Zarefsky David. Argumentation: The Study Of Effective Reasoning

2nd edition. — The Teaching Company, 2005. — 131 p.What is effective reasoning? And how can it be done persuasively? These questions have been asked for thousands of years, yet some of the best thinking on reasoning and argumentation is recent and represents a break from the past.These 24 engaging lectures teach you how to reason, how to persuade others that what you think is right, and how to judge and answer the arguments of others - and how they will judge yours. Professor Zarefsky makes argumentation accessible and familiar by breaking it into five easy-to-understand components: The tools of formal logic, while essential and even definitive for mathematics and programming computers, are inadequate to decide most controversial issues.This course shows more useful approaches. Arguments can be divided into three parts: a claim, evidence, and an inference linking the evidence to the claim. All arguments fall into a handful of distinctive categories, and the same issues are at stake each time one of these distinctive patterns occurs. Three kinds of evidence can be advanced to prove an argument that something is true: objective data, social consensus, and personal credibility. There are six kinds of inference that link evidence to a claim: example, cause, sign, analogy, narrative, and form. How to use and challenge each is explained.Along the way, you'll look at numerous actual controversies with a perspective that allows you to see the structure of all disputes. In this way, argument becomes an exchange, not just a flurry of words.Introducing Argumentation and Rhetoric
History of Argumentation Studies
Formal and Informal Argument
The Emergence of Controversy
Resolutions and Issues
Stasis The Focal Point of Dispute
Presumption and Burden of Proof
Argument Analysis and Diagramming
Claims and Evidence
Reasoning from Parts to Whole
Moving from Cause to Effect
Establishing Correlations
Analogy, Narrative, and Form
What Makes a Sound Argument?
Fallacies in Reasoning
Validity and Fallacies Reconsidered
Assembling a Case
Attack and Defense I
Attack and Defense II
Language and Style in Argumentation
Arguments between Friends
Arguments among Experts
Public Argument and Democratic Life
The Ends of Argumentation