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Circular reasoning
Author(s) -
Rips Lance J.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog2606_3
Subject(s) - repetition (rhetorical device) , argument (complex analysis) , rendering (computer graphics) , property (philosophy) , epistemology , common ground , psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , artificial intelligence , biochemistry , chemistry
Good informal arguments offer justification for their conclusions. They go wrong if the justifications double back, rendering the arguments circular. Circularity, however, is not necessarily a single property of an argument, but may depend on (a) whether the argument repeats an earlier claim, (b) whether the repetition occurs within the same line of justification, and (c) whether the claim is properly grounded in agreed‐upon information. The experiments reported here examine whether people take these factors into account in their judgments of whether arguments are circular and whether they are reasonable. The results suggest that direct judgments of circularity depend heavily on repetition and structural role of claims, but only minimally on grounding. Judgments of reasonableness take repetition and grounding into account, but are relatively insensitive to structural role.