3 - The Prover–Skeptic Dialogues

Summary

This chapter critically discusses the prominent dialogical accounts of logic and deduction proposed by Lorenzen, Hintikka, and Lakatos. It is argued that, while they contain valuable insights, Lorenzen’s dialogical logic and Hintikka’s game-theoretical semantics ultimately both fail to provide a satisfactory philosophical account of logic and deduction in dialogical terms. This critical evaluation then leads to a precise formulation of the dialogical model defended in the book, the Prover–Skeptic model, which is by and large inspired by Lakatos’ ‘proofs and refutations’ model, but with some important modifications.