The subject of this paper is argument-stopping dispositions or techniques, and how to counter them to make room for reasoned discussions. I will start from a description of the mental dispositions the 18th-century philosopher Isaac Watts, saw as detremental to rational debate. In his influential and for almost a century repeatedly reprinted major work Logick, he discerns several character traits the expression thereof in different ways will halt or impair debates or discussions. Watts personalizes these dispositions as the figures of e.g. the Credulous Man, the Man of Contradiction, the Dogmatist and the Skeptic.I will give a theoretical interpretation of how expressions of such dispositions impair reasoned discussion, and then suggest how to effectively counter them. The theoretical grounds for this will be the argument theory first developed by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coupled, and modern epistemological rhetoric.Finally, I will reflect upon the presupposition that the dispositions always are detrimental and argue that there is proper room for attitudes of dogmatism, relativism and skepticism in rational reasoning as well.

Ny reviderad utgava.Att tanka kritiskt ar att sjalvstandigt ta stallning till rimligheten i pastaenden och argument. Det ar en ovarderlig formaga nar vi stalls infor fragor dar svaren ar manga och ...