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Archive for July, 2010

Call for Papers: ARGAIP 2010

Posted in CFP, tagged , on July 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

1st Workshop on Argumentation in Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy: Computational and Philosophical Perspectives

http://wsarg2010.ing.unibs.it/

Part of the 11th Symposium of the Italian Association for the Artificial
Intelligence

Brescia, December 1-3, 2010

Argumentation is an important and exciting research topic that cuts
across a variety of disciplines: Philosophy, Psychology, Communications
Studies and Computer Science, in particular Artificial Intelligence. In
spite of the wide range of disciplines interested in Argumentation,
scientific communities tend to be organized along disciplinary
boundaries, with only moderate integration occurring between
computational models and philosophical theories of Argumentation. This
workshop aims to rectify this situation, bringing together people
from various disciplines (most notably, Artificial Intelligence,
Philosophy, and Psychology) and asking them to compare their methods and
results in the study of Argumentation.
(more…)

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Call for Papers: Special Issue of Culture, Language, and Representation

Posted in CFP on July 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The journal Culture, Language and Representation seeks contributions for volume 9 to be published in May 2011.

The issue will be devoted to the interface between politics and discursive practices.

Possible topics for analysis would include:

– Critical discourse analysis of political rhetoric.
– Ideology and representation in political discourse.
– The interface of political discourse and the media.
– The role of social networking in conforming political discourse.
– The internet and political campaigning: new rhetorical strategies.
– Representations of power and politics in the Arts, literature and cinema.
– Countercultural discourses and their dissemination in society.
– The construction of social reality at the interface of political discourse, sources of power and the media.

Both theoretical articles and case studies are welcome.

Deadline for submissions: September 10th, 2010.

Please, send your contributions via e-mail to:
Articles in English: Jose R. Prado, e-mail: prado@ang.uji.es
Articles in Spanish: José Luis Blas, e-mail: blas@fil.uji.es

Questions or queries should be addressed to the editors at the e-mail addresses above.

Journal website: http://www.clr.uji.es/

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Is Punditry Ethical?

Posted in Connections, Discussion, Rhetoric, tagged , , , , on July 16, 2010| 1 Comment »

An interesting distinction is made by Andrew Cline in this recent post on his rhetoric and journalism blog, Rhetorica, between “punditry” and “opinion journalism”.

According to Cline, opinion journalism is reporting informed by or explicitly written from a particular political perspective.  It includes acting as a “custodian of fact” and observing a “discipline of verification”.  The offers this description of that discipline via a link to an older post:

A discipline of verification should be basic to any practice that we would understand as journalism. Practicing such a discipline means that journalists must be custodians of fact, i.e. journalists should get to the bottom of civic disputes by gathering and verifying facts rather than simply allowing interested sources to spout off. Journalists should protect the facts from those who would spin them, ignore them, or distort them. When journalists don’t practice this discipline, they are guilty of spinning, ignoring, and distorting, often in the name of fairness and balance.

As to being a custodian of fact, Cline has this to say in another older post on Rhetorica:

What I’m getting at here is this: facts are not necessarily easy things to nail down unless we’re measuring (and even then we can run into problems). […] There can be no argument over facts in themselves. We argue about how facts are measured and what facts mean. And we argue about assertions of fact until such assertions are established as fact. Reporters should consider the statements by sources as assertions of fact until such time as the reporter can establish them as facts. The news organization, then, should not publish unverified assertions without disclaimers or qualifiers.

In contrast to opinion journalism, according to Cline, punditry is simply about “winning politically” and does not include the imperatives to be a custodian of fact or to follow a discipline of verification.

(more…)

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Pictures from ISSA 2010

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on July 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

For those who may have missed it, or for those who may want to revisit the experience, the conference organizers have posted some pictures of goings on at the Seventh ISSA conference.  Those of you who were in attendance will be happy to know that we all look remarkably comfortable despite the heat wave. Perhaps argumentation theorists just know how to keep their cool…

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New Site on Argument Mapping

Posted in Teaching, tagged , , , , on July 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Browsing the Argumentation Blog today turned up this announcement of an interesting website devoted to argument mapping, created by argument mapping guru Tim van Gelder.  The site is aimed at university level educators, and offers a kind of clearinghouse of information and resources on the subject of argument mapping, including links to trial versions of van Gelder’s mapping software.  I’ve added the link to the “Other Resources” section here on RAIL (see the right hand column near the end), but thought that it might be of enough interest to warrant an announcement here too given that summer is the time that many of us prepare for our Fall teaching obligations.

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Cognitive Dissonance, Deep Disagreement, and the Loch Ness Monster

Posted in Connections, Discussion, Rationality, Rhetoric, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Cognitive dissonance is one of the best established notions in psychology.  Simply put (perhaps too simply) the idea is that people in general will go to almost any length to hold onto a cherished belief, no matter how strong the evidence against it is, and no matter how irrational the attempt to do so may seem (or actually be).   In a recent posting on his blog Ben Goldacre talks about a recent article in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology that focuses on this effect in cases where subjects dismiss well-founded scientific data that contradicts their beliefs.

While reading this discussion I kept returning in memory to a session I attended at ISSA a couple of weeks ago on deep disagreement. Two of the papers presented focused extensively on strategies for resolving deep disagreements.   David Zarefsky presented a battery of strategies none of which, interestingly, involved a direct attack on the belief(s) at the heart of the disagreement.  Manfred Kraus’s proposal was that deep disagreement be dealt with by “anti-logical” reasoning after the fashion of the Sophist, Protagoras.   I’m no expert on the Sophists but as I understood the paper Kraus seemed to be suggesting that in anti-logical reasoning it’s not so much the partisans of the contradictory views that work out their disagreement as it is the audience to the dispute, who act in the role of judge.

(more…)

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CEAR Second International Conference on Logic, Argumentation, and Critical Thinking

Posted in CFP, tagged on July 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

October 7-9, 2010

Diego Portalés University
Santiago, Chile

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Eveline Feteris, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Chris Reed, University of Dundee, Scotland
Luis Vega, UNED, Spain
Michael A. Gilbert, York University, Canada

The International Conference Logic, Argumentation and Critical Thinking II is a new academic effort of our Centre to continue what was started with the first Conference in January 2008. Just as with the first Conference, in which we were together with researchers from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, The Netherlands, United States, and Uruguay, in this second conference we are not only trying to deepen and update the production of knowledge in the fields that this conference covers, but we are also trying to contribute to a positive valuation of different proposals that develop critical thinking and promote social debate with a standard of reasonableness.

This Conference, organized by the Centre for the Study of Argumentation and Reasoning (CEAR) of the Faculty of Psychology at Diego Portales University, would like to generate tools, approaches and solutions to apply in those fields in which the uses of reason is fundamental: communication, law, education, etc.

We do not have an official theoretical position, but rather we value the diversity of angles and proposals. We invite the scientific international community, which works in the topics of the Conference, to participate and share its knowledge, experience and current challenges.
The organizing committee invites proposal for papers in logic, informal logic, argumentation theory, rhetoric, critical thinking.

ABSTRACTS prepared for blind refereeing must be submitted electronically no later than August 16, 2010, to Cristián Santibáñez: cristian.santibanez@udp.cl

Abstracts should be between 200 and 250 words long, in APA format.
Official languages of the Conference: Spanish and English.

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Fourth Tokyo Conference on Argumentation: The Role of Argumentation in Society

Posted in CFP, tagged on July 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

August 10-12, 2012
Sponsored by the Japan Debate Association (JDA)

Keynote Speakers

David Zarefsky, PhD        Yoshiro Yano, PhD
Northwestern University     Chuo University

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 4th Tokyo Conference on Argumentation will be held August 10-12, 2012, in Tokyo, Japan. The conference is sponsored by the Japan Debate Association (JDA). The conference is designed to encourage exchanges of views on the theory, practice and instruction of argumentation across the disciplines. Presentations related to the convention theme “The Role of Argumentation in Society” are encouraged, but proposals are not restricted to it. Potential topics of interest include: argumentation and rhetoric, forensic pedagogy, the philosophy and psychology of reasoning, practical studies, and studies of historical argumentative texts. Qualified papers will appear in our Proceedings to be distributed at the Conference.

On-line submission of abstracts will be accepted starting December 15, 2010. Submit your title, affiliation and abstract (200-300 words) by January 15, 2012, on our web site at: http://japan-debate-assoociation.org/tokyo_conference/ Acceptance will be notified by February 20, 2012. Accepted authors who wish to have their papers considered for publication in the Proceedings must submit full manuscript by May 20, 2012. If you have questions, please contact Planning Committee Chair Takeshi Suzuki,  School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, 1-9-1 Eifuku, Suginami, Tokyo 168-8555 JAPAN, or ask your question at: http://japan-debate-organization.org/form/question.html

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ISSA 2010: A Note

Posted in Connections, Discussion, tagged on July 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

So, about that “live from ISSA” thing…

Yeah, that kinda didn’t happen.  Perhaps it was the punishing heat, abnormal for Amsterdam at this time of year.  Perhaps it was jetlag.  It may even have been that the papers were so incredibly interesting that the poor writer’s brain simply collapsed under the strain at the end of each day.  Or it might have been bewitchment at the charm and beauty of this famous city.  Perhaps it was all of these. We will never know.  All that can be done at this point is to beg the good reader’s indulgence.  It was rather more challenging to find the time to write than I expected.

Prior to coming here I had heard many things about what to expect, and it turns out that all of the nice things I heard were true.  The Dutch are friendly and relaxed, the cafes are excellent, and the city truly is beautiful by day and by night, offering enough history, art, and architecture to make one wonder just why there is so much activity in that one part of town, anyway.  The city certainly deserves to be on everyone’s travel agenda.  It is lovely.

ISSA too, was pleasant and highly rewarding.  I spent most of my time over the three days in sessions on rationality and reasonableness and argument schemes. I  heard quite a few interesting papers. I may write about some of them later here once I’ve had time to sit down, look over my notes, and think through them again. In addition to the papers, there were a great many conversations, at lunch and at receptions and informal gatherings too at which I learned a good deal.  These, in addition to being remarkably pleasant despite the heat, and a testament to the fundamental good will of argumentation theorists generally, were often as enlightening as the sessions themselves.

All in all it was a great conference in a fine city.  With any luck I’ll be able to make a return trip in 2012. That is, of course, provided the Aztec god doesn’t jump out of the Mexican jungle and devour the world before then.  It would be a shame if that did happen.  Those pancakes really are fantastic. 🙂

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