Abstract
I show that in our theoretical representations of argument, vicious infinite regresses of self-reference may arise with respect to each of the three usual, informal criteria of argument cogency: the premises are to be relevant, sufficient, and acceptable. They arise needlessly, by confusing a cogency criterion with argument content. The three types of regress all are structurally similar to Lewis Carroll’s famous regress, which involves quantitative extravagance with no explanatory power. Most attention is devoted to the sufficiency criterion, including its relation to the view au courant that inferring necessarily involves the thinker taking her premises to support her conclusion. I contend that this view is mistaken and likewise that arguments make no such assumption or inference claim as that the premises support the conclusion. The core of the positive alternative model I propose is that there is commitment to, but not claiming, the proposition that the premises support the conclusion.
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10 May 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00557-0
Notes
For example, Waller says that “The structure of inductive analogical arguments” includes the premise “4. Having characteristics e, f, g, and h is relevant to having characteristic k.” Walton, Reed, & Macagno’s “Argument from Analogy: Version 2” includes the “Relevant Similarity Premise: The similarity between C1 and C2 observed so far is relevant to the further similarity that is in question” (58).
There is an unusual theory that propositions can be regarded as limiting cases of properties in that they are zero-place properties; see Van Inwagen 2015.
McKeon’s view (2021a) is along the same lines as Hitchcock’s, but is more extreme. McKeon contends that “by stating an argument in arguing for its conclusion one asserts the associated inference claim [“to the effect that the conclusion follows from the premises”] as opposed to merely implying or implicating it” (359–360). Accordingly, he analyzes “speaker S’s utterance, p, so q in terms of two propositions expressed by the sentence S utters: p and q, q follows from p.” Thus, “arguments in their reason-giving sense are truth-evaluable” such that “what is uttered by stating an argument is true if every proposition that is expressed is true” (385). Yet, this would require a radical revision of our usual model of argument evaluation, since it is almost universally held that arguments do not have truth-values; rather, they are valid or invalid, or cogent or not.
Boghossian (2014: 5). As is common (e.g., Kietzmann 2018: 294ff.; Hlobil 2019: 702), I have elided the second part of the Condition—“and drawing his conclusion because of that fact”—since it seems irrelevant to our concerns. Note that McHugh & Way (discussed below) use the term “Consequence Condition” for the elided Taking Condition, but this does not affect my points. I attempt to construct a reasonable view partly from McHugh & Way’s paper, not give it a full hearing.
In some respects, Blake-Turner’s (2022) discussion of commitment in this context is similar to my own and McHugh and Way’s. However, he maintains that “to draw a conclusion is to take a rational stand…[this] reflects the agent’s having made up her mind—in the very inferring—about whether the premises support the conclusion” (98). This leaves little or no room for unreflective inferences, which the article often appears to assimilate to mere association or “mental jogging.” Hlobil’s (2019) notion of “inferential force” may be similar to that of commitment, but his notion is rather obscure, and from my point of view, arguments and inferences are not adequately distinguished.
Cf. Wisdom (1974: 571–572): “Now what is the point of this [Carroll’s] story? There is no agreement in the literature, unless it be that you should not treat ‘the principle of an inference’ as a premiss. But this simply cannot be the point of the story, since ‘C’, for example, is not the ‘principle’ of the inference from ‘A’ and ‘B’ to ‘Z’, whatever else the ‘principle’ of that inference might be. For ‘C’ is simply the claim that the inference is valid, or, equivalently, that ‘A’ and ‘B’ together entail ‘Z’.”
Instead of intended, the consequence relation may be pretended if the argument is insincere.
The Tortoise, in the first instance, asks Achilles “to force me, logically, to accept Z as true” given that “I accept A and B as true” (Carroll 1895: 279). Besides the answer to the Tortoise promised by epistemic infinitism, the postulation of “bridge principles” that link logical entailment and norms of reasoning is also an alternative to pragmatic defeatism. Here is an example of a bridge principle that apparently would address the Tortoise’s challenge (Pinder 2017: 62): “If P1, …, Pn ⊨ Q, then if S believes all the Pi, S has (defeasible) reason to believe Q” (cf., e.g., Steinberger 2019).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to David Botting, Daniel Cohen, Leo and Louis Groarke, David Kary, Matthew McKeon, Kenneth Olson, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on ancestors of this paper. One of these ancestors was presented at the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, another at the 9th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, and another won the Association for Informal Logic & Critical Thinking 2017 Essay Prize.
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Plumer, G. Carroll’s Regress Times Three. Acta Anal 38, 551–571 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00548-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00548-1