Why we still do not know what a "real" argument is

Abstract

In his recent paper, "What a Real Argument is," Ben Hamby attempts to provide an adequate theoretical account of "real" arguments. In this paper I present and evaluate both Hamby's motivation for distinguishing "real" from non-"real" arguments and his articulation of the distinction. I argue that neither is adequate to ground a theoretically significant class of "real" arguments, for the articulation fails to pick out a stable proper subclass of all arguments that is simultaneously both theoretically relevant and a proper subclass of all arguments. © G.C. Goddu.