Viewpointwhether

Viewpointwhether is a term used in argumentation theory and semantics to describe an approach that treats the acceptability of a proposition as dependent on two dimensions: the viewpoint from which it is evaluated and the conditional status expressed by whether-clauses. The concept highlights that justification can vary with who is assessing and under which conditions.

In practice, evaluating a claim with viewpointwhether involves considering multiple viewpoints and, for each one, assessing the claim under relevant whether-conditions. For example, a policy claim such as “the project will succeed” might be viewed differently by stakeholders who hold varying interests, and its status may change when conditioned on factors like funding, staffing, or regulatory approval. This two-dimensional assessment aims to reveal robustness or fragility of a claim across perspectives and circumstances.

Formally, a simplified model uses a set of viewpoints V and a set of conditions C. A claim p receives an evaluation function E: V × C → {supported, opposed, undecidable}. The resulting map shows where p holds under specific combinations of viewpoint and condition, making the dependency explicit rather than assuming a single verdict.

Applications of viewpointwhether appear in deliberative democracy, risk assessment, and artificial intelligence explainability, where diverse perspectives and conditional factors must be considered. It also informs critical discourse analysis by making implicit biases and contingent assumptions more transparent.

Limitations include increased complexity, potential for relativism, and the need to explicitly specify viewpoints and conditions, which may not be straightforward in open debate. See also stance, perspective-taking, conditional logic, modal logic, and argumentation theory.