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Informal Logic 
and General 
Education 
David N. Mowry 
SUNYat Plattsburgh 

The wide-spread debate over the meaning, 
nature and significance of General Education 
is being translated into programmatic revi-
sions at many colleges and universities. The 
debate and the programmatic revisions which 
are flowing from it provide an ideal oppor-
tunity for those interested in informal 
logic. In the following discussion, I will 
describe the relation of some of the issues 
surrounding general education to informal 
logic and also ways in ~hich informal logic 
can be incorporated into the general educa-
tion curriculum. ~uch of what I say will de-
pend on the experiences I have had with the 
more than four-year debate over the revision 
of general education at S.U.N.Y. College at 
Plattsburgh. Each college and university is 
unique in many ways, of course. But the 
experience here involved issues and decisions 
which have, I think, fairly wide application. 

One of the central issues which any attempt 
to define a general education curriculum must 
meet is whether it is possible, in the late 
seventies and early eighties, to achieve 
agreement on the content of a curriculum to 
be applied to all students. A variety of 
levels of debate are distinguishable here. 
Iii th respect to a particular discipline or 
subject matter, it may be possible to win 
agreement that all students should know some-
thing about X. It does not follow from th1s, 
however, that faculty will agree that a stu-
dent ought to take a course in X. Or if it 
is agreed that students ought to take a 
course in X, it may not be agreed that stu-
dents should be required to take a course in 
X. Because of the d1sagreement at these dif-
ferent levels of debate, it proved hopeless, 
at least at this college, to design a program 
around specific required courses. 

On most campuses there is a natural compe-
tition for student time between the student's 
major and the broader demands of general edu-
cation. The revision of general education in 
such a way as to heighten this competition 
is, again in our experience, a sure way to 

9 

defeat such reV1S1on. However, if general 
education is approached in such a way as to 
complement the various major programs, then 
this hurdle can be overcome. In fact, it 
might be argued that if general education is 
valid, then it must do this; otherwise, the 
admittedly vague notion that general educa-
tion teaches what is applicable (or impor-
tant) regardless of major (that is, for all) 
becomes a hollow sentiment that will persuade 
no one. 

Finally, it is frequently argued that be-
cause the goals of general education are 
frequently vague it is nearly impossible to 
tell whether a curriculum and individual 
courses within that curriculum are achieving 
what they intend. By contrast it is much 
easier to determine whether courses in the 
student's major discipline are successful 
(which is not to say that such determination 
is always made!). There was strong pressure 
on our campus, then, to identify an instru-
ment of evaluation for each course proposed 
for general education. 

The program which emerged as our solution 
to these, and of course many other issues, is 
a program which provided central opportuni-
ties for informal logic. Ignoring peculiar-
ities of the program which are unique to our 
campus it can be described as follows: The 
total program is divided into three compo-
nents. A) The Learning Skills Component, 
B) The Distributive Component, C) The Inte-
grative Component. Students are required to 
take four courses in (A), five in (B), and 
three in (C). Informal logic has direct 
application to (A) and (C). 

The Learning Skills Component requires a 
course in the areas of Writing Skills, Com-
munication Skills, Analytic Skills and a one-
credit course in Library Skills. A variety 
of departments teach courses which are ac-
cepted as fulfilling the requirement in each 
of these areas. In particular, a new course 
in informal logic was designed for the Anal-
ytic Skills area. Cather courses also satis-
fying this requirement include a number of 
mathematics courses, statistics courses, 
computer science courses, etc.) An attempt 
was made to tailor this informal logic course 
to the strong programs on this campus, for 
example, business, the sciences, and the arts. 
A number of the new texts include sections 
on the application of informal logic to just 
such areas as these (e.g. Toulmin, et al.; 
Fogelinl. Thus it was fairly easy to per-
suade faculty teaching in these areas that 
such a course would be of use to students 
majoring in such programs and in fact would 
supplement their major program. Thus, while 
providing a clear place for informal logic, 
the program does not resuire that all stu-
dents take a course in 1nformal logic and in 
this way the first difficulty mentioned above 
is overcome. Additionally, by designing the 
course in such a way that it complements a 
variety of popular programs, the issue of 
competition between general education and 
the major disciplines was addressed. 

The need for evaluation of the course was 
met by adopting a nationally standardized 
test of reasoning skills which while not 
matching our particular course exactly, 
nevertheless does identify a number of spec-



ific skills associated with informal logic. 
':'!1e test 'Ne are employing is the ivatson-
Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal.! It is 
being given in one version as a 'pre-test' 
at the beginning of the course and as a 
'~ost-test' at the end. The difference in 
student performance on these two versio~s 
will provide some measure of the effect~ve­
ness of the course in meeting its goals. (We 
are planning to establish a control group ~f 
students who will take the test, but who w~ll 
not be taking the course, as a way of making 
this a more accurate measure.) The data 
collected should be very helpful in per-
suading our more empirically minded col-
leagues of the effectiveness of this informal 
logic course. Additionally, it will provide 
valuable information to both the instructors 
and students. 

Informal logic will also have application 
in the Integrative Component of our new gen-
eral education program. In terms of t~e un-
derstanding of 'integration' oere (obv~ously 
there are many complex issues'in this approach 
to learning and education) our program in~er­
prets the concept as a process concept go~ng 
well beyond the idea of mere 'relatedness' 
which sometimes characterize attempts at in-
tegrative learning. In order to underscore 
this distinction, the program directs faculty 
who wish to teach courses in this component 
to specify the 'mechanism' of integration to 
be employed. The philosophy faculty believe 
that informal logic can serve admirably as 
just such a mechanism and that it can be 
employed for that purpose in a very wide 
variety of academic contexts. To give but 
one example: A program now being prepared 
for this component by Dr. Charles Krecz of 
our department, will be concerned with reli-
gion. It will involve a course in 7ach of: 
the philosophy of religion, the soc~ology of 
religion and an anthropology course in pri~­
itive religion, as well as an informal log~c 
course which will concentrate on methodology, 
structure of exposition, analysis of types of 
reasoning, etc. of each ~articular disci-
~line's aporoach to the study of religion as 
~ell as analysis of reasoning in religion 
drawing from-the data provided;oy the materi-
al in the other courses. 

'Jther a.reas i:1 p .. ;hich in:o~al l~gi= ::an 
serve as the mecha:1.isr:! of integration ::light 
i:1cl'...lde "technology and .,al'...les, '. "t!1e a=ts 
and er:~.r:'=onment" and so :>:1. !n :act ,:::e pos-
sibilities are about as great as t!1e imagina-
tion and interest of facultv and st'...ldents. 
Of course such an approach ~as the further 
advantage for those interested i:1 informal 
logic of exposing them to a variety of dif-
ferent areas where the special characteris-
tics of reasoning in those areas can be 
analyzed. Such contact should help maintain 
vigor and 'freshness' in informal logic. 

Obvio'...lsly many campuses will not be able to 
move in the precise directions we have. How-
ever, I hope I have illustrated the fruitful-
ness of looking for ways in which interest in 
informal logic can be pursued in the context 
of the debate on general education. 

10 

critical 
• reviews 

CHALLENGE 
& RESPONSE 
Carl Wellman 
Trudy Govier 
Trent University 

This book was oublished in 1971. It has not 
received very mu~h attention from philosophers, 
possibly bec;use Rawls' Theory of Justice, 
published almost at the same time, preoccupied 
;nany of those interested in moral philosophy. 
Challenge and Response deserves more attention 
':...~an it nas rece~ ved, I think, and it certain-
ly merits careful study by those interested i~ 
informal loaic. ~ellman sets OUt to answer 
the meta-ethical auestion 'how can moral judg-
ments be justified?', but before approaching 
that question, raises the prior one: 'what is 
justification?' The first nalf of ~is book is 
devoted to answering this general question, 
and, as such, contains much which is relevant 
to theorists of argument. 

After some one hundred and thirty pages of 
close argument, Wellmann arrives at his view 
of what justification amounts to: 

In my view justification is to be 
understood essentially as a process 
of responding to challenges made. It 
may be observed and described as a 
psychological struggle in which one 
person tries to force another to back 
down, or one person struggles to come 
to terms with his own doubts and con-
flicting convictions. But it is more 
than a psychological struggle because 
at its core are certain critical claims 
to trut!1, validity, to be upsetting, 
to be reassuring, and to be adequate. 
Therefore the actual outcome of any 
particular psychological struggle 
never settles once and for all the 
issues being fought over in the process 
of justification. It is this peculiar 
ambivalence of justification that 
enables what we actually do in discussion 
and thinking to serve as a test of 
critical ideals like truth, validity, 
and being justified. (pages 132-3) 

~uch justification (though not all, in Well-
man's view) proceeds by argument. Wellman has 
some novel and interesting things to say about 
arguments and arguing, and it is to these that 
I'll devote most of my attention here. He 
maintains that there are legitimate arguments 
which are neither inductive nor deductive (he 

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