This paper uses argument diagrams, argumentation schemes, and some tools from formal argumentation systems developed in artificial intelligence to build a graph-theoretic model of relevance shown to be applicable as a practical method for helping a third party judge issues of relevance or irrelevance of an argument in real examples. Examples used to illustrate how the method works are drawn from disputes about relevance in natural language discourse, including a criminal trial and a parliamentary debate.

New pedagogical visions and technological developments have brought argumentation to the fore of educational practice. Whereas students previously 'learned to 'argue', they now 'argue to learn': collaborative argumentation-based learning has become a popular and valuable pedagogical technique, across a variety of tasks and disciplines. Researchers have explored the conditions under which arguing to learn is successful, have described some of its learning potentials and have developed Internet-based tools to support such learning. However, the further advancement of this field presently faces (...) several problems, which the present book addresses. Three dimensions of analysis - historical, theoretical and empirical - are integrated throughout the book. Given the nature of its object of study - dialogue, interaction, argumentation, learning and teaching - the book is resolutely multidisciplinary, drawing on research on learning in educational and psychological sciences, as well as on philosophical and linguistic theories of dialogue and argumentation. (shrink)

We report our efforts to assess the skill of contemplating and evaluating argumentation. An adaptive forced-choice instrument was developed and administered to 6th grade students, 7th grade students who had participated in a year-long intervention that successfully strengthened their argumentation production skills, and expert arguers. The instrument was sensitive enough to detect differences in skill level across these groups. Despite their gains in production skill, however, 7th graders showed only modest superiority over the untrained 6th graders and performance well below (...) that of experts. Meta-level demands involved in evaluation but not present in production, we propose, may make evaluation more difficult. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

_Philosophy and Argument_ presents systematic analysis of the role of argumentation in philosophy.

Second edition of the introductory guidebook to the basic principles of constructing sound arguments and criticising bad ones. Non-technical in approach, it is based on 186 examples, which Douglas Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, discusses and evaluates in clear, illustrative detail. Walton explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical responses. This edition takes into account (...) many developments in the field of argumentation study that have occurred since 1989, many created by the author. Drawing on these developments, Walton includes and analyzes 36 new topical examples and also brings in work on argumentation schemes. Ideally suited for use in courses in informal logic and introduction to philosophy, this book will also be valuable to students of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication. (shrink)

This paper examines the views of Fogelin, Woods, Johnstone, etc., concerning deep disa-greements, force-five standoffs, philosophical controversies, etc. My approach is to reconstruct their views and critiques of them as meta-arguments, and to elaborate the meta-argumentative aspects of radical disa-greements. It turns out that deep disagreements are resolvable to a greater degree than usually thought, but only by using special principles and practices, such as meta-argumentation, ad hominem argumentation, Ramsey’s principle, etc.

In response to earlier papers in Informal Logic by Robert Fogelin and Andrew Lugg, this paper explores the issue of whether disagreement could ever be so deep that it defied rational resolution. Contra Lugg, I agree with Fogelin that such unresolvable disagreement is possible and, contra Fogelin, I suggest that the focus of such disagreement can be quite Iimited-a single proposition rather than a whole system of beliefs. I also suggest that emphasising arguing as a human practice rather than arguments (...) as a structure of propositions is unhelpful to consideration of these issues. (shrink)

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners. The book teaches by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed. Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton shows how arguments can be reasonable under the right dialogue conditions by (...) using critical questions to evaluate them. The book teaches by example, both in the text itself and in exercises, but it is based on methods that have been developed through the author's thirty years of research in argumentation studies. (shrink)