Rationale « Tim van Gelder

Archive for the ‘Rationale’ Category

Interview in “The Reasoner”

Posted in Argument Mapping, Intelligence Augmentation, Mapping, Rationale, Reasoning on February 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The free online magazine The Reasoner has recently published an interview with me in their February 2010 issue. Much of it is discussing argument mapping and its uses. However the first third or so of the interview covers my earlier work in the foundations of cognitive science (distributed representation, dynamical systems and such topics). Thanks [...]

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Why are legal arguments so hard to follow?

Posted in Argument, Argument Mapping, Language, Legal Argumentation, Rationale, Reasoning on August 13, 2009 | 5 Comments »

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.

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Bouquets appreciated

Posted in Argument Mapping, Rationale on January 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been engaged (with a great team) in building argument mapping software for over a decade now. Its been an uphill battle most of the way. The acid test of success is sales, but there are other measures, such as positive, insightful feedback from users who “get it,” i.e. understand what we’ve done. Such as [...]

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The three kinds of deliberative judgement

Posted in Argument, Argument Mapping, Austhink, Decision Making, Rationale on November 13, 2008 | 1 Comment »

[originally posted to BlogCisive] To a first approximation, all deliberative judgements (i.e., those that turn on to-some-degree careful consideration of the relevant arguments) can be usefully sorted into three kinds. These are the three Ds of judgement. 1. Decision Decision is a matter of choosing from among options, particularly where those options are possible actions. [...]

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Tools for Thinking – Management Consulting

Posted in Argument Mapping, bCisive, Intelligence Augmentation, Rationale on August 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Draft magazine piece. Comments welcome. In the late 1950s, a young engineer by the name of Douglas Engelbart made a decision that was to have a immense effect on all of our lives. Engelbart realised that the massive challenges faced by humanity, such as hunger or nuclear war, would place unprecedented demands on our thinking [...]

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Rationale documentary on YouTube

Posted in Austhink, Rationale on November 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Check it out…

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Dinosaurs and inference rebuttals

Posted in Argument, Argument Mapping, Explanation, Rationale on November 18, 2007 | 3 Comments »

Spotted at the Creation Museum: Q: Are human bones found with dinosaur fossils? A: None have been discovered yet. However, if human bones aren’t found with dinosaur bones, it simply means they weren’t buried together. Humans have come in contact with lots of animals, like crocodiles and coelecanths, but they aren’t buried with humans. The [...]

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Got Code got prize

Posted in Argument Mapping, Austhink, Rationale, Software Startup on October 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

Tonight Andy Bulka (our software architect) and I went to the “ICT Panorama” event at the University of Melbourne Computer Science and Software Engineering Department. Each year, 4th year students in the department are divided into teams who work on innovative projects for “real world” clients. Austhink Software was assigned a team, code-named “Got Code.” [...]

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Rationale for Rationale now officially available

Posted in Argument Mapping, Rationale on October 15, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Oxford Journals has published my The Rationale for Rationale in Law, Probability and Risk. They’ve sent me is a link to an online pdf version. Judging by the page numbering and the citation (see below) it seems this is an digital- or online-only issue. A good feature of the new system is that the papers [...]

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