Informal logic - Misplaced Pages

(Redirected from Informal Logic) Branch of logic For the journal, see Informal Logic (journal).

Informal logic encompasses the principles of logic and logical thought outside of a formal setting (characterized by the usage of particular statements). However, the precise definition of "informal logic" is a matter of some dispute. Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation." This definition reflects what had been implicit in their practice and what others were doing in their informal logic texts.

Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, the thinking skills movement and the interdisciplinary inquiry known as argumentation theory. Frans H. van Eemeren writes that the label "informal logic" covers a "collection of normative approaches to the study of reasoning in ordinary language that remain closer to the practice of argumentation than formal logic."

History

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Informal logic as a distinguished enterprise under this name emerged roughly in the late 1970s as a sub-field of philosophy. The naming of the field was preceded by the appearance of a number of textbooks that rejected the symbolic approach to logic on pedagogical grounds as inappropriate and unhelpful for introductory textbooks on logic for a general audience, for example Howard Kahane's Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, subtitled "The Use of Reason in Everyday Life", first published in 1971. Kahane's textbook was described on the notice of his death in the Proceedings And Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (2002) as "a text in informal logic, was intended to enable students to cope with the misleading rhetoric one frequently finds in the media and in political discourse. It was organized around a discussion of fallacies, and was meant to be a practical instrument for dealing with the problems of everyday life. ... gone through many editions; ... still in print; and the thousands upon thousands of students who have taken courses in which his text ... used can thank Howard for contributing to their ability to dissect arguments and avoid the deceptions of deceitful rhetoric. He tried to put into practice the ideal of discourse that aims at truth rather than merely at persuasion. (Hausman et al. 2002)" Other textbooks from the era taking this approach were Michael Scriven's Reasoning (Edgepress, 1976) and Logical Self-Defense by Ralph Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, first published in 1977. Earlier precursors in this tradition can be considered Monroe Beardsley's Practical Logic (1950) and Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of Argument (1958).

The field perhaps became recognized under its current name with the First International Symposium on Informal Logic held in 1978. Although initially motivated by a new pedagogical approach to undergraduate logic textbooks, the scope of the field was basically defined by a list of 13 problems and issues which Blair and Johnson included as an appendix to their keynote address at this symposium:

the theory of logical criticism
the theory of argument
the theory of fallacy
the fallacy approach vs. the critical thinking approach
the viability of the inductive/deductive dichotomy
the ethics of argumentation and logical criticism
the problem of assumptions and missing premises
the problem of context
methods of extracting arguments from context
methods of displaying arguments
the problem of pedagogy
the nature, division and scope of informal logic
the relationship of informal logic to other inquiries

David Hitchcock argues that the naming of the field was unfortunate, and that philosophy of argument would have been more appropriate. He argues that more undergraduate students in North America study informal logic than any other branch of philosophy, but that as of 2003 informal logic (or philosophy of argument) was not recognized as separate sub-field by the World Congress of Philosophy. Frans H. van Eemeren wrote that "informal logic" is mainly an approach to argumentation advanced by a group of US and Canadian philosophers and largely based on the previous works of Stephen Toulmin and to a lesser extent those of Chaïm Perelman.

Alongside the symposia, since 1983 the journal Informal Logic has been the publication of record of the field, with Blair and Johnson as initial editors, with the editorial board now including two other colleagues from the University of Windsor—Christopher Tindale and Hans V. Hansen. Other journals that regularly publish articles on informal logic include Argumentation (founded in 1986), Philosophy and Rhetoric, Argumentation and Advocacy (the journal of the American Forensic Association), and Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines (founded in 1988).

Proposed definitions

Johnson and Blair (2000) proposed the following definition: "Informal logic designates that branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, critique and construction of argumentation in everyday discourse." Their meaning of non-formal is taken from Barth and Krabbe (1982), which is explained below.

To understand the definition above, one must understand informal which takes its meaning in contrast to its counterpart formal. (This point was not made for a very long time, hence the nature of informal logic remained opaque, even to those involved in it, for a period of time.) Here it is helpful to have recourse to Barth and Krabbe (1982:14f) where they distinguish three senses of the term form. By form, Barth and Krabbe mean the sense of the term which derives from the Platonic idea of form—the ultimate metaphysical unit. Barth and Krabbe claim that most traditional logic is formal in this sense. That is, syllogistic logic is a logic of terms where the terms could naturally be understood as place-holders for Platonic (or Aristotelian) forms. In this first sense of form, almost all logic is informal (not-formal). Understanding informal logic this way would be much too broad to be useful.

By form, Barth and Krabbe mean the form of sentences and statements as these are understood in modern systems of logic. Here validity is the focus: if the premises are true, the conclusion must then also be true. Now validity has to do with the logical form of the statement that makes up the argument. In this sense of formal, most modern and contemporary logic is formal. That is, such logics canonize the notion of logical form, and the notion of validity plays the central normative role. In this second sense of form, informal logic is not-formal, because it abandons the notion of logical form as the key to understanding the structure of arguments, and likewise retires validity as normative for the purposes of the evaluation of argument. It seems to many that validity is too stringent a requirement, that there are good arguments in which the conclusion is supported by the premises even though it does not follow necessarily from them (as validity requires). An argument in which the conclusion is thought to be "beyond reasonable doubt, given the premises" is sufficient in law to cause a person to be sentenced to death, even though it does not meet the standard of logical validity. This type of argument, based on accumulation of evidence rather than pure deduction, is called a conductive argument.

By form, Barth and Krabbe mean to refer to "procedures which are somehow regulated or regimented, which take place according to some set of rules." Barth and Krabbe say that "we do not defend formality of all kinds and under all circumstances." Rather "we defend the thesis that verbal dialectics must have a certain form (i.e., must proceed according to certain rules) in order that one can speak of the discussion as being won or lost" (19). In this third sense of form, informal logic can be formal, for there is nothing in the informal logic enterprise that stands opposed to the idea that argumentative discourse should be subject to norms, i.e., subject to rules, criteria, standards or procedures. Informal logic does present standards for the evaluation of argument, procedures for detecting missing premises etc.

Johnson and Blair (2000) noticed a limitation of their own definition, particularly with respect to "everyday discourse", which could indicate that it does not seek to understand specialized, domain-specific arguments made in natural languages. Consequently, they have argued that the crucial divide is between arguments made in formal languages and those made in natural languages.

Fisher and Scriven (1997) proposed a more encompassing definition, seeing informal logic as "the discipline which studies the practice of critical thinking and provides its intellectual spine". By "critical thinking" they understand "skilled and active interpretation and evaluation of observations and communications, information and argumentation."

Criticisms

Some hold the view that informal logic is not a branch or subdiscipline of logic, or even the view that there cannot be such a thing as informal logic. Massey criticizes informal logic on the grounds that it has no theory underpinning it. Informal logic, he says, requires detailed classification schemes to organize it, which in other disciplines is provided by the underlying theory. He maintains that there is no method of establishing the invalidity of an argument aside from the formal method, and that the study of fallacies may be of more interest to other disciplines, like psychology, than to philosophy and logic.

Relation to critical thinking

Relation to argumentation theory

Footnotes

See Johnson 1999 for a survey of definitions.
Johnson, Ralph H., and Blair, J. Anthony (1987), "The Current State of Informal Logic", Informal Logic, 9(2–3), 147–151. Johnson & Blair added "... in everyday discourse" but in (2000), modified their definition, and broadened the focus now to include the sorts of argument that occurs not just in everyday discourse but also disciplined inquiry—what Weinstein (1990) calls "stylized discourse."
Resnick, 1989
^ Frans H. van Eemeren (2009). "The Study of Argumentation". In Andrea A. Lunsford; Kirt H. Wilson; Rosa A. Eberly (eds.). The SAGE handbook of rhetorical studies. SAGE. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-4129-0950-1.
^ David Hitchcock, Informal logic 25 years later in Informal Logic at 25: Proceedings of the Windsor Conference (OSSA 2003)
Hausman, Alan; Landesman, Charles; Seamon, Roger (2002). "Howard Kahane, 1928-2001". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 75 (5): 191–193. JSTOR 3218569.
Fisher (2004) p. vii
J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson (eds.), Informal Logic: The First International Symposium, 3-28. Pt. Reyes, CA: Edgepress
"Editorial Team | Informal Logic".
Johnson and Blair (2000), p. 100
As Johnson (1999) does.
Johnson and Blair (2000), p. 95
^ Massey, 1981
Woods, 1980
Woods, 2000
Johnson (2000) takes the conflation to be part of the Network Problem and holds that settling the issue will require a theory of reasoning.
^ Johnson, 1992
Ennis, 1987
Johnson, 1999
Wenzel (1990)

References

Barth, E. M., & Krabbe, E. C. W. (Eds.). (1982). From axiom to dialogue: A philosophical study of logics and argumentation. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.
Blair, J. A & Johnson, R.H. (1980). The recent development of informal logic. In J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson (Eds.). Informal logic: The first international symposium, (pp. 3–28). Inverness, CA: Edgepress.
Ennis, R.H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J.B. Baron and R.J. Sternberg (Eds.), Teaching critical thinking skills: Theory and practice, (pp. 9–26). New York: Freeman.
Eemeren, F. H. van, & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, communication and fallacies. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fisher, A. and Scriven, M. (1997). Critical thinking: Its definition and assessment. Point Reyes, CA: Edgepress
Fisher, Alec (2004). The logic of real arguments (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-65481-4.
Govier, T. (1987). Problems in argument analysis and evaluation. Dordrecht: Foris.
Govier, T. (1999). The Philosophy of Argument. Newport News, VA: Vale Press.
Hitchcock, David (2007). "Informal logic and the concept of argument". In Jacquette, Dale (ed.). Philosophy of logic. Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-51541-4. preprint
Johnson, R. H. (1992). The problem of defining critical thinking. In S. P. Norris (Ed.), The generalizability of critical thinking (pp. 38–53). New York: Teachers College Press. (Reprinted in Johnson (1996).)
Johnson, R. H. (1996). The rise of informal logic. Newport News, VA: Vale Press
Johnson, R. H. (1999). The relation between formal and informal logic. Argumentation, 13(3) 265–74.
Johnson, R. H. (2000). Manifest rationality: A pragmatic theory of argument. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1987). The current state of informal logic. Informal Logic 9, 147–51.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1996). Informal logic and critical thinking. In F. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, & F. Snoeck Henkemans (Eds.), Fundamentals of argumentation theory (pp. 383–86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (2002). Informal logic and the reconfiguration of logic. In D. Gabbay, R. H. Johnson, H.-J. Ohlbach and J. Woods (Eds.). Handbook of the logic of argument and inference: The turn towards the practical (pp. 339–396). Elsivier: North Holland.
MacFarlane, J. (2005). Logical Constants. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Massey, G. (1981). The fallacy behind fallacies. Midwest Studies of Philosophy, 6, 489–500.
Munson, R. (1976). The way of words: an informal logic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Resnick, L. (1987). Education and learning to think. Washington, DC: National Academy Press..
Walton, D. N. (1990). What is reasoning? What is an argument? The Journal of Philosophy, 87, 399–419.
Weinstein, M. (1990) Towards a research agenda for informal logic and critical thinking. Informal Logic, 12, 121–143.
Wenzel, J. 1990 Three perspectives on argumentation. In R Trapp and J Scheutz, (Eds.), Perspectives on argumentation: Essays in honour of Wayne Brockreide, 9-26 Waveland Press: Prospect Heights, IL
Woods, J. (1980). What is informal logic? In J.A. Blair & R. H. Johnson (Eds.), Informal Logic: The First International Symposium (pp. 57–68). Point Reyes, CA: Edgepress.

Special journal issue

The open access issue 20(2) of Informal Logic from year 2000 groups a number of papers addressing foundational issues, based on the Panel on Informal Logic that was held at the 1998 World Congress of Philosophy, including:

Hitchcock, D. (2000) The significance of informal logic for philosophy. Informal Logic 20(2), 129–138.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (2000). Informal logic: An overview. Informal Logic 20(2): 93–99.
Woods, J. (2000). How Philosophical is Informal Logic? Informal Logic 20(2): 139–167. 2000

Textbooks

Kahane, H. (1971). Logic and contemporary rhetoric: The use of reasoning in everyday life. Belmont: Wadsworth. Still in print as Nancy Cavender; Howard Kahane (2009). Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life (11th ed.). Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-80411-6.
Scriven, Michael (1976). Reasoning. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-055882-3.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1977). Logical self-defense. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson. US Edition. (2006). New York: Idebate Press.
Fogelin, R.J. (1978). Understanding arguments: An introduction to informal logic. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Still in print as Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Fogelin, Robert (2010), Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (8th ed.), Belmont, California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, ISBN 978-0-495-60395-5
Stephen N. Thomas (1997). Practical reasoning in natural language (4th ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-678269-8.
Irving M. Copi; Keith Burgess-Jackson (1996). Informal logic (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-229048-7.
Woods, John; Irvine, Andrew; Walton, Douglas N. (2004). Argument: Critical Thinking, Logic and the Fallacies. Toronto: Pearson/Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-039938-0.
Groarke, Leo (2004). Good reasoning matters! : a constructive approach to critical thinking (3rd ed.). Toronto: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-541904-7.
Douglas N. Walton (2008). Informal logic: a pragmatic approach (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-71380-1.
Trudy Govier (2009). A Practical Study of Argument (7th ed.). Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-60340-5.

External links

Groarke, Leo. "Informal Logic". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
An Outline for Verbal Logic

v t e Philosophical logic
Critical thinking and informal logic	Analysis Ambiguity Argument Belief Bias Credibility Dialectic Antithesis, Socratic method, Unity of opposites Evidence Explanation Explanatory power Fact Fallacy List of fallacies Hypothesis Inquiry Opinion Parsimony (Occam's razor) Premise Propaganda Prudence Reasoning Relevance Rhetoric Rigor Theory Vagueness
Theories of deduction	Constructivism Dialetheism Fictionalism Finitism Formalism Intuitionism Logical atomism Logicism Nominalism Platonic realism Pragmatism Realism

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