​This monograph poses a series of key problems of evidential reasoning and argumentation. It then offers solutions achieved by applying recently developed computational models of argumentation made available in artificial intelligence. Each problem is posed in such a way that the solution is easily understood. The book progresses from confronting these problems and offering solutions to them, building a useful general method for evaluating arguments along the way. It provides a hands-on survey explaining to the reader how to use current argumentation methods and concepts that are increasingly being implemented in more precise ways for the application of software tools in computational argumentation systems. It shows how the use of these tools and methods requires a new approach to the concepts of knowledge and explanation suitable for diverse settings, such as issues of public safety and health, debate, legal argumentation, forensic evidence, science education, and the use of expert opinion evidence in personal and public deliberations.

No detailed description available for "Problems in Argument Analysis and Evaluation".

The Common Core curriculum is designed to make students better readers, writers, listeners, and critical thinkers. This volume fulfills that mandate by teaching readers how to assess if an argument's reasoning is sound and the evidence presented is valid, relevant, and sufficient. Identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of an argument, along with an author's point of view and possible intentions or agenda, students become better able to separate fact from opinion and reality from spin. They form educated opinions and become better, more persuasive presenters of their own arguments.

Phelan and Reynolds' book is for anyone who needs to evaluate arguments and interpret evidence. It deals with the most fundamental aspects of academic study: * the ability to reason with ideas and evidence * to formulate arguments effectively * to appreciate the interplay between ideas and evidence in academic and media debate Argument and Evidence presents aspects of informal logic and statistical theory in a comprehensible way, enabling students to acquire skills in critical thinking which will outlast their undergraduate studies. Ideal as a companion for courses on methodology or study skills, Argument and Evidence will also be useful for other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation presents the basic tools for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of common arguments for beginners. The book teaches by using examples of arguments in dialogues, both in the text itself and in the exercises. Examples of controversial legal, political, and ethical arguments are analyzed. Illustrating the most common kinds of arguments, the book also explains how to analyze and evaluate each kind by critical questioning. Douglas Walton shows how arguments can be reasonable under the right dialogue conditions by using critical questions to evaluate them.

In The Uses of Argument (1958), Stephen Toulmin proposed a model for the layout of arguments: claim, data, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, backing. Since then, Toulmin’s model has been appropriated, adapted and extended by researchers in speech communications, philosophy and artificial intelligence. This book assembles the best contemporary reflection in these fields, extending or challenging Toulmin’s ideas in ways that make fresh contributions to the theory of analysing and evaluating arguments.

This text presents a clear and philosophically sound method for identifying, interpreting, and evaluating arguments as they appear in non-technical sources. It focuses on a more functional, real-world goal of argument analysis as a tool for figuring out what is reasonable to believe rather than as an instrument of persuasion. Methods are illustrated by applying them to arguments about different topics as they appear in a variety of contexts — e.g., newspaper editorials and columns, short essays, informal reports of scientific results, etc.

A leading expert in informal logic, Douglas Walton turns his attention in this new book to how reasoning operates in trials and other legal contexts, with special emphasis on the law of evidence. The new model he develops, drawing on methods of argumentation theory that are gaining wide acceptance in computing fields like artificial intelligence, can be used to identify, analyze, and evaluate specific types of legal argument. In contrast with approaches that rely on deductive and inductive logic and rule out many common types of argument as fallacious, Walton&’s aim is to provide a more expansive view of what can be considered &"reasonable&" in legal argument when it is construed as a dynamic, rule-governed, and goal-directed conversation. This dialogical model gives new meaning to the key notions of relevance and probative weight, with the latter analyzed in terms of pragmatic criteria for what constitutes plausible evidence rather than truth.