Methods of Argumentation

by Douglas N. Walton

Argumentation, which can be abstractly defined as the interaction of different arguments for and against some conclusion, is an important skill to learn for everyday life, law, science, politics, and business. The best way to learn it is to try it out on real instances of arguments found in everyday conversational exchanges and legal argumentation. The introductory chapter of this book gives a clear general idea of what the methods of argumentation are and how they work as tools that can be used to analyze arguments. Each subsequent chapter then applies these methods to a leading problem of argumentation. Today the field of computing has embraced argumentation as a paradigm for research in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. Another purpose of this book is to present and refine tools and techniques from computing as components of the methods that can be handily used by scholars in other fields.

Genres: Logic

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2013

About the author

Douglas Neil Walton (PhD University of Toronto, 1972) is a Canadian academic and author, well known for his many widely published books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. He is presently Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Canada, and before that (2008-2014), he held the Assumption Chair of Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor. Walton’s work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence. His books have been translated worldwide, and he attracts students from many countries to study with him. A special issue of the journal Informal Logic surveyed Walton’s contributions to informal logic and argumentation theory up to 2006 (Informal Logic, 27(3), 2007). A festschrift honoring his contributions, Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation: An Examination of Douglas Walton’s Theories of Reasoning and Argument, ed. C. Reed and C. W. Tindale, London: College Publications, 2010, shows how his theories are increasingly finding applications in computer science. A list of titles of many of Walton’s books is given below. Links to preprints of many of his published papers can be found on the website

http://www.dougwalton.ca