New Essays In Informal Logic

This book is a collection of essays based on papers presented at the Third International Symposium on Informal Logic held at the University of Windsor in June, 1989. The essays are almost without exception solid and good; most could profitably be read several times. It is regrettable that due to publication delays the work did not appear earlier. However it is a tribute to the authors and editors that the material remains interesting, timely, and worthwhile more than six years after the conference for which these essays were first written. In their introduction, editors Johnson and Blair outline some major developments in the past dozen years of research in informal logic, offer their impressions of the current state of affairs, and express their hopes for its future development. They offer evidence that scholarship is increasing in scope and in depth, but regret the relatively low status of informal logic within its home discipline of philosophy and the lack of opportunity in departments of philosophy for specialized doctoral work in informal logic. They note that no one dominant theory plays the role of paradigm in setting a research agenda for the field. Informal logic is in some contexts an alternative to symbolic logic. As such, it aims to specify principles and standards for the analysis and evaluation of arguments. Informal logic should not be identified with argumentation theory in general, because unlike many other areas of argumentation theory. informal logic is specifically concerned with normative issues. Its central question is: what norms do, and should, govern arguments? The book is divided into three sections. Part I contains essays by Maurice Finocchiaro and James Freeman about the relationship between Informal Logic and Logic. Part \I is about Argument Assessment; and has essays by Derek Allen. David Hitchcock, Christopher Tindale, John Woods, and Michael Wreen. Part Ill, about Epistemological Dimensions of informal logic and argument evaluation, contains essays by Jonathan Adler, Robert Pinto, Harvey Siegel, and Mark Weinstein.