Araucaria as a Tool for Diagramming Arguments in Teaching and Studying Philosophy

Abstract

This paper explains how to use a new software tool for argument diagramming available free on the Internet, showing especially how it can be used in the classroom to enhance critical thinking in philosophy. The user loads a text file containing an argument into a box on the computer interface, and then creates an argument diagram by dragging lines (representing infer- ences) from one node (proposition) to another. A key feature is the support for argumentation schemes, common patterns of defeasible reasoning historically know as topics (topoi). Several examples are presented, as well as the results of an experiment in using the system with students in a university classroom. Philosophical writing can be considered a form of argumentative discourse. Such a writer wants to convince her audience of readers or listeners by means of drawing logical inferences and presenting the logical development of her own ideas. Her aim is to provide her readers with reasons to come to accept a conclusion she reaches as reasonable and plausible. In philosophy, as in law and science, there is no indubitable conclusion established by the perfect proof (Descartes to the contrary). An argument for any conclusion needs to be evalu- ated in the light of the kind and nature of its premises, the strength of the inferential links to the conclusion from these premises, and of its possible criticisms or refutations. The importance of identifying, struc-