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A Feeling Disputation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Michael J. Wreen
Michael J. Wreen
Affiliation:
Marquette University
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Extract

This, the latest volume in The Douglas Walton Encyclopedia of Argumentation—well, it's starting to look like that, anyway—is primarily concerned with four purported fallacies that involve an appeal to emotion: ad populum, ad misericordiam, ad baculum, and ad hominem. In very rough outline, the layout of the book is this. After some preliminary remarks about the four fallacies in the first chapter, and some remarks about the theoretical framework he will be working with in the second, Walton devotes a chapter apiece to each of the four in the order indicated above. A seventh chapter focuses on “borderline cases,” in which more than one of the so-called fallacies is involved, and an eighth summarizes and refines the findings of earlier chapters. As is obvious, The Place of Emotion is well organized; and, as would be a safe inference for anyone acquainted with any of Walton's work, it is written in a readily accessible and unpretentious style: a plain style, in the best sense of the term. Walton has something to say, and it's virtually impossible to miss it—and that independently of the fact that this book, like a number of his others, is somewhat repetitive. The Place of Emotion is one of those rare books that a specialist in a field would find of interest, but that could also be taught in an undergraduate course.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Fall 1997 , pp. 787 - 812
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1997

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References

Notes

1 Walton's other books in argumentation theory include Topic Relevance in Argumentation (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1982)Google Scholar; Logical Dialogue-Games and Fallacies (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984)Google Scholar; Arguer's Position (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Informal Fallacies (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1987)Google Scholar; Informal Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Question-Reply Argumentation (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Begging the Question (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Slippery Slope Arguments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Plausible Argument in Everyday Conversation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992)Google Scholar; A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Arguments from Ignorance (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; (with John Woods) Argument: The Logic of the Fallacies (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1982)Google Scholar; Fallacies: Selected Papers 1972–1982 (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1989)Google Scholar; and (with Erik Krabbe) Commitment in Dialogue (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Practical Reasoning (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990)Google Scholar, another of Walton's books, is on a closely related topic.

2 It would be unfair to criticize Walton on ad baculum in this article, since I am criticized in his chapter on that argument-type and have responded at length elsewhere, in “Knockdown Arguments,” Informal Logic (forthcoming).

3 Walton himself discusses a similar case on p. 117, and agrees with this assessment.

4 Since I discuss the pragma-dialectical conception of a fallacy, and van Eemeren and Grootendoorst's in particular, at length in another article (“Look, Ma! No Frans!” Pragmatics and Cognition, 2 [1994]: 285–306), I will not pursue the matter here.

5 Actually, I might presume that it is loaded or presume that it is not loaded, if I knew more about firing ranges, or the particular firing range in question. Strictly enforced rules that I am acquainted with, for example, might prohibit loaded weapons from being left on the firing range; conversely, strictly enforced rules might require that, to preserve security, only loaded weapons are left on the firing range.

6 Walter L. Weber sniffed out this particular problem, and I would like to thank him for drawing my attention to it.

7 Except maybe me, in my article “Jump with Common Spirits.” Metaphilosophy 24(1993): 61–75.

8 I say “if” because, to me, the phrase sounds unnatural in context. My own guess is that more than anything else, its presence is due to Irving Copi (from whom Walton takes the example), and is there for the purpose of alienating the reader from the argument, and getting him to label it a fallacy.

9 Unfortunately, his first name was neither “Tobacco” nor “Uriah.” But then again, Mr. Bradley's name wasn't “Bill.”