Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1982

Argumentation and advocacy, 1997

2007

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook "written for upper-level undergraduate students who have completed at least one prior course in argumentation theory, critical thinking, informal logic, formal logic, or some other related discipline" (ix). This puts Vorobej's book in a unique position since, to my knowledge, there are no other second course undergraduate textbooks with a nonsymbolic focus. (Second course symbolic logic textbooks written for undergraduates, rather than primarily for graduate students, were relatively rare until recently; the past decade has seen a proliferation in such texts.) The book is divided into two parts. The first, comprising Chapters 1-3, is Macrostructure and the second, Chapters 4-6, Microstructure. Each chapter is broken down into various subsections and each subsection, with two exceptions, has its own set of exercises. The exercises are a mix of theoretically oriented problems such as "Suppose that argument A is cogent for person P and not cogent for person P′. Is it possible that, prior to carefully reflecting upon A, P and P′ could share identical epistemic states? Justify your answer" (102), and application oriented problems such as "On the assumption that each of the following passages expresses at least one normal convergent argument, identify the macrostructure and construct a diagram of that argument" (189). Chapter One, titled "Arguments", lays out the basic framework of the text and defines key terms such as argument, author, audience, argumentation, intentional audience, social audience, propositions, inference, canonical form, static, noise, embryonic argument, principle of charity, etc. With the exception of a heavy emphasis on theoretically oriented exercises, this chapter, the main purpose of which is to make the reader understand what arguments are and to understand the initial steps in extracting arguments from argumentative texts, could easily appear in an introductory text. Vorobej begins his text by writing "An argument is a social activity, the goal of which is interpersonal rational persuasion" (3) and initially talks of arguments occurring. However, Vorobej, without disavowing this commitment to arguments as a sort of act, quickly moves to talking of arguments as composed of propositions and inference claims. It is the propositions and the inference claims that ultimately determine the identity of an argument and it is the set of propositions, in relation to a given argumentative text, that have a canonical form, i.e., a macrostructure, and the propositions that bear evidential relations to each other, i.e., a microstructure. In Chapter Two, "Cogency", Vorobej presents his choice for an evaluative framework. According to Vorobej, a "cogent argument, we'll say, is an argument by which you ought to be persuaded. More precisely, an argument A is cogent for some person P, within some context C, just in case it is rational for P, within C, to be persuaded to believe the conclusion of A, on the basis of the evidence cited within

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

2010

This chapter collects the contributions discussed during the working sessions of the WG2 at CERME6. The work of the participants of the Thematic Working Group on Argumentation and Proof was organized around the goals of • Putting our research studies in relation to each other. • Getting feedback for improving both our research work and our papers. Each participant was expected to act as reactor to one of the other papers, presenting the key issues and posing questions to the author(s). Such intervention was aimed to trigger a collective discussion on the paper in focus as well on general issues. Although they all share the issue of proof and argumentation, the contributions offer a quite varied spectrum of perspectives, both from the point of view of theoretical frameworks assumed and of issues in focus. The main themes that emerged from the papers were the frame according to which the working sessions of the group were organized, and it is the same frame we use to organize this int...

2001

A commonly stated purpose for logic is evaluation of arguments. This paper describes the classical view, raises questions regarding its adequacy, and on the basis of the deficiencies found discusses ways to amend and refine the classical conception to make it more applicable to ordinary discourse.

Argumentation, 2008

This book is written for upper-level undergraduate students who have completed at least one course in logic, critical thinking or argumentation. Although the title suggests that the book provides a comprehensive theory, Vorobej deals primarily with the notion of argument, with the cogency of arguments and with how to develop a charitable reading of an argument and display it in a diagram. The book is not about argument schemes, argumentation indicators, dialogue, rhetoric or logical form. Nor is the book about argument evaluation. Norms are being discussed, but from the perspective of reconstructing arguments from a text. Part one of the book is called macrostructure and deals with arguments in canonical form (where they have a conclusion and a set of premises), with the cogency of arguments and with the analysis of so-called normal arguments. Part two is about the microstructure of arguments, i.e. with the more detailed patterns of evidential support. The book contains four hundred exercises with which students can examine the notions and definitions that the book introduces. Still, the book is not merely a textbook, but can also be considered as a scholarly contribution to the study of argumentation. The first part, on the macrostructure of arguments, has three chapters. The first chapter is about the notion of an argument. Vorobej makes it clear that he conceives of an argument as an attempt by an author to convince an audience to do or believe something by an appeal to reasons or evidence. The audience he refers to is the intentional audience, i.e. the persons that the author himself has in mind in his attempt at rational persuasion. The aim of constructing the macrostructure of an argument is ''to provide a perspicuous representation … of that argument's macrostructure as it is conceived by its author'', giving in that way ''primacy to

Informal Logic, 2010

Animal Rights, 2011

Here we turn to some important distinctions that everyone needs to know. These distinctions can become very technical and academic if one wishes to go that way, but the basic issues are relatively easy to understand. This chapter starts with the key distinction between...