Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T23:00:38.339Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Putting reasoning and judgement in their proper argumentative place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2011

Mike Oaksford
Mike Oaksford
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom. mike.oaksford@bbk.ac.ukhttp://www.bbk.ac.uk/psyc/staff/academic/moaksford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This commentary agrees with Mercier and Sperber's (M&S's) thesis on the argumentative function of reasoning but suggests that an account of argument strength is required. A Bayesian account of argument strength (Hahn & Oaksford 2007) shows how the deployment of deductive fallacies, weak inductive arguments, and judgment fallacies such as base-rate neglect, can all be rationally defended in the right argumentative context.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 84 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bar-Hillel, M. (1980) The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments. Acta Psychologica 44:211–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godden, D. M. & Walton, D. (2004) Denying the antecedent as a legitimate argumentative strategy: A dialectical model. Informal Logic 24:219–43.Google Scholar
Hahn, U. & Oaksford, M. (2007) The rationality of informal argumentation: A Bayesian approach to reasoning fallacies. Psychological Review 114:704–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1973) On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review 80:237–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oaksford, M. & Chater, N. (2007) Bayesian rationality: The probabilistic approach to human reasoning. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oaksford, M., Chater, N. & Larkin, J. (2000) Probabilities and polarity biases in conditional inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 26:883–99.Google ScholarPubMed
Oaksford, M. & Hahn, U. (2007) Induction, deduction and argument strength in human reasoning and argumentation. In Inductive reasoning, ed. Feeney, A. & Heit, E., pp. 269–301. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Perelman, C. & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969) The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation. University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar