The Death of Argument

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvii

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2. Metatheoretical Questions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Who Cares About the Fallacies?

      • John Woods

      Pages 3-23

   3. The Necessity of Formalism

      • John Woods

      Pages 25-42

   4. The Informal Core of Formal Logic

      • John Woods

      Pages 43-61

3. Threats and Intimidation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63

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   2. Ad Baculum and Pascal’s Wager

      • John Woods

      Pages 65-73

   3. Appeal to Force

      • John Woods

      Pages 75-94

4. Arguments Involving Reference to Persons

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 95-95

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   2. Dialectical Blindspots

      • John Woods

      Pages 97-110

   3. Ad Hominem

      • John Woods

      Pages 111-123

   4. And so Indeed are Perfect Cheat

      • John Woods

      Pages 125-148

5. Pragma-Dialectics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 149-149

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   2. Pragma-Dialectics

      • John Woods

      Pages 151-159

   3. Buttercups, GNP’s and Quarks

      • John Woods

      Pages 161-170

   4. Unifying the Fallacies?

      • John Woods

      Pages 171-182

6. Intractable Disagreement

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183

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   2. Standoffs in Public Policy

      • John Woods

      Pages 185-199

   3. Standoffs and Demoralization

      • John Woods

      Pages 201-216

7. How to Interpret Arguments

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 217-217

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The present work is a fair record of work I've done on the fallacies and related matters in the fifteen years since 1986. The book may be seen as a sequel to Fallacies: Selected papers 1972-1982, which I wrote with Douglas Walton, and which appeared in 1989 with Foris. This time I am on my own. Douglas Walton has, long since, found his own voice, as the saying has it; and so have I. Both of us greatly value the time we spent performing duets, but we also recognize the attractions of solo work. If I had to characterize the difference that has manifested itself in our later work, I would venture that Walton has strayed more, and I less, from what has come to be called the Woods-Walton Approach to the study of fallacies. Perhaps, on reflection "stray" is not the word for it, inasmuch as Walton's deviation from and my fidelity to the WWA are serious matters of methodological principle. The WWA was always conceived of as a way of handling the analysis of various kinds of fallacious argument or reasoning. It was a response to a particular challenge [Hamblin, 1970]. The challenge was that since logicians had allowed the investigation of fallacious reasoning to fall into disgraceful disarray, it was up to them to put things right. Accordingly, the WWA sought these repairs amidst the rich pluralisms of logic in the 1970s and beyond.

• Argumentation Theory
• cognitive psychology
• discourse
• formal logic
• linguistics
• logic
• science

• The Abductive Systems Group, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

  John Woods

• Department of Computer Science, King’s College, London, England

  John Woods

• Department of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge, Canada

  John Woods

Policies and ethics