This edited volume presents selected works from the 20th Biennial Alta Argumentation Conference, sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensics Association and held in 2017. The conference brought together scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America to engage in intensive conversations about how argument functions in our increasingly networked society. The essays discuss four aspects of networked argument. Some examine arguments occurring in online networks, seeking to both understand and respond more effectively to the acute changes underway in the information age. Others focus on offline networks to identify historical and contemporary resources available to advocates in the modern day. Still others discuss the value-added of including argumentation scholars on interdisciplinary research teams analyzing a diverse range of subjects, including science, education, health, law, economics, history, security, and media. Finally, the remainder network argumentation theories explore how the interactions between and among existing theories offer fruitful ground for new insights for the field of argumentation studies. The wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches employed in Networking Argument make this volume a unique compilation of perspectives for understanding urgent and sustaining issues facing our society.

Networking Arguments presents an original study on the use and misuse of global institutional rhetoric and the effects of these practices on women, particularly in developing countries. Using a feminist lens, Rebecca Dingo views the complex networks that rhetoric flows through, globally and nationally, and how it's often reconfigured to work both for and against women and to maintain existing power structures. To see how rhetorics travel, Dingo deconstructs the central terminology employed by global institutions—mainstreaming, fitness, and empowerment—and shows how their meanings shift depending on the contexts in which they're used. She studies programs by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the United States, among others, to view the original policies, then follows the trail of their diffusion and manipulation and the ultimate consequences for individuals. To analyze transnational rhetorical processes, Dingo builds a theoretical framework by employing concepts of transcoding, ideological traffic, and interarticulation to uncover the intricacies of power relationships at work within networks. She also views transnational capitalism, neoliberal economics, and neocolonial ideologies as primary determinants of policy and arguments over women's roles in the global economy. Networking Arguments offers a new method of feminist rhetorical analysis that allows for an increased understanding of global gender policies and encourages strategies to counteract the negative effects they can create.

Presents papers from the Third Conference on Computational Models of Argument, held in September 2010 in Desanzano del Garda, Italy. Providing a view of this important research field, this book is of interest to those involved in the use and development of artificial intelligence systems.

Argumentation is often understood as a coherent set of Western theories, birthed in Athens and developing throughout the Roman period, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and Renaissance, and into the present century. Ideas have been nuanced, developed, and revised, but still the outline of argumentation theory has been recognizable for centuries, or so it has seemed to Western scholars. The 2019 Alta Conference on Argumentation (co-sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensic Association) aimed to question the generality of these intellectual traditions. This resulting collection of essays deals with the possibility of having local theories of argument – local to a particular time, a particular kind of issue, a particular place, or a particular culture. Many of the papers argue for reconsidering basic ideas about arguing to represent the uniqueness of some moment or location of discourse. Other scholars are more comfortable with the Western traditions, and find them congenial to the analysis of arguments that originate in discernibly distinct circumstances. The papers represent different methodologies, cover the experiences of different nations at different times, examine varying sorts of argumentative events (speeches, court decisions, food choices, and sound), explore particular personal identities and the issues highlighted by them, and have different overall orientations to doing argumentation scholarship. Considered together, the essays do not generate one simple conclusion, but they stimulate reflection about the particularity or generality of the experience of arguing, and therefore the scope of our theories.

Annotation A basic text for citizens, professionals, and debaters of all types. This book introduces readers to the basic types of arguments and how to criticize and engage them, including induction, deduction, and causation. Readers will be familiarized with the ways in which advocates support their arguments and how to criticize and engage these forms of support, including historical data, statistics, examples, anecdotes, expert testimony and common experience. Readers will also encounter how to prepare for argumentative situations and how to conduct themselves within them, including debates, panel discussion, public speeches and informal settings. The original 1964 text has been updated and filled with new examples and activities.

Principles of Semantic Networks: Explorations in the Representation of Knowledge provides information pertinent to the theory and applications of semantic networks. This book deals with issues in knowledge representation, which discusses theoretical topics independent of particular implementations. Organized into three parts encompassing 19 chapters, this book begins with an overview of semantic network structure for representing knowledge as a pattern of interconnected nodes and arcs. This text then analyzes the concepts of subsumption and taxonomy and synthesizes a framework that integrates many previous approaches and goes beyond them to provide an account of abstract and partially defines concepts. Other chapters consider formal analyses, which treat the methods of reasoning with semantic networks and their computational complexity. This book discusses as well encoding linguistic knowledge. The final chapter deals with a formal approach to knowledge representation that builds on ideas originating outside the artificial intelligence literature in research on foundations for programming languages. This book is a valuable resource for mathematicians.

This edited volume represents the best of the scholarship presented at the 18th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association Conference on Argumentation. This biennial conference brings together a lively group of argumentation scholars from a range of disciplinary approaches and a variety of countries. Disturbing Argument contains selected works that speak both to the disturbing prevalence of violence in the contemporary world and to the potential of argument itself, to disturb the very relations of power that enable that violence. Scholars’ essays analyze a range of argument forms, including body and visual argument, interpersonal and group argument, argument in electoral politics, public argument, argument in social protest, scientific and technical argument, and argument and debate pedagogy. Contributors study argument using a range of methodological approaches, from social scientifically informed studies of interpersonal, group, and political argument to humanistic examinations of argument theory, political discourse, and social protest, to creatively informed considerations of argument practices that truly disturb the boundaries of what we consider argument.

New approaches to parallel computing are being developed that make better use of the heterogeneous cluster architecture Provides a detailed introduction to parallel computing on heterogenous clusters All concepts and algorithms are illustrated with working programs that can be compiled and executed on any cluster The algorithms discussed have practical applications in a range of real-life parallel computing problems, such as the N-body problem, portfolio management, and the modeling of oil extraction

In its classical form, the study of argumentation focuses on human-oriented uses of argument, such as whether an argument is legitimate or flawed, engagement in debate, or the rhetorical aspects of argumentation. In recent decades, however, the study of logic and computational models of argumentation has emerged as a growing sub-area of AI. This book presents the Seventh International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA’18), held in Warsaw, Poland, from 12 to 14 September 2018. Since its inception in 2006, the conference and its related activities have developed alongside the steady growth of interest in computational argumentation worldwide, and the selection of 25 full papers and 17 short papers, out of a total of 70 submissions, and 15 demonstration abstracts included here reflect the broad multidisciplinary nature of argumentation and the increasing body of work which establishes the relevance of computational models to various disciplines and real world applications. Subjects covered include: algorithm development; innovative applications; argument mining, argumentation-based models of dialogue; abstract argument frameworks; and structured argumentation. Representing an overview of current developments in the field, this book will appeal to all those with an interest in computational models of argument.

Argumentation has traditionally been studied across a number of fields, notably philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics and jurisprudence. The study of computational models of argumentation is a more recent endeavor, bringing together researchers from traditional fields and computer science and engineering within a rich, interdisciplinary matrix. Computational models of argumentation have been identified and used since the 1980s, and more recently an important role for argumentation in leading to principled decisions has emerged in several settings. This book presents the proceedings of COMMA 2022 the 9th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument, held in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, during 14 - 16 September 2022. The book contains 27 regular papers and 16 demo papers from a total of 75 submissions, as well as 3 invited talks from Prof Paul Dunne (University of Liverpool), Prof Iryna Gurevych (TU Darmstadt), and Prof Antonis Kakas (University of Cyprus), which reflect the diverse nature of the field. Papers are a mix of theoretical and practical contributions; theoretical contributions include new formal models, the study of formal or computational properties of models, design for implemented systems and experimental research; practical papers include applications to law, machine learning and explainability. Abstract and structured accounts of argumentation are covered, as are relations between different accounts. Many papers focus on the evaluation of arguments or their conclusions given a body of arguments, with a continuation of a recent trend to study gradual or probabilistic notions of evaluation. The book offers an overview of recent and current research and will be of interest to all those working with computational models of argumentation.