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. 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) Steven Patterson (Marygrove College) 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) Windsor Studies in Argumentation Mailing Address Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor 2189 Chrysler Hall North, 401 Sunset Avenue Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4 Editors in Chief Christopher Tindale Leo Groarke WSIA Support Contact Dave Johnston Phone: (519) 253 3000 x3208 Email: [email protected] Note to the Vale Press Edition, 1996 Copyright 1996 by Vale Press. Vale Press P. O. Box 6519 Newport News VA 23606 Print cover design by Chuck Haas. Permissions We are grateful to Ralph H. Johnson, to Anthony Blair, co-author of Chapters 1, 2, and 11, and to the following for permission to reprint material to which they hold the copyright. Edgepress of Inverness, CA, for permission to reprint Chapter 1 from Informal Logic: The First International Symposium © 1980. Informal Logic of Windsor, Ontario, for permission to reprint Chapter 2 © 1994 and Chapter 7 © 1980. Teaching Philosophy and the Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green, OH, for permission to reprint Chapter 3 © 1981 and Chapter 11 © 1991. Argumentation, D. Reidel and Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, for permission to reprint Chapter 5 © 1987. Synthese and Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, for permission to reprint Chapter 10 © 1989. Philosophy and Rhetoric and The Pennsylvania State University for permission to reprint Chapters 8 © 1991 and 9 © 1991. Chapter 12 is reprinted by permission of the publisher from Norris, S.P.(Ed.), The Generalizahility of Critical Thinking: Multiple Perspectives on an Education Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, © 1992 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.) pp. 38-53. Communication and Cognition of Ghent, Belgium, for permission to reprint Chapter 13 © 1991. North Holland and Elsevier Scientific Publishers ofAmsterdam, The Netherlands, for permission to reprint Chapter 16 from Logic and Political Culture © 1992. ISBN 0916475-265 cloth edition ISBN 0916475-255 paper edition To my parents Ralph and Marion who first exposed me to the practice of argumentation and gave me an appreciation of the importance of logic. Acknowledgements When john Hoaglund first broached the idea of collecting many of my various papers on informal logic under one cover, I was flattered and non-plussed. Two thoughts pushed their way forward. The first was: “Not dead yet.” But then I said to myself: “But neither was Quine.” Then came the second: “Not Quine yet.” I had no response to that one. I am grateful to Vale Press for undertaking the publication of these papers which reflect 20 years of struggling to identify clearly both the nature of informal logic and its contribution to logic and to philosophy. When I look at some of the changes that have taken place in the teaching of logic at the college and university level, I am satisfied that informal logic has had an impact. In addition to John Hoaglund, there are others I want to thank. First and foremost my colleague, Tony Blair, who is co-author of four of the papers reprinted here, with whom I have co-edited Informal Logic and Informal Logic Newsletter, and with whom I have been fortunate to have had an ongoing conversation about both the theory and practice of informal logic for more than 25 years. I want to thank a great many colleagues whom I have met and with whom I have had conversations that have both influenced my ideas and also had a direct impact on the writing of these papers, among them: Michael Scriven, Nicholas Rescher, Howard Kahane, John McPeck, John Woods, Douglas Walton, Jonathan Adler, Stephen Norris, Richard Paul, Perry Weddle, Trudy Govier, John Hoaglund, Maurice Finocchiaro, Robert Ennis, Matthew Libman, Else Barth, Frans van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, Erik Krabbe, Charles Willard, and Joe Wenzel. I apologize to those whose names have, at the moment, slipped my mind. I want especially to thank those who have supported the journal: Hans V. Hansen, Robert C. Pinto, and Mark Letteri. Thank you to Trudy Govier for writing such an apt and gracious Preface. A huge thank you to my wife, Maggie, for her patience and support over many years. Ralph H. Johnson Windsor June 1996 Origins of the Essays Chapter 1: “The Recent Development of Informal Logic “in J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson, eds., Informal Logic: The First lnternational Symposium (Inverness, CA: Edgepress, 1980), pp. 3-28. Chapter 2: “Informal Logic: Past and Present” in Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, eds., New Essays in Informal Logic (Windsor, Ontario: Informal Logic, 1994), pp. 1-19. Chapter 3: “The New Logic Course: The State of the Art in Non-Formal Methods of Argument Analysis,” Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 4 (1984) pp. 123-43. Chapter 4: “Logic Naturalized: Recovering a Tradition" in Argumentation: Across the Lines of Discipline, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, J. Anthony Blair, and Charles A. Willard (Dordrecht: Foris, 1987) pp. 47-56. (Studies of Argumentation in Pragmatics and Discourse Analyses.) Chapter 5: “Argumentation as Dialectical,” Argumentation, Vol. 1 (1987), pp. 41-56. Chapter 7: “Toulmin’s Bold Experiment,” Part I Informal Logic Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1981), pp. 13-19. Chapter 8: “Hamblin on the Standard Treatment,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 23 (1991), pp. 153-67. Chapter 9: “Acceptance is Not Enough: A Critique of Hamblin.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 23 (1991), pp. 271-287. Chapter 10: “Massey on Fallacy and Informal Logic: A Reply,” Synthese, Vol. 80 (1989), pp. 407-26. Chapter 11: “Misconceptions of Informal Logic: A Reply to McPeck,” Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 14 (1991), pp. 55-52. Chapter 12: “The Problem of Defining Critical Thinking” in The Generalizability of Critical Thinking, ed. by Stephen P. Norris (New York and London: Teachers College Press, 1992), pp. 38-53. Chapter 13: “The Place of Argumentation in the Theory of Reasoning,” Communication and Cognition, Vol. 24 (1991), pp. 5-14. Chapter 16: “Informal Logic and Politics in Logical and Political Culture,” ed. by E. M. Barth and E. C. W. Krabbe (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1992), pp. 133-44. Chapters 6, 14, and 15 appear here in print for the first time. Contents I. Informal Logic ..................................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1: The Recent Development of Informal Logic .................................................................. 10 Chapter 2: Informal Logic: Past and Present ...................................................................................... 36 Chapter 3: The New Logic Course: The State of the Art in Non-Formal Methods of Argument Analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 53 II. Informal Logic and Argumentation ........................................................................................................ 73 Chapter 4: Logic Naturalized: Recovering A Tradition ................................................................... 74 Chapter 5: Argumentation as Dialectical