Douglas Walton: The Early Years.

In one of his last writings, Douglas Walton tells of his journey as a young modal logician to the heights of his achievements as a computational analyst of argument.1 In it, he makes no mention of the work that had won him considerable early recognition in the years from 1972 to 1982. Of course, there was no space in that short 2019 note for exposure of all that had mattered in Doug’s philosophical working life. But in not mentioning it there, it was made plain how thoroughly he had shred methodological assumptions of his early work. Since I myself was privy, indeed party, to them, it falls to me to try to give some sense of their later loss of purchase. In what follows, I cover the first two intervals of the early period, beginning with the doctoral years in Toronto, then moving to the ten years of his and my work on fallacy theory and related matters. In so doing, I will say more of myself than is fitting in a paper about Doug. But, as I was an eye-witness to the events I’m about to recount, I don’t see how it can be avoided. For reasons that will also be obvious, in referring to him and to self, I shall forego the conventional use of surnames.

Authors

• John Woods

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