A: Of course! – because strategic planning involves complex arguments, and argument mapping can help whenever you have to deal with complex arguments.

However to move beyond that sort of trite proclamation, it is useful to have concrete examples of how argument mapping can enhance a strategic planning process.

Austhink recently providing mapping expertise for a major Australian organisation developing its strategic outlook for a nominated date of 2030. In order to do detailed planning, leading to major decisions such as investing many billions of dollars in human resources and equipment, it had to first develop a conception of what its “operating environment” would be in 2030 and how the organisation would be able to achieve competitive advantage in that environment. The team developing this conception had drafted a document laying it out, including seven hypotheses as to how the organisation would be able to achieve advantage, with arguments to support the hypotheses. Necessarily these hypotheses and arguments were quite abstract, intended as they were to cover a wide range of scenarios.

Parenthetically, it is worth emphasizing how difficult this task is. We all know how rapidly the world is changing in all sort of respects (technology, geopolitics, climate etc.), and how unpredictable that change is. The more you try to say anything reasonably definite and useful about the 2030s, the more they appear to be hidden in a dense fog of uncertainty. Yet this organisation – like so many others – can’t just throw up its hands. It has to make conceptual and predictive commitments with very high stakes, for the organisation itself and indeed far beyond it.

Having developed a draft strategic conception, the organisation is now putting it through a fairly elaborate process of “stress testing”. This raises the question – how do you “put to the test” sets of arguments relating to highly abstract and intrinsically speculative propositions? Their idea, in essence,was to

1. Articulate the arguments with as much clarity and rigor as possible
2. With the help of a broad selection of domain experts, in a series of workshops, identify strengths and weaknesses, including
   - Gaps – places where key arguments are missing, or more substantiation is needed;
   - Assumptions – especially “hidden” assumptions, i.e. ones you haven’t realized you’ve been making;
   - Objections and challenges
3. Use the findings to guide further development of the thinking

Developing good-quality argument maps in complex, murky territory is a challenging business. It involves getting sufficient clarity about what the issues are, and what arguments you have, and how they “hang together,” to be able to represent those issues and arguments in diagrams following the rules of argument mapping – which are really just fundamental principles of good logical thinking. It is inevitably an iterative process, with each draft resolving some matters but opening others for exploration.

In what follows, I’ll briefly recap this iterative process for just one of the seven argument maps we developed.  (Sorry that the illustrations are unreadable – this is deliberate to preserve confidentiality.)

As is typically the case, the arguments as we first encountered them were presented in standard prose:

I’ve discussed elsewhere how difficult it is to identify complex arguments in standard prose presentations, even when those arguments have been developed and written out by the sharpest of legal minds. In this case we were unsurprised to encounter the usual sorts of problems:

• Arguments pertaining to a particular hypothesis were scattered in various places around the document and interspersed with other not-directly-related material.
• The arguments were difficult to pin down, often because they were largely implicit.
• The arguments were easy to misunderstand, if indeed one didn’t miss them altogether.
• Consequently it was difficult to evaluate the arguments (i.e., judge with any confidence how effectively they supported the hypothesis).

In the first workshop with domain experts, we used real-time facilitated argument mapping with bCisive in an attempt to pin down and elaborate the main arguments, resulting in:

Many useful ideas had come out, but as you can see from the wide flat layout, were still struggling to find an appropriate overall structure. At this stage the map is poorly organised and missing a lot, but at least we could see more clearly what we had and how one thing supposedly relates to another.

We took the maps from the first workshop away and did some reworking, relying mostly on our generic argument mapping expertise (and only a little on commonsense and general knowledge of the domain). What emerged was a basic structure with more coherence, simplicity, and even elegance:

The overall structure is starting to emerge. Now we can distinguish between the higher level (more general, abstract) arguments and their lower-level supporting arguments. This “macro” is the structural “coat hanger” on which the rest can hang. This basic structure was now stable through the remaining iterations.

Aside: this was consistent with what I think of as one of the more profound insights I’ve derived from my years of experience with argument mapping: that complex arguments have a “true” form, a form which is (a) determined by the fundamental principles of good thinking meshing with the underlying reality of the issues, and (b) which uncoverable by patient reworking of the argument under the “rules” or guidelines of argument mapping.

During second workshop, a small number of valuable additions were made to the map:

But more importantly, participants used a “grouputer” system to jot down lots of additional ideas, which we took away and sorted and integrated into another reworked version of the map:

What we can now see emerging is a richer and more articulated sense of the case bearing on the hypothesis. We can clearly see both major lines of supporting argument. We know which claims have been supported and which have not. We can see key objections or warnings (little red blobs in the graphic above). We can see numerous places where unstated assumptions are lurking.

A map like this positions us well to make a provisional judgement as to how well the hypothesis (the main contention in the map) is supported. It also helps one see the numerous things one could do to further elaborate the thinking and develop greater confidence in that judgement. From the standpoint afforded by this map, it is clear that the arguments as originally presented simply couldn’t be properly evaluated. When you have only a very fuzzy sense of what the arguments are, you can have at best only a fuzzy sense of whether they are any good. You are then more likely to be guided by prejudice, bias, habit, instinct or “conventional wisdom”.

(Click the thumbnails to see full-size versions.)

The purist in me wants to say that these are argument infographics rather than argument maps, properly-so-called.    An argument map displays the logical (evidential, inferential) relationships among components in a complex argument, typically using box-and-arrow format.  The relationships displayed with boxes-and-arrows in these infographics are not always logical in this sense.

This is easiest to see in the Seven Good Reasons infographic (on the right, above), where arrows between boxes simply indicate order or progression (first this argument, then this one…).  There is no logical coherence in the linking of one argument to the next.

Still, if these argument infographics are effective in helping people understand the arguments, then they’re a good thing.  And if there is a trend towards the visual display of complex argument – even if in a “merely” infographical way – then that’s a good thing too.

Indeed it is possible that a well-crafted argument infographic may be a better way to communicate complex arguments than a true argument map, the virtues of which may not be apparent to the general reader.

The section Parte II: La téchnica de mapeo de argumentos (argument mapping) contains three pieces emerging from work at the University of Melbourne and Austhink:

• A translation of my article Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science
• A translation of Enhancing our Grasp of Complex Arguments, by Paul Monk and me, a big-picture view of why complex arguments are cognitively challenging and how argument mapping can help.  It has been available as a manuscript since 2004 and been well-received so we are very happy to see it finally appear in print.
• A new chapter  by Claudia María Álvarez Ortiz, ¿El estudio de le filosofia mejora las habilidades de pensamiento crítico? which extracts some core material from her MA thesis Does Philosophy Improve Reasoning Skills?.  This is the first proper publication of the very important meta-analysis of studies of gains in critical thinking at college.

Well-designed and attractively produced, the appearance of the volume is a significant development in critical thinking pedagogy and theory, particularly in the Spanish-speaking Americas.   Regrettably the language barrier will be a major hurdle to recognition and uptake in the Anglosphere.  Perhaps somebody should undertake a translation of the whole volume into English?

Theories on this matter come in five main kinds:

• Formal Training. CT skills are simply the exercise of generic thinking power which can be strengthened by intensive training, much as general fitness can be enhanced by running, swimming or weightlifting.  This approach recommends working out in some formal ‘mental gym’ such as chess, mathematics or symbolic logic as the most convenient and effective way to build these mental muscles.
• Theoretical Instruction. CT skills are acquired by learning the relevant theory (logic, statistics, scientific method, etc.).  This perspective assumes that mastering skills is a matter of gaining the relevant theory.  People with poor CT poor skills lack only a theoretical understanding; if they are taught the theory in sufficient detail, they will automatically be able to exhibit the skills, since exhibiting skills is just a matter of following explicit (or explicable) rules.
• Situated Cognition. CT is deeply tied to particular domains and can only be acquired through properly “situated” activity in each domain.  Extreme versions deny outright that there are any generic CT skills (e.g. McPeck).  Moderate versions claim, more plausibly, that increasingly general skills are acquired through engaging in domain-specific CT activities.  According to the moderate version general CT skills emerge gradually in a process of consolidation and abstraction from particular, concrete deployments, much as general sporting skills (e.g., hand-eye coordination) are acquired by playing a variety of particular sports in which those general skills are exercised in ways peculiar to those sports.
• Practice sees CT skills as acquired by directly practicing the general skills themselves, applying them to many particular problems within a wide selection of specific domains and contexts.  The Practice perspective differs from Formal Training in that it is general CT skills themselves which are being practiced rather than formal substitutes, and the practice takes place in non-formal domains.  It differs from Situated Cognition in that it is practice of general skills aimed at improving those general capacities, rather than embedded deployment of skills aimed at meeting some specific challenge within that domain.
• Evolutionary Psychology views the mind as constituted by an idiosyncratic set of universal, innate, hard-wired cognitive capacities bequeathed by natural selection due to the advantages conferred by those capacities in the particular physical and social environments in which we evolved.  The mind does not possess and cannot attain general-purpose CT skills; rather, it can consolidate strengths in those particular forms or patterns of thinking for which evolution has provided dedicated apparatus.  Cultivating CT is a matter of identifying and nurturing those forms.

Formal training is the oldest and most thoroughly discredited of the perspectives.   It seems now so obvious that teaching latin, chess, music or even formal logic will have little or no impact on general critical thinking skills that it is hard to understand now how this idea could ever have been embraced.   And we also know why it fails: it founders on the rock of transfer.  Skills acquired in playing chess do not transfer to, say, evaluating political debates.  Period.

Theoretical Instruction has almost as old a philosophical pedigree as Formal Training.  It has been implemented in countless college critical thinking classes whose pedagogical modus operandi is to teach students “what they need to know” to be better critical thinkers, by lecturing at them and having them read slabs out of textbooks.   Token homework exercises are assigned primarily as a way of assessing whether they have acquired the relevant knowledge; if they can’t do the exercises, what they need is more rehearsing of theory.   As you can probably tell from the tone of this paragraph, I believe this approach is deeply misguided.  The in-depth explanation was provided by philosophers such as Ryle and Heidegger who established the primacy of knowledge-how over knowledge-that, of skills over theory.

Current educational practice subscribes overwhelmingly (and for the most part unwittingly) to the moderate version of Situated Cognition.  That is, we typically hope and expect that students’ general CT skills will emerge as a consequence of their engaging in learning and thinking as they proceed through secondary and especially tertiary education studying a range of particular subjects.  However, students generally do not reach levels of skill regarded as both desirable and achievable.  As Deanna Kuhn put it, “Seldom has there been such widespread agreement about a significant social issue as there is reflected in the view that education is failing in its most central mission—to teach students to think.”  In my view the weakness of students’ critical thinking skills, after 12 or even 16 years of schooling, is powerful evidence of the inadequacy of the Situated Cognition perspective.

There may be some truth to the Evolutionary Psychology perspective.  However in my view the best argument against it is the fact that another perspective – Practice – actually seems quite promising.   The basic idea behind it is very simple and plausible.   It is a truism that, in general, skills are acquired through practice.   The Practice perspective simply says that generic critical thinking skills are really just like most other skills (that is, most other skills that are acquired, like music or chess or trampolining, rather than skills that are innate and develop naturally, like suckling or walking).

In our work in the Reason Project at the University of Melbourne we refined the Practice perspective into what we called the Quality (or Deliberate) Practice Hypothesis.   This was based on the foundational work of Ericsson and others who have shown that skill acquisition in general depends on extensive quality practice.  We conjectured that this would also be true of critical thinking; i.e. critical thinking skills would be (best) acquired by doing lots and lots of good-quality practice on a wide range of real (or realistic) critical thinking problems.   To improve the quality of practice we developed a training program based around the use of argument mapping, resulting in what has been called the LAMP (Lots of Argument Mapping) approach.   In a series of rigorous (or rather, as-rigorous-as-possible-under-the-circumstances) studies involving pre-, post- and follow-up testing using a variety of tests, and setting our results in the context of a meta-analysis of hundreds of other studies of critical thinking gains, we were able to establish that critical thinking skills gains could be dramatically accelerated, with students reliably improving 7-8 times faster, over one semester, than they would otherwise have done just as university students.   (For some of the detail on the Quality Practice hypothesis and our studies, see this paper, and this chapter.)

So if I had to choose one theory out of the five on offer, I’d choose Practice.  Fortunately however we are not in a forced-choice situation. Practice is enhanced by carefully-placed Theoretical Instruction.  And Practice can be reinforced by Situated Cognition, i.e. by engaging in domain-specific critical thinking activities, even when not framed as deliberate practice of general CT skills.   As one of the greatest critical thinkers said in one of the greatest texts on critical thinking:

“Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited.”

But is this the “right” way to use the term?  How do other people use it?  How should they use it? In short, what does “visual deliberation” mean?  Here’s an attempt at definition (semi-descriptive, semi-prescriptive).

In general, visual deliberation is the use of visual aids to support deliberative processes such as debate and decision making.   By “visual” I mean anything that can be, literally, seen, but not including text (words and sentences).

There are many kinds or “flavors” of visual deliberation depending on what sorts of visual aids are used, how they are deployed in the service of deliberation, and the extent to which they are used.

(1) The most familiar kinds involve the use of charts, graphics, diagrams, tables, and the like, sprinkled through the main verbal argumentation like glace cherries in a fruit cake.  For example, the famous movie An Inconvenient Truth includes various charts presenting information in a non-verbal (or largely non-verbal) manner, and the case being made depends on this information.   The deliberative activity is thus a kind of melange of textual and visual presentation.  Edward Tufte has of course written elegantly and at length about how such visualizations can aid deliberation and how to do this well (see e.g. his Beautiful Evidence).

Aside: not every use of visual aids in the context of deliberation is visual deliberation.   The graphics in An Inconvenient Truth include photos which, while thematically relevant, are incidental to the actual reasoning; if they weren’t there, nothing of any consequence would be lost from the case being made.  Such visuals may be playing a rhetorical or persuasive role, by e.g. activating emotional responses, but are not playing a logical role.  And sometimes of course visuals are pure eye-candy.

(2) A very different kind of visual deliberation is found in the “mapping” tradition which includes Wigmore’s charting method, Rittel’s IBIS, and Conklin’s Dialogue Mapping.   Here the focus is on identifying the core conceptual elements, such as questions, ideas, options, reasons, and objections, and displaying these elements and their relationships in diagrams intended to encompass or “map out” the thinking in all its complexity.  In this kind of visual deliberation, the visual elements are not just ingredients or components within a larger verbal superstructure.   Rather, the superstructure itself is given visual expression in box-and-arrow diagrams.

(3) In a recent book Noveck has identified a third, very different way in which visual ingredients can aid deliberation.  The basic idea here is that visual aspects or elements of a computer’s user interface can help shape deliberative activity: “I argue for what I term visual deliberation, namely, ways of using the computer screen to mirror the work of participating groups back to themselves so that they can organize and function as networked publics.” (p.22)

Sometimes multiple modes of visual deliberation are integrated into one complex, highly visual activity. For example Robert Horn’s argumentation maps, such as the well-known Can Computers Think series, embed graphics within maps.  Online collaborative argumentation systems such as Debategraph and bCisiveOnline, and Shum’s IBIS/Compendium-based design rationale, support the creation of maps within software interfaces providing visual clues guiding collective deliberative activity.

In practice, even traditional verbal deliberation usually involves at least some visual elements.  Speakers and debaters rely not only on their words but also on their gestures.  Argumentative texts such as reports or opinion pieces rely on font, paragraph and document formatting to help convey how verbally-expressed points hang together as argument.   There are deliberative activities involving no visual element at all (think of two people trying to resolve their differences over the telephone) but these are the end point of a spectrum, and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as the pure or paradigm cases.

At the other end of the spectrum, deliberation cannot be  purely visual.  Deliberation essentially involves argumentation, which in turn essentially involves relationships among propositions (claims) which must be expressed verbally.   In each of the three modes identified above, textual expression plays a crucial role.

Now, having said all that, it is useful for me to narrow the focus a little.  My work these days is concerned primarily with the second or “mapping” kind of visual deliberation and its deployment in practical contexts.  So for me visual deliberation usually means, specifically, aiding deliberation through the use of diagrams displaying the structure of that deliberative activity.  As in, this sort of thing:

Rather than creating a standard paper handout, I created a small website, Argument Mapping in Your Subject.  (Google Sites makes it very easy to whip up these kinds of sites.)  The website is a kind of portal to resources which might be helpful for educators seeking to better understand argument mapping and how to integrate into the subject they teach, whatever that may be.  Mostly the website just links to resources already available elsewhere, but does provide some useful original content including, in particular, some case studies of how educators have incorporated argument mapping into their subjects, one in Economics, and another in Computer Science.

Also there is a new Google Group email list for anyone wanting to join a nascent online community around this topic.

Thanks to Kevin Korb for initiating and conducting the interview.

Excerpt:

KK: What are argument maps and why are they important?

TvG: Typically an argument map is a box-and-arrow or node-and-link diagram showing the relationships among propositions in some piece of informal reasoning or argumentation. Argument mapping is thus “semi- formal”, blending formal graph structure with natural language. You can think of argument mapping as addressing a design challenge: come up with a maximally transparent way of representing informal reasoning and argumentation for human thinkers, one that makes the reasoning as explicit, rigorous and yet easily comprehensible and communicable as possible.  From this point of view, the various forms of argument mapping around today—such as the one embodied in the Rationale software—as particular attempts to come up with that optimal format. No doubt improved schemes, supported by more sophisticated technologies, will arise in coming years.

Figure 1.  View full size image, or the Rationale file.

Mapping these judgements is quite hard work.   This is due in part to the complexity of the arguments and their often turning on subtle conceptual distinctions.  However the difficulty is also largely due to the manner of expression, i.e. the way in which judges present complex legal arguments in traditional legal prose.  In a number of ways, this style of writing makes it very challenging to determine what the arguments are, at least at the level of clarity and rigour required for a well-developed argument map.

Sparse use of logical language

When we we present arguments in prose, we can use logical language to clearly indicate the logical connections between the parts of the argument.  So for example I might say

A brewer cannot sell beer on the condition that the buyer engage a particular transport firm for delivery.  The reason is that this would amount to exclusive dealing.

Here I have used the locution “The reason is” to help the reader understand that what follows is an argument for the preceding proposition.

However if you look closely at the Gibbs judgement, you’ll find that there is surprisingly little logical language of this kind.   Argument pieces are provided, but with little clear and explicit flagging of their logical relationships.  For example:

It is even more clear that there was no exclusive dealing of the kind mentioned in s.47(7).  The appellant did not refuse to supply the beer to any retailer.  It was already ready to supply any retailer, either by delivering it from the brewery to North Queensland, or by allowing it to be picked up from a regional depot.

The phrase “it is even more clear that” does suggest that the following proposition (there was no exclusive dealing…) is a point being established or supported.  The following sentences constitute (in part) the argument for that proposition.  Note however that those sentences are simply stated immediately after the proposition to be established.  There is no explicit verbal flag that they constitute an/the argument.   You, the reader, are supposed to just “see” that.  The cue is contextual (proximity) rather than verbal.  Gibbs could have said something like “This is because…” – but he didn’t; he relied on non-verbal cues instead.  The trouble is that non-verbal cues to logical relationships are generally quite weak and ambiguous, and impose a heavy interpretative burden – and hence cognitive load – on the reader.

Diverse or unclear logical language

Even when logical language is used, there are innumerable different forms, with subtle differences in meaning.   Readers would have a much easier time identifying complex arguments if there were standard, unambiguous verbal conventions for signposting logical relations.  Unfortunately, there are not.  Of course there are some locutions that are used more often than others and are relatively unambiguous – e.g. “It follows that”.  But you also find obscure or archaic expressions like “does not gainsay”, and use of ambiguous terms like “however” and “but”.  Both of these common expressions can be functioning as argument structure indicators, but might be playing quite different role.

Missing premises

Another problem is that only some pieces of the argument are actually presented in the prose.  The rest are left unstated, with the expectation that the reader will be able to fill in the gaps.

Consider again the passage quoted above.  What’s missing – at the very least – from this presentation of the argument is something like

Exclusive dealing of the kind mentioned in s.47(7) would require the appellant to refuse to supply beer.

Gibbs is assuming that the reader will understand that some proposition of this kind is part of the argument.  In this case it may seem a reasonable enough assumption.  However we know in general that people find it very hard to identify these missing parts, and when they try, there is huge variation in what they come up with.   In other words, it is dangerous to assume that readers will properly “read in” the missing pieces.  Even if they can do it correctly, it often takes signficant mental effort (though it is worth noting that very often, in simple cases, filling in the missing pieces is seemingly effortless).

Missing intermediate pieces (“leaps of logic”)

There are at least two kinds of missing pieces.  The first, just illustrated, is unstated co-premises; in other words, the argument is enthymematic.  The other kind are intermediate steps in the argument.  Here, in Rationale format, is an alternative rendering of the argument, making clear that between the general conclusion Gibbs is drawing (no exclusive dealing) and the  particular fact offered by way of proof (no refusal to supply beer) there is really an intermediate level of argument.

Figure 2.  Click on the thumbnail to view full-size version.

In other words, judges often expect readers to fill in missing pieces both alongside and between the pieces that are provided.

In fact, the first premise at the intermediate level had been provided, but many pages  before.  It was not (re)stated in the immediate context of the argument, though it did appear in the text, in a rather remote location, with many other pieces of the larger argument appearing in between.   Which brings up the next point…

Ordering

Consider an argument structure of the kind displayed in Figure 1.  Suppose you had to present that argument in ordinary prose.   Ordinary prose is essentially just a “linear” sequence of sentences – one sentence after another – though of course we can use some formatting to break up the monotony.    An issue you would be forced to address is: in what order do you present the pieces of the argument?

There is a systematic way to map a hierarchical structure into a sequence.  In fact there are many such ways.  However, every such way necessarily involves placing items adjacent in the sequence when they are not adjacent in the hierarchy.  This is simply a topological fact, with an interesting consequence for presenting arguments in prose.  It means that pieces of the argument with no direct relationship to each other must end up adjacent to each other in the text (though there may be other material, not part of the pure argument structure, separating them).  In other words, the prose will “bounce around” the argument structure.

When we study real examples of presentation of complex arguments in prose, such as the Gibbs judgement, and we look carefully at the order of presentation of pieces, we find that the author “bounces around” even more than is required mathematically.  In other words, in terms purely of ordering, the pieces are all “jumbled up”, almost as if pieces of a jigsaw had been thrown in a bag and drawn out one by one.

Of course, there will generally be some kind of logic in the madness; the author is trying to present the pieces in an order which, with the surrounding text, will help the reader understand the argument.  The issue is whether the author has done as well as he could in this.   Other things being equal, the more the “dis-order” or jumbling, the more trouble the reader will have in reassembling the hierarchical structure.

Intermingling with other material – and purposes

Another problem is that a written judgement is not solely concerned with transparently presenting the argument.   First, there is other material needing to be presented.  For example, there are the facts of the case, including both the facts that are immediately involved in the argument as well as other information providing important context.  Also there will be related issues which the judge may feel should be discussed, even though they are not part of the core arguments.

The trouble is that the presentation of the argument is intermingled with all this other material.  This means that the reader must pull apart what is argument, what is background, what is peripheral, etc..

On a related point, the judge has purposes in addition to transparent presentation of argument.  There is a certain amount of rhetoric involved in presenting a judgement, since the goal is to persuade others such as the parties to the case, their lawyers, and other judges.  Further, most judges would like to think that their written judgements are well-crafted, readable, perhaps somewhat entertaining, and possibly even literary, in a legal fashion.   It turns out that these goals are somewhat in tension with the goal of presenting the argument transparently.   It is certainly possible to present complex arguments in prose in such a way as a suitably trained reader can see, without inordinate effort or doubt, exactly what the argument is.  The problem is that such text is not pleasant to read, and it may not be as persuasive as more mellifluous discourse.   It requires a true master of argumentative writing to simultaneously reward the reader’s taste for literature or entertainment, and their desire to understand a complex argument with crystal clarity.

Argument Structure vs Essence

I’ve been writing as if judges’ primary ambition, in drafting written judgements, is to transparently display a complex argument structure.  But often when reading these judgements it seems that the authors are  more concerned to convey the “conceptual essence” of the argument – the key insight(s) such that, if the reader get that insight, then they’ve grasped the real heart of the argument.  The key that unlocks the case.   How exactly that essence is embedded in a larger structure of argument may not be so important.   So you find judges “talking around” that key insight or argument step, doing multiple “takes” on the presenting the point so that if the reader doesn’t quite get it one way, they’ll get it another, gaining understanding through a kind of triangulation.

Clearly conveying the conceptual essence of the case is of course a very important thing to do.  However it that is what the judge is primarily trying to do, then the effort devoted to this may be at the expense of, or even interfere with, transparent display of the rest of the case.

Summing up

Judges use written judgements to convey the complex set of arguments supporting their decision.  However it is difficult to extract the arguments from those written judgements, at the level of clarity and rigour demanded by good-quality argument mapping.   This difficulty is due in large part to various aspects of traditional legal prose.

• Judges make surprisingly little use of verbal indicators of logical structure, and often use obscure or vague indicators
• Judges present only some pieces of the arguments, expecting the reader to fill in the rest
• The pieces necessarily appear in the text in a “disrupted” order, compared with their proper relationships in the argument structure
• When producing their written judgements, judges have multiple purposes in addition to clearly conveying a complex structure; and the argument is intermingled, in the text, with other material
• Judges may be more focused on conveying the conceptual essence of the argument than the full argument structure.

These observations are based on a fairly small sample – a handful of judgements in the current round of tutorials, plus my occasional experience over the past few decades  grappling with similar legal writings.  Still, I’m confident that the factors listed would be in play in most legal argumentative writing, and indeed almost any time an author attempts to convey a complex argument in prose.

If this is right, then if we’re faced with the challenge of presenting a complex argument in prose, we can help our readers by:

• Making generous use of logical structure indicators, and trying to use a limited range of relatively standard, unambiguous ones
• Explicitly stating more pieces of the argument
• Trying to present the pieces in as coherent an order as possible, given the logical relationships among the pieces
• Being aware of one’s purposes, and trying to compromising the clear expression of the argument by other purposes
• Disentangling the presentation of the argument from presentation of other material
• Not neglecting overall argument structure while conveying the conceptual essence.

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Buffett is of course talking about investment, but the same seems to me to be true of mapping (whether of the decision, argument or hypothesis variants).

The principles are simple enough.  What for example could be simpler to state and understand than the Rabbit Rule – and yet it is so profound, and has such power.

Mapping is not easy, in large part, because it is just a visual discipline for clarifying our thinking. And clarifying our thinking is not easy, even with visual discipline.