Informal logic

Informal logic (also informal logic ) is a branch of argumentation theory .

Informal logics aim to analyze and evaluate normal language arguments using logical methods. The fact that logic is applied to non-formal phenomena such as everyday argumentation, mass media or non-formal scientific argumentation structures is taken into account. On the one hand, the term argument is massively expanded to include e.g. B. to be able to investigate pictorial representation theoretically with methods of argumentation theory, on the other hand, the results that are worked out in the discipline are not mandatory. Informal-logical conclusions can - unlike formal-logical conclusions - not be based on deductively necessary structures and therefore informal conclusions lack the logical necessity.

The term informal logic established itself in the Anglo-Saxon area in the 1970s and its content is usually traced back to the post-logistic preparatory work by Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman in the late 1950s. Approaches like the pragma dialectic are often assigned to the field.

See also

• Types of arguments

literature

• Hans V. Hansen: (2011): Are there methods of informal logic? in F. Zenker (Ed.): Argumentation: Community and Cognition, Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, Windsor: CRRAR.
• Douglas Walton (2008): Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach ; Cambridge University Press 2nd edition.

Web links

• Leo Groarke:  Informal Logic. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Frans van Eemeren (2009): The Study of Argumentation . In Andrea A. Lunsford, Kirt H. Wilson, Rosa A. Eberly (Eds.): The SAGE handbook of rhetorical studies. SAGE: p. 117. ISBN 978-1-4129-0950-1 .