Abstract
What are the constraints on an adequate theory of argumentation and are there any substantive principles that are accepted by all theories that could serve as grounds for adjudicating amongst competing theories? The challenge is to determine whether any set of basic principles will be robust enough to ground cross-theoretical evaluations of at least some of the target disagreements that confound argumentation theorists. In this paper I shall present and analyse numerous principles that argumentation theorists do agree upon (and some closely related ones which they do not) and argue that the set of agreed upon principles presented here offer at best limited grounds for cross-theoretical evaluation.
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Notes
- 1.
Woods (1992) appeals to a similar principle with regards to relevance—any theory of relevance that makes everything relevant to everything or nothing relevant to anything is to be rejected.
- 2.
The issue is made more complicated by the problem of trying to type acts or identify the identity conditions of an act—could act x have happened 2 min later and still be the same act? On some theories of the nature of acts the answer is ‘no’, but on others it is ‘yes’.
- 3.
The subtleties of the distinction between ‘giving’ and ‘using’ reasons in the context of arguing, if there is one, is not relevant here. Gilbert’s judo flip example is apparently an example of the giving or using of a reason, but still not the expressing of one.
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Goddu, G.C. (2015). Towards a Foundation for Argumentation Theory. In: van Eemeren, F., Garssen, B. (eds) Reflections on Theoretical Issues in Argumentation Theory. Argumentation Library, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21103-9_3
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