Abstract
The linked-convergent distinction introduced by Stephen Thomas in 1977 is primarily a distinction between ways in which two or more reasons can directly support a claim, and only derivatively a distinction between types of structures, arguments, reasoning, reasons, or premisses. As with the deductive-inductive distinction, there may be no fact of the matter as to whether a given multi-premiss argument is linked or convergent.
Bibliographical note: This chapter was previously published in Reflections on theoretical issues in argumentation theory (Argumentation Library 28), ed. Frans H. Van Eemeren and Bart Garssen (Springer, 2015), 83–91. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Reprinted with permission of Springer. An earlier version was presented at the 8th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation held in Amsterdam in 2014, and published in proceedings distributed on CD-ROM to conference participants.
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Notes
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This example disappears from the fourth (1997) edition of his textbook. A third type of example, in which a claim is supported both by evidence and by testimony, occurs only in the first two editions (1977, 1981) of his textbook.
- 3.
Correction in the present republication: I have deleted the phrase “that each consist of rationally acceptable premisses” from the end of this sentence, to make the linked-convergent distinction exhaustive within its field of application.
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Hitchcock, D. (2017). The Linked-Convergent Distinction. In: On Reasoning and Argument. Argumentation Library, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53562-3_2
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