A dialectical view on conduction: Reasons, warrants, and normal suasory inclinations

Abstract

Carl Wellman (1971) introduced the reasoning-type conduction while en-dorsing a dialectical view on natural lan-guage argumentation. Contemporary schol-arship, by contrast, treats conductive argu-ment predominantly on a product view. Not only did Wellman's reasons for a dialectical view thereby fall into disregard; a product-treatment of conduction also flouts the standard semantics of 'argument'. This pa-per traces why Wellman held a dialectical view regarding the role of defeasible war-rants. These act as stand-ins for (parts of) value hierarchies that arguers of normal suasory inclination find acceptable. We also improve on how to diagram conduction and distinguish two of its structural variants.