Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation

This book presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments.

Douglas Walton (Author)

9780521823197, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 October 2005

360 pages, 6 b/w illus.
25.4 x 17.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.84 kg

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners. The book teaches by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed. Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton shows how arguments can be reasonable under the right dialogue conditions by using critical questions to evaluate them. The book teaches by example, both in the text itself and in exercises, but it is based on methods that have been developed through the author's thirty years of research in argumentation studies.

1. Arguments and dialogues
2. Concepts useful for understanding arguments
3. Argumentation schemes
4. Argument reconstruction
5. Dialogues
6. Detecting bias
7. Relevance
8. Practical reasoning in a dialogical framework.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], History of Western philosophy [HPC]