this volume contains 12 papers addressed to researchers and advanced students in informal logic and related fields, such as argumentation, formal logic, and communications. among the issues are attempts to rethink the nature of argument and of inference, the role of dialectical context, and the standards for evaluating inferences, and to shed light on the interfaces between informal logic and argumentation theory, rhetoric, formal logic and cognitive psychology. the volume contains a concluding chapter that interrelates and qualifies the ideas developed in the individual papers.