REASON Winter School 2019: Keynote Prof. Douglas Walton

A Survey of Leading Argumentation Methods for Argument Evaluation and Argument Invention
Douglas Walton (University of Windsor)

Argumentation is a set of context-sensitive practical methods used to help a user identify, analyze and evaluate arguments, especially common ones of the kind often found in everyday discourse. In the past it was the prevalent assumption that the deductive model of valid inference was the cornerstone of rational thinking. There has now been a paradigm shift to highly knowledge-dependent models of reasoning under conditions of uncertainty where a conclusion is drawn on a basis of tentative acceptance on a balance of considerations. Argumentation can be described as (1) a means of arriving a reasoned decision to accept or reject a claim that is open to doubt or disputation by weighing the pro arguments against the con arguments, (2) a means to build evidence-based knowledge that is provisional and fallible, (3) a means for inventing new arguments to support or attack a designated claim, and (4) an interdisciplinary subject that so far most notably includes subjects such as informal logic, speech communication, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, legal argumentation, computational linguistics, education, formal logic and argumentation in medical communication.

This presentation surveys argumentation tools that can be applied to common kinds of tasks encountered in solving argumentation problems. The following tools are included: argumentation schemes, including the scheme for inference to the best explanation, argument diagrams, a profile of dialogue tool for repairing informal fallacies, and use of formal and computational argumentation models for automated argument invention and for explanation. A brief survey on how these tools can be applied to some specific fields is included. It is shown how scientific argumentation can be modeled as evidence-based using the Carneades Argumentation System.

Short Bio: Douglas Walton (Ph.D. University of Toronto, 1972) is Distinguished Research Fellow of CRRAR (Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric) at the University of Windsor. He has been Visiting Professor at Northwestern University, University of Arizona, and University of Lugano (Switzerland). He is co-editor of the Critical Argumentation textbook series for Cambridge University Press. In 2011 he was Fernand Braudel Research Fellow of the European University Institute in Florence, where he collaborated on research in legal argumentation with Prof. Giovanni Sartor of the EUI and the Faculty of Law at the University of Bologna. In 2010 he was appointed to the Editorial Board of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law. In 2009 he was given the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Special Recognition Award of the University of Windsor, in recognition of excellence in research, scholarship and creative activity. In the area of argumentation studies he has published 51 books, as well as 350+ refereed papers. His published books and papers have had over 20,000 citations according to Google Scholar. His two most recent books are: Goal-Based Reasoning for Argumentation, Cambridge University Press (2015), and Argument Evaluation and Evidence, Springer (2016).