Table of Contents

Theoretical Background and Organization of the Study.- Considerations Regarding the Design of the Study.- Ad Hominem Fallacies: An Exemplary Study.- The Confrontation Stage: The Freedom Rule.- The Opening Stage: The Obligation-to-Defend Rule (I).- The Opening Stage: The Obligation-to-Defend (II).- The Argumentation Stage: The Argument Scheme Rule.- The Concluding Stage: The Concluding Rule.- Conventional Validity of the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules.

Reviews

From the reviews: "This book is an excellent contribution to the study of pragma-dialectics. ... the present book is an extremely good example of how experimental studies can be designed on the basis of normative theories of argumentation. The authors have succeeded in developing a large set of well thought out experiments, and in reporting clearly about the results." (Jos Hornikx, Information Design Journal, Vol. 18 (2), 2010) "This book has varying levels of value to different scholars ... . The book has several clear merits. First, it is informative about how people view dialogical fallacies, and these results can be understood independent of the pragma-dialectical framework. Second, the research program offers consistent evidence for the conventional validity of the discussion rules at the heart of pragma-dialectics. And finally, it is a nice example of how programmatic empirical research can assist a theoretical project and move it into the domain of practical application." (Dale Hample, Argumentation, Vol. 24, March, 2010)