Open Forum 

Informal Logic 
IX.1, Winter 1987 

What Are We Doing? 

There is some need for a term that 
refers to the common area, or emphasis, 
of contemporary work in "critical think-
i ng/i nformallogiclargu mentation/val ues 
critique/rehetroic/d iscourse analysis/ 
media analysis/evaluation ... " It seems to 
me that the following considerations are 
widely accepted. (i) There has been a ma-
jor expansion of consciousness in the 
CTIIL community which has led us to 
believe that all of these semi-
independent traditions have developed 
something of value for teaching in most 
of the su b-areas. (i i) Of cou rse, each of 
these names makes perfectly good sense 
as a title for a cou rse or publication 
which is focussing on the particular 
perspective to which it refers; never-
theless, there are times when we need 
to refer to the general area to which they 
all relate (e.g. for framing course descrip-
tions and legislation or grant applica-
tions). (iii) "Critical thinking" is the 
oldest term (of the modern era) and 
perhaps deserves to be considered first. 
It's important because it stresses the no-
tion of the critical stance rather than the 
passive one. On the other hand, it is 
unattractive to many because it sounds 
as if the only focus is critical rather than 
partly creative and explicative. (iv) The 
term "informal logic" is good because 
it stresses the rejection of the formal 
logic approach, but people worry at the 
slight hint of a contradiction in terms, or 
that it is still too suggestive of formalism. 
(v) "Argumentation" is obviously a bit 
narrow, but (Tony Blair pOints out) also 
too wide because it includes e.g. non-
logical studies of dispute. (vi) "Thinking 
skills" is becoming more common in the 
schools, but also casts the net more 
widely than appeals to many people, in-
cluding e.g. the problem-solving and 
decision-making areas. (vii) "Reasoning 
skills" retains the normative element 

that most of us think of as the in-
heritance from logic, but may seem too 
narrow. (viii) Introducing a neologism is 
a last resort, but should be considered. 
'Infologic' is the only candidate I have 
to offer. The 'info' part of it is meant to 
convey the idea that we are looking at 
all forms of information (and its presen-
tation) as well as its processing in the 
th roes of argu mentation and explora-
tion. And of course the 'info' is also to 
remind us of our informal approach, the 
discarding of the effort to convert 
everything to formalism. Someone will 
be able to do better than 'infologic'; and 
may have other existing entries to can-
vas in these or other columns. 

Personally, I find myself attracted by 
'thinking skills and 'reasoning skills' to 
about the same extent. I favor the latter 
by a small margin because there is some 
slight problem about whether teaching 
the former makes sense in the purely 
creative area. I'm not worried about the 
inclusion of problem-solving/decision-
making because I think those are proper-
ly conceived as part of reasoning. I am 
more worried about the way the term 
fails to include training in "critical obser-
ving" i.e. critical perceptual skills, for ex-
ample in the identification of misleading 
portrayals in television or print adver-
tisements. But nobody's perfect, and we 
can simply insist on the inclusion of 
some non-obviously subsumed material 
by fiat. Can't we? Better suggestions? 
Reactions to these ones? (The Editors can 
sometimes fit in short reactions ahead of 
the articles queue.) 

(Received September 1988) 

Michael Scriven, Department of Education, 
The University of Western Australia, 
Nedlands, Western Australia. 6009 D