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This new second edition is an introductory guidebook to the basic principles of how to
construct good arguments and how to criticize bad ones. It is non-technical in its
approach and is based on 186 key examples, each discussed and evaluated in clear,
illustrative detail. Professor Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic,
explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how
correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and
critical responses.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: Abductive, Presumptive and Plausible Arguments

1. Abductive Inference
2. Peirce on the Three Types of Reasoning
3. Peirce on the Form of Abductive Inference
4. Scientific Discovery and Artificial Intelligence
5. Abductive Inference in Legal Evidence
6. Defeasible, Plausible and Presumptive Reasoning
7. Tentative Definitions
8. Argumentation Schemes
9. Araucaria as a Tool for Argument Diagramming

Chapter Two: A Dialogue Model of Explanation

1. Types of Explanations
2. Models of Scientific Explanation
3. Simulation, Understanding and Making Sense
4. Scripts, Anchored Narratives and Implicatures
5. The Dialogue Model of Explanation
6. The Speech Act of Explanation
7. Dialogue Models of Scientific Argumentation and Explanation
8. Examination Dialogue and Shared Understanding
9. Dialectical Shifts and Embeddings

Chapter Three: A Procedural Model of Rationality

1. Computational Dialectics
2. Reasoning as Chaining of Inferences
3. Forward and Backward Chaining Rule-Based Systems in AI
4. The Problem of Enthymemes
5. Multi-Agent Practical Reasoning
6. Bounded Rationality

Chapter Four: Defeasible Modus Ponens Arguments

1. A Typical Case of Abductive Reasoning in Evidence Law
2. Argumentation from Consequences
3. Defeasible Inferences and Modus Ponens
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4. Conditionals and Generalization

5. Abductive Inference in Medical Diagnosis
6. Introducing Defeasible Modus Ponens
7. Using DMP as an Argumentation Scheme

Chapter Five: Abductive Causal Reasoning

1. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
2. Forms of Causal Argumentation
3. Argument from Correlation to Cause
4. Abductive Causal Reasoning in Law
5. Causal Abduction in Medical Examination and Diagnosis
6. Causal Reasoning as Dynamic Improvement of a Hypothesis
7. The Thesis that Causal Reasoning is Abductive
8. Causal Explanations
9. The Chain of Reasoning in the Accident Case
10. Insights into Causal Argumentation Yielded by the Abductive Theory

Chapter Six: Query-Driven Abductive Reasoning

1. Argument Extrapolation by Chaining Forward
2. Colligation in Chaining Backward
3. The Form of Abductive Inference Revisited
4. BDI and Commitment Models
5. The Abductive Profile of Dialogue
6. Abduction as a Query-Driven Process
7. Discovery as an Open Process
8. Retraction of Commitments
9. The Four Phases of Abductive Reasoning

Chapter Seven: Unsolved Problems of Abduction

1. Abduction and Argumentation Schemes
2. Enthymemes, Argumentation Schemes and the DMP Form of Reasoning
3. The Role of Examination in Science
4. Accounts and Explanations
5. The Problem of Inconsistency
6. How Abductive Reasoning Moves Forward by Examining Competing Accounts
7. Question Answering and Critiquing Systems in AI
8. Summary of Abduction as a Heuristic

Bibliography