The objective of this paper is to show how methods rooted in formal logic may be used to analyze socially important processes of persuasion. A formal approach to the theory of persuasion enables us to thoroughly research issues crucial in everyday life such as: how we argue, why we quarrel, where we are efficient in persuasion, when do we win a negotiation, how we influence others’ decisions, and the kinds of argumentative strategies that are apt to yield more accurate beliefs (...) for all parties involved.I concentrate on three aspects of persuasion practice: nature, success and cognitive value of argumentation process. From a logical perspective, I understand argumentation as reasoning which, after initiation through the opponent’s disagreement, is deployed by the proponent in order to persuade the audience to believe his thesis. Furthermore, I attempt to determine the ways in which we succeed in persuading others. Lastly, I try to specify when an argument is cognitively valuable and when it is reliable, in the sense that it helps us to track the truth. In order to analyze these matters, I investigate argumentation on two independent levels. The subjective level of people’s beliefs is the essential foundation of all persuasion -- every time we aim to make the audience believe our opinions and /or change their decisions. The second level is the objective field of truthfulness, where we consider whether a given argumentation will lead us to true or false conclusions. (shrink)

Dans toutes les dimensions de la communication verbale, le virtuel s'efface devant l'actuel, mais le sens "absent" ne cesse d'escorter le sens « present ». Il le sous-tend, l'informe et, quelquefois, pointe le bout de son nez. En s'inscrivant dans la perspective de la sémantique microstructurale, ce livre se propose de revisiter le virtuel linguistique pour saisir ses rapports avec le domaine de l'actuel, en envisageant la virtualité dans l'optique interprétative qui mobilise tout un éventail de mécanismes sémantico-discursifs de la (...) production du sens en contexte. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, due to the development of mechanical reproduction and press, photomontage became a popular means of communication – popular and diverse in its nature and methods of exploitation. It is one of the cultural phenomena related to the change of rhythm of life and a sense of its increased pace, and an impression of fragmentation of reality. This article questions the role of photomontage in such an experience. The said role is complex: sometimes photomontage allows for expression (...) of that experience, and sometimes it is meant to evoke it, in the spirit of modernity; it is both a tool of agitation and critique. In order to answer this question I shall assume the approach of Walter Benjamin, who diagnoses the crisis of experience and the loss of storytelling skills – and describes the potential of photography. This potential is differently approached by artists and scholars who point out contradictory purposes and results of using photomontage. Referring to various works of art shall make it possible to define the tensions characteristic of photomontage. Due to its plasticity and the ambiguity of a photograph, and the potential for contextualization and construction, photomontage can function in a hard to understand, rapidly changing world and address the fragmentation of experience. (shrink)

The dissertation develops a conception of action based on the concept of practical task-responsibility rather than on the concept of intention. It answers two problems. First, it grounds the distinction between an action and a mere happening, thus meeting Wittgenstein's challenge to explain what is the difference between an agent's raising her arm and her arm rising? Second, it grounds the distinction between acting for a reason and acting while merely having a reason, thus meeting Davidson's challenge to give an (...) account of the explanatory force of reasons. ;One source of resistance to an account of action in terms of normative expectations rather than in terms of intentions comes from explanatory individualism. The explanatory individualist argues that it is ultimately the intentional attitudes of the agent rather than normative expectations of other people that are relevant to the way in which we explain one another's actions, and that they ought to figure in the account of the nature of action. I defend explanatory nonindividualism, according to which we sometimes act on our own intentions and desires but sometimes on the normative expectations and desires of others . Explanatory nonindividualism is fortified by a selectional account of the explanatory force of reasons. I demonstrate that Davidson's challenge can be met by identifying reasons with selectional criteria rather than with causes. ;In response to Wittgenstein's challenge, I propose that we understand what it is to be an action not in terms of a performance being intentional under a description, but in terms of it being reasonable to expect a performance of the agent under some description. Only one concept of reasonableness is necessary to make the distinction between actions and mere happenings, and I explicate that concept. In addition to accounting for actions that are intentional under some description, the account also captures cases that are not so straightforwardly captured by that criterion . Moreover, cases of so-called basic wayward causal chains are excluded from qualifying as actions. (shrink)

This is a collection of nine papers dealing with the topic of reporting on beliefs and other attitudes, and in particular with the issue of the semantics-pragmatics boundary dispute which is the core topic of research in the field.

A: Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other. B: The two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same. Z: So, the two sides of this triangle are equal to each other. Achilles fails because he encounters an infinite progression of hidden premises of the form “If all the premises of the argument are true, the conclusion is true”. In [a1], the hidden premise is H1 “If A and B then Z” (...) – surely, if one did not believe that H1 is true, one would have a reason not to accept the conclusion Z. So, the argument [a2] must lead to conclusion Z from A, B and H1. But, one will have to supplement [a2] with H2: “If A and B and H1 then Z” since if one did not believe H2 one would have a reason not to draw conclusion Z. And so on ad infinitum. The puzzle can be seen as arising through the application of an apparently innocent principle of discerning missing premises (§2). If looked at in this light, the standard response given to the paradox does not so much resolve the puzzle as legislates against it being raised with respect to principles of inference (§3). I argue that a fundamental ambiguity infests the test for what is a missing premise (§4). Moreover, it explains why the puzzle appears to, though it does not (§5), arise. I end with some comments on the usefulness of the test (§6). (shrink)

The recognition of the close relation between the concept of action and the concept of responsibility goes at least as far back as Aristotle. His account of voluntary action could be seen as being the source of two general strategies for understanding the concept of action.1 One such approach is to determine when something is not an action first by studying a variety of interfering conditions. (e) The agent’s ϕing was a mere happening (non-action) iff external forces caused him to (...) ϕ. But Aristotle described those cases as ones where the principle of action is not in the agent,2 generating what might be thought of as a corresponding picture of what it means for a performance to be an action. (shrink)