Research On John Woods’ Fallacy Theory

The theme of this research is the fallacy theory by logician John Woods.The basic idea of Woods’ theory is:traditional logical fallacy theory ignores the priority of the sufficient illustration of the characteristics of human reasoner,thus idealistically puts forward the criterion for the judgment of fallacy,resulting manytheoretical dilemmas.The most serious one is that some forms of argument are regarded as fallacies by the theory but are admitted and used in the actual interaction by people.An appropriate reasoning or argument theory is necessarily underlied in the illustration of the reasoning agent.Compared with the institutional subject,human individual subject generally owns insufficient cognitive information,time and computational capacity,and his cognitive goal is lower and smaller.Individual agent has to face the limitation of resources,turning the scarcity of resources into a favorable condition.An individual cognitive agent x commits an error relative to his cognitive goal M,only when x does not meet the criterion S requuired by T.In most circumstances,the goal of the individual reasoner is neither for experimental confirmation nor for preserving truths so whether a reasoning is fallacious or not is not folly evaluated by validity and cogent induction^and in fact in most cases,traditional"fallacies" are in fact strategies for compensating the insufficient resources,embodying the economy of cognition.However,this revolutionary theory of fallacy has not aroused the overall discussion by academic circle.This paper attempts to improve this situation.Through sorting out the history of the development of fallacy research,this paper locates the whole fallacy theory of Woods to two historical key points:"Woods-Walton Approach"(in response to the challenge of fallacy theory by Hamblin)and "the fallacy theory of cognitive economy"(adaptive to the turning of logic from practice to cognition),with the emphasis on the latter,the latest fallacy theory.Meanwhile,through the comparison with contemporary mainstream fallacy theories,the author puts forward his own evaluation of Woods’ fallacy theory and his understanding of the future development of fallacy theory.The paper is divided into five chapters:Chapter one is "Introduction",mainly introducing Woods and his fallacy research,discussing the great significance of the fallacy theory under the framework of cognitive economy and the relevant research at home and abroad,illustrating the overall structure of this paper and research work.Chapter two is "Woods-Walton’s Approach to Fallacy Theory",setting in the examination of the history of fallacy research,especially the challenge to traditional fallacy theory by Hamblin and the different directions responding to Hamblin’s challenge,evaluating the first stage of Woods’ fallacy theory,namely Woods-Walton’s Approach(WWA).The analysis of this paper shows that Woods-Walton’s approach has some flavors of modern logic.Chapter three is "the Turn Point of the Development of Woods’ Research on Fallacy",analyzing some important concepts of practical logic,such as cognitive systems,cognitive subjects and their classifications and ranks,the behavior of practical reasoning,the difference between practical reasoning and theoretical reasoning.This paper makes effort to prove that Woods puts forward a new view of logic by combining the new achievements of cognitive science with the new development of logic,and starting from this view,he reexamines the list of traditional fallacies,laying the solid foundation for the rise of new fallacy theory.Chapter four is "Woods’ Cognitive Economy Theory of Fallacy",or "Woods’ New View of Fallacy:the Cognitive Economy Theory of Fallacy",discussing the cognitive economy of the subject and the dramatic and profound changes of the concept of fallacy and criterions for reasoning initiated by it,locating the role of formal(deductive)logic in fallacy theory,evaluating the series essential propositions on fallacy by Woods under the frame of cognitive economy.Chapter five is "The Advantages and Problems of Woods’ Fallacy Theory",selecting the contemporary mainstream fallacy theories,namely H.van Eemeren’s pragmatic-dialectic fallacy theory and Walton’s pragmatic fallacy theory,to make a comparison with Woods’ new fallacy theory,illustrating the advantages of Woods’ theory.This paper points out that compared with the mainstream fallacy theories,Woods’ puts more emphasis on the logical perspective of fallacy analysis,logical approach and logical criterion,and it has a closer relation with the latest development of contemporary logic.It breaks the frame of dialogue,and highlights the behavior of reasoning.It focuses on the characteristics of the reasoning subject and stresses the rational criterion for fallacy evaluation.It insists on pluralism and deepens logic through deepening fallacy theory.Based on the above research,this paper finally explains how to understand the future development of fallacy theory:under the frame of Woods’ cognitive economy of fallacy,fallacy theory in the future should be integrated with the latest development of the research on reasoning and argument theory and be combined further with the ancient dialectic reasoning or with the topoi theory,and with Toulmin’s theory of argument "field",and with the contemporary argument scheme theory.