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>From: ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is there any such thing as informal logic?
Message-ID: <1991Nov8.142909.10560@cs.bham.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Nov 91 14:29:09 GMT
References: <1991Oct22.041210.5931@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <JMC.91Nov3151101@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov4.001344.5044@husc3.harvard.edu>
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There is a subject called Informla Logic.
It seems to be flavour of the month in philosophy.

There are some good textbooks on informal logic.  Eg, Trudy Govier's
``A Practical Study of Argument'', Alec Fisher's ``The Logic of Real
Argument'' and Robert Fogelin's ``Understanding Arguments''.  (I would
avoid Douglas Walton's ``Informal Logic'' because it is too extreme.)
There are also some older books like Toulmin's ``The Use of Agument'' (?)
and Susan Stebbing's ``Thinking to Some Purpose'' and also Hamblin's
``Fallacies''.  (Also check out Seaborne Jones's ``Treatment or Torture?''
who shows a connection between making logical fallacies and
psychoanalytic defence mechanisms.)

Informal logic---like cognitive science---is an interdisciplinary subject
which uses insights from formal logic, psychology, AI, linguistics, etc.

A.R.Diller@cs.bham.ac.uk


