VII.2&3, Spring&Fall1985 Informal Logic On Theory in Informal logic PERRY WEDDLE California State University, Sacramento Imagine my title to contain two main concepts-lJinformal logic," and "theory of informal logic." Only at the end do I consider the flashier one, theo- ry, and then mainly out of guilt. Mostly I become entangled in the idea of in- formal logic itself, in which lies the key to theory, In other words the paper turns out to be nine tenths what its au- thor fancies to be ground clearing. One ought to be struck by how re- cently the term "informal logic" has become current. As far as I can tell it appears in no widespread obvious form- ative source published more than a de- cade ago. It's not in COPI, not in Toul- min's The Uses of Argument, not in the English translation of The New Rheto- ric, not in Hamblin, not in Kneale and Kneale, not in the Encyclopedia of Phi- losophy, not in the titles of anything in Blair and Johnson's extensive 1980 bi- bliography. Almost ready to attribute coinage to Johnson and Blair them- selves, as in the titles of their news- letter and first Symposium, I stumbled upon the term in, of all places, my own textbook, which tome contains the phrase, "the subject sometimes called informal logic" -as if this were wide- spread usage. My misjudgement could have been built on at most wo in- stances, Carney and Scheer's bifurca- tion of logic in their 1964 textbook or, more likely, Gilbert Ryle's 1953 Tarner lecture, published in Dilemmas, a source which, as Ralph Pomeroy no- tices, gets neglected. That's 30 years- not, I hope, the anniversary of a word.[1 ] The word comes naturally. We hear it and know what it means, or think we do and have for years. For the term em- bodies two distinctions which as tea- chers we make or have made. One of these comes during the inevitable first- week "consumer" lecture in the tradi- tional"global" logic course, the lecture which warns students that there will be some "mathematical" logic, yes, with formation, transformation and truth rules and all the rest, but also plenty of common sense logic done in natural language. The other distinction with which we feel comfortable delineates two basic ways to appraise bits of rea- soning-either by virtue of logical form or else by virtue of what might be call- ed "everything else." Why fuss over words? Consider this passage from John McPeck's Critical Thinking and Education: Informal logic ... begins by distinguish- ing its enterprise from formal demons- tration, which characterizes logic, geo- metry, mathematics and other formal sciences. In these latter areas, infer- ences are justified or prohibited by direct appeal to formal rules. But informal logic does not have the advantage of formal rules (hence the term "informal"), so that mistakes in reasoning and argument must be characterized by other, less pre- cise means.(2] We can see at work here the first of the two distinctions. Retrace the progres- sion. "Informal logic" suggests not- formal logic, which in turn suggests that logic is formal logic. Formal logic being mathematical logic, and such lo- gic being precise, this suggest that in- formal logic is imprecise, or less pre- cise; whereupon if informal logic is go- ing to call itself logiC then it had better be, or be like, formal logic. But it isn't. And if it were, then it would no longer be informal logic. 120 Perry Weddle It's the term, that is to say, which thrusts upon us a dichotomy which if accepted causes underplay of the sub- ject's origins and possibly its best na- ture. The term inclines its hearers to consider the subject not according to what it is or should be but according to what it is not. From a perspective like McPeck's those who knock around in the subject of reasoning and its teach- ing can come to behave like social scientists presented with the model of physics-either manifesting guilt over dissimilarity of subject to model, or urging conformity of subject to model, or considering abandonment of subject all together. That's one direction. Another results from taking "formal" not to mean mathematical logic, necessarily, but from taking "formal" according to the other distinction in which it means "according to logical form." One result of such a reading I encountered recent- lyon my own campus: "Weddle, you say that critical thinking (which my uni- versity now requires) really ought to be informal logic. And yet the syllabi of many instructors teaching the philoso- phy course you think should be approv- ed use throughout what amounts to logical form. Some of the submitted sample exercises look like alphabet soup. That's not informal logic; that's formal logic." The inconsistency charge results from its author having construed a term. Had I not blundered by using it- had I used "reasoning" instead, or 11 argumentation" -then the alley which the term suggested would have been blocked. Even philosophers teaching or being forced to teach courses called informal logic, or called something else but interpreted to mean informal logic, may feel the pull to eschew logical structure. Were they to surrender that would be a shame, for logical structure in teaching reasoning is constantly useful. Every day one can do what Thomas Schwartz has recent- ly suggested - reconstruct arguments as valid (including inductive ones, in- cidentally) and then evaluate the prem- ises.[3) Or take fallacies: most of them display nicely either as invalid forms or as parasites upon valid forms. One can display equivocations as lip-therefore- q's," or as Four Terms, or as broken chains of hypotheticals. Even ignoratio elenchi is sometimes usefully taught as formal-as when a process of elimina- tion plays off of a dilemma presenting fewer disjuncts than dictated by an ap- peal to real interests. This yields a form in which the eliminatees number two or more fewer than those in the true di- lemma. The invalidity then stands out starkly. All sorts of opportunities exist, and by no means confined to the subject of fallacies. Use of logical form, in other words, ought not to be down-played in the teaching of reasoning just because the subject for whatever reasons hap- pens to have come to be called informal logic. In yet a third direction those words can lead, someone also construes "in- formal" to mean "lacking logical form," except that this time the result is the downgrading or elimination of the informal. In his preface to The Art of Logical Reasoning Schwartz comes close to taking such a direction. In- formal approaches, he thinks, trade logical rigor for offhand applicabil- ity. Containing more informality than lo- gic, they provide tools that are wanting in temper and sharpness. We expect well-educated people to construct and criticize pieces of reasoning with an un- common degree of rigor, subtlety and precision-just the qualities that are downgraded by many informal logic texts.(4] In their stead Schwartz provides a rather intriguing, nonsystematic, main- ly class logic, formal in the "logical form" sense of "formal". Although Schwartz complains here about existing informal treatments, about which he could be right, yet out with the same bathwater would go any improved po- tential member of their ilk. As with McPeck, words like "precision" and "rigor" become reserved for the Right Stuff and, accordingly, denied to others. Something, then, had better be said about the imprecision charge. The term /I informal log ic" suggests that formal logic and informal logic are comparable enterprises; whereupon, weighed in the balance, one of them is found wanting. This is puzzling. Is model railroading more precise than railroading? What could that mean? The former boasts interminable hairsplitting disputes over various locomotive drive-wheel configu- rations, the latter boasts batteries of executives, lawyers, computers and ac- countants. On the matter of precision, model railroading and railroading simply aren't helpfully compared: To claim enterprise x more precise than enterprise y, x and y would have to be doing similar things. And it has yet to be established that formal logic and informal logic do or ought to do similar things. In both McPeck and Schwartz "im- precise" seems to refer to methods. What would it mean to say that one method were more precise than an- other? One wants to ask, "Precise at what?" Put to a task to which it is ill- suited any method can look bad. Schwartz speaks of sharp tools. Tools for what? The business end of a cork- screw had better be sharp, the sharper the better; but for the gizmo one uses to pit cherries, the sharper the worse. Until it has been established that form- al and informal logic employ compar- able methods, comparisons with re- spect to precision won't be helpful. Now if the word "informal" can lead to neglect of what could be the subject's best nature, so can the word "logic." Here's McPeck again: ... if something is truly informal (that is has no detachment rules) then it is not logical in the normal sense of the word. The term" log ic," then, neither explai ns the meaning of informal logic nor dis- tinguishes it from rhetoric.[5] For those pursuing what they had imag- ined to be informal logic this presents a Hobson's choice: Either continue but quit calling the enterprise logic, or else get systematic, formally speaking, in which case quit calling the enterprise informal, On Theory 121 In this reasoning I want to check out two main assumptions-that whatever were called informal logic would have to be a branch of logic, and that what- ever is called informal logic could not be a branch of logic. The contention that informal logic must be a branch of logic rests on the unstated general hypothesis that any discipline with a compound name carries with it the bag- gage entailed by the name's constituent words. The hypothesis is questionable, rendering arguments which tap it, which proceed from constituent-term baggage to entire-term baggage, into what many of us teach under the head- ing "Composition." (According to the hypothesis the subjects Home Econo- mics would have to be economics, Canadian Government government or Criminal Justice justice.) Although I'll argue presently that as practitioners of informal logic we are already a branch of logic, why should it matter whether we're a branch of logic? Suppose for po- litical or intellectual reasons we and our descendants were to joi n or to merge with, say, rhetoric departments, to par- ticipate in Rhetoric Association meet- ings and publish in rhetoric journals, all the while retaining the title informal logic. We would have become a branch of rhetoric. Such results mayor may not be desirable, but not because of a constituent term in our subject's title. The second main assumption is that something called informal logic could not be a branch of logic, an assumption which rests on the contention that only systematic formal logic is logic. And though the contention may carry some persuasive force, descriptively it's false. From about the 13th Century to, let's say, World War II, when the ideas of the great mathematical logicians fi- nally became dominant, Aristotle's Organon (plus or minus sundry accre- tions, deletions and alterations) virtual- ly circumscribed the subject of logic. Supposing that one could divide the six diverse treatises collected into the Organon into "formal" and "informal" components-supposing, that is, that one could so divide what until just yes- 122 Perry Weddle terday passed as logic-then by most measures the "informal ll stuff would exceed the "forma!.11 Accordingly, in the Itil recently received sense of "logic,'1 something need not have been formal in order to qualify as logic. In- deed in McPeck/s sense of "Iogicll there would have been no logic until Frege. As direct descendants of the author of the Organon informal logic practitioners bear family resemblances to those who practice formal logic. Or, one could as well saYI those who prac- tice formal logic bear family resem- blances to practitioners of the informal. II IIWhat is the role of theory in inform- al logic?" Although so far rve indicat- ed a few things which the subject need not be, answers to the question await an understanding of what the subject ought to be. Although such an under- standing I have not got, I have inklings. Suppose a hundred astute, highly- educated people a decade or more out of school, people used to dealing with argumentation and evidence in their professions and daily lives. They're each given two voluminous empty files, one marked "GOOD REASONING," the other marked "BAD REASON- I NG." Every day for a year they photo- copy or summarize one example for each file, including a phrase or few sen- tences in comment. Into one file goes material which the subjects admire or would be pleased to have done them- selves; into the other goes what they would avoid and about which they would want to warn others. At the end of a year each person distills his or her file down to ten prime examples. About the distillate let me speculate. On the GOOD side would be such maneuvers as a case built on a perhaps- not-quite-perfect comparison, but one which recasts its subject in an entirely new light. Probably we'd find a well- wrought reductio which turns tables on an influential position. There would be problems solved by the unearthing of needed facts by employment of tech- niques so simple that a child could have thought of them, though until then no person had. Undoubtedly there would be the other sorts of case, too-cases which required less imagination than they did uncommon relentlessness at book-, leg-, or eyework. There would appear a few "copernican-type" solu- tions which by effecting a change of as- pect transform a problematic x into a less- or unproblematic y. In the other files would be found cases inadequately supporting conclu- sions but especially conclusions widely expected to be true. There would be pieces for which the overall descriptors would be words and phrases like "gobbledegook/' "misses the whole point," 1I0verkill/' IItunnel vision," "cheap shot/' "doesn't see that it cuts both ways/' IIPollyanna mentality," IIpure propaganda," "oversimplifies," "naive," "emotional," "coincidence," "begs the real issue,'1 "sloppy," "mountain out of a molehill," "Stran- gelovian," "byzantine," and "exag- gerated." Relative to the descriptors we learned in intro logic (ll valid," "sound," "accident," IIExistential Instantiation," "concomitant varia- tion" and all the rest) the descriptors of the argumentation in the files will be "infected with values." Prominent will be viewpoints, intentions, anger and admiration; concern about a result's good or harm; considerations of rarity; attention to power, personal ity and progress. Now suppose that the findings of my elite Hypothetical Hundred were to re- present a kind of standard of what the evaluation of reasoning really is, a standard toward which we would like our students to strive. The supposition seems not unrealistic. The standard would indicate or remind that the eval- uation of reasoning carries with it an in- tegral moral component. (" Moral" here in the psychological sense-per- taining to human actions and attitudes.) Furthermore, the findings would in- dicate that reasoning's descriptors are integrally pedagogical-conveyors of warnings, lessons and ideals. If real reason i ng processes are supposed to get us from where we are or think we are, to where we want to be or think we want to be, and also to question where we think we are and think we want to be, as well as to question the reliability and efficiency of the routes, then rea- soning, its description and evaluation will necessarily be very human Whereas traditional logic worried less about the point than about rules, what in reasoning we truly admire or fear, trust or scorn, has less to do with rules than with the point. Somewhere in all this I sense a subject lurking. If for his- torical reasons it must be called inform- allogic, well so be it. Has the deck been stacked? I can't see how. Many of the descriptors in the pair of lists could apply equally to a piece of art criticism, to a laboratory de- monstration and to a mathematical proof. Nor has the choice of adjectives "good" and "bad" infected the re- sult, the difference between descrip- tion and evaluation in this context being nebulous if not illusory. For example, there would be no hesitation into which file to throw an invalid proof, or an ex- perimental result built on faked data. (Objectivity and scorn are not incom- patible, nor are objectivity and praise.) Supposing the picture just sketched to express a measure of reality I that humanity and pedagogy are essential to the arts of reasoning and its evaluation, this would by no means entail that those arts would not improve if subject- ed to systematization like what has al- ready improved innumerable subcate- gory of reasoning. The term "informal logic" should not constrain us from go- ing in formal directions if they seem the best ways to go. Possibly a truly mas- sive mobilization of intellect in the ser- vice of formal semantics and pragmat- ics would accomplish something worth- while. Frankly I doubt it, not because I fathom the power of formalizing tools in the hands of our best creative logicians f but because I fancy that I fathom the enormity of the task, the value of rival methods, and especially the abilities of those who desperately need results now. My doubts may be summarized under two themes: that systematization On Theory 123 would encounter such obstacles that it would prove to be more hindrance than help, and that since the drive toward systematization constitutes less a result of investigation than a requirement, we would do well to examine what's behind the requirement. First the alleged obstacles. From our stock in trade consider just one member of a very long list, the matter of partici- pants. Is this (albeit simple-minded) ar- gument any good? Are interior decorators really necessary? Yes, but not for the accepted reasons. Since one cannot set one's own broken leg one relies on a doctor. Without a formidable knowledge of legal intricacies one consults a lawyer. Likewise, unless one is well versed in the home furnishing field the services of an interior decorator are a distinct advantage. Not only analogical strength here-but dlso what the very argument itself is- depends on who is being addressed. Were the addressees ordinary folks thinking about redecorating their living rooms then the argument would be one thing and its analogy weak. (Serious medical trouble and serious tax or criminal trouble typically attend do-it- yourself doctoring or lawyering. But besides a reputation for zany, quirky, cheapie, or tacky taste-by no means a liability-what trouble attends do-it- yourself home decorating?) On the other hand suppose the addressees instead to be up-and-coming business types who do lots of business-related entertaining at home. The argument would become something else again. Its analogical strength would soar with the stakes. And of course one can imagine an indefinite multiplicity of audiences or argument moves for those same words. How could such a multi- plicity be recursively enumerable with- out a lot of intuitive decision-making of the very sort which systematization would like to minimize if not eliminate, the very sort of stuff which, in order to assess the argument informally, one must likewise appreciate and decide on? So what's the advantage of the sys- tematic procedure? 124 Perry Weddle A similar multiplicity attends roles of arguers. A student assigned her Freshman Composition weekly essay, this one on whether to ban handguns, can scarcely be accused of having left gaps in her case because it lacks de- tails from this quarter's FBI Uniform Crime Statistics. Relative to her status, the 1,OOO-word limit, and the week she had, her production is splendid. The piece in last Sunday'S paper, on the other hand, by someone who teaches and writes on criminology for a living would, without those statis- tics, be seriously flawed. At the risk of committing Howard Kahane's fallacy "Small Sample" let me speculate on the enormity of the systematizer's task. The sorts of deci- sions one must make about matters concerning participants, on which I touched on only the tiniest fraction, typify countless others. To evaluate and construct reasoning intelligently one must constantly decide such matters as what and how large the assumptions are; where the burden of proof lies; whether there's an argument there at all; what, and how strong, counterarguments would be; where the case begins and ends; what sort of hedge the conclusion should have when the premises are nonmathematical or vague probabilities; what evaluation standard to use; when it's fair to de- mand more facts; how closely an analogy fits; whether there's a genuine question; whether it's begged; to what extent something in someone's past- such as an economics Ph.D., or a Chappaquiddick-counts for or against. This list with no effort could be dou- bled, and doubled again. However large the systematizer's task be ima- gined, the act of imagination itself seems to suggest further orders of task. If the system were to be better than alternatives it would have to ac- commodate better than they all sorts of human considerations, the sorts of thing admired and scorned, and taken into account, by my Hypothetical Hundred. And supposing a system could be made to evolve. Using it would itself require so much very intuitive decision-making that instead of trying to crank the mechanism up it would be easier and more reliable to forgo the ride and to hoof it. And hoofing it here needn't be second best. Hoofing it has advantages of its own, one of which is that one gets used to hoofing it, hence better at the task. Earlier I spoke loosely about the de- sire for system, an overall theory, being less result than requirement. Whether by "system" one means something Euclidean-like, something Newtonian-like, something Linnaean- like-or merely something a good deal more organized than what we've got at present-it's worth asking why it would be better if informal logic be- came more systematic, more theoretic- al. One assumption seems to be that what marks a viable discipline is an overall theory. And for certain cate- gories of endeavor the assumption about viability and theory is undoubted- ly correct, but not for all. I want to speculate briefly about the sorts of con- sideration which make theory worth having. What would a "theory" look like, a theory not of something which re- sembles what some thinkers may have expected informal logic to be, namely imprecise mathematical logic, but a theory of something which less re- sembles a system of rules that it does a fundamental human activity. Please don't laugh; I suggest the prosaic- the art of driving a car. Suppose that I set about teaching my daughter to drive. Should I go to a "theory of driving?" What would one be? There is something called "De- fensive Driving." Defensive driving is a strategy built on a theme-Think of trouble well before it happens, then avoid it. For psychological reasons that's a good theme I and a good slo- gan. But is it a theory? Fundamentally, "Defensive Driving" summarizes the same hodge-podge of rules-of-thumb which one would have taught without the slogan: Assume the other driver's blind or drunk, Don't tailgate, Don't drink, Don't fully trust your equip- ment, Maintain it conscientiously, Use your mirrors constantly, Carry flares, first-aid kit, ice-scraper .... The slogan /I Defensive Driving" nicely summarizes such countless rules-of- thumb, and by summarizing them per- haps adds to them. Heuristically. But it doesn't add to them theoretically, not as the Un iversal Gas Law, say, adds to Boyle's, Charles' and Gay-Lussac's laws, or as the Kinetic Theory of Gases adds to the Universal Gas Law. In the gas examples theory predominates, but not in the driving example. Defensive driving's flip-side also suggests something about so-called fallacy theory. What would a theory of traffic accidents look like? It would have to be extremely multiple-downright messy-in order to accommodate use- fully the myriad causes of traffic ac- cidents: all sorts of driver error; all sorts of manufacturer and maintenance error; all sorts of weather and road hazards, and so forth. One can see here, too, how very pedagogical a good informal logic "theory" would have to be. The quality of any categorizing of traffic accidents into kinds would be- come measured by its ability to effect prevention -which means explaining to somebody what to do. Now none of this is to say that we would not do well to get more sys- tematic, rigorous and precise-in our discipline's own terms. We could use more accurate and useful accounts of reasoning's fundamentals. We could stand consolidation of the gaggle of classification systems. All sorts of prin- ciples, no doubt, await discovery and refinement. We sorely need a body of literature in common. Now one can call Defensive Driving a theory if one wants. Usage poses no problem, nor even academic usage. At my institution we have "Theory of Motor-Development," "Theories of Personality," "Theory of Dramatic Production," and so on. Suppose something like the driving comparison, dignity aside, not wholly inappropriate. What would it suggest for us? Maybe that a theme does lurk out there around which to summarize On Theory 125 what we do or ought to. Sometimes I catch myself being tempted by some- thing like "Defensive Driving/' some- thing perhaps called /I An Instrumental Model of Reason." Suitably packaged this mouthful could be promoted with the fanfare attending the offering of a beachful of condominiums. What, though, would II An Instru- mental Model of Reason" look like? It would call attention to what we want to achieve (called "conclusions" or maybe "Volitional Realizations"), and to means to them (called "pre- mises"). It would examine the rela- tions between the two and if not pure hype would promote the arts of con- sidering alleged ends as means, to be examined themselves. Fallacies would fall under the model perfectly-to be explored as promIsing but blind alleys on the paths to goals. And since the point of the model would be a re- liable vehicle to truth, epistemic con- siderations would become many fold more prominent than before. The pack- age almost seems promiSing. (Perhaps I'm beginning to believe my own rhetoric.) But reasoning is already purposive, and since by far the bulk of the familiar reasoning techniques enshrined in the language are already means, to speak of an "Instrumental Model" would, like "Defensive Driving," just be a way to package what we know al- ready. And it's of course all been done before. Alexander of Aphrodisias, or whoever it was who promoted six diverse treatises as a "packagell under the title Organon, lithe instrument," beat me to it by a millenium or two. The moral is clear: If you're gonna sell reasoning or real estate, better not try to be first. Notes [1) See the References. [2] John E. McPeck, Critical Thinking and Education, New York: St. Martin's, 1981, p. 68. Slightly altered, the original having a 126 Perry Weddle double subject, "logic and rhetor- ic," which along with plural pro- nouns, etc., I simplified. [3] Thomas Schwartz, The Art of logic- al Reasoning, New York: Random House, 1980, p. 12. [4] Ibid., p. viii. [5] Op. cit., p. 69. References J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. John- son, Informal logic Newsletter, Windsor, Ontario, vol. 1, no. 1, July, 1978. James D. Carney and Richard K. Scheer, Fundamentals of logic, New York: Macmillan, 1980, 3rd edn. Irving M. Copi, Introduction to logic. New York: Macmillan, 1982, 5th edn. Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1967. C. L. Hamblin, Fallacies, London: Methuen, 1970. Ralph H, Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, II A Bibliography of Recent Work in Informal Logic" in Blair and Johnson (eds.), Informal logic: The First International Symposium, Pt. Reyes, CA: Edgepress, 1980, William C. Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of logic, Oxford University Press, 1962. Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, Notre Dame: Uni- versityof Notre Dame Press, 1969, Ralph S. Pomeroy, "Ryle On (And For) Informal Logic," Informal logic Newsletter, vol. v, no. 1 (Dec. 1982), pp.23-25. Gilbert Ryle, "Formal and Informal Logic" in Dilemmas, London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1956. Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argu- ment, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958. Perry Weddle, Argument: A Guide to Critical Thinking, New York: McGraw-Hili, 1978, Perry Weddle, 2511 Q Street, Sacra- mento, CA 95816