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...
Appeals to emotion--pity, fear, popular sentiment, and ad hominem attacks--are commonly used in argumentation. Instead of dismissing these...
Arguments from Ignorance explores the situations in which the argument from ignorance (also known as the lack-of-knowledge inference, negative evidence, or default reasoning) functions as a respectable form of reasoning and those in which it is indeed fallacious. Douglas Walton draws on everyday conversations on all kinds of practical matters in which the argumentum ad ignorantiam is used quite appropriately to infer conclusions. He also discusses the inappropriate use of this kind of argument, referring to various major case studies, including the Salem witchcraft...
Arguments from Ignorance explores the situations in which the argument from ignorance (also known as the lack-of-knowledge inference, nega...
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...
A new pragmatic approach, based on the latest developments in argumentation theory, analyzing appeal to expert opinion as a form of argument.
Presenting the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners, this book informs by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. (Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed.) Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton demonstrates the reasonable nature of arguments under the right dialogue conditions by using critical questions to evaluate them.
Presenting the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners, this book informs by using examples of ...
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...
Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize...
Presenting the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners, this book informs by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. (Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed.) Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton demonstrates the reasonable nature of arguments under the right dialogue conditions by using critical questions to evaluate them.
Presenting the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners, this book informs by using examples of ...
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...
Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize...
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...
Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation. S...
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...
Because developments in informal logic have been based, for the most part, on idealized and abstract models, the tools available for argument analy...
The theory in the book is based on the latest research in argumentation theory, and especially on new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to legal argumentation. The methodology of the book derives from recent work in argumentation theory and AI in which forms of reasoning other than deductive and inductive have been the focus of much investigation. The aim is not just to show how character judgments are made, but to show how they should properly be made based on sound reasoning, in order to avoid certain fallacies, errors and superficial judgments of a kind that are common. The book...
The theory in the book is based on the latest research in argumentation theory, and especially on new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to ...
