Argumentation Schemes with Critical Questions

Most everyday arguments are not deductive proofs. They are defeasible, presumptive moves: an expert says X, so presumably X; this case is like that case, so presumably the same verdict; doing A leads to bad consequence B, so presumably do not do A. Douglas Walton's insight is that these arguments come in a finite set of stereotyped patterns, that each pattern is legitimate (not a fallacy) when its conditions hold, and that each pattern has its own characteristic ways of failing. The durable move is classify-then-probe-with-keyed-defeaters: first identify which stereotyped scheme an argument instantiates, then interrogate it with the standard critical questions keyed to that scheme. Two things make this more than generic objection-raising. The defeaters are retrieved, not improvised - each scheme's question set encodes the accumulated knowledge of how that specific pattern fails, so coverage of the standard vulnerabilities does not depend on what occurs to the evaluator in the moment. And the semantics are presumptive - the output is not "valid or invalid" but a burden-of-proof ledger: which questions were answered, which remain open, and whether the presumption survives. The output is a scheme critique sheet, not prose.

When to Use

• A single, usually short, defeasible argument has to be judged for whether its presumption deserves acceptance: a recommendation resting on an authority's say-so, an analogy doing load-bearing work, a slippery-slope objection, a "users are asking for it" popular-practice appeal, or a consequence-based case for or against an action.
• An argument map would be overkill. The scheme method is strongest where a map is weakest: a one-premise pattern argument ("the analyst report says the market is contracting, so we should not enter") maps to a trivial two-node tree, while the scheme method immediately yields the standard expert-opinion probes.
• Critique needs discipline in both directions - to block naive acceptance ("an expert said it") and naive dismissal ("appeal to authority, ignored"). These patterns are not automatic fallacies.

When NOT to Use

• Do not use it on structurally complex, multi-premise arguments. When the question is how the whole argument hangs together and where its weakest links are, that is think-argument-mapping's job. The scheme method evaluates one typed inference at a time and has no view of overall structure. This is the central routing wall.
• Do not force a deductive or statistical argument into a scheme. The schemes formalize presumptive reasoning; a mathematical proof or a regression result is not an instance of any of them, and forcing one in degrades the analysis. Route that material out.
• Do not skip stating the classification, and do not trust a confident mis-type. Every downstream critical question is keyed to the scheme, so a wrong match (reading an argument from sign as an argument from cause) produces a confident interrogation of the wrong vulnerabilities. State the scheme explicitly, name the runner-up scheme, and flag a low-confidence match. Even the five most common schemes machine-separate at only 63-91% accuracy (Feng and Hirst, 2011), so mis-typing is live, not rare.
• Do not run it as checklist theater. Walking the critical questions and recording shallow answers produces the appearance of scrutiny. The presumption verdict is only as good as the honesty of the answers; an answered checklist is not a soundness proof.
• Do not treat naming the scheme as the verdict. "Appeal to authority" is a classification, not a refutation. Naming the scheme is the beginning of evaluation, not its end.

Instructions