# Argument schemas formalize dialectical rules [[Douglas Walton|Walton]], Reed, and Macagno's *Argumentation Schemes* (2008) provides a semi-formal account of what we mean by "rules of the game" in philosophical dialogue—locutions, commitments, legal moves, and critical questions. ## Connections ### 1. Cashes out "rules of the game" literally Walton et al. start from a dialogue game with explicit: - **Locution rules** (statements, withdrawals, questions, "Why S?" challenges) - **Commitment rules** (what you become committed to by making moves) - **Dialogue rules** (what moves are legal in response to what) That is basically a formal version of what we've been calling "the game": what moves are allowed + what counts as a response + what counts as a challenge + what gets you committed. ### 2. Principled account of "pressure" In Walton's scheme tradition, every scheme comes with **critical questions** that are the licensed ways of attacking it. This operationalises what we've been doing informally: - "Give the best objection" - "Now repair" - "Now make the objection stronger" - "Now revise again" ### 3. Supports the saturation thesis Even in ordinary natural discourse, a large amount of reasoning is scheme-governed and defeasible. Schemes can be represented computationally, and dialogue games can be extended so that schemes function like inference rules. If LLMs are trained on corpora saturated with these patterns, they have effectively internalised the scheme structure—even if implicitly. ### 4. Links to enthymemes / missing premises Walton et al. explicitly discuss enthymemes: the dialogue may contain only part of a substitution instance (e.g., one premise plus conclusion), and scheme machinery + critical questions can surface the implicit major premise. This connects to our observation that LLMs are good at "filling in" missing steps—they can act as **premise-completion engines** for philosophical arguments. ## How to Use It - **Conceptual framing:** Use schemes/dialogue games as your model of what "rules of the philosophical game" are - **Empirical option:** Treat "scheme competence" as an operational proxy: can the model (a) identify the scheme, (b) supply missing premises, (c) answer critical questions, (d) revise under defeat? - **Prompt-engineering:** Replace vague "be rigorous" prompts with "run the scheme" ## Caution Walton-style scheme theory is a general model of defeasible reasoning in dialogue; analytic philosophy includes that but also has its own genre constraints, long-horizon theory-building, and literature-sensitive moves. Use schemes as a **mid-level model** of public argumentative competence, then explicitly mark the remainder as "long-horizon research virtues" where [[Floridi's critique of LLM abduction|Floridi]]/[[Timothy Williamson|Williamson]]-style worries still bite. Source: [[Web Clippings/chat with ChatGPT about Floridi, LLM reasoning, Move 37|ChatGPT conversation on Floridi et al.]]