Walton’s Argumentation Schemes

The contribution critically discusses Walton's (and Reed’s and Macagno’s) argumentation scheme approach. On the one hand, its enormous richness and closeness to the empirical argumentation material is appreciated, but, on the other, fundamental conceptual weaknesses are revealed. Although the approach more recently has been declared to strive for “true beliefs and correct choices” it has not systematically developed the proposed schemes in a way that these goals are reached. Accordingly, many proposed schemes are fallacious from an epistemological standpoint.