Despite increasing interest in studying arguments from deontic authority of the general form “(1) \(\delta\) is a deontic authority in institution \(\varOmega\) ; (2) according to \(\delta\), I should do \(\alpha\), _C_: therefore, (3) I should do \(\alpha\) ”, the state of the art models are not capable of grasping their complexity. The existing sets of critical questions assigned to this argumentation scheme seem to conflate two problems: whether a person is subject to an authority of an institution in the (...) first place and whether the command issued within the context of a particular institution is eventually binding. For this reason, we introduce (1) a set of Basic Critical Questions to scrutinize the former issue, and (2) a set of more detailed questions related to specific features, also referred to as “parameters”, of institutional environments (Intra-Institutional Critical Questions). We identify major elements of institutional environments in which authoritative utterances are made and the crucial parameters of arguments from deontic authority. The selected evidence from the decisions of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court helps us show how these parameters may be used to reconstruct subtypes of this argument scheme, with their associated sets of critical questions. In specific institutional contexts, such detailed schemes are capable of grasping the complexity of appeals to deontic authority and thus should be used rather than general schemes. The reconstruction of argumentation schemes with critical questions shows how particular arguments may successfully be attacked. (shrink)

In this paper, we formulate a procedure for assessing reasoning as it is expressed in natural arguments. The procedure is a specification of one of the three aspects of argumentation assessment distinguished in the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation that makes use of the argument categorisation framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments. The theoretical framework and practical application of both the CAPNA and the PTA are described, as well as the evaluation procedure that combines the two. The procedure (...) is illustrated through an evaluation of the reasoning of two example arguments from a recently published text. (shrink)

In their book Commitment in Dialogue, Walton and Krabbe claim that formal dialogue systems for conversational argumentation are “not very realistic and not easy to apply”. This difficulty may make argumentation theory less well adapted to be employed to describe or analyse actual argumentation practice. On the other hand, the empirical study of real-life arguments may miss or ignore insights of more than the two millennia of the development of philosophy of language, rhetoric, and argumentation theory. In this paper, we (...) propose a novel methodology for adapting such theories to serve as applicable tools in the study of argumentation phenomena. Our approach is both theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded in large-scale corpus analysis. The area of interest are appeals to ethos, the character of the speaker, building upon Aristotle’s rhetoric. Ethotic techniques are used to influence the hearers through the communication, where speakers might establish, but also emphasise, weaken or undermine their own or others’ credibility and trustworthiness. Specifically, we apply our method to Aristotelian theory of ethos elements which identifies practical wisdom, moral virtue and goodwill as components of speakers’ character, which can be supported or attacked. The challenges we identified in this case and the solutions we proposed allow us to formulate general guidelines of how to exploit rich theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the practice of language use. (shrink)

Ethotic arguments, such as arguments from expert opinion and ad hominem arguments, play an important role in communication practice. In this paper, we argue that there is another type of reasoning from ethos, in which people argue about actions in the world. These subspecies of ethotic arguments are very common in public debates: societies are involved in heated disputes about what should be done with monuments of historical figures such as Stalin or Colston: Should we demolish the building they funded? (...) Should we revere their statues? Should the street named after them be renamed?; and the general public vividly argue about what should be done with the legacy of producers, directors and actors in debates of the #MeToo movement: Should their new movies be distributed? Should their scenes be deleted from motion pictures? Should their stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame be removed? Many arguments in these debates boil down to the character of the public figures: He was a slave trader!—But he is a part of our history; He harassed a young girl!—But he is an important actor. The reasoning step here is legitimised by the association between a person and an extra-linguistic object: the association between a historical figure and their statue or between an actor and their movie. The nature of this association is explained in the paper using Peirce’s theory of signs. We propose to extend an existing approach to patterns of reasoning from ethos that will help us to shed new light on ethotic argumentation and open an avenue for a systematic account of these unexplored argument forms. (shrink)

I inquire into argument at the system level, exploring the controversy over whether climate scientists should fly. I document participants’ knowledge of a skeptical argument that because scientists fly, they cannot testify credibly about the climate emergency. I show how this argument has been managed by pro-climate action arguers, and how some climate scientists have developed parallel reasoning, articulating a sophisticated case why they will be more effective in the controversy if they fly less. Finally, I review some strategies arguers (...) deploy to use the arguments of others against them. I argue that only by attending to argument-making at the system level can we understand how arguers come to know the resources for argument available in a controversy and to think strategically about how to use them. I call for more work on argument at the system level. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a model of pathos, delineate its operationalisation, and demonstrate its utility through an analysis of natural language argumentation. We understand pathos as an interactional persuasive process in which speakers are performing pathos appeals and the audience experiences emotional reactions. We analyse two strategies of such appeals in pre-election debates: pathotic Argument Schemes based on the taxonomy proposed by Walton et al. (Argumentation schemes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008), and emotion-eliciting language based on psychological lexicons of (...) emotive words (Wierzba in Behav Res Methods 54:2146–2161, 2021). In order to match the appeals with possible reactions, we collect real-time social media reactions to the debates and apply sentiment analysis (Alswaidan and Menai in Knowl Inf Syst 62:2937–2987, 2020) method to observe emotion expressed in language. The results point to the importance of pathos analysis in modern discourse: speakers in political debates refer to emotions in most of their arguments, and the audience in social media reacts to those appeals using emotion-expressing language. Our results show that pathos is a common strategy in natural language argumentation which can be analysed with the support of computational methods. (shrink)