Maurice
Finocchiaro. Arguments
about Arguments. Systematic, Critical and Historical Essays in Logical Theory.
The book
is a collection of essays Finocchiaro has written in the last three decades on
argument analysis and informal logic. The essays have not been rewritten, so
there is quite some redundancy between them.
The
book is divided into four parts. The first part develops Finocchiaro’s
approach to argument analysis and informal logic, and will be the focus of this
review in the next paragraph. The second part presents Finocchiaro’s theory of
fallacies and the positive and negative evaluation of arguments. On the one hand
Finocchiaro claims that fallacies are attributed too hastily, because
‘actually occurring logically incorrect arguments are not very common’
(116). On the other hand he develops his own typology of six types of actually
occurring fallacies. In the third part several alternative or related approaches
to argument analysis are critically evaluated. The theses under review range
from Cohen’s methodological views on analytic philosophy as working by
induction on one’s own intuition to Gramsci’s instrumentalist understanding
of logic as a technique of ideologically
neutral reasoning. The fourth part provides some examples of historical studies
on arguments. As in Finocchiaro’s other books Galileo is used as a paradigm of
an arguer several times in the book. In this part other studies of pre-modern
science are presented: Newton’s ambiguous formulation of his ‘3rd
rule’ of reasoning, or Lavoisier’s clever rhetorical embedding of his
non-obvious argument on oxidation.
Logic
is of different relevance for different understandings of philosophy. There are
types of philosophy (roughly those in the analytic tradition) for which the use
of formal logic is an essential tool of philosophy. There is even the even
narrower case of an understanding of philosophy which equates doing philosophy
with formal (re-)construction – like the late George Boolos considered his
formal theory of plural quantification as just being philosophy. For many other
understandings of philosophy and for fields like legal argumentation, however,
argumentation plays an essential role, but formal logic does not. Here
non-formal (informal) logic and non formalized rules of inference are employed.
Informal logic use almost no formalisms (as can be seen in a typical textbook
like Alec Fisher’s The Logic of real Arguments [Cambridge, 1988]).
Finocchiaro’s book also does not use formal logic. Sometimes (cf. 67, 93) he
equates his historical approach to argument analysis with informal logic. He
sets it apart from formal logic, which is often accused of ‘apriorism’ (32).
As philosophy lives by its diversity there is no need for unification here.
Avoiding logical imperialism is well advised. Nevertheless there has to be some
relation between formal and informal logic. One connection might be that some
proponents of formal logic (and the majority of analytic philosophers) claim
that formal logic captures structures of human reasoning. If that is so, formal
logic has to have some use in understanding actually employed arguments or
attributed reasoning procedures. In analytic philosophy and cognitive science
the whole field of such questions is discussed under the title of ‘reflective
equilibrium’: a coherent reconstruction of our logical faculties has to take
into account our intuitions on good arguments, our formal explications of
reasoning (i.e. formal system) and empirical results on actual human faculties
and performance (an overview is presented in Edward Stein’s Without
Good Reason. The Rationality Debate in
Philosophy and Cognitive Science. [Oxford, 1996]). Finocchiaro’s book can
be read as defending the claim that the historical analysis of arguments as
presented in classical texts is a further ingredient to be considered in this
reflective equilibrium. The historical cases – by just being historical cases
of published arguments – provide empirical evidence for what was considered to
be good or bad argumentation. Supposed principle of reasoning or the critical
evaluation of arguments are either to be found in them as well or read of from
them in the first place. Given the more or the less informal character of most
of these arguments the theory of these arguments may be considered as part of
the meta-theory of informal logic. Historical analysis in this sense has further
merits in promoting a better understanding of the historic controversies and the
development of science. Finocchiaro, however, claims that this type of argument
analysis is superior to the empirical study of human reasoning faculties
in the cognitive sciences and superior to formal logic as providing a
theory of reasoning, historical analysis being ‘the most scientific approach
to the topic’ (45). This can be seriously doubted. The meta-theory of informal
logic can hardly be informal itself. So Finocchiaro defines the essential
concept of reasoning as ‘a special type of thinking that consists of
interrelating thoughts in such a way that some are dependent on or follow from
others’ (15). His theory of fallacies rests on the definition of a fallacy as
‘the failure of one proposition to follow from others’ (133). One should
immediately ask here what ‘follows from’ means. Finocchiaro gives no
explanation. Formal logic does (whether one considers deductive systems or
confirmation theories). Formal logic further on provides a systematisation of
inference by providing sound and complete formal systems. Without such a
systematisation we have the ragbag of inference that pre-modern logic collected.
Neglecting this second connection between formal and informal logic Finocchiaro
comes close to presenting just such a collection of rather general principles of
reasoning comprising even the concept of explanation and any ‘rules, and
presuppositions of inquiry, truth-seeking, or knowledge gathering’ (96).
Informal
logic and argument analysis should be seen in connection with formal logic and
as an important ingredient in the wide reflective equilibrium needed to spell
out the proper principles of reasoning. Informal logic may also be seen as a
pedagogical tool for those who do not need formal logic in the sense of
manipulating formal systems. Within these limitations informal logic and the
evaluation of arguments is part of teaching logic and philosophy and historical
analysis is part of empirically investigating our practices of reasoning. All
other pretensions, however, should be dropped.