Volume 75 (2020), 8

According to a rather widespread view, the substantive aim of argumentation consists in resolving differences of opinion between disputing parties. This is the core of the pragma-dialectical definition of argumentation. It is argued that the definition is too narrow, if applied outside the scope of the Pragma-Dialectical Theory. It is not the case that every… Read more

This paper deals with various ways of criticizing arguments. In particular, I focus on John Pollock’s theory of defeasible reasoning and show that his conception of rebutting and undercutting defeaters omits some important ways of attacking arguments. I discuss not only the tenets of Pollock’s theory but I compare it also to some traditional ways of criticizing… Read more

Typically, a distinction is made between argumentation and explanation based on their different illocutionary aims. While the aim of argumentation is to provide support for the acceptability of a particular thesis by means of other statements, the aim of explanation is to provide understanding of a phenomenon, regularity, etc. Although this distinction is well-… Read more

The article deals with methods of abstraction, idealization and concretization in logic with a focus on the dimension of time in case of factual conditionals (in which an antecedent is stated as true and often introduced to by a conjunction „since“) with a time-shifted consequent in relation to the antecedent. We claim that the idealization of the time parameter… Read more

This article aims to show that it is impossible to put Cicero’s testimonies regarding The Fabius Argument in a consistent inferential order. Either we must suppose that additional premises are tacitly assumed in the text or we must compare it with other sources, which leads to inconsistencies in the proof’s reconstruction. Cicero’s reconstruction of the… Read more

Mysterianism has become a popular stance in philosophy of consciousness and other philosophical subdisciplines. The aim of this paper is to show that mysterianism is not justified, mainly because its inclination to epistemic defeatism and the misunderstanding of the division of epistemic labour. In the first part, I will present the history of mysterianism in the… Read more

The objective of the article is to explore representations and cognitive mechanisms that provide a basis for cumulative cultural learning. The paper examines research of imitation and natural pedagogy with focus on the role of decoupled representations and ostensive signals in the transmission of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge. The article aims to show that… Read more