This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

Within three of the most well-known contemporary approaches to argumentation, the notions of solo argumentation and arguing with one’s self are given little attention and are typically argued to be able to be subsumed within the dialectical aspects of the approach being propounded. Challenging these claims, this paper has two main aims. The first is to argue that while dialogical argumentation may be most common, there exists individual dialectical argumentation, which is not so easily subsumed within these theories. Second, in (...) order characterize this type of argumentation the paper also offers distinctions between the interrelated notions of dialectical, dialogical, and quasi-dialogical, reasoning and argumentation, within an individual or between multiple participants, which I hope provide useful precision for the field. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

In this paper we describe an approach to practical reasoning, reasoning about what it is best for a particular agent to do in a given situation, based on presumptive justifications of action through the instantiation of an argument scheme, which is then subject to examination through a series of critical questions. We identify three particular aspects of practical reasoning which distinguish it from theoretical reasoning. We next provide an argument scheme and an associated set of critical questions which is able (...) to capture these features. In order that both the argument scheme and the critical questions can be given precise interpretations we use the semantic structure of an Action-Based Alternating Transition System as the basis for their definition. We then work through a detailed example to show how this approach to practical reasoning can be applied to a problem solving situation, and briefly describe some other previous applications of the general approach. In a second example we relate our account to the social laws paradigm for co-ordinating multi-agent systems. The contribution of the paper is to provide firm foundations for an approach to practical reasoning based on presumptive argument in terms of a well-known model for representing the effects of actions of a group of agents. (shrink)

In this contribution, I will develop a comprehensive tool for the reconstruction and evaluation of argumentation from expert opinion. This is done by analyzing and then combining two dialectical accounts of this type of argumentation. Walton’s account of the ‘appeal to expert opinion’ provides a number of useful, but fairly unsystematic suggestions for critical questions pertaining to argumentation from expert opinion. The pragma-dialectical account of ‘argumentation from authority’ offers a clear and systematic, but fairly general framework for the reconstruction and (...) evaluation of this type of argumentation. The tool is developed by incorporating Walton’s critical questions into a pragma-dialectical framework. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

This paper explains the importance of classifying argumentation schemes, and outlines how schemes are being used in current research in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics on argument mining. It provides a survey of the literature on scheme classification. What are so far generally taken to represent a set of the most widely useful defeasible argumentation schemes are surveyed and explained systematically, including some that are difficult to classify. A new classification system covering these centrally important schemes is built.

Argumentation schemes can be described as abstract structures representing the most generic types of argument, constituting the building blocks of the ones used in everyday reasoning. This paper investigates the structure, classification, and uses of such schemes. Three goals are pursued: 1) to describe the schemes, showing how they evolved and how they have been classified in the traditional and the modern theories; 2) to propose a method for classifying them based on ancient and modern developments; and 3) to outline (...) and show how schemes can be used to describe and analyze or produce real arguments. To this purpose, we will build on the traditional distinctions for building a dichotomic classification of schemes, and we will advance a modular approach to argument analysis, in which different argumentation schemes are combined together in order to represent each step of reasoning on which a complex argument relies. Finally, we will show how schemes are applied to formal systems, focusing on their applications to Artificial Intelligence, AI & Law, argument mining, and formal ontologies. (shrink)

According to the argument scheme approach, to evaluate a given scheme-saturating instance completely does entail asking all critical questions relevant to it. Although this is a central task for argumentation theorists, the field currently lacks a method for providing a complete argument evaluation. Approaching this task at the meta-level, we combine a logical with a substantive approach to the argument schemes by starting from Toulmin’s schema: ‘data, warrant, so claim’. For the yet more general schema: ‘premise; if premise, then conclusion; (...) so conclusion’, we forward a meta-level CQ-list that is arguably both complete and applicable. This list should inform ongoing theoretical efforts at generating appropriate object-level CQs for specific argument schemes. (shrink)

The book offers a compact but comprehensive introductory overview of the crucial components of argumentation theory. In presenting this overview, argumentation is consistently approached from a pragma-dialectical perspective by viewing it pragmatically as a goal-directed communicative activity and dialectically as part of a regulated critical exchange aimed at resolving a difference of opinion. As a result, the book also systematically explains how the constitutive parts of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which are discussed in a number of separate publications, hang (...) together. The following crucial topics are discussed: argumentation theory as a discipline; the meta-theoretical principles of pragma-dialectics; the model of a critical discussion aimed at resolving a difference of opinion; fallacies as violations of a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse; descriptive research of argumentative reality; analysis as theoretically-motivated reconstruction; strategic manoeuvring aimed at combining achieving effectiveness with maintaining reasonableness; the conventionalization of argumentative practices; prototypical argumentative patterns; pragma-dialectics amidst other approaches. Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective is clearly written and makes argumentation theory understandable to all scholars and advanced students interested in argumentation research. (shrink)

This paper begins a working through of Blair’s (2001) theoretical agenda concerning argumentation schemes and their attendant critical questions, in which we propose a number of solutions to some outstanding theoretical issues. We consider the classification of schemes, their ultimate nature, their role in argument reconstruction, their foundation as normative categories of argument, and the evaluative role of critical questions.We demonstrate the role of schemes in argument reconstruction, and defend a normative account of their nature against specific criticisms due to (...) Pinto (2001). Concerning critical questions, we propose an account on which they are founded in the R.S.A. cogency standard, and develop an account of the relationship between critical questions and burden of proof. Our ultimate aim is to initiate a reconciliation between dialectical and informal logic approaches to the schemes. (shrink)

This volume of the Thinker’s Guide Library addresses the vital role of questions in every area of life. As readers develop a questioning mind, they also come to a better understanding of the world and of themselves. This book illustrates how well developed questions lead to deeper knowledge and counteract dangerous ignorance.

Argumentation theorists often disagree about which scheme best represents a given type of argument. Unfortunately, authors sometimes become involved in fruitless pseudo-agreement because they fail to perceive that their supposedly competing schemes are means for achieving different practical or theoretical goals. This paper explains some of the different purposes that an argument scheme may serve, and it indicates how the relevant type of pseudo-disagreement may be avoided.

Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Logic and Philosophy of Science, 157, 2007, 197-240. Published version available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/q9402gv46t415504/fulltext.pdf.

This paper describes an approach to legal logic based on the formal analysis of argumentation schemes. Argumentation schemes a notion borrowed from the .eld of argumentation theory - are a kind of generalized rules of inference, in the sense that they express that given certain premises a particular conclusion can be drawn. However, argumentation schemes need not concern strict, abstract, necessarily valid patterns of reasoning, but can be defeasible, concrete and contingently valid, i.e., valid in certain contexts or under certain (...) circumstances. A method is presented to analyze argumentation schemes and it is shown how argumentation schemes can be embedded in a formal model of dialectical argumentation. (shrink)

This paper shows how the critical questions matching an argumentation scheme can be mod-eled in the Carneades argumentation system as three kinds of premises. Ordinary premises hold only if they are supported by sufficient arguments. Assumptions hold, by default, until they have been questioned. With exceptions the negation holds, by default, until the exception has been supported by sufficient arguments. By “sufficient arguments”, we mean arguments sufficient to satisfy the applicable proof standard.