Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome | |||
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Argumentation: Argumentation is the process of presenting and evaluating reasons or evidence to support or refute a claim or position. It aims to establish rational conclusions through logical analysis._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Marvin Minsky on Argumentation - Dictionary of Arguments
I 190 Arguments/Strength of theories/Artificial Intelligence/Minsky: When people disagree, we often say that one side's position seems stronger than the other. But what has strength to do with reasoning? In logic, arguments are simply either right or wrong, since there is not the slightest room for matters of degree. But in real life, few arguments are ever absolutely sure, so we simply have to learn how various forms of reasoning are likely to go wrong. Then we can use different methods to make our chains of reasoning harder to break. a) [stronger]: Parallelism: One method is to use several different arguments to prove the same point — putting them in parallel. Then, though no one of these tricks is perfectly secure, the combination cannot fail unless [all] things go wrong at once. b) [weaker]: Chain: all those parts form a long and slender chain no stronger than its weakest link. I 191 Here are two different strategies for deciding whether one group of reasons should be considered stronger than another. 1. The first strategy tries to compare opposing arguments in terms of magnitudes, by analogy to how two physical forces interact: Strength from Magnitude: When two forces work together, they add to form a single larger force. But when two forces oppose each other directly, their strengths subtract. 2. Our second strategy is simply to count how many different reasons you can find for choosing each alternative: Strength from Multitude: The more reasons we can find in favor of a particular decision, the more confidence we can have in it. This is because if some of those reasons turn out to be wrong, other reasons may still remain. Strength: Whichever strategy we use, we tend to speak of the winning argument as the stronger one. But why do we use the same word strong for two such different strategies? It is because we use them both for the same purpose: to reduce the likelihood of failure. >Strength of theories, >Stronger/weaker, >Reasons, >Justification, >Ultimate justification. What makes us so prone to formulate our reasoning in terms of conflicting adversaries? Cf. >Dialogical Logic. It must be partly cultural, but some of it could also be based on inheritance. >Culture, >Cultural tradition._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Minsky I Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind New York 1985 Minsky II Marvin Minsky Semantic Information Processing Cambridge, MA 2003 |