[LtdGovt]

Umm... There's no such thing. There's logic and there's illogic. What you call "informal logic" is a collection of unsubstantiated generalizations and personal assertions.

Obviously, you have done nothing even remotely resembling logic, even as you were telling me to do so. You would have known what informal logic is. It's formal logic when (1) the conclusion follows with certainty and it (2) adds no new information. Everything else is informal logic. You're making quite a show out here, by making the claims you do, about subject matters that you have a modesty of knowledge.

I'll get back to respond to the rest of your post, it is quite amusing to have a discussion with you, but I felt the need to get this exceedingly preposterous point out of the way.l

[TChris]

You would have known what informal logic is. It's formal logic when (1) the conclusion follows with certainty and it (2) adds no new information. Everything else is informal logic.

Well, of course! While you're making up the rest of it, why not invent your own definition of the word "logic?" That makes the whole discussion much simpler, no?

[DelphiUser]

“Informal Logic” I thought there was no such thing, so I did what every intelligent person does, I Googled it (grin) it turns out that there is, but it is not what either of you are saying it is…

Informal Logic is using everyday language to explain “formal Logic” informal Logic does not allow for the skipping of steps in a logical conclusion, rather it requires those steps be explained in the language a six year old could understand.

The Stanford encyclopedia of Pilosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/ )
Says “Though informal logic is sometimes portrayed as a theoretical alternative to formal logic, the relationship between the two is more complex than this suggests. While the attempt to teach good reasoning and critical thinking is inevitably couched in natural language, research in informal logic may employ formal methods and one could argue that the informal accounts of argument in which informal logic specializes can in principle be formalized. Recent work in computational modelling, which attempts to implement informal logic models of natural-language reasoning, suggests that defeasible (non-monotonic) logic, probability theory and other non-classical formal frameworks may be well suited to this task.”

Wikipedia has a much simpler explanation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic )

Informal logic or non-formal logic is the study of arguments as presented in ordinary language, as contrasted with the presentations of arguments in an artificial, formal, or technical language (see formal logic). Johnson and Blair (1987) define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation in everyday discourse."

So, there is such a thing as informal logic, and it has to follow the same form as “Logic” just with a dumbed down vocabulary.

Everybody happy? I didn’t think so…