Doug Walton

Doug Walton

Douglas Neil Walton is a Canadian academic and author, well known for his many widely published books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. Walton teaches logic, published numerous books, and has written many papers. He holds the Assumption Chair in Argumentation Studies and Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric at the University of Windsor, Canada.

He gained his BA at University of Waterloo, Ontario (1964) and his PhD at University of Toronto (1972). He taught for many years at the University of Winnipeg, in Manitoba.

Walton's work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence. His books have been translated worldwide and he attracts students from many countries to study with him. A festschrift honoring his work was published in 2010.

Most of Walton's books are about logical fallacies, some of them co-authored with John Woods. According to Frans H. van Eemeren, who calls this body of work the Woods-Walton approach, this is "the most continuous and extensive post-Hamblin contribution to the study of fallacies".