Two Epistemic Issues for a Narrative Argument Structure

The transcendental approach to understanding narrative argument derives from the idea that for any believable fictional narrative, we can ask—what principles or generalizations would have to be true of human nature in order for the narrative to be believable? I address two key issues: whether only realistic or realist fictional narratives are believable, and how could it be established that we have an intuitive, mostly veridical grasp of human nature that grounds believability

Ants don't have friends: thoughts on socially intelligent agents

The question what is an agent? has been under dis cussion for many years. However, a consensus exists that the term 'agent' only makes sense in a multi-agent context - namely if there are at least two agents and assuming interaction and or communication between the agents. Agent research is generally done fairly independently in dfferent research areas, separated by the nature of the agents - natural or articial. This paper presents some thoughts on agency and sociality. Social intelligence is studied in the context of human style forms of social behaviour. Issues like embodiment, believability, rationality, social understanding,and different levels of social organisation and control are discussed

Cognition and literary ethical criticism

“Ethical criticism” is an approach to literary studies that holds that reading certain carefully selected novels can make us ethically better people, e.g., by stimulating our sympathetic imagination (Nussbaum). I will try to show that this nonargumentative approach cheapens the persuasive force of novels and that its inherent bias and censorship undercuts what is perhaps the principal value and defense of the novel—that reading novels can be critical to one’s learning how to think

Argumentatively Evil Storytelling

What can make storytelling “evil” in the sense that the storytelling leads to accepting a view for no good reason, thus allowing ill-reasoned action? I mean the storytelling can be argumentatively evil, not trivially that (e.g.) the overt speeches of characters can include bad arguments. The storytelling can be argumentatively evil in that it purveys false premises, or purveys reasoning that is formally or informally fallacious. My main thesis is that as a rule, the shorter the fictional narrative, the greater the potential for argumentative evil. Here, the notion of length is to be understood such that it is generally a proxy for more abstract features such as how complex and nuanced the piece is. In other argumentative contexts, length generally appears to make no comparable difference. This feature would put fictional narrative arguments in a special class beyond what is determined by obvious features, such as the definitional fact that they in some way(s) collapse two of the four traditional types of discourse: exposition, description, narration, and argument. The nonobvious features that distinguish this class have been a source of puzzlement and inquiry

A Defense of Taking Some Novels As Arguments

This paper’s main thesis is that in virtue of being believable, a believable novel makes an indirect transcendental argument telling us something about the real world of human psychology, action, and society. Three related objections are addressed. First, the Stroud-type objection would be that from believability, the only conclusion that could be licensed concerns how we must think or conceive of the real world. Second, Currie holds that such notions are probably false: the empirical evidence “is all against this idea…that readers’ emotional responses track the real causal relations between things.” Third, responding with a full range of emotions to a novel surely requires that it be believable. Yet since we know the novel is fiction, we do not believe it. So in what does its believability consist

Commentary on: Chiara Pollaroli\u27s T(r)opical patterns in advertising

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An approach to knowledge dynamic maintenance for emotional agents

In this work we present an approach to emotional reasoning for believable agents, by introducing a mechanism to progressively build a map of knowledge for reasoning. We present the notion of inference graph for progressive reasoning in an emotional context. In this model, knowledge is partially highlighted and noticed by the agent.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativa (SADIO

A Narrative Account of Argumentation

In this dissertation I attempt to accomplish three goals. The first goal is to develop a narrative account of argumentation. I show that storytelling serves as a legitimate mode of argumentation. I develop an account of narrative argument based on generalized features of narrative and a conception of argument that is rhetorical and in line with Charles Willards notion of argument as an interaction. I identify features of narrative argument that enable narrative to function as an argument and thus to provide reasons for a claim in the context of disagreement. As a result, I synthesize literatures on narrative and argumentation to provide a definition of narrative argument. The second goal of the dissertation is to argue for maintaining the narrative as a process without reconstructing the narrative into the dominant model of argument. In this part of the dissertation, I elaborate on the definition of narrative argument and argue that narrative argument must be understood as a process, and not as a product of argument. While the product view focuses on the form and structure of an argument as being linear, explicit, and containing premises and a conclusion, and treats arguments as things, the process view focuses on the whole act of arguing, thus highlighting the importance of the context of argumentation and the people involved. In support of this thesis, I show that reducing the narrative into premises and a conclusion is problematic because it deprives it of some of its persuasive force. Reducing the narrative into a product removes the real argumentpart of which is implicitfrom its context, its unique situation, and its complex social setting. The third goal of this dissertation is to develop an account of argument evaluation that is suitable for narrative argument understood as a process. I offer an account of how to evaluate narratives using the virtuous audience, combining theories of virtue argumentation and rhetorical audiences. In sum, this dissertation provides a definition of narrative argument, stipulates the conditions of narrative arguments that make them successful, and offers ways of evaluating the narrative while maintaining its form as a process