One-Sided Arguments: A Dialectical Analysis of Bias (SUNY series in Logic and Language) - Softcover

Walton, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791442683 ISBN 13: 9780791442685

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1999

Synopsis

We often feel that an argument should be doubted or held as suspicious because it has a bias. But bias isn't always wrong. It is a normal phenomenon in advocacy argumentation, and in many cases it is to be expected. Yet sometimes bias can be quite harmful in argumentation. In this book, bias is defined as one-sided advocacy of a point of view in argumentation. It is shown to be harmful, or properly subject to critical condemnation, only when the dialogue exchange is supposed to be a balanced, two-sided exchange of viewpoints.

The book concedes the postmodernist premise that bias is quite normal in everyday conversational arguments, and that a finding of bias should not, by itself, constitute grounds for criticizing an argument as critically deficient or fallacious. But the book strongly disagrees with the postmodernist conclusion that no standard of rationality can be brought to bear to condemn narrowly interest-based or one-sided arguments as biased. It is argued that in some cases narrow, one-sided partisanship in an argument is justifiably a basis for negative criticism of the worth of the argument.

About this title

Review:

"Walton tends to write books that need to be written, and in many cases he leads the field by being the first to draw attention to a topic that has been inadequately treated or not appreciated for its importance. In this book, he reads beyond the superficial assumption that all advocacy argumentation will be problematically biased to consider that such discourses are potentially reasonable and then discuss when this might be the case. There are also some very good case studies dispersed throughout."--Christopher Tindale, Trent University

Synopsis:

Walton (philosophy, U. of Winnipeg) accepts that bias is a normal part of everyday conversational arguments, but disagrees with the postmodernist presumption that no standard of rationality can be found to criticize narrowly one-sided arguments. Walton uses a diverse set of examples, such as the abortion and pornography issues, to explain how bias

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0791442683
• ISBN 13: 9780791442685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 295