The thesis of the paper holds that some future developments of argumentation theory may be inspired by the rich logico-methodological legacy of the Lvov–Warsaw School (LWS), the Polish research movement that was most active from 1895 to 1939. As a selection of ideas of the LWS which exploit both formal and pragmatic aspects of the force of argument, we present: Ajdukiewicz’s account of reasoning and inference, Bocheński’s analyses of superstitions or dogmas, and Frydman’s constructive approach to legal interpretation. This paper (...) does not aim at exhaustive elaboration of any of these topics or their usefulness in current discussions within argumentation theory. Rather, we intend to indicate chosen directions of a potentially fruitful research program for the emerging Polish School of Argumentation which would consist in application of methods and conceptions elaborated by the LWS to selected open problems of contemporary research on argumentation. (shrink)

Using the profiles of dialogue method we identify a species of ad verecundiam fallacy that works by forestalling of questioning in arguments from expert opinion. A profile of dialogue is a graph structure used to model a sequence of speech acts surrounding both the putting forward of an argument and the response to it at the next moves in a dialogue. The method is applied to a case of cross-examining a software engineer in a legal deposition in a case of (...) intellectual property litigation. (shrink)

In their book Commitment in Dialogue, Walton and Krabbe claim that formal dialogue systems for conversational argumentation are “not very realistic and not easy to apply”. This difficulty may make argumentation theory less well adapted to be employed to describe or analyse actual argumentation practice. On the other hand, the empirical study of real-life arguments may miss or ignore insights of more than the two millennia of the development of philosophy of language, rhetoric, and argumentation theory. In this paper, we (...) propose a novel methodology for adapting such theories to serve as applicable tools in the study of argumentation phenomena. Our approach is both theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded in large-scale corpus analysis. The area of interest are appeals to ethos, the character of the speaker, building upon Aristotle’s rhetoric. Ethotic techniques are used to influence the hearers through the communication, where speakers might establish, but also emphasise, weaken or undermine their own or others’ credibility and trustworthiness. Specifically, we apply our method to Aristotelian theory of ethos elements which identifies practical wisdom, moral virtue and goodwill as components of speakers’ character, which can be supported or attacked. The challenges we identified in this case and the solutions we proposed allow us to formulate general guidelines of how to exploit rich theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the practice of language use. (shrink)

The main thesis underlying the methodological approach to argument evaluation holds that some arguments which employ knowledge-gaining procedures can be suc-cessfully evaluated by applying tools elaborated by the methodology of science, such as the rules for reasoning, classifying objects, defining, and questioning. The applica-tion of those rules to argument evaluation consists in comparing them with proce-dures employed in the case of argumentative practices performed either in scientific inquiry or in everyday life. In order to show how building the methodological ap-proach (...) to argument evaluation could be started, I examine two cases of evaluating arguments by means of several methodological rules of defining. The idea of apply-ing the rules governing various knowledge-gaining procedures to evaluating argu-ments is present in philosophy of science and in argumentation theory, but so far it has not been systematically elaborated. The paper aims at justifying this idea as a promising research project. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

This special issue offers a multidimensional perspective on the recent inquiries into knowledge representation. Multidimensionality exposes the complexity of knowledge representation and helps distinguish between different approaches and research tools. On the one hand, the presented research focuses on the theoretical and empirical aspects of knowledge representation (taking into account cognitive processes and capacities, including linguistic skills needed to generate and express knowledge); on the other, the articles included in the issue discuss the practical discourse, analyzing actions from the point (...) of view of cognitively oriented semantics and the scientific practice broadly understood. The issue consists of five papers that show how certain ideas in the research area of knowledge representation inspired the authors to look for new approaches to modelling concepts and practical reasoning, constructing theory of signs using the tools of data science, and dealing with cognitive artifacts in scientific practice and its dynamics. What these approaches have in common is their attempt at capturing the multidimensionality of knowledge representation in such a way that integrates them. Our goal is to emphasize some innovative aspects of those approaches with respect to the dynamics of knowledge representation in both the cognitive system and scientific practice. (shrink)

In this paper we show that an essential aspect of solving the problem of uncritical acceptance of expert opinions that is at the root of the ad verecundiam fallacy is the need to disentangle argument from expert opinion from another kind of appeal to authority. Formal and computational argumentation systems enable us to analyze the fault in which an error has occurred by virtue of a failure to meet one or more of the requirements of the argumentation scheme from argument (...) from expert opinion. We present a method for enhancing this capability by showing how arguments from expert opinion are related to, but different from, arguments from deontic authority. (shrink)

Contemporary argument studies in Poland began with the research of the Lvov-Warsaw School and its successors in Artificial Intelligence and legal theory, as well as with the studies of Polish rhetoricians . The last decade has witnessed a major transformation in the Polish landscape, beginning with several landmark publications which have attracted an ever-growing number of young researchers and students. As a result, the research movement of the Polish School of Argumentation has begun to emerge .In 2008, the nationwide initiative (...) ArgDiaP was established in order to provide infrastructure facilitating the networking process and to foster res .. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical analysis of the research program for formalizing informal logic proposed by Douglas Walton and Thomas Gordon. Since their proposal is based on employing the Carneades Argumentation System, this paper aims at answering two questions: what are main benefits of applying CAS as means for formalizing informal logic, and what are possible extensions of Walton and Gordon’s research program and modifications in employing CAS?

In this paper, we will explore two initiatives that focus on the importance of employing logical theories in educating people how to think and reason properly, one in Poland: The Lvov-Warsaw School; the other in North America: The Informal Logic Initiative. These two movements differ in the logical means and skills that they focus on. However, we believe that they share a common purpose: to educate students in logic and reasoning (logical education conceived as a process) so that they may (...) be able to apply their skills to analyze the issues in their society (logical culture as a result of logical education). The aim of the paper is to justify this claim by exploring research objectives and products that are common to both movements. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in studying arguments from deontic authority of the general form “(1) \(\delta\) is a deontic authority in institution \(\varOmega\) ; (2) according to \(\delta\), I should do \(\alpha\), _C_: therefore, (3) I should do \(\alpha\) ”, the state of the art models are not capable of grasping their complexity. The existing sets of critical questions assigned to this argumentation scheme seem to conflate two problems: whether a person is subject to an authority of an institution in the (...) first place and whether the command issued within the context of a particular institution is eventually binding. For this reason, we introduce (1) a set of Basic Critical Questions to scrutinize the former issue, and (2) a set of more detailed questions related to specific features, also referred to as “parameters”, of institutional environments (Intra-Institutional Critical Questions). We identify major elements of institutional environments in which authoritative utterances are made and the crucial parameters of arguments from deontic authority. The selected evidence from the decisions of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court helps us show how these parameters may be used to reconstruct subtypes of this argument scheme, with their associated sets of critical questions. In specific institutional contexts, such detailed schemes are capable of grasping the complexity of appeals to deontic authority and thus should be used rather than general schemes. The reconstruction of argumentation schemes with critical questions shows how particular arguments may successfully be attacked. (shrink)

Ethotic arguments, such as arguments from expert opinion and ad hominem arguments, play an important role in communication practice. In this paper, we argue that there is another type of reasoning from ethos, in which people argue about actions in the world. These subspecies of ethotic arguments are very common in public debates: societies are involved in heated disputes about what should be done with monuments of historical figures such as Stalin or Colston: Should we demolish the building they funded? (...) Should we revere their statues? Should the street named after them be renamed?; and the general public vividly argue about what should be done with the legacy of producers, directors and actors in debates of the #MeToo movement: Should their new movies be distributed? Should their scenes be deleted from motion pictures? Should their stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame be removed? Many arguments in these debates boil down to the character of the public figures: He was a slave trader!—But he is a part of our history; He harassed a young girl!—But he is an important actor. The reasoning step here is legitimised by the association between a person and an extra-linguistic object: the association between a historical figure and their statue or between an actor and their movie. The nature of this association is explained in the paper using Peirce’s theory of signs. We propose to extend an existing approach to patterns of reasoning from ethos that will help us to shed new light on ethotic argumentation and open an avenue for a systematic account of these unexplored argument forms. (shrink)

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work (...) together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation. (shrink)

Pragmatics and dialectics are two disciplines which have been amongst the first and most important partners for argument studies in the exploration of the complex realm of communication. Treating argumentation as a construct consisting of premises and conclusion allows for investigating some interesting properties of the phenomenon of reasoning, but does not capture a variety of aspects related to the usage of natural language and dialogical context in which real-life argumentation is typically embedded. This special issue explores some of the (...) fascinating research questions which emerge when we move beyond logic into the territory of the pragmatics and dialectics of argument. (shrink)

An Introduction to the Special Issue on Question Processing.

In September 2018, the ArgDiaP association, along with colleagues from Germany and the UK, organised one of the longest and most interdisciplinary series of events ever dedicated to argumentation - Warsaw Argumentation Week, WAW 2018. The eleven-day ‘week’ featured a five day graduate school on computational and linguistic perspectives on argumentation (3rd SSA school); five workshops: on systems and algorithms for formal argumentation (2nd SAFA), argumentation in relation to society (1st ArgSoc), philosophical approaches to argumentation (1st ArgPhil), legal argumentation (2ndMET-ARG) (...) and argumentation in rhetoric (1st MET-RhET); and two conferences: on computational models of argumentation (7th COMMA conference) and on argumentation and corpus linguistics (16th ArgDiaP conference). WAW hosted twelve tutorials and eight invited talks as well as welcoming over 130 participants. All the conferences and workshops publish pre- or post-proceedings in the top journals and book series in the field. (shrink)

We compared the processing of natural language quantifiers in a group of patients with schizophrenia and a healthy control group. In both groups, the difficulty of the quantifiers was consistent with computational predictions, and patients with schizophrenia took more time to solve the problems. However, they were significantly less accurate only with proportional quantifiers, like more than half. This can be explained by noting that, according to the complexity perspective, only proportional quantifiers require working memory engagement.

The novel "Mephisto" is one of the most well-known texts by Klaus Mann. Its fame results not only from its literary virtuosity, but also and primarily from the enormous media attention which was caused by the novel’s publication. The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, in which it dealt with the relationship between freedom of art and other constitutionally guaranteed rights of individuals, launched the unprecedented career of this novel. This article describes Klaus Mann’s political views and their development in (...) the 1920s during the time when the National Socialist movement was strengthening and the writer made the decision to emigrate. The essay deals with the circumstances of creating the novel considering both biographical and political issues. The novelist is described from the perspective of the reality of the 1930s during the National Socialist regime and the time after his emigration. The concern of the article is not a literary analysis of the novel, but to take a look at the novelist’s development up until the moment of finishing his work as a protest against National Socialism. Another goal of the essay is to analyze the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, which regards the balance between freedom of art and other basic rights. Considering the synergy of both methodological approaches and the interdisciplinary view on the problem, the article represents a novel attempt to give a complex view on the relationship between art and the reality of a totalitarian state and between the relationship art–state in the conditions of a democratic state. (shrink)

Użytkownicy języka potrafią często zupełnie nieświadomie przywołać elementy struktury rodzaju tekstu potrzebnego do realizacji celów pozajęzykowych. Niniejszy artykuł stawia sobie za zadanie przybliżenie struktury i zadań komentarza prasowego jako funkcjonalnej części kompleksu informująco-opinotwórczego. Zamiarem było jednocześnie pokazanie, że wynikające z potrzeb komunikacyjnych tendencje w formułowaniu tekstów przenikają do świadomości użytkowników języka i mogą być przywoływane, jeżeli zachodzi taka potrzeba. Opierając się na opracowaniach lingwistycznych i podręcznikach dla przyszłych dziennikarzy przedłożony artykuł prezentuje wybrane definicje, a także schematy strukturalne i opisy funkcjonalne (...) dla rodzaju tekstu komentarz prasowy, usiłując jednocześnie udowodnić na wybranym przykładzie tekstu z prasy niemieckojęzycznej, że nie tylko dziennikarzom dane jest odtworzenie tego wzoru tekstowego. (shrink)

This paper offers a comprehensive examination of the language of “prosōpon” in Maximus the Confessor. It emerges that “prosōpon” almost never has an autonomous meaning in Maximus’ Christology and anthropology. While “person” is either a synonym for “hypostasis” or a term expressing heretical Christological doctrines, it may be used in its own right when Maximus emphasizes the fact that human actions make each of us recognizable as a unique individual. This usage cannot be separated from the colloquial meanings of “face” (...) and “character,” or from instances of “prosōpon” in Maximian Biblical exegesis. “The face of the intellect,” identified with “the face of Christ” within us and reflected in our actions as “the face of the soul,” is the perfect image of the eternal Divine logoi of virtues, impressed by grace in the intellect of saints and reflected in their actions. Possessing one’s own “persona” or “face,” and building one’s uniqueness through one’s own decisions, is of less interest to Maximus than assimilation of oneself to Christ. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a critical overview of Jacques Derrida’s objections to the theories of phenomenological experience. I present and analyze Derrida’s principal arguments which show that the primordial character of such experiences is only apparent. I also try to sketch a possible line of defense and to undermine some of the interpretational presuppositions introduced by the author of La voix et le phénomène.

Author: Moskalewicz Marcin Title: AESTHETIZATION OF POLITICS ACCORDING TO HANNAH ARENDT (Estetyzacja polityki w ujęciu Hannah Arendt) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2005, vol:.5, number: 2005/1, pages: 203-220 Keywords: ARENDT, AESTHETIZATION OF POLITICS, CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article reflects on the problem of aesthetization of politics in Hannah Arendt’s work. It starts with the reconstruction of Arendt’s concept of the human condition, with the intention of placing (...) the political within it. Then, by exploring the theatrical metaphor of political life the author attempts to show in what sense can we say that the political and the aesthetical intertwine in Arendt’s thought. The author also discusses the reproach of the aesthetization of politics and its link to fascism, arguing that paying a closer attention to the distinction between creative and performative arts may help to avoid it. In conclusion, Arendt’s reading of Kant’s Critique of Judgment serves as a basis for a more sympathetic interpretation of her aesthetization of politics, in which the gap between the moral and the aesthetical is reduced. (shrink)

In this article I scrutinise a crucial tension in understanding the debate over shale gas production in Europe. On the one hand, analyses predominantly grasp the debate in terms of pro-and-con dialectics, as if the pro-shale gas camp faced the anti-shale gas camp in a dyadic clash of opposing voices. On the other hand, it is commonly recognised that this debate is driven by multi-party and multi-position argumentative dynamics. In this broader context, I focus on one pivotal contribution to the (...) debate – Gazprom’s press release from October 2013 outlining Russia’s energy giant’s strategy of dealing with unconventional gas production. I employ concepts and methods of argumentative discourse analysis to contend that an arguer to a multi-party debate – argumentative polylogue – faces a number of constraints and opportunities that cannot be adequately grasped in terms of dyadic pro-and-con dialectics. The analysis reveals how Gazprom needs to simultaneously design its discourse to address a number of other parties who might also disagree among themselves: from Greenpeace to European Union governments to shale gas companies. I show why and how a stakeholder analysis used in organisational communication might lead to a better understanding of this form of multi-party public argumentation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose foundations for a formal model of representation and numerical evaluation of a possibly broad class of arguments, including those that occur in natural discourse. Since one of the most characteristic features of everyday argumentation is the occurrence of convergent reasoning, special attention should be paid to the operation ⊕, which allows us to calculate the logical force of convergent arguments with an accuracy not offered by other approaches.

Dialectical approaches traditionally conceptualize argumentation as a discussion in which two parties debate on “two sides of an issue”. However, many political issues engender multiple positions. This is clear in multi-party online deliberations in which often an array of competing positions is debated in one and the same discussion. A proponent of a given position thus addresses a number of possible opponents, who in turn may hold incompatible opinions. The goal of this paper is to shed extra light on such (...) “polylogical” clash of opinions in online deliberation, by examining the multi-layered participation in actual online debates. The examples are drawn from the readers’ discussions on Osama bin Laden’s killing in online versions of two British newspapers: The Guardian and The Telegraph. As a result of the analysis, a distinction between sides, positions, and cases in argumentative deliberation is proposed. (shrink)

The discussion around dignity in nursing philosophy has been underway for many years. The literature still lacks philosophical arguments that would justify the thesis that all people have dignity. Scholars who defend dignity as an intrinsic value most often refer to Kant. However, Kant does not seem to be the most suitable candidate to defend the thesis that all human beings possess dignity. In this paper, I attempt to show that Aristotle's and Aquinas's views can help justify this thesis. To (...) this end, I distinguish between actual dignity, potential dignity, and existential dignity. I state that all human beings have existential dignity or potential dignity. (shrink)

One of the critical issues in the philosophy of science is to understand scientific knowledge. This paper proposes a novel approach to the study of reflection on science, called “cognitive metascience”. In particular, it offers a new understanding of scientific knowledge as constituted by various kinds of scientific representations, framed as cognitive artifacts. It introduces a novel functional taxonomy of cognitive artifacts prevalent in scientific practice, covering a huge diversity of their formats, vehicles, and functions. As a consequence, toolboxes, conceptual (...) frameworks, theories, models, and individual hypotheses can be understood as artifacts supporting our cognitive performance. It is also shown that by empirically studying how artifacts function, we may discover hitherto undiscussed virtues and vices of these scientific representations. This paper relies on the use of language technology to analyze scientific discourse empirically, which allows us to uncover the metascientific views of researchers. This, in turn, can become part of normative considerations concerning virtues and vices of cognitive artifacts. (shrink)

In this article I address the following question: When are reformulations in argumentative criticisms reasonable and when do they become fallacious straw men? Following ideas developed in the integrated version of pragma-dialectics, I approach argumentation as an element of agonistic exchanges permeated by arguers’ strategic manoeuvring aimed at effectively defeating the opponent with reasonable means. I propose two basic context-sensitive criteria for deciding on the reasonableness of reformulations: precision of the rules for interpretation (precise vs. loose) and general expectation of (...) cooperativeness (critical vs. constructive). On the basis of analysis of examples taken from online political discussions, I argue that in some contexts, especially those that are critical and loose, what might easily be classified as a straw man following conventional treatment should be taken as a harsh, yet reasonable, strategic argumentative criticism. (shrink)

The problem of computational complexity of semantics for some natural language constructions – considered in [M. Mostowski, D. Wojtyniak 2004] – motivates an interest in complexity of Ramsey quantifiers in finite models. In general a sentence with a Ramsey quantifier R of the following form Rx, yH(x, y) is interpreted as ∃A(A is big relatively to the universe ∧A2 ⊆ H). In the paper cited the problem of the complexity of the Hintikka sentence is reduced to the problem of computational (...) complexity of the Ramsey quantifier for which the phrase “A is big relatively to the universe” is interpreted as containing at least one representative of each equivalence class, for some given equvalence relation. In this work we consider quantifiers Rf, for which “A is big relatively to the universe” means “card(A) > f (n), where n is the size of the universe”. Following [Blass, Gurevich 1986] we call R mighty if Rx, yH(x, y) defines N P – complete class of finite models. Similarly we say that Rf is N P –hard if the corresponding class is N P –hard. We prove the following theorems. (shrink)

National Socialism did not only constitute a political doctrine; it was also a kind of worldview that left its mark on German and pan­-European culture of the 20th century. The drastic changes that were linked to Hitler’s takeover of power confronted writers and poets with a completely new reality and wholly new conditions of the creative process. Those who could not or would not emigrate had to submit themselves to the policies and norms decreed by the National Socialists. National Socialism (...) – a conglomerate of different ideologies and ideologemes – perverted certain middle­-class values and ultimately aimed towards the total subjugation of all areas of life, culture being among them. The fact that the German middle­-class partly shared the values propagated by the Nazis led to an overhasty and unjust assessment of the attitude of writers belonging to the so­-called ‘Inner Emigration’. The article at hand outlines the principles of National Socialist cultural politics as well as its relationship to artists. The complicated creative situation of writers and poets in the Third Reich will be shown by representative examples. (shrink)

Book review: Łukasz Hardt, Economics Without Laws. Towards a New Philosophy of Economics, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017, pp. 220.

In the book, I argue that the mind can be explained computationally because it is itself computational—whether it engages in mental arithmetic, parses natural language, or processes the auditory signals that allow us to experience music. All these capacities arise from complex information-processing operations of the mind. By analyzing the state of the art in cognitive science, I develop an account of computational explanation used to explain the capacities in question.

The article describes Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec's perspective on four classic philosophical images of man and the resulting theoretical and practical implications for the nursing profession. The first three images, namely man as a set of elements, man as a soul imprisoned in the body and man as a rational animal, are regarded by Krąpiec as reductionist anthropologies and are thus inadequate for nursing. The first image reduces man to a biological element. The second one reduces man to a soul and (...) treats a body as something an obstacle in personal development. The third image absolutizes reason in man. While the body is not rejected in this image, it is viewed as an indifferent mass. The last image, which regards man as a person, is an adequate image for nursing. The exceptional character of man emphasized in this image is determined by the following personal qualities: the ability for cognition, freedom, love, religiousness, dignity, subjectivity to law and completeness. These characteristics reveal the specificity of personal being in both the body and the spirit. By viewing man as a person, a nurse discovers a wide range of possibilities of providing effective help to the patient. (shrink)