J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson (eds): Conductive Argument: An Overlooked Type of Defeasible Reasoning

Abstract

This collection of sixteen essays is a result of a symposium on conductive argument, organized by the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR, in Windsor, Ontario), in the spring of 2010. The notion of a conductive argument has been introduced by Carl Wellman in his book Challenge and Response: Justification in Ethics (1971), and is also discussed in his Morals and Ethics (1975). In Wellman’s view, the notions of induction and deduction do not deal adequately with the characteristics of ethical argumentation. The notion of conduction is needed to explain how ethical statements can be justified. His views have been brought to the attention of informal logicians and argumentation theorists by Govier (1979) and Hitchcock (1980). The book Conductive Argument aims to launch conductive argument as a topic for the attention of theorists of reasoning and argumentation, informal logic and logic in general (vii). It deals with: the concept of conduction, in part 1; the evaluation of conduction, in part 2; and with case studies and special topics, in part 3. The three parts are preceded by an introduction by Blair, and concluded with an afterword by Govier.