Commentary on Koszowy

Overview of M. Koszowy's essay and treatment of the topic Working generally within a framework of argumentation theory and the tradition of informal logic, Marcin Koszowy argues that the concept of logical error is more inclusive than the concept of logical fallacy and, therefore, that it better serves evaluating human mistakes.His essay has five sections: an introduction; a section each on the two concepts; a defense of their distinction; and some concluding remarks.Below we first review the salient points of this essay and we then provide some comments whose aim is to caution against psychologism.Koszowy begins with the thematic question of his essay: "Does the concept of logical fallacy capture all cases of human 'illogical moves?'" (emphasis added).The 'all' here is not extraneous to his thesis, nor also is his use of 'moves,' nor again his later use of 'behavior,' which use signals a theme of his essay.He then introduces what he takes to be a philosophically important distinction between two admittedly ambiguous notions -logical fallacy and logical error -both of which he affirms involve violations: the one concerning the "norms of argumentative discourse," the other, now associated with illogical moves, concerning the "norms of 'logic' governing certain human knowledge-seeking activities."Koszowy here asks about the relationship between the two notions and then introduces another issue, one he believes vital to argumentation theorists: "what kind of general logical concepts are involved in describing illogical moves?"He links this question to Toulmin's concern about 'failures of rationality' and, indeed, about the very 'criteria of rationality.'In this connection, Koszowy reaches to relate his discussion to "the genesis of illogical thinking" and "the problem of describing and explaining non-logical moves" (emphases added).By making these moves he seems accordingly to have set himself the project of providing "criteria of human rational behavior"; and this is just what he is really after, notwithstanding the title of his essay.Koszowy closes his introduction by presenting his thesis that the concept of logical error -being more general than that of logical fallacy and thereby well qualified as a philosophically meritorious concept -is more pragmatically efficacious in capturing what is involved in the human behavior of making illogical moves.Again, his use of 'behavior' signals his orientation to a theory of logic.At the end of his essay Koszowy reaffirms this position by noting that his intention is not to replace the concept of logical fallacy with that of logical error, but only to introduce another theoretical concept that can better assess the "logical incorrectness of human thought," and again we encounter his affinity with Toulmin's notion of rationality.From here Koszowy aims to steer his reader through a maze of philosophical concepts, generally using the terminology of argumentation theorists.A resonant, underlying theme becomes readily apparent: Koszowy, as many informal logicians cum argumentation and speechact theorists, stresses the human activity of reasoning -he is interested to assess cognitive correctness and cognitive error.Indeed, Koszowy focuses on human behavior -namely, on the matter of "the criteria of human rational behavior."Logic, then, which notion he recognizes

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