Cover; Title Page; Original Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Preface; CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION; Need for a Systematic Study; Aristotle's Topics; Informal Fallacies; How are Schemes Normatively Binding?; Practical Reasoning; Plausible Reasoning; Argumentation Schemes and Themes; CHAPTER TWO: PRE SUMPTIVE REASONING; Received Views of Presumption; Introduction to Nonmonotonic Reasoning; Burden of Proof; Commitment and Burden Shifting; Speech Act Conditions Defining Presumption; Presumptions and Presuppositions; Testimony, Presumption and Fallacies.;Recent concerns with the evaluation of argumentation in informal logic and speech communication center around nondemonstrative arguments that lead to tentative or defeasible conclusions based on a balance of considerations. Such arguments do not appear to have structures of the kind traditionally identified with deductive and inductive reasoning, but are extremely common and are often called ""plausible"" or ""presumptive, "" meaning that they are only provisionally acceptable even when they are correct. How is one to judge, by some clearly defined standard, whether such arguments are correct o.