An illocutionary approach to fallacy theory
Abstract
Fallacies have been traditionally defined as patterns of invalid reasoning that appear to be valid; however, due to the taxonomical difficulties of this definition, several projects have emerged in order to improve it. We believe, nevertheless, that by positing the traditional view we still can obtain interesting results. To show how this is so we claim that some of the most common fallacies are instances of invalid arguments within the Searle & Vanderveken’s illocutionary logic, which, in our opinion, turns out to be a rather traditional solution. To reach this goal we follow three steps: first we offer a brief exposition of the standard treatment of fallacies that enables us to notice an explanatory assimetry; then we present the features of Searle & Vanderveken’s logic that are relevant for our purposes; and finally we suggest some illocutionary models, for five fallacies, that show in what sense they are deductively invalid.References
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