Arrogance and deep disagreement

I intend to bring recent work applying virtue theory to the study of argument to bear on a much older problem, that of disagreements that resist rational resolution, sometimes termed "deep disagreements". Just as some virtue epistemologists have lately shifted focus onto epistemic vices, I shall argue that a renewed focus on the vices of argument can help to illuminate deep disagreements. In particular, I address the role of arrogance, both as a factor in the diagnosis of deep disagreements and as an obstacle to their mutually acceptable resolution. Arrogant arguers are likely to make any disagreements to which they are party seem deeper than they really are and arrogance impedes the strategies that we might adopt to resolve deep disagreements. As a case in point, since arrogant or otherwise vicious arguers cannot be trusted not to exploit such strategies for untoward ends, any policy for deep disagreement amelioration must require particularly close attention to the vices of argument, lest they be exploited by the unscrupulous

Evidence, Proofs, and Derivations

The traditional view of evidence in mathematics is that evidence is just proof and proof is just derivation. There are good reasons for thinking that this view should be rejected: it misrepresents both historical and current mathematical practice. Nonetheless, evidence, proof, and derivation are closely intertwined. This paper seeks to tease these concepts apart. It emphasizes the role of argumentation as a context shared by evidence, proofs, and derivations. The utility of argumentation theory, in general, and argumentation schemes, in particular, as a methodology for the study of mathematical practice is thereby demonstrated. Argumentation schemes represent an almost untapped resource for mathematics education. Notably, they provide a consistent treatment of rigorous and non-rigorous argumentation, thereby working to exhibit the continuity of reasoning in mathematics with reasoning in other areas. Moreover, since argumentation schemes are a comparatively mature methodology, there is a substantial body of existing work to draw upon, including some increasingly sophisticated software tools. Such tools have significant potential for the analysis and evaluation of mathematical argumentation. The first four sections of the paper address the relationships of evidence to proof, proof to derivation, argument to proof, and argument to evidence, respectively. The final section directly addresses some of the educational implications of an argumentation scheme account of mathematical reasoning

Intellectual humility and argumentation

In this chapter I argue that intellectual humility is related to argumentation in several distinct but mutually supporting ways. I begin by drawing connections between humility and two topics of long-standing importance to the evaluation of informal arguments: the ad verecundiam fallacy and the principle of charity. I then explore the more explicit role that humility plays in recent work on critical thinking dispositions, deliberative virtues, and virtue theories of argumentation

Introduction

There has been little overt discussion of the experimental philosophy of logic or mathematics. So it may be tempting to assume that application of the methods of experimental philosophy to these areas is impractical or unavailing. This assumption is undercut by three trends in recent research: a renewed interest in historical antecedents of experimental philosophy in philosophical logic; a “practice turn” in the philosophies of mathematics and logic; and philosophical interest in a substantial body of work in adjacent disciplines, such as the psychology of reasoning and mathematics education. This introduction offers a snapshot of each trend and addresses how they intersect with some of the standard criticisms of experimental philosophy. It also briefly summarizes the specific contribution of the other chapters of this book

Persuasive Definition

Charles Stevenson introduced the term \u27persuasive definition\u27 to describe a suspect form of moral argument \u27which gives a new conceptual meaning to a familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning\u27. However, as Stevenson acknowledges, such a move can be employed legitimately. If persuasive definition is to be a useful notion, we shall need a criterion for identifying specifically illegitimate usage. I criticize a recent proposed criterion from Keith Burgess-Jackson and offer an alternative

Argumentation Schemes and Communities of Argumentational Practice

Is it possible to distinguish communities of arguers by tracking the argumentation schemes they employ? There are many ways of relating schemes to communities, but not all are productive. Attention must be paid not only to the admissibility of schemes within a community of argumentational practice, but also to their comparative frequency. Two examples are discussed: informal mathematics, a convenient source of well-documented argumentational practice, and anthropological evidence of non-standard reasoning

Fallacy and argumentational vice

If good argument is virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of fallacies to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through case studies of several fallacies, with particular emphasis on the ad hominem

Virtue Argumentation and Bias

Virtue Argumentation and Bias PAPER Virtue theories of argumentation (VTA) are a burgeoning programme [2]. Bias is a familiar impediment to good argument, which has drawn renewed attention as a result of psychological research demonstrating the prevalence of cognitive biases and implicit associations. Despite some attempts to utilise the resources of VTA to address bias, there has been little acknowledgement of the obstacle that bias presents to VTA. Specifically, VTA seems vulnerable to a situationist challenge, analogous to similar challenges in virtue ethics and epistemology, that behavioural dispositions are too sensitive to specific situations for virtues to be psychologically plausible [1]. This paper proposes a two-pronged response that VTA may make to this challenge, and to the problem of bias in argument in general: a defence of the virtue of humility [3] and a demonstration of the role of attitude strength, as exhibited by deep-seated virtues [4]. [1] Mark Alfano. Expanding the situationist challenge to reliabilism about inference. In: Virtue Epistemology Naturalized (Abrol Fairweather, ed.), Springer, 2014. [2] Daniel Cohen. Virtue, in context. Informal Logic 33 (2013). [3] Ian James Kidd. Intellectual humility, confidence, and argumentation. Topoi (forthcoming). [4] Jonathan Webber. Instilling virtue. In: From Personality to Virtue (Alberto Masala and Jonathan Webber, eds.), Oxford University Press, forthcoming