David Godden

Biography

Dr. Godden’s primary areas of research are argumentation theory, epistemology, and informal logic. Generally speaking, I study the normative dimensions of argumentation (understood as those practices by which we transact reasons with one another), and reasoning (our internalization of those practices whereby we transact reasons with ourselves). My interests in these activities are almost exclusively epistemological: the primary normative status I concern myself with is epistemic justification, which I understand in terms of other statuses like commitment, entitlement, and recognition. My approach to theorizing our discursive and epistemic norms is thoroughly dialectical. In this respect, my work remains significantly informed by the postdoctoral work I did with Douglas Walton, as well as the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation. More recently, it is increasingly influenced by pragmatism, especially by the work of Robert Brandom. Presently, I have active, ongoing projects on the following topics: deep disagreements; presumption and burden of proof; disagreement and trust; adversariality and civility in public argumentative discourse; aretaic approaches to argumentative norms; formal models of argumentative dialogue. For example, here’s a link to a talk I recently gave on disagreement and trust as part of MSU’s Center for Interdisciplinarity (C4I) University Interdisciplinary Colloquium (UIC): Talk poster / abstract ; Link to talk on YouTube

Notice to Prospective Graduate Students

I welcome the opportunity to work with new and current graduate students on projects that are in line with the research interests, approaches, and topics outlined above. I am especially interested in supervising graduate studies in those topical areas of my active, ongoing projects, mentioned earlier. While I have worked on argumentation schemes in the past, I am not interested in supervising projects seeking to provide a classificatory catalogue of argumentation schemes or seeking to provide an underlying theory of their typology. Previously, I have co-authored papers with graduate students (Davis & Godden, 2021) I am mentoring. Generally, I am happy to engage in collaborative research projects with graduate students whether or not those projects feature in their dissertational plans. Interested students are encouraged to contact me directly by email in advance of their applying to the program. You can email me here: dgodden@msu.edu