What Is Informal Logic?

Abstract

This chapter is a slightly revised version of a keynote address at the 2014 International Society for the Study of Argumentation conference. I describe the emergence of two themes that I think are key to the constitution of informal logic. One is the development of analytic tools for the recognition, identification and display of so-called “non-interactive” arguments. The other is the development of evaluative tools for assessing deductive, inductive, and other kinds of arguments (or other evaluative criteria than deductive validity and inductive strength). At the end I mention several current interests of informal logic.