FROM THE EDITORS 

In this issue 

The bulk of this issue is made up of the proceedings of the Panel on Informal Logic that 
was held at the World Congress of Philosophy in Boston in August 1998, organized by 
Blair and Johnson. The topic set for that session was the bearing of informal logic on 
philosophy. Ralph Johnson and Anthony Blair led offwith an overview of informal logic, 
from their perspective. Then followed papers presenting their views of the relation be-
tween informal logic and philosophy by Alec Fisher, James Freeman and David Hitchcock 
All the articles in this issue are revised versions of those World Congress papers. john 
Woods had been asked to play the role of respondent to all the papers, a role that he 
reprises here in his revised commentary on the revised papers. 

In this issue we also feature a critical review of Douglas Walton's monograph, Appeal 
to Pity: Argumentum ad Misericordiam, by Hans V. Hansen, as well as three regular book 
reviews. 

A call for Teaching Supplement material 

Long-time subscribers will remember Robert Binkley's wonderful series, The London Close 
Reasoner, published in the Informal Logic Newsletter. It contained a stream of examples of 
arguments, mostly from the daily newspaper, along with Bob's comments on them aimed at 
the edification of his students. Readers were invited to pilfer the examples with or without 
the commentary for their own courses. If even a small number of readers who are also 
teaching courses in argument, informal logic, critical thinking, reasoning, critical reason-
ing (and so on) would send Claude Gratton a few examples with or without their own 
analyses every semester, plus a copy oftheir mid-term and final exam, we would be able to 
supply a steady stream of classroom material that would benefit all. If you have entered or 
scanned examples onto your computer, why not attach them in an e-mail to Claude? Even 
one at a time. It will take a few seconds. He will collect them and pass them along to 
everyone. With your participation, we can make this feature a valuable teaching aid. 

Upcoming OSSA Conference 

There will be a conference ofthe Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation on May 
17-19, 2000 on Argumentation and its Applications at the University of Windsor, in Wind-
sor, Ontario, Canada. The deadline for Abstracts has passed. The provisional program of 
the conference will be posted soon. Check the OSSA URL for the latest posting: http:// 
www.uwindsor.calOSSA.