Exchange Of Arguments Research Articles

The use of clarificatory metaphors in argumentative discourse in British Public Bill Committee debates

Abstract In this paper, we aim to explain how metaphors can be employed for clarificatory purposes in British parliamentary debates. These debates typically involve an exchange of arguments concerning complex issues, which more often than not may require clarification. In clarifying something complex, metaphors are often employed in which an unfamiliar and abstract concept is compared to a more familiar and concrete concept. Because the choice of metaphor affects how an issue is understood and reasoned about, discussants may wish to oppose such a metaphor to avoid biased conceptions or even misunderstandings of the issue under discussion. We present a number of cases in which metaphors used for clarificatory purposes are opposed in a British Public Bill Committee debate on the Digital Economy Bill. Our analyses uncover which metaphors are used for clarificatory purposes, to what extent these clarificatory metaphors contribute to furthering the resolution of a debate on the acceptability of legislative proposals, and what consequences opposing such metaphors may have on the continuation of the debate.

An analytical instrument for coding and assessing argumentative dialogues in science teaching contexts

AbstractMost of the tools developed in the area of Science Education aimed at analyzing either the product or the process of argumentation do not consider the following: (a) arguments are a part of dialogues, (b) dialogues present different objectives, (c) dialogues start from different assumptions, and (d) dialogues shape the roles and moves of interlocutors. This paper intends to address the analysis of argumentative exchanges within educational science dialogues considering several aspects of argumentation that have neglected to be investigated in the field of education, such as the relations among individual moves and the dialogues they are part of, and the influence of such moves on knowledge construction. Toward this purpose, a proposed tool is presented, which describes argumentative dialogues in science teaching contexts across the varied and interrelated dimensions. This tool, consisting of six analytical aspects, is applied to high school chemistry students' argumentative dialogues taking place during modeling activities. Data collection (involving audio and video recording plus observations made by the researchers) revealed the main affordances of this tool as follows: (a) favoring an understanding of the individual and collective students' intentions; (b) enabling the characterization of argumentative discourse beyond the moves of refuting, questioning and providing support; (c) enabling the identification of whether knowledge construction has occurred; and (d) the possibility of analyzing teaching situations across different contexts. Thus, the tool supports the descriptions and analyses of the scientific argumentation process and the associated knowledge construction by students.

Contribution to methods and techniques of scientific research: Structure of the scientific research report - 4. Discussion of research results

Discussion is the exchange of arguments and views related to a particular subject of discussion and the making of judgments arising from such confrontation. Such content has its place in the scientific research report and is behind the results, ahead of the conclusions. This section has its own structure, which depends on the authors who propose and practice it. Regardless of which variant of structure you use, researchers should be aware of such structures and follow selected examples when writing their reports. In this regard, higher education students need training to be able to compile this part of the scientific research report more easily and more quickly, especially for those conducting forestry research.

Эвиденциализм, проблема зла и гипотеза простого Бога теизма

In his paper Richard Swinburne argues that an adequate theodicy must be offered to support the probabilistic argument for the ‘best acting-God’ hypothesis. The adequacy of such a theodicy consists in, among other things, that it can explain that every bad state of the universe is a logically necessary condition for the existence of a good state, at least comparable to it, and that God, acting in the best possible way, has the right to allow every such bad state for the sake of the good state that it makes possible. In my commentary I disagree with this condition: it uses notions of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ states of affairs in the universe, which suggests an epistemological intuitivism which makes the exchange of arguments between theists, atheists and anti-theists on the problem of evil pointless, since all arguments are reduced to a so-called ‘evidentialistic game’. A way out of this situation is possible by abandoning intuitionism and developing criteria for selecting relevant evidence of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ states of affairs. As the latter I propose traditional for theism concepts: limitation of human cognitive abilities for weighing good and evil (in modern philosophy of religion such position is represented by skeptical theism) and privatio boni theory of evil which offers a metaphysical concept of evil.

Participation and deliberation in language policy: the case of gender-neutral language

ABSTRACT This paper investigates language policy formation through participatory and deliberative methods and, more concretely, the regulation of gender-neutral language in Barcelona City Council (Spain). Through an argumentative approach to policy, the paper examines a specific language policy idea, process and solution, and the accompanying discursive argumentation used by decision-makers. The paper (a) shows that linguistic preconceptions and power relations may constitute a potential barrier to effective deliberation on language, and (b) argues that if local modes of governance (as opposed to the centralised role assigned to language academies) are going to be used to prescribe language practices in institutional contexts, arrangements should be put in place to provide access to a full range of views about language, generate reflective judgments and promote a public exchange of arguments. The paper concludes with a discussion about the implications of this study for the inclusion of deliberation in language policy-making.

When in parliamentary debate there is no debate

Abstract On the 1st October 2017 an independence referendum was organised in Catalonia. The aim of this paper is to analyse the nature of the political debate going on in the Catalan Parliament during the whole process by focusing on the kind of argumentation strategies that were used by each of the leanings to legitimise their political decisions. We do that relying on a methodological distinction that differentiates between sound argumentation and fallacious argumentation. By using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, this study offers a wide picture of the kind of argumentation used by the main political actors involved in the process of decision making in Catalonia. The results show that there is more emphasis in antagonising with the others, than engaging in sound argument exchange that could facilitate minimal points of consensus. Such results may help explain why the Catalan conflict is still unsolved at the political level.

Effects of Worked Examples and External Scripts on Fallacy Recognition Skills: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT To provide clients with the best possible treatment, social workers require fallacy recognition skills. Ideally, these skills are already acquired during university education. We conducted an experimental study with a 2 × 2 factorial design (and an additional baseline condition) with worked examples (with/without) and external scripts (with/without) as scaffolds to support social work students’ (N=130) fallacy recognition skills during case-based reasoning on the exchange of fallacious arguments of social workers in the context of a web-based learning environment. Students significantly improved their fallacy recognition skills over time. During treatment, worked examples and external scripts yielded positive effects when presented in isolation, but not when combined. However, the effects of the two scaffolds could not be maintained in the posttest. Further systematic research is needed to identify principles for an effective design of additional instructional guidance.

A Rejoinder regarding Veronika Six’s Review Published in Aethiopica, 22 (2019), 271–276

The rejoinder responds to a review, penned by Dr Veronika Six, of a recent catalogue of Ethiopic manuscripts kept in Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, compiled by Dr Denis Nosnitsin. The rejoinder contains an exchange of arguments on the properties of the catalogue and responds to some critical remarks of V. Six. The dialog concerns individual characteristics of some specific manuscripts but also raises a number of issues and questions regarding some fundamental aspects of the cataloguing practice.

StarryThoughts

Enabling the free and equal exchange of arguments on social issues in a respectful manner is an integral part of establishing the democratic ideal. However, the current manifestation of online spaces tends to facilitate the gathering of like-minded people, leading to the polarization of opinions. Such polarization inhibits the sharing of diverse opinions and deteriorates respect for disagreeing opinions. To tackle this issue, we present StarryThoughts, an online system that supports users to express and explore diverse perspectives on social issues. The system supports three types of exploration of the collected arguments online: navigating opinions based on the demographic identities of the posters, checking the the stereotypes users hold towards demographics in relation to given social issues, and engaging with opinions with semantically different point-of-views. By deploying the system to the public in co-operation with a nationwide broadcasting company, we collected 1,950 opinions with 144 free-form responses from 1,209 visitors as initial data and iterated on the design. Results from a user study with 56 participants showed that the system enables participants to explore a wide range of opinions on social issues, be more informed on the various arguments, and be more confident about their opinions. From our findings, we provide several design considerations for building online systems for supporting users to explore diverse opinions on social issues.

The uncompromising confrontational argumentative style of the spokespersons’ replies at the regular press conferences of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Abstract According to van Eemeren’s expose about the theoretical notion “argumentative style” (2019: 153–171), each of the four stages of an argumentative exchange in a certain institutional context can have its own argumentative style, but all of them may well belong to the same general category (for instance, “detached” or “engaged”). As the start of a broad project investigating argumentative styles used in the spokespersons’ argumentative replies at the regular press conferences of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this paper focuses on the uncompromising confrontational style prototypically used by the spokespersons in responding to journalists, which is characterized by argumentative moves instrumental in strategies of silencing the other party, distracting the other party, and pressuring the other party. By means of an analysis of three argumentative replies given by Chinese spokespersons, this paper shows how this particular confrontational style takes shape and facilitates the spokespersons’ confrontational maneuvering by being at the same time detached.

Revealed preference in argumentation: Algorithms and applications

Argumentative agents in AI are inspired by how humans reason by exchange of arguments. Given the same set of arguments possibly attacking one another (Dung's AA framework) these agents are bound to accept the same subset of those arguments (aka extension) unless they reason by different argumentation semantics. However humans may not be so predictable, and in this paper we assume that this is because any real agent's reasoning is inevitably influenced by her own preferences over the arguments. Though such preferences are usually unobservable, their effects on the agent's reasoning cannot be washed out. Hence by reconstructing her reasoning process, we might uncover her hidden preferences, which then allow us to predict what else the agent must accept. Concretely we formalize and develop algorithms for such problems as uncovering the hidden argument preference relation of an agent from her expressed opinion, by which we mean a subset of arguments or attacks she accepted from a given AA framework; and uncovering the collective preferences of a group from a dataset of individual opinions. A major challenge we addressed in this endeavor is to deal with “answer sets” of argument preference relations which are generally exponential or even infinite. So we start by developing a compact representation for such answer sets called preference states. Preference revelation tasks are then structured as derivations of preference states from data, and reasoning prediction tasks are reduced to manipulations of derived preference states without enumerating the underlying (possibly infinite) answer sets. We also apply the presented results to two non-trivial problems: learning preferences over rules in structured argumentation with priorities – an open problem so far; and analyzing public polls in apparently deeper ways than existing social argumentation frameworks allow.

Settling outside the WTO: the case of the Indonesia-US kretek cigarette trade dispute, 2010–2014

ABSTRACT In 2010, Indonesia officially filled a complaint to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a dispute regarding the US import ban on clove cigarettes. Despite the fierce exchange of arguments in the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), in 2014, Indonesia and the US agreed to cease the formal pursuit and resolve trade disputes through signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) encompassing a more comprehensive trade partnership. This paper examines the reasons behind Indonesia’s preference for settling the clove cigarette dispute by signing the MoU with the US, stemming from the Indonesian Government’s perception of the shared benefits generated and WTO DSB’s institutional weaknesses. The MoU also allows the Indonesian Government to advance its foreign policy agenda and its trade diplomacy objectives, offering broader sets of advantages.

The Discussion of the Cause (CIC cc. 1601–1606): Technical Procedural Dialectic and Interpretation of the Meaning of the Proofs

A sometimes forgotten, distinct stage of the judicial process in canon law is the discussion of the cause. Its object—the presentation and exchange of argumention—was envisioned and treated in the commentaries of medieval canonists, but it only came to be regulated in the general legislation of the Church in the nineteenth century. Its detailed regulation especially in the proper law of the Apostolic Signatura and the Roman Rota gave birth to a more explicit regulation in the general legislation brought into being in the twentieth century: in the 1917 CIC and the parallel Eastern law (Sollicitudinem Nostram) and finally in the law currently in force in the CIC and CCEO. The supreme legislator thus prescribes that in diocesan and inter-diocesan tribunals, provision is to be made for the discussion of the cause, entailing the presentation of argumentation, the distribution or exchange of arguments, the presentation and distribution of replies, and the right of certain parties to make a final reply in certain causes. Various elements of the discussion are to be governed also by the particular regulations or statutes of individual tribunals.

Habermas, Rorty, and the Problem of Competent Interlocutors

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of evaluating our beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971, -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate-, in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons.

Parlamento de saberes: a atuação de cientistas sociais nos debates na Câmara dos Deputados como uma forma de serviço público

Partindo da noção de intelectuais do campo das Ciências Sociais como intérpretes do mundo social e da política, o artigo tem como foco analítico a participação de cientistas sociais em debates políticos promovidos pela Câmara dos Deputados por meio das audiências públicas. O enfoque teórico adotado é o da Sociologia Política. Os debates são entendidos aqui como uma forma de serviço público prestado pelos pesquisadores convidados, a partir do compartilhamento de conhecimentos especializados no âmbito da agenda legislativa. As audiências públicas constituem um importante instrumento de trocas argumentativas e fontes de informação para subsidiar as decisões dos parlamentares. Para tanto, foram entrevistados antropólogos, cientistas políticos e sociólogos que participaram de debates no contexto legislativo ou que acompanham tais discussões. As conclusões indicam um olhar crítico desses atores, focado em duas abordagens: (a) os impactos e efeitos positivos do uso da expertise intelectual no campo político; e (b) nas suas limitações, devido à superficialidade e uso instrumental dos debates, principalmente no caso das audiências públicas.

The Dutch Citizen Forum on Public Reimbursement of Healthcare: A Qualitative Analysis of Opinion Change

Background: A deliberative Citizen Forum ‘Choices in healthcare’ was held in the Netherlands to obtain insight into the criteria informed citizens would propose for the public reimbursement of healthcare. During 3 weekends, 24 citizens participated in evidence-informed deliberation on the basis of 8 case studies. The aim of this study was to assess how the opinions of 8 participants in the deliberative Citizens Forum changed and if so, why participants themselves believe their opinions have changed, whether participation influenced their perceived reasonableness of other participants in the forum and whether it influenced their opinions about involvement of citizens in decision-making. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were held with 8 participants before and after their participation in the Citizen Forum. Using the method of reconstructing interpretive frames opinions about the public reimbursement of healthcare were reconstructed. Results: Participants’ opinions changed over time; they became more aware of the complexity of decision-making and came to accept that there are limits to the available resources and accept cost as a criterion for reimbursement decisionmaking. Participants report that exchanging arguments and personal experiences with other participants made them change their initial opinions. Participants ascribed increases in the perceived reasonableness of other participants’ opinions to feelings of group-bonding and becoming more familiar with each other’s personal circumstances. Participants further believe that citizens represent an additional opinion to that of other stakeholders and believe their opinions should be considered in relation to those of other stakeholders, given they are provided with opportunities for critical discussion. Conclusion: Organized deliberation should allow for the exchange of arguments and the sharing of personal experiences which is linked to learning. On the one hand this is reflected in the uptake of new arguments and on the other hand in the revision, specification or expansion of personal argumentation. Providing opportunities for critical deliberation is key to prevent citizens from adhering to initial emotional reactions that remain unchallenged and which may no longer be supported after deliberation.

Surgical Leadership.

There are few topics of more importance in health care today than surgical leadership. The surgical leader will need to organize and maintain a collective effort if the organization is going to be effective. Health care teams work in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous ecosystem. Therefore, surgeons must develop skills beyond the operating room. The facilitative leader will lead from the middle, not the top. They will empower coworkers to participate in creating a vision by building consensus, developing teams, clarifying roles, and earning the loyalty and trust of their colleagues. Surgical leaders will use communication as the vehicle for their success, including intentional listening, asking open-ended questions, and creating dialog instead of argumentative exchanges. The future of health care belongs to the physicians who are investing the time and effort today to become leaders.

Argument Quality in Real World Argumentation.

The idea of resolving dispute through the exchange of arguments and reasons has been central to society for millennia. We exchange arguments as a way of getting at the truth in contexts as diverse as science, the court room, and our everyday lives. In democracies, political decisions should be negotiated through argument, not deception, or even worse, brute force. If argument is to lead to the truth or to good decisions, then some arguments must be better than others and 'argument strength' must have some meaningful connection with truth. Can argument strength be measured in a way that tracks an objective relationship with truth and not just mere persuasiveness? This article describes recent developments in providing such measures.

The Enemy and the Victim: Stray Dogs in Poland, 1945–70 (Discourses and Actions)

The article argues that two primary roles were prevalently identified for dogs in the period concerned: for one thing, dogs were perceived as objects of human malevolence or at least dislike; this had to do with the dissemination of disease – particularly, rabies, dangerous to humans. For another, the dog was represented as a victim of cruelty. The exchange of arguments between adherents of different solutions to the ‘canine question’ (dog-pounds and culling vs. shelters) grew emotion-imbued, especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The press published voices of protest against mass killings of dogs and reinstatement of dogcatcher’s establishments. Eminent scientists, artists, cultural workers sent requests or appeals in these respects to the authorities. This ‘canine campaign’ led to the adoption, in 1961–2, of legal acts designed to make the methods of dealing with homeless animals ‘civilised’, but they did not bring about a breakthrough in the way dogs were treated or dealt with in post-war Poland. The campaign demonstrated that an active group of dog lovers got formed in the People’s Republic. In this sense, it can be said that dogs became an object of human care (the latter topic not having been subject to the research on which the following text is based).

Trackers and Trailblazers: Dynamic Interactions and Institutional Design in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract The Inter-American Court’s negative reputation as a judicial activist is often contrasted with its influence in the Inter-American Human Rights System. Despite often issuing broad judgments, the Court has remained a reference and a standard for human rights in the region. This article aims to examine this phenomenon by examining the Court’s institutional powers. The article claims that the Court’s tendency towards judicial activism does not contradict its functions, but rather reflects domestic judicial tendencies and cultures. Domestic judicial cultures and states’ interactions with the Court provide context for the interpretation of its powers and its role in the Inter-American System. The article, therefore, suggests that argumentative legal exchange engaged by the Court and Member States is a healthy way of promoting mutual accountability, while maintaining flexibility for adaptations by both parties and preserving the internal coherence of the regional system.