Arguing that our attachment to Aristotelian modes of discourse makes a revision of their conceptual foundations long overdue, the author proposes the consideration of unacknowledged factors that play a central role in argument itself. These are in particular the subjective imprint and the dynamics of argumentation. Their inclusion in a four-dimensional framework (subjective-objective, structural-procedural) and the focus on thesis validity allow for a more realistic view of our discourse practice. Exhaustive analyses of fascinating historical and contemporary arguments are provided. These range from Columbus’s advocacy of the Western Passage to India, over the trial of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, to today’s highly charged controversies surrounding euthanasia and embryo research. Excavating foundational issues such as the purpose of argument itself (assent of an audience or critical examination of validity claims) and the contested role of argument as a generator of knowledge, the book culminates in a discussion of the relationship between rationality and reasonableness and criticizes the restrictions of ‘rational’ argument relying on fixed logical, economic or cultural criteria that in reality are mutable. Here, a true, open argument requires the infusion of Paul Lorenzen’s principle of ‘transsubjectivity’, which recognizes but transcends the partiality of the individual and which can be seen in the pragmatic and expanding consensus that humanity can control itself to safeguard the future of a fragile, damaged world.

Crucial Concepts in Argumentation Theory is a collection of essays that discuss a series of important issues in the study of argumentation. The essays describe the concepts that are crucial to argumentational research and the various ways these concepts have been approached. The essays explore such issues as points of view, unexpressed premises, argument schemes, argumentation structures, fallacies, argument interpretation and reconstruction, and argumentation in law. Each of the essays provides interested readers with an overview of the literature that can serve as a point of departure for further study.

J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the history of the field of argumentation theory and various related disciplines. It illuminates the central debates and presents core ideas in four main areas: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Argument Theory and Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric.

Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic and discourse analysis, linguistics and forensic science, philosophy and psychology, political science and education, sociology and law, and rhetoric and artificial intelligence. This presents the growing group of interested scholars and students with a problem of access, since it is even for those active in the field not common to have acquired a familiarity with relevant aspects of each discipline that enters into this multidisciplinary matrix. This book offers its readers a unique comprehensive survey of the various theoretical contributions which have been made to the study of argumentation. It discusses the historical works that provide the background to the field and all major approaches and trends in contemporary research. Argument has been the subject of systematic inquiry for twenty-five hundred years. It has been graced with theories, such as formal logic or the legal theory of evidence, that have acquired a more or less settled provenance with regard to specific issues. But there has been nothing to date that qualifies as a unified general theory of argumentation, in all its richness and complexity. This being so, the argumentation theorist must have access to materials and methods that lie beyond his or her "home" subject. It is precisely on this account that this volume is offered to all the constituent research communities and their students. Apart from the historical sections, each chapter provides an economical introduction to the problems and methods that characterize a given part of the contemporary research program. Because the chapters are self-contained, they can be consulted in the order of a reader's interests or research requirements. But there is value in reading the work in its entirety. Jointly authored by the very people whose research has done much to define the current state of argumentation theory and to point the way toward more general and unified future treatments, this book is an impressively authoritative contribution to the field.

This book works through some of the theoretical issues that have been accumulating in informal logic over the past 20 years. At the same time, it defines a core position in the theory of argument in which those issues can be further explored. The underlying concern that motivates this work is the health of practice of argumentation as an important cultural artifact. A further concern is for logic as a discipline. Argumentative and dialectical in nature, this book presupposes some awareness of the theory of argument in recent history, and some familiarity with the positions that have been advanced. It will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the disciplines of logic, rhetoric, linguistics, speech communication, English composition, and psychology.

This volume comprises a selection of contributions to the theorizing about argumentation that have been presented at the 9th conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA), held in Amsterdam in July 2018. The chapters included provide a general theoretical perspective on central topics in argumentation theory, such as argument schemes and the fallacies. Some contributions concentrate on the treatment of the concept of conductive argument. Other contributions are dedicated to specific issues such as the justification of questions, the occurrence of mining relations, the role of exclamatives, argumentative abduction, eudaimonistic argumentation and a typology of logical ways to counter an argument. In a number of cases the theoretical problems addressed are related to a specific type of context, such as the burden of proof in philosophical argumentation, the charge of committing a genetic fallacy in strategic manoeuvring in philosophy, the necessity of community argument, and connection adequacy for arguments with institutional warrants. The volume offers a great deal of diversity in its breadth of coverage of argumentation theory and wide geographic representation from North and South America to Europe and China.

This volume includes a collection of eighteen essays that provide a decisive input to the study of logic and argumentation theory by some of the finest specialists in these areas, covering the main schools of thought and contemporary trends at the beginning of the 21st century. In these essays, the authors clarify the status of what we currently call, ambiguously and problematically, “logic” and “argumentation theory”, and discuss the no less controversial issue of the relationship between these two concepts when applied to the study of argumentation and its problems. At the same time, they take stock of the most recent developments of argumentation theory considered as an ongoing research subject. It is the first time in the last few decades that a work this comprehensive and up-to-date on such matters has been published. This volume is an essential tool for all of those interested in the study of the relations between logic and argumentation, particularly at the university level. It provides not only an introduction to these subjects, but also the necessary framework for further specialised research development in the future.

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook intended for students in philosophy, communications studies and linguistics who have completed at least one course in argumentation theory, information logic, critical thinking or formal logic. Containing nearly 400 exercises, Mark Vorobej develops a novel approach to argument interpretation and evaluation. One of the key themes of the book is that we cannot succeed in distinguishing good argument from bad arguments until we learn to listen carefully to others. Part I develops a relativistic account of argument cogency that allows for rational disagreement. Part II offers a comprehensive and rigorous account of argument diagramming. Hybrid arguments are contrasted with linked and convergent arguments, and a novel technique is introduced for graphically recording disagreements with authorial claims.

Making Arguments: Reason in Context offers a new approach to the teaching of argumentation and debate. Nearly all argumentation courses and textbooks tilt toward one of two extremes: * Critical thinking/informal logic, in which the "laws" of reasoning are universal and not affected by audience or context * Public speaking, in which adaptation to the audience and winning assent trumps logic and reasoning At the first extreme are texts that stress flaws in arguments and how to discern them. Their focus tends to be on the logic (making deductive inferences and avoiding deductive mistakes or other errors of inference) and/or the recognition of fallacies (deficient or fake arguments). They also deal with the messy ambiguities of language. Generally, this approach omits the concept of an audience. And it does not explain how spotting the flaws in reasoning, or improving one's reasoning, translates into the ability to make an effective argument. Further, it is not clear how to address audiences whose grasp of logic is shaky. At the other extreme are books (especially public speaking textbooks) that err in the opposite direction. They are fixated on audience. As a result, their advice about how to argue is grounded in audience adaptation. In fact, the process of reasoning is nearly subordinated to such secondary considerations as style, delivery, and organization. And again, the connection between critical thinking/logic and audience is rarely examined. In Making Arguments, we propose to consider argument at the nexus of invention and judgment, the two endpoints from which logic and public speaking examine argumentation, respectively. By looking at the "stuff" that comes between an argument's design and its delivery, we hope to enrich the understanding and the study of argument, as both a theoretical and applied discipline. In particular, we want to answer some questions that are seldom addressed in print: * What is the starting point for augmentation? When do we even need to argue? * When should one embrace, and when should one avoid, arguing? * Why does the same argument work in one place and fail in another? * Are most audiences capable of understanding a complex argument? * With what authority can one make an argument--absent expertise in the field in which the argument takes place? * Are there substantive differences between oral and written argument? * What does it mean to "present" an argument? * Can someone control the argumentative situation/context to the benefit of his/her position? * How can argument educate and improve the arguer? * Can we learn the "truth" by arguing? This book addresses the whole advocacy process as a series of concatenated intellectual decisions affecting how arguments are created, ordered, rendered, and produced--with judgment as the over-arching concern.

This book brings together essays by one of the pre-eminent scholars of informal logic.