Douglas Walton

Argumentation Theory

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur in the mass media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments.

Dialectic, Persuasion and Rhetoric

Media Argumentation

Fabrizio Macagno

This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis.

The Pragmatics of Quotation and Reporting

Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation

Douglas Walton presents a clear account of the structure of the ad hominem argument and how that structure can be used to evaluate specific cases of this type of argumentation as fallacious or not.

Ad Hominem Arguments

M. Brand

Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, held at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 9-11 May 1975

Proceedings of the Winnipeg Conference on Human Action, Held at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 9–11 May 1975

Action Theory

Use of argumentation methods applied to legal reasoning is a relatively new field of study. Many vitally important problems of legal reasoning can be profitably studied in light of these new methods, even if they cannot all be solved in any single monograph. This book provides a survey of the leading problems, and outlines how future research using argumentation-based methods show great promise of leading to useful solutions. The problems studied include not only these of argument evaluation and argument invention, but also analysis of specific kinds of evidence commonly used in law, like witness testimony, circumstantial evidence, forensic evidence and character evidence. New tools for analyzing these kinds of evidence are introduced, like argument diagramming, abductive reasoning, an analysis of conditional relevance and a new dialectical model of explanation.

Argumentation Methods for Artificial Intelligence in Law

Douglas Walton takes a new analytical look at the concept of fallacy and presents an up-to-date analysis of its usefulness for argumentation studies.

A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy

This book explains how burden of proof and presumption work as powerful devices in argumentation, based on studying many clearly explained legal and non-legal examples. It shows how the latest argumentation-based methods of artificial intelligence can be applied to these examples to help us understand how burdens of proof and presumptions work as devices of legal reasoning. It also shows the reader how to deal with presumptions and burdens of proof in everyday life, as they shift from one side to the other, sometimes confusingly, during a sequence of argumentation.

Burden of Proof, Presumption and Argumentation

This book examines the nature of evidence for character judgments, using a model of abductive reasoning called Inference To The Best Explanation. The book expands this notion based on recent work with models of reasoning using argumentation theory and artificial intelligence. The aim is not just to show how character judgments are made, but how they should be properly be made based on sound reasoning, avoiding common errors and superficial judgments.

An Abductive Theory

Character Evidence

Recent concerns with the evaluation of argumentation in informal logic and speech communication center around nondemonstrative arguments that lead to tentative or defeasible conclusions based on a balance of considerations. Such arguments do not appear to have structures of the kind traditionally identified with deductive and inductive reasoning, but are extremely common and are often called "plausible" or "presumptive," meaning that they are only provisionally acceptable even when they are correct. How is one to judge, by some clearly defined standard, whether such arguments are correct or not in a given instance? The answer lies in what are called argumentation schemes -- forms of argument (structures of inference) that enable one to identify and evaluate common types of argumentation in everyday discourse. This book identifies 25 argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning and matches a set of critical questions to each. These two elements -- the scheme and the questions -- are then used to evaluate a given argument in a particular case in relation to a context of dialogue in which the argument occurred. In recent writings on argumentation, there is a good deal of stress placed on how important argumentation schemes are in any attempt to evaluate common arguments in everyday reasoning as correct or fallacious, acceptable or questionable. However, the problem is that the literature thus far has not produced a precise and user-friendly enough analysis of the structures of the argumentation schemes themselves, nor have any of the documented accounts been as helpful, accessible, or systematic as they could be, especially in relation to presumptive reasoning. This book solves the problem by presenting the most common presumptive schemes in an orderly and clear way that makes them explicit and useful as precisely defined structures. As such, it will be an indispensable tool for researchers, students, and teachers in the areas of critical thinking, argumentation, speech communication, informal logic, and discourse analysis.

Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning

Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation. Such arguments come under the heading of the argumentum ad baculum, the `argument to the stick/club', traditionally treated as a fallacy in the logic textbooks. The new dialectical theory is based on case studies of many interesting examples of the use of these arguments in advertising, public relations, politics, international negotiations, and everyday argumentation on all kinds of subjects. Many of these arguments are amusing, once you see the clever tactic used; others are scary. Some of the arguments appear to be quite reasonable, while others are highly suspicious, or even outrageously fraudulent. In addition to the examples taken from logic textbooks, other cases treated come from a variety of sources, including political debates, legal arguments, and arguments from media sources, like magazine articles and television ads. The purpose of this book is to explain how such arguments work as devices of persuasion, and to develop a method for analyzing and evaluating their reasonable and fallacious uses in particular cases. The book shows how such arguments share a common structure, revealing several distinctive forms of argument nested within each other. Based on its account of this cognitive structure, the new dialectical theory presents methods for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating these arguments, as they are used in specific cases. The book is a scholarly contribution to argumentation theory. It is written in an accessible style, and uses many colorful and provocative examples of fear and threat appeal arguments that are suitable for classroom discussions. The matters treated will be of interest to professionals and students in law, critical thinking, advertising, speech communication, informal logic, cognitive science, rhetoric, and media studies.

Arguments that Appeal to Fear and Threats

Scare Tactics

This book provides an argumentation model for means end-reasoning, a distinctive type of reasoning used for problem-solving and decision-making. Means end-reasoning is modelled as goal-directed argumentation from an agent's goals and known circumstances, and from an action selected as a means, to a decision to carry out the action. Goal-based Reasoning for Argumentation provides an argumentation model of this kind of reasoning showing how it is employed in settings of intelligent deliberation where agents try to collectively arrive at a conclusion on what they should do to move forward in a set of circumstances. The book explains how this argumentation model can help build more realistic computational systems of deliberation and decision-making, and shows how such systems can be applied to solve problems posed by goal-based reasoning in numerous fields, from social psychology and sociology, to law, political science, anthropology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, and robotics.

Goal-based Reasoning for Argumentation

A practical manual for evaluating bias that will be useful to anyone who has to deal with arguments, whether in academic reading or writing, or in everyday conversation.

A Dialectical Analysis of Bias

One-Sided Arguments

Erik C. W. Krabbe

This book develops a logical analysis of dialogue in which two or more parties attempt to advance their own interests. It includes a classification of the major types of dialogues and a discussion of several important informal fallacies. The authors define the concept of commitment in a way that makes it useful in evaluating arguments. In traditional logic, a proposition is either true or false, and that is the end of it. In this new framework, an arguer can be held to his or her commitments in some cases, but in other cases, he or she can retract them without violating any rule of the dialogue. Commitment in Dialogue studies the conditions under which commitments should be held or may be retracted within an argument.

Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning

Commitment in Dialogue

Arguments from Ignorance

Giovanni Sartor

Combining pragmatics, dialectics, analytics, and legal theory, this work translates interpretative canons into patterns of natural argument.

Pragmatics and Argumentation

Statutory Interpretation

Recent work in artificial intelligence has increasingly turned to argumentation as a rich, interdisciplinary area of research that can provide new methods related to evidence and reasoning in the area of law. Douglas Walton provides an introduction to basic concepts, tools and methods in argumentation theory and artificial intelligence as applied to the analysis and evaluation of witness testimony. He shows how witness testimony is by its nature inherently fallible and sometimes subject to disastrous failures. At the same time such testimony can provide evidence that is not only necessary but inherently reasonable for logically guiding legal experts to accept or reject a claim. Walton shows how to overcome the traditional disdain for witness testimony as a type of evidence shown by logical positivists, and the views of trial sceptics who doubt that trial rules deal with witness testimony in a way that yields a rational decision-making process.

Argumentation and the Law

Witness Testimony Evidence

Use of argumentation methods applied to legal reasoning is a relatively new field of study. The book provides a survey of the leading problems, and outlines how future research using argumentation-based methods show great promise of leading to useful solutions. The problems studied include not only these of argument evaluation and argument invention, but also analysis of specific kinds of evidence commonly used in law, like witness testimony, circumstantial evidence, forensic evidence and character evidence. New tools for analyzing these kinds of evidence are introduced.

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur in the mass media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments. He draws upon the most recent developments in artificial intelligence, including dialogical theories of argument, which he developed, as well as speech act theory. Each chapter presents solutions to problems central to understanding, analyzing, and criticizing media argumentation.

A leading expert in informal logic, Douglas Walton turns his attention in this new book to how reasoning operates in trials and other legal contexts, with special emphasis on the law of evidence. The new model he develops, drawing on methods of argumentation theory that are gaining wide acceptance in computing fields like artificial intelligence, can be used to identify, analyze, and evaluate specific types of legal argument. In contrast with approaches that rely on deductive and inductive logic and rule out many common types of argument as fallacious, Walton&’s aim is to provide a more expansive view of what can be considered &"reasonable&" in legal argument when it is construed as a dynamic, rule-governed, and goal-directed conversation. This dialogical model gives new meaning to the key notions of relevance and probative weight, with the latter analyzed in terms of pragmatic criteria for what constitutes plausible evidence rather than truth.

Douglas Walton

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