Argumentation最新文献

The phenomenon of selective dispute avoidance is that there are issues we debate and issues we recoil from debating, despite the fact that they are very similar in values at stake. What accounts for this variance? That some disagreements are deep and engagements on some deep issues yields meta-argumentatively bad results is a plausible explanation. However, practical second-order rebutting reasons to these considerations are proposed, essentially that not engaging has foreseeably worse consequences than engaging. What favors engagement, then, is that only when engaged can one address the negative second-order reasons one yields on either approach. What follows is a pragmatic meta-argument for engagement, even in cases of deep disagreement.

The role of interrogative sentences in political argumentation remains largely unexplored. This study addresses this gap by introducing a new Polish-language dataset featuring diverse examples of interrogative sentences in political discourse (election debates). The dataset serves as a unique resource for theoretical research in Argumentation Mining and Natural Language Inference through the annotation of ⟨IS, C⟩ and ⟨IS, P⟩ pairs, where IS denotes an interrogative sentence, C represents its corresponding conclusion, and P indicates a premise. The annotations primarily capture implicitly expressed argumentative structures and can serve as a benchmark for large language models (LLMs), particularly those trained on Polish-language data. Furthermore, this is the first study in Argumentation Mining where annotators independently verbalize the content of conclusions and premises conveyed through speech acts constructed with interrogative sentences. Our findings reveal that interrogative sentences in political debates most frequently function as implicature (approx. 45%), normative propositions (approx. 31%), statements expressing epistemic states (approx. 20%), and presuppositions (approx. 4%). Semantic similarity analysis confirms that annotators achieve a high level of consistency in identifying and verbalizing the content implied by interrogative sentences. The dataset provides a robust foundation for developing advanced language models and for further research into the role of interrogative sentences in political discourse.

This interdisciplinary study analyzes 6,085 learner argumentative essays across 16 language backgrounds using argument mining. Automated scoring of organization and argument strength is used to assess learners’ argument proficiency. The extraction of Argumentative Discourse Units (ADUs) (such as claims and premises) enables a comprehensive examination of argument structures at the sentence (ADUs), paragraph (ADU flows), and full-text (argumentative communication style) levels. Cross-cultural comparisons, based on language family and cultural context, reveal three major findings: (1) Learners often exhibit appropriate argument structure despite cultural differences, but reasoning is insufficient frequently. (2) High- and low-context cultures share the same top-3 ADU flows. While premises appear more frequently than claims in both groups, more notably in low-context cultures, high-context essays contain more non-argumentative units. (3) Over 87.2% of the essays reflect a direct argumentative style by placing claims at the beginning of the texts, especially in low-context cultures. Yet, only about 40% of the essays offer adequate supporting premises, with high-context cultures more often providing well-supported claims. In short, computational argumentation (argument mining along with organization and argument strength scoring) enhances language education by reducing manual annotation and enabling large-scale analysis of argumentative texts, providing insights into how culturally-diverse learners construct arguments.

Deliberative context matters in producing deliberative reasoning, but it is not destiny in adversarial reasoning exchanges. The motivational effects of positionally dominant arguers can undermine even the well-structured context regarding the epistemic diversity of evidence sources and low disagreement costs. Giving an example of government-led reasoning over the Site C Clean Energy Project, the paper employs a sequential conversation analysis to unveil the patterns underlying the adversarial exchanges between the project proponent, officials, and Indigenous communities. Under the “deliberative” reasoning context as represented by the Site C Deliberative Rules Configuration Matrix, the state-affiliated Joint Review Panel alternated between rebutting and reflective responses in its conclusions across 63 topics of disagreement between the project’s proponent and Indigenous communities adversely affected by the dam. The Panel’s responses are consultative outcomes, representing the culmination of Panel-led deliberations between the Site C proponent and Indigenous communities. The split of these outcomes without a clear majority trend suggests a lack of prescriptive, normative relationships between rules and the rhetorical choices of dominant arguers. The deliberative reasoning context has no deterministic effect on the likelihood of the Panel’s officials engaging in deliberative dialogue with Indigenous arguers. Although reflective responses were plentiful, they were insufficient to achieve meaningful responsiveness to Indigenous concerns. These findings align with Ostrom’s perspective on rules as a contextual structure that does not guarantee particular reasoning outcomes but influences the reasoning dynamics (practices) of participants whose response choices are shaped by the motivational effects of a specific reasoning situation. The findings also promote the practice-based approach to argumentation (Goodwin 2007), illustrating how response patterns in disagreement illuminate the actual (one-sided and two-sided) nature of reasoning interactivity between positionally unequal opponents without diverting attention to external structures or assigning normative weight to the “deliberative” reasoning context.

Argumentation occurring in public controversies (large, long-lasting, and complex disagreements) deserve more attention from argumentation theorists than they have yet received, primarily because they offer plentiful opportunity to discover new facts about the contemporary practice of argumentation. Drawing on the polylogue framework (Lewiński and Aakhus 2023) and the cartography of controversy (Venturini and Munk 2022), nine suggestions are offered for how to build new theoretical knowledge through observational research that combines classic techniques in qualitative social science with emerging computational techniques: (1) aim for observationally grounded theory; (2) anchor analysis in argumentative texts; (3) practice constant comparison; (4) build outward from individual texts to networks; (5) investigate the places where texts are produced; (6) pay attention to the literatures where texts accumulate; (7) leverage computational techniques for natural language processing of large bodies of text; (8) reserve judgment on matters of disagreement within the controversy; and (9) try team science. Recent argument-centered studies of controversies demonstrate aspects of this approach and show its promise for discovering interesting and novel phenomena.

This article aims to characterize the fallacy of unbeatable force as an argument whose flawed structure grants an illusion of invulnerability to a phenomenon or entity whose power is perceived in an exaggerated manner by the subject, thereby inducing their subordination. First, its philosophical roots are explored in the thought of Thomas Hobbes, particularly in Leviathan, where the notion of omnipotent authority plays a central role. The argument that defines this fallacy is then presented and formalized, allowing for an initial characterization of it as a material fallacy—one whose flaw lies in the content of its premises rather than in its structure. However, given the limitations of traditional conceptions of fallacies, this study will be complemented by contemporary approaches, such as epistemic, dialectical, and dialogical perspectives, which help to understand the functioning and implications of the fallacy of unbeatable force in broader argumentative contexts. Finally, the analysis is expanded in light of emerging neurocognitive approaches, which suggest that the fallacy in question transcends its discursive dimension, manifesting as a cognitive mechanism of (self)subordination and long-term control. This mechanism operates as a dual shield: on the one hand, it withdraws subjects, overprotecting them; on the other, it safeguards the entity to which superior power is attributed from any critical scrutiny, thereby reinforcing its dominant position.

As a fundamental issue in the study of argumentation, the conception of reasonableness is still open to discuss under different contexts. This paper attempts to unveil the unique morality-in-speech notion of reasonableness embedded in the Confucian classics. It first exposes the relation between speech and morality conveyed in the two Confucian classics—The Analects of Confucius and Mencius, where speech and morality are supposed to be intertwined with each other in that one’s speech reflects one’s morality and that one with morality should keep away from artful or sophistical speech as well as immoral deeds. Mencius, reputed for his fondness of argumentation in his times—the Warring States period (c. 453 BC—221 BC) of ancient China, proclaimed that he was adept at words (zhiyan), that is, being good at identifying, analyzing, and evaluating words, especially the four types of sophistical words—bici (biased words), yinci (overblown words), xieci (deviant words), and dunci (evasive words). After the moral foundation of Mencius’ argumentation is expounded, especially the normative dimension of Confucian morality—the Confucian virtue and deontic ethic of humaneness and righteousness, his argumentative discourse against those sophistical words is specifically reconstructed and analyzed by employing the pragma-dialectical model of critical discussion. By exclusively summarizing the argumentational strategies used all at the argumentation stages of the corresponding critical discussions, like slippery slope argument, argument by refutational analogy, and argument by dissociation, this paper elaborates in details how Mencius managed to integrate Confucian morality into his argumentation. It is concluded that Confucian morality of humaneness and righteousness is associated both with an individual’s self-cultivation and with benefiting a society, that “morality” in the morality-in-speech conception of reasonableness can be a universal term without a premodifier, and that this newly elaborated morality-in-speech conception of reasonableness is argumentation oriented, which distinguishes itself from the agent-based virtue argumentation theory and the (speech) act-based pragma-dialectical theory by incorporating an agent’s morality into his speech acts. Under the morality-in-speech reasonableness conception, the general criterion for reasonableness is whether argumentative speech acts align with the commonly endorsed morality or virtues under cultural contexts. Accordingly the specific evaluation criteria for reasonableness and fallacies must also be morality-related, where the context-independent codes of conduct for critical discussion proposed in the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation can be resorted to as an important foundation in the future research.

Classical Chinese argumentation theories were shaped by Chinese rhetorical traditions and played a crucial role in the evolvement of Chinese culture. This paper explores three key themes defining argumentation theories in the classical Chinese context and contrasts them with similar but different themes in Western argumentation traditions. The paper will draw implications for understanding the important role played by Chinese classical argumentation theories in the development of Chinese culture and how those theories contrast with theories of rhetoric, argumentation, and persuasion in the West.

This work advocates for an alternative to the principle of charity when teaching critical thinking or informal logic. It provides a brief reconstruction of the principle in the context of argumentation before moving to demonstrate some of the shortcomings associated with different approaches to it in the literature. It argues for placing emphasis not on charity but on the interpretative competence that underlies charity. Doing so avoids the difficulties associated with the principle as such while still fostering the conditions for exploring the kinds of advanced interpretations the pursuit of charity typically yields.