Abstract
‘Co-oriented reasons’ are reasons that can be adduced to support the same claim, and ‘co-orientation’ is an operation combining two arguments with a common conclusion. Co-orientation connectors include ‘also’, ‘even’, ‘on the one hand’, ‘on the other hand’, among others. There are two main forms of co-orientation: conjunction and disjunction. Argument conjunction and disjunction are operations that join two arguments to form a compound argument with the same conclusion. The difference between them can be apprehended by considering their resistance to counterargument. Reasons taken in disjunction stand of fall independently of one another, whereas in conjunction reasons add up. Consequently, disjunction may be a reply either to an objection or a rebuttal of an argument, while conjunction may be a reply to a refutation.
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Notes
- 1.
Actually, things are a bit more complicated than this. David Hitchcock points out that “There is also an interpretive difficulty in determining whether an additional supporting reason introduced by a bridging term like ‘besides’ or ‘moreover’ or ‘further’ is a new argument or merely an independently relevant part of a single argument (Hitchcock 2017, p. 24). My full answer is that ‘besides’ and the like can introduce either a new argument or a modifier, whose insertion in the given argument produces a modified reason.
- 2.
In set-theoretical terms, it could be said that the set of objections (rebuttals) of a conjunctive argument is the union of the sets of objections (rebuttals) of the conjoined arguments. Likewise, the set of objections (rebuttals) of a disjunctive argument is the intersection of the sets of objections (rebuttals) of the disjoined arguments.
- 3.
However, this metaphor should not be taken too far, since reasons are not quantities to be added or subtracted, multiplied and divided.
- 4.
I contend, against Bader, that transvaluators cannot be a special kind of attenuators. It is part of the identity of a reason to be a reason for something. When we take a consideration as a reason for two different things, it would be weird to say that we are examining the same reason. The fact that something is very expensive is a reason to consider it a luxury product and a reason to decide not to buy it, but it would be abusive to say that in both cases we are dealing with the same reason, even if it is obviously the same consideration.
- 5.
“Naturally it would be a waste of time and energy to bother recording these wholly general presuppositions explicitly in every actual case by writing them into the particular warrants on which our practical argumentation relies. Nor may it in fact be practicable to enumerate all these general assumptions exhaustively in advance of encountering the very rare exceptions that bring them to light.” (Toulmin, Rieke & Janik 1984, p. 100).
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Leal, F., Marraud, H. (2022). Co-Oriented Reasons and Modifiers. In: How Philosophers Argue. Argumentation Library, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85368-6_12
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