Subject: Lewis Carroll on Argument Validity: 201001_049223_CL
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@buffalo.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:29:45 -0500 (EST)

In lecture, I mentioned Lewis Carroll's philosophy essay on why rules
of inference cannot be premises of an argument (on pain of infinite
regress). His essay and some other material is online at:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/191/S09/logic.html#carroll-paradox

Prof. Peter Scott (CSE) writes:
"I was relieved to find that my specific concern about the validity of
the infinite regress argument you mentioned last Friday is (was?)
shared by at least one real philosopher... you are probably familiar
with it anyway, but I attach a copy of a short paper from Mind in 1974
by William Wisdom to this point. This paper proves nothing, of course,
other than that it may not be so clear what it means to say that you
accept "A implies B" as a premise in an argument."

The paper is:
Wisdom, William A. (1974), "Lewis Carroll's Infinite Regress",
Mind 83(332) (October): 571-573. 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252847
or
www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/Papers.by.Others/wisdom74-LewisCarroll.pdf.

I hasten to add that (a) I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but
(b) there is no general consensus on the proper interpretation of
Carroll's argument.