There are three loosely different types of chapter in this work. One is concerned with
staking out territory for informal logic as a discipline, surveying what has been done,
and estimating what most needs to be done. The First two chapters, co-authored with J.
Anthony Blair, fit this category neatly, and Chapter Three fits it loosely by spelling out
the teaching concerns of informal logic.
From Chapter One: The Recent Development of Informal Logic:
"…Since 1970 something new has been emerging in logic. To call it a Geist
is overblown, but suggestive. To call it an "outlook" is safe, but not forceful
enough. The development we refer to is characterized by two interrelated features. First,
there has been a turn in the direction of actual (i.e., real-life, ordinary, everyday)
arguments in their native habitat of public discourse and persuasion, together with an
attempt to deal with the problems that occur as a result of that focus. Second, there has
been a growing disenchantment with the capacity of formal logic to provide standards of
good reasoning that illuminate the argumentation of ordinary discourse. The result has
been a number of initiatives to develop methods of identifying, analyzing and evaluating
reasoning, which do not rely primarily on the instruments or nomenclature of formal logic.
True, these initiatives have been sporadic, dispersed, and tentative. Yet they have also
included some decisive forward thrusts. We believe, in short, that informal logic has
begun to come into its own as an area of theoretical inquiry."
The second is concerned with developing the theoretical underpinnings of informal
logic, filling in the territory staked out with reasoned, constructive doctrine, and
relating informal logic to collateral endeavors. Chapters Four through Six focus narrowly
on developing these theoretical underpinnings, and Chapters Twelve through Fifteen relate
informal logic mainly to recent writing on reasoning with some attention also to work on
critical thinking.
From Chapter Five: Argumentation as Dialectical:
"…An argument understood as product—a set of propositions with
certain characteristics —cannot be properly understood except against the background
of the process which produced it—the process of argumentation. The appropriate
analogy is a move in a chess game or a play in a football game, neither of which can be
properly understood out of its context. In Aristotelian dialectic, an interlocutor’s
contribution has to be seen against the background of the question already asked and the
answers already given. In understanding argumentation, this feature points in the
direction of background beliefs shared, or debated, by the community of informed people
for whom the key propositions of the argument arouse interest and attention.…"
The third type of chapter focuses on other writers, and is here again of two sorts.
Either spelling out certain positions in informal logic by contrast with other informal
logicians, as in the chapters on Toulmin and Hamblin, or defending informal logic as an
endeavor against those questioning its advisability or even possibility, as in the
chapters on Massey and McPeck.…
From Chapter Ten:
Massey on Fallacy and Informal Logic: A Reply
"…In my view, formal logic is the study of one important logical
relationship: implication—a relationship which holds (or does not) between statements
(or propositions). The development of systems of strict implication out of the sense of
dissatisfaction with material implication is some evidence of the truth of this claim.
Informal logic, on the other hand, deals with argumentation as it is found in real-life
settings. This means, as we have seen, that the informal logician faces a series of tasks
which have no counterpart in the realm of formal logic. Is there an argument? How can the
argument best be extracted from its context and prepared for evaluation? What standards or
range of them should be applied in the evaluation of the argument once it has been
readied? Is fallacy theory adequate? These and a host of other questions are the sort
which the informal logician must face."
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