Argumentation theory

Example of an early argument map, from Richard Whately's *Elements of Logic* (1852 edition)

Argumentation theory is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion. It studies rules of inference, logic, and procedural rules in both artificial and real-world settings.<ref>van Eemeren, Frans H.; Grootendorst, Rob (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation: the pragma-dialectical approach. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 9–13. ISBN 0521830753. OCLC 51931118.</ref><ref name=Handbook2014/>

Argumentation includes various forms of dialogue such as deliberation and negotiation which are concerned with collaborative decision-making procedures.<ref>Jory, Constanza Ihnen (May 2016). "Negotiation and deliberation: grasping the difference". Argumentation. 30 (2): 145–165 [146]. doi:10.1007/s10503-014-9343-1. S2CID 189944698.</ref> It also encompasses eristic dialog, the branch of social debate in which victory over an opponent is the primary goal, and didactic dialogue used for teaching.<ref name=Handbook2014>van Eemeren, Frans H.; Garssen, Bart; Krabbe, Erik C. W.; Snoeck Henkemans, A. Francisca; Verheij, Bart; Wagemans, Jean H. M. (2014). Handbook of argumentation theory. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 65–66. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-9473-5. ISBN 9789048194728. OCLC 871004444. At the start of Topics VIII.5, Aristotle distinguishes three types of dialogue by their different goals: (1) the truly dialectical debate, which is concerned with training (gumnasia), with critical examination (peira), or with inquiry (skepsis); (2) the didactic discussion, concerned with teaching; and (3) the competitive (eristic, contentious) type of debate in which winning is the only concern.</ref> This discipline also studies the means by which people can express and rationally resolve or at least manage their disagreements.<ref>Walton, Douglas N. (1990). "What is Reasoning? What Is an Argument?". The Journal of Philosophy. 87 (8): 399–419. doi:10.2307/2026735. JSTOR 2026735.</ref>

Argumentation is a daily occurrence, such as in public debate, science, and law.<ref>Palau, Raquel Mochales; Moens, Marie-Francine (2009-06-08). "Argumentation mining". Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. ICAIL '09. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 98–107. doi:10.1145/1568234.1568246. ISBN 978-1-60558-597-0. S2CID 1788414.</ref> For example in law, in courts by the judge, the parties and the prosecutor, in presenting and testing the validity of evidences. Also, argumentation scholars study the post hoc rationalizations by which organizational actors try to justify decisions they have made irrationally.

Argumentation is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse), along with exposition, description, and narration.

Key components of argumentation

Some key components of argumentation are:

Understanding and identifying arguments, either explicit or implied, and the goals of the participants in the different types of dialogue.
Identifying the premises from which conclusions are derived.
Establishing the "burden of proof" – determining who made the initial claim and is thus responsible for providing evidence why his/her position merits acceptance.
For the one carrying the "burden of proof", the advocate, to marshal evidence for his/her position in order to convince or force the opponent's acceptance. The method by which this is accomplished is producing valid, sound, and cogent arguments, devoid of weaknesses, and not easily attacked.
In a debate, fulfillment of the burden of proof creates a burden of rejoinder. One must try to identify faulty reasoning in the opponent's argument, to attack the reasons/premises of the argument, to provide counterexamples if possible, to identify any fallacies, and to show why a valid conclusion cannot be derived from the reasons provided for his/her argument.

For example, consider the following exchange, illustrating the No true Scotsman fallacy:

Argument: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Reply: "But my friend Angus, who is a Scotsman, likes sugar with his porridge."

Rebuttal: "Well perhaps, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

In this dialogue, the proposer first offers a premise, the premise is challenged by the interlocutor, and so the proposer offers a modification of the premise, which is designed only to evade the challenge provided.

Internal structure of arguments

Typically an argument has an internal structure, comprising the following:

a set of assumptions or premises,
a method of reasoning or deduction, and
a conclusion or point.

An argument has one or more premises and one conclusion.

Often classical logic is used as the method of reasoning so that the conclusion follows logically from the assumptions or support. One challenge is that if the set of assumptions is inconsistent then anything can follow logically from inconsistency. Therefore, it is common to insist that the set of assumptions be consistent. It is also good practice to require the set of assumptions to be the minimal set, with respect to set inclusion, necessary to infer the consequent. Such arguments are called MINCON arguments, short for minimal consistent. Such argumentation has been applied to the fields of law and medicine.

A non-classical approach to argumentation investigates abstract arguments, where 'argument' is considered a primitive term, so no internal structure of arguments is taken into account.^{[citation needed]}

Types of dialogue

In its most common form, argumentation involves an individual and an interlocutor or opponent engaged in dialogue, each contending differing positions and trying to persuade each other, but there are various types of dialogue:<ref name="WaltonKrabbe1995"/>

Persuasion dialogue aims to resolve conflicting points of view of different positions.
Negotiation aims to resolve conflicts of interests by cooperation and dealmaking.
Inquiry aims to resolve general ignorance by the growth of knowledge.
Deliberation aims to resolve a need to take action by reaching a decision.
Information seeking aims to reduce one party's ignorance by requesting information from another party that is in a position to know something.
Eristic aims to resolve a situation of antagonism through verbal fighting.

Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge

Argumentation theory had its origins in foundationalism, a theory of knowledge (epistemology) in the field of philosophy. It sought to find the grounds for claims in the forms (logic) and materials (factual laws) of a universal system of knowledge. The dialectical method was made famous by Plato and his use of Socrates critically questioning various characters and historical figures. But argument scholars gradually rejected Aristotle's systematic philosophy and the idealism in Plato and Kant. They questioned and ultimately discarded the idea that argument premises take their soundness from formal philosophical systems. The field thus broadened.<ref>Bruce Gronbeck. "From Argument to Argumentation: Fifteen Years of Identity Crisis." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980.</ref>

One of the original contributors to this trend was the philosopher Chaïm Perelman, who together with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca introduced the French term la nouvelle rhetorique in 1958 to describe an approach to argument which is not reduced to application of formal rules of inference. Perelman's view of argumentation is much closer to a juridical one, in which rules for presenting evidence and rebuttals play an important role.

Karl R. Wallace's seminal essay, "The Substance of Rhetoric: Good Reasons" in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (1963) 44, led many scholars to study "marketplace argumentation" – the ordinary arguments of ordinary people. The seminal essay on marketplace argumentation is Ray Lynn Anderson's and C. David Mortensen's "Logic and Marketplace Argumentation" Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 (1967): 143–150.<ref>See Joseph W. Wenzel "Perspectives on Argument." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980. </ref><ref>David Zarefsky. "Product, Process, or Point of View? Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, ed.s Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980.</ref> This line of thinking led to a natural alliance with late developments in the sociology of knowledge.<ref>See Ray E. McKerrow. "Argument Communities: A Quest for Distinctions."</ref> Some scholars drew connections with recent developments in philosophy, namely the pragmatism of John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Rorty has called this shift in emphasis "the linguistic turn".

In this new hybrid approach argumentation is used with or without empirical evidence to establish convincing conclusions about issues which are moral, scientific, epistemic, or of a nature in which science alone cannot answer. Out of pragmatism and many intellectual developments in the humanities and social sciences, "non-philosophical" argumentation theories grew which located the formal and material grounds of arguments in particular intellectual fields. These theories include informal logic, social epistemology, ethnomethodology, speech acts, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of science, and social psychology. These new theories are not non-logical or anti-logical. They find logical coherence in most communities of discourse. These theories are thus often labeled "sociological" in that they focus on the social grounds of knowledge.

Approaches to argumentation in communication and informal logic

In general, the label "argumentation" is used by communication scholars such as (to name only a few) Wayne E. Brockriede, Douglas Ehninger, Joseph W. Wenzel, Richard Rieke, Gordon Mitchell, Carol Winkler, Eric Gander, Dennis S. Gouran, Daniel J. O'Keefe, Mark Aakhus, Bruce Gronbeck, James Klumpp, G. Thomas Goodnight, Robin Rowland, Dale Hample, C. Scott Jacobs, Sally Jackson, David Zarefsky, and Charles Arthur Willard, while the term "informal logic" is preferred by philosophers, stemming from University of Windsor philosophers Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair. Harald Wohlrapp developed a criterion for validness (Geltung, Gültigkeit) as freedom of objections.

Trudy Govier, Douglas N. Walton, Michael Gilbert, Harvey Seigal, Michael Scriven, and John Woods (to name only a few) are other prominent authors in this tradition. Over the past thirty years, however, scholars from several disciplines have co-mingled at international conferences such as that hosted by the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Other international conferences are the biannual conference held at Alta, Utah sponsored by the (US) National Communication Association and American Forensics Association and conferences sponsored by the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA).

Some scholars (such as Ralph H. Johnson) construe the term "argument" narrowly, as exclusively written discourse or even discourse in which all premises are explicit. Others (such as Michael Gilbert) construe the term "argument" broadly, to include spoken and even nonverbal discourse, for instance the degree to which a war memorial or propaganda poster can be said to argue or "make arguments". The philosopher Stephen Toulmin has said that an argument is a claim on our attention and belief, a view that would seem to authorize treating, say, propaganda posters as arguments. The dispute between broad and narrow theorists is of long standing and is unlikely to be settled. The views of the majority of argumentation theorists and analysts fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Kinds of argumentation

Conversational argumentation

The study of naturally occurring conversation arose from the field of sociolinguistics. It is usually called conversation analysis (CA). Inspired by ethnomethodology, it was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and, among others, his close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Sacks died early in his career, but his work was championed by others in his field, and CA has now become an established force in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology.<ref>Psathas, George (1995): Conversation Analysis, Thousand Oaks: Sage Sacks, Harvey. (1995). Lectures on Conversation. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 1-55786-705-4. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A., & Jefferson, Gail (1974). A simple systematic for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Volume 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ten Have, Paul (1999): Doing Conversation Analysis. A Practical Guide, Thousand Oaks: Sage.</ref> It is particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology, as well as being a coherent discipline in its own right. Recently CA techniques of sequential analysis have been employed by phoneticians to explore the fine phonetic details of speech.

Empirical studies and theoretical formulations by Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs, and several generations of their students, have described argumentation as a form of managing conversational disagreement within communication contexts and systems that naturally prefer agreement.

Mathematical argumentation

The basis of mathematical truth has been the subject of long debate. Frege in particular sought to demonstrate (see Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, 1884, and Begriffsschrift, 1879) that arithmetical truths can be derived from purely logical axioms and therefore are, in the end, logical truths.<ref>Boolos, George (1999). "Chapter 9: Gottlob Frege and the Foundations of Arithmetic". Logic, logic, and logic (2nd print. ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674537675.</ref> The project was developed by Russell and Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica. If an argument can be cast in the form of sentences in symbolic logic, then it can be tested by the application of accepted proof procedures. This was carried out for arithmetic using Peano axioms, and the foundation most commonly used for most modern mathematics is Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, with or without the Axiom of Choice. Be that as it may, an argument in mathematics, as in any other discipline, can be considered valid only if it can be shown that it cannot have true premises and a false conclusion.

Scientific argumentation

Perhaps the most radical statement of the social grounds of scientific knowledge appears in Alan G.Gross's The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Gross holds that science is rhetorical "without remainder",<ref>Gross, Alan (1990). The Rhetoric of Science. Harvard University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0674768734.</ref> meaning that scientific knowledge itself cannot be seen as an idealized ground of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is produced rhetorically, meaning that it has special epistemic authority only insofar as its communal methods of verification are trustworthy. This thinking represents an almost complete rejection of the foundationalism on which argumentation was first based.

Interpretive argumentation

Interpretive argumentation is a dialogical process in which participants explore and/or resolve interpretations often of a text of any medium containing significant ambiguity in meaning.

Interpretive argumentation is pertinent to the humanities, hermeneutics, literary theory, linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, semiotics, analytic philosophy and aesthetics. Topics in conceptual interpretation include aesthetic, judicial, logical and religious interpretation. Topics in scientific interpretation include scientific modeling.

Legal argumentation

By lawyers

Legal arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer, or parties when representing themselves of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also advance the argument of each party in the legal dispute. A closing argument, or summation, is the concluding statement of each party's counsel reiterating the important arguments for the trier of fact, often the jury, in a court case. A closing argument occurs after the presentation of evidence.

By judges

A judicial opinion or legal opinion is in certain jurisdictions a written explanation by a judge or group of judges that accompanies an order or ruling in a case, laying out the rationale (justification) and legal principles for the ruling.<ref name=KerrCM>Orin S. Kerr (August 2005). "How to Read a Judicial Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students" (PDF). Carnegie Mellon; Computation Organizations & Society. Retrieved 15 March 2016.</ref> It cites the decision reached to resolve the dispute. A judicial opinion usually includes the reasons behind the decision.<ref name=KerrCM/> Where there are three or more judges, it may take the form of a majority opinion, minority opinion or a concurring opinion.<ref>"judicial opinion". businessdictionary.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2016.</ref>

Political argumentation

Political arguments are used by academics, media pundits, candidates for political office and government officials. Political arguments are also used by citizens in ordinary interactions to comment about and understand political events.<ref>Michael McGee. "The 'Ideograph' as a Unit of Analysis in Political Argument." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, eds. Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980.</ref> The rationality of the public is a major question in this line of research. Political scientist Samuel L. Popkin coined the expression "low information voters" to describe most voters who know very little about politics or the world in general.

In practice, a "low information voter" may not be aware of legislation that their representative has sponsored in Congress. A low-information voter may base their ballot box decision on a media sound-bite, or a flier received in the mail. It is possible for a media sound-bite or campaign flier to present a political position for the incumbent candidate that completely contradicts the legislative action taken in the Capitol on behalf of the constituents. It may only take a small percentage of the overall voting group who base their decision on the inaccurate information to form a voter bloc large enough to swing an overall election result. When this happens, the constituency at large may have been duped or fooled. Nevertheless, the election result is legal and confirmed. Savvy Political consultants will take advantage of low-information voters and sway their votes with disinformation and fake news because it can be easier and sufficiently effective. Fact checkers have come about in recent years to help counter the effects of such campaign tactics.

Psychological aspects

Psychology has long studied the non-logical aspects of argumentation. For example, studies have shown that simple repetition of an idea is often a more effective method of argumentation than appeals to reason. Propaganda often utilizes repetition.<ref>Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, Vintage, 1973, ISBN 0-394-71874-7 ISBN 978-0394718743.</ref> "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth" is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels. Nazi rhetoric has been studied extensively as, inter alia, a repetition campaign.

Empirical studies of communicator credibility and attractiveness, sometimes labeled charisma, have also been tied closely to empirically-occurring arguments. Such studies bring argumentation within the ambit of persuasion theory and practice.

Some psychologists such as William J. McGuire believe that the syllogism is the basic unit of human reasoning. They have produced a large body of empirical work around McGuire's famous title "A Syllogistic Analysis of Cognitive Relationships". A central line of this way of thinking is that logic is contaminated by psychological variables such as "wishful thinking", in which subjects confound the likelihood of predictions with the desirability of the predictions. People hear what they want to hear and see what they expect to see. If planners want something to happen they see it as likely to happen. If they hope something will not happen, they see it as unlikely to happen. Thus smokers think that they personally will avoid cancer, promiscuous people practice unsafe sex, and teenagers drive recklessly.

Theories

Argument fields

Stephen Toulmin and Charles Arthur Willard have championed the idea of argument fields, the former drawing upon Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of language games, (Sprachspiel) the latter drawing from communication and argumentation theory, sociology, political science, and social epistemology. For Toulmin, the term "field" designates discourses within which arguments and factual claims are grounded.<ref>Toulmin, Stephen E. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521092302.</ref> For Willard, the term "field" is interchangeable with "community", "audience", or "readership".<ref>Charles Arthur Willard. "Some Questions About Toulmin's View of Argument Fields." Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell, eds. Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation. 1980. "Field Theory: A Cartesian Meditation." George Ziegelmueller and Jack Rhodes, eds. Dimensions of Argument: Proceedings of the Second Summer Conference on Argumentation.</ref> Similarly, G. Thomas Goodnight has studied "spheres" of argument and sparked a large literature created by younger scholars responding to or using his ideas.<ref>G. T. Goodnight, "The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument." Journal of the American Forensics Association. (1982) 18:214–227.</ref> The general tenor of these field theories is that the premises of arguments take their meaning from social communities.<ref>Bruce E. Gronbeck. "Sociocultural Notions of Argument Fields: A Primer." George Ziegelmueller and Jack Rhodes, eds. Dimensions of Argument: Proceedings of the Second Summer Conference on Argumentation. (1981) 1–20.</ref>

Stephen E. Toulmin's contributions

The most influential theorist has been Stephen Toulmin, the Cambridge educated philosopher and educator,<ref>Loui, Ronald P. (2006). "A Citation-Based Reflection on Toulmin and Argument". In Hitchcock, David; Verheij, Bart (eds.). Arguing on the Toulmin Model: New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Springer Netherlands. pp. 31–38. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4938-5_3. ISBN 978-1-4020-4937-8. Retrieved 2010-06-25. Toulmin's 1958 work is essential in the field of argumentation</ref> best known for his Toulmin model of argument. What follows below is a sketch of his ideas.

An alternative to absolutism and relativism

Template:Transcluded section {{#section-h:Stephen Toulmin|Objection to absolutism and relativism}}

Toulmin model of argument

Template:Transcluded section {{#section-h:Stephen Toulmin|The Toulmin model of argument}}

The evolution of knowledge

Template:Transcluded section {{#section-h:Stephen Toulmin|The evolutionary model}}

Pragma-dialectics

Scholars at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands have pioneered a rigorous modern version of dialectic under the name pragma-dialectics. The intuitive idea is to formulate clear-cut rules that, if followed, will yield reasonable discussion and sound conclusions. Frans H. van Eemeren, the late Rob Grootendorst, and many of their students and co-authors have produced a large body of work expounding this idea.

The dialectical conception of reasonableness is given by ten rules for critical discussion, all being instrumental for achieving a resolution of the difference of opinion (from Van Eemeren, Grootendorst, & Snoeck Henkemans, 2002, p. 182–183). The theory postulates this as an ideal model, and not something one expects to find as an empirical fact. The model can however serve as an important heuristic and critical tool for testing how reality approximates this ideal and point to where discourse goes wrong, that is, when the rules are violated. Any such violation will constitute a fallacy. Albeit not primarily focused on fallacies, pragma-dialectics provides a systematic approach to deal with them in a coherent way.

Van Eemeren and Grootendorst identified four stages of argumentative dialogue. These stages can be regarded as an argument protocol. In a somewhat loose interpretation, the stages are as follows:^{[citation needed]}

Confrontation stage: Presentation of the difference of opinion, such as a debate question or a political disagreement.
Opening stage: Agreement on material and procedural starting points, the mutually acceptable common ground of facts and beliefs, and the rules to be followed during the discussion (such as, how evidence is to be presented, and determination of closing conditions).
Argumentation stage: Presentation of reasons for and against the standpoint(s) at issue, through application of logical and common-sense principles according to the agreed-upon rules
Concluding stage: Determining whether the standpoint has withstood reasonable criticism, and accepting it is justified. This occurs when the termination conditions are met (Among these could be, for example, a time limitation or the determination of an arbiter.)

Van Eemeren and Grootendorst provide a detailed list of rules that must be applied at each stage of the protocol.^{[citation needed]} Moreover, in the account of argumentation given by these authors, there are specified roles of protagonist and antagonist in the protocol which are determined by the conditions which set up the need for argument.

Walton's logical argumentation method

Douglas N. Walton developed a distinctive philosophical theory of logical argumentation built around a set of practical methods to help a user identify, analyze and evaluate arguments in everyday conversational discourse and in more structured areas such as debate, law and scientific fields.<ref>Walton, Douglas (2013). Methods of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</ref> There are four main components: argumentation schemes,<ref>Walton, Douglas; Reed, Chris; Macagno, Fabrizio (2008). Argumentation Schemes. New York: Cambridge University Press.</ref> dialogue structures, argument mapping tools, and formal argumentation systems. The method uses the notion of commitment in dialogue as the fundamental tool for the analysis and evaluation of argumentation rather than the notion of belief.<ref name="WaltonKrabbe1995">Walton, Douglas; Krabbe, E. C. W. (1995). Commitment in Dialogue: Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning. Albany: SUNY Press.</ref> Commitments are statements that the agent has expressed or formulated, and has pledged to carry out, or has publicly asserted. According to the commitment model, agents interact with each other in a dialogue in which each takes its turn to contribute speech acts. The dialogue framework uses critical questioning as a way of testing plausible explanations and finding weak points in an argument that raise doubt concerning the acceptability of the argument.

Walton's logical argumentation model took a view of proof and justification different from analytic philosophy's dominant epistemology, which was based on a justified true belief framework.<ref>Walton, Douglas; Zhang, Nanning (2 October 2013). "The Epistemology of Scientific Evidence". Artificial Intelligence and Law. Social Science Research Network. 21 (2): 1. doi:10.1007/s10506-012-9132-9. S2CID 16536938. SSRN 2335090. In place of the traditional epistemological view of knowledge as justified true belief we argue that artificial intelligence and law needs an evidence -based epistemology</ref> In the logical argumentation approach, knowledge is seen as form of belief commitment firmly fixed by an argumentation procedure that tests the evidence on both sides, and uses standards of proof to determine whether a proposition qualifies as knowledge. In this evidence-based approach, knowledge must be seen as defeasible.

Artificial intelligence

Efforts have been made within the field of artificial intelligence to perform and analyze argumentation with computers. Argumentation has been used to provide a proof-theoretic semantics for non-monotonic logic, starting with the influential work of Dung (1995). Computational argumentation systems have found particular application in domains where formal logic and classical decision theory are unable to capture the richness of reasoning, domains such as law and medicine. In Elements of Argumentation, Philippe Besnard and Anthony Hunter show how classical logic-based techniques can be used to capture key elements of practical argumentation.<ref>Besnard, Philippe; Hunter, Anthony (2008). Elements of Argumentation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262026437.001.0001. ISBN 9780262026437. OCLC 163605008. Reviewed in: Lundström, Jenny Eriksson (11 September 2009). "Book Reviews: Elements of Argumentation". Studia Logica. 93 (1): 97–103. doi:10.1007/s11225-009-9204-3. S2CID 3214194.</ref>

Within computer science, the ArgMAS workshop series (Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems), the CMNA workshop series,<ref>"Computational Models of Natural Argument". cmna.csc.liv.ac.uk.</ref> and the COMMA Conference,<ref>"Computational Models of Argument". intranet.csc.liv.ac.uk.</ref> are regular annual events attracting participants from every continent. The journal Argument & Computation<ref>"Argument & Computation". www.iospress.com. August 2023.</ref> is dedicated to exploring the intersection between argumentation and computer science. ArgMining is a workshop series dedicated specifically to the related argument mining task.<ref>"5th Workshop on Argument Mining". www.research.ibm.com. 2011-05-17.</ref>

Data from the collaborative structured online argumentation platform Kialo has been used to train and to evaluate natural language processing AI systems such as, most commonly, BERT and its variants.<ref name="NLPapplic" group=""></ref> This includes argument extraction, conclusion generation,<ref name="conclusion"/>^{[additional citation(s) needed]} argument form quality assessment,<ref name="Skitalinskaya">Skitalinskaya, Gabriella; Klaff, Jonas; Wachsmuth, Henning (2021). "Learning From Revisions: Quality Assessment of Claims in Argumentation at Scale". arXiv:2101.10250 [cs.CL]. The study investigates revisions of the same argument for machine learning of general style quality assessment.</ref> machine argumentative debate generation or participation,<ref name="Bolton"/><ref name="impactrating"/><ref name="Khatib"/> surfacing most relevant previously overlooked viewpoints or arguments,<ref name="Bolton"/><ref name="impactrating"/> argumentative writing support<ref name="Revise">Skitalinskaya, Gabriella; Wachsmuth, Henning (2023). "To Revise or Not to Revise: Learning to Detect Improvable Claims for Argumentative Writing Support". arXiv:2305.16799 [cs.CL].</ref> (including sentence attackability scores),<ref name="Detecting"/> automatic real-time evaluation of how truthful or convincing a sentence is (similar to fact-checking),<ref name="Detecting">Jo, Yohan; Bang, Seojin; Manzoor, Emaad; Hovy, Eduard; Reed, Chris (2020). "Detecting Attackable Sentences in Arguments". arXiv:2010.02660 [cs.CL].</ref> language model fine tuning<ref>Fanton, Margherita; Bonaldi, Helena; Tekiroglu, Serra Sinem; Guerini, Marco (2021). "Human-in-the-Loop for Data Collection: a Multi-Target Counter Narrative Dataset to Fight Online Hate Speech". Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (Volume 1: Long Papers). pp. 3226–3240. arXiv:2107.08720. doi:10.18653/v1/2021.acl-long.250. S2CID 236087808.</ref><ref name="Khatib"/> (including for chatbots),<ref>Björklin, Hampus; Abrahamsson, Tim; Widenfalk, Oscar (2021). "A retrieval-based chatbot's opinion on the trolley problem". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)</ref><ref>Farag, Youmna; Brand, Charlotte O.; Amidei, Jacopo; Piwek, Paul; Stafford, Tom; Stoyanchev, Svetlana; Vlachos, Andreas (2023). "Opening up Minds with Argumentative Dialogues". arXiv:2301.06400 [cs.CL].</ref> argument impact prediction, argument classification and polarity prediction.<ref name="graphbased">Agarwal, Vibhor; P. Young, Anthony; Joglekar, Sagar; Sastry, Nishanth (2022). "A Graph-Based Context-Aware Model to Understand Online Conversations". arXiv:2211.09207 [cs.CL].</ref><ref>Lenz, Mirko; Sahitaj, Premtim; Kallenberg, Sean; Coors, Christopher; Dumani, Lorik; Schenkel, Ralf; Bergmann, Ralph (2020). "Towards an Argument Mining Pipeline Transforming Texts to Argument Graphs". IOS Press: 263–270. arXiv:2006.04562. doi:10.3233/FAIA200510. S2CID 219531343. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)</ref>

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Contents

Key components of argumentation

Internal structure of arguments

Types of dialogue

Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge

Approaches to argumentation in communication and informal logic

Kinds of argumentation

Conversational argumentation

Mathematical argumentation

Scientific argumentation

Interpretive argumentation

Legal argumentation

By lawyers

By judges

Political argumentation

Psychological aspects

Theories

Argument fields

Stephen E. Toulmin's contributions

An alternative to absolutism and relativism

Toulmin model of argument

The evolution of knowledge

Pragma-dialectics

Walton's logical argumentation method

Artificial intelligence

See also

References

Further reading

Flagship journals

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Argumentation theory

Key components of argumentation

Internal structure of arguments

Types of dialogue

Argumentation and the grounds of knowledge

Approaches to argumentation in communication and informal logic

Kinds of argumentation

Conversational argumentation

Mathematical argumentation

Scientific argumentation

Interpretive argumentation

Legal argumentation

By lawyers

By judges

Political argumentation

Psychological aspects

Theories

Argument fields

Stephen E. Toulmin's contributions

An alternative to absolutism and relativism

Toulmin model of argument

The evolution of knowledge

Pragma-dialectics

Walton's logical argumentation method

Artificial intelligence

See also

References

Further reading

Flagship journals

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