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Home / Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation & Rhetoric / CRRAR Researchers / Douglas Walton

Douglas Walton, Distinguished Research Fellow

Narrative

In 1985, Dr. Walton was the winner of the American Philosophical Quarterly Prize Essay Competition on the topic: “Are Circular Arguments Necessarily Vicious?”. He was awarded a Fellowship-in-Residence in 1989 at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) to be a participant in the international research group working in the project, “Fallacies as Violations of Rules for Argumentative Discourse”. He is a member of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, and was a keynote speaker at the First International Conference on Argumentation in Amsterdam in 1986. In 1988, Dr. Walton won the Erica and Arnold Rogers Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship. He was an invited speaker at the Third International Conference on Informal Logic in Windsor, Canada, in 1989, and is on the editorial boards of the journals Argumentation and Advocacy, Informal Logic, and Philosophy and Rhetoric. He is co-editor of the Critical Argumentation book series for Cambridge University Press, and serves on the editorial boards of the Argumentation Library book series for Springer Verlag, and the Studies in Meaning and Communication book series for the Davies Group. He is the author of over thirty books in the areas of argumentation, logic and artificial intelligence. They include, most recently, Legal Argumentation and Evidence, Penn State Press, 2002, Argumentation Methods for Artificial Intelligence in Law, Springer, 2005, and Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation, Cambridge University Press, 2006, Character Evidence, Springer, 2006, Dialog Theory for Critical Argumentation, John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2007, Media Argumentation, Cambridge University Press, 2007, and Witness Testimony Evidence, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Research Interests

Argumentation, Artificial Intelligence, and Legal Argumentation.

Current Research:

Walton is working in legal argumentation, in particular on a series of problems in modeling dialogue argumentation in law including the application of argumentation and formal dialogue systems, inspired by their uses in AI, to legal reasoning.

Research Information

Recent Funding:

  • 2008-2011: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant 410-2008-0065: Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence and Law (Application ranked 6 out of 122 reviewed in the interdisciplinary category). Amount awarded = $98,400.
  • 2005-2008: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant 410-2005-0398: Dialogue Systems for Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence and Law (Application ranked 20 out of 109 reviewed in the interdisciplinary category). Amount awarded = $62,264.
  • 2002-2005: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant 410-2002-0690: Argumentation Schemes in Natural and Artificial Communication (Application ranked 28 out of 145 reviewed in the interdisciplinary category). Amount awarded = $91,760.
  • 1999-2002: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Research Grant 410-99-0877: The Dialogue Structure of Legal Argumentation.

Recent Publications:

(Complete list can be found at www.dougwalton.ca)

Books:

Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach, 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Douglas Walton, Chris Reed and Fabrizio Macagno, Argumentation Schemes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Fallacies: Selected Papers 1972-1982, with John Woods, 2nd edition, with Foreword by Dale Jacquette, Studies in Logic, London, College Publications, 2007.

Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion and Rhetoric, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Dialog Theory for Critical Argumentation, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007.

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Character Evidence: An Abductive Theory, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006.

Argumentation Methods for Artificial Intelligence in Law, Berlin, Springer (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence Series), 2005.

    Witness Testimony Evidence: Argumentation, Artificial Intelligence and Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Contribution to books:

Douglas Walton and David M. Godden, ‘Rescher on Dialog Systems, Argumentation and Burden of Proof’, Rescher Studies: A Collection of Essays on the Philosophical Work of Nicholas Rescher, Presented to Him on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, ed. Robert Almeder, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2008, 401-427.

Douglas Walton and David M. Godden, ‘Informal Logic and the Dialectical Approach to Argument’, Reason Reclaimed, ed. Hans V. Hansen and Robert C. Pinto, Newport News, Virginia, Vale Press, 2007, 3-17.

Douglas Walton and David M. Godden, ‘The Impact of Argumentation on Artificial Intelligence’, Considering Pragma-Dialectics, ed. Peter Houtlosser and Agnes van Rees, Mahwah, New Jersey, Erlbaum, 2006, 287-299.

Chris Reed and Douglas Walton, ‘Towards a Formal and Implemented Model of Argumentation Schemes in Agent Communication’, Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems: First International Workshop, ArgMAS 2004, Revised Selected and Invited Papers, ed. Iyad Rahwan, Pavlos Moraitis and Chris Reed, Berlin, Springer, 2005, 19-30.

‘Practical Reasoning’ (revised version), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Business Ethics, ed. Patricia H. Werhane and R. Edward Freeman, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005, 414-415.

‘Practical Reasoning and Proposing: Tools for e-Democracy’, Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, ed. Marie-Francine Moens and Peter Spyns, Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2005, 113-114.

    ‘Bias, Critical Doubt and Fallacies’, Readings on Argumentation, ed. Angela J. Aguayo and Timothy R. Steffensmeier, State College, Pennsylvania, Strata Publishing, 2008, 168-190.

Journal Articles:

Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno, ‘Reasoning from Classifications and Definitions’, Argumentation, 23, 2009, 81-107.

Fabrizio Macagno and Douglas Walton, ‘Persuasive Definitions, Values, Meanings and Implicit Disagreements’, Informal Logic, 28, 2008, 203-228.

‘A Dialogical Theory of Presumption’, Artificial Intelligence and Law, 16, 2008, 209-243.

Fabrizio Macagno and Douglas Walton, ‘The Argumentative Structure of Persuasive Definitions’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10677-008-9119-5

‘The Three Bases for the Enthymeme: A Dialogical Theory’, Journal of Applied Logic, 6, 2008, 361-379.

‘Can Argumentation Help AI to Understand Explanation?’, Kunstliche Intelligenz, 22(2), 2008, 8-12.

David M. Godden and Douglas Walton, ‘Defeasibility in Judicial Opinion: Logical or Procedural?’, Informal Logic, 28, 2008, 6-19.

‘Argument from Definition to Verbal Classification: ‘The Case of Redefining ‘Planet’ to Exclude Pluto’, Informal Logic, 28, 2008, 129-154.

Douglas Walton and Chris Reed, ‘Evaluating Corroborative Evidence’, Argumentation, 2008, DOI 10.1007/s10503-008-9104-0: http://www.springerlink.com/content/327683g16l362v8u/fulltext.pdf

David M. Godden and Douglas Walton, ‘A Theory of Presumption for Everyday Argumentation’, Pragmatics and Cognition, 15, 2007, 313-346.

Chris Reed, Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno, ‘Argument Diagramming in Logic, Law and Artificial Intelligence’, Knowledge Engineering Review, 22, 2007, 87-109.

Thomas F. Gordon, Henry Prakken and Douglas Walton, ‘The Carneades Model of Argument and Burden of Proof’, Artificial Intelligence, 171, 2007, 875-896.

‘Evaluating Practical Reasoning’, Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Logic and Philosophy of Science, 157, 2007, 197-240.

Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno, ‘Types of Dialogue, Dialectical Relevance and Textual Congruity’, Anthropology and Philosophy, 8, 2007, 101-121.

‘Visualization Tools, Argumentation Schemes and Expert Opinion Evidence in Law’, Law, Probability and Risk, 6, 2007, 119-140.

Douglas Walton and Fabrizio Macagno, ‘The Fallaciousness of Threats: Character and Ad Baculum’, Argumentation, 21, 2007, 63-81.

David M. Godden and Douglas Walton, ‘Advances in the Theory of Argumentation Schemes and Critical Questions’, Informal Logic, 27, 2007, 245-270.

‘Clarification Dialogue’, Studies in Communication Sciences, 7, 2007, 165-197.

‘Metadialogues for Resolving Burden of Proof Disputes’, Argumentation, 21, 2007, 291-316.

    ‘Dialectical Shifts Underlying Arguments from Consequences’, Informal Logic, 29, 2009, 54-83.

Conference Proceedings:

Thomas F. Gordon and Douglas Walton, ‘Legal Reasoning with Argumentation Schemes’, 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL 2009), New York, NY, USA, 2009, ed. Carole D. Hafner, ACM Press.

    Douglas Walton and Chris Reed, ‘Evaluating Corroborative Evidence’, Proceedings of the Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA), Amsterdam, SicSat, 2007, 881-885.
    ‘Disagreement Space, Burden of Proof and Fallacies’, Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 2005 NCA/AFA Summer Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley, Washington DC, National Communication Association, 2007, 426-431.

    ‘Dialogical Models of Explanation’, Explanation-Aware Computing: Papers from the 2007 AAAI Workshop, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Technical Report WS-07-06, Menlo Park California, AAAI Press, 2007, 1-9.

    Thomas F. Gordon and Douglas Walton, ‘The Carneades Argumentation Framework: Using Presumptions and Exceptions to Model Critical Questions ’, Proceedings of 6th CMNA (Computational Models of Natural Argument) Workshop, ECAI (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence), Riva del Garda, Italy, August 28 – September 1, Trento, Italy, University of Trento, 2006, 5-13.

    Fabrizio Macagno and Douglas Walton, ‘Argumentative Reasoning Patterns’, Proceedings of 6th CMNA (Computational Models of Natural Argument) Workshop, ECAI (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence), Riva del Garda, Italy, August 28 – September 1, Trento, Italy, University of Trento, 2006, 48-51.

    Douglas Walton and David M. Godden, ‘Alternatives to Suspicion and Trust as Conditions for Challenge in Argumentative Dialogue’, Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 2005 NCA/AFA Summer Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley, Washington DC, National Communication Association, 2006, 438-444.

    Thomas F. Gordon and Douglas Walton, ‘The Carneades Argumentation Framework’, Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2006, ed. P. E. Dunne and T. J. M. Bench-Capon, Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2006, 195-207.

    Thomas F. Gordon and Douglas Walton, ‘Pierson v. Post Revisited’, Computational Models of Argument: Proceedings of COMMA 2006, ed. P. E. Dunne and T. J. M. Bench-Capon, Amsterdam, IOS Press, 2006, 208-219.

    Douglas Walton and David M. Godden, ‘The Nature and Status of Critical Questions in Argumentation Schemes’, The Uses of Argument: Proceedings of a Conference at McMaster University, ed. David Hitchcock and Daniel Farr, Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, 2005, 476-484.

    Henry Prakken, Chris Reed and Douglas Walton, ‘Dialogues about the Burden of Proof’, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Held June 6-11, 2005 in Bologna, Italy, New York, The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2005, 115-124.

    ‘Evaluating Practical Reasoning’, Proceedings of the Conference on Norms, Knowledge and Reasoning in Technology Held at Huis Elzendaal, Boxmeer, the Netherlands, June 3-4, 2005, Eindhoven, Technical University of Eindhoven, 2005.

    Douglas Walton and Arno R. Lodder, ‘What Role Can Rational Argument Play in ADR and Online Dispute Resolution?’, with, IAAIL Workshop Series, Second International ODR Workshop, ed. John Zelzniknow and Arno R. Lodder, Nijmegen, Wolf Legal Publishers, 2005, 69-76.

 

Teaching Interests

Supervision:

MA Thesis:

  • M.A. Thesis Committee of Jeffrey Yik Fei Lau on ‘The Problem of Realism in Linguistic Ontology’ for Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Manitoba, 1985.

External Examiner:

  • External Examiner on the Ph.D. committee of Alena Valilyeva in the Graduate Program in Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University, 2008.
  • External Examiner for the Ph.D. thesis oral defense (viva) of Katie Atkinson, Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, England, December 5, 2005. Title of thesis: Computational Representation of Persuasive Argument in Practical Reasoning.
  • External Examiner for ‘The Dialectic of Ambiguity’, Ph.D. thesis of Jan Albert van Laar in the Department of Analytical Philosophy at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, June 19, 2003.
  • External Examiner (Fakulteit Opponent) for ‘Authority-Based Argumentative Strategies’, Ph.D. thesis of Taeda Jovicic in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, June 3, 2002.
  • External examiner for Ph.D. dissertation for Joseph Campbell, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, 1983, on medical ethics.