RAIL is pleased to recommend the Special Issue of Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric on Argument and Computation.
If, for some reason, you’re not yet paying attention to the things that are happening in the computation-based wing of argumentation theory, let me ever-so-humbly suggest that you should be. The excellent work being done in this area integrates not only key insights from mainstream contemporary argumentation theory but key insights from the ever-developing field of non-monotonic logic too. Well and truly gone are the days when, as applied to logic, ‘formal’ meant ‘classical’. This is truly exciting stuff. Those with no background in the overlap between argumentation and computation may wish to begin with Chris Reed and Marcin Kosowy’s excellent introduction. Following that, I would recommend Doug Walton’s article, “How to Refute an Argument in Artificial Intelligence” and Marcin Lewinsky’s article too as being particularly friendly to those whose background is heavier in argumentation and/or dialectics (per the Walton-Krabbe model) than in computation as next steps.
This issue is special in that it shows the relevance of computational approaches to nearly every branch of argumentation theory. To look at what some would consider extremes, for example, formal logic is represented in Kazimierz Trzęsicki’s excellent treatment of the problem of argument classification, but so is rhetoric in the article by Katarzyna Budzyńska and Magdalena Kacprzak, that represents the latest extension of their work at the time of this writing.
It is timely too. For those who have an interest in the way that argumentation is carried out through the medium of the internet this issue will be very useful indeed. The aforementioned article by Lewinsky covers this ground as does the article by Karolina Stefanowicz. Those interested in contemporary pragma-dialetctics will also find much to pique their interest here, especially the article by the team of Jacky Visser, Floris Bex, Chris Reed and Bart Garssen.
Though of course the computational wing of argumentation theory is established and thriving in departments all over the world, I think this issue of Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric also shows the variety of good things that are happening in what is becoming the vibrant argumentation theory community of Warsaw. We should all be paying attention.
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