Editor's Intro 27.1


Special Issue on Douglas Walton     1

© Informal Logic Vol. 27, No. 1 (2007): pp. 1-4.

Editor’s Introduction

It would be difficult to overstate Douglas Walton’s contributions to the fields of
informal logic and argumentation theory. Walton is certainly its most voluminous
contributor; his work has gained worldwide recognition, and he has become one
of the discipline’s leading ambassadors demonstrating its value for, and forging
new collaborative relationships in, fields such as communication theory, artificial
intelligence, and law.

The Editors of Informal Logic conceived of this Special Issue as an occasion
to open a number of dialogues addressing Walton’s work, and to assemble some
the critical responses that it rightly deserves. We begin this Introduction with a
brief overview of Walton’s work to orient readers who may be less familiar with it,
followed by synopses of the papers appearing in the issue.

Walton’s work in argumentation and informal logic began in the mid-1970s
with a collaboration with John Woods in which they revived the study of informal
fallacies through a series of case studies, which in turn led to a re-examination of
fallacy theory itself. The Woods-Walton approach, as it has come to be known,
has conclusively established that fallaciousness is not merely a matter of an
argument’s form or structure. Patterns of argument standardly identified as fallacious
can be used in non-fallacious ways in everyday argumentation. Consequently the
analysis and evaluation of supposed fallacies is not a straightforward matter of
considering apparent argument type, but also involves considering contextual
features of the argumentation itself, understood as a rational human activity.

From this early collaboration, Walton proceeded to develop a dialogic approach
to the study of everyday argumentation which he eventually christened the “New
Dialectic.” The New Dialectic has several identifiable characteristics, and promises
a variety of new tools for the analysis and evaluation of argument. First, an argument
is conceived as the product of a linguistic interaction between individual arguers,
the basic form of which is that of a dialogue. There are a number of different
dialogue-types (a standard list includes persuasion, inquiry, negotiation, information-
seeking, deliberation, and eristic), each of which is characterized by its initial
situation, the individual goals of the participants, and the goal of the dialogue itself
(understood as a shared goal of its participants). And, the reasoning involved in
everyday argumentation is conceived of as predominately presumptive rather than
deductive or probabilistic. Inherently then, arguments have a dialectical rather than
a monolectical structure, involve defeasible rather than deductive reasoning, and
are used for human rather than abstract purposes. As a result, the standard tools of
logic are unsuitable for the study of everyday argument. In their place, Walton’s
New Dialectic provides a variety of alternative tools for the analysis and evaluation
of argument. To accommodate the dialogic nature of argument, argument norms
are broadly conceived as specifying moves in a dialogue that are either permissible
or impermissible. Further, different moves are permissible, depending on the type



2     Editor’s Introduction

of dialogue one is engaged in; so the goal of the dialogue contributes to the
determination of argument norms. To accommodate the presumptive nature of
everyday argument, Walton sought to identify a number of schematic-types of
argument representing commonplace patterns of defeasible reasoning.
Accompanying each scheme is a set of critical questions which may be employed
by an interlocutor in the evaluation of arguments of the relevant type. Finally, the
standard of acceptability is not understood as establishing conclusive proof, but is
rather explained as establishing a presumption in favor of a conclusion by discharging
a burden of proof that is itself determined relative to the context and purposes of
the argumentative activity.

With these tools in hand, Walton has sought to provide dialectically-based
answers to many of the typical issues of argument analysis and evaluation. For
example, the structure of arguments is explained dialogically, where disputing parties
jointly interact to shape the course of argumentation. The goodness of arguments
is judged dialectically according to whether the reasons offered meet standards
appropriate to the type of dialogue and its situational context, and by how well
those reasons stand up to the objections offered by a dialogic interlocutor. Relevance
too is explained dialogically according to whether a premise can occur as one of a
series of arguments which can be “chained forward” to the ultimate conclusion at
issue. Finally, fallacies are explained as illicit shifts from one type of dialogue to
another that result in a derailing of the initial dialogue.

All the while, Walton has continued his investigations into the informal fallacies
and specific patters of defeasible argument, providing book-length studies of many
supposedly fallacious argument types (e.g., begging the question (1991), slippery
slope arguments (1992), arguments from ignorance (1996), appeal to pity (1997),
appeal to popular opinion (1999), and appeal to fear (2000)) as well as many
common types of reasoning used in argument (e.g., practical reasoning (1990),
plausible arguments (1992), appeal to expert opinion (1997), and abductive
arguments (2004)).

Most recently, Walton has reached outside of the community of informal logicians
and argumentation theorists to show how recent work in these fields can make
substantial contributions in such practical and applied disciplines as legal reasoning
and argument, as well as in such formal and abstract disciplines as artificial
intelligence. At the same time, Walton’s collaborative partnerships with some of
the most established and prominent researchers in these fields have brought a
wealth of new expertise and theoretical resources to the study of argumentation.

In this issue, we revisit some of the most traditional and pressing topics of
informal logic including the structure of arguments, Aristotle’s theory of the dialectic,
the nature of practical reasoning, functional approaches to the study of argument,
and the theory of fallacies.

In the first paper of the collection, Geoff Goddu critiques the account of linked
and convergent arguments Walton provides in Argument Structure: A Pragmatic
Theory (1996). Goddu expands on his previous work arguing that a theoretically



Special Issue on Douglas Walton     3

sound account of the linked/convergent distinction is not forthcoming and that
even if it were it would not be useful in evaluating arguments. Here Goddu begins
by rejecting the idea that the linked/convergent distinction plays a role in argument
identification. He proceeds to consider Walton’s proto-theory for distinguishing
linked and convergent arguments, which draws on four factors: structural, textual,
and contextual evidence, and the degree of support test understood from the
perspective of a critic trying to determine which premises need to be refuted.
While conceding that the first three factors are relevant, Goddu argues that they
are not sufficient to determine argument structure and that the test Walton proposes
as the final factor fails like its predecessors. In place of these tests, Goddu proposes
a ten-step process for identifying and evaluating arguments which does not rely on
the linked/convergent distinction.

From considerations about the micro-structure of individual arguments, the
second paper addresses their macro-structure as types of dialogue. In their paper
“About old and new dialectic” Erik Krabbe and Jan Albert van Laar compare and
contrast Walton’s New Dialectic with an Old Dialectic distilled from Aristotle’s
Topics and Sophistical Refutations. Working from Aristotle’s four domains of
argument (Didactic, Dialectical, Examination and Contentious) Krabbe and van
Laar extrapolate four dialogue types which they map onto those of Walton’s New
Dialectic. They then compare the Old Dialectic with the New in terms of their
respective explanations of fallacy, and their account of strategy. They conclude
that, while there are no strong parallels, some features of the Old Dialectic do
anticipate recent developments. For example, they note that while Aristotle’s
sophistical refutations do not translate well as illicit dialogue shifts, some instances
of eristic arguing do anticipate Walton’s account. Along the way, Krabbe and van
Laar also observe a normative/empirical ambiguity inherent in Walton’s dialogue
types, a point that informs the criticisms of van Eemeren and Houtlosser in the
next paper.

The following three papers raise challenges to some of the central tenets in
Walton’s New Dialectic: that dialogue-type plays an important role in determining
fallaciousness, that argumentation is an activity with a purpose independent of
those of its participants, and that practical reasoning has a presumptive inferential
structure.

Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser’s paper “The contextuality of fallacies”
contrasts Walton’s view of fallacies as illicit dialectical shifts to that provided by
the Pragma-Dialectical approach. According to van Eemeren and Houtlosser,
because the types of dialogue identified in the New Dialectic are ambiguous between
normative structures representing argumentative ideals and empirical activity-types,
whether the goal of some original dialogue has been subverted through a dialectical
shift is insufficient to determine whether the shift-causing move is actually fallacious.
By contrast, they claim, the Pragma-Dialectical model offers the normative ideal
of the critical discussion, allowing fallacies to be dialectically defined as any move
that violates one of the rules of the critical discussion.



4     Editor’s Introduction

A central tenet of Walton’s New Dialectic is that there are categorically different
types of argumentative dialogues which can be defined, at least partly, according
to their different purposes. Jean Goodwin, in “Argument has no function,” challenges
the very idea that the activity of argumentation (or the various activity-types which
make it up) have purposes that can be specified in general and a priori, and from
which normative consequences emerge. Instead, Goodwin argues that arguers
have purposes, but that arguments have no purposes separate from these. Further,
she maintains that even if arguments could be said to have functions, these could
not provide the source or foundation for any single set of evaluative norms. Instead
of a functionalist approach to argument, Goodwin encourages us to a design
approach whereby both the context of argument and argumentative norms are
meted out during the argumentative process itself through the speech acts of
individual arguers acting to achieve their goals.

In “Is practical reasoning presumptive?” Christian Kock challenges two elements
he takes to be central in Walton’s account of practical reasoning. First, Kock
rejects the idea that practical reasoning is about ought-propositions, arguing instead
that it is properly understood to be about actions or action-proposals. Furthermore,
Kock rejects the account of practical reasoning as inferential where the presumptive
acceptability of a claim is a bivalent property of it, and where challenge and evaluation
occurs through raising critical questions. In place of this Kock offers an alternative
account whereby acceptability and argument strength is a matter of degree, and
the weight of reasons supporting a proposal must be weighed not only against
reasons supporting competing proposals, but in relation to the goals of the actor as
well.

In the last paper, Walton’s original collaborator John Woods returns to the
topic of the fallacies with a case study. Woods’s paper “Lightening up on the ad
hominem” raises new challenges to standard assumptions about the operation and
fallaciousness of the ad hominem, and seeks to reveal its real argumentative function.
From Woods’s perspective, the most striking feature of the ad hominem is that it
does not occasion the abandonment of the argumentative process as one might
expect, but is rather a move made in an effort to continue dialogue as an attempt to
solicit reassurance from the very party whose character is impugned. As a result,
frequently the real argumentative function of the ad hominem is to articulate doubts
about an interlocutor’s bona fides, thereby signaling to an interlocutor the withdrawal
of dialectical presumptions concerning her sincerity or competence, and giving
her notice that she must now meet a higher standard of acceptability in order for
the discussion to proceed. Woods contends that in viewing the ad hominem in this
way theorists should not count it as a fallacy either on a logical model, as a failure
of reasoning, or on a dialectical model, as a derailing of an argumentative dialogue.

We close the volume with a bibliography of Walton’s published works (1971–
2007) that is provided, with thanks to Professor Walton, as a resource for interested
researchers and as an indication of his prolific contributions to informal logic and
argumentation theory.

    David M. Godden