Abstract: Scholars often suppose that those who employ sophistical refutations seek argumentative victory alone.  While it is undeniable that sophistical refutations have a merely playful, competitive use, it would be wrong to conclude that everyone who employs sophistical or eristic refutations has no ambition beyond defeating their opponents. To draw that conclusion would be to neglect a distinction that Aristotle draws between different purposes that different people have in employing these arguments. Indeed, although the adjectives ‘eristic’ and ‘sophistic’ describe the same class of refutations, Aristotle has a regimented use of the nouns ‘eristic’ and ‘sophist’, where they describe people who employ these arguments with different purposes. While eristics employ sophistical refutations with no aim beyond argumentative victory, sophists aim at apparent wisdom. By surveying Aristotle’s testimonies about this argumentative practice, I argue that, in Aristotle’s strict sense of the term, sophistry involves using refutations in order to support certain controversial doctrines, thereby gaining a reputation for wisdom. In particular, sophists support these doctrines by presenting them as the solutions to the contradictions and paradoxes in which they ensnare their interlocutors. 

Abstract: A considerable part of contemporary research on the nature of fallacies is unified by the attempt to overcome what since C.L. Hamblin has been labelled ‘The Standard Definition’, according to which ‘a fallacious argument, as almost every account from Aristotle onwards tells you, is one that seems to be valid but is not so’ (Hamblin 1970, 12). In particular, authors have taken issue with what they call ‘The Appearance Condition,’ according to which fallacies are arguments seem to be valid or have the appearance of validity. Scholars take this condition to be problematic in part because ‘appearances can vary from person to person, thus making the same argument a fallacy for the one who is taken in by the appearance, and not a fallacy for the one who sees past the appearances’ (Hansen 2020, §4.2). We argue that Aristotle’s treatment of fallacy is immune to this charge of relativism because his appearance condition is not subjective in the way that critics of the Standard Definition allege. A sophistical refutation’s “appearance” of being a refutation is a matter of having some objectively detectable resemblance to an argument that does not fall short of being a refutation in the way that it does. This understanding of the appearance condition in no way requires us to appeal to the subjective effect that arguments have on particular people in order to explain why certain arguments are fallacies.   

Abstract: Interpreters of Plato’s Euthydemus have often detected apparent Eleatic allegiances in the dialogue’s eponymous character and his brother Dionysodorus. However, according to another prominent line of interpretation, we should not attribute any doctrinal commitments to the eristic brothers in the Euthydemus. Indeed, the latter view seems to gain support from Socrates’ claim that the brothers’ ‘eristic wisdom’ enables them to refute whatever their interlocutor says, regardless of whether it is true or false (Euthyd. 272a7-b1). In this paper, I show that Plato does in fact attribute certain doctrinal commitments to Euthydemus and argue that these commitments are closely related to his larger argumentative practice. On the view I propose, Euthydemus’ aim in refuting his opponents is not simply to propound contradictions and paradoxes. He instead reduces his interlocutors to self-contradiction with the ultimate aim of defending a philosophical doctrine that provides one with a way out of these paradoxes. More precisely, I take the philosophical doctrine that Euthydemus defends to be a radical form of monism, often associated with the Eleatics and I will suggest that the argumentative practice by which he defends this doctrine to also has Eleatic pedigree. On the reading I will propose, like Zeno of Elea, Euthydemus’ ultimate aim in propounding his refutations is to reveal that his interlocutor’s apparently commonsense opinions are likewise paradoxical, and thus do not enjoy a greater plausibility than the radical monism that he espouses.  

Abstract: In Metaphysics Γ.3, Aristotle argues that it is impossible to deny the PNC. However, as several commentators—including Code, Barnes, Priest, Kirwan, and Dancy—have objected, Aristotle’s argument appears to rely on the invalid inference from 1 to 2 as follows: 

1. For all p, it is impossible to believe that p and not-p. 

2. Therefore, it is impossible to believe that it is possible that there is a p such that p and not-p. 

We argue that this objection turns on a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s text, and that Aristotle's argument is valid and quite strong.  

Abstract: This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations.

Abstract: This paper examines the way in which Plato, in the Euthydemus, exposes sophistical refutations that exploit various forms of linguistic ambiguity. In arguing that Plato is capable of doing this, the argument of this paper challenges a common view according to which Plato lacks the technical resources necessary to diagnose fallacious arguments that turn on ambiguity. I argue instead that Plato has a much more robust sensitivity to ambiguity and its pernicious effects on philosophical arguments than has been recognized, that he has at his disposal various strategies for exposing the eristic refutations that exploit linguistic ambiguity as merely apparent refutations, and that Plato's treatment of these arguments laid important groundwork for Aristotle’s understanding of genuine refutation in the Sophistici Elenchi.

Abstract: Interpreters of Isocrates’ Busiris tend either to think it is an unsuccessful work because it represents the very sort of paradoxical literature that Isocrates frequently criticizes, or to take the speech to be a serious work only insofar as it demonstrates pure encomiastic form. I argue that the Busiris is an educational tract whose content Isocrates takes seriously. In his encomium of Busiris (XI.10-29) and his defense of that encomium vis-à-vis Polycrates’ Defense of Busiris (XI.30-43), Isocrates uses an engagement with the rival rhetorician Polycrates to advance two pieces of propaganda: the superiority of his own education in persuasive speeches on important political matters over the education offered by Polycrates as well as the relevance and importance of the Panhellenic political agenda that his education ultimately serves.

Abstract: In this paper, I evaluate the possibility of convergence between animal welfare and environmental ethics. By surveying the most prominent views within each of these respective camps, I argue that animal welfare ethics and ecological theories in environmental ethics are incommensurable in virtue of their respective individualistic and holistic value theories. I conclude by arguing that this conceptual clarification allows us to see that animal welfare ethics can nevertheless be made commensurable with theories in environmental ethics according to which value primarily resides in individuals, rather than in collectives and communities.

Abstract: Interpreters of Socrates’ argument at Gorgias 466a4-468e5 that rhetoricians and tyrants have little power because they do almost nothing they want tend either to think that the argument is invalid, or that Socrates relies upon peculiar uses of the terms ‘power’ and ‘want.’ On the reading I offer, Socrates relies only on his interlocutor's beliefs that having power is good for the person who has it and that in wanting anything we above all want to be happy (eudaimōn). Being able to do whatever one wants and get away with it is not good for a person who lacks knowledge of what is best for the soul, and so it is neither a case of truly having power nor is it conducive to happiness. And since people want happiness (i.e., what here and now amounts to happiness) in everything they want to do, people don’t in fact manage to do what they want to do whenever they fail to achieve happiness in acting as they do. Tyrants and rhetoricians, in particular, act as they do without knowledge of what is best for the soul, and thus neither have great power nor do what they want.

Abstract: Omitted for blind review

Abstract: Omitted for blind review

Abstract: According to Aristotle, beliefs in contradictory propositions—the belief that p and the belief that not-p—are contrary mental states. This claim, if true, has a significant upshot. Given that it is metaphysically impossible to have contrary properties (at the same time, in the same way, etc.), it follows that it is metaphysically impossible to believe that p and also believe that not-p (at the same time, etc.). However, explicit support for the thesis that the belief that p and the belief that not-p are contrary mental states is hard to come by in Aristotle's corpus. If it was written by Aristotle and if sense can be made of its central argument, then De Interpretatione 14 contains Aristotle’s only meaningful defense of this idea. However, many commentators doubt, or even vehemently deny that Aristotle wrote this chapter (Ammonius, Stephanus, Bonitz, Weidemann). Others, while not denying Aristotelian authorship, maintain that its central argument is “either hopelessly obscure or rotten” (Dancy 1975, 148; cp. Łukasiewicz, Barnes, Kirwan). We argue that this chapter was indeed written by Aristotle, and we defend a reconstruction of its central argument on which Aristotle’s line of thought is perfectly reasonable, given some of his other commitments about change, contrariety, and truth.