On Reasoning and Argument: Essays in Informal Logic and on Critical Thinking

Cham, Switzerland: Springer Verlag (2017)
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Abstract

This book brings together in one place David Hitchcock’s most significant published articles on reasoning and argument. In seven new chapters he updates his thinking in the light of subsequent scholarship. Collectively, the papers articulate a distinctive position in the philosophy of argumentation. Among other things, the author:• develops an account of “material consequence” that permits evaluation of inferences without problematic postulation of unstated premises.• updates his recursive definition of argument that accommodates chaining and embedding of arguments and allows any type of illocutionary act to be a conclusion. • advances a general theory of relevance.• provides comprehensive frameworks for evaluating inferences in reasoning by analogy, means-end reasoning, and appeals to considerations or criteria.• argues that none of the forms of arguing ad hominem is a fallacy.• describes proven methods of teaching critical thinking effectively.

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9783319535616   3319535617   3319851845

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-53562-3
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Chapters

Do the Fallacies Have a Place in the Teaching of Reasoning Skills or Critical Thinking?

The case for including fallacies in teaching critical thinking is weaker than it seems. Further, there are at least four arguments against using fallacies as a framework for teaching critical thinking. Empirical research is needed to determine what kinds of mistakes in reasoning occur most commonly ... see more

Does the Traditional Treatment of Enthymemes Rest on a Mistake?

In many actual arguments, the conclusion seems intuitively to follow from the premisses, even though we cannot show that it follows logically. The traditional approach to evaluating such arguments is to suppose that they have an unstated premiss whose explicit addition will produce an argument where... see more

Informal Logic and the Concept of Argument

Informal logic studies the identification, analysis, evaluation, criticism and construction of arguments. An argument is a set of one or more interlinked premiss-illative-conclusion sequences. Premisses are assertives, not necessarily asserted by anyone. Conclusions can be assertives, directives, de... see more

Enthymematic Arguments

Enthymematic arguments are arguments appropriately appraised by a deductive standard whose premiss or premisses are partially topically relevant to their conclusion. The author of an enthymematic argument implicitly assumes the truth of a universal generalization of the argument’s associated conditi... see more

The Linked-Convergent Distinction

The linked-convergent distinction introduced by Stephen Thomas in 1977 is primarily a distinction between ways in which two or more reasons can directly support a claim, and only derivatively a distinction between types of structures, arguments, reasoning, reasons, or premisses. As with the deductiv... see more

Postscript

Informal logic is a newly self-conscious sub-discipline of philosophy that seeks to develop criteria, standards and procedures for the construction, identification, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and criticism of arguments. It is the philosophy of argument, or the philosophy of argumentation, ... see more

Deduction, Induction and Conduction

The position that the deductive-inductive distinction is primarily a distinction between types of support is defended against objections. Allowance is made for additional types of support, notably from relevant but not conclusive considerations.

The Practice of Argumentative Discussion

I propose some changes to the conceptions of argument and of argumentative discussion in Ralph Johnson’s Manifest Rationality . An argument is a discourse whose author seeks to persuade an audience to accept a thesis by producing reasons in support of it and discharging his dialectical obligations. ... see more

Erratum to: On Reasoning and Argument

Pollock on Practical Reasoning

The American epistemologist John Pollock has implemented computationally an architecture for a rational agent which he calls OSCAR. OSCAR models both practical and theoretical reasoning. I argue that Pollock’s model of practical reasoning, which has seven components, is superior not only to the two-... see more

Non-logical Consequence

Contemporary philosophers generally conceive of consequence as necessary truth-preservation. They generally construe this necessity as logical, and operationalize it in substitutional, formal or model-theoretic terms as the absence of a counterexample. A minority tradition allows for grounding truth... see more

Validity in Conductive Arguments

An appeal to features of some case in support of attribution of some status to that case is non-conclusively valid if and only if it is not conclusively valid but any case with those features either has the status or has some overriding negatively relevant feature not implied by lacking the status.

Good Reasoning on the Toulmin Model

Some solo verbal reasoning serves the function of arriving at a correct answer to a question from information at the reasoner’s disposal. Such reasoning is good if and only if its grounds are justified and adequate, its warrant is justified, and the reasoner is justified in assuming that no defeater... see more

Relevance

Relevance is a triadic relation between an item, an outcome or goal, and a situation. Causal relevance consists in an item’s ability to help produce an outcome in a situation. Epistemic relevance, a distinct concept, consists in the ability of a piece of information to help achieve an epistemic goal... see more

Is There an Argumentum ad Hominem Fallacy?

If we understand a fallacy as a mistake in reasoning that occurs with some frequency in real arguments and is characteristically deceptive, there is no argumentum ad hominem fallacy. Arguing ad hominem in its original sense is a perfectly legitimate strategy of using an interlocutor’s concessions or... see more

The Generation of Argument Schemes

One can generate argumentation schemes in three ways. A bottom-up approach of extracting patterns of argument from a corpus of actual arguments can be somewhat arbitrary, and is likely to produce an unsatisfactory guide to understanding and evaluating arguments. A top-down approach starting from tax... see more

Appeals to Considerations

Following Wellman, Trudy Govier has developed a comprehensive approach to the analysis and evaluation of what she calls “conductive arguments”. There is indeed a distinct form of reasoning and argument of the sort Wellman and Govier describe, but both the label ‘conduction’ and the common metaphor o... see more

“All Things Considered”

Diverse considerations may be relevant to deciding what to do, and people may disagree about their importance or even their relevance. Reasonable ways of taking such diversity into account include comprehensive listing of considerations, assessment of the acceptability and relevance of each consider... see more

Reasoning by Analogy: A General Theory

In reasoning by analogy, we project a queried property from one or more source cases to a target case on the basis of one or more assumed similarities. There are three ways in which such reasoning can be inferentially sound. First, the variables of which the assumed similarities are values may deter... see more

Toulmin’s Warrants

In The Uses of Argument , Stephen Toulmin proposed a new, dialectically grounded structure for the layout of arguments, replacing the old terminology of “premiss” and “conclusion” with a new set of terms: claim, data , warrant, modal qualifier, rebuttal, backing. Toulmin’s scheme has been widely ado... see more

Critical Thinking as an Educational Ideal

Critical thinking arrives at a judgment on a question by looking back in a reasonable way at the relevant evidence; it is “reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do” . Its key component skills are those of clarifying meaning, analyzing arguments, evaluating evidence, j... see more

Instrumental Rationality

Comprehensive reasoning from end to means requires an initiating intention to bring about some goal, along with five premisses: a specified means would immediately contribute to realization of the goal, the goal is achievable, the means is permissible, no alternative means is preferable, and the sid... see more

Inference Claims

A conclusion follows from given premisses if and only if an acceptable counterfactual-supporting covering generalization of the argument rules out, either definitively or with some modal qualification, simultaneous acceptability of the premisses and non-acceptability of the conclusion, even though i... see more

The Significance of Informal Logic for Philosophy

Informal logic is a new sub-discipline of philosophy, roughly definable as the philosophy of argument. Contributors have challenged the traditional concept of an argument as a premiss-conclusion complex, in favour of speech-act, functional and dialogical conceptions; they have identified as addition... see more

Material Consequence and Counterfactuals

A conclusion is a “material consequence” of reasons if it follows necessarily from them in accordance with a valid form of argument with content. The corresponding universal generalization of the argument’s associated conditional must be true, must be a covering generalization, and must be true of c... see more

The Effectiveness of Instruction in Critical Thinking

Studies have found only a small improvement in critical thinking skills in traditional stand-alone undergraduate critical thinking courses, moderate improvement when such courses involve computer-assisted tutoring or are combined with writing instruction and practice, and the largest improvements ma... see more

Some Principles of Rational Mutual Inquiry

In mutual inquiry two or more people seek rational agreement on an answer to an open question. Rules for a dialogue system for mutual inquiry should conform to at least the following 18 principles: externalization, dialectification, mutuality, turn-taking, orderliness, staging, logical pluralism, ru... see more

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Citations of this work

Assessing relevance.Fabrizio Macagno - 2018 - Lingua 210:42-64.

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Critical Thinking as an Educational Ideal.[author unknown] - 1989 - Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 4 (2):9-9.

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