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Open Positions in Formal Argumentation Research

December 8, 2011 by SP

PhD positions Forensic Science (2,0 fte)

Job description

These two PhD positions are part of the project “Designing and
Understanding Forensic Bayesian Networks with Arguments and Scenarios”
that is funded by the Netherlands Institute for Scientific Research in
the Forensic Science program (www.nwo.nl/forensicscience). The project
is a cooperation of the University of Groningen (Department of
Artificial Intelligence) and Utrecht University (Department of
Information and Computing Sciences) supported by partners from
forensic legal practice. Continue Reading »

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Cogency vol. 3 no.1 Now Available

December 8, 2011 by SP

RAIL is happy to announce the appearance of the latest issue of the journal Cogency!  

Click on the image to the right to view the table of contents for this issue.  The articles named therein make me wish this weren’t final exam season. Among them is an article by Tony Blair on the moral normativity of argumentation, an issue by Scott Aikin on how the rhetorical model of argument is self-defeating, and a note on practical reasoning by Gilbert Harman just to name a few. All the articles aren’t available for download yet but I’m assured that they will be soon. The editorial, which is available for download at the present time, gives a brief synopsis of the articles.  (It also gives a fairly comprehensive listing of recent and ongoing conferences in argumentation theory.) Happy reading!

Posted in Announcements, Informal Logic, Pragma-dialectics, Rationality, Rhetoric | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Dancing an Explanation

December 3, 2011 by SP

Some readers of RAIL may already with John Bohannon’s brilliant competition Dance your PhD.  In the video below, given at a TED event in Brussels, Bohannon generalizes the point that Dance your PhD essentially makes: Explanations can be effectively delivered in any number of ways.  Though the suggestion that dancers might replace the ubiquitous and dreaded PowerPoint is a bit tongue-in-cheek to be sure, I think that the observations Bohannon makes here about it’s pitfalls are spot on and worthy of consideration.

I have to admit that I’m also seized with curiosity as to how or even whether this could be done with arguments.  At the very least the results would put a whole new “spin” on Michael Gilbert‘s theory of visceral argument. 🙂

Enjoy.

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SEP Entry on Informal Logic Updated

December 3, 2011 by SP

Just a quick announcement here to let you know that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Informal Logic has been updated by author Leo Groarke.  The update is a substantial one and includes a great many new resources in the links section.  Thanks are due to Leo for his work on this. Do check it out!

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Informal Logic vol. 31 no. 4, on Charles Hamblin

December 2, 2011 by SP

Informal Logic vol. 31 no. 4

The latest edition of Informal Logic, dedicated to topics emerging from Charles Hamblin’s landmark 1970 work, Fallacies, is now available.  Contributing authors to this volume include Jim Mackenzie, Douglas Walton, Ralph Johnson, Fabrizio Macagno, and Jan Ablert van Laar and John Woods.It’s an interesting and welcome collection of essays with entries that range from developments of Hamblin’s ideas to criticism of the same.  In the latter category is John Woods’s highly recommended essay “Whither Consequence?”. Those interested in foundational questions of informal logic (for instance, whether informal logic is rightly called logic in the first place) will find Woods’s discussion of Hamblin’s views on induction very stimulating indeed.  It is an important discussion not just for informal logicians and argumentation theorists, but for logicians of all denominations. It easily is one of the best essays of the year.

Having had only the opportunity to peruse the other entries at this point I have to say that I’m very much looking forward to reading them too. If they are as interesting and insightful as I believe they are on the basis of what I’ve seen of them, then this issue of Informal Logic is a worthy tribute to the enduring importance of Charles Hamblin’s work and its impact on our field.

 

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CFP: NORDISCO 2012

November 29, 2011 by SP

The 2nd Nordic Interdisciplinary Conference on Discourse and Interaction, NORDISCO 2012  will be held 21.11.12-23.11.12 at Linköping University, Sweden.

First call for papers:

Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 March 2012 –

After its initial successes in Aalborg, Denmark, in November 2010, NORDISCO is emerging as a biennial event, whose goal is to create a Nordic and Baltic forum bringing together researchers and doctoral students who are investigating discourse and interaction from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. It is now our pleasure at Linköping University, Sweden, to host NORDISCO 2012, in the hope that the second Nordic and Baltic interdisciplinary conference will give rise to creative synergies and facilitate new networks, crossing both geographical and disciplinary borders. The focus of the conference is on the organisation, structure and constitution of text, discourse, talk and social interaction. We therefore welcome researchers’ contributions from different and diverse fields of enquiry, including – but not limited to – discourse studies, conversation analysis, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, interaction analysis, rhetoric, narrative analysis, discourse theory, political discourse analysis, social semiotics, multimodal discourse analysis, applied linguistics, gesture studies and communication activism, as well as approaches to discourse and interaction to be found in sociology, political science, environmental science, economics, media studies and cultural studies. Continue Reading »

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Name-dropping

November 22, 2011 by Cate Hundleby

This article from the Denver Post stresses the usefulness of philosophy, including how “emphasis on informal and symbolic logic” helps with computer science.  In accounts of philosophy curricula, unfortunately, reference to informal logic is typically just name-dropping, as the textbook authors are mostly not scholars in the field, and instructors rarely have any relevant training.  That seems to be the case here:  Colorado State has only one logician on faculty, and he specializes in formal logic.

This problem is deeply ironic, for the scholarship being neglected was developed for the very purpose of filling the gap between logical theory and logical practice. Much scholarship in symbolic logic may be irrelevant to undergraduate pedagogy, but informal logic is a movement developed substantially for the purpose of creating an approach to logic that would be more relevant to students.

When philosophers appeal to “informal logic” or philosophers claim ownership over the teaching of “critical thinking,” it verges on fraud.  The baiting with informal logic scholarship devoted to critical thinking and switching it for a loose distillation of the cultural standards in the discipline of philosophy is going to catch up with us eventually.

It’s time for philosophers to wake up and put our money, our faculty positions, our textbook buying power, and our textbook reviews where the scholarship is.  Philosophy can be highly relevant if we hold ourselves to higher scholarly standards.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Discussion, Informal Logic, Teaching | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

On Being Your Own Argument

November 18, 2011 by SP

Occupy, out of focus

Let’s be honest about this, coverage of the Occupy movement has neither been fair nor balanced in most cases.  What coverage there has been has usually centered on 1) how much of a mess these sites are making, 2) on how the absence of explicit demands makes them “incoherent”, and 3) on how the major political parties may or may not try to turn the frustrations of the protesters to their advantage in the coming national election cycle.  Much of the coverage that I’ve seen has focused on the second of these items, on how the protests seem to be just a sort of collective “acting out”.  “With no clear message”, so goes the refrain, “how can the Occupy protesters hope to achieve their aims (whatever they are)?” Continue Reading »

Posted in Connections, News, Rhetoric | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Two New Books via CRRAR

November 17, 2011 by SP

Today CRRAR announced the publication of two new books that should be of interest to those working in the fields of argumentation studies and informal logic. The first is a collection of papers by co-founder of the informal logic movement J. Anthony Blair.  The volume collects works spanning 30 years of research of one of the most respected scholars in the field.

Groundwork in the Theory of Argumentation, Selected Papers of J. Anthony Blair, with an Introduction by Christopher W. Tindale. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012.  Pp. xxii, 1-355.  (List price: cloth $189.00, €149,75)
[ Contents: Introduction; 23 papers by Blair; list of Blair’s publications; References; Name and Subject Indexes]

The second work announced today collects papers from the CRRAR symposium on conductive argument held in 2010.  I had the good fortune to be present at that event and I can attest firsthand that there is much of interest contained within these pages.  There were papers from a diverse  range of perspectives and approaches within argumentation theory and they covered many aspects of the topic of conductive argument.  I’m very happy to announce that this collection of papers is now available to all.

Conductive Argument, An Overlooked Type of Defeasible Reasoning Ed. by J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson. London: College Publications, 2012. Pp. viii, 1-299. (List price: paper $20.75)
[Contents: Intro. by Blair; Papers by Derek Allen, Mark Battersby & Sharon Bailin, Maurice Finocchiaro, Thomas Fischer, James Freeman, Trudy Govier, Hans Hansen, Rongdong Jin, Ralph Johnson, Fred Kauffeld, Christian Kock, Robert Pinto, Douglas Walton, Harald Wohlrapp, Frank Zenker; References; Name and Subject Indexes]

Posted in Announcements, Argumentation, Informal Logic | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

CFP – Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice

November 17, 2011 by David Godden

Call for papers: Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice

The past few years have seen a resurgence of interest in the philosophy of medicine and health care. Controversies about evidence, value, clinical knowledge, judgment, integrity and ethics have required practitioners and policy-makers to confront the epistemic and moral basis of practice, while philosophers have found in these debates ways to invigorate and reframe the investigation of long-standing philosophical problems about: the nature of reasoning, science, knowledge and practice, and the relationships between epistemology and ethics, morals and politics.

The Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice is an international journal that focuses on the evaluation and development of clinical practice in medicine, nursing and the allied health professions. It has a large and diverse readership including practitioners and academics from a vast range of areas, and a tradition of publishing papers raising epistemological, metaphysical and ethical issues underlying clinical policy and practice. Following the publication of two highly successful thematic issues in 2010 and 2011 on the philosophy of medicine and health care, we are seeking contributions to a third thematic edition, scheduled for publication in autumn 2012. Papers are particularly welcome on the following themes.

1) Reasoning in Medicine.
Possible questions/topics include: what is the role and what are the limitations of statistical reasoning in medicine? What alternative accounts of reasoning are available? If arguments are somehow at the core of medical reasoning, what are the sorts of argumentation skills we need to nurture in health care? What role do intuition and emotion play in a proper account of sound decision-making? How should we understand such ideas as judging, perceiving and interpreting and their role in reasoning in a range of contexts: clinical, policy, population/ public health?

2) Value, meaning and measurement.
Possible questions/topics include: how do we represent meaning and value in health care and are our representations adequate? How do we account for the value of ‘unquantifiable’ aspects of these processes? What is the relationship between epistemology and ethics in discussions of value? What are the criteria used to assess health care? (Which ‘outcomes’? what counts as ‘quality’? How is health gain assessed and valued in relation to other aspects of health care process/experience?) How do we defend expenditure on health care in the context of the current global environment?

However, we also welcome papers that do not fit neatly into one of these themes, but represent excellent examples of the application of philosophy to questions of substantive import in medicine and healthcare.

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is 30th April 2012. Original papers are usually no more than 5000 words in length, and detailed author guidelines are available at http://www.wiley.com/bw/submit.asp?ref=1356-1294&site=1

Those interested in submitting a paper are invited to contact Robyn Bluhm (Old Dominion University) at rbluhm@odu.edu

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