Daniel Cohen

We hold arguers culpable for ignoring obvious objections to their reasoning because their arguments are weaker than they could be, but we do not generally hold arguers culpable for missing relevant positive reasons even though their arguments are also weaker than they could be. What a curious asymmetry! After a brief explanation of virtue argumentation theory and its main branches, it is deployed to account for why this can seem natural but should in fact be discordant.

Daniel H. Cohen is Professor of Philosophy at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. His areas of expertise include argumentation theory, philosophy of language, metaphors and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Professor Cohen was keynote speaker the the 10th OSSA conference, Windsor, Canada (2013).