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Michael H.G. Hoffmann |
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Ongoing Research |
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Arguing—that is providing reasons for a claim, justifications for a position, or evidence for a hypothesis—is the essence of scientific activity. Arguments promote understanding when used to represent knowledge, hypotheses, explanations, or objections to claims. Arguing, however, is also a means of finding agreement in conflicts or controversies. We use arguments to justify positions: positions regarding matters of fact; norms, values, and principles; and recommendations to act. Thus, arguments are crucial for peaceful interaction in face-to-face communication and deliberation, in policy and decision making, in planning, and in sorts of cooperation. Arguments are a lingua franca, a universal language. “Argument” is often used in the confrontational sense of the term. This usage, however, distracts from a more productive function of arguments: the function to support understanding, reflection, and cognitive change. When we understand an argument, we understand the reasoning behind someone’s position. Since there are mostly various ways to argue for a position, we can see in someone’s arguments how this person frames and structures a problem. Conversely, when we are able to construct an argument, we are able to clarify and structure our own thinking, and to change it if we identify gaps, unjustified assumptions, contradictions, or open questions. In order to support understanding and reflection by means of arguments, I developed since 2004 Logical Argument Mapping (LAM), a method of argument visualization. LAM can be used to: · acquire the ability to argue in educational settings · facility communication, collaboration, and reflection on highly complex issues in science, across scientific disciplines, between science and the public, and in policy and decision making · support conflict resolution and cross-cultural understanding by visualizing the inferential structure of framing processes that determine how parties to a conflict make sense of what is going on. Read more. |
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Diagrammatic reasoning is reasoning by means of those external representations that allow, in particular, to visualize the relational structure of reasoning. Although the term attracted only recently greater attention in computer science and cognitive science, its most fruitful discussion, I would argue, can still be found in the writings of Charles Peirce. Crucial for Peirce’s approach is the consideration that diagrammatic reasoning can fulfill its cognitive function as a scaffold for reasoning and a stimulation for creativity only if two conditions are met: first, there must be a well-defined system of representation to construct diagrams and, second, a user must be familiar with the ontology, rules, and conventions that define such a representational system. Logical Argument Mapping (LAM) is such a representational system. Read more. |