Paraconsistency and Plausible Argumentation in Generative Grammar: A Case Study

Kertész, András; Rákosi, Csilla

doi:10.1007/s10849-013-9171-y

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Continuing the line of argument of their earlier work on the topic (e.g., Kertész 2004a;b; Rákosi 2005; Kertész & Rákosi 2009;2013), K&R's present book is a new contribution to the cognitive science of science. It provides novel insight into the understanding of general human cognition through the analysis of how linguists view language structure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…As noted above, in the p-model, inconsistencies are not a fatal fault to an argument: the logical contradiction between a premise and its negation may be accommodated by assigning different plausibility values to them, or, by a paraconsistent move, relegating them to different contexts; or by simply tolerating them on a temporary basis (247-249; cf. also Kertész & Rákosi 2013). …”

Section: Conflict Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 87%

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Book reviews

Moravcsik¹,

Bárány²

2014

Acta Linguistica Hungarica

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Central questions and answers"The problem of linguistic data and evidence is in the air." The first sentence of this highly compelling book places the work in the very center of recent metatheoretical discussions in linguistics. By reference to an article by M. Penke and A. Rosenbach (2004, 480), authors Kertész and Rákosi (K&R henceforth) note that the current issue is not whether linguistics is an empirical science and thus whether empirical evidence is available at all but rather, what type of empirical evidence should be used and how.The primary thrust of the book is not to tell linguists how they should go about their tasks; rather, it is to hold up a mirror that reflects the oftentacit assumptions that linguistic work has been rooted in and to propose a realistic metatheory of linguistic theorizing in tight fit with actual practice.The central questions pertain to the nature of data and evidence and their function in linguistic theorizing. Emerging from a systematic and tightly-structured argument, the answers to these questions are supplied by a novel metatheoretical framework: the plausibility model (p-model). Rather than attributing certainty, absolute consistency, context-independence, and immutability to the results of linguistic theories and the data that they are based on, this model offers a liberalized view of data and evidence by highlighting the uncertainty, possible inconsistency, contextdependence, and changeability of argumentation.In what follows, first an overview of the structure of the book is presented (section 2). Section 3 discusses three seminal ideas of the book and their general implications, followed by a few concluding thoughts (section 4). OverviewChapters 1 and 21 -stating the main questions and summarizing the answers -book-end the central body of the text. The issues of data, evidence, and argumentation are approached by way of five sub-problems taken up in turn in the five parts of the book. Paralleling the structure of the entire volume, each part also begins with questions and ends with answers.The five chapters (2-6) of Part I, "The state of the art" are devoted to the first sub-problem: what are the answers that have been provided to the issues of data, evidence, and argumentation in the current literature and what are the metascientific background assumptions revealed by these views (7)? 1 In surveying the literature, K&R identify two problems. First, they detect a gap between the metatheoretical principles that researchers explicitly subscribe to and their actual analytic practice. Most linguists would claim adherence to the standard view of the analytical philosophy of science and the standard view of linguistic data. According to the tenets of the analytic philosophy of science, the goal of the philosophy of science is the justification of theories with the discovery process irrelevant; justification is based on evidence; empirical scientific theories are deductive systems; and scientific theories have to conform strictly to the norms of rationality (11).However, K&R...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Section: Conflict Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 87%