On Pollock’s defeaters and diminishers

  • Constanza Ihnen Jory Universidad de Chile
Keywords: defeasible reasoning, defeater, diminisher, John Pollock, justificatory force, rebutter, undercutter

Abstract

The concepts of defeater, undercutter, rebutter and diminisher, introduced by John Pollock, have served as theoretical starting points within various areas of knowledge, such as epistemology, artificial intelligence and argumentation theory. In this article I will argue that, while these concepts have great explanatory and normative potential, some interpretative and conceptual problems which emerge from a reading of Pollock's work need to be addressed in the first place.

References

Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, L.J. (1977). The probable and the provable. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ihnen, C. (por publicar). The transferential force of a defeasible argument. In: Proceedings of the 13th OSSA Conference. Argumentation and Changing Minds. University of Windsor – May 23 - 25, 2024.

Ihnen, C. (2023). Sobre el concepto de suficiencia en la argumentación derrotable. Revista Iberoamericana De Argumentación 27, 23–60.

Johnson, R. & Blair A. (1977). Logical Self-Defense. Toronto, Canada: McGraw-Hill.

Koons, Robert, «Defeasible Reasoning», The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/reasoning-defeasible/>.

Marraud, H. (2017). «De las 7 maneras de contra-argumentar». Quadripartitaratio 2(4), 52-57.

Marraud, H. (2020). «On the logical ways to counter an argument: A typology and some theoretical consequences». En: F.H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (eds.), From Argument Schemes to Argumentative Relations in the Wild (pp. 149-166). Cham: Springer.

Pollock, J.L. (1970). «The structure of epistemic justification», American Philosophical Quarterly (Monograph Series) 4, 62-78.

- 1973). «Laying the Raven to Rest: A Discussion of Hempel and the Paradoxes of Confirmation». The Journal of Philosophy 70 (20), 747-754

- (1974). Knowledge and Justification. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

- (1987). «Defeasible Reasoning». Cognitive Science 11, 481-518.

- (1991). «A theory of defeasible reasoning». International Journal of Intelligent Systems 6, 33-54.

- (1995). Cognitive Carpentry: A blueprint for how to build a person. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

- (2001). «Defeasible reasoning with variable degrees of justification». Artificial Intelligence 133(1), 233-282.

- (2010). «Defeasible reasoning and degrees of justification». Argument and computation 1(1), 7-22.

Searle, J. (1979). A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In: Expression and meaning. Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Searle, J. & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

van Eemeren, F.H. & Grootendorst, R. (1984). Speech acts in argumentative discussions. A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Dordrecht/Berlin: Foris/Walter de Gruyter.

van Eemeren, F.H. & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, communication, and fallacies: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Vega, L. (2011). «Inferencia». En Vega, L. y P. Olmos (2011). Compendio de Lógica, Argumentación y Retórica. (pp. 297- 301). Madrid: Editorial Trotta

Walton, D. (2002). Are Some Modus Ponens Arguments Deductively Invalid? Informal Logic 22, 19-46.

Walton, D. (2012). Finding the Logic in Argumentation. In: H. Ribeiro (ed.), Inside Arguments: Logic and the Study of Argumentation, pp. 37-55. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Published
2024-12-20