Reason and Argument

Reason and Argument PDF Author: Richard Feldman
Publisher: Pearson Higher Ed
ISBN: 1292052937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This text presents a clear and philosophically sound method for identifying, interpreting, and evaluating arguments as they appear in non-technical sources. It focuses on a more functional, real-world goal of argument analysis as a tool for figuring out what is reasonable to believe rather than as an instrument of persuasion. Methods are illustrated by applying them to arguments about different topics as they appear in a variety of contexts — e.g., newspaper editorials and columns, short essays, informal reports of scientific results, etc.

Reason and Argument

Reason and Argument PDF Author: Richard Feldman
Publisher: Pearson Higher Ed
ISBN: 1292052937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book

Book Description
This text presents a clear and philosophically sound method for identifying, interpreting, and evaluating arguments as they appear in non-technical sources. It focuses on a more functional, real-world goal of argument analysis as a tool for figuring out what is reasonable to believe rather than as an instrument of persuasion. Methods are illustrated by applying them to arguments about different topics as they appear in a variety of contexts — e.g., newspaper editorials and columns, short essays, informal reports of scientific results, etc.

Reason and Argument

Reason and Argument PDF Author: Peter T. Geach
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520032897
Category : Philosophy
Languages : es
Pages : 116

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Book Description


Think Again

Think Again PDF Author: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190627123
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Subtitle in pre-publication: How to reason and argue--and why.

Reason and Argument

Reason and Argument PDF Author: Richard Feldman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reasoning
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description


On Reasoning and Argument

On Reasoning and Argument PDF Author: David Hitchcock
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319535625
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
This book brings together in one place David Hitchcock’s most significant published articles on reasoning and argument. In seven new chapters he updates his thinking in the light of subsequent scholarship. Collectively, the papers articulate a distinctive position in the philosophy of argumentation. Among other things, the author:• develops an account of “material consequence” that permits evaluation of inferences without problematic postulation of unstated premises.• updates his recursive definition of argument that accommodates chaining and embedding of arguments and allows any type of illocutionary act to be a conclusion. • advances a general theory of relevance.• provides comprehensive frameworks for evaluating inferences in reasoning by analogy, means-end reasoning, and appeals to considerations or criteria.• argues that none of the forms of arguing ad hominem is a fallacy.• describes proven methods of teaching critical thinking effectively.

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea PDF Author: Victor Reppert
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830874651
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Who ought to hold claim to the more dangerous idea--Charles Darwin or C. S. Lewis? Daniel Dennett argued for Darwin in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Touchstone Books, 1996). In this book Victor Reppert champions C. S. Lewis. Darwinists attempt to use science to show that our world and its inhabitants can be fully explained as the product of a mindless, purposeless system of physics and chemistry. But Lewis claimed in his argument from reason that if such materialism or naturalism were true then scientific reasoning itself could not be trusted. Victor Reppert believes that Lewis's arguments have been too often dismissed. In C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea Reppert offers careful, able development of Lewis's thought and demonstrates that the basic thrust of Lewis's argument from reason can bear up under the weight of the most serious philosophical attacks. Charging dismissive critics, Christian and not, with ad hominem arguments, Reppert also revisits the debate and subsequent interaction between Lewis and the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. And addressing those who might be afflicted with philosophical snobbery, Reppert demonstrates that Lewis's powerful philosophical instincts perhaps ought to place him among those other thinkers who, by contemporary standards, were also amateurs: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume. But even more than this, Reppert's work exemplifies the truth that the greatness of Lewis's mind is best measured, not by his ability to do our thinking for us, but by his capacity to provide sound direction for taking our own thought further up and further in.

For the Sake of Argument

For the Sake of Argument PDF Author: Eugene Garver
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226283968
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
What role does reason play in our lives? What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character. Eugene Garver brings Aristotle's Rhetoric to bear on practical reasoning to show how the value of such thinking emerges when members of communities deliberate together, persuade each other, and are persuaded by each other. That is to say, when they argue. Garver roots deliberation and persuasion in political friendship instead of a neutral, impersonal framework of justice. Through incisive readings of examples in modern legal and political history, from Brown v. Board of Education to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he demonstrates how acts of deliberation and persuasion foster friendship among individuals, leading to common action amid diversity. In an Aristotelian sense, there is a place for pathos and ethos in rational thought. Passion and character have as pivotal a role in practical reasoning as logic and language.

Modeling Legal Argument

Modeling Legal Argument PDF Author: Kevin D. Ashley
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
"Modeling Legal Argument "provides a comprehensive treatment of case-based reasoning and a detailed description of a computer program called Hypo, that models the way attorneys argue with cases, real and hypothetical. The program offers significant advantages over "keyword" case retrieval systems in the legal field and demonstrates how to design expert systems that assist the user by presenting reasonable alternative answers on all sides of an issue and by citing case examples to explain their advice.Hypo analyzes problem situations dealing with trade secrets disputes, retrieves relevant legal cases from its database and fashions them into reasonable legal arguments about who should win. The arguments demonstrate the program's ability to reason symbolically with past cases, to draw factual analogies between cases, to cite them in arguments, to distinguish them, and to pose counter-examples and hypotheticals based on past cases."Modeling Legal Argument "discusses the law as a paradigm of case-based argument, introduces Hypo and its adversarial reasoning process, provides an overview of the Hypo program, and gives extended examples of the model's reasoning capabilities. It describes the case knowledge base, a dimensional index, basic mechanisms of case-based reasoning, and offers a theory of case-based argument in Hypo. Ashley evaluates Hypo's performance and takes up adversarial case-based reasoning beyond the law and extensions of the Hypo model.Kevin D. Ashley is a Research Scientist at the Learning Research an Development Center and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh. "Modeling Legal Argument is "included in the Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning series, edited by L. Thorne McCarty and Edwina L. Rissland.

The Enigma of Reason

The Enigma of Reason PDF Author: Hugo Mercier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
“Brilliant...Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times “Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.” —Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs. “Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant...Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?...Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker “Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.” —Financial Times “The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.” —Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

The Fundamentals of Argument Analysis

The Fundamentals of Argument Analysis PDF Author: Richard L Epstein
Publisher: Advanced Reasoning Forum
ISBN: 193842106X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This series of books presents the fundamentals of logic in a style accessible to both students and scholars. The text of each essay presents a story, the main line of development of the ideas, while the notes and appendices place the research within a larger scholarly context. The essays overlap, forming a unified analysis of logic as the art of reasoning well, yet each essay is designed so that it may be read independently. The question addressed in this volume is how we can justify our beliefs through reasoning. The first essay, "Arguments," investigates what it is that we call true or false and how we reason toward truths through arguments. A general theory of argument analysis is set out on the basis of what we can assume about those with whom we reason. The next essay, "Fallacies," explains how the classification of an argument as a fallacy can be used within that general approach. In contrast, there is no agreement on what the terms "induction" and "deduction" mean, and they are not useful in evaluating arguments, as shown in "Induction and Deduction." In reasoning to truths, in the end we must take some claims as basic, not requiring any justification for accepting them. How we choose those claims and how they affect our reasoning is examined in "Base Claims." The essay "Analogies" considers how comparisons can be used as the basis of arguments, arguing from similar situations to similar conclusions. An important use of analogies is in reasoning about the mental life of other people and things, which is examined in "Subjective Claims," written with Fred Kroon and William S. Robinson. "Generalizing" examines how to argue from part of a collection or mass to the whole or a larger part. The question there is whether we are ever justified in accepting such an argument as good. "Probabilities" sets out the three main ways probability statements have been interpreted: the logical relation view, the frequency view, and the subjective degree of belief view. Each of those is shown to be inadequate to make precise the scale of plausibility of claims and the scale of the likelihood of a possibility. Many discussions of how to reason well and what counts as good reason are given in terms of who or what is rational. In the final essay, "Rationality," it's shown that what we mean by the idea of someone being rational is of very little use in evaluating reasoning or actions. This volume is meant to give a clearer idea of how to reason well, setting out methods of evaluation that are motivated in terms of our abilities and interests. At the ground of our reasoning, though, are metaphysical assumptions, too basic and too much needed in our reasoning for us to justify them through reasoning. But we can try to uncover those assumptions to see how they are important and what depends on them.