When social issues arise, who truly has the knowledge that will affect how policies are made? A discussion on Friday, November 9, will focus on climate change, as well as the questions of who the “knowers” or experts are, and whose knowledge claims can be taken seriously.
Philosophy
An exhibition of installation and video work by MFA candidate Michael Dirisio will provide context for a discussion of financial precarity and alternative economies, Thursday, November 2, in the main gallery of Mackenzie Hall.
“The event will address the role that political art can play in engaging with the city and with each other, and how it can prompt a reconsideration of social norms and conventions,” says Dirisio.
Oct 25th, 2012
Impulse is the catalyst of an argument and initiates the decisions that follow, says philosophy professor Christopher Tindale.
“Impulses do not arise from nowhere; they are related to past states,” he says. “I am interested in how the impulse for anything begins, and how our resulting arguments are directly affected by how we make choices.”
He will explore the origin of impulse as a stimulus for argumentation in a free public lecture entitled “Inventing Arguments” on Friday, October 26, at 2 p.m. in room 207, Essex Hall.
The argumentative theory of reasoning challenges the traditional view that the function of reasoning is to help us get better beliefs and improve our decision-making, says philosophy professor Christopher Tindale.
“Instead, the theory presents reasoning as a purely social phenomenon that has developed in order to help us convince others and monitor the ways other people try to convince us,” he says. “One interesting consequence is that apparent flawed reasoning is itself a useful adaptation that aids in persuasion.”
Sep 7th, 2012
The Humanities Research Group will present thought-provoking discussion during Humanities Week, September 10 to 14 on the University of Windsor campus.
Physics professor Gordon Drake, principal of Canterbury College, will analyze current thinking on the topic of free will in his free public lecture “Free Won’t,” at 4 p.m. Monday, September 10, in Alumni Hall’s McPherson Lounge. Dr. Drake will examine some of the underlying assumptions that may not necessarily be correct within the context of science, religion, and artificial intelligence.
The Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) will offer fellowships to two UWindsor graduate students to assist professors Douglas Walton and Hans V. Hansen with a research project analyzing the argumentation in the recent Alberta provincial election.
The work involves reading, extracting and classifying arguments found in newspaper reports made during the election period, and filing the information on a Web site as well as discussion of the findings.
Laura Benacquista, a master’s candidate in philosophy, will discuss three practical values of argumentation theory in a free public lecture on Tuesday, May 29:
UWindsor philosophy professor Christopher Tindale’s rhetorical approach to argumentation has come under critical scrutiny from an unlikely source, says doctoral candidate Justin Ross Morris: feminist theorists working in argumentation theory.
Apr 30th, 2012
The Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric presents Nathan Houser delivering his free public lecture “Peirce on Practical Reasoning” at 3 p.m. on Thursday, May 3, in the seminar room, Parker House.
Dr. Houser will consider the work of American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, discussing practical reasoning in the context of Peirce’s general conception of reasoning as a species of controlled conduct and his broad view of normative logic.
Apr 18th, 2012
An interesting recent development in argumentation theory has been the revived investigation of the metaphysics of argument, says Steven Patterson, a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric.
In his free public lecture “Are Arguments Abstract Objects?” he will explore important objections, Thursday, April 19, at 2 p.m. in the seminar room of Parker House, 105 Sunset Avenue.