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Archive for the ‘Connections’ Category

Intuition, X-Phi, and Appeal to Expert Authority

Posted in Connections, Discussion, tagged , , , , on March 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Here’s an interesting bit of controversy over at Leiter’s blog.  Let us leave aside for the moment that the comment spurring it largely constitutes a (pervasive) misunderstanding of what experimental philosophy is and claims to do.  (A better picture of experimental philosophy can be obtained here.)What I find interesting about it is that one thing that seems to be needed in the conversation that follows in the comment thread is a decent analysis of what it means to appeal to expert authority.

Now where, oh where, would they ever find the kind of analysis they need, I wonder?

Heh.  😉

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Posted in Argumentation, Connections, Fallacies, Uncategorized on March 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It seems to me that these reasons are not sufficient to prefer men (or white, straight, wealthy, able-bodied, etc. people) over other people. It’s not sufficient because the sorts of impressions addressed here while quite ubiquitous are of minor relevance to what makes a good …. whatever the issue is. Speakers need more than an authoritative voice, and also a social significance that can be parsed in many different ways. Track records can also be assessed in different ways and being established by track record in any case may also indicate entrenchment in outdated approaches and even burnout or over-exposure. The person who attracts an audience is also not necessarily the person who makes the greatest impression on an audience.

Yet it seems argumentation theory ought to be able to provide a clearer means for dismissing these sorts of appeals.  In a hierarchical society hierarchical social categories such as gender and race are sometimes relevant, but how can we show the (severe) limitation of that relevance?  Is generic status ever sufficient reason to promote or prefer a person?

annejjacobson's avatarFeminist Philosophers

In a sexist society where there is a very long tradition of women being excluded from a wide range of desirable public roles, we should expect many of the following things to be said of men and these roles:

People expect a man to be doing X.
People associate manliness with important features of this role. (E.g., a male voice has more authority.)
Men have much more of a proven track record at X.
(Some) men will have much more of an audience than any woman does.

So what do we think of appealing to such beliefs as a reason to favor picking only men for such roles? One response is to label it as the ‘Sexism Wins’ strategy, with the implication that the actions are sexist. What would you suggest? Notice that the strategy is different from the frequently false response to the effect that there just aren’t any…

View original post 90 more words

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CFP: Symposium on Influencing People with Information

Posted in Argumentation, CFP, Computation, Connections, tagged , , , , , , , on March 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

First Announcement and Call for Papers

Symposium “Influencing People with Information”
University of Aberdeen, Wednesday 25 April 2012.
How can a web site help you decide how best to travel? Can a computer explain your patient record to you? Does instant feedback on petrol use change how people drive? This symposium will ask how information can influence people, and how the manner in which the information is presented can make a difference. It will bring together researchers working on natural language generation, information presentation, behaviour change, argumentation and decision support.
For the last 5 years, researchers at the University of Aberdeen have investigated how information expressed in natural language can affect a recipient in terms of his/her knowledge, actions and emotions. Now, a Symposium supported by the Scottish Computer Science and Informatics Alliance (SICSA) will widen the focus from language, addressing a range of research questions about the ways in which information, and the presentation of information, can influence people. The aim of the symposium is to hear a range of views on this topic, including both established and young (e.g., PhD student) researchers, and to explore ideas for future research and funding in this mutidisciplinary area. The symposium aims to cover empirical as well as computational work (e.g., including experimental psychology).

We solicit submission of 500-1000-word abstracts in pdf format. Submissions should be submitted using Easychair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sipi2012

 

For further information, see the above-mentioned Symposium web site.

 

Feel free to forward to interested parties.

 

Submission of abstracts: 28 March 2012
Symposium date: 25 April 2012

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Stations: Argumentation Around the Web

Posted in Connections, Discussion, tagged , , , , , , on March 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Though I’ve been keeping up with the CFP’s, RAIL readers may have noted that I’ve not been posting much else. Apologies for that! Deadlines, deadlines. 🙂 At times like these I try to assuage my guilt for not writing more of my share of the content here by pointing RAIL readers to interesting posts on other blogs. I may be bogged down with research and writing, but the argumentation blogosphere outside of RAIL is alive and well too. As proof, I humbly suggest to you the following very worthy reads:

First up, check out A Toulminian approach to thought experiments, by our good friend-blog Argumentics. In this post you’ll find the writer’s usual insightful and knowledgeable article analysis, this time on the use of thought experiments in philosophy and in science. Those who are familiar with Maurice Finocchiaro’s work on Galileo might want to read the entire serious of posts at Argumentics on this issue. It’s good stuff. So is the series of posts on Searle’s Chinese Room argument. In fact, just add this blog to your bookmarks. It’s consistently great.

Also consistently great is Jean Goodwin’s blog Between Scientists and Citizens. Though not as prolific as Argumentics (with whom I challenge anyone to keep up), Between Scientists and Citizens consistently serves up gems like this one: Burden of Proof #1: Managing our own thinking, In this post Jean identifies an all-too-familiar argumentative use of the concept of burden-of-proof that, while general in scope, will resonate with readers who have been enjoying Cate’s recent posts too.

Lastly I suggest The dismal state of political discourse, over at Tim Van Gelder’s blog. The reason I suggest it isn’t so much because there’s novel conceptual analysis to be had, but because it’s a wonderful example of van Gelder’s hallmark: practical application of ideas from argumentation theory to concrete problems. This time the problem being taken on is the need for better communication between ordinary citizens and political institutions in Australia.  It’s an interesting project that deserves to be better known. Have a look!

Also, don’t forget to check out the Twitter feed in the top right corner of the page next to the posts or just follow us: @RAILBlog

Happy Reading!

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Ad feminam

Posted in Connections, Discussion, Fallacies, Informal Logic, tagged , , , , , on March 4, 2012| 4 Comments »

Rush Limbaugh’s recent dismissal of Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” reminds me of how much more vulnerable women are than men to the abusive ad hominem.  There is a a greater number of abusive words associated with women:  add “whore,” “bitch,” “cunt,” “old maid,” “hag,” “bag,” “jezebel,” “hoochie mama,” etc., as opposed to “prick,” “dick,” and “boy toy.”  Plus the feminine insults tend to be considered so bad that people often won’t actually say them, but only allude to them, for instance in saying “the c-word.”

On top of that, women tend not to be listened to, so the ad hominem may always be more effective against women.  Merely pointing out that a speaker is a woman may act as reason to ignore her. The same would apply to any marginalized people.  One’s very identity can undermine one’s claims and one’s reasons.

Lorraine Code has argued in a few places that the dismissal of women’s reasons for being women’s reasons should be identified as ad feminam.  The vulnerability of women to ad hominem suggests indeed that ad feminam deserves recognition as a distinct category.

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Cartwright on argumentation? Rock on!

Posted in Argumentation, Connections, tagged , , on March 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes!  But it’s true.  Nancy Cartwright, bad-girl of philosophy of science, denier of laws of nature, champion of singular causation, is giving a lecture on argumentation on March 8 at Western’s Rotman Institute for Philosophy.  To me it’s as if Gaga were to take her lyrics from Wittgenstein.

The lecture will be streamed live and available later on-line.

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Women in logic

Posted in Connections, Critical Thinking, Discussion, Humor, Logic, tagged , , , , , , on February 22, 2012| 17 Comments »

This [a disconnected link to a logic course webpage] is no way to get women into logic.  The “naughty schoolgirls” Vince Hendricks, an editor of Synthese, probably the most prestigious epistemology journal, anticipates in his logic class will surprise the rest of us.  The kinderwhore fashion is ten years out of date and provides too little clothing for Copenhagen.  In all seriousness, it’s such a throwback (except for the iPod) that I thought it was The Onion.

Hendricks gradually removed the images, beginning with these, which I caught with screen shots.  The page was changed to indicate they come from a magazine spread, which does not mitigate Hendricks’ choice to use cheesecake to advertise logic.  Perhaps mooning is a new transformation rule that he’s taught his students?

A similar arrogance, though not specifically sexist, was noted on the part of Hendricks by the Leiter Report, when he shut down criticisms of creationism.  Leiter  credits the  feminist philosophers blog for breaking the cheesecake story, (I thank them for my first joke,) and you can find more discussion there.  But here on RAIL are the screen shots everyone has asked for as a record of what logic looks like without feminism, even now.

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CFP: 14th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR 2012)

Posted in Argumentation, CFP, Computation, Connections, Logic, tagged , , , , , , on February 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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

CALL FOR PAPERS

NMR 2012

14th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning (NMR 2012)

http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/NMR12/

Co-located with KR 2012, DL 2012, KiBP 2012, CILC 2012, AI*IA 2012

Rome, Italy

June 8-10, 2012

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

AIMS AND SCOPE

The NMR workshop series is the premier specialized forum for researchers in
non-monotonic reasoning and related areas. This will be the 14th workshop in
the series. Its aim is to bring together active researchers in the broad area
of non-monotonic reasoning, including belief revision, reasoning about
actions, argumentation, declarative programming, preferences, non-monotonic
reasoning for ontologies, uncertainty, and other related topics.

In this year, NMR will share a joint session together with the International
Workshop on Description Logics (DL 2012).

TOPICS

NMR 2012 welcomes the submission of papers broadly centered on issues and
research in non-monotonic reasoning. We welcome papers of either a
theoretical or practical nature. Topics of interest include (but are not
limited to): (more…)

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Workshop: Formal Methods in Argument Reconstruction

Posted in Computation, Connections, Rationality, Workshops, tagged , , , , , , on January 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The purpose of this international workshop is to bring together researchers who apply formal methods, widely understood, to natural language argumentation in order to provide a reconstruction which can provide the basis for an evaluation.

A related objective is to make the state of the art accessible to audiences who predominantly reconstruct natural language argumentation with more traditional formal or informal tools.

The workshop will be held 20-21 September 2012, following the GAP.8 conference at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

(more…)

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NASSLLI 2012

Posted in Announcements, Connections, Seminar/Workshop/Program Announcements, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The fifth North American Summer School of Logic, Language, and Information, NASSLLI 2012, will be hosted at the University of Texas at Austin, on June 18–22, 2012.

Overview

NASSLLI is a one-week summer school aimed at formally-minded graduate students in Philosophy, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, and related fields, especially students whose interests cross over traditional boundaries between these domains. The summer school is loosely modeled on the long-running ESSLLI series in Europe; it consists of a number of courses and workshops which, by default, meet for 90 minutes on each of five days.

Courses

In the main week of the school, students select up to five courses from among twenty that are offered. Of these courses, five are from specially invited lecturers, and the remainder are researchers selected because they are leaders in their fields and also because they have proven ability to communicate with interdisciplinary audiences. These instructors were selected after a public call for course proposals and a peer review process by the program committee, which is drawn from a wide range of specialities including linguistics, philosophy, and computer science. Over 45 course proposals were submitted for NASSLLI 2012. These were high quality proposals by established scholars, mostly tenured or tenure-track at research universities, and many strong proposals had to be rejected. The acceptance rate for course proposals was 30%. (more…)

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