An Epistemological Appraisal of Walton’s Argument Schemes

Abstract

The article critically discusses Walton’s (and co-authors’) argument scheme approach to good argumentation. Four characteristics of Walton’s approach are presented: 1. Argument schemes provide normative requirements. 2. These schemata are enthymematic. 3. There are associated critical questions. 4. The method is inductive, abstracting schemata from groups of similar arguments. Four adequacy conditions are applied to these characteristics: AC1: effectiveness in achieving the epistemic goal of obtaining and communicating justified acceptable opinions; AC2: completeness in capturing the good argument types; AC3: efficiency in achieving the goals; AC4: justification of the argument schemes. The discussion reveals weaknesses in Walton’s account, including they are neither effective nor truly justified. A better alternative is an epistemological approach based on epistemological principles.

Epistemic Norms for Public Political Arguments

“…The schemes also do not provide any approach to the ethical weighing of the interests of different persons (T2). Moreover, Walton's schemes-his (ex post) justification attempt (Walton & Sartor 2013) notwithstanding-are descriptions of empirically found argument patterns but have not been checked or even constructed epistemologically with respect to their capacity to guarantee the thesis' acceptability; in fact many of Walton's schemes endorse ineffective arguments, which too rarely lead to acceptable theses (Lumer 2022a).…”