The paper tries to spell out a connection between deductive logic and rationality, against Harman's arguments that there is no such connection, and also against the thought that any such connection would preclude rational change in logic. One might not need to connect logic to rationality if one could view logic as the science of what preserves truth by a certain kind of necessity (or by necessity plus logical form); but the paper points out a serious obstacle to any such (...) view. (shrink)

It is a commonly-held belief that ignorance excuses. But what of moral ignorance? Is a person blameless who acts from “false” moral principles? In this paper I shall try to show that such a person is blameworthy. I shall produce an argument that connects the acceptance of moral principles with character, character with moral responsibility, and moral responsibility with the justifiability of blame.

1. Of what use is the concept of causation? Bertrand Russell [1912-13] argued that it is not useful: it is “a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” His argument for this was that the kind of physical theories that we have come to regard as fundamental leave no place for the notion of causation: not only does the word ‘cause’ not appear in the advanced sciences, but (...) the laws that these sciences state are incompatible with causation as we normally understand it. But Nancy Cartwright has argued [1979] that abandoning the concept of causation would cripple science; her conclusion was based not on fundamental physics, but on more ordinary science such as the search for the causes of cancer. She argues that Russell was right that the fundamental theories of modern physics say nothing, even implicitly, about causation, and concludes on this basis that such theories are incomplete. It is with this cluster of issues that I will begin my discussion. (shrink)

It might be thought that we could argue for the consistency of a mathematical theory T within T, by giving an inductive argument that all theorems of T are true and inferring consistency. By Gödel's second incompleteness theorem any such argument must break down, but just how it breaks down depends on the kind of theory of truth that is built into T. The paper surveys the possibilities, and suggests that some theories of truth give far more intuitive (...) diagnoses of the breakdown than do others. The paper concludes with some morals about the nature of validity and about a possible alternative to the idea that mathematical theories are indefinitely extensible. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

This book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explaining this crucial fact opens new paths to understanding the current resurgence AI (especially, deep learning AI and robotics), what happens when philosophy meets (...) science, and the role of philosophy in the culture in which it is embedded. -/- Organising the arguments into four core topics - 'Is AI possible', 'Architectures of the Mind', 'Mental Semantics and Mental Symbols' and 'Rationality and Creativity' - this book shows the debate that played out between the philosophers on both sides of the question, and, as well, the debate between philosophers and AI scientists and engineers building AI systems. Up-to-date and forward-looking, the book is packed with fresh insights and supporting material, including: -/- - Accessible introductions to each war, explaining the background behind the main arguments against AI - Each chapter details what happened in the AI wars, the legacy of the attacks, and what new controversies are on the horizon. - Extensive bibliography of key readings. (shrink)

Is there really such a thing as moral progress? Do we get any better as time goes on? It is a question which must often exercise the minds of those who reflect on moral questions at all. And it is a frequent topic of discussion, both in private conversations and in the written contributions of a good many of our popular philosophers. Of some of these contributions one may safely say that their chief value is as a warning against the (...) dangers of hasty generalization on a subject such as this. And, taking advantage of such a warning, I shall make no attempt to give a final or dogmatic answer to this question. All I can try to do, within the limits of a single lecture, is to disentangle some of the most important considerations that seem to be in people's minds in discussing this question, and to estimate their importance as arguments on one side or the other. (shrink)

The common practice of advancing arguments based on current physics in support of metaphysical conclusions has been criticized on the grounds that current physics may well be wrong. A further criticism is leveled here: current physics itself depends on metaphysical assumptions, so arguing from current physics is in fact arguing from yet more metaphysics. It is shown that the metaphysical assumptions underlying current physics are often deeply embedded in the formalism in which theories are presented, and hence impossible to dismiss (...) as mere motivational or interpretative speculation. It is then shown that such assumptions, when made explicit, can wreck havoc on otherwise-sensible philosophical arguments. It is argued in conclusion that this situation is both unlikely to be reparable just by being more careful, and unlikely to go away as further, presumably more subtle physical theories are developed. (shrink)

The development of bioethics primarily at the cognitive level further perpetuates the tendency to construe all aspects of our lives, including our bodies, as technical systems. For example, if we consider the moral issue of organ sales without taking our embodiment into account, there appear to be no sound arguments for opposing such sales. However, it is important to consider the aspects of the phenomenal body that challenge rational deliberation by exploring an embodied approach to the ethical dilemma produced by (...) a proposed kidney exchange as presented in one of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Dekalog films. What is sought is a description of a body-measure that would serve as a critique of strictly cognitive bioethical deliberations. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the fictionalist conception of mathematics, and on how it accommodates the obvious fact that mathematical claims are important in application to the physical world. It also replies to Maddy's argument that fictionalism does not have the epistemological advantage over Platonism that it appears to have; the reply involves a discussion of whether mathematics should be regarded as conservative over second order physical theories as well as first order ones.

A. Belden Fields invites people to think more deeply about human rights in this book in an attempt to overcome many of the traditional arguments in the human rights literature. He argues that human rights should be reconceptualized in a holistic way to combine philosophical, historical, and empirical-practical dimensions. Human rights are viewed not as a set of universal abstractions but rather as a set of past and ongoing social practices rooted in the claims and struggles of peoples against (...) what they consider to be political, economic, or social domination. By aptly showing how a people’s fight for recognition is often closely tied to rights claims, Fields argues that these connections to identity can help bridge the gulf between universalistic and cultural relativistic arguments in the human rights debate. (shrink)

The central argument of Youpa's book is that Spinoza's moral philosophy offers a distinctive variety of moral realism, grounded in a standard of human nature. In this review essay, I provide an overview of Youpa's remarkably lucid interpretation of Spinoza. However, I also critique Youpa's conception of the 'free man' as an objective standard of perfection which (a) applies equally to all humans, and (b) which has objective moral force in the sense that it ought to be approached. I (...) sketch an alternative reading of Spinoza which denies a shared human essence, and which denies that an individual ought to become more perfect than they in fact are. I argue that Youpa's reading rests on the conflation of Spinoza's concepts of active power and adequate causation. I then suggest that Youpa's resultant excessive focus on a rational human essence as 'what we fundamentally are' leads him to downplay a more developmental and imaginative dimension to Spinoza's moral philosophy. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Descartes' proof of the existence of matter as found in Meditation VI--an interpretation that is, I believe, the only one consistent with the relevant texts. The one guiding principle I use in offering this interpretation is the principle of charity, that is, when one interprets any philosopher's argument, and unsound argument should not be accepted as his unless there is no alternative interpretive argument that is (...) both sound and consistent with the relevant texts of that philosopher. (shrink)

Significant global events in recent years have had a substantial impact on the nursing profession. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and systemic racism are a few of the many complex issues that create a landscape of disruption and uncertainty in healthcare. With the aims of protecting both people and the planet, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals offer a road map to combat these global concerns, yet require more widespread consideration as a way forward. Education on the Sustainable Development Goals (...) is recognised as a key aspect for healthcare professionals to take action towards achieving the targets of the goals. For student nurses, the undergraduate curriculum offers an opportunity to enculturate future nurses on the important role they play in the global agenda to transform our world. Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire's theoretical approach to education, critical pedagogy, espouses transformation with conscientization, dialogue and liberation, which may create a paradigm shift toward global action. This discussion paper seeks to provide an argument for embedding the Sustainable Development Goals into nursing curricula using the philosophies of Freire's critical pedagogy. It will argue that a critical approach to education is required to create the transformation needed for student nurses to be educated on the Sustainable Development Goals. (shrink)

This review discusses the thesis advanced by Sarah Summers in her recent book. In particular it examines the three radical claims that structure her argument. First, that the commonly used analytical distinction between adversarial and inquisitorial traditions in criminal procedure should be abandoned. Secondly, that since the Continental reforms of the 19th century, criminal procedure can best be understood in terms of a single European procedural tradition. Thirdly, that the European Court of Human Rights has misconstrued the logic of (...) that single European procedural tradition by failing to understand that it involves the rejection of a ‘determinative’ pre-trial phase. Each of Summers’ three arguments is subjected to critical analysis and ultimately rejected as innovative and stimulating but flawed. (shrink)

Is there really such a thing as moral progress? Do we get any better as time goes on? It is a question which must often exercise the minds of those who reflect on moral questions at all. And it is a frequent topic of discussion, both in private conversations and in the written contributions of a good many of our popular philosophers. Of some of these contributions one may safely say that their chief value is as a warning against the (...) dangers of hasty generalization on a subject such as this. And, taking advantage of such a warning, I shall make no attempt to give a final or dogmatic answer to this question. All I can try to do, within the limits of a single lecture, is to disentangle some of the most important considerations that seem to be in people's minds in discussing this question, and to estimate their importance as arguments on one side or the other. (shrink)

This paper attempts a comprehensive account of the comparative merits of paracomplete and dialetheic approaches to the semantic paradoxes. It argues that aside from issues about conditionals, there can be no strong case for paracomplete approaches over dialetheic, or dialetheic over paracomplete, and indeed that in absence of conditionals, the two approaches are plausibly seen as notational variants. Graham Priest disagrees: many of his arguments favoring dialetheic solutions over paracomplete do not turn on issues about conditionals. The paper discusses his (...) arguments on these points in some detail. On the matter of conditionals, it argues that extant paracomplete approaches are far better than extant dialetheic approaches, a fact that traces in part to dialetheists having focused too heavily on “relevant logics”. It holds out hope for better dialetheic treatments of conditionals, but it also suggests that this is the one area where paracomplete approaches are inevitably better. (shrink)

I show that Eric Winsberg’s principles of model-building given in Science in the Age of Computer Simulation are insufficient to argue for the external validation of simulation data in cases in which simulation results conflict, and that laboratory experiments have an advantage over simulations because conflicting experimental results can be decided between on the basis of reproducibility. I also argue that robustness of predictions serves the same function for simulations as repeatability does for laboratory experiments in either adjudicating between conflicting (...) results or allowing us to say that we do not have sufficient justification to validate the results. Finally, I argue for an interpretation of the argument from robustness that appeals to the convergence of many well-built and diverse models rather than the more common interpretation which appeals to the probability that one of a set of models is likely to be true. (shrink)

This is an important book: It is the most sustained defense of a minimalist conception of truth in print. It systematically deals with all of the usual objections to minimalist views of truth, in most cases providing devastating replies to them; and it contains interesting things to say about many issues that are or have been thought to be connected to the topic of truth. Its arguments are lucid and of high quality, and it is broad in scope. I recommend (...) it with enthusiasm. (shrink)

This is an important book: It is the most sustained defense of a minimalist conception of truth in print. It systematically deals with all of the usual objections to minimalist views of truth, in most cases providing devastating replies to them; and it contains interesting things to say about many issues that are or have been thought to be connected to the topic of truth. Its arguments are lucid and of high quality, and it is broad in scope. I recommend (...) it with enthusiasm. (shrink)

I offer a line of argument that aims at the conclusion that the notion of radically different and incommensurable systems of value is incoherent, which would mean that the presumption of some significant common ground of valuation is rationally required in value inquiry.

In this dissertation I offer a theory of intrinsic value based on contextualist principles drawn from the value theories of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. The point of departure for the argument is the contextualist view that the qualitative patters representing in experience objects of states of affairs to which we attribute values provide necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to elicit particular valuations, and ground the evaluative judgments we make. The sufficient conditions for valuation include a broader context (...) of memories, beliefs, and peripheral qualia that combine in an integral experiential whole whose value is not reducible to that of its parts. It is first argued that value is, as G.E. Moore suggested, a simple, indefinable property. This property is emergent from experiential qualitative patterns in the sense that value is conditioned by the patterns, but is not itself a condition of them. An analysis of experiential qualitative pattern is then offered, which indicates how some parts of these patterns are focused on in evaluative judgment as crucial for the reproduction of particular values through practical action, whereas the influence of other parts is largely ignored, thus forming a relatively constant experiential context. Finally, a theory of evaluative judgment is offered based on contextualist principles. It is suggested that a contextualist theory can answer the challenge of value relativism by showing how evaluative judgment is 'position relative' rather than 'author relative'. That is, two subjects many come to different evaluative judgments on account of their differing positions or situations, while both may agree that the other's judgment is sound given his or her situation. (shrink)

At the centre of Powers' (2019) China and England is an extraordinary forgotten episode in the history of political ideas. There was a time when English radicals critiqued the corruption and injustice of the English political system by contrasting it with the superior example of China. There was a time when they advocated adopting a Chinese conceptual framework for thinking about politics. So dominant and prevalent was the English radicals' use of this framework, that their opponents took to dismissing their (...) points as 'the argument from the Chinese'. In my review of Powers' book, I welcome the profound reconfiguration of our political understandings that knowledge of this historical episode brings. However, I question Powers' framing presumption that the generic problems of any complex society lead to convergence on a single master political value of 'social justice'. Surely there are deep and enduring differences amongst thinkers of political value, even within a single society, let alone across different societies. Taking this point seriously would challenge the simple linear directionality of Powers' story of moral and political progress. (shrink)

Theoretical arguments and empirical investigations indicate that a high proportion of published findings do not replicate and are likely false. The current position paper provides a broad perspective on scientific error, which may lead to replication failures. This broad perspective focuses on reform history and on opportunities for future reform. We organize our perspective along four main themes: institutional reform, methodological reform, statistical reform and publishing reform. For each theme, we illustrate potential errors by narrating the story of a fictional (...) researcher during the research cycle. We discuss future opportunities for reform. The resulting agenda provides a resource to usher in an era that is marked by a research culture that is less error-prone and a scientific publication landscape with fewer spurious findings. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago, field theory was among the most contested issues in argumentation studies. Today, the situation is very different. In fact, field theory has almost disappeared from disciplinary debates, a development which might suggest that the concept is not a useful aspect of argumentation theory. In contrast, I argue that while field studies are rarely useful, field theory provides an essential underpinning to any close analysis of an argumentative controversy. I then argue that the conflicting approaches to argument (...) fields were in fact not inconsistent, but instead reflected different aspects of field practices. A coherent approach to field theory can be developed by considering the way that all aspects of argumentative practice develop based on the purposes of arguers in an argumentative context. I then extend that position to argue that a justifiable theory of argumentation, which makes claims beyond the descriptive, must have at its core an analysis of the way that purpose constrains argumentation practice. In this view, the ultimate justification of principles found in a prescriptive or evaluative theory of argument must be in the way those principles fulfill practical problem-solving purposes related to the epistemic function of argument. (shrink)

Toulmin’s DWC model recognizes a plurality of argument cultures through the thesis of field dependency: that the normative features of arguments vary from one field to the next. Yet, little consensus exists concerning the nature and foundations of argument fields. This paper explores the question of whether Toulminian fields have any useful role to play in the epistemic evaluation of arguments.

Hartry Field's formulation of an epistemological argument against platonism is only valid if knowledge is constrained by a causal clause. Contrary to recent claims (e.g. in Liggins (2006), Liggins (2010)), Field's argument therefore fails the very same criterion usually taken to discredit Benacerraf's earlier version.

In this article I subject to criticism Field's argument, according to which field theory takes space-time to be substance since it ascribes field properties to space-time points. There is petitio principii error made in this reasoning because Field does not give any justification for his controversial assumption that fields are properties of space-time points. What is more, I suggest, Field's interpretation of field theory is incompatible with the way this theory is understood and utilized by its users, namely (...) scientists. My criticism is based on the assumption that one cannot propose an ontology of a given scientific theory, at the same time imposing on it an interpretation which clashes with the interpretation current among its users. I also suggest that in order to establish the ontology of a scientific theory one should also take into account the way it has been constructed. According to this criterion, field theory does indeed take space-time to be a substance. (shrink)

The ability to analyze arguments is critical for higher-level reasoning, yet previous research suggests that standard university education provides at best modest improvements in students’ analytical reasoning abilities. What techniques are most effective for cultivating these skills? Here we investigate the effectiveness of a 12-week undergraduate seminar in which students practice a software-based technique for visualizing the logical structures implicit in argumen- tative texts. Seminar students met weekly to analyze excerpts from contemporary analytic philosophy papers, completed argument visualization problem (...) sets, and received individualized feedback on a weekly basis. We found that Seminar students improved substantially more on LSAT Logical Reasoning test forms than Control students (d = .71, p < .001), suggesting that learning how to visualize arguments in the seminar led to large generalized improvements in students’ analytical reasoning skills. Moreover, blind scoring of final essays from Seminar students and Control students, drawn from a parallel lecture course, revealed large differences in favor of seminar students (d = 0.87, p = .005). Seminar students understood the arguments better, and their essays were more accurate and effectively structured. Taken together, these findings deepen our understanding of how visualizations support logical reasoning, and provide a model for improving analytical reasoning pedagogy. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments purport to show that robust moral realism, the metaethical view that there are non-natural and mind-independent moral properties and facts that we can know about, is incompatible with evolutionary explanations of morality. One of the most prominent evolutionary debunking arguments is advanced by Sharon Street, who argues that if moral realism were true, then objective moral knowledge is unlikely because realist moral properties are evolutionary irrelevant and moral beliefs about those properties would not be selected for. However, (...) no evolutionary, causal explanation plays an essential role in reaching the argument’s epistemological conclusion. Street’s argument depends on the Benacerraf-Field challenge, which is the challenge to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs about causally inert moral properties. The Benacerraf-Field challenge relies on metaphysically necessary facts about realist moral properties, rather than on contingent Darwinian facts about the origin of our moral beliefs. Attempting to include an essential causal empirical premise yet avoiding recourse to the Benacerraf-Field problem yields an argument that is either self-defeating or of limited scope. Ultimately, evolutionary, causal explanations of our moral beliefs and their consequences do not present the strongest case against robust moral realism. Rather, the question is whether knowledge of casually-inert, mind-intendent properties is plausible at all. (shrink)

This paper analyses a hitherto unknown technique of using logic diagrams to create argument maps in eristic dialectics. The method was invented in the 1810s and -20s by Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered the originator of modern eristic. This technique of Schopenhauer could be interesting for several branches of research in the field of argumentation: Firstly, for the field of argument mapping, since here a hitherto unknown diagrammatic technique is shown in order to visualise possible situations of arguments (...) in a dialogical controversy. Secondly, the art of controversy or eristic, since the diagrams do not analyse the truth of judgements and the validity of inferences, but the persuasiveness of arguments in a dialogue. (shrink)

Wave function realism is an interpretative framework for quantum theories which recommends taking the central ontology of these theories to consist of the quantum wave function, understood as a field on a high-dimensional space. This paper presents and evaluates three standard arguments for wave function realism, and clarifies the sort of ontological framework these arguments support.

Argumentation, which can be abstractly defined as the interaction of different arguments for and against some conclusion, is an important skill to learn for everyday life, law, science, politics and business. The best way to learn it is to try it out on real instances of arguments found in everyday conversational exchanges and legal argumentation. The introductory chapter of this book gives a clear general idea of what the methods of argumentation are and how they work as tools that can (...) be used to analyze arguments. Each subsequent chapter then applies these methods to a leading problem of argumentation. Today the field of computing has embraced argumentation as a paradigm for research in artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. Another purpose of this book is to present and refine tools and techniques from computing as components of the methods that can be handily used by scholars in other fields. (shrink)

Winner of the National Business Book Award From the New York Times bestselling author of The Organized Mind and This Is Your Brain on Music, a primer to the critical thinking that is more necessary now than ever We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process—especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. New York Times bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written (...) reports, revealing the ways lying weasels can use them. It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, and distortions from reliable information? Levitin groups his field guide into two categories—statistical information and faulty arguments—ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking. Infoliteracy means understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds via every media channel, including social media. We may expect newspapers, bloggers, the government, and Wikipedia to be factually and logically correct, but they so often aren't. We need to think critically about the words and numbers we encounter if we want to be successful at work, at play, and in making the most of our lives. This means checking the plausibility and reasoning—not passively accepting information, repeating it, and making decisions based on it. Readers learn to avoid the extremes of passive gullibility and cynical rejection. Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And catch some weasels in their tracks! (shrink)

Virtue-based approaches have attracted significant recent interest in argumentation, including a recent anthology of Chinese translations of important articles in the field. In this article, adapted from the introduction to that anthology, we discuss the origins of virtue argumentation and some of the challenges it has faced, as well as attempt to provide an overview of recent work on the virtues and vices relevant to argumentation. In the final section we discuss the articles that were selected and motivate their selection.

Quantum field theory (QFT) presents a genuine example of the underdetermination of theory by empirical evidence. There are variants of QFT—for example, the standard textbook formulation and the rigorous axiomatic formulation—that are empirically indistinguishable yet support different interpretations. This case is of particular interest to philosophers of physics because, before the philosophical work of interpreting QFT can proceed, the question of which variant should be subject to interpretation must be settled. New arguments are offered for basing the interpretation of QFT (...) on a rigorous axiomatic variant of the theory. The pivotal considerations are the roles that consistency and idealization play in this case. *Received June 2009; revised August 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with argumentation in legal proceedings, namely in criminal cases. My interest is to explore how in the legal realm different argumentation fields interact, the juridical field being just one of them. The paper lays out an approach of studying argumentation in the legal realm in the framework of an ethnographic methodology by identifying the “topical rules” the participants in criminal trials adhere to. Suggesting the notion of field-dependence as a good starting point for the analysis (...) of legal argumentation, I will give several examples of different fields of argumentation interacting in criminal proceedings. The examination of what counts as a good reason and how arguments are employed, negotiated, and evaluated within a criminal proceeding might shed light on the practice of constructing facts and arriving at decisions in court. It can furthermore point at the constitution of legal rationality and how it is produced in criminal trials. I argue that rationality in criminal proceedings is interactively accomplished by negotiating different standards of validity. (shrink)

This book provides an argumentation model for means-end reasoning, a distinctive type of reasoning used for problem-solving gand decision-making. Means-end reasoning is modeled as goal-directed argumentation from an agent's goals and known circumstances, and from an action selected as a means, to a decision to carry out the action. Goal-based reasoning for argumentation provides an argumentation model for this kind of reasoning, showing how it is employed in settings of intelligent deliberation where agents try to collectively arrive at a conclusion (...) on what they should do to move forward in a set of circumstances. The book explains how this argumentation model can help build more realistic computational systems of deliberation and decision-making and shows how such systems can be applied to solve problems posed by goal-based reasoning in numerous fields, from social psychology and sociology, to law, political science, anthropology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems, and robotics." -- Back cover. (shrink)

Argumentation mining is an application of natural language processing (NLP) that emerged a few years ago and has recently enjoyed considerable popularity, as demonstrated by a series of international workshops and by a rising number of publications at the major conferences and journals of the field. Its goals are to identify argumentation in text or dialogue; to construct representations of the constellation of claims, supporting and attacking moves (in different levels of detail); and to characterize the patterns of reasoning that (...) appear to license the argumentation. Furthermore, recent work also addresses the difficult tasks of evaluating the persuasiveness and quality of arguments. Some of the linguistic genres that are being studied include legal text, student essays, political discourse and debate, newspaper editorials, scientific writing, and others. The book starts with a discussion of the linguistic perspective, characteristics of argumentative language, and their relationship to certain other notions such as subjectivity. Besides the connection to linguistics, argumentation has for a long time been a topic in Artificial Intelligence, where the focus is on devising adequate representations and reasoning formalisms that capture the properties of argumentative exchange. It is generally very difficult to connect the two realms of reasoning and text analysis, but we are convinced that it should be attempted in the long term, and therefore we also touch upon some fundamentals of reasoning approaches. Then the book turns to its focus, the computational side of mining argumentation in text. We first introduce a number of annotated corpora that have been used in the research. From the NLP perspective, argumentation mining shares subtasks with research fields such as subjectivity and sentiment analysis, semantic relation extraction, and discourse parsing. Therefore, many technical approaches are being borrowed from those (and other) fields. We break argumentation mining into a series of subtasks, starting with the preparatory steps of classifying text as argumentative (or not) and segmenting it into elementary units. Then, central steps are the automatic identification of claims, and finding statements that support or oppose the claim. For certain applications, it is also of interest to compute a full structure of an argumentative constellation of statements. Next, we discuss a few steps that try to 'dig deeper': to infer the underlying reasoning pattern for a textual argument, to reconstruct unstated premises (so-called 'enthymemes'), and to evaluate the quality of the argumentation. We also take a brief look at 'the other side' of mining, i.e., the generation or synthesis of argumentative text. The book finishes with a summary of the argumentation mining tasks, a sketch of potential applications, and a—necessarily subjective—outlook for the field. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Argumentative Language / Modeling Arguments / Corpus Annotation / Finding Claims / Finding Supporting and Objecting Statements / Deriving the Structure of Argumentation / Assessing Argumentation / Generating Argumentative Text / Summary and Perspectives / Bibliography / Authors' Biographies / Index. (shrink)