SUNY series in Logic and Language – serie

On the Logic of Ordinary Conditionals offers a formal treatment of the logic of a type of conditional found in natural speech which differs substantially from the material conditional of propositional logic and from the conditionals afforded by theories of possible worlds. Conventional and necessary conditionals are studied as well as factual ones.

Argues that many philosophical commitments to hidden "essences" are based on misunderstandings of language, and that Wittgenstein's view of meaning as use dissolves these essentialist assumptions across logic, epistemology, and metaphysics.What if much of contemporary philosophy rests on a mistake about language?In Essentialism, Garth L. Hallett mounts a sustained and wide-ranging challenge to the assumption that things in the world must share hidden "essences" in order for our concepts to meaningfully apply. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's insights into language, use, and meaning, Hallett argues that much of modern essentialist thinking stems not from discovery, but from a misunderstanding of how language actually works.Across seven tightly argued chapters, the book traces the rise, persistence, and transformation of essentialist thought—from classical and medieval analogies to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of language, and modal metaphysics. Figures such as Kripke, Gettier, Dretske, and Carnap are engaged critically, alongside broader patterns in philosophical reasoning that continue to reintroduce essentialist assumptions under new forms.Hallett not only diagnoses these recurring confusions but also asks why they remain so resilient. His answer is both philosophical and therapeutic: the problem is not simply that essentialism is false, but that certain entrenched habits of thought make it feel unavoidable.Engaging, methodical, and philosophically provocative, this work challenges readers to reconsider what it means for concepts to have boundaries—and whether those boundaries were ever as fixed as philosophy has long assumed.

This book examines skeptical problems originally raised by Descartes and Hume and currently discussed in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. It answers the basic skeptical questions concerning the existence of what is now unperceived, the reality of what is perceived, and the existence of an external world. Johnstone shows how the recently proposed solutions to these skeptical problems- pragmatic, coherentist, linguistic, and new-Kantian - do not and cannot work, and how only a return to foundational investigation on the terrain of the radical skeptic is adequate to the task. His analyses make for a valuable summary of every significant argument brought against skepticism. In the course of his investigation, Johnstone probes a number of topical issues: knowledge, rationality, the nature of meaning, nonverbal thinking, the bodily nature of the thinking self, parasitism, the role of the tactile-kinesthetic body in feeling and belief, and the necessary role of free will in epistemology.

Develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies.This book develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies. The authors define the concept of commitment in a way that makes it useful in evaluating arguments. In traditional logic, a proposition is either true or false, and that is the end of it. In this new framework, an arguer can be held to his or her commitments in some cases, but in other cases, he or she can retract them without violating any rule of the dialogue. Commitment in Dialogue studies the conditions under which commitments should be held or may be retracted within an argument.An extensive case study of a discussion in medical ethics is used to bring together two traditions or schools of thought that had not been integrated previously-the rigorous Lorenzen school of formal logic, and the more permissive Hamblin-style dialogue. It introduces these methods of evaluation and offers guidelines for analyzing the text of discourse.The book could be used in both intermediate and advanced courses in informal logic, argumentation, and critical thinking, but it is accessible to the reader with no background in these fields as well. Each chapter is summarized, and additional problems to be solved are presented.

Presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.Kearns investigates representation and intentional activity to determine how experience contributes to propositional thought and belief, and how experience is based on neural states and events. This speech-act theory shows using language to be intentional (purposive) activity which cannot be explained computationally or causally. Learning language makes propositional thinking possible and provides conceptual structure to experience.The account of language and its acquisition sheds light on further issues such as reference and proper names, the difference between syllogistic and modern logic, and the paradoxes of self-reference. As for experience, the nonrelational analysis of representing explains our awareness of the world, which doesn't give us access to the world, and our access, which isn't provided by awareness. Reconceiving Experience presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.

A useful contribution to theories of argumentation and public address criticism, this book uses a pragmatic approach to understanding conversation as a way of elucidating the use of appeals to pity and sympathy.Appeal to pity has frequently been exploited with amazing success as a deceptive tactic of argumentation, so much so that it has traditionally been treated as a fallacy. Using a case study method, the author examines examples of appeals to pity and compassion in real arguments in order to classify, analyze, and evaluate the types of arguments used in these appeals. Among the cases studied are the controversial use of "poster kids" in the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy and the "baby incubators story" deployed by a public relations firm to influence the decision to send U.S. forces into Kuwait during the Gulf War. In addition to the analyses of these and other case studies, this book provides, for the first time, precise guidelines and useful criteria with which to identify, analyze, and evaluate instances of the ad misericordiam argument.

A practical manual for evaluating bias that will be useful to anyone who has to deal with arguments, whether in academic reading or writing, or in everyday conversation.We often feel that an argument should be doubted or held as suspicious because it has a bias. But bias isn't always wrong. It is a normal phenomenon in advocacy argumentation, and in many cases it is to be expected. Yet sometimes bias can be quite harmful in argumentation. In this book, bias is defined as one-sided advocacy of a point of view in argumentation. It is shown to be harmful, or properly subject to critical condemnation, only when the dialogue exchange is supposed to be a balanced, two-sided exchange of viewpoints.The book concedes the postmodernist premise that bias is quite normal in everyday conversational arguments, and that a finding of bias should not, by itself, constitute grounds for criticizing an argument as critically deficient or fallacious. But the book strongly disagrees with the postmodernist conclusion that no standard of rationality can be brought to bear to condemn narrowly interest-based or one-sided arguments as biased. It is argued that in some cases narrow, one-sided partisanship in an argument is justifiably a basis for negative criticism of the worth of the argument.

A practical manual for evaluating bias that will be useful to anyone who has to deal with arguments, whether in academic reading or writing, or in everyday conversation.We often feel that an argument should be doubted or held as suspicious because it has a bias. But bias isn't always wrong. It is a normal phenomenon in advocacy argumentation, and in many cases it is to be expected. Yet sometimes bias can be quite harmful in argumentation. In this book, bias is defined as one-sided advocacy of a point of view in argumentation. It is shown to be harmful, or properly subject to critical condemnation, only when the dialogue exchange is supposed to be a balanced, two-sided exchange of viewpoints.The book concedes the postmodernist premise that bias is quite normal in everyday conversational arguments, and that a finding of bias should not, by itself, constitute grounds for criticizing an argument as critically deficient or fallacious. But the book strongly disagrees with the postmodernist conclusion that no standard of rationality can be brought to bear to condemn narrowly interest-based or one-sided arguments as biased. It is argued that in some cases narrow, one-sided partisanship in an argument is justifiably a basis for negative criticism of the worth of the argument.

Approaches recent innovations in argumentation theory from a primarily rhetorical perspective.The revival of argumentation theory in the past few decades has focused on its logical and dialectical dimensions, with less attention paid to rhetorical features. This book explores and then redresses this imbalance. Tindale examines important logical and dialectical innovations in recent argumentation theory and shows that they depend implicitly upon rhetorical features of argument that have been suppressed in the account. This is illustrated using two extended case studies, one looking at Shell International's defense of its actions in Nigeria after the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the other exploring the uses of character-based argument and testimony in a Holocaust-denial text and legal trial.In addition to the case studies, two chapters treat serious problems that plague current argumentation theory. The first concerns the nature of fallacy; the second concerns the ties between traditional argumentation and a model of rationality that has been seriously critiqued by feminist and postmodernist scholars. In both instances, the discussion indicates how a rhetorical approach to argumentation offers fresh insights and suggests responses to the questions raised.

Presents a single unified interpretation of the Tractatus.The Argument of the "Tractatus" presents a single unified interpretation of the Tractatus based on Wittgenstein's own view that the philosophy of logic is the real foundation of his philosophical system. It demonstrates that on this interpretation Wittgenstein's views are far more visionary and relevant to contemporary discussions than has been suspected. A case in point is a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's theory of meaning that is shown to illuminate the views of a series of philosophers, including Brentano, the early Russell, Chomsky, Fodor, Katz, Kripke, Malcolm, and Dummett. McDonough's interpretation sheds new light on the connection between Wittgenstein's work and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophical tradition, and it facilitates a clear resolution of the controversy over the relation between Wittgenstein's own early and later philosophies.The Argument of the "Tractatus" is an excellent introduction to the field of twentieth-century analytical philosophy. It treats a wide range of authors and topics, including the foundations of logic, the theory of meaning, the disputes concerning atomistic versus holistic conceptions of language, the nature of the mental, the foundations of psycho-linguistics, the theory of communication, and the nature of philosophical systems.