The Use of Argument Maps as an Assessment Tool in Higher Education

The use of argument diagrams to foster argumentation has been an object of research in education, as a way to support students\u27 argumentative interaction and, potentially learning. In this paper it is shown how argument analysis and evaluation assisted by means of argument diagramming tools, further developed in artificial intelligence (AI), can also support the assessment of argumentation skills in the classroom. A case study is presented to show how informal logic contributions on fallacies, in particular, can be combined with the data of an argument-diagramming task, to form a method of assessing students\u27 weaknesses in reasoning about everyday issues using argument maps. Our contribution is mainly methodological, as we suggest an application of AI and argumentation theories in educatio

Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments

PTDC/FER-FIL/28278/2017 EXPL/FER-FIL/0276/2021 UIDB/00183/2020 UIDP/00183/2020The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its meaning taken absolutely or in a certain respect. However, how can an “unqualified” statement have a proper meaning different from the qualified one, and vice versa? This “linguistic” fallacy brings to light a complex relationship between pragmatics, argumentation, and interpretation. The secundum quid is described in this paper as a manipulative argument, whose deceptive effect lies in its pragmatic dimension. This fallacy is analyzed as a strategy of decontextualization lying at the interface between pragmatics and argumentation and consisting of the unwarranted passage from an utterance to its semantic representation. By ignoring the available evidence and the presumptive interpretation of a statement, the speaker places it in a different context or suppresses textual and contextual evidence to infer a specific meaning different from the presumable one.publishersversionpublishe

Resenha: Introdução à análise da argumentação

The book that is being reviewed is the outcome of an extension course organized by Prof. Dr. Isabel Cristina Michelan de Azevedo and Prof. Dr. Rubens Damasceno-Morais, sponsored by the Federal University of Sergipe (Brazil) and the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil) in the year 2020. It is a significant and diverse book, as each chapter, constructed with careful and didactic attention, encompasses various perspectives for the study of argumentation, providing the reader with a comprehensive view of possible theoretical frameworks and methodological resources for undertaking the analysis of argumentative texts (written and oral).A obra em apreço é fruto de um curso de extensão organizado pela Profa. Dra. Isabel Cristina Michelan de Azevedo e pelo Prof. Dr. Rubens Damasceno-Morais, promovido pela Universidade Federal de Sergipe (Brasil) e pela Universidade Federal de Goiás (Brasil), no ano de 2020. Trata-se de livro relevante e plural, na medida em que cada capítulo, construído de forma cuidadosa e bastante didática, abarca distintas perspectivas para o estudo da argumentação, dando ao leitor uma visão abrangente de possíveis referenciais teóricos e recursos metodológicos para se empreender a análise de textos (escritos e orais) argumentativos

Evaluating Premise Relations

An essential step to evaluating arguments is moving from the weight of individual premises to the weight of the conclusion. In order to perform this step, one must understand the relationship between the premises in the argument. In the past, analyzing premise relations in informal logic has been limited primarily to the linked-convergent distinction. This distinction has failed to resolve some of the basic problems in finding a definition because it has underestimated the degree to which premises interact with each other in some complicated way. Embracing concepts from holistic epistemology, I argue that evaluating a premise involves considering a wide set of presuppositions and implications that that premise, if accepted, carries. I call this wide set the premise/world. The relationship between premises is then essentially just the relationship between these two premise/worlds

Ignoring Qualifications as a Pragmatic Fallacy: Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments

The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its meaning taken absolutely or in a certain respect. However, how can an “unqualified” statement have a proper meaning different from the qualified one, and vice versa? This “linguistic” fallacy brings to light a complex relationship between pragmatics, argumentation, and interpretation. The secundum quid is described in this paper as a manipulative argument, whose deceptive effect lies in its pragmatic dimension. This fallacy is analyzed as a strategy of decontextualization lying at the interface between pragmatics and argumentation and consisting of the unwarranted passage from an ut-terance to its semantic representation. By ignoring the available evidence and the presumptive interpretation of a statement, the speaker places it in a different context or suppresses textual and contextual evidence to infer a specific meaning different from the presumable one

Bayesian Argumentation and the Value of Logical Validity

According to the Bayesian paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, the norms by which everyday human cognition is best evaluated are probabilistic rather than logical in character. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has been applied to the domain of argumentation, where the fundamental norms are traditionally assumed to be logical. Here, we present a major generalisation of extant Bayesian approaches to argumentation that (i)utilizes a new class of Bayesian learning methods that are better suited to modelling dynamic and conditional inferences than standard Bayesian conditionalization, (ii) is able to characterise the special value of logically valid argument schemes in uncertain reasoning contexts, (iii) greatly extends the range of inferences and argumentative phenomena that can be adequately described in a Bayesian framework, and (iv) undermines some influential theoretical motivations for dual function models of human cognition. We conclude that the probabilistic norms given by the Bayesian approach to rationality are not necessarily at odds with the norms given by classical logic. Rather, the Bayesian theory of argumentation can be seen as justifying and enriching the argumentative norms of classical logic

Bayesian Argumentation and the Value of Logical Validity

According to the Bayesian paradigm in the psychology of reasoning, the norms by which everyday human cognition is best evaluated are probabilistic rather than logical in character. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has been applied to the domain of argumentation, where the fundamental norms are traditionally assumed to be logical. Here, we present a major generalisation of extant Bayesian approaches to argumentation that (i)utilizes a new class of Bayesian learning methods that are better suited to modelling dynamic and conditional inferences than standard Bayesian conditionalization, (ii) is able to characterise the special value of logically valid argument schemes in uncertain reasoning contexts, (iii) greatly extends the range of inferences and argumentative phenomena that can be adequately described in a Bayesian framework, and (iv) undermines some influential theoretical motivations for dual function models of human cognition. We conclude that the probabilistic norms given by the Bayesian approach to rationality are not necessarily at odds with the norms given by classical logic. Rather, the Bayesian theory of argumentation can be seen as justifying and enriching the argumentative norms of classical logic

Identifying Paralogisms in Two Ethnically Different Contexts at University Level

Although educational researchers have long tried to answer the question \u27Who reasons well?\u27, little has been done in regards to the influence of culture on argumentative reasoning quality. Among the factors that have been related with the construction of valid arguments, counterarguments and rebuttals by adults are: explicit argument training, task instructions and prior knowledge. No clear evidence exists regarding the influence of the ethnical background on the flaws or fallacies of reasoning. The present study applies the recent theory of paraschemes as a tool to identify university students’ paralogisms in a common argument-mapping task on everyday issues in two different cultural contexts: one European (Spain) and one Middle Eastern (United Arab Emirates). Our analysis showed that the influence of ethnical background was not statistically significant regarding the type and amount of paralogisms committed. On the contrary, the participants\u27 study major, being business or education, was shown to influence the production of argument fallacies. Implications of these findings for higher education are discussed