From the Editors 

The articles in this issue all originated 
as papers delivered at the Third Inter-
national Symposium on Informal Logic, 
held in June 1989 at the University of 
Windsor. All the contributors are new to 
these pages, and we are delighted to 
welcome them. 

Professor E. M. Barth has enjoyed a 
distinguished career as a logician in Holland 
and indeed in Europe. In "In the Service 
of Human Society: Formal, Informal or 
Anti-Logical?" Barth discusses the role of 
logic in human affairs. In this discussion 
she uses as her focal point an exchange be-
tween her mentor-Evert Willem Beth-
and Alonzo Church, this from a time when 
Beth served on the editorial board of the 
Journal of Symbolic Logic. We think our 
readers will be surprised and gratified to 
learn of Beth's concern for the role of logic 
in human affairs-an interest which 
prefigures the recent development of infor-
mal logic. 

Charles Willard is a much respected 
author in the speech communication 
scholarly community. In this paper, 
" Authority, " Willard analyzes the role of 
authorities within disciplines. He argues that 
our dependence on authority poses a dilem-
ma: it is rational to argue from authorities 
and to acknowledge their expertise, yet 
deference to authorities has the effect of 

foreclosing debate and argumentation. One 
solution to this dilemma is blocked, Willard 
argues: we cannot demand that individuals 
themselves achieve epistemic mastery. 

Jerome V. Bickenbach was the 1989 
winner of the Bora Laskin Fellowship in 
Canada. In "The 'Artificial Reason' ofthe 
Law," Bickenbach develops the view, 
stemming from John Wisdom, that the pro-
cess of argument is not best understood as 
a chain of demonstrative reasoning but 
rather as presenting and representing those 
features which severally cooperate in favour 
of the conclusion. 

Erik C. W. Krabbe has distinguished 
himself as a logician with particular interest 
in dialogue logic. In "Inconsistent Commit-
ment and Commitment to Inconsistencies," 
Krabbe shows how dialogue logic handles 
the phenomenon of inconsistency, follow-
ing and extending the work on inconsistency 
done by Rescher and Brandom, and the 
work of Hamblin on dialogue logic. Krabbe 
tables a distinction between fallacy, 
weakness or blunder, and quandary. Some 
difficulties with how to classity inconsisten-
cy are discussed. 

Finally, we are pleased to publish Derek 
Allen's carefully drawn Critical Study of 
Trudy Govier's landmark monograph, 
Problems in Argument Analysis and 
Evaluation. 0