Editing Argumentation theory (section)

==Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge==
Argumentation theory had its origins in [[foundationalism]], a theory of knowledge ([[epistemology]]) in the field of [[philosophy]]. It sought to find the grounds for claims in the forms (logic) and materials (factual laws) of a universal system of knowledge. The [[dialectic]]al method was made famous by [[Plato]] and his use of [[Socrates]] critically questioning various characters and historical figures. But argument scholars gradually rejected [[Aristotle]]'s systematic philosophy and the [[idealism]] in Plato and [[Kant]]. They questioned and ultimately discarded the idea that argument premises take their soundness from formal philosophical systems. The field thus broadened.<ref>Bruce Gronbeck. "From Argument to Argumentation: Fifteen Years of Identity Crisis." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s ''Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation''. 1980.</ref>

One of the original contributors to this trend was the philosopher [[Chaïm Perelman]], who together with [[Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca]] introduced the French term ''la nouvelle rhetorique'' in 1958 to describe an approach to argument which is not reduced to application of formal rules of inference. Perelman's view of argumentation is much closer to a [[juridical]] one, in which rules for presenting evidence and rebuttals play an important role.

Karl R. Wallace's seminal essay, "The Substance of Rhetoric: Good Reasons" in the ''Quarterly Journal of Speech'' (1963) 44, led many scholars to study "marketplace argumentation" – the ordinary arguments of ordinary people. The seminal essay on marketplace argumentation is Ray Lynn Anderson's and C. David Mortensen's "Logic and Marketplace Argumentation" ''Quarterly Journal of Speech'' 53 (1967): 143–150.<ref>See Joseph W. Wenzel "Perspectives on Argument." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980.
</ref><ref>David Zarefsky. "Product, Process, or Point of View? Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s ''Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation''. 1980.</ref> This line of thinking led to a natural alliance with late developments in the [[sociology of knowledge]].<ref>See Ray E. McKerrow. "Argument Communities: A Quest for Distinctions."</ref> Some scholars drew connections with recent developments in philosophy, namely the [[pragmatism]] of [[John Dewey]] and [[Richard Rorty]]. Rorty has called this shift in emphasis "the [[linguistic turn]]".

In this new hybrid approach argumentation is used with or without [[empirical]] evidence to establish convincing conclusions about issues which are moral, scientific, epistemic, or of a nature in which science alone cannot answer. Out of pragmatism and many intellectual developments in the humanities and social sciences, "non-philosophical" argumentation theories grew which located the formal and material grounds of arguments in particular intellectual fields.  These theories include [[informal logic]], [[social epistemology]], [[ethnomethodology]], [[speech acts]], the sociology of knowledge, the [[sociology of science]], and [[social psychology]]. These new theories are not non-logical or anti-logical. They find logical coherence in most communities of discourse. These theories are thus often labeled "sociological" in that they focus on the social grounds of knowledge.