From the Editors 

Bienvenue 

Readers may have noticed that our 
Masthead has been slightly redesigned for 
this first issue of Volume xm. It contains 
more information than before and, more im~ 
portant, it lists at the top some new naIl'!es. 

We have created the post of AssocIate 
Editor for our colleague Robert C. Pinto. 
Bob helps us by writing computer programs 
to improve the ease and efficiency of our 
operation. He also serves as a trusted 
advisor, a third editor, and an ~l-round 
extra mind and body. We are dehghted to 
formalize his relationship with the journal. 

Our new Assistant to the Editors is Mark 
Letteri (Ph.D., Waterloo). It is our good 
fortUne that Mark was interested in taking 
over from Hans Hansen, in addition to the 
teaching he does in the Windsor Philosophy 
Department. Mark has been. running. the 
day~to~day operations of the Journal smce 
last December. Also, with the help of Bob' s 
computer program, he carries out the manag~ 
ing editor tasks of handling subscriptions and 
fulfilment. We are grateful to the University 
of Windsor for continuing to provide the 
funding for Mark's part-time position. 

Last, but far from least, we have prevailed 
upon Hans Hansen (Ph.D., ~ayne. Sta!e) 
to maintain a semi-formal relabonshlp WIth 
the journal, although he has moved a. few 
hundred kilometres away to St. Catharmes, 
Ontario. "Consulting Editor" is a crisper 
title than" Assistant to the Editors, Emeri-
tus," plus it allows us to continue to call 
on Hans's experience and good judgement. 

We welcome Bob, Mark and Hans to 
their new positions. Any journal relies 
heavily on the people who help out the 
editors and we are fortunate indeed to have , . . . 
this experienced, wise, and enthuslasbc tno 
backing us up. 

This Issue 

By what standard(s) is the relationship 
between the premises and conclusion of an 
argument to be assessed? The first two 

papers in this issue address this questi.on. 
In "Evaluating Arguments: The PrelD1se~ 
Conclusion Relation," George Bowles con-
siders what might be called the "relevance" 
side, and in "Quantifying Support," John 
Black looks at what might be called the 
"completeness" side. . . . 

Valid and reliable tests of cnbcal thmk-
ing have proven extremely diffic~t to for-
mulate. When it comes to assessmg such 
tricky-to~measure proficiencie.s. as ~air­
mindedness, emphasized as a cnbcal thmk-
ing value by Richard Paul and o~ers, !he 
difficulties are compounded. In Testmg 
Fairmindedness," Alec Fisher takes a 
critical but sympathetic look at such a test 
currently under development. 

Rolf George and David Hitchcock's 
"Reply" is a rejoinder to Roger Smook's 
1988 critique of their work, which appeared 
under the title, "Logical and extralogica1 con-
stants," in these pages in Volume X, 1988. 

In his "Teaching Note," Leonard 
Berkowitz offers a welcome suggestion 
about how to find arguments that students 
will be genuinely interested in tackling to 
practice their skills at argument interpreta-
tion and evaluation. 

We are happy to be able to provide ~x­
tended reviews of three recent books of m-
terest: the collection of papers from the 
1988 Utrecht conference on Norms in 
Argumentation. edited by Robert Maier 
(reviewed by Josina Makau); coincidentally, 
Josina Makau's book on Reasoning and 
Communication (reviewed by Robert 
Rowland); and Sharon Bailin's monograph 
on creativity, Achieving Extraordinary Ends 
(reviewed by Donald Hatcher). 

* * * * 
Our printer ran into problems that have 

delayed the appearance of this issue by a 
couple of months, but even so we are now 
almost on our intended schedule of appear-
ing in the Winter, Spring, ~d Fall o~ each 
year. And this 1991 volume IS appearmg ... 
in 1991! 0