Individual Arguments Research Articles

Forming a belief: The contribution of comprehension to the evaluation and persuasive impact of argumentative text.

Research has shown substantial belief change as a result of reading text and the pervasive influence of prior belief in the evaluation of short arguments. Both outcomes have been attributed to the depth to which the text or the argument has been processed. This study brings together critical thinking and text comprehension research by employing an extended argumentative text and varying the quality of its arguments. The study examines the contribution of comprehension outcomes to the critical evaluation and persuasive impact of argumentative text. One hundred and sixteen first-year graduate and third- and fourth-year undergraduate university students. Measures of initial topic-related beliefs, perceived topic knowledge, and need for cognition were obtained. Students read one of two versions of a two-sided, implicitly persuasive argumentative text (677 words) varying in argument quality. Post-reading tasks included main claim recall, overall recall, inference generation, claim agreement, and text evaluation. The text was positively evaluated and highly persuasive regardless of argument quality, but half of the students either failed to identify the main claim promoted or confused it with individual arguments. Despite a modest but positive association between inference generation and text evaluation, no comprehension measure had a significant main or interactive effect. Need for cognition contributed to positive evaluations in the absence of prior topic knowledge regardless of argument quality. The findings suggest a dissociation between the elaboration associated with deep comprehension and the elaboration associated with critical evaluation with implications for belief formation and the teaching of thinking.

Argumentation as core curriculum

We report on an extended effort to introduce and evaluate argumentation as a stand-alone component of the middle-school curriculum. The dialogic-focused curriculum continued over two school years and from a research perspective benefitted from the availability of a closely-matched comparison group who participated in a parallel but non-dialogic curriculum. Following previous reports of success of the curriculum in developing both dialogic and individual argument skills, we report on results for a new cohort of middle-school students that focus on gains occurring after the first year, specifically in the use of evidence to support and to weaken claims. After two years of twice-weekly participation, students were more likely to support claims with evidence, relative to a comparison group. They continued to show difficulty, however, in using evidence to weaken claims. In addition, participants were more likely to draw on evidence from their own knowledge when debating peers than when writing an individual essay.

Fallacy Identification in a Dialectical Approach to Teaching Critical Thinking

The dialectical approach to teaching critical thinking is centred on a comparative evaluation of contending arguments, so that generally the strength of an argument for a position can only be assessed in the context of this dialectic. The identification of fallacies, though important, plays only a preliminary role in the evaluation to individual arguments. Our approach to fallacy identification and analysis sees fallacies as argument patterns whose persuasive power is disproportionate to their probative value.

Individual Versus Group Argumentation: Student’s Performance in a Malaysian Context

Scientific argumentation has been greatly emphasized in the National Science Standard due to its ability to enhance students’ understanding of scientific concepts. This study investigated the mastery level of scientific argumentation, based on Toulmin’s Argumentation Model (TAP), when students engage in individual and group argumentations. A total of 120 students were selected and were first randomly divided into two groups to answer the Scientific Argumentation Test (ScAT). One group of students answered individually, while the other group was allowed to collaborate among group members. The Student Semi Structured Interview (SSSI) and Teacher Semi Structured Interview (TSSI) were also conducted on a selected group of students and their teachers to gather additional information to support the ScAT data. The findings showed that there is a significant difference in the mastery level of scientific argumentation between groups and individuals. Students who participated in group argumentation tend to perform better than those who participated in individual argumentation. However, the mastery level of scientific argumentation for both groups of students was generally unsatisfactory. Therefore, the teaching and learning of science in Malaysian schools need to emphasize more on group argumentative activities to enhance students’ mastery of scientific argumentation, which will also their reasoning capabilities and scientific knowledge.

“Top 10” reasons: When adding persuasive arguments reduces persuasion

Across four studies, we show that experts’ efforts to strengthen the persuasiveness of health and civic duty-related appeals actually weakened them. When designing “Top 10” reasons lists to get people to quit smoking, encourage young people to vote, and persuade individuals to engage in fitness, governmental (studies 1–2) and non-profit (study 3) agencies chose to include mildly strong reasons alongside strong ones in their effort to be as persuasive as possible. However, from the target audience’s perspective, those mildly favorable reasons actually decreased the persuasiveness of the message compared to a condition in which fewer but only highly persuasive reasons were used. Building upon the Presenter’s Paradox by Weaver, Garcia & Schwarz (Journal of Consumer Research 39 (3):445–460, 2012), these results demonstrate that averaging in impression formation occurs not only in targets commonly thought of as unified entities such as consumer products and people but also occurs in persuasion contexts where the individual arguments comprising a message are independent of each other.

Symposium 1: Investigating Teaching Practices that Promote Learning in Science Lessons

In this talk we use the notion of communicative approach, as outlined in our book (Mortimer & Scott 2003), as a way of highlighting the science teaching practices carried out by two teachers, one Brazilian and the other British. The characteristics that emerge from these practices demonstrate that teaching for meaningful learning involves progressive shifting between authoritative and dialogic communicative approaches. On the one hand, dialogic discourse is open to different points of view. The discourse direction changes as ideas are introduced and explored and the teachers assume a neutral position, avoiding evaluative comments and encouraging and probing student ideas. On the other hand, authoritative discourse focuses on a single perspective, normally the school science view. The discourse direction is prescribed in advance and the authority of teacher is clear: he/she acts as a gatekeeper to points of view, through reshaping, ignoring, rejecting student ideas. The relationship between dialogic and authoritative approaches is that dialogic exploration of both everyday and scientific views requires resolution through authoritative guidance by the teacher. In shifting between dialogic and authoritative discourses these two teachers shows a number of pedagogical skills: they sustain a line of speech and thought, through which ideas are introduced, reviewed and consolidated in a cumulative process involving the creation of temporal links. They also monitor and follow the students’ understanding. They sistematicaly progress from the phenomenon to the description and explanation. And they select carefully developed activities to ensure the advancement of the scientific story. They also show affective and emotional skills, systematically encouraging the participation of all members of the class,offering approval, modeling the enthusiasm, recalling individual ideas and arguments of the students and linking to their names, and being consistent, warm and having control.With our analytical framework we are able to highlight all these features and to get a more precise idea of what are good teaching practices.Mortimer, E.F. & Scott, P. (2003) Meaning Making in Secondary Science Classroom. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Reconstructing Arguments

Traditional logical reconstruction of arguments aims at assessing the validity of ordinary language arguments. It involves several tasks: extracting argumentations from texts, breaking up complex argumentations into individual arguments, framing arguments in standard form, as well as formalizing arguments and showing their validity with the help of a logical formalism. These tasks are guided by a multitude of partly antagonistic goals, they interact in various feedback loops, and they are intertwined with the development of theories of valid inference and adequate formalization. This paper explores how the method of reflective equilibrium can be used for modelling the complexity of such reconstructions and for justifying the various steps involved. The proposed approach is illustrated and tested in a detailed reconstruction of the beginning of Anselm’s De casu diaboli.

Tilting at Windmills? The Counterposing Policy Interests Driving the U.S. Commercial Satellite Export Control Reform Debate

United States strategic export controls — which treat commercial satellite technologies, related technical data, and defense services as munitions subject to the strictest export control criteria — have been under fire for decades. Critics argue that in attempting to bolster national security by limiting the transfer of space technologies to adversaries and potential adversaries, the U.S. has unintentionally and paradoxically harmed national security by undermining the space industrial base, the academic and research institutions that feed and grow that base, and the international partnerships that drive scientific and technological advancement. There are few, if any, unequivocal supporters of the U.S. export control regime as it stands. As a result, both regulatory and statutory reform initiatives are afoot. Yet this begs the question: if the problems are and have been so apparent, why have the regulations and concomitant organic legislation not been subject to reform before now? This thesis will deconstruct the current discourse (keeping in mind its historical underpinnings) and challenge the orthodoxies of the export control reform debate in order to determine, to the extent possible, the merits of individual arguments and claims.

Group awareness support and argumentation scripts for individual preparation of arguments in Facebook

This study investigates how group awareness support and argumentation scripts influence learning in social networking sites like Facebook, which may be conducive to informal learning, but often lacks argumentative quality. Supporting participants' group awareness about the visibility of the arguments they construct and about prospective future debate with peers in order to promote argument quality may be particularly suited for learning in Social Networking Sites. Additional argumentation scripts may directly foster argumentative knowledge construction. In a 2 × 2 study (N = 81), we isolated and investigated the effects of group awareness support and argumentation scripts during individual preparation in a Facebook app on domain and argumentative knowledge. Our results reveal that group awareness support of upcoming argumentative processes can be counterproductive for learning in Social Networking Sites. Argumentation scripts in Facebook may remedy possible negative effects of such awareness. Process analysis showed that group awareness support promotes individual argument elaboration but reduces broad analysis of the domain.

2-tuple Linguistic Bonferroni Mean Operators and Their Application to Multiple Attribute Group Decision Making

Aims: The aim of this paper is to develop the 2-tuple linguistic Bonferroni mean and the weighted 2-tuple linguistic Bonferroni mean. Study Design: Some desirable properties and special cases of the developed operators are discussed. The geometric Bonferroni mean (GBM) is a generalization of the Bonferroni mean and geometric mean. In this paper, we also investigate the GBM under 2-tuple linguistic environments. We develop the 2-tuple linguistic geometric Bonf erroni mean and the weighted 2tuple linguistic geometric Bonferroni mean. We investiga te some fundamental properties and special cases of them. Place and Duration of Study: The Bonferroni Mean (BM) operator is a traditional mean t ype aggregation operator, which can capture the expressed interrelat ionship of the individual arguments and which is only suitable to aggregate crisp data. Methodology: This paper extends the BM operator to 2-tuple linguistic en vironments. Results: Based on these operators, we develop two approaches for m ultiple attribute group decision making with 2-tuple linguistic information. Conclusion: Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effec tiveness and practicality of the proposed approaches.

Intuitionistic linguistic weighted Bonferroni mean operator and its application to multiple attribute decision making.

The intuitionistic linguistic variables are easier to describe the fuzzy information which widely exists in the real world, and Bonferroni mean can capture the interrelationship of the individual arguments. However, the traditional Bonferroni mean can only process the crisp number. In this paper, we will extend Bonferroni mean to the intuitionistic linguistic environment and propose a multiple attribute decision making method with intuitionistic linguistic information based on the extended Bonferroni mean which can consider the interrelationship of the attributes. Firstly, score function and accuracy function of intuitionistic linguistic numbers are introduced. Then, an intuitionistic linguistic Bonferroni mean (ILBM) operator and an intuitionistic linguistic weighted Bonferroni mean (ILWBM) operator are developed, and some desirable characteristics of them are studied. At the same time, some special cases with respect to the parameters p and q in Bonferroni are analyzed. Based on the ILWBM operator, the approach to multiple attribute decision making with intuitionistic linguistic information is proposed. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the developed approach and to demonstrate its effectiveness.

English

For a collection of written articles, Classics in the Modern World is highly conversational. This is partly due to its origins in a preliminary e-seminar and follow-up conference on the 'democratic turn' in modern engagements with Classical Antiquity. Not only are questions that arose within these initial forums re-presented in the 'Introduction' (Hardwick and Harrison, pp. xix-xxxvii), but they are directly and indirectly raised throughout the volume's thirty contributions. Moreover, the very frame is interrogative. The content of the volume is diverse, with case studies drawn from a broad array of periods and settings and Classical receptions that might seem quite detached. Yet the question mark in the title - A Democratic Turn? - makes each individual argument a new contribution to a live debate. Whether dipping in or working more methodically through the book, the reader joins the evaluation of how Classics in modern settings might possess a democratic quality.

The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492 by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein (review)

Reviewed by: The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492 by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein Joshua Holo The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492 Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 340 pp. To grasp the value and challenge of The Chosen Few, one must first appreciate its disciplinary rootedness in economic history, the sole conceptual lens through which Botticini and Eckstein examine the very worthwhile, if broad, research question that drives them. The Chosen Few sets out to explain nothing less than how the Jews have succeeded as a dispersed urban minority for over a millennium. Specifically, it reduces that success to Judaism’s [End Page 151] demand for literacy, a commodity with costs and benefits that balance out very favorably in the money-based economies born during the Middle Ages. I say “reduce” advisedly, for a truly macroscopic history cannot avoid being reductive, and it risks, by extension, falling into a twilight genre, neither popular nor properly scholarly. If, however, a sweeping argument can navigate competing theories and resist gross oversimplification, it can still propose a useful organizing principle. All told, The Chosen Few succeeds in illustrating the centrality of literacy to Jewish success, but it unnecessarily, almost petulantly, insists on the exclusive primacy of literacy over others endogenous, multilayered factors, such as ethnic solidarity and dispersion. Ultimately, though sometimes blinkered, The Chosen Few deserves serious attention for raising and, largely compellingly, answering a fertile question of Jewish history. To begin, Botticini and Eckstein discern the origin of Jewish literacy in the rise of Rabbinic Judaism. Facing the destruction of the Temple, the rabbis committed the Jewish destiny to the text-based fulfillment of the divine covenant, concomitantly elevating literacy to a religious obligation. This obligation, though enacted in the mid-first century c.e., was implemented after the third-century redaction of the Mishnah. In the agricultural context of the third to seventh centuries, this resource-intensive, religious requirement weakened the Jews and diminished their numbers, because they were, in the main, farmers for whom literacy had no parallel, practical benefits. However, with the rise of Islam, urbanism and, later, the Commercial Revolution, the Jews’ requirement for literacy proved eminently useful and strengthened their position in emerging commercial and money-based economies. The middle chapters follow the Jews’ peregrinations to Europe and their settling into the niches of mercantilism and moneylending, on the strength of their literacy and numeracy. The book ends in the sixteenth century in Europe (leaving the post-Expulsion story for the next book) and at the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions in the Middle East, which destroyed the urban economies of the Islamic world. Dense (to humanists, impenetrable) mathematical annexes to chapters 4 and 6 complement illustrative numerical tables throughout. As a rule, Botticini and Eckstein affirm their thesis well; but they exclude other theses poorly. Though Jewish literacy clearly owes much to Rabbinic Judaism, The Chosen Few ignores the possibility that the rabbis and their penchant for literacy may not have, in fact, exerted much direct influence over Judaism and Jewish farmers, either way, during the pre-Islamic [End Page 152] centuries (cf. Ra’anan Boustan’s concise outline of influential arguments by Daniel Boyarin and Seth Schwartz, among others, in his review of Paula Fredriksen’s Augustine and the Jews, JQR 99, no. 1 [2009]: 74-77). Perhaps more troublingly, The Chosen Few is generally allergic to a more textured (and less punchy) historical tapestry of the coincident and aggregate forces that might have engendered Jewish urbanism. The authors prefer to divide and conquer, picking off individual arguments as insufficient explanations on their own, as if one needed a single-factored solution in the first place. For example, while Botticini and Eckstein convincingly illustrate the fact of disproportionate Jewish depopulation during the agricultural era, from the first to seventh centuries, they scorn the explanatory power of the lingering demographic effects of revolts and riots. Worse, they argue e silentio to dismiss low fertility; if low fertility “had been a major problem … one would expect it to have … found its way into the Talmud.” The Chosen Few reverts to conversion, spurred by the onus...

Nietzsche, die Orchestikologie und das dissipative Denken

Nietzsche, die Orchestikologie und das dissipative Denken

Quality, Evolution, and Positional Change of University Students’ Argumentation Patterns About Organic Agriculture During an Argument–Critique–Argument Experience

The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality, evolution, and position of university students’ argumentation about organic agriculture over a 4-week argument–critique–argument e-learning experience embedded in a first year university biology course. The participants (N = 43) were classified into three groups based on their epistemological views. Data collected from individual arguments, group deliberations, and individual critiques were coded and analyzed to establish the quality and evolution of argumentation. Results indicated significant improvement in the quality of their justifications between the first and second arguments. Post-hoc comparison of epistemological groups indicated that the more constructivist-oriented students had a greater significant evolution of their justifications than the more empiricist-oriented students, but there was no significant main effect for epistemological orientation. Qualitative analysis of the intervening critiques indicated that some students incorporated or used other students’ arguments or counter-arguments to change their position or to enhance the justification of their original position on organic agriculture, while others appeared to be locked into a confirmation-bias stance and search for evidence that supported their original position and disregarded contradictory evidence.

The Lure of Objectivity, or Verities of the Image

Considering the diversity of subjects, historical periods, and specialised knowledge surveyed in each of these books, reviewing them together makes for a bewildering reading experience. It would be impossible to accurately assess, or even, at times, to follow the individual arguments made in all of them, so widely do the authors draw upon the history of ideas, the history of institutions, the history of the visual arts and epistemology, in different places and periods from the Renaissance to ...

The trapezoid fuzzy linguistic Bonferroni mean operators and their application to multiple attribute decision making

The Bonferroni Mean (BM) operator is a traditional mean type aggregation operator which can capture the expressed interrelationship of the individual arguments, and is only suitable to aggregate crisp data. In this paper, we develop some Bonferroni mean operators based on trapezoid fuzzy linguistic variables, such as a Trapezoid Fuzzy Linguistic Bonferroni Mean (TFLBM) operator, a Trapezoid Fuzzy Linguistic Weighted Bonferroni Mean (TFLWBM) operator, a Trapezoid Fuzzy Linguistic Bonferroni OWA (TFLBOWA) operator and a Trapezoid Fuzzy Linguistic Weighted Bonferroni OWA (TFLWBOWA) operator. Furthermore, some desirable properties of these operators are studied. At the same time, some special cases in these operators are analyzed. Based on these operators, methods of multiple attribute decision making with trapezoid fuzzy linguistic information are proposed. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the developed approaches and to demonstrate their practicality and effectiveness.

Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research

This article analyses the findings from a cooperative inquiry study with seven feminist identified women based in the UK. It explores the tensions participants experienced in negotiating their feminist identification on the one hand and engagements in normative beauty practices on the other. A discourse analysis of participants’ talk identified an ideological dilemma of ‘feminism versus femininity’, a contemporary re-working of long-standing constructions of feminism and femininity as mutually exclusive. In exploring how this dilemma was negotiated, the article supports existing arguments that femininity is increasingly constructed as a bodily practice. The article also examines the consequences of employing the feminist versus femininity dilemma which included the use of anti-feminist and homophobic constructions. Strategies to resist the dilemma involved postfeminist individual choice arguments or refusal to participate in practices that were critiqued. These strategies were individualist, only partially successful, and failed to engage with the classed and racialised aspects of contemporary beauty ideals.

Ethical issues in physiotherapy – Reflected from the perspective of physiotherapists in private practice

Background: An important aspect of physiotherapy professional autonomy is the ethical code of the profession, both collectively and for the individual member of the profession. The aim of this study is to explore and add additional insight into the nature and scope of ethical issues as they are understood and experienced by Danish physiotherapists in outpatient, private practice. Methods: A qualitative approach was chosen and semi-structured interviews with 21 physiotherapists were carried out twice and analyzed, using a phenomenological hermeneutic framework. Results: One main theme emerged: The ideal of being beneficent toward the patient. Here, the ethical issues uncovered in the interviews were embedded in three code-groups: 1) ethical issues related to equality; 2) feeling obligated to do one's best; and 3) transgression of boundaries. Conclusions: In an ethical perspective, physiotherapy in private practice is on a trajectory toward increased professionalism. Physiotherapists in private practice have many reflections on ethics and these reflections are primarily based on individual common sense arguments and on deontological understandings. As physiotherapy by condition is characterized by asymmetrical power encounters where the parties are in close physical and emotional contact, practiced physiotherapy has many ethical issues embedded. Some physiotherapists meet these issues in a professional manner, but others meet them in unconscious or unprofessional ways. An explicit ethical consciousness among Danish physiotherapists in private practice seems to be needed. A debate of how to understand and respect the individual physiotherapist's moral versus the ethics of the profession needs to be addressed.

The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary (review)

Reviewed by: The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary Shawn Loht Francesco Ademollo . The Cratylus of Plato: A Commentary. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xx + 538. Cloth, $140.00. Filling a large gap in English-language Plato scholarship, this volume is the first dedicated book-length commentary on the Cratylus. No small feat, the work is the culmination of over a decade of the author's research investigating Plato's dialogue on language. This monograph will no doubt secure Ademollo's place as a top scholar in Plato studies and a leading expert on Plato's philosophy of language. [End Page 450] With the main body of the text numbering nearly five hundred pages (some appendixes and significant back matter add to the length), this commentary functions as a highly compressed analytical reading of the Cratylus from start to finish. The work contains exhaustive scholarship engaging secondary sources and key issues related to the standard versions of the Greek text. Only the brief introductory chapter differs in this regard: this provides a very short overview of the dialogue by discussing its general questions, biographies of the principal characters, and some larger historical issues related to the dialogue's line of inquiry. Ademollo demonstrates a masterful facility for dissecting Plato at a line-by-line, word-by-word level. He also gracefully incorporates thorough study of corresponding keywords and concepts elsewhere in Plato's work when there is a question of interpretation or translation choice. In general, despite its density, Ademollo's text is written in a lively and engaging style, with the best combination of critical reading and illuminating discussion. With these considerations in view, readers of Plato looking for an authoritative study of the Cratylus may find Ademollo's text difficult to use depending on their needs. Insofar as the text gives a complete reading of the dialogue from beginning to end, those seeking a more general introduction to the Cratylus or its main themes likely will find this commentary's length somewhat overwhelming. For similar reasons, the commentary may be less accessible for those who wish to get a focused look at the dialogue's relevance for other works in Plato. Ademollo works from an approach that develops the dialogue's internal coherence rather than its continuity with the rest of Plato's corpus. Limited space is devoted to how the dialogue's themes relate to other key topics in Plato or to how the dialogue's overall messages fit into the larger contours of Plato's philosophy. When Ademollo does take up such broader issues, he is motivated primarily by exegetical purposes rather than by a wish to work out Plato's philosophical understanding of a given topic. On the whole, Ademollo's approach is a bit more philological in its scope than one might see in a more detached philosophical reading. The commentary does not advance a central philosophical argument or perspective, although many of the chapters are structured around their own arguments or leading questions. The main body of the text consists of nine chapters, each of which is divided into several major sections and subsections that proceed through the dialogue stepwise, evaluating one passage at time. The chapters are organized according to the central movements of the dialogue: the dialogue's initial question regarding linguistic naturalism, Hermogenes's thesis for conventionalism, the dialogue's interlude on etymology, and so on. Ademollo's method of reading the dialogue is to present one small amount of text at a time—usually an individual argument—and then to analyze thoroughly all of the important issues it contains. It is here that Ademollo's commentary will be especially helpful for readers of the Cratylus if they seek an expert assessment of individual phrases and keywords in the dialogue or a deeper understanding of the minute turns in its argumentation. However, because the commentary's analyses of the dialogue's arguments often proceed slowly, unfolding over the course of several pages, one may still need to study an entire chapter or more in order to comprehend Ademollo's overall reading of specific passages. Where this text shines on a philosophical level is in its very granular treatment...