Abstract
The chapter is a reconsideration of the three criteria of a logically good argument—relevance, acceptability and sufficiency—30 years after Johnson and Blair introduced them in Logical Self-Defense (1977). The primary role of relevance is in the interpretation of discourse and judgments of probative relevance to identify the components of arguments to be found therein. Both acceptability and sufficiency are best understood as placeholders. In the case of acceptability, the use to which the argument is being put makes a difference. Similarly for sufficiency. Special fields such as the various sciences or professions will have standards peculiar to them for arguments about their subject matters. General guidelines for such things as the credibility of testimony or the trustworthiness of one’s own experience can be and have been formulated. Thorough arguments will have a dialectical dimension as well, with objections to the thesis or to the arguments for it acknowledged and answers to them provided.
Reprinted, with permission, from Anthropology & Philosophy, 8(1–2) (2007) (pp. 33–47). Mariano L. Bianca & Paolo Piccari (Eds.), Special Issue on Informal Logic and Theory of Argumentation.
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Notes
- 1.
In Logical Self-Defense we put the letters in the order, “R-S-A.” Nothing here depends on the order in which the terms or letters are placed.
- 2.
I need to warn the reader who might be under the mistaken impression that Johnson and Blair are a tag-team, either of whom can be a stand-in for the other, and each of whom speaks for the other. Although we agree about a great deal, have co-authored frequently and continue to do so, and often convince one another in conversation, we are in fact independent scholars who do not agree about everything. When either of us writes under his own name alone, the responsibility for what is written belongs exclusively to that author.
- 3.
This objection was first brought to my attention by Harvey Siegel.
- 4.
The most thorough and careful treatment of acceptability from an epistemological perspective is Freeman’s recent Acceptable Premises (2005).
- 5.
For instance, arguments for a claim that consists of a revolutionary new scientific theory will have to be indexed for scientists and scientific knowledge and beliefs in that field around that historical moment, but not for scientists of earlier eras and not for non-scientists or scientists in completely different fields.
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Blair, J.A. (2012). Relevance, Acceptability and Sufficiency Today. In: Tindale, C. (eds) Groundwork in the Theory of Argumentation. Argumentation Library, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2363-4_8
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