Abstract
Informal logic studies the identification, analysis, evaluation, criticism and construction of arguments. An argument is a set of one or more interlinked premiss-illative-conclusion sequences. Premisses are assertives, not necessarily asserted by anyone. Conclusions can be assertives, directives, declaratives, commissives or expressives. Each can be expressed either in language or by visual images or physically. Two arguments can be linked either by having a conclusion of one as a premiss of the other or by having one as a premiss of the other. A box-arrow system for diagramming arguments thus conceived is illustrated with reference to three expressed arguments; the diagrams show that the diagramming system can handle conditional proof, argument about an arbitrary instance as a proof of a universal generalization, argument by cases, and reductio ad absurdum. A final section lists issues in informal logic and gives some indication of the range of positions taken on these issues.
Bibliographical note: This chapter was first published with the same title in Philosophy of Logic, ed. Dale Jacquette, volume 5 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, ed. Dov M. Gabbay, Paul Thagard and John Woods (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007), 101–129. © 2007 Elsevier B. V. Republished with permission of Elsevier. I am deeply grateful for comments on an earlier version of this chapter to Lilian Bermejo-Luque , J. Anthony Blair , Inga B. Dolinina , Frans H. van Eemeren , Robert H. Ennis , Bart Garssen , Dale Hample , Ralph H. Johnson , Mike Metcalfe , Leah E. Polcar, Harvey Siegel and John Woods . They saved me from some embarrassing errors, and made useful suggestions. The responsibility for errors that remain is mine. Nor would they all agree with everything asserted in this chapter.
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- 1.
Correction in the present republication: The word ‘single’ replaces ‘simple’.
- 2.
Change in this chapter: For ease of understanding, in the diagram I have replaced the word ‘suppose’ with ‘thenS’ at the beginning of conclusions drawn directly from suppositions. The word ‘then’ signals their status as a conclusion. The superscripted ‘S’ signals their inheritance of a suppositional status from a premiss.
- 3.
Added in the present republication: One might wonder how this conclusion follows, and might be inclined to strengthen the supposition so as to make the inference more plausible, but that is interpretation rather than the faithful analysis illustrated here.
- 4.
Change in the present republication: For ease of understanding, in the diagram I have replaced the word ‘suppose’ with ‘thenS’ at the beginning of conclusions drawn directly from suppositions. The word ‘then’ signals their status as a conclusion. The superscripted ‘S’ signals their inheritance of a suppositional status from a premiss.
- 5.
Added in the present republication: The reader might wonder how such a piece of suppositional reasoning can be an argument and how it can be a premiss. It counts as an argument because Anselm (in this translation*) explicitly uses the illative ‘then’ to indicate that he is drawing a conclusion from what he has just supposed. It counts as a premiss because anything put forward in support of a conclusion is a premiss and Anselm puts this piece of suppositional reasoning forward in support of a conclusion. The western logical tradition has not counted suppositional reasoning used to support a further claim as a premiss, but only tradition counts against doing so. In chapter 32, where I revise the definition of argument developed in the present chapter, I no longer call suppositional reasoning used to support a claim a premiss, but instead speak of it as adduced in support of the claim. The new terminology bows to the traditional reluctance to allow that an argument can be a premiss, but the basic idea is still the same.
*The translation is in this respect unfaithful. A more faithful translation would read: “For if indeed it exists in the understanding alone, it can be conceived to exist also in reality.” (Latin: Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re.) Thus the embedded suppositional reasoning turns out to be an artifact of the translation rather than part of the structure of what Anselm wrote. There are real-life examples of suppositional reasoning used to support a conditional claim, such as some rather technical arguments in mathematics.
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Hitchcock, D. (2017). Informal Logic and the Concept of Argument. In: On Reasoning and Argument. Argumentation Library, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53562-3_29
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