Douglas Walton

(? - 2020)

This article analyses the fallacy of wrenching from context, using the dialectical notions of commitment and implicature as tools. The data, a set of key examples, is used to sharpen the conceptual borderlines around the related fallacies of straw man, accent, misquotation, and neglect of qualifications. According to the analysis, the main characteristics of wrenching from context are the manipulation of the meaning of the other’s statement through devices such as the use of misquotations, selective quotations, and quoting out of context. The theoretical tools employed in the analysis are pragmatic theories of meaning and a dialectical model of commitment, used to explain how and why a standpoint is distorted. The analysis is based on a conception of fallacies as deceptive strategic moves in a game of dialogue. As a consequence, our focus is not only on misquotations as distortions of meaning, but on how they are used as dialectical tools to attack an opponent or win a dispute. Wrenching from context is described as a fallacy of unfairly attributing a commitment to another party that he never held. Its power as a deceptive argumentation tactic is based on complex mechanisms of implicit commitments and on their misemployment to improperly suggest an attribution of commitment

Arguments from popular opinion have long been regarded with suspicion, and in most logic textbooks the _ad populum _argument is classified as a fallacy. Douglas Walton now asks whether this negative evaluation is always justified, particularly in a democratic system where decisions are based on majority opinion. In this insightful book, Walton maintains that there is a genuine type of argumentation based on commonly accepted opinions and presumptions that should represent a standard of rational decision-making on important issues, especially those of a personal and political nature. He shows how to judge arguments based on appeals to popular opinion in a more balanced way, identifying eleven subtypes of the _ad populum_ argument and providing a pragmatic method to evaluate each of these types. Walton has examined dozens of logic texts and drawn on a wide range of literature to reveal the many uses and misuses of popular opinion. He contrasts the traditional discussion of _ad populum _in Greek rhetoric with recent textbook treatment, then contrasts these contemporary views with his own dialectical perspective in order to clarify often confused appeals to prejudice and appeals to common knowledge. Although appeal to popular opinion has long been a powerful argumentative tactic, this is the first book to systematically describe and evaluate it as a well-defined type of argument with its own special characteristics. It enables us to deal with these often deceptive arguments in a critically balanced way and makes an original contribution to an important strand of rhetoric

In some recent cases in Anglo-American law juries ruled contrary to an expert's testimony even though that testimony was never challenged, contradicted or questioned in the trial. These cases are shown to raise some theoretical questions about formal dialogue systems in computational dialectical systems for legal argumentation of the kind recently surveyed by Bench-Capon (1997) and Hage (2000) in this journal. In such systems, there is a burden of proof, meaning that if the respondent questions an argument, the proponent is obliged to offer some support for it give it up. But what should happen in a formal system of dialogue if the proponent puts forward an argument and the respondent fails to critically question it, and simply moves on to another issue? Is this some kind of fault that should have implications? Should it be taken to imply that, by default, the respondent has conceded the argument? What, if anything, should be the outcome of such a failure to question in a formal dialogue system of argumentation? These questions are considered by examining some legal cases of expert opinion testimony in relation rules for formal dialectical argumentation systems.

Using tools like argument diagrams and profiles of dialogue, this paper studies a number of examples of everyday conversational argumentation where determination of relevance and irrelevance can be assisted by means of adopting a new dialectical approach. According to the new dialectical theory, dialogue types are normative frameworks with specific goals and rules that can be applied to conversational argumentation. In this paper is shown how such dialectical models of reasonable argumentation can be applied to a determination of whether an argument in a specific case is relevant are not in these examples. The approach is based on a linguistic account of dialogue and text from congruity theory, and on the notion of a dialectical shift. Such a shift occurs where an argument starts out as fitting into one type of dialogue, but then it only continues to makes sense as a coherent argument if it is taken to be a part of a different type of dialogue

Although fallacies have been common since Aristotle, until recently little attention has been devoted to identifying and defining them. Furthermore, the concept of fallacy itself has lacked a sufficiently clear meaning to make it a useful tool for evaluating arguments. Douglas Walton takes a new analytical look at the concept of fallacy and presents an up-to-date analysis of its usefulness for argumentation studies. Walton uses case studies illustrating familiar arguments and tricky deceptions in everyday conversation where the charge of fallaciousness is at issue. The numerous case studies show in concrete terms many practical aspects of how to use textual evidence to identify and analyze fallacies and to evaluate arguments as fallacious. Walton looks at how an argument is used in the context of conversation. He defines a fallacy as a conversational move, or sequence of moves, that is supposed to be an argument that contributes to the purpose of the conversation but in reality interferes with it. The view is a pragmatic one, based on the assumption that when people argue, they do so in a context of dialogue, a conventionalized normative framework that is goal-directed. Such a contextual framework is shown to be crucial in determining whether an argument has been used correctly. Walton also shows how examples of fallacies given in the logic textbooks characteristically turn out to be variants of reasonable, even if defeasible or questionable arguments, based on presumptive reasoning. This is the essence of the evaluation problem. A key thesis of the book, which must not be taken for granted as previous textbooks have so often done, is that you can spot a fallacy from how it was used in a context of dialogue. This is an innovative and even, as Walton notes, "a radical and controversial" theory of fallacy

This paper applies recent work on scripts and stories developed as tools of evidential reasoning in artificial intelligence to model the use of argument from analogy as a rhetorical device of persuasion. The example studied is Gerry Spence’s closing argument in the case of Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corporation, said to be the most persuasive closing argument ever used in an American trial. It is shown using this example how argument from analogy is based on a similarity premise where similarity between two cases is modeled using the device of a story scheme from the hybrid theory of legal evidential reasoning (Bex in Arguments, stories and criminal evidence: a formal hybrid theory. Springer, Dordrecht 2011). It is shown how the rhetorical strategy of Spence’s argumentation in the closing argument interweaves argument from analogy with explanation through three levels

In this paper we analyze the uses and misuses of argumentation schemes from verbal classification, and show how argument from definition supports argumentation based on argument from verbal classification. The inquiry has inevitably included the broader study of the concept of definition. The paper presents the schemes for argument from classification and for argument from definition, and shows how the latter type of argument so typically supports the former. The problem of analyzing arguments based on classification is framed in a structure that reveals the crucial role it plays in the persuasion process. The survey of the literature includes the work of Hastings, Perelman, Kienpointner and Schiappa, but still finds much of value in Aristotle. Lessons drawn from Aristotle’s Topics are shown to be useful for developing new tools for assessing definitions and arguments from definition

Tribunals have come to depend increasingly on expertise for determining the facts in cases. However, current legal methods have proved problematic to work with. This paper argues that, as a special model of public understanding of science, assessing expertise should consider source credibility of expertise from internal aspects, including scientific validity and reliability, and external aspects involving the credibility of experts. Using the Carneades Argumentation System we show that the internal and the external aspects are mediated by the structure of the argument from expert opinion with its matching set of critical questions