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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...

Arguments from popular opinion have long been regarded with suspicion, and in most logic textbooks the ad populum argument is classified as a fallacy. Douglas Walton now asks whether this negative evaluation is always justified, particularly in a democratic system where decisions are based on majority opinion.

In this insightful book, Walton maintains that there is a genuine type of argumentation based on commonly accepted opinions and presumptions that should represent a standard of rational decision-making on important issues, especially those of a personal and political...

Appeals to emotion--pity, fear, popular sentiment, and ad hominem attacks--are commonly used in argumentation. Instead of dismissing these appeals as fallacious wherever they occur, as many do, Walton urges that each use be judged on its merits. He distinguished three main categories of evaluation.

First, is it reasonable, even if not conclusive, as an argument?

Second, is it weak and therefore open to critical questioning for argument? And third, is it fallacious?

The third category is a strong charge that incurs a critical burden to back it up by citing...

Because developments in informal logic have been based, for the most part, on idealized and abstract models, the tools available for argument analysis are not easily adapted to the needs of everyday argumentation. In this book Douglas Walton proposes a new and practical approach to argument analysis based on his theory that different standards for argument must apply in the case of different types of dialogue.

By refining and extending the existing formal classifications of dialogue, Walton shows that each dialogue type, be it inquiry, negotiation, or critical discussion, has its own...

A new pragmatic approach, based on the latest developments in argumentation theory, analyzing appeal to expert opinion as a form of argument.

Reliance on authority has always been a common recourse in argumentation, perhaps never more so than today in our highly technological society when knowledge has become so specialized--as manifested, for instance, in the frequent appearance of "expert witnesses" in courtrooms. When is an appeal to the opinion of an expert a reasonable type of argument to make, and when does it become a fallacy? This book provides a method for the evaluation of...