First session this morning: Hans Hansen's "Are there Methods of Informal Logic?" (commentary by Dan Cohen).  Great presentation, excellent commentary, and great questions.  Hansen's presentation focused on the illative (premise-conclusion) relation alone and so the idea of method is almost strictly analogous to that of deductive logic.  So, to rephrase the question, are there methods of evaluating informal illation analogous to those of formal arguments?  There seem to be several candidates, and Hansen's paper lucidly covered the alternatives.  This warranted the comment: maybe this proliferation of conceptions of informal logic is very bad PR.