Walton’s Argumentation Schemes

Walton’s Argumentation Schemes

 

The Argumentation Schemes below are taken from Douglas Walton’s book Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning.  If you are interested in using these schemes I would suggest that you read Walton’s book, as their utility may not be apparent without the background theory concerning presumptive reasoning.

Critical Questions appear in note boxes, and are labeled with the question mark icon pictured below.

The critical questions are numbered as they appear in Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning, for easy reference.

 

Argumentation Schemes

 

• Argument from Sign
• Argument from an Exceptional Case
• Argument from Analogy
• Argument from Bias
• Argument from Cause to Effect
• Argument from Correlaton to Causes
• Argument from Established Rule
• Argument from Evidence to a Hypothesis
• Argument from Falsification of a Hypothesis
• Argument from Example
• Argument from Commitment
• Circumstantial Argument Against the Person
• Argument from Popular Practice
• Argument from Popularity
• Argument from Position to Know
• Argument from Expert Opinion
• Argument from Precedent
• Argument from Consequences
• Argument from Waste
• Argument from Verbal Classification
• Argument from Vagueness of a Verbal Clasification
• Argument from Arbitrariness of a Verbal Classification
• Argument from Gradulualism
• Full Slippery Slope Argument
• Causal Slippery Slope Argument
• Precendent Slipperly Slope Argument
• Plausible Argument from Ignorance
• Deductive Argument from Ignorance
• Ethotic Argument