Christopher W. Tindale  is a fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric and a professor of philosophy at the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada).

“An argumentative situation is a site in which the activity of arguing takes place, where views are exchanged and changed, meanings explored, concepts developed, and understandings achieved. It may also be a site in which people are persuaded and disagreements are resolved, but these popular goals are not the only ones, and too narrow a focus on them threatens to overlook much for which argumentation is a central and important tool” (Tindale, 2004, p. 2-3)

He is the (co-)author of a.o.:

Tindale, C. (2010) Reason's Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument (Studies in Rhetoric/Communication) Columbia (SC) : University of South Carolina Press (March 31, 2010).
Tindale, C. (2007) Fallacies and Argument Appraisal (Critical reasoning and argumentation), Cambridge / New York : Cambridge University Press.
Tindale, C. (2004) Rhetorical Argumentation: Principles of Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks / London / New Delhi : Sage Publications.
Tindale, C. (1999) Acts of Arguing: A Rhetorical Model of Argument. New York : SUNY.
Groarke, L. and Tindale, C. (2008) Good Reasoning Matters! (4th ed.) Oxford / New York : Oxford University Press.

He is the co-editor of the journal Informal Logic

ABSTRACT: The Words of Other People: The Fundamental Role of Testimony in Rhetorical Argumentation

The practice of argumentation, generally, is justified by the value we assign to other people and what they say. Other people are worth reasoning with and what they say, the discourses that reflect their beliefs, has value as a source of our own developing ideas. Perception, memory, inference and testimony all contribute to how we come to know and believe what we do. But among these testimony stands out for its social character, while memory, reason, and perception are faculties of the individual mind. And it is part of the continued overturning of the Cartesian worldview that we should recognize testimony not only as an independent source of knowledge, but also the most fundamental. We see the importance of this in the recent work of Robert Brandom, in whose account a speaker if challenged does not just take on the responsibility of justifying her claim with reasons, she also lends her authority to the asserted content, licensing others to undertake a corresponding commitment. On these terms, testimony is a kind of inherited entitlement and creates an epistemic interdependence.

In this talk, I discuss ways in which testimony can be seen as a generative source of knowledge. That is, testimony does not just transmit ideas from one person to another as the traditional view in epistemology holds; it generates new ideas in an audience, ideas that may not have been active in the mind of the arguer. In this way, we can appreciate how the epistemic work of testimony is a cooperative venture shared between arguer and audience. And thus we see further how such knowledge generation is fundamental to and reflective of the collaborative nature of rhetorical argumentation.

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