Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory : A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments

Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic and discourse analysis, linguistics and forensic science, philosophy and psychology, political science and education, sociology and law, and rhetoric and artificial intelligence. This presents the growing group of interested scholars and students with a problem of access, since it is even for those active in the field not common to have acquired a familiarity with relevant aspects of each discipline that enters into this multidisciplinary matrix. This book offers its readers a unique comprehensive survey of the various theoretical contributions which have been made to the study of argumentation. It discusses the historical works that provide the background to the field and all major approaches and trends in contemporary research. Argument has been the subject of systematic inquiry for twenty-five hundred years. It has been graced with theories, such as formal logic or the legal theory of evidence, that have acquired a more or less settled provenance with regard to specific issues. But there has been nothing to date that qualifies as a unified general theory of argumentation, in all its richness and complexity. This being so, the argumentation theorist must have access to materials and methods that lie beyond his or her "home" subject. It is precisely on this account that this volume is offered to all the constituent research communities and their students. Apart from the historical sections, each chapter provides an economical introduction to the problems and methods that characterize a given part of the contemporary research program. Because the chapters are self-contained, they can be consulted in the order of a reader's interests or research requirements. But there is value in reading the work in its entirety. Jointly authored by the very people whose research has done much to define the current state of argumentation theory and to point the way toward more general and unified future treatments, this book is an impressively authoritative contribution to the field. Cover 1 Title Page 2 Original Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Preface 10 Dedication 14 1 Introduction 16 1 . 1 Argumentation 16 1 . 2 Argumentation and Logic 20 1 .3 The Study of Argumentation 27 2 Analytic, Dialectic, and Rhetoric 44 2 . 1 The Analytical Logic of the Syllogism 48 2.2 The Dialectical Art of Critical Debate 52 2.3 The Rhetorical Art of Civic Discourse 57 2.4 Roman-Hellenistic Rhetoric 60 3 Analysis of Fallacies, Controversy, and Discussion 66 3. 1 The Aristotelian Heritage in the Study of Fallacies 71 3.2 The Standard Treatment of Fallacies and Beyond 77 3.3 Crawshay-Williams' Analysis of Controversy 89 3.4 Naess on Clarifying Discussions 98 4 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric 108 4. 1 The Rhetorical Framework 113 4.2 Points of Departure 117 4.3 A Typology of Argumentation Schemes 120 4.4 Perspectives 134 5 Toulmin's Model of Argumentation 144 5. 1 Field-Invariance and Field-Dependency 150 5.2 Argumentation Form and Validity 154 5.3 Some Applications of the Model 164 5.4 Perspectives 169 6 Informal Logic and Critical Thinking 178 6. 1 The (Re )emergence of Informal Logic 181 6.2 The Main Issues in Informal Logic 189 6.3 Critical Thinking 198 6.4 Perspectives 201 7 Communication and Rhetoric 204 7. 1 From Debate to Argumentation Studies 208 7.2 Social Science Perspectives on Communication 211 7.3 Practical Philosophy and Social and Cultural Critique 218 7.4 Perspectives 225 8 Fallacies and Formal Logic 228 8. 1 Formal Methods in Fallacy Theory 237 8.2 The Woods-Walton Approach 251 8.3 A Dialectical Analysis of Refutation 253 8.4 Perspectives 255 9 Dialogue Logic and Formal Dialectics 261 9.1 Barth's Conception of Logical Validity 264 9.2 The Logical Propaedeutic of the Erlanger School 268 9.3 Barth and Krabbe's Systems of Formal Dialectics 278 9.4 Perspectives 286 1 0 Pragma-Dialectics and Critical Discussion 289 10. 1 A Model for Critical Discussion 295 10.2 Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse 303 10.3 Fallacies in Resolving Disagreement 313 10.4 Perspectives 321 1 1 Language-Oriented Approaches to Argumentation 327 1 1 . 1 Anscombre and Ducrot's Radical Argumentation 330 1 1 .2 Polyphony in Argumentation Discourse 333 1 1 .3 Grize's Natural Logic 337 1 1 .4 Lo Casio's Argumentative Grammar 344 12 Other Significant Developments 355 12.1 Philosophical Approaches 356 12.2 Rhetorical Approaches 360 12.3 Unguistic Approaches 365 12.4 Argumentation in Special Fields 368 Classified Bibliography 372 References 376 Author Index 412 Subject Index 422