Analysis, Reconstruction, and Evaluation of Arguments

ARENA’s research team is composed of all of the members of the Department of Logic and the Methodology of Sciences at Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Arts.

František Gahér

Professor Gahér is the project’s Principal Investigator. His career spans more than three decades of research in logic, logical semantics, philosophy of language, the history of logic, and applications of logic, especially in law. He is the author of three monographs, three textbooks, over 50 scientific papers and more than 30 scholarly articles. Professor Gahér is also the Head of the Department of Logic and the Methodology of Sciences. In the project, his main focus will be arguments from the areas of application of law and ethics, chiefly in the framework of logical systems and various approaches to argumentation theory. Full profile…

Marián Zouhar

Professor Zouhar is an accomplished researcher who has published a number of papers and monographs on the logical and conceptual analysis of philosophical theories and arguments in the philosophy of language. In 2013–2017, he led the Department’s previous research project, “Analytical Methods in Social Sciences and Humanities”. In the project, he will participate in critically assessing some of the approaches in argumentation theory, developing a typology of arguments, and testing the hypotheses, especially in normative discourse (ethics). Full profile…

Igor Hanzel (2018–2020)

Dr. Hanzel’s research is concerned with methodological issues in physics, economics and sciences at the interface of natural and social sciences (and the humanities). He is the author of a number of publications, including monographs published with international publishers. In the project, he focused on the reconstruction of arguments in economics and sociology within the framework of multiple theories of argumentation, as well as on the testing of the project’s hypotheses in the areas of economics and sociology. After retiring in 2020, he was replaced by Dominik Sadloň. Full profile…

Vladimír Marko

Dr. Marko is an assistant professor at the Department. His scholarly interest focuses on the analysis and reconstruction of Ancient arguments by means of contemporary instruments of logic, as well as on the attempts to refine the methodological steps necessary for the correct characterization and interpretation of such arguments. In the project, he will focus on the issue of transforming arguments into their formal interpretations, and on the attempts at refining the procedures of argument analysis and reconstruction. Full profile…

Lukáš Bielik

Dr. Bielik has been an assistant professor at the Department since 2009. He specializes in the general methodology of science, with a focus on theories of confirmation, scientific explanation, the conceptual methods of defining and explication, as well as on non-deductive arguments. In the project, he will concentrate – apart from the testing of our hypotheses – on the comparison of problematic argument reconstructions and evaluations in Pollock’s computational theory of defeasible reasoning, Bayesian epistemology and some approaches in inductive logic. Apart from that, he will be the chief scientific coordinator of our efforts. Full profile…

Juraj Halas

Dr. Halas had been a researcher with the Department in 2013–2017 and currently holds the position of an assistant professor. His focus is the methodology and philosophy of social science, especially economics and sociology. In the project, he will focus on the testing of our hypotheses in the areas of sociology, economics and political science/expert political discourse, especially in the context of argumentation theories. He also maintains the project’s website and takes care of the project’s administrative needs. Full profile…

Tomáš Kollárik

Tomáš Kollárik has been a researcher at the Department since 2020 after completing his PhD. His areas of interest are temporal logics, polyvalent logics, the problems of logical fatalism, logical determinism, and adverbial modification. In the project, he will be testing our hypotheses in the areas of sociology and political science. Full profile…

Daniela Glavaničová

Prior to becoming a researcher at the Department in 2020, Daniela Glavaničová was a doctoral student. Her main areas of focus are deontic logic, hyperintensionality, and the analysis of fictional names. A prolific writer, she has already published several papers on these topics in renowned journals. A long-term interest of hers is the analysis of normative discourse (law, ethics) which will also be her focus in the project. Full profile…

Dominik Sadloň (2020–2021)

Dominik Sadloň has been a PhD. student at the Department since 2018. His PhD. thesis focuses on philosophical problems in information theory. In the project, he replaces our retired colleague, doc. Hanzel. Full profile…

Dalibor Makovník (2021–)

Dalibor Makovník has been a PhD. student at the Department since 2021. His PhD. thesis in the philosophy of science deals with non-causal explanation. In the project, he replaces Dominik Sadloň. Full profile…