Theories of individuation predict systematic differences in argumentative behavior between adolescent girls and their mothers. In order to reveal the nature and functions of this kind of discourse, two studies were carried out on 110 mother-daughter pairs. The second study (n=80) replicated and extended the first study (n=30) on an independent sample. The mother-daughter pairs were asked to discuss a subject that had recently been at issue between them. To assess the argumentative behavior, a category system was developed that reflects (...) the functional character of utterances in discourse. The aim of the research was to test the reliability and validity of the category system. Daughters are assumed to verbalize their own needs and preferences to increase the differences to the mother, and to weaken or reject the mother's arguments in an effort to resist control. Mothers, on the other hand, are supposed to exert control over the behavior of their daughters but do so within bounds of mutuality. This should lead to verbal initiatives and attempts to explain, support and modify their positions and arguments. The data showed high reliability of the categorization of arguments. The categories also differentiated between mothers and daughters. Daughters were more likely to try to weaken and reject (and accept) the mother's arguments and to state preferences while mothers tried to support and explain their positions and to retain control by initiating questions and arguments to which the daughters responded. (shrink)

A concept of critical thinking is developed based on the Socratic method and called accordingly a Socratic model. First the features of critical thinking stressed in this model are stated and illustrated. The Socratic method is presented and interpreted, then taken to yield a model of critical thinking. The process of internalization by which the Socratic model helps us to become critical thinkers is described. Argument analysis is considered as a widely used instructional strategy adaptable for teaching critical thinking on (...) the Socratic model. This Socratic model is advanced as one helpful way of organizing our ideas about critical thinking, helpful in unifying disparate factors and anchoring them in the humanist tradition. (shrink)

Post-war argumentation theorists have tended to regard argumentation as one thing and mathematical proof as another. Perelman (1958, 1969), for example, defined the word ‘argumentation’ stipulatively as a contrast term to ‘demonstration’: whereas mathematical reasoning as theorized by modern formal logic, he writes, is a matter of deducing theorems from axioms in accordance with stipulated rules of transformation, argumentation aims at gaining the adherence of minds (Perelman 1969, pp. 1–2). Toulmin (1958) contrasted his “jurisprudential model” of argument, according to which (...) the validity of an argument is a matter of its following proper procedure, with a “geometrical model” according to which validity is a matter of its having a proper shape comparable to the shape of a triangle (Toulmin 1958, p. 95). Johnson (2000, pp. 231–232) argues explicitly that a mathematical proof is not an argument.In the collection under review, Andrew Aberdein and Ian Dove have assembled a number of recent. (shrink)

Relevance is a triadic relation between an item, an outcome or goal, and a situation. Causal relevance consists in an item's ability to help produce an outcome in a situation. Epistemic relevance, a distinct concept, consists in the ability of a piece of information (or a speech act communicating or requesting a piece of information) to help achieve an epistemic goal in a situation. It has this ability when it can be ineliminably combined with other at least potentially accurate information (...) to achieve the goal. The relevance of a conversational contribution, premiss relevance and conclusion relevance are species of epistemic relevance thus defined. The conception of premiss relevance which results provides a basis for determining when the various ‘arguments ad’ called fallacies of relevance are indeed irrelevant. In particular, an ad verecundiam appeal is irrelevant if the authority cited lacks expertise in a cognitive domain to which the conclusion belongs, the authority does not exercise its expertise in coming to endorse the conclusion, or the conclusion does not belong to a cognitive domain; otherwise the ad verecundiam is relevant. (shrink)

Some solo verbal reasoning serves the function of arriving at a correct answer to a question from information at the reasoner’s disposal. Such reasoning is good if and only if its grounds are justified and adequate, its warrant is justified, and the reasoner is justified in assuming that no defeaters apply. I distinguish seven sources of justified grounds and state the conditions under which each source is trustworthy. Adequate grounds include all good relevant information practically obtainable by the reasoner. The (...) claim must follow from the grounds in accordance with a justified general warrant. If this warrant is not universal, the reasoner must be justified in assuming that no exception-making circumstances hold in the particular case to which it is applied. (shrink)

Paul Hirst claimed that Richard Peters ?revolutionised philosophy of education?. This does not accord with my experience in the Antipodean periphery. My experience of the work of Wittgenstein, Austin and Kovesi before reading Peters and Dewey, Kuhn and Toulmin subsequently meant that Peters was a major but not revolutionary figure in my understanding of philosophy of education.

This paper is concerned with argumentation in legal proceedings, namely in criminal cases. My interest is to explore how in the legal realm different argumentation fields interact, the juridical field being just one of them. The paper lays out an approach of studying argumentation in the legal realm in the framework of an ethnographic methodology by identifying the “topical rules” the participants in criminal trials adhere to. Suggesting the notion of field-dependence as a good starting point for the analysis of (...) legal argumentation, I will give several examples of different fields of argumentation interacting in criminal proceedings. The examination of what counts as a good reason and how arguments are employed, negotiated, and evaluated within a criminal proceeding might shed light on the practice of constructing facts and arriving at decisions in court. It can furthermore point at the constitution of legal rationality and how it is produced in criminal trials. I argue that rationality in criminal proceedings is interactively accomplished by negotiating different standards of validity. (shrink)

Much work on legal knowledge systems treats legal reasoning as arguments that lead from a description of the law and the facts of a case, to the legal conclusion for the case. The reasoning steps of the inference engine parallel the logical steps by means of which the legal conclusion is derived from the factual and legal premises. In short, the relation between the input and the output of a legal inference engine is a logical one. The truth of the (...) conclusion only depends on the premises, and is independent of the argument that leads to the conclusion.This paper opposes the logical approach, and defends a procedural approach to legal reasoning. Legal conclusions are not true or false independent of the reasoning process that ended in these conclusions. In critical cases this reasoning process consists of an adversarial procedure in which several parties are involved. The course of the argument determines whether the conclusion is true or false. The phenomenon of hard cases is used to demonstrate this essential procedural nature of legal reasoning. (shrink)

This paper describes a model of legal reasoning and a logic for reasoning with rules, principles and goals that is especially suited to this model of legal reasoning. The paper consists of three parts. The first part describes a model of legal reasoning based on a two-layered view of the law. The first layer consists of principles and goals that express fundamental ideas of a legal system. The second layer contains legal rules which in a sense summarise the outcome of (...) the interaction of the principles and goals for a number of case types. Both principles, goals and rules can be used in legal arguments, but their logical roles are different. One characteristic of the model of legal reasoning described in the first part of the paper is that it takes these logical differences into account. Another characteristic is that it pays serious attention to the phenomena of reasoning about the validity and acceptance of rules, respectively principles and goals, and about the application of legal rules, and the implications of these arguments for the use of rules, principles and goals in deriving legal conclusions for concrete cases.The second part of the paper first describes a logic (Reason-Based Logic) that is especially suited to deal with legal arguments as described in terms of the previously discussed model. The facilities of the logic are illustrated by means of examples that correspond to the several aspects of the model. (shrink)

In 1880, when Oliver Wendell Holmes (later to be a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) criticized the logical theology of law articulated by Christopher Columbus Langdell (the first Dean of Harvard Law School), neither Holmes nor Langdell was aware of the revolution in logic that had begun, the year before, with Frege's Begriffsschrift. But there is an important element of truth in Holmes's insistence that a legal system cannot be adequately understood as a system of axioms and corollaries; and (...) this element of truth is not obviated by the more powerful logical techniques that are now available. (shrink)

Various argumentation analysis tools permit the analyst to represent functional components of an argument (e.g., data, claim, warrant, backing), how arguments are composed of subarguments and defenses against potential counterarguments, and argumentation schemes. In order to facilitate a study of argument presentation in a biomedical corpus, we have developed a hybrid scheme that enables an analyst to encode argumentation analysis within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), which can be used to represent the discourse structure of a text. This (...) paper describes the hybrid representation scheme and illustrates its use for investigation of contexts that license omission of elements of an argument. The analyses given in the paper involve reconstruction of enthymemes. Defeasible argumentation schemes serve as a constraint on reconstruction. In addition, the examples illustrate several other types of contextual constraints on reconstruction of enthymemes. (shrink)

Abstract In order to be a general theory of human cognition, the theory of mental models needs to accommodate a variety of forms of reasoning in addition to deduction. The mental model theory of induction is a crucial step in establishing generality. After suggesting that the theory of mental models can also account for abduction and analogy, the paper points out that inductive performance is likely to be constrained both by the nature of the representation used and by strategic factors. (...) Since human cognition involves the communication of arguments, a final section explores the relationship between the theory of mental models and the notion of an argument. It proposes that models can contain tokens of inductive arguments which can be referred to in the course of other arguments. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine of (...) the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

Carneades is an open source argument mapping application and a programming library for building argumentation support tools. In this paper, Carneades’ support for argument reconstruction, evaluation and visualization is illustrated by modeling most of the factual and legal arguments in Popov v Hayashi.

Gilbert’s four modes of communication include the logical, the emotional, the visceral and the kisceral, which last has not received much attention at all. This mode covers the forms of argument that rely on intuition and undefended basal assumptions. These forms range from the scientific and mathematical to the religious and mystical. In this paper these forms will be examined, and suggestions made for ways in which intuitive frameworks can be compared and valued.

I discuss Toulmin's (1964) concept of backing with respect to the emotional mode of arguing by examining an example from Fogelin (1985), where emotional backing justifies a warrant concerning when we should judge that a person is being pig-headed. While Fogelin 's treatment is consistent with contemporary emotion science, I show that it needs to be supplemented by therapeutic techniques by comparing an analysis of an emotional argument from Gilbert (1997). The introduction of psychotherapy into argumentation theory raises the question (...) of the extent to which ordinary arguers can use such techniques. Psychotherapeutic techniques can be used in an intractable quarrel; is it fruitful to use them in the context of a deep disagreement? (shrink)

In this essay, Weinstein wants to address the issue of argument strength, of how strongly the premises of an argument support a conclusion. Using the framework of the Toulmin model, arguments have warrants which indicate some general connection between the premises and the conclusion of the argument. We may ask for the backing of the warrant, evidence for it. If the connection is an empirical generalization, the backing includes data supporting the generalization. But the backing may include theoretical generalizations, which (...) may explain the warrant. Furthermore, theories may be reduced by more comprehensive theories. A warrant then may ultimately be backed by some deep and very comprehensive theoretical explanation.Weinstein seeks to explicate the relation between the depth of backing for the warrant and the strength of the connection between premises and conclusion which the warrant indicates through the Model of Emerging Truth . Data relevant to confirming the theory have empir .. (shrink)

Relevance of premises to conclusion can be explicated through Toulmin’s notion of warrant, understood as an inference rule, albeit not necessarily formal. A normative notion of relevance requires the warrant to be reliable. To determine reliability, we propose a fourfold classification of warrants into a priori, empirical, institutional, and evaluative, with further subdivisions possible. This classification has its ancestry in classical rhetoric and recent epistemology. Distinctive to each type of warrant is the mode by which such connections are intuitively discovered (...) and the grounds on which we ultimately justify them. The classification of warrants is thus epistemic. We illustrate the difference by contrasting empirical physical with institutional intuition, and argue for the advantages of this approach over Toulmin’s conception of field dependence. (shrink)

We perceive relevance by virtue of inference habits, which may be expressed as Pierce's leading principles or as Toulmin's warrants. Hence relevance in a descriptive sense is a ternary relation between two statements and a set of inference rules. For a normative sense, the warrants must be properly backed. Different types of warrant to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A generalization H is supported (...) by evidence E to degree i/in iff E indicates that H passes canonical test i, where there are n canonical tests. In a canonical test, one or more relevant variables, factors which may falsify H, are varied. H passes a test if it is not falsified. The tests are cumulative. Degree of support is relative to the canonical test, and may be modeled as relative to a point in a dialectical situation. A value of a variable at which H is falsified is a rebutting value. A is normatively relevant to B with respect to W iff sup[associated generalization(W), E] = i/n and for j > i, there is a presumption that the values of j are non-rebuting. (shrink)

We present a computational model of dialectical argumentation that could serve as a basis for legal reasoning. The legal domain is an instance of a domain in which knowledge is incomplete, uncertain, and inconsistent. Argumentation is well suited for reasoning in such weak theory domains. We model argument both as information structure, i.e., argument units connecting claims with supporting data, and as dialectical process, i.e., an alternating series of moves by opposing sides. Our model includes burden of proof as a (...) key element, indicating what level of support must be achieved by one side to win the argument. Burden of proof acts as move filter, turntaking mechanism, and termination criterion, eventually determining the winner of an argument. Our model has been implemented in a computer program. We demonstrate the model by considering program output for two examples previously discussed in the artificial intelligence and legal reasoning literature. (shrink)

This essay argues that scientific discourse is amenable to interpretation and assessment from the perspective of the narrative paradigm and its attendant logic, narrative rationality. It also contends that this logic entails a revised conception of knowledge, one that permits the possibility of wisdom. The text analyzed is James D. Watson and Francis H. Crick's proposal of the double helix model of DNA.

In this paper, domain-specificity is presented as an understudied problem in chemical education. This argument is unpacked by drawing from two bodies of literature: learning of science and epistemology of science, both themes that have cognitive as well as philosophical undertones. The wider context is students’ engagement in scientific inquiry, an important goal for science education and one that has not been well executed in everyday classrooms. The focus on science learning illustrates the role of domain specificity in scientific reasoning. (...) The discussion on epistemology of science presents ideas from the emerging field of philosophy of chemistry to highlight the much neglected area of epistemology in chemical education. Domain-specificity is exemplified in the context of chemical laws, in particular the Periodic Law. The applications of the discussion for chemical education are explored in relation to argumentation, itself an epistemologically grounded discourse pattern in science. The overall implications include the need for reconceptualization of the nature of teaching and learning in chemistry to include more particular epistemological aspects of chemistry. (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)

Der Artikel greift die Überlegung auf, dass sich die Bioethik auch deshalb der empirischen Forschung zuwenden solle, um ihre Anwendbarkeit und Kontextsensitivität zu erhöhen. Am Beispiel der Norm, dass Schmerzen zu lindern seien, und mit Hilfe eines allgemeinen Modells ethischer Urteilsbildung werden verschiedene Bedeutungen der Anwendung und der Kontextsensitivität unterschieden und es wird untersucht, welche Rolle deskriptive Annahmen hierbei jeweils spielen können. Es wird die These vertreten, dass Kontextsensitivität in den meisten ihrer Bedeutungen von fundamentalethischen Grundannahmen unabhängig ist und dass (...) deskriptive Annahmen einen Prozess der Spezifikation ethischer Urteilsbildung auslösen, der in dieser Form nicht von der ethischen Begründung von Normen und Werten aus initiiert und antizipiert werden kann, jedoch zu seinem (zumindest vorübergehenden) handlungsorientierenden Abschluss auf diese zurückverwiesen ist. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel greift die Überlegung auf, dass sich die Bioethik auch deshalb der empirischen Forschung zuwenden solle, um ihre Anwendbarkeit und Kontextsensitivität zu erhöhen. Am Beispiel der Norm, dass Schmerzen zu lindern seien, und mit Hilfe eines allgemeinen Modells ethischer Urteilsbildung werden verschiedene Bedeutungen der Anwendung und der Kontextsensitivität unterschieden und es wird untersucht, welche Rolle deskriptive Annahmen hierbei jeweils spielen können. Es wird die These vertreten, dass Kontextsensitivität in den meisten ihrer Bedeutungen von fundamentalethischen Grundannahmen unabhängig ist und dass (...) deskriptive Annahmen einen Prozess der Spezifikation ethischer Urteilsbildung auslösen, der in dieser Form nicht von der ethischen Begründung von Normen und Werten aus initiiert und antizipiert werden kann, jedoch zu seinem (zumindest vorübergehenden) handlungsorientierenden Abschluss auf diese zurückverwiesen ist. (shrink)

This article develops an interpretation of Hegel that aims to show how a proper understanding of the nature of speculative sentences might achieve what Kant set out to do: to vindicate our most fundamental claims to knowledge as actual knowledge, rather than mere acts of believing. To this end, it develops a conception of speculative geographies (or “maps”) as an interpretive tool and introduces an Hegelian-inspired distinction between empirical, generic, and speculative sentences. On this reading, Kant’s employment of the “boundary (...) concept” of a noumenon is bound to fail as it needs to employ a contrast between our human point of view and that of an omniscient God – which turns out to be an aperspectival “view from nowhere” and thus an incoherent notion. The artcile ends by suggesting ways in which Hegel’s logical analysis can help us to better comprehend the reflective ascent necessary to make our conceptual differentiations and typical ways of understanding intelligible to ourselves. (shrink)

This paper deals with the reference of quotations. Several positions can be discerned in the literature: 1. Quotations do not refer; 2. Quotations only refer to types or classes; 3. Quotations can refer to a variety of objects. Although I believe the third position to be the most sensible one, I show that it cannot be taken for granted and that arguments proving it to be correct are hard to come by.

A warrant may be grounded in personal testimony, technical method, or public consensus. The justified choice of a field, in authorizing the warrant and providing further extension of support constitutes a legitimation inference. Complex cases evolve when there are a surplus of good reasons as potential support for a claim, and a choice must be made either to select a single ground for the claim or to advance independently valid reasons, differentially grounded, as support. Complex cases enter the realm of (...) controversy when not all relevant grounds offer the same degree of support or point in the same direction, and a choice to select some grounds and discard others must be justified. The justification of the selection of grounds constitutes a legitimation warrant—a missing element of the Toulmin model. (shrink)

Though a segment of feminists have questioned the combative, logical, objective nature of academic writing and presentation, their critique has seldom extended to the most widely used model in composition and communication, Stephen Toulmin’s Informal Model of argument, which terminologically relates to combative, logical and legal terminologies. Toulmin’s model, however, adapted to a visual rather than legal metaphor, fits well with the less confrontational, more personal and contextual approach espoused by some feminists and many argument theorists. This essay offers an (...) adaptation of Toulmin’s six-part model based in a visual metaphor, adding three more parts: ‘Interrelated Perceptions’ ; and ‘Historical/Cultural Horizon,’ (using Gadamer’s, 1989, hermeneutical historical concept to further contextualize arguments. The model then responds to two key feminist and argumentation theorist concerns, replacing the argument-as-war metaphorical mapping of argument relations, and personalizing and contextualizing arguments as to historical, social, and cultural situation. (shrink)

The Uses of Argument presented Stephen Toulmin’s call for a working logic and the classical statement of his layout of argument. In chapter 3, which explicated the model, each element was defined using multiple strategies. Toulmin presented his terminology both as a category system for labeling statements or propositions and as a functional vocabulary to describe ‘what... is involved in establishing conclusions by the production of arguments’. These two uses of the vocabulary did not come together seamlessly in his account, (...) however. Nor have they done so in subsequent work. Interpretations and elaborations of the Toulmin model, including Toulmin’s own with Rieke and Janek in An Introduction to Reasoning, have tended to characterize the overall model functionally but have defined and illustrated the elements as different kinds of statements. This paper calls for more attention to a definition for the ‘warrant’ element that emerges from the dialogue strategy of definition: ‘to warrant’ as a verb capturing the movement between the data and the claim. The paper argues that the result of this perspective is a more rhetorically based statement of the Toulmin model. (shrink)