In this paper we consider persuasion in the context of practical reasoning, and discuss the problems associated with construing reasoning about actions in a manner similar to reasoning about beliefs. We propose a perspective on practical reasoning as presumptive justification of a course of action, along with critical questions of this justification, building on the account of Walton. From this perspective, we articulate an interaction protocol, which we call PARMA, for dialogues over proposed actions based on this theory. We outline (...) an axiomatic semantics for the PARMA Protocol, and discuss two implementations which use this protocol to mediate a discussion between humans. We then show how our proposal can be made computational within the framework of agents based on the Belief-Desire-Intention model, and illustrate this proposal with an example debate within a multi agent system. (shrink)

We developed an on-line intelligent argumentation system which facilitates stakeholders in exchanging dialogues. It provides decision support by capturing stakeholders’ rationale through arguments. As part of the argumentation process, stakeholders tend to both polarise their opinions and form polarisation groups. The challenging issue of assessing argumentation polarisation had not been addressed in argumentation systems until recently. Arvapally, Liu, and Jiang [, ‘Identification of Faction Groups and Leaders in Web-Based Intelligent Argumentation System for Collaborative Decision Support’, in Proceedings of International Conference (...) on Collaborative Technologies and Systems] earlier developed a method to identify polarisation groups. These groups, however, tend to overlap to a certain degree; each stakeholder may be a member of multiple polarisation groups to varied degrees. Quantifying stakeholders’ membership in multiple polarisation groups is an important issue in the argumentation for collaborative decision-making, which is not addressed earlier. We present a novel approach using fuzzy clustering algorithm to address this issue in this article. The method is evaluated using data sets produced from the discussions of 24 stakeholders. Experimental results indicate that our method is effective for both identifying polarisation groups and quantifying stakeholders’ degree of membership in each polarisation group. (shrink)

During a dialogue, agents exchange information with each other and need thus to deal with incoming information. For that purpose, they should be able to reason effectively about trustworthiness of information sources. This paper proposes an argument-based system that allows an agent to reason about its own beliefs and information received from other sources. An agent's beliefs are of two kinds: beliefs about the environment and beliefs about trusting sources . Six basic forms of trust are discussed in the paper (...) including the most common one on sincerity. Starting with a base which contains such information, the system builds two types of arguments: arguments in favour of trusting a given source of information and arguments in favour of believing statements which may be received from other agents. We discuss how the different arguments interact and how an agent may decide to trust another source and thus to accept information coming from that source... (shrink)

Three forms of the straw man fallacy are posed: the straw, weak, and hollow man. Additionally, there can be non-fallacious cases of any of these species of straw man arguments.

The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition’s arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition’s arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies. The difference between appropriate and inappropriate iron manning clarifies the limits of the virtue of open-mindedness.

This paper offers an account of a fallacy we will call bothsiderism, which is to mistake disagreement on an issue for evidence that either a compromise on, suspension of judgment regarding, or continued discussion of the issue is in order. Our view is that this is a fallacy of a unique and heretofore untheorized type, a fallacy of meta-argumentation. The paper develops as follows. After a brief introduction, we examine a recent bothsiderist case in American politics. We use this as (...) a pivot point to survey the theoretical literature on the fallacy. The most prominent theory is that bothsiderism is a case of dialogue-shifting. This view fails, we maintain, to explain how bothsiderism might be persuasive. We argue, rather, bothsiderism is a kind of meta-argumentative fallacy. (shrink)

What should a virtue theory of argumentation say about fallacious reasoning? If good arguments are virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of bad argumentation to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through analysis of several fallacies, with particular emphasis (...) on the ad misericordiam. (shrink)

The virtues and vices of argument are now an established part of argumentation theory. They have helped direct attention to hitherto neglected aspects of how we argue. However, it remains controversial whether a virtue theory can contribute to some of the central questions of argumentation theory. Notably, Harvey Siegel disputes whether what he calls ‘arguments in the abstract propositional sense’ can be evaluated meaningfully within a virtue theory. This paper explores the prospects for grounding an account of argument evaluation in (...) arguers’ virtues and vices by examination of a corresponding debate in virtue ethics: Can an ethics of virtue guide our actions? It is thereby argued that an affirmative answer is possible: virtues suffice for argument evaluation. (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in social semiotics, pragmatics, (...) and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

People argue to reconcile differences of opinion, but reconciliation may fail to happen. In these cases, most theorists assume arguers are left with the same disagreement from which they started. This is too optimistic, since disagreement might instead escalate, and this may happen because of the argumentative practice, not in spite of it. These dangers depend on epistemological, pragmatic, and cultural factors, and show why arguers should be careful in picking their dialogical fights.

Disputational models of argumentation have been criticized as introducing adversariality into argumentation by mistakenly conceiving of it as minimally adversarial, and, in doing so, structurally incentivizing ancillary adversariality. As an alternative, non-adversarial models of argumentation like inquiry have been recommended. In this article I defend disputational, minimally adversarial models of disagreement-based argumentation. First, I argue that the normative kernel of minimal adversariality is properly located in the normative fabric of disagreement, not our practices of disputation. Thus, argumentation’s minimal adversariality is (...) a hereditary, rather than an acquired, trait. Second, I show how attempts to model disagreement-based argumentation non-adversarially, as co-inquiry, misrepresent the normative commitments of disagreers. Indeed, such attempts backfire in their efforts to make argumentation less adversarial, by removing the normative, discursive mechanisms by which we may hold each other to rational account for our commitments. Finally, I show how regulative models of disputation, like the Pragma-Dialectical critical discussion, are designed to minimize ancillary adversariality thereby preventing its escalation. (shrink)

The overarching goal of this book is to differentiate and provide a highly detailed descriptive account of a specific class of arguments. To simplify, let us consider the following example: suppose one aims to persuade that “Julius Caesar was a criminal.” To support that claim various arguments may be formulated, such as: a) Joseph Stalin murdered his political opponents who openly opposed him, thus he was a criminal. Julius Caesar did the same. Therefore, if Stalin was a criminal, then Caesar (...) was also a criminal. b) Most historians studying the history of the Roman Empire consider Julius Caesar to be a criminal, so he was one. c) The majority of people believe Julius Caesar was a criminal, so he was one. d) Anyone who murders or orders the killing of others is a criminal—regardless of whether it’s in defense of the country or to maintain power. Julius Caesar issued orders resulting in thousands of deaths, so he was a criminal. Argumentation theory distinguishes and extensively describes different types of arguments, each with its own definition, argumentation scheme, subtypes, and criteria for evaluation. We may, therefore, identify that: example (a) employs the argument from analogy, (b) is an argument from authority (ad auctoritate), and (c) is an argument from popular opinion (ad populum). What about (d)? Is there a theory for such arguments? Argument in the example (d) establishes the meaning of “criminal” by extending it to those who lead troops into battle or kill in self-defense, and in this way, Caesar can also be included in the extension of a “criminal” (regardless of whether he committed genocide or simply won battles). Although there are many concepts in argumentation theory and informal logic that explain various aspect of such arguments (e.g., persuasive definitions and persuasive quasi-definitions, attributions, classification arguments, etc.) there is no theory for such arguments—or rather—there was no until now. This book is aimed to provide a concept, classification, and assessment criteria for arguments which fix the meaning to support persuasion—namely, semantic arguments. Semantic arguments manifest themselves as a common and very powerful means of persuasion in various areas of human activity, including political discourse, advertising, science, law, and philosophy. This can be illustrated through an analysis of some examples: e.g., the redefinition of “planet” proposed in 2008 to exclude Pluto from the scope of this concept, the redefinition of the term “wetland” put forward by G.W. Bush in 1988, modifications of the definition of “human being” in disputes about abortion, or the definition of “vehicle” in cases of accidents involving electric scooters. The book’s goal is to provide a model of semantic argument—differentiating arguments that fix meaning for persuasive purposes, providing definition and scheme, constructing a comprehensive classification, and developing assessment criteria. This broader aim also fills a gap in argumentation theory regarding our understanding of semantic arguments and their actual and potential applications. (shrink)

La oposición a una estricta separación entre las dimensiones dialéctica y retórica de la actividad argumentativa es una de las aportaciones más destacadas y peculiares de la denominada escuela holandesa sobre argumentación. Frans H. van Eemeren y Peter Houtlosser reaccionaron contra una separación estricta entre dialéctica y retórica en varios trabajos, pero uno de los más inspiradores es sin duda su artículo “William the Silent’s argumentative discourse” (1998) presentado en la ciudad de Ámsterdam con ocasión de la cuarta conferencia organizada (...) por la International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Sobre este tema siguieron investigando para presentar un análisis de la perspectiva dialéctica inherente al caso de Guillermo I de Orange en un congreso de la Japan Debate Association en Tokio (van Eemeren y Houtlosser, 2000). (shrink)

The interpretation and the indirect reporting of a speaker’s communicative intentions lie at the crossroad between pragmatics, argumentation theory, and forensic linguistics. Since the leading case Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., in the United States the legal problem of determining the truth of a quotation is essentially equated with the correctness of its indirect reporting, i.e. the representation of the speaker’s intentions. For this reason, indirect reports are treated as interpretations of what the speaker intends to communicate. Theoretical considerations, (...) aimed at establishing the pragmatic meaning of an utterance and differentiating between presumptive and non-presumptive interpretation, are thus interwoven with the practical legal need of distinguishing a correct indirect report from an indirect one or a misquotation. An incorrect report or a misquotation has the dialectical effect of attributing to the misquoted party commitments that he never held, which the latter needs to rebut. This shifting of the burden of persuasion can be increased by using strategically the conflict between the presumptive interpretation of an utterance and the non-presumptive one, i.e. the different types of pragmatic ambiguity. When an interpreter is confronted with an utterance taken out of its dialogical context, his interpretative process is not guided by the actual context or intention, but rather the most frequent or prototypical dialogical setting or the most typical individual purpose that it could have served to achieve. This presumptive reconstruction can be used to provide a prima facie case that the other party needs to reject. The stronger the interpretative presumptions a speaker needs to rebut, the more effective the misquotation strategy. The conflict between the systematic and the presumptive process of interpretation can be represented as an argumentative mechanism of reconstruction of the individual intention, which allows one to assess the reasonableness of the interpretative reasoning. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of specific (...) terms, which can be represented and assessed considering its logical structure and its defeasibility conditions. This automatic inference is conceived as part of the connotation of an ethical term, and is not necessarily stable. By means of quasi-definitions, it is possible to modify the emotive meaning while maintaining the descriptive one, automaticizing the inferences drawn from an ethical word. Through examples drawn from the recent US presidential campaign, we show how re-contextualization and emotive contexts can affect emotive meaning. (shrink)

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, our goal is theoretical, as we aim at providing an instrument for detecting, analyzing, and solving ambiguities based on the reasoning mechanism underlying interpretation. To this purpose, combining the insights from pragmatics and argumentation theory, we represent the background assumptions driving an interpretation as presumptions. Presumptions are then investigated as the backbone of the argumentative reasoning that is used to assess and solve ambiguities and drive (theoretically) interpretive mechanisms. On (...) the other hand, our goal is practical. By analyzing ambiguities as stemming from different presumptions concerning language or, more importantly, expected communicative roles and goals, we can use communicative misunderstandings as the signal of deeper disagreements concerning mutual expectations or cultural differences. This argumentation-based interpretive mechanism will be applied to the analysis of medical interviews in the area of diabetes care, and will be used to bring to light the sources of misunderstanding and the different presumptions that define distinct cultures. We will consequently illustrate the analytical tools by identifying and distinguishing the various types of ambiguity underlying misunderstandings, and we will address them by describing the communicative intentions ascribed to the ambiguous utterances. (shrink)

This paper focuses on argumentation in a specific institutional context: debate in the European Parliament. A parliamentary debate is a distinct argumentative activity type. In the pragma-dialectical approach, argumentative activity types are defined as conventionalized argumentative practices in which the possibilities for strategic manoeuvring are predetermined. What are the characteristics of the activity type of a debate in European Parliament that predetermine the possibilities for strategic manoeuvring? What kind of constraints and opportunities for strategic manoeuvring can be distinguished?

Implicatures are described as particular forms reasoning from best explanation, in which the para-digm of possible explanations consists of the possible semantic interpretations of a sentence or a word. The need for explanation will be shown to be triggered by conflicts between presumptions, namely hearer’s dialogical expectations and the presumptive sentence meaning. What counts as the best explanation can be established on the grounds of hierarchies of presumptions, dependent on dialogue types and interlocutors’ culture.

If good argument is virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of fallacies to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through case studies of several fallacies, with particular emphasis on the ad hominem.

Different approaches analyze the strength of a natural language argument in different ways. This paper contrasts the dialectical, structural, probabilistic (or Bayesian), computational, and empirical approaches by exemplarily applying them to a single argumentative text (Epicureans on Squandering Life; Aikin & Talisse, 2019). Rather than pitching these approaches against one another, our main goal is to show the room for fruitful interaction. Our focus is on a dialectical analysis of the squandering argument as an argumentative response that voids an interlocutor’s (...) right to assertion. This analysis addresses the pragmatic dimensions of arguing and implies an argument structure that is consistent with empirical evidence of perceived argument strength. Results show that the squandering argument can be evaluated as a (non-fallacious) ad hominem argument, which however is not necessarily stronger than possible arguments attacking it. (shrink)

This book contains 20 essays tracing the work of David Zarefsky, a leading North American scholar of argumentation from a rhetorical perspective. The essays cohere around 4 general themes: objectives for studying argumentation rhetorically, approaches to rhetorical study of argumentation, patterns and schemes of rhetorical argumentation, and case studies illustrating the potential of studying argumentation rhetorically. These articles are drawn from across Zarefsky’s 45-year career. Many of these articles originally appeared in publications that are difficult to access today, and this (...) collection brings the reader up to date on the topic. Zarefsky’s scholarship focuses on the role of language in political argumentation, the ways in which argumentation creates public knowledge and belief, the influence of framing and context on what is said and understood, the deployment of particular patterns and schemes of argumentation in public reasoning, and the influence of debate on politics and governance. All these topics are addressed in this book. Each of the conceptual essays includes brief application to specific cases, and five extended case studies are also presented in this volume. The case studies cover different themes: two explore famous political debates, the third focuses on presidential rhetoric across the course of United States history, the fourth on the arguments for liberalism at a time of political polarization, and the fifth on the contemporary effort to engage the United States with the Muslim world. This book is of interest to scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, law, philosophy of law, and legal history. The range of topics and concepts addressed, the interplay of concepts and cases and the unifying perspective of rhetorical argumentation make this book a valuable read for students of argumentative practice, whether rhetorically or otherwise. (shrink)

In Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness, Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels report on their systematic empirical research of the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical discussion rules. The experimental studies they carried out during more than ten years start from the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation developed at the University of Amsterdam, their home university. In these studies they test methodically the intersubjective acceptability of the rules for critical discussion proposed in this theory by confronting ordinary arguers who (...) have not received any special education in argumentation and fallacies with discussion fragments containing both fallacious and non-fallacious argumentative moves. The research covers a wide range of informal fallacies. In this way, the authors create a basis for comparing the theoretical reasonableness conception of pragma-dialectics with the norms for judging argumentative moves prevailing in argumentative practice. Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness provides a unique insight into the relationship between theoretical and practical conceptions of reasonableness, supported by extensive empirical material gained by means of sophisticated experimental research. (shrink)

J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the history of (...) the field of argumentation theory and various related disciplines. It illuminates the central debates and presents core ideas in four main areas: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Argument Theory and Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. (shrink)

When should you engage with difficult arguments against your cherished controversial beliefs? The primary conclusion of this book is that your obligations to engage with counterarguments are more limited than is often thought. In some standard situations, you shouldn't engage with difficult counterarguments and, if you do, you shouldn't engage with them open-mindedly. This conclusion runs counter to aspects of the Millian political tradition and political liberalism, as well as what people working in informal logic tend to say about argumentation. (...) -/- Not all misleading arguments wear their flaws on their sleeve. Each step of a misleading argument might seem compelling and you might not be able to figure out what's wrong with it. Still, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with an argument, you can know that it's misleading. One way to know that an argument is misleading is, counterintuitively, to lack expertise in the methods and evidence-types employed by the argument. When you know that a counterargument is misleading, you shouldn't engage with it open-mindedly and sometimes shouldn't engage with it at all. You shouldn't engage open-mindedly because you shouldn't be willing to reduce your confidence in response to arguments you know are misleading. And you sometimes shouldn't engage closed-mindedly, because to do so can be manipulative or ineffective. -/- In making this case, Jeremy Fantl discusses echo chambers and group polarization, the importance in academic writing of a sympathetic case for the opposition, the epistemology of disagreement, the account of open-mindedness, and invitations to problematic academic speakers. (shrink)

Arguing that our attachment to Aristotelian modes of discourse makes a revision of their conceptual foundations long overdue, the author proposes the consideration of unacknowledged factors that play a central role in argument itself. These are in particular the subjective imprint and the dynamics of argumentation. Their inclusion in a four-dimensional framework and the focus on thesis validity allow for a more realistic view of our discourse practice. Exhaustive analyses of fascinating historical and contemporary arguments are provided. These range from (...) Columbus’s advocacy of the Western Passage to India, over the trial of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, to today’s highly charged controversies surrounding euthanasia and embryo research. Excavating foundational issues such as the purpose of argument itself and the contested role of argument as a generator of knowledge, the book culminates in a discussion of the relationship between rationality and reasonableness and criticizes the restrictions of ‘rational’ argument relying on fixed logical, economic or cultural criteria that in reality are mutable. Here, a true, open argument requires the infusion of Paul Lorenzen’s principle of ‘transsubjectivity’, which recognizes but transcends the partiality of the individual and which can be seen in the pragmatic and expanding consensus that humanity can control itself to safeguard the future of a fragile, damaged world. (shrink)

This volume focuses on dialogue and argumentation in contexts which are marked by truculence and discord. The contributors include well known argumentation scholars who discuss the issues this raises from the point of view of a variety of disciplines and points of view. The authors seek to address theoretically challenging issues in a way that is relevant to both the theory and the practice of argument. The collection brings together selected essays from the 2006 11th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation (...) Conference held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and the 2012 14th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation Conference held at Casa Artom in Venice, Italy. (shrink)

This article provides a brief selective overview and discussion of recent research into natural language argumentation that may inform the study of human reasoning on the assumption that an episode of argumentation issues an invitation to accept a corresponding inference. As this research shows, arguers typically seek to establish new consequences based on prior information. And they typically do so vis-à-vis a real or an imagined opponent, or an opponent-position, in ways that remain sensitive to considerations of context, audiences, and (...) goals. Deductively valid inferences remain a limiting case of such reasoning. In view of these insights, it may appear less surprising that allegedly “irrational” behavior can regularly be produced in experimental settings that expose subjects to standardized reasoning tasks. (shrink)

The Toulmin model has been proved useful in law and argumentation theory. This model describes the basic process in justifying a claim, which comprises six elements, i.e., claim (C), data (D), warrant (W), backing (B), qualifier (Q), and rebuttal (R). Specifically, in justifying a claim, one must put forward ‘data’ and a ‘warrant’, whereas the latter is authorized by ‘backing’. The force of the ‘claim’ being justified is represented by the ‘qualifier’, and the condition under which the claim cannot be (...) justified is represented as the ‘rebuttal’. To further improve the model, (Goodnight, Informal Logic 15:41–52, 1993) points out that the selection of a backing needs justification, which he calls legitimation justification. However, how such justification is constituted has not yet been clarified. To identify legitimation justification, we separate it into two parts. One justifies a backing’s eligibility (legitimation justification 1 ; LJ 1 ); the other justifies its superiority over other eligible backings (legitimation justification 2 ; LJ 2 ). In this paper, we focus on LJ 1 and apply it to the legal justification (of judgements) in hard cases for illustration purposes. We submit that LJ 1 refers to the justification of the legal interpretation of a norm by its backing, which can be further separated into several orderable subjustifications. Taking the subjustification of a norm’s existence as an example, we show how it would be influenced by different positions in the philosophy of law. Taking the position of the theory of natural law, such subjustification is presented and evaluated. This paper aims not only to inform ongoing theoretical efforts to apply the Toulmin model in the legal field, but it also seeks to clarify the process in the justification of legal judgments in hard cases. It also offers background information for the possible construction of related AI systems. In our future work, LJ 2 and other subjustifications of LJ 1 will be discussed. (shrink)

There has been increasing use of argument-based approaches in the development of safety-critical systems. Within this approach, a safety case plays a key role in the system development life cycle. The key components in a safety case are safety arguments, which are designated to demonstrate that the system is acceptably safe. Inappropriate reasoning in safety arguments could undermine a system's safety claims which in turn contribute to safety-related failures of the system. The review of safety arguments is therefore a crucial (...) step in the development of safety-critical systems. Reviews are conducted using dialogues where elements of the argument and their relations are proposed and scrutinised. This paper investigates an approach of conducting argument review using dialectical models. After studying five established dialectical models with varying strengths and drawbacks, a new dialectical model specially designed to support persuasion and information-seeking dialogues has been proposed to suit the requir... (shrink)

Safe Safety arguments are key components in a safety case. Too often, safety arguments are constructed without proper reasoning. To address this, we argue that informal logic argument schemes have important roles to play in safety argument construction and reviewing process. Ten commonly used reasoning schemes in computer system safety domain are proposed. The role of informal logic dialogue games in computer system safety arguments reviewing is also discussed and the intended work in this area is proposed. It is anticipated (...) that this work will contribute toward the development of computer system safety arguments, and help to move forward the interplay between research in informal logic and research in computer system safety engineering. (shrink)

This paper reports research concerning a suitable dialogue model for human computer debate. In particular, we consider the adoption of Moore's (1993) utilization of Mackenzie's (1979) game DC, means of using computational agents as the test-bed to facilitate evaluation of the proposed model, and means of using the evaluation results as motivation to further develop a dialogue model, which can prevent fallacious argument and common errors. It is anticipated that this work will contribute toward the development of human computer dialogue, (...) and help to illuminate research issues in the field of dialectics itself. (shrink)

Mercier and Sperber (2011a, 2011b; Mercier, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, and 2011d) have presented a stimulating and provocative new theory of reasoning: the argumentative theory of reasoning. They maintain that argumentation is a meta-representational module. In their evolutionary view of argumentation, the function of this module would be to regulate the flow of information between interlocutors through persuasiveness on the side of the communicator and epistemic vigilance on the side of the audience. The aim of this paper is to discuss the (...) perspective of the authors in which they conceive this competence as the natural scenario of reflective reasoning. (shrink)

Current formal dialectical models postulate normative rules that enable discussants to conduct dialogical interactions without committing fallacies. Though the rules for conducting a dialogue are supposed to apply to interactions between actual arguers, they are without exception theoretically motivated. This creates a gap between model and reality, because dialogue participants typically leave important content-related elements implicit. Therefore, analysts cannot readily relate normative rules to actual debates in ways that will be empirically confirmable. This paper details a new, data-driven method for (...) describing discussants’ actual reply structures, wherein corpus studies serve to acknowledge the complexity of natural argumentation. Rather than refer exclusively to propositional content as an indicator of arguing pro/contra a given claim, the proposed approach to dialogue structure tracks the sequence of dialogical moves itself. This arguably improves the applicability of theoretical dialectical models to empirical data, and thus advances the study of dialogue systems. (shrink)

This paper proposes two formal models for understanding real-life dialogues, aimed at capturing argumentative structures performatively enacted during conversations. In the course of the investigation, two types of discourse with a high degree of well-structured argumentation were chosen: moral debate and financial communication. The research project found itself confronted by a need to analyse, structure and formally describe large volumes of textual data, where this called for the application of computational tools. It is expected that the results of the proposed (...) research will make a contribution to formal systems modelling and the evaluation of communication from the point of view of argument soundness. (shrink)

In this paper, illocutionary acts of commanding will be differentiated from perlocutionary acts that affect preferences of addressees in a new dynamic logic which combines the preference upgrade introduced in DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) by van Benthem and Liu with the deontic update introduced in ECL II (eliminative command logic II) by Yamada. The resulting logic will incorporate J. L. Austin’s distinction between illocutionary acts as acts having mere conventional effects and perlocutionary acts as acts having real effects upon (...) attitudes and actions of agents, and help us understand why saying so can make it so in explicit performative utterances. We will also discuss how acts of commanding give rise to so-called “deontic dilemmas” and how we can accommodate most deontic dilemmas without triggering so-called “deontic explosion”. (shrink)

Particular reasoning is arguably the most common type of legal reasoning. Neil MacCormick proposed that, in a legal context, justifiable particular reasoning has to be universalizable. This paper aims to: investigate MacCormick’s thesis; explain how a particular can ever be universal by drawing inspiration from Scott Brewer’s formula on reasoning by analogy; further comprehend MacCormick’s thesis by considering some of the arguments advanced by its opponents; use the ‘pilot-judgement procedure’ developed by the European Court of Human Rights as an example (...) to illustrate the relevance of the universalizable particular thesis in today’s legal practices. (shrink)

Epistemology and informal logic have overlapping and broadly similar subject matters. A principle of methodological symmetry is: philosophical theories of sufficiently similar subject matters should engage similar methods. Suppose the best way to do epistemology is in highly formalized ways, with a large role for mathematical methods. The symmetry principle suggests this is also the best way to do the logic of the reasoning and argument, the subject matter of informal logic. A capitulation to mathematics is inimical to informal logicians, (...) yet formal methods and mathematical models are an emerging force in epistemology. What is to be done? What’s sauce for the goose of epistemology is sauce for the gander of informal logic. (shrink)

Recent proposals for computer-assisted argumentation have drawn on dialectical models of argumentation. When used to assist public policy planning, such systems also raise questions of political legitimacy. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory, we elaborate normative criteria for deliberative legitimacy and illustrate their use for assessing two argumentation systems. Full assessment of such systems requires experiments in which system designers draw on expertise from the social sciences and enter into the policy deliberation itself at the level of participants.

We describe PADUA, a protocol designed to support two agents debating a classification by offering arguments based on association rules mined from individual datasets. We motivate the style of argumentation supported by PADUA, and describe the protocol. We discuss the strategies and tactics that can be employed by agents participating in a PADUA dialogue. PADUA is applied to a typical problem in the classification of routine claims for a hypothetical welfare benefit. We particularly address the problems that arise from the (...) extensive number of misclassified examples typically found in such domains, where the high error rate is a widely recognised problem. We give examples of the use of PADUA in this domain, and explore in particular the effect of intermediate predicates. We have also done a large scale evaluation designed to test the effectiveness of using PADUA to detect misclassified examples, and to provide a comparison with other classification systems. (shrink)

This paper combines methods of argumentation theory and artificial intelligence to extend existing work on the dialectical structure of crossexamination. The existing method used conflict diagrams to search for inconsistent statements in the testimony of a witness. This paper extends the method by using the inconsistency of commitments to draw an inference by the ad hominem argumentation scheme to the conclusion that the testimony is unreliable because of the bad ethical character for veracity of the witness.

This article analyses the fallacy of wrenching from context, using the dialectical notions of commitment and implicature as tools. The data, a set of key examples, is used to sharpen the conceptual borderlines around the related fallacies of straw man, accent, misquotation, and neglect of qualifications. According to the analysis, the main characteristics of wrenching from context are the manipulation of the meaning of the other’s statement through devices such as the use of misquotations, selective quotations, and quoting out of (...) context. The theoretical tools employed in the analysis are pragmatic theories of meaning and a dialectical model of commitment, used to explain how and why a standpoint is distorted. The analysis is based on a conception of fallacies as deceptive strategic moves in a game of dialogue. As a consequence, our focus is not only on misquotations as distortions of meaning, but on how they are used as dialectical tools to attack an opponent or win a dispute. Wrenching from context is described as a fallacy of unfairly attributing a commitment to another party that he never held. Its power as a deceptive argumentation tactic is based on complex mechanisms of implicit commitments and on their misemployment to improperly suggest an attribution of commitment. (shrink)