Groarke, Leo. Review of Douglas Walton, et al. ARGUMENTATION SCHEMES. NDPR (February 2009).

Walton, Douglas, Chris Reed, and Fabrizio Macagno. Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge: CUP, 2008. This is a valuable book from the forefront of research on argument. Over the last half century, the study of informal argument has emerged as a key focus in a variety of disciplines. In philosophy, the locus of such study has been "informal logic," which has devoted itself to the study and teaching of natural language argument. Early work in informal logic tended to take a "fallacy approach" to argument assessment. Arguments were categorized in terms of traditional fallacies: ad ignorantiam, ad hominem, equivocation, and so on. Much of the work in informal logic and the philosophy of argument continues to assume this approach. This is especially evident in textbooks which attempt to teach students how to reason well by teaching them to detect the fallacies that abound in ordinary arguments -- in political debates, in commentaries on science and religion, and in everyday conversation. Despite the popularity of the fallacy approach, it has been roundly criticized in contemporary work on the theory of argument. Putting aside pedagogical questions raised by an approach to argument that inevitably focuses on poor reasoning, a large and ever growing body of literature has questioned many of the assumptions made about specific fallacies. Most significantly, a series of commentators have pointed out that many instances of traditional fallacies are good arguments. This applies not only in the obvious cases -- it need not be said that some appeals to authority and arguments by analogy are an appropriate, even essential, component of ordinary reasoning -- but in cases where philosophers once dismissed whole categories of argument out of hand. "Attacks against the person", which are clear instances of the traditional ad hominem, may, for example, be very reasonable attacks on someone's credibility, and appeals to pity, ignorance, popular opinion, emotions, and so on, may be the basis of many reasonable conclusions. In view of such considerations, argumentation "schemes" have begun to supplant traditional fallacies in the analysis of informal argument. . . . Read the review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15387.