The notions of types of dialogue and dialectical relevance are central themes in Walton’s work and the grounds for a dialectical approach to many fallacies. After outlining the dialogue models constituting the background of Walton’s account, this article presents the concepts of dialectical relevance and dialogue shifts in their application to biased argumentation, fallacious moves, and illicit argumentative strategies. Showing the different dialectical proposals Walton advanced in several studies on argumentation as a development of a dialogical system, it has proved (...) possible to highlight the fundamental aspects of his theory in a comprehensive model of communication and interaction. (shrink)

A dialogue-based analysis of informal fallacies does not provide a fully adequate explanation of our intuitions about what is wrong with ad baculum and of when it is admissible and when it is not. The dialogue-based analysis explains well why mild, benign threats can be legitimate in some situations, such as cooperative bargaining and negotiation, but does not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats to coerce and to intimidate. I propose an alternative deriving partly (...) from virtue theory in ethics and epistemology and partly from Kantian principles of respect for persons as ends-in-themselves. I examine some specific kinds of social relations, e.g., parent-child and partner relationships, and ask what kinds of threats are permissible in these relationships and especially what is wrong with the objectionable threats. My explanation is framed in terms of the good character and contributing virtues of the ideal parent or partner on the one hand, and the bad character and contributing vices of the abusive parent or violent partner on the other. This analysis puts the discussion of theats in the context of virtue theory, of human flourishing, and of the kind of social relations it is best to have. In general, what's wrong with argumentum ad baculum should be explained in terms of the intentions, purposes, and character of threateners, and the differences in intentions and purposes for which threats are made. The characters of those who make the threats will provide the criteria for distinguishing benign and malicious threats. (shrink)

A general outline of a theory of reasoned dialogue is presented as an underlying basis of critical analysis of a text of argument discourse. This theory is applied to the analysis of informal fallacies by showing how textual evidence can be brought to bear in argument reconstruction. Several basic types of dialogue are identified and described, but the persuasive type of dialogue is emphasized as being of key importance to critical thinking theory.

Robert Kimball, in “What’s Wrong with Argumentum Ad Baculum?” (Argumentation, 2006) argues that dialogue-based models of rational argumentation do not satisfactorily account for what is objectionable about more malicious uses of threats encountered in some ad baculum arguments. We review the dialogue-based approach to argumentum ad baculum, and show how it can offer more than Kimball thinks for analyzing such threat arguments and ad baculum fallacies.

Princeton University Press, 1974. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (5 MB).

The study presented here examines how interacting with a more capable interlocutor influences use of argumentation strategies in electronic discourse. To address this question, 54 young adolescents participating in an intervention centered on electronic peer dialogs were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control condition. In both conditions, pairs who held the same position on a social issue engaged in a series of electronic dialogs with pairs who held an opposing position. In the experimental condition, in some dialogs, unbeknownst (...) to them (because dialog took place electronically), the opponent was a more capable (“expert”) adult. Dialogs in the control condition were only with peers. Argumentation strategies of the experimental group who argued with the “expert” showed immediate strategy improvements in their subsequent peer dialogs, improvement absent in the control group (Cohen's d = 1.12). In particular, the experimental group showed greater use of counterargument in general and advanced forms of counterargument (undermining) that challenges the deeper premises or reasoning on which an argument is based. Implications with respect to mechanisms of change in the development of argumentation skills are considered. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to identify which peer collaboration characteristics may be accountable for conceptual change through interaction. We focus on different socio‐cognitive aspects of the peer dialog and relate these with learning gains on the dyadic as well as the individual level. The scientific topic that was used for this study concerns natural selection, a topic for which students’ intuitive conceptions have been shown to be particularly robust. Learning tasks were designed according to the socio‐cognitive conflict instructional paradigm. (...) After receiving a short instructional intervention on natural selection, paired students were asked to collaboratively construct explanations for certain evolutionary phenomena while engaging in dialectical argumentation. Two quantitative coding schemes were developed, each with a different granularity. The first assessed discrete dialog moves that pertained to dialectical argumentation and to consensual explanation development. The second scheme characterized the dialog as a whole on a number of socio‐cognitive dimensions. Results from analyses on the dyadic as well as the individual level revealed that the engagement in dialectical argumentation predicted conceptual learning gains, whereas consensual explanation development did not. These findings open up new venues for research on the mechanisms of learning in and from peer collaboration. (shrink)

Van Eemeren and Houtlosser concentrate on the tension inherent in argumentative discourse between the pursuit of success and the maintenance of reasonableness. They elaborate on their earlier claim that this tension leads to ‘strategic manoeuvring’ that can be explained by making use of insights from dialectic and rhetoric. As a new step in their treatment of strategic manoeuvring they take account of the fact that the manoeuvring always takes place in one of the various argumentative ‘activity types’ that can be (...) distinguished in argumentative practice. Unlike theoretical constructs such as a critical discussion and other ideal models, which are based on analytic considerations regarding the most pertinent presentation of the constitutive parts of a problem-valid procedure for carrying out a particular kind of discursive task, the activity types and their associated speech events are cultural artefacts that can be identified on the basis of careful empirical observation of argumentative practice. By concentrating on three conventionalised activity types that are more or less institutionalised, van Eemeren and Houtlosser show how strategic manoeuvring is affected by the opportunities and constraints of the activity type in which it takes place. (shrink)