Page 41 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 41
fallacies: do we ‘use’ them or ‘commit’ them? ...
(1) What we say can only be more or less true (i.e. true up to a point);
(3) it can only be true for certain intents and purposes;
(4) it can only be true in some contexts, and
(5) its truth (or falsity) depends on knowledge at the time of utterance.
Circumstances, audiences, purposes and intentions
—not truth or falsity
This is a real rhetorical perspective on communication (truth, logic, and
philosophy) that was very often overlooked, mostly at the expense of clas-
sificatory madness that started with J. R. Searle. What Austin is proposing
is that—outside logic, in the real world, in everyday communication, where
we don’t go around with propositions in our pockets and truth tables in
our hands—the truth or falsity of what we say be replaced by right or prop-
er things to say, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes
and with these intentions. Such a proposal is very Protagorean in nature and
does justice to the first three canons of rhetoric, or more appropriately to
the officia oratoris, placing emphasis on inventio and elocutio.
I will claim that Hamblin followed the same enterprise 15 years later
with his Fallacies. These two ground breaking works follow the same pat-
tern, run parallel, and I will (hopefully) show why.
C. L. Hamblin’s pragmatic perspective
Formal language vs. natural language
(1) In real life, as opposed to the simple situations envisaged in logical the-
ory, one cannot always answer in a simple manner whether something is
true or false.
Within a formal language it is generally clear enough which ar-
guments are formally valid; but an ordinary-language argument
cannot be declared ‘formally valid’ or ‘formally fallacious’ until
the language within which it is expressed is brought into relation
with that of some logical system. (Hamblin 1970/2004: 193)
The message of this passage is very clear: we can speak of formal va-
lidity (which includes truth and falsity, and, consequently, fallacies) only in
formal systems (but Hamblin relativizes even that by saying ‘it is generally
clear enough’), but not in ‘natural languages’. If we want any kind of formal
41
(1) What we say can only be more or less true (i.e. true up to a point);
(3) it can only be true for certain intents and purposes;
(4) it can only be true in some contexts, and
(5) its truth (or falsity) depends on knowledge at the time of utterance.
Circumstances, audiences, purposes and intentions
—not truth or falsity
This is a real rhetorical perspective on communication (truth, logic, and
philosophy) that was very often overlooked, mostly at the expense of clas-
sificatory madness that started with J. R. Searle. What Austin is proposing
is that—outside logic, in the real world, in everyday communication, where
we don’t go around with propositions in our pockets and truth tables in
our hands—the truth or falsity of what we say be replaced by right or prop-
er things to say, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes
and with these intentions. Such a proposal is very Protagorean in nature and
does justice to the first three canons of rhetoric, or more appropriately to
the officia oratoris, placing emphasis on inventio and elocutio.
I will claim that Hamblin followed the same enterprise 15 years later
with his Fallacies. These two ground breaking works follow the same pat-
tern, run parallel, and I will (hopefully) show why.
C. L. Hamblin’s pragmatic perspective
Formal language vs. natural language
(1) In real life, as opposed to the simple situations envisaged in logical the-
ory, one cannot always answer in a simple manner whether something is
true or false.
Within a formal language it is generally clear enough which ar-
guments are formally valid; but an ordinary-language argument
cannot be declared ‘formally valid’ or ‘formally fallacious’ until
the language within which it is expressed is brought into relation
with that of some logical system. (Hamblin 1970/2004: 193)
The message of this passage is very clear: we can speak of formal va-
lidity (which includes truth and falsity, and, consequently, fallacies) only in
formal systems (but Hamblin relativizes even that by saying ‘it is generally
clear enough’), but not in ‘natural languages’. If we want any kind of formal
41
