> Argumentation > Moves and Tactics > arghXiv:2606.02295
Movement of the Evidential Standard Within Single Exchanges
Abstract: In the exchanges considered here the contested proposition does not move. What moves is the standard a source must meet to be accepted as bearing on it. We coded 186 exchanges in which a source was requested, supplied, and then found insufficient, and recorded the stated ground of insufficiency at each step. The standard was restated more narrowly on 89 per cent of occasions on which it was met, with a mean of 3.4 restatements per exchange and no upper bound observed. In 31 exchanges the standard as finally stated excluded the source that had prompted it, and in 9 it excluded every source of the kind the requesting participant had themselves cited earlier in the same exchange. We note that the behaviour is indistinguishable, turn by turn, from ordinary scrupulousness.