Greco Morasso, Sara

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Henrique J. Ribeiro (ed): Inside Arguments. Logicand the Study of ArgumentationCambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2012,vii + 405 ppSara Greco MorassoPublished online: 5 March 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 20131 IntroductionThis volume explores and critically discusses the relation between argumentationand logic, which is of particular importance as these two disciplines have beentightly connected since the origin of modern argumentation theory; and so were theyin the ancient reflection on rhetoric, from Aristotle onwards.What the Editor claims at the beginning of his very well-thought Introduction isthat the volume aims at doing more than a simple overview of the connectionsbetween two disciplines. Henrique J. Ribeiro inserts the study of argumentation andlogic into a broader philosophical framework, claiming that argumentation is thenew paradigm of human reason (p. 11) in post-modern reflection, whichcharacterizes the contemporary intellectual world. This is because argumentationfocuses on agreement rather than on truth (p. 4). As questionable as this claim mightbe—I am not sure that its epistemological premises would be accepted by allargumentation theorists—it certainly attributes enormous importance not only toargumentation studies but also to the specific relation between argumentation andlogic as the kernel of all philosophical studies. When studying this relation, in fact,we deal with a definition of human reason and its limits.Henrique J. Ribeiro is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra,Portugal, where he teaches logic, rhetoric and argumentation theory.S. Greco Morasso (&)Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics, Faculty of Communication Sciences,Universita` della Svizzera italiana, Via G. Buffi 13, 6900 Lugano, Switzerlande-mail: sara.greco@usi.ch123Argumentation (2013) 27:453–458DOI 10.1007/s10503-013-9297-82 On the ContentsThe Editor deliberately chose not to introduce macro-sections in this volume inorder not to conceal the theoretical connections between the eighteen contributionsforming this collection, as he argues. This does not mean, however, thatclassifications of such contributions are not possible. To start with, authors clearlybelong to different schools of thought, not to say disciplines. Some of them arebetween the initiators of informal logic, while others are formal logicians; some arescholars in philosophy, others in critical thinking; some have been working incomputer sciences and artificial intelligence as well; finally, some could be moreappropriately described as argumentation scholars—and most of these latter adoptthe pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation theory.Moreover, the eighteen papers have very different scopes. Some of them adopt atheoretical approach, discussing the relation between logic and argumentation ingeneral, or revisiting the history of these disciplines in order to explore theirconvergence as well as their specific characteristics. This is the case of almost thefirst half of this volume (chapters 1–7), plus chapters 9, 11, 14, 15 and 17. Otherchapters are better qualified as case-studies, in which the different authors attempt atmaking the logic-argumentation relationship clear in practice. Some of them analysea specific context of application for argumentation and/or logic: this is the case ofchapter 12, which deals with public deliberation; chapter 16, which is focused onscientific controversies; as well as chapter 18, devoted to ‘‘logic and fiction’’. Otherchapters are concentrating on a specific theoretical problem, such as the tu quoquefallacy (ch. 8), the argument from expert opinion (ch. 10) and presupposition (ch.13).More specifically, after the Editor’s introduction, the reflections presented inchapter 1 (‘‘A little light logic’’), by Alec Fisher, originate from the author’s longexperience in teaching logic. He is in a unique position to describe how logic needsargumentation if it is to describe natural language reasoning, starting from theeducational needs he started to acknowledge in the early 1970s. Fisher is not alonein raising educational concerns in this volume; several of the contributors, in fact,declare to have been inspired to consider the relation between logic andargumentation by their first-hand experience as teachers (another prime exampleof this is chapter 6 by Ralph Johnson).In chapter 2 (‘‘Finding the logic in argumentation’’), Douglas Walton introducesthe concept of a defeasible logic which should work, in his opinion, as underlyinglogical system for argumentation schemes. He also introduces Carneades, amathematical and computational model for argument mapping and evaluation whichadmits of defeasible logic. Chapter 3 (‘‘The place of logic in argument studies’’), byJames Freeman, is also devoted to the province of logic in the study ofargumentative discourse. In particular, this author concentrates on whether logicshould consider the acceptability of premises (warrants) or not (see also Freeman2005 and, within this volume, Hansen, pp. 102–103).In Chapter 4 (‘‘Inference claims’’), David Hitchcock discusses the notion ofinference, which is common to argumentation and logic, analysing in particularwhat it means for a conclusion to follow from given premises. Like the preceding454 S. Greco Morasso123chapter, which deals with premises, this contribution elaborates on two key-notionsin the relation between argumentation and logic, i.e. inference and conclusion.Chapter 5 and 6 assume the vantage point of informal logic. In chapter 5 (‘‘Anenquiry into the methods of informal logic’’), Hans V. Hansen reviews the differentmethods adopted by informal logicians in the study of argumentation, while chapter6 (‘‘Informal logic and its contribution to argumentation theory’’), by Ralph J.Johnson, constitutes an informative retrospective reflection on the historicaldevelopment of informal logic and on its past and present contributions toargumentation theory.In chapter 7 (‘‘The role of logic in analysing and evaluating argumentation’’),Frans H. van Eemeren discusses the role of logic in argumentation in light of thepragma-dialectical approach. In this perspective, logic is there to scrutinize thevalidity of argument; but it never overlaps with the whole of an analysis of anargumentative discussion. In ‘‘Charges of inconsistency and the tu quoque fallacy’’(ch. 8), Bart Garssen brings van Eemeren’s conclusions forward by providing aspecific example of the place of logic in an argumentative reconstruction. Inparticular, the tu quoque fallacy is explained in terms of a violation of the freedomrule of a critical discussion rather than in mere formal logic terms (cf. van Eemerenand Grootendorst 1992).In chapter 9 (‘‘Formals and ties: Connecting argumentation studies with formaldisciplines’’), Erik C. Krabbe goes back to the possible uses of logic for the analysisof argumentation. Beside the formalisation and evaluation of informal arguments,the author acknowledges the importance of logic for conceptual clarification andtheoretical elucidation of concepts (see in particular pp. 173–174). The role heattributes to different formal systems, in this sense, is contiguous to thedisambiguating role of semantic analysis discussed by Rigotti (2008).Jan Albert van Laar (‘‘Logical criticism and argumentation schemes: Argumentfrom expert opinion as a case in point’’, ch. 10) discusses argumentation from expertopinion from the point of view of what room there is for the opponent to put forwardlogical criticism in response to an argument in which this argument scheme hasbeen applied. Expert opinion is taken as a case in point, albeit the author’s goal is todefine general criteria for logical criticism. Central to his contribution is the notionof argumentation (or argument) scheme, which he compares to that of deductivescheme (pp. 201–203). Argument schemes are one of the common themes forseveral contributors to this volume (see in particular chapter 2).Developed in the perspective of dialogical logic, chapter 11, by Jesse Alama andSara L. Uckelman, criticize the applicability of Lorenzen’s and Lorenz’s (1978) andLorenzen’s (1987) notion of dialogue games to everyday argumentative dialogue.The two chapters that follow focus on specific aspects. Marcin Lewin´ski (‘‘Publicdeliberation as a polylogue: challenges of argumentation analysis and evaluation’’,ch. 12) interprets the context of public deliberation as one involving more than twoparties to an argumentative discussion. His problem is then how to interpret thesetypes of multi-party practice in light of the models of sound argumentationdeveloped in disciplines such as logic and dialectics (p. 224). He discusses thefeatures of polylogues which go beyond two-party argumentation and argues for theneed for modelling this type of interaction. In ‘‘Reconstructing and assessing theLogic and the Study of Argumentation 455123conditions of meaningfulness. An argumentative approach to presupposition’’ (ch.13), Fabrizio Macagno discusses the role of the linguistic phenomenon ofpresupposition in argumentation. He proposes to connect presupposition to theepistemic notion of presumption (p. 252 ff).In chapter 14, Bruno Leclercq investigates the connection between argumenta-tion and mathematical proof, showing that formal proof is not sufficient even inmathematics. In fact, because ‘‘there is an important demonstrative or ostensivedimension to formal proofs’’ (p. 273), these latter are closer to visual rhetoric andinformal proofs than one could expect.Elaborating on the connections between argumentation theory, on the one hand,and semantics and pragmatics, on the other, Chapter 15 by Andrei Moldovan is atthe boundaries between argumentation and philosophy of language, as well aslinguistic semantics and pragmatics. The author focuses on the notion ofimplicature, insisting on the distinction between what is said and what is implicated,and argues against the existence of exclusively argumentative implicatures. Hisclaim is that argumentative analysis is often poor in terms of the analysis ofimplicatures and this may lead ‘‘to unfortunate analyses of speech acts of arguing, aswell as to the general impression that logic is inapplicable to real life arguments’’ (p.300).Chapter 16 (‘‘Argumentation theory vs. formal logic: The case of scientificargumentation and the ‘logic’ of controversies’’), by Xavier de Donato Rodrı´guez,examines the context of scientific controversies. He first analyses this argumentationcontext applying the method of (some) formal approaches, considering in particularLorenzen and Lorenz (1978) and Dung (1995); second, he interprets scientificdisagreement in terms of ‘‘informal’’ argumentation models. His view is that thesetwo types of approach—the informal and the formal one—can be fruitfullycombined. On the same line of thought, Maurice A. Finocchiaro’s programmaticcontribution (‘‘Logical theory, argumentation theory and meta-argumentation’’, ch.17) aims at showing that it is possible to construct a project for the study ofargumentation, which he calls the meta-argumentation project, combining elementsof traditional formal deductive logic, recent informal logic, argumentation theoryand the historical-textual approach (Finocchiaro 2005).The volume is concluded with Maria Marzano’s contribution titled ‘‘Logic andfiction’’ (ch. 18), in which the author applies different logics to the analysis ofexcerpts of literary texts taken from quite different sources. There is no conclusionprovided by the Editor to this collection of papers.3 Discussion and Critical RemarksAn interesting aspect shared by many of the contributions in this volume is theretrospective, sometimes apologetic, reflection (as in the case of Johnson’s chapter6, cf. p. 120) proposed by informal logicians on the genesis and current status oftheir discipline. Informal logic is, to some extent, derived from the same origin asargumentation, i.e. discontent with the limits of formal logic as applied to modelnatural language interactions (see for example Fisher, pp. 21-21; and Johnson,456 S. Greco Morasso123p. 123). As a consequence, informal logic aims at modelling argumentativediscourse; the object it deals with is at least partially overlapping with that ofargumentation. This makes the reflection on the role and cross-fertilization betweenthese two disciplines even more urgent.Most importantly, however, what emerges this volume is that the problem aboutthe relation between argumentation and logic mainly amounts to a problem ofdefinition of (formal) logic (more than of argumentation). What is formal logic? Oneof the aspects which are clearly stated in several chapters is that we should not speakof one ‘‘logic’’ but of different ‘‘logics’’. It is a well-established acquisition that wehave different types of formal models, which are used to represent different aspectsof natural language. Among models of formal logic, one could mention for examplemodal logic, which includes operators expressing modality; or fuzzy logic, whichadmits for intermediate truth values between true and false (the binary opposition1-0). Johnson (p. 117) suggests that, if we consider different logics, then we arebound to admit that there might be different relations between these logics andargumentation. Freeman (p. 77) maintains that these relations ‘‘are complex, but notopaque’’ and that, as a consequence, they can be analysed and mapped. Johnson,again, recalls that, historically, when informal logic originated as a reaction toformal logic, opposition was indeed to an oversimplified version of logic presentedin introductory logic textbooks rather than to formal deductive logic per se (p. 120).The same holds true for the origin of argumentation theory and critical thinking.Therefore, it seems worth rethinking of the role of formal logic models in light of amore comprehensive definition of the developments of this discipline. All in all, adefinition of logic(s) is probably one of the main issues to be thoroughly addressedwhen approaching its possible contribution(s) to argumentation theory.The main limitations of this volume are due to the fact that, while the centralproblem of identifying a relation between argumentation and logic(s) is insightfullyapproached in several chapters, a reader perceives some disconnection betweenthese theoretically-oriented chapters and the specific applications and case-studiesanalysed by other authors. These latter sometimes lack connection to the generalproblem addressed by this volume. This is probably the main limitation of this book,which, although courageously attempting to describe an interesting topic anddespite being full of insightful considerations, lacks a unitary perspective. It is alsoclearly acknowledgeable that not all the authors are involved in a regular dialogueon these topics. In this sense, the fact that the book lacks a conclusion or postface bythe Editor impoverishes it, despite the completeness of the Introduction, as thereader is left with the impression that too many issues are left unresolved.Probably as a corollary of this problem, one has the impression that some of theauthors are not well-informed on the other contributors’ research on the centraltopic. As an example, take Moldovan’s suggestion to consider implicatures in theanalysis of argumentation, in order to distinguish what is said from what isimplicated. Contrary to what the author states, the analysis of implicit material inargumentation is not new in the literature on argumentation. On the one hand, thereconstruction of implicit premises has been broadly discussed (Macagno, thisvolume, van Eemeren, this volume; see also Ennis 1982; Walton 2001, 2008; Bigiand Greco Morasso 2012). On the other hand, the difference between argumentationLogic and the Study of Argumentation 457123as a communicated inference and forms of communicative (pragmatic) inferences,such as implicatures, has been discussed as well (Rocci 2006).Despite these weak points, my personal view is that this collection of paperscould be rightfully considered as a first valuable step in the direction of studyinghow argumentation and logic are related and of understanding the place of formaland informal logic in current studies on argumentation.ReferencesBigi, S., and S. Greco Morasso. 2012. Keywords, frames and the reconstruction of material starting pointsin argumentation. Journal of Pragmatics 44(10): 1135–1149.Dung, P.M. 1995. On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in nonmonotonic reasoning,logic programming and N-person games. Artificial Intelligence 77: 321–357.Ennis, R.H. 1982. Identifying implicit assumptions. Synthese 51: 61–86.Finocchiaro, M.A. 2005. Arguments about arguments. New York: Cambridge University Press.Freeman, J.B. 2005. Acceptable premises: An epistemic approach to an informal logic problem.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Lorenzen, P. 1987. Constructive Philosophy (translated by K.R. Pavlovic). Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press.Lorenzen, P., and K. Lorenz. 1978. Dialogische Logik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Rigotti, E. 2008. Locus a causa finali. L’analisi linguistica e letteraria 16 (2): 559–576 (special issue, ed.G. Gobber et al.).Rocci, A. 2006. Pragmatic inference and argumentation in intercultural communication. InterculturalPragmatics 3(4): 409–443.Van Eemeren, F. H., and R. Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies: APragma-dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Walton, D. 2001. Enthymemes, common knowledge, and plausible inference. Philosophy and Rhetoric34: 93–112.Walton, D. 2008. The three bases for the enthymeme: A dialogical theory. Journal of Applied Logic 6(3):361–379.458 S. Greco Morasso123

Henrique J. Ribeiro (ed): Inside Arguments. Logic and the Study of Argumentation: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2012, vii+405pp

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Henrique J. Ribeiro (ed): Inside Arguments. Logic and the Study of Argumentation: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2012, vii+405pp

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