Richard Whately

1787-1863 · English · Argumentation Theory, Logic, Christian Evidences, Political Economy

A presumption in favour of any supposition means, not that it is antecedently probable, but that it must stand good till some sufficient reason is adduced against it.

Richard Whately was an Oxford logician who became Archbishop of Dublin, and he did more than anyone to rescue formal logic from the contempt into which the eighteenth century had dropped it. His *Elements of Logic* (1826) argued that the syllogism is not a method of discovery — the charge that had been used to bury it — but the form to which all valid reasoning can be reduced for inspection, which is a different and defensible claim.

Topics Richard Whately addresses

• presumption
• the burden of proof
• the shifting of the burden
• argumentative composition
• invention of arguments
• conviction and persuasion
• the syllogism
• logic as the science of reasoning
• logic is not an art of discovery
• the ambiguous middle
• petitio principii
• the classification of fallacies
• the credit of testimony
• historic doubts
• the evidences of Christianity
• political economy as moral science
• perspicuity of style
• energy in style
• elocution and delivery
• the natural manner of delivery
• argument from analogy
• definition and division
• sign and cause
• the a fortiori argument

Questions to put to Richard Whately

Presumption and Burden of Proof

• What do you mean by a presumption in favour of a proposition?
• How is presumption different from saying something is probably true?
• Why does the burden of proof rest on whoever challenges the presumption?
• What gives existing institutions a presumption in their favour?
• How do you decide which side holds the presumption in a dispute?

The Office of Logic and the Syllogism

• What is logic the science of, if not discovery?
• Why did you think the syllogism needed defending?
• How does reducing an argument to syllogistic form help us examine it?
• What belongs to the sciences and what belongs to logic?
• Why do people keep expecting logic to teach them how to discover new truths?

Rhetoric and Argumentative Composition

• Why do you define rhetoric as argumentative composition rather than the art of persuasion generally?
• What is invention, and how did you recover it from the classical tradition?
• What's the difference between conviction and persuasion in your system?
• How much does style matter in argumentative writing?
• Why shouldn't rhetoric include taste and literary criticism?

Historic Doubts and the Argument Against Miracles

• What's wrong with Hume's way of weighing testimony about miracles?
• How did you use Napoleon to show the absurdity of Hume's canons?
• Why can't we just reject extraordinary claims that lack extraordinary evidence?
• What role does testimony play in historical knowledge?
• Was the Historic Doubts piece a joke or a serious argument?

Political Economy as Moral Science

• Why do you say political economy is a branch of morals?
• What's at stake in treating economic exchanges as moral actions?
• How do you answer the charge that moralizing corrupts the science of wealth?
• What does religion have to fear or gain from political economy?
• How should we think about the relationship between markets and virtue?

Converse with Richard Whately on Simposeum. Every reply is grounded in Richard Whately's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.