Abstract
Technology is not only an object of philosophical reflection but also something that can change this reflection. This paper discusses the potential of computer-supported argument visualization tools for coping with the complexity of philosophical arguments. I will show, in particular, how the interactive and web-based argument mapping software “AGORA-net” can change the practice of philosophical reflection, communication, and collaboration. AGORA-net allows the graphical representation of complex argumentations in logical form and the synchronous and asynchronous collaboration on those “argument maps” on the internet. Web-based argument mapping can overcome limits of space, time, and access, and it can empower users from all over the world to clarify their reasoning and to participate in deliberation and debate. Collaborative and web-based argument mapping tools such as AGORA-net can change the practice of arguing in two dimensions. First, arguing on web-based argument maps in both collaborative and adversarial form can lead to a fundamental shift in the way arguments are produced and debated. It can provide an alternative to the traditional four-step process of writing, publishing, debating, and responding in new writing with its clear distinction between individual and social activities by a process in which these four steps happen virtually simultaneously, and individual and social activities become more closely intertwined. Second, by replacing the linear form of arguments through graphical representations of networks of inferential relations which can grow over time in an infinite space, these tools do not only allow a clear visualization of structures and relations, but also forms of collaboration in which, for example, participants work on different “construction zones” of larger argument maps, or debates are performed at specific points of disagreement on those maps. I introduce the term synergetic logosymphysis (defined as a process in which an argumentative structure grows in a collaborative effort) to describe a practice that combines these two dimensions of collaborative- and web-based argument mapping.
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Notes
Unless the software does not pose any constraints on the user as in most “mind mapping” software. The concept mapping software cmap, for instance, allows the construction of differently shaped and colored text boxes that can be connected by a variety of different lines (http://cmap.ihmc.us/). The only constraint is that every line has to be named so that the user is prompted to specify what kind of relationship she wants to establish. Other than that, everything is possible so that the software's ontology does not provide any hints to the kind of “arguments” that can be represented.
A nice online tool for this and other purposes, http://www.bcisiveonline.com/, has been developed by Tim van Gelder's team. It belongs to a software family composed of ReasonAble!, Rationale, and bCisive (http://austhink.com/).
The same is the case with the CSAV tools “Argumentative” (http://argumentative.sourceforge.net/) and “Argunaut” (http://www.argunaut.org/), for example.
OVA, the “Online Visualization of Argument” created by http://www.arg.dundee.ac.uk, allows—according to its “user guide”—the construction of arguments online, but not collaboration of different users on the same argument map. Collaboration on “arguments” in a broader sense of the term is possible, for example, with bCisive online (http://www.bcisiveonline.com/, created by www.austhink.com), Compendium (http://compendium.open.ac.uk/applications.html, created by the Open University, UK), Debategraph (http://debategraph.org/), and in the commercial SEAS software (http://www.ai.sri.com/~seas/).
LASAD is a project conducted by researchers at Saarland and Clausthal University in Germany (http://cscwlab.in.tu-clausthal.de/lasad/).
In Hoffmann and Borenstein (2013), we showed how AGORA-net can also be used to cope with another form of complexity: complexity that results from what Rittel and Webber (1973) described as the multiperspectivity of “wicked problems.” These problems appear to be wicked or ill-structured because the way they are perceived and addressed is often determined by conflicting values and interests. This results from the fact that in pluralist societies, in which a multitude of world views and values compete, the determination and formulation of a problem as well as the assessment of its “solution” can be controversial and open to discussion.
See for reconstructions of Hume's argument and several versions of Kant's transcendental argument the AGORA-maps “Hume's argument that empirical knowledge is impossible,” “Kant's transcendental argument about causality I” and “II,” “Kant's argument about Euclidean space,” “… about triangles,” and “… its general structure.” You can find these arguments after entering the AGORA-net at http://agora.gatech.edu/ in the folder “Philosophy/Epistemology.”
Note: The second and third sentence in this quote replace, according to Kant's own instructions in the Preface to the Second Edition (B XXXIX), the following sentence: “This persistent thing, however, cannot be something in me, since my own existence in time can first be determined only through this persistent thing.”
See the section “The Refutation of Idealism” in Pereboom (2009) for a short overview.
The “enabler”—the premise that is always located directly underneath the “therefore”—is so named because it “enables” the reason(s) provided to guarantee the truth of the conclusion, if these reasons are true and the enabler is true as well.
If modus ponens is used, the enabler—representing a material implication—is of course true also in cases where its antecedent is false. However, since in modus ponens, the truth of the antecedent is always affirmed in the second premise, this case is not relevant in situations where only modus ponens is used. More importantly—and this refers to the well-known paradoxes of the material implication—it is assumed that claiming the “truth of the enabler” is equivalent to the arguer's conviction that there is a universal, law-like relation between the components of the enabler in the sense that the reason(s) is (are) sufficient to justify the claim. “Truth,” thus, remains in the eye of the beholder. But in a context in which an arguer wants to convince a possible opponent that her reason(s) justifies her claim, the conviction that all the premises are true in the sense of being acceptable is crucial. This makes it highly unlikely that somebody would claim things such as “if grass is green, then 2 + 2 = 4. See also footnote 14.
Anybody can create a “project” and add the user names of others as “members.” Only members have access to the maps in a project.
AGORA-net realizes “defeasible deductive reasoning,” that is, it is not assumed that the premises of an argument are necessarily true (see footnote 12). In the literature on “defeasible logic” (Prakken and Vreeswijk 2001), defeasibility is often indicated by inserting a qualifier such as “usually” or “as a rule” into the conclusion, or there is an additional premise such as “It is not the case that there is an exception to the rule that if P, then Q” (Walton et al. 2008, p. 366). However, the same effect can be achieved by establishing the convention that every statement is only “believed to be true” by someone whose name is connected to this statement (that is the reason why all the user-created text boxes in AGORA-net indicate the author, “AU,” of statements). This convention can be justified within a pragmatist framework according to which all empirical knowledge is fallible. Whether a statement used in an argument is indeed true is less important than the question whether we can provide a justification for it, and whether our justification gets accepted. As long as nobody cares to defeat the reasons for claims, they can be accepted as being true. This is the essence of a dialogical and pragmatist approach to argumentation that is realized in AGORA-net (see also Pinto 2001).
The only exception to this rule I can think of concerns the possibility of vandalism on published argument maps. Vandalism happens in many online settings, for example online games (Smed et al. 2002).
The “monstrous waste of space” (Moktefi and Shin 2012, p. 656), that Ernst Schröder criticized in Frege's “conceptual notation” for predicate logic in which symbols are spatially arranged is no longer a problem when, as in AGORA-net, the available space is really infinite.
One of the anonymous reviewers of this paper notes correctly that the “compartmentalization” that is possible in collaborative argument mapping would lead “to a serious problem of authorship in philosophy: who has written the final text in the end?” The notion of synergetic logosymphysis is indeed intended to signify a shift away from the idea of authorship.
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Acknowledgements
This research and the development of the AGORA software described here is supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (FIPSE Grant P116S100006). The AGORA project is part of a collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Many thanks to Bryan Norton, Nancy Nersessian, Justin Biddle, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback that helped to improve this paper.
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Hoffmann, M.H.G. Changing Philosophy Through Technology: Complexity and Computer-Supported Collaborative Argument Mapping. Philos. Technol. 28, 167–188 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0143-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0143-6