This paper aims to describe and formalize the Unbeatable Force Argument as a mode of reasoning that imparts an appearance of inevitability or invulnerability to a phenomenon or entity whose power is perceived as insurmountable. First, its philosophical roots are explored in the thought of Thomas Hobbes, particularly in Leviathan, where the notion of an omnipotent authority plays a central role in shaping subjects’ submission and obedience. The argument that gives the study its name is then introduced and formalized, allowing it to be approached as a case of composite inference, in which an initial abductive step leads to the hypothesis of invincibility, which is then developed deductively to conclude in the inevitability of submission. The analysis is further complemented by considerations drawn from material, epistemic, and dialectical/rhetorical approaches to fallacies, in order to examine the conditions under which the argument may turn into one. This allows for an exploration of its manifestation across different forms of argumentation and discourse, particularly its impact on the formation of structures of power and control.
Con el objeto de mostrar el potencial de un enfoque sistémico-funcional para abordar la conclusividad del discurso argumentativo, este estudio pretende describir las funciones y usos de las distintas formas del conector consecutivo conclusivo "por (lo) tanto". Mediante una investigación mixta, se interpretaron cualitativamente los usos de este marcador discursivo y se describieron sus frecuencias en distintos campos del corpus CREA. Como resultado, se caracterizó la multifuncionalidad del conector, que puede concretar metafunciones ideacionales, interpersonales y textuales; además, se describieron algunas diferencias de empleo del marcador según el campo discursivo. Cabe concluir que una gramática sistémico-funcional del discurso argumentativo presenta un notable rendimiento descriptivo y una particular capacidad para integrar dimensiones lógicas, retóricas y discursivas de la argumentación.
El argumento por oposición fue identificado por la tradición dialéctica y retórica griega como esquema inferencial y estrategia discursiva, y desde entonces ha mantenido una presencia sostenida en la retórica latina y en los tratados que desembocan en la moderna teoría de la argumentación. Aquí discutimos las principales propuestass conceptuales clásicas y contemporáneas que tomamos como punto de partida para ofrecer un esquema aplicable a discursos multimodales. En términos generales, entendemos el argumento por oposición como una forma de razonamiento que pone en escena incompatibilidades de las que se derivan juicios de valor enfrentados o antitéticos. Además de distinguir variaciones del esquema de base, identificamos tres operaciones mediante las cuales las argumentaciones visuales construyen esa incompatibilidad: la comparación de situaciones simétricas opuestas; la correlación de posiciones en escalas continuas; y la puesta en evidencia de la ausencia, en una entidad, de propiedades consideradas normales, esperables o definitorias. La propuesta se desarrolla mediante el análisis de un corpus visual de política internacional, compuesto en buena medida por materiales de campaña de partidos de derecha europeos.
El artículo presenta una visión teórica que conecta la cognición corporeizada radical (CCR) con la argumentación multimodal y propone, a partir de la CCR, criterios epistémicos para su evaluación. Sostiene que la argumentación multimodal se despliega como un proceso enactivo, en el que los gestos, los objetos, los diagramas y los arreglos espaciales no son meros soportes, sino componentes constitutivos de las inferencias y de la formación de entidades singulares. La argumentación funciona como un sistema autopoiético con clausura operacional y acoplamiento estructural, en el que los invariantes argumentativos emergen de la convergencia modal y estabilizan las conclusiones provisionales. Para evaluar estos argumentos, propone tres criterios epistémicos: la accesibilidad cultural y cognitiva de los signos, la verosimilitud de las inferencias multimodales y la responsabilidad epistémica respecto a la transparencia de los invariantes y los grados de incertidumbre. Finalmente, plantea prácticas comunicativas que combinan redundancia deliberada con señales metacognitivas para permitir la renegociación de significados y evitar fijaciones dogmáticas, integrando el análisis semiótico, cognitivo y social en la teoría y la praxis argumentativa y la evaluación aplicada.
El artículo presenta un modelo argumentativo para explicar cómo los medios pueden fabricar controversias científicas mediante maniobras que distorsionan la percepción pública de la evidencia. A partir del caso Climategate (la filtración de correos del Climatic Research Unit en 2009) analizo cómo ciertos actores mediáticos construyeron la apariencia de fraude científico usando descontextualización, selección sesgada de información, bothsiderism, ataques personales, apelaciones emocionales y generación deliberada de controversias. El objetivo no es reinterpretar el episodio, sino mostrar que estas estrategias conforman un patrón argumentativo reproducible que desplaza cargas de prueba, socava la credibilidad de la ciencia y modifica los marcos interpretativos del público. Combinando enfoques pragma-dialécticos, esquemas argumentativos y herramientas retóricas, el estudio propone un método para comprender cómo discursos racionalmente deficientes pueden adquirir poder persuasivo en controversias públicas.
La expansión de la inteligencia artificial ha ido acompañada por un imaginario sociotécnico que atribuye agencia autónoma a sistemas computacionales, generando distorsiones ontológicas con profundas consecuencias epistémicas y políticas. En ese marco, el presente artículo analiza críticamente los imaginarios sociotécnicos que operan en el discurso sobre la inteligencia artificial, con especial atención a los mecanismos de antropomorfización y las brechas hermenéuticas que intervienen en su legitimación. El hallazgo central revela que estas narrativas no son neutras, sino dispositivos de poder que desplazan el juicio humano, consolidan estructuras de desigualdad y limitan la deliberación democrática. A partir de este diagnóstico, se propone que la gobernanza de la IA debe ir más allá de los marcos técnicos para incorporar epistemologías situadas, participación plural e imaginación política. En un contexto donde el significado de la IA está aún en disputa, el estudio invita a reconstruir los sentidos que le atribuimos a nuestras tecnologías, visibilizando sus condiciones materiales y recuperando el papel del juicio colectivo en su diseño y regulación.
The article explores the theory of legal argumentation of Scottish philosopher Neil MacCormick, known for its integrative approach. The work is based on a theoretical approach that seeks to harmonize elements of legal positivism with its formal logic with a pragmatic and critical perspective. The methodology adopts a double analysis of legal justification: the internal plan, which uses deductive logic for easy cases; and the external level, which evaluates the coherence and practical consequences of judicial decisions in difficult cases. By connecting both plans, the principle of universality is central to ensure that decisions are fair and democratically applicable to future cases. The main results indicate that MacCormick's integrative theory offers a legal framework capable of justifying decisions in both easy and difficult cases, and contributes to the development of a more robust theory of standard legal argumentation, by emphasizing rationality, pragmatism and justice in judicial decisions, integrating normative principles with the analysis of the assessment of the practical consequences of decisions.
This study examines how middle school students in a Colombian state school develop key skills for critical thinking and citizenship formation through the creation of persuasive writings. Texts in which fifty-seven students addressed a conflictive situation were analyzed with the Argumentum Topic Model (AMT), observing both the relationship between premises and conclusions and the inferential strength of their reasoning. The results revealed the use of diverse argumentative strategies such as resorting to places of definition, establishing causal relationships, foreseeing consequences or exploring alternative solutions. The ability to reflect, to apply legal knowledge, to analyze conflicts and to understand different perspectives that students can develop by writing persuasive papers related to a problem that is close to them was evidenced. Finally, this study allows us to appreciate the important educational implications of persuasive writing for critical thinking and citizenship education.
This article presents the Triaxial Inquiry Method [MIT], a pedagogical device for teaching argumentation in different disciplines and with an eminently practical approach. This method arises as a response to one of the criticisms that informal logic made against the teaching of argumentation from traditional deductive logic: pedagogical critique. Throughout this text, it will be shown that the critique holds even in the face of new proposals from argumentation theory, because students are still required to delve into complex theories of the philosophy of language and argumentation theory that are eminently the concern of experts and that—a posteriori—are not all applicable to the argumentative practice of various disciplines such as law or communication. This paper presents the first phase of application and the theoretical foundations of the MIT as an option that helps to resolve this critique, not only by proposing assumptions that enable the teaching of argumentation from a practical dimension, but also by allowing the teaching of this skill to extend to people who are dedicated to various disciplines. Throughout this article, the MIT will be explained through a double contrast with the classical proposal of the epicheirema and with the Toulmin model, and finally, a practical guide is presented to develop an argument implementing the MIT
Talking about the relationship between pragma-dialectics and philosophy, even if only in the form of notes, invites on the one hand a discussion of the concepts and methods of pragma-dialectics from the point of view of philosophy, and on the other hand a use of pragma-dialectics to study the way philosophers argue. I have done both myself, and the path has been bidirectional. When I set out to use pragma-dialectics to analyse philosophical argumentative texts with my postgraduate students, the analysis has repeatedly led me to certain aspects of the philosophical tradition itself, which have helped me both to address crucial features of philosophical argument and to understand more deeply the concepts and methods of pragma-dialectics. In this article I will try to give a brief account of this back and forth between philosophy and pragma-dialectics.
Discussing the topic of deliberation has become relevant in light of the deliberative democracy paradigm. But there’s no complete clarity on the benefits of deliberation because, among other reasons, there’s no total conceptual certainty about what it means to deliberate and to which standards it is set. The present article offers a broad view of different theoretical conceptualizations about deliberation with a critical analysis of them. The objective is to be able to formulate the constitutive and regulative elements of a deliberative scenario more clearly; to that end, the article distinguishes between conceptions that see deliberation as a synonym of discussion, those who see it as a genre of discussion among others, and those who see it as a regulative ideal. After the critical revision, a characterization of deliberation that adequately distinguishes between argumentation, deliberation, negotiation, among others, is proposed.
When a person is faced with a novel situation (target analogue), they may be persuaded by someone else through a comparison between that situation and a familiar one (source analogue). For this type of argumentation to be effective, the speaker must take into account the listener’s prior knowledge about the domain of the source. Although the development of argumentative skills is a relevant educational goal, students often struggle with this task. This study evaluated the effectiveness of an educational intervention aimed at promoting analogical arguments that consider the listener’s knowledge. 68 students participated: while the experimental group received the intervention, the control group did not. Although no differences were observed in the pretest, in the posttest, the experimental group produced significantly more analogies that took the listener’s knowledge into account. It is concluded that the intervention supports the development of analogical argumentative strategies, providing new tools for psychologists and educators.
El año de 1939 el filósofo, arqueólogo e historiador británico Robin George Collingwood planteó la necesidad de una ‘lógica de pregunta y respuesta’ para el historiador en general y el arqueólogo en particular. Aquí propongo que esta lógica no es otra cosa que una teoría de cómo argumentan los historiadores científicos, y por tanto es de interés para todos aquellos que trabajan en el campo de estudios de la argumentación y particularmente para los que trabajan en esa parcela que llamamos ‘teoría de la argumentación’. Para que el lector pueda juzgar por sí mismo la plausibilidad de esta hipótesis, ofrezco una traducción del primer capítulo, titulado ‘Evidence’, del manuscrito The Principles of History de 1939
This paper analyses, from an argumentative point of view, the use of WBE in the media context of COVID-19. Specifically, the analysis will focus on both the identification and reconstruction of the arguments, as well as their logical evaluation in the specific theoretical and discursive context. The objective is to analyse and reflect on the acceptance and legitimation of scientific innovations in times of health crisis. For this purpose, I will jointly use the tools of the dialectics of arguments, and the concept of the argumentative device - developed by the authors Sally Jackson and Jodi Schneider. The analysis reveals the occurrence of a triple simplification when transferring arguments belonging to a specialised scientific context to the media context, a phenomenon that may be of particular interest to study in other cases and circumstances.
This research article aims to present the development of a argumentative strategy designed to improve the argumentation processes among teachers of a public school in Bogotá, Colombia. Methodologically, the aim was to design a social experience to contribute to the consolidation of an Academic Council as a community of practice (Wenger, 2001). This research is part of the author's postdoctoral stay in the Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación at the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas. Among the main results, seven types of discursive actions manifested by the Academic Council community, during the development of the strategy, were identified, which indicated degrees of tension regarding the communicative strategy. Among the main concussions it was found that the strategy was recognized, but not accepted.
This article explores the intersection of Pragma-dialectics, Experimental Philosophy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) applied to the context of mediation. We emphasize the importance of understanding and managing intuitions, perceptions, and moral judgments to facilitate critical dialogue and conflict resolution. We analyze the negative side effects that can arise from biases stemming from intuitions and perceptions, as well as the relevance of cognitive tools such as NLP to address these challenges and promote the mediator’s neutrality.
Despite the everyday practice of argumentation (present in all areas of our daily life) and its importance in current times -invaded by fake news, half-truths and unargued opinions-, its teaching in Peruvian schools is still insufficient. Therefore, the present research aims to evaluate the didactics of argumentation in school textbooks of three national publishers. This research adopts a qualitative approach and uses documentary analysis as a method. The corpus is made up of Communication books aimed at students in the fifth grade of Secondary Education, published between 2016 and 2022 in Peru. The results obtained reveal a) a simplification of the argumentative theory, evidenced by the omission of important components such as the subargument and counterargument; b) discordance between the argumentative theory provided and the examples of discursive genres requested, and c) limitations of the didactic sequences designed for the development of argumentative competence.
We explore some explanations of the mutual and common disdain for the link between argumentation and science in the disciplines that study these practices. In the state of the art of argumentation theory, we identify and criticize the assumption that disagreement is a necessary condition for argumentation, or that argumentation is intended to resolve disagreements or differences of opinion. We examine and qualify the widely held assumption in the philosophy of science that scientific argumentation is the mere externalization of reasoning, which can be rationally evaluated regardless of the process, the participants, and the context in which it occurs. Against these conceptions, we characterize argumentation as a constitutively epistemic practice, as a form of inquiry. This allows to start closing the gap between argumentation and science, contributing to our understanding of both practices.
In this article we evaluate the dispossession of epistemic agency that witnesses often suffer. We argue that this is not only problematic from a general epistemic point of view, but also for the fulfillment of the epistemic purposes of judicial processes. We examine ordinary civil procedure in Chile, where interaction with witnesses is marked by distrust of them. We present a paradigmatic case of the normal dynamics, and we show that it is epistemically unsatisfactory. Then, we make the consequentialist-veritist epistemological model that supports what we call “the myth of the incompatibility between efficiency and recognition.” explicit. It seems to support the aforementioned dynamic by implying that favoring alternative practices that allow for greater recognition of different agents would result in a loss of effectiveness of the processes. This model is far from being obvious or intuitive, and is rather based on substantive theoretical commitments. We show that under an alternative responsibilist model, the recognition of witnesses contributes centrally to the epistemic quality of judicial processes, thus blocking the argument that leads to the myth of incompatibility.
El presente artículo revisa algunas contribuciones feministas a la filosofía del lenguaje. Se muestra cómo estas perspectivas, al evidenciar los sesgos androcéntricos o asimetrías en el poder comunicacional, aportan herramientas críticas a la filosofía del lenguaje y proponen estrategias para resistir injusticias lingüísticas. Se analizan tres acercamientos: 1) las injusticias discursivas o ilocucionarias que se inscriben dentro de la teoría de los actos de habla, 2) la injusticia hermenéutica que articula la teoría del lenguaje con la epistemología, explorando los ambientes comunicacionales y 3) el activismo lingüístico que estudia cómo los movimientos sociales hacen cambios en los conceptos y las narrativas dominantes para confrontar injusticias sistemáticas.
