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Arguments about Arguments First Edition Maurice A.
Finocchiaro Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Maurice A. Finocchiaro
ISBN(s): 9780521618533, 0521618533
Edition: First Edition
File Details: PDF, 17.89 MB
Year: 2005
Language: english
Cambridge University Press
0521853273 - Arguments about Arguments: Systematic, Critical, and Historical Essays in
Logical Theory
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
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Arguments about Arguments

Systematic, Critical, and Historical Essays in Logical Theory

This book brings together a selection of essays by one of the pre-

eminent scholars of informal logic. Following an approach that is
empirical but not psychological, dialectical but not dialogical, and
focused on interpretation without neglecting evaluation, Maurice
Finocchiaro defines concepts such as reasoning, argument, argument
analysis, critical reasoning, methodological reflection, judgment, crit-
ical thinking, and informal logic. He defends theses about the rarity
of fallacies but the frequency of fallacious reasoning; the asymmetry
of positive and negative in argumentation, interpretation, and evalua-
tion; and the role of critical thinking in science, among other topics.
And he presents extended critiques of the views of many contem-
porary scholars, while also integrating into the discussion Arnauld’s
Port-Royal Logic, Gramsci’s theory of intellectuals, and case studies
from the history of science, particularly the work of Galileo, Newton,
Huygens, and Lavoisier.

Maurice A. Finocchiaro is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy

Emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The author of eight
other books, including Galileo and the Art of Reasoning and Gramsci
and the History of Dialectical Thought, he has received major grants and
fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the
American Council of Learned Societies. He is currently president of
the Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking.

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Maurice A. Finocchiaro
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Arguments about Arguments

Systematic, Critical, and Historical Essays
in Logical Theory

MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
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Maurice A. Finocchiaro
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Cambridge University Press

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521853279

C Maurice A. Finocchiaro 2005

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Finocchiaro, Maurice A., 1942–
Arguments about arguments : systematic, critical, and historical essays in
logical theory / Maurice A. Finocchiaro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-521-85327-3 (hardcover) – isbn 0-521-61853-3 (pbk.)
1. Reasoning. I. Title.
bc177.f565 2005
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Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments page vii

Introduction: An Approach to a Branch of Logic 1

part i theorizing about reasoning and argument

1 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning (1984) 21
2 An Historical Approach to the Study of Argumentation
(1987) 34
3 Methodological Problems in Empirical Logic (1989) 46
4 Two Empirical Approaches to the Study of Reasoning
(1994) 65
5 Critical Thinking, Critical Reasoning, and
Methodological Reflection (1996) 92

part ii fallacies and asymmetries

6 Fallacies and the Evaluation of Reasoning (1981) 109
7 Six Types of Fallaciousness: Toward a Realistic Theory
of Logical Criticism (1987) 128
8 Asymmetries in Argumentation and Evaluation (1992) 148
9 The Positive versus the Negative Evaluation of Arguments
(1994) 159

part iii critiques: metaphilosophical views

and dialectical approaches
10 Siegel on Critical Thinking: Reasoning versus Rationality
versus Criticism (1989) 181

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vi Contents

11 Induction and Intuition in the Normative Study

of Reasoning: Cohen on Inductive Reasoning
in Philosophy (1991) 193
12 Logic, Politics, and Gramsci: Intellectuals, Dialectics,
and Philosophy in the Prison Notebooks (1992) 207
13 The Dialectical Approach to Interpretation and
Evaluation: From Axiom to Dialogue (Barth) and from
Structure to Dialogue (Freeman) (1995) 231
14 The Port-Royal Logic’s Theory of Argument:
Instrumentalism in the Philosophy of Logic (1997) 246
15 A Critique of the Dialectical Approach, Part II: The
Amsterdam School and Walton on Complex Dialogues
(1999) 265
16 Valid Ad Hominem Arguments in Philosophy: Johnstone’s
Metaphilosophical Informal Logic (2001) 277
17 Dialectics, Evaluation, and Argument: Goldman
and Johnson on the Concept of Argument (2003) 292

part iv historical analyses: critical

thinking in science
18 The Concept of Ad Hominem Argument in Galileo and
Locke (1974) 329
19 Newton’s Third Rule of Philosophizing: A Role for Logic
in Historiography (1974) 340
20 Logic and Rhetoric in Lavoisier’s Sealed Note: Toward
a Rhetoric of Science (1977) 350
21 The Concept of Judgment and Huygens’ Theory
of Gravity (1980) 361
22 Empiricism, Judgment, and Argument: Toward
an Informal Logic of Science (1988) 386
23 Criticism, Reasoning, and Judgment in Science (1995) 409

Selected Bibliography 431

Index 453

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Preface and Acknowledgments

This book is a collection of selected articles published during the past

three decades in various journals, anthologies, and conference proceed-
ings. No substantive alterations have been made in the original text, but
many editorial changes have been introduced. For example, not only
have typographical errors been corrected, but for the sake of uniformity
spelling has been standardized; all bibliographical references are now in
the APA style of author, date, and page number(s); and all chapters have
been subdivided into sections with numbers and headings. Moreover,
to avoid duplication, the individual bibliographies have been combined
into one for the whole book; to update the publication information,
works that were originally listed as “in press” have been provided with the
subsequent actual publication date; and entries by the same author for
the same year have been appropriately redesignated.
With regard to the titles of the chapters, I have followed something
of a middle course. The original article titles have been left unchanged,
except for two things. The first is that the year of original publication
has been added in parentheses at the end of each title. The second is
that in some cases, in part II, subtitles have been added in order to re-
flect the two-fold aspect (critical and thematic) of that group of chapters.
The original titles and the added dates ensure the unambiguous and easy
identification of the original articles from the bibliography, where they
had to be listed because of cross-referencing. Thus there is no need to
indicate here or in a separate section of this book the places of origi-
nal publication of the various chapters; readers can simply consult the
bibliography.

vii

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viii Preface and Acknowledgments

I considered including summaries of the chapters in the introduction

or in another special section of this book, but this would have been super-
fluous because almost every chapter contains a summary, usually in the
last section, headed as summary, conclusion, epilogue, recapitulation,
or the like. Thus readers can read such summaries by turning to those
concluding sections of chapters.
As the table of contents indicates, the chapters have been grouped into
four “parts” of this volume. This grouping is meant to be reflected in the
book’s subtitle: Part I (“Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument”)
and part II (“Fallacies and Asymmetries”) contain the mostly system-
atic chapters; part III obviously includes the mostly critical chapters; and
part IV includes the mostly historical ones. Such a classification also has a
thematic motivation: In part I, the main topics are theories of reasoning
and argument; in part II, fallacies and asymmetries; in part III, accounts
of philosophical reasoning and argument and dialectical approaches to
the study of argument and reasoning; and in part IV, critical thinking in
science. However, such a grouping is neither exact nor exclusive, and in
fact the introduction explains in more detail the many other themes and
approaches that criss-cross the various chapters. At any rate, it should be
noted that within each part, the chapters are printed in chronological
order.
Finally, some acknowledgments are in order. My appreciation goes
to the many scholars who have provided valuable encouragement, sup-
port, and suggestions over the past three decades, although the number
is so large that I cannot name them all here. I am also grateful to the
(three anonymous) Press referees for their enthusiasm, and especially to
the one who made the brilliant suggestion to entitle the book Arguments
about Arguments, instead of using the pedestrian and prosaic title that I
had originally proposed. More specifically, Michael Scriven has provided
the initial (1967) inspiration and a constant model to emulate, as the
introduction makes clear. The late Henry Johnstone became a catalyst
for many of my ideas ever since the original publication of chapter 18
(1974) triggered our acquaintance and made us aware of the overlap
in our work. Else Barth has been gracious and generous ever since my
oral presentation of chapter 2 in 1986 revealed that I had independently
arrived at and was pursuing in my own way her program in empirical
logic. Alec Fisher, James Freeman, Ralph Johnson, and Harvey Siegel
have provided not only the original stimulus for some of the essays col-
lected here, but also friendly encouragement and feedback regarding the

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Preface and Acknowledgments ix

compilation and viability of this volume. The University of Nevada, Las

Vegas, has continued to provide institutional support even after I decided
to retire from formal teaching in order to work full-time on research,
scholarship, and writing. Finally, acknowledgments go to the original
publishers of the essays, in regard to which the reader can look up the
information in the bibliography, under my name, the year, and the title
of each chapter.

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 1

Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning (1984)

1. A Definition of Informal Logic

Informal logic seems to be suffering from an image problem, a bad con-
science, and an identity crisis. The image problem derives from the some-
what negative connotations of the term “informal,” which often conveys
the impression that what we have here is a sloppy, nonserious approach
to the study of logical problems.1 The bad conscience stems from con-
ceiving the field as the theory of informal fallacies, and then taking the
notion of “theory” to be such as to imply that a theory worthy of the name
is necessarily formal;2 this would make the label “informal logic” a dis-
guise for the formal theory of those fallacies different from the deductive
and inductive ones. These two views are, respectively, a methodological
interpretation of informal logic in terms of its alleged approach (“in-
formality”), and a substantive definition in terms of its alleged subject
matter (“informal fallacies”); now, since it is not easy to devise alterna-
tive interpretations as long as one keeps close to the terminological and
verbal level,3 this may lead to the identity crisis of wondering what on

1 The first definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary for the word “informal” is: “Not
done or made according to a recognized or prescribed form; not observing forms; not
according to order; irregular; unofficial, disorderly” (1933 edition, vol. 5, p. 273).
2 Here I am thinking of the interpretation given in Woods 1980. Woods is certainly right
to distinguish between two senses of “formal”: (1) the use of formal, mathematical, or
symbolic techniques, and (2) formalization or the construction of logistic or axiomatic
systems (p. 58). He is also correct in noting that, from the point of view of (2), even
mathematics is typically informal; and so he is merely advocating (1). Nevertheless, it is
questionable whether this can escape the present difficulty.
3 What I mean here is that if we take the label “informal logic” too seriously, and then we
try to examine its meaning and uses, we could not ignore the sense given to the term in

21

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 22 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

earth informal logic is supposed to be. In this chapter I plan to bypass

these difficulties by conceiving informal logic as the theory of reasoning.
By theory of reasoning I mean the attempt to formulate, to test, to clar-
ify, and to systematize concepts and principles for the interpretation, the
evaluation, and the sound practice of reasoning. I claim that the theory
of reasoning so defined is a legitimate philosophical enterprise which is
both viable and important, and that it corresponds to the central theoret-
ical4 concerns of those who explicitly identify themselves with the field
of informal logic, but that it also suggests certain constructive criticisms
and desirable reforms in this discipline.

2. Clarifications
Let me begin by clarifying my definition of the theory of reasoning. First,
notice that I speak of reasoning, rather than, for example, argumentation;
this is deliberately meant to allow a broader domain, by including, be-
sides the study of arguments, such activities as problem-solving, decision-
making, persuasion, and explaining, which cannot be equated with ar-
gumentation, but which may involve reasoning in an essential way. The
emphasis on reasoning is also meant as a reminder that what is being
studied here is a mental activity that actually occurs in the world and
which leaves empirical traces (normally in the form of written or oral dis-
course). This in turn means that the theory of reasoning has an empirical
orientation and is not a purely formal or abstract discipline.
Second, you should notice my explicit reference to the interpretation of
reasoning. This is needed partly for the intrinsic reason that such interpre-
tation aims at the understanding of reasoning, and the understanding of

Ryle 1954. For Ryle informal logic is essentially identical to ordinary-language philosophy,
or to be more exact, to the analysis of the “logic” of concepts like pleasure, memory,
responsibility, chance; whereas formal logic is the study of concepts such as “all,” “some,”
“not,” etc.
4 In speaking of the theoretical concerns of “informal logicians,” I mean to distinguish them
from practical concerns. In fact, as Michael Scriven stressed at the Second International
Symposium on Informal Logic, informal logic cannot be equated with the theory of
reasoning simpliciter, any more than medicine can be equated with the theory of healing;
just as medicine includes the activity of actually curing diseases, so informal logic refers to
the activity of formulating actual arguments. What this means is that informal logic must
be taken to refer both to the theory and practice of reasoning. This, in turn, introduces
further complications, some of which will be discussed below, toward the end. For other
developments, see Finocchiaro 1980b, especially pp. 299–302, where a different twist is
given to Scriven’s point, by introducing the notion of reasoning about reasoning, as a helpful
way of combining the theory and the practice of reasoning.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 23

a phenomenon is obviously an essential concern of any theorizing. How-

ever, I also emphasize it in order to correct what I feel is an over-concern
with evaluation; this imbalance is shown, for example, by the fact that
informal logic textbooks often define logic as the attempt to distinguish
good from bad arguments, and by the fact that no explicit mention of
interpretation is made in Johnson and Blair’s definition given at the First
International Symposium of Informal Logic.5 Therefore, the interpreta-
tive dimension needs distinct recognition despite the fact that we would
all agree that it is indirectly mentioned by the evaluative dimension, inso-
far as the proper evaluation of an argument presupposes that it has been
properly interpreted.6
My third clarification involves the inclusion of concepts and principles
for the sound practice of reasoning. Notice that I am not talking about
important or original reasoning, but merely about correct reasoning.
Principles for reasoning well would obviously be related to principles for
the evaluation of reasoning. Nevertheless the difference remains since
the activity of evaluation would normally come after a certain argument
has been produced, whereas the practice of reasoning means simply the
construction of actual arguments or the actual involvement in reasoning.
In this regard, both interpretation and evaluation have something in
common which they do not share with practice; they are both reflection
on previous practice, whereas the practice of reasoning is the construction
of what can later become the subject of those types of reflection.
Another important feature of my definition is that I speak of concepts
and principles. Notice that I do not say “universally valid principles,” hence
it is an open question whether any of them exist. If not, it would be part
of the task of the theory of reasoning to tell us that the most we can hope
for are principles of restricted application and limited validity, as well as
to specify which principles hold in which fields.7 Moreover, because of
the distinction between interpretation and evaluation, my definition also
leaves it as an open question whether there are universally valid princi-
ples of interpretation, even if it turns out that there are no universally
valid principles of evaluation. Additional openness is allowed by my ref-
erence to concepts, as well as to principles. In fact, a concept may be
useful for interpreting, evaluating, or practicing reasoning, even though

5 Cf. Johnson and Blair 1980, 3.

6 For an explicit discussion of this presupposition, see for example McPeck (1981, 63) and
Finocchiaro (1980b, 339–40).
7 As also discussed below, this answers some of the explicit and implicit objections found
in McPeck 1981.

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 24 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

there might be disagreement about which principles or which types of

principles formulated in its terms are the correct ones. For example, one
might agree that the notion of ad hominem argument is important at least
as a way of classifying certain types of reasoning, but one does not have to
agree with Henry Johnstone’s metaphilosophical principle of interpreta-
tion that all genuinely philosophical arguments are ad hominem,8 nor with
the widely accepted principle of evaluation that ad hominem arguments
are fallacious.
Finally, I should clarify that, in saying that the theory of reasoning aims
to formulate, to test, to clarify, and to systematize principles, I am indeed
referring to four distinct activities. Obviously, systematization is impossi-
ble unless the principles in question have already been formulated and
have undergone a certain amount of testing and clarification. Moreover,
there is no reason to expect the same degree of systematization that was
possible for Euclidean geometry or celestial mechanics. Nevertheless,
although one of the greatest temptations to be resisted is that of prema-
ture systematization, the idea of systematization is not excluded in princi-
ple. The reference to testing reflects the semi-empirical orientation men-
tioned earlier, and it can mean either confirmation or disconfirmation.
A good example of disconfirmation is Professor Hintikka’s criticism that
the quantification theory of symbolic logic is neither a correct descrip-
tion of nor a correct abstraction from natural-language reasoning with
quantifiers,9 while a good example of confirmation would be L. Jonathan
Cohen’s demonstration that probabilistic reasoning by juries in Anglo-
American courts conforms to a number of principles which embody an
inductive, neo-Baconian, non-Pascalian notion of probability.10 Last, the
clarification of principles is distinct from their formulation, as shown for
example by the fact that, regardless of who was the first to formulate ex-
plicitly the Principle of Charity, additional insights have been provided
by Ralph Johnson’s recent discussion in the Informal Logic Newsletter.11
I claimed above that the theory of reasoning so conceived represents a
critical systematization of work in the field of informal logic. In order to
justify directly this claim one would have to argue that the main concerns
of informal logicians can find a place, or can be improved by corre-
sponding investigations, in the theory of reasoning. However, the sketch

8 Johnstone 1978.
9 Hintikka 1974.
10 L. J. Cohen 1977; 1981b.
11 Johnson 1981a.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 25

just given is sufficient to suggest a considerable overlap between the two;

hence I will postpone for the moment a direct comparison, and I will
go on to add further indirect evidence for their correspondence by dis-
cussing the question of the philosophical legitimacy of the theory of rea-
soning. This discussion will take the form of answers to various objections.

3. Replies to Four Objections

The most fundamental objection to the theory of reasoning is that the
alleged entity which is the subject matter of its inquiries does not really ex-
ist.12 Reasoning is presumably an epiphenomenal illusion deriving from
using a general label to refer to a number of disparate activities. A theory
of reasoning per se, as distinct from theorizing about particular instances
or types or fields of reasoning, makes no more sense than a theory of
success in general; just as success in one field (say business) is very dif-
ferent from success in another field (say sports), so is the skill of legal
reasoning, for example, different from that of scientific reasoning. Even
a general-sounding type of success, like Dale Carnegie’s winning friends
and influencing people, is not truly universal since it is obvious that one
could master this art and yet fail at such things as sports, teaching, mil-
itary strategy, debating, poetry, etc. Hence, even if the entity sometimes
labeled everyday reasoning turns out to be theoretically and critically
comprehensible (taking this label to refer to reasoning about such prac-
tical and fundamental issues that deserve the attention of every educated
person), even then the theory of everyday reasoning would not be equiv-
alent to the theory of reasoning simpliciter, since the nature of everyday
reasoning would be bound to differ from the nature of reasoning in such
special domains as science, the law, medicine, business, etc.
My answer to this powerful objection consists of a counter-charge and a
constructive suggestion. The counter-charge is that the criticism confuses
the interpretation and the evaluation of reasoning, and that in effect it
overstresses the latter. This is shown by the tendency of these critics to
compare reasoning with such implicitly evaluated entities as success, cre-
ativity, constructiveness, and effectiveness,13 whereas the proper analogue
to such nongeneralizable non-entities would be correct reasoning. In

12 McPeck 1981, especially pp. 84–85. McPeck is directly concerned with teaching, and so
he might not endorse my adaptation of his criticism to the context of theorizing. The
same qualification applies to some of the other objections discussed below which stem
from his book.
13 McPeck 1981, 84–85.

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 26 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

other words, these critics ignore the fact (which they themselves admit14 )
that “reasoning” is both a task and an achievement term; to engage in
reasoning does not necessarily imply to be successful at it. This means
that, at worst, what’s impossible is a general theory of correct reasoning,
and not necessarily a general interpretative theory of the structure of
reasoning. However, even the limited pessimistic conclusion seems ex-
cessively apriorist, since, given that it would allow for limited theories of
correct reasoning in particular fields, there is no a priori reason to pre-
dict that the further generalization and systematization of these limited
theories will necessarily fail. Moreover, the notion of a field of reasoning
is problematic,15 and the same criticism made against the possibility of
generalizations among fields could be leveled against the possibility of
generalizing within a given field, which after all consists of various sub-
fields. Finally, it is possible that a general theory of evaluation might be
based in part on a general theory of interpretation, whose possibility, as
we have seen, is untouched by the present criticism. But this brings us
to the question of what all types and instances of reasoning have in com-
mon, and it is here that my constructive suggestion becomes relevant. I
think that the essential feature of all reasoning is the interrelating of in-
dividual thoughts in such a way that some follow from others,16 and that
the normal linguistic expression of such interrelated thinking involves
the use of particles like ‘because,’ ‘therefore,’ etc. However minimal this
conception is, it allows the theory of reasoning to get started by suggest-
ing that we try to understand and to evaluate those discourses having a
high incidence of these logical particles.
If this first objection to the legitimacy of the theory of reasoning threat-
ens to deprive it of a genuine subject matter, a second criticism threatens
to let a discipline other than philosophy lay claim upon that domain. The
objection would now be that there already exists a branch of cognitive
psychology, namely the psychology of reasoning, that theorizes about the
phenomenon in an a posteriori fashion. What then is the difference, if
any, between the psychology of reasoning and the philosophical theory of
reasoning?
Let me begin answering this objection by noting that at a phenomeno-
logical level there are certainly some differences. To be specific, psychol-
ogists tend to be experimental, to refrain from explicit evaluation, and to

14 McPeck 1981, 13.

15 As has been shown by Johnson 1981b.
16 For more details see Finocchiaro 1980b, especially part III, p. 311.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 27

favor explicit explanations in terms of theoretical models of unconscious

mental processes.
Their experimental approach may be viewed as their way of being em-
pirical, and it may be contrasted with the philosophers’ historical method,
which is another kind of empirical orientation. In other words, psychol-
ogists tend to establish contact with the real world of reasoning by mak-
ing experiments in which human subjects are asked to perform various
tasks which involve reasoning in one form or another; on the other hand,
philosophers tend to study reasoning that has already taken place and left
historical traces, usually in the form of written records. One may question
the soundness of the experimental approach since the data thereby col-
lected reflect the artificiality of the experimental situation; that is, the rea-
soning in which the experimental subjects are led to engage is necessarily
artificial since their reasoning is taking place solely as a result of their par-
ticipation in the experiment and the experimenter’s instructions; thus,
one may be reluctant to generalize or extrapolate that whichever fea-
tures human reasoning exhibits during experiments, will also charac-
terize it in real-life situations. Now, this difficulty with the experimental
approach might lead one to claim that if psychologists wanted to be prop-
erly empirical, then they should adopt the historical approach favored by
philosophers;17 however, such a proposed reform would not obliterate
the surface difference that presently exists between the two enterprises.
It is perhaps in order to neutralize this criticism of the experimental
approach that psychologists are also inclined to devise models of mental
processes that explain the experimental data they collect. I believe the
connection would be that if the cognitive performance shown by experi-
mental subjects is the effect of the mental processes postulated to explain
it, and if these explanation-providing processes are sufficiently basic and
general, then one is entitled to say that the latter processes possess a ro-
bust reality, firm enough to prevent variation from an experimental to a
real-life situation. In short, if during the experiments what is happening
inside the minds of the subjects is of the appropriate sort, then the same
things would have to happen outside the experimental situation. What-
ever the soundness of these claims, my main concern is to emphasize
the difference from the philosophical theory of reasoning. I think the
central difference is that the explanatory mental models devised by psy-
chologists normally involve processes of which the human reasoners are
not in fact or could not in principle be or become conscious. By contrast,

17 This has been argued in Finocchiaro 1980b, chapter 2.

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 28 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

the philosopher who is trying to understand reasoning does so in terms

of conscious or potentially conscious processes; for example, unstated
assumptions may be originally overlooked in a given argument, but they
are certainly entities that can be brought before the mind as a result of
discussion.
The third surface difference between the psychology and the philos-
ophy of reasoning concerns evaluation. It is explicitly included in my
definition of the theory of reasoning, and it obviously corresponds to the
philosophers’ practice of assessing the validity, soundness, or correctness
of the reasoning they examine. By contrast, psychologists like to follow
a supposedly value-free approach; they pretend that they are merely de-
scribing and explaining the cognitive phenomena they observe. Even
when they claim to have found evidence that human beings reason in
various specific illogical or irrational ways,18 psychologists adopt a curi-
ously non-evaluative stance, for they treat this alleged irrationality as a
fact-to-be-explained, rather than as a condition to be avoided, and they
take this irrationality merely to mean an objective discrepancy between
the performance of experimental subjects and various abstract principles
taken from truth-functional logic, the mathematical theory of probability,
etc. Clearly the real difference is one of explicitness, rather than presence
or absence, of evaluation.
Actually, this leads to another difference from the point of view of eval-
uation. Once we see that the real fact established by psychologists is the
discrepancy between human reasoning and the principles of traditional
formal deductive and inductive logic, there is no reason to prefer an eval-
uative conclusion about human irrationality to one about the empirical
unfoundedness of formal logic. In fact, given an empirical orientation, it
seems clear that the discrepancy should be resolved by a negative evalua-
tion of the traditional logical principles. This is precisely what L. Jonathan
Cohen has been doing in the domain of probabilistic reasoning, where
he has attempted to devise a non-Pascalian theory of probability more in
conformity with the actual performance of human beings.19
So we may summarize the evaluational differences between the psy-
chology and the philosophy of reasoning by saying that whereas psychol-
ogists evaluate reasoning only implicitly and unavoidably, philosophers
do so actively and explicitly; moreover, psychologists’ evaluations are

18 Wason and Johnson-Laird 1972; Tversky and Kahneman (1971; 1973).

19 L. J. Cohen (1977; 1981a; 1982). Finocchiaro (1980b) follows a similar approach, though
his context is that of the general theory of reasoning.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 29

directed against the performance of their experimental subjects, whereas

philosophers’ evaluations tend to be directed against traditional formal
logic. Together with the difference between an experimental and an his-
torical approach, and between the use of nonconscious and of potentially
conscious mental processes, these are certainly sufficient to distinguish
the two fields of endeavor. I should end this section by saying that there
is no reason, however, why philosophers cannot adopt and appropriate
useful facts or ideas examined by psychologists. Besides the discrepancy
between actual cognitive performance and formal logic, another very im-
portant fact for which there seems to be overwhelming evidence is that in
general the content of propositions has a significant effect on how peo-
ple interpret their logical form, and in particular the concreteness or the
abstractness of the subject matter sometimes facilitates and sometimes
hinders their reasoning.20
Another sweeping criticism that can be leveled against the legitimacy
of the theory of reasoning raises questions about “argument analysis as
a plausible subject for study.”21 What is called argument analysis in the
literature is indeed the heart of the theory of reasoning since it largely
corresponds to what I call the interpretation and the evaluation of reason-
ing. For example, of Michael Scriven’s seven steps of argument analysis,22
the first three obviously pertain to interpretation since they are, respec-
tively, the clarification of meaning, the identification of conclusions, and
the portrayal of structure; the last three obviously deal with evaluation
since they speak of the criticism of the premises and of the inferences,
the introduction of other relevant arguments, and the overall evaluation
of the given argument; the fourth step is the formulation of unstated
assumptions or missing premises, and I would regard it as being partly an
interpretative and partly an evaluative problem. What supposedly under-
mines the viability of argument analysis are the following three things.
First, the three interpretative steps are neither sequential nor discrete
since it is clear that each presupposes the other two: for example, one
cannot understand the meaning of an argument and of its parts without
knowing the identity of its conclusion and how its various components
are structured into a whole.23 Second, it is clear that the articulation of
unstated assumptions is a task that requires creativity and imagination,

20 Wason and Johnson-Laird 1972, 54–85, 193.

21 McPeck 1981, 89.
22 Scriven 1976, 39–51.
23 McPeck 1981, 87–89.

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 30 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

and hence the procedure is neither mechanical nor methodical.24 Finally,

the evaluation process presupposes substantive and factual information
which cannot be regarded as logical in any sense of the term (including
the sense of the phrase “informal logic”); this is obvious from the step that
requires criticism of the premises and the one that asks us to introduce
other relevant arguments.
I agree with almost all of these points, with one very important ex-
ception. The final conclusion of this critical argument simply does not
follow, that is the conclusion that argument analysis and the theory of
reasoning are not a serious or plausible subject for study. In order to
infer this conclusion one would have to assume that the only serious or
plausible disciplines are those that possess techniques and procedures
that are simple, effective, and mechanical. There are many difficulties
with this assumption. Partly it seems to advocate an untenable scientism
according to which the only subjects worthy of pursuit are the exact sci-
ences. Partly it seems to leave the door open for the kind of irrationalism
that the proponents of the new rhetoric have been reacting against,25
namely that intellectual respectability is to be equated only with effec-
tive decision procedures, and all else is equally worthless. Obviously the
proper thing to do, when mechanical methods are not available, is to
elaborate the imperfect rules of thumb that are possible. And partly such
an assumption seems to ignore even the well-known limitations of math-
ematics and formal logic stemming from Gödel’s theorems; for example,
there is no mechanical procedure to construct derivations of theorems in
the predicate calculus. In summary, I would say that this objection reflects
an inadequate epistemology and philosophy of science.
The last objection I want to discuss is one to which I am not sure I
can give an effective rebuttal. It stems from the theory/practice distinc-
tion. The difficulty is that, despite its empirical, practical, and contextual
orientation, and despite its sensitivity to concrete reasoning in natural
language, the theory of reasoning is still a theoretical inquiry whose con-
cepts and principles, however sound and low-level, need to be applied
and used in practice in ordinary contexts different from that of philo-
sophical reflection. This is simply an instance in the domain of reasoning
of a general difficulty that seems to afflict the most diverse fields. For ex-
ample, if one looks at science, the greatest exemplars of scientific practice

24 McPeck 1981, 91.

25 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 1–10.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 31

are such people as Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein, whereas the
most outstanding theorists of science are such people as Bacon, Peirce,
Duhem, Popper, etc.; in politics we find, on the one hand, Pericles, Caesar
Augustus, Jefferson, Disraeli, etc., and on the other hand, Aristotle,
Machiavelli, Tocqueville, etc.; in morality, one group would include
Socrates, St. Francis, Gandhi, etc., the other Aristotle, Kant, Bentham,
etc. Why should we expect the situation to be any different in the do-
main of our present interest?
This difficulty can also be elaborated in another way. From the point of
view of reasoning, the theory of reasoning is at best an instance of a spe-
cial kind of reasoning, namely reasoning about reasoning. What reason is
there to think that if one becomes proficient in reasoning about reason-
ing, one will be also proficient in reasoning about atoms and molecules,
torts and contracts, personal and emotional problems, affirmative action
and nuclear deterrence, etc.? When expressed in these terms, this objec-
tion may be reminiscent of the earlier one about whether there is any such
thing as reasoning in general. However, what we have here is a new diffi-
culty, since we are now asking whether there is any significant similarity
between, for example, reasoning about reasoning and reasoning about
atoms and molecules, whereas earlier we were asking whether there is any
significant similarity between such things as reasoning about atoms and
molecules and reasoning about torts and contracts. Someone could ad-
mit that there are significant similarities among fields at the object level,
but not between the object level and the metalevel, or one might think
that each field is significantly different from each other, but argue that,
for example, object-level reasoning about atoms and metalevel reasoning
about reasoning about atoms do not constitute two different fields. But
the transference between these two levels is what the present objection
questions, or to be more exact, the transference from the higher into the
lower level.
In order to begin answering this objection, I would want to say that
the divergence between theory and practice mentioned above does not
show that the theoretical reflections of the practitioners, or the actual
behavior of the theorists, are inadequate, but only that normally they do
not excel. Second, even from the point of view of excellence, there are ex-
ceptions to this generalization. For example, Socrates is not only a model
of moral life, but a brilliant ethical theorist; Galileo is not only “the father
of modern science,” but also an acute methodological theorist; and both
Socrates and Galileo were nonnegligible theorists of reasoning, as well as

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 32 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

effective practitioners of reasoning.26 Third, I should call attention to one

element of my definition of the theory of reasoning which I have already
mentioned, but without the proper emphasis. I defined the enterprise in
terms of concepts and principles, not only for the interpretation and the
evaluation of reasoning, but also for the “sound practice” of reasoning.
Although the amount of theoretical understanding such principles for
reasoning well provide is in inverse proportion to the ease of their prac-
tical applicability, some of them can certainly be formulated in such a
way as to be easily applicable. Fourth, the objection seems stronger than
it is only if we emphasize a necessary connection between proficiency in
theory and proficiency in practice, for it is clear that there is no necessary
connection. However, if we are more realistic and speak in terms of influ-
ence, then I think we can say that proficiency in certain kinds or aspects
of theorizing is likely to improve practice, and conversely proficiency in
actual reasoning is likely to produce the desire for theoretical reflection
in order to understand better what one is doing. Finally, theory and prac-
tice are not themselves inert, static entities, and so, to the extent that
there is a lack of correspondence, one can demand that they be brought
closer together, that theory be constructed with an eye toward practice,
and that practice be more infused with theory.

4. Summary
To sum up, I have addressed myself to the problem of giving a positive,
constructive, and self-sufficient interpretation of informal logic, by view-
ing it as a philosophical approach to the theory of reasoning. I began
by defining the theory of reasoning in such a way as to avoid apriorism,
excessive evaluationism, dogmatic universalism, and premature systemati-
zation. And then I defended the viability, the philosophical character, and
the methodological legitimacy of the theory of reasoning so conceived by
defending it from a number of objections. These were the criticisms that
its defining subject matter – reasoning – is perhaps a fictitious one; that
even if reasoning is not a fictitious subject matter, it can be studied only
by a branch of cognitive psychology; that even if there is a distinct, philo-
sophical way of studying reasoning, this is not a discipline that can be
taken seriously, as the difficulties afflicting argument analysis show; and
finally, that at any rate, the practical import of the theory of reasoning is

26 The case of Socrates is, of course, well known, while for the case of Galileo the thesis is
demonstrated in Finocchiaro 1980b.

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 Informal Logic and the Theory of Reasoning 33

suspect. Both my elaboration of the definition and my methodological

justification of the theory of reasoning suggest a considerable overlap27
with “informal logic.” Two other ways of strengthening this suggestion
have not been attempted in this chapter. One would be a detailed exam-
ination of explicit contributions to the theory of reasoning.28 A second
way of strengthening the suggestion would be to show how contributions
to the theory of reasoning can be interpreted as contributions to infor-
mal logic, in the sense that they are addressing themselves to topics and
issues of explicit concern and interest to informal logicians.29

27 Notice that I speak of overlap, and not of identity, partly because, as clarified earlier,
informal logic has a practical component which cannot be completely reduced to the
theoretical one, even when the latter is required to include the elaboration of principles
for the sound practice of reasoning.
28 Cf. Finocchiaro 1981, where it is argued that the theories of fallacies prevalent among
informal logicians are contributions (of various worth) to the theory of the evaluation
of reasoning.
29 A possible example might be to elaborate the “informal logic” aspect of a work like
Finocchiaro 1980b; cf. Johnson and Blair 1985.

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 2

An Historical Approach to the Study

of Argumentation (1987)

1. Elements of the Historical Approach

The primary purpose of this chapter is to elucidate and illustrate an
historical approach1 to the study of argumentation. I am also interested
in justifying this approach and in discussing a number of difficulties that
it faces and some fruitful lines of inquiry it suggests. However, space
limitations will force me to be rather sketchy and allusive in regard to
this justification and discussion, whose details will have to await some
other occasion. Nevertheless, I invite reactions to the secondary topics as
well as to the central ones.
By way of elucidation, an historical approach is to be understood as a
type of empirical approach, empirical primarily in the sense in which this
term is contrasted to an apriorist, rationalistic, or intellectualist orienta-
tion. In this context, formal logic, or at least the relevant parts of for-
mal logic,2 may be taken as an example of the apriorist approach, while

1 This may be regarded as being in the tradition of Toulmin, who was explicit that “not
only will logic have to become more empirical; it will inevitably tend to become more
historical. . . . In the natural sciences, for instance, men such as Kepler, Newton, Lavoisier,
Darwin and Freud have transformed not only our beliefs, but also our way of arguing and
our standards of relevance and proof” (1958, 257). There are differences, however. For
example Toulmin’s thesis here is primarily a metalogical claim, whereas mine bypasses
issues in the philosophy of logic as such. And his conception of ‘historical’ here seems
to refer primarily to notions of evolutionary development, emergence of novelty, and
absence of eternal absolutes, whereas mine emphasizes merely the past, the naturally
occurring, and the observational.
2 Here I am thinking of a work like Kalish et al. 1980, whereas Tarski 1965 may be regarded
as a semi-empirical approach to mathematical reasoning, and Jeffrey 1967 a relatively
autonomous and self-contained investigation.

34

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 Historical Approach to the Study of Argumentation 35

cognitive psychology3 may be regarded as an instance of a different type of

empirical approach. The main methodological difference between cog-
nitive psychology and the historical approach advocated here is that the
former is experimental, while the latter is merely observational. Whether
the historical-observational or psychological-experimental approach is
preferable is an issue of great interest and importance, which for the
moment I merely want to raise rather than discuss, let alone settle.4 It
should also be clear that the historical approach is in no way committed
to any sort of naive empiricism, according to which one should observe
argumentation with a tabula rasa and without any presuppositions; for I
do not think such naive empiricism is tenable. Nor is the historical ap-
proach committed to an absolute separation between the empirical and
the a priori; for what we have instead is a relative and contextual distinc-
tion. Finally, it should be pointed out that such orientations are matters of
degree, and so what I would advocate is a greater emphasis on empirical
studies of argumentation (at least among philosophers5 ), rather than the

3 See, for example, Wason and Johnson-Laird 1972, Johnson-Laird and Wason 1977, and
Evans (1982; 1983c).
4 In Finocchiaro (1979b; 1980b, 256–72) I argued for the superiority of the historical
approach by exploring some difficulties in the otherwise important work in the psy-
chology of reasoning by Wason and Johnson-Laird (1972). In a recent paper, Wason
(1983) has replied to some of my criticism and has thrown some new light on the spe-
cific experimental phenomenon that had occasioned my criticism, that is the so-called
“Watson’s four-card problem.” Nevertheless, I am not sure that the methodological issue
is significantly affected. If we take the issue to be that of experimental versus historical-
observational approach, I would now want to strengthen my argument in two ways, which,
ironically, would utilize ideas and arguments advanced by other cognitive psychologists.
One would be what I take to be a central point in Byrne 1983, namely that if we
reject the use of subjects’ “protocols” as explanations of their performance, and regard
them merely as data, then they can function to provide more stringent tests for theoretical
claims. Another would be to exploit some of the conclusions found in Evans (1982; 1983b;
1983c). His work is too important and controversial for any one-sentence summary, and it
certainly deserves extended critical scrutiny. Nevertheless, at the risk of oversimplification
I will say that he criticizes the “rationalist” approach in the experimental psychology of
reasoning, and he engages in an impressive constructive attempt to interpret such exper-
imental data along the lines of general cognitive psychology, using notions and activities
like perception, memory, and at times even purely statistical scholastic considerations.
From this it is a short step to conclude that psychologists’ reasoning experiments have
not really been testing reasoning and argumentation, but other cognitive activities, so
that if it is the study of reasoning and argumentation that we are dealing with, then the
experimental approach has been shown to have severe limitations indeed. Needless to
say, this methodological issue deserves further discussion, and I will tackle it more fully
on some other occasion.
5 This is not to say, of course, that even among philosophers the empirical emphasis is
totally absent. In fact, the recent emergence of what is sometimes called “informal logic”

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 36 Theorizing about Reasoning and Argument

total exclusion of apriorist, conceptual analyses. In short, the historical

study in question is an empirical, not an empiricist approach.
A second needed clarification regards its relationship to the norma-
tive approach. Although sometimes the empirical and the normative are
contrasted with each other, that is not my intention here. I do not mean
to exclude normative considerations. On the contrary, my historical ap-
proach to argumentation has normative and evaluative aims in addition
to descriptive, analytical, and explanatory ones. The question of the ex-
act relationship between the two sets of goals is another interesting and
important issue that could be dealt with in a longer or in a purely method-
ological investigation. However, in the present one I also want to present
some concrete and substantive results, and so these remarks will have to
suffice for the moment.
In regard to approaches that might be labeled rhetorical and dialec-
tical, I would begin by delimiting the meaning of these terms as follows.
I would take ‘rhetorical’ in Perelman’s sense,6 as meaning pertaining to
persuasion, and I would take ‘dialectical’ to mean dialogical, that is, per-
taining to dialogue. And then I would say that I see no reason to exclude
the rhetorical and dialectical aspects of argumentation from the histori-
cal approach. Of course, if the rhetorical approach is taken to be the one
that studies exclusively the persuasive aspects of argumentation, then it
would be incompatible with the historical approach. Similarly, if the di-
alectical orientation is defined as the approach that examines only the
element of dialogue in argumentation, then it would not be possible to
proceed both historically and dialectically. So, while I would not attribute
the features of ‘rhetorical’ and ‘dialectical’ to the historical approach in
exactly the same way that I would speak of its being empirical and norma-
tive, nevertheless the rhetorical and dialectical aspects of argumentation
do come within the purview of my historical approach.
One last clarification is needed before we go on. In many contexts the
historical is opposed to the theoretical. I am thinking, for example, of
such contrasts as economic theory versus economic history, philosophical
theorizing versus the history of philosophy, natural history versus natural

is a sign of greater interest in the empirical study of argumentation among philosophers;

for an excellent review of the literature, see Johnson and Blair 1985, and for a more
methodological analysis, see Finocchiaro 1984b, which is in part a methodological de-
fense from criticism such as McPeck 1981; this last issue could now benefit from some of
the insights in Johnson-Laird 1983a. Other interesting philosophical discussions of the
question of empiricism are Barth 1985a and Harman 1984.
6 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958.

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 Historical Approach to the Study of Argumentation 37

philosophy, and more generally of the classification of disciplines into

those that deal with particulars and those that deal with generalities. This
is not the contrast I have in mind when I speak of the historical approach
to the study of argumentation. Rather, one of its central aims is indeed
the formulation of generalizations. The historicity refers primarily to the
nature of the evidence, data, or sources that are examined in order to
reach those generalizations. To what extent it is possible to formulate
high-level, systematic, interpretative, and explanatory theories, in addi-
tion to low-level principles and approximate rules of thumb, is another
one of those interesting and important problems, whose full details are
off-limits in the present context.
The historical approach begins with the selection of some important
book of the past, containing a suitably wide range and intense degree of
argumentation. Many of the classics would fulfill this requirement, for
example, Plato’s Republic, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Galileo
Galilei’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, David Hume’s Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, perhaps Karl
Marx’s Capital. Not all classics would be appropriate; this is easy to see
for works of poetry, fiction, and literature. Historical works such as those
of Thucydides, Guicciardini, or Burckhardt do contain an occasional ar-
gument, but not sufficiently frequently. I do not think that philosophical
classics would qualify either, if we are thinking of such works as Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, Descartes’s Meditations, Kant’s Critique, or Hegel’s Phenomenol-
ogy. The problem with them would not be an insufficient degree of argu-
mentation, but an insufficiently wide range of topic. In other words, they
would make good case studies in philosophical argumentation, whereas
our present concern is argumentation in general. Analogous remarks ap-
ply to mathematical classics such as Euclid’s Elements. In some cases works
other than the classics would serve the purpose, for example collections
or selections of judicial opinions of bodies like the United States Supreme
Court or the World Court in The Hague.7
The first step of the historical approach gives content to the qualifi-
cation made earlier, to the effect that there is no commitment here to
naive empiricism. In fact, it is obvious that such a selection presupposes
a notion of what argumentation is. In this sense, there is an element of
apriorism. However, this is not to say that one is deciding or assuming
in advance what descriptive generalizations or normative principles of

7 Interesting variations of this textual-analytical discussion of the historical approach may

be found in Ennis 1968, Vignaux (1976, 266–326), and Walton (1985, 92–112, 226–36).

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