Can we have a Theory of Fallacies?

Abstract

In his Fallacies, C.L. Hamblin asserts that «we have no theory of fallacy». In light of his discussion of «the nailing problem», regarding the difficulties of pinning an argument on a speaker, of determining the form that such an argument might display, and of evaluating arguments that do not display the forms characteristic of known systems of (deductive) logic, I consider why one means to discredit an argument, which we may call «refutation by analogy», is insecure. Refutation by analogy invites us to construct an argument that is on all fours with the argument to be discredited, but that has true premise(s) and false conclusion. The insecurity of this procedure emerges both from a fatal indeterminacy about the phrase «on all fours» insofar as that invokes the problematic notion of there being such a thing as the form to be attributed to any given argument, and from the way that the most obvious form attributable to refutation by analogy appears to be on all fours with at least one argument that has a true premise and a false conclusion. Because refutation by analogy refutes itself, I suggest that the best we can hope for is a folklore of fallacies.