Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION Windsor Studies in Argumentation Volume 6 TRUDY GOVIER Windsor Studies in Argumentation Windsor Ontario Canada Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation by Trudy Govier & Windsor Studies in Argumentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Copyright Trudy Govier and Windsor Studies in Argumentation CONTENTS WSIA Editors v WSIA Editors' Introduction vii Preface viii 1. Rigor and Reality 1 2. Is a Theory of Argument Possible 20 3. The Great Divide 56 4. Two Unreceived Views about Reasoning and 84 Argument 5. The Problem of Missing Premises 123 6. A Dialogic Exercise 161 7. A New Approach to Charity 203 8. Reasons Why Arguments and Explanations are 242 Different 9. Four Reasons There are No Fallacies? 271 10. Formalism and Informalism in Theories of 311 Reasoning and Argument 11. Critical Thinking in the Armchair, the Classroom, 349 and the Lab 12. Critical Thinking about Critical Thinking Tests 377 13. The Social Epistemology of Argument 413 WSIA EDITORS Editors in Chief Leo Groarke (Trent University) Christopher Tindale (University of Windsor) Board of Editors Mark Battersby (Capilano University) Camille Cameron (Dalhousie University) Emmanuelle Danblon (Université libre de Bruxelles) Ian Dove (University of Nevada Las Vegas) Bart Garssen (University of Amsterdam) Michael Gilbert (York University) David Godden (Michigan State University) Jean Goodwin (North Carolina State University) Hans V. Hansen (University of Windsor) Gabrijela Kišiček (University of Zagreb) Marcin Koszowy (University of Białystok) Marcin Lewiński (New University of Lisbon) Catherine H. Palczewski (University of Northern Iowa) Chris Reed (University of Dundee) Andrea Rocci (University of Lugano) Paul van den Hoven (Tilburg University) Cristián Santibáñez Yáñez (Diego Portales University) Igor Ž. Žagar (University of Maribor & University of Primorska) Frank Zenker (Lund University) PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION v Windsor Studies In Argumentation Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric University of Windsor 401 Sunset Avenue Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 vi TRUDY GOVIER WSIA EDITORS' INTRODUCTION We are pleased to publish this WSIA edition of Trudy’s Govier’s seminal volume, Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Originally published in 1987 by Foris Publications, this was a pioneering work that played a major role in establishing argumentation theory as a discipline. Today, it is as relevant to the field as when it first appeared, with discussions of questions and issues that remain central to the study of argument. It has defined the main approaches to many of those issues and guided the ways in which we might respond to them. From this foundation, it sets the stage for further investigations and emerging research. This is a second edition of the book that is corrected and updated by the author, with new prefaces to each chapter (but without the previous appendix). We want to acknowledge the work of Ms. Tamilyn Mulvaney who assisted in the editorial process and prepared the final manuscript for publication. Leo A. Groarke Christopher W. Tindale PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION vii PREFACE Preface to the First Edition My interest in the subjects covered in this book dates from 1978, when I came across several texts in informal logic, and was fascinated both by their practicality and by their recommendations for rethinking central philosophical traditions regarding logic and argument. I thought at that time that very fundamental issues were at stake but that the context of textbooks did not provide sufficient opportunities to explore them in depth. This book is an attempt to fill that gap. I have profited very much over the intervening years from philosophical exchanges with Tony Blair, Ralph Johnson, and David Hitchcock. Comments and analyses from Jonathan Adler, Douglas Walton, Richard Paul, Dennis Rohatyn, John McPeck, David Ennis, Frans van Eemeren, and Rob Grootendorst have also been helpful, as have the interesting questions posed when parts of this book have been read to audiences in Canada (Lethbridge, Windsor, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Waterloo, and Peterborough); the United States (Newport News and Sonoma); and the Netherlands (Amsterdam). Materials on critical thinking tests were willingly supplied by Matthew Lipton, Robert Ennis, Stephen Norris, and John McPeck, whose cooperation is appreciated. I would also like to thank the editors and contributors to the Informal Logic Newsletter (now the journal Informal Logic) for their interest in, and comments on, my work, especially in the period 1979-1982. viii TRUDY GOVIER I am extremely grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous financial support during the period 1982-1984. Without this support, the book would not have been completed. Trent University also provided some support in 1981, enabling Jennifer Dance Flatman to lend valuable bibliographical assistance. Equally important has been moral support – especially that of David Gallop, William H. Dray, Bernard Hodgson, Sandy McMullen, Michael Scriven, Nettie Wiebe, Janet Keeping and, most of all, my husband, Anton Colijn. For errors or omissions that may remain, I am solely responsible. Preface to the Second Edition For many years, this book has been difficult to obtain, and I felt badly about that. I was delighted to learn that the series Windsor Studies in Argumentation was interested in re-publishing the work so as to make both electronic and print versions available. After some difficulties, I was able to retrieve the copyright from the large Walter de Gruyter firm (Berlin), which had taken over the original publisher, Foris (Dordrecht, the Netherlands) and dramatically increased the price of the work. Hopefully, this new edition will be accessible to all who wish to consult it. People often expressed to me their frustration about the inaccessibility of the original book. They did not indicate a desire for a re- working of its themes in the light of subsequent research. That, in any event, would require a massive amount of work. In this second edition I have for the most part kept the original material intact, while adding introductory essays to each chapter in an effort to convey my present sense of what I said decades ago. This book was an early one in the development of informal logic and argumentation studies. My youthful excitement about topics and problems in these fields stemmed of course from their intrinsic interest but also from my sense that they had rarely been explored and seemed to emerge, when they did, mainly from pedagogical experience and treatments in textbooks. I PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION ix wrote my own textbook A Practical Study of Argument (currently in its seventh edition), and I enjoyed doing that, but I was convinced that such topics as missing premises, the inductive/ deductive distinction, and the principle of interpretive charity required treatment different from what would be appropriate in a textbook. Hence, this work. Some topics here — for example, fallacies and social epistemology — have subsequently been explored by many other theorists. Others, including the argument/explanation distinction, a priori analogies, and the principle of charity, have received less attention. In any event, I hope that this version of Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation will be of interest to persons now active in the study of argumentation. I am extremely grateful to Michael Williams for his assistance in scanning the original book so as to generate electronic files. He and his fast scanner saved me weeks of work. The research, thinking, and writing for this work was done in the period 1982 – 1986. During much of that time I was an independent scholar based in Calgary, Alberta, and I benefited from financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. Presently my finances are secure, but my gratitude to the council persists. x TRUDY GOVIER CHAPTER 1. RIGOR AND REALITY This chapter was written in an atmosphere of challenged change in the teaching of logic. According to Howard Kahane, whose book on fallacies (Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric) went through many editions, his interest in that topic stemmed from the career of Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew was Vice President of the United States from 1969 to 1973. His highly imaginative and well-publicized rhetoric, incorporating such famous expressions as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” led several of Kahane’s students to ask what the tools of logic could offer for the evaluation of Agnew’s claims and arguments. Kahane realized that formal logic had little to offer, a realization that led him to develop his own text, emphasizing the understanding of fallacies. In that work, the examples were taken from American politics, a selection that prompted Ralph Johnson and Tony Blair to produce their book, Logical Self-Defence, with Canadian material. That work was an important stimulus for my own. In the early nineteen eighties, “logic” as used by philosophers, meant “formal logic”, and the standard presumption was that by studying logic, students could learn to reason, detect poor reasoning and argument, and construct good arguments. This presumption was coming into question in the nineteen eighties but in my experience it was still strongly defended by many philosophers. In the context, I was astounded when I heard in 1978 from Michael Scriven – still active in the field – that formal logic had little or nothing to offer as applied to real arguments PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION 1 expressed in natural language. There were problems of translation, argument type, structure, premise assessment, dialectical context, audience, and much else. For all its rigour and status, formal logic was of little use as applied to real arguments. To me the discovery was shocking. How could philosophers have been so wrong about practicalities? Were they deceiving themselves? They prided themselves on knowing how to argue, but were sadly lacking when it came to theorizing about that.
Recommended publications
  • An Assessment of the Pragma-Dialectical Perspective Christopher Tindale University of Windsor
    University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor Philosophy Publications Department of Philosophy 1996 Fallacies in Transition: An Assessment of the Pragma-Dialectical Perspective Christopher Tindale University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/philosophypub Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Tindale, Christopher. (1996). Fallacies in Transition: An Assessment of the Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Informal Logic, 18 (1), 17-33. http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/philosophypub/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at Scholarship at UWindsor. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship at UWindsor. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Fallacies in Transition: An Assessment of the Pragma­ Dialectical Perspective CHRISTOPHER W. TINDALE, Trent University Keywords: Argumentation, audience, fallacies, objective standards, pragma-dialectics; rhetoric. Abstract: The paper critically investigates the Resume: eet article examine d 'un oeil critique la pragma-dialectics of van Eemeren and pragma-dialectique de van Eemeren et de Grootendorst, particularly the treatment of falla­ Grootendorst, mais tout particulierement leurs cies. While the pragma-dialectieians claim that traitements des paralogismes. Bien qu'ils dialectics combines the logical and rhetorical ap­ affirment que la dialectique reunit les approches proaches to argumentation, it is argued here that logiques et rhetoriques, on maintient plutOt iei the perspective relies heavily on rhetorical fea­ qu'elle s'appuie fortement sur des traits tures that have been suppressed in the account rhetoriques implicites et qu'en refusant de voir and that overlooking these features leads to sig­ ceux-ci, la perspective pragma-dialectique connait nificant problems in the pragma-dialectical per­ d'importants problemes.
    [Show full text]
  • Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation
    PROBLEMS IN ARGUMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION Windsor Studies in Argumentation Volume 6 TRUDY GOVIER Windsor Studies in Argumentation Windsor Ontario Canada Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation by Trudy Govier & Windsor Studies in Argumentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Copyright Trudy Govier and Windsor Studies in Argumentation ISBN 978-0-920233-83-2 CONTENTS WSIA Editors v WSIA Editors' Introduction vii Preface viii 1. Rigor and Reality 1 2. Is a Theory of Argument Possible 20 3. The Great Divide 56 4. Two Unreceived Views about Reasoning and 84 Argument 5. The Problem of Missing Premises 123 6. A Dialogic Exercise 161 7. A New Approach to Charity 203 8. Reasons Why Arguments and Explanations are 242 Different 9. Four Reasons There are No Fallacies? 271 10. Formalism and Informalism in Theories of 311 Reasoning and Argument 11. Critical Thinking in the Armchair, the Classroom, 349 and the Lab 12. Critical Thinking about Critical Thinking Tests 377 13. The Social Epistemology of Argument 413 WSIA EDITORS Editors in Chief Leo Groarke (Trent University) Christopher Tindale (University of Windsor) Board of Editors Mark Battersby (Capilano University) Camille Cameron (Dalhousie University) Emmanuelle Danblon (Université libre de Bruxelles) Ian Dove (University of Nevada Las Vegas) Bart Garssen (University of Amsterdam) Michael Gilbert (York University) David Godden (Michigan State University) Jean Goodwin (North Carolina State University) Hans V. Hansen (University of Windsor) Gabrijela Kišiček (University of Zagreb) Marcin Koszowy (University of Białystok) Marcin Lewiński (New University of Lisbon) Catherine H. Palczewski (University of Northern Iowa) Chris Reed (University of Dundee) Andrea Rocci (University of Lugano) Paul van den Hoven (Tilburg University) Cristián Santibáñez Yáñez (Diego Portales University) Igor Ž.
    [Show full text]
  • Studies in Critical Thinking, 2Nd Ed
    Studies in Critical Thinking, 2nd Ed Studies in Critical Thinking, 2nd Ed Edited by J. Anthony Blair WINDSOR STUDIES IN ARGUMENTATION WINDSOR, ON Contents Preface xi Part I. Introductory Introduction 3 1. What critical thinking is 7 Alec Fisher Part II. On Teaching Critical Thinking Introduction to Part II 29 2. Teaching critical thinking 31 J. Anthony Blair and Michael Scriven 3. Validity 37 Derek Allen 4. Teaching argument construction 51 Justine Kingsbury 5. Encouraging critical thinking about students’ own 57 beliefs Tracy Bowell and Justine Kingsbury 6. Middle Ground: Settling a public controversy by 61 means of a reasonable compromise Jan Albert van Laar 7. Using arguments to inquire 71 Mark Battersby and Sharon Bailin Part III. About Argument and Arguments Introduction to Part III 85 8. Arguments and critical thinking 87 J. Anthony Blair 9. The concept of an argument 101 David Hitchcock 10. Using computer-aided argument mapping to teach 115 reasoning Martin Davies, Ashley Barnett, and Tim van Gelder 11. Argumentation schemes and their application in 153 argument mining Douglas Walton 12. Constructing effective arguments 181 Beth Innocenti 13. Judging arguments 191 J. Anthony Blair 14. An introduction to the study of fallaciousness 209 Christopher W. Tindale Part IV. Other Elements of Critical Thinking Introduction to Part IV 225 15. How a critical thinker uses the web 227 Sally Jackson 16. Definition 249 Robert H. Ennis 17. Generalizing 271 Dale Hample and Yiwen Dai 18. Appeals to authority: sources and experts 289 Mark Battersby 19. Logic and critical thinking 307 G.C. Goddu 20. Abduction and inference to the best explanation 329 John Woods 21.
    [Show full text]
  • Informal Logic: a 'Canadian' Approach to Argument
    Informal Logic: A 'Canadian' Approach to Argument INFORMAL LOGIC: A 'CANADIAN' APPROACH TO ARGUMENT FEDERIC O PUPPO Windsor Studies in Argumentation Windsor, ON Editorial and formatting assistance provided by Tamilyn Mulvaney. Cover Image “School of Fish” by Thomas Quine was generously made available under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:School_of_fish_(29627924482).jpg) Permission to reproduce previously published works has been obtained from the rights holder(s). Please refer to the Acknowledgements section of each chapter for more details. Copyright (2019) Windsor Studies in Argumentation & the original authors, unless otherwise noted. Windsor Studies In Argumentation Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric University of Windsor 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, Canada Digital Edition of this book are available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License. ISBN: 978-0-920233-91-7 CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 Federico Puppo 2. Pioneering Informal Logic and Argumentation 35 Studies Anthony J. Blair 3. Formal Models 61 John Woods 4. The Problem of Missing Premisses 104 David Hitchcock 5. Are There Methods of Informal Logic? 130 Hans V. Hansen 6. Duets, Cartoons, and Tragedies: Struggles with 153 the Fallacy of Composition Trudy Govier 7. The Dialectical Tier Revisited 176 Ralph H. Johnson 8. How the Context of Dialogue of an Argument 196 Influences its Evaluation Douglas Walton 9. Inquiry: A Dialectical Approach to Teaching Criti- 234 cal Thinking Sharon Bailin and Mark Battersby 10. Argumentation and the Force of Reasons 251 Robert C. Pinto 11. Aggression, Politeness, and Abstract Adversaries 287 Catherine Hundleby 12. MULTI-MODAL 2010: Multi-Modal Argumenta- 313 tion 20 Years Later Michael A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Informal Logic
    Studies in Critical Thinking and Informal Logic 1. C. L. Hamblin Fallacies 2. Ralph H. Johnson The Rise of lnformal Logic The Rise of Informal Logic Essays on Argumentation, Critical Thinking, Reasoning and Politics Ralph H. Johnson With four chapters co-authored by J. Anthony Blair Edited by John Hoaglund with Prefaces by Trudy Govier, Christopher Tindale & Leo Groarke Note to the Windsor Studies In Argumentation Digital Edition, 2014 The Rise of Informal Logic, by Ralph Johnson, has chapters co-authored by J. Anthony Blair, and prefaces by Trudy Govier, John Hoagland, and Leo Groarke & Christopher Tindale. The content of this edition of the book is the same as the 1996 Vale Press edition, with a number of minor typographical corrections. The cover of this edition was designed by Dave Johnston for WSIA and is an image of the cupola of Dillon Hall, an iconic building at the University of Windsor. Dillon hall was one of the original buildings at the Assumption College before the university became public. We have included this as a cover image to recognize the University of Windsor as the centre of much of the work that gave birth to informal logic as a discipline. E-editions of works in the WSIA series on argumentation are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 4.0 license. E-edition ISBN 978-0-920233-71-9 Windsor Studies in Argumentation Volume 1: Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar, eds. What do We Know about the World? Rhetorical and Argumentative Perspectives Volume 2: Ralph Johnson, The Rise of Informal Logic The WSIA series is overseen by the following editorial board Mark Battersby (Capilano University) Camille Cameron (University of Windsor) Emmanuelle Danblon (Université libre de Bruxelles) Ian Dove (University of Nevada Las Vegas) Bart Garssen (University of Amsterdam) Michael Gilbert (York University) David Godden (Old Dominion University) Jean Goodwin (Iowa State University) Hans V.
    [Show full text]