Jean H.M. Wagemans

Research on conditional reasoning has long debated whether human rationality is best captured by logicist accounts or by pragmatically oriented approaches such as Relevance Theory, which highlight contextual and communicative factors. While the former predict reliable adherence to logical schemata (e.g., Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens), experimental evidence consistently reveals systematic deviations, such as endorsement of invalid inferences. The latter view attributes such patterns not to irrationality, but to pragmatic expectations that guide interpretation. This study contributes to this debate by examining how logical validity and pragmatic congruency jointly shape the evaluation of conditional arguments. We report two experiments employing a 2 × 2 factorial design. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated conditional syllogisms framed in the standard 'if/then' format. Results showed that pragmatic violations slowed responses and, crucially, facilitated detection of logical invalidity, without hindering performance on valid arguments. Experiment 2 reformulated the same arguments using the Periodic Table of Arguments to replace 'if/then' conditionals with lever-based structures. Here, participants exhibited a generalized tendency to resist conditional inference, resulting in improved rejection of invalid arguments but reduced recognition of valid ones. Across both studies, pragmatic congruency alone did not predict accuracy, but interactions between pragmatic expectations and logical form systematically influenced evaluations. Taken together, the findings suggest that pragmatics does not override logic but modulates its accessibility: violations of pragmatic expectations invite deliberation. At the same time, semantic scaffolding, such as explicit 'if/then' cues, supports deductive reasoning. We propose that natural argumentation depends on this interplay, highlighting the need for situated accounts of logos.

Conceptions of fallacies suggested by philosophers vary significantly. Often these contributions are little more than lists, only sometimes approaching a fully-developed theory of fallacy. Where there is a clear understanding of what is meant by the term fallacy, the problem of how to identify them in discourse remains, often leading to a conflation of descriptive and evaluative analyses. We present a two-tier procedure that strictly distinguishes the descriptive and normative dimensions of identifying fallacies. The combination of the descriptive Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP), which enables the characterization of an argument in terms of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA), and the evaluative Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation (CAPNA), provides a basis for systematic, repeatable, and explainable argument acceptability judgements. We explain how this two-tier procedure overcomes some of the difficulties of fallacy identification and categorization and list several other advantages that a procedural approach to fallacies brings.

Rhetoric has long suffered from the bad reputation Plato assigned to it, being regarded as inferior to dialectic and associated with mere persuasion rather than the pursuit of truth. This paper challenges that narrative by tracing the lingering influence of Plato’s criticisms in contemporary theories of argumentation. Drawing on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic, it reexamines the relationship between the two disciplines and argues for a rehabilitation of rhetoric. Furthermore, inspired by Schleiermacher’s general hermeneutics, it proposes an even more radical reconceptualization: rhetoric should be seen not merely as the complement of dialectic, but the two disciplines together should be viewed as counterparts of hermeneutics. This reconceptualization highlights the independent contribution of rhetoric to the study of human communication, especially in the context of disagreement. In doing so, the paper seeks to free rhetoric from Plato’s spell and affirm its vital place in contemporary thought about argumentation and persuasive communication.

Enthymemes are arguments that are not fully articulated, often omitting a connection between premise and conclusion but sometimes also other information that is crucial for their interpretation. This implicitness poses challenges for the analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse. We use the concept of “argument form” as employed in the argument classification framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments to address this issue. By developing an algorithmic procedure grounded in this concept, we provide a method for explicating missing statements and connections condensed in enthymemes. Our approach contributes to understanding the pragmatics of argumentation, as it offers a formal framework for analysing how the interpretation of implicit elements in argumentation arises from apparent non-sequiturs. The algorithmic procedure we developed can function as a guideline for human annotation of argumentative discourse and is also suitable for implementation in (AI-assisted) annotation software for argument mining.

Metaphors abound in scientific discourse. Well-known examples include ‘the brain as a computer’ and ‘the organism as a machine’. Such metaphors, we argue, have both a theoretical and a practical aspect: they may serve as explanatory models, but also guide technological development, influence policy, reflect ideological assumptions, and reshape how we understand ourselves. These practical dimensions have prompted growing concern about the risks associated with metaphor use in science. While this concern has been widely noted, less attention has been paid to the argumentative forms such criticism may take. This article addresses that gap by reconstructing resistance to scientific metaphors—specifically computer and machine metaphors—as a form of pragmatic argumentation, in which metaphor use is challenged on the basis of its practical consequences. It further shows how such argumentation may be supported by subordinate causal arguments that appeal to the metaphor’s highlighting/hiding structure. Drawing on the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, and analyzing examples from cognitive science, philosophy, and bioethics, the article demonstrates how metaphor resistance can be understood as a reconstructable form of argumentative critique—one in which metaphors become sites of normative contestation.

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred normative framework, our main purpose is to illustrate the complexity of this theme.

This paper examines the conceptual and terminological overlap between theories and models of practical deliberation developed within the fields of Practical Reasoning (PR) and Practical Argumentation (PA). It carefully delineates the volitional, epistemic, normative, and social commitments invoked and explicates various rationales for attributing the label ‘practical’ to instances of reasoning and argumentation. Based on these analyses, the paper develops a new approach to practical deliberation called the Stakeholder Commitment Approach (SCA). By distinguishing between ‘problem holder’ and ‘problem solver’, and specifying the distributions of attributable commitments among the stakeholders, the SCA introduces an extension and refinement of the grounds for assigning the label ‘practical’ that brings PR and PA closer together.

The need for fair and just AI is often related to the possibility of understanding AI itself, in other words, of turning an opaque box into a glass box, as inspectable as possible. Transparency and explainability, however, pertain to the technical domain and to philosophy of science, thus leaving the ethics and epistemology of AI largely disconnected. To remedy this, we propose an integrated approach premised on the idea that a glass-box epistemology should explicitly consider how to incorporate values and other normative considerations, such as intersectoral vulnerabilities, at critical stages of the whole process from design and implementation to use and assessment. To connect ethics and epistemology of AI, we perform a double shift of focus. First, we move from trusting the output of an AI system to trusting the process that leads to the outcome. Second, we move from expert assessment to more inclusive assessment strategies, aiming to facilitate expert and non-expert assessment. Together, these two moves yield a framework usable for experts and non-experts when they inquire into relevant epistemological and ethical aspects of AI systems. We dub our framework ‘epistemology-cum-ethics’ to signal the equal importance of both aspects. We develop it from the vantage point of the designers: how to create the conditions to internalize values into the whole process of design, implementation, use, and assessment of an AI system, in which values (epistemic and non-epistemic) are explicitly considered at each stage and inspectable by every salient actor involved at any moment.

In this paper, we use a pseudo-algorithmic procedure for assessing an AI-generated text. We apply the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation (CAPNA) in evaluating the arguments produced by an Artificial Intelligence text generator, GPT-3, in an opinion piece written for the Guardian newspaper. The CAPNA examines instances of argumentation in three aspects: their Process, Reasoning and Expression. Initial Analysis is conducted using the Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP) to establish, firstly, that an argument is present and, secondly, its specific type in terms of the argument classification framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA). Procedural Questions are then used to test the acceptability of the argument in each of the three aspects. The analysis shows that while the arguments put forward by the AI text generator are varied in terms of their type and follow familiar patterns of human reasoning, they contain obvious weaknesses. From this we can conclude that the automated generation of persuasive, well-reasoned argumentation is a far more difficult task than the generation of meaningful language, and that if AI systems producing arguments are to be persuasive, they require a method of checking the plausibility of their own output.

In this paper, we formulate a procedure for assessing reasoning as it is expressed in natural arguments. The procedure is a specification of one of the three aspects of argumentation assessment distinguished in the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation that makes use of the argument categorisation framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments. The theoretical framework and practical application of both the CAPNA and the PTA are described, as well as the evaluation procedure that combines the two. The procedure is illustrated through an evaluation of the reasoning of two example arguments from a recently published text.

Argument schemes are abstractions substantiating the inferential connection between premise(s) and conclusion in argumentative communication. Identifying such conventional patterns of reasoning is essential to the interpretation and evaluation of argumentation. Whether studying argumentation from a theory-driven or data-driven perspective, insight into the actual use of argumentation in communicative practice is essential. Large and reliably annotated corpora of argumentative discourse to quantitatively provide such insight are few and far between. This is all the more true for argument scheme corpora, which tend to suffer from a combination of limited size, poor validation, and the use of ad hoc restricted typologies. In the current paper, we describe the annotation of schemes on the basis of two distinct classifications: Walton’s taxonomy of argument schemes, and Wagemans’ Periodic Table of Arguments. We describe the annotation procedure for each, and the quantitative characteristics of the resulting annotated text corpora. In doing so, we extend the annotation of the preexisting US2016 corpus of televised election debates, resulting in, to the best of our knowledge, the two largest consistently annotated corpora of schemes in argumentative dialogue publicly available. Based on evaluation in terms of inter-annotator agreement, we propose further improvements to the guidelines for annotating schemes: the argument scheme key, and the Argument Type Identification Procedure.

The practice of justifying scientific explanations generates argumentative patterns in which several types of arguments may play a role. This paper is aimed at identifying these patterns on the basis of an exploration of the institutional conventions regarding the nature, the shape and the quality of scientific explanations as reflected in the writings of influential philosophers of science. First, a basic pattern for justifying scientific explanations is described. Then, two types of extensions of this pattern are presented. These extensions are derived from philosophical accounts of requirements for the quality of explanations and the choice of the best explanation from a number of candidate explanations respectively. The description of the second extension will make clear how pragmatic argumentation plays a role in argumentative patterns within the scientific domain.

In this contribution, I will develop a comprehensive tool for the reconstruction and evaluation of argumentation from expert opinion. This is done by analyzing and then combining two dialectical accounts of this type of argumentation. Walton’s account of the ‘appeal to expert opinion’ provides a number of useful, but fairly unsystematic suggestions for critical questions pertaining to argumentation from expert opinion. The pragma-dialectical account of ‘argumentation from authority’ offers a clear and systematic, but fairly general framework for the reconstruction and evaluation of this type of argumentation. The tool is developed by incorporating Walton’s critical questions into a pragma-dialectical framework.

Abduction is a widely used but deductively invalid type of reasoning. In this paper I will develop a tool for the assessment of argumentation based on abduction that can be used to analyse and evaluate the type of argumentation as it occurs in institutionalized contexts like science and medical diagnosis. I will summarize the most important definitions of abduction and propose an argumentative pattern on the basis of a critical examination of two extant dialectical accounts of the argument scheme involved.

Recent scholarship in the field of argumentation theory has shown an increasing interest in rethinking the relation between dialectic and rhetoric. In the debate concerning this issue, some scholars take the position of ‘isolationists’. They think that fundamental differences exist between the two disciplines and that it is impossible to translate insights developed within the one discipline in terms of the other. Other scholars can be characterized as ‘combinationalists’. They take the position that insights from dialectic and rhetoric can be combined for the purpose of analyzing or evaluating argumentative discourse. Finally, there are ‘integrationalists’, who are of the opinion that the differences between dialectic and rhetoric can be overcome by reconceptualizing the two disciplines and integrating them into an encompassing theory of argumentation. According to these scholars, dialectic and rhetoric study one and the same phenomenon—argumentation understood as the ju ..

The aim of this paper is to indicate the systematic place of arguments based on the concept of analogy within the theoretical framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments, a new method for describing and classifying arguments that integrates traditional dialectical accounts of arguments and fallacies and rhetorical accounts of the means of persuasion (logos, ethos, pathos) into a comprehensive framework. The paper begins with an inventory of existing approaches to arguments based on analogy, similarity and adjacent concepts. Then, the theoretical framework of the table will be expounded and several concrete examples of arguments based on these concepts will be analyzed in terms of the framework. Finally, the results of these analyses will be summarized and it will be indicated how they can be refined in further research related to the Periodic Table of Arguments.