ABSTRACT
Arguments themselves can suffer from a number of general sources of inadequacies. One inadequacy is that there are false beliefs among their premises or mediating inferences. A second is that one or more of the inferential steps can be invalid. A third is that either the warrants or the backings are simply not sufficient to merit the conclusions (e.g., they are irrelevant, too weak, or simply underdetermine any conclusions drawn). A fourth is that they cite appeals that are not just weak but are potentially misleading. It is these last that make up the bulk of the lists generated in the popularly written but argumentatively sound Straight and Crooked Thinking of Thouless (1974/1932), in which he illustrates 38 "dishonest tricks." Walton (1989) elaborated this listing, including ISO in his Informal Logic. In a spate of concern that his fellow historians should cease to be so carefree and careless in their writings, Fischer (1971) identified 112 types of fallacy, each of which he had found to mar the quality of at least one history text. Lists continue to appear (Cohen, 2003). The "dishonest tricks" label of Thouless implies that their author is aware of what is being done and is being deliberately deceptive; that may not be so. Although Fischer may be justified in his presumption that professional historians should be aware of the fallacious qualities of arguments, especially in written works, the term is too strong to be used in all his examples, especially in contexts of situation where the use of some of them could be defended as sensible. For my taste, the use of "informal" as a contrast with "formal" is also misleading; "informal" normally carries no implication of falling short of any standard, and many of his examples do fall short of being ac-
ceptable. Here 'inadequate' will be used to embrace the four types of potential unacceptability and any other variants. Where the Gricean principle of precision can be applied to yield greater specificity, 'false or mistaken beliefs,' 'invalid,' 'weak,' and 'misleading' are used, with the last occasionally being referred to as a 'rhetorical device.'
