Faculty Research and Publications

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Browsing Faculty Research and Publications by Subject "Argumentation"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Avoiding toxic charity in argumentation
    (Springer, 2025) Stevens, Katharina
    The interpersonal argumentative principle of charity is widely regarded as a legitimate norm for argumentation. Still, even a cursory look into the literature on argumentative charity reveals that charitable interpretations can easily become toxic. This means that they generate epistemic and moral losses by leading to distorting interpretations instead of preventing them, as the arguments for charity promise. This paper explores why argumentative charity becomes toxic and offers an attempt at identifying a kind of argumentative charity that fulfills the promises that make argumentative charity attractive. It does so by distinguishing three kinds of charity: Egocentric charity, which interprets the argument as strong from the interpreter’s point of view, emic charity, which interprets it as strong from the arguer’s point of view, and complex charity, which unites the two. Only complex charity can avoid toxicity.
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    Does rhetoric have a place in Wolhrapp's theory of argument?
    (University of Windsor, 2017) Stevens, Katharina
    This paper aims to determine whether rhetoric has a place in Wohlrapp's theory of argumentation. Wohlrapp's own attitude towards rhetoric is ambiguous. There are passages in his book where he grants that rhetoric might have a role to play when it comes to the subjective side of argumentation. Overall, however, he views rhetoric with deep suspicion. I argue that in spite of Wohlrapp's negative attitude, his theory of argumentation would benefit from integrating a theory of rhetoric. I take Wohlrapp's concepts of frame and insight as a starting point to make my case.
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    Sophisms and contempt for autonomy
    (The Pennsylvania State University, 2024) Stevens, Katharina
    Argumentation theory tends to treat the distinction between intentional and unin- tentional fallacies—sophisms and paralogisms—as unimportant for the evaluation of argumentation. The article author believes this is so because argumentation the- ory tends to be focused on the epistemic functions of argumentation and fallacious arguments pose the same threat to the production of epistemic goods whether they are intentional or not, so the distinction is not needed for the epistemic evalua- tion of argumentation. This article argues that argumentation has a special connec- tion to respect for autonomy, one that enables it to also produce distinctly moral goods. Sophisms, but not paralogisms, spoil these goods. Worse—sophisms produce potentially continuing moral harms, while paralogisms do not. Therefore, the paralogism/sophism distinction should be reintegrated into argumentation theory's evaluative toolbox. duce potentially continuing moral harms, while paralogisms do not. Therefore, the paralogism/sophism distinction should be reintegrated into argumentation theory’s