Notice Board

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series presents:

"Rules: Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them
On the Need to Prescribe an Overarching Telos for Virtue Argumentation Theory"

Speaker: Nathan Fuehrer (Department of Philosophy)
March 3, 2025
PE264, 5:00-6:30PM

Abstract: Virtue argumentation theory (VAT) is a normative argumentation theory that prescribes virtue in argumentational contexts. VAT faces two perennial problems. The conflict problem results when virtues contradict each other in a given situation. VAT has responded by prescribing practical wisdom. The application problem states that VAT offers no real guidance for moral action because it lacks rules. VAT has responded by offering “v-rules.” The attempt to prescribe separate solutions to these problems, I argue, has generated a blind spot within VAT.  Specifically, VAT fails to address its application problem in situations where virtues conflict.  In such cases, we are simply to be assured that the virtuous arguer will always know the “best way” to argue. But “best” is a thin concept which doesn’t offer any guidance in how to determine what “the best way” is. To solve this problem I argue that VAT needs to offer a rational principle to guide all argumentation and I provide criteria for what such a principle needs to look like.