Rejecting the urge to theorise in fallacy inquiry

Rejecting the Urge to Theorise in Fallacy Inquiry

LOUISE CUMMINGS

Room J511, Tower BlockDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of Ulster at ColeraineCromore RoadColeraine, BT52 1SACounty LondonderryNorthern IrelandU.K.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I examine the incessant call to theory that is evident in fallacyinquiry. I relate the motivations for this call to a desire to attain for fallacy inquiry certainattributes of the theoretical process in scientific inquiry. I argue that these same attributes,when pursued in the context of philosophical inquiry in general and fallacy inquiry inparticular, lead to the assumption of a metaphysical standpoint. This standpoint, I contend,is generative of unintelligibility in philosophical discussions of rationality. I claim that thissame unintelligibility can be shown to characterise fallacy inquiry, an example of the studyof argumentative rationality. The context for my claim is an examination of the theoreticalpronouncements of two prominent fallacy theorists, John Woods and Douglas Walton, inrelation to the argument from ignorance fallacy. My conclusion takes the form of guidelinesfor the post-theoretical pursuit of fallacy inquiry.

KEY WORDS: argument from ignorance, John Woods and Douglas Walton, metaphysicalstandpoint, monolectical/dialectical reasoning, Nicholas Rescher, rationality, theorising,unintelligibility

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. The motivation for a theory of fallacies

The call for a theory of fallacies appears with remarkable regularity in theliterature on fallacies. Charles Hamblin, whose 1970 text Fallacies effec-tively resurrected an interest in the fallacies, remarks:

We have no theory of fallacy at all, in the sense in which we have theories of correctreasoning or inference. . . . we have lost the doctrine of fallacy, and need to rediscoverit. But it is all more complicated than that because, these days, we set ourselves higherstandards of theoretical rigour and will not be satisfied for long with a theory less ramifiedand systematic than we are used to in other departments of Logic . . . (1970, pp. 11–12;emphasis in original).

Grootendorst (1986) echoes Hamblin’s remarks when he states that:

I am not sure whether the proponents of the approaches just described would wish toassert that they have a theory of fallacies, and it would be very unfair to blame them fornot having one. However, anyone who takes a professional interest in the subject ought

Argumentation

18: 61–94, 2004. 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

to try to contribute to the formulation of such a theory. There is nothing new in this,because almost everybody agrees with Hamblin that we have no theory of fallacies andthat we badly need one (p. 335).

Woods and Walton, two prominent fallacy theorists, adopt an exactly similarposition to that of Grootendorst and Hamblin when they claim that‘. . . what we really need is a theory of the fallacies’ (1982, p. ix). Thatthere exists among those who study the fallacies a demand for the devel-opment of a theory of fallacies is clear indeed. What is less clear, however,is what motivates this demand and, in particular, the impact that thisdemand has on the structure of the fallacy inquiry which ensues from it.Certainly within scientific inquiry, the urge to theorise can be explainedby reference to values that are presupposed by that inquiry. Thus we findscientists pursuing analyses that exhibit completeness, certainty andobjectivity for the reason that these particular theoretical attributes aredeemed to bring us closer to attaining the end goal of all scientific inquiry,the goal of truth. If, for example, our inquiries are incomplete, then wecannot ever claim to be in possession of the truth concerning a particularissue: it is possible that we have omitted from inquiry some aspect of aproblem which could refute a claim to truth that is based on that inquiry(of course, this could still be the case, notwithstanding our best efforts topursue complete inquiries). In the same way, analyses which proceed onthe basis of idiosyncratic methods lack the kind of objectivity that we strivefor in scientific theorising, an objectivity which, it is generally held, revealsthe true nature of the external world. Finally, any scientific analysis whichlacks the epistemic feature of certainty is an analysis which lacks essen-tial verification as to its truth status. Now, the urge to theorise is as strongin fallacy inquiry as it is in scientific inquiry and, it should be added, forall the same reasons as those which are routinely cited by scientists whowish to justify their theoretical activities. The question that I want to askis whether what is appropriate theoretical methodology in the context ofscience constitutes appropriate theoretical methodology in the context offallacy inquiry and, specifically, whether the urge to attain completeness,objectivity and certainty of theoretical analysis in science constitutes in anyway an intelligible theoretical pursuit in fallacy inquiry.

1.2. The mundane-metaphysical distinction

It is necessary to explain at this point a distinction that will be central tothe argument of this paper. Notions like completeness, certainty and objec-tivity, I contend, can exist in both a mundane and a metaphysical form. Itis the mundane conceptions of these notions that effectively guide scien-tific inquiry – the scientist is not in pursuit of a form of certainty that isbeyond all of our cognitive grasps (metaphysical certainty), only a formof certainty that is attainable from within the rational resources of inquirers.By the same token, as the scientist comes to pursue completeness and

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objectivity in his theorising, he is pursuing specifically mundane concep-tions of these notions – the scientist is not aiming for theories that arecomplete and objective by standards which we cannot recognise let aloneimplement, only by standards that we can make sense of from within ouravailable rational resources. I will argue subsequently that when the subjectof inquiry is rationality itself, as it is in the case of philosophical inquiry,the scientist’s mundane conceptions of certainty, completeness and objec-tivity undergo a process of inflation, the result of which is the metaphys-ical counterpart of these notions.

2. COMPLETENESS, OBJECTIVITY AND CERTAINTY: THE THEORETICAL

2. IDEALS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY AS THE SOURCE OF UNINTELLIGIBILITY

2. IN PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

The simple answer to both parts of the question that was posed at the endof section 1.1 is that the theoretical methodology of science is not appro-priate methodology in the context of fallacy inquiry, and that completeness,objectivity and certainty of theoretical analysis, whilst constituting accept-able theoretical aims in scientific inquiry, give rise to much unintelligibilityin fallacy inquiry. The more complicated answer to this question involvesus in an examination of the nature of the problems that are addressed byscience and philosophy respectively (fallacy inquiry is, after all, a sub-domain of philosophy). The scientist’s domain of inquiry is that of thenatural world. When the scientist poses questions about the natural world,he is concerned to establish not only the physical entities which make upthis world, but also how these physical entities connect to other physicalentities to form the basis of structures which are biological, chemical,geological, etc. in nature. Each physical entity and each interconnectionbetween physical entities finds representation in the form of a theory, atheory which undergoes successive reformulations as new knowledgeemerges from inquiry. This process of theory construction proceeds againsta background in which there is at least the possibility that a point will bereached in inquiry where no further reformulations of theory can beachieved and the development of a theory will be complete. What makesthe completeness of scientific theorising possible in principle, if not inpractice, is the relationship of the processes of scientific thought to theprocesses of rational thought. Scientific thinking, whilst representative ofrational thinking, is effectively subsumed by rational thinking. Indeed, itis on account of this relationship of subsumption between scientific andrational thought that the processes of scientific thought are both possibleand intelligible. Now, a complete scientific theory is a theory which cannotbe reformulated on the basis of any processes of scientific thought whichare within our present-day scientific knowledge. However, while we makenecessary use of processes of scientific thought in developing complete

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scientific theories, any assessment of the completeness of a scientific theoryis an assessment which can only proceed when processes of rational thoughtthat are of a different order to the processes that are involved in theestablishment of a scientific theory are presupposed by that theory. Mypoint is quite simply that in posing scientific questions and in developingcomplete scientific theories, the scientist is not posing questions anddeveloping complete theories about rational thought; rather, the scientist’stheories and questions presuppose rational thought.

Now consider the case of the philosopher in pursuit of inquiry. Thephilosopher believes, mistakenly I contend, that he can pose questionsabout, and develop complete theories of, rational thought in much the samemanner that the scientist poses questions about, and develops completetheories of, physical phenomena. However, what the philosopher fails toappreciate when he poses such questions and develops such theories isthat when those questions and theories involve rational thought itself, thenthe rational framework which is presupposed by scientific methodologyand which confers sense upon the questions and theories of the scientist islacking in the case of philosophical methodology. The philosopher’s entiretheoretical pursuit is the unintelligible one of attempting to theorise aboutrational thought from a perspective which is itself devoid of rationalthought. Certainly the philosopher’s motivation in pursuing scientificmethodology in the context of philosophical inquiry – through his pursuitof completeness of theoretical analysis the philosopher, I am claiming, ispursuing scientific methodology – is an understandable one: the philoso-pher, like the scientist, wishes to attain truth through his analyses and thecompleteness of theoretical analysis in science appears to guarantee thatsuch truth will be attained. However, the nature of the particular questionsand theories that the philosopher is concerned to investigate requires thathe deny the rational presuppositions of scientific methodology – while thescientist can claim completeness for his analyses, analyses which at thesame time presuppose rational thought, the philosopher, who is theorisingabout rational thought itself, can only claim completeness for his analysesby denying that these analyses presuppose rational thought.

The philosopher, I am claiming, is like the scientist in his desire to pursuecomplete theoretical analyses. This desire and the analyses that it gives riseto are motivated, I have argued, by the end goal of inquiry, the goal of theattainment of truth. I am also claiming that while completeness of analysisconstitutes an intelligible theoretical pursuit in scientific inquiry – suchanalysis presupposes rational thought, thought which confers sense on thatanalysis – completeness of analysis in philosophical inquiry leads to muchunintelligibility in that inquiry – the rational thought which confers senseon analysis is absent when that analysis is a complete description of rationalthought itself. In effect, my claim is that where the scientist theorises froma standpoint or perspective which presupposes rational thought, the philoso-pher, in theorising about rational thought itself, can only do so from a type

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of metaphysical standpoint, the essential feature of which is that it is devoidof rational thought. Similar claims can now be shown to apply to philo-sophical analyses that mimic the objectivity and certainty of scientificanalyses. Scientific objectivity consists essentially in the scientist’s pursuitof methods which have a proven reliability as indicators of truth. What thisnotion of reliability comes to is that each of the scientist’s methods shouldbe susceptible of discussion in a public forum and, importantly, that eachof these methods should be susceptible of implementation by any of themembers of that forum, identical results being obtained with each imple-mentation of the method concerned. Thus science rejects astrology as amethod of prediction for the reason that the astrologer’s predictive methods,so the scientist claims, cannot be demonstrated to another who can use themto replicate the results that were obtained upon the initial implementationof these methods. Similarly, when the mystic claims to have belief in areality which surpasses normal human understanding and experience, thescientist claims that the methods that the mystic uses for grounding his/herbelief cannot be communicated to another who can implement them in orderto describe the mystic’s reality – the mystic’s methods, the scientist argues,are entirely within his/her private experience. In short, where mysticismemphasises the subjectivity of experience, science, the scientist claims,emphasises the objectivity of the public domain.

In the same way that I have been claiming that the philosopher sets outto mimic the completeness of the scientist’s analyses, the philosopher, Inow want to claim, sets out to mimic the objectivity of those analyses.Central to a scientific conception of objectivity, it was argued above, isthe rejection of private experience with all its inherent subjectivity. Thephilosopher, who wishes to achieve just this scientific conception ofobjectivity for his own analyses, sets about a similar rejection of experi-ence. However, as the philosopher pursues this rejection, the whole notionof a mind, within which these experiences occur, comes to be rejected.But then there is nothing to distinguish the philosopher’s viewpoint fromthe type of metaphysical standpoint that I described earlier. For in bothcases the attempt to theorise proceeds from a perspective which isessentially devoid of the processes of rational thought. Fisher commentsas follows on just such a ‘negation of “mind” ’ in the case of symboliclogic:

While positivism was busy denying metaphysics as a legitimate philosophical study andconceiving of value statements as meaningless, mathematical (symbolic) logic was movingtoward a negation of “mind”. Following a line of thought stretching from Aristotle throughthe works of Gottfried Leibniz, George Boole, and Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russellasserted in 1905:

Throughout logic and mathematics, the existence of the human mind or any other mindis totally irrelevant; mental processes are studied by means of logic, but the subject-matterof logic does not presuppose mental processes and would be equally true if there wereno mental processes. It is true that in that case we should not know logic; but ourknowledge must not be confounded with the truths which we know (1987, pp. 6–7).


In the same way that the logician believes he can confer objectivity on logicby making any assessment of the correctness of axioms and the validity ofrules of inference a matter of the form of these structures,1 thus eliminatingany role for the subjective judgements of individual minds in theseassessments, the philosopher believes that in order to pursue objectiveanalyses in philosophical inquiry, he must effectively assume the perspec-tive of a metaphysical standpoint, a standpoint from which any and allconceptual contribution from the mind is absent. However, in so assumingthis standpoint, the position of the philosopher who is aiming to pursueobjective analyses is exactly that of the philosopher who is aiming to pursuecomplete analyses: his analyses are not objective so much as they areunintelligible, for the reason that this standpoint lacks the conceptualresources with which to make sense of these analyses.

It remains to be seen if the philosopher’s pursuit of analyses that exhibitcertainty can evade the charge of unintelligibility that vitiated his attemptsto pursue analyses that are complete and objective. I described earlier howthe notion of scientific certainty has its basis in verification: scientificanalyses are certain when they have undergone verification of their truthstatus. Within scientific inquiry, verification most usually consists in a formof experimentation. In this way, scientific hypotheses are confirmed (shownto be true) or disconfirmed (shown to be false) through the use of tech-niques that extend the normal perceptual capacity of the senses. Underlyingeach such confirmation or disconfirmation are, among other things,judgements of relevance – these judgements guide us in our choice of inves-tigative technique: only certain microscopy techniques are relevant to (inthe sense of producing evidence which is relevant to) the confirmation/disconfirmation of an hypothesis concerning the microbiology of plant cells.Other judgements that are presupposed by these confirmations anddisconfirmations are judgements about when it is appropriate to desist fromfurther inquiry, for the reason that the hypothesis in question has under-gone as thorough a verification of its truth status as is possible in theparticular circumstances of the case. What this last set of judgements comesto is that in any inquiry, scientific inquiry specifically included, we arenot required to verify a statement, claim or hypothesis beyond any and allpossibility of error before we can be certain of its truth status, but onlybeyond the reasonable possibility of error2 – a point is reached in anyinquiry where, owing to constraints imposed by the intellectual capacityof inquirers and by the measuring instruments employed by those inquirers,no further verification of a hypothesis is possible. By the same token, thecertainty that we aim for in scientific analysis is of a practical kind, asopposed to a type of transcendental certainty which is beyond all of ourgrasps.

Now the philosopher, I want to claim, looks to scientific inquiry for aconception of certainty that he can employ in his analyses. It will berecalled from the above discussion that the verifications which give content

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to the scientific notion of certainty often proceed on the basis of techniquesthat extend considerably the capacity of human perceptual processes. Nounassisted process of human visual perception can register the mitochon-dria in animal cells, for example; yet through the use of electron microscopywe can easily detect these cellular structures. The reason why suchmicroscopic structures, while outside the unassisted visual perceptualcapacity of humans, are not outside the conceptual capacity of humans –we can still think about these structures and make sense of the type offunctions that they perform, even in the absence of our being able to directlyperceive them – is because human visual perception presupposes all sortsof concepts that are constitutive of rational thinking. Now consider howthe philosopher sets about replicating this scientific notion of certainty inthe context of his analyses. In his attempt to institute within his inquiriesa scientific conception of certainty, the philosopher believes that he canpursue verifications of the type routinely performed by the scientist.However, given that the philosopher is inquiring into the nature of notionslike rationality, a scientific process of verification that moves beyond ourperceptual processes becomes transformed for the philosopher into aprocess of verification that moves beyond our conceptual processes. Sowhereas, for the scientist, concepts of rational thought are presupposed byhis process of assisted-perception verification, for the philosopher ofrationality, no concepts of rational thought are presupposed by his processof verification, for the reason that it is rational thought itself that is thesubject of verification. Yet in the absence of such prior concepts of rationalthought the philosopher’s verifications are completely unintelligible innature. Where the scientist performs intelligible assisted-perception veri-fications, the philosopher, in attempting to pursue a scientific conceptionof certainty within his own analyses, ends up pursuing unintelligibleverifications of our rational thought. A model for the type of these latterverifications, I believe, is to be found in the argumentation employed bythe sceptic. Edwards describes how the knowledge sceptic argues that:

None of us, for example, has explored every corner of the universe to make sure thatthere nowhere exists a malicious but powerful individual who controls the movementsof the sun by means of wires which are too fine to be detected by any of our microscopes.None of us can be sure that there is no such Controller who, in order to play a joke withthe human race, will prevent the sun from rising tomorrow. Equally, none of us can besure that there is nowhere a powerful individual who can, if he wishes, regulate themovement of human bodies by means of ropes which are too thin to be detected by anyof our present instruments. None of us therefore can be sure that when a man jumps outof the Empire State Building he will not be drawn skyward by the Controller of Motion(1949, p. 144).

The knowledge sceptic attempts to undermine our claims to knowledge bypresenting scenarios of the kind described above, scenarios which, thesceptic claims, cannot be eliminated as possible sources of error withinour claims to knowledge with the inevitable result that we cannot ever


advance such claims. However, the only thing to emerge from argumenta-tion of this type is not that knowledge is impossible, as the sceptic wouldhave us believe, but that the sceptic is operating with an altogether inflatedconception of certainty. The conception of certainty that the sceptic thrustsupon the concept of knowledge is transcendental as opposed to practicalin nature. It is the conception which requires us to eliminate all possibilityof error, even the possibility that we are being duped by some evilController of Motion, before advancing any claim to knowledge. Yet thistranscendental conception is itself only possible from within the perspec-tive of a metaphysical standpoint, as can be seen as soon as we ask thequestion of how the evil Controller of Motion’s deception is to be exposed(such an exposure becomes part of our procedure of verification under atranscendental conception of certainty). The only way in which we canexpose this deception is to step outside of our conceptual schemes andobserve the Controller of Motion as he proceeds to manipulate theseschemes. In so stepping outside of our schemes, the only perspective thatwe can assume is the essentially aconceptual perspective of a metaphys-ical standpoint. Yet it is just this standpoint which, I have been arguing, isgenerative of much unintelligibility in philosophical inquiry. It thus emergesthat the philosopher’s attempt to pursue certainty of theoretical analysisgives rise to the same unintelligibility that vitiated his pursuit of analysesthat are complete and objective.

Indeed, I contend that such is the nature of the philosopher’s subjectmatter that the assumption of a metaphysical standpoint along with itsattendant unintelligibility is the inevitable consequence of any philosopher’sattempt to pursue certain, complete and objective analyses of rationality.Moreover, the philosopher who theorises about rationality is not at libertyto reject the metaphysical standpoint and metaphysical conceptions ofcertainty, completeness and objectivity and to institute in their place amundane analysis of rationality, i.e. an analysis of rationality that proceedson the basis of mundane conceptions of these notions. For it is not thecase that the philosopher has chosen to pursue metaphysical conceptionsof completeness, certainty and objectivity within his analyses of rationality.Rather, it is the case that these metaphysical conceptions are immediatelythrust upon the philosopher by virtue of the fact that the subject matter ofhis theorising is rationality itself. It is simply not possible for the philoso-pher of rationality to pursue an analysis of rationality that is complete,certain and objective in the mundane senses of these terms, for the reasonthat such a mundane analysis of rationality embodies two conflicting and,ultimately, contradictory demands – the demand inherent in notions likecompleteness to analyse rationality in its entirety and the demand inherentin the notion of a mundane analysis to establish rationality as a concept,at least part of which is presupposed by such an analysis and as such isnecessarily outside of that analysis. An analysis of rationality that iscomplete in a mundane sense is quite simply incoherent. The scientist’s

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pursuit of a form of completeness that presupposes rationality makes itseem as if the philosopher should be able to pursue a complete analysis ofrationality, an analysis that also presupposes rationality. But whereas thescientist can claim completeness in principle, if not in practice, for thetheories that he formulates, the philosopher is denied, by virtue of the factthat we must first use rationality to say anything about rationality, evencompleteness in principle for his theories of rationality. Of course, this isnot to say that the rationality that is presupposed by a theory of rationalitycannot itself be examined within such a theory. It is just to say that for suchan examination to even proceed, yet further rationality that is not part ofthe theory of rationality must be presupposed by that theory – we can neverfully step outside of rationality and survey rationality in its totality.

This last claim warrants further examination, particularly in the contextof an actual theory of rationality. For this reason I undertake in the nextsection an analysis of the theory of rationality proposed by NicholasRescher.

3. RESCHER ON RATIONALITY

In his 1988 text Rationality, Rescher locates from the outset the source ofhis dissatisfaction with standard conceptions of rationality in what he takesto be the ‘overly narrow’ nature of those conceptions. For example, in thepreface of that text he states:

In writing this book I have one central objective – to protest against an overly narrowconception of what ‘rationality’ is all about (1988, p. vii).

This ‘overly narrow conception’ of rationality comes about, Rescher argues,through the attempt to define rationality from within a ‘particular disci-pline’:

When cultivating the limited concerns of a particular discipline it is easy to lose sight ofhow complex and many-sided rationality is, and there has been a widespread tendencyto take an over-narrow view. For the logician, the avoidance of inconsistency is seen asrationality’s be-all and end-all. For the economist, it is efficiency in the pursuit of chosenobjectives. For the decision theorist, it is correct cost-benefit calculation. Everyspecialty seems to opt for some narrow desideratum as the definitive feature of reason(p. vii; emphasis added).

According to Rescher, no particular discipline can provide us with a ‘defin-itive feature’ of rationality, nor can rationality be accounted for in termsof the ‘delimited good to be achieved’ by a particular discipline:

In fact, however, rationality is something far-reaching and much-inclusive, and not merelya particular delimited good to be achieved by narrow technical means that convenientlylie within the scope limitations of a particular discipline. Properly construed, rationalityis as wide-ranging and complex as the domain of intelligence at large (pp. vii–viii;emphasis added).


It is clear that Rescher is critical, at least initially, of attempts to fullycircumscribe the notion of rationality through the identification of thisnotion with the ‘concerns’ of particular disciplines. Rescher maintains thiscritical position in later discussion when he argues that the rationality ofparticular disciplines is itself subject to rational evaluation – in such acase, the rationality of this evaluation is, by necessity, distinct from therationality of particular disciplines, thus precluding the attempt to identifyrationality in toto with the rationality of these disciplines. For example, inrelation to a classical utilitarian view of rationality, Rescher argues:

Just here lies a salient defect of classical utilitarianism – it sees utility as an ultimatestandard in rational choice, whereas the issue of the rational status of utility itself cannotbe avoided permanently (p. 114).

Any determination of the ‘rational status of utility itself’ is a determina-tion which presupposes rational thought, indeed presupposes rationalthought which is unrelated to utility as such. In this way, rationality cannotbe identified with utility – the notion of rationality is wider than that ofutility. Rescher takes the same point to apply to probabilities in orthodoxdecision theory:

They [probabilities] are not arbiters of rationality, but themselves objects of rationalcriticism – representing factual judgements that themselves need to be rationallysubstantiated (p. 116).

In rationally substantiating these factual judgements, we must consider the‘special, restrictive assumptions’ under which probabilities are defined. Yetany consideration of this nature cannot proceed ‘in a mindless and auto-matic way’, but must instead presuppose rational thought, rational thoughtwhich is unrelated to probabilities. It emerges that probabilities, likeutilities, do not determine rationality. Instead, they form the subject of thecritical scrutiny of rationality:

The very fact that expected-value comparisons can be implemented in a rational (intel-ligent) and an irrational (unintelligent) way – depending on how meaningful thoseutilities are and how well-based those probability values are – shows that rationalitycannot consist in expected-value appraisals alone.

And so, while the maximization of actual or expected utilities is an important instru-mentality of rational procedure, it is not itself the determinative arbiter of rationality.Probabilities and utilities do not determine rationality: they themselves are subject torational constraints. Rationality is something too fundamental to be embraced within theboundaries of standard economic practice and orthodox decision theory. Expected-utilitycalculation is no more than a serviceable tool whose proper use must itself be conditionedand canalized by considerations of rational appropriateness (p. 118).

Even as Rescher criticises economic conceptions of rationality, his ownpositive view of rationality is beginning to emerge. That view seeseconomic rationality as the subject of an ongoing process of rationalcriticism and reflection, and not as the ‘arbiter’ of that process. The moregeneral conclusion of this view is that the attempt to identify rationality intoto with the standards of rational warrant of particular disciplines is

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precluded for the reason that standards of rational warrant which are notincluded by these disciplines are presupposed by any such identificationof rationality. Rationality, on this view, is wider, and necessarily so, thanthe rationality of not just economic disciplines but of all other disciplinesas well. Given Rescher’s adherence to this view, part of his subsequentanalysis of practical, cognitive and evaluative forms of rationality isunremarkable indeed. That part relates to what Rescher claims is the depen-dence of each of these forms of rationality on the rationality of the tworemaining domains. For example, Rescher argues that practical rationalityis dependent on cognitive rationality (knowledge) and evaluative rationality:

Intelligent action cannot proceed without knowledge, in whose absence we would nolonger be able to perform those acts that afford our best-warranted hopes for optimalresults (p. 121).

. . . practical activity in the pursuit of an objective is rational only in so far as we havesound reason for deeming the realization of this objective to be a good. Accordingly,evaluation too is an essential resource for practice (p. 121).

In the same way, Rescher claims that cognitive rationality is dependenton practical and evaluative rationality and that evaluative rationality isdependent on cognitive and practical rationality. What the interdependenceof these forms of rationality demonstrates is that neither the practical, thecognitive nor the evaluative sphere is definitive of rationality. For in orderto even say what practical rationality consists in, for example, issues whichare unrelated to the sphere of practice, issues which pertain to cognitionand evaluation, are required. So to the extent that Rescher takes one formof rationality to be presupposed by yet further forms of rationality, it isclear that his own view of rationality concurs with the view of rationalitythat I have been proposing. However, the point at which Rescher’s viewof rationality differs significantly from my own view concerns the natureof the dependence relation between practical, cognitive and evaluativeforms of rationality. As I have characterised this relation, it is of the orderof a presupposition – rational thought is not simply a requirement ofconceptions of rationality, but is actually presupposed by those concep-tions, in the sense of forming a precondition for the very possibility of thoseconceptions. Yet Rescher is explicit in his rejection of a presuppositionalstatus for the relations between practical, cognitive and evaluative formsof rationality:

The following objection arises:

You maintain that cognitive reason involves practical reason through construing accep-tance as an act – an ‘act of acceptance’. But you also hold that practical reasonings alwaysrequire premisses that can only be secured through cognitive reason. Do these togethernot make for a sceptical regress that blocks all prospect of cognition via the vitiating con-sequence that every valid practical argument presupposes others?

The answer to this question is negative. For one must observe: ‘Requires, yes, butnot pre-requires – demands, yes, but not presupposes in the literal sense of somethingthat must go before’ (p. 124).


To this objection I respond that nothing of a pernicious nature is admittedonce we recognise the presuppositional character of rationality. The per-nicious nature of a presuppositional view of rationality constitutes a centralthesis in Rescher’s thinking:

The structure of rationality is a matter of system, not of sequence. The mutual involve-ment at issue is reciprocal and harmless rather than presuppositional and vitiating(p. 124; emphasis added).

Presuppositional rationality can only be reasonably described as vitiatingin the case where presupposed rationality is exactly identical to therationality which is made possible by this presupposed rationality – theflaw, in such a case, is essentially that of a circular process of dependence.However, in the scenario outlined in the above objection, circularity issimply not an issue. The rationality which is presupposed by cognitivereason in the present case is distinct from cognitive reason, thus renderingirrelevant a charge of circularity. The distinctness of this presupposed formof rationality is necessary if the rationality of cognitive reason is to beintelligible. Any attempt to terminate the necessarily presuppositionalcharacter of rationality is an attempt to describe rationality from a meta-physical standpoint, a standpoint from which it seems that we can surveyrationality in toto without in turn presupposing rationality. One such attemptat termination, I want to claim, is to be found in the view of Rescher, aview to the effect that ‘the structure of rationality is a matter of system’.In emphasising the systemic unity of reason – rational claims are, accordingto Rescher, ‘concomitant’, they stand ‘co-ordinate’ with each other –Rescher is, in effect, denying the priority of any one form of rationalityover other forms of rationality. Yet in the absence of such priority, prac-tical, cognitive and evaluative forms of rationality are unintelligible innature. These issues can be further examined by returning to the aboveobjection.

The objector, it will be recalled, describes the dependence of cognitivereason on practical reason and the further dependence of practical reasonon cognitive reason as involving a ‘sceptical regress’ which has ‘thevitiating consequence that every valid practical argument presupposesothers’. It is my claim that this regress, quite apart from being sceptical,and that these presuppositions, quite apart from being vitiating, constitutenecessary features of the notion of rationality. The necessity of thesefeatures derives from a precondition on rationality, a precondition to theeffect that rationality is only possible in the presence of prior rationality.On this view, rationality is regressive and presuppositional and harmlesslyso. The harmlessness of this view, I argued above, obtains only if it canbe demonstrated that the cognitive reason ‘required’ by the practical reasonof the above objection is distinct both from practical reason and from theoriginal cognitive reason which ‘involves’ practical reason. The distinct-ness of these forms of rationality can indeed be demonstrated. As employed

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by Rescher, the notion of acceptance in the above objection pertains to acontext of cognitive inquiry. In any cognitive inquiry, theses are acceptedor rejected in accordance with their satisfaction or failure of satisfactionof certain criteria. Some of these criteria can be characterised as relevanceto the wider purpose of an inquiry, relevance to a particular thesis-to-be-confirmed in an inquiry and satisfaction of the evidential standards of aninquiry. While these criteria belong to the domain of cognitive inquiry –relevance in this context is the relevance of information – effective pursuitof these criteria ‘must be governed by the ground rules of practicalrationality’ (Rescher, 1988, p. 122). For example, in order to secure infor-mation which is relevant to the wider purpose of inquiry, these ground rulesmust direct inquiry away from some areas of investigation and towardsother areas of investigation (imagine in this case a ground rule in the formof the imperative ‘In order to secure information which is relevant to thepurpose of inquiry, investigate area x as opposed to areas y and z’). Yetthis ground rule is itself only rational against the background of knowledgeto the effect that by investigating area x as opposed to areas y and z,information which is relevant to the purpose of inquiry will be attained.Rescher describes this knowledge as follows:

We cannot even begin to effect a rational choice among alternative courses of actionwithout determinate beliefs about the consequences of these actions. Even if performingan action is in fact conducive to realizing someone’s appropriate ends (if, say, ingestingyonder chemical substance will actually cure his illness), it is nevertheless not rationalso to act if the agent has no knowledge of this circumstance (and all the more so if suchinformation as he has points the other way) (1988, p. 120).

My point is quite simply that the chain of dependence represented by theobjector as that between cognitive reason and practical reason and betweenpractical reason and cognitive reason is more accurately represented as achain of dependence between the following considerations – acceptanceof theses in cognitive inquiry proceeds in accordance with criteria ofcognitive rationality, criteria the satisfaction of which presupposes groundrules of practical rationality, ground rules which in turn presuppose theknowledge that a particular course of action will be effective in attaininginformation which satisfies criteria of cognitive rationality. It will benoticed that at each point in this chain of dependence essentially distinctconsiderations are in operation – new and distinct features of rationalityare revealed with the exposure of each presupposition. And while, as it wasargued above, no termination of these presuppositions can be achieved,their distinctness establishes presuppositional rationality as a structurewhich is harmless rather than as a structure which is sceptical andvitiating.3

Even in the voice of an objector in the above passage, Rescher’s char-acterisation of a presuppositional structure for the analysis of rationalityas a structure which makes for ‘a sceptical regress that blocks all prospect


of cognition’ is deeply revealing of how he conceives of the theoreticalprocess in philosophy and, particularly, of what he takes to constituteacceptable theory in philosophy. It can be demonstrated that for Rescher,one of the attributes of an acceptable philosophical theory is that it shouldembody a complete analysis of its subject matter which, in the case ofrationality, is an analysis of rationality that does not presuppose rationality.By its very nature, a conception of rationality, that is based on a regress,evades any complete, final analysis – irrespective of where we decide tocall a halt to that analysis, some further component of rationality, whichshould properly be part of that analysis, is presupposed by that analysis.The reason Rescher is anxious to reject a regress as an appropriate con-ceptual framework within which to analyse rationality is that the inherentcapacity of a regress to evade complete analysis offends against Rescher’sview of what constitutes an acceptable theory in philosophy, namely, thatsuch a theory must be, if not in practice complete, then at least capable ofbecoming complete, given an inquiry of sufficient duration, etc. If it isclear how Rescher’s rejection of a regressive conception of rationality ismotivated by his pursuit of the theoretical aim of completeness of analysis,it is less clear how Rescher intends that theoretical aim to evade thecriticism of it examined earlier. That criticism consisted in a charge ofunintelligibility against a complete analysis of rationality – for such ananalysis to be complete, it was argued above, a precondition on both thepossibility and intelligibility of rationality, the existence of a prior form ofrationality, must first be negated. Rescher negates this same preconditionby denying the priority of any form of rationality over other forms ofrationality – recall that for Rescher, rational claims are ‘concomitant’, theystand ‘co-ordinate’ with each other. Yet what Rescher must explain, andwhat I believe he cannot explain, is how the ‘systemic unity’ view of ratio-nality that he takes to result from this denial of the priority of rationalitycan evade the charge of unintelligibility that was examined above.

Rescher, it will be recalled, had one central objective in conducting aninquiry into rationality – ‘to protest against an overly narrow conceptionof what ‘rationality’ is all about’ (p. vii). And it is clear that Reschersucceeds in bringing together aspects of rationality which have tradition-ally been examined in isolation from one another. But it is also clear thatby denying the priority of rationality, Rescher has not produced anexpanded conception of rationality so much as he has produced anunintelligible conception of rationality.

4. COMPLETENESS, OBJECTIVITY, CERTAINTY AND THE ARGUMENT FROM

4. IGNORANCE

Even a cursory examination of the literature on informal fallacies isadequate to establish the fact that completeness, objectivity and certainty

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are significant theoretical concepts in the study of individual fallacies. Forexample, in relation to petitio principii argument, Biro (1977) remarks that:

I have not discussed the other versions of the F–

A [the “non-formalist analysis”] viewwhich attempt to explicate begging the question in terms which Perelman and Mrs.Olbrechts-Tyteca call “rhetorical” and Hamblin “dialectical”. Both of these approaches,in spite of their great interest, share the flaw we have seen to be fatal in Sanford’s treat-ment: relying, instead of on the necessary argument-relativity of the notion of knowa-bility, on the essentially user-relative notions of assent and acceptance. In their quiteproper concern to shift the focus of analysis from formal to extra-formal considerations,they lose sight – as Aristotle never did – of the possibility and necessity of regardingBQC [begging-the-question criticism] as an objective matter (p. 270; emphasis added).

A similar emphasis on the objectivity of the evaluative models that weadopt in relation to the fallacies is evident in the following comments ofWalton:

Of course much of the traditional doom and gloom about the fallacies is justified if wedo analyze them at the ad hoc level of free quarrels or debates. Such adversarial, unreg-ulated, subjective models can never take us very far towards offering objective guidelinesto fairly determine whether a given argument is correct or fallacious (1987, p. 292;emphasis added).

While issues of objectivity pervade the theoretical discussion of how weshould proceed to evaluate the fallacies, certainty constitutes a centralnotion in the criteria that define the existence of a number of fallacies. Suchis the case in petitio principii, the fallacy of begging the question. Thus,we find Hamblin (1970) remarking upon an argument from Aristotle’s PriorAnalytics as follows:

If it is uncertain whether all Bs are As, and equally uncertain whether all Cs are As, wecannot use one to prove the other, since premisses must always be more certain – moreimmediately known – than their conclusions. If Bs and Cs are the same things whetherbecause the concepts are identical or merely because the terms are convertible, “All Csare As” seems to be inferable from “All Bs are As”, but also vice versa, but there cannotbe genuine inferences both ways, or there could be argument in a circle. Hence theapparent inference is really fallacious (p. 77; emphases in original).

The notion of certainty, as well as being central to the theoretical analysisof the flaw of petitio principii, features in the analysis of the argument fromignorance. In this way, Carbonell and Collins (1973) describe the followingexchange between a tutor and a student:

(S) Are there any other areas where oil is found other thanVenezuela?

(T) Not particularly. There is some oil offshore there but in generaloil comes from Venezuela. Venezuela is the only one that’smaking any money in oil.

as an exchange which proceeds by means of a lack-of-knowledge infer-ence4 (another term for the argument from ignorance), the essential featureof which is its lack of certainty:


The basis of the tutor’s inference is this: since he knows as much about other SouthAmerican countries as he knows about Venezuela, it is a plausible but uncertaininference that if other countries produced oil, he would know about it (1973; emphasisadded).

However, out of the theoretical attributes that have been examined in thispaper, completeness is the attribute which features most prominently indiscussions of the argument from ignorance. Thus we find Walton (1996)emphasising the incompleteness of the knowledge that we have at ourdisposal in the argument from ignorance:

The presence of some knowledge (usually incomplete), is combined with the absence ofother knowledge (i.e., ignorance) to draw a conclusion about the significance of thislack of knowledge or missing knowledge. This inference takes a modus tollens form. . . : if A were true (false), A would be known to be true (false) but A is not known tobe true, therefore A is false (true). These three components, the ignorance premise, thesearch premise, and the modus tollens inference, characterise the argumentum ad ignorantiam as a distinctive species of argument (p. 246).

The same knowledge that is considered to be incomplete can also bedescribed as being complete, in the sense of containing all the informationthat is relevant to the case under examination. Walton (1992) presents thismore positive characterisation of the lack of knowledge involved in theargument from ignorance as follows:

To the extent we know a knowledge-based K is closed, i.e. complete, in the sense ofcontaining all the relevant information, we can infer that if a proposition A is not in it,then A is false. This argumentation scheme for the argumentum ad ignorantiam has thefollowing form.

All the true propositions in domain D of knowledge are contained in K.

A is in D.A is not in K.For all A in D, A is either true or false.Therefore, A is false (p. 385).

It is clear that completeness, objectivity and certainty feature variouslyin the evaluation and identification of fallacies. I argued earlier thatunintelligibility of analysis results from the philosopher’s attempt to pursueanalyses that are complete, objective and certain. I want to argue that whenthe fallacy theorist pursues the notions of completeness, objectivity andcertainty – either as concepts that are integral to our understanding of whatconstitutes certain fallacies (e.g. completeness and certainty) or as conceptsthat are descriptive of the analytical models and frameworks that we employin relation to the fallacies (e.g. objectivity) – the same unintelligibility ofanalysis that vitiated the philosopher’s theoretical efforts can be shown toinvalidate the theorising of the fallacy theorist. In demonstration of thisclaim, I turn to an examination of how two prominent fallacy theorists,John Woods and Douglas Walton, set about the task of developing criteria

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for the identification of the argument from ignorance fallacy. Specifically,I contend that a dialectical framework, of the type increasingly favouredby Woods and Walton in the identification of the argument from ignorance,is itself only possible and intelligible when a framework, which is signif-icantly different from a dialectical framework, is presupposed by thatdialectical framework. This non-dialectical framework then precludes theidentification of the argument from ignorance with dialectical criteria, forthe reason that such identification can only proceed in the presence ofnon-dialectical criteria. In advancing dialectical identity criteria for theargument from ignorance, Woods and Walton, I contend, are denying aprecondition on the possibility and intelligibility of argumentativerationality, a precondition to the effect that the rational judgements arrivedat by arguers in a context of dialogue are derivative upon the rationaljudgements arrived at by a solitary reasoner or by a dialogical exchangewithin a solitary reasoner. On account of their denial of this precondition,the position of Woods and Walton as they undertake inquiry into theargument from ignorance, I argue, is exactly that of the philosopher whoproceeds to theorise from within the perspective of a metaphysical stand-point. In section 7, I propose guidelines for the post-theoretical pursuit offallacy inquiry. In the meantime, however, I examine how Woods andWalton propose that we should identify the argument from ignorance.

5. IDENTIFYING THE ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE: WOODS AND WALTON

It is clear, as early as their first encounter with the argument from igno-rance, that Woods and Walton wish to pursue a dialectical analysis of thisfallacy. Within that first encounter, in addition to presenting confirmationtheory and epistemic logic as possible analytical contexts for the argumentfrom ignorance, Woods and Walton propose the following dialecticalcontext for the analysis of this fallacy:

In general, if a person asserts a sentence in the context of argument, he may reasonablybe obliged to support it with some independent evidence. This is plain enough, yet oftenin the course of a complex or convoluted debate, considerations of onus of proof maybecome blurred. The simplest scenario is where we might have a debate between Mr. Xand Mr. Y, and Mr. X at some point in the debate asserts that p. Then later in the debate,perhaps when the issue has been somewhat clouded, Mr. X may aggressively demandthat Mr. Y produce evidence of the negation of p, in a case where Mr. Y has expressedor implied disbelief that p obtains. Now it is altogether reasonable for Y to admit thathe has no definite or articulatable positive evidence to prompt us to the negation of p,but yet on the other hand, that it is not obvious to him that the evidence sufficientlywarrants the acceptance of p either. In other words, Mr. Y may maintain that no relevantevidence sufficient to favour either acceptance or rejection is available. In this case itmay be quite unreasonable, even fallacious, for X to insist that Y produce evidence forp’s negation. Since Mr. X originally asserted that p, it would seem that the obligation ishis to marshall evidence in p’s behalf. Alternatively, it would seem appropriate that Xretreat into a more neutral modality concerning p (1978, pp. 92–93).


I have quoted this passage at length for the reason that it reveals morethan any subsequent passage in the work of Woods and Walton, the typeof dialectical analysis that these theorists are pursuing in relation to theargument from ignorance. Before examining that analysis and, particularly,what that analysis can tell us about the type of theoretical process thatWoods and Walton are engaged in, I want to consider how the rudimentsof dialectical criteria for the identification and evaluation of the argumentfrom ignorance in the above passage take shape in the more recent workof these theorists. It is clear from the passage quoted above that Woods andWalton have a rather unspecialised notion of dialogue in mind when theycome to discuss the argument from ignorance – the dialogue is that of acritical discussion involving two participants, one of which proposes athesis which it is then the concern of the other participant to challenge.This same fallacy comes to be examined in subsequent work within anumber of dialogical contexts, ranging from the above simple conflict ofopinion in a critical discussion to the more formal inquiries that arerepresentative of scientific theorising. With the argument from ignorancebeing examined against a range of different dialogues, it is little wonderthat what constitutes this fallacy has become something of a context-sensitive affair. Thus we find that in a simple critical discussion, such asthat described in the above quotation, the argument from ignorance fallacyconsists, it is claimed, in the illicit shifting of a burden of proof by oneparticipant in the exchange to the other participant in the exchange.However, within a dispute5 an exactly similar dialogical move to thatperformed by Mr. X above fails to give rise to the argument from igno-rance: the essential feature of a dispute is that both participants have a thesisto be proved and the one thesis is the opposite (negation) of the other, sothat Mr. X could ask Mr. Y to prove the negative counterpart of his thesiswithout committing the type of fallacious move that gives rise to theargument from ignorance. Not only must we look to the particular dialoguein which an exchange unfolds to determine whether or not that exchangegives rise to the argument from ignorance, thus addressing the question ofwhat constitutes this fallacy, but it is to this dialogical context that we turnfor criteria for the evaluation of this fallacy.6 Walton (1992), for example,argues that:

Whether the argumentum ad ignorantiam is fallacious or not, in a given case, can be seenthen as depending on how it was used in the context of dialogue for that particular case.Such standards of correctness depend on an allocation of burden of proof, telling uswhat constitutes a successful proof for that type of dialogue in the given case. Soconceived, the argumentum ad ignorantiam can be nonfallacious in some cases, and itsbeing judged as correct in such cases depends on pragmatic standards of correctness ofuse of an argument in a context of dialogue (p. 384).

Woods is similarly inclined to look to the context of dialogue in which anargumentative exchange occurs in order to obtain criteria for the evalua-

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tion of such an exchange. So we find that in more recent years Woods hasbecome an energetic supporter of van Eemeren’s and Grootendorst’spragma-dialectical approach to the study of fallacies. As van Eemeren andGrootendorst define that approach:

. . . fallacies are analyzed as . . . incorrect discussion moves in which a discussion rulehas been violated. A fallacy is . . . defined as a speech act that prejudices or frustratesefforts to resolve a difference of opinion and the use of the term “fallacy” is thussystematically connected with the rules for critical discussion (1995, p. 136; emphasis inoriginal).

It is clear that Woods and Walton, in both their early and later work, sub-scribe to the view that the argument from ignorance can be both identifiedand rationally evaluated on the basis of dialogical criteria. However, as Iindicated at the outset of this discussion, I believe and intend to demon-strate that the dialectical framework which contains these criteria is itselfonly possible and intelligible when a non-dialectical framework is pre-supposed by that dialectical framework. This non-dialectical framework, Icontend, takes the form of monolectical reasoning and consists essentiallyin inferences.7 So it is that I will argue that the argumentative exchange inthe Woods and Walton passage that was quoted at length above cannot byitself give rise to the pattern of reasoning that we have come to identifyas being that of the argument from ignorance, that some monolectical,inferential process of reasoning is required in addition to the dialecticalprocesses that are explicitly discussed in order to make an identificationof the argument from ignorance. The necessary role of a monolecticalprocess of reasoning in the identification and, I will argue, evaluation ofthis fallacy precludes any attempt to identify the argument from ignorancewith the criteria of a dialectical framework and also precludes any attemptto evaluate this argument on the basis of these criteria. Indeed, any suchattempted identification and evaluation, I will argue, is indicative of atheoretical process in the inquiry into the argument from ignorance, atheoretical process which leads ultimately to the unintelligibility of thatinquiry. However, before pursuing this charge of unintelligibility againstthe claims of Woods and Walton, I turn to an examination of how theircharacterisation of the dialectical nature of the argument from ignorancelacks an essential monolectical component.

It is clear from the argumentative exchange quoted above that Woodsand Walton intend that the argument from ignorance which, these theo-rists are claiming, is within that exchange should develop as follows. WhenMr. X asks Mr. Y to produce evidence for the negation of p, it is unlikelythat Mr. Y will be able to produce such evidence – after all, in his role asquestioner of the theses that Mr. X advances, he is in no way required toproduce evidence for the negation of Mr. X’s commitments. Accordingly,it will likely eventuate that Mr. Y will be unable to discharge his (apparent)burden of proof, with the result that Mr. X’s thesis assumes the status of


a presumptive truth – Mr. Y’s failure to prove the truth of not-p impliesthe falsity of not-p, with a resulting presumption of truth on the side of p.The point that I want to make about how Woods and Walton proceed withtheir analysis of the argument from ignorance is that that analysis is notso much dialectical in nature as it is monolectical in nature, that far frombeing a superfluous element in an otherwise dialectical account of thisfallacy, monolectical reasoning is what makes such a dialectical accountpossible and intelligible. To see this, one need only consider that Mr. X’sillicit shifting of his burden of proof to Mr. Y is insufficient by itself togenerate the conclusion of the above argument from ignorance, a pre-sumption of truth on the side of p. To obtain this conclusion, what is neededis some means of reasoning to this conclusion from Mr. Y’s failed attemptto produce evidence for the negation of p. I contend that no dialecticalprocess of reasoning can be those means, that only an inference of the formFAILURE TO PROVE THAT P IS FALSE IMPLIES THAT P IS TRUEcan possibly link Mr. Y’s ignorance of the knowledge that would substan-tiate the proposition not-p with the conclusion that p is true. The failureof a dialectical process of reasoning to provide such a link can bedemonstrated by considering in more detail what the dialectical featuresof the present case, particularly Mr. X’s illicit shifting of his burden ofproof, contribute to the reasoning of this case. By illicitly shifting hisburden of proof, Mr. X has effectively forced Mr. Y to provide evidencefor the negation of the thesis p in a situation where Mr. Y is under noobligation to provide such evidence. In the absence of an obligation toprovide evidence, Mr. Y’s epistemic state will undoubtedly be one ofignorance of the reasons which support the proposition not-p. Mr. Y’s lackof knowledge constitutes what Walton (1996) has described as an ignorancepremise within the argument from ignorance. By itself this ignorancepremise can tell us very little. As with all reasoning, this ignorance premisemust combine with other information if we are to derive any conclusionsfrom it. As far as the argument from ignorance is concerned, this otherinformation consists in a search premise (again, Walton’s term), a premisewhich states IF NOT-P WERE TRUE, I WOULD KNOW IT TO BE TRUE.These two premises, Walton argues, then enter into a modus tollensinference8 of the form:

If not-p were true, I would know it to be true SEARCH PREMISEI do not know not-p to be true IGNORANCE PREMISETherefore, not-p is false (and p is true) ARGUMENT FROM

IGNORANCE CONCLUSION

It is undoubtedly the case that the ignorance premise of the above argumenthas its origin in Mr. X’s illicit shifting of his burden of proof onto Mr. Y– it is a simple fact that Mr. Y is in a state of imposed ignorance on accountof being asked by Mr. X to defend the thesis not-p when his role in theabove argumentative exchange clearly does not require him to provide any

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such defence. It could even be argued that the illicit shifting by Mr. X ofhis burden of proof is ultimately the source of the search premise of theabove argument – perhaps Mr. Y has become so confused regarding hisrole in the above argumentative exchange that he believes upon beckoningfrom Mr. X that he has a duty within that exchange to investigate the thesisnot-p and to claim when that investigation has been thoroughly completedthat if not-p were true, he would know it to be true. However, once boththe search premise and the ignorance premise are in place the movementfrom them to the conclusion that not-p is false (and p is true) is effectedby a monolectical process of reasoning in the form of a modus tollens infer-ence. Woods and Walton are allowing, I believe, what is the dialecticalnature of the pattern of development that gave rise to the premises of theargument from ignorance of the present case to come to represent thecomplete nature of this argument. The mistaken nature of such a repre-sentation can be seen more clearly by means of a comparison of the currentcase with the case of the following deductive argument:

All men are mortal.Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The major premise of the above argument – All men are mortal – is ageneralisation which is arrived at by induction from many individual casesin which men are observed to be mortal. However, although the develop-ment of the major premise has been by means of induction, the method bymeans of which we reason from this premise and, of course, from the minorpremise to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal is strictly deductive innature. In the same way, the ignorance and search premises of the aboveargument from ignorance can be seen to be dialectical in origin – they arethe result of an illicit dialogical move on the part of Mr. X. However,although we must recognise the dialectical origin of these premises, wemust also recognise that it is a monolectical, not a dialectical, process ofreasoning which leads us from these premises to the conclusion of the aboveargument from ignorance. If the view that the above argument fromignorance owes its dialectical nature to the dialectical origins of thepremises of this argument has been undermined to some degree by theobservation that we do not, as a matter of course, identify the mode ofreasoning in an argument with the mode of reasoning by means of whichwe attain the premises of an argument, then this same view is underminedyet further by the observation that propositions which routinely feature inour reasoning and which are dialectical, according to the definition of thisterm advanced by Woods and Walton, fail, even for these theorists them-selves, to confer a dialectical status upon the reasoning in which they occur.As Woods and Walton define dialectical reasoning, it ‘occurs where thereare two participants reasoning together, and the reasoning of each partici-pant contains steps derived from the reasoning of the other’ (Walton, 1990,


p. 405). On the basis of this definition the following scenario is an exampleof dialectical reasoning:

Jan and Sue are engaged in an argument about Jan’s attendance at Sue’s forthcomingbirthday party. Jan dislikes Mark who is likely to be one of the guests at Sue’s party. Inthe argument, Jan is defending the claim that if Mark is in attendance at the party, thenshe will not go to the party. Sue is trying to persuade Jan to come to her party, regard-less of whether or not Mark will be there, and she does this by advancing counter-claimsto each of the reasons that Jan puts forward for why she will not attend if Mark is present.After much discussion and when Jan has successfully evaded each of Sue’s counter-claims, Sue comes away with the knowledge in mind that if Mark attends the party, thenJan will not go to the party. Two days later, Sue receives a letter from Mark in whichhe confirms his attendance at Sue’s party. Sue combines the knowledge that Mark willbe in attendance at her party with the thesis obtained from her argument with Jan, thatif Mark is in attendance at the party, then Jan will not go to the party, to conclude thatJan will not go to the party. Sue phones Jan to inform her that Mark will be coming tothe party. Upon receiving the news, Jan similarly concludes that she will not be at Sue’sparty.

The point that I want to demonstrate by means of this scenario is that avast number of the propositions that routinely feature in our reasoning arearrived at through dialectical reasoning, as Woods and Walton define thatterm; yet we, and Woods and Walton also, decline to describe the reasoningin which those propositions occur as dialectical in nature. Sue employs asa premise within her reasoning a proposition that occurs in Jan’s reasoning– if Mark attends Sue’s party, then Jan will not attend Sue’s party. Similarly,Jan employs as a premise within her reasoning a proposition that occursin Sue’s reasoning – Mark will attend Sue’s party. Both of these proposi-tions are dialectical in nature, according to Woods’s and Walton’s defini-tion of this term. However, the dialectical nature of these propositions issimply a description of the particular epistemic route by means of whichthese propositions are obtained – we routinely employ as premises withinour reasoning propositions that are obtained through dialogical exchangeswith others. Other epistemic routes by means of which we obtain thepropositions that we employ in reasoning include perceptual processes ofvarious kinds. But in the same way that no special perceptual type ofreasoning results from the use of propositions in reasoning that are obtainedperceptually, no special dialectical type of reasoning results from the useof propositions in reasoning that are obtained dialectically. Woods andWalton, through their quite proper concern to attribute analytical signifi-cance to features of the dialogical contexts in which the argument fromignorance can occur – such contexts, we have seen, provide in certain casesthe propositions that form the premises of this argument – end by subor-dinating to the point of non-existence the role of monolectical (inferen-tial) reasoning within the argument from ignorance. Yet in the absence ofmonolectical reasoning – in the case of the argument from ignorance, amodus tollens inference – features of the dialogical contexts in which theargument from ignorance can occur fail to be meaningfully interrelated in

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such a way as to produce the conclusion of this argument, for the reasonthat these features lack significance as premises within an inference thatleads to a conclusion.

The situation for Woods and Walton can be summarised as follows. Theargument from ignorance is, for these theorists, a dialectical fallacy, afallacy which depends essentially on a dialectical pattern of reasoning (ofcourse, this is not to overlook the other forms of the argument fromignorance that Woods and Walton describe, but only that in relation tohow Woods and Walton portray the dialectical variant of this fallacy theabove criticism applies). I have argued that a dialectical pattern of rea-soning is of secondary importance to a proper understanding of this fallacy,that in the absence of monolectical reasoning we cannot even begin to seethe significance of various dialogical moves for the development of theargument from ignorance. I demonstrated this claim in two ways. Firstly,I argued that Woods and Walton were locating the dialectical nature of theargument from ignorance in the premises of this argument and that it wasnot standard practice for the reasoning of an argument to be identifiedwith the method by means of which the premises of an argument wereobtained – recall the case of deductive argument. Secondly, I argued thatif the reasoning of an argument is to be identified with the origin of thepremises of an argument, as Woods and Walton would seem to be sug-gesting in the case of the argument from ignorance, that these theorists mustbe prepared to concede the dialectical nature of many more arguments thanprobably even they had envisaged – dialogical exchanges with others, Iclaimed, are as common a source of the propositions that we employ inreasoning as are our perceptual processes – and that, in any case, therewas no precedent among the other epistemic sources of the propositionsthat we employ in our reasoning for identifying the type of reasoning ofan argument with the source of those propositions. Motivating these criti-cisms of Woods’s and Walton’s view of the dialectical nature of theargument from ignorance is the belief that in this case at least, Woods andWalton have come to identify the rationality of the argument from igno-rance with features of the dialogical contexts in which this argument can,on occasion, occur and that this identification operates to the completeneglect of monolectical reasoning in the form of inferencing. Monolecticalreasoning constitutes, I believe, a precondition on the possibility andintelligibility of dialectical reasoning, as was seen when I argued that inthe absence of monolectical reasoning we failed to see the significance ofcertain dialogical moves for the development of the argument fromignorance. More ultimately still, this precondition, I contend, comes to bedenied as a result of a type of theoretical process in fallacy inquiry, thesame type of theoretical process that, I claimed earlier, had renderedunintelligible philosophical discussions of rationality. It remains for me toexamine these wider claims in more detail.


6. THE THEORISING OF WOODS AND WALTON.

In the above discussion, my aim has been one of demonstrating how thedialectical approach that Woods and Walton pursue in relation to the iden-tification of the argument from ignorance is, in the final analysis, depen-dent on a monolectical process of reasoning, a monolectical process thatis largely overlooked by these theorists, at least in their discussions of thedialectical variant of this argument. While this aim is essentially theopposite of the more usual aim for analytical emphasis to be given to thedialogical context in which reasoning occurs, its motivation is effectivelythe same as the motivation to ‘go dialectical’ in analyses of reasoning andthe fallacies. The movement towards an examination of the dialogicalcontext in which reasoning occurs for criteria that could be used to bothidentify and evaluate arguments stemmed largely from a growing aware-ness that basic monolectical, inferential models of reasoning were bythemselves insufficient for the tasks of identification and evaluation to besuccessfully completed and, on occasion, actually distorted the outcomeof those tasks. Thus we find Woods and Walton remarking of the dialec-tical features of the argument from ignorance that ‘None of these require-ments can be warranted by a standard, monolectical logic, howeverpowerful . . .’ (1978, p. 93), while it has become almost customary in dis-cussions of the dialectical nature of argument and fallacies to begin thosediscussions by bemoaning the inadequacies of formal logic (Blair andJohnson argue, for example, ‘that problems with validity and truth as thestandards of logically compelling argument force abandonment of 20thcentury formal, deductive logic as an adequate theory of argument criti-cism’ (1987, p. 41)). Proponents of a dialectical analysis of the fallacieshave urged us to relocate the study of fallacies within the dialogical contextsthat are, it is claimed, the rightful historical home of such a study. Oneproponent of this type of dialectical analysis is Jaakko Hintikka:

It is not just that some Aristotelian fallacies are naturally thought of in inferential termsand others as mistakes in questioning procedures. The entire study of so-called fallaciesin Aristotle is part and parcel of his discussion of the theory and practice of interroga-tive games. For that is what Topica and De Sophisticis Elenchis together amount to. Asthe very title of the second of these treatises shows, Aristotle strives in these works tobe the Hoyle of Socratic elenchus or, rather, of its academic descendant. Thus in a senseall Aristotelian fallacies are essentially mistakes in questioning games, while some ofthem are accidentally mistakes in deductive (more generally, logical) reasoning (1987,pp. 212–213).

This relocation of fallacy inquiry, it is argued, not only restores historicalaccuracy to this inquiry, but also grounds fallacy inquiry in the very dialec-tical concepts by means of which we proceed to identify and evaluatefallacious argument. Ryle makes just this point in the case of argument ingeneral during a discussion of what he claims is a separation of argumenttypes – argument against an answerer and argument against an impasse –in the work of Plato:

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The notion of a valid argument is just beginning [in the Hippias Major] to separate itselfoff from the notion of an unrebutted argument. But the answerer’s surrender is still thesolid criterion of the inescapability of an elenchus. What other criterion could there, inthe beginning of things, have been? How could even that criterion have become a definiteand unsubjective one but for the existence of the rule-governed exercise of questioner-answerer duelling under the eyes of a vigilant, practised and sporting jury?Anachronistically we have all assumed that Plato just knew from the start the differ-ences between good and bad pro and contra arguments. We have not wondered how heor anyone else learned to look for these differences or to satisfy other people that theywere there. It was the debating-match with its rules and its controls that gave the lessons(1966, pp. 206–207).

The above quotations from Hintikka and Ryle are especially revealing inthat they demonstrate how what I have been calling, following Woods andWalton, monolectical reasoning – Ryle’s argument against an impasse – hasdeveloped conceptually from what I have been calling dialectical reasoning– Ryle’s argument against an answerer. Hintikka and Ryle and many othertheorists besides them are certainly justified in attempting to reinstate thedialectical origins, both historical and conceptual, of our present-daynotions of inference, argument and logic – the dialectical bases of thesenotions are both historically and conceptually undeniable. But where thesetheorists go wrong, I believe, is that in their quite proper concern to rein-state the dialectical bases of notions such as argument, these theorists endup overlooking the necessary monolectical bases of the dialectical frame-works that they are proposing. Theorists like Woods and Walton set out toovercome what they perceive to be deficits in monolectical accounts ofarguments in general and fallacious arguments in particular. These deficits,it is argued, can be avoided by giving analytical significance to the dia-logical contexts in which arguments and fallacies occur. What this approachcomes to in the case of the argument from ignorance is that this argumentis effectively identified with certain dialogical moves. However, as theabove discussion was intended to demonstrate dialectical criteria for theidentification of the argument from ignorance are conceptually dependenton features of a monolectical process of reasoning, that is, we can onlytruly make sense of how a certain dialogical move gives rise to the argumentfrom ignorance when factors that are essentially monolectical in natureare presupposed by the dialogical move in question. This state of affairscreates the following problem for the proponent of dialectical analysis.Monolectical reasoning functions by conferring intelligibility on the moveswithin a dialogical exchange, as when a monolectical process of inferencewas needed in the above discussion in order to demonstrate the relevanceof Mr. X’s dialogical move for the identification of the argument fromignorance. Yet monolectical reasoning can only confer intelligibility orsense on the moves of a dialogical exchange by being conceptually priorto these moves. But then it is the necessity of monolectical reasoning’sconceptual priority over the moves of a dialogical exchange for the intel-ligibility of these moves that precludes any identification of the argument


from ignorance with dialogical moves. This claim is sufficiently impor-tant to warrant its further examination.

Woods and Walton believe that the question of how we should proceedto identify an argument sequence as being an argument from ignorancecan be addressed by examining the dialogical contexts in which thisargument occurs. Dialectical criteria, these theorists claim, can be used toidentify the argument from ignorance. It is my claim that dialectical criteriacannot, by themselves, effect any such identification of the argument fromignorance, that criteria that are monolectical in nature must be presupposedby these dialectical criteria in order for the identification of the argumentfrom ignorance to proceed. The role of monolectical criteria within ananalysis of the argument from ignorance, I contend, is not that of anoptional addendum to the dialectical criteria that are proposed by Woodsand Walton; rather, these monolectical criteria constitute the conceptualframework by means of which we make sense of the dialectical criteria thatare proposed by Woods and Walton. The necessity of these monolecticalcriteria for the intelligibility of a dialectical analysis of the argument fromignorance effectively precludes any attempt to identify the argument fromignorance with dialectical criteria. In effect, the predicament of theproponent of a dialectical analysis of the argument from ignorance is essen-tially the predicament of the philosopher of rationality described earlier.The philosopher, it will be recalled, could not pursue a complete accountof rationality and claim intelligibility for such an account for the reasonthat a form of rationality that was not part of this account was needed inorder to make sense of this account. In the same way, I am now claimingthat the proponent of a dialectical analysis of the argument from ignorancecannot identify this argument with dialectical criteria (an identificationwhich, in effect, produces a complete analysis of this argument) and claimintelligibility for the resulting dialectical identification, for the reason thatnon-dialectical criteria – monolectical reasoning in the form of inferencing– is required in order to make sense of this dialectical identification. Theunintelligibility of the philosopher’s account of rationality was shownultimately to stem from the philosopher’s assumption of a metaphysicalstandpoint, a standpoint that, I argued, was generative of much theorisingin philosophical discussions of rationality. In a similar manner, I now wantto argue that Woods’s and Walton’s dialectical analysis of the argumentfrom ignorance owes its unintelligibility to the adoption by these theoristsof the same metaphysical standpoint and theoretical process that wereshown above to invalidate the philosopher’s account of rationality.

Monolectical reasoning, I have been arguing, is necessary for theintelligibility of a dialectical analysis of the argument from ignorance. Yetmonolectical reasoning can only function to confer intelligibility on suchan analysis on account of its position of conceptual priority over theconcepts of this analysis. The necessity and priority of monolectical rea-soning in this case serve to establish it as a precondition on the possibility

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and intelligibility of a dialectical analysis of the argument from ignorance.As a result of Woods’s and Walton’s attempt to identify the argument fromignorance with dialectical criteria and to evaluate this argument usingdialectical criteria, these theorists, I contend, end by denying monolecticalreasoning as a precondition on the dialectical analysis of the argument fromignorance – the relation of identity implies exclusivity for dialectical criteriawithin an analysis of the argument from ignorance, an exclusivity that canonly be achieved through the denial of monolectical criteria as a precon-dition on, and a necessary component of, such an analysis. Now, while thedenial of monolectical reasoning/criteria as a precondition on a dialecticalanalysis of the argument from ignorance is a consequence of the decisionto identify this argument with dialectical criteria, the motivation for thisdecision and the origin of this denial lie in Woods’s and Walton’s desireto pursue theorising in relation to the argument from ignorance. Theorising,I argued earlier, manifests itself through the theorist’s pursuit of analysesthat are complete, objective and certain in nature. I also argued earlier thatcompleteness, objectivity and certainty enter in different ways into theanalysis of fallacies in general and the analysis of the argument fromignorance fallacy in particular. For example, I described how the theoristof the argument from ignorance was compelled to concede the uncertaintyof the inference of this argument on account of the incompleteness ofknowledge in the premises of this argument. When proponents of a dialec-tical analysis of the fallacies set about analysing notions like completeness,certainty and objectivity, they inevitably end up doing so from within theperspective of a metaphysical standpoint. To see this, consider the situa-tion of Woods and Walton as they proceed to develop a notion of argu-mentative completeness that can be used in the analysis of the argumentfrom ignorance. Argumentative completeness, by virtue of the fact that itsabsence from the premises of the argument from ignorance is at the rootof this argument’s fallaciousness, constitutes a central concept in therationality of this argument. The rationality of the argument from igno-rance, Woods and Walton contend, is to be explicated in dialectical terms.It is to be reasonably expected, therefore, that Woods and Walton wouldintend the component concepts of this argument’s rationality, concepts suchas completeness, to be analysed dialectically. What this analysis amountsto for Woods and Walton is that completeness ends up being identified withfeatures of the dialogical context in which the argument from ignoranceoccurs. But such an identification, I have already argued, is itself onlypossible and intelligible when monolectical reasoning in the form ofinferencing is presupposed by that identification. It seems to Woods andWalton that the notion of argumentative completeness that is central to therationality of the argument from ignorance can be identified with dialec-tical criteria for the reason that these theorists are proceeding to analysethis notion from within the perspective of a metaphysical standpoint. Theaconceptual nature of this standpoint makes it seem that the argument from


ignorance can be identified using dialectical criteria and that key notionsin our understanding of the nature of this argument, for example, com-pleteness, can be given a dialectical analysis, without criteria that aremonolectical in nature being presupposed by this analysis. In more generalterms, the aconceptual nature of this standpoint makes it seem that we canseek explanations at one level of argumentative rationality – dialecticalreasoning – without a further level of argumentative rationality – monolec-tical reasoning – being presupposed by those explanations. But in the sameway that the philosopher of rationality cannot proceed to develop an accountof rationality without first having access to a form of rationality that isoutside of this account, the theorist of argumentative rationality cannotproceed with a dialectical analysis of argument or fallacy without firsthaving access to non-dialectical criteria in the form of monolectical rea-soning. Indeed, we have just seen how the attempt to so identify one fallacy,the argument from ignorance fallacy, leads inevitably to the unintelligibilityof this fallacy.

The philosopher and the fallacy theorist, it can now be seen, are unitedby their pursuit of theorising in relation to rationality. The philosopher’stheorising consists in his attempt to produce a complete (and certain andobjective) analysis of rationality. Completeness enters into the analyses ofthe fallacy theorist as a notion which must itself undergo analysis withinthe context of specific fallacies, for example, the argument from ignorancefallacy. And although the notion of completeness is now the subject ofanalysis, it still generates the same unintelligibility of analysis that vitiatedthe philosopher’s account of rationality – the fallacy theorist’s iden-tification of the notion of argumentative completeness with dialecticalcriteria is generative of an unintelligible circumscription of argumentativerationality in much the same way that the philosopher’s pursuit of acomplete analysis of rationality is generative of an unintelligible circum-scription of rationality more generally. So for the philosopher and thefallacy theorist alike, theoretical completeness functions by bringing abouta circumscription of rationality in general and argumentative rationality inparticular. And it is this circumscription that precludes the intelligibilityof the notions of rationality and argumentative rationality – a circumscribedconcept of rationality is necessarily unintelligible owing to the absence ofa form of rationality that is outside of the circumscription, a form ofrationality which confers sense on the rationality of the circumscription.The question that I want to address in the final section is whether or notit is possible, given what I have been saying about the unintelligibility ofanalyses to emerge from a theoretical process that embodies the notion ofcompleteness, to pursue an account of argumentative completeness that canbe used in the analysis of the argument from ignorance without that accountsuccumbing to a charge of unintelligibility. A response to this question isalso a response to the question of what is involved in the pursuit of a post-theoretical form of fallacy inquiry.

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7. GUIDELINES FOR THE POST-THEORETICAL PURSUIT OF FALLACY INQUIRY

The guidelines that I will describe in the following discussion fall withintwo main methodological approaches that I see as being significant to futureinquiry not only into the argument from ignorance, but also into fallaciesmore generally. These approaches are firstly, that the inquirer into thefallacies should reject theorising about the fallacies and secondly, that thisinquirer should engage in a process of description in relation to thefallacies. These approaches, quite apart from representing distinct lines ofinquiry into the fallacies, operate in complete tandem – by engaging indescription of the fallacies we are, in effect, rejecting a theoretical approachto the fallacies and vice versa. In the discussion to follow, I examine thesetwo approaches separately, notwithstanding what I have just said about theircombined operation, as doing so will enable me to emphasise more clearlythe various considerations involved in each of these approaches. I beginwith an examination of the approach which says that we should rejecttheorising in relation to the fallacies.

I argued above that philosophers were motivated by the success ofscience in attaining truth to pursue within their own philosophical analysesof rationality certain of the theoretical aims of science. In that earliercontext, I examined the scientific theoretical aims of completeness, cer-tainty and objectivity of analysis and how these aims come to be pursuedwithin the context of philosophical inquiry. I argued that the philosopher’spursuit of these theoretical aims within his analyses of rationality leadsinevitably to the unintelligibility of those analyses. I now want to claimthat the fallacy theorist is destined to produce similarly unintelligibleanalyses of argumentative rationality through his pursuit of these sametheoretical aims within the context of fallacy inquiry. I demonstrated thisunintelligibility in the case of Woods’ and Walton’s institution of dialec-tical criteria in the identification of the argument from ignorance. Theunintelligibility of this case, it was argued, resulted from the negation ofmonolectical reasoning – this reasoning, I claimed, formed a preconditionon the intelligibility of the dialectical criteria that the argument fromignorance was taken to consist in. Moreover, this same unintelligibility willcharacterise every attempt of the fallacy theorist to engage in theorising forthe reason that the subject of that theorising – argumentative rationality –forms a precondition on the intelligibility of but yet is not presupposed bya theoretically complete description of argumentative rationality. Thefallacy theorist is confronted with the same contradictory demand thatconfronted the philosopher of rationality. The theoretical process with itsideals of completeness, objectivity and certainty serves to circumscribethe notion of argumentative rationality. Yet we can only ever make senseof argumentative rationality through yet further argumentative rationality,specifically through argumentative rationality that is not part of theachieved circumscription of this notion. Out of necessity the fallacy theorist


must engage with the notions of completeness, certainty and objectivity –it was shown above how these notions enter into the identification andevaluation of various fallacies. And like the philosopher of rationalitybefore him, it seems to the fallacy theorist that scientific theorising providesa successful model for the treatment of these notions. However, while thescientist can pursue a mundane conception of completeness – a concep-tion of completeness that presupposes rational thought – the fallacy theorist,by virtue of the fact that he is studying argumentative rationality, isconstrained to pursue a metaphysical conception of completeness. Theessential feature of this metaphysical conception is that it does notpresuppose rational thought, that it is conceived of from within theaconceptual perspective of a metaphysical standpoint. However, while theaconceptual nature of this standpoint guarantees the completeness of ananalysis of argumentative rationality that is pursued from within it, thiscompleteness is achieved at the expense of the intelligibility of that analysis.

I described earlier how, in rejecting theorising about the fallacies, weare, in effect, instituting in its place a process of description of the fallacies.The emphasis of the process of description that I am proposing for fallacyinquiry is on an accurate account of the many and varied interrelation-ships that exist between concepts. A central part of the description of theargument from ignorance, for example, is a demonstration of how the keynotion of completeness in the study of this fallacy derives its content fromthe notion of verification – the premise-set of the argument from igno-rance is judged to be complete or incomplete on the basis of whether ornot it includes all the relevant evidence that can be verified within ourcognitive powers. In a similar manner, the concept of verification derivesits content from the particular interests that verification serves – theverification concept of philosophical inquiry, it was shown earlier, isnecessarily distinct from the verification concept of scientific inquiry, forthe reason that the interests (questions and problems) of the philosopherand of the scientist are significantly different. In short, a complex networkof concepts can be demonstrated to exist, not just in relation to the argumentfrom ignorance, but in relation to all arguments. And it is the revelationof this network that is the aim of the type of descriptive process that I amcurrently proposing. A model for how this descriptive process is to bepursued is to be found in Wittgenstein. In his Lectures on Religious Belief,Wittgenstein describes the considerations that are subsumed within this typeof description:

“God’s eye sees everything” – I want to say of this that it uses a picture.I don’t want to belittle . . . the person who says it . . .We associate a particular use with a picture . . .What conclusions are you going to draw? . . . Are eyebrows going to be talked of, inconnection with the Eye of God? . . .If I say he used a picture, I don’t want to say anything he himself wouldn’t say. I wantto say he draws these conclusions.

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Isn’t it as important as anything else, what picture he does use? . . .The whole weight may be in the picture . . . When I say he’s using a picture, I am merelymaking a grammatical remark: [What I say] can only be verified by the consequenceshe does or does not draw . . .All I wished to characterise was the consequences he wished to draw.If I wished to say anything more I was merely being philosophically arrogant (pp. 71–72;emphases in original).

The most outstanding feature of this descriptive process is the restrictionsplaced on the extent of the description. Wittgenstein doesn’t want to sayanything he [the user of the picture] himself wouldn’t say; indeed, to saymore is ‘being philosophically arrogant’. It is just this feature ofWittgenstein’s descriptive process, its restriction of any description to anaccount of the consequences that certain concepts have for their user, whichhas most relevance to the post-theoretical pursuit of fallacy inquiry. For itis quite possible that the perspective which we must assume, in order toaccurately describe the significance that concepts have for their users, maypreclude our assumption of a further perspective, the perspective of a meta-physical standpoint.9 Certainly, this last claim has sufficient plausibility towarrant its further examination.

8. SUMMARY

In this paper, I have examined a type of unintelligibility that results fromthe pursuit of theorising in relation to rationality in philosophical inquiry.I have argued that this same unintelligibility characterises the inquiry ofthe fallacy theorist into the notion of argumentative rationality. This latterclaim was examined in the context of how Woods and Walton and fallacytheorists more generally proceed to identify one informal fallacy, theargument from ignorance fallacy. The conclusion of this analysis was thatthe rejection of theorising in fallacy inquiry is as urgent as the rejection oftheorising in wider philosophical inquiry.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper was written while the author was in receipt of the Eila CampbellMemorial Award from the British Federation of Women Graduates. Theauthor wishes to express her gratitude to the Federation for its financialassistance. The comments of two referees of this journal on an earlierversion of this paper are gratefully acknowledged.


NOTES

1 Tarski (1965) describes these considerations as follows: ‘Our miniature deductive theoryrests upon a suitably selected system of primitive terms and axioms. Our knowledge of thethings denoted by the primitive terms . . . is very comprehensive and is by no means exhaustedby the adopted axioms. But this knowledge is, so to speak, our private concern which doesnot exert the least influence on the construction of our theory. In particular, in derivingtheorems from the axioms, we make no use whatsoever of this knowledge, and behave asthough we did not understand the content of the concepts involved in our considerations, andas if we knew nothing about them that had not been expressly asserted in the axioms. Wedisregard, as it is commonly put, the meaning of the primitive terms adopted by us, and directour attention exclusively to the form of the axioms in which these terms occur (pp. 121–122).2 A precedent for this claim is to be found in Rescher (1980): ‘One must distinguish betweenmundane or practical (or “effective”) certainty on the one hand and transcendental orcategorical (or “rigid”) certainty on the other. The former is certainty “beyond anyreasonable doubt”, the latter certainty “beyond any possible doubt at all – be it reasonableor otherwise”. And the certainty we claim for our knowledge is of the former, and notnecessarily of the latter kind (p. 37; emphases in original).3 Rescher’s use of language belies his view that the relationship between practical, cogni-tive and evaluative forms of rationality is non-presuppositional in nature. For example, heargues that ‘. . . cognitive reason has evaluative involvements as well. Once one has certainfacts at one’s disposal, one can, of course, proceed to derive others from them by logicalinference. But, one must make a start at the inferential venture by way of accepting somefacts not on the basis of other facts, but on the basis of mere indications. We cannot proceedin factual matters without making some non-discursive judgements of fact. Such ‘acts ofacceptance’ must be guided by evaluative processes. The stance that ‘The indications areindeed strong enough to warrant acceptance in the particular case at hand’ presupposesjudgements along the lines of ‘This issue is important enough for us to chance a resolutionon present evidence notwithstanding the inherent risk of error’. Without these judgementsregarding issues of cognitive value, there is no sensible basis for holding that the prevailingconditions justify the risks involved in the acceptance of something that could, in the end,turn out to be incorrect. Thus, evaluation is also bound to enter into our cognitive deliber-ations’ (1988, pp. 124–125; underlining added).4 Walton (1996) describes how ‘the term lack-of-knowledge inference is in common use inthe social science and computer science literature’ (p. 250; emphasis in original). Carbonelland Collins are writers within the computer science literature.5 The terms ‘critical discussion’ and ‘dispute’ are taken from Walton’s (1996) discussionof dialogue types.6 It may appear that the same dialogical criteria that we are claiming effectively constitutethe argument from ignorance are also the criteria by means of which we evaluate thisargument – after all, as the example of Mr. X and Mr. Y in the main text demonstrated, thereason this exchange was considered to contain an argument from ignorance – the illicitshifting of X’s burden of proof to Y – is the very reason why this exchange is also describedas being fallacious. However, any such identification of the criteria that we use to identifythe argument from ignorance with the criteria that we use to assess the fallaciousness ofthis argument precludes the possibility that there may be non-fallacious forms of thisargument. I want to allow for the possibility of these forms, as doing so is consistent withthe literature on this topic (see Walton (1992) quotation in main text).7 Such an inferential characterisation of monolectical reasoning is consistent with standardviews. Thus, Blair and Johnson (1987) remark, for example: ‘First, if argument is dialec-tical, the same cannot be said of inference. It is or can be “monolectical” – discourse whosenature and significance does not depend upon an exchange between two or more interlocu-tors. Thus, I may infer from the presence of the smoke that there is a camp-fire. I need not

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report this inference to anyone, and it need not be validated by anyone else in order to achieveits goal. It is conceivable that the inference can remain “in the mind” and never be expressedand yet still be useful: i.e., I decide that I should proceed to go in that direction in the hopeof finding food’ (p. 48).8 ‘These three components, the ignorance premise, the search premise, and the modus tollensinference, characterize the argumentum ad ignorantiam as a distinctive species of argument’(Walton, 1996, p. 246).9 A somewhat similar position is advanced by Levi (1994) who claims, within his analysisof the petitio principii fallacy, that asking what is wrong with an argument which assumesa position on a question at issue is ‘hard to understand’ when one is party to the conflict –in such a case it is evident in what the error consists and, therefore, the need to ask thequestion is removed. You may consider it appropriate to ask this question ‘if, like logicaltheorists, you were outside the conflict, and so you failed to put yourself in the positions ofthose who are parties to the conflict’ (p. 270). It is interesting that Levi is opposed to theurge to theorise in petitio inquiry: ‘Perhaps what is most at issue between my interlocutorsand myself is the need for a theory of fallacy. I have criticised the urge to theorise becauseof what I have taken to be its pernicious consequences – tools of analysis that put moreemphasis on fitting actual rhetoric into a logical bed of procrustes than they do in acquiringa better understanding of what is being argued. But the real issue that divides me from myopposition is that they insist, even in the absence of any problematic concerning beggingthe question, that we need a theory that tells us what it is and provides necessary and suf-ficient conditions for distinguishing between fallacious and non-fallacious instances of it.The question that I am raising in this paper is whether they are right’ (p. 281).

REFERENCES

Biro, J. I.: 1977, ‘Rescuing ‘Begging the Question”’, Metaphilosophy 8(4), 257–271.Blair, J. A. and Johnson, R. H.: 1987, ‘Argumentation as Dialectical’, Argumentation 1,

41–56.Carbonell, J. R. and Collins, A. M.: 1973, ‘Natural Semantics in Artificial Intelligence’,

Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 1973,344–351.

Edwards, P.: 1949, ‘Russell’s Doubts about Induction’, Mind 58, 141–163.Fisher, W. R.: 1987, ‘Technical Logic, Rhetorical Logic, and Narrative Rationality’,

Argumentation 1, 3–21.Grootendorst, R.: 1986, ‘Some Fallacies about Fallacies’, in F. H. van Eemeren, R.

Grootendorst, J. A. Blair and C. A. Willard (eds.), Argumentation: Across the Lines ofDiscipline, Foris Publications, Dordrecht-Holland.

Hamblin, C. L.: 1970, Fallacies, Methuen, London.Hintikka, J.: 1987, ‘The Fallacy of Fallacies’, Argumentation 1, 211–238.Levi, D. S.: 1994, ‘Begging What is at Issue in the Argument’, Argumentation 8, 265–282.Rescher, N.: 1980, Scepticism: A Critical Reappraisal, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Rescher, N.: 1988, Rationality: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and the Rationale

of Reason, Clarendon Press, Oxford.Ryle, G.: 1966, Plato’s Progress, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Tarski, A.: 1965, Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences, Oxford

University Press, New York.Van Eemeren, F. H. and Grootendorst, R.: 1995, ‘The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to

Fallacies’, in H. V. Hansen and R. C. Pinto (eds.), Fallacies: Classical and ContemporaryReadings, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania.

Walton, D. N.: 1987, Informal Fallacies: Towards a Theory of Argument Criticisms, JohnBenjamins, Amsterdam.


Walton, D. N., 1990, ‘What is Reasoning? What is an Argument?’, The Journal of Philosophy87, 399–419.

Walton, D. N.: 1992, ‘Nonfallacious Arguments from Ignorance’, American PhilosophicalQuarterly 29(4), 381–387.

Walton, D. N.: 1996, Arguments from Ignorance, The Pennsylvania State University Press,University Park, Pennsylvania.

Wittgenstein, L. (1966). Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and ReligiousBelief. University of California Press. Berkeley.

Woods, J. and Walton, D. N.: 1978, ‘The Fallacy of “Ad Ignorantiam”’, Dialectica 32(2),87–99.

Woods, J. and Walton, D. N.: 1982, Argument: The Logic of the Fallacies, McGraw-HillRyerson Limited.

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Rejecting the urge to theorise in fallacy inquiry