Defeasible argumentation in African oral traditions. a special case of dealing with the non-monotonic inference in a dialogical framework

Gildas Nzokou

pp. 323-341

in: Juan Redmond, Olga Pombo Martins, Angel Fernández (eds), Epistemology, knowledge and the impact of interaction, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The main claim of the present paper is to defend that some specific oral debate forms of the African traditions seem to correspond structurally speaking to non-monotonic reasoning in a way that is not that different from nowadays argumentation-based approaches of legal reasoning within the context of western juridical systems. So, the aim of this survey consists in two points: on the one hand, we will show that polemical debates in African oral traditions implement systematically a non-monotonic inference, that is closed to what Aristotle termed by "dialectical arguments"; on the other hand, we are suggesting a way to deal with non-monotonic inference in a dialogical framework.

Cited authors

Aristoteles