In chemistry one observes different relationships [rapports] between different bodies, which act such that they unite easily with one another. These relationships have their degrees and their laws. One observes their different insofar as, among several materials are confounded and that have some disposition to unite together, one perceives that one of these substances always unites constantly with a certain other [substance] preferably to all others.

In this analysis of the ethical dimensions of doctors’ participation in macroallocation we set out to understand the skills they use, how they are acquired, and how they influence performance of the role. Using the principles of grounded moral analysis, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with Australian doctors engaged in macroallocation. We found that they performed expertise as argument, bringing together phronetic and rhetorical skills founded on communication, strategic thinking, finance, and health data. They had made significant, purposeful efforts (...) to gain skills for the role. Our findings challenge common assumptions about doctors’ preferences in argumentation, and reveal an unexpected commitment to practical reason. Using the ethics of Paul Ricoeur in our analysis enabled us to identify the moral meaning of doctors’ skills and learning. We concluded that Ricoeur’s ethics offers an empirically grounded matrix for ethical analysis of the doctor’s role in macroallocation that may help to establish norms for procedure. (shrink)

For several millennia now, the enthymeme has been taught, on the putative authority of Aristotle, as "a kind of syllogism" —that is, a rhetorical syllogism—that consists in a three-part unit of deductive reasoning that parallels the inductive reasoning of the example. The rhetorical syllogism is said to be imperfect or incomplete because it relies on probable or particular rather than certain or universal premises and because the speaker suppresses one premise or the conclusion, usually the major premise, leaving it with (...) only two stated terms as follows:Socrates is a manSocrates is mortalOne premise is left unstated because it is known to the members of the audience (they... (shrink)

We argue that Cohen’s concept of inductive or ampliative probability facilitates proper explication of sufficient strength for non-demonstrative arguments conforming to the Toulmin model. The data and claims of such arguments are singular statements. We may epistemically classify the warrants of such arguments as empirical (either physical or personal), institutional, or evaluative. Backing evidence and rebutting considerations vary with the epistemic type of warrant, but in each case the notion of ampliative probability for arguments with warrants of that type can (...) be characterized. We may then use ampliative probability to define sufficient strength and related notions for Toulmin arguments. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay tells the story of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's “dissociation of concepts,” which they introduced in 1958 and is in use as a tool of criticism by many rhetorical critics. The story begins in England with John Locke's development of associative reasoning in 1770 and then moves to France, with Remy de Gourmont extending associative reasoning with the concept of dissociation in 1899. Gourmont's dissociation crosses the Atlantic and is then developed by Kenneth Burke in 1931. In turn, Perelman (...) and Olbrechts-Tyteca absorbed and expanded Locke, Gourmont, and Burke's theories of association and dissociation in 1958. They crafted a tool, the dissociation of concepts, that equips rhetorical reasoning with the capacity to navigate between the promise and perils of fission and fusion. Since 1958, many scholars have made productive use of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's innovation. The essay concludes with some possible futures for their dissociation of concepts. (shrink)

Following a linguistic-descriptivist approach, Marianne Doury has studied debates about “parasciences”, discovering that “parascientists” frequently argue by “appeal to Galileo” ; opponents object by criticizing the analogy, charging fallacy, and appealing to counter-examples. I argue that Galilean appeals are much more widely used, by creationists, global-warming skeptics, advocates of “settled science”, great scientists, and great philosophers. Moreover, several subtypes should be distinguished; critiques questioning the analogy are proper; fallacy charges are problematic; and appeals to counter-examples are really indirect critiques of (...) the analogy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The sections devoted to dissociation in The New Rhetoric identify many verbal forms that can express this reconceptualizing line of argument. This article reviews the linguistic options offered in English for epitomizing dissociations, including tautologies and constructions that prompt diverging meanings, orthographical devices like capitalization or subscripts that produce variants of a single word, word schemes like agnominatio and polyptoton that alter core forms, and affixes or modifiers that are either available as antonyms or require forcing apart by subsequent (...) antitheses. Paying attention to the verbal expression of dissociations highlights cases that may or may not qualify as the rich reconceptualizations Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca had in mind. Arguments that involve three distinguished terms may, for example, reach a limit where dissociations merge into arguments from division, a long recognized device in traditional rhetoric/dialectic. (shrink)

Public policy decisions often require rhetorically-engaged citizens to have some understanding of the science and technology involved. On many current issues sectors of the public hold views differing from those of most scientists, and they often do not support proposals based on the scientists’ views. The overall cultural authority of science has also been challenged in the last decade by several negative trends in the sciences themselves, including widely-reported cases of fraud and failures in replication. With the support of professional (...) science organizations, science communication specialists have stepped in aggressively to address science’s communication problems scientifically. This paper will examine the assumptions behind their advice on scientific information, their recommended strategies of framing, narration, and projecting trustworthiness, and their characterizations of audiences and the nature of science itself. From the perspective of rhetorical argumentation, the science communication literature does not promote addressing audiences as citizens capable of rational argumentation. But the science of science communication is likely to remain the dominant approach to public science with the professional science community. (shrink)

Archaeologists have long disagreed about when and how humans first migrated into the Americas; a point particularly in contention is whether there is any convincing evidence of human occupation earlier than about 12,000 years ago. This article ex amines some recent publications on the controversy, selected especially from review articles and from a recent series, written by professional archaeologists, that appeared in a popular magazine, Natural History. The sample texts are analyzed from a rhetorical perspective with emphasis on textual features (...) such as word choice, hedging, arrange ment, self-reference, argumentative topic, and figure. Such features are taken to be signs of the writer's accommodation to audience and situation as determined in part by the place of publication. The analysis reveals some of the rich variety of persuasive techniques employed in popular and review publications by scientists who find themselves in a disciplinary stalemate, for example, the attempt of each side to depict itself as in the minority. The well-crafied popular pieces also use explicit appeals left only im plicit in the review articles; for example, the popular pieces describe the writer's status based on years of experience and support conclusions by narrating the long process of inquiry followed before a verdict was reached. (shrink)

In this paper a theoretical definition that helps to explain how the logical structure of legal presumptions is constructed by applying the Carneades model of argumentation developed in artificial intelligence. Using this model, it is shown how presumptions work as devices used in evidentiary reasoning in law in the event of a lack of evidence to assist a chain of reasoning to move forward to prove or disprove a claim. It is shown how presumptions work as practical devices that may (...) be useful in cases in which there is insufficient evidence to prove the claim to an appropriate standard of proof. (shrink)

Argument from analogy is a common and formidable form of reasoning in law and in everyday conversation. Although there is substantial literature on the subject, according to a recent survey ( Juthe 2005) there is little fundamental agreement on what form the argument should take, or on how it should be evaluated. Th e lack of conformity, no doubt, stems from the complexity and multiplicity of forms taken by arguments that fall under the umbrella of analogical reasoning in argumentation, dialectical (...) studies, and law. Modeling arguments with argumentation schemes has proven useful in attempts to refine the analyst’s understanding of not only the logical structures that shape the backbone of the argument itself, but also the logical underpinning of strategies for evaluating it, strategies based on the semantic categories of genus and relevance. By clarifying the distinction between argument from example and argument from analogy, it is possible to advance a useful proposal for the treatment of argument from analogy in law. (shrink)

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain in the sense (...) that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

This study analyses how online participants of celebrity gossip position themselves in relation to their audience through forms of moral argumentation and thereby contribute to social hierarchies. In this study, forms of moral argumentation are seen as enthymemes, that is, claim-reason units based on moral norms as premises. The material consists of a total of 900 asynchronous online comments in English and 900 in Finnish. In addition to rhetorical argumentation analysis, the study investigates the dependency of moral argumentation on three (...) contextual variables: gendered violence as the topic of discussion, as the shared culture of participants and a media institution as the moderator of online discourse. Four forms of moral argumentation were found in the material: 1) theoretical, 2) practical, 3) categorical and 4) digital enthymeme. Theoretical, practical and categorical enthymemes are rhetorical in a traditional sense because they include the hierarchical idea of moral norms as the shared, more or less authoritarian, basis of a community. Digital enthymemes, conversely, are texts without clear borders or any notion of moral norms. Such arguments characterized especially user-generated, English-language discussions concerning female celebrities’ fights. This indicates that the digital enthymeme is particularly prevalent where there is a lack of obvious hierarchies in the context of argumentation. As this study argues, however, the seemingly non-hierarchical and individualistic participation through digital enthymemes is a mere illusion, for these enthymemes are based on crowd behaviour supportive of sexist and class-bound domination. (shrink)

According to van Eemeren, argumentation theory is a hybrid discipline, because it requires a multidisciplinary, if not interdisciplinary approach, combining descriptive and normative insights. He points out that modern argumentation theorists give substance to the discipline by relying either on a dialectical perspective, concentrating on the reasonableness of argumentation, or on a rhetorical perspective, concentrating on its effectiveness. Both the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective are interpreted in ways related to how they were viewed by Aristotle, but in modern argumentation (...) theory the relationship between the two, captured in Aristotle’s term antistrophos, is lost. According to van Eemeren, this relationship, which he considers crucial to a full-fledged argumentation theory, has been recovered in extended pragma-dialectics with the help of the theoretical notion of ‘strategic manoeuvring.’. (shrink)

This paper explores the viability of a synergy between corpus linguistics and the study of argumentation in context. While quantitative approaches to the study of discourse have been profitably integrated at the levels of lexico-grammar and syntax, more rarely has this been the case for higher levels of analysis such as argumentative structures. Such an approach would help identify those recurring patterns of argumentation that build up cumulatively, and which can only be identified in larger samples of discourse. In particular (...) this paper concerns how the tools of corpus linguistics can be put to use for the analysis of strategic manoeuvring, and especially topical selection. In order to do so, the televised prime ministerial debates held on the occasion of the 2010 general election in the UK will be taken as a case study, with a focus on the use of linguistic indicators that might help retrieve argumentative patterns. (shrink)

The ArgumentTwo dominant models of criticism are identified and analyzed. One is selfconsciously normative. It conceives of criticism as subject to strict logical rules. The other views itself as essentially descriptive and accounts for the critical activity in terms of social factors. In spite of their different origins and purposes, it is argued that both models share a reductionistic thrust, which minimizes the role of the critic qua agent. It is further agreed that neither provides an adequate account of critical (...) activity and its role in science. (shrink)

Paying more attention to the rhetorical side of argumentation raises epistemological questions. In this article I argue that rhetoric has to be an integral part of argumentative models if such models are to be considered rational. In other words, I claim that rhetoric is a necessary condition for argumentation studies. I am aware that this view may appear provocative. I hope to show that it is not the case, if we consider rationality to be a concept that encompasses more than (...) just a strictly logical way of thinking. Indeed, I would like to defend a humanistic conception of rationality as the background for a theory of rhetoric in order to underscore the specific rationality of the humanist frame of thinking for a .. (shrink)

According to Perelman (Rhétoriques, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1989: 80), a pseudo-argument is an argument that is supposed to be convincing from a given audience viewpoint, while it is not from another audience viewpoint. Such a claim raises the traditional problem of the boundaries between the well known “convince versus persuade” dichotomy. This paper aims at investigating it from a contemporary rhetorical and argumentative perspective which will take into account the fictional dimension of persuasion. In this perspective, it will be (...) claimed that the notion of an “as if” argument better fits to some rhetorical phenomena. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that the classical rhetorical framework undergoes a transformation because of an important change in Western thought. Following this hypothesis, I analyze a rhetorical notion of “dissuasion” as a rhetorical technique of creating a “general disposition to inaction” in addition to a classical rhetorical notion of “dissuasion” that aims at “refraining from an action”.

Acceptance of three tenets of the doctrine of scientific objectivity, namely, the tenets of consensus, compartmentalization, and ahistorical truth, undermines scientists‘ appreciation of the importance of scientific controversy and consideration of the policy and value implications of controversial scientific theories. This essay rejects these tenets and suggests scientists appreciate theoretical diversity, learn rational means for adjudicating value differences, and cultivate conversational as well as written forms of communication.

Universality has become a predominant focus of critique. To take just three examples: the purported universality of Western values has been exposed as a major justification for violent imperial enterprises, feminist thought has exposed so-called universal norms as having a specifically masculine provenance and nature, and the study of whiteness has largely been the exposure of specifically white features of institutions, practices, arts, norms, and laws that have been taken to be universal and colorless. All these examples follow the general (...) Marxian form of critique that is guided by the proposition that all existing universalities conceal a factional interest. Universalities that function effectively and guide .. (shrink)

The contemporary study of argumentation has adopted a fundamentally rhetorical account of the standards of rationality, although it has also developed several ways to deny this. One is by obscuring the fact that its standards of rationality are primarily communicative and that an audience of some kind is the ultimate judge of the strength of arguments. Another is by defining “rhetoric” in such a way that it can no longer play any role in providing rational normativity. I want to challenge (...) these denials by pressing a single question. The question is: if formal validity is no longer the standard for evaluating arguments, then exactly what is? I direct this question at three highly developed, systematic, and .. (shrink)

More than fifty years have passed since Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca published Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique, and over forty have slipped by since the work was translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. The inversion of the title and subtitle in the French and English versions expresses well the chiasmic dynamic of the philosophy of rhetoric and the rhetoric of philosophy that defines the new rhetoric project. Its overall aim is essentially philosophical: "the (...) justification of the possibility of a human community in the sphere of action when this justification cannot be grounded in a reality or an objective truth" (1969, 514). This project is .. (shrink)

This essay investigates the representation of lesbian, gay and bisexual people during the debate over whether they should serve openly in the United States military. Many studies on this topic have focused on the question of whether this debate ‘militarized’ LGB people. This study takes a broader view, tracking five rhetorical archetypes through two US Congressional Hearings. I identify and track these archetypes using a coding procedure that draws on concepts from Membership Categorization Analysis, rhetorical theory, discourse analysis and elsewhere. (...) The result is a holistic picture of how LGB people were represented across the hearings. While they were increasingly associated with military values in the later hearing, they were also less often represented as victims, spoilers or activists in a negative sense. These findings offer additional insights into how the meanings-in-use of identity categories are changed in discourse. (shrink)

This essay argues for the value of presence as rhetorical heuristic. Beginning with the philosophical tradition, the authors establish a long-standing interest in presence or isness, understood as the thing-itself outside subjectivity. We then trace how rhetorical theorists including Aristotle, Quintilian, and Perelman have privileged isness as a baseline for true conviction, positioning rhetoric as an effort to imitate material proofs. Such views highlight the tension between presence (things of the world in their isness) and the arts of presencing (the (...) capacity of words and symbols to shape an isness), suggesting a generative frame for analysis. To demonstrate, we examine global migration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among undocumented migrants, we posit that these individuals' paradoxical experiences of bodily presence but legal absence reveal a fraught interplay among rhetoric, state power, and competing notions of truth. However, immigration is only a case study; presence is a much more widely applicable heuristic. (shrink)

Informal logic has expanded the concept of an 'argument' beyond that presented traditionally by formal logicians-to include arguments as encountered in 'real-life'. Existent definitions of argument structure are argued to be inadequate by failing to fully recognise that, ultimately, arguments have a human source. Accordingly, a new definition is proposed which appeals to relevant cognitive and behavioural factors. The definition retains some traditional concepts, but introduces the term 'supportive' as a modification to 'premiss'. The concept of a 'persuader' is also (...) developed. The definition is argued to capture more fully the intricacies, subtleties and rich diversity of informal arguments. (shrink)

Coherentists fail to distinguish between the individual revision of a conviction and the intersubjective revision of a rule. This paper fills this gap. A conviction is a norm that, according to an individual, ought to be ascribed to a provision. By contrast, a rule is a judicially ascribed norm that controls a case and is protected by the formal principles of competence, certainty, and equality. A revision of a rule is the invalidation or modification such a judicially ascribed norm, provided (...) that the judge meets the burden of argumentation of formal principles. Thus, judges can revise their convictions without changing the law. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of the most important developments in twentieth-century rhetorical theory is Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's insight that concepts, when under strain, can be split or dissociated into two separate terms. Not a simple binary, these terms remain interconnected in a value hierarchy with one term serving as the normative frame for the other. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca theorize that either term can be dissociated further, producing a fan-type dissociation. Unlike ordinary dissociations, fan-types place three or more terms in hierarchical relationship, resulting (...) in unique rhetorical features. Fanning a dissociation can serve three basic rhetorical functions: purging undesirable elements, preserving less undesirable elements from total devaluation, and purifying desirable elements. Building on these basic functions, rhetors can perform complex rhetorical actions, from intensifying a dissociation's values to completely undoing a dissociation. Long ignored by theorists and critics, fan-types complicate our understanding of dissociation, argumentation, and value-based reasoning, and therefore deserve more scholarly attention. (shrink)

This article reflects one scholar's attempt to locate herself within emerging ethical methodologies given a specific concern with cross-cultural women's moral praxis. The field of comparative ethics's debt to past debates over methodology is considered through a typology of three waves of methodological invention. The article goes on to describe a specific research focus on U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shii women that initiated a search for a distinct method. This method of comparative ethics, which focuses on the production of ethical (...) knowledge through the interaction of discursive logics of various moral agents, is described. The conclusion turns to how methodological invention can itself become a constructive project through the way it (1) locates the scholar in relation to her subject of study and (2) allows for isolation of tactics within specific moral discourses. (shrink)

An observational analysis of selected Nightline program transcripts was undertaken to advance understanding of conversational arguments used in the service of public policy debate. Results indicate that Nightline discussions involved more compound structural variations, but fewer simple, convergent and eroded argument structures than had been found in previous research. In contrast to previous efforts, the development of prompter and delimitor argument structures was also identified. In addition, the program's moderator, Ted Koppel, used challenge structures as his primary method of proposing (...) issues for debate. Discussion focuses on features of Nightline argument complexity and proposes directions for future research. (shrink)

The concept of topos has received considerable attention from both argumentation and discourse studies, although its usage and meaning remain obscure. In this article, I argue that the rediscovery of Aristotelian thought might provide a comprehensible explication of topos. Despite the discourse historical approach’s emphasis on topos, its context is found to be limited and this exposes the argumentation strategies of the DHA to criticism. To overcome any shortcomings and provide a better understanding of topos, a classical approach to the (...) concept is suggested, derived from Aristotle’s rhetoric and dialectic. By focusing on Greek media discourses on ‘Islamist terrorism’, I seek to illustrate the synthesis between the DHA’s argumentation strategies and Aristotelian topos as a fruitful analytical and theoretical tool. (shrink)

Some current attempts to go beyond the narrow scope of rational choice theory (RCT) in the social sciences and the artificial reconstructions it sometimes provides focus on the arguments that people give to justify their beliefs and behaviors themselves. But the available argumentation theories are not constructed to fill this gap. This article argues that relevance theory, on the contrary, suggests interesting tracks. This provocative idea requires a rereading of Sperber and Wilson's theory. Actually, the authors do not explicitly support (...) RCT, and Sperber has even strongly criticized methodological individualism, which most of the time underlies RCT, in favor of infra-individualism. A key point of the argument presented here is to show that Sperber and Wilson do not firmly distinguish between infra-individualism and subintentionality. Only subintentionality is needed. Key Words: argumentation • rational choice • relevance theory • methodological individualism. (shrink)

Separate from the question of whether our patients believe us as doctors is the question of whether we ourselves believe in our healing ‘performances’. Borrowing from Bernard Williams’ model of truth based on the two irreducible virtues of sincerity and accuracy, this article describes a spectrum of states of self-belief, from the quack who does not believe in his acts to the fanatic who does not ‘dis-believe’, with ranges of pious fraud and bad faith in between and on either side (...) of a variable range of justified self-belief. I describe how as practitioners we move and are moved up and down this range throughout our careers and as a result of the behaviors of others. The model provides the basis for a critique of the marketing efforts of industries related to medical practice. (shrink)

Traditionally, a presumption is a dialogically privileged, yet defeasible proposition that allocates the burden of proof to a party who challenges it. This paper investigates the strength of presumptions. First, it explains how ‘strength’ contributes to defining the concept of presumption. Second, it provides an overview of (contextual, justificatory, and deontic) factors determining a presumption’s strength. Finally, it analyses the predominant view that defines strength in terms of the Challenger’s burden of proof: the stronger (weaker) the presumptionp, the more (less) (...) difficult it is to prove non-p. I argue that the latter proposal applies only to practical presumptions, and that strength is conceived differently for cognitive presumptions. (shrink)

By explaining the argument from ignorance in terms of the presumption of innocence, many textbooks in argumentation theory suggest that some arguments from ignorance might share essential features with some types of presumptive reasoning. The stronger version of this view, suggesting that arguments from ignorance and presumptive reasoning are almost indistinguishable, is occasionally proposed by Douglas Walton. This paper explores the nature and limits of the stronger proposal and argues that initial presumptions and arguments from ignorance are not closely connected. (...) There are three main reasons. First, the argument from ignorance, unlike typical presumptive reasoning, is a negative kind of inference. Second, the typical initial presumption is sensitive to a broader set of defeaters and thus assumes a higher standard of acceptability. Third, in dialectical terms, initial presumption and argument from ignorance bring different attacking rights and obligations. I conclude that Waltonian intuition is unsupported or, at best, is limited only to practical presumptions and practical arguments from ignorance. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a research field that has grown rapidly and attracted considerable attention. Most prominently, it has been labelled the ‘engineering of biology’. While other attempts to label the field have been also pursued, the program of engineering can be considered the core of the field’s disciplinary program, of its identity. This article addresses the success of the ‘engineering program’ in synthetic biology and argues that its success can partly be explained by distinct practices of persuasion that aim at (...) persuading scientific, but also non-scientific audiences. The article explores two different modes of persuasion:, building tools as heuristic models and posing visionary claims. Objects such as the toggle switch or the synthetic oscillator in synthetic biology can more adequately be described as heuristic models of engineering instead of simply as prototypes of ‘tools’. Posing visionary claims can be also understood as a persuasion practice, since the claims are used to construct the societal relevance of the field. Drawing upon Michel Callon’s ‘sociology of translation’, I argue that both practices of persuasion aim at ‘enrolling’ entities into the disciplinary identity. The article is based on the textual analysis of rhetorical practices in three synthetic biology review articles which are considered seminal for the history of the field. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that to explain and resolve some kinds of disagreement we need to go beyond what logic alone can provide. In particular, following Perelman, I argue that we need to consider how arguments are ascribed different strengths by different audiences, according to how accepting these arguments promotes values favoured by the audience to which they are addressed. I show how we can extend the standard framework for modelling argumentation systems to allow different audiences to be represented. (...) I also show how this formalism can explain how some disputes can be resolved while in others the parties can only agree to differ. I illustrate this by consideration of a legal example. Finally, I make some suggestions as to where these values come from, and how they can be used to explain differences across jurisdictions, and changes in views over time. (shrink)

In this paper I recapitulate the ideas of Berman and Hafner (1993) regarding the role of teleology in legal argument. I show how these ideas can be used to address some issues arising from more recent work on legal argument, and how this relates to ideas associated with the New Rhetoric of Perelman. I illustrate the points with a discussion of the classic problem of which vehicles should be allowed in parks.

This paper is an introduction to a virtual special issue of AI and Law exploring the legacy of the influential HYPO system of Rissland and Ashley. The papers included are: Arguments and cases: An inevitable intertwining, BankXX: Supporting legal arguments through heuristic retrieval, Modelling reasoning with precedents in a formal dialogue Game, A note on dimensions and factors, An empirical investigation of reasoning with legal cases through theory construction and application, Automatically classifying case texts and predicting outcomes, A factor-based definition (...) of precedential constraint and An improved factor based approach to precedential constraint. After describing HYPO, in this introduction to the special issue I look at various aspects of its influence on AI and Law: the developments led by Rissland at Amherst; the developments led by Ashley in Pittsburgh; the expression of these ideas in terms of rule based systems, and their subsequent formalisation; value based theories, which were inspired by a critique of HYPO; and contemporary approaches which revive the idea of dimensions. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

Recent research has highlighted the character and importance of the study of agreement. This paper, paralleling work on the more familiar concept of deep disagreement, will provide a first articulation of the character and implications of deep agreements, that is, agreements so deep that disagreement cannot overcome them. To do so, I start by outlining the main features of deep disagreement. I then provide a brief characterization of agreement in general to ground the discussion of the unique characteristics of deep (...) agreements and compare them to deep disagreements. After distinguishing the concept from other more familiar ones, I then point to a few of the major social and theoretical issues the existence of deep agreements poses before concluding with some remarks pointing to valuable areas for future research. (shrink)