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 analyze and 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.

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes.

This text introduces university students to the philosophical ethos of critical thinking, as well as to the essential skills required to practice it. The authors believe that Critical Thinking should engage students with issues of broader philosophical interest while they develop their skills in reasoning and argumentation. The text is informed throughout by philosophical theory concerning argument and communication—from Aristotle’s recognition of the importance of evaluating argument in terms of its purpose to Habermas’s developing of the concept of communicative rationality. The authors’ treatment of the topic is also sensitive to the importance of language and of situation in shaping arguments, and to the necessity in argument of some interplay between reason and emotion. Unlike many other texts in this area, then, Good Reasons for Better Arguments helps to explain both why argument is important and how the social role of argument plays an important part in determining what counts as a good argument. If this text is distinctive in the extent to which it deals with the theory and the values of critical thinking, it is also noteworthy for the thorough grounding it provides in the skills of deductive and inductive reasoning; the authors present the reader with useful tools for the interpretation, evaluation and construction of arguments. A particular feature is the inclusion of a wide range of exercises, rich with examples that illuminate the practice of argument for the student. Many of the exercises are self testing, with answers provided at the back of the text; others are appropriate for in-class discussion and assignments. Challenging yet accessible, Good Reasons for Better Arguments brings a fresh perspective to an essential subject.

Explores how we justify our beliefs - and try to influence those of others - both soundly and effectively.

Developed for introductory courses in argumentation and advocacy, Argumentation and Critical Thought: An Introduction to Advocacy, Reasoning, and Debateintroduces students to argumentation as a theory and as a practice. It clearly explains key concepts of argumentation and places it within the context of the larger field of communication studies. The emphasis is on critical theory and rhetoric as ways to ground the practical elements of formal debate. This encompasses ethos, pathos, logos, critical theory, notions of subjectivity, and social change, all of which are addressed in the text. The text also addresses the canons of rhetoric, the Toulmin diagram, logic and reason, and competitive debate and strategic research. Each chapter includes targeted learning activities to support self-assessment, and enhance comprehension and retention. Argumentation and Critical Thought: An Introduction to Advocacy, Reasoning, and Debate makes its subject matter both accessible and challenging. The textbook's blend of theory and practice, fundamentals, and critical thinking, as well as its exploration of all the intricacies of argumentation and advocacy, make it an ideal teaching and learning tool for any undergraduate course in debate or critical thinking. Kevin Kuswa holds a Ph.D. in communication studies and rhetoric from the University of Texas, Austin. He has been involved in nationwide debate pedagogy and coaching for over twenty years. He won the national debate tournament for Georgetown University, coached the national championship team for Dartmouth College, and is currently the head coach at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, Florida. Cameron Sublett is an assistant professor at Santa Barbara City College, where he also serves as the director of Argumentation and Debate and Public Address. His research and writing focuses on education policy and leadership as well as political communication.

In this book two of the leading figures in argumentation theory present a view of argumentation as a means of resolving differences of opinion by testing the acceptability of the disputed positions. Their model of a 'critical discussion' serves as a theoretical tool for analyzing, evaluating and producing argumentative discourse. This is a major contribution to the study of argumentation and will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy.

Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic and discourse analysis, linguistics and forensic science, philosophy and psychology, political science and education, sociology and law, and rhetoric and artificial intelligence. This presents the growing group of interested scholars and students with a problem of access, since it is even for those active in the field not common to have acquired a familiarity with relevant aspects of each discipline that enters into this multidisciplinary matrix. This book offers its readers a unique comprehensive survey of the various theoretical contributions which have been made to the study of argumentation. It discusses the historical works that provide the background to the field and all major approaches and trends in contemporary research. Argument has been the subject of systematic inquiry for twenty-five hundred years. It has been graced with theories, such as formal logic or the legal theory of evidence, that have acquired a more or less settled provenance with regard to specific issues. But there has been nothing to date that qualifies as a unified general theory of argumentation, in all its richness and complexity. This being so, the argumentation theorist must have access to materials and methods that lie beyond his or her "home" subject. It is precisely on this account that this volume is offered to all the constituent research communities and their students. Apart from the historical sections, each chapter provides an economical introduction to the problems and methods that characterize a given part of the contemporary research program. Because the chapters are self-contained, they can be consulted in the order of a reader's interests or research requirements. But there is value in reading the work in its entirety. Jointly authored by the very people whose research has done much to define the current state of argumentation theory and to point the way toward more general and unified future treatments, this book is an impressively authoritative contribution to the field.