So a mysterianist and a semicompatibilist walk into a bar . . .

1. You've read Peter van Inwagen's chapter on philosophical failure.
2. Now you can* read John Martin Fischer's reply.
3. It is now up to you** whether to reply, however it is true that you should*** do so.

Go!

* 'can' in some sense profoundly indeterministic, ultimacy-bearing sense
** 'up to you' in some sense compatible with your deliberating about whether to reply
*** 'should' relative to some justified standards concerning your individual conduct given your aims and the Objective Value™ of the Irrepressible GFP Online Reading Group.

---------Fischer's comments on van Inwagen's "Philosophical Failure":
"I should begin by saying that I admire this book greatly. It is beautifully written, and very interesting and stimulating throughout. Not surprisingly, the book is filled with ingenious argumentation and penetrating insights. Here I shall focus solely on van Inwagen's fascinating suggestions about philosophical methodology in Chapter 3.

The chapter is entitled "Philosophical Failure," but it is really about philosophical methodology in general, or perhaps more precisely, about how best to assess and also to develop philosophical argumentation. Van Inwagen begins by rejecting a model of philosophical argumentation quite similar to what Robert Nozick has called "coercive philosophy"; on this model, one seeks to provide knockdown arguments from indisputable premises. As regards this sort of model, Van Inwagen points out (p. 36) that Nozick said that when he was young he thought that a philosophical argument is adequate only if anyone who understood the premises but not the conclusion would die! (One imagines the brain exploding. And note that even Nozick's characterization captures a less than optimally stringent model, insofar as it leaves it open that someone could reject the premises without fatality.)

Van Inwagen goes on to consider a second model. On this view, philosophical argumentation can be thought of as a kind of debate between two parties who have opposite views about the issue under consideration, where the goal of each is to convince the other to give up his position and adopt the competing view. (A weaker requirement would be that the other party to the debate switch from accepting the competing view to agnosticism; Van Inwagen doesn't explicitly consider this possibility. An even weaker requirement--or family or requirements--would be that the other party decreases to some degree his confidence in his view.) So suppose the issue is whether causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility. Here we are to envisage an idealized debate (some of the conditions of idealization are discussed on pp. 42-3) between a compatibilist and an incompatibilist, where the compatibilist seeks to convince the incompatibilist to adopt compatibilism, and the incompatibilist seeks to convince the compatibilist to adopt compatibilism. The argument offered (say) by the compatiblist is deemed successful only if the incompatibilist is persuaded to adopt compatibilism.

Van Inwagen rejects this second model for the same reason he rejects the first, saying that it places the bar too high: "I very much doubt whether any argument, or any set of independent arguments, for any substantive philosophical conclusion has the power to turn a determined opponent of that conclusion, however rational, into an adherent of that conclusion." (p. 45)

Van Inwagen prefers a third model, according to which we understand philosophical argumentation as like an idealized debate between proponents of competing positions, where the goal is not to convert the other debater, but to convince an idealized "agnostic"--a person who is "neutral" in the sense that he has no particular antecedent inclination to accept the relevant position. Here the two debaters address a third party, rather than each other; and the goal is not "conversion", but securing "conviction", as it were. Van Inwagen contends that this weaker model is more reasonable, and that it has some advantages with respect to understanding issues about begging the question and the burden of proof.

I find Van Inwagen's proposal highly attractive, and I agree with him that it is preferable to the first two. I certainly have not offered such an explicit and helpful characterization of the model (as Van Inwagen has here), but in a way I have suggested something similar. That is, I have suggested that (for example) a compatibilist understand his arguments as directed to a fair-minded, reasonable person without a prior commitment to either compatibilism or incompatibilism. (In recent work by Haji and McKenna one sees a similar view.) In certain debates one often reads or hears the following sort of reply to a proposed argument or consideration: "but an incompatibilist would reject that…" It is as if a compatibilsit may only present considerations and arguments that would not be rejected by someone with an antecedent and iron-clad commitment to incompatibilism! But this really sets the bar too high; clearly, if we accepted this sort of requirement, no philosophical progress could be made with respect to substantive and contentious philosophical issues. I think it is quite helpful to point out that the arguments and considerations should be addressed to a neutral agnostic, rather than a committed opponent. As Van Inwagen points out, adopting this model might well result in different views about what is argumentatively permissible, as opposed to question-begging or otherwise illicit, and where the burden of proof lies.

Van Inwagen goes on to argue that even on the somewhat more permissive third model, not only is the atheist's argument based on evil a failure, but all arguments for substantive, interesting philosophical theses will turn out to be failures. (Here I won't assess either of these claims.) I wonder why Van Inwagen thinks it is a fatal criticism of the first two models that they would have it that no philosophical arguments are successes, but not a problem for his favored model that it also has this implication. Perhaps Van Inwagen believes that the first two models set the bar unreasonably high so that it would be unreasonably hard to meet their criteria for success, whereas the third model sets the bar at just the right height--but that even so no philosophical argument for an interesting, substantive thesis is successful. But perhaps it would be worth considering another model (or family of models), by reference to which it would turn out that some (but not all) philosophical arguments for the relevant sorts of theses are indeed successful (or at least successful to certain degrees).

Consider a model that adopts the assumptions of Van Inwagen's third model--we have a debate addressed to a neutral agnostic (with respect to the view under dispute). But here success does not require that the neutral agnostic actually adopt the relevant view; what is required is simply that the agnostic's inclination to adopt the thesis increases (perhaps to some threshold amount). Here we can again imagine a family of different views; the weakest view would be that success simply requires some increase in the agnostic's inclination to accept the relevant view, whereas stronger views would require a range of more significant increases in the strength of the inclination to accept the view in question. On this sort of model, we presumably could say that some (but certainly not all) philosophical arguments for contentious, substantive positions are successful. It is arguably at least a strike against Van Inwagen's view that it seems (by his own admission) to imply that all philosophical arguments (of the sort under consideration) are failures, and a virtue of my suggestion that it does not have this implication. (I leave aside for now the question of whether the atheist's argument from evil is successful, on my proposed model.)

Van Inwagen is aware of the possibility of models similar to the one I have suggested above; indeed, he says:

I would suppose that most real agnostics, most actual people who do profess and call themselves agnostics, are not neutral agnostics. Most agnostics I have discussed these matters with think that it's pretty improbable that there's a God. Their relation to the proposition that God exists is very much like my relation to the proposition that there are intelligent non-human beings inhabiting some planet within 10,000 light-years of the Earth. And this consideration suggests a possible objection to my definition of philosophical success. Call those agnostics who think that it's very improbable that there is a God weighted agnostics. An argument for the non-existence of God, the argument from evil for example, might be a failure by my criterion because it lacked the power to transform ideal (and hence neutral) agnostics into atheists. But it might, consistently with that, have the power to transform neutral agnostics into weighted agnostics. If it does, isn't it rather hard on it to call it a failure? (p. 50)

Van Inwagen says that he would not object to revising his model to allow for success in the case described (in which the neutral agnostic becomes a weighted agnostic). But he goes on to contend that if the considerations he invokes in seeking to show that the argument from evil is incapable of turning neutral agnostics into atheists are persuasive, they would be equally persuasive in showing that the argument from evil is incapable of turning neutral agnostics into weighted agnostics. (p. 51)

But note that even Van Inwagen's permitted revision is significantly different from the model I sketched above, insofar as my model does not require for success that a neutral agnostic become a weighted agnostic; after all, a weighted agnostic, according to Van Inwagen, believes that it is "very improbable" that God does not exist. All that is required on my suggested model is that a neutral agnostic become inclined to some degree (which may fall considerably short of the threshold posited by Van Inwagen) to accept the relevant position (say, atheism). Given this important difference, even if Van Inwagen's conditional is true (that if the argument from evil is incapable of transforming a neutral agnostic into an atheist, then it is also incapable of transforming a neutral agnostic into a weighted agnostic), it would not follow that if the argument from evil is incapable of transforming a neutral agnostic into an atheist, it would also be incapable of increasing the inclination of a neutral agnostic to accept atheism (to the relevant degree).

Why exactly would we want a model by reference to which we could say that some (but not all) philosophical arguments for interesting, substantive thesis are successful? I suppose this may depend to some extent on one's temperament or philosophical personality. Some philosophers might well think that it is accurate to describe all philosophical arguments for substantive, contentious theses as failures, although perhaps they may invoke a model like mine to say that some arguments are "better" than others, or come closer to success than others, or perhaps are "partial" successes (to one degree or another). Others will be a bit less dour about the possibility of philosophical success. I suppose that my own view is that the interesting philosophical issues are so incredibly difficult, we should consider ourselves successful if we could change the inclination of an idealized neutral agnostic even a little bit. (And note that this change is in the context of a debate where the proponent of the opposing view can mount a vigorous argument of his own.)

There are of course various problems for the very sketchy proposal I have made. I simply note that it applies most naturally to highly contentious philosophical theses, where it is plausible that an ideal agnostic would in fact be neutral. If one considers theses which are in dispute but whose objective probability of truth is relatively high, then even a very uninspiring argument would presumably change (significantly) the inclination of an idealized unweighted agnostic. This suggests that perhaps in general the requirement should be that the argument move an ideal agnostic who has an inclination to accept the relevant view that matches (in a suitable sense) the objective probability of truth of the relevant view. But I will simply follow Van Inwagen in noting this problem without addressing it in detail (p. 49)."

Comments

[Mark Smeltzer]

Philosophical methodry bent on achieving a specific result in a set of subjects is a rather tenuous practice...

The best way to produce a desired result is to take special, particular care to fashion a package that will appear fashionable in the eyes of the subjects. This is called marketing. From there, the goal would be to lull the subjects to act in a manner consistent with taking ownership of the contents of that package. This is called sales.

Now, if the goals of the philosophical enterprise are best explained in terms of marketing and sales, many so called "philosophical tools", like logic and reason, will have little relevance. For the best marketers and salesmen known enough logic and reason to twist them to their advantage. A good salesman, one who regularly produces results, pays no special care to avoid affirming the consequent unless he knows that his subject would respond negatively. The good salesman anticipates his subject's reaction; he never asks a question he does not know the answer to.

When I do philosophy, results be damned, it is in the context of a personal quest for Truth. Debate and rationale discourse are valuable insofar as they serve to assist in highlighting weak, flawed, or otherwise suspicious features of my thought. What happens along the way, the results, are all very interesting features of the tale, but I worry over any suggestion that these features, however modest, ought be the central prize.

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Interesting post, John! I'm sympathetic, but I do have two thoughts (not having read Van Inwagen's chapter, I should confess).

First, should the "success" of a philosophical argument be defined in term of its effect on an actual audience? What about a brilliant argument that fails to gain any adherents because of some fault or perversity in the audience? Should we consider an "idealized" audience, perhaps? Well some people have more taste for appeals to idealized this-and-thats than others. Maybe there's some less audience-dependent standard to consider.

And second, I worry that your criteria might make too many arguments successful. I'm thinking here of the sort of undergraduate who is blown about by the winds, and finds herself agreeing with whatever she has read most recently....

[John Fischer]

Eric,

Thanks! Yes, I'm sorry--I should have been clearer about this-- Peter Van Inwagen and I are talking about an "idealized audience"--say, an "idealized agnostic" under certain idealized circumstances. Of course, part of the trick would be to spell out the conditions of idealization, which Peter does to some extent. I agree that one might be skeptical about idealization.

Mark:

Well, it sounds really bad to say this, but philosophy is sometimes kind of like "sales"--at least it is clearly about persuasion. What else is an argument except an offering of reasons in an attempt to persuade? Maybe the fact that we are seeking to persuade an idealized audience under idealized conditions can help to assuage the lingering sense of crassness...

[Mark Smeltzer]

John,

After reading Van Inwagen's piece, I still have very little sense of what an "ideal" audience is like.

Suppose the debate is over compatibilism and incompatibilism, what properties would the "ideal" audience have?

One way to attempt to answer the question would be to frame the audience in terms of the related beliefs that will certainly bear on the debate. So, the question could be: Does the "ideal" audience for the compatibilist/incompatibilist debate subscribe to:Substance dualism? Property dualism? Property realism?
Value realism? Moral realism? Ethical realism?
Epistemological methodism? Experimental particularism? Dogmatic particularism?
Correspondence theory of truth? Coherentist theory of truth? Pragmatist theory of truth?
Epistemic externalism? Reliablism? Virtue epistemology? Epistemic internalism? Epistemic coherentism? Epistemic pragmatism?
... and so on and so forth will all the other related disciplines of philosophy!

Moreover, what would an "ideal" audience be like for a debate over the law of non-contradiction (which is not held as objective law in many Eastern philosophies)? This one could really throw a defender of an "ideal" audience for a loop...

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Thanks for the reply, John. Yes, of course, (as you politely refrained from pointing out!) you already described the audience as an "idealized agnostic" several times in the post. However, you characterized an idealized agnostic as "a person who is 'neutral' in the sense that he has no particular antecedent inclination to accept the relevant position"; I guess I was thinking about other aspects of idealization, besides neutrality, which are perhaps more philosophically problematic (like "ideally rational"). I didn't make that clear in my hastily-written comment, I'm afraid! Maybe you intended to be idealizing in some of those other ways, too. Of course, the thing I should do is just go out and look at the Van Inwagen.

Thanks again for the thought-provoking post.

[Joe]

Mark and Eric both raise some interesting questions about the "idealized agnostic." Following Mark, we might ask: Is the "idealized agnostic" only agnostic about the specific area of debate? I'm sure I would have more luck trying to convince someone who was, say, a dualist and a theist that the free will thesis was true than I would have trying to convince someone who was, say, a materialist and an atheist.

Following Eric, we might ask: is the "idealized agnostic" ideally rational? If not, then we're really talking about arguments that are merely persuasive and not necessarily good in any philosophical sense.

Putting it all together it seems that the "idealized agnostic" is going to have to be ideally rational yet agnostic about substantive philosophical issues. Is such an creature even possible? Perhaps a graduate student in mathematics would do!

I tend to think that there are a number of ways that a philosophical argument might be deemed a success. By some standard both McTaggart's argument for the non-existence of time and Zeno's argument for the non-existence of motion are very successful. Yet not because they are convincing to agnostics about time and motion (if there are any).

Recently I had lunch with a graduate student at the APA. During the lunch I presented an argument for compatibilism. The student works in ethics and epistemology but does no work on free will. By the end of the lunch she claimed that she no longer thought that compatibilism was a crazy view. I thought that my argument was a huge success! I generally think that I've done a good job if I can convince a few students in my undergraduate metaphysics class that compatibilism is not a crazy view.

This is not to say that Peter's own criteria isn't of interest. I found it (and John's contrasting view) to be very interesting. It is also interesting to note that perhaps Peter is correct in claiming that all substantive philosophical arguments are arguments, given his criteria. If this were true, that would be very interesting, as well. I just think that there are a multitude of ways that philosophical arguments may be deemed successful apart from the ways noted by Peter and John.

Personally, I think that the argument from evil (for the non-existence of God) is unsound. But I have a hard time calling it a 'failure.'

[Jussi Suikkanen]

The models introduced here all address mainly what doing positive constructive philosophy aims at. And, that's all well and good. Yet, an essential part of the fun (yes, I admit it) of philosophy that goes back to Socrates is the destructive, negative part of finding holes in other people's arguments and views. That part of philosophy fits better the idea that we are engaging in a dialogue with other people who hold opposite views and try get them to give up their views or weaken their degrees of confidence to them. As Fischer writes, in the two-person dialogue model success is measured both by how much less convinced they are about their own view and how much more convinced they are about ours.

However, I'm not sure how this part of philosophy fits the idea of addressing a third party who is an idealised agnostic or fairminded person without prior commitments. If she is thus defined, the she has no inclination yet to believe the competing views that are alternatives to my view. In this case, I would have no motivation to try to find faults in those views. That the other view is bad does not itself count for my view and so that cannot get her to believe in my view at all. This would mean that negative philosophy is unsuccesful from the start. But, that's spoiling the fun. Philosophy is to a large degree a contact sport... Sometimes, during the dark times, I think that that is mainly what philosophy achieves.

[Kip Werking]

I wrote a fairly long (3.5 pages) response to Van Inwagen's article. I understand that some people view the purposes of blogs differently than I do, and may appreciate shorter comments (without cluttering the blog), so I thought it may be more appropriate to post this short comment with a link to my full response:

http://ktwerk.people.wm.edu/vinwagen.doc

["Q" the Enchanter]

I'm not sure I see any advantage of gearing arguments to an idealized agnostic. Besides the methodological problems (identified quite well by Mark Smeltzer in his comment above), the traditional strategy gets all the same arguments out into the open (including metaphilosophical arguments like burden-shifting and question-begging) and is much more entertaining to boot.

I'm also much more optimistic about the ability of keen argument to persuade even the most committed opponents to some degree. Changes in position in light of new evidence and argument really do happen (indeed, I can almost sense my opponents' changing their minds as they read this...), and I would think we'd be better off studying those cases of successful persuasion carefully to see what we can carry away.

Finally, it's very hard for me to imagine in the abstract how an argument that has enough power to persuade committed opponents wouldn't have an equal-or-greater persuasive effect on a mere agnostic.

[David K. Lewis]

I think the procedure of revising our opinions piecemeal, guided in part by theoretical conservatism and in part by the pursuit of theoretical unity, is what we call `being reasonable' … Is it that we must prove that it is reasonable to be reasonable? That proof should be a one-liner. Is it that we must find something to say that would, of necessity, make anyone who heard it become reasonable forthwith? That would be a spell, not an argument. Must we prove, from no questionable premises, that those who are reasonable will never fall into error? That is not to be expected.

[Manuel]

I would have thought that dead men post no comments, but I couldn't agree more with the view. (Can I cite this? Is it wrong to cite the posthumous postings of brilliant philosophers?) :-)

[Alan]

John--

Doesn't van Inwagen's whole approach assume that the determination of success assumes an ideal situation where all relevant terms of argument are disambiguated or conceded to have some agreed gloss? I say this only because when I consider some classic instances of what I'd call success in philosophical argument, they are ones of significant clarification of disputed terms of argument in a larger context. For example, prior to the 20th century, it appears most disputants about the ontological argument thought that Anselm had one argument that could be equivalently expressed two ways. But now it's generally agreed that Anselm offered two forms of argument that awaited modal logic to clearly discern them. In our own area of FW, Frankfurt's refreshing splash was to reconstruct the classical compatibilist claim of physically freely doing what one wants into a similar psychological structural property of freely identifying with what one wants. Your own work significantly refines questions of freedom and responsibility and argues they can be split. These are successes in my book, for they push thinking forward into contemplating more complexity and subtlety of issues. Van Inwagen's own consequence argument is such a success as well, getting us to be clearer about non-transferability and such. I'd say that perhaps his point is a good one about cogence of argument given settled terms, but I'd more strongly advocate a different measure of success for argument as improvement of understanding and appreciation of our potential level of ignorance at any given time. And this measure of success would have to be recognized even by trenchant advocates of an opposing view where the distinctions are drawn, for they are forced to respond to any challenge they afford.

[Anthony D'Amato]

Is there an idealized audience for Kripkenstein's view of quaddition? I might argue that such an audience would understand it perfectly, whereas you might argue that any audience that purports to understand it is deluding itself. Thus, having canceled out the audience, we're back to ordinary philosophizing.

[Joe]

Great post, Alan! I'd like to hear what John says about it.

I want to make two clarifications and raise some questions. First, I think that there are a variety of ways in which a philosophical argument might be deemed a success. ONE of those ways is articulately nicely by Peter and contrasted just as well by John.

It is interesting that, according to Peter's criteria, substantive philosophical arguments are rarely if ever successful. John allows for more success. I tend to agree with John. What do other people think?

Second, I think that one important type of success for a philosophical argument has little to do with persuasion. Alan mentioned Peter’s consequence argument. As many gardeners know, I am obsessed with that argument. I see the main elements of the argument everywhere -- in G. Strawson’s basic argument, in Mele’s zygote argument, even in Frankfurt-style counterexamples. In my mind, no philosophical argument is more successful.

Yet I’ve never found the argument to be persuasive. I was a committed compatibilist when I first I first encountered it, and I’ve always regarded it as a challenge. Perhaps I’m not the “idealized agnostic” but that is just the point.

I have something to say about Anthony's interesting post, as well, but it will have to wait until tomorrow!

[tnadelhoffer]

My worry about the "ideal but impartial audience" model of philosophical persuasion is that it always leaves an escape clause for the losing party. Imagine two philosophers--one of whom is a proponent of T1 and the other of whom is an opponent of T1. Now imagine they actually present their respective arguments for (and against) T1 to an impartial audience. At the end of these presentations, we take a poll which reveals that 80% of the agnostics were more convinced by the arguments of the opponent of T1 than they were by the proponent's arguments. What will the proponents of T1 say? That the conditions were not ideal. After all, if they were ideal, the participants would have been swayed by the arguments for T1 rather than by the arguments against it.

What we would need from the start for this whole process to work is for the opposing parties to agree in advance with respect to what conditions are going to count as "ideal" so that we could use the audience's verdict to settle the issue at hand. But what incompatibilist worth her salt will concede that there are ideal conditions under which compatibilism will be more convincing to impartial observers than incompatibilism? Isn't each party to the debate going to assume from the start that under ideal conditions their own view is the most intuitive? If so, the "ideal but impartial audience" model is not going to be very helpful.

By my lights, this model won't be of much use unless and until we have an agreed upon account of which audiences are "impartial" and which testing conditions are "ideal." Of course, if everyone could agree with respect to these two issues, we could then straightforwardly set up studies to test which competing philosophical theories are the most intuitive/persuasive. However, I am skeptical that such agreement can be reached.

[Joshua Alexander]

It strikes me that van Inwagen slips from a psychological point to an epistemological one. Take, for example, van Inwagen’s claim concerning the potential that philosophical arguments have for success provided a two-party-model standard:

"I very much doubt whether any argument, or any set of independent arguments, for any substantive philosophical conclusion has the power to turn a determined opponent of that conclusion, however rational, into an adherent of that conclusion." (p. 45)

Why think that this is the case? From what I gather, van Inwagen’s thinks that, whatever premises one adduces in favor of some conclusion, a determined opponent of that conclusion *can* always refuse to accept one or more of the premises. Now, there are two ways of reading the *can* here: a psychological reading and an epistemological reading. Further, it seems to me that van Inwagen has in mind (here and elsewhere in the paper) the psychological reading. However, it would seem that the interesting philosophical issue concerning the potential that philosophical arguments have for success has to do with the epistemological reading. That is, what is really at issue when we are considering whether or not an argument is successful is whether the argument ought to convince a rational, reasonable interlocutor or audience not whether or not it will.

[Mark Smeltzer]

Tom,

I am not sure what Van Inwagen's notion of philosophical failure has to do with your notion of settling debates. Could you clarify?

It seems like you are interested in setting up an actual debate format to test the persuasiveness of various claims, and further that you are suggesting that this method would be useful for empirically testing the success of an argument. However, isn't that merely equating success with persuasive power?

Truth conductivity should play a more vital role in determining philosophical success than persuasiveness... On a truth conductivity view, even an unsound argument could be counted as successful if it has helped us move closer to the truth. That might be enough to underwrite Joe's desire to call the consequent argument a success.

[tnadelhoffer]

Mark

I am not sure I made myself clear. First, you suggest that I am "equating success with persuasive power"--but that is not quite right. I was simply trying to raise a problem I have with the attempt on the part of both Van Inwagen and Fischer to define the success of a philosophical argument in terms of whether it would convert (or have some affect upon) impartial observers under ideal conditions.

My point was just that in order for this whole approach to gauging the success of a philosophical argument to work, we would need an account of what conditions are going to count as ideal. If we could agree upon which conditions count as ideal, we could in principle then run controlled and systematic studies to test which of two competing theories is more succesful--i.e., which one "moves" impartial laypersons the most under ideal conditions. Unfortunately, I do not think that philosophers will be able to agree upon or specify when these conditions are met. Hence, I have suggested, that the proposed method for establishing the successfulness of philosophical arguments cannot get off the ground.

Perhaps I should have worded my point in the form of a dilemma: Either we can agree in advance concerning what is going to count as an ideal condition or we cannot. If we cannot reach such an agreement, the the "ideal but impartial" model won't do any good. If, on the other hand, we can agree with respect to what will count as an ideal condition, then we can run studies to determine which of two competing theories is succesful.

I take it that your point is that at best this approach will reveal which of two competing views is the most persuasive, but it will not shed any light on which of the two is correct.

Since I am not advocating the "ideal but impartial audience" model, this is not a problem for me--rather, it is a problem for the proponents of the model. All I really wanted to do was simply point out that the so-called ideal conditions are going to have to do a lot of work to make the model useful.

[David Alexander]

Joshua,

You wrote: "That is, what is really at issue when we are considering whether or not an argument is successful is whether the argument ought to convince a rational, reasonable interlocutor or audience not whether or not it will."

I think van Inwagen takes care of this worry by making the audience (or in the case you present the opposing party) ideal. By making the audience ideal it will be the case that what they in fact do is what one ought (rationally) to do.

[Joshua Alexander]

Hi David,

Thanks for your response. Let’s suppose that you’re right: van Inwagen can takes care of my worry by supposing the audience to be ideal—whatever it is that they in fact do is what one ought rationally to do. What then is the motivation he has for moving from a two-party-model where both subjects are ideal in this sense to the audience-model where all subjects are ideal in this sense? If no argument can persuade an ideal interlocutor, I must admit that I fail to see how it can persuade an ideal audience.

Maybe at this point, van Inwagen would respond by pointing out that, on his account, the audience is not only ideal but also both impartial and agnostic. But it would seem that an ideal interlocutor in the relevant sense should be capable of overcoming any tendencies towards partiality or dogmatism; were she not, then what she in fact did would not be what one ought rationally to do.

[Patrick Todd]

Hi all,

Here’s a thought: some of the disagreement concerning which model of argumentative 'success' is best might be resolved if we become pluralists about 'success'. Why think there is such a thing as success *simpliciter* that one’s account ought to allow for here? Rather, why not think that there's only success in ways, i.e. *success at doing such and such*?

If that’s the case, then if we’re arguing about whether a particular argument is successful, we’ll need to specify just what we’ve got in mind by ‘success’: success at convincing an idealized agnostic? At changing the mind of a hardened opponent? Or merely at inclining a neutral agnostic towards a position? And so on. If you say, “No, I’m talking about just success, plain and simple,” then I think one can plausibly argue that there’s no such thing.

One would of course say analogous things concerning failure. Hence, on this line, PvI wouldn’t say that the argument from evil is a failure *simpliciter* (as he does), but simply a failure in the sense that it would fail to convince an audience of idealized agnostics. That’s an important conclusion, but the argument could be successful in other important ways.

[jon kvanvig]

Here's one way to think of the issues involved in PvI's approach to philosophical argumentation, a way that I'm surprised Gardeners sensitive to Frankfurt counterexamples and the conditional fallacy haven't pointed out. Suppose we think of a philosophical argument as an attempt to encapsulate in an efficient presentation what the total information available about a particular subject matter reveals. In short, it is an instance of attempting to display what the total evidence shows. Maybe "success" can mean other things, but one of the more interesting things one might mean by that term is having provided in succinct form an account of what the total evidence available shows about a particular proposition. So, suppose that's what we are talking about. Then the idea of cashing out this idea in terms of ideal agnostics and what ideal responses they would have to an argument is just another example of the inclination to operationalize in philosophy, an inclination that provides those sensitive to the conditional fallacy something to do in their free time.

Thought of in this way, the challenge is to say what the notion of philosophical success is supposed to be so that an account of it in terms of ideal agents and their subjunctively-encoded responses wouldn't legitimately bring to mind the conditional fallacy.

[anon]

For those interested, the comment from Lewis above is from *On the plurality of worlds* at p. 115. (No, I didn't post it.)

[John K. Alexander]

Is there a view of truth inherent in Pvl’s notion of philosophical failure and his model for success, that commits him, and those who agree with him, to an absolutist position that something is true iff it agrees with reality? It seems, based on his analysis, that he must maintain that if person A believes x to be true and person B believes -x to be true that one of them must be wrong in the ontological sense (obviously derived from the logical law of non-contradiction) that x and –x cannot exist at the same time. By arguing to a suitably defined ideal audience we ought therefore be able to determine whether x or –x is true.

This position overlooks the possibility, suggested by John Wisdom, that people sometimes agree on the facts but disagree on what they metaphysically entail. Wisdom, I think (it has been many years since I read Gods) would conclude that the existence of people believing both x and –x is not necessarily an indication of philosophical failure, but instead simply an indication of a difference of interpretation of what the facts mean when interpreted in some metaphysical context. If Wisdom is correct, there would be no ‘ideal’ audience. All of us come to the shared experience with our conceptual frameworks intact, where we agree on what is what (the verifiable facts or data), and where we interpret these facts utilizing our individual frameworks, more or less in a coherence model of truth which would allow for diverse alternative metaphysical positions each justified by the individual’s conceptual framework.

[Paul Torek]

David K Lewis (aka anon) -

I absolutely love the line "That would be a spell, not an argument." But I first encountered it in E.J. Bond's book, Reason and Value. Do you happen to know if Lewis cribbed it from Bond, or vice versa, or what? It would be nice to know whom to credit.