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.

As the value of a university degree plummets, the popularity of digital microcredentials has soared. Similar to recent calls for the early adoption of Blockchain technology, the so-called ‘microcredentialing craze’ could be no more than a fad, marketing hype or another case of ‘learning innovation theater’. Alternatively, the introduction of these compact skills- and competency-based online certificate programs might augur the arrival of a legitimate successor to the four-year university diploma. The thesis of this article is that the craze for (...) microcredentialing reflects (1) administrative urgency to unbundle higher education curricula and degree programs for greater efficiency and profitability and (2) a renascent movement among industry and higher education leaders to reorient the university curriculum towards vocational training. (shrink)

Douglas Walton’s multitudinous contributions to the study of argumentation seldom, if ever, directly engage with argumentation in mathematics. Nonetheless, several of the innovations with which he is most closely associated lend themselves to improving our understanding of mathematical arguments. I concentrate on two such innovations: dialogue types (§1) and argumentation schemes (§2). I argue that both devices are much more applicable to mathematical reasoning than may be commonly supposed.

In this paper, we study dialogue as a game, but not only in the sense in which there would exist winning strategies and a priori rules. Dialogue is not governed by game rules like for chess or other games, since even if we start from a priori rules, it is always possible to play with them, provided that some invariant properties are preserved. An important discovery of Ludics is that such properties may be expressed in geometrical terms. The main feature (...) of a dialogue is “convergence”. Intuitively, a dialogue “diverges” when it stops prematurely by some disruption, or a violation of the tacit agreed upon conditions of the discourse. It converges when the two speakers go together towards a situation where they agree at least on some points. As we shall see, convergence may be thought of through the geometrical concept of orthogonality . Utterances in a dialogue have as their content, not only the processes (similar to proofs) which lead to them from a monologic view, but also their interactions with other utterances. Finally, any utterance must be seen as co-constructed in an interaction between two processes. That is to say that it not only contains one speaker’s intentions but also his or her expectations from the other interlocutor. From our viewpoint, discursive strategies like narration , elaboration , topicalization may derive from such interactions, as well as speech acts like assertion, question and denegation. (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)

The present study explored several dispositional factors associated with individual differences in lay adult’s interpretation of when an arguer is, or is not, committed to a statement. College students were presented with several two-person arguments in which the proponent of a thesis conceded a key point in the last turn. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which that concession implied a change in the proponent’s attitude toward any of the previous statements in the argument. Participants designated as (...) ‘liberal’ used the concession to infer substantial change in commitment to earlier statements in the argument. A group designated as ‘conservative’ were reluctant to make any such inferences. A discriminant analysis indicated that variables assessing participants’ attitudes toward argument as well as their cognitive and communication styles jointly predicted their liberal or conservative status. The discriminant function and follow-up group comparisons indicated that liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in argument. This included a greater tendency to use argument as a source of knowledge. Liberals also employed a more sophisticated message design logic than conservatives on a communication task. The groups did not clearly differ with respect to participants’ implicit theory of argument, though trends were present that merit attention in future research. Implications of these findings for future research on lay interpretations of commitment are discussed. (shrink)