As appeals to expert authority shift from “fallacies” to “argument schemes,” argumentation theorists are called on to provide critical questions for assessing them. I argue that current treatments focus too heavily on assessing expertise, and not enough on judging trustworthiness. I propose instead a norma-tive pragmatic account of the rational force of the appeal to expert authority, one that emphasizes the ex-pert's actions in constructing his/her own legitimate trustworthiness.

I present a “reduced” version of the fifteen Pragma-dialectical rules and inquire into their theoretical status as necessary conditions for a critical discussion. Questions: In what respect is PD’s non-sufficiency a deficiency, can and must it be remedied? Brief answers: with respect to defining the concept ‘critical discussion,’ possibly, yes, if, and only if, one seeks to identify the concept ‘critical discussion’; no, if PD is for fallacy-detection.