graphics

Related
Information science
topics
 Mental visualisation
 Misleading graph
 Neuroimaging
 Patent drawing
 Scientific modelling
 Spatial analysis
 Visual analytics
 Visual perception
 Volume cartography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization
469

There are different approaches on the scope of data visualization. One common focus is on
information presentation, such as Friedman (2008) presented it. In this way Friendly (2008)
presumes two main parts of data visualization: statistical graphics, and thematic
cartography.[1] In this line the "Data Visualization: Modern Approaches" (2007) article gives
an overview of seven subjects of data visualization:[20]
 Articles & resources
 Displaying connections
 Displaying data
 Displaying news
 Displaying websites
 Mind maps
 Tools and services
All these subjects are closely related to graphic design and information representation.
On the other hand, from a computer science perspective, Frits H. Post (2002) categorized the
field into a number of sub-fields:[7]
[21]

 Information visualization
 Interaction techniques and architectures
 Modelling techniques
 Multiresolution methods
 Visualization algorithms and techniques
 Volume visualization

Data presentation architecture

A data visualization from social media

470

Data presentation architecture (DPA) is a skill-set that seeks to identify, locate,

manipulate, format and present data in such a way as to optimally communicate meaning and
proper knowledge. (This is the type of presentation that every word, each concept, used in a
philosophical sentence or statements should look like. It should present all implicit
assumptions explicitly, for example those of the thinking person, mentally,
physically,socially, culturally, biologically, etc, as well as those of the medium, language, he
employs, etc as well as those dimensions of the subject or object he expresses his statements
about.)
Historically, the term data presentation architecture is attributed to Kelly Lautt:[22] "Data
Presentation Architecture (DPA) is a rarely applied skill set critical for the success and value
of Business Intelligence. Data presentation architecture weds the science of numbers, data
and statistics in discovering valuable information from data and making it usable, relevant
and actionable with the arts of data visualization, communications, organizational psychology
and change management in order to provide business intelligence solutions with the data
scope, delivery timing, format and visualizations that will most effectively support and drive
operational, tactical and strategic behaviour toward understood business (or organizational)
goals. DPA is neither an IT nor a business skill set but exists as a separate field of expertise.
Often confused with data visualization, data presentation architecture is a much broader skill
set that includes determining what data on what schedule and in what exact format is to be
presented, not just the best way to present data that has already been chosen (which is data
visualization). Data visualization skills are one element of DPA."

Objectives
DPA has two main objectives:
 To use data to provide knowledge in the most efficient manner possible (minimize
noise, complexity, and unnecessary data or detail given each audience's needs and
roles)
 To use data to provide knowledge in the most effective manner possible (provide
relevant, timely and complete data to each audience member in a clear and
understandable manner that conveys important meaning, is actionable and can affect
understanding, behavior and decisions)

Scope
With the above objectives in mind, the actual work of data presentation architecture consists
of:
 Creating effective delivery mechanisms for each audience member depending on their
role, tasks, locations and access to technology
 Defining important meaning (relevant knowledge) that is needed by each audience
member in each context
 Determining the required periodicity of data updates (the currency of the data)
 Determining the right timing for data presentation (when and how often the user
needs to see the data)
471

 Finding the right data (subject area, historical reach, breadth, level of detail, etc.)
 Utilizing appropriate analysis, grouping, visualization, and other presentation formats

Related fields
DPA work shares commonalities with several other fields, including:
 Business analysis in determining business goals, collecting requirements, mapping
processes.
 Business process improvement in that its goal is to improve and streamline actions
and decisions in furtherance of business goals
 Data visualization in that it uses well-established theories of visualization to add or
highlight meaning or importance in data presentation.
 Graphic or user design: As the term DPA is used, it falls just short of design in that it
does not consider such detail as colour palates, styling, branding and other aesthetic
concerns, unless these design elements are specifically required or beneficial for
communication of meaning, impact, severity or other information of business value.
For example:
o choosing locations for various data presentation elements on a presentation
page (such as in a company portal, in a report or on a web page) in order to
convey hierarchy, priority, importance or a rational progression for the user is
part of the DPA skill-set.
o choosing to provide a specific colour in graphical elements that represent data
of specific meaning or concern is part of the DPA skill-set
 Information architecture, but information architecture's focus is on unstructured data
and therefore excludes both analysis (in the statistical/data sense) and direct
transformation of the actual content (data, for DPA) into new entities and
combinations.
 Solution architecture in determining the optimal detailed solution, including the scope
of data to include, given the business goals
 Statistical analysis or data analysis in that it creates information and knowledge out of
data
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
This is how our embodied consciousness and brains ‘perceive’ and experience so if we wish
to express it ‘conceptually’, talk about it or explore it we should express ourselves in at least
such three (or multi)-dimensional ways – and that in every word we employ, so as to
include, explicitly, all the variables (mentally, physically, chemically, biologically,
psychologically, etc) that are involved.
472

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_(graphics)
Visualization or visualisation (see spelling differences) is any technique for creating images,
diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has
been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of
humanity. Examples from history include cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek
geometry, and Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary methods of technical drawing for
engineering and scientific purposes.
Visualization today has ever-expanding applications in science, education, engineering (e.g.,
product visualization), interactive multimedia, medicine, etc. Typical of a visualization
application is the field of computer graphics. The invention of computer graphics may be the
most important development in visualization since the invention of central perspective in the
Renaissance period. The development of animation also helped advance visualization.
 1 Overview
 2 Applications of visualization
o 2.1 Scientific visualization

o
473

 A scientific visualization of a simulation of a Raleigh–Taylor instability caused by

two mixing fluids
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/scivis/tutorial/tutorial.html
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Conceptual Image Lab

NASA's CI Lab is an award-winning studio with artists who work closely with astronomers,
scientists and engineers to bring scientific theory, design and concepts to life in an accurate,
yet visually compelling way.

Scientific Hyperwall Presentations

The Hyperwall is a big beautiful “wall" of high-definition screens used to display NASA’s
latest and greatest data visualizations, images, videos, and other presentation material, and is
a primary outreach platform for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Existing Hyperwall
stories highlight themes in Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics.
The Scientific Visualization Studio developed the Hyperwall software.

NASA Visualization Explorer

is your portal to the coolest stories about NASA’s exploration of Earth, the sun, moon,
planets and universe. A new story is released every Tuesday and Thursday. Download the
app now and get stories delivered right to your iOS device.
474

Our Mission
The Scientific Visualization Studio wants you to learn about NASA programs through
visualization. The SVS works closely with scientists in the creation of visualizations,
animations, and images in order to promote a greater understanding of Earth and Space
Science research activities at NASA and within the academic research community supported
by NASA.
All the visualizations and multimedia products created by the SVS, CI Lab, and Goddard
Media Studios are accessible to you through this web site, and free to download! Please note
that this is not an all-inclusive repository of NASA images and movies. You are welcome to
try NASA's Data Portal.

o 2.2 Educational visualization

o 2.3 Information visualization
o 2.4 Knowledge visualization
o 2.5 Product visualization
o 2.6 Visual communication
o 2.7 Visual analytics
 3 References
 4 Further reading
 5 External links
 --------------------------------------------------------
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking
 Visual thinking, also called visual/spatial learning or picture thinking is the
phenomenon of thinking through visual processing.[1]
 Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures.[citation needed]
It is common in approximately 60%–65% of the general population.[1]
 "Real picture thinkers", those persons who use visual thinking almost to the exclusion
of other kinds of thinking, make up a smaller percentage of the population. Research
475

by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of
the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both
visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively
in words. According to Kreger Silverman, of the 30% of the general population who
use visual/spatial thinking, only a small percentage would use this style over and
above all other forms of thinking, and can be said to be true "picture thinkers".[2]
 1 Research and theoretical background
 2 Non-verbal thought
 Thinking in mental images is one of a number of other recognized forms of non-
verbal thought, such as kinesthetic, musical and mathematical thinking.
o 2.1 Linguistics
o 2.2 Multiple intelligences
o Gardner's multiple intelligences theory recognises various forms of
intelligence, namely spatial, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-
kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic. Gardner's theory
is discussed and cited in many of David A Sousa's 'How the Brain learns'
series of books, including 'How the Gifted Brain learns' and 'How the Special
Needs Brain Learns'. Areas of competence may be reinforcing, but also
mutually exclusive. In today's society the link between IQ and education has
weakened, but the idea of educated and intelligent has become synonymous,
interchangeable; reinforced by verbalizers being better able to internalize
information, advocate systems and design jobs that monetarily reward
strengths, a cycle that is self-perpetuating
o 2.3 Split-brain research
 According to Roger Sperry the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere perform
different tasks. The left and right hemisphere may be simultaneously conscious in
different, even mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run in parallel. (As is
the case with me) The right [non-verbal] hemisphere perceives, thinks, remembers,
reasons, wills and emotes, all at a characteristically human level
o 2.4 Spatial-temporal reasoning and spatial visualization ability
 Spatial-temporal reasoning is the ability to visualize special patterns and mentally
manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations.[1] Spatial
visualization ability is the ability to manipulate mentally two- and three-dimensional
figures.[1]
 Spatial-temporal reasoning is prominent among visual thinkers as well as among
kinesthetic learners (those who learn through movement, physical patterning and
doing) and logical thinkers (mathematical thinkers who think in patterns and systems)
who may not be strong visual thinkers at all.[1]
o

o 2.5 Photographic memory

476

o Eidetic memory (photographic memory) may co-occur in visual thinkers as

much as in any type of thinking style as it is a memory function associated
with having vision rather than a thinking style.
o 2.6 Learning styles
o The acknowledgement and application of different cognitive and learning
styles, including visual, kinesthetic, musical, mathematical and verbal thinking
styles, are a common part of many current teacher training courses
 3 Concurrency with dyslexia and autism
o 3.1 Dyslexia
o 3.2 Autism
 4 Art and design education
 Concepts related to visual thinking have played an important role in art and design
education over the past several decades, but this has not always been the case.[13] In
Ancient Greece, Plato tended to place an emphasis on music to aid cognition in the
education of heroes because of its mathematical tendencies and "harmonies of the
cosmos". On the other hand, visual images, paintings in particular, caused the
reliances on "illusionary images"[14] However, in the Western world, children begin
primary school with abstract thought and shapes, but as we grow older, according to
Rudolf Arnheim, "arts are reduced to a desirable supplement"[14] The general world
trend in the late twentieth century caused an emphases towards scientific,
mathematical, and quantitative approach to education, and art education is often
refuted because it is based on perception. It is qualitative and subjective which makes
it difficult to measure and evaluate.
 However, fundamentals in visual thinking lay the ground work for many design
disciplines such as art and architecture. Two of the most influential aspects of visual
composition in these disciplines are patterns and color. Patterns are not only prevalent
in many different aspects of everyday life, but it is also telling about our interpretation
of the world. In addition, there are now studied approaches to how color should be
used in design where "the functional aesthetics of colour can be reduced to a small
number of guidelines and lists the main properties needed to make design decisions
leading to visual clarity".[15]
 At the same time, techniques in art and design can open up pathways to stimulate the
thought process. Sketches offer an unrestrained way to get thoughts down on paper
through the "abstract representations of ideas and idea structures".[15] It is also an
effective means of communication, especially for architects, for translating ideas from
designer to client. Despite all the advantages of integrating art and visuals into
education, it is a difficult skill to master. Those who can are well versed in visual
analysis. It takes a lot of practice to have sketches evolve from "meaningless
scribbles" to a complex "thinking tool".[15]


 5 See also
477

 Aphantasia
 Concept map
 Image schema
 Intellectual giftedness
 Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is
a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school
programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various
consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. There
is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most
school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of
individual lives have been based on IQ in the top 2 percent of the population, that is
above IQ 130.
 The various definitions of intellectual giftedness include either general high ability or
specific abilities. For example, by some definitions an intellectually gifted person may
have a striking talent for mathematics without equally strong language skills. In
particular, the relationship between artistic ability or musical ability and the high
academic ability usually associated with high IQ scores is still being explored, with
some authors referring to all of those forms of high ability as "giftedness," while other
authors distinguish "giftedness" from "talent." There is still much controversy and
much research on the topic of how adult performance unfolds from trait differences in
childhood, and what educational and other supports best help the development of
adult giftedness.
 While many people believe giftedness is a strictly quantitative difference, measurable
by IQ tests, some authors on the "experience of being" have described giftedness as a
fundamentally different way of perceiving the world, which in turn affects every
experience had by the gifted individual.
 Multiple intelligences has been associated with giftedness or overachievement of
some developmental areas (Colangelo, 2003).[28] Multiple intelligences has been
described as an attitude towards learning, instead of techniques or strategies (Cason,
2001).[29]
 There are said[by whom?] to be eight Intelligences, or different areas in which people
assimilate or learn about the world around them: interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily-
kinesthetic, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, naturalistic, and spatial-visual.
If the Theory of Multiple Intelligences is applied to educational curriculum, by
providing lesson plans, themes, and programs in a way that all students are
encouraged to develop their stronger area, and at the same time educators provide
opportunities to enhance the learning process in the less strong areas, academic
success may be attainable for all children in a school system.
 Howard Gardner proposed in Frames of Mind (Gardner 1983/1994) that intellectual
giftedness may be present in areas other than the typical intellectual realm. The
concept of multiple intelligences (MI) makes the field aware of additional potential
strengths and proposes a variety of curricular methods.
478

 Gardner suggests MI in the following areas: Linguistic, logico-mathematical, musical,

spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential.
 Identification of gifted students with MI is a challenge since there is no simple test to
give to determine giftedness of MI. Assessing by observation is potentially most
accurate, but potentially highly subjective. MI theory can be applied to not only gifted
students, but it can be a lens through which all students can be assessed. This more
global perspective may lead to more child-centered instruction and meet the needs of
a greater number of children (Colangelo, 2003).[28]
 This perspective has been criticized on the grounds that it is ad hoc: that Gardner is
not expanding the definition of the word "intelligence", but rather denies the existence
of intelligence as traditionally understood, and instead uses the word "intelligence"
where other people have traditionally used words like "ability" and "aptitude".


 Mental image
 Mind map
 New Epoch Notation Painting
 Picture dictionary
 Rich pictures
 Rudolf Arnheim
 Visual language


 6 References
 7 Sources
 8 Further reading
 9 External links
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
479

ARGUMENT MAPPING
http://www.argunet.org/2013/04/03/so-what-exactly-is-an-argument-map/

So, what exactly is an argument map?

by Christian Voigt, Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013
This is a quick introduction into argument maps: How to create them, how to read them
and what you can expect to get out of it.
An Argunet argument map visualises the structure of complex argumentations and debates as
a graphical network. In this network all nodes are either sentences or arguments and all
relations between them are either attack or support relations.
The reconstruction and visualisation with argument maps can be useful in many ways:
 Argument maps can give you a fast overview over the state of a debate
 Argument maps help you to remember complex argumentation structures
 The logical reconstruction allows a detailed analysis and evaluation of arguments and
dialectic strategies
 Argument maps help to keep focused on relevant parts of the debate by filtering out
irrelevant or redundant information
 Argument maps help concentrate on a rational, fair debate
 Argument maps can guide and structure live discussions. Misunderstandings,
repitition and unfair persuasion techniques can be avoided.
 Argument mapping can be used for presentations or whole seminars

How do I read an argument map?

Argument Maps contain two elements: Sentences and Arguments.

Sentences

Sentences are visualised as small framed white boxes.

Arguments
480

Arguments are visualised as small colored boxes

Reconstructed Arguments

If an argument has been logically reconstructed, the argument is visualised as a small framed
colored box. You can open the logical reconstruction by clicking on it.
Logically an argument consists of nothing else but sentences. But these sentences play
different roles in an argument. Every argument has one inferred sentence (the conclusion) and
at least one sentence from which the conclusion is inferred (a premiss). This premiss-
conclusion structure is visualised as a sentence list: First all premisses of the argument are
listed. Each horizontal line symbolizes an inference. Under the line the conclusion is listed
(sometimes there are preliminary conclusions). Under the last line stands the main conclusion
of the argument.

Support relations
If an argument supports a sentence of another argument, a green arrow is drawn from the
former to the latter.
481

If the arrow is drawn-through, the support relation has been logically reconstructed.
Logically, an argument supports another argument, if the conclusion of the supporting
argument is equivalent to a premiss of the supported argument (”Socrates is mortal”,
“Socrates will die”).

If you click on the arrow, you can see which sentences are defined as equivalent.
If the arrow is dashed, the support relation is only sketched and not logically reconstructed.

Attack relations

If an argument attacks a sentence of another argument, a red arrow is drawn from the former
to the latter.
482

If the arrow is drawn-through, the attack relation has been logically reconstructed. Logically,
an argument attacks another argument, if the conclusion of the supporting argument is
contrary to a premiss of the supported argument (”Socrates is mortal”, “Socrates will never
die”).
If you click on the arrow, you can see which sentences are defined as contrary.

If the arrow is dashed, the support relation is only sketched and not logically reconstructed.

Reading tips
 Start from the center of the debate. Look for the central thesis (sometimes there are
more than one). Open and read all reconstructed arguments that support or attack the
central thesis. Proceed by going from the center to the periphery.
 An attack does not necessarily mean, that the attacked argument is a bad argument. A
support does not necessarily mean the argument is good. It all depends on your
evaluation: How plausible do you find the premisses of the attacking/supporting
argument? Where are the weak points of the argumentation?
 Are the reconstructed arguments really valid? Does the conclusion follow from the
premisses? If the argument is valid and the premisses are true, the conclusion has to
be true, too. Is there a counter-example?
 Naturally, no argument map can contain every argument. The authors have always
made a selection. Are there important arguments missing?
Please read the introduction of the Argunet Editor Help for further information.

Do argument maps tell me, what I should believe?

No, they don’t. Argument maps are just a tool you can use for making up your mind. The
better an argument map is, the more unbiased and neutral it is.
Every argument presupposes premisses. How good the arguments in the argument map are
depends on how plausible their premisses are. The attack and support relations of the
argument map do not determine the plausibility of the premisses, they only limit the
possibilities by relating the plausibilities of different sentences to one another.
483

So, it is really up to you. Argument maps can show you, which questions you have to answer
to make up your mind. They can not answer these questions for you.
Just download Argunet Editor for free. Start Argunet and click on “Create a new debate”.
You can create local debates on your computer or start an online debate to collaborate with
others.

How can I create an argument map?

Follow the instructions in our first Tutorial (All tutorials come with your Argunet installation,
so you do not have to read them online). It won’t take long and will teach you the Argunet
basics.

Is there any difference to mind-mapping?

Yes, there are many differences. Argument maps may remind you of mind maps, because
they look similar. But that’s about it. Mind maps have a different methodology, serve
different purposes and are used by different people. Here are just some important differences:
 Mind maps are used for brainstorming, i.e. the collection of subjective associations,
opinions, ideas of all sorts. Argument maps are used for the logical reconstruction and
analysis of controverse debates. In most cases these debates will take place between
different people with different perspective and not in your mind alone.
 In mind maps the visualisation means to you, what you want it to mean. That may be
great for you, but it is not so great if you want to share the products of your mind with
others. In every Argunet argument map the meaning of all elements always stays the
same and is well defined by logic or argumentation theory. This precision is not only
necessary if you want to assess complex arguments and argumentations. It gives you
also the opportunity to share your insights with others in a common visual language.
 There are no real rules in mind-mapping. You can do what you want. Nobody can say
what is right and what is wrong. In contrast, giving and taking reasons is a rule guided
practice. There are rules about good and bad reasoning. Argument maps can not
guarantee good reasoning. But they can restrict the users options in a way that makes
it more probable. This rule-guided reconstruction makes it possible to collaborate on
argument maps even if the participants have opposing views in the reconstructed
debate.

3 Responses to “So, what exactly is an argument map?”

1.
Ernani Gaspar August 16, 2013
My PhD is related to domain ontologies and their construction process. As a shared
conceptualization, they are discussed by stake holders. Capturing the ontology design
484

rationale might be also approached as an argumentation process. Thus, your approach

seems to converge with my investigation. Do you have the language meta-model? Or
any material from which I can go further in studying the applicability of you work?
Thanks.

Christian Voigt September 11, 2013

Sorry for answering so late.
Thanks for your interest. You might want to check out
http://philpapers.org/rec/BETAAV and other publications of us where we
introduce the theory of dialectical structures.

Argunet Blog

A Blog About Argumentation Theory

We are a team of philosophers with expertise in reconstructing, analysing and teaching
argumentation. Over the years we have developed a couple of tools to facilitate our work. At
the Argunet blog, we share and discuss our experience so far.
 more about us…

Categories
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Alexander Kremling has compiled a vast argument map of Descartes Meditations, which he
presented at the 9th conference of the German Association of Analytic Philosophy.
486

http://www.austhink.com/critical/pages/argument_mapping.html

Home
Argument Mapping
Art
Assessing
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Blogs
Cognitive Biases and Blindspots
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Definitions
Email Lists and Newsletters
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General Resources
Great Critical Thinkers
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Hoaxes, Scams and Urban Legends
487

Institutes, Centers and Societies

Intelligence (military, etc.)
Language and Thought
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Magazines & Journals
The Media
Miscellaneous & Fun
rgument mapping is producing "boxes and arrows" diagrams of reasoning, especially
complex arguments and debates. Argument mapping improves our ability to articulate,
comprehend and communicate reasoning, thereby promoting critical thinking.
Argument Mapping Tutorials from Austhink
Argument mapping is using graphical methods to display the structure of reasoning and
argumentation. The technique is essential for advanced critical thinking. Without mapping,
it is very hard to be clear about the structure of evidence; and without such clarity, critical
responses usually misfire. These six extensive tutorials cover the fundamentals of argument
mapping, from elementary inferences through to the most complex arguments. Each tutorial
contains concepts, principles, and vocabulary; a quiz; and exercises with model answers.
Can Computers Think?
Website for the classic series of maps on whether computers can think.
Robert Horn
Website of one of the pioneers of argument mapping. Contains links to many maps.
Austhink Argument Mapping
Argument mapping page at the website of the Austhink, leaders in the application of
argument mapping in education and in professional contexts.
Visualizing Argumentation: Software Tools for Collaborative and Educational Sense-Making
by Paul A. Kirschner,
Simon J. Buckingham Shum and Chad S. Carr (Eds)
Important new volume on argument mapping, from Springer-Verlag. Probably the first book
on the topic; contains contributions from many leading players in the field. This website
contains many resources and links beyond what is found in the book. [23 Nov 02]
Dialog Mapping page of CogNexus Institute
Dialog is a close cousin of argument mapping.
Using Maps to Compose Research Papers
A simple online powerpoint presentation discussing producing argument maps for use in
preparing to write research papers. Worth a quick look.

Essays
Beyond Words - Bob Holmes, New Scientist
Good overview of visual language and argument mapping, focusing mostly on Bob Horn's
work.
Mapping the Future of Argument by Paul Monk, which appeared in the Australian Financial
Review
488

Broad historical/philosophical overview of argument mapping and its place in human

intellectual development.
Enhancing our Grasp of Complex Arguments by Paul Monk and Tim van Gelder
An overview of the use of argument mapping to augment our capacity to handle complex
reasoning and argumentation, and to improve deliberative judgment. This paper was
presented by Paul Monk as a plenary address to the 2004 Fenner Conference on the
Environment, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, 24 May 2004. [15 June 04]
Discussion of the use of argument maps in teaching philosophy in the online journal Psyche.
Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking, by Charles Twardy.
"Computer-based argument mapping greatly enhances student critical thinking, more than
tripling absolute gains made by other methods. I describe the method and my experience as
an outsider. Argument mapping often showed precisely how students were erring (for
example: confusing helping premises for separate reasons), making it much easier for them to
fix their errors." [5 Jun 03]
The IBIS Manual: A Short Course in IBIS Methodology by Jeff Conklin?
Short guide to IBIS, a method for helping groups think their way through "wicked" problems
(e.g., should the US invade Iraq?). "IBIS (pronounced "eye-bis") stands for Issue-Based
Information System, and was developed by Horst Rittel and colleagues during the early
1970's. IBIS was developed to provide a simple yet formal structure for the discussion and
exploration of "wicked" problems....The purpose of this manual is to explain the rules of the
IBIS method, to convey a sense of the power, simplicity, and ease of use of the method and,
most importantly, to give the reader confidence that he or she can use the IBIS method to
sharpen and organize the exploration of virtually any topic." [11 Feb 03]
Some of Philosophy's Next Problems by Robert Horn (powerpoint)
Expansive discussion of how we think and how we represent what we think, and their
interaction. Argument mapping and much more. [22 Jan 04]
GlobalArgument.Net
GlobalArgument.net is an experiment to evaluate different Computer-Supported
Argumentation approaches: both the technologies, and the 'craft skill' of using them
effectively. Our two-fold objectives are to: showcase how complex debates of topical interest
can be more effectively communicated, navigated and analysed when mapped in software
tools; and advance the state of the art in practical argumentation support tools. Players
participate in Argumentation Experiments, working to an agreed schedule and from common
sources. Through systematic comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of approaches, we
aim to clarify how approaches can be improved. [20 Apr 05]

Software
Rationale
By far the best software for general argument mapping. Supports three modes: simple
hierarchical structuring of ideas, basic argument mapping, and "analysis," which enables
construction of diagrams properly representing the complexity of real-world reasoning. [23
Jul 06]
489

Reason!Able
The precursor to Rationale, now superseded. Reason!Able guides and scaffolds users in
reasoning about any topic.
Araucaria
"Araucaria is a software tool for analysing arguments. It aids a user in reconstructing and
diagramming an argument using a simple point-and-click interface..." [26 Apr 02]
Athena
Argument mapping software. "The Athena software is designed to support analysis and
production of reasoning and argumentation by students in higher education at undergraduate
and postgraduate levels." [19 Jun 02]
Compendium
Compendium is a software package supporting IBIS-based dialog mapping. Not really
argument mapping, but closely related, and this is the best tool of its kind. [11 Feb 03]
Theseus
Software-based package for critical thinking in schools. Includes simple a argument
mapping tool, a process, and a guidebook. [25 Jul 05]

Online
Debate Mapper
Peter Baldwin's web tool for collective mapping of complex debates. "DebateMapper (patent
pending) is a new software application designed to help address this problem. Fully web-
enabled, it allows global communities of users to collaborate in building and evaluating large-
scale diagrammatic representations, termed Argument Maps, of the structure of complex
controversies. Such maps can be filtered and sorted in different ways, and the basic
argumentative elements evaluated by a user community. Each user can create and store
Selective views reflecting different assumptions. By using recent web and database
technologies, DebateMapper can support very large and complex map structures." [6 Sep
04]
TruthMapping.Com
An online collaborative argument mapping system. "TruthMapping.com is a free tool that
provides a focused, rational method for adversarial discussion (patent pending) that
overcomes the limitations of standard message boards, e-mail and even conversation; it is a
site for persons who believe that reasoning should be at the heart of public debate." [16 Aug
05]

Email Lists
Argumap
Email discussion forum for people interested in the theory and practice of argument mapping.
TheismArgumaps
"What is not new: The purpose of the group is to explore arguments for and against the
existence of God. What IS New: To then use this information to construct formalised
argument maps (or diagrams) showing how all the different arguments fit together."
490

VIMS - QuestMap-Dialog Mapping Discussion Forum

"This discussion space is for questions, ideas, stories, experiences, concerns, and insights
about the collaborative tools of IBIS, QuestMap, and Dialog Mapping. It is intended
primarily for graduates of the Dialog Mapping workshop, although anyone is welcome to
participate. I hope that this group will encourage public experimentation and learning with
these tools."
compendiuminstitute
"This is a general mailing list for news and discussion of interest to Compendium Institute
members." May also be of interest to non-members. According to one member, "It's pretty
light traffic at present and most of the discussion is about the Compendium tool itself, but
that could change." Sign up to stay in the loop. [4 Nov 03]
Last updated: 19 Jun 2007

https://f66ddba0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/timvangelder/publications-
1/argument-
mapping/ArgumentMappingEncycSubmissionFinal.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7co8SxKhK_IW8t
9UC0fXaBWVFEQjBUmUspTsijS35OlE1mLiOc8rgCCTkkMFtp5TYNsRISb2ctuj1AR90L
U4Rp8qxjX8mxYEB0Q_61kY-
aBLCcIgr95Wjc9S4Z_e1OUYeH6lwngOArP07mHsvbSCbG6BzRWb8RY-
Y30WexyT2KxOfrqzlKWSlTiYy7d9nurrh-sljalnZ9ViV9J4KKO-
Bm8q34M8UL9gyOc5iEL4DnyVHlL0ujJCFPbTUqtmSFmcPLxx5bClTsOZ9DhB3k3iLtYS
LNO0PU3EKkDmby1xeeiX-eUHrSY%3D&attredirects=0

https://timvangelder.com/2009/02/17/what-is-argument-mapping/

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/complex.php

Argument analysis
 A01. What is an argument?
 A02. The standard format
 A03. Validity
 A04. Soundness
 A05. Valid patterns
 A06. Validity and relevance
 A07. Hidden Assumptions
 A08. Inductive Reasoning
 A09. Good Arguments
 A10. Argument mapping
 A11. Analogical Arguments
 A12. More valid patterns
491

 A13. Arguing with other people

An (simple) argument is a set of one or more premise with a conclusion. A complex argument
is a set of arguments with either overlapping premises or conclusions (or both). Complex
arguments are very common because many issues and debates are complicated and involve
extended reasoning. To understand complex arguments, we need to analyze the logical
structure of the reasoning involved. Drawing a diagram can be very helpful.

§1. Argument maps

An argument map is a diagram that captures the logical structure of a simple or complex
argument. In the simplest possible case, we have a single premise supporting a single
conclusion.
http://www.jostwald.com/ArgumentMapping/ARGUMENT%20MAPPING.pdf

ARGUMENT MAPPING – THE BASICS

These sheets are based on the heuristics and Rationale software developed by Austhink (
www.austhink.com
).
Introduction
The Syntax of an Argument Map
Argument mapping is a way to
visually show the logical structure of
arguments. You break up an
argument into its constituent claims,
and use lines, boxes, colors and
location to indicate the relationships
between the various parts. The
resulting map allows us to see exactly
how each part of an argument is
related to every other part.
Definitions
•
Argument
: a claim and reason(s)
to believe that that claim is true.
•
Conclusion
: the main point an
argument is trying to prove,
usually a belief. Also called the
position, the main claim, the issue
at hand.
•
Reason
: evidence given to support
the conclusion.
•
Co-premise
: the subset of a reason.
Every reason has at least two co-
premises, and each of these co-
premises must be true for the
reason to support the claim.
•
Objection
: a ‘reason’ that a claim
is
false
; evidence against a claim
•
Rebuttal
: an objection to an
objection.
Things To Note
•
Arguments can have many claims, many reasons, many objections and rebuttals, but only
one
conclusion.
•
Distinguish a claim with a single reason (made up of two
co-premises) from a claim w
492

ith two independent reasons.

•
Every argument is made up of one or more simple arguments. A
simple argument
is the building block of all
arguments, consisting of one claim and one reason (with two or more co-premises). A
complex argument
, like the
one above, has several simple arguments linked together. In
the example above, there are
four simple arguments, one
objection, and one rebuttal. Together, they form a
debate
.
•
The exact structure of an argument is very important. For example, if side A has two good reasons to conclude
something, and their opponent (side B) thinks one of those reasons is bad, then A’s conclusion may still be
true/warranted
if
the remaining, unobjected-t
o reason is convincing.
•
An argument map can represent a debate by showing exac
tly where two sides disagree on the issue. In the above
example, side B disagrees with side A’s conclusion, even
though it accepts the reasons (1 and 2) that A gives. It
disagrees with A’s conclusion because of a separate objection to the conclusion. Side A rebuts the objection of side
B, thus (it hopes) invalidating the objection and saving its conclusion.
•
Remember that an argument map shows th
e structure of the argument/debate – ev
ery box is not necessarily true, but
the first step is to understand the structure of the argument. Only then can y

https://www.rationaleonline.com/

http://www.reasoninglab.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Argument-Mapping-at-Work-
2013.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map

In informal logic and philosophy, an argument map or argument diagram is a visual

representation of the structure of an argument. An argument map typically includes the key
components of the argument, traditionally called the conclusion and the premises, also called
contention and reasons.[1] Argument maps can also show co-premises, objections,
counterarguments, rebuttals, and lemmas. There are different styles of argument map but they
are often functionally equivalent and represent an argument's individual claims and the
relationships between them.
Argument maps are commonly used in the context of teaching and applying critical
thinking.[2] The purpose of mapping is to uncover the logical structure of arguments, identify
unstated assumptions, evaluate the support an argument offers for a conclusion, and aid
understanding of debates. Argument maps are often designed to support deliberation of
issues, ideas and arguments in wicked problems.[3]
An argument map is not to be confused with a concept map or a mind map, two other kinds
of node–link diagram which have different constraints on nodes and links.

Contents
 1 Key features of an argument map
 2 Representing an argument as an argument map
493

 3 History
o 3.1 The philosophical origins and tradition of argument mapping
o 3.2 Anglophone argument diagramming in the 20th century
 4 Applications
o 4.1 Difficulties with the philosophical tradition
o 4.2 Evidence that argument mapping improves critical thinking ability
o 4.3 How argument mapping helps with critical thinking
 5 Standards
o 5.1 Argument Interchange Format
o 5.2 Legal Knowledge Interchange Format
 6 See also
 7 Notes
 8 References
 9 Further reading
 10 External links
o 10.1 Argument mapping software
o 10.2 Online, collaborative software

Key features of an argument map

A number of different kinds of argument map have been proposed but the most common,
which Chris Reed and Glenn Rowe called the standard diagram,[4] consists of a tree structure
with each of the reasons leading to the conclusion. There is no consensus as to whether the
conclusion should be at the top of the tree with the reasons leading up to it or whether it
should be at the bottom with the reasons leading down to it.[4] Another variation diagrams an
argument from left to right.[5]
According to Doug Walton and colleagues, an argument map has two basic components:
"One component is a set of circled numbers arrayed as points. Each number represents a
proposition (premise or conclusion) in the argument being diagrammed. The other component
is a set of lines or arrows joining the points. Each line (arrow) represents an inference. The
whole network of points and lines represents a kind of overview of the reasoning in the given
argument..."[6] With the introduction of software for producing argument maps, it has become
common for argument maps to consist of boxes containing the actual propositions rather than
numbers referencing those propositions.
There is disagreement on the terminology to be used when describing argument maps,[7] but
the standard diagram contains the following structures:
494

Dependent premises or co-premises, where at least one of the joined premises requires
another premise before it can give support to the conclusion: An argument with this structure
has been called a linked argument.[8]

Argument mapping software

 Araucaria (open source, cross platform/Java)
 Argumentative (open source, Windows); supports single-user, graphical
argumentation
 Argunet (open source, cross platform)
 Compendium (open source, cross platform/Java)
 iLogos (cross platform/Java)
 OVA (Web based, Online Visualisation of Argument)
 PIRIKA (PIlot for the RIght Knowledge and Argument) (open source, Linux,
Windows)
 The Reasoning PowerPoint App (PowerPoint add-in, Windows 2007 or later)

Google images for many Argument

maps

goo.gl/0J33gD
495